In my opinion, Mattel would never have thought about making a Scrabble facebook app... thus, in my twisted logic, they are not really being deprived of revenues they would have been otherwise earning. I know this doesn't really make it "right", but whatever. You snooze you lose.
But the owners are making money, to the tune of $25,000 a month from online advertising. They're doing so with Hasbro/Mattel's intellectual property, without permission, and aren't sharing a dime.
How exactly is Scrabulous in "flagrant violation of copyright law"? Did they copy the text of the rules wholesale? Did they use the Scrabble trademark?
Well, according to TFA, "Scrabulous...has a board that looks just like Scrabble, and the same number of letter tiles with the same point values."
If they'd rearranged the spaces on the board and the point values -- and they wouldn't be the first, Yahoo's been hosting Literati for quite some time -- they'd have been okay. But Hasbro has successfully gone after every single online clone of Scrabble that's ever shown up, and these guys should have expected the same.
It probably wouldn't kill device manufacturers to make the gestures on their devices customizable.
Yeah, because complete customizability of the software experience is exactly what's enabled Linux to conquer the desktop market the way that it has.
No, I'm not trolling; I'm trying to make a point. Your average user doesn't give a darn about customizability beyond adding some bling to the outside of the product case. Consistency--like the entire keyboard-mouse-monitor interface and the windowing operating system--is what attracts most people.
If there's no established pattern to be consistent with, then intuition is equally important. This is why the iPod really succeeded, and why desktop Linux is forever playing catch-up to Windows.
I can see thousand of people trying to make numeric directories:) Yes, also if you can run your tummy while patting your head you aren't infected also.
I heard that if you can spread your fingers and your hand covers your entire face, your server is infected.
And for a child, tactile learning and feedback plays a crucial role in cognitive development.
This is the biggie. Parents: take note.
There's a new trend by VTech and LeapFrog to start using computer games as edutainment for babies. As a parent who's helped raise three babies in the last six years, I strongly question their usefulness.
Children under the age of three are undergoing a phenomenal amount of brain development at the fundamental level. They don't need to learn things like "I push a button, then the TV makes a flash and noise," because they're still learning stuff like "I drop a ball, then it falls to the ground" and "I hit my sister, then I go to time-out."
Manipulating solid objects, developing hand-eye coordination, using certain words to mean certain things--these are the most important things for infants and toddlers to master, and this is what their brain is building on. Interactive computer games are a waste of time, because (a) they can get the same feedback from a stuffed toy with a lightbulb in its nose, and (b) they need--NEED--to spend time interacting with their parents and peers instead of the television set.
I don't have a problem with computer games per se for small children, but I would never buy games specifically for kids until they're at least in preschool.
...did anyone else watch the trailers for "Jumper" and think, "Hey, this looks like they borrowed a lot of ideas from Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' and a few more from 'The Demolished Man' (teleporter cops instead of telepath cops) and smoosh them together into a single story?"
Not that it means it'll be a bad movie, but man, I hope the screenwriters and directors give credit where it's due.
What I mean by that, is you are able to identify what in a person's brain (and related nervous systems) that allows them to be their own unique person, and can store that as some kind of information, if that can be sent to a far-off location, to a reusable body or synthetic equivalent.
See also "Altered Carbon", as well as "The Matrix" et.al.
We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity.
It still surprises me that people don't see a connection between the two. Could anyone become a chess grand master without being at least a little obsessive, autistic, or both? Is it possible to spend so much of one's life being the acknowledged best in the world at something as sophisticated as chess and not become rather self-centered as a result?
Better to think of his racism and bigotry as symptoms of his chess prodigy than as an unfortunate coincidence.
I contacted both and it seems the movies are not captioned and they do not know if it'll be in the near future.
I am not a QuickTime expert, but I believe the current version of the player/codec supports optional subtitles. If so, Apple should have the ability to add captioning in the not-to-distant future. While it may not be trivial to do so, continued petitioning could and should bring some results.
I myself enjoy having English subtitles on hand on my DVDs -- when there's other people in the room, or sleeping upstairs, or kids I don't want to hear all the noise/swearing going on, I find it handy to keep the volume down and the subtitles up. So if this is a feature Apple can add to their rental store, I'd be happy to join the push for it.
One option I thought would make it a lot more attractive would be built-in ripping of DVDs into iTunes.
Can't do that without annoying the very same media companies Jobs wanted to court into iTunes movie rentals -- not to mention the one he himself sits on the board of.
They can't actually tell the stores they'll be selling it at exactly $150, because there are laws against that.
Really? I'm pretty sure Apple does this with their iPods, Nintendo with the Wii, Microsoft with the XBox 360, Sony with the PS3, Canon with their cameras, and so on. Granted they appear to have pre-existing agreements with those retailers, but let's not pretend it's completely illegal.
That's what the "audiophiles" claim, but that's not the way CDs are recorded.
Nitpick: don't misuse quotes like this. There really are such things as "audiophiles" and putting quotes around "them" implies that you think music lovers are a mythical illusion, instead of the expertise they claim to have.
I'm surprised the article could discuss the mathematics of this without bringing up the Alabama paradox of 1880. It's an interesting example of how, using otherwise correct and normal mathematical distribution, increasing the number of seats in the House can actually decrease the representatives for a specific state.
It is actually possible for people to just enjoy doing cool stuff without being bastards about it. People forget this sometimes, maybe due to the reputation of a certain dominant software provider.:)
Oh, come on. The people who matter already know that most Linux users aren't elitist snobs.
It had to happen eventually. IT has become middle-aged, mass-market, everyday stuff.
Are you referring to the technology, or to Dvorak? I mean, if a line like "it was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000" doesn't scream "curmudgeon" at you from the get-go (guess he's still hung up on Win98), I don't know what does.
Slashdot Mirror
No one's mentioned it because it already had it's own slashdot article.
In my opinion, Mattel would never have thought about making a Scrabble facebook app... thus, in my twisted logic, they are not really being deprived of revenues they would have been otherwise earning. I know this doesn't really make it "right", but whatever. You snooze you lose.
But the owners are making money, to the tune of $25,000 a month from online advertising. They're doing so with Hasbro/Mattel's intellectual property, without permission, and aren't sharing a dime.
How exactly is Scrabulous in "flagrant violation of copyright law"? Did they copy the text of the rules wholesale? Did they use the Scrabble trademark?
Well, according to TFA, "Scrabulous...has a board that looks just like Scrabble, and the same number of letter tiles with the same point values."
If they'd rearranged the spaces on the board and the point values -- and they wouldn't be the first, Yahoo's been hosting Literati for quite some time -- they'd have been okay. But Hasbro has successfully gone after every single online clone of Scrabble that's ever shown up, and these guys should have expected the same.
I'm pretty sure this was first mentioned in the book version of "2010: Odyssey Two", IIRC.
And he was basing it on serious scientific speculation, but no one has any way of knowing for sure.
It probably wouldn't kill device manufacturers to make the gestures on their devices customizable.
Yeah, because complete customizability of the software experience is exactly what's enabled Linux to conquer the desktop market the way that it has.
No, I'm not trolling; I'm trying to make a point. Your average user doesn't give a darn about customizability beyond adding some bling to the outside of the product case. Consistency--like the entire keyboard-mouse-monitor interface and the windowing operating system--is what attracts most people.
If there's no established pattern to be consistent with, then intuition is equally important. This is why the iPod really succeeded, and why desktop Linux is forever playing catch-up to Windows.
It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of The Leopard'
Worth mentioning, too; Amazon has the best prices on OS X upgrades I've seen anywhere.
I can see thousand of people trying to make numeric directories :)
Yes, also if you can run your tummy while patting your head you aren't infected also.
I heard that if you can spread your fingers and your hand covers your entire face, your server is infected.
And for a child, tactile learning and feedback plays a crucial role in cognitive development.
This is the biggie. Parents: take note.
There's a new trend by VTech and LeapFrog to start using computer games as edutainment for babies. As a parent who's helped raise three babies in the last six years, I strongly question their usefulness.
Children under the age of three are undergoing a phenomenal amount of brain development at the fundamental level. They don't need to learn things like "I push a button, then the TV makes a flash and noise," because they're still learning stuff like "I drop a ball, then it falls to the ground" and "I hit my sister, then I go to time-out."
Manipulating solid objects, developing hand-eye coordination, using certain words to mean certain things--these are the most important things for infants and toddlers to master, and this is what their brain is building on. Interactive computer games are a waste of time, because (a) they can get the same feedback from a stuffed toy with a lightbulb in its nose, and (b) they need--NEED--to spend time interacting with their parents and peers instead of the television set.
I don't have a problem with computer games per se for small children, but I would never buy games specifically for kids until they're at least in preschool.
...did anyone else watch the trailers for "Jumper" and think, "Hey, this looks like they borrowed a lot of ideas from Alfred Bester's 'The Stars My Destination' and a few more from 'The Demolished Man' (teleporter cops instead of telepath cops) and smoosh them together into a single story?"
Not that it means it'll be a bad movie, but man, I hope the screenwriters and directors give credit where it's due.
The "Next Generation" Star Trek folks knew this, and covered it appropriately. Well, sort of. Read about it under Heisenberg compensators if you like.
Remember, folks, when dealing with science fiction, the operative word is always "fiction".
What I mean by that, is you are able to identify what in a person's brain (and related nervous systems) that allows them to be their own unique person, and can store that as some kind of information, if that can be sent to a far-off location, to a reusable body or synthetic equivalent.
See also "Altered Carbon", as well as "The Matrix" et.al.
Did anyone else see this under "Games," read "64" and automatically assume it was Nintendo related?
I think most of us were too busy admiring the fact that 64 equals the number of squares on a chessboard.
The defunct psychosis that he suffered from rendered him completely useless for the greater good that his abilities offered.
Really? I didn't know you had to be a humanitarian to be a great chess player, or to offer that skill to generations that followed you.
The chess-playing world will still be studying and learning from his games long after his bigotry has been forgotten and glossed over.
We'll miss the young Bobby Fischer and always be a little confused about what happened to make him cross that fine line between ingenuity and insanity.
It still surprises me that people don't see a connection between the two. Could anyone become a chess grand master without being at least a little obsessive, autistic, or both? Is it possible to spend so much of one's life being the acknowledged best in the world at something as sophisticated as chess and not become rather self-centered as a result?
Better to think of his racism and bigotry as symptoms of his chess prodigy than as an unfortunate coincidence.
But sometime I do get a tingle, in the right condition./i.
Does it only happen when you're surfing certain web sites?
I contacted both and it seems the movies are not captioned and they do not know if it'll be in the near future.
I am not a QuickTime expert, but I believe the current version of the player/codec supports optional subtitles. If so, Apple should have the ability to add captioning in the not-to-distant future. While it may not be trivial to do so, continued petitioning could and should bring some results.
I myself enjoy having English subtitles on hand on my DVDs -- when there's other people in the room, or sleeping upstairs, or kids I don't want to hear all the noise/swearing going on, I find it handy to keep the volume down and the subtitles up. So if this is a feature Apple can add to their rental store, I'd be happy to join the push for it.
One option I thought would make it a lot more attractive would be built-in ripping of DVDs into iTunes.
Can't do that without annoying the very same media companies Jobs wanted to court into iTunes movie rentals -- not to mention the one he himself sits on the board of.
But how am I going to watch movies?
If you can afford an $1799 subnotebook but not a $50 set-top DVD player for your television, there's something badly wrong with you.
They can't actually tell the stores they'll be selling it at exactly $150, because there are laws against that.
Really? I'm pretty sure Apple does this with their iPods, Nintendo with the Wii, Microsoft with the XBox 360, Sony with the PS3, Canon with their cameras, and so on. Granted they appear to have pre-existing agreements with those retailers, but let's not pretend it's completely illegal.
Sun's Niagra technology differs, cos it has "virtual cores" which gives you more virtual cores but slower.
Thanks, that cleared it up completely for me.
That's what the "audiophiles" claim, but that's not the way CDs are recorded.
Nitpick: don't misuse quotes like this. There really are such things as "audiophiles" and putting quotes around "them" implies that you think music lovers are a mythical illusion, instead of the expertise they claim to have.
I'm surprised the article could discuss the mathematics of this without bringing up the Alabama paradox of 1880. It's an interesting example of how, using otherwise correct and normal mathematical distribution, increasing the number of seats in the House can actually decrease the representatives for a specific state.
Off my limited knowledge, it would seem to be akin to one of the problems with biofuels...they currently take more energy to produce than they store.
If I remember my Second Law of Thermodynamics correctly, this is true in any case.
(Yes, I know what you meant.)
It is actually possible for people to just enjoy doing cool stuff without being bastards about it. People forget this sometimes, maybe due to the reputation of a certain dominant software provider. :)
Oh, come on. The people who matter already know that most Linux users aren't elitist snobs.
It had to happen eventually. IT has become middle-aged, mass-market, everyday stuff.
Are you referring to the technology, or to Dvorak? I mean, if a line like "it was another crappy tech year--just the latest in a string of bad years dating back to 2000" doesn't scream "curmudgeon" at you from the get-go (guess he's still hung up on Win98), I don't know what does.