There's no way they can copyright the 'smiley' face itself. They might be able to copyright their interpretation of it.
Wal-Mart's smiley face is a very distinctive one - the elongated eyes, the wide smile, the button-ised bevel around its edges, the ray-man-esque gloves. If they included its whistling personality and the song they use for the whistling, there is a GOOD chance they can copyright that specific interpretation of the smiley as a cartoon character, much in the way the Church of the Subgenius seems to hold the copyright for 'Bob's pipe-wielding visage, despite how common the image of a clean-cut 50's male with a pipe actually was in those times.
I think Wal-mart is full of shit here if they think they can claim they invented the smiley or patented its use in drumming up sales, but if they keep to that narrow interpretation I just described, they have a chance.
Jack Thompson's such an anti-progressive twit that he actually considers this an HONOR of some kind. It's just like the stereotypical princess insulting the Evil Overlord.
See, with the general tirade against video games and violence therein I would have assumed him to be an off-his-rocker far-off-left Democrat (and yes, I am liberal), but wow, a statement like that makes me think he's actually managed to loop around.
Of course, I wouldn't claim his damn ass if I could help it...
. . . Okay, come on, laugh. But I'm serious about this.
A key to getting engineers to learn to write better is some level of passion about their work, and of course, in coding, the most writing that the engineer actually needs is maybe enough to learn how to pseudo-code. The trick, then, is to give the engineer something involving writing to be passionate about. As most engineers spend their recreational time watching the latest films and games, fanfiction is a key outlet and possibly the main source of enjoyment an engineer will get out of recreational writing.
Unlike a blog/livejournal, fanfiction encourages cooperative writing and reviewing, giving the engineer feedback and the opportunity to improve. In fact, a subset of fanfiction writers, the 'betas', often serve as teachers to the less experienced and can give one-on-one coaching to new writers.
For obvious reasons, fanfiction is best done while young and less burdened with real life, but it's the best way I've seen yet to teach writing.
There's a difference between allowing people to do things with your software you'd rather them not (like looking up porn / google-smut), and actively appearing like you are endorsing such things (such as providing ad revenue for a porn site).
One is passive endorsement, the other is proactive endorsement. It's like offering BitTorrent and looking the other way when it's used to rebroadcast American Idol episodes.
MSN is an available engine on the 'add search engines' feature in the drop-down menu. That makes it just as supported as Wikipedia or IMDB in terms of engines (also absent from the factory presets).
My guess is that this is (the first of) a heavy-handed backlash at Google, orchestrated more by Microsoft and others trying to regain their momentum versus any actual competence for a change on Microsoft's part.
With the exception of Google Calendar, almost everything Google's done has been high-quality, search-related, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face applications, and to dump Google for their core product (indexing the internet and keeping track of data, something that Google should PERSONALLY be in the best position to execute, is at best a misguided executive decision to get a kickback from Microsoft and at worse a direct pimp-slap to Google for pure spite.
This will make it even more difficult to have an affair!
"Hey Honey!
I hope to see you this weekend. I've increased my pen15! I've made sure the kids are 'spending the night' over at their friend's houses, and my wife's out. Now we'll get to celebrate our anniversary with those new nippl3 clamps I bought you!
Love and V1agra, Hermie."
Re:They've obviously compensated in some way
on
Bloodless Surgery
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Odds are good the '20k in savings' is either an average savings (and hence including the ever-expensive organ transplants and other risky surgeries) or else it's a cumulative savings from the following:
Red Cross doesn't have to expend as much effort into attracting donors with gimmicks like t-shirts and other contests when that money could be put into more useful 'core' purposes.
Less transportation issues and cooling needed for fewer amounts of blood to circulate, which also means a lack of emissions, vehicle repairs/maintenance, and all-important gasoline to worry about.
Less chance of a blood shortage forcing doctors to use 'riskier' procedures on their patients, leading to less complications.
Already mentioned in the article, but those shorter hospital visits and fewer complications really DO add up, as most people who've ever been in for surgery will tell you the complications are often worse (and costlier) than the surgery itself.
Time in the operating room can be VERY expensive for hospitals! Easier surgery means less time in the Operating Room, which translates into immediate savings.
The compensation is in keeping up repeat business and being able to brag about the new revolutionary procedure that will attract new business. A doctor you have a pleasant experience with is a doctor you keep going to, every time.
In my own experience, I've had supernumerary teeth removed by a specialist, went back a year later to the same guy to have some crowding issues resolved, and I'll be getting my wisdom teeth taken out this summer by the same guy. If I didn't like the guy on at least some level, he wouldn't be seeing this kind of repeat business, even if it is only three procedures across eight years.
Re:Bloodless Surgery?
on
Bloodless Surgery
·
· Score: 5, Informative
From TFA:
The patients have the iron content in their blood enhanced in order to better cope with the procedure (same as in a blood donation).
During the surgery, various non-bleedy and less bleedy techniques (such as cauterizing as you cut, and freezing the tissue to stop blood flow) to reduce the amount of blood you lose in the first place.
They recover what DOES get spilled and recycle it so you use your own blood during the procedure instead of having to donate in advance.
The artices does go ahead and admit that the more complex a procedure, the less likely this is possible: so a full-on heart transplant is far less likely to be bloodless than, say, an appendectomy or a stomach reduction (or other similar surgeries that don't require large incisions).
The problem isn't in saying "Okay, these games are violent, we shouldn't be selling 'Game-Name-Here'".
The problem is that what THESE guys define as violent and in bad taste could range from anything from overly pokey nipples to firing off guns of any type (And when you can include Ratchet and Clank or Final Fantasy VII on a list of banned games with enough legalese...)
The big deal is that Netflix tweaked their mailers to eliminate the following:
The need for a secondary envelope
the large amounts of waste generated from their mailers (since you're using a separate envelope for returns, I'm going to assume you junk the original)
As many pennies as can be saved as possible without risking further damage to the disk.
Now, if this 1.4 million mailers daily idea is to be believed, even $0.0001 saved in printing/scanning/postage comes out to saving over $51,000 annually per hundreth of a cent per mailer. If Netflix decides to spend the extra cent to add padding or a second envelope, that's a loss of over five million dollars to them each year.
In short, your FlixClone can get away with 'better' packaging because it's not having to deal with these ridiculously marginal values. Once and if their subscribers grow to as much as Netflix's current base, they'll either notice how much it's costing them or else cripple themselves financially.
B) appears to apply to reader's complicity with the authors, much like current pay-per-click ad banners.
Having dealt with the pay-per-click model from a provider's perspective, you can have your account ganked for telling people on your site (or forums, etc...) to click the ads so you get the extra revenue. This is not for users knowing that you use a pay-per-click model per se, but for you TELLING them that you want them to click to generate more money via frauding the advertisers. Same principle is in effect here; by acting in complicity with the users to prevent ads being viewed, you are defrauding LiveJournal to get a better account.
In Livejournal's case, it would appear that posting a link in your entries or profiles to ad-blocking software or providing scripts for sponsored users to block their ads is a violation of part B. However, it sounds like CS-oriented journalers who happen to report on, say, the latest Firefox Extensions or various legal battles, are very likely to run up against this problem as inevitiably something about their reporting on various ad-blocking utilities or legal battles involving not being able to skip the commercials on TV or DVD could easily violate part B.
The RIAA wants these kids to drop out of college NOT ONLY to pay their settlement fees, but to prevent these kids from learning how to break their DRM or ever set themselves upwith a racket as sweet as the RIAA's!
You never know, If this girl stays in college, she might learn to sue people for illegally breathing in perfume they didn't buy! EVERYONE would be a potential litigant! Where would the RIAA be then?
If Email is considered a 'collaboration tool', I want to say that the cell phone is even more powerful than email.
As a CS Major, I have to work on at least one group-oriented coding project a semester. As a girl, I carry my cell phone at almost all times. The cell phone is a ubqiuitous tool in completing the projects.
Here's how my projects tend to go in terms of use of the following media:
Email is used for initial coordination of group members and advertising for said members. Email may also be used for design prototypes, UML Diagrams, and other non-code-related tools.
CVS (or Monticello, or whatever) is used for the coding itself, because minute differences in each other's code may not be caught otherwise.
Cell phones are used for instaneous contact, last-minute meeting changes, pizza ordering, and other details. The project manager should ALWAYS make sure to have her partners on speed dial, as email is clunky for coordinations.
IM is for wasting time. Period. Unless your partners are in other states or the IM accounts used are heavily restricted for business use only, IM is a terrible way to coordinate details.
Anything that tries to do what these four things already do and/or combine any of the following will not work. Period. They're separate because they function better separate, and texting counts as IM'ing in my book.
Besides, cell phones are much easier to keep up with than laptops.
Fuck, I almost WANTED this to be real.... well, except for the obvious fact that WoTC would run the game into the ground with endless expansion packs, re-releases, and the eventual BioWare tie-in.
I like my My Little Ponies as much as the next girl, but if I wanted to be doused in this kind of hyper-sugar and high-school spazzoness, I'd have stayed in high school.
I like my men smart, my sushi raw, and my Slashdot over my head. Oh, and my code working, but hell, it's a CS major, some trauma is expected there. I'm glad it'll be back to normal tommorow.... but the pink theme is kinda cute.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, now some Limey's going to smash their research up...
I always figured the 'British bird' required an upward thrust of the arm.
I think our boys at Wired are in trouble now, no?
Georgia used Diebold (and had the fishiest results for a governor's race in ages . . .)
Wal-Mart's smiley face is a very distinctive one - the elongated eyes, the wide smile, the button-ised bevel around its edges, the ray-man-esque gloves. If they included its whistling personality and the song they use for the whistling, there is a GOOD chance they can copyright that specific interpretation of the smiley as a cartoon character, much in the way the Church of the Subgenius seems to hold the copyright for 'Bob's pipe-wielding visage, despite how common the image of a clean-cut 50's male with a pipe actually was in those times.
I think Wal-mart is full of shit here if they think they can claim they invented the smiley or patented its use in drumming up sales, but if they keep to that narrow interpretation I just described, they have a chance.
It beats some of the other names they're tossing at us... Origami, anyone?
Jack Thompson's such an anti-progressive twit that he actually considers this an HONOR of some kind. It's just like the stereotypical princess insulting the Evil Overlord.
You don't want to give these people any MORE ideas, do you?!
Of course, I wouldn't claim his damn ass if I could help it...
A key to getting engineers to learn to write better is some level of passion about their work, and of course, in coding, the most writing that the engineer actually needs is maybe enough to learn how to pseudo-code. The trick, then, is to give the engineer something involving writing to be passionate about. As most engineers spend their recreational time watching the latest films and games, fanfiction is a key outlet and possibly the main source of enjoyment an engineer will get out of recreational writing.
Unlike a blog/livejournal, fanfiction encourages cooperative writing and reviewing, giving the engineer feedback and the opportunity to improve. In fact, a subset of fanfiction writers, the 'betas', often serve as teachers to the less experienced and can give one-on-one coaching to new writers.
For obvious reasons, fanfiction is best done while young and less burdened with real life, but it's the best way I've seen yet to teach writing.
There's a difference between allowing people to do things with your software you'd rather them not (like looking up porn / google-smut), and actively appearing like you are endorsing such things (such as providing ad revenue for a porn site). One is passive endorsement, the other is proactive endorsement. It's like offering BitTorrent and looking the other way when it's used to rebroadcast American Idol episodes.
MSN is an available engine on the 'add search engines' feature in the drop-down menu. That makes it just as supported as Wikipedia or IMDB in terms of engines (also absent from the factory presets).
Hence the idea of offering lunch with a meeting, dinner for a merger, and handing out samples in large-scale stores and malls.
Does anyone actually FOLLOW Alexa?
My guess is that this is (the first of) a heavy-handed backlash at Google, orchestrated more by Microsoft and others trying to regain their momentum versus any actual competence for a change on Microsoft's part.
With the exception of Google Calendar, almost everything Google's done has been high-quality, search-related, plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face applications, and to dump Google for their core product (indexing the internet and keeping track of data, something that Google should PERSONALLY be in the best position to execute, is at best a misguided executive decision to get a kickback from Microsoft and at worse a direct pimp-slap to Google for pure spite.
The diseases of yesteryear are infecting the workers of tommorow! How Ironic!
This will make it even more difficult to have an affair!
"Hey Honey!
I hope to see you this weekend. I've increased my pen15! I've made sure the kids are 'spending the night' over at their friend's houses, and my wife's out. Now we'll get to celebrate our anniversary with those new nippl3 clamps I bought you!
Love and V1agra,
Hermie."
The compensation is in keeping up repeat business and being able to brag about the new revolutionary procedure that will attract new business. A doctor you have a pleasant experience with is a doctor you keep going to, every time.
In my own experience, I've had supernumerary teeth removed by a specialist, went back a year later to the same guy to have some crowding issues resolved, and I'll be getting my wisdom teeth taken out this summer by the same guy. If I didn't like the guy on at least some level, he wouldn't be seeing this kind of repeat business, even if it is only three procedures across eight years.
The artices does go ahead and admit that the more complex a procedure, the less likely this is possible: so a full-on heart transplant is far less likely to be bloodless than, say, an appendectomy or a stomach reduction (or other similar surgeries that don't require large incisions).
The problem isn't in saying "Okay, these games are violent, we shouldn't be selling 'Game-Name-Here'".
The problem is that what THESE guys define as violent and in bad taste could range from anything from overly pokey nipples to firing off guns of any type (And when you can include Ratchet and Clank or Final Fantasy VII on a list of banned games with enough legalese...)
Now, if this 1.4 million mailers daily idea is to be believed, even $0.0001 saved in printing/scanning/postage comes out to saving over $51,000 annually per hundreth of a cent per mailer. If Netflix decides to spend the extra cent to add padding or a second envelope, that's a loss of over five million dollars to them each year.
In short, your FlixClone can get away with 'better' packaging because it's not having to deal with these ridiculously marginal values. Once and if their subscribers grow to as much as Netflix's current base, they'll either notice how much it's costing them or else cripple themselves financially.
Here I was hoping for something clever, like word frequency or something.
B) appears to apply to reader's complicity with the authors, much like current pay-per-click ad banners.
Having dealt with the pay-per-click model from a provider's perspective, you can have your account ganked for telling people on your site (or forums, etc...) to click the ads so you get the extra revenue. This is not for users knowing that you use a pay-per-click model per se, but for you TELLING them that you want them to click to generate more money via frauding the advertisers. Same principle is in effect here; by acting in complicity with the users to prevent ads being viewed, you are defrauding LiveJournal to get a better account.
In Livejournal's case, it would appear that posting a link in your entries or profiles to ad-blocking software or providing scripts for sponsored users to block their ads is a violation of part B. However, it sounds like CS-oriented journalers who happen to report on, say, the latest Firefox Extensions or various legal battles, are very likely to run up against this problem as inevitiably something about their reporting on various ad-blocking utilities or legal battles involving not being able to skip the commercials on TV or DVD could easily violate part B.
You never know, If this girl stays in college, she might learn to sue people for illegally breathing in perfume they didn't buy! EVERYONE would be a potential litigant! Where would the RIAA be then?
As a CS Major, I have to work on at least one group-oriented coding project a semester. As a girl, I carry my cell phone at almost all times. The cell phone is a ubqiuitous tool in completing the projects.
Here's how my projects tend to go in terms of use of the following media:
Anything that tries to do what these four things already do and/or combine any of the following will not work. Period. They're separate because they function better separate, and texting counts as IM'ing in my book.
Besides, cell phones are much easier to keep up with than laptops.
Fuck, I almost WANTED this to be real. ... well, except for the obvious fact that WoTC would run the game into the ground with endless expansion packs, re-releases, and the eventual BioWare tie-in.
I like my My Little Ponies as much as the next girl, but if I wanted to be doused in this kind of hyper-sugar and high-school spazzoness, I'd have stayed in high school. I like my men smart, my sushi raw, and my Slashdot over my head. Oh, and my code working, but hell, it's a CS major, some trauma is expected there. I'm glad it'll be back to normal tommorow. ... but the pink theme is kinda cute.