You can take a car apart and look how that secret bit works but do the same with software and you probably have violated a law. Software doesn't really need patents because it's illegal to disassemble it to find out how that thoroughly researched secret bit works.
In theory it's the job of the patent office to determine if a claim is too broad and could possibly cover implementations the applicant didn't think of so the patent office could reject a patent if it found the claims to be overly broad even with no prior art. In practice of course everything gets rubberstamped.
NO. Patents protect the implementation and ONLY the implementation. That is the invention. By allowing only the implementation to be patented competitors can invent a new implementation that serves the same purpose and compete with you instead of you having a total monopoly over a section of the market. Never mind that this is necessary to limit the scope of patents and the possible abstraction present in the patent. After all, we'd be downright fucked if the MP3 patent applied to any way of compressing an audio file without notable loss in quality.
The last time they attempted to introduce software patents the anti-SW-patent groups managed to convince the politicians to change the law to the point where it explicitly forbade software patents. The pro-patent lobby reacted by making their politicians withdraw support for the directive and in the end nothing was passed.
There is an EU patent office, I'd guess you need to get the patent through that if you want it to be enforceable in all countries, no just the one you gained it in.
I think only Americans see a state as being something different from a country or nation. The EU has member states since the word state is usually interchangeable with nation or country. Maybe the USA regions are called states because the USA was more like a political union like the EU or the Commonwealth when it began?
Member state: The countries that belong to an international organisation are its 'member states'. The term is also often used to mean the governments of those countries. From 1 May 2004, the member states of the European Union are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. For the years when they joined the EU, see 'enlargement' (above).
Then implement only the parts necessary for your patent and describe how they would interface with other patented parts. If that fails the implementation is at least documented and is prior art should anyone else attempt to patent the same thing.
1. A patent lasts for at most 20 years. Ask someone else for the specifics about filing, granting and the appropriate lengths for each. 2. Google is free to ask Altavista for a license in that scenario. 3. Ideas aren't patented, implementations are. Altavista would have patented building an index by doing A, B and C, if Google could build an index using only A and C or maybe A, B, D etc they wouldn't need to pay license fees since their implementation is new.
I don't think there's any console gamer who doesn't know about the PS3 and even without any publicity a majority wouild have bought the thing no questions asked simply because they expect it to perform like the PS2 did. It's only this negative publicity that makes people doubt that Sony will have a huge lead next generation and look for alternatives.
Losing Japan would mean losing many Japanese developers that make games people traditionally associate with the Playstation name. Who'd buy a PS3 if games like Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Solid were suddently exclusive to another console? US developers aren't such a big deal, they're more likely to make multiplatform titles. And who'd court European developers?
There's also the possibility that I will be hit by a falling sasquatch tied to a unicorn after they have suddently come into existance from a random collision of a large number of atoms.
Link has a shield in his off hand, possibly even another item. He can't just use the sword with his other hand, he'd have to switch the shield and that'd take quite some time.
a) It'll cost you a LOT more to develop for 8 platforms.
No, not at all. It'll add a bit to your costs but not much. This most likely uses the Renderware platform which makes multiplatform development very easy. Sell a thousand copies on each of those port platforms and you've recouped the cost.
The news is that it's a million seller. You can make a game like Beyond Good & Evil in as many SKUs as you like and you're not going to sell a million of them. Nothing (except exclusivity contracts and you aren't forced to sign those) is preventing other games from being released in multiple SKUs so I don't see why games that didn't get released for all platforms should have an advantage over games that did.
The same applies to the shapes on the PS2 controller buttons yet Sony managed to trademark them and force third party controller manufacturers to make strange changes (like interrupitng the lines).
Of course there will be no net change, the sea level will be the same it was the last time the caps were completely liquid. Question is, what was that sea level?
Slashdot Mirror
Stop it, you're clogging up the tubes!
I've played Gradius a lot and I never input select for that code.
You can take a car apart and look how that secret bit works but do the same with software and you probably have violated a law. Software doesn't really need patents because it's illegal to disassemble it to find out how that thoroughly researched secret bit works.
In theory it's the job of the patent office to determine if a claim is too broad and could possibly cover implementations the applicant didn't think of so the patent office could reject a patent if it found the claims to be overly broad even with no prior art. In practice of course everything gets rubberstamped.
NO. Patents protect the implementation and ONLY the implementation. That is the invention. By allowing only the implementation to be patented competitors can invent a new implementation that serves the same purpose and compete with you instead of you having a total monopoly over a section of the market. Never mind that this is necessary to limit the scope of patents and the possible abstraction present in the patent. After all, we'd be downright fucked if the MP3 patent applied to any way of compressing an audio file without notable loss in quality.
The last time they attempted to introduce software patents the anti-SW-patent groups managed to convince the politicians to change the law to the point where it explicitly forbade software patents. The pro-patent lobby reacted by making their politicians withdraw support for the directive and in the end nothing was passed.
There is an EU patent office, I'd guess you need to get the patent through that if you want it to be enforceable in all countries, no just the one you gained it in.
from http://europa.eu/abc/eurojargon/index_en.htm
Then implement only the parts necessary for your patent and describe how they would interface with other patented parts. If that fails the implementation is at least documented and is prior art should anyone else attempt to patent the same thing.
1. A patent lasts for at most 20 years. Ask someone else for the specifics about filing, granting and the appropriate lengths for each.
2. Google is free to ask Altavista for a license in that scenario.
3. Ideas aren't patented, implementations are. Altavista would have patented building an index by doing A, B and C, if Google could build an index using only A and C or maybe A, B, D etc they wouldn't need to pay license fees since their implementation is new.
I don't think there's any console gamer who doesn't know about the PS3 and even without any publicity a majority wouild have bought the thing no questions asked simply because they expect it to perform like the PS2 did. It's only this negative publicity that makes people doubt that Sony will have a huge lead next generation and look for alternatives.
Losing Japan would mean losing many Japanese developers that make games people traditionally associate with the Playstation name. Who'd buy a PS3 if games like Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry or Metal Gear Solid were suddently exclusive to another console? US developers aren't such a big deal, they're more likely to make multiplatform titles. And who'd court European developers?
There's also the possibility that I will be hit by a falling sasquatch tied to a unicorn after they have suddently come into existance from a random collision of a large number of atoms.
Yeah, for a mere 50€ more I can get a console with no games I want and better support for a TV I don't have.
You got a pre SCPH-70000 PS2 I take it?
Link has a shield in his off hand, possibly even another item. He can't just use the sword with his other hand, he'd have to switch the shield and that'd take quite some time.
a) It'll cost you a LOT more to develop for 8 platforms.
No, not at all. It'll add a bit to your costs but not much. This most likely uses the Renderware platform which makes multiplatform development very easy. Sell a thousand copies on each of those port platforms and you've recouped the cost.
The news is that it's a million seller. You can make a game like Beyond Good & Evil in as many SKUs as you like and you're not going to sell a million of them. Nothing (except exclusivity contracts and you aren't forced to sign those) is preventing other games from being released in multiple SKUs so I don't see why games that didn't get released for all platforms should have an advantage over games that did.
Oh ccome on, they haven't even started posting the yiff yet.
The same applies to the shapes on the PS2 controller buttons yet Sony managed to trademark them and force third party controller manufacturers to make strange changes (like interrupitng the lines).
Of course it's just returning where it came from. But we don't want it to, we like the areas that are currently land but were ocean once.
Opera doesn't have a font size preference, at least not easily accessible. You can give it a zoom preference instead or simply override the CSS.
Except for some embedded videos I have yet to see a website that doesn't scale when I tell Opera to zoom it.
Of course there will be no net change, the sea level will be the same it was the last time the caps were completely liquid. Question is, what was that sea level?
Course, they don't get many hurricanes in the UK either.
They do, it's just that noone cares.