There are quite few companies that -sue first-
Patents portfolios are often compared to WMD arsenal. You keep your patents so that nobody dares to attack you because they infringe on many of your patents. If they do though, you launch a retaliatory strike. You must be either very inexperienced or have really massive portfolio (or have your essential profit source attacked) to assert your patents. Or simply be a patent troll with no production at all (so unable to infringe upon any patents).
Of course if you get attacked, you counterattack with full strength in hope to intimidate the opponent into out-of-court settlement and backing off from their attack. Yeah, Sony, let us sell our smartphones and we will let you sell your Playstations. Following up and not settling leads to MAD, because companies can easily kill each other's production entirely, because about every single product out there infringes on one patent or another in possession of some other company, so if they launch total war, the court can shut down operations of both - and without sources of revenue they won't be able to pay compensation for patent violations and go down really fast.
rejected x to overturn y not allowing z.
In the end this requires quite a bit of thought WHAT was the result.
That's why I always teach "Use variables and functions with positive logic, so you always use "isCorrect", not " !isFaulty" because very soon it devolves into unmaintainable mess.
If the guys who released the game took effort to redraw all backgrounds, remake all the textures, remodel and retexture all the 3D models, then make maps, storyline and dialogue, then added a new soundtrack and FX on top of that, then they are perfectly in their right to bind this all using the free GPL code, and sell as their own app.
The engine is GPLd, the assets are still proprietary.
The answer i all the tablet, netbooks and other gizmos churned out en masse from China, that run Android (because it's easy to implement being so open, and pretty much free.) They are all 'mobile devices'. Meanwhile, Symbian almost doesn't exist outside of phones. Psion palmtops are pretty much dead and the rest of the world uses all kinds of more developer-friendly systems on phones.
I wonder what the mobile phone market share is.
In other news, mobile phones without OS* still outnumber phones with an OS 10:1.
*) Yeah, I know, technically what is running on them -is- some kind of OS, if you stretch the definition of OS some.
The government won't succeed... without external support.
Say, some big, rich country interested in maintaining status quo and furthering their influences, that is friendly to the current regime, begins sending "aid" to "peace the protesters".
That wasn't an engine bug. It was a game balance error. Not something not possible according to the game mechanics. Likely, something that could be reported by playtesters and dismissed as "works as intended" because indeed the game was following the algorithm, you can build factories in factories and the number will grow exponentially. A wise manager would set a cap or an extra cost factor.
The caveat is then there is no fixed border between exploiting a bug and a valid gameplay strategy. How many factories are you allowed to build that way? Limit yourself only to "1st generation"? But how, if they are all identical?
Another similar example, Morrowind, Fortify Intelligence potion. You can improve your potion efficiency by increasing intelligence by magical means, say, drinking a potion of intelligence. And a new potion of intelligence made then will be stronger. And drinking it will result in even stronger one. So, when does it stop being a smart tactic becomes a cheat? Especially that natural max int is 100, other magical means allow to raise intelligence to some 200 points, but reliably crafting some of better (but still reasonably balanced) magical items requires int in ~10000 range, where you can make "fortify strength" potion that gives you a 1-hit-kill with any weapon against any enemy.
So, to ever be able to craft a ring of permanent 35% fire resistance, you need to exploit the "fortify int potion" trick. This is the strongest item of this kind that can be crafted in the game, it can't be made stronger, it requires some hard to obtain ingredients, good skill level, and it does not unbalance the game at all. But at 200 int your chance to craft it is some 0.2% and you lose your valuable ingredients if you fail. At 10,000 int you can do it reliably, with good 80% success rate. Except any potion you will make then lasts months and raises attributes by thousands points. And is worth a small fortune too.
So, exploiting a bug or a valid gameplay strategy?
The biggest problem is the destroying the data stored in wetware of employees who collected and accessed it.
I heard they contacted the Church of Scientology on techniques of secure brainwashing, but there are concerns both about quality, security and moral side of the process.
There are opinions that disposing of the employees using the big shredder is both safer and more humane.
The person to try to pass this into law would die in a tragic accident.
I suggest watching Zeitgeist 2. Yes, it's sensationalist, yes parts are strongly overdrawn, yes, it's inaccurate and yes, the solutions it suggests are totally impossible. But still, it raises some very hard points. Like, what tools of pressure can the leading banks impose on governments to force compliance. And a trail of blood regularly following opponents of the current system.
I was thinking what open-source models could be successfully applied to government.
One thing I think might really work would be a Bugzilla-like "problem management system" open to all.
People submit problems, discuss them, suggest solutions, vote for or against them, combine duplicates, suggest, discuss and correct laws that would fix them. A ready patch would be in form of a bill to be passed by the parliament into law.
In many countries, getting a set number of signatures under a ready project of a law will get it under voting in a parliament. But first, it requires informed, trained people to write the bill, then organizing a signature-collecting campaign. This would streamline the system - a new law evolves as the need and suggestions arise, it is corrected many times and gains public attention if it's worthwhile. And if it is good enough, people will "vote for the bug" and get it eventually passed.
"Someone is trying to damage good name of our respectable company by sending spam mail in our name. This lawsuit itself is a proof this strategy works. We don't know these people, they are located somewhere in China, and working on behalf of parties we were unable to discern but we suspect they are associated with our competition."
No written contracts, no paper trail, just anonymous transactions based on number of purchases from referral links. Hard to trace, hard to pinpoint the source, people who send the spam live outside the jurisdiction, the person who pays for it is quite hard to trace and has no official connection with the company, just meets one of middle managers who hands them a small briefcase of cash and a pendrive with amounts to transfer and referer IDs.
Interestingly, I have an ancient Motorola phone with "field engineering options" menu enabled. The menu not only reveals a lot of info you won't get on a normal phone (pings, signal strengths, IDs from separate base stations), it also allows to do some "nasty" stuff like switching the radio on at full power (and back then full power was much more than nowadays) and broadcast noise, jamming any other cellular communication.
The problem is you're thinking like a logical person looking for what would be best in their situation. Not like some pointy-haired from a big corporation, who wants to have as little work as possible now, push the blame as far as possible and act as if nothing happened.
Expecting sane reaction to a problem from a corporation is a very common mistake.
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There are quite few companies that -sue first- Patents portfolios are often compared to WMD arsenal. You keep your patents so that nobody dares to attack you because they infringe on many of your patents. If they do though, you launch a retaliatory strike. You must be either very inexperienced or have really massive portfolio (or have your essential profit source attacked) to assert your patents. Or simply be a patent troll with no production at all (so unable to infringe upon any patents). Of course if you get attacked, you counterattack with full strength in hope to intimidate the opponent into out-of-court settlement and backing off from their attack. Yeah, Sony, let us sell our smartphones and we will let you sell your Playstations. Following up and not settling leads to MAD, because companies can easily kill each other's production entirely, because about every single product out there infringes on one patent or another in possession of some other company, so if they launch total war, the court can shut down operations of both - and without sources of revenue they won't be able to pay compensation for patent violations and go down really fast.
The bad thing is that while you CAN play every game on $200 card, none of them is WORTH playing.
rejected x to overturn y not allowing z. In the end this requires quite a bit of thought WHAT was the result. That's why I always teach "Use variables and functions with positive logic, so you always use "isCorrect", not " !isFaulty" because very soon it devolves into unmaintainable mess.
Reminds me of a background element in the "Girl Genius" comic.
.....POISON......
A candy dispenser ball, filled with candies in big glass sphere, and a pretty poster over it, written in big friendly colorful letters:
Illiteracy reduction program
but 'tech' is certainly quite abused.
If the guys who released the game took effort to redraw all backgrounds, remake all the textures, remodel and retexture all the 3D models, then make maps, storyline and dialogue, then added a new soundtrack and FX on top of that, then they are perfectly in their right to bind this all using the free GPL code, and sell as their own app.
The engine is GPLd, the assets are still proprietary.
Of course the kids would never be allowed to assemble such precise equipment as iPhones!
They are only allowed to make Nike sportswear, and the likes.
The answer i all the tablet, netbooks and other gizmos churned out en masse from China, that run Android (because it's easy to implement being so open, and pretty much free.) They are all 'mobile devices'.
Meanwhile, Symbian almost doesn't exist outside of phones. Psion palmtops are pretty much dead and the rest of the world uses all kinds of more developer-friendly systems on phones.
I wonder what the mobile phone market share is.
In other news, mobile phones without OS* still outnumber phones with an OS 10:1.
*) Yeah, I know, technically what is running on them -is- some kind of OS, if you stretch the definition of OS some.
The government won't succeed... without external support.
Say, some big, rich country interested in maintaining status quo and furthering their influences, that is friendly to the current regime, begins sending "aid" to "peace the protesters".
Goddamned campers, annoying IRL too.
Heh, help the third world become more similar to the USA by lowering the bar?
Considering they were asked by the mother to remove the tag, they certainly have been informed about this later. They still refused to act.
That wasn't an engine bug. It was a game balance error. Not something not possible according to the game mechanics. Likely, something that could be reported by playtesters and dismissed as "works as intended" because indeed the game was following the algorithm, you can build factories in factories and the number will grow exponentially. A wise manager would set a cap or an extra cost factor.
The caveat is then there is no fixed border between exploiting a bug and a valid gameplay strategy. How many factories are you allowed to build that way? Limit yourself only to "1st generation"? But how, if they are all identical?
Another similar example, Morrowind, Fortify Intelligence potion. You can improve your potion efficiency by increasing intelligence by magical means, say, drinking a potion of intelligence. And a new potion of intelligence made then will be stronger. And drinking it will result in even stronger one. So, when does it stop being a smart tactic becomes a cheat? Especially that natural max int is 100, other magical means allow to raise intelligence to some 200 points, but reliably crafting some of better (but still reasonably balanced) magical items requires int in ~10000 range, where you can make "fortify strength" potion that gives you a 1-hit-kill with any weapon against any enemy.
So, to ever be able to craft a ring of permanent 35% fire resistance, you need to exploit the "fortify int potion" trick. This is the strongest item of this kind that can be crafted in the game, it can't be made stronger, it requires some hard to obtain ingredients, good skill level, and it does not unbalance the game at all. But at 200 int your chance to craft it is some 0.2% and you lose your valuable ingredients if you fail. At 10,000 int you can do it reliably, with good 80% success rate. Except any potion you will make then lasts months and raises attributes by thousands points. And is worth a small fortune too.
So, exploiting a bug or a valid gameplay strategy?
Yea, we lock you up with Bubba here, and he'll be having sex with you until you're ready to reveal all the information.
Do you perform tests of cellphone related interference, or do you just assume "no phones permitted"?
Drag a cable with an anchor, preferably in form of a plow, digging into the ground, as a grounding line.
The biggest problem is the destroying the data stored in wetware of employees who collected and accessed it.
I heard they contacted the Church of Scientology on techniques of secure brainwashing, but there are concerns both about quality, security and moral side of the process.
There are opinions that disposing of the employees using the big shredder is both safer and more humane.
The person to try to pass this into law would die in a tragic accident.
I suggest watching Zeitgeist 2. Yes, it's sensationalist, yes parts are strongly overdrawn, yes, it's inaccurate and yes, the solutions it suggests are totally impossible. But still, it raises some very hard points. Like, what tools of pressure can the leading banks impose on governments to force compliance. And a trail of blood regularly following opponents of the current system.
I was thinking what open-source models could be successfully applied to government.
One thing I think might really work would be a Bugzilla-like "problem management system" open to all.
People submit problems, discuss them, suggest solutions, vote for or against them, combine duplicates, suggest, discuss and correct laws that would fix them.
A ready patch would be in form of a bill to be passed by the parliament into law.
In many countries, getting a set number of signatures under a ready project of a law will get it under voting in a parliament. But first, it requires informed, trained people to write the bill, then organizing a signature-collecting campaign. This would streamline the system - a new law evolves as the need and suggestions arise, it is corrected many times and gains public attention if it's worthwhile. And if it is good enough, people will "vote for the bug" and get it eventually passed.
I still wonder, what if:
"Someone is trying to damage good name of our respectable company by sending spam mail in our name. This lawsuit itself is a proof this strategy works. We don't know these people, they are located somewhere in China, and working on behalf of parties we were unable to discern but we suspect they are associated with our competition."
No written contracts, no paper trail, just anonymous transactions based on number of purchases from referral links. Hard to trace, hard to pinpoint the source, people who send the spam live outside the jurisdiction, the person who pays for it is quite hard to trace and has no official connection with the company, just meets one of middle managers who hands them a small briefcase of cash and a pendrive with amounts to transfer and referer IDs.
Interestingly, I have an ancient Motorola phone with "field engineering options" menu enabled. The menu not only reveals a lot of info you won't get on a normal phone (pings, signal strengths, IDs from separate base stations), it also allows to do some "nasty" stuff like switching the radio on at full power (and back then full power was much more than nowadays) and broadcast noise, jamming any other cellular communication.
If Torvalds et all changed the kernel's license to GPLv3, Google and the phone manufacturers would either have to comply with it or stop upgrading.
Or fork. Never forget this option.
The problem is you're thinking like a logical person looking for what would be best in their situation. Not like some pointy-haired from a big corporation, who wants to have as little work as possible now, push the blame as far as possible and act as if nothing happened.
Expecting sane reaction to a problem from a corporation is a very common mistake.
you control your team (or single worm) with your system, and Stirman controls the other side with his.
no, no, no. You control a team of 4 worms. And arm them with all kinds of miniature weapons trying to blast opponent's worms!
You mean you have to use your hands?
That's like a baby's toy!