You know, with a good hex editor, the pistol in Doom II was 1000 round per second swath of death and gibbing... not to mention it sounded like an old crotchety woman farting when you fired it!
You assume that the US Military can be sued...
I will laugh when some football game gets massacred because Private Doofus threw a tight spiral at the tank...
is the length of time granted. Twenty years may make sense for something that is a physical product and takes time to manufacture, market, sell, and support... but with software, the cash-cow timeline is much shorter. I think if you just granted software patents for 3-5 years, you'd see two things happen.
First, the potential payoff window is so small that it becomes not worth the lawyers' time/money to file frivolous lawsuits. Since a normal patent case seems to take years in court (NTP and RIM), by the time it was settled, the patent would be expiring anyway.
Second, you see a lot fewer patents getting filed in the first place, because the protections offered wouldn't always be worth it.
Personally, I think that if your innovation is novel enough to qualify for a patent in the first place, then it shouldn't be so obvious as to be easily duplicated by your competitors. Hence, you should always have a competitive advantage as long as your don't become complacent and get yourself overtaken. In either case, the end user still ends up with the best product.
The FTC doesn't have to jail spammers or shut down their 'business' to make them stop. The only reason to send spam is to profit from the retards that buy the stuff they are selling. If you levy steep enough fines, spamming becomes uneconomical. Sure, there will still be script kiddies out there sending spam from zombies just to be pricks, but its way easier to filter out a bunch of 'I pwnd j00' emails than it is to filter out unsolicited quasi-realistic product advertisements and sophisticated phishing attempts.
That said, anyone up for forming some kind of international death squad to mercilessly hunt and kill spammers?
Chances are that no one will read this because I am languishing in Bad Karma Hell, but just wondering... why provide this great free WiFi in the name of the poor? Did someone miss the fact that you need a computer to get on the net? City wide WiFi is a great idea and all... but it helps the middle class more than anyone. Unless you bundle it with some kind of computer giveaway or those fabled $100 laptops, it's not going to be the 'great internet equalizer' or lead to any kind of social equity...
Far Cry, for example, autodetected very low settings, but it ran without a hitch when I bumped the resolution up to 1280 by 720, with all visual quality options set to 'High.'
*stares at 2048x1536*
People still run 1280? No wonder all these websites are tiny...
This is how our government works... first you save 12 cents here and then you spend $12 Billion on something else... kind of like cutting a few million from the Peace Corps in the name of fiscal responsibilty and then asking for another $80 billion for Iraq...
I can't help but wonder what the world would be like if we gave $80 billion to the Peace Corps...
Yeah, probably just get wasted on hippy love projects anyway... w00t JDAMs!
But what happens when lots of relatively dumb drones have to share airspace with aircraft carrying passengers?
Somehow I think that a 747 could hit a dozon UAVs without even noticing... unless the UAV somehow flew into one of the engines... but hey, that is what redundancy is for right?
is there really a need for it when we now have WiFi which has a better range?
Obviously you haven't tried to backup all your porn before... We have WRT-54g routers that are client bridged, but when it comes to the porn, best to break out the ethernet cable... because otherwise it takes hours... WiFi needs best-case, routers-sitting-on-top-of-each-other, clear-skies, low-tide, happy-music-playing, world-peace-and-end-of-poverty type conditions in order to actually hit 54mbps... and even then I think you would have to sell your soul to Satan...
I for one welcome our UWB Overlords...
What is more annoying? A 17 year old trying to sound knowledgeable and important? Or that time you read the 43rd comment in a row about Bittorrent not being a Sysadmin tool?
The real irony is that all you repetitive pricks are probably 14 yourselves...
Slashdot Mirror
Come on... Adopple is a cool name! Appobe too!
... why are we so uptight about nudity in this country?
This case is still going on? Hasn't it been like 12 years or some-such-retardly-long-time?
I can picture the headline now... "Microsoft defeats EU, forces them to use Outlook as punishment..."
... at which point I will turn back to playing DNF on the Phantom ...
Everybody forgets the trusty pistol...
You know, with a good hex editor, the pistol in Doom II was 1000 round per second swath of death and gibbing... not to mention it sounded like an old crotchety woman farting when you fired it!
You incorrectly assume that MS updates their products...
Even a 'critical flaw' like allowing Google to access Exchange will take nine months and three KB articles before it will be 'fixed'...
You assume that the US Military can be sued... I will laugh when some football game gets massacred because Private Doofus threw a tight spiral at the tank...
First, the potential payoff window is so small that it becomes not worth the lawyers' time/money to file frivolous lawsuits. Since a normal patent case seems to take years in court (NTP and RIM), by the time it was settled, the patent would be expiring anyway.
Second, you see a lot fewer patents getting filed in the first place, because the protections offered wouldn't always be worth it.
Personally, I think that if your innovation is novel enough to qualify for a patent in the first place, then it shouldn't be so obvious as to be easily duplicated by your competitors. Hence, you should always have a competitive advantage as long as your don't become complacent and get yourself overtaken. In either case, the end user still ends up with the best product.
Sadly, I actually found it more amusing how grammatically inept I was...
NSA and DHS merge to form Minitrue... doubleplusgood!
The FTC doesn't have to jail spammers or shut down their 'business' to make them stop. The only reason to send spam is to profit from the retards that buy the stuff they are selling. If you levy steep enough fines, spamming becomes uneconomical. Sure, there will still be script kiddies out there sending spam from zombies just to be pricks, but its way easier to filter out a bunch of 'I pwnd j00' emails than it is to filter out unsolicited quasi-realistic product advertisements and sophisticated phishing attempts.
That said, anyone up for forming some kind of international death squad to mercilessly hunt and kill spammers?
Man, I totally ruined my attempt at humor by using the wrong 'your'... pretend I said 'your' ...
I can already tell today is going to rock...
Hmmm, viruses that create batteries... you're iPod wants AIDS!
Chances are that no one will read this because I am languishing in Bad Karma Hell, but just wondering... why provide this great free WiFi in the name of the poor? Did someone miss the fact that you need a computer to get on the net? City wide WiFi is a great idea and all... but it helps the middle class more than anyone. Unless you bundle it with some kind of computer giveaway or those fabled $100 laptops, it's not going to be the 'great internet equalizer' or lead to any kind of social equity...
*stares at 2048x1536*
People still run 1280? No wonder all these websites are tiny...
I hope for your sake you told him the reason the 500mb file wouldn't attach in because of a short between the chair and the keyboard...
My morning...
*wake up*
dum de dum... /.!
DNF is coming out?!?
*hell freezes over*
*pigs fly through room*
*monkeys begin streaming out of butt*
*universe implodes as fundamental law of vapourware is violated*
Thanks a lot /. ... just had to go destroy the universe... I hope you are proud of yourself...
Blasphemy! You are in time out Mister! Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done! I for one welcome our Pink Pony Overlords...
Sounds like the Democratic Party!
This is how our government works... first you save 12 cents here and then you spend $12 Billion on something else... kind of like cutting a few million from the Peace Corps in the name of fiscal responsibilty and then asking for another $80 billion for Iraq... I can't help but wonder what the world would be like if we gave $80 billion to the Peace Corps... Yeah, probably just get wasted on hippy love projects anyway... w00t JDAMs!
Thankfully, here in America, our government isn't completely controlled by large corporations... er... what?
Yeah, wasn't Hotmail just a phase in high school? I think it was right between Mambo #5 and the Y2K 'Crisis'...
is there really a need for it when we now have WiFi which has a better range? Obviously you haven't tried to backup all your porn before... We have WRT-54g routers that are client bridged, but when it comes to the porn, best to break out the ethernet cable... because otherwise it takes hours... WiFi needs best-case, routers-sitting-on-top-of-each-other, clear-skies, low-tide, happy-music-playing, world-peace-and-end-of-poverty type conditions in order to actually hit 54mbps... and even then I think you would have to sell your soul to Satan... I for one welcome our UWB Overlords...
What is more annoying? A 17 year old trying to sound knowledgeable and important? Or that time you read the 43rd comment in a row about Bittorrent not being a Sysadmin tool? The real irony is that all you repetitive pricks are probably 14 yourselves...