Comment Platform (Score 1) 105
Alphabet Partners With Chipotle To Deliver Burritos Using Drones
Comment Good to see someone standing up against this junk (Score 5, Interesting) 217
While artists and such do deserve a right to be able to make a fair shake on what they produce, why should patentable items only have a 20 year shelf life while a song have 100+ years of protection?
This is insane.
That should give the entertainment/content industry pause, if there was a strong united Internet demand for fair copyright terms.
That should give some pause to those trying to hijack the production and distribution of ideas.
Comment SOPA and Internet Activism (Score 1) 421
Artists and such do deserve a right to be able to make a fair shake on what they produce.
However, why should patentable items only have a 20 year shelf life while a song have 150 years of protection?
A "reasonable" counter-position is to demand that copyright retroactively returns to reasonable periods such as a 20 years and that's it, no extensions. That would put most of the fun stuff in public domain where it belongs anyways. Hence the copyright bargain between those who create and those who consume gets rebalanced.
That should give the entertainment/content industry pause, if there was a strong SOPA-bashing united Internet demand for fair copyright terms.
That should give some pause to those trying to take over the production and distribution of ideas.
Comment Why not (Score 2) 471
If the toilet was nicknamed the crapper due to the invetor
do we now go to the bathroom and take a giant gates?
Comment Give them what they want, just a short time (Score 1) 473
I think they (RIAA) should have their draconian utopia. However the range / length of copyright should only hold for 5-10 years maximum retroactively. Why should the song "happy birthday" still be raking in money when patents only range about 20 years and cost a fortune to maintain. Public domain exists for a reason, otherwise you have lock-in on all ideas.
They can take a long walk of a short pier.
Comment Re:Paid Beta Program? (Score 1) 313
However unlike a demo which is free, if I don't like the game, do I get my money back?
Improving Education Through Social Gaming 44
A piece up at Mashable explores how some schools and universities are finding success at integrating social gaming into their education curriculum. Various game-related programs are getting assistance these days from sources like the government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
"For the less well-to-do educator, the Federation of American Scientists has developed a first-person shooter-inspired cellular biology curriculum. Gamers explore the fully-interactive 3D world of an ill patient and assist the immune system in fighting back a bacterial infection. Dr. Melanie Ann Stegman has been evaluating the educational impacts of the game and is optimistic about her preliminary findings. 'The amount of detail about proteins, chemical signals and gene regulation that these 15-year-olds were devouring was amazing. Their questions were insightful. I felt like I was having a discussion with scientist colleagues,' said Stegman. Perhaps more importantly, the video game excites students about science. Motivating more youngsters to adopt a science-related career track has became a major education initiative of the Obama administration. So desperate to find a solution that motivates students to become scientists, the government has even enlisted Darpa, the Department of Defense’s 'mad scientist' research organization, to figure out a solution."
Game Development In a Post-Agile World 149
An anonymous reader writes "Many games developers have been pursuing agile development, and we are now beginning to witness the debris and chaos it has caused. While there have been some successes, there have also been many casualties. As the industry at large is moving away from the phantasmagoria of Agile, Gwaredd Mountain, Technical Director at Climax Studios, looks at Post-Agile and what this might mean for the games industry."
Comment Enough MPAA stuff already (Score 1) 323
Sorry folks,
We really should stop posting all the MPAA crap on this site. No one is doing anything about it. Where are the protests? Where are the letters being written to your elected official?
If you, that means You reading this, are not willing to do anything about it then I'm tired of hearing about it.
When we were going to get a DMCA like act about to be passed we crashed the Xmas party of the Minister in charge to get our point out.
So either put up and fight back or shut up.
Comment Well why stop there? (Score 2, Insightful) 793
Why not fat tax recliners and comfy couches along with any channel that shows the NFL all day on Sunday (and Beer too)?
I'm sure that will help the slightly older generation also get out there and be fit.
Comment Not totally useless (Score 1) 187
Thats nice,
We have been doing exactly this in our lab at the University since 2005 with magnetic fields and have the publications to prove it.
We have been using and developing our system for rehabilitation since the Wii and even that controller cannot be used properly for that purpose. Yes I've seen them in hospitals but they only have limited use.
They are of no use when it comes to fine movement rehabilitation.
When did these guys file their patent?
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With all the fancy scientists in the world, why can't they just once build a nuclear balm?
