Apple went after MS for, first, "look and feel" infringement; then when that failed, they tried "trade dress" (usually appled to product packaging or appearance).
Neither strategy worked, and the reasons more or less depend on whom you ask. Strictly speaking, IIRC, the judge in that case declined to agree that a GUI fits either of the above categories. If the law had been caught up with software interface, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
In this case, although (as other posters have rightfully noted) Linux WMs do slavishly copy Windows GUI/widgets, Gates almost certainly is talking about code, not UI elements.
Just played for a bit (I'm not saying what time zone I'm in!) and my first impression was surprise at the languages being used in chat.
I know non-English-speakers are not unusual in FPS games, of course. But something about the in-your-face stridence of American military machismo in the game made it an odd cognitive dissonance.
I can see a Huey Long (or Joe McCarthy) figure showing a screenshot of dudes blasting people with their m1a4 or whatever, talking in Czech... and then McCarthy lambasting the Army for training the next generation of terrorists.
U.S. patent system goes by first to invent, not first to file (as in many other countries). "Prior art" needs to predate the invention, not the filing.
How do you determine prior invention? Documentation.
But anyway: Nothing angers me more than ill-informed accusations maligning the whole profession.
Except a bad journalist.
Whether the NYT reporter acted in bad faith is, to put it mildly, unclear. But this reporter, Jayson Blair and Connie Chung are not representative.
But the vast majority of journalists work long hours, for shit pay and bad benefits, because they feel an obligation to society. Not for money or fame - because we rarely get any of either.
Your average reporter wants nothing more than to report the truth and, through doing so, somehow "make a difference."
Please refrain from accusing all of us of misconduct and unprofessionalism. That vast majority of responsible reporters has nothing going for it except the presumption of accuracy and reliability, something we have to earn every day.
Similar naming conventions in separate markets don't a trademark violation make. If Apple doesn't start making digital cameras again (they haven't for a hell of a long time, I believe) and Canon doesn't go for the desktop PC market, there shouldn't be a problem.
I don't' really have a problem with the SimCity 2000-style graphics, especially as Oceanus' requirements apparently don't include a 3D card. Might run on Virtual PC on my Mac (minimum is a PII-500 or so). Nice.
Agreed, and I'm not sure the other replies understood your point.
As I see it, the other end of the cable is hooked to a bigass weight - at least, that's what the massive, spacecraft-size block looks like in the schematics. Where does that block come from, and how do you boost it even to LEO? Do you mine a passing comet for all that metal?
Spinning the cable I don't think would be the problem - get a weight (spacecraft) attached to the other end and the whole mess will rotate, with the cable ballast dropping its orbit level while the craft is boosted.
Of course, then you have to push the bigass weight back where it was, using probably as much propulsion/fuel/whatever means you used to get it up there in the first place.
Don't see the savings - perhaps the article's at fault or I'm a waterhead. I still like the space elevator better.
My impression of SCO's claims on this one is that illegally exporting restricted technology was in violation of IBM's license for AIX. Probably there's a clause in there that indemnified AT&T, and hence now SCO, against any potential crimes committed by IBM.
Somehow I was able to find myself at the theater watching this movie with my folks pretty soon after it came out. I would have given my left nut to play SMB 3 at the time, I believe. My dad had this freakish system of trying to get me to play less nintendo: Unlike normal parents, who would simply say 'Play for an hour, and no more,' or similar, my dad had me scrupulously record exactly how much time I spent playing each day.
That's it - I think he expected me to look at old pages and put the game away in self-loathing. Yeah right. Final Fantasy and Faxanadu definitely won it over self-loathing.
Most amusing facet of reading The Wizard review: watching the clip in the casino, where the girl (I think she was the precise median of little geek boys' dream girls) screams and points and says about the breasts... I remember that at that point in the theater my mother holds her hand to her mouth in a sort of gasp and says (loudly), I shit you not, "Brilliant!"
I cannot, cannot stop laughing remembering that. I wonder if I had a similar reaction in '89.
High culture is alive and well, and the Simpsons are among its halls. As are creatively excellent ad campaigns, for what that's worth. But honestly, I believe you've hit on a couple of those exceptions that prove the rule. Most of the rest is pap.
My point is that "strikes a common chord with the rest of humanity" is a foolishly idealistic viewpoint to adopt, and a dangerous one. Many of our common chords would be better unstruck - our basest desires and most destructive impulses among them. And usually this manipulation (it's not a random resonance, it's a plucked string) is done crudely and more or less ineffectually - someone posted to another thread about 'Die harder than you've ever died hard before with a vengeance.'
I think that about sums up the level of pop discourse; just insert meaningless sex or drugs for violence. (Not that sex or drugs are inherently bad.)
Art is not exclusively an uplifting object - it can be a tool, a weapon, as well as a teacher and friend. It is not always uplifting, or valuable, or well-meaning. But it requires excellence to be art.
Art can be evil - and as you say, the manipulation of crowds is one of those applications. There is dangerous music (no, not Black Sabbath backwards or 'Louie Louie' sped up; I'm talking about mindless hatred and destructive violence) and dangerous literature (Celine comes to mind). And there is artistic excellence employed to sometimes-ill purposes - like great advertising.
At this point I think the words 'genius' or 'arete' may be more appropriate than 'art', but the idea is the same. Selling is a psychological challenge, as are mesmerizing and deceiving - all those things that pop culture does best. And I don't believe that they're good for you, especially when they are accomplished with excellence/genius.
If the Pied Piper plays a better tune, should we necessarily follow?
Video games can transcent "pop" into art, and often (used to) do so. I don't think AO is very good, but that doesn't matter here. Because the creation of the game, and its world, isn't the same as the mindless, repetitious occupation of that world. Whether the game is art or not, the player is not creating art - unless (a la Shadowbane) he figures out a way to change the terms, e.g. sending everyone to the bottom of the ocean. I'm completely serious - an accomplishment like that may be evil, it may be destructive, but I admire it for its excellence in design and execution and effect.
In sum: I'm not making a blanket statement about "art," and claiming simplistically "art good, pop bad." Art, work of excellence whether for good or evil, can be good and bad. Warhol, for example, was not an example of "pop culture." He was skewering pop culture and multiplying/degrading its icons of safety and convention. He was, like all artists, an inhabitant of "high culture." Pop, real pop culture, is worthless and designed that way. It doesn't deserve the adjectives 'good' and 'evil,' and it generally isn't worth bothering with.
but in response: posthumous fame is not my criterion. You're right - I'm being subjective. Ultimately we all must be; I don't deny that. But I do maintain that some choices are of lesser excellence - of course that too is a subjective statement.
Frankly I admire Warhol and I like Seurat, but it's not important to me whether either was commercially accepted, or whether they are alive or dead. McCarthy, whom I mentioned, isn't dead, and neither are (obviously) many other of the greatest living artists.
My point was that none of them (I'm hoping) did what they did out a desire to earn a profit. More specifically, they did/do not cater to a market, give the people what they want... they thumb their collective noses at some establishment, as you say. Ars gratia artis!
Yes, I do believe it is the intentions of the artist - along with, it should go without saying, his/her success at fulfilling those intentions - that makes expression into art.
So which is missing from our posts, intentions or talent? As this is a dead thread, I think we too must go gently, and unmodded, into that dark night.
I'd like to make the case that time spent on any particular habit, pursuit, hobby - or obsession, as seems the case for Stenlund - is not necessarily equally worthwhile simply out of its value to you personally.
For example, I would place playing Anarchy Online, or any other MMORPG, well below, say, reading classically-accepted literature like Faulkner, Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe or Cormac McCarthy. Ditto for the rest of the "Great Books" canon. Why?
Well, I have this (perhaps naive) idea that true art carries its own rewards, and people who produce amazingly creative works aren't in it for material reward. That's one reason so many artists die unappreciated (e.g. van Gogh, Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson) only to become established posthumously.
Can the same be said for MMORPGs, for television? Absolutely not. Generally the products of popular culture are made to turn a profit for someone or some business - not to stimulate, to excite, to inspire, to last, as is the case with transcendent art.
Same goes, to a potentially lesser extent, for cinema and popular music. And notice it's rarely the blockbuster or the smash hit that achieves valuable cultural immortality. Where are the Beatles and the Velvet Underground and the Antonionis and the Kurosawas of today?
It's still possible, it seems, for great directors to make great movies... but how often are they paying for it themselves? Why do actors join Woody Allen films for no money?
And perhaps there are musicians who could change the world - but they probably wouldn't get a record deal. Look at the trouble Wilco had just publishing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Radiohead is the only band I can think of offhand right now that still seems to want to make art after reaching popular acclaim.
Our ministers of culture are not interested in art. They want hits.
To speak in very general terms (of course, there are exceptions), popular cultural products are generally crap. Which is more beneficial spiritually, watching Real World or reading Jude the Obscure? The denigration of pop culture is especially pervasive because it's designed to mesmerize, to trap and distract you. It's no accident some parents treat the TV as a babysitter, and some kids treat it as their best friend - that's the aim of its cultural products and their advertisers.
Producing one's own art can, of course, confer similar to or greater benefits than absorbing someone else's. And I'm not suggesting that we need to rip the cable TV out and spend time exclusively with dead trees. But McLuhan was right to say that the "electric culture" is a paradigm shift from all that has come before in terms of attention, of culture, of intelligence, of moral and spiritual value.
And I strongly question the relativist outlook that "you can learn from just about any activity, even watching TV." Perhaps if you're watching PBS exclusively, and even then you'd likely be better off doing something else most of the time.
Where's the leaky logic? Granted, he's not much for specifics, but even without Moore's Law-type shenanigans his argument about future processing power seems reasonable.
More important, people get paid lotsa green for thinking up created-world scenarios and trying to determine what is the best course of action to pursue, then propounding that course. We call it religion; this gent calls it philosophy.
Frankly, it scares me because it implies that not only is afterlife possible, it seems likely...
What's more, as the Hansen essay explored, obtaining that afterlife means attempting to guess the simulation designer's goals, whether they be religious, artistic or whatever.
Maybe I should become a Zoroastrian. Or maybe the designer's goals include creating minds with a Kyoto-school acceptance of the absurd.
I'm not sure how well the mafia connection holds up, frankly; I'd like to see a lot more information and analysis about the parallels between the two than the hand-waving "just as the Mafia developed because of its environment." Still an interesting read, especially since I've never played EQ.
But I have played Shadowbane (though I don't anymore), and I think they might really have something if they looked at a game, like SB, where player-killing is virtually unrestricted and where all expectations point to a social-interaction model versus a lone-wolf model.
Their example of a player ripping off the group by logging out pales next to some of the experiences I had on SB: an assassin backstabbing from stealth to kill and rob players ten levels lower, for example. Then griefed players grouping together to track and kill that sucker across the entire game world (as we did once). Add in the ever-present guild scene in that game, in which certain leading individuals are known to literally every player on the server, and you get a lot closer to northern New jersey.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, probably not.
Apple went after MS for, first, "look and feel" infringement; then when that failed, they tried "trade dress" (usually appled to product packaging or appearance).
Neither strategy worked, and the reasons more or less depend on whom you ask. Strictly speaking, IIRC, the judge in that case declined to agree that a GUI fits either of the above categories. If the law had been caught up with software interface, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
In this case, although (as other posters have rightfully noted) Linux WMs do slavishly copy Windows GUI/widgets, Gates almost certainly is talking about code, not UI elements.
Heh.
As an Apple enthusiast, I thought Hannibal's reply was even funnier:
Just played for a bit (I'm not saying what time zone I'm in!) and my first impression was surprise at the languages being used in chat.
I know non-English-speakers are not unusual in FPS games, of course. But something about the in-your-face stridence of American military machismo in the game made it an odd cognitive dissonance.
I can see a Huey Long (or Joe McCarthy) figure showing a screenshot of dudes blasting people with their m1a4 or whatever, talking in Czech... and then McCarthy lambasting the Army for training the next generation of terrorists.
Or do I just need my morning coffee?
U.S. patent system goes by first to invent, not first to file (as in many other countries). "Prior art" needs to predate the invention, not the filing.
How do you determine prior invention? Documentation.
Eeeexcellent...
Eeeeeexcellent!
Blah blah.
Does Intel make a compiler for the 970?
Didn't think so.
The subject was Barbara Bush, IIRC.
But anyway: Nothing angers me more than ill-informed accusations maligning the whole profession.
Except a bad journalist.
Whether the NYT reporter acted in bad faith is, to put it mildly, unclear. But this reporter, Jayson Blair and Connie Chung are not representative.
But the vast majority of journalists work long hours, for shit pay and bad benefits, because they feel an obligation to society. Not for money or fame - because we rarely get any of either.
Your average reporter wants nothing more than to report the truth and, through doing so, somehow "make a difference."
Please refrain from accusing all of us of misconduct and unprofessionalism. That vast majority of responsible reporters has nothing going for it except the presumption of accuracy and reliability, something we have to earn every day.
Similar naming conventions in separate markets don't a trademark violation make. If Apple doesn't start making digital cameras again (they haven't for a hell of a long time, I believe) and Canon doesn't go for the desktop PC market, there shouldn't be a problem.
Sweet!
I don't' really have a problem with the SimCity 2000-style graphics, especially as Oceanus' requirements apparently don't include a 3D card. Might run on Virtual PC on my Mac (minimum is a PII-500 or so). Nice.
Does the Post have problems with Moz? I opened it fine.
Accourse, this is on OS X.
Agreed, and I'm not sure the other replies understood your point.
As I see it, the other end of the cable is hooked to a bigass weight - at least, that's what the massive, spacecraft-size block looks like in the schematics. Where does that block come from, and how do you boost it even to LEO? Do you mine a passing comet for all that metal?
Spinning the cable I don't think would be the problem - get a weight (spacecraft) attached to the other end and the whole mess will rotate, with the cable ballast dropping its orbit level while the craft is boosted.
Of course, then you have to push the bigass weight back where it was, using probably as much propulsion/fuel/whatever means you used to get it up there in the first place.
Don't see the savings - perhaps the article's at fault or I'm a waterhead. I still like the space elevator better.
My impression of SCO's claims on this one is that illegally exporting restricted technology was in violation of IBM's license for AIX. Probably there's a clause in there that indemnified AT&T, and hence now SCO, against any potential crimes committed by IBM.
Boxen? Distrii?
Egads!
From the article: "QNX has been the only company so far to commercialize a microkernel OS."
Am I just ignant, or isn't Mac OS X built on top of the Mach microkernel, with a monolithic 4.4BSD kernel atop it?
Wow, this brings me back.
Somehow I was able to find myself at the theater watching this movie with my folks pretty soon after it came out. I would have given my left nut to play SMB 3 at the time, I believe. My dad had this freakish system of trying to get me to play less nintendo: Unlike normal parents, who would simply say 'Play for an hour, and no more,' or similar, my dad had me scrupulously record exactly how much time I spent playing each day.
That's it - I think he expected me to look at old pages and put the game away in self-loathing. Yeah right. Final Fantasy and Faxanadu definitely won it over self-loathing.
Most amusing facet of reading The Wizard review: watching the clip in the casino, where the girl (I think she was the precise median of little geek boys' dream girls) screams and points and says about the breasts... I remember that at that point in the theater my mother holds her hand to her mouth in a sort of gasp and says (loudly), I shit you not, "Brilliant!"
I cannot, cannot stop laughing remembering that. I wonder if I had a similar reaction in '89.
This is fantastic. I wish threads stayed alive longer, so those like this could get modded up.
High culture is alive and well, and the Simpsons are among its halls. As are creatively excellent ad campaigns, for what that's worth. But honestly, I believe you've hit on a couple of those exceptions that prove the rule. Most of the rest is pap.
My point is that "strikes a common chord with the rest of humanity" is a foolishly idealistic viewpoint to adopt, and a dangerous one. Many of our common chords would be better unstruck - our basest desires and most destructive impulses among them. And usually this manipulation (it's not a random resonance, it's a plucked string) is done crudely and more or less ineffectually - someone posted to another thread about 'Die harder than you've ever died hard before with a vengeance.'
I think that about sums up the level of pop discourse; just insert meaningless sex or drugs for violence. (Not that sex or drugs are inherently bad.)
Art is not exclusively an uplifting object - it can be a tool, a weapon, as well as a teacher and friend. It is not always uplifting, or valuable, or well-meaning. But it requires excellence to be art.
Art can be evil - and as you say, the manipulation of crowds is one of those applications. There is dangerous music (no, not Black Sabbath backwards or 'Louie Louie' sped up; I'm talking about mindless hatred and destructive violence) and dangerous literature (Celine comes to mind). And there is artistic excellence employed to sometimes-ill purposes - like great advertising.
At this point I think the words 'genius' or 'arete' may be more appropriate than 'art', but the idea is the same. Selling is a psychological challenge, as are mesmerizing and deceiving - all those things that pop culture does best. And I don't believe that they're good for you, especially when they are accomplished with excellence/genius.
If the Pied Piper plays a better tune, should we necessarily follow?
Video games can transcent "pop" into art, and often (used to) do so. I don't think AO is very good, but that doesn't matter here. Because the creation of the game, and its world, isn't the same as the mindless, repetitious occupation of that world. Whether the game is art or not, the player is not creating art - unless (a la Shadowbane) he figures out a way to change the terms, e.g. sending everyone to the bottom of the ocean. I'm completely serious - an accomplishment like that may be evil, it may be destructive, but I admire it for its excellence in design and execution and effect.
In sum: I'm not making a blanket statement about "art," and claiming simplistically "art good, pop bad." Art, work of excellence whether for good or evil, can be good and bad. Warhol, for example, was not an example of "pop culture." He was skewering pop culture and multiplying/degrading its icons of safety and convention. He was, like all artists, an inhabitant of "high culture." Pop, real pop culture, is worthless and designed that way. It doesn't deserve the adjectives 'good' and 'evil,' and it generally isn't worth bothering with.
Bastion art-wankery? Ouch.
but in response: posthumous fame is not my criterion. You're right - I'm being subjective. Ultimately we all must be; I don't deny that. But I do maintain that some choices are of lesser excellence - of course that too is a subjective statement.
Frankly I admire Warhol and I like Seurat, but it's not important to me whether either was commercially accepted, or whether they are alive or dead. McCarthy, whom I mentioned, isn't dead, and neither are (obviously) many other of the greatest living artists.
My point was that none of them (I'm hoping) did what they did out a desire to earn a profit. More specifically, they did/do not cater to a market, give the people what they want... they thumb their collective noses at some establishment, as you say. Ars gratia artis!
Yes, I do believe it is the intentions of the artist - along with, it should go without saying, his/her success at fulfilling those intentions - that makes expression into art.
So which is missing from our posts, intentions or talent? As this is a dead thread, I think we too must go gently, and unmodded, into that dark night.
Heh...
You forgot "And we liked it!"
I'd like to make the case that time spent on any particular habit, pursuit, hobby - or obsession, as seems the case for Stenlund - is not necessarily equally worthwhile simply out of its value to you personally.
For example, I would place playing Anarchy Online, or any other MMORPG, well below, say, reading classically-accepted literature like Faulkner, Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe or Cormac McCarthy. Ditto for the rest of the "Great Books" canon. Why?
Well, I have this (perhaps naive) idea that true art carries its own rewards, and people who produce amazingly creative works aren't in it for material reward. That's one reason so many artists die unappreciated (e.g. van Gogh, Nietzsche, Emily Dickinson) only to become established posthumously.
Can the same be said for MMORPGs, for television? Absolutely not. Generally the products of popular culture are made to turn a profit for someone or some business - not to stimulate, to excite, to inspire, to last, as is the case with transcendent art.
Same goes, to a potentially lesser extent, for cinema and popular music. And notice it's rarely the blockbuster or the smash hit that achieves valuable cultural immortality. Where are the Beatles and the Velvet Underground and the Antonionis and the Kurosawas of today?
It's still possible, it seems, for great directors to make great movies... but how often are they paying for it themselves? Why do actors join Woody Allen films for no money?
And perhaps there are musicians who could change the world - but they probably wouldn't get a record deal. Look at the trouble Wilco had just publishing Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Radiohead is the only band I can think of offhand right now that still seems to want to make art after reaching popular acclaim.
Our ministers of culture are not interested in art. They want hits.
To speak in very general terms (of course, there are exceptions), popular cultural products are generally crap. Which is more beneficial spiritually, watching Real World or reading Jude the Obscure? The denigration of pop culture is especially pervasive because it's designed to mesmerize, to trap and distract you. It's no accident some parents treat the TV as a babysitter, and some kids treat it as their best friend - that's the aim of its cultural products and their advertisers.
Producing one's own art can, of course, confer similar to or greater benefits than absorbing someone else's. And I'm not suggesting that we need to rip the cable TV out and spend time exclusively with dead trees. But McLuhan was right to say that the "electric culture" is a paradigm shift from all that has come before in terms of attention, of culture, of intelligence, of moral and spiritual value.
And I strongly question the relativist outlook that "you can learn from just about any activity, even watching TV." Perhaps if you're watching PBS exclusively, and even then you'd likely be better off doing something else most of the time.
Is this in the EETimes article? I didn't see it there.
(You're correct, of course, I just couldn't find your quote in the story)
And we LIKED it!
Where's the leaky logic? Granted, he's not much for specifics, but even without Moore's Law-type shenanigans his argument about future processing power seems reasonable.
More important, people get paid lotsa green for thinking up created-world scenarios and trying to determine what is the best course of action to pursue, then propounding that course. We call it religion; this gent calls it philosophy.
Frankly, it scares me because it implies that not only is afterlife possible, it seems likely...
What's more, as the Hansen essay explored, obtaining that afterlife means attempting to guess the simulation designer's goals, whether they be religious, artistic or whatever.
Maybe I should become a Zoroastrian. Or maybe the designer's goals include creating minds with a Kyoto-school acceptance of the absurd.
I'm not sure how well the mafia connection holds up, frankly; I'd like to see a lot more information and analysis about the parallels between the two than the hand-waving "just as the Mafia developed because of its environment." Still an interesting read, especially since I've never played EQ.
But I have played Shadowbane (though I don't anymore), and I think they might really have something if they looked at a game, like SB, where player-killing is virtually unrestricted and where all expectations point to a social-interaction model versus a lone-wolf model.
Their example of a player ripping off the group by logging out pales next to some of the experiences I had on SB: an assassin backstabbing from stealth to kill and rob players ten levels lower, for example. Then griefed players grouping together to track and kill that sucker across the entire game world (as we did once). Add in the ever-present guild scene in that game, in which certain leading individuals are known to literally every player on the server, and you get a lot closer to northern New jersey.