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Comment Hypothetical Copyright Question (Score 1) 188

by WagonWheelsRX8 (#37569008) Attached to: Ask <em>They Might Be Giants</em> About Almost 30 Years of Music
I've noticed issues regarding copyright tend to have rather opinionated discussions here on Slashdot. My question is a hypothetical one. When copyright law was initially established waaaay back in 1790 it granted protection for 14 years with the option to renew for another 14 years after that time period expired. If this were the way the copyright still worked, and assuming you filed the extension, it wouldn't be long before some of your original works were in the public domain. Would it be unacceptable or would it be considered OK? How do you feel about the current law (life + 70 years)? Is this something artists typically even think of/consider/care about?
Space

Submission + - Samsung Cites 2001 as Prior Art in Court Case (blogspot.com)

Submitted by WagonWheelsRX8
WagonWheelsRX8 writes: From the article:
One element of Samsung's defense strategy is interesting enough that I wanted to report on it beforehand. Ever since Apple started to assert the design of the iPad against other manufacturers, many people have been wondering whether there's actually prior art for the general design of the iPad in some futuristic devices shown in sci-fi movies and TV series. And indeed, Samsung's lawyers make this claim now in their defense against Apple's motion for a preliminary injunction.
I wonder if the reason Star Trek isn't being cited too is because it is set in the future?

Comment Re:Tesla is misrepresenting the claims made. (Score 1) 547

by WagonWheelsRX8 (#35678040) Attached to: Tesla Sues BBC's <em>Top Gear</em> For Libel
Hate to point this out, but your argument appears to be flawed: Quote from the show (which you quoted, emphasis mine). "...but then, although Tesla say it'll do 2 hundred miles we worked out that on our track it would run out after just fifty-five miles." And your implication appears to be that this translates to everyday driving (where the Tesla gets a range of ~200 miles). My point is that they specifically stated that they 'worked out' its range (easily meaning 'calculated' or 'extrapolated', among many other possibilities. Thus it is vague and not as definitive as many people appear to be reading it as.) Also, they tested it on their track, which is obviously not ideal for range, but since the Tesla IS marketed as an electric sports car IS an important piece of information to know (as believe it or not, many people actually enjoy to bring their sports cars to the track!) I can't assume that most people that watch the show know things about cars, but I imagine a decent percentage of their audience does, and can recognize that driving on the track does not equate to 'daily driving'.
Image

Indian Police Using Facebook to Catch Scofflaw Drivers 130

Posted by samzenpus from the check-your-status dept.
New Delhi police have a new weapon in the battle against bad drivers, Facebook. Two months ago the police created a Facebook page that allowed people to inform on others breaking traffic laws, and upload pictures of the violations. The page has more than 17,000 fans, and 3,000 pictures currently. From the article: "The online rap sheet was impressive. There are photos of people on motorcycles without helmets, cars stopped in crosswalks, drivers on cellphones, drivers in the middle of illegal turns and improperly parked vehicles. Using the pictures, the Delhi Traffic Police have issued 665 tickets, using the license plate numbers shown in the photos to track vehicle owners, said the city’s joint commissioner of traffic, Satyendra Garg."

Comment Re:Hmm... (Score 1) 148

by WagonWheelsRX8 (#33006432) Attached to: Microsoft Signs License With ARM
Actually, I think what is REALLY going on is MS doesn't actually have a plan for the ARM architecture. Instead, they figured they'd generate some buzz and a lot of speculation by licensing it. Then they'd cherry pick the best of the speculative ideas, and use them as their plans for ARM...
Biotech

First 'Malaria-Proof' Mosquito Created 261

Posted by timothy from the what-about-a-really-good-egg-cream dept.
Gisg writes "The University of Arizona team reported that their genetically modified mosquitoes are immune to the malaria-causing parasite, a single-cell organism called Plasmodium. Riehle and his colleagues tested their genetically-altered mosquitoes by feeding them malaria-infested blood. Not even one mosquito became infected with the malaria parasite."
Image

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Internet 92

Posted by samzenpus from the vicky-who? dept.
MMBK writes "Our friends at JESS3 have unveiled The Ex-Blocker. It's a Firefox and Chrome plugin that erases all name and likeness of your ex from the Internet, even if they become a meme, or the president. You'll no longer have to threaten to delete your Facebook account or concoct an elaborate e-hoax to assuage the reality-shattering complications that are born from break-ups. Simply construct an Internet that omits bad vibes all together."
Image

Man Builds His Own Subway 174

Posted by samzenpus from the everyone-needs-a-hobby dept.
jerryjamesstone writes "Everybody is into rail these days; it is the greenest way to get around next to a bike. Leonid Mulyanchik has been into it for years since before the Berlin Wall fell, since before the first Macintosh, building his own private underground Metro railway system. English-Russia says that he has been doing it with his pension, that it is all legal and approved and that he is still at it. Gizmodo calls it 'Partly the traditional, inspiring, one man against all odds type of persistence, but more the obsessive, borderline insane persistence.'" Update: 06/02 07:33 GMT by T : And if you're the type to visit Burning Man, you can actually ride a home-made monorail this summer, too.
First Person Shooters (Games)

Code Review of Doom For the iPhone 161

Posted by Soulskill from the old-dogs-new-tricks dept.
Developer Fabien Sanglard has written a code review for id Software's iPhone port of Doom. It's an interesting look into how the original 1993 game (which he also reviewed to understand its rendering process) was adapted to a modern platform. "Just like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom was rendering a screenframe pixel per pixel. The only way to do this on iPhone with an acceptable framerate would be to use CoreSurface/CoreSurface.h framework. But it is unfortunately restricted and using it would prevent distribution on the AppStore. The only solution is to use OpenGL, but this comes with a few challenges: Doom was faking 3D with a 2D map. OpenGL needs real 3D vertices. More than 3D vertices, OpenGL needs data to be sent as triangles (among other things because they are easy to rasterize). But Doom sectors were made of arbitrary forms. Doom 1993's perspective was also faked, it was actually closer to an orthogonal projection than a perspective projection. Doom was using VGA palette indexing to perform special effect (red for damage, silver for invulnerable...)."
Social Networks

Game Distribution Platforms Becoming Annoyingly Common 349

Posted by Soulskill from the looking-at-you-games-for-windows-live dept.
The Escapist's Shamus Young recently posted an article complaining about the proliferation of distribution platforms and social networks for video games. None of the companies who make these are "quite sure how games will be sold and played ten years from now," he writes, "but they all know they want to be the ones running the community or selling the titles." Young continues, "Remember how these systems usually work: The program sets itself up to run when Windows starts, and it must be running if you want to play the game. If you follow this scheme to its logical conclusion, you'll see that the system tray of every gaming PC would eventually end up clogged with loaders, patchers, helpers, and monitors. Every publisher would have a program for serving up content, connecting players, managing digital licenses, performing patches, and (most importantly) selling stuff. Some people don't mind having 'just one more' program running in the background. But what happens when you have programs from Valve, Stardock, Activision, 2k Games, Take-Two, Codemasters, Microsoft, Eidos, and Ubisoft? Sure, you could disable them. But then when you fire the thing up to play a game, it will want to spend fifteen minutes patching itself and the game before it will let you in. And imagine how fun it would be juggling accounts for all of them."
The Almighty Buck

How Do You Measure a Game's Worth? 188

Posted by Soulskill from the if-it's-frags-per-dollar-then-quake-live-wins dept.
RamblingJosh writes "Video games can be very expensive these days, especially with so many great games on the horizon. So I wonder: how exactly do you get the most gaming entertainment for your dollar? '... the first thing I personally thought about when approaching this was money spent versus time played. Using Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions as an example: I bought the game for about $30 Canadian, and played it for roughly 85 hours. That comes out to 2.83 hours per dollar spent, a pretty good number. In this case, the game was a lot of fun and it was cheap, and so the system works fairly well. There are so many other things to think about, though. What if the game wasn't so good? What about the fact that it's portable? ... What about the new content? Multiplayer?'"
Games

Correlation Found Between Brain Structure and Video Game Success 110

Posted by Soulskill from the correlation-does-not-equal-yadda-yadda dept.
kghapa writes "Still want to argue that video games shrink your brain? While video games have been previously shown to stimulate brain activity and improve coordination skills, a recently published study has directly linked structures in the human brain with video game aptitude. And yes, apparently size does matter in this case. Quoting: '... each subject received 20 hours of training to play a video game specifically created for research purposes, called Space Fortress. It's basically an Asteroids-type arcade game, in which the object is to knock down and destroy an enemy fortress while dodging space mines. However, the game has lots of extra twists that require close attention. Some of the players were told to focus exclusively on running up a high score, while others were told to shift their priorities between several goals. The result? The subjects who had more volume in an area called the nucleus accumbens did significantly better in the early stages of training. Meanwhile, those who were well-endowed in different areas of the striatum, known as the caudate nucleus and putamen, handled the shifting strategies better.'"

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