These people are targeted because they declare their intention to carry out attacks. Should the FBI wait around until they are successful or should they intercept them first? This is no different than somebody looking for a hitman and the FBI "supplying" one.
From that list I'd pick out Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, StarCraft II, Bayonetta, and DeathSpank as games I'm familiar with and was impressed by. Every year there are quality games being made.
I've played the older Final Fantasy games. There's plenty of tedium in them and they don't really hold up well in terms of gameplay. If they came out today there wouldn't be anything special about them.
They were good for the time, but I see a consistent pattern of people getting older and rejecting anything new while glorifying the past.
You're just stuck in the past. There's no doubt a kid similar to you when you were a kid, enjoying today's games just as much as you enjoyed them, who will say the same thing as he gets older. Every generation does this. What makes you think your generation was special?
It's easy to say "screw em" to the companies, too, yet they're also providing a service. If they aren't, then there's no need for the artists to sign with them. This knee-jerk reaction of "artist good, corporation bad" is dishonest.
I believe it can be done, using ideas like ant colony optimization or error detection or correction. We can make electronics work with a certain percentage of flaws- so why not human systems?
Because people aren't ants and the problems are more complex.
I never figured it out, they never seemed to get any real kickback from people using Java. No hardware sales, no software sales, no licensing fees, no split of any profits of anything built using Java that I can tell.
They licensed it to mobile devices, and I think some other partners as well:
"That had become lucrative: a source familiar with Sun's Java work said royalty payments for mobile Java was the dominant part of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year Sun took garnered in Java revenue. "
You're right, though, that for as big as Java was brand-wise, they didn't profit all that much. Then again, they ended up being bought by Oracle for a lot of money, and a big part of that was because of Java, so it wasn't exactly a losing bet. Their biggest problem was the competition with Linux and cheap PCs. Java at least gave them name recognition in the tech world.
Here's Zenimax's contact page, if you're interested in actually registering a complaint, instead of just blaming the victim (and given the bad press, Bethesda really does seem to be a victim here).
It's amazing how easily people are duped. If you want to hurt the clowns taking this action, don't buy the game, as it directly profits the people involved in this lawsuit.
Not when the owner of both the patent and copyright gives you explicit permission to use, copy, and modify code that contains those patents. If what you said was true, then Sun wouldn't have been able to release closed source versions of Java without users violating their patents.
What's a JVM or not is defined by the standards originally set out by Sun. Google didn't like the standard for mobiles so they decided to go with their own, one that was largely compatible with existing Java code but was not claimed to be Java (avoiding the trouble that Microsoft got into back in the 90s with their Java extensions). They avoided the trademark issues, but they ran into patent and copyright issues instead.
Sun explicitly licensed their code under the GPL, which includes the permission to copy, distribute, and modify under the GPL, so there would have been no patent violation.
The problem is that Google didn't implement a conforming JVM, so there was no grant to use the patents. They could have gotten around this by forking the GPL version of Java, but they didn't want to.
Google doesn't distribute Android under the GPL, and because of that, they haven't been granted the rights to use any patents or copyright related to Java. The quotes from Sun in that Groklaw article don't contradict this.
Most Linux distros will simply just point the mysql packages to mariadb (or whatever fork), and end-users will not have to do (or know) anything
I don't see this happening. MySQL is still open source and available, even if the extensions are not, so it will continue to be distributed by open source distributions. The name is also trademarked, so pointing to mariadb or otherwise when the user goes to install MySQL is a trademark violation.
"Open core (a.k.a. proprietary relicensing[1]) is a business model where an open source product is also made available commercially with non-open-source additions. The name "open core" came into use in early 2010 but the business model had already existed for many years."
"open core" is mentioned in the article. To be honest, it's the first I've heard of it too, but it's a pretty good name for this model.
Is it abrasive and cocky or just straightforward and experienced?
The former. There's no reason in a technical dispute to call people idiots and morons, even if you are right. And if you're wrong, well now you're going to find it very hard to back down.
Your claims that he's "agreeable" is just a joke. He's abrasive, dismissive, and arrogant. There are smart, technical people who don't come across this way when disagreeing. Linus is not one of them.
Thanks for the laugh. He's abrasive and cocky when it comes to disagreements. Just google for: linus asshole. There are plenty of public examples on the Linux Kernel Mailing List and elsewhere.
He still manages to get people to work for him, though, so at the end of the day he's successful.
I guess that's only if you find them to be disingenuous enough not to chase their adjusted revenues of US$312.9 million with an investment. What the article seems to be ignoring is that Groupon is still turning a profit.
But as an investor, why would you trust these guys to use your investment wisely?
"Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers, including Eric Lefkofsky, and, notably, the Samwer brothers, who sold their CityDeal company to Groupon in 2010."
Do you want to be the sucker left holding the empty bag at the end?
It's not just about Africa. I believe the United States and other countries, if they had the political will, could have implemented the testing and quarantine programs that Cuba did. I'm not saying that's what should have been done, but just that it was feasible.
Slashdot Mirror
These people are targeted because they declare their intention to carry out attacks. Should the FBI wait around until they are successful or should they intercept them first? This is no different than somebody looking for a hitman and the FBI "supplying" one.
This guy explains it far more convincingly then I could
He talks about some great games from years past.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/12/20-best-games-2010/?pid=783&viewall=true
From that list I'd pick out Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption, StarCraft II, Bayonetta, and DeathSpank as games I'm familiar with and was impressed by. Every year there are quality games being made.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2278670&cid=36607816
As a Debian user, of course I do. When they decide to migrate to Gnome 3 then I'll make the switch to something else.
Microsoft has not disclosed which patents they allegedly would infringe.
Yes they have.
I've played the older Final Fantasy games. There's plenty of tedium in them and they don't really hold up well in terms of gameplay. If they came out today there wouldn't be anything special about them.
They were good for the time, but I see a consistent pattern of people getting older and rejecting anything new while glorifying the past.
You're just stuck in the past. There's no doubt a kid similar to you when you were a kid, enjoying today's games just as much as you enjoyed them, who will say the same thing as he gets older. Every generation does this. What makes you think your generation was special?
It's easy to say "screw em" to the companies, too, yet they're also providing a service. If they aren't, then there's no need for the artists to sign with them. This knee-jerk reaction of "artist good, corporation bad" is dishonest.
I believe it can be done, using ideas like ant colony optimization or error detection or correction. We can make electronics work with a certain percentage of flaws- so why not human systems?
Because people aren't ants and the problems are more complex.
Sun made Java to do what exactly?
Initially it was for television-based devices.
I never figured it out, they never seemed to get any real kickback from people using Java. No hardware sales, no software sales, no licensing fees, no split of any profits of anything built using Java that I can tell.
They licensed it to mobile devices, and I think some other partners as well:
"That had become lucrative: a source familiar with Sun's Java work said royalty payments for mobile Java was the dominant part of the hundreds of millions of dollars a year Sun took garnered in Java revenue. "
You're right, though, that for as big as Java was brand-wise, they didn't profit all that much. Then again, they ended up being bought by Oracle for a lot of money, and a big part of that was because of Java, so it wasn't exactly a losing bet. Their biggest problem was the competition with Linux and cheap PCs. Java at least gave them name recognition in the tech world.
Here's Zenimax's contact page, if you're interested in actually registering a complaint, instead of just blaming the victim (and given the bad press, Bethesda really does seem to be a victim here).
It's amazing how easily people are duped. If you want to hurt the clowns taking this action, don't buy the game, as it directly profits the people involved in this lawsuit.
:)
They were also sued over copyright issues. The case is still pending.
Not when the owner of both the patent and copyright gives you explicit permission to use, copy, and modify code that contains those patents. If what you said was true, then Sun wouldn't have been able to release closed source versions of Java without users violating their patents.
What's a JVM or not is defined by the standards originally set out by Sun. Google didn't like the standard for mobiles so they decided to go with their own, one that was largely compatible with existing Java code but was not claimed to be Java (avoiding the trouble that Microsoft got into back in the 90s with their Java extensions). They avoided the trademark issues, but they ran into patent and copyright issues instead.
Sun explicitly licensed their code under the GPL, which includes the permission to copy, distribute, and modify under the GPL, so there would have been no patent violation.
The problem is that Google didn't implement a conforming JVM, so there was no grant to use the patents. They could have gotten around this by forking the GPL version of Java, but they didn't want to.
The GPL has everything to do with it, as it's the only way any Java patents or copyrights can be legally used.
Google doesn't distribute Android under the GPL, and because of that, they haven't been granted the rights to use any patents or copyright related to Java. The quotes from Sun in that Groklaw article don't contradict this.
Most Linux distros will simply just point the mysql packages to mariadb (or whatever fork), and end-users will not have to do (or know) anything
I don't see this happening. MySQL is still open source and available, even if the extensions are not, so it will continue to be distributed by open source distributions. The name is also trademarked, so pointing to mariadb or otherwise when the user goes to install MySQL is a trademark violation.
He's NOT using an alternative name for open source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_core
"Open core (a.k.a. proprietary relicensing[1]) is a business model where an open source product is also made available commercially with non-open-source additions. The name "open core" came into use in early 2010 but the business model had already existed for many years."
"open core" is mentioned in the article. To be honest, it's the first I've heard of it too, but it's a pretty good name for this model.
Is it abrasive and cocky or just straightforward and experienced?
The former. There's no reason in a technical dispute to call people idiots and morons, even if you are right. And if you're wrong, well now you're going to find it very hard to back down.
Your claims that he's "agreeable" is just a joke. He's abrasive, dismissive, and arrogant. There are smart, technical people who don't come across this way when disagreeing. Linus is not one of them.
Linus is agreeable and works well with others
Thanks for the laugh. He's abrasive and cocky when it comes to disagreements. Just google for: linus asshole. There are plenty of public examples on the Linux Kernel Mailing List and elsewhere.
He still manages to get people to work for him, though, so at the end of the day he's successful.
I guess that's only if you find them to be disingenuous enough not to chase their adjusted revenues of US$312.9 million with an investment. What the article seems to be ignoring is that Groupon is still turning a profit.
But as an investor, why would you trust these guys to use your investment wisely?
Where Did Grouponâ(TM)s Billion Dollars Go?
"Groupon raised a total of $946 million in two funding rounds last winter. It kept $136 million of it help run the money-losing company. The remaining $810 million was paid out, via stock purchases, to CEO Andrew Mason and some of his backers, including Eric Lefkofsky, and, notably, the Samwer brothers, who sold their CityDeal company to Groupon in 2010."
Do you want to be the sucker left holding the empty bag at the end?
It's not just about Africa. I believe the United States and other countries, if they had the political will, could have implemented the testing and quarantine programs that Cuba did. I'm not saying that's what should have been done, but just that it was feasible.