The gaming sites (enworld, notably) had this clarification from a prospective 3rd party at about the time the furor erupted. The question remains whether this a total ban on dual-badging: We know that a product can't be released as 4e/3.xd20-inclusive or in two versions, but we are currently unclear as to whether a product can contain two rulesets at all (most commonly the publishing company's general ruleset (GoO before they folded published a number of Tri-Stat dX/d20 co-stated supplements) or special ruleset for that game (Godlike had a d20 section in the back, there was at least one UA adventure published that included full d20 stats)). Loss of the ability to publish like that would not be helpful to the smaller systems out there.

Turing says "Sorry, no."

the patent wouldn't stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny

Really? If that's the case, then fight the patent! Invalidity is not only a defense, but if Boeing tried to use a patent they knew was invalid, it's possible to recover damages from them. There are copyfighters and there are copywhiners; SES seems to be the latter.

The just keep staring at goats, don't they?

Tom@13:

The belief is entirely explicable: neurology and psychology explains it quite nicely.

Actually watched the video; my above statement is entirely wrong. Eighty? Don't make me fucking laugh. Otakon is able to put together single-source tableaux of that size.

Arguendo, let's allow Bleach characters as "Video Game Characters": A Picasaweb public album showing at least 100 cosplayers.

If I had half an hour to spend on fansview, I could probably beat the 80 for primarily-VG characters.

Arbitrary cosplay, Comiket almost certainly wins. VG cosplay ONLY (leaving aside characters only secondarily game characters)? This might be a competitor.

Aside from all that, there's the problem that for a lot of people, fingerprinting is simply NOT RELIABLE. My fingerprints are recognizable as mine on the highest-end fingerprinting equipment, but hand geometry readers will frequently identify me as different at different times of the day, low end fingerprint readers have trouble matching me to my prior scan, and the fingerprint readers that use a swipe (like the ones on most laptops) don't even recognize my finger as a finger.

Giant fucking pain -- and I'm very concerned that with the coming fingerprint replacements for ID in a lot of situations, it might make me an unperson, or a hassle to identify, at the very least (which is a sort of good thing/bad thing, as if I were trying to remain anonymous it's a slight help, but my profession often requires me to identify myself).

I'd say, given the last few pictures in "now", it's more than vaguely racist.

To be entirely fair, if one were to trap a hated teacher in a school and then hunt them like an animal, Welcome to the Jungle would be a good soundtrack.

It's even more ironic that this film is linked from a site that has an ad banner across the top, a skyscraper banner and box ads along the side, and text ads (classifieds) below those. bOingbOing is exactly the sort of website that they're railing against -- ad-supported, "promoting their own content at the expense of others". It is standards-compliant, but that's not what they're talking about. And while bb doesn't misuse the information it collects from me, it certainly does collect it, as I had to log on to post this comment (which I happily do, note. I love bb, and I think bb and google are excellent models for how the web Should Be, but the creators of this video most emphatically do not.)

Pfft. The ATM on my corner (and most in-bank ATMs as opposed to the ones in bodegas, candyshops, delis, etc.) has 6 languages and a "More Languages" button.

In other neighborhoods, of course, the default language options are customized for the neighborhood.

So while the rest of the world marches toward the cyberpunk future (Russia happily leading the way), India is skipping all that towards the post-cyberpunk future?

Wassa @5
I don't agree that they're universally obvious. Netflix is not obvious from the existence of Blockbuster, Columbia House, and The Internet, for instance. I would say that if there is any problem of Patents being "handed out too freely" I would point at the requirement that the office be self-funding through fees, not at the Internet.

#2 It's quite simple, really: Go to www.uspto.gov and read the relevant chapter in the MPEP (22 or 23 if memory serve). There should be at least one reasonably-informative flowchart in there.

More generally: This is what I keep saying to the anti-patent agitators. If you honestly believe the patent is invalid, there are excellent and effective ways to attack it that don't involve pulling down the whole system. The patent system is designed (and has been modified by courts and later rules) to protect actual inventors and stomp very hard on bad-faith abusers. Engage with it rather than trying to pull it down, and good things will happen.

For "realism", the game should also modify the carry-cost of the plants as hydrocarbons increase (or even just fluctuate) in price.