Wal-Mart almost succeeding in robbing blind everyone who had purchased from their online store by making their MP3s unplayable, forcing them to pay for their music AGAIN. Now it took the effort of thousands of customers putting pressure on the stores, and they very nearly pulled it off. How long before other online music services decide to try something like this again, or simply go out of business and leave their customers in the cold?
"I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
In a certain way, it advantages the entertainment industry to claim such outlandish figures. If you're going to sue an average woman for hundreds of thousand of dollars, or bully a 12 year old child for upwards of 25,000$, you need to make your claim based on a tiny percentage of your actual losses. What court would allow a six digit suit against any ONE person when your ENTIRE industry losses only tally up a few millions? It's all part of being able to push around helpless citizens, like the Juggernaut picking on a class of non-mutant first graders.
Off topic again slightly, John Lennon wrote a few songs that seemed to have a distinctly leftist bent, does anyone know if he was actually a socialist or anything similar?
He definitely had a humanist bent, but these days anyone who cares for other people regardless of cost tends to get branded as a "liberal" by the government. It's more politically correct than calling them ouright communists, which you can tell is the word burning on McCain's lips whenever is he says LIBERAL on camera...
If you read the article and scroll down to the sample conversations, the AI subject is easy to identify for two obvious reasons:
It keeps answering vaguely with questions that try to steer away from the interviewer's topic, it seems unable to grasp what the human speaker is referring to. The human subject from the first conversation is able to answer fact to the matter, something that Ultra Hal does do at all.
It also gets dumbfounded by simple typos. Anyone who reads the word "dubject" in a chat will look down at his keyboard and think "oh, he meant 'subject' but hit the D instead of S." An AI seems unable to deduce the origin of unrecognized words outside of dictionaries and synonym listings.
I'd love to help, and I will do so as soon as my transfer fees are processed in order to help this friendly nigerian prince recover his lost millions. I know get-rich-quick schemes don't usually work, but I have a feeling this one will make me rich... and QUICK!
With Blizzard's outstanding reputation for cinematic cutscene production and massive game lore in several well-established game universes (Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo), will we ever see CGI feature-length or animated series productions?
Yes, nothing defeats the tricks and tactics of advertisers and television like giving your kids the critical mind needed to see through their deception. I remember as a kid my parents showing me how to recognize such tricks: "See how they pulled the camera far back? That's so they don't show you that the actor was replaced by a stuntman."
Kids are smart, but inexperienced. It's up to us to fill them in on what they see, and become keen to the tricks of the media. Watch television with your kids, show them all the strings and camera tricks, and reward them for calling out shenanigans where they see them. Trust me, you'll be proud of how astute they will become!
"Mister Taft, what is your position on young whippersnappers using Edison's sound capturing device to obtain songs of popular performers and listening to it later, not paying music admission prices? Is this the end of Music Hall?"
Further cases involving open source code used in works later patented will refer back to this one. A landmark is always a good thing to have on your side.
It would be irresponsible for Apple to deny the allegations without further looking into it first. Having a knee-jerk 'we didn't do nothing!' reaction would concern me a lot more, because that would indicate at best a lack of concern for safety, and at worst a possible cover-up. At least now we know that they're taking this potential threat seriously, and if evidence is found, corrective action will soon follow.
True that. Real life doesn't work like Family Guy where Stewie takes control of the entire world's power grid from a single keyboard. Hydro-electric, coal and nuclear power plants used to work just fine before the advent of the internet and have like, you know, levers and switches.
It sort of makes you wonder - if such a critical, destructive and EASY way to cripple the entire internet exists... why hasn't it been discovered yet so late in the game, and why are the usual DOS targets still operating normally?
The simple fact that I'm posting this reply makes me doubt the "ZOMG UNSTOPPABLEZ" aspect of this claim, is all.
Paper mills and lumber companies can't use lobbyists to bully machinery-lumbering bills through congress to cut down every last CO2-removing tower from the face of the earth, would be my guess. It's just a theory, mind you.
So, you know, wtf? They'd hire someone who worked at McDonalds and lied about having taken a "Java for dummies" course, but they won't even listen to someone who's worked in tech suppport? Something seems amiss there.
They simply apply the logic that someone qualified and competent will expect more money.
People who pay peanuts usually end up hiring monkeys.
Isn't amazing that whenever a new technological breakthrough occurs, it's instantly assumed that the End Is Nigh? If anyone remembers, atomic bombs were originally estimated to have a 15% chance to cause complete atmospheric ignition on a planetary scale. Also, it was a "generally well known fact" when cars were invented that going above 50 mph would cause the driver's lungs to collapse from wind pressure, as well as tear off his face. Don't you just love all those nightmare scenarios that keep popping up? It takes all the challenge out of creating new science fiction apocalypse scenarios!
Slashdot Mirror
"I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"
In a certain way, it advantages the entertainment industry to claim such outlandish figures. If you're going to sue an average woman for hundreds of thousand of dollars, or bully a 12 year old child for upwards of 25,000$, you need to make your claim based on a tiny percentage of your actual losses. What court would allow a six digit suit against any ONE person when your ENTIRE industry losses only tally up a few millions? It's all part of being able to push around helpless citizens, like the Juggernaut picking on a class of non-mutant first graders.
*starts playing frenetic circus plate-spinner music*
Off topic again slightly, John Lennon wrote a few songs that seemed to have a distinctly leftist bent, does anyone know if he was actually a socialist or anything similar?
He definitely had a humanist bent, but these days anyone who cares for other people regardless of cost tends to get branded as a "liberal" by the government. It's more politically correct than calling them ouright communists, which you can tell is the word burning on McCain's lips whenever is he says LIBERAL on camera...
That's what happens when you forget to hire Aerosmith to write your theme song!
Some of us still have the iBall legacy reader for the .DTF (Dead Tree Format) file type!
It keeps answering vaguely with questions that try to steer away from the interviewer's topic, it seems unable to grasp what the human speaker is referring to. The human subject from the first conversation is able to answer fact to the matter, something that Ultra Hal does do at all.
It also gets dumbfounded by simple typos. Anyone who reads the word "dubject" in a chat will look down at his keyboard and think "oh, he meant 'subject' but hit the D instead of S." An AI seems unable to deduce the origin of unrecognized words outside of dictionaries and synonym listings.
I'd love to help, and I will do so as soon as my transfer fees are processed in order to help this friendly nigerian prince recover his lost millions. I know get-rich-quick schemes don't usually work, but I have a feeling this one will make me rich... and QUICK!
I guess that they'll both be winners until someone observes the vote tally and collapses the waveform.
... don't they have to stop at some point first? You can't start what's been going on non-stop for decades.
With Blizzard's outstanding reputation for cinematic cutscene production and massive game lore in several well-established game universes (Starcraft, Warcraft, Diablo), will we ever see CGI feature-length or animated series productions?
Kids are smart, but inexperienced. It's up to us to fill them in on what they see, and become keen to the tricks of the media. Watch television with your kids, show them all the strings and camera tricks, and reward them for calling out shenanigans where they see them. Trust me, you'll be proud of how astute they will become!
"Mister Taft, what is your position on young whippersnappers using Edison's sound capturing device to obtain songs of popular performers and listening to it later, not paying music admission prices? Is this the end of Music Hall?"
Further cases involving open source code used in works later patented will refer back to this one. A landmark is always a good thing to have on your side.
... starting with the electrical college.
It would be irresponsible for Apple to deny the allegations without further looking into it first. Having a knee-jerk 'we didn't do nothing!' reaction would concern me a lot more, because that would indicate at best a lack of concern for safety, and at worst a possible cover-up. At least now we know that they're taking this potential threat seriously, and if evidence is found, corrective action will soon follow.
True that. Real life doesn't work like Family Guy where Stewie takes control of the entire world's power grid from a single keyboard. Hydro-electric, coal and nuclear power plants used to work just fine before the advent of the internet and have like, you know, levers and switches.
The simple fact that I'm posting this reply makes me doubt the "ZOMG UNSTOPPABLEZ" aspect of this claim, is all.
Paper mills and lumber companies can't use lobbyists to bully machinery-lumbering bills through congress to cut down every last CO2-removing tower from the face of the earth, would be my guess. It's just a theory, mind you.
So, you know, wtf? They'd hire someone who worked at McDonalds and lied about having taken a "Java for dummies" course, but they won't even listen to someone who's worked in tech suppport? Something seems amiss there.
They simply apply the logic that someone qualified and competent will expect more money.
People who pay peanuts usually end up hiring monkeys.
Neither does water... right? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68p4ngS-yME
Isn't amazing that whenever a new technological breakthrough occurs, it's instantly assumed that the End Is Nigh? If anyone remembers, atomic bombs were originally estimated to have a 15% chance to cause complete atmospheric ignition on a planetary scale. Also, it was a "generally well known fact" when cars were invented that going above 50 mph would cause the driver's lungs to collapse from wind pressure, as well as tear off his face. Don't you just love all those nightmare scenarios that keep popping up? It takes all the challenge out of creating new science fiction apocalypse scenarios!
It all depends on whether they are trying to patent a software that achieves this, or the actual IDEA of searching for unpatented ideas. If you think I'm being paranoid here, behold Namco's US patent for the idea of putting minigames within loading screens: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5718632.PN.&OS=PN/5718632&RS=PN/5718632
*looks at his hybrid Blizzard game disks and smiles* It goes to show that these days, everything new is an old idea!
Basically what IBM wants is a patent that makes applying for a patent a patent infringement unless you pay them first.