There is no way to create an effective used marketplace without onerous DRM. We're better off preventing resale and making sure that selling unencumbered files is a practical option for copyright holders.
Why is it that these tight corporate tie-ins are permitted for education? I certainly would hope that the schools wouldn't allow "Luke Skywalker and Belle teach American History", so why is the equivalent permitted for CS? Is it the fact that this is a "new" educational subject, where they're seizing the uncharted void of curriculum to get us warmed up to the idea?
Smashing with a rock looks suspicious, and almost anyone that sees you do it will call the police. If you've got a fully-wired home, and an attacker compromises it, they can find out exactly when you're not home (from automated lights and climate control settings), unlock the door, and walk out with whatever high-value items they think they can get away with.
I'm not sure I understand your first point. Lego sells interesting models, and the pieces necessary to build them. For castles, this means a lot of blocks that are rectangular, and some special ones for things like gargoyles and drawbridge winches. For spaceships, this means a lot of angles and greebly-bits that you can make look like engines and weapons and exhaust ports. There's not some sort of "trick" where Lego is forcing you to buy high-margin specialty pieces; people want those pieces because they let you make things that look better. And, sure, if you try to take the pieces from a castle and make a spaceship, you'll end up with a blocky-looking spaceship. But I fail to see how providing the option of sleek pieces (which you could also use to make a sleek, elven-looking castle?) somehow degrades the experience. There are very few pieces in modern Lego sets that are genuinely single-purpose; a spaceship control surface could easily be an angel wing, a ship's rudder, or the fairing of a racecar.
Minecraft supplements, not replaces, Lego in the minds of creative kids. Minecraft is neat, and it lets you do a lot, but there's something special about being physically engaged with what you're building. You can't take your Minecraft creation out back to play by the stream (unless you recreate it with Legos?).
There was a time when this was true, but not so much within the past ~5 years. Can you give me a definition of what you'd call an "ordinary" brick, and what percentage of a set needs to be ordinary bricks (it's easier by piece count, but I suppose a by-volume comparison could be made) before you can classify it as general purpose? Or is there some other definition you'd prefer? Whatever it is, please make it quantitative; there are plenty of meticulously-maintained online resources we can use to determine exactly how many bricks of what types are in pretty much every Lego set ever made.
All sets produced via LEGO Ideas are limited edition. Though in truth, all sets are; you'll find great difficulty getting just sets older than a year, perhaps a year and a half, from the primary market.
The trailer appears to show the people on Earth forced to work for scraps in factories (presumably making things the people on the station want), with order being enforced by autonomous/remotely-controlled humanoid drones.
It's neither; it's factually inaccurate. GOES-R is alive and well, and likely to deliver on schedule (launch and operations in the 2015-2017 timeframe). The reason the article listed the expectated lifetime of the satellite was 2015 is that it should be replaced around then.
Factually incorrect. Project organizers have a legal obligation to deliver what they promise, or refund the money. I recall at least one case where the organizer did not deliver, and was successfully sued and forced to declare bankruptcy.
Five years from now, just two categories of game will be made: Multi-player for consoles, solo (with multi-player functionality) for mobile devices.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "gaming by the numbers" studios and publishers move that way. But I can guarantee that the people pouring millions of dollars into independent Kickstarter and greenlight games, and getting DRM-free software written by devs who care in return, will still be doing it in five years.
Sure, but I think that's a grave mistake. Certainly, no console game can match the depth of the very deepest PC games, but there are still plenty of games that require strategy, knowledge, and reflex to complete (or be competitively successful). People aren't popping out a few minutes of Halo IV on the train to work.
Casual games are the biggest market in the same sense that Lego is the biggest tire manufacturer. Based on some quick googling, it looks like the casual game industry has revenues of about $3 billion, versus $78 billion for the video game industry as a whole.
You speak of the ultimate end, I spoke of the local mechanical one. Both are correct; patents are intended to allow you to profit, in the hopes that the profit motive will drive innovation.
Hm, serves me right for assuming the patent linked in the summary was the one the lawsuit was actually about. It appears that the one linked to has no actual relation, based on looking at the demand letter.
I think you may be misunderstanding GPP. It was a simple (somewhat pedantic) statement about how the traditional definition of a patent troll is someone that doesn't have a product. Since they have products, they're not a patent troll.
It's possible you're right. Inuitively, one would think that removing a possible incentive for spending a lot of money in R&D would reduce money spent there (which, in general, probably reduces results). There are things in this world that it takes a lot of money to find out. Generally, that means a profit motive (which might not exist if you can't necessarily capitalize on your own discoveries), or government funding (which makes sense for things like medical research, but not necessarily for things that are less essential, like consumer luxuries). I really don't think that if you remove that motivation, the amount of results would be the same. But if you happen to have any hard evidence (both of us are making claims derived from reasoning and extrapolation), I'd be interested to see it.
The purpose of patents is to ensure that people can spend a lot of money on research, with some kind of general guarantee that it can pay off for them. Making support struts thinner at the point of contact doesn't really strike me as something that resulted from a protracted compaign of research, but rather an isolated flash of insight.
Those flashes of insight aren't irrelevant; they're important to making things move forward. But they don't need to be patented; people will have them anyway. In order to encourage the progress of science and the useful arts, I think one really only needs to protect the things that require a great deal of effort to discover.
No, it's not. Every single one of those satellites is visible, maybe with some near IR. I couldn't see a single one that can observe wavelengths longer than 1 um. That makes sense for commercial satellites, but it's not even close to sufficient for climate science.
I agree to a certain extent; we need to be careful what we portray as normal, because people will see it that way if it approaches saturation. But I feel the particular act in Ender's game we're talking about really wasn't seen that way. It wasn't something that happened regularly at Battle School, and I seem to recall it being very clear that Ender had done something wrong, and there were very particular reasons as to why he wasn't being punished (though my memory of the book is getting rather old).
Card is certainly unsavory, but I am curious why you think it shouldn't be promoted as a young adult book. Many of those books involve violence, often without consequences (e.g The Lottery short story). I personally think that scene makes a great discussion point; people should understand why Ender wasn't punished, and that could frame an interesting ethical discussion. I think the target audience for Ender's Game is old enough that they can understand that not everything that happens (in a book or reality) is just.
No, they're not. But there's no reason to suspect they can do more damage here than disposing many of the other nasty, non-nuclear things that need to be cleaned up.
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There is no way to create an effective used marketplace without onerous DRM. We're better off preventing resale and making sure that selling unencumbered files is a practical option for copyright holders.
Why is it that these tight corporate tie-ins are permitted for education? I certainly would hope that the schools wouldn't allow "Luke Skywalker and Belle teach American History", so why is the equivalent permitted for CS? Is it the fact that this is a "new" educational subject, where they're seizing the uncharted void of curriculum to get us warmed up to the idea?
Smashing with a rock looks suspicious, and almost anyone that sees you do it will call the police. If you've got a fully-wired home, and an attacker compromises it, they can find out exactly when you're not home (from automated lights and climate control settings), unlock the door, and walk out with whatever high-value items they think they can get away with.
I'm not sure I understand your first point. Lego sells interesting models, and the pieces necessary to build them. For castles, this means a lot of blocks that are rectangular, and some special ones for things like gargoyles and drawbridge winches. For spaceships, this means a lot of angles and greebly-bits that you can make look like engines and weapons and exhaust ports. There's not some sort of "trick" where Lego is forcing you to buy high-margin specialty pieces; people want those pieces because they let you make things that look better. And, sure, if you try to take the pieces from a castle and make a spaceship, you'll end up with a blocky-looking spaceship. But I fail to see how providing the option of sleek pieces (which you could also use to make a sleek, elven-looking castle?) somehow degrades the experience. There are very few pieces in modern Lego sets that are genuinely single-purpose; a spaceship control surface could easily be an angel wing, a ship's rudder, or the fairing of a racecar.
Minecraft supplements, not replaces, Lego in the minds of creative kids. Minecraft is neat, and it lets you do a lot, but there's something special about being physically engaged with what you're building. You can't take your Minecraft creation out back to play by the stream (unless you recreate it with Legos?).
There was a time when this was true, but not so much within the past ~5 years. Can you give me a definition of what you'd call an "ordinary" brick, and what percentage of a set needs to be ordinary bricks (it's easier by piece count, but I suppose a by-volume comparison could be made) before you can classify it as general purpose? Or is there some other definition you'd prefer? Whatever it is, please make it quantitative; there are plenty of meticulously-maintained online resources we can use to determine exactly how many bricks of what types are in pretty much every Lego set ever made.
All sets produced via LEGO Ideas are limited edition. Though in truth, all sets are; you'll find great difficulty getting just sets older than a year, perhaps a year and a half, from the primary market.
The trailer appears to show the people on Earth forced to work for scraps in factories (presumably making things the people on the station want), with order being enforced by autonomous/remotely-controlled humanoid drones.
It's neither; it's factually inaccurate. GOES-R is alive and well, and likely to deliver on schedule (launch and operations in the 2015-2017 timeframe). The reason the article listed the expectated lifetime of the satellite was 2015 is that it should be replaced around then.
Factually incorrect. Project organizers have a legal obligation to deliver what they promise, or refund the money. I recall at least one case where the organizer did not deliver, and was successfully sued and forced to declare bankruptcy.
Five years from now, just two categories of game will be made: Multi-player for consoles, solo (with multi-player functionality) for mobile devices.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "gaming by the numbers" studios and publishers move that way. But I can guarantee that the people pouring millions of dollars into independent Kickstarter and greenlight games, and getting DRM-free software written by devs who care in return, will still be doing it in five years.
Prosecutors have discretion. They are not required to prioritize every case and put forward the largest number of possible charges.
What would you recommend?
Sure, but I think that's a grave mistake. Certainly, no console game can match the depth of the very deepest PC games, but there are still plenty of games that require strategy, knowledge, and reflex to complete (or be competitively successful). People aren't popping out a few minutes of Halo IV on the train to work.
Casual games are the biggest market in the same sense that Lego is the biggest tire manufacturer. Based on some quick googling, it looks like the casual game industry has revenues of about $3 billion, versus $78 billion for the video game industry as a whole.
You speak of the ultimate end, I spoke of the local mechanical one. Both are correct; patents are intended to allow you to profit, in the hopes that the profit motive will drive innovation.
This is the correct link for the patent at issue: http://www.google.com/patents/US5597520
Hm, serves me right for assuming the patent linked in the summary was the one the lawsuit was actually about. It appears that the one linked to has no actual relation, based on looking at the demand letter.
I think you may be misunderstanding GPP. It was a simple (somewhat pedantic) statement about how the traditional definition of a patent troll is someone that doesn't have a product. Since they have products, they're not a patent troll.
It's possible you're right. Inuitively, one would think that removing a possible incentive for spending a lot of money in R&D would reduce money spent there (which, in general, probably reduces results). There are things in this world that it takes a lot of money to find out. Generally, that means a profit motive (which might not exist if you can't necessarily capitalize on your own discoveries), or government funding (which makes sense for things like medical research, but not necessarily for things that are less essential, like consumer luxuries). I really don't think that if you remove that motivation, the amount of results would be the same. But if you happen to have any hard evidence (both of us are making claims derived from reasoning and extrapolation), I'd be interested to see it.
The purpose of patents is to ensure that people can spend a lot of money on research, with some kind of general guarantee that it can pay off for them. Making support struts thinner at the point of contact doesn't really strike me as something that resulted from a protracted compaign of research, but rather an isolated flash of insight. Those flashes of insight aren't irrelevant; they're important to making things move forward. But they don't need to be patented; people will have them anyway. In order to encourage the progress of science and the useful arts, I think one really only needs to protect the things that require a great deal of effort to discover.
No, it's not. Every single one of those satellites is visible, maybe with some near IR. I couldn't see a single one that can observe wavelengths longer than 1 um. That makes sense for commercial satellites, but it's not even close to sufficient for climate science.
I agree to a certain extent; we need to be careful what we portray as normal, because people will see it that way if it approaches saturation. But I feel the particular act in Ender's game we're talking about really wasn't seen that way. It wasn't something that happened regularly at Battle School, and I seem to recall it being very clear that Ender had done something wrong, and there were very particular reasons as to why he wasn't being punished (though my memory of the book is getting rather old).
Card is certainly unsavory, but I am curious why you think it shouldn't be promoted as a young adult book. Many of those books involve violence, often without consequences (e.g The Lottery short story). I personally think that scene makes a great discussion point; people should understand why Ender wasn't punished, and that could frame an interesting ethical discussion. I think the target audience for Ender's Game is old enough that they can understand that not everything that happens (in a book or reality) is just.
No, they're not. But there's no reason to suspect they can do more damage here than disposing many of the other nasty, non-nuclear things that need to be cleaned up.
Just like the recycling industry, eh?