I think the larger issue is not whether this is a good idea for a game demo, but why is an idea at this level of abstraction even patentable?
Because any distinct "thing" of IP can be covered by one and only one form of intellectual property, and you don't want ideas to be covered as either a trademark or a copyright.
When Sony patents this, they get a limited time to use it, and then EVERYONE gets to use it. If it were a copywritten, they'd be able to use it until 60+ years after steamboat willie becomes public domain, and if it were covered by trademark they could use it forever.
Patents require novelty and clarity, not complexity or physicality. Wizards of the Coast got a patent on turning a card 90 degrees to indicate that it's "out of play" -- which was novel, as prior to that all card games treated any card face up the same way. They got a few years of being able to collect a fee from anyone who wanted to copy their one novel mechanic, and now anyone who wants to can use it at will.
(If you don't think something is patentable, because either someone else already thought of it and used it in the market, or because it's obvious to someone proficient in the relative trade, tell the patent office and the patent holder's competition.:) )
So we have a service designed from the start to attract internet trolls from one end and propaganda ministries from the other. What could possibly go wrong?
You'll finally notice that the US does have "propaganda ministries", and they will show us their best trolls?
Life is not a romantic comedy. If you're already in a relationship, nice chocolate, flowers, and dinner (or any subset of the above) is plenty celebration.
Romantic Comedies are popular in large part because they try and reflect what women dream of happening -- and there are worse ways to prove one's love than planning a big showy stunt that makes your beloved smile. (What worse ways? I'd say blindly giving her chocolate, flowers, and dinner. Unless you KNOW that she likes those.)
Your guiding principle is "what would make her smile." If you know her well enough to know that she would like a big showy stunt, then don't let some nobody on the internet tell you otherwise. If you know that she DOES like chocolate and flowers, then go for it.
And if you don't know her well enough to know what she likes, you don't know her well enough to give her a notable valentine's gift.
Are we going to be in the insane situation where our children will need to dust off the old C64 from half a century ago just to learn the basics for themselves?
No.
Apple can do whatever the #$@ they want, but there will always be a market for computers that don't treat you like an idiot. As much bad press as Microsoft gets for their "Palladium" system, it does jack and shit if you simply don't use it. The system is as open as you can expect any closed-source software company to make it-- and that's before we even get into Android or WebOS.
so long as you're not dumb enough to go for everything apple, you should NEVER only have "locked content on locked machines."
however, the current status quo means that if there is an error, whether honest mistake or malicious, it is usually in favor of the individual, not the government
hah. HAH!
Look at how the typical US worker files their taxes. They send in part of their paycheck all year long, and then at the end file to get some of that money back. And the way you do that is to add up all of your "income" in the year, subtract out an "exclusion", and then root around in a manual lookup table to find out how much you really owed.
And the situation isn't any better with a paid preparer: as often as not, they just do the same thing you would do, but with less of a care how big your refund check (or balance due) is.
Oh, and Intuit--like all the rest of the @#$ers -- jsut wants to keep on stealing money in the form of "Refund Anticipation Loans."
It's just not going to be a threat. If something that like that could be created by these cosmically insignificant energy levels and actually survive long enough to eat planets, the universe would already be pretty darn empty
You, ah, DO realize that a planet is "cosmically insignificant", right? And we don't even need a complete anihilation of earth to no longer be able to live here.
The LHC throws two particles at each other at very close (on an absolute scale) to the speed of light. While parcticles wiz by at just this speed all the time, they (1) don't tend to hit each other head on, and (2) usually don't collide near a planet.
Your argument against it is as invalid as the threat.
Wouldn't it be nice if they televised the entire health care bill debates on C-SPAN as they said they were going to?
Yes, it would.
And they would have, if the Republicans had ever shown one bit of being willing to debate. When a major political party's response is "no, just no, I don't care what we said we'd say yes to, we're saying no even if you take our 2004 platform and make it your health care reform", there really isn't any debate to broadcast.
Yeah. I mean, everyone and their brother was making PVR's before TiVo, and it's not like this invaded every single cable company in America or anything, or did anything at all to change how we watch TV as a nation...
Sorry, but TiVo's a great case of "well-earned Patent." You've just got your panties in a knot over the GPL v3 issue.
Well, books can be typed in braille, the kindle cannot... The issue might be that with a kindle, the e-books are very accessible compared to your standard book (probably cheaper?). Maybe the organization thinks it's an unfair advantage?
1: Sure e-books can be put into "braille". There are even a plethora of devices that'll do it, or just read teh darn thing aloud.
2: Braille books are EXPENSIVE. They have a far smaller audience, need thicker paper, usually can use only one side of the paper... and can't be printed out on the same equipment as everyone else's books.
Given those two, the association at play should demand GREATER adoption of e-books -- it's a printed book that the blind cannot read, not a properly formatted e-book
Do you have any concrete prediction of religion which became true?
Not generally, although a primary reason for that is that the historical predictions were dated due to their mention of the database facts that they predicted. And, to the extent that such a prediction cannot be post-dated, it would then be explained as a pre-existing belief which was attached to latter events, instead of a prediction.
God's biblical prediction of the course of human civilization is a good one, though. "You suck now, but will get better latter."
2: You're confusing intelligence with an absence of religion. While people cannot be good scientists when it comes to questions about which they have religious convictions, the presence or abscence or such convictions does not correlate with their intelligence. There are plenty of morons who don't believe.
3: Even if we accept the Athesist's candard that "atheism is not a religion", you're happily proving that Atheism does have not only a primary religious conviction, but also the unfortunately secondary conviction of bigotry. Well done!
Nobody can explain why there is Inertia, or what mechanisms makes it a requirement.
What an odd thing to say.
Tell me -- is there anything that you think we do "understand"? Because I think the problem here is that you're abusing the word.
I understand my wife. That does NOT know that I know why she does exactly everything that she does -- only that I have enough knowlege of her to appreciate her point of view and be a fair judge as to her sense of normalcy.
Anyone who knows that intertia exists and has internalized this fact enough to, say, drive a car, understands inertia.
While I appreciate history, and hope to learn from it, I'm not one to feel guilt for the actions of others, especially when they are not even living anymore.
Where do you live?
Odds are that the house you are in RIGHT NOW was taken by a cascade of force, torture, and broken promises from a native peoples that, largely, welcomed your forefathers with open arms. Not feeling any guilt at all about that really shows a deficiency in patriotism.
If your father stole the life savings from a dying nun and used it to give you a lavish lifestyle, wouldn't you feel guilty when you found out? (If not, I suggest psychological evaluation: you may be a sociopath.) Enjoying the fruits of bad behavior is tantamount to supporting bad behavior, ergo guilt.
And the Germans don't need to feel guilty about the holocaust, as the survivors largely have all their stolen resources back. They should, and do, feel embarassed, though.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's irrelevant. You can't be bound to terms of a contract which are illegal. If your provider cracked your root password and logged into your server, they have committed the crime of illegal trespassing upon a computer system whether it's in the contract or not.
Wrong.
If I take $5 from my wallet and put it down on my porch table, you cannot normally just take it without committing the crime of theft. However, if you and i form a contract that any money left on my porch can be taken by you, well, then that's part of the contract, not theft.
The essential part of contracting is that you exchange something you have ($) for something the other guy has (internet hosting.) Absent the contract, neither of you are entitled to what the other has; the contract is the precise manner in which you exchange those things.
If you buy hosting from someone else, KEEP A COPY of the contract, and stay abreast of any changes. If you do not understand completely every part of it, hire a lawyer to have it explained to you. (Or just ask for that part to be re-written to be clearer.)
Think back to high school, doc. Remember the parts of a human cell?
One of 'em, the mitochondria, is essentially a specially-evovled bacteria used to help your cell produce energy. It's easily less than 1/10th the size of the whole cell. Maybe 1/20th, or even 1/100th, for very big cells.
And not all cells are the same size. You have some cells in your body that stretch for the better part of a yard, and if you're a woman you produce one certain cell every four weeks or so that's almost big enough to be seen with the naked eye.
I agree. You can ask any professional creative writer: That gotta be one of the best roots to build a story upon ever!
Gah. It's a terrible premise. "Why is Freddy Evil?" is two throwaway lines. Books and movies setup like that simply do not sell -- because so few of their already small audience go out and tell someone how good the story was. (Why? Because it's a hard story to tell convincingly, AND even if you pull it off, you're still stuck wthi a story that human nature says doesn't need to be told.)
Give it up. [Your] argument is circular. Just rewrite the functionality yourself then others can use your BSD licensed version.
And when he does that, the author of the GPL'd version will sue him for unlawful copyright infringement, and try and get the whole thing forced into the GPL.
This is the so-called "cancer" in GPL'd (or any sticky copyleft) software. If you so much as LOOK at a piece of code, you are unable to write code under any other license that does the same thing without exposing yourself to legal jeopardy. This is in contrast to pre-GPL, non-copyleft source code, where a good assumption was that if you could see the source code, you could do whatever you wanted with it.
On the other hand, the "cancer" really comes from software-as-copyright, when by all rights software should be covered either by design patents or by a fourth category of IP.
This is not rocket science to find, VG. Upon hearing of an accusation, you really should not take it with face value until you examine it directly. Even if said accusation was wrapped in a lawsuit from a prissy developer.
muPDF is available from Palm's site, both as original and as their patches. Here are URL's for each:
This news made the rounds last week, and it's entirely possible that those are recent additions. Unless you think that either (1) there are more modifications not listed, or (2) that the court should impose punative damages on what was almost certainly an oversight, this matter is settled.
And you can root your webOS device trivially easy. And develop on it for free. AND they are/are planning to waive their fee for open-source apps in their app store.
If you could convince a whole county or state to resist THEN you might have a legitimate contention, but the fact of the matter is the idea of armed rebellion is quaint and irrelevant today.
Tell that to the Soviet Union. Or Yugoslavia. Or Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, you need to reach a critical mass and have a compelling moral argument, but if you do that armed rebellion is entirely practical.
And before you ask..... I've owned and used firearms since I was about 8, still do. The difference is here you don't mention them in polite society.
Americans believe that an armed populace is a necessary check on a tyrannical government or foreign conquest. It goes right along with the reason that our soldiers swear to uphold the constitution, and not our rulers or the ruler's laws.
I'll go so far as to claim that if your country cannot trust its citizenry with effective weapons of rebellion, then you are not a civilized country. (Not that presence of weapons is by any means proof of civilization... but their absence is an indicator of civilization's lack.)
Every time this speed comparison between Linux and Windows is done, it is done on newly installed systems. My experience is that after six months of running by a regular (read non technical) user, the windows system will be bogged down by all kinds of crap that make it unbearably slow.
So, "don't install crap" is now a technical skill? Wow.
My wife his hardly technical, and I haven't had to touch her laptop since I installed the OS on it. And her laptop moves along just fine. Faster than mine, in fact, but I can blame that on the oddly matched hardware I've got.
I tell you what -- setup a linux install for your "non-technical users", give them the root password, and leave them alone for six months. Assuming they don't find a new techie who will let them actually play games on their machine, I'll be they'll wind up every bit as bogged down as as similarly-configured and abandoned windows installation.
Or, you could realize that installing programs is an admin function, that a properly installed program doesn't force a user to run as administrator, and fix the problem on the front end. Hell, you could even post a sticker that says "DO NOT INSTALL ANYTHING" if you want.
Oh, and show me a netbook with a comfortable keyboard, and you'll have a no-brainer. I can't find anyone who can stand the damn things.
A good rule of thumb is, if you saw it in an advertisement, it's a scam.
That's a terrible rule of thumb. Here's a better one: "ALWAYS get it in writing." And I mean save the #@$ing text locally. Write it to a CD-R or print it out if you can. (Why? 'cause the changestamp won't get updated.)
And if the other party tries to dick around with what you have in writing, be willing to go to court.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the larger issue is not whether this is a good idea for a game demo, but why is an idea at this level of abstraction even patentable?
Because any distinct "thing" of IP can be covered by one and only one form of intellectual property, and you don't want ideas to be covered as either a trademark or a copyright.
When Sony patents this, they get a limited time to use it, and then EVERYONE gets to use it. If it were a copywritten, they'd be able to use it until 60+ years after steamboat willie becomes public domain, and if it were covered by trademark they could use it forever.
Patents require novelty and clarity, not complexity or physicality. Wizards of the Coast got a patent on turning a card 90 degrees to indicate that it's "out of play" -- which was novel, as prior to that all card games treated any card face up the same way. They got a few years of being able to collect a fee from anyone who wanted to copy their one novel mechanic, and now anyone who wants to can use it at will.
(If you don't think something is patentable, because either someone else already thought of it and used it in the market, or because it's obvious to someone proficient in the relative trade, tell the patent office and the patent holder's competition. :) )
So we have a service designed from the start to attract internet trolls from one end and propaganda ministries from the other. What could possibly go wrong?
You'll finally notice that the US does have "propaganda ministries", and they will show us their best trolls?
Life is not a romantic comedy. If you're already in a relationship, nice chocolate, flowers, and dinner (or any subset of the above) is plenty celebration.
Romantic Comedies are popular in large part because they try and reflect what women dream of happening -- and there are worse ways to prove one's love than planning a big showy stunt that makes your beloved smile. (What worse ways? I'd say blindly giving her chocolate, flowers, and dinner. Unless you KNOW that she likes those.)
Your guiding principle is "what would make her smile." If you know her well enough to know that she would like a big showy stunt, then don't let some nobody on the internet tell you otherwise. If you know that she DOES like chocolate and flowers, then go for it.
And if you don't know her well enough to know what she likes, you don't know her well enough to give her a notable valentine's gift.
Are we going to be in the insane situation where our children will need to dust off the old C64 from half a century ago just to learn the basics for themselves?
No.
Apple can do whatever the #$@ they want, but there will always be a market for computers that don't treat you like an idiot. As much bad press as Microsoft gets for their "Palladium" system, it does jack and shit if you simply don't use it. The system is as open as you can expect any closed-source software company to make it-- and that's before we even get into Android or WebOS.
so long as you're not dumb enough to go for everything apple, you should NEVER only have "locked content on locked machines."
however, the current status quo means that if there is an error, whether honest mistake or malicious, it is usually in favor of the individual, not the government
hah. HAH!
Look at how the typical US worker files their taxes. They send in part of their paycheck all year long, and then at the end file to get some of that money back. And the way you do that is to add up all of your "income" in the year, subtract out an "exclusion", and then root around in a manual lookup table to find out how much you really owed.
And the situation isn't any better with a paid preparer: as often as not, they just do the same thing you would do, but with less of a care how big your refund check (or balance due) is.
Oh, and Intuit--like all the rest of the @#$ers -- jsut wants to keep on stealing money in the form of "Refund Anticipation Loans."
It's just not going to be a threat. If something that like that could be created by these cosmically insignificant energy levels and actually survive long enough to eat planets, the universe would already be pretty darn empty
You, ah, DO realize that a planet is "cosmically insignificant", right? And we don't even need a complete anihilation of earth to no longer be able to live here.
The LHC throws two particles at each other at very close (on an absolute scale) to the speed of light. While parcticles wiz by at just this speed all the time, they (1) don't tend to hit each other head on, and (2) usually don't collide near a planet.
Your argument against it is as invalid as the threat.
Wouldn't it be nice if they televised the entire health care bill debates on C-SPAN as they said they were going to?
Yes, it would.
And they would have, if the Republicans had ever shown one bit of being willing to debate. When a major political party's response is "no, just no, I don't care what we said we'd say yes to, we're saying no even if you take our 2004 platform and make it your health care reform", there really isn't any debate to broadcast.
The same nonsense that allowed Tivo to run amok
Yeah. I mean, everyone and their brother was making PVR's before TiVo, and it's not like this invaded every single cable company in America or anything, or did anything at all to change how we watch TV as a nation...
Sorry, but TiVo's a great case of "well-earned Patent." You've just got your panties in a knot over the GPL v3 issue.
Well, books can be typed in braille, the kindle cannot... The issue might be that with a kindle, the e-books are very accessible compared to your standard book (probably cheaper?). Maybe the organization thinks it's an unfair advantage?
1: Sure e-books can be put into "braille". There are even a plethora of devices that'll do it, or just read teh darn thing aloud.
2: Braille books are EXPENSIVE. They have a far smaller audience, need thicker paper, usually can use only one side of the paper... and can't be printed out on the same equipment as everyone else's books.
Given those two, the association at play should demand GREATER adoption of e-books -- it's a printed book that the blind cannot read, not a properly formatted e-book
Do you have any concrete prediction of religion which became true?
Not generally, although a primary reason for that is that the historical predictions were dated due to their mention of the database facts that they predicted. And, to the extent that such a prediction cannot be post-dated, it would then be explained as a pre-existing belief which was attached to latter events, instead of a prediction.
God's biblical prediction of the course of human civilization is a good one, though. "You suck now, but will get better latter."
1: You're missing an apostrophe
2: You're confusing intelligence with an absence of religion. While people cannot be good scientists when it comes to questions about which they have religious convictions, the presence or abscence or such convictions does not correlate with their intelligence. There are plenty of morons who don't believe.
3: Even if we accept the Athesist's candard that "atheism is not a religion", you're happily proving that Atheism does have not only a primary religious conviction, but also the unfortunately secondary conviction of bigotry. Well done!
Nobody can explain why there is Inertia, or what mechanisms makes it a requirement.
What an odd thing to say.
Tell me -- is there anything that you think we do "understand"? Because I think the problem here is that you're abusing the word.
I understand my wife. That does NOT know that I know why she does exactly everything that she does -- only that I have enough knowlege of her to appreciate her point of view and be a fair judge as to her sense of normalcy.
Anyone who knows that intertia exists and has internalized this fact enough to, say, drive a car, understands inertia.
While I appreciate history, and hope to learn from it, I'm not one to feel guilt for the actions of others, especially when they are not even living anymore.
Where do you live?
Odds are that the house you are in RIGHT NOW was taken by a cascade of force, torture, and broken promises from a native peoples that, largely, welcomed your forefathers with open arms. Not feeling any guilt at all about that really shows a deficiency in patriotism.
If your father stole the life savings from a dying nun and used it to give you a lavish lifestyle, wouldn't you feel guilty when you found out? (If not, I suggest psychological evaluation: you may be a sociopath.) Enjoying the fruits of bad behavior is tantamount to supporting bad behavior, ergo guilt.
And the Germans don't need to feel guilty about the holocaust, as the survivors largely have all their stolen resources back. They should, and do, feel embarassed, though.
There's a myth that's prevalent amongst those with little exposure to the criminal element that criminals are stupid
No, it's a definition. Blue-collar crime is less profitable than a minimum wage job and a lottery ticket.
Criminals are clever and adaptable, but by definition (unless they're big corporations) stupid.
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that's irrelevant. You can't be bound to terms of a contract which are illegal. If your provider cracked your root password and logged into your server, they have committed the crime of illegal trespassing upon a computer system whether it's in the contract or not.
Wrong.
If I take $5 from my wallet and put it down on my porch table, you cannot normally just take it without committing the crime of theft. However, if you and i form a contract that any money left on my porch can be taken by you, well, then that's part of the contract, not theft.
The essential part of contracting is that you exchange something you have ($) for something the other guy has (internet hosting.) Absent the contract, neither of you are entitled to what the other has; the contract is the precise manner in which you exchange those things.
If you buy hosting from someone else, KEEP A COPY of the contract, and stay abreast of any changes. If you do not understand completely every part of it, hire a lawyer to have it explained to you. (Or just ask for that part to be re-written to be clearer.)
Think back to high school, doc. Remember the parts of a human cell?
One of 'em, the mitochondria, is essentially a specially-evovled bacteria used to help your cell produce energy. It's easily less than 1/10th the size of the whole cell. Maybe 1/20th, or even 1/100th, for very big cells.
And not all cells are the same size. You have some cells in your body that stretch for the better part of a yard, and if you're a woman you produce one certain cell every four weeks or so that's almost big enough to be seen with the naked eye.
So you've had your fillings removed, right?
(and wtf are you doing on slashdot if you think you can be tracked from somewhere else due to "gps".)
I agree. You can ask any professional creative writer: That gotta be one of the best roots to build a story upon ever!
Gah. It's a terrible premise. "Why is Freddy Evil?" is two throwaway lines. Books and movies setup like that simply do not sell -- because so few of their already small audience go out and tell someone how good the story was. (Why? Because it's a hard story to tell convincingly, AND even if you pull it off, you're still stuck wthi a story that human nature says doesn't need to be told.)
Give it up. [Your] argument is circular. Just rewrite the functionality yourself then others can use your BSD licensed version.
And when he does that, the author of the GPL'd version will sue him for unlawful copyright infringement, and try and get the whole thing forced into the GPL.
This is the so-called "cancer" in GPL'd (or any sticky copyleft) software. If you so much as LOOK at a piece of code, you are unable to write code under any other license that does the same thing without exposing yourself to legal jeopardy. This is in contrast to pre-GPL, non-copyleft source code, where a good assumption was that if you could see the source code, you could do whatever you wanted with it.
On the other hand, the "cancer" really comes from software-as-copyright, when by all rights software should be covered either by design patents or by a fourth category of IP.
http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html
This is not rocket science to find, VG. Upon hearing of an accusation, you really should not take it with face value until you examine it directly. Even if said accusation was wrapped in a lawsuit from a prissy developer.
muPDF is available from Palm's site, both as original and as their patches. Here are URL's for each:
http://palm.cdnetworks.net/opensource/1.3.1/mupdf-1.0.tar
http://palm.cdnetworks.net/opensource/1.3.1/mupdf-1.0.tar-patches.tgz
This news made the rounds last week, and it's entirely possible that those are recent additions. Unless you think that either (1) there are more modifications not listed, or (2) that the court should impose punative damages on what was almost certainly an oversight, this matter is settled.
http://opensource.palm.com/packages.html
And you can root your webOS device trivially easy. And develop on it for free. AND they are/are planning to waive their fee for open-source apps in their app store.
If you could convince a whole county or state to resist THEN you might have a legitimate contention, but the fact of the matter is the idea of armed rebellion is quaint and irrelevant today.
Tell that to the Soviet Union. Or Yugoslavia. Or Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yes, you need to reach a critical mass and have a compelling moral argument, but if you do that armed rebellion is entirely practical.
And before you ask..... I've owned and used firearms since I was about 8, still do. The difference is here you don't mention them in polite society.
Americans believe that an armed populace is a necessary check on a tyrannical government or foreign conquest. It goes right along with the reason that our soldiers swear to uphold the constitution, and not our rulers or the ruler's laws.
I'll go so far as to claim that if your country cannot trust its citizenry with effective weapons of rebellion, then you are not a civilized country. (Not that presence of weapons is by any means proof of civilization... but their absence is an indicator of civilization's lack.)
Every time this speed comparison between Linux and Windows is done, it is done on newly installed systems. My experience is that after six months of running by a regular (read non technical) user, the windows system will be bogged down by all kinds of crap that make it unbearably slow.
So, "don't install crap" is now a technical skill? Wow.
My wife his hardly technical, and I haven't had to touch her laptop since I installed the OS on it. And her laptop moves along just fine. Faster than mine, in fact, but I can blame that on the oddly matched hardware I've got.
I tell you what -- setup a linux install for your "non-technical users", give them the root password, and leave them alone for six months. Assuming they don't find a new techie who will let them actually play games on their machine, I'll be they'll wind up every bit as bogged down as as similarly-configured and abandoned windows installation.
Or, you could realize that installing programs is an admin function, that a properly installed program doesn't force a user to run as administrator, and fix the problem on the front end. Hell, you could even post a sticker that says "DO NOT INSTALL ANYTHING" if you want.
Oh, and show me a netbook with a comfortable keyboard, and you'll have a no-brainer. I can't find anyone who can stand the damn things.
A good rule of thumb is, if you saw it in an advertisement, it's a scam.
That's a terrible rule of thumb. Here's a better one: "ALWAYS get it in writing." And I mean save the #@$ing text locally. Write it to a CD-R or print it out if you can. (Why? 'cause the changestamp won't get updated.)
And if the other party tries to dick around with what you have in writing, be willing to go to court.