This is something that people do all the time; everywhere.

As a matter of fact, living in CA, it has its' own lingo associated with it

called 'blowing a house up'.. it's when you rent a property for the sole purpose of growing pot in every square inch possible

As a matter of fact, I see a good handful of property owners who advertise properties on craigslist/budtrader for the sole purpose of doing this.

Then again, this is California where it is BIG BUSINESS. People make millions upon millions from legal pot here, so of course a market will spring up around places to grow it, it's only natural when so much $ is involved

This is so true.. although i'm still a 'slave' to the monster out of need.. valve has royally screwed me just like that one time.

I lost my entire account (The entire thing, banned) with well over $300 worth of games. Almost everyone valve-made game. CoD: MW, BF:BC2

How does this happen, you say? You receive a gift from a random friend who you never talked to (The gift was Left4Dead 2, because he wanted someone to play with) and it turns out whoever's credit card he used, issues a chargeback... your account is locked/banned permanently!

No matter what I did or said, I could not get my account back. They wouldn't just remove the offending game. They wouldn't let me pay the ***MEASLY FIVE DOLLARS (on sale) THE GAME COST WHEN THIS HAPPENED*** to get my account back.

They pretty much thought I was part of some kind of credit card fraud ring and banned me outright, when I offered to fax them multiple forms of identification AND the credit card used to purchase *Every single game* on my account...

But no, in the end, it came down to one single $5 gift given to me randomly from some douchebag to take away all my games.

Fuck you Valve.

(I still love you, though.. Portal 2 was awesome.. but this just isn't fair)

hahhaha /.'s troll-sense must be off lately

I was obviously a troll, I know this lodsys stuff has everyone up in a frenzy, I was just bored and fishing for replies.. you should see my other thread, so many ragers.

Lol, I definitely win troll of the thread.

Yeah, lodesys is a bunch of punks akin to a mafia protection racket..

But I was in a shitty mood and wanted to troll

got a killer rage response from /. though, score +1

Uhm, don't you think it would be cheaper to BUY A FUCKING LICENSE TO THE PATENT?

They are ONLY ASKING FOR a very VERY small amount. An amount so small you'd be pressed to notice considering you're using their technology to sell your application with a crippled free-ware version that you can upgrade.

They should be allowed to PROFIT from TECHNOLOGY THEY PATENTED (or bought the patent to)
That's the ENTIRE POINT OF THE PATENT SYSTEM.

Sure, it would be hugely expensive to fight a lawsuit... They aren't asking for THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS, they are asking for an absolute tiny amount of revenue that you gain, by using their technology.

Not at all unreasonable.

and just buy a license.

Deal with it, this company was the first to PATENT this technology...

So you need to buy a license to use this tech.

If you don't like it, stop offering in-app upgrades. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? I know why.. because they want their "Freeware app" to lure in buyers..

DEAL WITH IT, make your app either free or completely pay for. Stop offering in-app upgrades unless you want to license the technology (and it's not like they are being unreasonable in what they are asking for a license, it's a very very small amount)

It's not Apple's fault developers didn't do their research on patents before they made a product. This is something *every company* has to do during R&D. As a matter of fact, most companies hire entire DIFFERENT companies to see if they are in violation of any patents! Just because you're a 'little guy' should mean you're immune to this procedure? I think not. When you are developing, you NEED to make sure you are not violating any patents. If it does violate patents, find a different way.

It really is that simple, I don't understand why everyone is up in arms... well I do.. people want something for nothing. If ANY ONE of these developers were the one to come up/patent this idea, they would be equally as pissed if every single app on the bigger app-market in the world used their technology without a license; I know I would be furious.

So, you didn't do your research and violated a patent

Now you expect Apple to bail you out?

Why doesn't anyone just buy a license? It's painfully cheap, something alone the lines of a COUPLE CENTS per app sold for a $2 app.

I guess we should just allow the 'little guys' to replicate patent functionality as much as they want without fear of consequences. Talk about stopping innovation... nobody will bother with innovation anymore because it no longer would be profitable.. because any functionality you devise could be easily replicated and copied by anyone willing to undercut you. There is a reason we have patents..

Buy a goddamn license and stop whining to apple to bail you out, jesus. You're big boys making big money from the app store, you can take care of yourself.

Otherwise, remove the in-app upgrade from your application.

It's really that simple.

This is not true if you use google's free calling feature from gmail via the google talk plugin.

I haven't paid for any phone service for a year now, because if you have a google voice account, when you make a phone call (For free!) Via Gmail it calls with your GVoice number (It appears on the other party's caller ID) and people can call YOU with your google voice number, simply by adding google talk as a forwarding phone under GVoice.

Now, if google would create an app that interfaced with the google talk plugin like gmail, and let you place phonecalls for free over THEIR network, I could see the phone companies getting pretty irritated.

Hell, I already have a feeling comcast must be getting pretty miffed... I have completely free home phone service that is in almost all ways better than a regular land-line, save for the power requirements and no access to 911 (Cell phone with no service fixes this problem)

Then they shouldn't advertise their service as 'blazing fast' and 'unlimited'... specifically to appeal to those 'bad users' you are going on about..

I'm one of the 5%. I regularly use over 400gb of bandwidth a month streaming, downloading DVDRs, etc etc etc.

When I see an advertisement for 'blazing fast, unlimited mobile internet!' what do I think of? I think of doing everything I do at home, out of the home on my laptop. This includes streaming copious amounts of netflix, downloading DVDRs, etc. If they want to see a limited package, that's all fine. They just need to tell us that before we purchase it, and NOT in infinitely small text. They need to advertise their service as, "Blazing fast, unless you download more than 1 movie's worth of data between 4-6, then its modem-fast." That way I could make an informed decision in my buying choice. I could obviously see, hey, this plan ISN'T for me! And I would pick something more along the lines of what i needed (And likely, more expensive)

Heh, I remember my days on Q-link as a 4-5 year old, very shrouded those memories are.

I distinctly remember the very colorful splash page, and "People Connection" always intrigued me, but it was a PLUS+ feature that costed extra minutes!

Huh? Fastest Processor? This doesn't make sense to me. What is an old lady going to do with an i7 when all she is doing is checking email and going to pogo?

Seriously, most *NETBOOKS* have just about enough processing power to get most average computer users by fine. SERIOUSLY. If it wasn't for insane memory bloat, they could still be doing this on 10 year old machines (and very many, do)

I bought an exceedingly cheap laptop. I needed an el-cheapo to tote with me, use at work, etc. It was just about one of the crappiest processors you can get in a laptop (fullsize) right now, AMD p340

It does absolutely everything I need it to do, and I do some pretty tech heavy stuff..

The REAL kicker? It has more 'power' according to benchmarks than my Pentium Dual Core 2.2GHz sitting at home as my desktop. This scores a 'whopping' ~1100 in passmark CPU points.. and I do almost everything anyone else does! I play all the latest games, I have a $80 video card. Sure, I can't pump the resolution up, but with a monitor that supports MAX 1440x900 there's not much to worry about! I have to turn down settings FINALLY on the absolutely latest games, and 2011's Q3 games probably will be a NO GO for me, and finally force an upgrade... but think about it

CPU power is fucking insane these days, top of the line i7 is scoring as much as 10-13x as much as my desktop CPU, and the only time I *ever* notice my CPU chugging is processor intensive games (popular areas in wow, BF:BC2) or doing serious encoding.

Hey.. wait a second.. CustomTF.. Shaka..

Man, like when I was sooo young, so long ago, I used to play a ton of TF.. I was really fond of "MegaTF"

Some friends of mine kept raving about "shaka's tf server"

tried it and ended up playing on that damn server for months!

Memory has faded a ton, but totally remember warlock knives, haha

i salute you, sir

I'm so sorry for your loss.

I have found myself in a similar situation.. not too similar I hope.

Some minor pain led me to noticed a very large right submandibular lymph node.. it's huge, pretty sure it's my lymph node.. it sort of 'comes out' when I bend my head forward, near the carotid artery.. It's very firm to the touch, has been this way for 4 weeks now,

I have been to the doctor, a couple in fact... both think it's nothing, both offered a course of anti-biotics (which I of course took) thing is still the same, I don't think it's growing but I have no idea how long it took to get this big, because i noticed it suddenly (it was very sore that day, whole area was sore/hot to the touch)... One doc finally offered an ultrasound but here's the real kicker

I have health insurance, but I am still unable to do anything! I have 'disaster' health insurance (through my employer, no less!) High deductible ($10k!) I make so little at my current job, with rent, etc.. I cannot afford to meet my deductible. I can't even afford the damn ultra-sound. My savings (small as it was) was demolished by a suspicious mole that required multiple treatments and ended up costing me so much money I couldn't believe it. So what do I do?

I've taken the worst possible route so far; I've tried to ignore it and hope it goes away. I know this is the worst possible outcome, but what else do I do? I could go get -all- the treatment/tests I needed for awhile, because the way my insurance works is they perform whatever, bill my insurance, then I get a bill months later.. So do I basically just stiff these medical establishments? Are they forced to accept payment? For my mole stuff I asked them about payments, and they said they wanted the money right now! What does someone like me do in a situation like this? I'm saving money for the ultrasound, but at the pace I'm able to right now.. I don't know what to do

Guess I'm rambling.. but honestly I'm scared to death and just am at a loss, hah

Correct. This is called a "Soft Pull"

There once was a time (and maybe still is with the right backdoors..) you were actually able to knock 'hard' pulls (The ones from companies checking your credit for an account, these lower your score) by getting as many soft pulls in as you could.. this worked with Transunion and Experian for a bit.

I know quite a few retired UAW workers from detroit,,, entire family lines of UAW workers.

And you know what they like to talk about? How they sit around doing coke/heroin at work and couldn't get fired for it, the most that would happen is a forced rehab.. they would talk about doing the rehab stint and be right back to slinging tar on the assembly line...

I've heard some crazy ass stories about UAW workers, it wouldn't supprise me to find a lot of contempt held for them from hard-working individuals who get bitched at for smoking a cig at work.