Matt, I think you're a bit missinformed on a few things:
"whereas Nolan and the rest of the "hacker" types had "better" things to do with their time and ended up taking a royal screwing for it."
Nolan was far from a "hacker type", he was a salesman and a "trained and well paid engineer" at Ampex as well. In fact, that's one of the things that have been going on - Ted Dabney was found and has been discussing the actual design process of Computer Space and setting a bunch of things in a different light. Nolan is the one that's far far better at presentation and public swaying.
And Ralph's testifying was against major arcade companies looking to not have to pay royalties on their own "well paid engineer designed products", not "hacker" types.
"I must point out that Baer has a long-standing and very real motive for defending his patents and making all sorts of sweeping generalizations about his inventions--it translates into cold, hard, cash."
"getting as much money as he could convince courts to award him"
"Perhaps if he hadn't grubbed so hard for coin"
Those are completely way off (if not a bit slanderous) - he was called as a witness for Magnavox, Sanders, and other companies in all those cases, not as a plantiff. There was no "court awarded cash" to him, the companies who brought him in were the ones defending their cash flow. And what "all sorts of sweeping generalizations" about his products has he made? Or is that comment a "sweeping generalization" in itself?
Finally, skpetical of what with his notes? They show the documented evolution and design process of all his protos and products. Not much room for "skew" and point of view there, they're not stating opinions. Likewise, they were valid evidence in countless court cases. And they show a DTL based setup for the Odyssey - again not much room for skewing their either, DTL has a standard definition (not created by Ralph) of being a class of digital circuits.
You want to agree to disagree (for whatever reason you see), that's fine. But don't keep making these outlandish statements to try and somehow justify it. Its not helping.
Matt, I think you're a bit missinformed on a few things:
"whereas Nolan and the rest of the "hacker" types had "better" things to do with their time and ended up taking a royal screwing for it."
Nolan was far from a "hacker type", he was a salesman and a "trained and well paid engineer" at Ampex as well. In fact, that's one of the things that have been going on - Ted Dabney was found and has been discussing the actual design process of Computer Space and setting a bunch of things in a different light. Nolan is the one that's far far better at presentation and public swaying.
And Ralph's testifying was against major arcade companies looking to not have to pay royalties on their own "well paid engineer designed products", not "hacker" types.
"I must point out that Baer has a long-standing and very real motive for defending his patents and making all sorts of sweeping generalizations about his inventions--it translates into cold, hard, cash."
"getting as much money as he could convince courts to award him"
"Perhaps if he hadn't grubbed so hard for coin"
Those are completely way off (if not a bit slanderous) - he was called as a witness for Magnavox, Sanders, and other companies in all those cases, not as a plantiff. There was no "court awarded cash" to him, the companies who brought him in were the ones defending their cash flow. And what "all sorts of sweeping generalizations" about his products has he made? Or is that comment a "sweeping generalization" in itself?
Finally, skpetical of what with his notes? They show the documented evolution and design process of all his protos and products. Not much room for "skew" and point of view there, they're not stating opinions. Likewise, they were valid evidence in countless court cases. And they show a DTL based setup for the Odyssey - again not much room for skewing their either, DTL has a standard definition (not created by Ralph) of being a class of digital circuits.
You want to agree to disagree (for whatever reason you see), that's fine. But don't keep making these outlandish statements to try and somehow justify it. Its not helping.
Marty
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