So we can quit trying to apologize for transgressions of due process by inventing imaginary loopholes in the story You seem to be the one inventing things. Lets see, odds that there was an injunction >> odds she was harboring terrorists. This obviously was an inflamatory off the cuff story. The mentioning of the expired patent is meaningless, the inference that this was terrorist related because customs falls under DHS was ridiculous, and the whole conversation between the store owner and the supplier had no importance. No furhter investigation about injunctions, who filed the complaint, etc. It's poor journalism I'm not apologizing for transgressions, the problem is the factually empty report doesn't point either way. DHS has had numerous and more horrendous transgretions especially towards immigrants and foreign visitors. And they've done far worse things than asking "Ma'am could you take the toy off the shelf." I just don't jump to the conclusion that a trademark infringement investigation = outrageous misuse of power when there is no evidence.
I had a "Magic Cube" in the 1980s, a Rubik's Cube clone that was probably in violation of their patent. That trademark to which you linked cites prior art only in 1998, so it's probably invalid. It isn't necessarily invalid. I ran across a couple of "Magic Cube" Trademarks in the "puzzle games" category since 1980. (sorry about the link) Seems like that trademark has been claimed, then allowed to expire a couple of times (first one cited 1979). Since it is legal to claim an expired trademark, it is possible the one in 1998 is legit. The "due process" requires an injunction from a judge to prevent such abuses. What is to say they didn't get an injuction? I didn't see anything in the article either way. And the effect of "Homeland Security" agents scaring the vendor doesn't end with just this abuse of due process and commerce. It's not as if they came in ransacked the place searching for the toy. Or brought a truck and impounded everything in the store. They came in, asked her about the toy, then asked her to remove it from the shelf due to trademark accusation. The article didn't even say if the agents secured the toys as evidence. Nothing in the article indicates that there was any malicious use of power, the owner overreacted. I can't claim knowledge either way on the legitimacy of the case. I am just saying that this appears to be more an overreaction by the store owner than abuse of goverment power. If the author of the article wanted to show DHS abuses, I'm sure there are far worse examples (treatment of immigrants, foreigners, citizens with "suspect" surnames,etc).
The article said the patent expired, but that the investigation was about trademark violation. The two have nothing to do with each other. The article is entirely slanted with its presentation of facts As others point out, these were customs officials, just because they fall under DHS doesn't mean this is terrorist related accusation, its customs doing their job. I did not see any conclusions in the story about the validity of the trademark claim. Just that her supplier told her that they weren't infringing (what do you expect them to say?) I just did a quick search and found a live Trademark #76351080 "Magic Cube" word mark that falls under G[oods] & S[ervices]: Manipulative puzzles. It is possible there is a legitimate trademark claim From the story, the agents didn't shut the store down, they asked to removed the suspected item from the shelves. I don't think that is excessive. The "goverment is always evil and wrong" attitude is killing the country. Be wary of goverment, but don't spout out wild claims until all the evidence is in.
Well, I didn't mean to come off sounding like the social/psychological side of business is frivoulous or vapourous, just the people who engage in it:) I know alot of engineers who went into marketing. There are different types of marketing. There are the vaccuous funny tv commercial clowns. Then there are the technical marketing folks who shape product roadmaps, who need to understand their industry and products. I didn't mean to say that marketing was more important than engineering, they need to go hand in hand. There is a cycle. Engineering comes up with a great idea, marketing convinces people to invest, engineering makes the idea happen, marketing sells it, marketing communicates the customer roadmap, engineering works to match the roadmap... etc.
Actually most people realized what was going on, the problem was they didn't want to get burned by no going with the momentum. In late 90s lots of people said, yeah the market is overpriced, but it keeps going up so they had to stay in. The fear of fund managers was to not have certain stocks, then have them double in price (for no reason), and look bad because they only managed 10% growth while others were at 70%. So it became a continuous cycle. I remember a commercial, I think it was for beer, and a couple guys at a rich woman's house are proposing a.com business. One looks up at a picture of a dog and says yeah the website will be captainskippy.com (or whatever the dogs name was), just so they could get the cash. When everybody is getting rich, logic tends to take a back seat. My reference to programmers was directed towards how they let themselves get pressured into impossible deadlines. Many people in all jobs convince themselves they can things work no matter what. It's nothing new, ET for the Atari 2600 was done in 6 weeks, and it wasn't some hack who just needed money, it was one of the greats of the industry. And of course the game was terrible.
People's ego + $ will usually convince them they can do the impossible.
Uh this is how it always works. If there is reasonable suspicion you stop the action until through due process things can be resolved. This is the same thing as arresting a person, then going through due process. You don't wait to have a trial before arresting somebody in a shooting. You arrest the person, arrange bond (to secure the person's appearance at trial) then go through the trial process.
An ethical professional would have said "You know, this business will die, horribly. Selling catfood through the internet isn't going to work, at least not today. I think that's more of a hindsight arguement. It was probably a combination of a workable idea, starry eyes of the.com boom, and ego thinking "I can make this work". Same thing happens to other professionals like programmers (late, overbudget, buggy products)
Do marketing people get paid a lot to compensate them for their frivolous job and their vapourous life? I wouldn't call marketing frivolous, at least in their importance to a business. Just go to a drugstore, right next to the $1.99 Wal-ynol is a $4.99 bottle of Tylenol. It's the same medicine, but somehow people are convinced the name brand is better. Sure the chemical engineers can figure out new ways to make each bottle 10 cents cheaper, but the marketing folks can convince people to pay $3 more. Which do you think is better for profits? Some marketing person convinced us that $5 for a cup of coffee, or $100 for a pair of shoes is reasonable; They even convince people that american beer "tastes great"! You shouldn't dismiss the social and psychological side of business. Too often the "better" product doesn't sell as well because people think the other product is "better."
One of the smart things CoH did was not over-promise. The game at launch provided a polished core gameplay, and they have added more and more fatures later. Contrast this with SWG that had crafting, housing, mining, pets, wide variety of character classes... and most everything was broken at launch.
Really, given the fact that most popular computers have enough processing power to handle anything, and the fact that clustering technology has evolved and is usable in case they aren't...what is the point in the "super computer"? The super computer is a cluster (10k+ processors in 20 nodes). Not all applications/computations scale by just adding computers to the cluster. An example would be solving for z: x=84+19, y=5*3, z=x+y The ultimate solution z is limited by the speed x & y can be solved. You can have an individual computer solve for x and another for y in parallel. But no matter how many more computers you add, none of them can solve z until x&y are solved first, and none of them would speed up the computation of x&y. After a certain scale, you do not get benifits of parellel processing, so the only way to speed things up is to make each individual computer faster.
Knights of the Old Republic originally launched on XBox, then got ported to PC a few months later. Bioware has been focusing on console market, their next "big game" Jade Empire will be Xbox launch as well.
Raising before the flop requires strategy, like you said, it can be done to weed out those with bad hands from time to time If you raise before the flop only when you have good hands, you just gave an indication to the table what you have. OTOH those who raise before the flop on all hands, basically make the game more expensive To give an example of both cases If you have an average hand playing somebody always raising before the flop when they have good cards, them raising will give you a reason to fold. If you have an average hand playing somebody always raising before the flop no matter what, you are in essence sitting at a more expensive table. Instead of sitting at a $20 dollar a hand table you are sitting at a $50 a hand table. You now have reduced the "number of games" in your bankroll leaning things more towards luck.
The reason you don't want to play against these types is they force you to increase your risk with minimal information. For example after the flop you have a good understanding of the strength of you hand and bet accordingly, but if somebody raises you big before the flop, you have a lot less information to work off of. It pushes things more towards luck than skill. Yes, most likely a good player will win, but there is a higher chance they get burned by bad luck.
NASA Administrator: Team, what should our next mission be? NASA Scientist 1: First Post!! (+3 funny) NASA Scientist 2: FP! OMG LOL!! (-1 redundant) NASA Scientist 3: We should bring back some Mars rocks to research planetary formation so we can understand if it had a strong magnetic field early during its formation. Of course MY projects never get funded because you are too shortsigthed and continue to soak up resources for the doomed ISS (+2 Interesting [50% Interesting, 50% Troll]) NASA Scientist 4: I for one welcome out Martian Rock Overlords (+3 Funny [70% Funny, 30% Overrated]) NASA Scientist 1: 1. Spend billions on rock collecting mission, 2. ???, 3. Profit! (0 [100% Overrated]) Anonymous Coward: You guys are a bunch of dorks, stop spending my tax dollars, go home to your parents basement and play D&D, and let private companies do space exploration. (+5 Funny [20% Interesting, 80% Funny])
But we who are decent or even good/great at poker definitely prefer to play against the stupid - because they're the ones who line our pockets. Except for the ones that are too stupid. The ones who raise big early, tilting the game more towards chance than skill. Typically online "play money" players play like that.
...can anyone tell me how being close to the equator makes it easier to get to space? Obviously it's because you're closer to the sun, ignore all those other posts.
Yes because of course the residents of Fallujah would prefer firebombing. You are making my point, previously it would have been accepted to just level a city that was resisting, now limited strikes and policing troops are all that is allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
So we can quit trying to apologize for transgressions of due process by inventing imaginary loopholes in the story
You seem to be the one inventing things. Lets see, odds that there was an injunction >> odds she was harboring terrorists. This obviously was an inflamatory off the cuff story. The mentioning of the expired patent is meaningless, the inference that this was terrorist related because customs falls under DHS was ridiculous, and the whole conversation between the store owner and the supplier had no importance. No furhter investigation about injunctions, who filed the complaint, etc. It's poor journalism
I'm not apologizing for transgressions, the problem is the factually empty report doesn't point either way. DHS has had numerous and more horrendous transgretions especially towards immigrants and foreign visitors. And they've done far worse things than asking "Ma'am could you take the toy off the shelf."
I just don't jump to the conclusion that a trademark infringement investigation = outrageous misuse of power when there is no evidence.
I had a "Magic Cube" in the 1980s, a Rubik's Cube clone that was probably in violation of their patent. That trademark to which you linked cites prior art only in 1998, so it's probably invalid.
It isn't necessarily invalid. I ran across a couple of "Magic Cube" Trademarks in the "puzzle games" category since 1980. (sorry about the link) Seems like that trademark has been claimed, then allowed to expire a couple of times (first one cited 1979). Since it is legal to claim an expired trademark, it is possible the one in 1998 is legit.
The "due process" requires an injunction from a judge to prevent such abuses.
What is to say they didn't get an injuction? I didn't see anything in the article either way.
And the effect of "Homeland Security" agents scaring the vendor doesn't end with just this abuse of due process and commerce.
It's not as if they came in ransacked the place searching for the toy. Or brought a truck and impounded everything in the store. They came in, asked her about the toy, then asked her to remove it from the shelf due to trademark accusation. The article didn't even say if the agents secured the toys as evidence. Nothing in the article indicates that there was any malicious use of power, the owner overreacted.
I can't claim knowledge either way on the legitimacy of the case. I am just saying that this appears to be more an overreaction by the store owner than abuse of goverment power. If the author of the article wanted to show DHS abuses, I'm sure there are far worse examples (treatment of immigrants, foreigners, citizens with "suspect" surnames,etc).
Could also be infringment on the "Magic Cube" word mark which is live.
The article said the patent expired, but that the investigation was about trademark violation. The two have nothing to do with each other. The article is entirely slanted with its presentation of facts
As others point out, these were customs officials, just because they fall under DHS doesn't mean this is terrorist related accusation, its customs doing their job.
I did not see any conclusions in the story about the validity of the trademark claim. Just that her supplier told her that they weren't infringing (what do you expect them to say?) I just did a quick search and found a live Trademark #76351080 "Magic Cube" word mark that falls under G[oods] & S[ervices]: Manipulative puzzles. It is possible there is a legitimate trademark claim
From the story, the agents didn't shut the store down, they asked to removed the suspected item from the shelves. I don't think that is excessive.
The "goverment is always evil and wrong" attitude is killing the country. Be wary of goverment, but don't spout out wild claims until all the evidence is in.
Well, I didn't mean to come off sounding like the social/psychological side of business is frivoulous or vapourous, just the people who engage in it :)
I know alot of engineers who went into marketing. There are different types of marketing. There are the vaccuous funny tv commercial clowns. Then there are the technical marketing folks who shape product roadmaps, who need to understand their industry and products.
I didn't mean to say that marketing was more important than engineering, they need to go hand in hand. There is a cycle.
Engineering comes up with a great idea, marketing convinces people to invest, engineering makes the idea happen, marketing sells it, marketing communicates the customer roadmap, engineering works to match the roadmap... etc.
Actually most people realized what was going on, the problem was they didn't want to get burned by no going with the momentum. .com business. One looks up at a picture of a dog and says yeah the website will be captainskippy.com (or whatever the dogs name was), just so they could get the cash. When everybody is getting rich, logic tends to take a back seat.
In late 90s lots of people said, yeah the market is overpriced, but it keeps going up so they had to stay in.
The fear of fund managers was to not have certain stocks, then have them double in price (for no reason), and look bad because they only managed 10% growth while others were at 70%. So it became a continuous cycle.
I remember a commercial, I think it was for beer, and a couple guys at a rich woman's house are proposing a
My reference to programmers was directed towards how they let themselves get pressured into impossible deadlines.
Many people in all jobs convince themselves they can things work no matter what. It's nothing new, ET for the Atari 2600 was done in 6 weeks, and it wasn't some hack who just needed money, it was one of the greats of the industry. And of course the game was terrible.
People's ego + $ will usually convince them they can do the impossible.
Uh this is how it always works. If there is reasonable suspicion you stop the action until through due process things can be resolved.
This is the same thing as arresting a person, then going through due process. You don't wait to have a trial before arresting somebody in a shooting. You arrest the person, arrange bond (to secure the person's appearance at trial) then go through the trial process.
An ethical professional would have said "You know, this business will die, horribly. Selling catfood through the internet isn't going to work, at least not today. .com boom, and ego thinking "I can make this work".
I think that's more of a hindsight arguement. It was probably a combination of a workable idea, starry eyes of the
Same thing happens to other professionals like programmers (late, overbudget, buggy products)
Do marketing people get paid a lot to compensate them for their frivolous job and their vapourous life?
I wouldn't call marketing frivolous, at least in their importance to a business.
Just go to a drugstore, right next to the $1.99 Wal-ynol is a $4.99 bottle of Tylenol. It's the same medicine, but somehow people are convinced the name brand is better. Sure the chemical engineers can figure out new ways to make each bottle 10 cents cheaper, but the marketing folks can convince people to pay $3 more. Which do you think is better for profits?
Some marketing person convinced us that $5 for a cup of coffee, or $100 for a pair of shoes is reasonable; They even convince people that american beer "tastes great"!
You shouldn't dismiss the social and psychological side of business. Too often the "better" product doesn't sell as well because people think the other product is "better."
One of the smart things CoH did was not over-promise. The game at launch provided a polished core gameplay, and they have added more and more fatures later.
Contrast this with SWG that had crafting, housing, mining, pets, wide variety of character classes... and most everything was broken at launch.
City of Heroes
Heck even a Centris 650 can do everything. Of course we are still waiting for boot to complete.
Really, given the fact that most popular computers have enough processing power to handle anything, and the fact that clustering technology has evolved and is usable in case they aren't...what is the point in the "super computer"?
The super computer is a cluster (10k+ processors in 20 nodes).
Not all applications/computations scale by just adding computers to the cluster.
An example would be solving for z: x=84+19, y=5*3, z=x+y
The ultimate solution z is limited by the speed x & y can be solved. You can have an individual computer solve for x and another for y in parallel. But no matter how many more computers you add, none of them can solve z until x&y are solved first, and none of them would speed up the computation of x&y.
After a certain scale, you do not get benifits of parellel processing, so the only way to speed things up is to make each individual computer faster.
Knights of the Old Republic originally launched on XBox, then got ported to PC a few months later.
Bioware has been focusing on console market, their next "big game" Jade Empire will be Xbox launch as well.
You wouldn't happen to wear a green jacket with a bunch of question marks on it would you?
Don't forget KOTOR
What about System Shock, its more like an RPG type adventure, focusing on story line and character development than running and gunning.
NOOOOO put him back in his wheel, the rat is actually the power supply.
Raising before the flop requires strategy, like you said, it can be done to weed out those with bad hands from time to time
If you raise before the flop only when you have good hands, you just gave an indication to the table what you have.
OTOH those who raise before the flop on all hands, basically make the game more expensive
To give an example of both cases
If you have an average hand playing somebody always raising before the flop when they have good cards, them raising will give you a reason to fold.
If you have an average hand playing somebody always raising before the flop no matter what, you are in essence sitting at a more expensive table. Instead of sitting at a $20 dollar a hand table you are sitting at a $50 a hand table. You now have reduced the "number of games" in your bankroll leaning things more towards luck.
The reason you don't want to play against these types is they force you to increase your risk with minimal information.
For example after the flop you have a good understanding of the strength of you hand and bet accordingly, but if somebody raises you big before the flop, you have a lot less information to work off of. It pushes things more towards luck than skill.
Yes, most likely a good player will win, but there is a higher chance they get burned by bad luck.
NASA Administrator: Team, what should our next mission be?
NASA Scientist 1: First Post!! (+3 funny)
NASA Scientist 2: FP! OMG LOL!! (-1 redundant)
NASA Scientist 3: We should bring back some Mars rocks to research planetary formation so we can understand if it had a strong magnetic field early during its formation. Of course MY projects never get funded because you are too shortsigthed and continue to soak up resources for the doomed ISS (+2 Interesting [50% Interesting, 50% Troll])
NASA Scientist 4: I for one welcome out Martian Rock Overlords (+3 Funny [70% Funny, 30% Overrated])
NASA Scientist 1: 1. Spend billions on rock collecting mission, 2. ???, 3. Profit! (0 [100% Overrated])
Anonymous Coward: You guys are a bunch of dorks, stop spending my tax dollars, go home to your parents basement and play D&D, and let private companies do space exploration. (+5 Funny [20% Interesting, 80% Funny])
But we who are decent or even good/great at poker definitely prefer to play against the stupid - because they're the ones who line our pockets.
Except for the ones that are too stupid. The ones who raise big early, tilting the game more towards chance than skill. Typically online "play money" players play like that.
...can anyone tell me how being close to the equator makes it easier to get to space?
Obviously it's because you're closer to the sun, ignore all those other posts.
I beg to differ
Keep in mind most sorties are not airstrikes.
Yes because of course the residents of Fallujah would prefer firebombing.
You are making my point, previously it would have been accepted to just level a city that was resisting, now limited strikes and policing troops are all that is allowed.