It can't be a surprise to Pystar that Apple reacted this way. They must have expected this from the start, and got a legal opionion that they were satisfied with. They must have had their defence strategy planned before Apple even knew they existed.
Sounds like someone made an off-the-cuff joke suggesting that Miyamato's hobbies should be a trade secret, rather than actually stating company policy.
Of course, this has worked remarkably well, getting Nintendo a lot of press, so if it was a joke they're going to stick to their story.
Thanks. Really I'm just hoping for interesting replies. I'm not sure my position is fully thought through and there have been some interesting points made.
Who's talking about the first amendment? I'm talking about freedom of speech - and the spirit of the first amendment, which is based on the principle.
Would Lucasarts have enforced the embargo if everyone said it was great? If so, then that's their right. If not, they're interfering with freedom of speech - Legal but rather unethical.
Freedom of speech. It's a principle that the first amendment is based on. Its scope is much wider but doesn't have legal backing. It is a strong principle, considered a human right by the UN, and supported by most people, and although legal, it's bad form for a company to punish people for exercising this right.
This isn't a job interview. At least it shouldn't be. We can't possibly have enough information to determine who would do the best job of running the country. If we could judge that objectively, then there would be virtually no political decisions, instead just some skilled advisors in each subject.
Democracy is all about the subjective factors. Is a public health service better than lower taxes? Should we invest more in education? How much more? Is it better to have extra perks for minorities or should everything be equal? Is the level of immigration too high, too low or just right?
None of these have a right and a wrong answer. You pick the answers that seem right to you and pick the candidate that most closely represents your views.
and has been thrown out of courts. Do some research, and stop spreading this lie.
I've done plenty of Googling. Lots of people say that Poor Man's copyright would not be valid. Absolutely none of them cite a court case. Several people state that it has never been tested in court. The UK IP office has even suggested this method. I think you may well be unintentionally spreading a lie here.
Registration provides easy proof of date and allows increased damages, but is not necessary to sue.
It is for all practical purposes. You can only claim damages if you can prove lost profits. You can't claim legal fees or statutory damages.
All of the arguments against this have assumed that the courts would immediately assume that the plaintiff was trying to commit fraud, even though nobody has even attempted to commit a fraud in this manner, and typically the courts tend not to assume that plaintiffs have committed a federal offence when presenting evidence. Maybe it wouldn't work. I'd certainly advise against it on the grounds that it has never been tested, and registering for copyright is much more effective. The courts will take all the evidence into account, and generally assume that people are more likely to be telling the truth than lying.
The self mailing thing has no basis because you need to register a copyright before suing someone for infringing it. Claiming premeditated fraud by the plaintiff is no more reasonable than an allegation that you may have bribed a clerk at the copyright office. You could have done but the defence would need to back up the allegation.
I don't know of any times it's been tried in court in the US. I imagine this is more because without a copyright registration it would be useless and with one it would be redundant. I do have vague memories of someone using this successfully in another country.
It's not proof, but still evidence. evidence is not rejected because it could be faked. It would be up to the company to show that it's actually reasonable to assume that you sent yourself an unsealed envelope on spec, hoping that someone else would come up with an idea that you could claim was ripped off from you.
Just what I was thinking. It seems they could actually allow people to try applications and return them for a refund without Apple having major concerns about piracy.
I like getting games for free, and generally know I'm not going to play them enough to justify the price tag. I'll buy plenty when the prices have come down, and do own mostly original games but quite often I'll want to see what the fuss is about so I'll download it.
Air travel is an industry where the pricing simply makes no sense.
That's true. It's about game theory and guesswork. Closer to a barter system than a pricing system.
Thing is, a flight might cost the airline $100 per seat. It will cost about as much if the seat is full or if it's empty. Sell a seat for $101, and that's $1 profit. Great! Sell it for $50 represents a $50 loss. That's not so great but if the alternative is losing $100 on an empty seat then they'll go for it. But this still means they need to make sure the average price of a ticket is over $100 to remain profitable.
It's actually easier for the airline to sell some seats for $200, and make a loss on most seats than it is for them to charge a consistent price.
This is a risk with any of their applications. And the money Apple gets should easily cover the cost. Although since it's so locked down, you would have thought Apple would have installed a remote disable feature for software as well.
But on it's own, that's very naive. A chess computer using this method would, for example, consider moving the Queen to a position where it can be immediately taken, and then try several hundred scenarios based on that to see if it leads to a win. It's possible that this would win but most unlikely. The AI would assign this action a low score and try higher scoring methods first.
A good go AI should be able to tell what are good boards and what are bad boards rather than randomly sampling a subset of them.
And it probably does this. The Monte Carlo method is probably just a very brief explanation of what the researchers feel si the key mechanic.
It's about exponential growth. Computers today are about 150 times as fast as they were in 1997. Assuming we're matching Moores law, for every second this machine would have taken, the previous champion mentioned would take 2½ minutes. If you give it an hour per move, the old machine would have taken over 6 days to think about it.
You can't realistically play a game with that sort of lag.
It's not just that it's not implementable. It's also that there are several games in there. He needs to leave a lot of stuff out. The idea of an empire building game based largely on Roman political intrigue is a good one although needs development. Having a RTS battle system could just about work with it but would need to be combined logically. Gladiatorial events could probably be combined as well, but adding both concepts means the game loses focus.
Allowing different eras and completely different characters means you end up missing out all of the gameplay of other eras.
Every well known writer has had someone come to them and tell them about their idea. "It's about this guy called Bob. He builds a spaceship and visits lots of planets where exciting adventures happen. Can you write this story for me? I'll split the profits 50/50".
The same applies to studios. Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example. It just doesn't work like that.
What actually happens is that someone in the company comes up with a game concept, and producers and designers talk about it. In many cases (especially party games), there's some discussion about whether it's technically possible. It's possible that the technology isn't up to it, so some development effort is spent in making a tech demo to check that the concept works. If that works then the developer will submit a pitch to a publisher. The pitch is, at the very least, a detailed description of the game and how it will work. Ideally the developer will have some idea of the market for this as well.
It's possible that none of the publishers will be interested. In this case, unless the developer is sure enough about it to develop a demo, they just come up with a new idea.
Ideas are cheap. Developed polished realised ideas are wherethe difficulty is.
Yes. You get diminishing returns. Will 1620p be worth it? 2430p? Most people aren't going to be able to tell you whether a display is 1080p or 720p, many even with a side by side comparison. You really need a 55inch TV to tell the difference.
Most people can tell the difference between 480p and 480i.
The laptop had either been stolen, and sold with the information wiped, stolen and the information sold, lost, destroyed, or left in an office.
Whichever it was, the only information they had was that it was unaccounted for. It was actually a good response to automatically assume the worst case scenario and deal with the situation as if that had happened. If the worst case scenario was the case then at least it was dealt with as best it could be. If not then the only harm done is to them and not their customers.
So while losing it was very inept, their response afterwards was actually fairly responsible of them.
Slashdot Mirror
It can't be a surprise to Pystar that Apple reacted this way. They must have expected this from the start, and got a legal opionion that they were satisfied with. They must have had their defence strategy planned before Apple even knew they existed.
Never had this:
Try the correct way.
Try the other way.
Try the correct way again.
Look at plug
Insert screwdriver to bend plug back into shape
Try the correct way.
Sounds like someone made an off-the-cuff joke suggesting that Miyamato's hobbies should be a trade secret, rather than actually stating company policy.
Of course, this has worked remarkably well, getting Nintendo a lot of press, so if it was a joke they're going to stick to their story.
Thanks. Really I'm just hoping for interesting replies. I'm not sure my position is fully thought through and there have been some interesting points made.
Who's talking about the first amendment? I'm talking about freedom of speech - and the spirit of the first amendment, which is based on the principle.
Would Lucasarts have enforced the embargo if everyone said it was great? If so, then that's their right. If not, they're interfering with freedom of speech - Legal but rather unethical.
Freedom of speech. It's a principle that the first amendment is based on. Its scope is much wider but doesn't have legal backing. It is a strong principle, considered a human right by the UN, and supported by most people, and although legal, it's bad form for a company to punish people for exercising this right.
So, in other words, yes it does:)
This isn't a job interview. At least it shouldn't be. We can't possibly have enough information to determine who would do the best job of running the country. If we could judge that objectively, then there would be virtually no political decisions, instead just some skilled advisors in each subject.
Democracy is all about the subjective factors. Is a public health service better than lower taxes? Should we invest more in education? How much more? Is it better to have extra perks for minorities or should everything be equal? Is the level of immigration too high, too low or just right?
None of these have a right and a wrong answer. You pick the answers that seem right to you and pick the candidate that most closely represents your views.
and has been thrown out of courts. Do some research, and stop spreading this lie.
I've done plenty of Googling. Lots of people say that Poor Man's copyright would not be valid. Absolutely none of them cite a court case. Several people state that it has never been tested in court. The UK IP office has even suggested this method. I think you may well be unintentionally spreading a lie here.
Registration provides easy proof of date and allows increased damages, but is not necessary to sue.
It is for all practical purposes. You can only claim damages if you can prove lost profits. You can't claim legal fees or statutory damages.
All of the arguments against this have assumed that the courts would immediately assume that the plaintiff was trying to commit fraud, even though nobody has even attempted to commit a fraud in this manner, and typically the courts tend not to assume that plaintiffs have committed a federal offence when presenting evidence. Maybe it wouldn't work. I'd certainly advise against it on the grounds that it has never been tested, and registering for copyright is much more effective. The courts will take all the evidence into account, and generally assume that people are more likely to be telling the truth than lying.
The self mailing thing has no basis because you need to register a copyright before suing someone for infringing it. Claiming premeditated fraud by the plaintiff is no more reasonable than an allegation that you may have bribed a clerk at the copyright office. You could have done but the defence would need to back up the allegation.
I don't know of any times it's been tried in court in the US. I imagine this is more because without a copyright registration it would be useless and with one it would be redundant. I do have vague memories of someone using this successfully in another country.
It's not proof, but still evidence. evidence is not rejected because it could be faked. It would be up to the company to show that it's actually reasonable to assume that you sent yourself an unsealed envelope on spec, hoping that someone else would come up with an idea that you could claim was ripped off from you.
Just what I was thinking. It seems they could actually allow people to try applications and return them for a refund without Apple having major concerns about piracy.
I like getting games for free, and generally know I'm not going to play them enough to justify the price tag. I'll buy plenty when the prices have come down, and do own mostly original games but quite often I'll want to see what the fuss is about so I'll download it.
Air travel is an industry where the pricing simply makes no sense.
That's true. It's about game theory and guesswork. Closer to a barter system than a pricing system.
Thing is, a flight might cost the airline $100 per seat. It will cost about as much if the seat is full or if it's empty. Sell a seat for $101, and that's $1 profit. Great! Sell it for $50 represents a $50 loss. That's not so great but if the alternative is losing $100 on an empty seat then they'll go for it. But this still means they need to make sure the average price of a ticket is over $100 to remain profitable.
It's actually easier for the airline to sell some seats for $200, and make a loss on most seats than it is for them to charge a consistent price.
This is a risk with any of their applications. And the money Apple gets should easily cover the cost. Although since it's so locked down, you would have thought Apple would have installed a remote disable feature for software as well.
Some people think throwing money away is fun in and of itself. A lot of people go to Vegas for essentially this reason.
Yes. Computers have always been rubbish at Go. This one amazed everyone by being quite reasonable.
But on it's own, that's very naive. A chess computer using this method would, for example, consider moving the Queen to a position where it can be immediately taken, and then try several hundred scenarios based on that to see if it leads to a win. It's possible that this would win but most unlikely. The AI would assign this action a low score and try higher scoring methods first.
A good go AI should be able to tell what are good boards and what are bad boards rather than randomly sampling a subset of them.
And it probably does this. The Monte Carlo method is probably just a very brief explanation of what the researchers feel si the key mechanic.
It's about exponential growth. Computers today are about 150 times as fast as they were in 1997. Assuming we're matching Moores law, for every second this machine would have taken, the previous champion mentioned would take 2½ minutes. If you give it an hour per move, the old machine would have taken over 6 days to think about it.
You can't realistically play a game with that sort of lag.
It's not just that it's not implementable. It's also that there are several games in there. He needs to leave a lot of stuff out. The idea of an empire building game based largely on Roman political intrigue is a good one although needs development. Having a RTS battle system could just about work with it but would need to be combined logically. Gladiatorial events could probably be combined as well, but adding both concepts means the game loses focus.
Allowing different eras and completely different characters means you end up missing out all of the gameplay of other eras.
Every well known writer has had someone come to them and tell them about their idea. "It's about this guy called Bob. He builds a spaceship and visits lots of planets where exciting adventures happen. Can you write this story for me? I'll split the profits 50/50".
The same applies to studios. Everyone has an idea for a game. Here's an example. It just doesn't work like that.
What actually happens is that someone in the company comes up with a game concept, and producers and designers talk about it. In many cases (especially party games), there's some discussion about whether it's technically possible. It's possible that the technology isn't up to it, so some development effort is spent in making a tech demo to check that the concept works. If that works then the developer will submit a pitch to a publisher. The pitch is, at the very least, a detailed description of the game and how it will work. Ideally the developer will have some idea of the market for this as well.
It's possible that none of the publishers will be interested. In this case, unless the developer is sure enough about it to develop a demo, they just come up with a new idea.
Ideas are cheap. Developed polished realised ideas are wherethe difficulty is.
Yes. You get diminishing returns. Will 1620p be worth it? 2430p? Most people aren't going to be able to tell you whether a display is 1080p or 720p, many even with a side by side comparison. You really need a 55inch TV to tell the difference.
Most people can tell the difference between 480p and 480i.
I don't think so. An insider would be able to steal it and return it before anyone had noticed it was gone.
Which is good but you can't deny your inconveniencing yourself.
Obviously you feel the security BS is a bigger inconvenience than not flying. That's fine but not everyone feels the same way.
Try it. Might work.
The laptop had either been stolen, and sold with the information wiped, stolen and the information sold, lost, destroyed, or left in an office.
Whichever it was, the only information they had was that it was unaccounted for. It was actually a good response to automatically assume the worst case scenario and deal with the situation as if that had happened. If the worst case scenario was the case then at least it was dealt with as best it could be. If not then the only harm done is to them and not their customers.
So while losing it was very inept, their response afterwards was actually fairly responsible of them.