"Update: Consumerist has updated their post with a message from Zecco claiming that it was not an April Fool's joke, but noting "Some clients may experience incorrect display of Buying Power and Account Balances." It's not entirely clear how those "incorrect displays" were apparently off by millions in some cases."
So this effectively puts a hamper on "limiting file sharing services" as a blanket policy. The RIAA will likely have to instead focus on individual users who are doing specific things. This basically just takes their problems out of the courthouse and into ISP corporate offices.
Where are you getting these restrictions on prior art from?
There may be a rebuttable presumption of validity if you want to apply the same piece of prior art in the same way as it was used earlier on in the prosecution history, but there is nothing preventing you from using it court. Think about it: it would be fundamentally unfair to not allow someone to use something as evidence in court simply because it was brought up in an earlier ex parte proceeding.
As for the "nobody does it"--do you know the different in cost difference between a third party submission versus an infringement suit in court? We are talking thousands versus millions of dollars here.
There are certainly plenty of reasons why someone would prefer to take an issue to the courts, but sitting on a clear, obvious piece of prior art is not one of them. Of course, patent trolls are the exception to this rule.
Wait, so you are saying you want the dispatcher to be skeptical of your situation?
R: 911 emergency, how may I help you? L: There are two men downstairs that have broken into my home. I think they are armed. R: Great! We are sending our unarmed emergency verification officer to your address. Please fill out the Real Emergency form when he arrives.
It might create temporary 'cash in hand wealth' but you aren't taking into account what is happening in the long term.
In that scenario, if the american was to buy the japanese car for 18,000, although he might have a little more spending money left to help out the USA's economy, he has already invested 18k into improving the japanese economy!
If this trend were to continue widespread across the USA, eventually that american auto manufacturer would go out of business, or start producing inferior products (due to lost R&D revenue.) As an end result, our steel/autopart industries lose revenue, massive auto worker unemployment ensues, and even our government loses money because instead of taxing those auto workers incomes they are now paying them unemployment. Were this to happen simultaneously across multiple industries the results could be drastic.
But hey, you the end consumer would still have your extra 4 grand.
Futuremark needs to work on random testing, say you would create a "test file" that would be full of random paths and the like. It would make make the test much less visually appealing to watch, but unpredicatable. Then you could run this random test sequencing file on each card. It wouldn't solve everything, but at least it would take away the option to "not render what you don't see."
Futuremark needs to stop apologizing, and start hard coding ways to keep their tests fair. It is going to be the only way to keep afloat after this situation.
Relation of time / real world currency to gaming
on
Law and Virtual Worlds
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I read the entire near 100 page abstract (yeah, it's a boring day at work) and found it very interesting.
He seems to base his thesis on two decent arguments: first, investing time into making something, even if this investment is in a virtual world, gives something inherent value. secondly, that because in game properties are being sold via ebay that there is some sort of real-world value to these objects. He even points out that people have made 'us dollar to everquest platinum' currency conversions, and you can pretty easily earn around 3.24$ US dollars an hour 'working' on everquest.
I think given this base, his entirely abstract was pretty worthless other than a very good history on the evolution from the start of gaming to MUDs (which I used to frequent and appreciated the reminiscing) all the way to the everquest (graphical MUD) phenomenon.
The premise that investing time and effort into something, even virtual, makes it valuable?? seems ridiculous to me when the end result of such efforts is (realistically) changes in 0's to 1's and vice versa on a remote computer system. It seems like the author is taking the psychological effect of these games as having some sort of value. Who should really care if someone becomes emotionally invested in what really isn't more than a series of pixels on a screen.
The selling of items is merely a fluke, and I think it's partially companies like Sony's fault for letting it happen --shouldn't they have the power to just randomly delete the objects from the characters doing the selling (with some checking for fairness) ? And I'm sorry but that reference to the company hiring poor mexicans to play dark ages full time just to sell items is a hilarious(?) abuse of mythic's systems.
I played MUDs for a couple years, racked up a character with 3000 hours. I know how addicting and psychologically investing these games can be. Yet on the same note, I always understood deep down that it was just a file on a remote system, and were it to be erased then it would just be "too bad."
The phrase "it's just a game" is very overused (esp on slashdot) and I think is inappropriate because that implies that just because some people view these games as trivial that we all should. The author mentioned that a large number of people (many 80+hr/wk players) have been recorded as saying they feel their 'real life' is just a meaningless support to their lives in everquest.
I think the author hits that psychological impact right on the money, but on the same note, this shouldn't have any real world meaning except maybe feeling sorry for those who are hurt and lose property in 'virtual worlds.'
"Sadly the policy for most persistent online games is "every player we boot off for cheating is a player who won't pay us money anymore.""
That is a very good point. Maybe a more important question though, is which would lose a company like that more money, kicking off X number of cheaters or losing X number of players that get fed up with the cheating going on and quit playing because of it.
Slashdot Mirror
None of this was intentional. FTA:
"Update: Consumerist has updated their post with a message from Zecco claiming that it was not an April Fool's joke, but noting "Some clients may experience incorrect display of Buying Power and Account Balances." It's not entirely clear how those "incorrect displays" were apparently off by millions in some cases."
Even more important than the question of what would motivate an ISP to block services is the question of how they would go about doing it.
The FCC recently in a formal ruling that Comcast's P2P throttling was illegal and ordered them to cease and desist (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10004508-38.html?tag=mncol;txt for more info).
So this effectively puts a hamper on "limiting file sharing services" as a blanket policy. The RIAA will likely have to instead focus on individual users who are doing specific things. This basically just takes their problems out of the courthouse and into ISP corporate offices.
Where are you getting these restrictions on prior art from?
There may be a rebuttable presumption of validity if you want to apply the same piece of prior art in the same way as it was used earlier on in the prosecution history, but there is nothing preventing you from using it court. Think about it: it would be fundamentally unfair to not allow someone to use something as evidence in court simply because it was brought up in an earlier ex parte proceeding.
As for the "nobody does it"--do you know the different in cost difference between a third party submission versus an infringement suit in court? We are talking thousands versus millions of dollars here.
There are certainly plenty of reasons why someone would prefer to take an issue to the courts, but sitting on a clear, obvious piece of prior art is not one of them. Of course, patent trolls are the exception to this rule.
That fruit better be an apple, or else.
Wait, so you are saying you want the dispatcher to be skeptical of your situation?
R: 911 emergency, how may I help you?
L: There are two men downstairs that have broken into my home. I think they are armed.
R: Great! We are sending our unarmed emergency verification officer to your address. Please fill out the Real Emergency form when he arrives.
Sorry, the IRS has already responded to this and other frivolous tax avoidance arguments.
Their direct response is a very interesting read:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/friv_tax.pdf
(warning, pdf)
However, you can always choose to ignore this. I'm sure your cellmate might find your tax theories interesting.
I think it uses one little, two little, three little endians.
It might create temporary 'cash in hand wealth' but you aren't taking into account what is happening in the long term.
In that scenario, if the american was to buy the japanese car for 18,000, although he might have a little more spending money left to help out the USA's economy, he has already invested 18k into improving the japanese economy!
If this trend were to continue widespread across the USA, eventually that american auto manufacturer would go out of business, or start producing inferior products (due to lost R&D revenue.) As an end result, our steel/autopart industries lose revenue, massive auto worker unemployment ensues, and even our government loses money because instead of taxing those auto workers incomes they are now paying them unemployment. Were this to happen simultaneously across multiple industries the results could be drastic.
But hey, you the end consumer would still have your extra 4 grand.
this reminds me of an old onion article
Microsoft to Patent Ones, Zeroes
Futuremark needs to work on random testing, say you would create a "test file" that would be full of random paths and the like. It would make make the test much less visually appealing to watch, but unpredicatable. Then you could run this random test sequencing file on each card. It wouldn't solve everything, but at least it would take away the option to "not render what you don't see."
Futuremark needs to stop apologizing, and start hard coding ways to keep their tests fair. It is going to be the only way to keep afloat after this situation.
I read the entire near 100 page abstract (yeah, it's a boring day at work) and found it very interesting.
He seems to base his thesis on two decent arguments: first, investing time into making something, even if this investment is in a virtual world, gives something inherent value. secondly, that because in game properties are being sold via ebay that there is some sort of real-world value to these objects. He even points out that people have made 'us dollar to everquest platinum' currency conversions, and you can pretty easily earn around 3.24$ US dollars an hour 'working' on everquest.
I think given this base, his entirely abstract was pretty worthless other than a very good history on the evolution from the start of gaming to MUDs (which I used to frequent and appreciated the reminiscing) all the way to the everquest (graphical MUD) phenomenon.
The premise that investing time and effort into something, even virtual, makes it valuable?? seems ridiculous to me when the end result of such efforts is (realistically) changes in 0's to 1's and vice versa on a remote computer system. It seems like the author is taking the psychological effect of these games as having some sort of value. Who should really care if someone becomes emotionally invested in what really isn't more than a series of pixels on a screen.
The selling of items is merely a fluke, and I think it's partially companies like Sony's fault for letting it happen --shouldn't they have the power to just randomly delete the objects from the characters doing the selling (with some checking for fairness) ? And I'm sorry but that reference to the company hiring poor mexicans to play dark ages full time just to sell items is a hilarious(?) abuse of mythic's systems.
I played MUDs for a couple years, racked up a character with 3000 hours. I know how addicting and psychologically investing these games can be. Yet on the same note, I always understood deep down that it was just a file on a remote system, and were it to be erased then it would just be "too bad."
The phrase "it's just a game" is very overused (esp on slashdot) and I think is inappropriate because that implies that just because some people view these games as trivial that we all should. The author mentioned that a large number of people (many 80+hr/wk players) have been recorded as saying they feel their 'real life' is just a meaningless support to their lives in everquest.
I think the author hits that psychological impact right on the money, but on the same note, this shouldn't have any real world meaning except maybe feeling sorry for those who are hurt and lose property in 'virtual worlds.'
"Sadly the policy for most persistent online games is "every player we boot off for cheating is a player who won't pay us money anymore."" That is a very good point. Maybe a more important question though, is which would lose a company like that more money, kicking off X number of cheaters or losing X number of players that get fed up with the cheating going on and quit playing because of it.