Patents come to computer gaming

Patents: in a recent discussion about games and patents, it emerged that these common elements are patented:

Looks like software patenting is coming to computer games in a big way. I’m not sure how any game on a modern platform can avoid the ’streamed loading’ patent.

Naturally, I can remember playing games on the Commodore 64 in the 1980s that included these…

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Microsoft 0wnz ‘http’

Web: Back in 2002, it occurred to someone to check the Google search results for ‘http’, to figure out what the most popular sites were.

Looks like it’s changed — here’s the top five results from a Google search for ‘http’ now:

  • 1: Microsoft
  • 2: AltaVista (!!)
  • 3: Yahoo!
  • 4: My Excite
  • 5: Google

My guess: older links are getting good PageRank, using whatever new tweaked algorithm they’re using. But AltaVista beating Google? ;)

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taint.org got NTK’d!

Meta: NTK this week linked to my closed-group filesharing roundup — thanks!

One I’d missed — Shinkuro. Looks very interesting, although pretty proprietary at a glance. It remains to be seen what their availability and prices will be like…

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Back to work you slackers

Funny: The staff of O2 Retail, Kennedy Road, Navan have set them up the foneblog, it appears, and are messing about… Why not give ‘em a call? Looks like their number is +353 46 21803!

On the subject — Dervala on texting. I couldn’t get over the text frenzy that took place over New Year’s — I’d forgotten all about it in the few months I’d been away.

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That Samuel L. Jackson quote again

Ireland: Looks like I was wrong about that Samuel L. Jackson quote — it really did happen!

Tom did the heavy lifting, and asked the production company; here’s the scoop:

Anyway in answer to your question, similar comments were indeed made on the TV Special ‘SWAT - The Movie’. In the programme Colin is considered a very successful ‘fish out of water’ in LA and the line of questioning was exploring how the Americans view him. Kate was ‘claiming’ Colin as our own in an ‘inclusive’ way. It was meant as a mark of comradeship rather than thievery and being of liberal mind I can assure you Kate has no intention of staking any real claims! It went like this.

KATE THORNTON:
Now lets talk about Colin because in the UK he’s become the man of the moment.

SAMUEL L.JACKSON:
Really? Only in the UK?

KT: Well everywhere but we kind of claim him as our own because he’s from Ireland.

SLJ: You can’t claim him because he’s from Ireland.

KT: Well we do because it’s close by. (laughter)

SLJ: Ok. That’s the source of all the conflict over there. You people always claiming the Irish as yours. We got a little problem just like that here called slavery but that’s ok we don’t need to talk about that so lets go. (more laughter)

KT: Well Colin is a very well paid slave.

SLJ: Ok good.

KT: As are you.

SLJ: Yeah all right.

KT: What did you know about him before you came to work with him on this project?

SLJ: I knew he was a hot, young, Irish actor who was good looking and I talked to a couple of people about him. I talked to Bruce about him and I talked to some script supervisors that had worked with him on a couple of things and they all loved him.

KT: So you checked him out?

SLJ: Yeah

The programme was an irreverent promotional vehicle for SWAT and it’s cast and I must say that Colin gave the most honest interview I’ve ever heard on a junket. Long may his attitude prevail. Does this answer your question and win you the bet?

Yours sincerely,

Rufus Roubicek
Executive Producer
matchboxtv.com

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That Samuel L. Jackson quote again

Looks like I was wrong about that Samuel L. Jackson quote — it really did happen!

Tom did the heavy lifting, and asked the production company; here’s the scoop:

Anyway in answer to your question, similar comments were indeed made on the TV Special ‘SWAT - The Movie’. In the programme Colin is considered a very successful ‘fish out of water’ in LA and the line of questioning was exploring how the Americans view him. Kate was ‘claiming’ Colin as our own in an ‘inclusive’ way. It was meant as a mark of comradeship rather than thievery and being of liberal mind I can assure you Kate has no intention of staking any real claims! It went like this.

KATE THORNTON: Now lets talk about Colin because in the UK he’s become the man of the moment.

SAMUEL L.JACKSON: Really? Only in the UK?

KT: Well everywhere but we kind of claim him as our own because he’s from Ireland.

SLJ: You can’t claim him because he’s from Ireland.

KT: Well we do because it’s close by. (laughter)

SLJ: Ok. That’s the source of all the conflict over there. You people always claiming the Irish as yours. We got a little problem just like that here called slavery but that’s ok we don’t need to talk about that so lets go. (more laughter)

KT: Well Colin is a very well paid slave.

SLJ: Ok good.

KT: As are you.

SLJ: Yeah all right.

KT: What did you know about him before you came to work with him on this project?

SLJ: I knew he was a hot, young, Irish actor who was good looking and I talked to a couple of people about him. I talked to Bruce about him and I talked to some script supervisors that had worked with him on a couple of things and they all loved him.

KT: So you checked him out?

SLJ: Yeah.

[....]

The programme was an irreverent promotional vehicle for SWAT and it’s cast and I must say that Colin gave the most honest interview I’ve ever heard on a junket. Long may his attitude prevail. Does this answer your question and win you the bet?

Yours sincerely,

Rufus Roubicek
Executive Producer
matchboxtv.com

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Unicode

Oops! Looks like 2-byte Unicode — UCS-2, aka Unicode 1.0 – will be running into trouble shortly; according to this and this on debian-i18n from back in 2000, several Asian charsets will shortly require 4-byte Unicode characters, which means using either UTF-8 or UCS-4. In particular, correct display of proper nouns in Japanese apparently requires use of the 4-byte planes.

Unicode 1.0 is used widely, in MS products and Java. Expect ‘flag days’ galore when this has to change.

Unicode 2.0 introduced a concept called a ’surrogate pair’ to fix this; it’s basically introducing multibyte characters into the supposedly fixed-width character-based UCS-2; so all those ‘length == nchars’ assumptions will break — again. Argh.

Now I know why the Linux vendors are going for UTF-8 instead…

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SpamAssassin on CNN!

Hubris: wow, SpamAssassin is on CNN.com!

The cool thing is — this photo’s syndicated by AP. Looks like SpamAssassin’s name is truly in lights now…

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Inevitable

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Marked As Spam For Easy Filtering

Looks like SpamAssassin’s ‘tag, not delete’ technique has spread to the real world ;)

Thanks to David Raistrick for forwarding this to the SpamAssassin-Talk mailing list…

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(Untitled)

Found on /.: Nuon have released a free-as-in-speech SDK for third-party developers to develop applications which will run on certain models of DVD players. According to ‘What Is Nuon?’, the Nuon DVD hardware is essentially both a DVD player and an open gaming platform. Incredible! Looks like I know now what kind of DVD player I’ll be buying — the one I can write my own apps for ;)

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(Untitled)

Looks like my extensive Laxo and Publin experience will come in handy, if things get tight.

Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 15:15:33 -0500
From: “Damien Morton” (spam-protected)
To: “Jason Borum” (spam-protected)
Subject: RE: Programming position?

Dear Jason,

Thanks for your interest in employment at Dennis Interactive. These are indeed tough times, but its always good to hear from someone with as broad and varied experience as yours. Im am particularily impressed with your familiarity with Xwad and Verible. You time at E*pregnate must have been an interesting one.

Whilst we arent currently looking for T and T++ programmers, your experience with PROBOL and XVRT suggests that the transition to our in-house programming language, BABEL, would be a relatively painless one. We will certainly keep you on file for a later date, should we have an opening for someone of your calibre.

Thanks again for your interest.


Damien Morton, Technical Director, Dennis Interactive

The glass is neither half-full nor half-empty. Its too big.

—–Original Message—– From: Jason Borum
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 2:24 PM
To: Damien Morton
Subject: Programming position?

Hi there:

I realize that in the current economic climate, jobs are scarce. But I believe I fill a programming niche overlooked by many employers. Please take a look at my attched resume, and let me know if you think I’d be a good match with Dennis Interactive.

Thanks! \jason


Jason Borum (spam-protected)

Goal: A position that will utilize my knowledge of programming languages,
operating systems, software products, and programming methodologies

Description: I have work-experience in a broad range of programming
languages in a number of different industries, and I believe that I have my finger on the pulse of the latest technological developments. I’m an ‘out of the box’ thinker willing to learn any and all new technolgies. My motto is “whatever it takes to do the job”.

Programming Languages: T+, T++, PROBOL, TSP2, TSP3, RSP, XVRT, XEL, XSM, AHP, EVML, NOML, QML, YML, LOGO

Development Tools: EUnit (EX, SX, SI, TI), Verible, SR Promoly, WevCan, WevCan SE, WevCan Pro, EyePopper 2.0, PluTo, Xwad, Spelunker

Databases: DuBase(4,5), NuQL, MyNuQL, XKSBase, WooferBase

Operating Systems: Eunichs, Firewater NT, Publin, Raxin, Laxo (FUI, TNP/TNT)

Experience: 06/1999 - Present E*Pregnate Senior TSP Engineer

-Developed OMP methodology for TSP reporting -Implemented XJIB based server-side reporting utilizing PluTo shell -Created SR Promly reports with UFML Port and XPO -Programmed multi-tier MRAF based on DuBase 4,5 -Engineered blocked WIML procedure with Laxo Connectivity

04/1998-06/1999 PolyAnemic.com RCSC Analyst

-Ported Publin 1.8.x content from legacy Raxin system -Utilized DMP 1.3/1.4 for EDE triggers -Secured KYB connection with ESS (XK, XL) -Analyzed RCSC driver with XLUnit, FoGrois

08/1997-04/1998 Bendix & Formalade IHML Developer

-Developed IHML surface for PROBOL, XSM EEIU system -Designed TNP/TNT FUI for ROP -Made coffee -TSP4 driven DCV System with PIO Connectivity -Created copies of documents using a P&H KX43400 ML Series photocopier

04/1997-08/1997 Orange Julius Customer Service

-Prepared Orange Julius drinks -Prepared and servered hot dogs -Answered phones -Took out trash -Swept and mopped

http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork

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