Also, do people seriously use "app" for "appetizers"? Or is there some other reason you would use app in a restaurant?
Yes, but it's usually only internal. That is, the waiter won't ask you if you'd like an app, but if you order an appetizer he'll ask the cook if the app is ready yet.
I'm in the same position, with listed speeds much higher than any provider in the area will actually sell me. Instead of just posting about it here, though, we can help to improve the data. Since we all want faster connections, it's in our interest to notify them when a provider is reporting an area covered at a higher speed than is actually available in that area.
Clicking the provider name will expand some details, and then mousing over the bullet next to "source" will show the agency that uploaded that data to the national database. In my case, it's an office of my state government, and they have a speed test and contact information on their site. Your local site will vary, but contacting them about the error will get it corrected much faster than posting about it on/. will.
You told him he was wrong and then listed several reasons he might be right. Someone born in the United States but whose parents are in the U.S. in a diplomatic capacity for a foreign power aren't citizens, but someone born outside the U.S. to U.S.-citizen parents is a citizen. So, place of birth isn't a reliable indicator of citizenship. Likewise, a citizen might not have an SSN and a non-citizen might have one, so that's also not a reliable indicator.
You and the author of the blog you linked to misunderstand trademarks. You will need to argue either non-infringement (that a reasonable person would never think that "Tetrada" is somehow related to the Tetris Company) or dilution (that the average person uses "tetris" to mean "a game with tetrominos" and not "Tetris, the game by the Tetris Company"). "'Tetra-' just means 'four'!" or "It's in the dictionary!" are irrelevant distractions. I think you'll have a hard time making that case.
On the copyright side, you seem to be proposing that as long as you don't directly copy the bits from Tetris you're okay. I think that's an overly narrow view of copyright law that is going to get you in (more) trouble. For example, if you write a book with the exact same plot and characterization as another, that's still copyright infringement even though you didn't photocopy the original pages. When something like this goes to court, they will look at the first work and the allegedly infringing work, and compare how much of the first work's artistic expression was incorporated into the second, as well as how much originality the second work added to the allegedly copied elements.
In your case, you don't seem to have added any innovation or originality to Tetris, so you have to argue that except for code, images, and sounds, Tetris contains no copyrightable material. Again, I think you're going to have a very hard time making that case.
With that said, "how much of a video game idea is protected by copyright?" is a question I'd like to see the courts answer. However, since your game consists of a direct clone with no originality, I think that pursuing this case would almost certainly set a precedent that would later be used against people who actually did do some innovating--in short, you would be furthering the suppression of derivative but innovative works.
Ok, I've read every single one of the comments (so far). The issue here is not me not being original. I know I wasn't. The issue is if I (and many more) are breaking the law.
On the subject of the law, your posts suggest that maybe you don't understand the distinctions between trademarks and copyrights. If you are going to keep posting about this, let alone if you're going to pursue legal action, I strongly suggest you educate yourself on the differences.
Did Pro Evolution Soccer break the law when they made a game oh-so-similar to the Fifa series? They were careful enough not to include players and teams names that had a copyright, but the gameplay followed the rules of football (or soccer for my US friends), which have not copyright and could not have any. And the shape of the ball was the same in both games. And Kick Off 2.And Sensible Soccer. Oh my god, the non-original senseless clowns.
This is a false analogy. In all of these cases, you could ask the developer "Where did you get the idea for this game?" and they'd say "From the sport of football, which predates copyright." Your answer to that same question is necessarily "From the video game 'Tetris'".
If my game was better or worse, or if it brings anything new to the "original" is for the customers and the market to decide.
Your opinion is not law; whether your game infringes is exclusively for the courts to decide.
Some reviewers said that it was in fact better because it played better and it felt better to them. But all that is irrelevant. If you ask me, it was a better implementation in this version, and I was preparing some never-before-seen game modes for the next version. Will anyone get to see the innovation apart from me? No. Would I be breaking the law when I would bring original gameplay modes in the mix?
I don't understand why you think future innovation would somehow absolve you of past infringement. If you had released a game with innovative modes in the first place, you could reasonably argue that you were making a different game that was distinct enough from Tetris to not be covered.
I would still be using tetrominos, but for anyone over 12 it is known that tetrominos (like dominos, trominos, pentominos, hexominos etc) were NOT invented by Tetris, were not used there for the first time and while Tetris is copyrighted as a word, other words that derive from the word tetromino are not all copyrighted by this fact. Quoting wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyomino): "Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, and the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity. Many results with the pieces of 1 to 6 squares were first published in Fairy Chess Review between the years 1937 to 1957, under the name of “dissection problems.” The name polyomino was invented by Solomon W. Golomb in 1953 and it was popularized by Martin Gardner." "The word polyomino and the names of the various orders of polyomino are all back-formations from the word domino, a common game piece consisting of two squares, with the first letter d- fancifully interpreted as a version of the prefix di- meaning “two”. The name domino for the game piece is believed to come from the spotted masquerade garment domino, from Latin dominus. Most of the numerical prefixes are Greek. Polyominoes of order 9 and 11 more often take the Latin prefixes nona- (nonomino) and undeca- (undecomino) than the Greek prefixes ennea- (enneomino) and hendeca- (hendecomino)." So clearly, the names were used long before Tetris. I can agree that Tetris is a make-believe word that uniquely characterizes this game. That is why I did not use this word, and chose to use a greek dictionary word, Tetrada.
Again, learn the difference between trademarks and copyrights if you're going to keep writing about th
I've never seen the floor function defined as "just take the integer part", since this is wrong for negative numbers. It's usually written as "the greatest integer that is less than or equal to the given number", which would work correctly for 0.999... and other repeating decimals.
No, you're missing the whole point. 1/3 is exactly equal to 0.333... with an infinite number of trailing digits. It's not an approximation or an estimate, it is two ways of representing the exact same real number.
Here's how you convince yourself: If 1/3 was really close but not quite 0.333..., then we could split the difference between those numbers and find another real number between them. But we can't, which means we were wrong to assume that 1/3 and 0.333... were distinct.
Read it again. There's a comment about the FCC followed by a question about government regulations that doesn't mention the FCC. Your interpretation is that the poster was only talking about FCC regulations since he mentioned them in the previous sentence, the other interpretation is that the poster was generalizing from the FCC to all government regulations. I think both interpretations are valid, but quoting only part of the message to make it seem like your interpretation is the right one is poor form.
It's more like yelling at your neighbor across the street, and then getting upset when someone driving by overhears it. With unencrypted traffic on a wireless network you are quite literally broadcasting information to the world. The argument that someone is the intended recipient and everyone else needs to pretend they didn't hear it is bullshit.
Sure, but by the time you've got users running scripts or installers locally you've already won. No need to also trick them into using a fake web page when you could just be logging their keys on the real page.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, do people seriously use "app" for "appetizers"? Or is there some other reason you would use app in a restaurant?
Yes, but it's usually only internal. That is, the waiter won't ask you if you'd like an app, but if you order an appetizer he'll ask the cook if the app is ready yet.
I'm in the same position, with listed speeds much higher than any provider in the area will actually sell me. Instead of just posting about it here, though, we can help to improve the data. Since we all want faster connections, it's in our interest to notify them when a provider is reporting an area covered at a higher speed than is actually available in that area.
Clicking the provider name will expand some details, and then mousing over the bullet next to "source" will show the agency that uploaded that data to the national database. In my case, it's an office of my state government, and they have a speed test and contact information on their site. Your local site will vary, but contacting them about the error will get it corrected much faster than posting about it on /. will.
You told him he was wrong and then listed several reasons he might be right. Someone born in the United States but whose parents are in the U.S. in a diplomatic capacity for a foreign power aren't citizens, but someone born outside the U.S. to U.S.-citizen parents is a citizen. So, place of birth isn't a reliable indicator of citizenship. Likewise, a citizen might not have an SSN and a non-citizen might have one, so that's also not a reliable indicator.
Wrong twice in one thread! Good show!
You and the author of the blog you linked to misunderstand trademarks. You will need to argue either non-infringement (that a reasonable person would never think that "Tetrada" is somehow related to the Tetris Company) or dilution (that the average person uses "tetris" to mean "a game with tetrominos" and not "Tetris, the game by the Tetris Company"). "'Tetra-' just means 'four'!" or "It's in the dictionary!" are irrelevant distractions. I think you'll have a hard time making that case.
On the copyright side, you seem to be proposing that as long as you don't directly copy the bits from Tetris you're okay. I think that's an overly narrow view of copyright law that is going to get you in (more) trouble. For example, if you write a book with the exact same plot and characterization as another, that's still copyright infringement even though you didn't photocopy the original pages. When something like this goes to court, they will look at the first work and the allegedly infringing work, and compare how much of the first work's artistic expression was incorporated into the second, as well as how much originality the second work added to the allegedly copied elements.
In your case, you don't seem to have added any innovation or originality to Tetris, so you have to argue that except for code, images, and sounds, Tetris contains no copyrightable material. Again, I think you're going to have a very hard time making that case.
With that said, "how much of a video game idea is protected by copyright?" is a question I'd like to see the courts answer. However, since your game consists of a direct clone with no originality, I think that pursuing this case would almost certainly set a precedent that would later be used against people who actually did do some innovating--in short, you would be furthering the suppression of derivative but innovative works.
On the subject of the law, your posts suggest that maybe you don't understand the distinctions between trademarks and copyrights. If you are going to keep posting about this, let alone if you're going to pursue legal action, I strongly suggest you educate yourself on the differences.
This is a false analogy. In all of these cases, you could ask the developer "Where did you get the idea for this game?" and they'd say "From the sport of football, which predates copyright." Your answer to that same question is necessarily "From the video game 'Tetris'".
Your opinion is not law; whether your game infringes is exclusively for the courts to decide.
I don't understand why you think future innovation would somehow absolve you of past infringement. If you had released a game with innovative modes in the first place, you could reasonably argue that you were making a different game that was distinct enough from Tetris to not be covered.
Again, learn the difference between trademarks and copyrights if you're going to keep writing about th
So every state gets the freedom to decide for themselves whether black people are people?
Were it not for this compromise, there probably wouldn't have been a constitution at all.
I had this same thought. I maintain that this, more than any mis-attribution of credit, is the reason GNU/Linux never took off as a name.
You were doing great until "Except 0.999... is not a rational number. It is an irrational number."
0.999... is as rational as 1 is, since they're equal.
In your dimensional explanation, 10 is a dimensionless scalar. 10 meter sticks measure 10 meters, not 10 square meters.
I've never seen the floor function defined as "just take the integer part", since this is wrong for negative numbers. It's usually written as "the greatest integer that is less than or equal to the given number", which would work correctly for 0.999... and other repeating decimals.
Welcome to the cutting edge of mathematics 2500 years ago.
No, you're missing the whole point. 1/3 is exactly equal to 0.333... with an infinite number of trailing digits. It's not an approximation or an estimate, it is two ways of representing the exact same real number.
Here's how you convince yourself: If 1/3 was really close but not quite 0.333..., then we could split the difference between those numbers and find another real number between them. But we can't, which means we were wrong to assume that 1/3 and 0.333... were distinct.
That doesn't really sound like Carl Sagan at all.
Read it again. There's a comment about the FCC followed by a question about government regulations that doesn't mention the FCC. Your interpretation is that the poster was only talking about FCC regulations since he mentioned them in the previous sentence, the other interpretation is that the poster was generalizing from the FCC to all government regulations. I think both interpretations are valid, but quoting only part of the message to make it seem like your interpretation is the right one is poor form.
Way to selectively quote the part that wasn't being responded to. Good show.
It's more like yelling at your neighbor across the street, and then getting upset when someone driving by overhears it. With unencrypted traffic on a wireless network you are quite literally broadcasting information to the world. The argument that someone is the intended recipient and everyone else needs to pretend they didn't hear it is bullshit.
Something like this? http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2010/06/mickeys_amphetamine.html
Yeah, because "all plastics are bad" is totally what I said.
...he says, taking a long drink from his plastic water bottle.
I don't disagree with you, but I strongly suspect this will be one of those times that it really would have been worth it to take precautions.
I'd rather see them be makers than consumers.
Can't speak for everyone, of course, but some of us enjoy consuming in the evening because we spend the whole day making.
How do you anonymously receive mail?
Sure, but by the time you've got users running scripts or installers locally you've already won. No need to also trick them into using a fake web page when you could just be logging their keys on the real page.
Just a guess, but maybe the part where he said "Then use the corn for ethanol!"?