Preserve the genre? Is my old copy of Chainmail. .
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Layoffs at WotC
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· Score: 5, Insightful
going to go up in a puff of smoke or something?
An RPG is nothing but a set of rules, a framework, around which a campaign is built. The rules have already been published. If people wish to play D&D they will continue to play D&D no matter what the hell happens at or to WotC.
Hey, remember the days when a single human being could carry all the rules to D&D without the aid of a forklift? In his *pocket?* Go get a copy of those rules somewhere, Xerox them if you have to, it'll just make them look more authentic anyway, and then find come creative type with a good *imagination* to run the show. All the players need are some pencils and graph paper.
Does the genre need to be preserved? Only if we've sunk so low in our society that college kids these days can't have fun sitting around the commons and * making cool shit up!*
Some patents can't be enforced in their first year as a practical matter. Going back to the flowerbed analogy as you yourself point out it takes several years to lose certain property rights through enforcing ones soveriegnity. What's more those rights that are lost only as they relate to * right of ways,* and certain actual damages, not ownership per se.
Personally I'm of the old school and think the application of patent law to mathmatical algorithms and business models is absurd in the first place, but what the hell do I know?
I'm with the guy who says saying " . . . with a computer" is not a patentable inovation. In this case the computer is merely acting as a tool for communication and the particular mode of communitcation doesn't effect the uniqueness of the core business model. Sales over the internet are the same as sales over the phone or by mail. Amazon is nothing but a mailorder house. Simple as that.
Yes, I'm aware of this. I was using this as an *analogy* with regards to patents. All analogies are flawed in some repects. They're just tools to aid in the understanding.
Your point would have had more validity though if you had pointed out some flaw in my analogy with regards to *patent* law, not real property law. It's the patent law that is in question here, not the law of my analogous property restrictions. You got sidetracked down the wrong road.
But please note that this defense only limits the possible judgement. The patent itself is still valid and enforceable, thus this defense has to be applied on a case by case basis, unlike trademark where once it's gone, it's gone.
Basically it says that if you let the neighbors kids run all over your flower beds for years and then one day finally get sick of it and sue them you can't go back to the begining of time to collect for every flower they ever trampled. Since you had allowed them to do it for years without complaint you willfully gave up the right to collect for earlier incidents and any attempt to do so would be out of malice.
That does NOT mean you gave up any rights of ownership to your flowerbed and can't keep the kids off it in the future.
to be solved by a government. So is internal security.
All MS has to do to compete on an even field is give Venezuela the source code and let them compile it for free.
*That* is the way the free market works.
If Venezuela is unhappy with a particular interface they have tons of local coders, spending their money in the local economy, perfectly willing and capable of doing the job, and ultimately benefiting us all.
*All* ip eventually becomes "worthless," i.e., free, sooner or later. That's a simple fact that the purveyors of ip have yet to work into their business models.
talking about the first computer they got at Los Alamos. Before that they used a room full of "girls" at Marchant adding machines to do the calculations. Feynman had figured out a way to maximize the output of the human workers and he tested them against the computer, they were just as fast, but. . .
The computer didn't get tired and start making mistakes. The "girls" did.
Do long hours effect the quality of code? Well Duh! Does the Pope shit on a bear in the Vatican woods?
Will anything in this thread help convince your boss the whole thing is a bad idea? Nope.
Is it time to bail? Yup. Do it now. The people telling you you're just going to end up fired anyway know of what they speak.
You'll never look at houses the same and his interior walls don't even necessarily need tools to move. Heck some of them aren't even technically walls although a stranger couldn't even tell.
This book should be required reading for anyone intending to build a house, especially architects.
for you asseration that patent holders can't ignore infringement.
Patents are NOT trademark like.
In some legal senses trademarks are not owned. One merely retains the *temporary* right to associate one's business with a particular mark. That right is maintained only so long as in the opinion of the *public* that business is uniquely identified with the mark. That's very important. It is the *public* that determines the validity of a mark. I cases where a mark is called into question in the courts the court only rules whether or not a particular mark uniquely identifies a business in the *public* mind. He does NOT assign *ownership,* only the rights for USE. One *registers* one's use of a mark to show that it was in use by you at a particular time. One does not have *title* to it. Thus for a mark to remain current the courts have ruled that one must defend it's association with one's business vigorously and a mark abandoned becomes once again available or even in the public domain.
A patent is completely different. It is considered true property, like your house, and like your house you can allow people to use it as you will, even to the point of ignoring neighbor's children using it as if it were their own while 'capriciously and discriminatorially' prosecuting another neighbor for trespass. One is given *title* to a patent, just as one is given title to a house, and many of the same legal principles apply. Evidence of this is as near as the headlines, as nearly every day some company discovers they own title to some patent that they didn't even know they had and begins enforcing it, often times against only one or two specific 'people' while continuing to allow all others to freely ignore it.
Kind of like allowing one neighbor to use your lawnmower without asking. It doesn't cease to be your property and you retain the right to, at any time, deny him it's use, or to prosecute a burgler for stealing it.
All perfectly proper, legal, and within the general philosophical framework that governs all property law.
How many people have you rejected that would have turned out to be the best people in your company?
I'll bet the answer is well over 'one.'
You're looking for a magic bullet. A simple mechanical reduction of human issues. It doesn't exist.
The only sure fire way I've ever found of evaluating an employee is to give them something to do and see how it works out, bearing in mind that often times a person with mediocre skills turns out to be a very valuable employee and those with great 'creds' often turns out to be nearly worthless. That's why God invented the probationary period.
To get a better look at what I'm driving at here take a look at another flip side. *You* are asking this question because you are performing less than 'perfectly' at evaluating prospective employees. Why? Because you're humans. You yourself are too complex to easily reduce your performance to a repeatable, mechanical formula.
It is always, ultimately, no matter what interview and evaluation process you impliment, going to come down to what it has always going to come down to, an educated guess and a gut 'feel.'
And you'll make mistakes, you'll hire people you shouldn't have, and *you'll let go people you should have kept.*
Thus it has always been, thus it will always be, as long as it's people we're dealing with.
They are really quite different enviroments. The Antarctic is a *continent.* There are no 'iceflows.' There is also comparitively little drifting of free snow, Antarctica is the most arid desert on earth, precipitaion being measured in handfulls of inchs per *century.*
The glacial icepacks are *miles* deep in places and heating the cable would see it sinking down to the bottom, to be crushed and ripped apart by the *expansion and contraction* of the glacial mass. The ice does not 'move' anymore than it does on your lawn.
forbiding actors to yell " Turn your F---ing phone off!", or audiences from yelling " Asshole!"
I rather think that's all the law we need. Now, go do *your* part in enforcement.
KFG
Ummmmmm, in the 70's the gas war. . .
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VisionTek Folds
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· Score: 2
refered to shooting someone to get to move up one spot in line at the gas pump.
I've got a silver(Texaco)star to prove it. Some nice battle scars too.
In the *60's* not only did they compete on price, but couldn't lower the price low enough and so had to resort to giving away yachts and shit with a fill up.
Ah, those were the days, filling up your Eldorado, getting *change back from a five*, AND a lovely new vacation home in Zurich.
Exactly how was this bad for me?
KFG
There is almost always too much competition. . .
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VisionTek Folds
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· Score: 2
in a free market. Businesses come, businesses go. Just think of the convienience store field.
But with an excess of competition there's always someone else chomping at the bit to take a piece of the pie abandoned by those fallen by the wayside.
If VisionTek had been Nvidia's *only* retailer they'd be hosed right now, but with an excess of them VisionTek's loss is Asus's gain.
Nvidia will be fine in the long run and ATI will hardly even see a blip in their market share.
KFG
Contrary to the other posts in this thread. . .
on
VisionTek Folds
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· Score: 2
the "lifetime" refered to in your warranty refers neither to your life, nor the life of your product, but rather to the life of the *company* backing it.
See? You did it again. You didn't read my post carefully enough to determine what I explicitly stated was my "suggestion," and replied with what you wanted me to have suggested.
I suggested you read posts more carefully and respond relevantly.
The first poster spoke of *kids*, you responded with a rant about *grads.*
They should hire people who read carefully and don't off ranting on their own tangent like some wet behind the ears *kid* who's only interested in his own problems, rather than the one the company pays him to work on?
Many Americans gave their lives so that we can enjoy the hard won freedoms that we do today, AND hand them out like fucking party favors to whoever else comes along and values those freedoms.
That was the whole fucking point of the Monroe Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, The South African, Cuban and Iraqi embargos, etc.
comentary for the stories. That is, after all, the point of Slashdot. Of course Slashdot is late with the news, to become a Slashdot story it is *required* that it appear somewhere else first. Slashdot, by design, only points to stories. If there is a single source that tends to be first with the news interesting to Slashdot readers it's only natural that a large percentage of such readers will go there for news.
Then they come here to *comment* on it, and to read, and perhaps ridicule, the comments of others.
If all you want are the facts, ma'am, this isn't the ideal place.
Slashdot Mirror
going to go up in a puff of smoke or something?
An RPG is nothing but a set of rules, a framework, around which a campaign is built. The rules have already been published. If people wish to play D&D they will continue to play D&D no matter what the hell happens at or to WotC.
Hey, remember the days when a single human being could carry all the rules to D&D without the aid of a forklift? In his *pocket?* Go get a copy of those rules somewhere, Xerox them if you have to, it'll just make them look more authentic anyway, and then find come creative type with a good *imagination* to run the show. All the players need are some pencils and graph paper.
Does the genre need to be preserved? Only if we've sunk so low in our society that college kids these days can't have fun sitting around the commons and * making cool shit up!*
KFG
. . . they've suffered mechanical difficulties and cancelled the test."
Yeah, they suddenly discovered the second law of thermodynamics. In an interview they said, " why didn't somebody tell us?"
KFG
Some patents can't be enforced in their first year as a practical matter. Going back to the flowerbed analogy as you yourself point out it takes several years to lose certain property rights through enforcing ones soveriegnity. What's more those rights that are lost only as they relate to * right of ways,* and certain actual damages, not ownership per se.
Personally I'm of the old school and think the application of patent law to mathmatical algorithms and business models is absurd in the first place, but what the hell do I know?
I'm with the guy who says saying " . . . with a computer" is not a patentable inovation. In this case the computer is merely acting as a tool for communication and the particular mode of communitcation doesn't effect the uniqueness of the core business model. Sales over the internet are the same as sales over the phone or by mail. Amazon is nothing but a mailorder house. Simple as that.
KFG
Yes, I'm aware of this. I was using this as an *analogy* with regards to patents. All analogies are flawed in some repects. They're just tools to aid in the understanding.
Your point would have had more validity though if you had pointed out some flaw in my analogy with regards to *patent* law, not real property law. It's the patent law that is in question here, not the law of my analogous property restrictions. You got sidetracked down the wrong road.
KFG
But please note that this defense only limits the possible judgement. The patent itself is still valid and enforceable, thus this defense has to be applied on a case by case basis, unlike trademark where once it's gone, it's gone.
Basically it says that if you let the neighbors kids run all over your flower beds for years and then one day finally get sick of it and sue them you can't go back to the begining of time to collect for every flower they ever trampled. Since you had allowed them to do it for years without complaint you willfully gave up the right to collect for earlier incidents and any attempt to do so would be out of malice.
That does NOT mean you gave up any rights of ownership to your flowerbed and can't keep the kids off it in the future.
KFG
to be solved by a government. So is internal security.
All MS has to do to compete on an even field is give Venezuela the source code and let them compile it for free.
*That* is the way the free market works.
If Venezuela is unhappy with a particular interface they have tons of local coders, spending their money in the local economy, perfectly willing and capable of doing the job, and ultimately benefiting us all.
*All* ip eventually becomes "worthless," i.e., free, sooner or later. That's a simple fact that the purveyors of ip have yet to work into their business models.
KFG
bought a used Timex-Sinclair last year is no reason to get all huffy about it.
KFG
talking about the first computer they got at Los Alamos. Before that they used a room full of "girls" at Marchant adding machines to do the calculations. Feynman had figured out a way to maximize the output of the human workers and he tested them against the computer, they were just as fast, but. . .
The computer didn't get tired and start making mistakes. The "girls" did.
Do long hours effect the quality of code? Well Duh! Does the Pope shit on a bear in the Vatican woods?
Will anything in this thread help convince your boss the whole thing is a bad idea? Nope.
Is it time to bail? Yup. Do it now. The people telling you you're just going to end up fired anyway know of what they speak.
KFG
by Rex Roberts. Published by M.Evans, 1964.
You'll never look at houses the same and his interior walls don't even necessarily need tools to move. Heck some of them aren't even technically walls although a stranger couldn't even tell.
This book should be required reading for anyone intending to build a house, especially architects.
KFG
for you asseration that patent holders can't ignore infringement.
Patents are NOT trademark like.
In some legal senses trademarks are not owned. One merely retains the *temporary* right to associate one's business with a particular mark. That right is maintained only so long as in the opinion of the *public* that business is uniquely identified with the mark. That's very important. It is the *public* that determines the validity of a mark. I cases where a mark is called into question in the courts the court only rules whether or not a particular mark uniquely identifies a business in the *public* mind. He does NOT assign *ownership,* only the rights for USE. One *registers* one's use of a mark to show that it was in use by you at a particular time. One does not have *title* to it. Thus for a mark to remain current the courts have ruled that one must defend it's association with one's business vigorously and a mark abandoned becomes once again available or even in the public domain.
A patent is completely different. It is considered true property, like your house, and like your house you can allow people to use it as you will, even to the point of ignoring neighbor's children using it as if it were their own while 'capriciously and discriminatorially' prosecuting another neighbor for trespass. One is given *title* to a patent, just as one is given title to a house, and many of the same legal principles apply. Evidence of this is as near as the headlines, as nearly every day some company discovers they own title to some patent that they didn't even know they had and begins enforcing it, often times against only one or two specific 'people' while continuing to allow all others to freely ignore it.
Kind of like allowing one neighbor to use your lawnmower without asking. It doesn't cease to be your property and you retain the right to, at any time, deny him it's use, or to prosecute a burgler for stealing it.
All perfectly proper, legal, and within the general philosophical framework that governs all property law.
How many people have you rejected that would have turned out to be the best people in your company?
I'll bet the answer is well over 'one.'
You're looking for a magic bullet. A simple mechanical reduction of human issues. It doesn't exist.
The only sure fire way I've ever found of evaluating an employee is to give them something to do and see how it works out, bearing in mind that often times a person with mediocre skills turns out to be a very valuable employee and those with great 'creds' often turns out to be nearly worthless. That's why God invented the probationary period.
To get a better look at what I'm driving at here take a look at another flip side. *You* are asking this question because you are performing less than 'perfectly' at evaluating prospective employees. Why? Because you're humans. You yourself are too complex to easily reduce your performance to a repeatable, mechanical formula.
It is always, ultimately, no matter what interview and evaluation process you impliment, going to come down to what it has always going to come down to, an educated guess and a gut 'feel.'
And you'll make mistakes, you'll hire people you shouldn't have, and *you'll let go people you should have kept.*
Thus it has always been, thus it will always be, as long as it's people we're dealing with.
KFG
They are really quite different enviroments. The Antarctic is a *continent.* There are no 'iceflows.' There is also comparitively little drifting of free snow, Antarctica is the most arid desert on earth, precipitaion being measured in handfulls of inchs per *century.*
The glacial icepacks are *miles* deep in places and heating the cable would see it sinking down to the bottom, to be crushed and ripped apart by the *expansion and contraction* of the glacial mass. The ice does not 'move' anymore than it does on your lawn.
KFG
The only time sensitive data to/from Byrd Station are their Quake packets.
They may just have to live with a perpetual LAN party.
KFG
until you read a recent post of mine and the response it illicited:
0 82 924
/. news posting, making fun of it in a rather subtle way.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=38085&cid=4
In point of fact I said "f---ing" quoting not Fishburne, but the original
So. . . fucking relax, ok? Give me a fucking break or fuck off and die.
There, that better?
KFG
burn sulpher bearing coal that you have to knock down a lot of trees to get to and make yourself more dependent on foreign oil.
Blimey, this redistribution of wealth is trickier than I thought -Dennis Moore
KFG
forbiding actors to yell " Turn your F---ing phone off!", or audiences from yelling " Asshole!"
I rather think that's all the law we need. Now, go do *your* part in enforcement.
KFG
refered to shooting someone to get to move up one spot in line at the gas pump.
I've got a silver(Texaco)star to prove it. Some nice battle scars too.
In the *60's* not only did they compete on price, but couldn't lower the price low enough and so had to resort to giving away yachts and shit with a fill up.
Ah, those were the days, filling up your Eldorado, getting *change back from a five*, AND a lovely new vacation home in Zurich.
Exactly how was this bad for me?
KFG
in a free market. Businesses come, businesses go. Just think of the convienience store field.
But with an excess of competition there's always someone else chomping at the bit to take a piece of the pie abandoned by those fallen by the wayside.
If VisionTek had been Nvidia's *only* retailer they'd be hosed right now, but with an excess of them VisionTek's loss is Asus's gain.
Nvidia will be fine in the long run and ATI will hardly even see a blip in their market share.
KFG
the "lifetime" refered to in your warranty refers neither to your life, nor the life of your product, but rather to the life of the *company* backing it.
Can you say "Poof!" boys and girls?
I knew you could.
KFG
See? You did it again. You didn't read my post carefully enough to determine what I explicitly stated was my "suggestion," and replied with what you wanted me to have suggested.
I suggested you read posts more carefully and respond relevantly.
The first poster spoke of *kids*, you responded with a rant about *grads.*
Focus dude.
KFG
They should hire people who read carefully and don't off ranting on their own tangent like some wet behind the ears *kid* who's only interested in his own problems, rather than the one the company pays him to work on?
Just a guess.
KFG
in civics class.
Many Americans gave their lives so that we can enjoy the hard won freedoms that we do today, AND hand them out like fucking party favors to whoever else comes along and values those freedoms.
That was the whole fucking point of the Monroe Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, The South African, Cuban and Iraqi embargos, etc.
Fucking sincerly,
KFG
comentary for the stories. That is, after all, the point of Slashdot. Of course Slashdot is late with the news, to become a Slashdot story it is *required* that it appear somewhere else first. Slashdot, by design, only points to stories. If there is a single source that tends to be first with the news interesting to Slashdot readers it's only natural that a large percentage of such readers will go there for news.
Then they come here to *comment* on it, and to read, and perhaps ridicule, the comments of others.
If all you want are the facts, ma'am, this isn't the ideal place.
KFG
who I called for my free shuttle ride myself.
KFG
India has the largest middle class in the world. It is also true they have many, many poor.
Both are, in part, by virtue of their *large population*.
*Having* poor is not the same as saying a country is poor, otherwise the US would rank among the poor as well.
KFG