Why isn't it a copyright violation. He used their characters, their name (SuperPacman came out in 1982), and mechanic. This about as much of a derivative work as you get.

IANAL but there has been quite a bit of hoo doo about this in the 1970s over board games. From my recollection, the courts determined that you can copyright the art and words, but you can't copyright the rules or the design of the game itself.

Recently Hasbro filed suit against Scrabulous over the copyright infringment of Scrabble. (source)

The courts said that Scrabble was a trademark but the game itself was not in which the company in question simply changed their name of the copycat game.

In that regard, anyone could take say super mario brothers or pac man, and as long as they use their own grpahics, game code, and art, can basically create a copy cat of sorts.

Same thing applies to this issue the article brings forth. He probably shouldn't have used the word "Pac" tho as it might be trademarked.

Color me stumped.

No. The answer is obvious.

This shuttle vehicle is designed to retrieve satellites deemed too risky to fall back to earth in any shape or form.

Also... It has the ability to retrieve foreign satellites. This is more of a chilling effect as they seem to want everyone to know they have this ability so before Russia or China decided to send up anything of note in the spy department that they will have to be aware that the Americans can pull it down to find out what makes it tick.

It makes sense this thing is unmanned as such satellites have been known to be able to self destruct if it is believed to be falling back to earth anyways.

Someone once used a car to kill someone.

I don't think anyone has used a car to kill just about everything that moves in a city.

A rich lawyer or CEO is NOT the equal of a McDonalds burger flipper that studied liberal arts in college. The rich lawyer has a job, the CEO has a job, and they are both rich; the burger flipper cannot argue a court case reliably or run a company (or gracefully drop it if it's destined to fail-- some CEOs are repeatedly hired by companies that are winding down to make this process graceful; others just suck at their jobs). Likewise the lawyer probably would need some training to flip burgers; though this is a lot less training and a LOT less upkeep than entering and staying in the legal profession.

The key point people should remember is that the CEOs and lawyers are able to make their income off the collective wellbeing of society.

As in... If the CEO and laywer lived in Somalia, then they would not really have much to do in the way of income. So arguably, they should pay their fair share of their income to support such a way of life to the rest of society so that they themselves don't have to worry about the collapse of said society (yes I'm being over dramatic, but if there were no laws or a functioning government and society than CEO's and laywers would just be as bad off)

Food Stamps: Are they for food or cigarettes, booze, and lottery tickets? Are the recipients actually deserving of them.

Farm Subsidies: Are they for keeping wealthy mega-farms profitable?

Corporate welfare: Is it to keep the lobbyists appeased?

Serioiusly... The USPS, public education system, and food stamps are a drop in the bucket compared to the corporate pork barrel that goes to companies like Haliburton etc.

Second, why in the hell would you tell ANYONE to type out a registry key anyway?

Norton Symantec Endpoint Protection has hosed the TCP/IP stack on your VP's laptop while he's in his hotel room on the other side of the country.

He needs to pull his PowerPoint presentation off the server that his office assistant worked on last night.

You're unable to remote in or email him the registry fix due to the glaring obvious problem that he has no TCP/IP connection and his local tech turned off Window's Restore on his image for some unknown reason.

Obviously the only thing you can do for him is to read out the entry over the phone... Just saying because its happened.

The registry is a database file, why can't be backed up?

Thats easy...

Lets say (and this has happened more than once to offices that I have had the pleasure of working in):

Program A is installed and messes with the registry.
Program B is installed and messes with the registry.
Program A runs an update and messes with the registry.

Something happens (malware, hotfix, windows update) and Program A has to be fixed with a registry backup restore at the time of its installation.

Now Program B is screwed up because its missing its entries. Oh lets put the registry restore back after its installed, but now we're missing the registry entries for the update.

Actually, I've never worked in an office where restoring the registry was considered to be a reasonable option and usually considered a last resort because so many things can go wrong.

Not in an aircraft = doesn't make flying scary. Crowd bomb theater is short (BOOM!) and cleaned up quickly.

I'm too tired to find the article, but its what the Hamas suicide bombers did to Israeli soldiers after they setup security checkpoints.

As they couldn't sneak bombs into Israel anymore (that easy), they decided to just target the soldiers directly at the gates.

Of course the jokes on them as many checkpoints involve soldiers sitting in a blast proof bunker who do the checkpoint screenings via CCTV and a loudspeaker.

I take a dice and throw it in the air. Even if I give you the starting terms and the exact forces used to throw the cube, you still cannot, with 100% absolute certainty, tell me what number it will land on. Even with everything known, there are things we cannot calculate.

I'm pretty sure if we had a marker on the cube and a hi-speed camera plus a rather fast image processing computer, we could give you an answer before the dice had landed. Also it wouldn't be too hard to create a robot arm to throw the dice with exactly the same force and position each time.

Dice have to adhere to the laws of physics just like everything else. Its just when humans throw them, there are so many variables that it seems random.

Now, when we start talking about particle decay or trying to determine the position of an electron.

Then yeah... We can start talking about random.

Norway and Sweden are not police state hell holes...

And secondly, the dems aren't even remotely socialist.

Then again, neither is the Communist Chinese government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system#Foundations_of_voting_theory

A variety of methods were proposed by statesmen such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and Daniel Webster. Some of the apportionment methods discovered in the United States were in a sense rediscovered in Europe in the 19th century, as seat allocation methods for the newly proposed system of party-list proportional representation. The result is that many apportionment methods have two names: for instance, Jefferson's method is equivalent to the d'Hondt method, as is Webster's method to the Sainte-Laguë method, while Hamilton's method is identical to the Hare largest remainder method.[12]

Well to be fair, he didn't really point out the problems as he proposed a different method. Of course he did a lot back then such as proposing 20 years in between constitutional conventions to re-approve the constitution (or to add or remove depending).

And in Europe its called the D'Hondt method, but its basically the same as Jefferson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Hondt_method#D.27Hondt_and_Jefferson

Personally I didn't know Jefferson had created a different voting method until I saw it in a computer game called "Victoria 2" in which you could change your government voting system so I had to look it up.

I'm not a physicist, or anything, but I tend to think the following: if energy is here, it was either created at some time in the past or it has existed forever.

The thing is, all our laws of physics and hypothesis thereof, have been acquired through observation of the known and observable universe.

There could be parts of the universe too far off to observe (things past 14 billion light years away), impossible to observe (whats inside a black hole or large chunks of matter approaching the speed of light), or thinking unknown to be unknown that we can observe (other theoretical dimensions or things like dark mater).

It could be very well possible that our laws of physics may not apply in other parts or conditions of the universe where entropy and 2nd laws of thermodynamics does not apply or at least not in the ways we are familiar with.

Of course, it could be possible the laws are uniform everywhere and in all conditions instead, but either way it is impossible to tell currently until we actually find observable proof.

Which is why we are doing the LHC. ;)

Well of COURSE most people want their own opinions to be the only ones in power. I would love it if I had complete and total control and congress voted in lockstep with me.

I think you misunderstood me.

I want my personal political view in government, rather than in control of government.

Let's say we have 30% demss, 30% republicans, 20% libertarians, and 20% socialists in congress.

I'd be much more happy with that than the current government which as you say Ron Paul has to parade as a Republican (which he himself has said the only reason he is one, is because a non 2 party candidate has no realistic ability to win).

That said, there is nothing preventing individuals running as parties in these systems.

I mentioned Kadima earlier, which was founded by Sharon after he had a break with his existing political party. When people voted for Kadima they were voting for Sharon.

Same thing is still happening in the states like it or not... Just without 3rd parties.

People are simply voting Republican because they support Sarah Palin and people are voting Democrat because they support Obama.

I'm pretty sure I voted for people today that I have no idea who are, but I know whoever I vote for will usually tow the party line.

I mean how else did the Republicans keep a filibuster when some of the individual Republican senators previously said they supported the legislation?

And if proportional representative irks you so much, just suggest STV (single transferable vote) or IRV instead as that is more in the classic sense of voting for individuals.

But the question is, does this make the quality of government better?

If we are using quality on efficiency governmental metrics, you could just install a dictator and get the job done quite easier and quicker.

What many of us really want in our government is our personal opinion and political views represented more clearly and like our own.

Sure, this will add another cook in the kitchen, but we need more alternative views than just two.

And its not like Germany, Israel, and many other of the prop rep governments go into political deadlocks all the time and have their government shutdown.

If the Prime Minister cannot form a coalition, then he has to call for an election and/or resign until a functional one does.

Proportional Representation assumes that you're voting for a Political Party. We don't actually do that in the USA. We cast votes for individuals.

When you vote for candidates on the Federal (and mostly state level) you are voting for the party like it or not because either the candidate tows the party line or you don't get funding, committee seats, or campaign help.

Notice how both parties have usually voted down the party line in congress even when the candidates previously said their stances are.

And in theory in a proportional rep government, an individual can create a one man political party in which they have complete control over, so when you vote for that party, you vote for that individual.

If they got more than one seat, they could simply get a college to fill in or just write that that persons vote in parliament is 2 seats or whatever.