"big but not that great: one of the last episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (don't remember which one in particular) - yes, you can stuff too many ships on screen at once!"
Nar it wasn't that bad. Star Trek ships are color coded for easy reference. Gray or green ships are good guys, brown and purple are bad guys, and yellow changes sides on a whim.
Deep Space Nine had some damn cool battles. "Sacrifice of Angels" was particularly surprising given that it featured a battle between 1200 Dominion ships and 600 Federation ships. The sheer scale of it was amazing. "Way of the Warrior" was another kick ass episode. It featured a fleet of Klingon ships assaulting DS9. What was so startling about it was that most of it featured motion controlled models as opposed to the CGI stuff we see today. The visual quality of that battle is amazing, even today. "Shattered Mirror" made a lot of people's eyes go wide as well. There moneymaker shot was when the Defiant went up against a huge Klingon ship and blew away pieces of the underside of it. They had to build a 20 foot model to film that! Eek.
Not sure it really qualifies, but there's an ep called "One Little Ship" where a minaturized runabout's flying around the Defiant. There is little that's more satisfying than watching a man shot in the chest by a photon torpedo. Heh.
I loved Deep Space Nine's space fx. To be honest, that show is the main reason I'm gunning for the VFX industry right now. Not only were the battles on that show unique (notice how one doesn't really sound like the other, unlike some shows that overdid it ridiculously), but man the visual quality was just top notch.
It probably is. The link to 'gmail.google.com' doesn't even try to work.
I have to admit, though, as far as April Fool's jokes go, this is definitely one of the better ones. I mean seriously, this isn't exactly out of the realm of possibility.
" Of course, this will be "advertiser supported" so who knows how invasive that will or will not be when using their mail services."
Setting aside the posibilty that this is an April Fool's joke, (Although it does say March 31st on the story..) perhaps advertising is exactly what they're after. Instead of using disposable accounts, they make it so you never need to clean your mailbox again. That means you use Google as your mail client instead of whatever app you use. That means their ads are always up, etc.
I'm skeptical about this, really. But hey, it has the virtue of never having been tried. What kind of revenue can you get when you give somebody a low-cost service that makes them eyeball your site many times a day every day?
"I know this is cheating, but I must say: the worst development job I've ever had is unemployment. Lots of work, but no pay. Any job is better than no job, so long as you're getting paid."
Hmm actually I'm enjoying my unemployment. Yeah I'm 1,000 miles away from home looking for a job. Yeah, I haveta keep updating my artwork and getting demo reel DVDs made. Yeah I'm homeless if I'm jobless when my unemployment runs out. On a day to day basis, though, this period's really not too bad. I'm getting reasonable amounts of sleep. My leisure time is actually leisure time. (Back when I was employed, leisure time was usually just "whew Im not at work.") I've even been able to keep up on some of my fav shows.
I'd prefer to be employed, but I can't exactly say I'm suffereing right now. Im actually quite comfortable right now. (And I'm saying this just after working 2 weeks straight on a project to try to get a new job..)
" You may think it's fun to be paid to goof off, but it's really really boring. Gimme something to do, damnit!"
I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I sure wouldn't mind a brief 'paid goof-off' period. If I could freely work on my artwork or pick up a programming language or something, I'd make good use of it. (Especially if there's no pressure for me to hide what I'm doing...)
I do kinda envy ya. But that's because there's a lot I'd like to learn, and that'd give me the time to do it.
"Yes, the Y2K bug was real. No, nothing happened. Why? Because poor fuckers like me worked our asses off doing the most boring programming work known to mankind for 2 years straight."
You think you had it bad? My dad had to fix computers for the BC to AD conversion!
That's prior art of a domain being specified. This patent is about automatically creating a subdomain for each user. The difference? I imagine they had to do some significant work to make their server do that at the time it was filed. Good patent? Eh I don't think so. But it doesn't shock me a whole lot that it was granted.
The real question is: Should patenting how a website works be allowed? Should you be able to patent using a bunch of features together for a spcific result? In the physical world, I can see that... but in the digital world, well that's a heck of a lot tougher to answer.
I remember a few years ago somebody told me that a company (RCA?) patented drawing a single character on a TV. That's right, if you made a TV that told you on-screen what channel you were on, you had to license it. It seems so ABSURD these days. Back then, though, they were the first to do it, and it was probably a rather tough situation to solve seeing as how they had to design circuits for it for the first time. I bet back then the general thought was "uhh... but TVs show characters if they're part of the broadcast!" It really did change how TVs work, though.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this topic. I can see the value in patents. I mean, if I do some grunt work that would benefit everybody, and have a patent to insure that I get paid for it, well it really makes me want to innovate. But, at the same time, if I want to go do something obvious and I step on somebody else's toes... well gee. That makes me NOT want to go into that market at all. Does 'fixing' the patent system create winners or losers?
"I'm sorry, but this is just a ridiculous argument. Firstly, the USPTO must use technology to some degree, so if someone visited "news.yahoo.com" two years before this patent was ever issued, they've got their prior art right there."
Not exactly the same. The patent is in the server automatically setting up subdomains for users as they sign up. News.yahoo.com is not a good example. However, if Slashdot was setup so that typing in NanoGator.Slashdot.Org brought up my stats list, well that'd be more like what the patent covers.
Did they do it first? I dunno. I doubt it. However, I can envision a situation where they wrote all the code to make that work, and some PHB saying "what the hell, just file a patent. If we get it, neat!" If nobody else did that before them, then I can see the USPTO allowing it.
Now, before you point your pitchfork at me, understand that I'm *not* saying it's right. I'm not saying they should be able to do it. I'm not saying it's legit, etc. I'm just saying I can see how it probably came about. This was probably something that was filed before the internet really took off.
The nice thing is that if they get too aggressive about it, there'll be a court smack-down. Personally, I wish there was a check and/or balance so that it didn't involve a nasty agressive court case to suss it all out. Small companies really can't get into this sort of mess. Either it should be tougher to get a patent, or there needs to be a way found that means the first patent case is not expensive for either side to get into unless... Well I dunno. Sorry I don't have all the answers heh.
" There have been a few "attacks" on slashdot which could have been prevented by simply blocking 'repeat' posts. "
Filerting out GNAA posts would be nice. Not that I've run into it lately, but there was a story a couple of months back that had nearly 1,000 GNAA posts. Impressive organization on the behalf of the trolls, but it did take a while to suss out. (I wonder how many mods burned up mod points that night...)
Slashdot Mirror
"The Wing Commander movie had some good space combat in it..."
Sorry, any good battles in that movie were nullified by the "Be quite, the other SPACE ship might hear us talking!" scene.
I'd really like to see a fleet of eggs from Ork engage a fleet of Police Boxes from Gallifrey.
"big but not that great: one of the last episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (don't remember which one in particular) - yes, you can stuff too many ships on screen at once!"
Nar it wasn't that bad. Star Trek ships are color coded for easy reference. Gray or green ships are good guys, brown and purple are bad guys, and yellow changes sides on a whim.
Deep Space Nine had some damn cool battles. "Sacrifice of Angels" was particularly surprising given that it featured a battle between 1200 Dominion ships and 600 Federation ships. The sheer scale of it was amazing. "Way of the Warrior" was another kick ass episode. It featured a fleet of Klingon ships assaulting DS9. What was so startling about it was that most of it featured motion controlled models as opposed to the CGI stuff we see today. The visual quality of that battle is amazing, even today. "Shattered Mirror" made a lot of people's eyes go wide as well. There moneymaker shot was when the Defiant went up against a huge Klingon ship and blew away pieces of the underside of it. They had to build a 20 foot model to film that! Eek.
Not sure it really qualifies, but there's an ep called "One Little Ship" where a minaturized runabout's flying around the Defiant. There is little that's more satisfying than watching a man shot in the chest by a photon torpedo. Heh.
I loved Deep Space Nine's space fx. To be honest, that show is the main reason I'm gunning for the VFX industry right now. Not only were the battles on that show unique (notice how one doesn't really sound like the other, unlike some shows that overdid it ridiculously), but man the visual quality was just top notch.
"Silly, VB uses a semicolon. After what he's gone through, do you expect him to have a whole colon left?"
That'd be funnier if VB used semicolons or colons. You just use the plain old enter key.
"And no one mentioned ..the word "Turing"
AOL stories don't include the term "Information SuperHighway" either.
"disassembled"
Heh. Actually the reall Johnny 5 used to be at Disneyland. I think it was called the 'Backlot tour". That was like 12 years ago, though.
No country has enslaved the entire world. Arguably, we did conquer this half of the continent, and enslaved people to do it.
If you really wanted to defend this country, you'd bring up the fact that we haven't expanded our territory in decades.
"http://gmail.com/
well.. they do have a domain set up for it.."
Interesting. The domain was registerred by Google back in 95. It was last updated today. And, it doesn't expire for 2 years. Maybe it's not a joke?
It probably is. The link to 'gmail.google.com' doesn't even try to work.
I have to admit, though, as far as April Fool's jokes go, this is definitely one of the better ones. I mean seriously, this isn't exactly out of the realm of possibility.
" Of course, this will be "advertiser supported" so who knows how invasive that will or will not be when using their mail services."
Setting aside the posibilty that this is an April Fool's joke, (Although it does say March 31st on the story..) perhaps advertising is exactly what they're after. Instead of using disposable accounts, they make it so you never need to clean your mailbox again. That means you use Google as your mail client instead of whatever app you use. That means their ads are always up, etc.
I'm skeptical about this, really. But hey, it has the virtue of never having been tried. What kind of revenue can you get when you give somebody a low-cost service that makes them eyeball your site many times a day every day?
"I know this is cheating, but I must say: the worst development job I've ever had is unemployment. Lots of work, but no pay. Any job is better than no job, so long as you're getting paid."
Hmm actually I'm enjoying my unemployment. Yeah I'm 1,000 miles away from home looking for a job. Yeah, I haveta keep updating my artwork and getting demo reel DVDs made. Yeah I'm homeless if I'm jobless when my unemployment runs out. On a day to day basis, though, this period's really not too bad. I'm getting reasonable amounts of sleep. My leisure time is actually leisure time. (Back when I was employed, leisure time was usually just "whew Im not at work.") I've even been able to keep up on some of my fav shows.
I'd prefer to be employed, but I can't exactly say I'm suffereing right now. Im actually quite comfortable right now. (And I'm saying this just after working 2 weeks straight on a project to try to get a new job..)
" You may think it's fun to be paid to goof off, but it's really really boring. Gimme something to do, damnit!"
I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I sure wouldn't mind a brief 'paid goof-off' period. If I could freely work on my artwork or pick up a programming language or something, I'd make good use of it. (Especially if there's no pressure for me to hide what I'm doing...)
I do kinda envy ya. But that's because there's a lot I'd like to learn, and that'd give me the time to do it.
"Converting a quarter of a million lines of VB code to Java..."
Man, talk about overworking your colon....
"Yes, the Y2K bug was real. No, nothing happened. Why? Because poor fuckers like me worked our asses off doing the most boring programming work known to mankind for 2 years straight."
You think you had it bad? My dad had to fix computers for the BC to AD conversion!
"Like when your boss has chronic halotosis (or "halo" for short.)"
Whoah! You worked for Gooshie?!
Ah crap. Perfect setup for a rare Quantum Leap reference, and I can't make it funny.
"By your logic, a car can not be called a car, because in the past (before assembly) it was only a bunch of parts."
Uh right, you're going the wrong direction in time here. You can't call a lump of metal a car until it's a car.
"I think that the power and flexibility of Linux on something as small and effecient as a handheld is an excellent combinaiton."
Without a keyboard? Oh I don't think so.
"Think of how many blowjobs you could afford with $645."
One really great one, or 645 from your mom.
"Asteroids != meteors. This is about them entering the Earth's atmosphere eventually, right? So, shouldn't we be expecting nuclear 'meteors'?"
They aren't meteor(ites?)s today, so no.
That's prior art of a domain being specified. This patent is about automatically creating a subdomain for each user. The difference? I imagine they had to do some significant work to make their server do that at the time it was filed. Good patent? Eh I don't think so. But it doesn't shock me a whole lot that it was granted.
The real question is: Should patenting how a website works be allowed? Should you be able to patent using a bunch of features together for a spcific result? In the physical world, I can see that... but in the digital world, well that's a heck of a lot tougher to answer.
I remember a few years ago somebody told me that a company (RCA?) patented drawing a single character on a TV. That's right, if you made a TV that told you on-screen what channel you were on, you had to license it. It seems so ABSURD these days. Back then, though, they were the first to do it, and it was probably a rather tough situation to solve seeing as how they had to design circuits for it for the first time. I bet back then the general thought was "uhh... but TVs show characters if they're part of the broadcast!" It really did change how TVs work, though.
I'm not really sure how I feel about this topic. I can see the value in patents. I mean, if I do some grunt work that would benefit everybody, and have a patent to insure that I get paid for it, well it really makes me want to innovate. But, at the same time, if I want to go do something obvious and I step on somebody else's toes... well gee. That makes me NOT want to go into that market at all. Does 'fixing' the patent system create winners or losers?
"I'm sorry, but this is just a ridiculous argument. Firstly, the USPTO must use technology to some degree, so if someone visited "news.yahoo.com" two years before this patent was ever issued, they've got their prior art right there."
Not exactly the same. The patent is in the server automatically setting up subdomains for users as they sign up. News.yahoo.com is not a good example. However, if Slashdot was setup so that typing in NanoGator.Slashdot.Org brought up my stats list, well that'd be more like what the patent covers.
Did they do it first? I dunno. I doubt it. However, I can envision a situation where they wrote all the code to make that work, and some PHB saying "what the hell, just file a patent. If we get it, neat!" If nobody else did that before them, then I can see the USPTO allowing it.
Now, before you point your pitchfork at me, understand that I'm *not* saying it's right. I'm not saying they should be able to do it. I'm not saying it's legit, etc. I'm just saying I can see how it probably came about. This was probably something that was filed before the internet really took off.
The nice thing is that if they get too aggressive about it, there'll be a court smack-down. Personally, I wish there was a check and/or balance so that it didn't involve a nasty agressive court case to suss it all out. Small companies really can't get into this sort of mess. Either it should be tougher to get a patent, or there needs to be a way found that means the first patent case is not expensive for either side to get into unless... Well I dunno. Sorry I don't have all the answers heh.
" There have been a few "attacks" on slashdot which could have been prevented by simply blocking 'repeat' posts. "
Filerting out GNAA posts would be nice. Not that I've run into it lately, but there was a story a couple of months back that had nearly 1,000 GNAA posts. Impressive organization on the behalf of the trolls, but it did take a while to suss out. (I wonder how many mods burned up mod points that night...)
.. imagine, filtering out MS fud stories and dupes!
"We mostly did the one-on-one skirmishes (forget what they're called. =P)"
;)
Meelee.
Ah it'd be fun to play that on line. Simple yet addictive combat.