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Comment Re:He said free software destroys the market (Score 1) 37

He's right when it comes to games.

But not so much when it comes to the libraries that underlie games and the marketing of games. Though the free software community has so far failed to developer a business model for producing original games, it has excelled at producing infrastructure. EA's ports of Tetris to Android run on top of free libraries. Tetris Zone was first made for OS X, whose low-level components are based on Mach and FreeBSD. Tetris can be played over the Internet, and many TCP/IP stacks are based on the free TCP/IP implementation released by AT&T in 1989 as free software. Tetris has a Twitter account, and Twitter was originally written in the free language Ruby until it switched to the free language Scala. Tetris.com uses the CloudFlare CDN, which according to Netcraft runs Linux. Yet Mr. Pajitnov thinks all the free software on which his business depends "should never have existed".

I'm surprised you didn't ask [pastiche of my previous question patterns]

I've moved on. Best practice is "prototype your original game on PC first then talk to Sony", contacting is "@tetris_official will tell you what you need to know", and how same-screen Tetris works is "whatever BPS and its partners have put out on the latest console".

Comment Vicarious infringement (Score 1) 151

So he's being charged with some made up offense

Vicarious infringement is defined as profiting from infringements that you have power to stop. A policy of paying users who share infringing copies of popular files is pretty good evidence of profiting from infringement. Safe harbor laws such as OCILLA exist in many countries to protect site operators from having to pay excessive damages due to accidental vicarious infringement, but it appears Megaupload didn't take steps to qualify for these safe harbors.

which isn't a law anywhere.

What do you mean by "isn't a law"? New Zealand and the United States are common-law jurisdictions, which rely heavily on how previous judges have interpreted statutes.

Comment Disney Disc Replacement Program (Score 2) 155

First see if Disney offers a discount on a new copy with the exchange of a broken authentic disc. If not, a workaround is to find a decent adaptation of the same story not distributed by Disney. I can think of a half dozen versions of The Adventures of Pinocchio, and there are probably plenty of "Rapunzel" and "The Snow Queen" adaptations that aren't Tangled or Frozen. Yes, mockbusters exist; read reviews to avoid the worst. And when they get old enough, show them the other Tangled with Rachael Leigh Cook.

Comment Clickview counts reporting (Score 1) 319

admen don't trust webmasters on clickview counts reporting.

Then why do they trust Google and the other major ad networks on clickview counts reporting?

Putting an ad blocker or plugin click-to-play on top of hosts

Hosts are a ALSO valuable added layer of security!

That's what I was trying to imply. Adblock is a layer, and hosts is a layer.

Comment Define "program itself" (Score 2) 455

Computers have been able to "program themselves" since the first Fortran compiler. We just taught computers how to interpret specifications written at higher and higher levels. Let me know what it'd take for a computer to come up with a program's requirements all by itself, and then we'll know what a singularity needs.

Comment Re:Disney and LEGO are very different (Score 2) 125

people could legitimately argue "you let that profit making company knowingly use your trademark for 0 dollars, so charging us more would be illegal"

I'd be interested in reading a citation supporting your theory that granting a nonexclusive license for qualifying noncommercial uses will weaken a trademark.

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