Maybe if Microsoft stopped forcing Android handset manufacturers to pay bogus patent fees and kept from launching Scroogled campaigns, Google would be more likely to let their WP8 Youtube app pass this time.
As the generations age, more and more adults are playing computer games. In my "adult life" I have played a lot of games and only completed two or three.
The reason for this are complicated controls and level of skills required to continue an interrupted game.
Let's take GTA IV. It's a nice game. The controls are kinda advanced and difficulty of the levels raises as the game progresses. An adult person with a job and a family can play a game like GTA few nights a week and complete some of the missions. Then something happens and there is a pause. Maybe your kid gets sick or you have a busy period at work.
After a while, I would like to pick up the game and continue the progress. But then I find out, that I have forgotten some of the controls and some skills have been lost and the game kicks my ass. After a few failed missions the frustrations takes over and I turn of the PS3 and never pick up GTA IV again.
As a busy adult with work and family, I do not need more frustrations from a computer game after a long day at work.
Royalties and closed markeds are nice to have for a company, but there is more to it.
I fully understand Microsoft and other large companies. They "arm themselfes" with patents and use them in the same way as strategic nuclear weapons are used by governments.
Every big business has to aquire as many patents as possible for everything they can think of. If they don't have them, they are sitting duck and can easily be ruined by lawsuits from other players.
Every company is infringing patents owned by others, because basically everything useful is being patented. There is a fragile equilibrium, because everybody is affraid to start lawsuits, knowing that a counter lawsuit will be launched against you.
This is how patents are used today. The big companies are not the ones to blame. The patent system made this behaviour possible, so it has to be fixed.
The WMDs of the tech world have been found
on
Apple Sues Creative
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Patents are used as WMDs by the big tech corporations. If you have them, you can keep the others from using theirs to sue you into bankrupcy. If you don't have them, you are sitting duck.
Sometimes the doctrine fails and it looks like a patent war between desperate Creative and Apple.
Let's see if this ends as a minor WMD accident and a quick settlement in court, or if we will see a fullblown patent war between two of the big ones./picz
This reminds me of some of the other questions:
- 2002: Who wants to read other peoples blogs?
- 2000: Who wants to use digital cameras? The analogue ones are far better.
- 1998: Who wants to be online all the time with this ICQ thingie?
- 1997: Who wants to write SMS's on a nummeric keyboard? Make a phonecall instead.
- 1995: Who wants to carry his phone around?
- 1999: E-mail? Why? I can make a phonecall or fax.
- 1984: Who wants to own a microcomputer?
- 1972: Who wants to mount wheels under their shoes?
- 1964: Who wants to hear this Beattles-noise?
Do not underestimate people's confusion about what they really want. Of course they want to be able to watch videos anywhare and anytime and show off with it to our poor friends, family and colleagues.
I haven't tried the 5G iPod yet. But I have had a Nintendo Gameboy Advance and have enjoyed playing on it's small display. When being in train or on a plane, it's a nice way to make the time pass.
I do not say, that video on mobile devices will catch on as a fire in a pile of tyres, but I have learnt never to say never. Strange things catch on.
regards picz
Please don't use it. I beg you.
on
Flash, Meet Sparkle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The internet has grown and thrived thanks to open standards. Anyone (capable) person can write a mail reader or a web server and a lot of them have done just that. That's why I can write this words while sitting on a machine filled with free code implementing the standards. HTML, HTTP TCP/IP. All of them free and open.
Than FLASH came. A lot of sites started using it. FLASH is bad enough. Flash is a closed standard. There is a player for Windows, Mac OS and Linux x86. All other platforms are screwed. FLASH has degraded the open availability of the web for many people.
Now we have Sparkle. I'm sure it's brillant. But will we ever be able to write an open Sparkle player? Will MS release Sparkle player for Linux? I don't think so.
If people on the internet start to embrace closed standards and abandon the open one, the internet will not longer be free. All of us using Linux/BSD will soon be looking at empty boxes in our browsers saying "Missing plugin".
That's how corporations will steal the net from the people. By replacing openess with closed standards./picz
Apple choose to switch to the x86 and their OS will eventually run on it. They should stop whining and se the possibilities.
I don't understand people, who are ready to give up their basic consumer freedom, just to have some (pretty spiffy) computer manufacturer survive.
When I buy a sweater, I can choose to wear it my self or give it to my dog to chew. When I buy a book, I can choose to read it or to split it and glue the pages to the wall.
When I buy an OS, I want to choose which machine should be able to boot it.
If it weren't for Microsoft tolerance of bootlegged Windows and MS Office, their dominance wouldn't be as clear. "Pirated" software is good for sotware companies. Their products get exposed to a vast amount of people. People that work at companies. People that make decisions about what software to buy for their business.
So if Apple goes TCPA and MS follows, then the only non-crippled system left is Linux (sorry BSD guys, your OS is still hostile)
That might be good news. And my current iBook might be my last Apple.
Open Source is not very important. Open Standards are. That is what it should be all about. Open Source is in fact totally irrelevant, if all of your data is locked inside proprietary files. Somebody will sure start to reverse engineer the formats, but it almost never works 100% right.
Right now I'm looking at an OS browser showing HTML with CSS. There are som jpegs around and some png's as well. If Microsoft or other company had their way, all of those formats would be secret, closed and patented and the software should be licenced from them.
Open Source is nice and efficient way of writing code, but real freedom is inside open standards.
As it is now, every government and every company has a lot of unreadable documents sitting around on their disks. They only become readable, when a licence is paid to MS or Adobe etc. And who knows, how long these companies will be around? And what if they choose to abandon old platforms and try to force everybody to use the newest Longhorn 2020 Ultra Plus for $499 pr. licence? This is not freedom.
What if I work for some government office and would like to make a nice, indexed and searchable database of my Word documents available to the public. Where is the innovation, when the standards are closed and secret and unreadable for my programmers
Knowing what's inside your own documents is essential. Specially if you are a government.
I hope that EU will look at Norway and learn. There's not much hope for the US I'm affraid. Too much corporate influence inside the political system./picz
MS will use their monopoly on the desktop to destroy Google and create new monopoly for search enginges. They did the same thing with Netscape, when they embedded MSIE in Windows 95.
And this has perfect justification. They are only making a better MSIE with easy search feature for the masses. The masses don't care what their search engine's name is. If it will work "out of the box", people will use it and not ask questions./picz
The stupid part is Sony trying to keep their gagdet closed. The other guys are just doint what every hacker should be doing. Finding out how stuff works and make stuff run cool stuff./picz
It is amazing. The programmers at Sony are wasting their time to prevent other programmers to program for PSP and the PSP programmers waste their time trying to hack the PSP.
This is stupid. All that creativity could be used for some cool apps./picz
The official movie distribution involves a sytem trucks driving the celluloid rolls to chosen addresses. It involves people driving their cars or use public transport to reach same addresses. It involves big and expensive buildings and a lot of expensive employees, reservation of tickets and standing in line (sometimes twice)
It is a part of your experience. So are 200-300 other people sweating, eating smelly foods, taking their smelly shoes of, eating candy out of noisy plastic bags, having their mobile phones ringing, etc.. All that for $10 pr. seat.
The distribution is both expensive and the movie theatre experience does not please the modern consumer, who would like to enjoy the magic of movies without getting p*ssed off.
Bittorrent delivers right to the computer in your living room through an established network. It's fast and cheap and gives you home cinema system something to do. You can even pause the movie and go get a snack or a cop of coffee. Now, that's magic.
All people believing in capitalism should hail the BT for it's efficiency and low costs. The old and rusty movie distribution system can not compete with the smooth functionality of the modern computer networks and comfort of home cinema (even if it's just a 28'' TV).
MPAA should start to think about improving their product. If I could download a legal copy of Star Wars today, I would do it.
At this moment the only competition to the distribution monopoly of movie theatres are the P2P networks./picz
EU tried to rush the legislation through on a meeting between ministers of agriculture and fishery.
This is how seriously software patent issues are taken in the European Union. "We need to fish more herring, mackerel and patents on software, or else the fishers will dump something smelly in front of the building"
Well... It was just a quick thought. Big fat button right in your face.
Deep integration of MSN Search into Longhorn seems as a perfectly logical thing to do for our convenience and improved world domination.
Anyway... It is bad news for Google. Taking away their users will be a piece of cake for Ballmer and his gang. You can not win over people owning the platform./regards picz
Microsoft can capture Google's users using their dominance on the browswer market.
If the next version of MSIE has a big fat SEARCH button in the navigation bar, then Google has already lost half of the so called "normal users" (The ones, that just click on stuff on their desktop with no clue about what a program is)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe if Microsoft stopped forcing Android handset manufacturers to pay bogus patent fees and kept from launching Scroogled campaigns, Google would be more likely to let their WP8 Youtube app pass this time.
As the generations age, more and more adults are playing computer games. In my "adult life" I have played a lot of games and only completed two or three.
The reason for this are complicated controls and level of skills required to continue an interrupted game.
Let's take GTA IV. It's a nice game. The controls are kinda advanced and difficulty of the levels raises as the game progresses. An adult person with a job and a family can play a game like GTA few nights a week and complete some of the missions. Then something happens and there is a pause. Maybe your kid gets sick or you have a busy period at work.
After a while, I would like to pick up the game and continue the progress. But then I find out, that I have forgotten some of the controls and some skills have been lost and the game kicks my ass. After a few failed missions the frustrations takes over and I turn of the PS3 and never pick up GTA IV again.
As a busy adult with work and family, I do not need more frustrations from a computer game after a long day at work.
Royalties and closed markeds are nice to have for a company, but there is more to it.
I fully understand Microsoft and other large companies. They "arm themselfes" with patents and use them in the same way as strategic nuclear weapons are used by governments.
Every big business has to aquire as many patents as possible for everything they can think of. If they don't have them, they are sitting duck and can easily be ruined by lawsuits from other players.
Every company is infringing patents owned by others, because basically everything useful is being patented. There is a fragile equilibrium, because everybody is affraid to start lawsuits, knowing that a counter lawsuit will be launched against you.
This is how patents are used today. The big companies are not the ones to blame. The patent system made this behaviour possible, so it has to be fixed.
Patents are used as WMDs by the big tech corporations. If you have them, you can keep the others from using theirs to sue you into bankrupcy. If you don't have them, you are sitting duck.
/picz
Sometimes the doctrine fails and it looks like a patent war between desperate Creative and Apple.
Let's see if this ends as a minor WMD accident and a quick settlement in court, or if we will see a fullblown patent war between two of the big ones.
Who wants to watch TV on a 2 inch display?
This reminds me of some of the other questions:
- 2002: Who wants to read other peoples blogs?
- 2000: Who wants to use digital cameras? The analogue ones are far better.
- 1998: Who wants to be online all the time with this ICQ thingie?
- 1997: Who wants to write SMS's on a nummeric keyboard? Make a phonecall instead.
- 1995: Who wants to carry his phone around?
- 1999: E-mail? Why? I can make a phonecall or fax.
- 1984: Who wants to own a microcomputer?
- 1972: Who wants to mount wheels under their shoes?
- 1964: Who wants to hear this Beattles-noise?
Do not underestimate people's confusion about what they really want. Of course they want to be able to watch videos anywhare and anytime and show off with it to our poor friends, family and colleagues.
I haven't tried the 5G iPod yet. But I have had a Nintendo Gameboy Advance and have enjoyed playing on it's small display. When being in train or on a plane, it's a nice way to make the time pass.
I do not say, that video on mobile devices will catch on as a fire in a pile of tyres, but I have learnt never to say never. Strange things catch on.
regards
picz
The internet has grown and thrived thanks to open standards. Anyone (capable) person can write a mail reader or a web server and a lot of them have done just that. That's why I can write this words while sitting on a machine filled with free code implementing the standards. HTML, HTTP TCP/IP. All of them free and open.
/picz
Than FLASH came. A lot of sites started using it. FLASH is bad enough. Flash is a closed standard. There is a player for Windows, Mac OS and Linux x86. All other platforms are screwed. FLASH has degraded the open availability of the web for many people.
Now we have Sparkle. I'm sure it's brillant. But will we ever be able to write an open Sparkle player? Will MS release Sparkle player for Linux? I don't think so.
If people on the internet start to embrace closed standards and abandon the open one, the internet will not longer be free. All of us using Linux/BSD will soon be looking at empty boxes in our browsers saying "Missing plugin".
That's how corporations will steal the net from the people. By replacing openess with closed standards.
Finally. No more distractions from sex and pr0n. More time for pure slaughter and massacres of innocent bystanders. /picz
The soundstorm song from the site made my ears cry. I haven't heard something that horrible since Stock, Aitken and Waterman.
/picz
Every time somebody clicks on the link to the song GOD kills a kitten.
Apple choose to switch to the x86 and their OS will eventually run on it. They should stop whining and se the possibilities.
I don't understand people, who are ready to give up their basic consumer freedom, just to have some (pretty spiffy) computer manufacturer survive.
When I buy a sweater, I can choose to wear it my self or give it to my dog to chew. When I buy a book, I can choose to read it or to split it and glue the pages to the wall.
When I buy an OS, I want to choose which machine should be able to boot it.
regards
PiCz.
.
If it weren't for Microsoft tolerance of bootlegged Windows and MS Office, their dominance wouldn't be as clear. "Pirated" software is good for sotware companies. Their products get exposed to a vast amount of people. People that work at companies. People that make decisions about what software to buy for their business.
So if Apple goes TCPA and MS follows, then the only non-crippled system left is Linux (sorry BSD guys, your OS is still hostile)
That might be good news. And my current iBook might be my last Apple.
Open Source is not very important. Open Standards are. That is what it should be all about. Open Source is in fact totally irrelevant, if all of your data is locked inside proprietary files. Somebody will sure start to reverse engineer the formats, but it almost never works 100% right.
/picz
Right now I'm looking at an OS browser showing HTML with CSS. There are som jpegs around and some png's as well. If Microsoft or other company had their way, all of those formats would be secret, closed and patented and the software should be licenced from them.
Open Source is nice and efficient way of writing code, but real freedom is inside open standards.
As it is now, every government and every company has a lot of unreadable documents sitting around on their disks. They only become readable, when a licence is paid to MS or Adobe etc. And who knows, how long these companies will be around? And what if they choose to abandon old platforms and try to force everybody to use the newest Longhorn 2020 Ultra Plus for $499 pr. licence? This is not freedom.
What if I work for some government office and would like to make a nice, indexed and searchable database of my Word documents available to the public. Where is the innovation, when the standards are closed and secret and unreadable for my programmers
Knowing what's inside your own documents is essential. Specially if you are a government.
I hope that EU will look at Norway and learn. There's not much hope for the US I'm affraid. Too much corporate influence inside the political system.
Yes indeed.
/picz
MS will use their monopoly on the desktop to destroy Google and create new monopoly for search enginges. They did the same thing with Netscape, when they embedded MSIE in Windows 95.
And this has perfect justification. They are only making a better MSIE with easy search feature for the masses. The masses don't care what their search engine's name is. If it will work "out of the box", people will use it and not ask questions.
The stupid part is Sony trying to keep their gagdet closed. The other guys are just doint what every hacker should be doing. Finding out how stuff works and make stuff run cool stuff. /picz
It is amazing. The programmers at Sony are wasting their time to prevent other programmers to program for PSP and the PSP programmers waste their time trying to hack the PSP.
/picz
This is stupid. All that creativity could be used for some cool apps.
Yes. Mac OS X will run on standard Dell PCs and other cheap hardware. It's only a question of time.
/picz
Just as you can modify your XBox to run anything by following simple instructions, the same will happen for Mac OS on PC.
This is good news for consumers. We will get the power of Mac OS for the price of cheap PCs from China.
The official movie distribution involves a sytem trucks driving the celluloid rolls to chosen addresses. It involves people driving their cars or use public transport to reach same addresses. It involves big and expensive buildings and a lot of expensive employees, reservation of tickets and standing in line (sometimes twice)
/picz
It is a part of your experience. So are 200-300 other people sweating, eating smelly foods, taking their smelly shoes of, eating candy out of noisy plastic bags, having their mobile phones ringing, etc.. All that for $10 pr. seat.
The distribution is both expensive and the movie theatre experience does not please the modern consumer, who would like to enjoy the magic of movies without getting p*ssed off.
Bittorrent delivers right to the computer in your living room through an established network. It's fast and cheap and gives you home cinema system something to do. You can even pause the movie and go get a snack or a cop of coffee. Now, that's magic.
All people believing in capitalism should hail the BT for it's efficiency and low costs. The old and rusty movie distribution system can not compete with the smooth functionality of the modern computer networks and comfort of home cinema (even if it's just a 28'' TV).
MPAA should start to think about improving their product. If I could download a legal copy of Star Wars today, I would do it.
At this moment the only competition to the distribution monopoly of movie theatres are the P2P networks.
Hmmmm... No Linux version of the Word Viewer there is.
/picz
Strange it is.
The story made it to Slashdot /picz
Elch's webserver is gone
Mission accomplished for 'bitchecker'
This is not a flying car. It's just another plane!
A small plane, but still just a plane.
There has to be another way of beating gravity than blowing air over a wing shaped objects at high speed.
I agree
Trying to describe human intelligence with a single number is not very intelligent.
Mensa should be known as a organisation for people with puzzle-solving skills.
regards
picZ
And it was a good paper... and it was like, bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep.. /picz
EU tried to rush the legislation through on a meeting between ministers of agriculture and fishery.
This is how seriously software patent issues are taken in the European Union. "We need to fish more herring, mackerel and patents on software, or else the fishers will dump something smelly in front of the building"
Thumbs up for Poland for stalling the process.
Well... It was just a quick thought. Big fat button right in your face.
/regards
Deep integration of MSN Search into Longhorn seems as a perfectly logical thing to do for our convenience and improved world domination.
Anyway... It is bad news for Google. Taking away their users will be a piece of cake for Ballmer and his gang. You can not win over people owning the platform.
picz
They are going to pull off another Netscape.
/picz
Microsoft can capture Google's users using their dominance on the browswer market.
If the next version of MSIE has a big fat SEARCH button in the navigation bar, then Google has already lost half of the so called "normal users" (The ones, that just click on stuff on their desktop with no clue about what a program is)
regards
>And people will wonder why the US falls behind in tech.
/picz
But your lawyers are getting better and better every day.