From the perspective of the business that makes and sells the software, the best option is leasing. And to some degree this already goes on. This requires an always on connection, but it lets you expand into other markets at discounts and much lower cost entry points (as long as it is still profitable, which for software, once it is created, sale of said software is essentially 100% profit) without having to worry about profiteers taking the discounts that you offer to some and spreading them back to your primary markets. You might still sell licenses to first world markets for say $4000 each, but in developing countries, you can offer leases which require an always on connection and intermittently phone home to confirm they are being used as intended. The lease only requires an initial payment of maybe $400 per seat and $200 per seat per month after that, cutting the up front cash to 10% of the purchase price. If the cash flow benefit is greater than the lease cost, it should be widely adopted. You can cap the lease at $4500 or some such and then let the third world companies convert to licenses if you want.
Just straight discounts on goods due to a countries financial status is a bad idea for many reasons well outlined by other posts. Life saving drugs and food are a different story, but they are also necessities which puts them in a different light than software used to make money.
Reasonably good science work, horrible assumptions, junk conclusions. We know that there are fossils of huge mammals (and humans, not the hoaxes but actual fossils) that still live today only much smaller, not just Australia but all over the globe. What caused these mammals to get a lot smaller? Given the fact that physics says that many of these mammals were so large that they would barely function on today's atmospheric density and composition, it is highly likely that at some point in the past the atmosphere was much denser and/or much higher in oxygen than it is now, which would support the cardiovascular systems of the fossils we find (dinosaur and mammal). Couple this with the fact that almost the entire planet has sedimentary rock and fossils within those sedimentary layers, and that sedimentary rock can be deposited rapidly under cataclysmic conditions and things begin to fall into place.
The best theory that I have heard goes something like this:
Before 6000 years ago, there was an ice shell around the outer atmosphere, which at the time only extended up 10-20 miles instead of 60 miles. Atmospheric pressure was higher and the ice shell filtered out most harmful radiation that now comes down to the surface. Because there was no radiation getting through, there was zero C14 [C14 is generated in the upper atmosphere by ionizing radiation; C14 decays at a constant rate; EVIDENCE AND OBSERVATION (not speculation) points to a continuous generation rate of C14]. We have observed that C14 rates are still increasing, and based on the rate of increase and the current levels, C14 production began around 6000 years ago and will reach equilibrium in around 24,000 years. Thus we know reasonably well that the planet was significantly different before 6000 years ago. Oxygen content was maybe 30%. The planet was roughly flat with the largest mountains being only a few hundred feet or so and the tectonic plates all had massive underground water pockets supporting them, similar to all continents today with trapped underground reservoirs, only much larger. Around 6000 years ago, a nitrogen comet struck the planet (mostly broke up in the atmosphere due to the nature of nitrogen ice) somewhere around Siberia, crushing the atmospheric ice shell and causing massive shear on the planet and a planet wide temperature crash. Mammoths in Siberia found frozen solid with green food in their mouths and stomachs support this hypothesis, seeing that it takes temperatures around -180C to flash freeze an animal of that size, where attempting to freeze it in the coldest sustained polar temperatures (-50C) would cause the insides to rot before they froze. The comet diluted the oxygen atmosphere to 20%, and the cold caused immediate global rain.
The shear imparted by the impact caused massive earth quakes that caused a catastrophic failure of many underground oceans, which came jetting to the surface very hot and very fast, with the pressure of entire continents behind the flow. If these jets occurred on an ocean floor, they instantly killed the animals around the jet for miles, from whales to microorganisms, which fell to the ocean floor by the ton and formed diatomaceous earth deposits. Ask anyone who has ever worked at one of these mines, they constantly find all manner of sea fossils, including whales and other huge fossils sometimes buried vertically down through the deposit. The collapse of the ice shell, global drop in temperature and massive release of underwater reserves caused the entire planet to be covered in water. Almost everything on the planet died except for one man and his family and a baby pair of every kind (not species, kind: i.e. wolf/dog/coyote/dingo etc are all one kind).
There are over 200 flood legends globally, and nearly all of them describe a global flood (95%) where one family of 8 people survived (88%). In one of the oldest languages, early Chinese, the word for boat is pictographic and is literally a vessel with 8 people. These people survived on this boat for about a ye
No, what Trump needs to do is split California into about 5 states (California is way too populous to be one state, split 5 ways the subsequent states would be about average in size), kick out all the illegals by strict enforcement of the labor and federal immigration laws, revoke the anchor baby practice and get the SC to clarify that the 14th amendment only applies to freed slaves, kick out any anchor babies and their families who commit violent crimes, stop all aid to countries who wont take their criminals back and then drop them off using military aircraft by force if necessary, kick out H1Bs brought in illegally, kick judges off the bench who blatantly violate our laws as written with tort reform/oversight and require a voter ID and an English reading test as part of the ballot in order for electoral votes to count. America is about to become a sovereign country again, if you don't like it, there is the door GTFO.
The establishment has no freaking clue and the rioting libtards that have been brainwashed into a frenzy right now will settle right down when they realize that a populist is actually for the people, regardless of R or D after the name (or Trump will charge them all with felonies when they do riot and they can spend the next 4 years making license plates).
Just call it a parody highlighting the lack of plot and poor writing of Star Trek Beyond using contrast. Parody is largely protected from copyright and Paramount CBS can go suck eggs.
(Liberal snow flakes please just move to read the next comment and keep your mod phasers set to stun). This whole thing just highlights what is fundamentally wrong with copyright. This is a cut and dried example of how the ridiculously long copyright laws supported by both establishment parties are stifling and robbing our culture and are only for the enrichment of a few. This is the system that Barak Hussain Obama defended and did not fix for the last 8 years. We will have to see what the next administration brings.
We badly need to reform the system to something reasonable and in line with the original intent. Star Trek first aired in 1966, and it's creator is now dead. Reasonable copyright of 40 years from the creation date would put the Star Trek universe squarely in the public domain, while subsequent movies would still be protected for 40 years from their first showing. Nothing will change though if we the people just keep on bending over and taking it.
IF is the operative word, and, as the story points out, they are alleging destruction of evidence, which indicates that they were unable to find evidence that he took anything that would help their case.
Honestly, as a founder of id software, he may have written into his contract on the acquisition that he got to keep a copy of all of his emails. The grey area may be that Zenimax thought that should only apply to emails in the past, where as Carmack thought it applied to all of his emails up until he left the company. I think the biggest thing here is that if he wasn't allowed to take his email with him, Zenimax should be leading with that, but they aren't. At this point it is a lot of speculation on both sides. We won't know until testimony reveals what the contracts said and/or what was or was not allowed.
Just working on a similar concept at company A and company B is not enough. Coming up with some specs at company A is sure as shit not enough. Unless they can show that he copied CAD or code onto a thumb drive that was subsequently incorporated exactly as is into Oculus, they don't have a case.
What most likely happened is the board of directors at Zenimax shit a brick when Oculus was bought by FB for $2B and were ready to chop some heads off in the management/legal team for letting Carmack get away and/or not pursuing the VR idea (which is all it was when Carmack left). To save their asses, management/legal cooked up some bullshit story about him stealing their IP (which is BS, b/c if they had IP on VR they would be suing for patent violation, but they aren't because they don't). The other telling sign is that Zenimax waited how long before going after Carmack? This tells the world that they didn't think VR was worth pursuing and/or for a long time everyone in the know at Zenimax knew all they had done was some initial investigations into what it might take to do VR. I suspect that the investigation that Carmack did at Zenimax probably didn't even get into R&D, he was just investigating. It might be pretty funny if Zenimax trots out all the work that Carmack did at there and then Oculus pulls out a stack of patents held by Nintendo on the Virtual Boy from the 90s that basically puts all of their super secret "research" squarely in the public domain.
As an engineer I have seen this from time to time. The more specialized and skilled you are, the more companies know that the moment that you leave, a competitor will get that expertise, so they try to get you to sign non-compete contracts or come after you when you leave with threatening letters. I always tell them that this is my livelihood and that they get the hours that they pay for period full stop. If they want to pay me until the day that I die, they get to prevent competitors from using me, otherwise no strings. (Non-compete contracts are actually illegal in many states, but that doesn't stop companies from trying).
You are conflating a created thing versus knowing how to create the thing (as well as patent-able designs vs copyright). A created work belongs to the company that paid you to create it (like a comic book character) (and BTW is also protected by copyright). To use your analogy, Zenimax is suing because the guy learned how to create a comic book character (at least some kind of prototype of a character) while working with them, then they canned his project so he left and created a different comic book character at a different company. Both comic book characters are heroes with powers and they swoop in to save the day very dramatically, therefore their ex employee must have stolen the "specs" for the comic book character that he subsequently helped create with his new company. If they actually had a claim they would be suing for patent violation, because when you have a physical product, you get patents to protect yourself from this exact thing. But they don't have patents because this was just an initial investigation and they decided not to pursue it at the time.
If this was any other topic but VR and software, they would be laughed out of court, but because the technology is not well understood by the layman, they can get away with at least not having the suit dismissed with prejudice 2 minutes after filing. Oculus best course here is to dig up an engineer from the 80s or 90s to show that the research that Zenimax was doing was neither novel or original and then counter sue for damages, libel etc. VR is not a new concept, the issue has always been getting a high enough resolution and frame rate that it doesn't look like total garbage. I had a VR headset in the 90s, it was called the virtual boy...
This first, file the FCC complaint, and this is also why I pay for these services with my credit card. You can do a charge back and block them from further charges with a simple note to your credit card company. It costs AT&T $35 a pop plus all the involuntary refunds. If a few million users did this, it would definitely get some attention at very high levels. Enough charge backs and the vendor may also lose their accreditation with that credit card (i.e. Visa/MC/American Express) which is a huge deal for them.
Unless Oculus has a computer with Zenimax owned code on it or exact copies of blueprints/CAD stolen from Zenimax, this is just the lawyers lining their pockets. Slavery is illegal in the US. If you can't retain your employees, you lose the knowledge between their ears. Outside of patented ideas, they can and do take their knowledge to their next employer. This is like suing a software engineer's new company because he worked on GPS mapping software at his old and new company, it's just ridiculous.
This case should be slapped down hard with 10x punitive damages on Zenimax along with paying for Oculus court costs for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
MS: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Microsoft's Monetization Goals; MS Recommends Windows 10. Will stoop to damaging Windows 7 to get better adoption numbers. Has army of lawyers to crush any opposition.
The reality is that computers as an industry have come a long way in maturing. Yes, there will still be innovation, but I expect that the disruptions requiring a new OS to be markedly reduced from 20 years ago. I have multiple PCs running Windows 7, and I see no reason to upgrade. MS trying to shat on my systems by sabotaging Windows 7 does not improve my disposition towards MS. My ~6 year old i5 Quad core with 16GB ram and SSD boot and GTX 560 still does everything that I want it to do. I used to upgrade my video card every 6 months and my whole PC every year or so, but the rate of growth and the delta of the improvements in functionality have greatly diminished. Further, with the spyware and crap advertisements loaded into windows 10, when I do get to the point of needing to upgrade, I will probably be going to Apple, who makes stuff that just works without all the hassle of an MS system. If I actually need a windows platform, I can use boot camp or something similar to run Windows software. I might look into Linux, but honestly, for me it is a deal breaker if I have to futz with the OS/drivers for more than 30 minutes to get devices/drivers to work. The last time I played with Linux (admittedly years ago), it was just useless unless you were a software engineer. (From what I understand, Apple is basically a Linux distro that just works with their custom hardware anyway).
Just to be clear, your experience growing up on a farm is vastly different from today's commercial farming practices. Both my father and grandfather grew up on farms. My grandfather in his old age related to me a story where he had visited a commercial farm late in his life. He was shocked at the conditions that the animals were kept in, and where before he had been frustrated at the sterilization and sanitation required by state laws, he said that after he saw that literal shit hole, he realized that commercial farms were why the laws existed, because they keep their animals in conditions that no family farm would ever dream of subjecting their animals to, whether it be dairy cows, chickens or pigs.
Part of the solution is to prevent importing animal products from antibiotics abusing countries and forcing hygienic practices at all farms, instead of hosing down the feed every morning with antibiotics. Will meat go up in price? Yes, some, but it is a small price to pay for not having 20% of the world population die from some super strain of pneumonia that is resistant to everything...
The reality is that most resistant strains of bacteria originate from antibiotics abuse, and the biggest abusers of antibiotics are third world countries and those who raise livestock. Normal un-resistant bacteria are actually more healthy vital and will grow and displace resistant strains because resistant strains are typically resistant due to the fact that they are missing receptors or features that antibiotics use to kill the bacteria. Those same features allow normal bacteria to be stronger and multiply faster than the resistant strains.
What the doctors and scientists are only recently realizing is that the way to deal with resistant strains is that we must crack down on antibiotics abuse in these two areas globally, and greatly step up and enforce the use of post-antibiotic use of un-resistant probiotics, replenishing the healthy, easy to kill bacteria in people and farm animals which then come out in their waste/manure/fertilizer or sometimes on the meat/eggs/milk etc. and spread from there.
I recall reading about a river in India where a pharmaceutical had been illegally dumping waste antibiotics and something like 90% of all bacteria tested in the river were resistant. The solution, after stopping the pollution, should have been to seed the river with a continuous stream of healthy un-resistant bacteria, and over time (maybe a year) the healthy, un-resistant bacteria would supplant the resistant strains 99% of the time, greatly reducing the odds of exposure to a resistant strain. We are just now discovering that regular old soil bacteria have over 40 different methods of killing off resistant bacteria that are completely new to us. We can and will convert some into new antibiotics, but we must learn from the past and minimize the spread of resistant strains of bacteria now by spreading as much as possible the un-resistant strains which will in turn supplant the resistant strains we have fostered around the globe with minimal additional human intervention.
The hack on the DNC, OPM, JSF blueprints, NASA, the DOE, FEC, USPS, NOAA, the White House, the State Department, DOD, IRS (and hundreds of large companies) all took place under Obama, jackass. Trump isn't even in power yet. Obama's presidency has been a giant cluster f-k on cyber security.
Trump selects an effective executive who was a US attorney for 10 plus years and you idiots lose your shit. Trump won, he is president. Sit down, shut up and take a Valium. Once the guy is actually president, you can judge him based on how he is actually doing.
Nope, definitely apples to apples. Hacking has been rampant for the last 8 years and Obama has done jack shit about it, until the DNC gets hacked, then the dems shit a brick. Under a competent leader, hacking would have been diminished, both by reciprocal attacks on foreign countries, laws requiring standards of security around important information, black bag ops to take out eastern European/third world hacking gangs as well as physical attacks where appropriate (take out China's backbone connections for a few weeks via some well placed explosives when they hacked the OPM would have been a good start, the hit would have cost them a few percent of their GDP and made all hostile nations think twice before hacking us again).
I dare you to find someone more effective than Rudy. He whipped a completely out of control NY government into shape. He cut the murder rate in NY from over 2000/year down to like 400/year. He was very effective as a chief executive and in leading and organizing people to get things done. He was an effective US attorney for 10 plus years before that.
So I am sure all of these anti Trump/Giuliani posts are perfectly content with the job the Obama administration has done, what with the millions of accounts hacked at OPM and hundreds, if not thousands of cyber foreign cyber attacks on US companies and contractors???
Anyone who thinks that Giuliani, a very active public figure, is going to update the Giuliani web site himself is an idiot. He paid someone to put that site together, and if it gets hacked, so what, i'ts not like he is storing classified government documents on it like someone else we know did... Part of any good security is knowing what is worth protecting and what can be isolated and wiped and restored more economically than putting a lot of effort into protection.
This is the way it works in business and how it is supposed to work in government. Trump thinks hacking of US companies/government/contractors is way out of hand. Finds a smart guy (Giuliani) who understands geopolitics and security in general, as well as how to lead a team and get shit done. Hires Giuliani. Giuliani puts together a team of experts to work on guidelines for better protecting the US from hacking and what our response should be for foreign and domestic hacks, how to minimize damage, steps to take to block foreign access to sensitive data and prevent phishing etc. etc. Giuliani has to know very little about the actual implementation of any specific instance of cyber security, his job is by an large as a facilitator to bring the right people together and help cover the bases as the team works together.
Here is how this works in the real world. If half the work people do starts being automated, that creates new jobs, on top of the new jobs that are continuously being created by new markets and new fields. If there really is a glut of work force due to automation, the simple solution is to cut the work week down to 32h and require all companies to pay hourly for everyone below the executive level (essentially eliminate salaried workers) and make overtime 2.5x base rate to start and go up from there after the first two hours.
Slashdot Mirror
Good thing Obama is no longer president, or we would be nuking Russia for their "hacking" of a US airline...
From the perspective of the business that makes and sells the software, the best option is leasing. And to some degree this already goes on. This requires an always on connection, but it lets you expand into other markets at discounts and much lower cost entry points (as long as it is still profitable, which for software, once it is created, sale of said software is essentially 100% profit) without having to worry about profiteers taking the discounts that you offer to some and spreading them back to your primary markets. You might still sell licenses to first world markets for say $4000 each, but in developing countries, you can offer leases which require an always on connection and intermittently phone home to confirm they are being used as intended. The lease only requires an initial payment of maybe $400 per seat and $200 per seat per month after that, cutting the up front cash to 10% of the purchase price. If the cash flow benefit is greater than the lease cost, it should be widely adopted. You can cap the lease at $4500 or some such and then let the third world companies convert to licenses if you want.
Just straight discounts on goods due to a countries financial status is a bad idea for many reasons well outlined by other posts. Life saving drugs and food are a different story, but they are also necessities which puts them in a different light than software used to make money.
Reasonably good science work, horrible assumptions, junk conclusions. We know that there are fossils of huge mammals (and humans, not the hoaxes but actual fossils) that still live today only much smaller, not just Australia but all over the globe. What caused these mammals to get a lot smaller? Given the fact that physics says that many of these mammals were so large that they would barely function on today's atmospheric density and composition, it is highly likely that at some point in the past the atmosphere was much denser and/or much higher in oxygen than it is now, which would support the cardiovascular systems of the fossils we find (dinosaur and mammal). Couple this with the fact that almost the entire planet has sedimentary rock and fossils within those sedimentary layers, and that sedimentary rock can be deposited rapidly under cataclysmic conditions and things begin to fall into place.
The best theory that I have heard goes something like this:
Before 6000 years ago, there was an ice shell around the outer atmosphere, which at the time only extended up 10-20 miles instead of 60 miles. Atmospheric pressure was higher and the ice shell filtered out most harmful radiation that now comes down to the surface. Because there was no radiation getting through, there was zero C14 [C14 is generated in the upper atmosphere by ionizing radiation; C14 decays at a constant rate; EVIDENCE AND OBSERVATION (not speculation) points to a continuous generation rate of C14]. We have observed that C14 rates are still increasing, and based on the rate of increase and the current levels, C14 production began around 6000 years ago and will reach equilibrium in around 24,000 years. Thus we know reasonably well that the planet was significantly different before 6000 years ago.
Oxygen content was maybe 30%. The planet was roughly flat with the largest mountains being only a few hundred feet or so and the tectonic plates all had massive underground water pockets supporting them, similar to all continents today with trapped underground reservoirs, only much larger. Around 6000 years ago, a nitrogen comet struck the planet (mostly broke up in the atmosphere due to the nature of nitrogen ice) somewhere around Siberia, crushing the atmospheric ice shell and causing massive shear on the planet and a planet wide temperature crash. Mammoths in Siberia found frozen solid with green food in their mouths and stomachs support this hypothesis, seeing that it takes temperatures around -180C to flash freeze an animal of that size, where attempting to freeze it in the coldest sustained polar temperatures (-50C) would cause the insides to rot before they froze. The comet diluted the oxygen atmosphere to 20%, and the cold caused immediate global rain.
The shear imparted by the impact caused massive earth quakes that caused a catastrophic failure of many underground oceans, which came jetting to the surface very hot and very fast, with the pressure of entire continents behind the flow. If these jets occurred on an ocean floor, they instantly killed the animals around the jet for miles, from whales to microorganisms, which fell to the ocean floor by the ton and formed diatomaceous earth deposits. Ask anyone who has ever worked at one of these mines, they constantly find all manner of sea fossils, including whales and other huge fossils sometimes buried vertically down through the deposit. The collapse of the ice shell, global drop in temperature and massive release of underwater reserves caused the entire planet to be covered in water. Almost everything on the planet died except for one man and his family and a baby pair of every kind (not species, kind: i.e. wolf/dog/coyote/dingo etc are all one kind).
There are over 200 flood legends globally, and nearly all of them describe a global flood (95%) where one family of 8 people survived (88%). In one of the oldest languages, early Chinese, the word for boat is pictographic and is literally a vessel with 8 people. These people survived on this boat for about a ye
No, what Trump needs to do is split California into about 5 states (California is way too populous to be one state, split 5 ways the subsequent states would be about average in size), kick out all the illegals by strict enforcement of the labor and federal immigration laws, revoke the anchor baby practice and get the SC to clarify that the 14th amendment only applies to freed slaves, kick out any anchor babies and their families who commit violent crimes, stop all aid to countries who wont take their criminals back and then drop them off using military aircraft by force if necessary, kick out H1Bs brought in illegally, kick judges off the bench who blatantly violate our laws as written with tort reform/oversight and require a voter ID and an English reading test as part of the ballot in order for electoral votes to count. America is about to become a sovereign country again, if you don't like it, there is the door GTFO.
The establishment has no freaking clue and the rioting libtards that have been brainwashed into a frenzy right now will settle right down when they realize that a populist is actually for the people, regardless of R or D after the name (or Trump will charge them all with felonies when they do riot and they can spend the next 4 years making license plates).
I would crowd fund it ;-)
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/...
Just call it a parody highlighting the lack of plot and poor writing of Star Trek Beyond using contrast. Parody is largely protected from copyright and Paramount CBS can go suck eggs.
(Liberal snow flakes please just move to read the next comment and keep your mod phasers set to stun). This whole thing just highlights what is fundamentally wrong with copyright. This is a cut and dried example of how the ridiculously long copyright laws supported by both establishment parties are stifling and robbing our culture and are only for the enrichment of a few. This is the system that Barak Hussain Obama defended and did not fix for the last 8 years. We will have to see what the next administration brings.
We badly need to reform the system to something reasonable and in line with the original intent. Star Trek first aired in 1966, and it's creator is now dead. Reasonable copyright of 40 years from the creation date would put the Star Trek universe squarely in the public domain, while subsequent movies would still be protected for 40 years from their first showing. Nothing will change though if we the people just keep on bending over and taking it.
IF is the operative word, and, as the story points out, they are alleging destruction of evidence, which indicates that they were unable to find evidence that he took anything that would help their case.
Very well put Rahvin
Honestly, as a founder of id software, he may have written into his contract on the acquisition that he got to keep a copy of all of his emails. The grey area may be that Zenimax thought that should only apply to emails in the past, where as Carmack thought it applied to all of his emails up until he left the company. I think the biggest thing here is that if he wasn't allowed to take his email with him, Zenimax should be leading with that, but they aren't. At this point it is a lot of speculation on both sides. We won't know until testimony reveals what the contracts said and/or what was or was not allowed.
LOL, I was just coming here to say that ;-)
Just working on a similar concept at company A and company B is not enough. Coming up with some specs at company A is sure as shit not enough. Unless they can show that he copied CAD or code onto a thumb drive that was subsequently incorporated exactly as is into Oculus, they don't have a case.
What most likely happened is the board of directors at Zenimax shit a brick when Oculus was bought by FB for $2B and were ready to chop some heads off in the management/legal team for letting Carmack get away and/or not pursuing the VR idea (which is all it was when Carmack left). To save their asses, management/legal cooked up some bullshit story about him stealing their IP (which is BS, b/c if they had IP on VR they would be suing for patent violation, but they aren't because they don't). The other telling sign is that Zenimax waited how long before going after Carmack? This tells the world that they didn't think VR was worth pursuing and/or for a long time everyone in the know at Zenimax knew all they had done was some initial investigations into what it might take to do VR. I suspect that the investigation that Carmack did at Zenimax probably didn't even get into R&D, he was just investigating. It might be pretty funny if Zenimax trots out all the work that Carmack did at there and then Oculus pulls out a stack of patents held by Nintendo on the Virtual Boy from the 90s that basically puts all of their super secret "research" squarely in the public domain.
As an engineer I have seen this from time to time. The more specialized and skilled you are, the more companies know that the moment that you leave, a competitor will get that expertise, so they try to get you to sign non-compete contracts or come after you when you leave with threatening letters. I always tell them that this is my livelihood and that they get the hours that they pay for period full stop. If they want to pay me until the day that I die, they get to prevent competitors from using me, otherwise no strings. (Non-compete contracts are actually illegal in many states, but that doesn't stop companies from trying).
That completely depends on the content of the emails and the details of his contract (or lack thereof) with Zenimax.
You are conflating a created thing versus knowing how to create the thing (as well as patent-able designs vs copyright). A created work belongs to the company that paid you to create it (like a comic book character) (and BTW is also protected by copyright). To use your analogy, Zenimax is suing because the guy learned how to create a comic book character (at least some kind of prototype of a character) while working with them, then they canned his project so he left and created a different comic book character at a different company. Both comic book characters are heroes with powers and they swoop in to save the day very dramatically, therefore their ex employee must have stolen the "specs" for the comic book character that he subsequently helped create with his new company. If they actually had a claim they would be suing for patent violation, because when you have a physical product, you get patents to protect yourself from this exact thing. But they don't have patents because this was just an initial investigation and they decided not to pursue it at the time.
If this was any other topic but VR and software, they would be laughed out of court, but because the technology is not well understood by the layman, they can get away with at least not having the suit dismissed with prejudice 2 minutes after filing. Oculus best course here is to dig up an engineer from the 80s or 90s to show that the research that Zenimax was doing was neither novel or original and then counter sue for damages, libel etc. VR is not a new concept, the issue has always been getting a high enough resolution and frame rate that it doesn't look like total garbage. I had a VR headset in the 90s, it was called the virtual boy...
This first, file the FCC complaint, and this is also why I pay for these services with my credit card. You can do a charge back and block them from further charges with a simple note to your credit card company. It costs AT&T $35 a pop plus all the involuntary refunds. If a few million users did this, it would definitely get some attention at very high levels. Enough charge backs and the vendor may also lose their accreditation with that credit card (i.e. Visa/MC/American Express) which is a huge deal for them.
Unless Oculus has a computer with Zenimax owned code on it or exact copies of blueprints/CAD stolen from Zenimax, this is just the lawyers lining their pockets. Slavery is illegal in the US. If you can't retain your employees, you lose the knowledge between their ears. Outside of patented ideas, they can and do take their knowledge to their next employer. This is like suing a software engineer's new company because he worked on GPS mapping software at his old and new company, it's just ridiculous.
This case should be slapped down hard with 10x punitive damages on Zenimax along with paying for Oculus court costs for filing a frivolous lawsuit.
MS: Windows 7 Does Not Meet the Demands of Microsoft's Monetization Goals; MS Recommends Windows 10. Will stoop to damaging Windows 7 to get better adoption numbers. Has army of lawyers to crush any opposition.
The reality is that computers as an industry have come a long way in maturing. Yes, there will still be innovation, but I expect that the disruptions requiring a new OS to be markedly reduced from 20 years ago. I have multiple PCs running Windows 7, and I see no reason to upgrade. MS trying to shat on my systems by sabotaging Windows 7 does not improve my disposition towards MS. My ~6 year old i5 Quad core with 16GB ram and SSD boot and GTX 560 still does everything that I want it to do. I used to upgrade my video card every 6 months and my whole PC every year or so, but the rate of growth and the delta of the improvements in functionality have greatly diminished. Further, with the spyware and crap advertisements loaded into windows 10, when I do get to the point of needing to upgrade, I will probably be going to Apple, who makes stuff that just works without all the hassle of an MS system. If I actually need a windows platform, I can use boot camp or something similar to run Windows software. I might look into Linux, but honestly, for me it is a deal breaker if I have to futz with the OS/drivers for more than 30 minutes to get devices/drivers to work. The last time I played with Linux (admittedly years ago), it was just useless unless you were a software engineer. (From what I understand, Apple is basically a Linux distro that just works with their custom hardware anyway).
Just to be clear, your experience growing up on a farm is vastly different from today's commercial farming practices. Both my father and grandfather grew up on farms. My grandfather in his old age related to me a story where he had visited a commercial farm late in his life. He was shocked at the conditions that the animals were kept in, and where before he had been frustrated at the sterilization and sanitation required by state laws, he said that after he saw that literal shit hole, he realized that commercial farms were why the laws existed, because they keep their animals in conditions that no family farm would ever dream of subjecting their animals to, whether it be dairy cows, chickens or pigs.
Part of the solution is to prevent importing animal products from antibiotics abusing countries and forcing hygienic practices at all farms, instead of hosing down the feed every morning with antibiotics. Will meat go up in price? Yes, some, but it is a small price to pay for not having 20% of the world population die from some super strain of pneumonia that is resistant to everything...
The reality is that most resistant strains of bacteria originate from antibiotics abuse, and the biggest abusers of antibiotics are third world countries and those who raise livestock. Normal un-resistant bacteria are actually more healthy vital and will grow and displace resistant strains because resistant strains are typically resistant due to the fact that they are missing receptors or features that antibiotics use to kill the bacteria. Those same features allow normal bacteria to be stronger and multiply faster than the resistant strains.
What the doctors and scientists are only recently realizing is that the way to deal with resistant strains is that we must crack down on antibiotics abuse in these two areas globally, and greatly step up and enforce the use of post-antibiotic use of un-resistant probiotics, replenishing the healthy, easy to kill bacteria in people and farm animals which then come out in their waste/manure/fertilizer or sometimes on the meat/eggs/milk etc. and spread from there.
I recall reading about a river in India where a pharmaceutical had been illegally dumping waste antibiotics and something like 90% of all bacteria tested in the river were resistant. The solution, after stopping the pollution, should have been to seed the river with a continuous stream of healthy un-resistant bacteria, and over time (maybe a year) the healthy, un-resistant bacteria would supplant the resistant strains 99% of the time, greatly reducing the odds of exposure to a resistant strain. We are just now discovering that regular old soil bacteria have over 40 different methods of killing off resistant bacteria that are completely new to us. We can and will convert some into new antibiotics, but we must learn from the past and minimize the spread of resistant strains of bacteria now by spreading as much as possible the un-resistant strains which will in turn supplant the resistant strains we have fostered around the globe with minimal additional human intervention.
http://www.the-scientist.com/?...
The hack on the DNC, OPM, JSF blueprints, NASA, the DOE, FEC, USPS, NOAA, the White House, the State Department, DOD, IRS (and hundreds of large companies) all took place under Obama, jackass. Trump isn't even in power yet. Obama's presidency has been a giant cluster f-k on cyber security.
https://investmentwatchblog.co...
Trump selects an effective executive who was a US attorney for 10 plus years and you idiots lose your shit. Trump won, he is president. Sit down, shut up and take a Valium. Once the guy is actually president, you can judge him based on how he is actually doing.
Nope, definitely apples to apples. Hacking has been rampant for the last 8 years and Obama has done jack shit about it, until the DNC gets hacked, then the dems shit a brick. Under a competent leader, hacking would have been diminished, both by reciprocal attacks on foreign countries, laws requiring standards of security around important information, black bag ops to take out eastern European/third world hacking gangs as well as physical attacks where appropriate (take out China's backbone connections for a few weeks via some well placed explosives when they hacked the OPM would have been a good start, the hit would have cost them a few percent of their GDP and made all hostile nations think twice before hacking us again).
The quality of your argument stands on it's own merits.
I dare you to find someone more effective than Rudy. He whipped a completely out of control NY government into shape. He cut the murder rate in NY from over 2000/year down to like 400/year. He was very effective as a chief executive and in leading and organizing people to get things done. He was an effective US attorney for 10 plus years before that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So I am sure all of these anti Trump/Giuliani posts are perfectly content with the job the Obama administration has done, what with the millions of accounts hacked at OPM and hundreds, if not thousands of cyber foreign cyber attacks on US companies and contractors???
Anyone who thinks that Giuliani, a very active public figure, is going to update the Giuliani web site himself is an idiot. He paid someone to put that site together, and if it gets hacked, so what, i'ts not like he is storing classified government documents on it like someone else we know did... Part of any good security is knowing what is worth protecting and what can be isolated and wiped and restored more economically than putting a lot of effort into protection.
This is the way it works in business and how it is supposed to work in government. Trump thinks hacking of US companies/government/contractors is way out of hand. Finds a smart guy (Giuliani) who understands geopolitics and security in general, as well as how to lead a team and get shit done. Hires Giuliani. Giuliani puts together a team of experts to work on guidelines for better protecting the US from hacking and what our response should be for foreign and domestic hacks, how to minimize damage, steps to take to block foreign access to sensitive data and prevent phishing etc. etc. Giuliani has to know very little about the actual implementation of any specific instance of cyber security, his job is by an large as a facilitator to bring the right people together and help cover the bases as the team works together.
Here is how this works in the real world. If half the work people do starts being automated, that creates new jobs, on top of the new jobs that are continuously being created by new markets and new fields. If there really is a glut of work force due to automation, the simple solution is to cut the work week down to 32h and require all companies to pay hourly for everyone below the executive level (essentially eliminate salaried workers) and make overtime 2.5x base rate to start and go up from there after the first two hours.