"No matter how secure, how deeply coded, the rules are, the only way to have robots that don't have the capability to hurt people is to not make robots at all."
Agreed. We'd also have fewer car accidents if we never made cars at all.
"If I don't want to pay $x to see a movie or purchase a CD, then I have that right. I do not have the right to have in my posession a reporduction of that right because I don't agree with the authors/copyright holders."
Perhaps not. However, the problem with movie piracy (on the net, I'm not referring to selling $1 DVD copies of screeners...) to the MPAA is that it levels the playing field to be more fair towards the consumer. They have a business model I refer to as "open your mouth and close your eyes". You cannot get your money back if you're disatisfied unlike just about anything else you can buy. As such, movie makers can get away with sup-par movies and recieve money even though the consumer did not get the satisfaction he or she was paying for.
You're probably thinking I'm trying to justify downloading of movies. Frankly, it's not something I do. I have a substantial DVD collection but my computers only have a couple of rips I've downloaded. They are of movies I already have. I'm an artist. I make content for a living. I'm working on a movie right now. I don't want to lose my job because the movie wasn't successful, even if the blame could land squarely on piracy. However, there's something I have to think about: Content making is an art form, but it is also a business. We all paid to go see Matrix. We all paid to go see Star Wars, despite all the grumbling we did about it. If the movie I'm working on didn't generate the interest for people to run out and go see it, I can't say that piracy was the issue. The issue was that we did something wrong. Maybe the movie sucked, maybe we didn't market it well, maybe we asked too much for it. Yeah, maybe the result is a bunch of individuals did something wrong, that doesn't mean that we didn't either.
So what do I do? I have confidence it'll be a good movie. We're all working to make it that way. It's effort that is MUCH better spent than running ads to guilt people into paying for it. I want to make money from this, but I don't want to do it and leave people saying "man, what a rip-off."/i.
"I'm sure they will Call this INOVATION when we all know its just the same old stuff with a web brower on it."
So.. what you're saying is that they're changing how people work, but it's not innovation... Huh?
I'm not a fan of Microsoft. Despite that, I can't believe how self-destructive this comment is. It's so easy to oversimplify something and make it sound stupid. Watch:
"Gee, the Open Source Community is copying something again. How lame."
"Gee, the MPAA is making yet another lame movie. How lame."
"Gee, a new feature on a cell phone. How lame."
"Gee, Slashdot posts nothing but stories that are already on the web, and they want subscriptions for it. How lame."
"Gee, George Lucas is making another Star Wars movie, but we already have five of them. How lame."
Some of these are probably causing a lot of you to nod your heads. Probably think I'm insightful. But how insightful are any of these, really? In each case, I filtered out a LOT of relevent information. But our personal biases percieve truth in those statements, so we agree in some cases. There is no insight here, simply a filtering of information tuned to appeal who already hate the topic at hand.
So what's the point of my rant? To defend Microsoft? Nah. Don't care about them. I'm just hoping pointless comments like the one above don't get modded as insightful. Wee, we all hate Microsoft, gimme a karma point.
"How will this be a good thing for people who don't need the collaborative tools?"
Maybe they're not the target audience. I mean, be serious, every single company who sells an upgrade to software has to face this question. Nothing new here. Current customers may not upgrade. Eventually they'll do something their customers will want and will make the leap. Yay. New customers are exposed to the new features, may find value in them. Double yay.
" it is also about taking Office off of the desktop and putting it on the web where user registration can be more tightly controlled, upgrade paths more easily enforced, etc."
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything in the article that suggested that. (I have heard rumors to that effect, tho..) Sounded more like Office talks to other computers running Office and the documents can go back and forth more easily. Frankly, people who are collaborating today are doing what you describe anyway. Emailing.doc files, copying over network, etc. Might as well streamline the process.
"I don't know if I trust the MS server with that much access to my data."
I doubt MS would store the data. It's probably more like ICQ where MS's server helps you find the client (or maybe it's a server the company sets up...) and the actual transfer is direct. I'm not sure mistrust of MS is any more beneficial to you in that case.
About the web based service you described, personally in some cases I'd prefer that. Office is not my main app anymore as I've recently changed careers. I use Photoshop and Lightwave daily now. Frankly, I'd rather pay n-hundred dollars a year as a web-based subscription service for these two apps. Even if they had to call home once in a while to make sure I'm legit, that's fine by me. The potential advantages here are a.) Always up to date, b.) If they did it right, I could go from machine to machine and still be able to use the software. Eh maybe I'm just daydreaming. I'm so sick of dongles and having to keep install CDs around. I'm sick of version incompabilities. I'm sick of lots of stuff when it comes to software my living is based on.
Consider this, if people subscribed to Office instead of the way it's done now, there'd be no more backward/forward compatibility problems. If MS updates the software, everybody's quickly up to date. Boy that'd be nice.
"I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article you haven't already."
Actually, that wasn't that big of spoiler. I know this because I recently read the book and figured out what the spoiler gave away halfway into it. When I got to the reveal, I was like "uh yeah, figured". Fortunately, I think the author anticipated this and provided more to the ending unrelated to what the article mentioned that was far more interesting.
My point? Even if you read the last paragraph, there's still something good you can get out of reading Ender's Game.
"There are a bunch of folks who used to live near this place called Chernobyl. They might disagree with you a bit on that one. The ones that are still alive that is."
Yeah, Chernobyl comes up a lot in these discussions. Nobody seems to notice that it's the only example brought up, or that it was quite a few years ago. Guess it's not worth considering that these accidents are few and far between.
"Its great that companies are able to offer TV on cell phones, but it is really necessary? I for one have a camera phone with wireless internet and most of the features on that phone go unused."
Okay, so you're not sold. BFD. You should consider, though, that this isn't a matter of practicality. Not everybody treats their cell phone like it's their house key. A lot of us have cell phones that double as entertainment devices.
I'll use myself as an example. I have a cell phone. I don't have a landline. I pay ~$50 for service. Some of that is to make sure that my bill stays the same every month (i.e. more minutes than I really really need) and some of it is for entertainment options such as the internet etc. I paid roughly $150 for the phone, though I should get a rebate back any day now that knocks it down to about $20. It goes with me everywhere.
With this phone, I've taken amusing pictures of my cat, my nephew, and a few other things that have made my girlfriend laugh. I read the news while waiting for the DMV to get to me. I'm still playing Prince of Persia on it. I find times here and there where I just need to kill a little time, and by some strange cosmic coincidence, theh phone is with me 98% of the time I need it for something like that.
Do I make calls on it too? You betcha! Some work related stuff. Some calls to my gf to let her know I'll be a little late for dinner. Some calls to my family to let them know how I'm doing. Do I miss calls? Sure. Due to dead battery? Once in a great while. However, I have this nifty little thing called voice mail. All that's left is to plug it into the wall, wait a moment or two, and make the return call. I get so few "Gotta have it right now this second" calls that I haven't even bothered to get a car charger for it.
So, is it really necessary? No. But I do like the idea that the $50 I'm paying a month does more than just recieve a few calls here and there. Heck, my phone even works as my alarm clock. I have no conscience about the monthly expense on my phone, and all these little things help. Not necessary, but I did make more of my investment. And you know what? I'm happy with it. I haven't griped about my phone.
I cannot possibly be the only person on the planet that feels this way, and given how many phones with features similar to mine I see out there, I can reasonably suspect that a lot of other people have made the same decision. Maybe you're missing out because you're not considering it. I'm not going to tell you how to use you rphone, rather I hope that revealing my own use of it will cause you to think from a different perspective.
As for the topic at hand, is this service interesting to me? Mildly. Yeah, the resolution and frame rate may be a lil low, but good content is good content either way. I'm not interested in sports or video news so it's probably not interesting to me, but if I could call up episodes of Quantum Leap or something, I'd give it a go for a month. I doubt it'd go on long, but I'm excited about possibilities down the road. Video on demand for my phone would be pretty slick, especially while waiting in line for the DMV.:P
I wonder why so many self described 'nerds' out there think their cell phones shouldn't be doing anything more but making calls? How can we like PDAs but not like similar functionality in the phones we've got and carry around 24-7? *Shrug*
"All I see is that Nintendo is grabbing the patent so that people won't come along and try to patent what is essentially common sense as far as computers are concerned and try to extort money from the big 3."
Doubtful. They spent a lot of R&D time and money prior to 1998 (MS wasn't even a player then) to make an on-line experience. Hell yeah they're going to try to patent it. It's a reward for doing that kind of research and a teaser to convince other companies to come up with something even better.
" Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo most probably have enough patents of mass destruction that should they wish to patent fight between themselves they would indeed destroy themselves."
Again, doubtful. Patents are tough to win significant money from. The point is to cause them to point in another direction.
Is the patent silly? Eh sorta. I don't agree that this is a common sense 'as far as computers are concerned' case, but I'm also not convinced that Nintendo really really really deserves that patent. Nintendo didn't exactly have anybody else to copy of, and they certainly had to put a lot of work into making it work. This plainly isn't a case of Nintendo being evil, but it could be a good case for the Patent Office being stupid.
"This just hastens the end of the patent system. Seriously -- the American patent system is going to fall apart soon, and things like this are the reason."
Soon? Nah. These patents aren't a problem until somebody actually starts using them to extort money. What's preventing that from happening is fear of losing in court. MS hasn't sued Palm over the double clicking of hardware buttons in PDAs, for example. Why? Because they're slow? Nah. Because they risk losing. Just a money pit at that point.
Frankly, I think this trend of attempting to patent anything they can has more to do with self defense than with messing with anybody else. Tit for tat. If somebody approaches MS claiming they violate a patent, MS can searc through their patents and look for something to countersue with.
Polite rebuttals invited. I'm not exactly the most knowledgable person on this topic, so I'm open to discussion. But right now, as it stands, I'm not convinced that the patent system is in that much danger for the foreseeable future. Revolution? Maybe. But I'm not sold on it falling apart. Something to consider: Slashdot's sensationalizing it quite a bit.
"Why would they patent something which has been around for years in the competition's OS? There's no way they can actually patent sudo...not on my watch."
They can patent it just fine, all the USPTO has to do is not notice the similarity. It's when they get to court with somebody about it that the problem actually exists.
I had to sound like an arrogant ass here, but maybe you should go work for the Patent Office? Not because it'd teach you a lesson, but because it is pretty clear that whoever approves these doesn't understand the area they're in. I mean, look how technical the patent is. Either the patent office picked up on a subtle nuance that makes it different from *nux, or they just didn't connect it with something it does already.
Ya know, usually patents like this can make it through because there's something differentiating them. Unfortunately, while looking for that distinction, my screensaver went on.
"as i understand it it's the other way round - one of the possibilities mentions the moon "blocking" gravitation from the sun during an eclipse."
Pardon my naievity, but does gravity from one object affect the gravity of another? I don't mean cumulative effects... Ah I don't know how to explain what I'm thinking.
"I think I'll stay on the "A console is a fucking computer" side of the fence, thankyou very much."
If you'd rather go by the literal definition like the dictionary does instead of the practical definition like the patent office does, doesn't hurt my feelings. Consider a couple of things, though:
1.) You don't do the same stuff with a computer that you do with a console. Though there is some overlap, you will not be browsing porn from your GameCube or playing Wind Waker on your computer.
2.) Sharing the same guts is not the same as being the same. You obviously percieve the difference between a PC and a Console just fine. There's no confusion in your mind between the two. Hopefully from there you'll understand why calling a console a computer is misleading. If I say I'm selling you a computer and I give you a GameCube, you're not going to look at it and go "well.. it does have a CPU, so I guess technically he didn't misrepresent it."
For the record, I'm not siding with Nintendo. (I think Sega has some prior art with the Saturn... or the X-Band for the SNES/Genesis that was made by a 3rd party) rather I'm just pointing out what the significance is. Lots of people here on Slashdot think that patents are more broad than they really are. I can't patent double clicking on a PDA and sue Microsoft for using double clicking on a PC. You can argue that a PDA is a computer until you're blue in the face, the law simply will not see it that way. They're actually very specific, and even if they have a broad patent, making a case with it is an entire matter entirely. Nintendo isn't suing Sony or Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't sued Palm over the double click patent. Etc.
No, it's not. The very fact that you see the difference between a console and a PC totally self destructs your own argument. It's funny that you're accusing me of existing in a distorted reality when you can't even cook up a good argument.
"Oh, and you indeed CAN surf the web with a Dreamcast"
Perhaps, but since you can't travel back in time with it to when this patent was filed, your point has no substance. Actually, if you're looking for prior art, I think the Saturn had a net doohicky that played online games. That would probably be effective at destroying Nintendo's patent. (Pity you haven't paid a lot of attention to my posts, or you'd realize I'm not defending Nintendo, but rather explaining how it could be possible to patent this sort of thing. Maybe when your view isn't obstructed by your anus, you'll see that.)
"Resist it, boy! Fight it! Come back to reality! Back!"
I don't need to fight, you haven't been able to stand on your own two feet yet. Put up an actual fight and I'll spar with ya. You'll have to do better than accusing me of being a Nintendo fan boy, though.;)
Okay, this may not be very practical, but I thought I'd suggest it anyway:
PocketPC with a voice recorder. I dunno if she can get away with talking, but I figured it's at least a unique answer. When I did system testing a year ago, I found it was quicker just to have my PocketPC nearby, press the record button like a walkie-talkie and record my notes. Then I'd get back to my PC, listen to each one, and transcribe what I said.
There are a couple of caveats here:
1.) Obviously she's gonna haveta talk out loud for this to work. This worked in my situation, but possibly not in hers.
2.) You have to download a special codec to play those.WAV files from the PocketPC on your desktop. Although I can't imagine she'd really need that as once she's transcribed them she's got them. But I was shocked that these files a.) Don't automatically synch with the desktop and b.) They don't play without a special codec installed. Grr. Leave it to MS to break something like that.
"When I run a game on my computer or my game console they both utilize the majority of the processing power of the hardware."
No, they don't. The games you play on it, maybe, but not the apps. Otherwise you'd always need the latest and greatest machines to do your work.
"Last time I checked a Windows/Linux/Mac OS based computer was also a "fully interactive experience".
Not like a game, no. You're raching a bit.
"Men and women are actually extremely similar. They're also both humans, just like consoles and personal computers are both computers."
They are also distinct entities. Just like consoles and computers.
"I use a mouse to find my online servers, can I patent that?"
There was a patent awarded (and heavily contested...) for hyperlinking. That would have covered that, yes.
" Again, how is this anything special?"
They had to set up the service to do this. They had to do a lot of work to make that possible. It would even be worse for consoles because of their more limited nature.
"And it doesn't matter if a lot of people don't have keyboards for their consoles."
It does matter because games are meant to be sold by the millions, not thousands, so they cannot rely on that kb existing.
"Everything from cash registers, to embedded systems that run weather stations, to super computers, to rendering clusters, etc. etc. etc. All of them are computers."
You're fuzzing up your own point. Nobody calls a cash register a computer. Why? Because the general purposeness of that machine is not exposed. Patenting something for a cash register is possible. Very specific.
"Honestly, trying to argue with you that game consoles are comptuers is getting a little tiring,"
Maybe one of us is being too broad while the other is being too narrow? That's not an attack, but I am starting to think that we're nitpicking the definition of computer and console for differeing reasons. I'll try to help by offering that the reason I'm making the distinction is that a console is a different and focused application, as such, a different type of research and innovation goes into improving it. In the eyes of the patent office, this is enough of a distinction to make something patentable. Because of this distintion, Nintendo cannot sue Dell or Id because computers are not consoles and Quake is not a console game. That make sense? That's an honest attempt not to be flaming or condescending, please keep that in mind when you respond.
Not even in the same league. Game consoles run apps that utilize 100% of their power for a fully interactive experience. Computers run apps of varying capability. If you want to have a computer app that does nothing but voice chat, you can reasonably dedicate the whole machine to. Again, not an easy problem to solve.
"capped by the market - and this has absolutely no relevance to patents"
Wrong. It is very much relevant. You can't package a $2,000 PC into a console just to do voice chat. The price point of a console limits the resources available for software to run. So when you make something work within those limitations, you've genuinely innovated. You can't say that market price has nothing to do with this.
"Most (all?) consoles have keyboards available (Xbox and PS2 for sure)"
So? Nobody has them. Your interface for something like this is a controller. That's what you got. That means when you create an online service, you have to deal with issues like 'how does one find another person's IP address?' Putting a keyboard into the mix is one way of doing it. But if you take the time to actually deal with it sans kb, you've done something innovative.
"And how was I "letting on" about anything? What are you even talking about? What's your point with all this?"
The point was you can't just take what's been done on a PC and drop it into a console without a significant amount of work to turn it into a satisfactory product. Simple as that. When you do that kind of work, some elements of it become patentable.
"A console is a computer. Just because it's in a pretty box, and doesn't come with standard components doesn't mean anything."
Wrong. Sharing similar internals does not make them the same any more than saying a woman and a man are the same just because they share most of the same organs. You don't surf the web with consoles, and you don't play Super Mario Sunshine on your PC. The only way you can say one is the other is by oversimplifying way too dramatically.
"The argument that a console is somehow different enough to warrant the ability to patent these things is ridiculous. "
Um, no it's not. Console have very demanding apps, a capped price point, and no keyboard to input on. Making all that stuff work well enough to sell is far more challenging than you're letting on.
Slashdot Mirror
"No matter how secure, how deeply coded, the rules are, the only way to have robots that don't have the capability to hurt people is to not make robots at all."
Agreed. We'd also have fewer car accidents if we never made cars at all.
*patiently waits for his insightful mod*
"If I don't want to pay $x to see a movie or purchase a CD, then I have that right. I do not have the right to have in my posession a reporduction of that right because I don't agree with the authors/copyright holders."
Perhaps not. However, the problem with movie piracy (on the net, I'm not referring to selling $1 DVD copies of screeners...) to the MPAA is that it levels the playing field to be more fair towards the consumer. They have a business model I refer to as "open your mouth and close your eyes". You cannot get your money back if you're disatisfied unlike just about anything else you can buy. As such, movie makers can get away with sup-par movies and recieve money even though the consumer did not get the satisfaction he or she was paying for.
You're probably thinking I'm trying to justify downloading of movies. Frankly, it's not something I do. I have a substantial DVD collection but my computers only have a couple of rips I've downloaded. They are of movies I already have. I'm an artist. I make content for a living. I'm working on a movie right now. I don't want to lose my job because the movie wasn't successful, even if the blame could land squarely on piracy. However, there's something I have to think about: Content making is an art form, but it is also a business. We all paid to go see Matrix. We all paid to go see Star Wars, despite all the grumbling we did about it. If the movie I'm working on didn't generate the interest for people to run out and go see it, I can't say that piracy was the issue. The issue was that we did something wrong. Maybe the movie sucked, maybe we didn't market it well, maybe we asked too much for it. Yeah, maybe the result is a bunch of individuals did something wrong, that doesn't mean that we didn't either.
So what do I do? I have confidence it'll be a good movie. We're all working to make it that way. It's effort that is MUCH better spent than running ads to guilt people into paying for it. I want to make money from this, but I don't want to do it and leave people saying "man, what a rip-off."/i.
"I'm sure they will Call this INOVATION when we all know its just the same old stuff with a web brower on it."
So.. what you're saying is that they're changing how people work, but it's not innovation... Huh?
I'm not a fan of Microsoft. Despite that, I can't believe how self-destructive this comment is. It's so easy to oversimplify something and make it sound stupid. Watch:
"Gee, the Open Source Community is copying something again. How lame."
"Gee, the MPAA is making yet another lame movie. How lame."
"Gee, a new feature on a cell phone. How lame."
"Gee, Slashdot posts nothing but stories that are already on the web, and they want subscriptions for it. How lame."
"Gee, George Lucas is making another Star Wars movie, but we already have five of them. How lame."
Some of these are probably causing a lot of you to nod your heads. Probably think I'm insightful. But how insightful are any of these, really? In each case, I filtered out a LOT of relevent information. But our personal biases percieve truth in those statements, so we agree in some cases. There is no insight here, simply a filtering of information tuned to appeal who already hate the topic at hand.
So what's the point of my rant? To defend Microsoft? Nah. Don't care about them. I'm just hoping pointless comments like the one above don't get modded as insightful. Wee, we all hate Microsoft, gimme a karma point.
"How will this be a good thing for people who don't need the collaborative tools?"
.doc files, copying over network, etc. Might as well streamline the process.
Maybe they're not the target audience. I mean, be serious, every single company who sells an upgrade to software has to face this question. Nothing new here. Current customers may not upgrade. Eventually they'll do something their customers will want and will make the leap. Yay. New customers are exposed to the new features, may find value in them. Double yay.
" it is also about taking Office off of the desktop and putting it on the web where user registration can be more tightly controlled, upgrade paths more easily enforced, etc."
Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see anything in the article that suggested that. (I have heard rumors to that effect, tho..) Sounded more like Office talks to other computers running Office and the documents can go back and forth more easily. Frankly, people who are collaborating today are doing what you describe anyway. Emailing
"I don't know if I trust the MS server with that much access to my data."
I doubt MS would store the data. It's probably more like ICQ where MS's server helps you find the client (or maybe it's a server the company sets up...) and the actual transfer is direct. I'm not sure mistrust of MS is any more beneficial to you in that case.
About the web based service you described, personally in some cases I'd prefer that. Office is not my main app anymore as I've recently changed careers. I use Photoshop and Lightwave daily now. Frankly, I'd rather pay n-hundred dollars a year as a web-based subscription service for these two apps. Even if they had to call home once in a while to make sure I'm legit, that's fine by me. The potential advantages here are a.) Always up to date, b.) If they did it right, I could go from machine to machine and still be able to use the software. Eh maybe I'm just daydreaming. I'm so sick of dongles and having to keep install CDs around. I'm sick of version incompabilities. I'm sick of lots of stuff when it comes to software my living is based on.
Consider this, if people subscribed to Office instead of the way it's done now, there'd be no more backward/forward compatibility problems. If MS updates the software, everybody's quickly up to date. Boy that'd be nice.
"I recommend Ender's Game, easy to read and great, and recommend against reading the last paragraph of the article you haven't already."
Actually, that wasn't that big of spoiler. I know this because I recently read the book and figured out what the spoiler gave away halfway into it. When I got to the reveal, I was like "uh yeah, figured". Fortunately, I think the author anticipated this and provided more to the ending unrelated to what the article mentioned that was far more interesting.
My point? Even if you read the last paragraph, there's still something good you can get out of reading Ender's Game.
"Why are the machines of war still designed to carry meat-sacks around inside them?!"
The technology doesn't exist to remotely control them yet. At least not safely.
Don't you remember the unmanned drones used in Afghanistan?
"There are a bunch of folks who used to live near this place called Chernobyl. They might disagree with you a bit on that one. The ones that are still alive that is."
Yeah, Chernobyl comes up a lot in these discussions. Nobody seems to notice that it's the only example brought up, or that it was quite a few years ago. Guess it's not worth considering that these accidents are few and far between.
"Its great that companies are able to offer TV on cell phones, but it is really necessary? I for one have a camera phone with wireless internet and most of the features on that phone go unused."
:P
Okay, so you're not sold. BFD. You should consider, though, that this isn't a matter of practicality. Not everybody treats their cell phone like it's their house key. A lot of us have cell phones that double as entertainment devices.
I'll use myself as an example. I have a cell phone. I don't have a landline. I pay ~$50 for service. Some of that is to make sure that my bill stays the same every month (i.e. more minutes than I really really need) and some of it is for entertainment options such as the internet etc. I paid roughly $150 for the phone, though I should get a rebate back any day now that knocks it down to about $20. It goes with me everywhere.
With this phone, I've taken amusing pictures of my cat, my nephew, and a few other things that have made my girlfriend laugh. I read the news while waiting for the DMV to get to me. I'm still playing Prince of Persia on it. I find times here and there where I just need to kill a little time, and by some strange cosmic coincidence, theh phone is with me 98% of the time I need it for something like that.
Do I make calls on it too? You betcha! Some work related stuff. Some calls to my gf to let her know I'll be a little late for dinner. Some calls to my family to let them know how I'm doing. Do I miss calls? Sure. Due to dead battery? Once in a great while. However, I have this nifty little thing called voice mail. All that's left is to plug it into the wall, wait a moment or two, and make the return call. I get so few "Gotta have it right now this second" calls that I haven't even bothered to get a car charger for it.
So, is it really necessary? No. But I do like the idea that the $50 I'm paying a month does more than just recieve a few calls here and there. Heck, my phone even works as my alarm clock. I have no conscience about the monthly expense on my phone, and all these little things help. Not necessary, but I did make more of my investment. And you know what? I'm happy with it. I haven't griped about my phone.
I cannot possibly be the only person on the planet that feels this way, and given how many phones with features similar to mine I see out there, I can reasonably suspect that a lot of other people have made the same decision. Maybe you're missing out because you're not considering it. I'm not going to tell you how to use you rphone, rather I hope that revealing my own use of it will cause you to think from a different perspective.
As for the topic at hand, is this service interesting to me? Mildly. Yeah, the resolution and frame rate may be a lil low, but good content is good content either way. I'm not interested in sports or video news so it's probably not interesting to me, but if I could call up episodes of Quantum Leap or something, I'd give it a go for a month. I doubt it'd go on long, but I'm excited about possibilities down the road. Video on demand for my phone would be pretty slick, especially while waiting in line for the DMV.
I wonder why so many self described 'nerds' out there think their cell phones shouldn't be doing anything more but making calls? How can we like PDAs but not like similar functionality in the phones we've got and carry around 24-7? *Shrug*
"All I see is that Nintendo is grabbing the patent so that people won't come along and try to patent what is essentially common sense as far as computers are concerned and try to extort money from the big 3."
Doubtful. They spent a lot of R&D time and money prior to 1998 (MS wasn't even a player then) to make an on-line experience. Hell yeah they're going to try to patent it. It's a reward for doing that kind of research and a teaser to convince other companies to come up with something even better.
" Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo most probably have enough patents of mass destruction that should they wish to patent fight between themselves they would indeed destroy themselves."
Again, doubtful. Patents are tough to win significant money from. The point is to cause them to point in another direction.
Is the patent silly? Eh sorta. I don't agree that this is a common sense 'as far as computers are concerned' case, but I'm also not convinced that Nintendo really really really deserves that patent. Nintendo didn't exactly have anybody else to copy of, and they certainly had to put a lot of work into making it work. This plainly isn't a case of Nintendo being evil, but it could be a good case for the Patent Office being stupid.
"This just hastens the end of the patent system. Seriously -- the American patent system is going to fall apart soon, and things like this are the reason."
Soon? Nah. These patents aren't a problem until somebody actually starts using them to extort money. What's preventing that from happening is fear of losing in court. MS hasn't sued Palm over the double clicking of hardware buttons in PDAs, for example. Why? Because they're slow? Nah. Because they risk losing. Just a money pit at that point.
Frankly, I think this trend of attempting to patent anything they can has more to do with self defense than with messing with anybody else. Tit for tat. If somebody approaches MS claiming they violate a patent, MS can searc through their patents and look for something to countersue with.
Polite rebuttals invited. I'm not exactly the most knowledgable person on this topic, so I'm open to discussion. But right now, as it stands, I'm not convinced that the patent system is in that much danger for the foreseeable future. Revolution? Maybe. But I'm not sold on it falling apart. Something to consider: Slashdot's sensationalizing it quite a bit.
"What is the process to go about for getting this patent revoked?"
Duplicate the feature, release a product, wait for MS to sue you.
st -r -f | fu
"Why would they patent something which has been around for years in the competition's OS? There's no way they can actually patent sudo...not on my watch."
They can patent it just fine, all the USPTO has to do is not notice the similarity. It's when they get to court with somebody about it that the problem actually exists.
I had to sound like an arrogant ass here, but maybe you should go work for the Patent Office? Not because it'd teach you a lesson, but because it is pretty clear that whoever approves these doesn't understand the area they're in. I mean, look how technical the patent is. Either the patent office picked up on a subtle nuance that makes it different from *nux, or they just didn't connect it with something it does already.
Ya know, usually patents like this can make it through because there's something differentiating them. Unfortunately, while looking for that distinction, my screensaver went on.
"BTW....wouldn't have taken more than 2 minutes to Google that!"
The point is to discuss it, not to be a human Google. Read some of the other posts that were modded up.
"as i understand it it's the other way round - one of the possibilities mentions the moon "blocking" gravitation from the sun during an eclipse."
Pardon my naievity, but does gravity from one object affect the gravity of another? I don't mean cumulative effects... Ah I don't know how to explain what I'm thinking.
"My wife had one of these after she went in for breast augmentation..."
Ever notice that marriage causes gravitational anomiles in women?
"Where is Capn' Picard when he is needed"
Nah we need an admiral that'd be willing to violate the prime directive. Anybody got Janeway's phone #?
Ugh. Friday evening and I'm cracking jokes that only hardcore Trek fans would chuckle and snort at. I'm glad chicks aren't reading this.
"I think I'll stay on the "A console is a fucking computer" side of the fence, thankyou very much."
If you'd rather go by the literal definition like the dictionary does instead of the practical definition like the patent office does, doesn't hurt my feelings. Consider a couple of things, though:
1.) You don't do the same stuff with a computer that you do with a console. Though there is some overlap, you will not be browsing porn from your GameCube or playing Wind Waker on your computer.
2.) Sharing the same guts is not the same as being the same. You obviously percieve the difference between a PC and a Console just fine. There's no confusion in your mind between the two. Hopefully from there you'll understand why calling a console a computer is misleading. If I say I'm selling you a computer and I give you a GameCube, you're not going to look at it and go "well.. it does have a CPU, so I guess technically he didn't misrepresent it."
For the record, I'm not siding with Nintendo. (I think Sega has some prior art with the Saturn... or the X-Band for the SNES/Genesis that was made by a 3rd party) rather I'm just pointing out what the significance is. Lots of people here on Slashdot think that patents are more broad than they really are. I can't patent double clicking on a PDA and sue Microsoft for using double clicking on a PC. You can argue that a PDA is a computer until you're blue in the face, the law simply will not see it that way. They're actually very specific, and even if they have a broad patent, making a case with it is an entire matter entirely. Nintendo isn't suing Sony or Microsoft. Microsoft hasn't sued Palm over the double click patent. Etc.
"A console is a fucking computer."
;)
No, it's not. The very fact that you see the difference between a console and a PC totally self destructs your own argument. It's funny that you're accusing me of existing in a distorted reality when you can't even cook up a good argument.
"Oh, and you indeed CAN surf the web with a Dreamcast"
Perhaps, but since you can't travel back in time with it to when this patent was filed, your point has no substance. Actually, if you're looking for prior art, I think the Saturn had a net doohicky that played online games. That would probably be effective at destroying Nintendo's patent. (Pity you haven't paid a lot of attention to my posts, or you'd realize I'm not defending Nintendo, but rather explaining how it could be possible to patent this sort of thing. Maybe when your view isn't obstructed by your anus, you'll see that.)
"Resist it, boy! Fight it! Come back to reality! Back!"
I don't need to fight, you haven't been able to stand on your own two feet yet. Put up an actual fight and I'll spar with ya. You'll have to do better than accusing me of being a Nintendo fan boy, though.
Okay, this may not be very practical, but I thought I'd suggest it anyway:
.WAV files from the PocketPC on your desktop. Although I can't imagine she'd really need that as once she's transcribed them she's got them. But I was shocked that these files a.) Don't automatically synch with the desktop and b.) They don't play without a special codec installed. Grr. Leave it to MS to break something like that.
PocketPC with a voice recorder. I dunno if she can get away with talking, but I figured it's at least a unique answer. When I did system testing a year ago, I found it was quicker just to have my PocketPC nearby, press the record button like a walkie-talkie and record my notes. Then I'd get back to my PC, listen to each one, and transcribe what I said.
There are a couple of caveats here:
1.) Obviously she's gonna haveta talk out loud for this to work. This worked in my situation, but possibly not in hers.
2.) You have to download a special codec to play those
"When I run a game on my computer or my game console they both utilize the majority of the processing power of the hardware."
No, they don't. The games you play on it, maybe, but not the apps. Otherwise you'd always need the latest and greatest machines to do your work.
"Last time I checked a Windows/Linux/Mac OS based computer was also a "fully interactive experience".
Not like a game, no. You're raching a bit.
"Men and women are actually extremely similar. They're also both humans, just like consoles and personal computers are both computers."
They are also distinct entities. Just like consoles and computers.
"I use a mouse to find my online servers, can I patent that?"
There was a patent awarded (and heavily contested...) for hyperlinking. That would have covered that, yes.
" Again, how is this anything special?"
They had to set up the service to do this. They had to do a lot of work to make that possible. It would even be worse for consoles because of their more limited nature.
"And it doesn't matter if a lot of people don't have keyboards for their consoles."
It does matter because games are meant to be sold by the millions, not thousands, so they cannot rely on that kb existing.
"Everything from cash registers, to embedded systems that run weather stations, to super computers, to rendering clusters, etc. etc. etc. All of them are computers."
You're fuzzing up your own point. Nobody calls a cash register a computer. Why? Because the general purposeness of that machine is not exposed. Patenting something for a cash register is possible. Very specific.
"Honestly, trying to argue with you that game consoles are comptuers is getting a little tiring,"
Maybe one of us is being too broad while the other is being too narrow? That's not an attack, but I am starting to think that we're nitpicking the definition of computer and console for differeing reasons. I'll try to help by offering that the reason I'm making the distinction is that a console is a different and focused application, as such, a different type of research and innovation goes into improving it. In the eyes of the patent office, this is enough of a distinction to make something patentable. Because of this distintion, Nintendo cannot sue Dell or Id because computers are not consoles and Quake is not a console game. That make sense? That's an honest attempt not to be flaming or condescending, please keep that in mind when you respond.
"As do computers"
Not even in the same league. Game consoles run apps that utilize 100% of their power for a fully interactive experience. Computers run apps of varying capability. If you want to have a computer app that does nothing but voice chat, you can reasonably dedicate the whole machine to. Again, not an easy problem to solve.
"capped by the market - and this has absolutely no relevance to patents"
Wrong. It is very much relevant. You can't package a $2,000 PC into a console just to do voice chat. The price point of a console limits the resources available for software to run. So when you make something work within those limitations, you've genuinely innovated. You can't say that market price has nothing to do with this.
"Most (all?) consoles have keyboards available (Xbox and PS2 for sure)"
So? Nobody has them. Your interface for something like this is a controller. That's what you got. That means when you create an online service, you have to deal with issues like 'how does one find another person's IP address?' Putting a keyboard into the mix is one way of doing it. But if you take the time to actually deal with it sans kb, you've done something innovative.
"And how was I "letting on" about anything? What are you even talking about? What's your point with all this?"
The point was you can't just take what's been done on a PC and drop it into a console without a significant amount of work to turn it into a satisfactory product. Simple as that. When you do that kind of work, some elements of it become patentable.
"A console is a computer. Just because it's in a pretty box, and doesn't come with standard components doesn't mean anything."
Wrong. Sharing similar internals does not make them the same any more than saying a woman and a man are the same just because they share most of the same organs. You don't surf the web with consoles, and you don't play Super Mario Sunshine on your PC. The only way you can say one is the other is by oversimplifying way too dramatically.
"The argument that a console is somehow different enough to warrant the ability to patent these things is ridiculous. "
Um, no it's not. Console have very demanding apps, a capped price point, and no keyboard to input on. Making all that stuff work well enough to sell is far more challenging than you're letting on.
"Well, hey, thanks for asking."
Don't you just look great in that dress?