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Comment Re:Lame duck President (Score 5, Insightful) 316

All very true, unfortunately. Obama has been little more than a continuation of Dubya's reign. It's too bad the American people are so divided, so beholden to their preferred "team", or else they might notice how thoroughly they're being fucked regardless of which party is in power.

And here I was, sincerely hoping for a Socialist, non-Christian president. If only Fox news were correct now and then. :(

Comment Re:so many things (Score 1) 299

Most people define themselves by their jobs, no matter how trivial of a task it may actually be. They have no hobbies, no hopes, no dreams. They go to work 9-5, then come home to their white picket fence and 2.5 kids. The only thing they truly look forward to is mowing their lawn for the third time that week. People are thoughtless automatons that fall apart without orders. You'd think they could pick a creative outlet to use their time for. To learn and ponder the bigger picture, but they won't. Most simply can't. Welcome to the human race.

Comment Re:Yawn (Score 1) 656

All prosecutors are criminals. They care about number of convictions, not right or wrong, not innocent or guilty, and certainly not justice. This entire incident only highlights what happens all day, every day in our legal system.

Comment Re:Their patents expired (Score 1) 425

Wall of text! Wall of text!
Nostalgia made me ramble!

Anyway... the point is that kids only build it by the instructions to see how everything comes together. After that pieces sits around for a few days, it's torn apart and re-purposed for custom creations. Some of the new themes are fun, and I wish I had had access to a few of them when I was young. The Universal Monsters-esque sets I've seen are particularly cool, without even being a licensed IP. :)

Comment Re:Their patents expired (Score 2) 425

I'm not so sure about that. I recall my brother and I getting a bunch of really cool looking Mega Block sets one year for Christmas. There were colors and shapes we had never seen before, and neat themes like dinosaurs and moon bases. In theory it was all compatible with the absolutely huge amount of Lego blocks that we had in our combined collection. What we quickly found out however was that Mega Blocks were cheaply made. They barely locked together with each other tightly enough to build with, let alone with Legos. They were also fragile and routinely broke because the outer walls of the blocks were so thin. My parents actually ended up complaining to the company, which netted us a ton more Mega Block sets. We tried to make the best of it, mostly because the dinosaur pieces and 3D building bases were unheard of in the Lego ecosystem at the time. Eventually however, my brother and I went through every storage tub we had and purged the Mega Blocks from our collection. It was a lengthy undertaking, especially at that age, but the Great Purging left our superior Legos free of any kind of contamination. I'm not sure if Mega Blocks have improved over the years, but I wouldn't chance it personally. I still have all of my Legos in storage though, about ten big, plastic bins in all. One day they'll have someone to play with again.

Now has Lego sold out? Probably. I recall branded sets like Star Wars on the horizon right as I was growing out of the little blocks. It didn't seem harmful then, but nowadays it seems like Lego has more licensed sets than they do good 'ole fashioned knights and pirates. You can still purchase the regular old blocks, but they don't get the shelf space at the store that Harry Potter and Batman does. On the bright side, it does seem as though Lego has really tried to move away from the specialized pieces that were becoming so prevalent toward the end of the 90s. There's also an exciting global community that has sprung up around Lego, so you can buy homemade, custom pieces. I've seen weapon packs, for example. My brother and I would have loved something like that back in the day, when we were building entire Lego cities across our bedroom floors. We didn't realize it then, but we had essentially created a Lego RPG. Each character had a name and personality. Characters could only move so many pegs per turn, battles were decided vie dice, etc. Go figure. :p

Patents

Should Inventions Be Automatically Owned By Your Employer? 291

An anonymous reader writes "Joshua Simmons authored an article for the N.Y.U. Journal of Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law. The article is a comparison of the developments in copyright law and patent law in the nineteenth century that resulted in copyright law developing a work made for hire doctrine while patent law only developed a patch work of judge-made employment doctrines. The article theorizes that patent law did not develop an inventions made for hire doctrine, because inventive activity was almost exclusively perceived to be performed by individuals. It goes on to suggest that, as patentable inventions today are generally perceived to be invented collaboratively, the Patent Act should be amended to borrow from the Copyright Act and adopt a principle similar to the work made for hire doctrine."

Comment Re:No Good (Score 1) 553

That's too bad. I already have Darksiders, and wanted to gift away the new copy. Oh well, Saints Row and Metro 2033 are the worth $5 if nothing else. Red Faction looks interesting, even if the franchise isn't an FPS anymore. Generic WWII shooters like Company of Heroes though? Throwaways.

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