User: usiems

An amusing consequence - Aliens on earth

On: Fair IP Laws?

I always had problems this the term "intellectual property". How can you own ideas? That's as if one could own the air.

Imagine what could happen if aliens contacted the earth and these aliens were so advanced and old, that they had invented everything we could dream of, and more. Would these "prior art" invalidate every patent on earth? Perhaps this would not happen, but what about the new technology? What if this aliens would share their knowledge with us. Would this knowledge be patented? By whom? By the aliens? What would happen if they demanded ridiculous fees for their patents? Remember, they have invented everything! And if this aliens were not allowed to patent their technology, who would do this for them? Their (human) lawyers? A straw firm? The aliens could wreak havoc on human development just by using their patent rights.

I must admit, I find this thoughts quite funny.

If it needs water cooling...

On: Hitachi Demos Water-Cooled Notebooks

...it consumes way too much power. Come on, this is a laptop, it is supposed to run of a battery.

A technical solution to Blizzard's problem

On: Blizzard, Bnetd Respond on Bnetd Shutdown

Blizzard could have avoided all this hazzle if they had thought a little bit in advance. If the client would check the identity of the server with a challenge-response algorithm (send a random string to the server, let the server encode it with a secret key, the client decodes the result with a public key and checks if it is still the same) nobody would have been able to write a server replacement in the first place... well, as long as the secrect key stays secret.

Sueing somebody for their own technical inability is lame.