Actually, the point of the patent was to increase information sharing. A patented product (at least in the US) must disclose all the steps necessary to create the end result; the owner then owns the exact method for a few years (which he is capable of doing anything himself but anyone who uses his method must receive his permission). This was implemented to counter trade secrets (a la Coca-Cola) by providing incentive (exclusive rights for a short period of time) to those who open up their innovations; reverse engineering a trade secret is perfectly legitimate (Pepsi), but reverse engineering a patent means nothing since everybody already knows how it's done.
The problem isn't the idea of patents. They exist for many reasons and have proven to work immensely. No, the problem lies in software patents. I'm not against software patents in general, but 20 years is far too excessive. If we reduct it to one year or some equivalent, there wouldn't be such fiascos. The software world changes quick, and thus so should the laws protecting them.
Fear of biological strike? Last natural case occurred back in 1977, and the last known case of the disease anywhere was in 1978. As far we know, the only sources of the virus remain in labs. If it still existed in the wild, we'd all be getting vaccinations. 25% death rate with a moderate to high spreading capability... not exactly pleasant. I can't even get a vaccination if I wanted to unless I join the military or work at a contagion lab.
Compared to Sega Saturn's dual processor hell, the Sony PlayStation was leaps and bounds easier to develop on. Of all the games released for the Saturn, only one (Panzer Dragoon Saga) managed to utilize them correctly (and it looks beautiful to boot). Everything else was designed either on one processor or a staggered mechanism that failed to extract the parallelism. This led to the belief that the PlayStation was far more powerful than the Saturn.
Now, the PlayStation 3 has (God knows what reason) nine concurrent microprocessors. Even if only one is primary and seven of the secondary ones are active, it'll be leaps and bounds more difficult to develop software than just two. And the difficulty curve is not linear; more processors would yield far more difficulty.
Of course, all this would be theoretically handled by a smart compiler. But compilers today are struggling with mere dual-core systems, let alone nine different processors. As for assembly coding, look at the failure that is the Saturn. I'm not questioning the power of the Cell. I'm questioning whether a developer exists in the world to extract at least half of its potential.
Saying people are "just kids" are ignoring the fact that they are not. They're college students. After all, a kid eschewed the giant corporation funded operating system and slapped one together (with a fellow kid) to play Space Wars and revolutionize operating system design. A kid wrote the free implementation of Minix. A kid founded both the most portable operating system and the most secure one. A kid cloned an implementation of the Windows network file system onto the *nix platform. It may be surprising, but kids today start some of the most influential work in computing.
Some people actually believe in security through obscurity. Hackers won't find flaws if the source code isn't readily available! Of course, they don't understand that opening up the source code helps fix flaws faster than people can break them.
I personally think that Half-Life executed cutscenes perfectly. Only once did the game actually take away actual control (end of Apprehension), and yet there's so many sequences (the "we are pulling out speech" in Surface Tension hangs in my mind) that would have led to some FMV crap by any other company.
Uwe Boll is making the current video game movie market better. I mean look at the pre-Boll movies (no specific order):
Mortal Kombat
Street Fighter
Super Mario Bros.
Resident Evil
Tomb Raider
Final Fantasy
A very mediocre to bad offering right? Now have at the Boll movies:
House of the Dead
Alone in the Dark
Bloodrayne
What differences are between these and the previous ones? That's right, they're far worse! See, Boll just made the prior video game movies look like classics! What a guy!
Slashdot Mirror
I personally think that noone will ever need more than 640gb of RAM. So let's hard code that in, shall we?
???
There have been touchscreen keyboards for quite some time now... So what's so special about this?
... you need an Orb of Thesulah (not to be mistaken with a paper weight) and a powerful gypsy or wicca.
Actually, the point of the patent was to increase information sharing. A patented product (at least in the US) must disclose all the steps necessary to create the end result; the owner then owns the exact method for a few years (which he is capable of doing anything himself but anyone who uses his method must receive his permission). This was implemented to counter trade secrets (a la Coca-Cola) by providing incentive (exclusive rights for a short period of time) to those who open up their innovations; reverse engineering a trade secret is perfectly legitimate (Pepsi), but reverse engineering a patent means nothing since everybody already knows how it's done.
The problem isn't the idea of patents. They exist for many reasons and have proven to work immensely. No, the problem lies in software patents. I'm not against software patents in general, but 20 years is far too excessive. If we reduct it to one year or some equivalent, there wouldn't be such fiascos. The software world changes quick, and thus so should the laws protecting them.
Fear of biological strike? Last natural case occurred back in 1977, and the last known case of the disease anywhere was in 1978. As far we know, the only sources of the virus remain in labs. If it still existed in the wild, we'd all be getting vaccinations. 25% death rate with a moderate to high spreading capability... not exactly pleasant. I can't even get a vaccination if I wanted to unless I join the military or work at a contagion lab.
Perhaps. But we did manage to eradicate smallpox. It's possible to destroy a disease before it mutates too much.
Never said anything about legality.
Compared to Sega Saturn's dual processor hell, the Sony PlayStation was leaps and bounds easier to develop on. Of all the games released for the Saturn, only one (Panzer Dragoon Saga) managed to utilize them correctly (and it looks beautiful to boot). Everything else was designed either on one processor or a staggered mechanism that failed to extract the parallelism. This led to the belief that the PlayStation was far more powerful than the Saturn.
Now, the PlayStation 3 has (God knows what reason) nine concurrent microprocessors. Even if only one is primary and seven of the secondary ones are active, it'll be leaps and bounds more difficult to develop software than just two. And the difficulty curve is not linear; more processors would yield far more difficulty.
Of course, all this would be theoretically handled by a smart compiler. But compilers today are struggling with mere dual-core systems, let alone nine different processors. As for assembly coding, look at the failure that is the Saturn. I'm not questioning the power of the Cell. I'm questioning whether a developer exists in the world to extract at least half of its potential.
It was Hitler's opinion that Jews were evil.
Saying people are "just kids" are ignoring the fact that they are not. They're college students. After all, a kid eschewed the giant corporation funded operating system and slapped one together (with a fellow kid) to play Space Wars and revolutionize operating system design. A kid wrote the free implementation of Minix. A kid founded both the most portable operating system and the most secure one. A kid cloned an implementation of the Windows network file system onto the *nix platform. It may be surprising, but kids today start some of the most influential work in computing.
Some people actually believe in security through obscurity. Hackers won't find flaws if the source code isn't readily available! Of course, they don't understand that opening up the source code helps fix flaws faster than people can break them.
Since Resident Evil 4 had the exact gameplay as its predecessors and was released last year, 2006 will continue its trend.
... is to ask /. people. Oh wait, you already did. Maybe posting some wage information? And e-mailing me about it would be nice too ;).
I was expecting a Metroid Prime clone in the article. I didn't know they made Pong and Donkey Kong too.
I know there are people better than me (my time is at least 10 minutes from optimal), but I'm still here http://speeddemosarchive.com/MetroidPrime.html#har d.
I personally think that Half-Life executed cutscenes perfectly. Only once did the game actually take away actual control (end of Apprehension), and yet there's so many sequences (the "we are pulling out speech" in Surface Tension hangs in my mind) that would have led to some FMV crap by any other company.
and having a crappy X server.
"Crappy" is kinda redundant there.
We have GNU/Linux.
We have GNU/*BSD.
Does this mean that GNU/Solaris is surely to come?
Serenity
What about a game (Street Fighter: Real Battle on Film) based upon a movie (Street Fighter) based upon a video game ( Street Fighter 2 )?
They hate us because we can't bribe them?
Or ipeople n some other country less hesitant about the unsavory aspects of the Chinese communists could do it.
I think a cockroach carried your i a little too far backwards.
I prefer XHTML. The X makes it sound cool.
Actually, the German law isn't a loophole. It was intended to do exactly what Boll did (albeit not repeatedly). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uwe_Boll#Financing
-
Mortal Kombat
-
Street Fighter
-
Super Mario Bros.
-
Resident Evil
-
Tomb Raider
-
Final Fantasy
A very mediocre to bad offering right? Now have at the Boll movies:-
House of the Dead
-
Alone in the Dark
-
Bloodrayne
What differences are between these and the previous ones? That's right, they're far worse! See, Boll just made the prior video game movies look like classics! What a guy!