This whole argument is founded in the fact that the man said "uh, auction on a computer!" and got a patent.
Actually, I have to disagree here. Quoting from the article:
He filed his idea with the patent office in April 1995 and founded MercExchange to try to turn the idea into a business. But he couldn't raise the funding and eventually turned to the business of licensing his patents to other companies.
So he made a good faith attempt to raise the funding to produce the item listed in the patent, but couldn't get the money for it. Just because he may have made the attempt when there wasn't billions of dollars of capital available for anyone that mentioned the word "Internet" doesn't mean that he should be punished for that fact. My gripe is the folks that file for patents without any intention of ever attempting to implement it.
Only once?:D I actually wish I could make it down there a bit more often. As for finding 30 credits on there, that's typically left by people who buy the 2 hour game card, swipe it between every song to add a credit, and get about 6-8 hours worth of play time out of it...
Oh... And of course, being from the Chicago area myself, I should say that Gameworks in Schaumburg is probably the best place to play. They have a DDR USA, and a DDRMAX2, which is the newest machine over in Japan, and is very fun. Almost 100 songs on it to keep you dancing.
I realize you said Central Illinois, but it's not that far to get up this direction from time to time!:D
Actually, on I-440 around Raleigh, they use 'Inner' and 'Outer' (or at least, they did when I was there a few years back) It wasn't any less confusing, unfortunately, as I had to think hard coming up to the interchange on to it to figure out which way I wanted to go...
It requires that everyone in the USA have access to broadband within 5 years, subject to serious penalties, requires the FCC to monitor and enforce the laws (contrary to a very deceiving ad run locally in DC by voicesforchoices), and makes special provisions for under served communities.
Penalties that they're more than willing to pay, because actually providing broadband will likely cost more than the penalties in the long run. Ameritech has been doing this for years. The best link I have at the moment (5 minutes of searching) is from late 2000. And to further add insult to injury, who ends up paying the penalties? The consumers, through jacked up basic line service charges. I've lived in the Chicago area for 2 years, and I've seen my basic phone line charges rise from $40 to $50.
And don't even get me started on trying to get DSL from anyone besides Ameritech around here.
If you have a Dreamcast (or even if you don't... They're dirt cheap now) a good game that rivals Smash Bros. for just plain fun in a fighting game is Powerstone 2. My co-workers and I have literally devoted entire evenings to playing this game. Get a case of your favorite bubbly beverage, a few friends, and Powerstone 2, and you'll be set.
Gambling is illegal. The new economy is based on it. The stockmarket is just legallized gambling. Some people are good, some people are bad and most people really have no idea what they're doing. They're just interested in taking a risk to maybe make some money. So, there. Gambling is legal.
Uh, completely wrong, actually. The stock market can be -compared- to gambling, but it is not gambling. You purchase a tangible item (stock) whose value fluctuates based upon supply and demand. If the demand increases, the value of the stock goes up because there is a fixed supply of stock available to the public at any point in time (This is true even after stock splits or un-splits. The resolution of the tangible item simply becomes greater or smaller) If the demand decreases, the value of the stock goes down.
Gambling is a completely different thing. You do not purchase a tangible item when you gamble. That's why gambling is illegal and will remain illegal unless a law is passed similar to what NV and NJ have done (To allow Vegas and Atlantic City, respectivly)
IMNSHO, patents should be a bit more like trademarks, in that you have to use the technology or you lose it.
Here I have to disagree... Say, for example, you come up with this awesome new product that has never been seen before in the market. Now say that to actually implement this idea would take half a million dollars to do. You're an individual, you don't have half a million lying around, nor the facilities to mass produce this new product for the marketplace... So you patent your idea to protect it.
Except that in your world, if you don't have the means of producing the product, you lose the patent. Suddenly, every major company that can afford it is producing your product, and you don't get a penny, even though you came up with the whole idea in the first place.
This is what patents were always meant to protect. Individuals with ideas that they had no chance of ever being able to finance their ideas into a product. A company could buy rights from this person to produce the product if they thought it a good idea, and the individual would be protected if a big company decides that they can go ahead and implement this person's idea without compensating him. It's been twisted quite a bit as of late, with more corporate patents than individual patents, but that's pretty much inescapable now. When you start work at a company, you're required to sign a sheet that essentially says "What's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours."
As proof, CBS and other major networks have been doing this for some time on live network broadcasts?
Did anyone see the obviously fake sign around turn 4 of the Indy this year and last? What about the broadcasts from Times Square on New Years? Did you notice the suspicious CBS logo where some background advertising on billboards and stuff was? I've even seen it in use on network broadcasts of baseball games. Ads appearing, disappearing and changing on the base of the backstop behind the batter. Real enough looking that Joe Average probably doesn't even notice.
Slashdot even had a story on this technology somewhere, though I'm too lazy too look for it at the moment. Add a reply if you find it.
If this kind of real-time replacement of ads on TV is kosher, I can't imagine how the same would not be extended to websites.
Not that I -like- this or anything. I think it's downright scummy, but then again, so are most Marketing folks.
Gasp! You mean I can't get 99.999% reliability on my 768/128 ADSL connection that I only pay $49.99 a month for? I should sue!
Really... Anyone that thinks they can use the Internet for critical business applications that require near-perfect uptime and high speeds should get a 2x4-sized cluing to the head. The only way you'll get that kind of service is to either wait a few more years for everything to just develop (I remember dialing up to my friend's BBS with a 2400-baud modem, do you? Try doing voice or sending video over that) or build their own damn network to the specs they need it.
All these companies are doing is whining because they can't use a public medium to serve their own interests. Get used to it. It's like a good open-sourced program. If you don't like it, roll your own!
Firewalls don't help against valid traffic flood attacks.
True enough, but what the firewalls would really help prevent is the act of getting infected to begin with. Sure, there's going to be plenty of people still infected by the typical con-email approach (My father passes pretty much every "cool" executable on to me that he gets from friends and family) but at the very least, a simple firewall program will keep the numerous security holes that most regular users don't even know exist from being exploited on a daily basis to get these trojans installed.
The best thing MS could do for the internet community is to write up a basic firewalling service that is user configurable and is installed by default with the TCP/IP stack. That way users that know what they're doing and need ports open to run servers can do so (The idea being that if they need to run such a server, they would probably know the basic concepts of a firewall and security) and users that don't know how to do much more than browse the web and read email (my father) could do so with little risk of their system being compromised.
Of course, I doubt it would happen (Any Windows developers out there reading this? I thought not...) but it's always nice to wish.
Actually the American and Japanese TV formats are quite the same. It's completely understandable to have different versions of consoles for areas with different TV types, but I'd imagine that it would be a simple step in the software itself to read the console type and run the correct video output code in the game (If that's even needed at all. It's most likely all in the hardware itself.)
As for the language, again, most DVDs, most hardware, etc already do multiple languages. Wouldn't be incredibly hard to put more than one language in the hardware and on the software.
As for DVD regional coding? Well... Guess I can't suggest anything there except for possibly... neglecting... to put the region checking code in the console. Sorta like some DVD players did. Like that'll really happen, though.
Earlier this week, Napster unveiled a proposal under which it would pay the record industry $200 million a year if it is allowed to stay open. But record industry officials have been cool to the idea, and say they are moving ahead with their own online plans that don't involve Napster.
Wouldn't be surprised if this has been discussed before somewhere, but would Napster be able to patent the distribution of music via centralized servers? Is there prior art somewhere that would nullify a patent like this? If not, it would be a wonderful little surprise to the RIAA/record companies when they try to get their own plans out the door...
Well, I believe the challenge was to come up with a linux application that didn't have a better windows counterpart, not programs that we run through Wine.
Okay, so I'm one of those few that doesn't have a DC but still wants one. I know there's a few more of you out there like me who are going to finally shell out the cash and get one of these DCs cheap. Well, if you're looking for instant gratification, you can actually save a few bucks by buying a DC -before- the price drop from Circuit City.
Why?
Well, they have a nifty price guarantee that if you find the same product for less at another store, or even their own store, you get refunded 110% of the difference. You get the DC now, and assuming that Circuit City is on top of the price drop, you get a cool $55 refund sometime in the next couple weeks.
Anyone know of another place that could better this deal?
They're also rather vulnerable to buffer overflows, especially when the owner of the mailbox is unable to read his or her mail for an extended length of time.
If a game on the Indrema console segfaults, where does the core dump get stored? And will Indrema or the game company be able to analyze the core dump?
Kinda tough to tell at the moment as there's no specs on the website (that I could find quickly) but one of the questions above seemed to indicate there might be a hard drive in the console. That might allow for some debug storage, though personally I would hope it would be an option of some kind. Just imagine if the hard drive filled up with core files and you were some regular Joe that had no idea what they were and was too afraid to delete them for that reason...
Also, will the game title programmers for this console diligently debug their titles before releasing them? So far, no Linux title (be it an OS distro or a software package) has proven stable or up-to-date right off the CD.
Nor, unfortunately, have many Windows games I've played. Fortunately, the entire PC market has the possibility of software upgrades being available (assuming there's a hard drive of some sort the game is installed to) I can't say the same about most consoles. Would have been nice to get an upgrade of Gauntlet Legends for the N64 so it wouldn't crash and freeze playing 4 players;)
NBC is covering the olympics and will be posting results, et. al. on the internet.
According to the article they will only be posting results after it has had a chance to be aired on the network, possibly a day or more after the event takes place (after all, who in their right mind would actually watch an event if they already know the result? </sarcasm>). For a medium that has always meant instant information, this is pretty disappointing, to say the least.
Having spent some time on our solar car racing team back in college, one of our mantras was 'Lighter is better'. I looked into one of the hybrid cars as well as I was interested in them, and found that they too seem to follow this rule. The Insight is nearly 1000 pounds lighter than a similarily priced ICE car. What does this mean? If you're still in Chicago come winter, you'd better find another car to drive lest you end up in the ditch. I live in Chicago as well and know that most cities use salt only (After a major snowstorm dropped 8-12 inches here in the burbs, the road was never plowed) These cars are great in the southern climates, but until they're as efficient as they are now with weights comparable to a normal car, I would stay away from them.
Slashdot Mirror
So, what I want to know is if it's cheaper than my current apartment, and if utilities are included
Yep, the utilities are included, but the plumbing tends to leak a lot for the first couple years.
Actually, I have to disagree here. Quoting from the article:
So he made a good faith attempt to raise the funding to produce the item listed in the patent, but couldn't get the money for it. Just because he may have made the attempt when there wasn't billions of dollars of capital available for anyone that mentioned the word "Internet" doesn't mean that he should be punished for that fact. My gripe is the folks that file for patents without any intention of ever attempting to implement it.
Only once? :D I actually wish I could make it down there a bit more often. As for finding 30 credits on there, that's typically left by people who buy the 2 hour game card, swipe it between every song to add a credit, and get about 6-8 hours worth of play time out of it...
Oh... And of course, being from the Chicago area myself, I should say that Gameworks in Schaumburg is probably the best place to play. They have a DDR USA, and a DDRMAX2, which is the newest machine over in Japan, and is very fun. Almost 100 songs on it to keep you dancing.
:D
I realize you said Central Illinois, but it's not that far to get up this direction from time to time!
Excellent locations list:
http://www.ddrfreak.com/locations/locations.php
Actually, on I-440 around Raleigh, they use 'Inner' and 'Outer' (or at least, they did when I was there a few years back) It wasn't any less confusing, unfortunately, as I had to think hard coming up to the interchange on to it to figure out which way I wanted to go...
And don't even get me started on trying to get DSL from anyone besides Ameritech around here.
If you have a Dreamcast (or even if you don't... They're dirt cheap now) a good game that rivals Smash Bros. for just plain fun in a fighting game is Powerstone 2. My co-workers and I have literally devoted entire evenings to playing this game. Get a case of your favorite bubbly beverage, a few friends, and Powerstone 2, and you'll be set.
Uh, completely wrong, actually. The stock market can be -compared- to gambling, but it is not gambling. You purchase a tangible item (stock) whose value fluctuates based upon supply and demand. If the demand increases, the value of the stock goes up because there is a fixed supply of stock available to the public at any point in time (This is true even after stock splits or un-splits. The resolution of the tangible item simply becomes greater or smaller) If the demand decreases, the value of the stock goes down.
Gambling is a completely different thing. You do not purchase a tangible item when you gamble. That's why gambling is illegal and will remain illegal unless a law is passed similar to what NV and NJ have done (To allow Vegas and Atlantic City, respectivly)
Here I have to disagree... Say, for example, you come up with this awesome new product that has never been seen before in the market. Now say that to actually implement this idea would take half a million dollars to do. You're an individual, you don't have half a million lying around, nor the facilities to mass produce this new product for the marketplace... So you patent your idea to protect it.
Except that in your world, if you don't have the means of producing the product, you lose the patent. Suddenly, every major company that can afford it is producing your product, and you don't get a penny, even though you came up with the whole idea in the first place.
This is what patents were always meant to protect. Individuals with ideas that they had no chance of ever being able to finance their ideas into a product. A company could buy rights from this person to produce the product if they thought it a good idea, and the individual would be protected if a big company decides that they can go ahead and implement this person's idea without compensating him. It's been twisted quite a bit as of late, with more corporate patents than individual patents, but that's pretty much inescapable now. When you start work at a company, you're required to sign a sheet that essentially says "What's ours is ours, and what's yours is ours."
I would have to guess that this is quite legal.
As proof, CBS and other major networks have been doing this for some time on live network broadcasts?
Did anyone see the obviously fake sign around turn 4 of the Indy this year and last? What about the broadcasts from Times Square on New Years? Did you notice the suspicious CBS logo where some background advertising on billboards and stuff was? I've even seen it in use on network broadcasts of baseball games. Ads appearing, disappearing and changing on the base of the backstop behind the batter. Real enough looking that Joe Average probably doesn't even notice.
Slashdot even had a story on this technology somewhere, though I'm too lazy too look for it at the moment. Add a reply if you find it.
If this kind of real-time replacement of ads on TV is kosher, I can't imagine how the same would not be extended to websites.
Not that I -like- this or anything. I think it's downright scummy, but then again, so are most Marketing folks.
Really... Anyone that thinks they can use the Internet for critical business applications that require near-perfect uptime and high speeds should get a 2x4-sized cluing to the head. The only way you'll get that kind of service is to either wait a few more years for everything to just develop (I remember dialing up to my friend's BBS with a 2400-baud modem, do you? Try doing voice or sending video over that) or build their own damn network to the specs they need it.
All these companies are doing is whining because they can't use a public medium to serve their own interests. Get used to it. It's like a good open-sourced program. If you don't like it, roll your own!
... that in the Gallery linked above, the key to unlock a $99 piece of software had been posted? Doesn't that strike anyone as being a bit ironic?
Firewalls don't help against valid traffic flood attacks.
True enough, but what the firewalls would really help prevent is the act of getting infected to begin with. Sure, there's going to be plenty of people still infected by the typical con-email approach (My father passes pretty much every "cool" executable on to me that he gets from friends and family) but at the very least, a simple firewall program will keep the numerous security holes that most regular users don't even know exist from being exploited on a daily basis to get these trojans installed.
The best thing MS could do for the internet community is to write up a basic firewalling service that is user configurable and is installed by default with the TCP/IP stack. That way users that know what they're doing and need ports open to run servers can do so (The idea being that if they need to run such a server, they would probably know the basic concepts of a firewall and security) and users that don't know how to do much more than browse the web and read email (my father) could do so with little risk of their system being compromised.
Of course, I doubt it would happen (Any Windows developers out there reading this? I thought not...) but it's always nice to wish.
Actually the American and Japanese TV formats are quite the same. It's completely understandable to have different versions of consoles for areas with different TV types, but I'd imagine that it would be a simple step in the software itself to read the console type and run the correct video output code in the game (If that's even needed at all. It's most likely all in the hardware itself.)
As for the language, again, most DVDs, most hardware, etc already do multiple languages. Wouldn't be incredibly hard to put more than one language in the hardware and on the software.
As for DVD regional coding? Well... Guess I can't suggest anything there except for possibly... neglecting... to put the region checking code in the console. Sorta like some DVD players did. Like that'll really happen, though.
Wouldn't be surprised if this has been discussed before somewhere, but would Napster be able to patent the distribution of music via centralized servers? Is there prior art somewhere that would nullify a patent like this? If not, it would be a wonderful little surprise to the RIAA/record companies when they try to get their own plans out the door...
I'll have to go with my birthday (Like a few others here)
2001-04-23 21:37:00
I wouldn't doubt that they exist... but the burden of proof lies on you now, doesn't it?
Well, I believe the challenge was to come up with a linux application that didn't have a better windows counterpart, not programs that we run through Wine.
Okay, so I'm one of those few that doesn't have a DC but still wants one. I know there's a few more of you out there like me who are going to finally shell out the cash and get one of these DCs cheap. Well, if you're looking for instant gratification, you can actually save a few bucks by buying a DC -before- the price drop from Circuit City.
Why?
Well, they have a nifty price guarantee that if you find the same product for less at another store, or even their own store, you get refunded 110% of the difference. You get the DC now, and assuming that Circuit City is on top of the price drop, you get a cool $55 refund sometime in the next couple weeks.
Anyone know of another place that could better this deal?
One word...
grep
They're also rather vulnerable to buffer overflows, especially when the owner of the mailbox is unable to read his or her mail for an extended length of time.
Kinda tough to tell at the moment as there's no specs on the website (that I could find quickly) but one of the questions above seemed to indicate there might be a hard drive in the console. That might allow for some debug storage, though personally I would hope it would be an option of some kind. Just imagine if the hard drive filled up with core files and you were some regular Joe that had no idea what they were and was too afraid to delete them for that reason...
Also, will the game title programmers for this console diligently debug their titles before releasing them? So far, no Linux title (be it an OS distro or a software package) has proven stable or up-to-date right off the CD.
Nor, unfortunately, have many Windows games I've played. Fortunately, the entire PC market has the possibility of software upgrades being available (assuming there's a hard drive of some sort the game is installed to) I can't say the same about most consoles. Would have been nice to get an upgrade of Gauntlet Legends for the N64 so it wouldn't crash and freeze playing 4 players ;)
According to the article they will only be posting results after it has had a chance to be aired on the network, possibly a day or more after the event takes place (after all, who in their right mind would actually watch an event if they already know the result? </sarcasm>). For a medium that has always meant instant information, this is pretty disappointing, to say the least.