A good videogame is as good a model of society as any social studies or economics textbook. They wouldn't be any fun to play if they didn't try to follow the rules of reality, would they?
Maybe we SHOULD make such videogames part of the mandatory education of anyone who wants to be a leader in government at any level.
U.S. concepts of freedom to be monitored, tracked, analyzed, and advertised to...
The EU legislation has NOTHING to do with freedom of speech. The summary is busy trying to paint a red herring argument where there is none, just to stir up good old "Proud American" sentiment.
The problem with the Harper Government's emphasis on their omnibus crime legislation is that it's taking away funding from education, retirement plans, and even medicine. It's a seriously screwed up set of priorities that man and our government has about where and how to spend our national and provincial budgets.
Even in videogames, you can not develop technology to attack or defend your virtual community without taking care of the essentials for your population first: making sure they are fed, clothed, housed, and educated.
The Iraqi universities are not the only victims of a failure to recognize the importance of these social pillars.
The First Nations of Canada have many communities where even those basic needs are not properly managed and delivered to the people.
Heck, the whole COUNTRY of Canada suffers from a government which places an emphasis on imprisoning people for growing plants that the majority of the population wants to see legalized, taxed, and regulated in poll after poll.
Without an educated and comfortable population, a nation has no hope of competing on the global market and being a "real player." Education creates jobs, it creates technology, and it improves the processes of business and society. Even people like Marx recognized that society would evolve into a "communist" or "socialist" state as the people became educated and concerned about more than their own personal needs. (Marx never espoused a revolution such as Russia or China had; he was merely discussing where he saw society evolving to.)
It's good to hear the courts are not letting Apple leverage a patent that's expected to be invalidated in order to damage a competitor's business. Samsung did, after all, modify the "N" design to get around Apple's patents that applied to the 10.1, so they did their due diligence.
Ah, but because they're PROFITING off the infringement, it escalates to THEFT, a criminal matter.
Though I could see some difficulty proving theft, because you CAN play the Zynga games for free if you want. You don't HAVE to buy the in-game schwag to play. So they just might have found a loophole defense against criminal charges.
But IS there an option to have a copyright or patent violation filed as a CRIMINAL case, or do you have to show how they've escalated the infringement to THEFT by turning a profit? If you're making money off a stolen idea, it's theft because you have paying customers showing it's an item or data of value. If you're just using it for yourself or giving away copies, there is no theft necessarily, just infringement.
I'd argue that THEFT is a CRIMINAL suit if you want to file it as such and give up on collecting damages.
It may not matter to the creator if they think they could get money from people who didn't pay for the content or used it personally, but it matters a great deal if you're trying to prove THEFT instead of copyright infringement. When you SELL downloaded media or software, you give it a VALUE, and that escalates the infringement to being theft, because clearly your customers WERE willing to pay for the content, so it's not "just data" as pure piracy advocates claim.
I see what you mean about not being able to patent or copyright the CONCEPT behind a game, though, if you mean concept as in "general class of gameplay." There are many first person shooters implementing the concept, but each has a copyright-protected style of gameplay specific to each game.
e.g. No one has ripped off Halo specifically, but there are many games where you run around with sci-fi and common weapons and shoot aliens or soldiers.
But copyright can apply to game play specifics, and has been used to win cases against game clones in the past. However, it's easier to apply patents than copyright in such cases, because patents are for any implementation, whereas copyright is a tough battle unless you can show they COPIED the code itself.
However, I think it would be FAR easier to demonstrate UI infringement with an HTML interface than a low-level graphics interface.
Ah, so it's the same as Canada, then. If you file a suit, you collect damages. If you go through the RCMP/FBI, you get justice.
So the question is not whether they CAN pursue Zynga for jail time, it's a question of whether they CHOOSE to, or go for cash instead.
It's too bad there isn't a provision on either side of the border for some sort of victim's damages collected on the basis of criminal cases.
Here I thought lawsuits were the only way any one pursued criminals in the US unless the police/FBI got involved. Thanks for clearing up that it's up to the victim to decide which approach to take.
Yes I do. And do you have any idea how many of those clones were shut down by successful lawsuits?
The fact that winning the battles in the face of rampant gameplay/idea piracy proved futile was because of the sheer VOLUME of players. I wouldn't recommend this tactic for dealing with iOS and Android game developers, because they're going to be outnumbered by them. But when the issue is one monolithic company that's abusive, like Zynga, then the tactic DOES WORK.
As to citing cases, get off your lazy ass and search for yourself. I'm not your Google.
And if the originators of the game ideas win the case, I strongly recommend that they demand jail time for Pincus seeing as he's clearly documented that this is a POLICY of the company under his leadership, so he can't pin the blame on some middle manager and fire him instead. Jail time would mean losing out on any cash settlement, but by the time there's a victory, no one will probably still want to play that particular style of game, so it won't help with FUTURE revenue for those companies.
The question is whether the competitors want to PUNISH Zynga's leadership or PILLAGE them for cash. Unfortunately I suspect most of them will settle for cash, and Zynga will therefore just treat it as a cost of doing business and continue ripping off competitor's ideas.
If the competition isn't copyrighting and trademarking their games as companies used to in the era of "Pac-Man" and "Space Invaders", then they haven't got the tools needed to defend themselves against Zynga's predatory practices.
There have been many precedent setting cases in the US and Canada where competitors who cloned and renamed games without altering the play were able to defend against their predators, and force the competition off the market.
In short, Zynga's approach is NOT legal, but it's not something the FBI is going to investigate, either. They have to be pursued by the individual companies whose products are being cloned.
If Apple can force HTC and Samsung into a corner because of "design similarities", then the game companies should be able to lynch Zynga the same way. IP theft is IP theft, regardless of the scope or scale of the theft. The question is whether any of the competitors have the deep pockets for lawyers that Zynga does -- because the case will take YEARS to run through all the appeals before a final victory for either side.
More specifically, they applied value to the copyright materials by charging for it. It's the act of charging a fee which changes it from simple copyright violation to actual theft in my books. The media companies are barking up the wrong tree to pursue those who preview media and buy it later if it's worthwhile, but those who SELL copyrighted media are obviously taking something of value, or they wouldn't be able to CHARGE for it.
The idealism only goes as far as lining American pockets.
Witness SOPA, ACTA, etc.
The fact that the media companies have the American government in it's pocket through lobbyists is irrelevant to the rest of the world. We don't care why your government is abusive; that's an internal problem for the US. What we care about is that you do not (as a government) act anywhere near the ideals you espouse on the international stage.
And as soon as the American people wake up to the fact that the American government doesn't give a damn what they want, only what the lobbyists want, the sooner there might be change in that global perception of the US. Take back control of your OWN government before you try to tell anyone else how to run theirs.
Take off those rose coloured glasses. You can't see shit with them on!
Just as people who interact with lifelike robots often develop a strange feeling due to something they can't quite name, something about Romney leaves voters unsettled.
That's because they're trying hard to ignore the fact that he's a bigoted, judgemental, do-what-I-tell-you-not-what-I-do "typical" old-school politician. People who are uncomfortable with him just aren't willing to dig deeper and understand their own discomfort, but I do hope they'll trust their instincts and not vote for this warmonger.
It sounds like you're more interested interested in the Quality Assurance aspects of the industry than programming. You can be one or the other, but not both, at least not on the same project.
It is normal for QA to be handled separately from programming so that the testing process can cover cases the programmers didn't allow for. It's an entirely separate discipline of the software process, and you are correct, there are standards and rules if you choose QA as a career path.
Just be aware that it takes a special mindset to enjoy QA work -- most programmers hate it because a lot of it is checklist regression testing and running automated test scripts, and programmers usually prefer a more creative career path.
Even without a career in QA, I strongly recommend that you read up on Six Sigma and ISO9000 to understand what the goals of those approaches are. Software creation and testing are a process, and both of those approaches rely heavily on documenting and improving the process over time to reduce the bug reports and improve the quality of delivered code.
Obviously, something like that works quite well in the academic environment, but not in the 'real world.'
Guess what? With 30+ years of programming under my belt, that is exactly what my career entails.
"Software Engineering" is a misnomer. While there are certainly aspects of programming which can be canned and automated, the creation of GUIs, reports, understanding requirements, and coming up with the right algorithms to IMPLEMENT those requirements is more art than science.
Engineering presumes that there are canned rules and "how to" guides to guarantee a program's reliability or a building's safety. There are no such guarantees with software, no matter how thoroughly you test a system. The only exception are "mathematically correct" theoretical languages that no one actually uses for production systems.
Keep doing what you're doing. Getting an engineering-focused degree will NOT help you find employment.
Good luck with your career -- I think you're off to a great start with your approach to coding techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
A good videogame is as good a model of society as any social studies or economics textbook. They wouldn't be any fun to play if they didn't try to follow the rules of reality, would they?
Maybe we SHOULD make such videogames part of the mandatory education of anyone who wants to be a leader in government at any level.
Should read
The EU legislation has NOTHING to do with freedom of speech. The summary is busy trying to paint a red herring argument where there is none, just to stir up good old "Proud American" sentiment.
I click too quick.
The problem with the Harper Government's emphasis on their omnibus crime legislation is that it's taking away funding from education, retirement plans, and even medicine. It's a seriously screwed up set of priorities that man and our government has about where and how to spend our national and provincial budgets.
Even in videogames, you can not develop technology to attack or defend your virtual community without taking care of the essentials for your population first: making sure they are fed, clothed, housed, and educated.
The Iraqi universities are not the only victims of a failure to recognize the importance of these social pillars.
The First Nations of Canada have many communities where even those basic needs are not properly managed and delivered to the people.
Heck, the whole COUNTRY of Canada suffers from a government which places an emphasis on imprisoning people for growing plants that the majority of the population wants to see legalized, taxed, and regulated in poll after poll.
Without an educated and comfortable population, a nation has no hope of competing on the global market and being a "real player." Education creates jobs, it creates technology, and it improves the processes of business and society. Even people like Marx recognized that society would evolve into a "communist" or "socialist" state as the people became educated and concerned about more than their own personal needs. (Marx never espoused a revolution such as Russia or China had; he was merely discussing where he saw society evolving to.)
It's good to hear the courts are not letting Apple leverage a patent that's expected to be invalidated in order to damage a competitor's business. Samsung did, after all, modify the "N" design to get around Apple's patents that applied to the 10.1, so they did their due diligence.
Jesus but you're a lazy little fuck, aren't you?
Here. Read. Lazy prick.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/copyright/commentary/chn95t1.htm
Dig up the rest yourself. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=videogame+pac-man+copyright+infringement
Ah, but because they're PROFITING off the infringement, it escalates to THEFT, a criminal matter.
Though I could see some difficulty proving theft, because you CAN play the Zynga games for free if you want. You don't HAVE to buy the in-game schwag to play. So they just might have found a loophole defense against criminal charges.
I mean file the charges of theft, not file a civil lawsuit on grounds of theft. Sorry for the fuzzy writing.
But IS there an option to have a copyright or patent violation filed as a CRIMINAL case, or do you have to show how they've escalated the infringement to THEFT by turning a profit? If you're making money off a stolen idea, it's theft because you have paying customers showing it's an item or data of value. If you're just using it for yourself or giving away copies, there is no theft necessarily, just infringement.
I'd argue that THEFT is a CRIMINAL suit if you want to file it as such and give up on collecting damages.
It may not matter to the creator if they think they could get money from people who didn't pay for the content or used it personally, but it matters a great deal if you're trying to prove THEFT instead of copyright infringement. When you SELL downloaded media or software, you give it a VALUE, and that escalates the infringement to being theft, because clearly your customers WERE willing to pay for the content, so it's not "just data" as pure piracy advocates claim.
I see what you mean about not being able to patent or copyright the CONCEPT behind a game, though, if you mean concept as in "general class of gameplay." There are many first person shooters implementing the concept, but each has a copyright-protected style of gameplay specific to each game.
e.g. No one has ripped off Halo specifically, but there are many games where you run around with sci-fi and common weapons and shoot aliens or soldiers.
But copyright can apply to game play specifics, and has been used to win cases against game clones in the past. However, it's easier to apply patents than copyright in such cases, because patents are for any implementation, whereas copyright is a tough battle unless you can show they COPIED the code itself.
However, I think it would be FAR easier to demonstrate UI infringement with an HTML interface than a low-level graphics interface.
"Making money" does not excuse a company from being subject to the law, much to the annoyance of the rich and powerful.
Ah, so it's the same as Canada, then. If you file a suit, you collect damages. If you go through the RCMP/FBI, you get justice.
So the question is not whether they CAN pursue Zynga for jail time, it's a question of whether they CHOOSE to, or go for cash instead.
It's too bad there isn't a provision on either side of the border for some sort of victim's damages collected on the basis of criminal cases.
Here I thought lawsuits were the only way any one pursued criminals in the US unless the police/FBI got involved. Thanks for clearing up that it's up to the victim to decide which approach to take.
Yes I do. And do you have any idea how many of those clones were shut down by successful lawsuits?
The fact that winning the battles in the face of rampant gameplay/idea piracy proved futile was because of the sheer VOLUME of players. I wouldn't recommend this tactic for dealing with iOS and Android game developers, because they're going to be outnumbered by them. But when the issue is one monolithic company that's abusive, like Zynga, then the tactic DOES WORK.
As to citing cases, get off your lazy ass and search for yourself. I'm not your Google.
Mod parent up. This AC is absolutely right -- the comparison to Google and Apple is a red herring -- it's not the same situation at ALL.
And if the originators of the game ideas win the case, I strongly recommend that they demand jail time for Pincus seeing as he's clearly documented that this is a POLICY of the company under his leadership, so he can't pin the blame on some middle manager and fire him instead. Jail time would mean losing out on any cash settlement, but by the time there's a victory, no one will probably still want to play that particular style of game, so it won't help with FUTURE revenue for those companies.
The question is whether the competitors want to PUNISH Zynga's leadership or PILLAGE them for cash. Unfortunately I suspect most of them will settle for cash, and Zynga will therefore just treat it as a cost of doing business and continue ripping off competitor's ideas.
If the competition isn't copyrighting and trademarking their games as companies used to in the era of "Pac-Man" and "Space Invaders", then they haven't got the tools needed to defend themselves against Zynga's predatory practices.
There have been many precedent setting cases in the US and Canada where competitors who cloned and renamed games without altering the play were able to defend against their predators, and force the competition off the market.
In short, Zynga's approach is NOT legal, but it's not something the FBI is going to investigate, either. They have to be pursued by the individual companies whose products are being cloned.
If Apple can force HTC and Samsung into a corner because of "design similarities", then the game companies should be able to lynch Zynga the same way. IP theft is IP theft, regardless of the scope or scale of the theft. The question is whether any of the competitors have the deep pockets for lawyers that Zynga does -- because the case will take YEARS to run through all the appeals before a final victory for either side.
More specifically, they applied value to the copyright materials by charging for it. It's the act of charging a fee which changes it from simple copyright violation to actual theft in my books. The media companies are barking up the wrong tree to pursue those who preview media and buy it later if it's worthwhile, but those who SELL copyrighted media are obviously taking something of value, or they wouldn't be able to CHARGE for it.
The idealism only goes as far as lining American pockets.
Witness SOPA, ACTA, etc.
The fact that the media companies have the American government in it's pocket through lobbyists is irrelevant to the rest of the world. We don't care why your government is abusive; that's an internal problem for the US. What we care about is that you do not (as a government) act anywhere near the ideals you espouse on the international stage.
And as soon as the American people wake up to the fact that the American government doesn't give a damn what they want, only what the lobbyists want, the sooner there might be change in that global perception of the US. Take back control of your OWN government before you try to tell anyone else how to run theirs.
Take off those rose coloured glasses. You can't see shit with them on!
I find it amusing that the day Facebook issued their IPO is the same day I got my articles of incorporation back from ISC.
Coincidence?
Yeah, pretty much guaranteed there is no correlation. :D
Google is doing the blocking so they can do business in the nations requesting the block.
Despite American arrogance, all companies are required to abide by the laws of the customer's nation if they do business there.
You can't blame Google for following the rules! Sorry, but that's just the FACTS OF LIFE.
That's because they're trying hard to ignore the fact that he's a bigoted, judgemental, do-what-I-tell-you-not-what-I-do "typical" old-school politician. People who are uncomfortable with him just aren't willing to dig deeper and understand their own discomfort, but I do hope they'll trust their instincts and not vote for this warmonger.
It sounds like you're more interested interested in the Quality Assurance aspects of the industry than programming. You can be one or the other, but not both, at least not on the same project.
It is normal for QA to be handled separately from programming so that the testing process can cover cases the programmers didn't allow for. It's an entirely separate discipline of the software process, and you are correct, there are standards and rules if you choose QA as a career path.
Just be aware that it takes a special mindset to enjoy QA work -- most programmers hate it because a lot of it is checklist regression testing and running automated test scripts, and programmers usually prefer a more creative career path.
Even without a career in QA, I strongly recommend that you read up on Six Sigma and ISO9000 to understand what the goals of those approaches are. Software creation and testing are a process, and both of those approaches rely heavily on documenting and improving the process over time to reduce the bug reports and improve the quality of delivered code.
Guess what? With 30+ years of programming under my belt, that is exactly what my career entails.
"Software Engineering" is a misnomer. While there are certainly aspects of programming which can be canned and automated, the creation of GUIs, reports, understanding requirements, and coming up with the right algorithms to IMPLEMENT those requirements is more art than science.
Engineering presumes that there are canned rules and "how to" guides to guarantee a program's reliability or a building's safety. There are no such guarantees with software, no matter how thoroughly you test a system. The only exception are "mathematically correct" theoretical languages that no one actually uses for production systems.
Keep doing what you're doing. Getting an engineering-focused degree will NOT help you find employment.
Good luck with your career -- I think you're off to a great start with your approach to coding techniques.