http://www.flickr.com/photos/gilgongo/5282908367

Holy mother of screaming baby jeezus. I've been on /. for years and never have I seen such a frustrating thread as this.

Nintendo (or Namco or whoever they are) created Pac Man about 30 bloody years ago. Isn't that ENOUGH TIME for them to have made some money out of it?? Let it go to the public domain where people like this guy can re-interpret it (however incrementally) and maybe make it BETTER! If it's a boring clone, then it deserves to be - and will be - forgotten. If it's not, then cool!

To all those bleating "it's copyright infringement!" here: Would you have it that if I install the plumbing in your house, I should have the right to ask you for a payment every time you have a bath - for the rest of my life plus 70 years? And what do you think went on before about 1750? Was there no culture or innovation in the arts? There was no copyright then after all.

Can't you see that this post is a fantastic example of how we have been completely eaten up by crazy long copyright terms. WHAT DOES IT MATTER THAT THIS GAME IS A RIP-OFF OF A 30 YEAR OLD IDEA? I have no sympathy with cigar-smoking fatsos wanting to squeeze yet more money out of one person's ancient idea so they can build another swimming pool in their garden.

Absolutely none. I hope this little guy wins, and wins big.

I'd say that this is in fact what's wrong with *copyright* (if this is a case of copyright infringement, which I doubt).

Nintendo had the original idea for Pac Man in the friggin' 1980s! Don't you think it's been enough time for them to have made some money off it so we can now do our own versions?

The fact that cigar-smoking nobodies can build swimming pools and retire on huge pension for decades and decades on the back of some tiny act of creative genius is ridiculous.

I hope this guy wins, and better still, goes on to make a good deal of money from his own interpretation of Pac Man.

It's amazing how, in a world full of copyrights and trademarks and patents and intellectual "property" and all sorts, that people just don't understand any of it.

The items you list above CANNOT be a "clear case of copyright infringement" because you cannot copyright an idea. If you could copyright an idea, then Hollywood would probably produce about 1 film a decade while the lawyers researched the script for stuff people had done before ("This script has a cop with a chip on his shoulder. That was done in Lethal Weapon. Next! Nope, you can't have a bunch of 20-something yuppies living together, that was done in Friends.").

There may be a case against the guy for using the word "Pac" in the name of the game, but not even in the wildest dreams of any copyright lawyer are you going to get away with saying that having a ghost in an arcade game is copyright infringement!

What next? Sue Jamiroquai for singing like Steve Wonder?

I think what you call "anti copyright bias" is just plain common sense in most cases. Nintendo or whoever they are have made a shedload of cash from a single creative event that happened about 30 years ago. They then "rewrote" this idea numerous times and re-sold it because the copyright system allowed them to, and will allow them to pretty much for ever.

How about limiting the TIME of copyright to about 10 years so that people can rip mix and burn stuff to their heart's content, just like they used to a few hundred years ago?

Who knows, maybe we'll derive some BETTER works out of that, and ALL benefit from it. Not just bunch of non-creative suits and lawyers from Namco.

If, like me, you watch a tiny amount of TV because you've concluded that almost all of it is shit, then it might be worth thinking about saving on your annual license fee:

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/what-if-a-tv-licence-is-not-needed-top12/

"You don't need a licence if you don't use any of these devices to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV - for example, if you use your TV only to watch DVDs or play video games, or you only watch programmes on your computer after they have been shown on TV."

Yeah, I thought about that to.

As to point 1., you don't have to give them shell access, just rsync over SSH. So, give the shell as /dev/null in /etc/passwd (and don't set the password, to be extra safe).

As to point 2., well, it's a question of trust alright. About the same level of trust I give to updating software via Debian apt repos, or any number of scenarios where the publisher says "here's my public key, please use it". Not foolproof by any means, but it's a chance I'm willing to take.

I think you'll find suspending the Laws of Thermodynamics for the big bang requires rather a lot of mathematics and predictive logical reasoning. At what point does scientific theory start and "belief" end, I wonder?

So a small bomb can take down a plane, but can't necessarily take out a ship or train, especially if in a cargo area.

My point is there is nothing NEW in that. At any time since the invention of air freight, it has been possible to put a bomb in a box and see that box ride a plane, just as letter bombs are literally 100 years old. Sure, timed or remotely detonated bombs are relatively new (like maybe 80 years), but that makes little difference.

What has changed in the last few years that we now see a 100 year old threat as being something to freak out about?

You may say, as the TSA do, that the fact a threat is old does not mean that we should not defend against it. But the issue here is freedom and perspective. What if the Yemen bombs had gone off? Planes might have crashed, people might have been killed. It would have been awful. However, I myself think that there is nothing wrong with doing what we have ALWAYS HISTORICALLY DONE in the face of such incredibly rare and isolated acts of lunatics: shrug and let life carry on.

That is what the British did with the IRA (give or take a few public waste bin removals).

That was what Germany did with Baader-Meinhoff.

That is what Spain has been doing with ETA for the last half century.

The pitiful reaction in the US to Middle East terrorists almost makes me what to become a terrorist myself!

What I don't understand about the screaming to ban deadly packages flying by air mail is that for literally 100 YEARS letter bombs have been on the scene. I myself was in Washington DC in about 1975 when a letter bomb posted by the IRA was delivered to the British Embassy. It blew the hand off a secretary who opened it up. Yes, there was an investigation, the police were called, the IRA condemned etc. etc. but nobody suggested banning packages in the mail or removing the rights of anyone who went into a post office. Heck, these devices from Yemen didn't even explode and we're falling apart with fear!

What the hell is going on? Why has the US become a nation of panty-wetting idiots?

"My kinect tells me that it's almost time to stop touching devices at all, and I believe it."

Voice control (or the easy possibility of it) on mobile devices has been around for years. What's changed recently that you should think it's going to become something that's worth doing?

Absolutely. In fact, scoot forward maybe 20-30 years or so and imagine passively-powered storage devices. Imagine them tiny, dirt cheap, made in China and anywhere you care to look.

Boof - we got ourselves a totally new world: On my way to work, my phone alerts me to the fact that I've just walked past the entire works of Hollywood, in 1080p, on a chip the size of a pinhead and the cost of a stick of gum. Would I like to copy some to my device? OK. 10 seconds later, I've got everything made between 1940 and 1950.

Not messaging networks as we know them, but a web of data mixed in to the fabric of everyday life. What's that on your shoulder? Dandruff? No, it's some 10 petabyte storage devices that somebody's scattered over the heads of the crowd. Hey! They've got the Pentagon's email correspondence from 2012 on them. Time for some mining!

From TFA: "Success in this field will not only bring major social benefits it could also bring significant commercial rewards for those involved."

If they're talking about a type of mesh network, then I say bring it on! Right now, things really don't look good for the "traditional" Internet as we know it. It's controllable servers, lap-dog ISPs, government p0wned routers, etc. One day, the net will just be Rupert Murdoch's pay-ground just as sure as cable TV went main stream in the 1980's.

Take out the centrality, enter the mesh. They stole our revolution - let's steal it back!!

(Sits back and waits for the sound of cynical laughter and replies beginning "In the real world...")

I assume the name "Qualcomm" in the diagram has a dotted red underline because MS PowerPoint thinks it's mis-spelt?

Ah, this is the Grauniad we're talking about. Ignore me.

a majority of the people who use IE are either forced or don't even know there are alternatives

Which is, in a nutshell, everything you need to know about Microsoft. It's also why comparing Microsoft desktop products to any alternatives in the last decade has been a purely academic exercise. When 90% of the market is owned by MS, why would MS logically choose to do anything to improve or change their products in any real way?

I say this because I have been an involuntary user of MS Outlook for about 10 years now. I'm now with Outlook 2007 and even now I can STILL accidentally book a meeting in the PAST. Powerpoint still doesn't have any useful keystrokes, MS Word is essentially the same manically controlling lunatic it always was (no, I do NOT want you to start auto-numbering my paragraphs...). I could go on for hours.

But it's pointless. Because ultimately MS has no reason to improve beyond keeping the DOJ and a bunch of toothless consumer rights groups off their back.