To continue your chicken soup analogy, it would be like Campbell's patenting putting chicken soup in a can, and sending it to grocery stores, where, once consumers buy a can, the grocery store receives another to replace it, which someone else can then purchase.
Seems like there is a lot of prior art on this one. It's called shopping. Software that tracks and manages transactions should not be patentable. Copywritten? Sure. That way, Blockbuster can't just take their exact code for handling movie lists and the web site that allows to take orders and use it as their own, but a patent? Come on, no way.
You know, the real irony here is that while Blizzard won't allow players to 'bot' their way through the game, the only responses you get from them are bots. Standard form letters that are automatically activated when you contact them.
There should be a Player TOS that the company agrees to before selling their games. It would read like so:
17. In the event you, the player, are ever in need of technical assistance, customer support, account maintenance, or in the event you are banned from the game and your account closed, you have the right to expect that a human Blizzard employee will examine your situation and respond without the use of bots, form letters, or automated responses to make certain that your situation is fully resolved. Furthermore, while the resolution may not always be to your liking, the details will be explained in full using simple, standard language showing the logic we used to make our decisions. Once we have made every effort to explain our decisions, if you still feel that Blizzard has errored in some way, you will have one appeal effort to escalate your situation. This will mean that a team of three Blizzard employees will examine your case in full, reaching a decision. You will only be notified that either Blizzard's previous decision has been upheld, or that there is sufficient evidence to reverse the previous Blizzard decision.
Some good points about WoW have been made already. But, there is one reason and one reason only that WoW is huge: no pre-released, rush-to-meet-it launch deadline. And as far as I know, Blizzard has never done this. What do they do instead? They say "It'll be out when it is done. Not a day before." This attitude is what makes their games so fun. They actually make it good before they release it.
Now some will argue that WoW was far from "done" when they released it, but that would be an asinine statement. All MMORPG's go through an initial struggle at launch because that is the first time real players, not the beta testers, get involved, and with millions more people checking it out, the glitches are bound to show up.
But, I played WoW in beta, and am still playing it today, and while I do not agree with every change, or even necessarily their pace for patches and updates, I am quite satisfied with the game and happy to pay for it.
Come on, here at my small university we have a homegrown black hole. We have a guy here, last name Black and we occasionally play basketball on our lunch breaks. Whenever we pass the ball to him, we never see it again. Nickname: The Black Hole.
We have been studying this phenomena for some time now. The one strange part is, when we pass the ball to him, it can often be seen immediately being repelled in an upward arch towards some unknown destination. We usually call this The Ill-Advised Shot.
He is using the term "mastubatory" to reflect doing something strictly to satisfy oneself. Hence, the reason I said he buys shares in companies he disagrees with, so he can go to their meetings and hear himself talk, which is completely self-satsifying and definitely masturbatory, in my view. Thanks for playing.
Exactly. Can you say Conflict of Interest, Johnny? Of course you can. But, buying stock in companies you despise so you can have meetings with their shareholders and hear yourself speak is a mastubatory activity. Those that engage in such should close their mouths and get a real life. Like the ones gamers have, preferably.
I'm afraid acting alone won't do it. We need real, live, drooling stupid people. Now, where can we find a bunch of them right away, and get them all green cards?
My concern with any kind of computer or technology being used as any kind of evidence is this: prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was sitting at that keyboard and computer and performed whatever searches you claim. Unless there is video of me sitting there, and it shows the screen as well, how can anyone prove that I was the one who did the searches.
Unless you have a computer that is physically off-limits to anyone else in the world, I don't see how this can easily be proven. Even if I logged into to some account, that doesn't prove I was there doing it. For example, my browser remembers my name and password for several accounts. Anyone else could sit down and my computer and log into those accounts.
So, whose to say someone isn't trying to frame me by entering my home and using my computer to make 'questionable' searches? For that matter, who's to say someone couldn't have remoted in to my computer and performed those searches.
Amazing how few and far between anything resembling a positive comment is on this topic.
My school has been using BB for several years now, and we are actually considering paying the money to upgrade to the Enterprise version. I think I need to forward this/. story on to those that pay the bills.
My experiences:
No batch delete courses - (we found this out the hard way)
No sharing of content across courses
Glitches abound: everything from instructor's Enroll User buttons being grayed out to the occasional "Access Denied" errors when students and/or instructors try to access a course
Our support team hardcoded a URL into the system which prevented any of our Virtual Classroom options from working...and they figured it out after an entire year had passed
To get this line back on topic: I guess by this CEO's standards, Hillary should be held responsible for Mr. Clinton's "activities" in the Oval Orifice because her "end-to-end" solutions in the White House bedroom weren't getting the job done.
Yeah, it's Hillary's fault. She compromised our nation's security with her inadequacies in bed, which led to Mr. Bill putting 'the hunt for Al Qaeda' on hold for a few minutes.
The university presses depend on books sales and other licensing agreements for most of their revenue, making copyright protections essential to their survival.
For the sake of open information and a climate of "I want information now so make it available electronically and let me search for it", some businesses and business model might have to go the way of the dodo. So be it.
I just wish the RIAA and MPAA were already extinct.
However, I think we should be able to agree that the movie industry has always generated the most money of any other medium. Hence, my comment about how video games are now the largest selling form of entertainment. And if you find proof otherwise, great, but I will lay odds that if video games are not at the very top now, they will be within the next few years.
I hope they send a very clear message to Illinios politicos that video games are very much an art form and worthy of comparison to movies, literature, and photography. Hell, video games are outselling every other medium out there these days.
So, I really hope that all gaming company execs will take a few minutes today to send an email to these boneheads in Illinois.
For one, I don't believe that anyone should ever face jail time if they haven't directly profited from a copyright infraction. So, placing a file in a shared folder where someone else might be able to download gains that user nothing. If they aren't charging for it, aren't re-distributing it in some fashion to make money, then the most they should ever have to face is a fine. And that needs to be proportionate to the crime.
Secondly, how do we stop this? Even if every American sat up and took notice and said, "Well, screw them, I am not going to any more movies, and I am not buying anymore CD's", then sales would fall, and the lecherous MPAA and RIAA would use that as an excuse to make penalities and laws worse. "Look, our sales are way down because of all the file-sharing."
Just because newspapers might all move to an online pay service doesn't mean the average joe won't still get his news for free.
For example, Fox News and CNN already offer free news on television and on their web sites. When/If the newspapers go this route, they will be pulling up the covers as they lie down in their bed of irrelevance.
It seems to me that another thing they have done is to create Soulbound items. I could be wrong, but many of the nicer items are bound to you once you equip them. So, if they change that to automatically bound as soon as you receive an item, the only thing you can do with it is sell it to a vendor.
So, the only really valuable thing worth selling would be the in-game money. Boring.
Guys, do we really ned bittorrent for this small file? Yes, I know the link isn't working very well, but it is just an ftp. Just login anonymously to their ftp server, and you can find the file no problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, that is funny. I must be so used to ignoring ads that I don't even recognize them anymore. I never once saw those ads in Foxit. :)
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Seems like there is a lot of prior art on this one. It's called shopping. Software that tracks and manages transactions should not be patentable. Copywritten? Sure. That way, Blockbuster can't just take their exact code for handling movie lists and the web site that allows to take orders and use it as their own, but a patent? Come on, no way.
There should be a Player TOS that the company agrees to before selling their games. It would read like so:
17. In the event you, the player, are ever in need of technical assistance, customer support, account maintenance, or in the event you are banned from the game and your account closed, you have the right to expect that a human Blizzard employee will examine your situation and respond without the use of bots, form letters, or automated responses to make certain that your situation is fully resolved. Furthermore, while the resolution may not always be to your liking, the details will be explained in full using simple, standard language showing the logic we used to make our decisions. Once we have made every effort to explain our decisions, if you still feel that Blizzard has errored in some way, you will have one appeal effort to escalate your situation. This will mean that a team of three Blizzard employees will examine your case in full, reaching a decision. You will only be notified that either Blizzard's previous decision has been upheld, or that there is sufficient evidence to reverse the previous Blizzard decision.
Now some will argue that WoW was far from "done" when they released it, but that would be an asinine statement. All MMORPG's go through an initial struggle at launch because that is the first time real players, not the beta testers, get involved, and with millions more people checking it out, the glitches are bound to show up.
But, I played WoW in beta, and am still playing it today, and while I do not agree with every change, or even necessarily their pace for patches and updates, I am quite satisfied with the game and happy to pay for it.
Come on, here at my small university we have a homegrown black hole. We have a guy here, last name Black and we occasionally play basketball on our lunch breaks. Whenever we pass the ball to him, we never see it again. Nickname: The Black Hole. We have been studying this phenomena for some time now. The one strange part is, when we pass the ball to him, it can often be seen immediately being repelled in an upward arch towards some unknown destination. We usually call this The Ill-Advised Shot.
So, you disagree that talking just to hear one's own voice is a self-satisfying behavior?
He is using the term "mastubatory" to reflect doing something strictly to satisfy oneself. Hence, the reason I said he buys shares in companies he disagrees with, so he can go to their meetings and hear himself talk, which is completely self-satsifying and definitely masturbatory, in my view. Thanks for playing.
Exactly. Can you say Conflict of Interest, Johnny? Of course you can. But, buying stock in companies you despise so you can have meetings with their shareholders and hear yourself speak is a mastubatory activity. Those that engage in such should close their mouths and get a real life. Like the ones gamers have, preferably.
Unscreened is likely right. But, it will still be voted for even by those unscreeners just because of the media hype. Am I right, or am I right?
I'm afraid acting alone won't do it. We need real, live, drooling stupid people. Now, where can we find a bunch of them right away, and get them all green cards?
Now just what does the size of their posterior have to do with anything? I swear, you /. geeks track the strangest demographics.
Unless you have a computer that is physically off-limits to anyone else in the world, I don't see how this can easily be proven. Even if I logged into to some account, that doesn't prove I was there doing it. For example, my browser remembers my name and password for several accounts. Anyone else could sit down and my computer and log into those accounts.
So, whose to say someone isn't trying to frame me by entering my home and using my computer to make 'questionable' searches? For that matter, who's to say someone couldn't have remoted in to my computer and performed those searches.
...Expect Useless Lawsuit Anytime...
Is the snapshot tool available in the Basic Edition of BB? I guess I need to do some research on it, if it is. Hmm...where to start? :)
My school has been using BB for several years now, and we are actually considering paying the money to upgrade to the Enterprise version. I think I need to forward this /. story on to those that pay the bills.
My experiences:
Yeah, it's Hillary's fault. She compromised our nation's security with her inadequacies in bed, which led to Mr. Bill putting 'the hunt for Al Qaeda' on hold for a few minutes.
For the sake of open information and a climate of "I want information now so make it available electronically and let me search for it", some businesses and business model might have to go the way of the dodo. So be it.
I just wish the RIAA and MPAA were already extinct.
to this one: http://retailindustry.about.com/b/a/170809.htm. Sorry, I can't provide sources for the authors of these articles.
However, I think we should be able to agree that the movie industry has always generated the most money of any other medium. Hence, my comment about how video games are now the largest selling form of entertainment. And if you find proof otherwise, great, but I will lay odds that if video games are not at the very top now, they will be within the next few years.
I hope they send a very clear message to Illinios politicos that video games are very much an art form and worthy of comparison to movies, literature, and photography. Hell, video games are outselling every other medium out there these days.
So, I really hope that all gaming company execs will take a few minutes today to send an email to these boneheads in Illinois.
For one, I don't believe that anyone should ever face jail time if they haven't directly profited from a copyright infraction. So, placing a file in a shared folder where someone else might be able to download gains that user nothing. If they aren't charging for it, aren't re-distributing it in some fashion to make money, then the most they should ever have to face is a fine. And that needs to be proportionate to the crime.
Secondly, how do we stop this? Even if every American sat up and took notice and said, "Well, screw them, I am not going to any more movies, and I am not buying anymore CD's", then sales would fall, and the lecherous MPAA and RIAA would use that as an excuse to make penalities and laws worse. "Look, our sales are way down because of all the file-sharing."
Just because newspapers might all move to an online pay service doesn't mean the average joe won't still get his news for free.
For example, Fox News and CNN already offer free news on television and on their web sites. When/If the newspapers go this route, they will be pulling up the covers as they lie down in their bed of irrelevance.
So, the only really valuable thing worth selling would be the in-game money. Boring.
Guys, do we really ned bittorrent for this small file? Yes, I know the link isn't working very well, but it is just an ftp. Just login anonymously to their ftp server, and you can find the file no problem.
Here is his post.