If the satellite is over foreign soil is it really an act of war if the satellite is shot down for trespassing? Is discovering and killing an enemy spy on your soil an act of war?
That's less of a given than it may seem, for the longest time the different "sizes" of currency in many countries were based on the relative value of copper, silver and gold to each other.
Clothing sizes are often denoted in inches even in areas that have never used imperial scales. We just remember which numbers fit when we tried them on. I've also seen it on tools found in hardware stores but for those we remember the number that was on the counterpiece it has to match.
We shortened "a half-litre of beer" to "a half" long time ago. Because ordering beer shouldn't be so damn verbose when you're drinking it in half increments.
There is no global anything, neither global warming nror cooling, it's called climate change for a reason and that is that different regions will experience different changes. Some will become cooler, some warmer but as we are already seeing the weather is freaking out as a result.
Then there's the toilets, oh so many different kinds of toilet.
Did you ever see the people in Star Trek go to the privvy? Hell have you ever SEEN a privvy in ST? There's only one explaination: Starfleet uniforms include catheters.
Considering the Federation is often described as communism that doesn't make much sense. Of course it also doesn't make much sense that people who got partially assimilated hate being Borg, you'd think the first thing they'd do is reprogram them to feel happyness at the thought of serving the swarm.
I'd say PC programs could be called clients. In Tron you could call the servers servers without hurting the RP, after all. You could even have the server load influence the game and make events deliberately lag players.
But I'm really not sure if it should be allowed to kill system critical components, it IS pretty ridiculous to delete the kernel or even the entire OS (sorry, MCP) and having the system still run (especially if killing a harmless program caused you to die of segfaulting in 2.0). Maybe instanced dungeons could be VMs and killing their kernel would cause a kernel panic forcing you to evacuate the VM in a limited amount of time or you die? Heh, remember the "Windows will shut down in 60 seconds" the Blaster virus caused?
Would be kinda funny to have a game where you kill the mighty Emacs though (Emacs was a possible name for ressource hogs in Tron 2.0...)
Remember Sony and the Dualshock lawsuit? They were supposed to pay cents for each controller and yet they refused. There's no reasonable price when dealing with companies, if they can do it cheaper by breaking or circumventing the law they'll do that. Even if you just want one cent per unit and the patent cost you a billion $ to develop they'd wait until it's public domain and then grab it. Or they'd buy you out. While some license negotiations would be successful how much leverage do you think the inventor has when the company can just say "fuck you, we'll take it in a year and don't have to pay you a single cent"? This'd force patent license fees so low you'd be lucky to recover the investment.
Also you could still sit on a patent by e.g. making five units and labelling them with some outrageous price, you did manufacture the product but it seems there is no demand. Well, not your fault, right? Can't invalidate patents just because noone's buying them.
I really have issues with how many mobs can be displayed at any one time. I don't know if it was a game limitation or an engine limitation, regardless I wasn't too thrilled with it.
I think it was a limitation of the hardware at the time, normalmapping creates a lot of load for the hardware and Doom 3 had to be able to run on less advanced systems (like the Radeon 8500 I had at the time, worked well enough although the framerate was pretty low) than what the engine was meant for (since games licensing the engine would take a year or two to come out). I don't think the market was really ready for normalmapping (along with unified lighting) at the time but the engine had to support it. Half-Life 2 used normalmaps only on very few surfaces and had precalculated lighting, that greatly reduced the load on the system. Later Doom 3 mods and levels used much more enemies at once than the standard game but in turn upped the hardware requirements by doing so.
In my opinion however I just doesn't get any sweeter than Quake 3 engine, to me it really feels like an extension of myself on how fast it reacts.
You'd feel different had you tried to make stuff for the engine, Doom 3 is just so much more advanced (as it should be since a lot of stuff happened between the releases of these two games).
Companies are considered dead for such purposes, just define a fixed duration for copyright that belongs to a corporation and... hey, you've got the current system!
Why shouldn't a builder be paid for building one house for the rest of their lives?
Because he's the one charged with making copies, not the one who made the original work. The builder of a house is akin to the printer at a publishing house. The one who owns the copyright on the house and could indeed make money with it forever is the architect. However, building standards and aesthetics change so a plan will not be of value indefinitely. Copyrighted plans have the advantage that the architect can sell a plan multiple times and that he can charge less than the cost of a new plan for each copy so he gets more money for the same work and the buyers get the work for less money compared to paying for having their own plan drafted. Both parties benefit so the system is accepted.
And yes, photographing a building can be copyright infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
If the satellite is over foreign soil is it really an act of war if the satellite is shot down for trespassing? Is discovering and killing an enemy spy on your soil an act of war?
That's less of a given than it may seem, for the longest time the different "sizes" of currency in many countries were based on the relative value of copper, silver and gold to each other.
Clothing sizes are often denoted in inches even in areas that have never used imperial scales. We just remember which numbers fit when we tried them on. I've also seen it on tools found in hardware stores but for those we remember the number that was on the counterpiece it has to match.
We shortened "a half-litre of beer" to "a half" long time ago. Because ordering beer shouldn't be so damn verbose when you're drinking it in half increments.
& eur ;
There is scarcity of a material, latinum (can't be replicated). Though I don't think it's of any use other than convincing Ferenghis.
That's because FF uses the newspeak introduced by those fundamentalists to prevent us from expressing that fact!
That's Babylonian myth, slightly predates Lovecraft.
There is no global anything, neither global warming nror cooling, it's called climate change for a reason and that is that different regions will experience different changes. Some will become cooler, some warmer but as we are already seeing the weather is freaking out as a result.
Then there's the toilets, oh so many different kinds of toilet.
Did you ever see the people in Star Trek go to the privvy? Hell have you ever SEEN a privvy in ST? There's only one explaination: Starfleet uniforms include catheters.
I started laughing when he said Wharf.
the Borg as a metaphor for socialism.
Considering the Federation is often described as communism that doesn't make much sense. Of course it also doesn't make much sense that people who got partially assimilated hate being Borg, you'd think the first thing they'd do is reprogram them to feel happyness at the thought of serving the swarm.
I'd say PC programs could be called clients. In Tron you could call the servers servers without hurting the RP, after all. You could even have the server load influence the game and make events deliberately lag players.
But I'm really not sure if it should be allowed to kill system critical components, it IS pretty ridiculous to delete the kernel or even the entire OS (sorry, MCP) and having the system still run (especially if killing a harmless program caused you to die of segfaulting in 2.0). Maybe instanced dungeons could be VMs and killing their kernel would cause a kernel panic forcing you to evacuate the VM in a limited amount of time or you die? Heh, remember the "Windows will shut down in 60 seconds" the Blaster virus caused?
Would be kinda funny to have a game where you kill the mighty Emacs though (Emacs was a possible name for ressource hogs in Tron 2.0...)
The other smart thing they could do is create cross-movie interaction. Let your TOYS character go visit your friend's CARS character world.
Of course they would have to completely ignore the scales involved unless they want that to turn into a game of Frogger.
Remember Sony and the Dualshock lawsuit? They were supposed to pay cents for each controller and yet they refused. There's no reasonable price when dealing with companies, if they can do it cheaper by breaking or circumventing the law they'll do that. Even if you just want one cent per unit and the patent cost you a billion $ to develop they'd wait until it's public domain and then grab it. Or they'd buy you out. While some license negotiations would be successful how much leverage do you think the inventor has when the company can just say "fuck you, we'll take it in a year and don't have to pay you a single cent"? This'd force patent license fees so low you'd be lucky to recover the investment.
Also you could still sit on a patent by e.g. making five units and labelling them with some outrageous price, you did manufacture the product but it seems there is no demand. Well, not your fault, right? Can't invalidate patents just because noone's buying them.
To be fair, Madden for the Wii alledgedly added a lot of new stuff so buying that is justified.
I really have issues with how many mobs can be displayed at any one time. I don't know if it was a game limitation or an engine limitation, regardless I wasn't too thrilled with it.
I think it was a limitation of the hardware at the time, normalmapping creates a lot of load for the hardware and Doom 3 had to be able to run on less advanced systems (like the Radeon 8500 I had at the time, worked well enough although the framerate was pretty low) than what the engine was meant for (since games licensing the engine would take a year or two to come out). I don't think the market was really ready for normalmapping (along with unified lighting) at the time but the engine had to support it. Half-Life 2 used normalmaps only on very few surfaces and had precalculated lighting, that greatly reduced the load on the system. Later Doom 3 mods and levels used much more enemies at once than the standard game but in turn upped the hardware requirements by doing so.
In my opinion however I just doesn't get any sweeter than Quake 3 engine, to me it really feels like an extension of myself on how fast it reacts.
You'd feel different had you tried to make stuff for the engine, Doom 3 is just so much more advanced (as it should be since a lot of stuff happened between the releases of these two games).
Yes but if the timeframe is too short the companies will just wait until it expires and then use it without having to pay royalties.
I wish...
R2D2 is supposed to bleep and bloop, not tell people to bite his shiny metal ass.
Though I admit Bender would probably have made the prequels better.
Now compare those to the number of singers and songs in that time period.
I've never heard of a corporation jailed or executed so I don't think we need to really give them the rights they are entitled to, either.
Companies are considered dead for such purposes, just define a fixed duration for copyright that belongs to a corporation and... hey, you've got the current system!
Why shouldn't a builder be paid for building one house for the rest of their lives?
Because he's the one charged with making copies, not the one who made the original work. The builder of a house is akin to the printer at a publishing house. The one who owns the copyright on the house and could indeed make money with it forever is the architect. However, building standards and aesthetics change so a plan will not be of value indefinitely. Copyrighted plans have the advantage that the architect can sell a plan multiple times and that he can charge less than the cost of a new plan for each copy so he gets more money for the same work and the buyers get the work for less money compared to paying for having their own plan drafted. Both parties benefit so the system is accepted.
And yes, photographing a building can be copyright infringement.
Perhaps he's hiring some unpleasant men with automatic weapons to enforce his will?