Further, it seems that design patents may be referred to in some cases as copyrights in Nigeria. The very first page of the patent document talks about "copyright expiration", not "patent expiration". It may be that things eligible for design patents in Nigeria are NOT eligible for standard copyrights, so thus the term copyright was overloaded to include design patents as well. Or it may just be a case of Nigerian law being a bit loose with terminology.
and anything to encourage coding for a platform has to be a good thing.
I'm not so sure. Some of the benefits of the whole Mac system are somewhat incompatible with the concept of thousands of people who don't really understand programming writing apps for the platform.
Take the bundle system. It is really nice for applications to be basically self contained, and runnable from anywhere. Generally bundles let this happen. Many (but not all) Mac apps have no need for an installer, and can run from any location. To remove the app, you simply drag it to the trash. Sure, they sometimes leave behind a bit of cruft, but the cruft is in well known locations and is trivial to remove.
But look at many.NET programmers. Very few of them are even aware what would be nessisary to create an location independent application, and might not care even if they did know.
Further, what about the interface standards. Sure Apple is not following them perfectly themselves, but as long as most apps follow them pretty closely everything works well. But how many.NET developers even try to follow the very minimal interface standards of Windows? There is almost no chance they would try to follow the interface standards of a Mac.
However, from what I remember the registry of 3.1 seemed to consist solely of a mapping between file-types and programs (or at least, that is all that the 3.1 regedit exposed). So it was quite a different beast way back then.
Well actually Google would be best off not to use the spectrum at all. Instead rent it to telecoms, who would provide wireless broadband services. See the current problem is that there is virtually no competition in the wireless broadband arena. The spectrum is owned by the very companies that use it, so it is not in their interest to allow competition on their part of the spectrum. On the other hand, there are so few chunks of spectrum that no real competition can emerge.
If Google were to run this well, companies would be required to used standardized equipment and protocols on the frequency. Further they would allow multiple companies to license the spectrum for the exact same purpose in the same geographical area. Thus if AT&T's offering was a good deal you sign up with them. But when Sprint has a better deal, you can easily switch to Sprint with no hassle, after all, the equipment and protocols would be standardized. Further, the overhead for a new company to enter the business would be significantly smaller than it is currently. So some real competition would develop. The end result should be widely available low-cost wireless broadband. That is very much in the interests of Google. However that is not in the interests of the large telecoms, who currently own virtually all the available spectrum usable for this.
So in this case the interests of Google and the interests of the consumers are the same. This is because Google is not in the telecom market. I really feel that this should always be the case. For example, phone lines should not be owned by the phone companies, but a separate company who has a strong interest in having phone/data services available at minimal cost.
Am I the only one who is seriously freaked out by that thing?
- The speed is fairly impressive for that thing
- With walking there is a large thud with each step
- It's making somewhat alien noises
- It's all twitchy
Perhaps it's a case of uncanny valley, except not with trying to be human but trying to be an animal/headcrab.
I would probably use a bat/crowbar on that thing, just too damn creepy... Bit too much HalfLife? On a more serious note, The self modeling system is highly interesting. However, all of the gaits shown in the video (especially those in the later part of the video) seem significantly less than ideal. I would find it much more interesting to see the same concept applied to a more normal leg layout, that is capable of more or less normal walking.
Well, I know that small businesses often have to use an external firm for IT, which can cost significantly in excess of $100 per hour.
Much of it is simple technician/"repair" work (get the computer working again), although some of it is is a tad bit higher level (Set up a complete windows based domain, including installing the OS on all the systems, choosing the server, setting up the networking system, including securing the wireless network, etc.)
"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration"
You won't get any argument out of me that the original intent behind the Constitution has been/is being subverted. My favorite example is the interstate commerce clause becoming a blank check for Congress to do whatever they want (like controlling what I can put into my own body as a consenting adult). But using the income tax and Lincoln as your examples doesn't seem very justifiable.
I disagree. The text you quote above is the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, not part of the original Constitution (which only had 10 Amendments), and ratified in 1913.
Here's another Amendment passed only four years later:
"After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."
I don't think you'll find many Constitutionalists who'll support that Amendment. Many (most?) of them have the same disdain for the 16th. Unfortunately, while the 18th was finally repealed after disastrous consequences, the 16th hasn't been repealed yet in spite of all its negative effects. The original Constitution allowed an income tax. That was never under question. The only thing was that income from real property (land) could not be taxed equally across the board, but would have to be taxed based on population. To repeat, the 16th does not authorize income taxes, as they were already legal. It merely lets the Federal government tax income from things like property evenly across the board.
Personally, I wouldn't shed a single tear if EA announced that they will never develop for the PS3 again. Hmm... I would not be upset if EA stops developing any games at all, as long as they spin Maxis, Westwood, (and a few other studios) back out into separate companies. (And those companies become once again as good as they were before EA ate them.)
From the site: "Live Documents provides you with a full Office productivity suite - Word, Excel and PowerPoint - with built-in collaboration features right out of your browser - no more dependence on Microsoft Office and Windows and no more format lock-in!" So there is a full office suite online. It also sounds like the online suite might be using the names "Word", "Excel", and "Powerpoint". That is a problem.
However they also have a Microsoft office add-in that more or less allows one to use Microsoft Office as an offline non-browser client. In fact, it looks like they intend this to be the usual way to edit documents, using the online editors only when Microsoft office is not available.
Their site does definitely use too many copies of the Microsoft office logo, and the Microsoft Office screen shots are somewhat misleading, especially as there very few screen shots of the browser-based editor.
Simply abolish the FAA which is unconstitutional anyway.
The Constitution does not give the federal government authority to regulate travel and run a traffic directing organization First of all, do consider that the FAA being an organization regulating interstate commerce is not very far-fetched. After all, most flights involve crossing state lines. The FAA is not really much of a stretch of that clause. There are much worse abuses. Even if the FAA were to be abolished, the many individual states would likely end up creating a single equivalent agency to regulate flight, as consistency in the regulations is rather important to the industry.
It may be a tiny bit of a pain for some broken IT infrastructure, but the simple fact is that most people are completely unaware of the occurrence of leap seconds. Since most clock tend to drift anyway, and need to be reset periodically, the leap second has very little impact on regular people. However, letting UT1 and UTC drift apart by a whole hour would definitely be problematic. Further, the leap hour would be a real pain for everybody, both IT and the regular world. Have you already forgotten the problems the idiotic DST change caused?
Randi made that change on April 1, 2007. The purpose was to cut down on the number of tests. Randi really wants to go after the major players.
However, please note that Randi explicitly mentions (someplace, I'm not sure where he mentions it) that winning any region skeptics challenge qualifies you (the media profile from such an event is sufficient).
Most random number generators harvest entropy from various sources. Typically, the timing and origin of interrupts is used as the source. If you hit keys or receive network packets, your kernel will get an interrupt. It will then read the CPU's timestamp counter, permute the value in some way, and add it it to the entropy pool. This entropy is not completely random, but it is much better than using a purely deterministic algorithm. My understanding is that there would be a small amount of pure randomness in such sources. Since such an RNG keeps track of accumulated entropy, and releases numbers only with maximum entropy then if the true entropy (true randomness) of the sources is used, and the mixing function is valid, then the output would be perfectly random. Of course, determining the true entropy of such sources is almost impossible, but...
the NSA has every reason to deny others effective cryptographic tools
Well actually, the NSA wants other countries to have bad cryptographic tools, the USA to have good cryptographic tools, or best of all, everyone to have cryptographic tools that only the NSA can break. This algorithm sounds like the latter, since as Schneier said it uses a set of magic number parameters and there are some more magic numbers which constitute a back door. The back door is hard to calculate from the known magic numbers, but could plausibly have been determined during development of both sets of numbers by the NSA boys.
I wonder if there would be any use in having an encryption scheme that was widely known to be breakable only by the NSA. Well One use would be sending messages to the NSA. More seriously though, such an algorithm would be fine for encrypting data that need not be protected from the government. (A.K.A it is a non U.S. government entity that you are trying to keep from reading the message.
The fact is that home Users should NEVER need to see or think about any versions other than
"Home Basic" (Minimum features)
"Home premium" (Most features that would interest a home user are included)
or "Ultimate" (ALL features).
3 Versions is not too terribly bad. Especially since they can be upgraded without another trip to the store.
Similarly, Businesses also only have 3 versions to consider.
Of Course Microsoft does not make this as clear as they could, but My guess is the average Circuit City Employee can assist the average person in ignoring
the irrelevant versions.
Is there any reason to belive that the list is really a windows 7 list and not a Windows Vista SP1 list. Some of those feature if implemented would make Vista suck less. But I've always had a hard time putting my finger on what makes Vista suck. There are many definite improvements. What is it that makes Vista suck?
What Linux RNG are they talking about? My understanding is that the output of/dev/random is fully random under the condition that the kernel has not overestimated the entropy of any of the inputs, and the mixing function works properly.
Indeed, my Dell laptop has a button specifically for booting into a mini-OS to directly access files in this manner. Unfortunately, there isn't enough difference between this limited boot and a regular boot to justify its use.
Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.
You are talking about the MediaDirect feature. It actually uses Windows XP embeded. The first time its loaded it loads fully. Then it writes what is basically a hibernation file. So all subsequent boots load this hibernation file which brings the system to a fully running state faster than booting Windows XP Embeded, and much faster than booting all of normal Windows from scratch. (But there is not enough difference in loading speed to justify loading MediaDirect instead of hibernated Windows XP.)
The main two complaints I have heard about the system is that it does not have DivX support (This would have been near trivial for dell to add. The technical side could easily be completed in less than one programmer day.) and that it does not support Windows Media DRM files. (This would be harder to support, and to do it reasonably would require support by Microsoft.)
exactly. It's not that it's possible for there to be a third party wiimote. It just looks like exactly like one.
And I suppose you're right. Nintendo really isn't at risk of selling less stuff as a result of this infringement. But it's still too confusing. This is a trademark violation.
Nintendo could most certainly go after them. I'm not sure if trademark is the right avenue, but they definitely have some form of claim. The shape of the Wiimote is definitely beyond mere functionality, so it would qualify for a design patent, or a copyright. Further, I think they may have a trademark case, in so far as concepts like "trade dress" are considered trademarks, as Nintendo does use the distinctive shape of the controller as an identifying feature of the overall system.
Actually Nintendo is at some risk here. They would certainly like to see this product gone from the market. However things like the Super Joy III are much higher on Nintendo's list of priorities. Only if the product's packaging clearly indicated that it is not a Wii product, for example: "THIS IS NOT A WII REMOTE" would Nintendo be willing to completely ignore it. However, it is very difficult to fight these cheap knockoffs. So, waiting for Nintendo to have a chance to do something about it is a bad thing. Walmart should definitely pull the product.
The three most likely possibilities seem to be that Hans killed her, Sturgeon killed her, or she left for Russia herself.
Now lets look at some weird aspects of the case: (most of these taken from other posters, and are not original). Why would Hans go to Russia for programmers when he did not know know Russian? That seems a bit odd. Why would a smart guy like Hans want to use a Russian dating service? Why would Nina (an obstetrician) be working as a translator for a russian dating service? Hans was found with a passport and $9,000 cash. While that is an unusually large amount of money, it is not too large. His explanation seems to be that he was going to travel to Russia to pay the Russian programmers he hired. Why would he travel to Russia to pay them in person?
More weird things: Nina was having an affair with Sturgeon. Sturgeon is a much more unusual fellow than Hans, as evidenced by his wearing drag during the wedding, his practice of "death yoga", and his claims that he is a serial killer. If somebody should be convicted solely because they are really weird, it should definitely be Sturgeon.
He may have had books on murder investigation, but seeing as he bought these after the police said they suspected foul play implies to me that he knew he would be a suspect, and wanted to know how the whole process worked. Many of us would have done the same thing.
As for the blood traces in the house and in the car: Without more information about the exact nature of these, I'm unsure how significant they are. After all, she was his wife. Heck, my shoe has a bloodstain of a random person. (I'm thinking they had a bloody nose, but I really don't know how it got there. All I do know it that it is not mine.
Other stuff:
Nina divorced Hans as soon as she had American citizenship. She had custody of the children, and was working on moving them to Russia when she disappeared.
---------
Conclusion: A very weird case. Without more evidence there is definitely significant doubt. Procecuting a murder with no eyewitness and no body is a difficult thing to do successfully.
I would think this was a wiimote if I saw it in a store without labelling. It's clearly supposed to look like a wiimote. I even bet that it IS a third party wiimote, just that the company couldn't get licensing or good tech or something, and retools to make this crap.
I mean, come on man. The button placement, the fake speaker, the color and shape, etc. It's a motion control game thingy. Like I said, I can tell this isn't nintendo's wiimote, but it could easily be logitech's or madcatz's. No doubt at all this is what even a nintendo employee would think at first glance.
Actually in this case Nintendo employees would not think that. But this is only because Nintendo has decided no make it very difficult for third parties to make replacement controllers, but encourages them to make controller accessories. This was a deliberate decision. If Nintendo's controller sales are not at risk, they feel better. The official policy seems to be that wii-mote plug-in add-ons are a bit more restricted but only to keep the number such accessories down to a manageable level. But they are definitely willing to work with third parties. I've seen a number of Wii and DS products that are not Nintendo made that have been authorized to use the Nintendo Seal.
However, if that were not the case, I agree that even Nintendo Employees would first guess a third party controller, but would rule that with a second glance. Then they would assume it is exactly what it is. There have been very similar rip-offs all the time. The last possible guess would be a pirate version of a much older Nintendo system ( think "Super Joy III" which is an NES-on-a-chip deigned in a fake n64 controller housing).
I know that doctors get more than that. Pens seem to be the most common. But I've seen some more interesting items. I've seen wireless mice, Small USB hubs, and even a pen with a built in 64MB USB flash drive. (But as far as I can tell, it did not come preloaded with a copy of the prescribing information, or promotional material, which would make good sense to me.) I know that if I was a doctor and i received one of those bigger ticket items, I'd certainly take the time to research the Medication. Better awareness of the medication would lead to me being more likely to prescribe it in the cases where it works best. However, besides making me more aware of a products availability, advertising has little impact on me. The only way an advertisement will lead to a sale is when I am already looking for such an item, and the advertisement reminds me of the availability of the product, or perhaps, a surprising low price. This is a fairly rare occurrence.
True gamers have never liked titles like The Sims or Spore because they don't have an end goal. You actually have to be creative in these games to enjoy them; it has little to do with "involved skill". But the same is true of most other Maxis games (anything created by Will Wright is a Maxis game, even if not labeled as such), Notably the Sim City series. The recent onexs are very much a type of hardcore game, although certainly a different hardcore gaming division than the ones that play Halo etc.
To give more information: SchedulesDirect has reached their goal of costing only $20/year, and they retroactively extended all memberships payed at higher price to be equivalent to paying that price. It is possible that the price may even drop further in the future, although the $20/year figure was based on most MythTV users switching to their service, which has most likely happened, so future price drops will likely occur slower. They are non-profit, with all of the money collected going to costs of the license to redistribute and things like bandwidth expenses. The system is intended to be a drop in replacement for the Zap2It service, supporting the same hardware, and using the same format as the old service did.
I can't help but wonder if a notarized letter stating something to the effect of, " Failure on your part to accurately verify the identity of the participant in a financial transaction does not incur a liability on my part. However unfortunate your loss, it was not caused by me, and I will not be held liable for it. Subsequent attempts to contact me on this matter will be ignored. " would work.
I'm pretty sure you could turn it into a form letter, and send it to any debtors you didn't recognize.
That might have some impact, but remember that unless you can convince the credit reporting agencies that those debts should be removed from your credit history as they were not really your liability, you will still be impacted. And the credit reporting agencies will be very reluctant to remove items for that reason, or otherwise people will attempt to remove from their records cases in which they really did default on a loan, by claiming it was identity theft.
Slashdot Mirror
Further, it seems that design patents may be referred to in some cases as copyrights in Nigeria. The very first page of the patent document talks about "copyright expiration", not "patent expiration". It may be that things eligible for design patents in Nigeria are NOT eligible for standard copyrights, so thus the term copyright was overloaded to include design patents as well. Or it may just be a case of Nigerian law being a bit loose with terminology.
I'm not so sure. Some of the benefits of the whole Mac system are somewhat incompatible with the concept of thousands of people who don't really understand programming writing apps for the platform.
Take the bundle system. It is really nice for applications to be basically self contained, and runnable from anywhere. Generally bundles let this happen. Many (but not all) Mac apps have no need for an installer, and can run from any location. To remove the app, you simply drag it to the trash. Sure, they sometimes leave behind a bit of cruft, but the cruft is in well known locations and is trivial to remove.
But look at many .NET programmers. Very few of them are even aware what would be nessisary to create an location independent application, and might not care even if they did know.
Further, what about the interface standards. Sure Apple is not following them perfectly themselves, but as long as most apps follow them pretty closely everything works well. But how many .NET developers even try to follow the very minimal interface standards of Windows? There is almost no chance they would try to follow the interface standards of a Mac.
However, from what I remember the registry of 3.1 seemed to consist solely of a mapping between file-types and programs (or at least, that is all that the 3.1 regedit exposed). So it was quite a different beast way back then.
Well actually Google would be best off not to use the spectrum at all. Instead rent it to telecoms, who would provide wireless broadband services. See the current problem is that there is virtually no competition in the wireless broadband arena. The spectrum is owned by the very companies that use it, so it is not in their interest to allow competition on their part of the spectrum. On the other hand, there are so few chunks of spectrum that no real competition can emerge. If Google were to run this well, companies would be required to used standardized equipment and protocols on the frequency. Further they would allow multiple companies to license the spectrum for the exact same purpose in the same geographical area. Thus if AT&T's offering was a good deal you sign up with them. But when Sprint has a better deal, you can easily switch to Sprint with no hassle, after all, the equipment and protocols would be standardized. Further, the overhead for a new company to enter the business would be significantly smaller than it is currently. So some real competition would develop. The end result should be widely available low-cost wireless broadband. That is very much in the interests of Google. However that is not in the interests of the large telecoms, who currently own virtually all the available spectrum usable for this. So in this case the interests of Google and the interests of the consumers are the same. This is because Google is not in the telecom market. I really feel that this should always be the case. For example, phone lines should not be owned by the phone companies, but a separate company who has a strong interest in having phone/data services available at minimal cost.
- The speed is fairly impressive for that thing
- With walking there is a large thud with each step
- It's making somewhat alien noises
- It's all twitchy
Perhaps it's a case of uncanny valley, except not with trying to be human but trying to be an animal/headcrab.
I would probably use a bat/crowbar on that thing, just too damn creepy... Bit too much HalfLife? On a more serious note, The self modeling system is highly interesting. However, all of the gaits shown in the video (especially those in the later part of the video) seem significantly less than ideal. I would find it much more interesting to see the same concept applied to a more normal leg layout, that is capable of more or less normal walking.
As a computer technician I say yes, absolutely.
Well, I know that small businesses often have to use an external firm for IT, which can cost significantly in excess of $100 per hour. Much of it is simple technician/"repair" work (get the computer working again), although some of it is is a tad bit higher level (Set up a complete windows based domain, including installing the OS on all the systems, choosing the server, setting up the networking system, including securing the wireless network, etc.)"The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration"
You won't get any argument out of me that the original intent behind the Constitution has been/is being subverted. My favorite example is the interstate commerce clause becoming a blank check for Congress to do whatever they want (like controlling what I can put into my own body as a consenting adult). But using the income tax and Lincoln as your examples doesn't seem very justifiable.
I disagree. The text you quote above is the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, not part of the original Constitution (which only had 10 Amendments), and ratified in 1913.
Here's another Amendment passed only four years later:
"After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."
I don't think you'll find many Constitutionalists who'll support that Amendment. Many (most?) of them have the same disdain for the 16th. Unfortunately, while the 18th was finally repealed after disastrous consequences, the 16th hasn't been repealed yet in spite of all its negative effects.
The original Constitution allowed an income tax. That was never under question. The only thing was that income from real property (land) could not be taxed equally across the board, but would have to be taxed based on population. To repeat, the 16th does not authorize income taxes, as they were already legal. It merely lets the Federal government tax income from things like property evenly across the board.
Hmm... I would not be upset if EA stops developing any games at all, as long as they spin Maxis, Westwood, (and a few other studios) back out into separate companies. (And those companies become once again as good as they were before EA ate them.)
From the site: "Live Documents provides you with a full Office productivity suite - Word, Excel and PowerPoint - with built-in collaboration features right out of your browser - no more dependence on Microsoft Office and Windows and no more format lock-in!" So there is a full office suite online. It also sounds like the online suite might be using the names "Word", "Excel", and "Powerpoint". That is a problem.
However they also have a Microsoft office add-in that more or less allows one to use Microsoft Office as an offline non-browser client. In fact, it looks like they intend this to be the usual way to edit documents, using the online editors only when Microsoft office is not available.
Their site does definitely use too many copies of the Microsoft office logo, and the Microsoft Office screen shots are somewhat misleading, especially as there very few screen shots of the browser-based editor.
The Constitution does not give the federal government authority to regulate travel and run a traffic directing organization First of all, do consider that the FAA being an organization regulating interstate commerce is not very far-fetched. After all, most flights involve crossing state lines. The FAA is not really much of a stretch of that clause. There are much worse abuses. Even if the FAA were to be abolished, the many individual states would likely end up creating a single equivalent agency to regulate flight, as consistency in the regulations is rather important to the industry.
It may be a tiny bit of a pain for some broken IT infrastructure, but the simple fact is that most people are completely unaware of the occurrence of leap seconds. Since most clock tend to drift anyway, and need to be reset periodically, the leap second has very little impact on regular people. However, letting UT1 and UTC drift apart by a whole hour would definitely be problematic. Further, the leap hour would be a real pain for everybody, both IT and the regular world. Have you already forgotten the problems the idiotic DST change caused?
Randi made that change on April 1, 2007. The purpose was to cut down on the number of tests. Randi really wants to go after the major players. However, please note that Randi explicitly mentions (someplace, I'm not sure where he mentions it) that winning any region skeptics challenge qualifies you (the media profile from such an event is sufficient).
Well actually, the NSA wants other countries to have bad cryptographic tools, the USA to have good cryptographic tools, or best of all, everyone to have cryptographic tools that only the NSA can break. This algorithm sounds like the latter, since as Schneier said it uses a set of magic number parameters and there are some more magic numbers which constitute a back door. The back door is hard to calculate from the known magic numbers, but could plausibly have been determined during development of both sets of numbers by the NSA boys.
I wonder if there would be any use in having an encryption scheme that was widely known to be breakable only by the NSA. Well One use would be sending messages to the NSA. More seriously though, such an algorithm would be fine for encrypting data that need not be protected from the government. (A.K.A it is a non U.S. government entity that you are trying to keep from reading the message.
The fact is that home Users should NEVER need to see or think about any versions other than "Home Basic" (Minimum features) "Home premium" (Most features that would interest a home user are included) or "Ultimate" (ALL features). 3 Versions is not too terribly bad. Especially since they can be upgraded without another trip to the store. Similarly, Businesses also only have 3 versions to consider. Of Course Microsoft does not make this as clear as they could, but My guess is the average Circuit City Employee can assist the average person in ignoring the irrelevant versions.
Is there any reason to belive that the list is really a windows 7 list and not a Windows Vista SP1 list. Some of those feature if implemented would make Vista suck less. But I've always had a hard time putting my finger on what makes Vista suck. There are many definite improvements. What is it that makes Vista suck?
What Linux RNG are they talking about? My understanding is that the output of /dev/random is fully random under the condition that the kernel has not overestimated the entropy of any of the inputs, and the mixing function works properly.
Perhaps their proposal can do a better job, but it doesn't appear to be new ground.
You are talking about the MediaDirect feature. It actually uses Windows XP embeded. The first time its loaded it loads fully. Then it writes what is basically a hibernation file. So all subsequent boots load this hibernation file which brings the system to a fully running state faster than booting Windows XP Embeded, and much faster than booting all of normal Windows from scratch. (But there is not enough difference in loading speed to justify loading MediaDirect instead of hibernated Windows XP.)
The main two complaints I have heard about the system is that it does not have DivX support (This would have been near trivial for dell to add. The technical side could easily be completed in less than one programmer day.) and that it does not support Windows Media DRM files. (This would be harder to support, and to do it reasonably would require support by Microsoft.)
And I suppose you're right. Nintendo really isn't at risk of selling less stuff as a result of this infringement. But it's still too confusing. This is a trademark violation.
Nintendo could most certainly go after them. I'm not sure if trademark is the right avenue, but they definitely have some form of claim. The shape of the Wiimote is definitely beyond mere functionality, so it would qualify for a design patent, or a copyright. Further, I think they may have a trademark case, in so far as concepts like "trade dress" are considered trademarks, as Nintendo does use the distinctive shape of the controller as an identifying feature of the overall system.
Actually Nintendo is at some risk here. They would certainly like to see this product gone from the market. However things like the Super Joy III are much higher on Nintendo's list of priorities. Only if the product's packaging clearly indicated that it is not a Wii product, for example: "THIS IS NOT A WII REMOTE" would Nintendo be willing to completely ignore it. However, it is very difficult to fight these cheap knockoffs. So, waiting for Nintendo to have a chance to do something about it is a bad thing. Walmart should definitely pull the product.
So lets take a look at the whole case.
The three most likely possibilities seem to be that Hans killed her, Sturgeon killed her, or she left for Russia herself.
Now lets look at some weird aspects of the case: (most of these taken from other posters, and are not original).
Why would Hans go to Russia for programmers when he did not know know Russian? That seems a bit odd.
Why would a smart guy like Hans want to use a Russian dating service?
Why would Nina (an obstetrician) be working as a translator for a russian dating service?
Hans was found with a passport and $9,000 cash. While that is an unusually large amount of money, it is not too large. His
explanation seems to be that he was going to travel to Russia to pay the Russian programmers he hired. Why would
he travel to Russia to pay them in person?
More weird things:
Nina was having an affair with Sturgeon.
Sturgeon is a much more unusual fellow than Hans, as evidenced by his wearing drag during the wedding,
his practice of "death yoga", and his claims that he is a serial killer. If somebody
should be convicted solely because they are really weird, it should definitely be Sturgeon.
He may have had books on murder investigation, but seeing as he bought these after the police said they suspected foul play
implies to me that he knew he would be a suspect, and wanted to know how the whole process worked. Many of us would have done the same thing.
As for the blood traces in the house and in the car: Without more information about the exact nature of these, I'm unsure how significant they are.
After all, she was his wife. Heck, my shoe has a bloodstain of a random person. (I'm thinking they had a bloody nose, but I really don't know how it got there. All I do know it that it is not mine.
Other stuff:
Nina divorced Hans as soon as she had American citizenship.
She had custody of the children, and was working on moving them to Russia when she disappeared.
---------
Conclusion: A very weird case. Without more evidence there is definitely significant doubt. Procecuting a murder with no eyewitness and no body is a difficult thing to do successfully.
I mean, come on man. The button placement, the fake speaker, the color and shape, etc. It's a motion control game thingy. Like I said, I can tell this isn't nintendo's wiimote, but it could easily be logitech's or madcatz's. No doubt at all this is what even a nintendo employee would think at first glance.
Actually in this case Nintendo employees would not think that. But this is only because Nintendo has decided no make it very difficult for third parties to make replacement controllers, but encourages them to make controller accessories. This was a deliberate decision. If Nintendo's controller sales are not at risk, they feel better. The official policy seems to be that wii-mote plug-in add-ons are a bit more restricted but only to keep the number such accessories down to a manageable level. But they are definitely willing to work with third parties. I've seen a number of Wii and DS products that are not Nintendo made that have been authorized to use the Nintendo Seal.
However, if that were not the case, I agree that even Nintendo Employees would first guess a third party controller, but would rule that with a second glance. Then they would assume it is exactly what it is. There have been very similar rip-offs all the time. The last possible guess would be a pirate version of a much older Nintendo system ( think "Super Joy III" which is an NES-on-a-chip deigned in a fake n64 controller housing).
I know that doctors get more than that. Pens seem to be the most common. But I've seen some more interesting items. I've seen wireless mice, Small USB hubs, and even a pen with a built in 64MB USB flash drive. (But as far as I can tell, it did not come preloaded with a copy of the prescribing information, or promotional material, which would make good sense to me.) I know that if I was a doctor and i received one of those bigger ticket items, I'd certainly take the time to research the Medication. Better awareness of the medication would lead to me being more likely to prescribe it in the cases where it works best. However, besides making me more aware of a products availability, advertising has little impact on me. The only way an advertisement will lead to a sale is when I am already looking for such an item, and the advertisement reminds me of the availability of the product, or perhaps, a surprising low price. This is a fairly rare occurrence.
Yes, Zap2It stopped offering free schedules to MythTV users. Here is the replacement for that service. There is a small fee to use Schedules Direct.
http://www.schedulesdirect.org/
To give more information: SchedulesDirect has reached their goal of costing only $20/year, and they retroactively extended all memberships payed at higher price to be equivalent to paying that price. It is possible that the price may even drop further in the future, although the $20/year figure was based on most MythTV users switching to their service, which has most likely happened, so future price drops will likely occur slower. They are non-profit, with all of the money collected going to costs of the license to redistribute and things like bandwidth expenses. The system is intended to be a drop in replacement for the Zap2It service, supporting the same hardware, and using the same format as the old service did.
I can't help but wonder if a notarized letter stating something to the effect of, " Failure on your part to accurately verify the identity of the participant in a financial transaction does not incur a liability on my part. However unfortunate your loss, it was not caused by me, and I will not be held liable for it. Subsequent attempts to contact me on this matter will be ignored. " would work.
I'm pretty sure you could turn it into a form letter, and send it to any debtors you didn't recognize.
That might have some impact, but remember that unless you can convince the credit reporting agencies that those debts should be removed from your credit history as they were not really your liability, you will still be impacted. And the credit reporting agencies will be very reluctant to remove items for that reason, or otherwise people will attempt to remove from their records cases in which they really did default on a loan, by claiming it was identity theft.