It'd work exactly the way it does on existing public domain works that various companies hold various trademarks over. E.g. Peter Pan, Sleepy Hollow, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.
You can hold a trademark over a particular design or styling of a public domain character or concept, in a particular class of goods or services. But you can't use that trademark to block the creation or marketing of further works derived from that public domain character.
Hence, there's a peanut butter company out there with a Peter Pan trademark for their foodstuffs and it happily coexists alongside Disney's Peter Pan trademarks, and all the other assorted Peter Pan trademarks -- none of which stopped BJ Hogan from making his own derivative Peter Pan movie.
I don't even think Microsoft has to worry about Sony at this point. Sony's too busy shooting themselves in the foot over and over. Apparently, the only reason their E3 announcements went over faily well, was because they'd paused to reload.
Microsoft would be better suited pricing the 360 core to compete with the Wii and reinvigorate sales in the premium. (sales numbers have been falling off; they're pretty close to the limit on people willing to spend $400 for a console).
Clinton had a hostile legislature watching him like a hawk. Bush had a complicit legislature rubber-stamping every idea the party could dream up for six years.
Note how once the legislature flipped, Bush and his cronies have been subjected to the same sort of rotating inquisition that Clinton suffered?
If they maintained a closed development ecosystem, more like Apple, the question would make more sense. But if they did: sure. Why not? It's their platform and they already have all sorts of qualifications in their licensing terms.
That's one of the things consumers need to be aware of and consider when they buy into a closed platform. And then they can vote with their dollars on platforms that don't allow the content they want. E.g. no porn on betamax, laserdisc, divx(the bad one)
Really, the only problem of the PS3 is the price. That's it. There's just a limit to how many people are going to shell out 500/600 for a game console. They sold a ton of PS3s at launch and they hit that limit.
That's why this price cut is so mind-boggling -- it just brings the current price back inline with what was offered at launch. To gamers, the difference between the original 500/600 dollar SKUs just wasn't relevant. If there was anyone out there who was willing to pay $500 for a PS3, they already have one.
The games library isn't a real big problem, because the PS3 will get all the major cross-platform titles anyway. People would buy the PS3 over the 360 simply because they likely have a ton of PS2 games and wouldn't mind a blu-ray player. They just won't do it while there's a $200 price differential.
While I definitely want titles that appeal to me on a more adult level, I somehow doubt that Manhunt 2 is what I have in mind.
It's not like Take Two is making a game like Requiem for a Dream, Bad Lieutenant or American Psycho (all originally NC-17). All signs point to them making another snuff game, that just happens to be more offensive than the last. I mean, I played Manhunt. There's not alot going on there. Tissue-thin story, characterization and themes. Worst of all, the gameplay was a fairly uninspired sneaker that seemed to mistake variety of implements and quantity of gore for fun. Maybe it turned around after the first three hours or so, but I'll never know.
Don't get me wrong: I think Take Two should be able to make whatever they want, Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony should be able to bar whatever they want, and Wal-Mart/Blockbuster/etc be able to carry whatever they want. So more power to Take Two if they port Manhunt2 to the PC and release it in all its g(l)ory.
I just don't think you want to point to this particular franchise and say "this is what we mean by 'more adult' games".
(Personally, when I say 'adult' games, I'm thinking about concepts more like Bioshock's main moral dilemma, just without a 'think of the children' filter on the depiction of violence/drug-use.)
Yes but DSPAM and Spamassassin don't fit perfectly into Google's plan to co-opt small to mid-size corporate email.
As a spam-filtering go-between, Google gets right back to their earlier push to get corporate users using for-pay gmail. But now it's a value-added service and doesn't require that you give up exchange (initially).
When the rest of the google apps catch up, it'll be that much easier to pitch a cut-over. I'd imagine the next step would be more application-glue to integrate exchange calendars and public folders with google apps.
Now imagine doing that straight through an 8-hour work day.
Artists and Draftsman have been doing it for centuries. Just shift to a drawing-table-style inclined workspace for display and input.
The problem isn't that people don't like the mouse. The problem is that the mouse is not good at what it's being used to do. Further, touchscreens do what mousing does far better and the keyboard does the remainder even better than that.
So why not combine it all into an inclined desktop with an app-programmable touch-based keyboard (live app-specific shotcut keys with meaningful icons) and a touch-sensitive flat display?
Clickety-clack fans could even keep the physical 101, and their programmable touch keyspace could just wrap around the sides and top for additional shortcut keys.
Re:Yeah make it worthless, then I can afford one!!
on
Free the iPhone from AT&T
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I carry my n800 in my pocket all the time. Of course, I'm a pretty big guy and I don't wear tight pants - so YMMV.
In the winter, I've got coat pockets that make it even easier - in the summer, my shorts tend to have those big superfluous pockets, so that's a no-brainer too.
And the important part of 'the n800 is bigger' is that the nokia's screen is 800pixels wide. Despite what Jobs would have you believe, the real internet is not 480 pixels wide, nor is it browsed by zooming in and out and sidescrolling as a matter of course. As a mobile browser the iphone is far ahead of other phones, but it's still a ways behind opera (with flash) on the n800.
The n800 also has 2 SD slots, a usb port, a non-recessed-to-hell headset jack, is infinitely hackable and has a superior landscape thumbboard. Taken together it's exponentially better as a mobile platform. Particularly for anyone on this site.
The only advantage the iphone has over the n800 is integrated phone capability. If you take that out (as DVD Jon has) the iphone costs far too much for far too little.
No Magic Carpet. No Dungeon Keeper. No Theme Hospital. No Syndicate. No Populous.
Furthermore: No X-Com, No Ultima IV and No Fallout.
Almost all lists like this are complete pap, but you simply cannot omit 5 top-50 titles and 3 more that are easily top-10 contenders. Not when you're presenting a list like this with a straight face. I know we bag on gaming 'journalism' for being a joke, but this isn't even funny. It's just kinda sad.
Odds of getting 11 Failed XBox360s given a 5% failure rate: 1 in 20^11 or 204,800,000,000,000 (204 Trillion).
The trivial math only holds for events of chance that have no memory: that is, where history doesn't have any input on future outcomes.
But in the case of sending back a console that's already been determined faulty, that's not the case at all. It's much, much more likely that an already-failed electronics device will fail again after service sends it back. Having 11 hardware failures is far more plausible if he was repeatedly sent back the same defective consoles.
I'd like to know how many unique serial numbers we're talking about here.
But because the odds of getting so many bad machines in a row are still so low, this situation screams User Error or Incompetent Customer Service. Without any further information all we can do is pick a team and cheer.
I actually see some omissions like dialing while driving and music as ringtones are Apple enforcing its taste and manners on the user. They think extremely deeply into the process of not only actually using the phone, but what the overall experience means to the user, and others around them.
I don't see how a random snippet of music is necessarily more annoying than any other ringtone. Further, I don't know many people who actually want a full song as a ringtone (let alone an obnoxious song), but everyone I know would leap at the chance to load other sounds if it didn't mean paying a couple bucks per non-portable tone to their phone provider.
And of course that omission is good for Apple -- now users will demand a ringtone section on iTunes, and Apple will get to jump in on the over-priced ringtone market.
The lack of voice dialing is similarly obnoxious. Presuming that people will change their habits based around a feature omission would be the height of design arrogance (not like that would be a stretch for Apple). People are going to talk on the iPhone while they drive. A lack of voice dialing just mean that they'll have to physically manipulate the device to start or end calls. All Apple is doing (if intentional) is ensuring that cell using drivers are more dangerous.
So could you send a CRC value through a classical channel, and gobs of data through teleportation? Overall, the data wouldn't travel faster than light, but the net effect on transfer speeds would be astounding.
Making a mix CD isn't the problem. The fact that they gifted it to their father is. (They distributed music to their father that they almost certainly did not have the right to distribute)
Also, it's not a 'support' of anti-piracy laws, it's an apagogical argument: "if you sue college kids for swapping songs, you should then also sue the daugther of the president for an absurd amount for this obviously harmless activity."
Who said the music on it was actually copyrighted?
Art is covered under copyright the moment it is fixed into a given form. You don't have to register a work for copyright to be in effect. The second it is fixed, copyright is in effect. Ergo, recorded music is always copyrighted.
If the twin(s) didn't have express consent to redistribute from every rightsholder for every track it's (technically) illegal. It's possible they recorded those songs themselves or had express consent, it's just highly unlikely.
And the RIAA never gives their 'targets' the benefit of the doubt. They threaten and sue long before they have any actual evidence.
Yeah but you can avoid most crap like 'vlog', 'digerati', 'me-media' and other such nonsense by staying out of self-important 'blogs' made purely for the sake of 'blogging'. (You know, the ones that have no theme or focus whatsoever.)
The ones I find most annoying are the words I simply can not get away from. Podcast and Blog lead that list by a wide margin.
It's not a blog, it's a farking diary. It's not a podcast, it's a damn audio file.
With any luck, this shlock will pass quickly from the zeitgeist to the junkpile of 'personal publishing' history; joining zines and short-wave radio 'shows' from the early 90s in their well-deserved repose.
I've got a Nokia n800 with touchscreen keyboard and I do light word processing on there all the time.
I'm not going to write the Great American Novel on it - but a blog post, messsageboard post or even 500 word short-story is no problem. I'm far more effective with the touchscreen than with the tiny keypad on a Treo.
Hand position is far more comfortable due the larger effective keypad, I get larger keys, better word-completion, simple and intuitive highlighting for drag-n-drop, bulk delete, markup, formatting, etc. And the huge screen makes it far easier to display and read larger messages, and effortless to jump to particular places for spot editing.
I was iffy on touch keypads before. But after using one I'm beyond sold; I'm not going back.
We theoretically have direct control over both the US Government (via voting) and Microsoft (via voting with our dollars). Trick is, if we disagree with the US Government, people can go to jail for finding alternative ways to purchase/play the game.
I prefer Microsoft's censorship over the government's purely because of how it impacts my life during the time that my views are at odds with the rules' makers. The net effect is pretty similar for the bulk of the populace, but the personal effect on me and my liberty is far, far less when it's Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony - than when it's Uncle Sam.
Frankly I'm much more comfortable with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony playing morality police than I am with the BBFC/FCC/etc making similar decisions.
I can boycott the corporations that seek to drag the form into a "comic's code"-like ghetto. And I can still buy whatever AO or unrated title I like on my PC. This isn't nearly as bad as judgement passed by those who have the power to fine and jail you for disobeying.
It's still unfortunate, but it's the way console games have been since Nintendo revived the market.
All the console manufacturers make money from hardware and licensing. Some sell their consoles for a loss early on (Nintendo doesn't), but they all turn a profit later in the console's life. Not to mention absurd profit made from day 1 on hardware like memory cards, cables, controllers, network adapters, etc.
Why in the hell is everyone so fixated on the business users? The market for the iPhone is anyone with a phone and an iPod. Which, judging from the sales figures, is just about everyone.
So who cares what the corporate world does? Have we ever looked to them to determine whether any other new phone will be a success?
If journalists want a good iPhone-drama story, just line up all the people who won't touch it because it's AT&T exclusive. AT&T's a far bigger problem for Apple than the corporate world's opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
It'd work exactly the way it does on existing public domain works that various companies hold various trademarks over.
E.g. Peter Pan, Sleepy Hollow, Cinderella, Snow White, etc.
You can hold a trademark over a particular design or styling of a public domain character or concept, in a particular class of goods or services. But you can't use that trademark to block the creation or marketing of further works derived from that public domain character.
Hence, there's a peanut butter company out there with a Peter Pan trademark for their foodstuffs and it happily coexists alongside Disney's Peter Pan trademarks, and all the other assorted Peter Pan trademarks -- none of which stopped BJ Hogan from making his own derivative Peter Pan movie.
I don't even think Microsoft has to worry about Sony at this point. Sony's too busy shooting themselves in the foot over and over.
Apparently, the only reason their E3 announcements went over faily well, was because they'd paused to reload.
Microsoft would be better suited pricing the 360 core to compete with the Wii and reinvigorate sales in the premium.
(sales numbers have been falling off; they're pretty close to the limit on people willing to spend $400 for a console).
Clinton had a hostile legislature watching him like a hawk.
Bush had a complicit legislature rubber-stamping every idea the party could dream up for six years.
Note how once the legislature flipped, Bush and his cronies have been subjected to the same sort of rotating inquisition that Clinton suffered?
If they maintained a closed development ecosystem, more like Apple, the question would make more sense.
But if they did: sure. Why not? It's their platform and they already have all sorts of qualifications in their licensing terms.
That's one of the things consumers need to be aware of and consider when they buy into a closed platform.
And then they can vote with their dollars on platforms that don't allow the content they want.
E.g. no porn on betamax, laserdisc, divx(the bad one)
I think the larger point was that the things it does, it does well.
And an iPhone 'shuffle' with no screen, bluetooth voice dialing and a2dp could actually be a pretty great product.
Really, the only problem of the PS3 is the price. That's it.
There's just a limit to how many people are going to shell out 500/600 for a game console.
They sold a ton of PS3s at launch and they hit that limit.
That's why this price cut is so mind-boggling -- it just brings the current price back inline with what was offered at launch. To gamers, the difference between the original 500/600 dollar SKUs just wasn't relevant. If there was anyone out there who was willing to pay $500 for a PS3, they already have one.
The games library isn't a real big problem, because the PS3 will get all the major cross-platform titles anyway. People would buy the PS3 over the 360 simply because they likely have a ton of PS2 games and wouldn't mind a blu-ray player. They just won't do it while there's a $200 price differential.
While I definitely want titles that appeal to me on a more adult level, I somehow doubt that Manhunt 2 is what I have in mind.
It's not like Take Two is making a game like Requiem for a Dream, Bad Lieutenant or American Psycho (all originally NC-17).
All signs point to them making another snuff game, that just happens to be more offensive than the last. I mean, I played Manhunt. There's not alot going on there. Tissue-thin story, characterization and themes. Worst of all, the gameplay was a fairly uninspired sneaker that seemed to mistake variety of implements and quantity of gore for fun. Maybe it turned around after the first three hours or so, but I'll never know.
Don't get me wrong: I think Take Two should be able to make whatever they want, Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony should be able to bar whatever they want, and Wal-Mart/Blockbuster/etc be able to carry whatever they want. So more power to Take Two if they port Manhunt2 to the PC and release it in all its g(l)ory.
I just don't think you want to point to this particular franchise and say "this is what we mean by 'more adult' games".
(Personally, when I say 'adult' games, I'm thinking about concepts more like Bioshock's main moral dilemma, just without a 'think of the children' filter on the depiction of violence/drug-use.)
Yes but DSPAM and Spamassassin don't fit perfectly into Google's plan to co-opt small to mid-size corporate email.
As a spam-filtering go-between, Google gets right back to their earlier push to get corporate users using for-pay gmail. But now it's a value-added service and doesn't require that you give up exchange (initially).
When the rest of the google apps catch up, it'll be that much easier to pitch a cut-over.
I'd imagine the next step would be more application-glue to integrate exchange calendars and public folders with google apps.
Artists and Draftsman have been doing it for centuries.
Just shift to a drawing-table-style inclined workspace for display and input.
The problem isn't that people don't like the mouse.
The problem is that the mouse is not good at what it's being used to do.
Further, touchscreens do what mousing does far better and the keyboard does the remainder even better than that.
So why not combine it all into an inclined desktop with an app-programmable touch-based keyboard (live app-specific shotcut keys with meaningful icons) and a touch-sensitive flat display?
Clickety-clack fans could even keep the physical 101, and their programmable touch keyspace could just wrap around the sides and top for additional shortcut keys.
I carry my n800 in my pocket all the time.
Of course, I'm a pretty big guy and I don't wear tight pants - so YMMV.
In the winter, I've got coat pockets that make it even easier - in the summer, my shorts tend to have those big superfluous pockets, so that's a no-brainer too.
And the important part of 'the n800 is bigger' is that the nokia's screen is 800pixels wide.
Despite what Jobs would have you believe, the real internet is not 480 pixels wide, nor is it browsed by zooming in and out and sidescrolling as a matter of course.
As a mobile browser the iphone is far ahead of other phones, but it's still a ways behind opera (with flash) on the n800.
The n800 also has 2 SD slots, a usb port, a non-recessed-to-hell headset jack, is infinitely hackable and has a superior landscape thumbboard. Taken together it's exponentially better as a mobile platform. Particularly for anyone on this site.
The only advantage the iphone has over the n800 is integrated phone capability.
If you take that out (as DVD Jon has) the iphone costs far too much for far too little.
No Magic Carpet.
No Dungeon Keeper.
No Theme Hospital.
No Syndicate.
No Populous.
Furthermore: No X-Com, No Ultima IV and No Fallout.
Almost all lists like this are complete pap, but you simply cannot omit 5 top-50 titles and 3 more that are easily top-10 contenders. Not when you're presenting a list like this with a straight face. I know we bag on gaming 'journalism' for being a joke, but this isn't even funny.
It's just kinda sad.
The trivial math only holds for events of chance that have no memory: that is, where history doesn't have any input on future outcomes.
But in the case of sending back a console that's already been determined faulty, that's not the case at all.
It's much, much more likely that an already-failed electronics device will fail again after service sends it back.
Having 11 hardware failures is far more plausible if he was repeatedly sent back the same defective consoles.
I'd like to know how many unique serial numbers we're talking about here.
But because the odds of getting so many bad machines in a row are still so low, this situation screams User Error or Incompetent Customer Service. Without any further information all we can do is pick a team and cheer.
I don't see how a random snippet of music is necessarily more annoying than any other ringtone. Further, I don't know many people who actually want a full song as a ringtone (let alone an obnoxious song), but everyone I know would leap at the chance to load other sounds if it didn't mean paying a couple bucks per non-portable tone to their phone provider.
And of course that omission is good for Apple -- now users will demand a ringtone section on iTunes, and Apple will get to jump in on the over-priced ringtone market.
The lack of voice dialing is similarly obnoxious. Presuming that people will change their habits based around a feature omission would be the height of design arrogance (not like that would be a stretch for Apple).
People are going to talk on the iPhone while they drive. A lack of voice dialing just mean that they'll have to physically manipulate the device to start or end calls. All Apple is doing (if intentional) is ensuring that cell using drivers are more dangerous.
It's just a typo in the presentation.
Scan up the image a bit and you'll see the device is still listed as an iPhone with 7.4GB capacity.
That kid, is back on the space escalator!
I hope his pants get caught and a bloodbath ensues.
So could you send a CRC value through a classical channel, and gobs of data through teleportation? Overall, the data wouldn't travel faster than light, but the net effect on transfer speeds would be astounding.
Making a mix CD isn't the problem.
The fact that they gifted it to their father is.
(They distributed music to their father that they almost certainly did not have the right to distribute)
Also, it's not a 'support' of anti-piracy laws, it's an apagogical argument:
"if you sue college kids for swapping songs, you should then also sue the daugther of the president for an absurd amount for this obviously harmless activity."
You sure can. You don't even have to pitch the original discs.
But you can't give that fix disc to someone else as a gift.
Unless you deprive yourself of the originals, you've made a copy and distributed it.
Art is covered under copyright the moment it is fixed into a given form. You don't have to register a work for copyright to be in effect. The second it is fixed, copyright is in effect. Ergo, recorded music is always copyrighted.
If the twin(s) didn't have express consent to redistribute from every rightsholder for every track it's (technically) illegal. It's possible they recorded those songs themselves or had express consent, it's just highly unlikely.
And the RIAA never gives their 'targets' the benefit of the doubt. They threaten and sue long before they have any actual evidence.
Yeah but you can avoid most crap like 'vlog', 'digerati', 'me-media' and other such nonsense by staying out of self-important 'blogs' made purely for the sake of 'blogging'. (You know, the ones that have no theme or focus whatsoever.)
The ones I find most annoying are the words I simply can not get away from.
Podcast and Blog lead that list by a wide margin.
It's not a blog, it's a farking diary.
It's not a podcast, it's a damn audio file.
With any luck, this shlock will pass quickly from the zeitgeist to the junkpile of 'personal publishing' history; joining zines and short-wave radio 'shows' from the early 90s in their well-deserved repose.
I've got a Nokia n800 with touchscreen keyboard and I do light word processing on there all the time.
I'm not going to write the Great American Novel on it - but a blog post, messsageboard post or even 500 word short-story is no problem. I'm far more effective with the touchscreen than with the tiny keypad on a Treo.
Hand position is far more comfortable due the larger effective keypad, I get larger keys, better word-completion, simple and intuitive highlighting for drag-n-drop, bulk delete, markup, formatting, etc. And the huge screen makes it far easier to display and read larger messages, and effortless to jump to particular places for spot editing.
I was iffy on touch keypads before. But after using one I'm beyond sold; I'm not going back.
We theoretically have direct control over both the US Government (via voting) and Microsoft (via voting with our dollars). Trick is, if we disagree with the US Government, people can go to jail for finding alternative ways to purchase/play the game.
I prefer Microsoft's censorship over the government's purely because of how it impacts my life during the time that my views are at odds with the rules' makers. The net effect is pretty similar for the bulk of the populace, but the personal effect on me and my liberty is far, far less when it's Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony - than when it's Uncle Sam.
Frankly I'm much more comfortable with Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony playing morality police than I am with the BBFC/FCC/etc making similar decisions.
I can boycott the corporations that seek to drag the form into a "comic's code"-like ghetto. And I can still buy whatever AO or unrated title I like on my PC. This isn't nearly as bad as judgement passed by those who have the power to fine and jail you for disobeying.
It's still unfortunate, but it's the way console games have been since Nintendo revived the market.
All the console manufacturers make money from hardware and licensing.
Some sell their consoles for a loss early on (Nintendo doesn't), but they all turn a profit later in the console's life. Not to mention absurd profit made from day 1 on hardware like memory cards, cables, controllers, network adapters, etc.
This is the same question I keep pondering.
Why in the hell is everyone so fixated on the business users?
The market for the iPhone is anyone with a phone and an iPod. Which, judging from the sales figures, is just about everyone.
So who cares what the corporate world does?
Have we ever looked to them to determine whether any other new phone will be a success?
If journalists want a good iPhone-drama story, just line up all the people who won't touch it because it's AT&T exclusive.
AT&T's a far bigger problem for Apple than the corporate world's opinion.