There's a critical difference; it's perfectly legal for Nintendo or a third-party who has obtained permission from Nintendo to make a sequel or other game using the Mario Bros. and the attendant characters and other properties associated with it. And, even then, it would, unless they'd been specifically remaking one of the earlier games, be a new game.
Speaking for myself, while I'm impressed with the technical work done, and with their dedication to the massive job involved, their choice to work over a pre-existing game for release rather than attempt to create a new one is a mark against them on their conceptual strengths, and, I think, somewhat against their character. I'd be less bothered with them using this project as a learning framework, which would remain unreleased, as a prelude to a real project.
My apologies. That would be a typo that crept past my proof-reading. The last sentence to the second paragraph of my previous comment should have read:
There is no way they could legally have distributed or published this project with
out Squeenix's permission.
To my knowledge, you are correct; explicitly giving permission for a property to be used by a third party without recompense does not, legally, invalidate one's rights to that property in the future.
Look, Square is required to defend, vigorously, its trademarks and copyrights. If they don't, they lose them, and that could cut into their profits significantly. Furthermore, this crosses way beyond any legitimate extrapolation of fair use. Just as translating a book into another language or re-scoring a song for another set of instruments requires the permission of the original copyright-holder, re-implementing a game down to the plot, character designs, and underlying system of mechanics is stepping past the boundaries of fair use. There is no way they could legally have distributed or published this project with Squeenix's permission.
It looks like the folks involved have talent and skill, maybe they should be working on making their own game, instead of copying somebody else's? They'd have to start from scratch in many areas, but the screenshots certainly look like they have a suitable graphics engine, and seems like a demonstration of general know-how in the area. Why shouldn't they leverage what they've learned to create a new, different game which isn't someone else's idea warmed over and regurgitated?
No, the original restrictions on the voting franchise were intended to make sure that the President was select by property owners. This was, at the time, a reasonable means for determining competence with respect to voting. Today, the electoral college helps balance the interests of larger states' cities and urban centers (such as New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others) against the interests of rural areas, which are more sparsely populated (cf. Wyoming, Montana, outlying regions of many states with very large urban centers). These two broad sets of interests correspond fairly well with Democratic and Republican strongholds, respectively. This is similar to the function filled by the US's bicameral legislature.
One hopes that this provides a greater diversity of values and ideas, which is vastly more important than diversity of ethnicity, and prevents the national government from becoming too far skewed to the needs of either particular demographic.
Like I can't find enough badly informed, half-assed political commentary in my local newspaper or at kuro5hin.org or any of an infinite number of random webfora, Slashdot has decided to start discussing politics from the perspective of those who think that (intellectual) property should be free.
I know, don't pick on the lack of grammar on Slashdot, lest ye be struck down by Great Powers On High. I just can't help but wonder if that's a minor arcanum/suit for some sort of geek tarot or playing card deck.
If this does well over the long term, I suppose I'll be looking at an n-cluster computing system in ten or fifteen years, when the technology percolates out to the masses.
That's all well and good if the movie is being written by people who know how to write, shot by people understand the camera in cinematography, acted by skilled actors, and just generally produced by trained professionals with a dedication to their craft and the skill to back it up.
I've sat through hundreds of Powerpoint presentations, most of them put on by people who were both dedicated to their craft and skilled in its practice, but with one intrinsic flaw: in not a single case was their craft the art of presentation or speaking. They were college professors (who are often excellent instructors, teachers, and quite knowledgeable about their subject, but not always excellent speakers) and middle managers, students and co-workers.
These are not people telling grand epics of breathtaking proportion to an audience yearning to be entertained and enthralled by their visual aids. Powerpoint easily affords and even encourages a lousy style of presentation and communication, by distracting the audience, by over-regimenting the content, and by substituting form for substance.
Flashiness is nice, and there are contexts where I'm sure it's appropriate (e. g. advertising). However, I don't go in to corporate meetings, and I didn't attend college lectures, so that I can, or could, be spun the charming tale of a manager and his pet project, or to have a textbook chapter split up into small bits. For the former, the public library or the nearest bookstore will have vastly more and more interesting material for the purposes of entertaining, and for the latter, I purchased the textbook once, I need not spend an hour being read off a screen what I can read off a page in the same time.
I'd have some sort of pseudo-clever, fashoinably ironic reference here, but it's been far, far too many years since I read any of the Asimov's Norby books to quote anything.
1. You can knuckle down, work your way through college, get a degree, and see what doors open up to you. 2. You can not.
Bear in mind, choice number two really isn't likely to be a bed of roses unless you're really keen on the idea of low-paying job, long, long hours and a certain lack of respect from others.
Maybe you should see if you can eliminate some unnecessary expenses. I mean, in the last three months, I've managed to demonstrate to myself that I can cover all my bills and still eat at only half the pay rate of my last job. Were it not for the car payment, I'd actually be making more on unemployment than I'm spending.
I'm pretty sure it's a service issue. If you only hand out static IPs (or primarily hand out static IPs), you're going to subject to a lot of support calls about why so-and-so's machine can't connect because they mistyped their IP address, or because somebody else mistyped their address so that the address you're looking for is already in use by the wrong person, and so on. Lots of paperwork to track allocation and all that nonsense.
Alternatively, they can click a couple of radio buttons on the same Windows dialog and everything is smooth sailing. Making static IPs an additional expense also discourages a number of twits who don't actually need one, I'd guess, and enables them to oversub things if they think it's a viable proposal (IME, a 'dynamic' IP assigned to you by the cable company is only going to change if there are major network changes, which would probably require a change in static IPs as well). It also would probably allow them to keep the folks who are going to run a webserver out of their basement from tying up the bandwidth of everyone else with the misfortune of being on the same circuit.
Hey, I only kept up one roommate once with my Model M.... Since he regularly drove me nuts (including keeping me awake at night watching movies) with *his* habits, I can't say I felt *too* bad about it.
One other thing is that that was the year I had a funny sleep schedule. I only slept about 7 nights out of every 8 (or 6 of 7? Which night it was moved), so there were nights when I just didn't sleep. It didn't really matter whether I was working on anything or not.
Were I a game developer, I have the option of supporting ATI, which produces fine performance and is easy to develop for, and nVidia, which produces find performance and is a pain to develop for.
I can see already that I would terribly unenthused about working on nVidia specific performance enhancements.
Um.... If you're doing grid computing on virtual microchips over the Internet, remind me again what you're processing and transferring data with? Or have you managed to get a net-capable port of NetBSD using an abacus, two tin cans and some string?
Just FWIW, there was a time when Pascal was the language you taught to first-year Comp Sci. students and you could find a surprising amount of employment using it in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a critical difference; it's perfectly legal for Nintendo or a third-party who has obtained permission from Nintendo to make a sequel or other game using the Mario Bros. and the attendant characters and other properties associated with it. And, even then, it would, unless they'd been specifically remaking one of the earlier games, be a new game.
Speaking for myself, while I'm impressed with the technical work done, and with their dedication to the massive job involved, their choice to work over a pre-existing game for release rather than attempt to create a new one is a mark against them on their conceptual strengths, and, I think, somewhat against their character. I'd be less bothered with them using this project as a learning framework, which would remain unreleased, as a prelude to a real project.
Perhaps they'll go that direction now.
Disclaimer: IANAL, but...
Look, Square is required to defend, vigorously, its trademarks and copyrights. If they don't, they lose them, and that could cut into their profits significantly. Furthermore, this crosses way beyond any legitimate extrapolation of fair use. Just as translating a book into another language or re-scoring a song for another set of instruments requires the permission of the original copyright-holder, re-implementing a game down to the plot, character designs, and underlying system of mechanics is stepping past the boundaries of fair use. There is no way they could legally have distributed or published this project with Squeenix's permission.
It looks like the folks involved have talent and skill, maybe they should be working on making their own game, instead of copying somebody else's? They'd have to start from scratch in many areas, but the screenshots certainly look like they have a suitable graphics engine, and seems like a demonstration of general know-how in the area. Why shouldn't they leverage what they've learned to create a new, different game which isn't someone else's idea warmed over and regurgitated?
No, the original restrictions on the voting franchise were intended to make sure that the President was select by property owners. This was, at the time, a reasonable means for determining competence with respect to voting. Today, the electoral college helps balance the interests of larger states' cities and urban centers (such as New York City, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others) against the interests of rural areas, which are more sparsely populated (cf. Wyoming, Montana, outlying regions of many states with very large urban centers). These two broad sets of interests correspond fairly well with Democratic and Republican strongholds, respectively. This is similar to the function filled by the US's bicameral legislature.
One hopes that this provides a greater diversity of values and ideas, which is vastly more important than diversity of ethnicity, and prevents the national government from becoming too far skewed to the needs of either particular demographic.
Perhaps you're a good match for the Libertarian National Socialist Green Party?
I'm joking about that. I hope those guys are, too.
Adding to the Political Compass is skewed noise: I think President Bush's administration is, policy-wise, not as conservative as I'd like.
The Compass sets me to the left of Jacque Chirac.
Like I can't find enough badly informed, half-assed political commentary in my local newspaper or at kuro5hin.org or any of an infinite number of random webfora, Slashdot has decided to start discussing politics from the perspective of those who think that (intellectual) property should be free.
Off to add a section to the don't display list.
I know, don't pick on the lack of grammar on Slashdot, lest ye be struck down by Great Powers On High. I just can't help but wonder if that's a minor arcanum/suit for some sort of geek tarot or playing card deck.
If this does well over the long term, I suppose I'll be looking at an n-cluster computing system in ten or fifteen years, when the technology percolates out to the masses.
Best wait for the decision on the appeal before breaking out the champagne, then.
That's all well and good if the movie is being written by people who know how to write, shot by people understand the camera in cinematography, acted by skilled actors, and just generally produced by trained professionals with a dedication to their craft and the skill to back it up.
I've sat through hundreds of Powerpoint presentations, most of them put on by people who were both dedicated to their craft and skilled in its practice, but with one intrinsic flaw: in not a single case was their craft the art of presentation or speaking. They were college professors (who are often excellent instructors, teachers, and quite knowledgeable about their subject, but not always excellent speakers) and middle managers, students and co-workers.
These are not people telling grand epics of breathtaking proportion to an audience yearning to be entertained and enthralled by their visual aids. Powerpoint easily affords and even encourages a lousy style of presentation and communication, by distracting the audience, by over-regimenting the content, and by substituting form for substance.
Flashiness is nice, and there are contexts where I'm sure it's appropriate (e. g. advertising). However, I don't go in to corporate meetings, and I didn't attend college lectures, so that I can, or could, be spun the charming tale of a manager and his pet project, or to have a textbook chapter split up into small bits. For the former, the public library or the nearest bookstore will have vastly more and more interesting material for the purposes of entertaining, and for the latter, I purchased the textbook once, I need not spend an hour being read off a screen what I can read off a page in the same time.
I'd have some sort of pseudo-clever, fashoinably ironic reference here, but it's been far, far too many years since I read any of the Asimov's Norby books to quote anything.
1. You can knuckle down, work your way through college, get a degree, and see what doors open up to you.
2. You can not.
Bear in mind, choice number two really isn't likely to be a bed of roses unless you're really keen on the idea of low-paying job, long, long hours and a certain lack of respect from others.
Maybe you should see if you can eliminate some unnecessary expenses. I mean, in the last three months, I've managed to demonstrate to myself that I can cover all my bills and still eat at only half the pay rate of my last job. Were it not for the car payment, I'd actually be making more on unemployment than I'm spending.
I'm pretty sure it's a service issue. If you only hand out static IPs (or primarily hand out static IPs), you're going to subject to a lot of support calls about why so-and-so's machine can't connect because they mistyped their IP address, or because somebody else mistyped their address so that the address you're looking for is already in use by the wrong person, and so on. Lots of paperwork to track allocation and all that nonsense.
Alternatively, they can click a couple of radio buttons on the same Windows dialog and everything is smooth sailing. Making static IPs an additional expense also discourages a number of twits who don't actually need one, I'd guess, and enables them to oversub things if they think it's a viable proposal (IME, a 'dynamic' IP assigned to you by the cable company is only going to change if there are major network changes, which would probably require a change in static IPs as well). It also would probably allow them to keep the folks who are going to run a webserver out of their basement from tying up the bandwidth of everyone else with the misfortune of being on the same circuit.
Decompression support expected in next WinZip release.
Hey, I only kept up one roommate once with my Model M. ... Since he regularly drove me nuts (including keeping me awake at night watching movies) with *his* habits, I can't say I felt *too* bad about it.
One other thing is that that was the year I had a funny sleep schedule. I only slept about 7 nights out of every 8 (or 6 of 7? Which night it was moved), so there were nights when I just didn't sleep. It didn't really matter whether I was working on anything or not.
Were I a game developer, I have the option of supporting ATI, which produces fine performance and is easy to develop for, and nVidia, which produces find performance and is a pain to develop for.
I can see already that I would terribly unenthused about working on nVidia specific performance enhancements.
Um .... If you're doing grid computing on virtual microchips over the Internet, remind me again what you're processing and transferring data with? Or have you managed to get a net-capable port of NetBSD using an abacus, two tin cans and some string?
Sir, that is the funniest thing I have read all day. Bravo on your excellent grasp of pointers, references, and the languages of C++ and Java.
Just FWIW, there was a time when Pascal was the language you taught to first-year Comp Sci. students and you could find a surprising amount of employment using it in the real world.
Note where Pascal sits now.
No, not especially.
*sigh*
100% pure water does not exist. You can't make it; the stuff dissociates, at very low levels, into impurities (H-, OH+) even when by itself.
So it will conduct. It just won't conduct a whole lot.
In my local newspaper, I think.