Well, surely it has been appropriately encrypted with strong encryption and protected with a strong password. After all, those people are not completely incompetent, are they?
What would 3DRealms do if someone just went ahead and wrote / released an open source version of Duke Nukem Forever.
They would probably announce that they'll sue you soon if you don't stop this. However, the actual sue date would be shifted to the future indefinitely.:-)
One difference is that you can leave the iPod in your pocket during usage, and furthermore usage required a physical connection between the device and your ears (earphones). Both reduces the probability of losing it.
Indeed. For example, as one example of "definite" content he mentions a book which is written from the view of two people, where you have to flip the book to see the other view. Which is actually a quite crude way of switching viewpoints, but probably the best you could do with books. With an e-book reader you might be able to switch viewpoints at any paragraph. At the end of a paragraph there might be two buttons, one for each viewpoint, and depending on the button you press, you remain in the current viewpoint or switch it for the next paragraph. Indeed, the text may even be more "fluid" in that when changing viewpoints you might be given extra information (e.g. in the form of some text which has been carried over from previous paragraphs, or in the form extra text purposely written for this) which you missed by reading the other viewpoint, but which is important to understand the current paragraph in the current viewpoint. This would also make the re-reading value of the book higher, because every time you may get a slightly different text (which nevertheless tells the same story). However, it would probably drive literature scientists crazy if they want to cite from it with exact reference.:-)
The only form of "definite" product that his analysis does support is for the consumption of magazines and newspapers. These relatively disposable products are ideal fodder for a jazzy colour display though you'd have to be quite mad to want to pay for the medium of display and STILL fork out fot the product subscription!
Maybe the same model as with cell phones would work for them: Subscribe to the paper, get the reader for a reduced price, or maybe even free.
C) The readers themselves are expensive (but then, over time this will probably change) D) They are more easily damaged. E) Books never run out of battery.
First, you can own it. You just have to get the copyright owner sell you the copyright.
Second, if you steal something, you don't own it. The owner is still the one from whom you've stolen it. And that's not unique to stealing; if you rent a car, you don't own that car either. Only if you buy it, you own it.
Of course, the summary says Sony applied for a patent. So if this is correct, the patent could still get rejected. It's not yet decided if this can be patented.
Anti-matter is matter which has exactly the opposite properties from normal matter (e.g. the proton has positive charge, the antiproton has negative charge). In principle you could build stuff out of it; the problem is that in our matter world that stuff would immediately annihilate with all that matter around. Well, and that we just don't have enough antimatter to begin with:-)
Except for the anti-strange quark. Since regular matter doesn't contain strange quarks, the anti-strange quark will probably not find a partner to annihilate with, therefore it will live on until it decays into an anti-up, which then can annihilate with an up quark from ordinary matter.
This is slightly off-topic, but from all the names they could have given the damn thing, why give it a bizarre name like that? As if particle physics weren't confusing already...
From Wikipedia:
The quark flavors were given their names for a number of reasons. The up and down quarks are named after the up and down components of isospin, which they carry.[48] Strange quarks were given their name because they were discovered to be components of the strange particles discovered in cosmic rays years before the quark model was proposed; these particles were deemed "strange" because they had unusually long lifetimes.[49] Glashow, who coproposed charm quark with Bjorken, is quoted as saying, "We called our construct the 'charmed quark', for we were fascinated and pleased by the symmetry it brought to the subnuclear world."[50] The names "top" and "bottom", coined by Harari, were chosen because they are "logical partners for up and down quarks".[36][37][49] In the past, top and bottom quarks were sometimes referred to as "truth" and "beauty" respectively, but these names have mostly fallen out of use.[51]
Building a botnet isn't theft. The owners of the computers involved still have and use that computer. The botnet may be used for theft, but that's unrelated (the user may be another person than the builder). Building a botnet doesn't need to involve fraud either. It's fraud if they got people to install the stuff by making false claims about it, but it's not fraud if they managed to install it through security holes.
Imagine someone breaking into your house and installing some device. He doesn't steal anything (he even leaves something at the house), and there's definitely no fraud involved. However, the very act of breaking into your house already is forbidden by law.
Now breaking into your computer is something different to breaking into your house, which is why it needs separate laws.
Why is human civilization itself not considered "natural"? And where does this conceptual framework of human unnaturalness come from if we accept scientific, secular humanism and don't appeal to some religious magical thinking about the separated, part-divine nature of humanity?
I'd say the difference between natural and artificial is if it is caused by a conscious decision. It doesn't matter if this conscious decision was made by a human, an ape or an extraterrestrian. If a fallen tree dams a river, it's natural. If a human builds a dam, it's artificial. If a beaver builds a dam, I'm not sure. Does the beaver consciously decide to build a dam?
You only think it's unrealistic because you think the unrealistic graphics the Matrix gives you is the reality. The real reality of course looks exactly like WoW graphics.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, surely it has been appropriately encrypted with strong encryption and protected with a strong password. After all, those people are not completely incompetent, are they?
What would 3DRealms do if someone just went ahead and wrote / released an open source version of Duke Nukem Forever.
They would probably announce that they'll sue you soon if you don't stop this. However, the actual sue date would be shifted to the future indefinitely. :-)
Of course, just because presentation doesn't matter to you doesn't mean presentation doesn't matter to anyone.
Actually, I own a signed CD.
What do you expect from a person who sues his software? :-)
Copy/paste? With a printed book? :-)
I don't know what you tend to do with your books, but I usually just read them.
Of course the readers are likely to be stolen exactly because they are expensive.
One difference is that you can leave the iPod in your pocket during usage, and furthermore usage required a physical connection between the device and your ears (earphones). Both reduces the probability of losing it.
Indeed. For example, as one example of "definite" content he mentions a book which is written from the view of two people, where you have to flip the book to see the other view. Which is actually a quite crude way of switching viewpoints, but probably the best you could do with books. With an e-book reader you might be able to switch viewpoints at any paragraph. At the end of a paragraph there might be two buttons, one for each viewpoint, and depending on the button you press, you remain in the current viewpoint or switch it for the next paragraph. Indeed, the text may even be more "fluid" in that when changing viewpoints you might be given extra information (e.g. in the form of some text which has been carried over from previous paragraphs, or in the form extra text purposely written for this) which you missed by reading the other viewpoint, but which is important to understand the current paragraph in the current viewpoint. This would also make the re-reading value of the book higher, because every time you may get a slightly different text (which nevertheless tells the same story). However, it would probably drive literature scientists crazy if they want to cite from it with exact reference. :-)
Maybe the same model as with cell phones would work for them: Subscribe to the paper, get the reader for a reduced price, or maybe even free.
C) The readers themselves are expensive (but then, over time this will probably change)
D) They are more easily damaged.
E) Books never run out of battery.
Sorry, flawed logic.
First, you can own it. You just have to get the copyright owner sell you the copyright.
Second, if you steal something, you don't own it. The owner is still the one from whom you've stolen it. And that's not unique to stealing; if you rent a car, you don't own that car either. Only if you buy it, you own it.
Well, that's the question: Do they pay you for the product, or do they pay you for the work?
Of course, the summary says Sony applied for a patent. So if this is correct, the patent could still get rejected. It's not yet decided if this can be patented.
Anti-matter is matter which has exactly the opposite properties from normal matter (e.g. the proton has positive charge, the antiproton has negative charge). In principle you could build stuff out of it; the problem is that in our matter world that stuff would immediately annihilate with all that matter around. Well, and that we just don't have enough antimatter to begin with :-)
So if e.g. a vertex shader and a pixel shader are the same thing, why are they named differently?
Except for the anti-strange quark. Since regular matter doesn't contain strange quarks, the anti-strange quark will probably not find a partner to annihilate with, therefore it will live on until it decays into an anti-up, which then can annihilate with an up quark from ordinary matter.
...why is it called a "strange" quark anyways?
This is slightly off-topic, but from all the names they could have given the damn thing, why give it a bizarre name like that? As if particle physics weren't confusing already...
From Wikipedia:
The quark flavors were given their names for a number of reasons. The up and down quarks are named after the up and down components of isospin, which they carry.[48] Strange quarks were given their name because they were discovered to be components of the strange particles discovered in cosmic rays years before the quark model was proposed; these particles were deemed "strange" because they had unusually long lifetimes.[49] Glashow, who coproposed charm quark with Bjorken, is quoted as saying, "We called our construct the 'charmed quark', for we were fascinated and pleased by the symmetry it brought to the subnuclear world."[50] The names "top" and "bottom", coined by Harari, were chosen because they are "logical partners for up and down quarks".[36][37][49] In the past, top and bottom quarks were sometimes referred to as "truth" and "beauty" respectively, but these names have mostly fallen out of use.[51]
Building a botnet isn't theft. The owners of the computers involved still have and use that computer. The botnet may be used for theft, but that's unrelated (the user may be another person than the builder).
Building a botnet doesn't need to involve fraud either. It's fraud if they got people to install the stuff by making false claims about it, but it's not fraud if they managed to install it through security holes.
Imagine someone breaking into your house and installing some device. He doesn't steal anything (he even leaves something at the house), and there's definitely no fraud involved. However, the very act of breaking into your house already is forbidden by law.
Now breaking into your computer is something different to breaking into your house, which is why it needs separate laws.
How on earth could they misspell "combat ability"?
So tell me, who the hell do you have buried in the tomb of the Anonymous Soldier?
An Anonymous Coward, of course.
Let's call it an asymmetric threat situation.
I would certainly rather have a tone of British ail then a ton of American light beer
You like to listen to suffering Brits, and afterwards get drunk with American beer? Pervert! :-)
I'd say the difference between natural and artificial is if it is caused by a conscious decision. It doesn't matter if this conscious decision was made by a human, an ape or an extraterrestrian. If a fallen tree dams a river, it's natural. If a human builds a dam, it's artificial. If a beaver builds a dam, I'm not sure. Does the beaver consciously decide to build a dam?
You only think it's unrealistic because you think the unrealistic graphics the Matrix gives you is the reality. The real reality of course looks exactly like WoW graphics.