The whole software patent issue is akin to the nuclear arms race: everyone has lots of them and they threaten to use them, but they are rarely ever used.
Not only DO they get used, but when they get used consumers lose.
Hayes +++ patent led to most non-Hayes modems disconnecting when displaying a message like this.
The Xerox Unistroke patent means that modern PalmOS handhelds do not support Graffiti.
They work as a great scare tactic, but they are hardly useful for their intended purpose.
They are NEVER useful for their intended purpose, unless you think the intended purpose is to prevent compatibility between systems and prevent innovators from using the tools they developed.
Cooler computers? Computers that last longer on UPS?
I can't play computer games in the summer because my "Wintendo" generates too much heat for my AC unit. This isn't much of a problem for me, I'm not much of a gamer, but anything that can reduce AC power per unit of computer power is all to the good.
What if tomorrow KFC was forced to give up the eleven herbs and spices used in their secret recipe?
Nobody's asking Microsoft to give up their secret recipe. They're asking Microsoft to document how you eat their chicken.
This isn't information you would use to duplicate Microsoft's software, this is information yu need to make your products work WITH Microsoft's software.
Netscape tried to sue Microsoft because they felt their browser was unfairly marketed since it came with the system.
Not only did it come with the system, but Microsoft refused to let computer makers even include Netscape with the system if they wanted to, AFTER they had already agreed not to. On top of that, to try and make an end run around their original deal with the DoJ, they combined the browser and the desktop in an inherently insecure manner that has cost the industry billions of man-hours to the resulting flood of viruses.
Don't try and whitewash Microsoft's actions in the '90s or pretend that this deal (which is still outrageous) is trying to get hold of information that Microsoft needs to keep secret.
All physorg does is reprint articles from news feeds and press releases, and they ALWAYS remove all links and online references from the original story. It's a "link tarpit".
In this particular case the story doesn't seem to have had much to wipe, but a little googling would have gotten you versions that didn't promote physorg.
The existing media tax in Canada compensates the industry for the legal right of users in Canada to copy material for their own use.
But are they charging a tax on pre-recorded CDs... in case, um, he guy who downloads it makes a copy. Or something?
If not, then how the HELL do they justify this? It's got nothing to do with a right to copy, because the copyright holder has ALREADY been compensated for the download. It's completely unrelated to the media charge because a download isn't media.
If you want to compensate musicians for piracy by taxing potentially uncompensated transfers that are stored on CDs and MP3 players, OK, I can see that. I could even see a tax on internet access to compensate copyright holders, similar to the CD tax. But taxing *legal* downloads that have already compensated the copyright holders instead? That's penalizing the activity you want to promote, and encouraging people to trade "under the table" instead.
I've got Temperature Monitor alerting me if my lappy gets over 75. That's how I got that graph.
I tried a coolpad, USB-powered fans, and it cut the temperature 10 degrees when it was on and not much at all when off, but it still shot through the roof when the CPU maxed out. Since the MBP draws air in through the media slot and not the underside I'm not sure feet will help much. Removing the battery, though, reliably keeps all the sensors below 60C.
That's kind of the thing. The high temperature, is that an identifiable bug or manufacturing defect, or just the way it's supposed to work?
I've had some people say that they routinely run their MBP over 90deg and have had no problems. I thought maybe they're talking 90degF and missed that I was using degC, but at least one guy insisted they really mean that. It doesn't seem right.
I prefer MMOGs to single player, not for the chatting or guilds, but for the fact that humans make for more interesting teammates or opponents, than the computer does.
Game AI is definitely one of the things that makes me not want to play video games any more. Why? Because game AIs suck, so instead they either make the enemies stronger and faster than you (bosses), or they put more of them up against you (everything else), so that your human AI advantage is countered by overwhelming force. I got tired of the whole combat video game back when side-scrollers were king.
If MMO has changed that, maybe it's time I looked into it again... because so far I've pretty much avoided the whole combat MMO thing in favor of social MMOs because I've gotten so used to combat being a boring slog.
No, there's plenty of antisocial shut-ins left in the world.
There's also people who don't consider video games their only potential avenue for socializing, and maybe even go whole *days* or (yes, really) *weeks* without playing one. They're not gamers, they just play games. Some of them might even consider that people who are so focussed on video games at all... MMO or otherwise... as the "antisocial shut-ins".
This isn't new, though, Raph Koster is wrong about that. Putting myself into a Victorian frame of mind, I can easily visualise an overly serious Bridge player telling someone who's setting up a game of Solitaire after spending the day working at the boat club, before they head out to help with the Scouts in the evening, that they're an antisocial shut-in for playing solitaire. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves would definitely be involved, somewhere.
I do indeed have Applecare, and they have already replaced my first battery after it was trashed by overheating. I hadn't thought of trying to get the computer replaced the same way... do you have any useful references?
You're assuming you have to run faster than the bear.
The point is not to force a quick settlement, it's to discourage them from taking you on in the first place. They usually don't have to go after any particular company, and if your company has something that can complicate the case they'll chase a company that can't run as fast.
Hmm... your response made me think about my response some more.
In an environment where network access is sufficiently invisible, and the "game AI" (horrible term, I know) sufficiantly subtle, you could potentially get into a state where you don't notice whether the game you're playing at any given moment is online or offline, single or multi player. In fact I could see someone deliberately designing a game like that, so the main effect of getting into MMO mode would be that the "game AI" seemed to suddenly change.
The (reverse) turing test for a game would be two-fold. First, whether the game is rich enough to make it matter whether the other player is a human or not... and if so, how long would it take for you to tell if there's another human in the game, or how expert you would have to be to tell human from computer tactics. Of course, if you bring in verbal or typed messages that's likely to blow the test right off, since you'd need real AI to pass it... so that's why it would have to be a reverse turing test: with an opponent who doesn't respond to messages, could you tell if it was an NPC or a taciturn PC?
Some people play in the Battlegrounds only. They never actually talk to anyone, and the players they fight might as well be computer NPCs too, because they never communicate, they just fight and forget.
Even if they never communicate with you, if they're treating you like NPCs and acting like NPCs, they're still not acting like AIs, and you're not acting like AIs, so they're not getting the same experience as single-player, and you're still getting a different experience because they're there.
Similarly, in RL, most of the people around you... they're treating you like an NPC, and you're treating them like an NPC. I think you'd have a different experience if they were all androids operated by simple AIs, even if you don't pass the time of day with the bank teller or the automatic teller.
Finally, there are single-player games where you're part of a team, as well as ones where you're one-on-one or controlling each of the team members in turn.
Multiplayer isn't all about mixing chat rooms and combat, just like MMO in general isn't just about combat or even things that "look like games". There's all kinds of experiences and ways of interacting with people, and until we get strong AI MMO and single-player are going to be inherently different.
Schneier says steganographic images are just too obvious, anyway, which renders the technique useless. "If I'm in Burma and trying to send out human rights documentation and hide it in a picture of a giraffe," it's going to look suspicious, he says. "For it to work, you need to have a plausible cover story."
Like, you're sending pictures of your family to relatives overseas?
Steganography is just a new way to mix up the classic techniques of prearranged obscure and innocent signals with ciphers, and these kinds of signals are well known and have a long history of being used by all kinds of people for purposes both innocent and otherwise. Paul Revere's "one if by land, two if by sea". Coded messages in classified advertisements. Kipling's raised hand. They've even been appropriated and turned into normal and expected parts of games, like signals in baseball, or bidding in contract bridge.
The claims are cumulative. A patent troll wouldn't violate claim 15, for example, but they could still be in violation of earlier claims as well as claims that don't reference claim 15. Claim 1 is (of course) particularly broad.
Now depending on such broad claims won't make a strong case, but they don't need to be able to make a strong case to make it too much of a risk for a patent troll to take them on.
A notable exception being the very first generation MacBook Pros some years ago which were very buggy, and in many cases treated as DOAs and promptly replaced by Apple.
No kidding. I have to remove the battery when I'm using iMovie or other CPU-intensive programs or my MBP goes from 50C to 80C in no time at all when it starts converting.
My guess is that Apple, at all costs, wanted to avoid doing what Microsoft did and completely disenchanting their user base by releasing a half-finished OS.
That's what I think the real reason was. If Leopard had been on track for the expected 18-month release cycle in mid-2006 it would have been pretty solid by the time they started on the iPhone, with a late 2006 or early 2007 release. The mid-2007 "non-slipped" date was already 2 years after Tiger.
Maybe the iPhone made the slip worse, but if it wasn't already slipping it wouldn't have needed the resources they pulled out for the iPhone.
And I don't think this slip cost them much of an "opportunity". If they'd had it out around the same time as Vista, 18 months after Tiger, then sure... but I don't think they could have pulled that off no matter what resources they threw into the pot. Brooks' Law always trumps Moore's Law.
This is the "let's patent stupid patents" patent that has been so often discussed on/.
You know the joke, you patent the process of patenting obvious things, and then none of the patent trolls could operate unless you licensed them to. Which, of course, you wouldn't.
The question is, is IBM going to use this as a defensive patent against patent trolls, or try and get into the patent troll business directly?
Slashdot Mirror
The whole software patent issue is akin to the nuclear arms race: everyone has lots of them and they threaten to use them, but they are rarely ever used.
Not only DO they get used, but when they get used consumers lose.
Hayes +++ patent led to most non-Hayes modems disconnecting when displaying a message like this.
The Xerox Unistroke patent means that modern PalmOS handhelds do not support Graffiti.
They work as a great scare tactic, but they are hardly useful for their intended purpose.
They are NEVER useful for their intended purpose, unless you think the intended purpose is to prevent compatibility between systems and prevent innovators from using the tools they developed.
Cooler computers? Computers that last longer on UPS?
I can't play computer games in the summer because my "Wintendo" generates too much heat for my AC unit. This isn't much of a problem for me, I'm not much of a gamer, but anything that can reduce AC power per unit of computer power is all to the good.
Absolutely. I've been saying ever since the EU's decision came out that Microsoft had won the whole thing.
Second, the royalties payable for this information will be reduced to a nominal one-off payment of 10,000 euros.
That's not "nominal".
And projects that need the information can't use it even if they're willing to spend 14 grand for it, because it's utterly encumbered.
Just like I predicted.
What if tomorrow KFC was forced to give up the eleven herbs and spices used in their secret recipe?
Nobody's asking Microsoft to give up their secret recipe. They're asking Microsoft to document how you eat their chicken.
This isn't information you would use to duplicate Microsoft's software, this is information yu need to make your products work WITH Microsoft's software.
Netscape tried to sue Microsoft because they felt their browser was unfairly marketed since it came with the system.
Not only did it come with the system, but Microsoft refused to let computer makers even include Netscape with the system if they wanted to, AFTER they had already agreed not to. On top of that, to try and make an end run around their original deal with the DoJ, they combined the browser and the desktop in an inherently insecure manner that has cost the industry billions of man-hours to the resulting flood of viruses.
Don't try and whitewash Microsoft's actions in the '90s or pretend that this deal (which is still outrageous) is trying to get hold of information that Microsoft needs to keep secret.
All physorg does is reprint articles from news feeds and press releases, and they ALWAYS remove all links and online references from the original story. It's a "link tarpit".
In this particular case the story doesn't seem to have had much to wipe, but a little googling would have gotten you versions that didn't promote physorg.
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/tech/2007/oct/21/102106464.html
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/5232431.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_sc/russia_s_gateway_to_space
I think I figured it out.
This is a hidden import duty, a tax applied primarily to non-canadian musicians but paid primarily to canadian musicians.
Looks like they've come up with a loophole in NAFTA, GATT, etcetera...
The existing media tax in Canada compensates the industry for the legal right of users in Canada to copy material for their own use.
But are they charging a tax on pre-recorded CDs... in case, um, he guy who downloads it makes a copy. Or something?
If not, then how the HELL do they justify this? It's got nothing to do with a right to copy, because the copyright holder has ALREADY been compensated for the download. It's completely unrelated to the media charge because a download isn't media.
If you want to compensate musicians for piracy by taxing potentially uncompensated transfers that are stored on CDs and MP3 players, OK, I can see that. I could even see a tax on internet access to compensate copyright holders, similar to the CD tax. But taxing *legal* downloads that have already compensated the copyright holders instead? That's penalizing the activity you want to promote, and encouraging people to trade "under the table" instead.
What idiot came up with this?
Last I've heard Apple was still not acknowledging that as a fault. :(
I've got Temperature Monitor alerting me if my lappy gets over 75. That's how I got that graph.
I tried a coolpad, USB-powered fans, and it cut the temperature 10 degrees when it was on and not much at all when off, but it still shot through the roof when the CPU maxed out. Since the MBP draws air in through the media slot and not the underside I'm not sure feet will help much. Removing the battery, though, reliably keeps all the sensors below 60C.
Did ya not see my mention of Minuet, which does fit and boot direct from a floppy? :) Pure Assembler.
Menuet, no?
Not open source, though, and kind of funky. Reminds me a lot of '60s and '70s operating systems, and not in a good way.
QNX boots off a floppy and it's actually UNIX. And it appears to be in C.
goatse.ganography?
That's kind of the thing. The high temperature, is that an identifiable bug or manufacturing defect, or just the way it's supposed to work?
I've had some people say that they routinely run their MBP over 90deg and have had no problems. I thought maybe they're talking 90degF and missed that I was using degC, but at least one guy insisted they really mean that. It doesn't seem right.
I prefer MMOGs to single player, not for the chatting or guilds, but for the fact that humans make for more interesting teammates or opponents, than the computer does.
Game AI is definitely one of the things that makes me not want to play video games any more. Why? Because game AIs suck, so instead they either make the enemies stronger and faster than you (bosses), or they put more of them up against you (everything else), so that your human AI advantage is countered by overwhelming force. I got tired of the whole combat video game back when side-scrollers were king.
If MMO has changed that, maybe it's time I looked into it again... because so far I've pretty much avoided the whole combat MMO thing in favor of social MMOs because I've gotten so used to combat being a boring slog.
No, there's plenty of antisocial shut-ins left in the world.
There's also people who don't consider video games their only potential avenue for socializing, and maybe even go whole *days* or (yes, really) *weeks* without playing one. They're not gamers, they just play games. Some of them might even consider that people who are so focussed on video games at all... MMO or otherwise... as the "antisocial shut-ins".
This isn't new, though, Raph Koster is wrong about that. Putting myself into a Victorian frame of mind, I can easily visualise an overly serious Bridge player telling someone who's setting up a game of Solitaire after spending the day working at the boat club, before they head out to help with the Scouts in the evening, that they're an antisocial shut-in for playing solitaire. Bertie Wooster and Jeeves would definitely be involved, somewhere.
I do indeed have Applecare, and they have already replaced my first battery after it was trashed by overheating. I hadn't thought of trying to get the computer replaced the same way... do you have any useful references?
You're assuming you have to run faster than the bear.
The point is not to force a quick settlement, it's to discourage them from taking you on in the first place. They usually don't have to go after any particular company, and if your company has something that can complicate the case they'll chase a company that can't run as fast.
Hmm... your response made me think about my response some more.
In an environment where network access is sufficiently invisible, and the "game AI" (horrible term, I know) sufficiantly subtle, you could potentially get into a state where you don't notice whether the game you're playing at any given moment is online or offline, single or multi player. In fact I could see someone deliberately designing a game like that, so the main effect of getting into MMO mode would be that the "game AI" seemed to suddenly change.
The (reverse) turing test for a game would be two-fold. First, whether the game is rich enough to make it matter whether the other player is a human or not... and if so, how long would it take for you to tell if there's another human in the game, or how expert you would have to be to tell human from computer tactics. Of course, if you bring in verbal or typed messages that's likely to blow the test right off, since you'd need real AI to pass it... so that's why it would have to be a reverse turing test: with an opponent who doesn't respond to messages, could you tell if it was an NPC or a taciturn PC?
Some people play in the Battlegrounds only. They never actually talk to anyone, and the players they fight might as well be computer NPCs too, because they never communicate, they just fight and forget.
Even if they never communicate with you, if they're treating you like NPCs and acting like NPCs, they're still not acting like AIs, and you're not acting like AIs, so they're not getting the same experience as single-player, and you're still getting a different experience because they're there.
Similarly, in RL, most of the people around you... they're treating you like an NPC, and you're treating them like an NPC. I think you'd have a different experience if they were all androids operated by simple AIs, even if you don't pass the time of day with the bank teller or the automatic teller.
Finally, there are single-player games where you're part of a team, as well as ones where you're one-on-one or controlling each of the team members in turn.
Multiplayer isn't all about mixing chat rooms and combat, just like MMO in general isn't just about combat or even things that "look like games". There's all kinds of experiences and ways of interacting with people, and until we get strong AI MMO and single-player are going to be inherently different.
Schneier says steganographic images are just too obvious, anyway, which renders the technique useless. "If I'm in Burma and trying to send out human rights documentation and hide it in a picture of a giraffe," it's going to look suspicious, he says. "For it to work, you need to have a plausible cover story."
Like, you're sending pictures of your family to relatives overseas?
Steganography is just a new way to mix up the classic techniques of prearranged obscure and innocent signals with ciphers, and these kinds of signals are well known and have a long history of being used by all kinds of people for purposes both innocent and otherwise. Paul Revere's "one if by land, two if by sea". Coded messages in classified advertisements. Kipling's raised hand. They've even been appropriated and turned into normal and expected parts of games, like signals in baseball, or bidding in contract bridge.
The claims are cumulative. A patent troll wouldn't violate claim 15, for example, but they could still be in violation of earlier claims as well as claims that don't reference claim 15. Claim 1 is (of course) particularly broad.
Now depending on such broad claims won't make a strong case, but they don't need to be able to make a strong case to make it too much of a risk for a patent troll to take them on.
A notable exception being the very first generation MacBook Pros some years ago which were very buggy, and in many cases treated as DOAs and promptly replaced by Apple.
No kidding. I have to remove the battery when I'm using iMovie or other CPU-intensive programs or my MBP goes from 50C to 80C in no time at all when it starts converting.
Graph here.
My guess is that Apple, at all costs, wanted to avoid doing what Microsoft did and completely disenchanting their user base by releasing a half-finished OS.
That's what I think the real reason was. If Leopard had been on track for the expected 18-month release cycle in mid-2006 it would have been pretty solid by the time they started on the iPhone, with a late 2006 or early 2007 release. The mid-2007 "non-slipped" date was already 2 years after Tiger.
Maybe the iPhone made the slip worse, but if it wasn't already slipping it wouldn't have needed the resources they pulled out for the iPhone.
And I don't think this slip cost them much of an "opportunity". If they'd had it out around the same time as Vista, 18 months after Tiger, then sure... but I don't think they could have pulled that off no matter what resources they threw into the pot. Brooks' Law always trumps Moore's Law.
But, as already pointed out in a recent discussion, what if a patent troll, which is not utilizing any of its patents, comes up against you?
Then you refuse to license this patent to the patent troll, so they're in violation of your patent troll patent.
This is the "let's patent stupid patents" patent that has been so often discussed on /.
You know the joke, you patent the process of patenting obvious things, and then none of the patent trolls could operate unless you licensed them to. Which, of course, you wouldn't.
The question is, is IBM going to use this as a defensive patent against patent trolls, or try and get into the patent troll business directly?