A games company I know (NovaLogic) became tied to a software technology they patented many years ago (various voxel terrain rendering algorithms). At the time they were quite ahead of the competition graphically and the patent allowed them to rest on their laurels, assured that no other company could replicate their technology without infringing on their patent...
To their suprise and horror several years later the industry had moved on, leaving their software rendering based technology in the hardware rendered dust... Unfortunately, they had so much momentum built around the old system that they almost didn't survive the transition.
Even when they started the transition they didn't understand why their hardware accelerated scenes (that still had voxel backgrounds) rendered so much more slowly than the competitions. At least until they entirely removed the the old code...
Slashdot Mirror
One of the major assumptions by the author of the article (and most people) is that the death penalty deters murder. It doesn't.
:(
;P
Check out The Death Penalty Inormation Center for more facts, info, and studies.
All of the authors economic number crunching is totally invalid because of this.
However that doesn't mean that I don't WANT to execute them.
A games company I know (NovaLogic) became tied to a software technology they patented many years ago (various voxel terrain rendering algorithms). At the time they were quite ahead of the competition graphically and the patent allowed them to rest on their laurels, assured that no other company could replicate their technology without infringing on their patent...
To their suprise and horror several years later the industry had moved on, leaving their software rendering based technology in the hardware rendered dust... Unfortunately, they had so much momentum built around the old system that they almost didn't survive the transition.
Even when they started the transition they didn't understand why their hardware accelerated scenes (that still had voxel backgrounds) rendered so much more slowly than the competitions. At least until they entirely removed the the old code...