Doing a close remake of a game may be a copyright violation under certain circumstances. Speaking of the Tetris game, a company has been claiming exclusive rights with respect to the Tetris game. Certain games that duplicate the Tetris gameplay and appearance have been targeted. The claim was not about patents, but about the game's "overall look and feel" (in terms of copyright) and "trade dress" (which implies trademarks.) The Tetris game has a known history and its gameplay is quite specific, so the company may be justified in terms of regular copyright.
If you want to develop software yourself, then by all means go for it. Shareware-type software (without spyware or adware) is common, but some is more successful than others.
Software patents are a concern, but it is better to work at fixing the problem than simply worrying about it. Most patent infringement cases have involved large-ish companies. Though it may sound strange, a good policy is not to look for software patents. Previous postings have already mentioned this, but it is meaningful in terms of avoiding "willful infringement" which is much more serious than innocent infringement. Linus Torvalds has said that "no engineer should ever go looking for a patent" and he mentions liability as one of the reasons. Also see this article from an attorney. The best idea is not to be concerned unless you already know about a software patent i.e. compressed GIF images.
May you have the best of luck with your software development.:)
There is lots of emphasis on guarding a system against outside attacks. However, it can also be useful to restrict the privileges of software on the system i.e. a limited user account and restricted access to the Internet.
Free (as in "freedom") software and open-source software are less likely to have issues of secretly reporting data. Even proprietary software produced by individuals (as opposed to companies) is less likely to spy on users (consider the bad publicity for the author.)
When software costs nothing or if it has already been paid for, filling out a registration form for the software may not be worth the effort and the potential privacy violations.
If the stolen code was released on the Internet, expunging it could prove impossible. Hopefully, the code was not designed to rely on security through obscurity. The article takes the "security through obscurity" line when it talks about restricting access to the code to avoid exploitation of security vulnerabilities.
Using an absentee ballot (even if you can go to a polling place) can help your vote count. In some areas, you can receive an absentee ballot without having to give a reason. Note: You should send off the completed ballot as early as possible. Also, it is a good idea to follow up if you do not receive the ballot soon enough.
Doesn't hanging chad, duplicate marks, and all the other problems with paper type ballots make this a uniform problem, and not just one with electronic voting?
In this case, the paper ballot would be printed by a machine and would not necessarily involve punching out tabs of paper (which could leave hanging chads.)
Are the manfacturing specs available for the punch card machines? Or any other paper ballot machine? Are we allowed to take the machine apart and verify that it is manufactured to those specs?
Mechanical devices are well understood. Examining the innards of a mechanical device is easier than trying to examine machine code-there are also no license agreements that prohibit such examination. When an individual uses a voting machine that alters a paper ballot, it is easier to see what was changed.
I have to say that while electronic voting may not be totally secure, I do think it would be easier to fudge with the punch card machines to throw an election. And I could do it with much less skilled people. Hire someone to bend a punch, so it doesn't always punch the hole correctly. Have a slightly longer punch, so more duplicate punches show up. Fill in the dot cards? shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to smudge the dots a little.
Examining ballots is important. However, tampering or faults with an electronic device might not be obvious until later. With e-voting, there is the potential for altering votes in addition to destroying votes. All parts of an election should be subject to unbiased and public scrutiny.
Paper votes for a recount? Only if we recount 7 times and the first time we get 4 totals that match do they count.
Without paper printouts, an accurate recount could be impossible. It has been mentioned that a desire to know the results quickly can affect how an election turns out and what happens.
People must have considered this, because the VerifiedVoting.org site has an answer to the question. They mention that an ATM machine provides a paper printout on the spot and that banks provide monthly information about bank account transactions. These guard against problems and provide information if a problem happens anyway.
Advertisements sometimes compare commercial software packages based on the features in each package. Increasing the number of features can make the software look better in such a comparison. Software that is not commercial, i.e. FOSS, shareware, freeware, etc. rarely relies on published ads and has less incentive to include unneeded features.
One FAQ entry says that adding new HTML capabilities to Web browsers can be a problem if the capabilities are added in a rush or if they are not implemented properly. In addition, features such as ad-blocking (which help the user) are different from features such as tying a promoted service into a web browser from the same company.
Just consider any faults and problems that were not noticed... It is likely impossible ever to know whether votes for either side were affected by such unnoticed problems.
Electronic voting could make voting easier, but it is a good idea to have a voter-verifiable audit trail. As of now, not all electronic voting machines have such audit trails.
We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money
Security expert Bruce Schneier has talked about secure voting versus secure financial transactions. E-voting has the difficulty of secret ballots, which is not an issue for even the largest financial transactions. In addition, a single vote is associated with many others. Imagine redoing an election. It is much easier to figure out what happened if something goes wrong with a financial transaction. Though there are mission-critical systems, their design is different from normal systems, not to mention much more expensive. Electronic voting machines are not designed like this. In addition, voting machines have to be secure against deliberate tampering (possibly from the inside), as well as accidental failure.
In the case of copyright issues, explicitly mentioning that something was removed is better than silently excluding something from the search results. That also applies to exclusion of search results due to other types of outside influence. This way, people know what is happening and why it is happening.
(as proven by/.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).
I've never seen any of that on other search engines.
If one search engine is extremely popular, it may be more likely to be targeted than others. Also, if the search engine provides very powerful search features or features such as cached copies of pages, etc. it might be noticed. If a search engine complies once with a removal request, some might say that provides incentive to target it again.
One such videotape of this type consisted of a solid block of what appeared to be Styrofoam. (A patent describes a limited-use video tape in which the core could be cardboard, styrofoam, or synthetic resin.) This block had openings and gaps for the path of the magnetic tape and for the plastic reels onto which the magnetic tape was wound. On the outside of the block was thin plastic that appeared to be attached with some adhesive. Stuck to the top of the cassette was a cardboard sheet printed with information about the promotion. The end of the tape which was inserted into the VCR had a long cardboard tab. This tab had serrations so that it could be easily pulled off of the tape without damaging anything.
It might be impossible to know if any votes were recorded incorrectly (or perhaps maliciously altered in secret) by technology. This applies to all political platforms, etc.
Someone might be interested in seeing what the inside of a closed-source product really looks like. Both good people and bad people might be interested in looking for security vulnerabilities.
Hopefully, the code was not designed to rely on "security through obscurity."
There have been lightweight videotapes that are meant for purposes like promotional mailings. The tapes are made out of a material like Styrofoam with an outside of cardboard and thin plastic. See one such brand here.
Next thing we know, IRS burst into a kindergarten arresting several 5-year-old's for not calculating and paying proper tax while playing Monopoly, just to protect the integrity of the economy and nation's financial systems. "If they can't do tax at age of 5, will you trust them to pay tax 20 years later?!"
Businesses can be required to have permits, and there was a case where this was applied to a kid with a lemonade stand. It is likely that the rules were not meant to cover such a situation, and most kids probably do not know or care about such issues. As it was, a neighbor reported the stand because she was having problems with the kid's parent. See also these comments.
Here is an actual cease-and-desist notice concerning a trademark infringement on a Rubik's Cube-type game. There is no mention of copyrights or patents. They claim that the "distinctive overall appearance" of the Rubik's Cube is trademarked. The same page says that product design can be trademarked. One would think that the visual appearance of the design would have to be distinctive and be important with respect to marketing and/or identifying the product (i.e. it is associated with the product and/or the manufacturer) in order to be trademarked. They also mention trade dress. This appears to apply to distinctive aspects of the total visual appearance of the product. These aspects would be associated with the product by the public. An example of trade dress is a color scheme that is associated with a specific brand.
On the Macintosh platform years ago, there was a game called Rubik's Wrap. In the game there was a repeating pattern on a 2D surface. The pattern was scrambled and would have to be unscrambled by the player, similar to a Rubik's Cube toy.
Even if there was no intent to do damage, it is understandable that people are concerned about the data. If it is not clear as to whether the data was taken, it is likely best to assume that it was. This is likely to be a huge inconvenience to those affected. Not everyone thinks that it is OK to "look around" a system that does not belong to them.
If the data was taken maliciously and then redistributed via Internet sites, catching the perpetrator would not instantly expunge the unauthorized copies of the data. This is where it is important to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data in the first place.
Sexual harassment involving a female boss is not necessarily far from reality. See this article. (Notice the responses that the man received from supervisors.)
Slashdot Mirror
Doing a close remake of a game may be a copyright violation under certain circumstances. Speaking of the Tetris game, a company has been claiming exclusive rights with respect to the Tetris game. Certain games that duplicate the Tetris gameplay and appearance have been targeted. The claim was not about patents, but about the game's "overall look and feel" (in terms of copyright) and "trade dress" (which implies trademarks.) The Tetris game has a known history and its gameplay is quite specific, so the company may be justified in terms of regular copyright.
If you want to develop software yourself, then by all means go for it. Shareware-type software (without spyware or adware) is common, but some is more successful than others.
Software patents are a concern, but it is better to work at fixing the problem than simply worrying about it. Most patent infringement cases have involved large-ish companies. Though it may sound strange, a good policy is not to look for software patents. Previous postings have already mentioned this, but it is meaningful in terms of avoiding "willful infringement" which is much more serious than innocent infringement. Linus Torvalds has said that "no engineer should ever go looking for a patent" and he mentions liability as one of the reasons. Also see this article from an attorney. The best idea is not to be concerned unless you already know about a software patent i.e. compressed GIF images.
May you have the best of luck with your software development. :)
If the stolen code was released on the Internet, expunging it could prove impossible. Hopefully, the code was not designed to rely on security through obscurity. The article takes the "security through obscurity" line when it talks about restricting access to the code to avoid exploitation of security vulnerabilities.
Using an absentee ballot (even if you can go to a polling place) can help your vote count. In some areas, you can receive an absentee ballot without having to give a reason. Note: You should send off the completed ballot as early as possible. Also, it is a good idea to follow up if you do not receive the ballot soon enough.
Doesn't hanging chad, duplicate marks, and all the other problems with paper type ballots make this a uniform problem, and not just one with electronic voting?
In this case, the paper ballot would be printed by a machine and would not necessarily involve punching out tabs of paper (which could leave hanging chads.)
Are the manfacturing specs available for the punch card machines? Or any other paper ballot machine? Are we allowed to take the machine apart and verify that it is manufactured to those specs?
Mechanical devices are well understood. Examining the innards of a mechanical device is easier than trying to examine machine code-there are also no license agreements that prohibit such examination. When an individual uses a voting machine that alters a paper ballot, it is easier to see what was changed.
I have to say that while electronic voting may not be totally secure, I do think it would be easier to fudge with the punch card machines to throw an election. And I could do it with much less skilled people. Hire someone to bend a punch, so it doesn't always punch the hole correctly. Have a slightly longer punch, so more duplicate punches show up. Fill in the dot cards? shouldn't be too hard to figure out how to smudge the dots a little.
Examining ballots is important. However, tampering or faults with an electronic device might not be obvious until later. With e-voting, there is the potential for altering votes in addition to destroying votes. All parts of an election should be subject to unbiased and public scrutiny.
Paper votes for a recount? Only if we recount 7 times and the first time we get 4 totals that match do they count.
Without paper printouts, an accurate recount could be impossible. It has been mentioned that a desire to know the results quickly can affect how an election turns out and what happens.
People must have considered this, because the VerifiedVoting.org site has an answer to the question. They mention that an ATM machine provides a paper printout on the spot and that banks provide monthly information about bank account transactions. These guard against problems and provide information if a problem happens anyway.
Notice the speed factor: people are very interested to know the results of an election as soon as possible.
A Web site should not require a specific brand of browser. A site that is accessible to all browsers, but which looks best with a standards-compliant browser, is a different matter. In the past, there were "Best viewed with [name of a popular browser]" and "[name of a certain browser] Now" logos for sites. One individual did a campaign called "Best Viewed With Any Browser" to encourage browser-independent HTML pages. The campaign includes graphics for participating pages.
Advertisements sometimes compare commercial software packages based on the features in each package. Increasing the number of features can make the software look better in such a comparison. Software that is not commercial, i.e. FOSS, shareware, freeware, etc. rarely relies on published ads and has less incentive to include unneeded features.
One FAQ entry says that adding new HTML capabilities to Web browsers can be a problem if the capabilities are added in a rush or if they are not implemented properly. In addition, features such as ad-blocking (which help the user) are different from features such as tying a promoted service into a web browser from the same company.
Unbiased and public oversight of the election and the voting machines is also important.
Notice how they talked about using a single PC-like system to tabulate the votes. The votes from various locations were added up by this machine. Hopefully there was no tampering or other faults...
Just consider any faults and problems that were not noticed... It is likely impossible ever to know whether votes for either side were affected by such unnoticed problems.
A Slashdot story talks about how changing one or two votes per machine could have a noticable impact.
Electronic voting could make voting easier, but it is a good idea to have a voter-verifiable audit trail. As of now, not all electronic voting machines have such audit trails.
We trust computers with just about everything under the sun: our power, our health, our lives, our money
Security expert Bruce Schneier has talked about secure voting versus secure financial transactions. E-voting has the difficulty of secret ballots, which is not an issue for even the largest financial transactions. In addition, a single vote is associated with many others. Imagine redoing an election. It is much easier to figure out what happened if something goes wrong with a financial transaction. Though there are mission-critical systems, their design is different from normal systems, not to mention much more expensive. Electronic voting machines are not designed like this. In addition, voting machines have to be secure against deliberate tampering (possibly from the inside), as well as accidental failure.
In the case of copyright issues, explicitly mentioning that something was removed is better than silently excluding something from the search results. That also applies to exclusion of search results due to other types of outside influence. This way, people know what is happening and why it is happening.
(as proven by /.'s removal of posts in the past due to litigation from Microsoft).
When did this happen...? Slashdot was asked to remove certain postings but it is not clear as to whether they actually did remove them.
I've never seen any of that on other search engines.
If one search engine is extremely popular, it may be more likely to be targeted than others. Also, if the search engine provides very powerful search features or features such as cached copies of pages, etc. it might be noticed. If a search engine complies once with a removal request, some might say that provides incentive to target it again.
One such videotape of this type consisted of a solid block of what appeared to be Styrofoam. (A patent describes a limited-use video tape in which the core could be cardboard, styrofoam, or synthetic resin.) This block had openings and gaps for the path of the magnetic tape and for the plastic reels onto which the magnetic tape was wound. On the outside of the block was thin plastic that appeared to be attached with some adhesive. Stuck to the top of the cassette was a cardboard sheet printed with information about the promotion. The end of the tape which was inserted into the VCR had a long cardboard tab. This tab had serrations so that it could be easily pulled off of the tape without damaging anything.
It might be impossible to know if any votes were recorded incorrectly (or perhaps maliciously altered in secret) by technology. This applies to all political platforms, etc.
Would it be better to give away the code (minus any trademark rights) or perhaps make it available for others to use?
Someone might be interested in seeing what the inside of a closed-source product really looks like. Both good people and bad people might be interested in looking for security vulnerabilities.
Hopefully, the code was not designed to rely on "security through obscurity."
There have been lightweight videotapes that are meant for purposes like promotional mailings. The tapes are made out of a material like Styrofoam with an outside of cardboard and thin plastic. See one such brand here.
Next thing we know, IRS burst into a kindergarten arresting several 5-year-old's for not calculating and paying proper tax while playing Monopoly, just to protect the integrity of the economy and nation's financial systems. "If they can't do tax at age of 5, will you trust them to pay tax 20 years later?!"
Businesses can be required to have permits, and there was a case where this was applied to a kid with a lemonade stand. It is likely that the rules were not meant to cover such a situation, and most kids probably do not know or care about such issues. As it was, a neighbor reported the stand because she was having problems with the kid's parent. See also these comments.
Here is an actual cease-and-desist notice concerning a trademark infringement on a Rubik's Cube-type game. There is no mention of copyrights or patents. They claim that the "distinctive overall appearance" of the Rubik's Cube is trademarked. The same page says that product design can be trademarked. One would think that the visual appearance of the design would have to be distinctive and be important with respect to marketing and/or identifying the product (i.e. it is associated with the product and/or the manufacturer) in order to be trademarked. They also mention trade dress. This appears to apply to distinctive aspects of the total visual appearance of the product. These aspects would be associated with the product by the public. An example of trade dress is a color scheme that is associated with a specific brand.
On the Macintosh platform years ago, there was a game called Rubik's Wrap. In the game there was a repeating pattern on a 2D surface. The pattern was scrambled and would have to be unscrambled by the player, similar to a Rubik's Cube toy.
Even if there was no intent to do damage, it is understandable that people are concerned about the data. If it is not clear as to whether the data was taken, it is likely best to assume that it was. This is likely to be a huge inconvenience to those affected. Not everyone thinks that it is OK to "look around" a system that does not belong to them.
If the data was taken maliciously and then redistributed via Internet sites, catching the perpetrator would not instantly expunge the unauthorized copies of the data. This is where it is important to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive data in the first place.
Sexual harassment involving a female boss is not necessarily far from reality. See this article. (Notice the responses that the man received from supervisors.)