"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - A. Einstein
The papers are not as simple as possible but not simpler. They are needlessly complicated.
Or perhaps I should have said:
"The publications exhibit superfluous failure to acheive the threshold of maximal simplicity whilst maintaining preservation of the requisite specificity."
Disney posted Steamboat Willie to You Tube in 2009.
Yes. But *I* can't. That's the difference.
If the geek were honest about the thing, what he has in Steamboat Willie is simply a tech demo of synchronized sound. The only other reason to watch it is to see Mickey, Minnie and Pete in their earliest, but still recognizable, form. Now fixed and trademarked.
Steamboat willie itself yes, but in terms of what it represents... and what would flow into the PD afterwards, that's when it gets interesting. Steamboat Willie... 1928 Three Little Pigs... 1933 (including "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Theme song") Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is 1937
but still, it was created first and foremost as a character, not as a branding mark).
Why, at first blush I was going to agree, since you are arguing that trademark cannot be used to 'remove' something from the public domain.
But then I realized that's exactly what all trademarks are. The letters I, B, M couldn't be more public domain,... the trademark's sole purpose is to remove them from the public domain and grant a entity limited exclusive rights to use them for certain designated purposes.
I think its pretty plausible that Disney will successfully argue that it still owns Mickey Mouse as a trademark even if the original film enters the PD. There might be some limited uses of it that would be allowed... but even stamping the image on a shirt would 'confuse' buyers into thinking the Disney company had authorized or endorsed that shirt... no i think no matter what Disney owns the mouse.
And I'm ok with that. Steamboat willie should still slip into the PD though.
"How does trademark infringement apply if not using the character to identify a competing good or service?"
In precisely the same way EA using a "Porsche 911" or "Ferrari Enzo" in a Need 4 Speed racing game without licensing the use would be infringement.
Or are you arguing that because EA doesn't need to license the trademarks to be allowed use them? Because if so you'd be wrong.
Do you claim that no one can publish a picture of an apple with a bite missing, because it's a trademark of Apple?
A picture of an apple with a bite missing? Or the apple logo? Not all pictures of apples with a bite out are the Apple Logo. And to answer your question yes, you do need to pay damned careful attention to what you are doing when you are publishing works containing trademarked things; or you expose yourself to liability for infringement.
I think disney will hang onto Mickey Mouse. He is more than just a random character in some of their films. He *is* their identity and their mascot. He identifies to disney as much as the michelin man or the pillsbury doughboy belong to their respective companies. (Indeed the Michelin man dates back to the 1890s himself.)
Mickey Mouse is used the way Trademarks should be used.
I could see them losing a lot of other stuff as the copyright falls. And the nonsense I mentioned with Harry Potter should likewise fall apart. (That would be good.)
But the mouse is still a registered trademark. And you will lose. They'll go after you for trademark infringement.
That's why the disney copyright stuff really doesn't make a lot of sense. They won't lose mickey mouse when steamboat willie goes into the public domain, but the mouse itself is trademarked. My sense of it is that its a belt and suspenders defense... they don't want to take any chances. But really, the trademark will hold as long as they maintain it.*
When steamboat willies goes into PD, anyone can upload it to youtube. Anyone can make movies about a dancing mouse on a steamboat, and even use the same music that it's paired with it etc. But that mouse still can't *be* Mickey Mouse; nor so similar as to be confused with Mickey Mouse.
* - trademarking components of works is really a separate problem that's gone into overdrive lately. Every major and minor character, event, location, etc is being "trademarked" these days. (Harry Potter for example...every proper noun in the series and some that aren't is a registered trademark. That's wrong on some level.)
I'm not disputing that there is *some* cost. But its noise. The manufacturers could drop the vga-only sku, one less device to maintain warehouse, track, have procedures for and nobody would even notice. Its not like anyone would complain the price of monitors has gone up.
Personally, I'd rather watch people play than walk through tutorial missions for the first N hours of the game, but to each is own.
To each his own indeed.
Personally I'd rather gouge my eyes out than watch some Rando play a game I just bought, or was about to buy. Between the spoilers and having every decision you get to make already analysed by someone else would completely rob me of any desire to even play the game.
(And yes, tutorial missions are ass too unless they are optional.)
And streamers irritate me on multiple levels. Lets say I dominate at some game or other, do the poor saps thrown up against me in casual play really deserve to have their steam names and game play performance etc on display while I dismember them? Where did they sign up for public shaming and youtube immortality; whilst making me a few bucks in ad revenue while I cash in on their newb moves?
Tourney players sure; they want an 'audience'. But some newb Rando who is just looking to play a casual game? I'm beginning to think all players should need to consent before a match can be streamed.
HDMI sends audio information in the blanking period. VGA has no need for an audio DAC or output jack.
Lots of HDMI devices don't do anything with audio. I have HDMI capable screens that have no audio support whatsoever.
HDMI is patented and has royalties. HDMI certification requires implementation of HDCP, which has royalties and compliance costs.
So don't do HDMI if its that big a deal Sell DVI + VGA Or Displayport + VGA Actually they ALREADY do that. They just need to drop the VGA-only SKU.
How much do you really think a DVI or displayport or even an HDMI port adds to the cost of a screen anyway?
I doubt it costs more than a buck; and if you go to newegg or anywhere else and shop the budget $85 monitor price point there are plenty of options of "D-sub only" and "D-sub + DVI" at the same price point; so at the retail level the "extra cost" of adding a digital port is lost in the noise. I expect its pretty close to lost in the noise at the manufacturing point too.
The industry could make large strides towards retiring VGA if they would just stop making "VGA-only" monitors. You can still buy them today, from all the major brands.
Yes, the odd use case requires VGA, I'm not saying they should stop selling monitors that support VGA. I'm not even saying VGA should be removed from the monitor... just stop making and selling LED/LCD monitors that ONLY do VGA.
In an "unethical" capitalistic society, if someone buys up all of drug which costs 50 cents per pill to make and tries to sell it for $750, someone else will just start making that drug for 50 cents and try to sell it at $700. Then someone else tries to sell it for $650, then $600, and so on. Until the price comes down to just above 50 cents and the competitor is afraid to undercut the price anymore because then the margin won't be enough to cover his marketing and distribution expenses.
No. Someone else shows up to make the drug for 50 cents and the person selling the drug for $750 just buys them outright, or immediately drops the price to below profitability to drive the competitor under, then jacks it up to $750 again to refill the warchest for the next silly competitor.
And it's not like you can just spin up a drug producing lab to export prescription medicine for human consumption.
The only outfit with the resources to do that is another drug company. So, at best "capitalism" devolves to oligopoply, and at worst to a monopoly.
Take a look at the M&A for the worlds large pharmaceuticle companies. Competition is dropping like a stone, and prices are going up.
The post I was responding to was specifically asking for symbol characters that weren't 'above the numbers'. (r) and (c) the examples given... aren't even on most keyboards, and the methods for inputting them can be wildly variable, and a royal PITA to even know if you are doing it right if all you get as feedback is the usual asterisk.
Sure. I can remember one of those. But seriously the (r) and (c) symbols... pray you never need type that in on someone elses laptop computer with an international keyboard and no numeric pad or a smartphone keyboard... etc.
But more importantly I can't remember dozens of those.
And password re-use is a bigger issue than using a good password.
I use a mix of a password safe for most passwords, and subset of passwords i need to use commonly are 'algorithmic' based on what i need them for / the sites name / etc.
However, I try to keep the algorithmic ones to a minimum because if you ever have to change an algorithm generated password, it really sucks... because the algorithm you normally use can't be used... because that would result in the password you have now, that you can't use.
And as that starts to accumulate the benefit of algorithmic passwords rapidly declines.
Yet, they paid a fraction of what one cost new. This is why.
They still paid a lot.
I can give actual pricing from 2013.
But today the iphone 6S is the new hotness. You can still buy a new iphone 5c which is 3 generations back. And an 8GB 5c costs $480 at one of the local carriers. Anyone buying one is still perfectly reasonable if they expected to get security updates for a couple years from today.
x-forwarding means that you are forwarding the communications between the x-client and x-server through a network tunnel. Windows doesn't have an end user exposed client/server paradigm within the window manager for you to redirect like that.
My point here is that the ability to do x-forwarding is a feature of X itself not of openssh. Adding openssh to windows isn't the "missing piece" you need to do the equivalent of x-forwarding.
I suppose you could setup an openssh tunnel; and then use RDP through it... and maybe that will be supported; but RDP already has encryption and security features, and can already be run through a VPN tunnel. So you aren't really gaining much.
I got to "lunar impacts" before I realized it wasn't going to be an article about matchmaking algorithms at dating websites. And I spent at least a fraction of a second considering that "lunar impacts" is a strange name for a dating website.
The manufacturers and carriers guaranteed that my first Android device would be my last, by failing to allow me to upgrade to the latest, most secure version of the operating system.
Yeah... android is worse than Apple.
I'm sticking with Apple devices from now on.
My daughters iphone 4 purchased in 2013 didn't get ios8 last year, nor ios9 this year. It stopped receiving security updates 15months ago... barely 9 months after we got it.
Sure it was nearing the end of its run when we bought it, and we new that. But Apple pretty much dropped software support for it completely -- while it was still under its 1 year warranty.
Apple's a better vender then most (all?) android vendors. But you still can get burnt. At least with android you can install alternative builds after the vendor forgets you exist; especially if you buy a popular model that has lots of support.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Sure. Just as there cannot be a door knob that is not art. Or a zipper pull tab that is not art. Or ballpoint pen that is not art. Or a chair. or a pizza box. or a monthly credit card statement, or screwdriver, or a coupon for cat food. All of these things required some creative choices... colors, textures, fine details, and their placement, etc. It's all art.
So yes, if that's the threshold, then "all games are art". That's not a very interesting thing to say though.
So when people ask whether games are art, they ARE invariably referring to a more nebulous definition of an artistic pursuit wherein an artist is attempting to evoke a response from his audience. Are games THAT kind of art is what they are asking?
And yes, absolutely, some games, most definitely do rise to that level of art. You named a few yourself.
But a simplistic knockoff freemium game on the app store that is little more than a skinner box attached to a nag screen for your credit card number... it's art on the same level as the coupon book from mcdonalds I got mailed yesterday is art.
It has nothing to say. It's not trying to get you to think (and really it would just prefer it if you didn't think and just entered your credit card number for some more coins/gems/whatevers). And anything thinking you do end up doing is entirely incidental to it's raison d'etre; and probably a detriment to it fulfilling its purpose of distracting you into extracting a few more dollars from your wallet without your noticing.
And seriously, even Duke Nukem had things to say and even caused controversy and was an intentional parody of it's genre.
But a lot of the stuff i see on the app store. Yeah, some guy drew some cutesy icons and animations, and that's "art" but the game itself is no more interesting artistically than a dollar store toilet brush. That is to say: yes its art, but so what?
Ditto for tag. Tag isn't artistically interesting.
Slashdot Mirror
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler" - A. Einstein
The papers are not as simple as possible but not simpler. They are needlessly complicated.
Or perhaps I should have said:
"The publications exhibit superfluous failure to acheive the threshold of maximal simplicity whilst maintaining preservation of the requisite specificity."
That says nothing about putting out, say, drink mixes of those names.
Sure a drink mix named "Porsche" is fine.
A drink mix named "Porsche" featuring the Porsche shield logo though? Give me a break. No way that's going to fly.
Images are not the same as words.
then you have the fetuses disrupting the classroom by spouting Republican talking points in their tiny high voices.
While literally leeching off the people around them. :p
Disney posted Steamboat Willie to You Tube in 2009.
Yes. But *I* can't. That's the difference.
If the geek were honest about the thing, what he has in Steamboat Willie is simply a tech demo of synchronized sound. The only other reason to watch it is to see Mickey, Minnie and Pete in their earliest, but still recognizable, form. Now fixed and trademarked.
Steamboat willie itself yes, but in terms of what it represents... and what would flow into the PD afterwards, that's when it gets interesting. ... 1928 ... 1933 (including "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Theme song")
Steamboat Willie
Three Little Pigs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is 1937
but still, it was created first and foremost as a character, not as a branding mark).
Why, at first blush I was going to agree, since you are arguing that trademark cannot be used to 'remove' something from the public domain.
But then I realized that's exactly what all trademarks are. The letters I, B, M couldn't be more public domain, ... the trademark's sole purpose is to remove them from the public domain and grant a entity limited exclusive rights to use them for certain designated purposes.
I think its pretty plausible that Disney will successfully argue that it still owns Mickey Mouse as a trademark even if the original film enters the PD. There might be some limited uses of it that would be allowed... but even stamping the image on a shirt would 'confuse' buyers into thinking the Disney company had authorized or endorsed that shirt... no i think no matter what Disney owns the mouse.
And I'm ok with that. Steamboat willie should still slip into the PD though.
You can have, for example, a Pepsi Auto Service.
For sure.
You can even mimic their font.
Mimic maybe. But use their actual colors and logo wholesale, without modification. I'm just not buying it.
"How does trademark infringement apply if not using the character to identify a competing good or service?"
In precisely the same way EA using a "Porsche 911" or "Ferrari Enzo" in a Need 4 Speed racing game without licensing the use would be infringement.
Or are you arguing that because EA doesn't need to license the trademarks to be allowed use them? Because if so you'd be wrong.
Do you claim that no one can publish a picture of an apple with a bite missing, because it's a trademark of Apple?
A picture of an apple with a bite missing? Or the apple logo? Not all pictures of apples with a bite out are the Apple Logo. And to answer your question yes, you do need to pay damned careful attention to what you are doing when you are publishing works containing trademarked things; or you expose yourself to liability for infringement.
I think disney will hang onto Mickey Mouse. He is more than just a random character in some of their films. He *is* their identity and their mascot. He identifies to disney as much as the michelin man or the pillsbury doughboy belong to their respective companies. (Indeed the Michelin man dates back to the 1890s himself.)
Mickey Mouse is used the way Trademarks should be used.
I could see them losing a lot of other stuff as the copyright falls. And the nonsense I mentioned with Harry Potter should likewise fall apart. (That would be good.)
Under copyright. Yes. You can do that.
But the mouse is still a registered trademark. And you will lose. They'll go after you for trademark infringement.
That's why the disney copyright stuff really doesn't make a lot of sense. They won't lose mickey mouse when steamboat willie goes into the public domain, but the mouse itself is trademarked. My sense of it is that its a belt and suspenders defense... they don't want to take any chances. But really, the trademark will hold as long as they maintain it.*
When steamboat willies goes into PD, anyone can upload it to youtube. Anyone can make movies about a dancing mouse on a steamboat, and even use the same music that it's paired with it etc. But that mouse still can't *be* Mickey Mouse; nor so similar as to be confused with Mickey Mouse.
* - trademarking components of works is really a separate problem that's gone into overdrive lately. Every major and minor character, event, location, etc is being "trademarked" these days. (Harry Potter for example...every proper noun in the series and some that aren't is a registered trademark. That's wrong on some level.)
I'm not disputing that there is *some* cost. But its noise. The manufacturers could drop the vga-only sku, one less device to maintain warehouse, track, have procedures for and nobody would even notice. Its not like anyone would complain the price of monitors has gone up.
Personally, I'd rather watch people play than walk through tutorial missions for the first N hours of the game, but to each is own.
To each his own indeed.
Personally I'd rather gouge my eyes out than watch some Rando play a game I just bought, or was about to buy. Between the spoilers and having every decision you get to make already analysed by someone else would completely rob me of any desire to even play the game.
(And yes, tutorial missions are ass too unless they are optional.)
And streamers irritate me on multiple levels. Lets say I dominate at some game or other, do the poor saps thrown up against me in casual play really deserve to have their steam names and game play performance etc on display while I dismember them? Where did they sign up for public shaming and youtube immortality; whilst making me a few bucks in ad revenue while I cash in on their newb moves?
Tourney players sure; they want an 'audience'. But some newb Rando who is just looking to play a casual game? I'm beginning to think all players should need to consent before a match can be streamed.
HDMI sends audio information in the blanking period. VGA has no need for an audio DAC or output jack.
Lots of HDMI devices don't do anything with audio. I have HDMI capable screens that have no audio support whatsoever.
HDMI is patented and has royalties.
HDMI certification requires implementation of HDCP, which has royalties and compliance costs.
So don't do HDMI if its that big a deal
Sell DVI + VGA
Or Displayport + VGA
Actually they ALREADY do that.
They just need to drop the VGA-only SKU.
How much do you really think a DVI or displayport or even an HDMI port adds to the cost of a screen anyway?
I doubt it costs more than a buck; and if you go to newegg or anywhere else and shop the budget $85 monitor price point there are plenty of options of "D-sub only" and "D-sub + DVI" at the same price point; so at the retail level the "extra cost" of adding a digital port is lost in the noise. I expect its pretty close to lost in the noise at the manufacturing point too.
The industry could make large strides towards retiring VGA if they would just stop making "VGA-only" monitors. You can still buy them today, from all the major brands.
Yes, the odd use case requires VGA, I'm not saying they should stop selling monitors that support VGA. I'm not even saying VGA should be removed from the monitor... just stop making and selling LED/LCD monitors that ONLY do VGA.
In an "unethical" capitalistic society, if someone buys up all of drug which costs 50 cents per pill to make and tries to sell it for $750, someone else will just start making that drug for 50 cents and try to sell it at $700. Then someone else tries to sell it for $650, then $600, and so on. Until the price comes down to just above 50 cents and the competitor is afraid to undercut the price anymore because then the margin won't be enough to cover his marketing and distribution expenses.
No. Someone else shows up to make the drug for 50 cents and the person selling the drug for $750 just buys them outright, or immediately drops the price to below profitability to drive the competitor under, then jacks it up to $750 again to refill the warchest for the next silly competitor.
And it's not like you can just spin up a drug producing lab to export prescription medicine for human consumption.
The only outfit with the resources to do that is another drug company. So, at best "capitalism" devolves to oligopoply, and at worst to a monopoly.
Take a look at the M&A for the worlds large pharmaceuticle companies. Competition is dropping like a stone, and prices are going up.
The post I was responding to was specifically asking for symbol characters that weren't 'above the numbers'. (r) and (c) the examples given ... aren't even on most keyboards, and the methods for inputting them can be wildly variable, and a royal PITA to even know if you are doing it right if all you get as feedback is the usual asterisk.
Sure. I can remember one of those. But seriously the (r) and (c) symbols ... pray you never need type that in on someone elses laptop computer with an international keyboard and no numeric pad or a smartphone keyboard... etc.
But more importantly I can't remember dozens of those.
And password re-use is a bigger issue than using a good password.
I use a mix of a password safe for most passwords, and subset of passwords i need to use commonly are 'algorithmic' based on what i need them for / the sites name / etc.
However, I try to keep the algorithmic ones to a minimum because if you ever have to change an algorithm generated password, it really sucks... because the algorithm you normally use can't be used... because that would result in the password you have now, that you can't use.
And as that starts to accumulate the benefit of algorithmic passwords rapidly declines.
There's a show, House of Lies, starring Don Cheadle, where it shows a team of management consultants doing their thing.
It's worth watching the first several episodes; just to see the team in action as management consultants. So much truth in there it's painful.
Yet, they paid a fraction of what one cost new. This is why.
They still paid a lot.
I can give actual pricing from 2013.
But today the iphone 6S is the new hotness. You can still buy a new iphone 5c which is 3 generations back. And an 8GB 5c costs $480 at one of the local carriers. Anyone buying one is still perfectly reasonable if they expected to get security updates for a couple years from today.
OS 9 - the current version runs on devices as old as the 4S. I believe the 4S was introduced in 2011. That's a lot longer than 2 years.
It doesn't matter when it was *introduced*, what matters is when it was *discontinued* -- because people were still buying them new up until that day.
The iphone 4 was discontinued in September 2013. That means, yes, ios9 was released before some iphone 4 users had their phones for 2 years.
And the iphone 4 wasn't eligible for ios8 either which was released a year ago.
So anyone who bought an iphone 4 in mid-late 2013 had support for their phone dropped within a few months of buying it.
Apple is pretty good about updates compared to most android vendors. But there is lots of room for improvement at Apple too.
How would this improve it?
Maybe ... key management; using the windows platform key stores. Integration with active directory etc.
x-forwarding means that you are forwarding the communications between the x-client and x-server through a network tunnel. Windows doesn't have an end user exposed client/server paradigm within the window manager for you to redirect like that.
My point here is that the ability to do x-forwarding is a feature of X itself not of openssh. Adding openssh to windows isn't the "missing piece" you need to do the equivalent of x-forwarding.
I suppose you could setup an openssh tunnel; and then use RDP through it... and maybe that will be supported; but RDP already has encryption and security features, and can already be run through a VPN tunnel. So you aren't really gaining much.
I got to "lunar impacts" before I realized it wasn't going to be an article about matchmaking algorithms at dating websites. And I spent at least a fraction of a second considering that "lunar impacts" is a strange name for a dating website.
The manufacturers and carriers guaranteed that my first Android device would be my last, by failing to allow me to upgrade to the latest, most secure version of the operating system.
Yeah... android is worse than Apple.
I'm sticking with Apple devices from now on.
My daughters iphone 4 purchased in 2013 didn't get ios8 last year, nor ios9 this year. It stopped receiving security updates 15months ago... barely 9 months after we got it.
Sure it was nearing the end of its run when we bought it, and we new that. But Apple pretty much dropped software support for it completely -- while it was still under its 1 year warranty.
Apple's a better vender then most (all?) android vendors. But you still can get burnt. At least with android you can install alternative builds after the vendor forgets you exist; especially if you buy a popular model that has lots of support.
Rule 34.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Sure. Just as there cannot be a door knob that is not art. Or a zipper pull tab that is not art. Or ballpoint pen that is not art. Or a chair. or a pizza box. or a monthly credit card statement, or screwdriver, or a coupon for cat food. All of these things required some creative choices ... colors, textures, fine details, and their placement, etc. It's all art.
So yes, if that's the threshold, then "all games are art". That's not a very interesting thing to say though.
So when people ask whether games are art, they ARE invariably referring to a more nebulous definition of an artistic pursuit wherein an artist is attempting to evoke a response from his audience. Are games THAT kind of art is what they are asking?
And yes, absolutely, some games, most definitely do rise to that level of art. You named a few yourself.
But a simplistic knockoff freemium game on the app store that is little more than a skinner box attached to a nag screen for your credit card number... it's art on the same level as the coupon book from mcdonalds I got mailed yesterday is art.
It has nothing to say. It's not trying to get you to think (and really it would just prefer it if you didn't think and just entered your credit card number for some more coins/gems/whatevers). And anything thinking you do end up doing is entirely incidental to it's raison d'etre; and probably a detriment to it fulfilling its purpose of distracting you into extracting a few more dollars from your wallet without your noticing.
And seriously, even Duke Nukem had things to say and even caused controversy and was an intentional parody of it's genre.
But a lot of the stuff i see on the app store. Yeah, some guy drew some cutesy icons and animations, and that's "art" but the game itself is no more interesting artistically than a dollar store toilet brush. That is to say: yes its art, but so what?
Ditto for tag. Tag isn't artistically interesting.