That kind of measure seems clever, but if unpublicized and subtle, it will make the program appear buggy. They need to make it very clear you've got a playable demo on your hands, rather than a buggy full version. Playable demos sell games. Buggy full versions put people off.
I find the fact that you're 49 year old grandmother to mean that you either got pregnant in school, or your daughter did, maybe one of you should have been taught about safe sex, or you're just lying about your age, a common trait among women. Face it you're old.
Older than you seem to think. It is possible to have graduated from university by the time you're 24. Still too young for kids if you ask me, but it's not all that uncommon, nor nearly as irresponsible as you suggest it is.
Just do a survey of 10000 grandmothers, how many will be "programmer of 20 years, assembly and C". If Apple targeted people like you they'd go out of business.
I think it's time to use great-grandmothers as the stereotype now. While my mother (a 63 year old grandmother) isn't a programmer, she did learn (and forgot) Pascal and Prolog long ago. And she's married to a programmer of 40 years. I have a friend who's mother is both a programmer and a grandmother.
The demographic of programming grandparents is growing rapidly, because second generation nerds are having kids now.
Interesting. (And your post deserves to be modded up as such.)
I don't notice much difference between iPhone and Android, but as you say, I'm pretty tech-savvy compared to the average user. I admit I can see a few minor differences that might make a lot if difference to some people. The Android Market just isn't terribly friendly, in my experience. Not that iPhone's App Store makes it easy to find stuff, but maybe it's just enough of a difference to matter. More importantly, though: when you install a new app, it shows up on your home screen immediately. Not on Android; there, the home screens clearly provide shortcuts to the much larger range of apps in the app folder. And that extra step might make others wonder where their new app went.
Email? I have trouble believing that iPhone email is really easier. I certainly never liked it. But in general, I see what you mean. Android is really easy for people who know how computers work. The iPhone is easy even for people who don't.
In the gaming industry when talking about IP it's a reference to the combined constituent parts of the game
The thing is, the industry doesn't make law. If they call something IP, that doesn't automatically make it legally protected. The only thing that matters is what is legally protected, and that's copyright and trademarks.
You don't copyright constituent parts individually, you copyright the work as a whole.
And that protects that work from direct copying. But it doesn't protect the idea behind that work against reimplementation using different art, different code, and different names.
Because in the end, the only things that are legally protected are the art and the code (through copyright) and the names (as trademarks). Ideas aren't copyrightable. Some people consider them patentable, but it's highly debatable whether they really are and should be. And I don't think computer game concepts tend to be patented.
Trademarks protect against use of say, "Sonic the Hedgehog" in a 3rd party game created without permission, even if that game is nothing like any of the existing Sonic games. A copyright case would not be sufficient here because not enough IP from an existing Sonic game has been copied.
You still sound a bit confused here. Names aren't copyrightable at all. The entire idea behind trademarks is to protect customers against fakes. A third party can't use "Sonic the Hedgehog" because that name might lead customers to believe it's a real Sonic game from the original makers/owners of Sonic.
In trademark cases (in my country at least), judges tend to look at whether it's confusing to the customer. Whether they are likely to confuse the alleged violating product with the original. If that's not the case, it's not a trademark violation.
Industry lawyers do often try to confuse this issue, claiming copyright and trademark are related and throwing a lot more in there under the name "IP", but that doesn't make it law.
After the 2.1 update, my phone automatically switched to Dutch. Bloody annoying. I mean, I am Dutch, but I prefer to have my computers in English, and my Milestone counts as computer to me.
I've never found Apple products terribly visually appealing, a little too "pretty" in a feminine way. I prefer harder edge more badass looking gadgets,
You might be on to something. I prefer my blocky steel Milestone over the slippery sleek iPhone I used to have.
I don't see how you need much more common sense to be able to operate a Droid in comparison to an iPhone. They're nearly identical.
I think part of the draw for Android is that you can tweak and customize it more. And I don't just mean installing a custom OS. Also just customizing it with widgets and other stuff. Even just the stock "customizations" of manufacturers, like SenseUI and all those others. Android is pretty powerful and flexible there. And I suspect men are on average slightly more likely to tinker with their phones than women.
"However, copying the "look and feel" of a game using different code and different art, is not copyright infringement."
No, this is completely wrong. If you copy the characters- i.e. Pacman, then it IS copyright infringement, that is Namco's IP.
What does that even mean? There is no generic IP. There's copyright and there's trademarks (which serve entirely different purposes, mind you). If you copy a character's name, you might be violating a trademark, depending on how unique and distinctive that name is. If you copy a character's appearance, you might be violating copyright, depending on how accurately you copy its distinctiveness. But what does "copy the characters" mean? You can easily copy the character's behaviour, for example. And if name and appearance aren't special enough, you might be able to copy those too.
In Netherland, when you lose your job, you first get unemployment benefits (WW) which are proportional to your income if you've been employed for 4 of the last 5 months, I think. If you remain unemployed for a long time, you get welfare (Bijstand) which is a fixed amount, but first you're supposed to eat up your savings. The idea of unemployment is that it's supposed to be temporary, and you don't have to change your lifestyle when you're unemployed for only a short period.
What exactly do you mean by "gaseous life forms"? You need some sort of structure. How do you structure gas?
I suppose if you have a really heavy, dense atmosphere where complex molecules can float about in sufficient concentrations, you might get some sort of gas-filled structures. But you still need the complex molecules. And there just aren't a lot of ways to get complex molecules. Carbon is really quite unique.
Assange published the information, and has a site intended for the publication of this information. He's not the leaker, he's the journalist. Manning is the leaker.
Journalists are not just the people who write the final piece in the paper. They're also people who do a lot of the research and collection.
What we need is to stop kowtowing, and let the Russians know, under no uncertain terms, that there will be consequences for assassinating people in other countries. Why Putin isn't a pariah in most civilized nations is beyond me. He's a thug, plain and simple. Why don't we call him what he is?
The problem with that is that Russia is too powerful. They're not North Korea. And with China's rise in power, we don't hear nearly as much about their human rights problems as we used to.
But a bigger problem for the EU at least, is that a lot of European countries depend on Russian gas and other resources.
And finally there's the fact that Russia has quite a bit of military power. Nuclear weapons and all that. You don't want to anger them too much. Hence all the kowtowing.
I fully agree that it's a gangster nation and we should be doing something about it, but I have no idea what.
To my point, what makes you think random-chance life elsewhere in the universe would need hydrogen or carbon, or a substitute for them, at all.
There are plenty of other molecules & elements that react with each other and release energy in the process without the involvement of carbon or hydrogen.
Life is not merely about releasing energy. It's about structure, about self-organising and self-replicating molecules. It is, basically, about really, really, amazingly complex molecules. And you can't have complex molecules without carbon. There is simply no substitute.
Hydrogen is similarly irreplaceable. It's also so abundant that simply based on its abundance you can be certain that any kind of life in this universe, no matter how alien, does something with hydrogen.
The other basic elements of life (nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur), who knows? Phosphorous is clearly the easiest to replace. Maybe there are ways to replace some of the other elements. Maybe it's possible to incorporate other elements into DNA-like structures. Time (and lots of research) will tell.
Russia is willing to assassinate people quite openly just to set an example. Julian Assange is relatively safe from the US, because if the US wants to kill him, they'll want to do it either legally or secretly. Russia has very few of such qualms.
Sure, some things need to be secret. For a while, at least. But if the lies can never be allowed to be exposed, well, then you created a big problem for yourself.
Catching drug dealers, mafia etc through deception is all perfectly fine, as long as afterward you can justify the need for the deception, should it be exposed.
But these lies were just lies because they were convenient at the time, but had no real justification other than PR. They lied again their own people with the intention to keep lying to them. That kind of lie deserves to be exposed.
You don't hear anyone complaining about all the deceptions Rommel and Montgomery pulled off during WW2, do you? All of them have been exposed, and they were perfectly justifiable at the time. Those are good and useful lies. But lying to the people you work for, with the intention to keep lying to them, just because you think you can; that's wrong.
What you are perhaps not seeing is that the embarassment might not be that of the US government. Take for instance the case of the Yemen president (prime minister?) saying that he would tell his countrymen that the missiles that were used on the attack in Yemen were Yemeni missiles, not American. Is the US the embarassed party here? No - its the Yemeni government. But now that this is out there, the US - Yemeni relationship will have cool, and this hurts American interests.
It's still a lie that has been exposed. Maybe the US should have told the Yemen president not to lie to his countrymen.
I have no problem whatsoever when liars get embarrassed. Especially when the liars are people who claim the trust of others.
Presumably, you want your government (whatever government that might be) to have strong diplomacy and the ability to influence its region of the world.
Actually, first and foremost, I want my government to represent me, to be accountable to me, and to play nice with our neighbours and allies.
I definitely do not want my government to be a bunch of power-hungry maniacs. Power for power's sake, which is what you seem to be arguing for, is not what I want. And if they are going for power anyway, I happen to believe that the truth is a very powerful weapon. They should use it more often.
Slashdot Mirror
That kind of measure seems clever, but if unpublicized and subtle, it will make the program appear buggy. They need to make it very clear you've got a playable demo on your hands, rather than a buggy full version. Playable demos sell games. Buggy full versions put people off.
I find the fact that you're 49 year old grandmother to mean that you either got pregnant in school, or your daughter did, maybe one of you should have been taught about safe sex, or you're just lying about your age, a common trait among women. Face it you're old.
Older than you seem to think. It is possible to have graduated from university by the time you're 24. Still too young for kids if you ask me, but it's not all that uncommon, nor nearly as irresponsible as you suggest it is.
Just do a survey of 10000 grandmothers, how many will be "programmer of 20 years, assembly and C". If Apple targeted people like you they'd go out of business.
I think it's time to use great-grandmothers as the stereotype now. While my mother (a 63 year old grandmother) isn't a programmer, she did learn (and forgot) Pascal and Prolog long ago. And she's married to a programmer of 40 years. I have a friend who's mother is both a programmer and a grandmother.
The demographic of programming grandparents is growing rapidly, because second generation nerds are having kids now.
Interesting. (And your post deserves to be modded up as such.)
I don't notice much difference between iPhone and Android, but as you say, I'm pretty tech-savvy compared to the average user. I admit I can see a few minor differences that might make a lot if difference to some people. The Android Market just isn't terribly friendly, in my experience. Not that iPhone's App Store makes it easy to find stuff, but maybe it's just enough of a difference to matter. More importantly, though: when you install a new app, it shows up on your home screen immediately. Not on Android; there, the home screens clearly provide shortcuts to the much larger range of apps in the app folder. And that extra step might make others wonder where their new app went.
Email? I have trouble believing that iPhone email is really easier. I certainly never liked it. But in general, I see what you mean. Android is really easy for people who know how computers work. The iPhone is easy even for people who don't.
In the gaming industry when talking about IP it's a reference to the combined constituent parts of the game
The thing is, the industry doesn't make law. If they call something IP, that doesn't automatically make it legally protected. The only thing that matters is what is legally protected, and that's copyright and trademarks.
You don't copyright constituent parts individually, you copyright the work as a whole.
And that protects that work from direct copying. But it doesn't protect the idea behind that work against reimplementation using different art, different code, and different names.
Because in the end, the only things that are legally protected are the art and the code (through copyright) and the names (as trademarks). Ideas aren't copyrightable. Some people consider them patentable, but it's highly debatable whether they really are and should be.
And I don't think computer game concepts tend to be patented.
Trademarks protect against use of say, "Sonic the Hedgehog" in a 3rd party game created without permission, even if that game is nothing like any of the existing Sonic games. A copyright case would not be sufficient here because not enough IP from an existing Sonic game has been copied.
You still sound a bit confused here. Names aren't copyrightable at all. The entire idea behind trademarks is to protect customers against fakes. A third party can't use "Sonic the Hedgehog" because that name might lead customers to believe it's a real Sonic game from the original makers/owners of Sonic.
In trademark cases (in my country at least), judges tend to look at whether it's confusing to the customer. Whether they are likely to confuse the alleged violating product with the original. If that's not the case, it's not a trademark violation.
Industry lawyers do often try to confuse this issue, claiming copyright and trademark are related and throwing a lot more in there under the name "IP", but that doesn't make it law.
My phone only does Spanish, French, and English.
After the 2.1 update, my phone automatically switched to Dutch. Bloody annoying. I mean, I am Dutch, but I prefer to have my computers in English, and my Milestone counts as computer to me.
That's nice, but that's not really what this article is about. It is about the gender difference.
I've never found Apple products terribly visually appealing, a little too "pretty" in a feminine way. I prefer harder edge more badass looking gadgets,
You might be on to something. I prefer my blocky steel Milestone over the slippery sleek iPhone I used to have.
Real men just shout loud enough that whoever they want to reach, can hear them.
And they don't get lost, so they don't need no stinking GPS either.
So why do men prefer Androids while women prefer iPhones? Do women have more money to waste?
I don't see how you need much more common sense to be able to operate a Droid in comparison to an iPhone. They're nearly identical.
I think part of the draw for Android is that you can tweak and customize it more. And I don't just mean installing a custom OS. Also just customizing it with widgets and other stuff. Even just the stock "customizations" of manufacturers, like SenseUI and all those others. Android is pretty powerful and flexible there. And I suspect men are on average slightly more likely to tinker with their phones than women.
"However, copying the "look and feel" of a game using different code and different art, is not copyright infringement."
No, this is completely wrong. If you copy the characters- i.e. Pacman, then it IS copyright infringement, that is Namco's IP.
What does that even mean? There is no generic IP. There's copyright and there's trademarks (which serve entirely different purposes, mind you). If you copy a character's name, you might be violating a trademark, depending on how unique and distinctive that name is. If you copy a character's appearance, you might be violating copyright, depending on how accurately you copy its distinctiveness. But what does "copy the characters" mean? You can easily copy the character's behaviour, for example. And if name and appearance aren't special enough, you might be able to copy those too.
In Netherland, when you lose your job, you first get unemployment benefits (WW) which are proportional to your income if you've been employed for 4 of the last 5 months, I think. If you remain unemployed for a long time, you get welfare (Bijstand) which is a fixed amount, but first you're supposed to eat up your savings. The idea of unemployment is that it's supposed to be temporary, and you don't have to change your lifestyle when you're unemployed for only a short period.
But what if the initial bad thing was kept at least partially secret? Wouldn't it be useful to expose it?
What exactly do you mean by "gaseous life forms"? You need some sort of structure. How do you structure gas?
I suppose if you have a really heavy, dense atmosphere where complex molecules can float about in sufficient concentrations, you might get some sort of gas-filled structures. But you still need the complex molecules. And there just aren't a lot of ways to get complex molecules. Carbon is really quite unique.
Assange published the information, and has a site intended for the publication of this information. He's not the leaker, he's the journalist. Manning is the leaker.
Journalists are not just the people who write the final piece in the paper. They're also people who do a lot of the research and collection.
For the US to kill him legally is rather hard to do, considering he's not in the US. Secretly is hard because he's constantly in the news.
But you might be right that between the US and the Russians, a Swedish prison might be his best option.
What we need is to stop kowtowing, and let the Russians know, under no uncertain terms, that there will be consequences for assassinating people in other countries. Why Putin isn't a pariah in most civilized nations is beyond me. He's a thug, plain and simple. Why don't we call him what he is?
The problem with that is that Russia is too powerful. They're not North Korea. And with China's rise in power, we don't hear nearly as much about their human rights problems as we used to.
But a bigger problem for the EU at least, is that a lot of European countries depend on Russian gas and other resources.
And finally there's the fact that Russia has quite a bit of military power. Nuclear weapons and all that. You don't want to anger them too much. Hence all the kowtowing.
I fully agree that it's a gangster nation and we should be doing something about it, but I have no idea what.
Wouldn't the same be true for the US and other governments? Why is it okay for governments to be callous about human lives?
To my point, what makes you think random-chance life elsewhere in the universe would need hydrogen or carbon, or a substitute for them, at all.
There are plenty of other molecules & elements that react with each other and release energy in the process without the involvement of carbon or hydrogen.
Life is not merely about releasing energy. It's about structure, about self-organising and self-replicating molecules. It is, basically, about really, really, amazingly complex molecules. And you can't have complex molecules without carbon. There is simply no substitute.
Hydrogen is similarly irreplaceable. It's also so abundant that simply based on its abundance you can be certain that any kind of life in this universe, no matter how alien, does something with hydrogen.
The other basic elements of life (nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur), who knows? Phosphorous is clearly the easiest to replace. Maybe there are ways to replace some of the other elements. Maybe it's possible to incorporate other elements into DNA-like structures. Time (and lots of research) will tell.
If you think Assange is a journalist, then by your logic the hospital janitor is a brain surgeon.
Not a great analogy there. If you want to compare a legitimate journalist to a brain surgeon, then Assange is a clandestine back street surgeon.
Russia is willing to assassinate people quite openly just to set an example. Julian Assange is relatively safe from the US, because if the US wants to kill him, they'll want to do it either legally or secretly. Russia has very few of such qualms.
Sure, some things need to be secret. For a while, at least. But if the lies can never be allowed to be exposed, well, then you created a big problem for yourself.
Catching drug dealers, mafia etc through deception is all perfectly fine, as long as afterward you can justify the need for the deception, should it be exposed.
But these lies were just lies because they were convenient at the time, but had no real justification other than PR. They lied again their own people with the intention to keep lying to them. That kind of lie deserves to be exposed.
You don't hear anyone complaining about all the deceptions Rommel and Montgomery pulled off during WW2, do you? All of them have been exposed, and they were perfectly justifiable at the time. Those are good and useful lies. But lying to the people you work for, with the intention to keep lying to them, just because you think you can; that's wrong.
What you are perhaps not seeing is that the embarassment might not be that of the US government. Take for instance the case of the Yemen president (prime minister?) saying that he would tell his countrymen that the missiles that were used on the attack in Yemen were Yemeni missiles, not American. Is the US the embarassed party here? No - its the Yemeni government. But now that this is out there, the US - Yemeni relationship will have cool, and this hurts American interests.
It's still a lie that has been exposed. Maybe the US should have told the Yemen president not to lie to his countrymen.
I have no problem whatsoever when liars get embarrassed. Especially when the liars are people who claim the trust of others.
Presumably, you want your government (whatever government that might be) to have strong diplomacy and the ability to influence its region of the world.
Actually, first and foremost, I want my government to represent me, to be accountable to me, and to play nice with our neighbours and allies.
I definitely do not want my government to be a bunch of power-hungry maniacs. Power for power's sake, which is what you seem to be arguing for, is not what I want. And if they are going for power anyway, I happen to believe that the truth is a very powerful weapon. They should use it more often.