Yeah... Invention clauses cover any invention that at any time, now or at any time in the future, the company might be interested in. So yes... it was definately covered.
As for John Carmack, and his buddies, considering he tried to get his company to publish it, and they said they didn't want it, I doubt it was an issue. Also since he was negotiating with his company, I'm assuming they had some agreement about it.
"In April 1996, Brown sought a release from DSC to pursue his idea. Brown alleges that he asked several managers at DSC whether the company would be interested in helping him develop the idea. According to Brown, DSC and Brown began negotiating an agreement whereby DSC would pay Brown a percentage of savings realized by the company if the idea was successful and a percentage of income from third-party sales, but the company later halted negotiations. Brown says when he refused to reveal his idea, DSC fired him and sued him."
It seems to me, that while still employed he tried to negotiate an agreement with them, for them to pay him for this idea he had (Which he had not stated in his inventions). They started negotiating, and then a lawyer of theirs realized that "Wait, we own this, don't we?" So they asked him to turn it over. I'd say if he was negotiating to sell it, it was damn well concieved already. Only when he then refused to disclose, they fired him (under breach of contract) and sued his sorry butt.
This is not a precedent to them owning ideas in your head. It's a precedent saying, don't try to sell inventions to your employer, who was employing you when you came up with it. (Which really is rather fair).
But doesn't "fair use" state that you can copy both for your own backup or to transer to a seperate medium as long as you don't listen to more than one at one time. Thus you can copy your CD's to Tapes (And MP3s) as long as you don't give them to someone else. In fact, even putting them up on your webserver should be legal, as it's just the same as showing someone (not playing mind you, just showing) a cassette tape or CD. They're the ones who are clicking download (which is when the copying actually takes place).
Hmmm, maybe they should sue the makers of all tape recorders, cd burners, and anything else that actually can be used to create copies.
What makes many PC games, such as Quake and Starcraft great is the ability to modify them. In the case of the Quake games quite extremely. RPGs I find make good console games (They also make good PC games, but Nevermind) because they are meant to be played a couple of times and then dropped. A lot of the great PC games what makes them great is the ability to download new levels, and or in the case of Quake the ability to both create and download mods. Without that ability a Console is limited and if that ability becomes introduced to a console, a console becomes a computer, and then we see consoles suffering the same issues as computers do, so why not just buy a computer?
Why Console, I play them all on the PC!
on
Salon on the XBox
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· Score: 1
I've played every FF game out there (well, not 9 yet, but I don't speak Japanese fluently). And loved every one of them. And I played every one of them on the PC, with higher resolution graphics, and in 8 high res videos and the ability to see the characters expressions in battle is NICE. The PC versions are if anything better. Consoles have their place, but all their games can be ported to PC.
This once again bashes home an opinion I've been forming for some time, which is that the US patent office has been issuing some of the most idiotic patents in the last few years.
More specifically, they've been handing out far, far too general patents. When I was a young kid and patents were explained to me, the concept was quite simple. If you invented something cool you could patent it, which prevented someone from just copying your idea and selling it without paying you royalties. My father also was quick to point out how a large company would then usually change something small and steal your idea anyway, but he always was a bit biased against large companies.
Now though I've seen patents not so much on devices themselves, or even methods, but on general concepts, frequently having NOTHING to do with implementation. A Patent used to be issued for a method of doing something. But these days people patent things such as One-Click shopping and international computer to computer trade, and what basically amounts to the idea of communicating with a graphics card. So yes, NVidia is Evil (TM), of course 3DFX is not really any better and has had its own spate of patent lawsuits, so they too are Evil (TM). What it basically comes down to is all large companies are Evil (TM).
But it must be remembered that without large companies, the prices on computers and cool hardware (if it existed at all), would probably be much, much higher, so for buying anything from any large company, you too are supporting Evil (TM).
But back to the main point (if there ever was one), is that patents haven't done a whole lot of good lately, and their original intent has become rather lost, so like many features of our government the whole idea is obselete and being abused horribly and probably should be scrapped and started from scratch. But it won't be, because our government (like everything else involving more than 5 people) is Evil (TM).
Ahh....but due to the lesser air pressure, much less pressure is needed inside the balloon, so It can be much larger far easier. Anyway, the main point is just to bound a lot on the ground anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... Invention clauses cover any invention that at any time, now or at any time in the future, the company might be interested in. So yes... it was definately covered.
As for John Carmack, and his buddies, considering he tried to get his company to publish it, and they said they didn't want it, I doubt it was an issue. Also since he was negotiating with his company, I'm assuming they had some agreement about it.
Read this paragraph again:
"In April 1996, Brown sought a release from DSC to pursue his idea. Brown alleges that he asked several managers at DSC whether the company would be interested in helping him develop the idea. According to Brown, DSC and Brown began negotiating an agreement whereby DSC would pay Brown a percentage of savings realized by the company if the idea was successful and a percentage of income from third-party sales, but the company later halted negotiations. Brown says when he refused to reveal his idea, DSC fired him and sued him."
It seems to me, that while still employed he tried to negotiate an agreement with them, for them to pay him for this idea he had (Which he had not stated in his inventions). They started negotiating, and then a lawyer of theirs realized that "Wait, we own this, don't we?" So they asked him to turn it over. I'd say if he was negotiating to sell it, it was damn well concieved already. Only when he then refused to disclose, they fired him (under breach of contract) and sued his sorry butt.
This is not a precedent to them owning ideas in your head. It's a precedent saying, don't try to sell inventions to your employer, who was employing you when you came up with it. (Which really is rather fair).
They define piracy as copying...
But doesn't "fair use" state that you can copy both for your own backup or to transer to a seperate medium as long as you don't listen to more than one at one time. Thus you can copy your CD's to Tapes (And MP3s) as long as you don't give them to someone else. In fact, even putting them up on your webserver should be legal, as it's just the same as showing someone (not playing mind you, just showing) a cassette tape or CD. They're the ones who are clicking download (which is when the copying actually takes place).
Hmmm, maybe they should sue the makers of all tape recorders, cd burners, and anything else that actually can be used to create copies.
What makes many PC games, such as Quake and Starcraft great is the ability to modify them. In the case of the Quake games quite extremely. RPGs I find make good console games (They also make good PC games, but Nevermind) because they are meant to be played a couple of times and then dropped. A lot of the great PC games what makes them great is the ability to download new levels, and or in the case of Quake the ability to both create and download mods. Without that ability a Console is limited and if that ability becomes introduced to a console, a console becomes a computer, and then we see consoles suffering the same issues as computers do, so why not just buy a computer?
I've played every FF game out there (well, not 9 yet, but I don't speak Japanese fluently). And loved every one of them. And I played every one of them on the PC, with higher resolution graphics, and in 8 high res videos and the ability to see the characters expressions in battle is NICE. The PC versions are if anything better. Consoles have their place, but all their games can be ported to PC.
This once again bashes home an opinion I've been forming for some time, which is that the US patent office has been issuing some of the most idiotic patents in the last few years. More specifically, they've been handing out far, far too general patents. When I was a young kid and patents were explained to me, the concept was quite simple. If you invented something cool you could patent it, which prevented someone from just copying your idea and selling it without paying you royalties. My father also was quick to point out how a large company would then usually change something small and steal your idea anyway, but he always was a bit biased against large companies. Now though I've seen patents not so much on devices themselves, or even methods, but on general concepts, frequently having NOTHING to do with implementation. A Patent used to be issued for a method of doing something. But these days people patent things such as One-Click shopping and international computer to computer trade, and what basically amounts to the idea of communicating with a graphics card. So yes, NVidia is Evil (TM), of course 3DFX is not really any better and has had its own spate of patent lawsuits, so they too are Evil (TM). What it basically comes down to is all large companies are Evil (TM). But it must be remembered that without large companies, the prices on computers and cool hardware (if it existed at all), would probably be much, much higher, so for buying anything from any large company, you too are supporting Evil (TM). But back to the main point (if there ever was one), is that patents haven't done a whole lot of good lately, and their original intent has become rather lost, so like many features of our government the whole idea is obselete and being abused horribly and probably should be scrapped and started from scratch. But it won't be, because our government (like everything else involving more than 5 people) is Evil (TM).
You forgot freeing the mallocs...
I apologize, but it had to be said.
Ahh....but due to the lesser air pressure, much less pressure is needed inside the balloon, so It can be much larger far easier. Anyway, the main point is just to bound a lot on the ground anyway.