They buy up cheap, undervalued IP and then demand that its users pay license fees. Imagine the jpeg patent a hundred times over, or various other companies who's only asset is a few industry-critical patents who give up and let the lawyers take over. This company will snatch up those patents on the cheap and pay for them using licensing fees.
And, if you think about it, this would be fine. Researchers could freelance and sell to such "brokering" companies, never worrying about products. The problem is the broken patent system, where the US patent system allows ideas that are painfully obvious to be patented, and place the exhorbitantly expensive cost of proving its stupidity on the shoulders of individuals.
My solution: sue the US patent organisation for legal fees. Make it expensive. If they started hemhorraging cash they might tighten up their asshole a little better.
The other problem is that, even if a new technology is a revolutionary idea now, it might not be 4 years from now, when it would just be the next logical step in development and would involve no risk at all (protection of such developmental riskless technologies is not the point of patenting).
This might just as well be protection money. Sony, I expect this from, ditto MS (who has an aweful lot of legal IP, despite not being a litigation-happy company)... but Apple and Google might just be investing because they work at the forefront of technology and could easily run into bad IP issues, and it would be good for them to have a firm like this on their side. We'll know more when we see who else invests.
Yes, unfortunately, Lego is eliminating their middleground. Back in the 80s/90s, the themed lego was still centred around standard pieces and was pleasantly versitile. A set would have, at most, one very non-standard piece, and sometimes it would be something that would have obvious reusabiltiy anyways (like a big blue transparent dome). Its unfortunate that they don't have much to fill the gap between over-custom practically-model stuff, and dull blocks.
Come on, don't you remember the days of M-Tron, Black-Tron, Aquanots, etc? I built tons of twisted hovertanks and bases and airships with that.
Unfortunately, Lego faced hard times and had to make hard decisions, hence the Star Wars stuff (like having the SW characters, but don't like the SW kits) and the wierd new islander robot things.
While I disagree that Microsoft is a very litigous company (they mostly go after pirates, which I think is a legitimate grievance), I think you might have missed the obvious:
Microsoft does not innovate. It copies, assimilates, and polishes. Microsoft software is never groundbreaking in any significant way - it just is usually more usable, better integrated, more reputable, and cheaper than the competition. Of course, once they have eliminated the competition, they no longer have anyone to copy.
Actually, I think that change happened when Google took hold... up until then, they were all bloated portal pages. Except OpenText, the one I used back in the nascent days. Google is just unique among these portal/engine sites in that it has the search engine on the front page and the portal stuff tucked away, where Yahoo and friends have it the other way around.
You know you can do both right? I've been a hardcore gamer since I was old enough to buttonmash (even though the C64 had only 1 button), but I still loved my legos and my gyroscopes when I was a kid.
A good solid metal gyroscope is a fun toy that won't break or obselesce. I loved mine.
Ones that are still big hits with the kids: anything with marbles. You can't go wrong with marbles. Pinball machines, chute kits, Fireball Island. While static boardgames might be a dead issue for kids, motile, kinetic boardgames like Crossbows and Catapults (unfortunately also a lawsuit magnet) have the novelty of actually having active, real world objects smashing into each other.
Personally, I want to make a simple real-world RTS game involving a punchclock and some wind-up toys.
Re:Slashdot loves to astroturf for the Segway
on
Segway vs. Roomba
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· Score: 1
Its not just motorized, its a pretty sophisticated "smart" vacuum that senses the walls and manoevers around the room. The idea is that you turn it on and forget about it. Its also very flat and has no handle so it should be able to drive right under furniture.
Of course, it ain't perfect - its got a very small storage bay, for example.
Besides, we both know what the Nintendo model released here would be: $50, 5 games, one gamepad. Meanwhile, the knockoff is $50CAN, oodles of games, and gamepad, gun, and zapper.
If it doesn't have a second pad, its just masturbation.
Yeah, there was one at my mall too... it was a neat gizmo, but I laughed out loud when I saw that the analog stick on the n64 knockoff pad was just for show.
I was half tempted to buy one because it looked like it had a good layout of games and the second gamepad+gun gave it a featureset that gave those Atari things a run for thier money (especially at $50CAN), but the damn thing looked so fragile and stupid.
CBLDF's primary concern is censorship - I doubt the DMCA is at the top of the list of priorities. When it comes to censoring material of extreme themes, the nanny-state liberals and the fundamentalist concervatives bat pretty evenly nasty - although I think the fundy concervatives are a little worse, as they tend to want controversial materials banned altogether, while the liberals usually just want it out of the kids' reach.
No, they're defending the right to print it and sell it - not saying where it has to be sold.
Keep in mind that in the '80s the comic book industry had the most horrible volunteer-cencorship system. Basically, anything other than traditional super-hero comics and childrens comics was banned from stores. While keeping extreme subject matter out of children's reach is a valid concern, what of a graphic and literary art form? And after all - you can buy Playboy at the magazine rack, so why not Heavy Metal?
That was my first point too. And as much as Dave Sim complains about how his controversial opinions are always described alongside his accomplishments, he should keep in mind that his opinions are as unusual and noteworthy as his accomplishments.
Amen. BattleZone was one of the coolest games ever... CC was a good sequel that fixed the bugs and play balance issues, but I still have the first game pegged as a superior title (it just felt better, and I didn't like some of the new strategic elements of BZ2).
Game I want to see: do for BattleZone what HomeWorld did for conventional RTS games. Set it in space, with MonCal's and Star Destroyers in the place of Recyclers.
Plus, play Crimson Skies II before making another spacefighter.
Mod parent up, I've often felt that "corporate jail time" would be a better answer to corporate crime than the modern approach of short-term fines. It would also make the shareholders partially accountable for the actions of the companies they buy into (no dividends) - as they should be: by appointing the CEO and providing funds, they are complicit in the crimes of the company proportionally to the amount invested.
Of course, this is different in the cases of Enron-style financial fraud where the company's victim _is_ its investors - but in the cases of violating human rights/safety/environmental regulations a "corporate house arrest" policy would seem very appropriate.
And as for the first point - I think that people need to stay very focussed on the purpose of the justice system. That is not currently happening - short terms for violent criminals, and punishment for crimes of theft/fraud/financial crimes are not proportional to the magnitude of the crime (white-collar financial crime exceeds the total monetary cost of street crime). If someone steals my car from the driveway they can go away for years, but if someone steals my pension they'll likely get off with a slap on the wrist, never mind the orders of magnitude in difference in the crime.
The other problem is the prison system - there are three types of prison life: 1: hell. You're the bottom of a totem pole in a violent state prison. Abuse, rape, and AIDS are a way of life. 2: residence. You're in low-security townhouse system that doesn't really do anything to punish you - you just have to get up early and do a few odd jobs. 3: thug. The guards would rather not deal with you, and you pretty much get free reign to do what you want.
Now, the problem is that we seem to apply the wrong lifestyles to the wrong criminals. The worst, most violent career criminals live high on the hog - a highschool bully but with shankings and anal pillagings.
The milder drug-offenders and non-violent sex offenders are still sent to Hell. Those people should be in psychiatric wards to be reconditioned.
Meanwhile, many of the top-end white-collar criminals, even if they've stolen more than every thug in New York, get off in a country club... or even house arrest.
I wonder where they send spammers? Club Fed probably - but at least its a long sentence in Club Fed.
My solution: make use of the country's massive supply of idle psychology majors working joe-jobs 'cause they can't find work in the field. Retrain them as guards and get their hands dirty in the prison system.
Ditto. I'll buy new music when I hear something worth buying - its no coincidence that the last few CDs I bought were used copies of The Wall and Depeche Mode's "Exciter".
Noticed that... at any rate, I will now. Python is cooler than Perl - yes, its just as crufty and bloated, but its legible. And yes, I have worked on large-scale Python projects.
Ruby looks really cool, but I'd rather just have Ruby blocks added into Python than sacrifice legibility as much as Ruby does. Python closures/lambdas are teh suck compared to Ruby blocks.
So, what does this news mean for Parrot? We any closer to seeing our sexy cross-language interpreter/VM yet?
Yes, because economics are the only metric by which the effectiveness of government must be measured, rather than the actual quality of life of its constituents.
You can have a perfectly viable and impressive economy while shitting on everyone in it.
Yes, but you forgot the magical digital rule, which was the basis for the DMCA: Everything is completely different when its on the internet, and can't be compared to any existing real world matters in any way.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, that is odd notation - I don't see it here in Canada either.
That raises the question: even after the sentencing - how much money does he get to keep? Ultimately, might it have been worth 9 years in Club Fed?
They buy up cheap, undervalued IP and then demand that its users pay license fees. Imagine the jpeg patent a hundred times over, or various other companies who's only asset is a few industry-critical patents who give up and let the lawyers take over. This company will snatch up those patents on the cheap and pay for them using licensing fees.
And, if you think about it, this would be fine. Researchers could freelance and sell to such "brokering" companies, never worrying about products. The problem is the broken patent system, where the US patent system allows ideas that are painfully obvious to be patented, and place the exhorbitantly expensive cost of proving its stupidity on the shoulders of individuals.
My solution: sue the US patent organisation for legal fees. Make it expensive. If they started hemhorraging cash they might tighten up their asshole a little better.
The other problem is that, even if a new technology is a revolutionary idea now, it might not be 4 years from now, when it would just be the next logical step in development and would involve no risk at all (protection of such developmental riskless technologies is not the point of patenting).
This might just as well be protection money. Sony, I expect this from, ditto MS (who has an aweful lot of legal IP, despite not being a litigation-happy company)... but Apple and Google might just be investing because they work at the forefront of technology and could easily run into bad IP issues, and it would be good for them to have a firm like this on their side. We'll know more when we see who else invests.
Yes, unfortunately, Lego is eliminating their middleground. Back in the 80s/90s, the themed lego was still centred around standard pieces and was pleasantly versitile. A set would have, at most, one very non-standard piece, and sometimes it would be something that would have obvious reusabiltiy anyways (like a big blue transparent dome). Its unfortunate that they don't have much to fill the gap between over-custom practically-model stuff, and dull blocks.
Come on, don't you remember the days of M-Tron, Black-Tron, Aquanots, etc? I built tons of twisted hovertanks and bases and airships with that.
Unfortunately, Lego faced hard times and had to make hard decisions, hence the Star Wars stuff (like having the SW characters, but don't like the SW kits) and the wierd new islander robot things.
While I disagree that Microsoft is a very litigous company (they mostly go after pirates, which I think is a legitimate grievance), I think you might have missed the obvious:
Microsoft does not innovate. It copies, assimilates, and polishes. Microsoft software is never groundbreaking in any significant way - it just is usually more usable, better integrated, more reputable, and cheaper than the competition. Of course, once they have eliminated the competition, they no longer have anyone to copy.
Actually, I think that change happened when Google took hold... up until then, they were all bloated portal pages. Except OpenText, the one I used back in the nascent days. Google is just unique among these portal/engine sites in that it has the search engine on the front page and the portal stuff tucked away, where Yahoo and friends have it the other way around.
You know you can do both right? I've been a hardcore gamer since I was old enough to buttonmash (even though the C64 had only 1 button), but I still loved my legos and my gyroscopes when I was a kid.
A good solid metal gyroscope is a fun toy that won't break or obselesce. I loved mine.
Ones that are still big hits with the kids: anything with marbles. You can't go wrong with marbles. Pinball machines, chute kits, Fireball Island. While static boardgames might be a dead issue for kids, motile, kinetic boardgames like Crossbows and Catapults (unfortunately also a lawsuit magnet) have the novelty of actually having active, real world objects smashing into each other.
Personally, I want to make a simple real-world RTS game involving a punchclock and some wind-up toys.
Its not just motorized, its a pretty sophisticated "smart" vacuum that senses the walls and manoevers around the room. The idea is that you turn it on and forget about it. Its also very flat and has no handle so it should be able to drive right under furniture.
Of course, it ain't perfect - its got a very small storage bay, for example.
Besides, we both know what the Nintendo model released here would be: $50, 5 games, one gamepad. Meanwhile, the knockoff is $50CAN, oodles of games, and gamepad, gun, and zapper.
If it doesn't have a second pad, its just masturbation.
Yeah, there was one at my mall too... it was a neat gizmo, but I laughed out loud when I saw that the analog stick on the n64 knockoff pad was just for show.
I was half tempted to buy one because it looked like it had a good layout of games and the second gamepad+gun gave it a featureset that gave those Atari things a run for thier money (especially at $50CAN), but the damn thing looked so fragile and stupid.
CBLDF's primary concern is censorship - I doubt the DMCA is at the top of the list of priorities. When it comes to censoring material of extreme themes, the nanny-state liberals and the fundamentalist concervatives bat pretty evenly nasty - although I think the fundy concervatives are a little worse, as they tend to want controversial materials banned altogether, while the liberals usually just want it out of the kids' reach.
No, they're defending the right to print it and sell it - not saying where it has to be sold.
Keep in mind that in the '80s the comic book industry had the most horrible volunteer-cencorship system. Basically, anything other than traditional super-hero comics and childrens comics was banned from stores. While keeping extreme subject matter out of children's reach is a valid concern, what of a graphic and literary art form? And after all - you can buy Playboy at the magazine rack, so why not Heavy Metal?
That was my first point too. And as much as Dave Sim complains about how his controversial opinions are always described alongside his accomplishments, he should keep in mind that his opinions are as unusual and noteworthy as his accomplishments.
Damn. Lets try that again: one good Cube deserves another.
I suck.
One good Cube deserves another.
Amen. BattleZone was one of the coolest games ever... CC was a good sequel that fixed the bugs and play balance issues, but I still have the first game pegged as a superior title (it just felt better, and I didn't like some of the new strategic elements of BZ2).
Game I want to see: do for BattleZone what HomeWorld did for conventional RTS games. Set it in space, with MonCal's and Star Destroyers in the place of Recyclers.
Plus, play Crimson Skies II before making another spacefighter.
Mod parent up, I've often felt that "corporate jail time" would be a better answer to corporate crime than the modern approach of short-term fines. It would also make the shareholders partially accountable for the actions of the companies they buy into (no dividends) - as they should be: by appointing the CEO and providing funds, they are complicit in the crimes of the company proportionally to the amount invested.
Of course, this is different in the cases of Enron-style financial fraud where the company's victim _is_ its investors - but in the cases of violating human rights/safety/environmental regulations a "corporate house arrest" policy would seem very appropriate.
And as for the first point - I think that people need to stay very focussed on the purpose of the justice system. That is not currently happening - short terms for violent criminals, and punishment for crimes of theft/fraud/financial crimes are not proportional to the magnitude of the crime (white-collar financial crime exceeds the total monetary cost of street crime). If someone steals my car from the driveway they can go away for years, but if someone steals my pension they'll likely get off with a slap on the wrist, never mind the orders of magnitude in difference in the crime.
The other problem is the prison system - there are three types of prison life:
1: hell. You're the bottom of a totem pole in a violent state prison. Abuse, rape, and AIDS are a way of life.
2: residence. You're in low-security townhouse system that doesn't really do anything to punish you - you just have to get up early and do a few odd jobs.
3: thug. The guards would rather not deal with you, and you pretty much get free reign to do what you want.
Now, the problem is that we seem to apply the wrong lifestyles to the wrong criminals. The worst, most violent career criminals live high on the hog - a highschool bully but with shankings and anal pillagings.
The milder drug-offenders and non-violent sex offenders are still sent to Hell. Those people should be in psychiatric wards to be reconditioned.
Meanwhile, many of the top-end white-collar criminals, even if they've stolen more than every thug in New York, get off in a country club... or even house arrest.
I wonder where they send spammers? Club Fed probably - but at least its a long sentence in Club Fed.
My solution: make use of the country's massive supply of idle psychology majors working joe-jobs 'cause they can't find work in the field. Retrain them as guards and get their hands dirty in the prison system.
Ditto. I'll buy new music when I hear something worth buying - its no coincidence that the last few CDs I bought were used copies of The Wall and Depeche Mode's "Exciter".
Noticed that... at any rate, I will now. Python is cooler than Perl - yes, its just as crufty and bloated, but its legible. And yes, I have worked on large-scale Python projects.
Ruby looks really cool, but I'd rather just have Ruby blocks added into Python than sacrifice legibility as much as Ruby does. Python closures/lambdas are teh suck compared to Ruby blocks.
So, what does this news mean for Parrot? We any closer to seeing our sexy cross-language interpreter/VM yet?
Not all open source nerds are extremist libertarian nutbars.
Idunno, my T720's pretty sparse on cruft, and it gets the job done nicely for me.
Yes, because economics are the only metric by which the effectiveness of government must be measured, rather than the actual quality of life of its constituents.
You can have a perfectly viable and impressive economy while shitting on everyone in it.
Know lots of people who love platformers and can't get into newer games. I recommend them to play Abuse.
Yes, but you forgot the magical digital rule, which was the basis for the DMCA: Everything is completely different when its on the internet, and can't be compared to any existing real world matters in any way.