This would be the expansion that received rather mediocre reviews, and was dropped to a closeout price of $10 at the local Frys within a couple/few months of release?
I didn't run into any of the bugs the original poster did during the relatively short time it held my interest, but I did observe the critical and Usenet community quickly cool on the game. The initial press was terrific, but the game itself got pretty tedious after the first couple of islands.
I loved the UI, and generally believe in Peter Molyneux's game designs, so I'm looking forward to B&W2. I do hope you guys are actually including a game this time around though.
Except that you can trademark common words, when used in an uncommon context. For example, there is a music studio and a computer company, both with the trademark Apple in their specific contexts. You could probably get a trademark for Pie Computers, if you wanted; it's not a generic in that context (unless you're making your computers out of pie!:D)
The problem with the Microsoft trademark is that "windows" was a common word within the industry it was trademarked in. By 1993, when they registered it, X and other windowed systems had already helped popularize the term.
Perhaps you should take your nose out of the strategy aisle and check out some of the action and sim gaming coming out. Today's cutting edge games are designed to be minimally playable on 1-2 year old hardware, and to have legs for the current TOL and next-generation.
I was discussing this particular patent with friends a couple of weeks ago (when the story debuted in The Register).
Would it be possible for some trusted organization (EFF?) to set up a Journal of Prior Art, where you could submit ideas you wanted to give to public domain? Once a month, all the submissions would be bundled and published, with one copy sent to the Library of Congress to establish timeline. Whenever some new technology like frames came out, you could iterate over ideas and submit them. That way, when bonehead patents like these come up, you'd have at least one resource to search through to try to invalidate them. From a legal point of view, you should be safe...worse comes to worse, you get some already patented ideas in the Journal, but that's not illegal, and doesn't really decrease the usefulness of what would be there. About the only legal risk I can see if is someone managed to violate the DMCA with a tech description (decryption or the like).
The questions would be:
A) is this feasible from a resources point of view.
B) Does prior art have to be a full implementation, or can it be a description of an implementation?
And most importantly, C) Could someone take any of the suggestions, vary one tiny detail (that one's red, this is blue), then patent that? You don't want to create a cookbook for scumsuckers!
What really sucked was that Netcom knew that the numbers had been hacked for some time before letting its customers know they'd been compromised. Apparently the FBI asked them to keep mum so that Mitnick wouldn't be tipped off, so they opted not to tell us.
While I realize that they were under pressure from law enforcement, that whole debacle contributed heavily to my decision to move to a different ISP (which was a big deal back then, when there were only a handful of viable options).
One reason is that a game that's just one of many in a genre in the Windows world stands alone more in the Linux world. If you want a commercial strategy game under Windows, you have a wealth to choose from. If you want one that runs natively under Linux, you only have a handful.
Another reason is that I'm pretty sure the porting companies pay for the right to port and resell the game. Less successful games are, no doubt, cheaper to license.
Finally, a game like Disciples 2 (which is an excellent game, btw) will likely do better among the Linux crowd than among the point-and-drool crowd. Not to be arrogant, but I think the people who are willing and able to do all the stuff one has to do to maintain a Linux box correctly are probably a little more cerebral than most.
Yeah, but it's a different situation. CDN vs. Kapes didn't involve an absolute price list (i.e. I have this foozle, I'll sell it to you for $25). Rather, it involved a "worth" list. CDN analyzed a bunch of information and came up with an estimate of wholesale price, which Kapes offset to create his retail prices. IOW, he wasn't copying facts.
They -might- be able to make a good faith argument, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "could almost surely argue".
Not that there aren't still advantages with concurrency and CPU usage for SCSI, but coasters due to buffer underrun are pretty much a thing of the past on any current burner. They have technology (BurnProof, etc.) to allow the burn to stop and start without messing up the disc.
Contacts recently got a -lot- easier to wear. The FDA approved a new breed of 30-day wear contacts earlier this year. Here's a bit of info. The new contacts let in a lot more oxygen than the older soft contacts, and have antibacterial properties to help prevent corneal infection.
I've been wearing these (PureVisions) for the last few months, and they're phenomenal. I put in new contacts on the first of each month, and most of the time I don't touch them until the first day of the next month. If they get a little uncomfortable (doesn't happen much), I might take them out and clean them, or leave them out overnight while I sleep. My optometrist examined me after a month of wearing these, and gave me the A-OK. I had some corneal pitting before from occasionally sleeping in my old (regular soft) contacts, and it was gone after a month of these. They dry out a lot less often than my old contacts, too.
Only real downside is that they aren't cheap...around $250 a year for contacts, mail-order, plus the eye appointment and (a very minimal amount of) cleaning fluid. OTOH, at $1500+ per eye for LASIK, that's not so bad after all.
I -was- thinking about LASIK or the like, but now I really don't even consider it an option. I have fifteen minutes of hassle a month in exchange for good night vision and no corneal scarring.
OTOH, one of the qualifications for LASIK is that your pupils are smaller than so-and-so size. Isn't that requirement there to ensure this problem doesn't happen?
Upgrading the firmware is totally legal. However, the firmware itself is generally illegal for you to grab and use. By and large, the CDROM manufacturers don't give out the updated firmware. They usually come from someone who has a current rev of the drive and who scans and uploads their firmware to drive-hacking sites. That's a clear copyright violation.
I don't think consoles -do- compete with PCs. In fact, as far as I know, they far outpace them when it comes to entertainment software sales and profits. PC gaming has definitely come out of its niche in the last few years, but it's no competition for the mighty Playstation.
As far as upgradability goes, doing so would eliminate the biggest advantage of a console -- a stable platform. When I buy a console game, I know just how it's going to run. Moreover, the manufacturer knows the exact platform it's running on, so they're able to use little hackish tricks to squeeze out better results. They can also ensure 100% (well, ideally) stability. If you start mixing up the platform, you lose that. No thanks.
Much depends on why it is you've become hearing impaired. There are three sections of the ear, external, middle, and inner. This kind of thing would only help those with external ear problems, as it still relies on the middle ear and inner ear to pick up the sounds. As it happens, many external and middle ear problems are correctable already via surgery or other medical treatment. Folks with inner ear problems -- that is, those with neural damage -- wouldn't be helped at all, and would rely on technology such as cochlear implants.
On the other hand, I know my father (who is significantly hearing impaired) absolutely hates many aspects of his hearing aids. He has to deal with fit, visibility, feedback from the compact size that places the mic near the speaker, etc. Sounds like this sort of thing could make one heck of a stealth-device for people like him.
In the sense that it'll use your system memory via AGP, pretty much. Performance-wise, it's pretty analogous to going to HD swap from system RAM, though not quite as drastic of a performance difference.
Hm. You're right, re: reference. I'd forgotten about that. Still, none of the manufacturers went with it. It may be market pressure, and it may be stability. I guess you'll find out.:)
FWIW, I was able to get one hell of an overclock on my card, with a pretty craptastic heatsink and a thin fan. I guess given that, you probably -will- be able to run at stock speeds with a heatsink and decent airflow.
Still, don't pull off the fan until you've tried it. Unless you're running a fanless system, I'll lay odds you won't hear the GF3 fan. Assuming your design doesn't divurge much from the one I have, it's really quiet.
Every GF3 Ti200 I've seen has a fan, and needs it. It's very quiet fan (on my Siluro)...probably about 25db, and a relatively low pitch...but it is a fan. You could run it in a quiet PC without a problem, I think, but if you expect noiseless, you're out of luck. I run a quiet PC, and I'm OK with it...I can only barely hear it in the middle of my other voltage-reduced fans....but you might be pickier than I am.
You'll have to go down to a GF2 MX or TNT2 before you get a card that doesn't need a fan at all. Your 2D performance will be roughly the same as the GF3 (though the 2D quality is noticeably higher on the later nVidia cards), but 3D performance will be significantly worse.
You wouldn't think it'd make a difference, but it does. At that resolution, it's not so much jaggies as it is texture crawling and shimmering. Anti-aliasing fixes both.
There are 128MB GeForce 3 Ti200s (no clue on the Ti500). It's just not a very popular configuration. Pity, too, because you can really see the different 128MB makes on heavily textured games, like Jedi Knight 2 and EverQuest.
Hopefully the GF4s will break that trend, since 128MB is the rule there, and not the exception.
That's just not true. Anti-aliasing, in particular, depends entirely on the card's performance. I have a GF3 Ti200 and I have a GF4 Ti4600. In any given resolution, I get the pretty much the same frame rates on the latter with anti-aliasing on as I do for the former with anti-aliasing off. The apparent difference in visual quality is significant; texture crawl and edge jags pretty much disappear.
Sure, I'll be glad when games specifically target my card, but for now, I'm enjoying some particularly clean looking software. It's worth the extra money to me, and it has nothing to do with being l33t.
Slashdot Mirror
You know, "great tasteless filling" describes that commercial perfectly!
This would be the expansion that received rather mediocre reviews, and was dropped to a closeout price of $10 at the local Frys within a couple/few months of release?
I didn't run into any of the bugs the original poster did during the relatively short time it held my interest, but I did observe the critical and Usenet community quickly cool on the game. The initial press was terrific, but the game itself got pretty tedious after the first couple of islands.
I loved the UI, and generally believe in Peter Molyneux's game designs, so I'm looking forward to B&W2. I do hope you guys are actually including a game this time around though.
Except that you can trademark common words, when used in an uncommon context. For example, there is a music studio and a computer company, both with the trademark Apple in their specific contexts. You could probably get a trademark for Pie Computers, if you wanted; it's not a generic in that context (unless you're making your computers out of pie! :D)
The problem with the Microsoft trademark is that "windows" was a common word within the industry it was trademarked in. By 1993, when they registered it, X and other windowed systems had already helped popularize the term.
Perhaps you should take your nose out of the strategy aisle and check out some of the action and sim gaming coming out. Today's cutting edge games are designed to be minimally playable on 1-2 year old hardware, and to have legs for the current TOL and next-generation.
This is why we refer to them as "cutting-edge".
I was discussing this particular patent with friends a couple of weeks ago (when the story debuted in The Register).
Would it be possible for some trusted organization (EFF?) to set up a Journal of Prior Art, where you could submit ideas you wanted to give to public domain? Once a month, all the submissions would be bundled and published, with one copy sent to the Library of Congress to establish timeline. Whenever some new technology like frames came out, you could iterate over ideas and submit them. That way, when bonehead patents like these come up, you'd have at least one resource to search through to try to invalidate them. From a legal point of view, you should be safe...worse comes to worse, you get some already patented ideas in the Journal, but that's not illegal, and doesn't really decrease the usefulness of what would be there. About the only legal risk I can see if is someone managed to violate the DMCA with a tech description (decryption or the like).
The questions would be:
A) is this feasible from a resources point of view.
B) Does prior art have to be a full implementation, or can it be a description of an implementation?
And most importantly,
C) Could someone take any of the suggestions, vary one tiny detail (that one's red, this is blue), then patent that? You don't want to create a cookbook for scumsuckers!
Indeed it does. Your Tivo told it so. :D
What really sucked was that Netcom knew that the numbers had been hacked for some time before letting its customers know they'd been compromised. Apparently the FBI asked them to keep mum so that Mitnick wouldn't be tipped off, so they opted not to tell us.
While I realize that they were under pressure from law enforcement, that whole debacle contributed heavily to my decision to move to a different ISP (which was a big deal back then, when there were only a handful of viable options).
Actually, one of the credit card numbers probably was mine. I was a customer of Netcom at the time, which was one of the systems he hacked.
Kevin's actions aren't terribly defensible. However, neither were the government's.
Well, of course. When ST1 came out, people hadn't been adequately warned yet. :)
One reason is that a game that's just one of many in a genre in the Windows world stands alone more in the Linux world. If you want a commercial strategy game under Windows, you have a wealth to choose from. If you want one that runs natively under Linux, you only have a handful.
Another reason is that I'm pretty sure the porting companies pay for the right to port and resell the game. Less successful games are, no doubt, cheaper to license.
Finally, a game like Disciples 2 (which is an excellent game, btw) will likely do better among the Linux crowd than among the point-and-drool crowd. Not to be arrogant, but I think the people who are willing and able to do all the stuff one has to do to maintain a Linux box correctly are probably a little more cerebral than most.
Yeah, but it's a different situation. CDN vs. Kapes didn't involve an absolute price list (i.e. I have this foozle, I'll sell it to you for $25). Rather, it involved a "worth" list. CDN analyzed a bunch of information and came up with an estimate of wholesale price, which Kapes offset to create his retail prices. IOW, he wasn't copying facts.
They -might- be able to make a good faith argument, but I wouldn't go so far as to say "could almost surely argue".
(obDisc: IANAL)
Not that there aren't still advantages with concurrency and CPU usage for SCSI, but coasters due to buffer underrun are pretty much a thing of the past on any current burner. They have technology (BurnProof, etc.) to allow the burn to stop and start without messing up the disc.
Contacts recently got a -lot- easier to wear. The FDA approved a new breed of 30-day wear contacts earlier this year. Here's a bit of info. The new contacts let in a lot more oxygen than the older soft contacts, and have antibacterial properties to help prevent corneal infection.
I've been wearing these (PureVisions) for the last few months, and they're phenomenal. I put in new contacts on the first of each month, and most of the time I don't touch them until the first day of the next month. If they get a little uncomfortable (doesn't happen much), I might take them out and clean them, or leave them out overnight while I sleep. My optometrist examined me after a month of wearing these, and gave me the A-OK. I had some corneal pitting before from occasionally sleeping in my old (regular soft) contacts, and it was gone after a month of these. They dry out a lot less often than my old contacts, too.
Only real downside is that they aren't cheap...around $250 a year for contacts, mail-order, plus the eye appointment and (a very minimal amount of) cleaning fluid. OTOH, at $1500+ per eye for LASIK, that's not so bad after all.
I -was- thinking about LASIK or the like, but now I really don't even consider it an option. I have fifteen minutes of hassle a month in exchange for good night vision and no corneal scarring.
Geo
OTOH, one of the qualifications for LASIK is that your pupils are smaller than so-and-so size. Isn't that requirement there to ensure this problem doesn't happen?
Upgrading the firmware is totally legal. However, the firmware itself is generally illegal for you to grab and use. By and large, the CDROM manufacturers don't give out the updated firmware. They usually come from someone who has a current rev of the drive and who scans and uploads their firmware to drive-hacking sites. That's a clear copyright violation.
I don't think consoles -do- compete with PCs. In fact, as far as I know, they far outpace them when it comes to entertainment software sales and profits. PC gaming has definitely come out of its niche in the last few years, but it's no competition for the mighty Playstation.
As far as upgradability goes, doing so would eliminate the biggest advantage of a console -- a stable platform. When I buy a console game, I know just how it's going to run. Moreover, the manufacturer knows the exact platform it's running on, so they're able to use little hackish tricks to squeeze out better results. They can also ensure 100% (well, ideally) stability. If you start mixing up the platform, you lose that. No thanks.
I remember having an ATRAC player in my family's pickup back in the 70s. C'mon, Sony...innovate!
Much depends on why it is you've become hearing impaired. There are three sections of the ear, external, middle, and inner. This kind of thing would only help those with external ear problems, as it still relies on the middle ear and inner ear to pick up the sounds. As it happens, many external and middle ear problems are correctable already via surgery or other medical treatment. Folks with inner ear problems -- that is, those with neural damage -- wouldn't be helped at all, and would rely on technology such as cochlear implants.
On the other hand, I know my father (who is significantly hearing impaired) absolutely hates many aspects of his hearing aids. He has to deal with fit, visibility, feedback from the compact size that places the mic near the speaker, etc. Sounds like this sort of thing could make one heck of a stealth-device for people like him.
In the sense that it'll use your system memory via AGP, pretty much. Performance-wise, it's pretty analogous to going to HD swap from system RAM, though not quite as drastic of a performance difference.
Geo
Ugh. Attached this to the wrong post. This goes with Pointwood's second posting.
Hm. You're right, re: reference. I'd forgotten about that. Still, none of the manufacturers went with it. It may be market pressure, and it may be stability. I guess you'll find out. :)
FWIW, I was able to get one hell of an overclock on my card, with a pretty craptastic heatsink and a thin fan. I guess given that, you probably -will- be able to run at stock speeds with a heatsink and decent airflow.
Still, don't pull off the fan until you've tried it. Unless you're running a fanless system, I'll lay odds you won't hear the GF3 fan. Assuming your design doesn't divurge much from the one I have, it's really quiet.
Geo
Every GF3 Ti200 I've seen has a fan, and needs it. It's very quiet fan (on my Siluro)...probably about 25db, and a relatively low pitch...but it is a fan. You could run it in a quiet PC without a problem, I think, but if you expect noiseless, you're out of luck. I run a quiet PC, and I'm OK with it...I can only barely hear it in the middle of my other voltage-reduced fans....but you might be pickier than I am.
You'll have to go down to a GF2 MX or TNT2 before you get a card that doesn't need a fan at all. Your 2D performance will be roughly the same as the GF3 (though the 2D quality is noticeably higher on the later nVidia cards), but 3D performance will be significantly worse.
Geo
You wouldn't think it'd make a difference, but it does. At that resolution, it's not so much jaggies as it is texture crawling and shimmering. Anti-aliasing fixes both.
Geo
There are 128MB GeForce 3 Ti200s (no clue on the Ti500). It's just not a very popular configuration. Pity, too, because you can really see the different 128MB makes on heavily textured games, like Jedi Knight 2 and EverQuest.
Hopefully the GF4s will break that trend, since 128MB is the rule there, and not the exception.
Geo
That's just not true. Anti-aliasing, in particular, depends entirely on the card's performance. I have a GF3 Ti200 and I have a GF4 Ti4600. In any given resolution, I get the pretty much the same frame rates on the latter with anti-aliasing on as I do for the former with anti-aliasing off. The apparent difference in visual quality is significant; texture crawl and edge jags pretty much disappear.
Sure, I'll be glad when games specifically target my card, but for now, I'm enjoying some particularly clean looking software. It's worth the extra money to me, and it has nothing to do with being l33t.