Cracked Game Released to Poke at Pirates; Lawyer Unleashes in Letter to Patent Office

Don't miss a single issue of Slashback. Add slashdot@newsletters.slashdot.org to your address book. Cracked Game Released to Poke at Pirates Lawyer Unleashes in Letter to Patent Office German Ministry Dumps 187,300 Euros Worth of PCs Due to Infection Hiring Developers by Algorithm BlackBerry Chief: Tablets Will Be Dead in 5 Years Hot Comment: Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket From the Vault: Microsoft Says Free Software Violates 235 Patents Watch It: Up Close with Firefox OS Phone Poll Booth: How often do friends/family call you for tech support? Cracked Game Released to Poke at Pirates Minutes after Greenheart Games launched its very first game--Game Dev Tycoon--this week, the company released a cracked version of the game. The pirated copy was completely same as the real copy, except that after a few hours into the game, players started noticing widespread piracy of their games in the game development simulator. Sound Off>> Lawyer Unleashes in Letter to Patent Office Nobody has ever accused the world of patent law of being a roller coaster of excitement, but every now and then something interesting happens. Take this attorney who was angry over the rejection of his client's application. Here's a snippet from his letter: "Are you drunk? No, seriously... are you drinking scotch and whiskey with a side of crack cocaine while you 'examine' patent applications?" Sound Off>> German Ministry Dumps 187,300 Euros Worth of PCs Due to Infection German IT magazine Heise reports that the Ministry of Education in Schwerin had a Conficker virus infection on 170 machines and it was dealt with by simply throwing them in the trash. Other German authorities have now decided that "the approach taken is not up to the principle of efficiency and economy." Sound Off>> Hiring Developers by Algorithm Are the traditional talent markers--a degree from MIT, a previous job at Google, a recommendation from a friend or colleague--always the best way to determine who is right for the job? Not according to a startup that aims to automate the discovery of talented programmers by looking at simple notions including how well the person performs and what they can do. Sound Off>> BlackBerry Chief: Tablets Will Be Dead in 5 Years BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins said he believes that tablets will be dead by 2018, adding that the devices are not a good business model. That may come as a surprise to Apple, Google, Amazon and Samsung, all of which have built significant tablet businesses over the past few years. Sound Off>> Going to Hell in a (brightly lit) Handbasket "While I think this is pretty cool and all (Avatar anyone?), once people get a hold of the fact that the enzyme is called 'Luciferase', things could get rather warm for the company (at least in the US)." --by ColdWetDog Read More>>   Microsoft Says Free Software Violates 235 Patents Six years ago, Microsoft told Fortune magazine that various free software products violate at least 235 of its patents, and it wants royalties from distributors and users. In an interview for the article, Steve Ballmer said that FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," adding that "What's fair is fair." Read More>> Up Close with Firefox OS Phone SlashTV: Ubuntu and Mozilla contributor Benjamin Kerensa was on hand at LinuxFest NorthWest to talk about what makes the Firefox OS phone tick and to give a demo of the all-HTML5 interface. He also discussed what distinguishes it from the other bigger name players in the phone OS world. Watch the Video>> How often do friends/family call you for tech support? Never Once per year Once every few months Once per month Once per two weeks Once per week or more Every day I'm helping one right now. Cast Your Vote>> Follow Slashdot on Twitter and Facebook. To unsubscribe, click here or send an email to: unsubscribe-213087@elabs10.com To ensure delivery of this newsletter to your inbox and to enable images, please add slashdot@newsletters.slashdot.org to your e-mail address book or safe senders list. Slashdot | 594 Howard Street, Suite 300 | San Francisco, CA 94105 To view our Privacy Policy click here.