IANAL, but my understanding is that the fact that the clone was written from scratch doesn't have any bearing on whether or not it infringes on copyright. The clone uses the name "Agar.io Clone" and copies the look and mechanics of the original game, thus making it substantially similar in appearance and use to the copyrighted work. Unless they have found some way to invoke fair use (educational purposes, etc.), the clone you mention is also infringing.
An analogy: if someone were to write a book called "Harry Potter - Clone" in their own words about the adventures of young wizard, you could expect them to receive a notice of infringement pretty darn fast, regardless of the fact that they didn't copy the original word-for-word.
IAANAL, but I do deal with these topics from a technical point of view.
"look and feel" are generally a part of Trademark law, not Copyright law. More specifically, Trademark law deals with concept of "customer confusion".
Copyright deals generally with "expression", and generally does not cover what something looks like. So for example, it's possible to copyright the textual rules of a game, but it's not possible to copyright a particular style of game. Which is why it's generally legal to clone something.
It would not legal to do what the person has been been accused of here, which was to substantially copy the original code.
The reason why Trademark/Copyright generally get mixed up with regards to clones is because:
1.) It's actual copy of the original source code, and thus is a copyright violation
2.) It's a "from scratch" clone of the game elements, but mentions the original work in a way that doesn't make it clear to the consumer that it's not actually the original, which is a Trademark violation
3.) It's a "from scratch" clone of the game elements, and mentions specifically that it takes inspiration from the original, but makes it clear that it's not the original. But the original creator doesn't like it, and they are really mad that "anyone can steal my work", and the original creator bills it as a Copyright/Trademark infringement when it's really not.
Assuming the complaint is correct, this is obviously a case of #1. It's been ruled that a literal translation from one language to another is a "mechanical translation", and is not deserving of it's own copyright.
Obviously this is a very coarse overview of a very complicated framework, but should hopefully provide a little more insight in to what the actual law is.
In the above mentioned link to Agar.io clone the copyright infringing part is the "agar.io," not the actual reproduction of the game. The game play it self can not be copyrighted, and it can not be patented because there have been several prior art games with exact same gameplay (or very similar). There is a very similar planet like game for the iOS that I used to play back in 2010, and that's just off the top of my head.
In the main link Agar.io has a very fair DMCA claim if their JS has been literally copied, even if it has than been subsequently altered. However, if one was to make a game like "Bob's Better Floating Balls that Eat Each Other" from scratch, I don't think Agar.io would have a fair claim. I am guessing that they also have a trademark out on Agar.io.
No exactly, they'd receive a notice of Trademark infringement. You could however write a parody about a wizard named Parry Hotter that would be okay under "Fair Use".
Why? If you spend all day designing and writing code, why not view your commute as an opportunity to relax/read a book/listen to music/whatever you want to do that's different from your day-to-day work? Future you will thank you for it.
When I try to find the Standard Treasury homepage to get a better idea of what it's trying to accomplish (by following the link from OP's blog), all I see is an empty blog site. Is this because they are trying to keep a low web profile? It seems a little odd to me.
That fits with the OP's opening sentence. Also, the WHOIS record for standardtreasury.com was updated 29 hours ago, which would make sense if it was being transferred as an acquisition asset and accounts for it being down.
I agree with most of what you've said, but I would recommend switching the priority to lifting rather than cardio. Of course, cardio is important for heart heath and overall respiratory fitness, but in terms of "getting in shape" it's hard to beat a good lifting regimen.
I have a couple of reasons for this:
1) If your goal is to look good, then lifting will most definitely help with that. Basically, you'll gain more definition and muscle tone where it counts and lose a lot of the superfluous fat.
2) You'll also feel better. It's a pretty great feeling to pick up something that you know should be heavy and find that you can manage it with one hand.
3) The above talks about diet, specifically burning more calories on a daily basis than you consume. Lifting will help with this in two ways. Firstly, the act of lifting itself is extremely calorie-intensive: you burn pretty much the same (or greater) number of calories lifting than you do running (assuming fairly standard workouts, of course). Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, not only does it take a lot of energy to build new muscle during your recovery, muscle tissue takes more energy to keep warm than an equal amount of fat. What that means is that if you replace some of your body fat with muscle through a lifting routine, you will increase your basal metabolic rate (the amount of energy you burn at rest), which will be a godsend for any weight-loss plans you may have.
That being said, don't disregard cardio: work it in on recovery days.
Speaking of recovery days, if your muscles feel good enough to lift more than four days a week, you'll get better results increasing your workloads (higher weight) and keeping to 2-4 days a week. If you do chose to do 4 days a week, a great pattern is:
Day 1: Upper Body (High Weight + Low Reps)
Day 2: Lower Body (Low Weight + High Reps)
Day 3: Rest (Cardio if you feel up to it)
Day 4: Lower Body (High Weight + Low Reps)
Day 5: Upper Body (Low Weight + High Reps)
Day 6: Rest
Day 7: Rest
Low reps means 5-6, high means 10-15. Use whatever weight allows you to do that many reps twice (a.k.a. two sets of x reps). Don't do both sets together; do one set of one exercise, then one of some complementary exercise, then do the last set of the first and the last set of the second.
Whatever route you choose: good luck :)
P.S. A note on soreness: you should be tired after your workouts, and a little soreness the next day is fine. What's not fine is being near-unable to use your muscles after a workout. Too much soreness actually impedes the recovery process, so take it easy ;)
> I thought my taxes pay for that :) . Do you mean "finances" as "machinery which helps moving money"? I think there are several definitions there.
You are correct in that the money used to build highways etc. does start as your tax dollars. However, I would imagine that it is then held (and allowed to appreciate) in the form of a reasonably liquid portfolio of cash, bonds, and equities. I suppose you could technically reduce finance to "moving money around", but that is such a gross simplification that it would be like saying programmers just type for a living.
> Nah, that's those same deposits. I largely pay myself for retirement, by saving the whole life.
If your entire retirement savings are in simple savings accounts (i.e. in a bank instead of a brokerage account), I am afraid you are losing out on quite a substantial return that could allow you to either retire earlier or enjoy a higher annual income during retirement (or both).
> > Funds the college fund that paid for your school
> Again, it's either another example of "moving money", or an oddity - as people managed to get educated even without banks.
The statement that college funds, loan programs, and scholarship endowments (all powered by "finance") pay for the education of practically every student in the country is true, unless you save for college in a piggy bank.
> you ought to share risks and benefits
If you want to share the risks and benefits, there's an easy way to do that: get a brokerage account. If you have deposited your money, the basic assumption is that you are willing to accept a lower rate of return in exchange for a (practically) risk-free place to store your money.
> "You are correct in that the money used to build highways etc. does start as your tax dollars."
Taxes are not the only way that governments get money. Sales of government bonds are likely to generate a large portion of capital behind infrastructure projects.
Banks don't necessarily borrow at 0%. Granted, they are able to borrow at a much lower rate than you or me (closer to the Federal Funds Rate managed by the U.S. Federal Reserve), but they still pay interest on their loans.
Of course, real interest rates have gotten close to zero, but in general real interest rates of 0% are nonsensical in stable, developed economies. Economically speaking, if rates were 0%, it would in the long run make sense to bulldoze the rocky mountains to save money on gas, because there is no marginal cost to consider.
"if rates were 0%, it would in the long run make sense to bulldoze the rocky mountains to save money on gas, because there is no marginal cost to consider"
Wait, run that by me again more slowly.
In general, it does make sense to make large infrastructure investments in order to increase long term productivity, especially when interest rates are low, but in general, it's always the case. Hell, bits of the Rockies WERE bulldozed (And dynamited) to save money on railroad or freeway construction that would pay off on a fifty to a hundred year timescale. What does zero percent interest have to do with that? Presumably there are even some positive interest rate values for which the eventual gas savings outweigh the cost of hiring the guys with the bulldozers, if those are the only costs you care about.
If there's a quadrillion dollars worth of hydrocarbons on Titan, and it'll cost me a trillion dollars and fifty years to bring them to earth, it makes economic sense for me to do it, even if interest rates are 5%. I don't think it's the interest rate that makes these projects make sense or not make sense.
What's the magic that happens at zero that causes otherwise nonsensical projects to make economic sense?
> What's the magic that happens at zero that causes otherwise nonsensical projects to make economic sense?
The bulldozing-mountains example is purposefully over-the-top (I believe I first heard it in an article by Bernanke[0]). The point that I am trying to illustrate is that at a 0% interest rate, the traditional marginal cost/marginal utility analysis breaks down, since as long as the marginal utility of the last investment dollar spent outweighs the marginal cost of spending that dollar (the interest rate), traditional economic thinking would have you spend that dollar.
> Exactly. I think he's assuming he'll never have to pay back the principle.
The rocky-mountain example does assume this, but it doesn't make a 0% interest rate any more ludicrous. Imagine that you could take out a loan for $x at 0%. Simply because of the fact that time gives assets the opportunity to grow, the future value of that loan when it is to be repaid is greater than the value when you received the loan [1]. Of course, the 0% rate would remove some traditional investment options (savings account, Treasury bonds, etc.), I think it is reasonable to assume that investments will still be able to appreciate to some degree.
However, this appreciation would be constrained in reality by inflation if the real interest rate is 0%. If, on the other hand, the nominal interest rate is 0%, then the loan effectively counteracts the headwind of inflation, and any return, no matter how small, winds up in your pocket.
I guess that assumes infinite access to credit? Otherwise there would be an opportunity cost associated with bulldozing the rocky mountains in favor of some other activity with higher marginal utility, right?
Time gives the money a chance to grow if there is anywhere that offers a safe return. Lending at a negative interest rate is paying someone to keep your money safe. Borrowing at a real negative interest rate may not make sense if you aren't sure you can do that.
Suppose you spend $1M to produce something worth $100k. You lost $900k.
But suppose you borrowed at 0% while inflation was (to use round numbers) 10%. After about 50 years of borrowing at 0%, your $100k is now worth more than $1M. (I'm too lazy to use logs to figure out the exact breakeven point right now.) You made a profit.
With 0% interest rates, your investment that destroyed $900k of value was (eventually) profitable. If you can avoid mark-to-market accounting, you can just borrow, wait for inflation, and eventually sell for a profit.
When interest rates are less than inflation, a capital-destroying investment can seem profitable.
So in this scenario, you either got an indefinite-term loan with a 0 interest payment, or you took a big risk by betting that the cost of borrowing would not increase until you could pay down the loan.
Its possible to borrow money, blow through the cash on some unproductive investment and then be unable to repay the principle on the agreed-upon schedule.
> "society needs more people working directly on problems that matter"
This does not imply that "we should al be working directly on more worthy causes". My impression was that the author was simply making an observation about the relative distribution of labor (specifically: that there are not enough people working directly on causes that "matter"), which should by no means be reduced to the absurd by saying that all people should be working on those causes.
> "If you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber"?
I'm sorry, but that strikes me as a pretty privileged sentiment. Would you say that everyone who feels a calling to work in the nonprofit/humanitarian sphere is merely doing so to assuage their "teen angst"?
If someone else feels compelled to work more directly to help those in need, and he or she is perfectly respectful of others' work (as OP clearly is), why do you feel compelled to reduce their desire to "standard liberal guilt" or "teen angst"?
> If you're a programmer and you feel like curing malaria is more important than Uber
Um, this, for one. I see no possible reality in which a disease that kills almost one child every minute[1] could possibly take a backseat to you not being able to get a taxi when you call for one. The above could be put in the dictionary next to "first world problem".
I would love to hear your reasoning if you have some opinion to the contrary.
Actually, that is a pretty neutral position. Your position sounds much more "privileged", as you appear to be attempting to tell people not only what they should do, but how they should feel. I'm going to assume that you didn't imply that anybody holding a contrary opinion on the best use of their time is somehow cheering on malaria :)
An analogy: if someone were to write a book called "Harry Potter - Clone" in their own words about the adventures of young wizard, you could expect them to receive a notice of infringement pretty darn fast, regardless of the fact that they didn't copy the original word-for-word.