It would be silly to say Coca-Cola should be PD now.
Did you ever hear anyone call any non-Coca-Cola product "Coca-Cola"? "Coke" is a separate term. Being able to label your bottles "Pepsi Coke" would still not confuse anyone into thinking that it's a Coca-Cola product.
Even if the term has been used by someone else for the same type of product, if that trademark has expired you can snatch it up and start using it.
However, in this case superhero was not used as a product name and did never* nor does it now refer to a specific company's characters. Trademarks are supposed to link the term uniquely to your product(s), if people use the term for other products as well (especially if they were doing so before you laid claim to the term) you cannot gain trademark protection on it. It's like getting a trademark on the word "automobile".
*= Maybe it did before any other company's characters fitting the description existed but they didn't start building it up as a trademark back then and let it slip into generic use.
When other people touch him he's not hard as stone (at least I presume because that'd blow his cover) so we can assume that Superman's hardness somehow increases when he is subjected to a strong force. A gun thrown would not be very fast and create a more spread-out force, perhaps it would remain below his hardening threshold and as such be able to compress his skin. If applied to skin that forms a thin layer over bone (such as a forehead) this compression could make his nerves report too strong a compression so that it'd hurt, which, while not necessarily causing any damage to his tissue would still be uncomfortable and lack style.
In other words: The slow knife penetrates the Superman.
The problem with such a trademark is that a trademark is lost when it becomes a term in everyday language. If you were to create a character that is a hero and has strong superhuman powers and show it to someone else, there's a high chance that someone would call your character a superhero. Superhero is a generic term for a hero with superhuman powers that fights for good. Compare that to Coca-Cola: If you make a fizzing, brownish bewerage and showed it to someone they wouldn't call it "Coca-Cola", they'd maybe call it Cola but that's not the trademarked term.
I'm sitting back and not interfering with the US Government executing its own citizens because of a jury decision despite that being a violation of fundamental human rights. I'm sitting back and not interfering with the NATO running a war of aggression despite having a citizen's duty to prevent a war of aggression at all costs. Who says I'm right and they are wrong with their understanding of morality? Is it moral to kill a mass murderer? Is it moral to kill a heretic?
Just because the infant is 80 years old and wrinkly doesn't mean he's not an infant? Come again? Why should we try them under adult law?
In other words: There is a clear definition of foetus and a clear definition of infant. If you were to cut the foetus's umbilical cord he'd die, an infant survives that, for example. If you think abortion means killing a child a day before it is born you're misinformed, abortion is only allowed while the organism is still in early stages of development, while it's still a body part.
Not to my knowledge. Some societies kill children with certain defects (Sparta was notorious for that, as was medieval Christianity) but inconvenience was never a sufficient reason to kill a child. Of course you probably can't tell the difference between a sperm and a child.
The problem was at that point his wings attack could kill everyone but the dead guy even at full health, the survivor would end up zombified and the boss's sidepart would cast revive on him (i.e. instakill). Dead in one round. I'd need a couple thousand extra HP to survive that and considering the rate of advancement in that levelling system that'd mean hours upon hours of mindless grind (at least ten or twenty levelups for each character). I'll rather play an MMORPG, at least that doesn't have looooooooooooooooong load times before and after each battle.
I don't think it'd have as much selling power as it once had. People who have the console will pick it up but those who don't most likely won't plunk down 450$ (I've read a claim that that's the price for the "basic" package) so they can play a game they played before. It didn't work for GTA LCS*, it won't work for FF7.
*= I know, it's not like GTA3. But it's not that different from other GTA games and people only buy a console for very unique experiences that can't be had elsewhere.
Early in the history of games, developers realized that the emotional impact of the games feedback can be easily magnified by using visually rich and shocking imagery. The introduction of faked dangerous stimuli makes your reptile brain react in a physical manner is not so different than the thrills of a rollercoaster ride. You are never in any danger, but critical portions of your brain react as if you are. The brain evolved to deal with real threats, not 3D video cards pumping out super realistic explosions complete with force feedback. The flow of blood in your brain changes, your heartbeat increases and the excitement builds. The game play goes from interesting to thrilling. I call this visceral feedback.
Assuming he means that there is no threat present in the game (as opposed to "the threat in the game is just virtual"), that effect is lost on me. Unless I know something can hurt my game character I'm not worried about it, no matter how scary it would be in real life. FEAR seems to rely on harmless spook imagery a lot but while blood running down the walls would be scary in real life it's not in a game because that's just the game setting up the atmosphere. In a game these things happen, you see ghosts, visions, etc. If they don't hurt your character they aren't scary. Fear comes from thinking that you might get hurt or die if something that you consider likely happens.
In a game you're usually a lone hero slaughtering hundreds of enemies, feeling fear in such a situation is difficult because, well, you're the killing machine, they should be afraid of YOU. In fact it'd make more sense if enemies instead of boasting about their strength trembled in fear when approaching you, panicking when they know that you are near but don't know where (e.g. hearing a noise you caused but not being able to locate it). There's a good reason the space pirates in Metroid call the player "The Hunter".
I suppose I'd appreciate if any jRPG let the player character talk smack instead of being frightened of the evil guy. Just like the smack-talking badass is a clichee in FPSes the whiny emo guy who's scared so much he can't move when the bad guy takes his girl hostage is an overdone clichee in RPGs (especially the japanese kind). I know, someone will drag out some niche SRPG now...
Yep, they're milking FF7 for all it's worth. I think some dev said they'd prever to put the remake on a non-Sony platform. Personally I don't think the remake is needed, after all you can still plop your copy of FF7 into the PS2 and play it. Perhaps they'll give it a handheld remake like they did with 1, 2 and 4 and are doing with 3. After all, the handheld market (especially cellphone games) is expanding in Japan while the home console market is contracting.
Shit, I'm stuck at the same boss as your friend in 10*. I mean, seriously, it takes more than an hour to go through that ice path even when you flee every battle and you face the same three enemy types over and over again. Nothing to see, random encounter every five steps, fuck that.
*= Unless you're talking about another ice gorge, I mean the one before Zanarkand. With endless talking before you can fight the boss and the boss wiping my party with one combo attack.
People are already running mostly homebrew or movies on their PSPs, the worst thing that could happen is that the homebrew users can finally update their firmware and start buying new PSP games again.
I have the idea of opening a hardware store in some small town that's hasn't had a hardware store since it was established hundreds of years ago. By your reasoning I should be able to get a patent on that idea so nobody can create a competitor without licensing from me at my price in that town.
An idea is not patentable, an implementation is patentable. And I think these days you could really patent your hardware store (the exact way the store works, not the idea of opening a store) if you could prove that it is sufficiently different from other hardware stores in a non-obvious way.
Don't read a patent's abstract and think "Boy, I could have thought of that" or "I've seen that before", read the specific claims. A patent is more than an idea or a purpose, it is an implementation. How obvious is it to build two electromotors into a controller at different angles and having their mechanism form unbalanced weights with both being controlled independently by the software? Obviously not very or you'd have seen Atari do that. Of course it's easy to say "I could have thought of that" but AFAIK obvious means only implied by the description of the components. "Electromotor" does not imply "add unbalanced weight and stuff two of them into a gamepad".
Both rumbling and Force Feedback are part of Immersion's patent list. They have patents on lots of different implementations and IIRC were the ones who licensed Force Feedback to Microsoft for those Sidewinder joysticks and wheels.
But Immersion's patents don't cover everything, specifically Nintendo's implementation of rumble is not patented by Immersion because Nintendo patented that first.
The patent specifically covers having force feedback through two motors in a gamepad. Immersion has separate patents for gamepads, joysticks, wheels, etc. Nintendo isn't in trouble because their patent predates Immersion's and their implementation differs in the number of motors, the placement of the weight (one uses weights build into the motor mechanism, the other has the weight attached to the motor) and does not offer variable strength of vibration AFAIK. That the RumbePak was not built in would not be a sufficient difference since that step is obvious.
In other words, Nintendo invented it, Immersion improved it. Sony decided to copy Nintendo, decided to improve it to avoid Nintendo's patent and ran directly into Immersion's patent (and Immersion claims Sony deliberately used Immersion's technology). Microsoft saw what Sony did, decided it's a good idea and did the same. Even though MS had prior dealings with Immersion (remember the Sidewinder Force Feedback products?) they didn't bother to get a license from them.
It is the implementation that shuold be patented, not the idea, and as long as Sony's implementation of vibrating controllers is different it should not be a problem.
It is the implementation that is patented. Sony chose to use the exact same implementation while Nintendo is completely untouchable by Immersion because they use a different implementation and have their own patents on that.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be silly to say Coca-Cola should be PD now.
Did you ever hear anyone call any non-Coca-Cola product "Coca-Cola"? "Coke" is a separate term. Being able to label your bottles "Pepsi Coke" would still not confuse anyone into thinking that it's a Coca-Cola product.
Even if the term has been used by someone else for the same type of product, if that trademark has expired you can snatch it up and start using it.
However, in this case superhero was not used as a product name and did never* nor does it now refer to a specific company's characters. Trademarks are supposed to link the term uniquely to your product(s), if people use the term for other products as well (especially if they were doing so before you laid claim to the term) you cannot gain trademark protection on it. It's like getting a trademark on the word "automobile".
*= Maybe it did before any other company's characters fitting the description existed but they didn't start building it up as a trademark back then and let it slip into generic use.
When other people touch him he's not hard as stone (at least I presume because that'd blow his cover) so we can assume that Superman's hardness somehow increases when he is subjected to a strong force. A gun thrown would not be very fast and create a more spread-out force, perhaps it would remain below his hardening threshold and as such be able to compress his skin. If applied to skin that forms a thin layer over bone (such as a forehead) this compression could make his nerves report too strong a compression so that it'd hurt, which, while not necessarily causing any damage to his tissue would still be uncomfortable and lack style.
In other words: The slow knife penetrates the Superman.
The problem with such a trademark is that a trademark is lost when it becomes a term in everyday language. If you were to create a character that is a hero and has strong superhuman powers and show it to someone else, there's a high chance that someone would call your character a superhero. Superhero is a generic term for a hero with superhuman powers that fights for good. Compare that to Coca-Cola: If you make a fizzing, brownish bewerage and showed it to someone they wouldn't call it "Coca-Cola", they'd maybe call it Cola but that's not the trademarked term.
"less feature-full" = "no online play".
He didn't pull it out of the air, that's the hard limit the hardware accepts.
I'm sitting back and not interfering with the US Government executing its own citizens because of a jury decision despite that being a violation of fundamental human rights. I'm sitting back and not interfering with the NATO running a war of aggression despite having a citizen's duty to prevent a war of aggression at all costs. Who says I'm right and they are wrong with their understanding of morality? Is it moral to kill a mass murderer? Is it moral to kill a heretic?
Just because the infant is 80 years old and wrinkly doesn't mean he's not an infant? Come again? Why should we try them under adult law?
In other words: There is a clear definition of foetus and a clear definition of infant. If you were to cut the foetus's umbilical cord he'd die, an infant survives that, for example. If you think abortion means killing a child a day before it is born you're misinformed, abortion is only allowed while the organism is still in early stages of development, while it's still a body part.
Not to my knowledge. Some societies kill children with certain defects (Sparta was notorious for that, as was medieval Christianity) but inconvenience was never a sufficient reason to kill a child. Of course you probably can't tell the difference between a sperm and a child.
Let me ask you, is belonging to a different culture justification for denying people rights we consider fundamental?
Yes because it means the person in question is not part of the "we" and will have different ideas of what rights are fundamental.
No, abortion = foeticide because foetus != infant.
But they're not advertising a service or product, they're recruiting people for their cause. Following these ads could end with returning in a casket.
The problem was at that point his wings attack could kill everyone but the dead guy even at full health, the survivor would end up zombified and the boss's sidepart would cast revive on him (i.e. instakill). Dead in one round. I'd need a couple thousand extra HP to survive that and considering the rate of advancement in that levelling system that'd mean hours upon hours of mindless grind (at least ten or twenty levelups for each character). I'll rather play an MMORPG, at least that doesn't have looooooooooooooooong load times before and after each battle.
I don't think it'd have as much selling power as it once had. People who have the console will pick it up but those who don't most likely won't plunk down 450$ (I've read a claim that that's the price for the "basic" package) so they can play a game they played before. It didn't work for GTA LCS*, it won't work for FF7.
*= I know, it's not like GTA3. But it's not that different from other GTA games and people only buy a console for very unique experiences that can't be had elsewhere.
A more fitting movie reference would be Un Chien Andalou since that relied on the exact same shock value.
Early in the history of games, developers realized that the emotional impact of the games feedback can be easily magnified by using visually rich and shocking imagery. The introduction of faked dangerous stimuli makes your reptile brain react in a physical manner is not so different than the thrills of a rollercoaster ride. You are never in any danger, but critical portions of your brain react as if you are. The brain evolved to deal with real threats, not 3D video cards pumping out super realistic explosions complete with force feedback. The flow of blood in your brain changes, your heartbeat increases and the excitement builds. The game play goes from interesting to thrilling. I call this visceral feedback.
Assuming he means that there is no threat present in the game (as opposed to "the threat in the game is just virtual"), that effect is lost on me. Unless I know something can hurt my game character I'm not worried about it, no matter how scary it would be in real life. FEAR seems to rely on harmless spook imagery a lot but while blood running down the walls would be scary in real life it's not in a game because that's just the game setting up the atmosphere. In a game these things happen, you see ghosts, visions, etc. If they don't hurt your character they aren't scary. Fear comes from thinking that you might get hurt or die if something that you consider likely happens.
In a game you're usually a lone hero slaughtering hundreds of enemies, feeling fear in such a situation is difficult because, well, you're the killing machine, they should be afraid of YOU. In fact it'd make more sense if enemies instead of boasting about their strength trembled in fear when approaching you, panicking when they know that you are near but don't know where (e.g. hearing a noise you caused but not being able to locate it). There's a good reason the space pirates in Metroid call the player "The Hunter".
I suppose I'd appreciate if any jRPG let the player character talk smack instead of being frightened of the evil guy. Just like the smack-talking badass is a clichee in FPSes the whiny emo guy who's scared so much he can't move when the bad guy takes his girl hostage is an overdone clichee in RPGs (especially the japanese kind). I know, someone will drag out some niche SRPG now...
Yep, they're milking FF7 for all it's worth. I think some dev said they'd prever to put the remake on a non-Sony platform. Personally I don't think the remake is needed, after all you can still plop your copy of FF7 into the PS2 and play it. Perhaps they'll give it a handheld remake like they did with 1, 2 and 4 and are doing with 3. After all, the handheld market (especially cellphone games) is expanding in Japan while the home console market is contracting.
Shit, I'm stuck at the same boss as your friend in 10*. I mean, seriously, it takes more than an hour to go through that ice path even when you flee every battle and you face the same three enemy types over and over again. Nothing to see, random encounter every five steps, fuck that.
*= Unless you're talking about another ice gorge, I mean the one before Zanarkand. With endless talking before you can fight the boss and the boss wiping my party with one combo attack.
I think he's talking about games that are primarily played online.
People are already running mostly homebrew or movies on their PSPs, the worst thing that could happen is that the homebrew users can finally update their firmware and start buying new PSP games again.
I have the idea of opening a hardware store in some small town that's hasn't had a hardware store since it was established hundreds of years ago. By your reasoning I should be able to get a patent on that idea so nobody can create a competitor without licensing from me at my price in that town.
An idea is not patentable, an implementation is patentable. And I think these days you could really patent your hardware store (the exact way the store works, not the idea of opening a store) if you could prove that it is sufficiently different from other hardware stores in a non-obvious way.
Don't read a patent's abstract and think "Boy, I could have thought of that" or "I've seen that before", read the specific claims. A patent is more than an idea or a purpose, it is an implementation. How obvious is it to build two electromotors into a controller at different angles and having their mechanism form unbalanced weights with both being controlled independently by the software? Obviously not very or you'd have seen Atari do that. Of course it's easy to say "I could have thought of that" but AFAIK obvious means only implied by the description of the components. "Electromotor" does not imply "add unbalanced weight and stuff two of them into a gamepad".
They were working with MS before, Sony and MS just decided to ignore Immersion this time 'round.
Both rumbling and Force Feedback are part of Immersion's patent list. They have patents on lots of different implementations and IIRC were the ones who licensed Force Feedback to Microsoft for those Sidewinder joysticks and wheels.
But Immersion's patents don't cover everything, specifically Nintendo's implementation of rumble is not patented by Immersion because Nintendo patented that first.
The patent specifically covers having force feedback through two motors in a gamepad. Immersion has separate patents for gamepads, joysticks, wheels, etc. Nintendo isn't in trouble because their patent predates Immersion's and their implementation differs in the number of motors, the placement of the weight (one uses weights build into the motor mechanism, the other has the weight attached to the motor) and does not offer variable strength of vibration AFAIK. That the RumbePak was not built in would not be a sufficient difference since that step is obvious.
In other words, Nintendo invented it, Immersion improved it. Sony decided to copy Nintendo, decided to improve it to avoid Nintendo's patent and ran directly into Immersion's patent (and Immersion claims Sony deliberately used Immersion's technology). Microsoft saw what Sony did, decided it's a good idea and did the same. Even though MS had prior dealings with Immersion (remember the Sidewinder Force Feedback products?) they didn't bother to get a license from them.
It is the implementation that shuold be patented, not the idea, and as long as Sony's implementation of vibrating controllers is different it should not be a problem.
It is the implementation that is patented. Sony chose to use the exact same implementation while Nintendo is completely untouchable by Immersion because they use a different implementation and have their own patents on that.