New commercial game licence clause?
on
Abandoned Games
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· Score: 1
What would be nice is if the gaming companies could be convinced to include a clause that allows free trading/no-cd patching etc. of a game after an elapsed period of X number of years. They wouldn't have to give away the rights to the game itself, just make it so that you can trade it without penalty. They get to keep their exclusive commercial licence, gamers get to play old games without getting sued.
Frankly any game that still has any impact whatsoever on a company's balance sheet after a year from release is a minor miracle, I doubt very much that putting a 3 or 5 year "free trade" clause on there would do anything except make their fan base ecstatically happy.
I'd love to see some folks like Stardock or the like try something like this, just to see what kind of effect it has.
In this case, Google did not provide the information to the police, rather the browser cache did. And yes, when looking for evidence of motive in a murder trial, many things can and should be admissable, provided they are legally seized via a search warrant. This isn't a music company fishing for copyright violations, this is a man who murdered his wife.
If he had left notes on stickies somewhere about how to hide a body in a lake, it would be no different from this. If he hadn't wanted anybody to know what he searched on he could easily have configured his browser to delete all history.
In a breaking story, President Bush has endorsed the "Centrist" viewpoint that the Earth is the center of the universe. Contrary to observation, accepted "science" and basic physics, President Bush stated that all views that the Earth isn't the center of the universe are "Obviously incorrect because they don't explain Biblical accounts, which of course must be true".
I disagree. When the consumer finds out that they can't play their MP3 collection on the lasted machine there will be a real quick end to this.
The Sith lords of IP can only rule the world so long as they make products folks want to buy. Guess what happens when all the big names go to DRM, all the little companies that aren't in the Trusted Computing Group see a surprising increase in sales because their products still work.
While I'm not a big fan of Dvorak, he's got a point. Linux has a fairly large fanboy contingent that sometimes.... exceeds the bounds of prudent behavior. While most of us geeks are used to that, all it takes is a few NYTimes bylines about Linux users issuing death threats to errant journalists to tarnish the image.
If I'm reading it right, I think the article is simply a "Fanboys grow up!" call.
If you're a cop, why harass somebody for no good reason? There's no reason to abuse your authority by forcing somebody to give you id if there's no real reason to investigate them.
Given that the patent was filed in 1999, I think it will be relatively easy to show that there is a large body of prior art. Like, say, everything on the web.
Well, today non-phone system VOIP not a very common option, but if we had something equivalent to "internet 2" say in about 10 years? 20 at the outset...
Phone companies should be looking for a way to turn themselves entirely into an ISP business is what I'm saying, because their existing business model is going to go bye bye.
I think the question should be "how on earth are they going to regulate it", not when. VOIP is just data on the network. How long until there's an open source VOIP solution widely adopted without centralized control?
It isn't going to be possible to regulate it without extensive packet monitoring.
"Allow" the customer to use digital content at home. You mean the content you payed for? As opposed to not allowing you to listen/watch/use content you've payed for?
They always word these things like they're *granting* new rights instead of taking them away. I don't know whether to be amused at the balls of the PR makers or dismayed at the fact that there are twits who will read a press release like that and think "Oh goody, I've been wanting to do that."
We can hope that this leads to companies like MS realizing that software patents are not in the best interests of anybody. If MS threw it's weight into suppressing software patents then this sort of thing might never be an issue.
I had exactly the same problems as canuck until I got tired of being an ever expanding lump. Now that I'm down to a respectable weight and getting regular exercise it has improved my concentration greatly.
How do you respond to allegations that, at least with music piracy, piracy may actually help sell more CDs? There are numerous interpretations of the data that point to music sharing leading to increased sales through increased exposure.
I realize you folks are dealing with the enforcement of copyright laws (rather than their effects), but do you ever feel like you're acting against the best interests of both the general public and the recording industry in general? Please explain why or why not.
After playing RoadRash (sega genesis) for several hours with my wife (and drinking copiously) the whole next week I had an urge to sideswipe any bikers I saw while driving.
Personally the "headless" in the first one scared the bejesus out of me. I was walking down a hallway with a dim torch and turned around just in time to see one of them take a swipe at my head. I ran away like a girly man.
And I'll say it again. The first thing that somebody with the know how needs to do is scan all the networks that the politicians are running. Then report the ones in violation of the law to the authorities and see how long the law lasts. For that matter, don't just stop at the authorities, find out what the Federal agencies and DoD contractors are using, and report them too. Is the state going to take the Federal government to task? The DoD? If they do then the law is toast, if they don't then evidence that the law is applied selectively will spell it's doom just as nicely.
For that matter, engage in some civil disobedience. Get some of the more prominent geeks in the area to do a "VPN Day" in protest. No reason to take that shit quietly.
Time travellers from the future reveal that future Trek series will suck just as badly. In a last ditch effort to save Enterprise, the crew must travel back in time and assassinate Rick Berman.
This just in, piracy is found to not only contribute to acts of terror, but also is responsible for all known venerial diseases. CDC researchers have found a link between getting payed large amounts of money by the RIAA and discovering virulent diseases linked to piracy.
Not using this system mind you but simply putting all our objects in a map/hash structure. We had a financial database and everything on it ran off of raw returns. Rather than continually read the returns from the DB we just ate the performance hit when our system started up and loaded it all into memory then.
This speeded up the data access dramatically for us. Actions which typically would take 10 minutes to compute pulling from a DB we could do in seconds. Even our largest customer databases we could usually load in 5-10 megs of ram.
Granted, our system rarely needed to write data. It was an analysis package so most of our data updates came in lump data uploads. The overhead for a system that does a lot of writing could have significantly slowed us down.
While it's true that some techies are poor in the "user friendly" department, the majority of bad system design comes from the management.
I've worked on a number of systems where what would have been a nice design has been sabotaged by management decisions. Almost always by management that doesn't actually use the system in question.
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What would be nice is if the gaming companies could be convinced to include a clause that allows free trading/no-cd patching etc. of a game after an elapsed period of X number of years. They wouldn't have to give away the rights to the game itself, just make it so that you can trade it without penalty. They get to keep their exclusive commercial licence, gamers get to play old games without getting sued.
Frankly any game that still has any impact whatsoever on a company's balance sheet after a year from release is a minor miracle, I doubt very much that putting a 3 or 5 year "free trade" clause on there would do anything except make their fan base ecstatically happy.
I'd love to see some folks like Stardock or the like try something like this, just to see what kind of effect it has.
In this case, Google did not provide the information to the police, rather the browser cache did. And yes, when looking for evidence of motive in a murder trial, many things can and should be admissable, provided they are legally seized via a search warrant. This isn't a music company fishing for copyright violations, this is a man who murdered his wife.
If he had left notes on stickies somewhere about how to hide a body in a lake, it would be no different from this. If he hadn't wanted anybody to know what he searched on he could easily have configured his browser to delete all history.
In a breaking story, President Bush has endorsed the "Centrist" viewpoint that the Earth is the center of the universe. Contrary to observation, accepted "science" and basic physics, President Bush stated that all views that the Earth isn't the center of the universe are "Obviously incorrect because they don't explain Biblical accounts, which of course must be true".
Surprise! People like downloading music cheaply instead of paying exhorbitant prices for CDs filled with crap. Who would have thought such a thing!
I disagree. When the consumer finds out that they can't play their MP3 collection on the lasted machine there will be a real quick end to this.
The Sith lords of IP can only rule the world so long as they make products folks want to buy. Guess what happens when all the big names go to DRM, all the little companies that aren't in the Trusted Computing Group see a surprising increase in sales because their products still work.
Well think of it this way...
Who are the web site owners going to complain to?
"Um, hello justice department, some h4x0r just defaced my scam bank site, now I can't steal money from people's accounts any more!"
While I'm not a big fan of Dvorak, he's got a point. Linux has a fairly large fanboy contingent that sometimes.... exceeds the bounds of prudent behavior. While most of us geeks are used to that, all it takes is a few NYTimes bylines about Linux users issuing death threats to errant journalists to tarnish the image.
If I'm reading it right, I think the article is simply a "Fanboys grow up!" call.
(With apologies to Jim Henson)
So does this mean that when the space station sends a transmission that "The Trashheap has spoken!"?
If you're a cop, why harass somebody for no good reason? There's no reason to abuse your authority by forcing somebody to give you id if there's no real reason to investigate them.
Given that the patent was filed in 1999, I think it will be relatively easy to show that there is a large body of prior art. Like, say, everything on the web.
Well, today non-phone system VOIP not a very common option, but if we had something equivalent to "internet 2" say in about 10 years? 20 at the outset...
Phone companies should be looking for a way to turn themselves entirely into an ISP business is what I'm saying, because their existing business model is going to go bye bye.
I think the question should be "how on earth are they going to regulate it", not when. VOIP is just data on the network. How long until there's an open source VOIP solution widely adopted without centralized control?
It isn't going to be possible to regulate it without extensive packet monitoring.
"Allow" the customer to use digital content at home. You mean the content you payed for? As opposed to not allowing you to listen/watch/use content you've payed for?
They always word these things like they're *granting* new rights instead of taking them away. I don't know whether to be amused at the balls of the PR makers or dismayed at the fact that there are twits who will read a press release like that and think "Oh goody, I've been wanting to do that."
We can hope that this leads to companies like MS realizing that software patents are not in the best interests of anybody. If MS threw it's weight into suppressing software patents then this sort of thing might never be an issue.
Bingo.
I had exactly the same problems as canuck until I got tired of being an ever expanding lump. Now that I'm down to a respectable weight and getting regular exercise it has improved my concentration greatly.
How do you respond to allegations that, at least with music piracy, piracy may actually help sell more CDs? There are numerous interpretations of the data that point to music sharing leading to increased sales through increased exposure.
I realize you folks are dealing with the enforcement of copyright laws (rather than their effects), but do you ever feel like you're acting against the best interests of both the general public and the recording industry in general? Please explain why or why not.
After playing RoadRash (sega genesis) for several hours with my wife (and drinking copiously) the whole next week I had an urge to sideswipe any bikers I saw while driving.
Personally the "headless" in the first one scared the bejesus out of me. I was walking down a hallway with a dim torch and turned around just in time to see one of them take a swipe at my head. I ran away like a girly man.
Perhaps it's meant to be a surprise "Suicide Bomber" strategy. A surprise for the soldier carrying it as well :)
And I'll say it again. The first thing that somebody with the know how needs to do is scan all the networks that the politicians are running. Then report the ones in violation of the law to the authorities and see how long the law lasts. For that matter, don't just stop at the authorities, find out what the Federal agencies and DoD contractors are using, and report them too. Is the state going to take the Federal government to task? The DoD? If they do then the law is toast, if they don't then evidence that the law is applied selectively will spell it's doom just as nicely.
For that matter, engage in some civil disobedience. Get some of the more prominent geeks in the area to do a "VPN Day" in protest. No reason to take that shit quietly.
Time travellers from the future reveal that future Trek series will suck just as badly. In a last ditch effort to save Enterprise, the crew must travel back in time and assassinate Rick Berman.
This just in, piracy is found to not only contribute to acts of terror, but also is responsible for all known venerial diseases. CDC researchers have found a link between getting payed large amounts of money by the RIAA and discovering virulent diseases linked to piracy.
Not using this system mind you but simply putting all our objects in a map/hash structure. We had a financial database and everything on it ran off of raw returns. Rather than continually read the returns from the DB we just ate the performance hit when our system started up and loaded it all into memory then.
This speeded up the data access dramatically for us. Actions which typically would take 10 minutes to compute pulling from a DB we could do in seconds. Even our largest customer databases we could usually load in 5-10 megs of ram.
Granted, our system rarely needed to write data. It was an analysis package so most of our data updates came in lump data uploads. The overhead for a system that does a lot of writing could have significantly slowed us down.
While it's true that some techies are poor in the "user friendly" department, the majority of bad system design comes from the management.
I've worked on a number of systems where what would have been a nice design has been sabotaged by management decisions. Almost always by management that doesn't actually use the system in question.
I had to search on "Deepness" to see if this triggered anybody else. Glad to see I'm not the only one.