I'm told our office (Twisted Oak Studios) is the old GoInstant office. We're both companies in Halifax, Nova Scotia. There is also Compilr, toplog and a few others around here. Jevon of GoInstant also does the the http://startupnorth.ca blog.

Can't wait to see what people start building with the tech; looks neat.

The Roy building? Loved that place.

I"m really going to miss the Roy Building when they tear it down / turn it into condos. I can't think of a better place to host your early-stage startup / indie dev office in Halifax: prime downtown location, relatively inexpensive rent, flexible terms, "Maltese Falcon" 1940s decor. I've had two offices there, but eventually moved on (just across the street though).

drop by sometime and say hi! We've made a real mess of things.

horsman@gmail.com

I've not heard the term 'HOF' before and didn't find it/expand it with a cursory search. Could you define/expand it?

I had (mistakenly) thought it's a commonly known term.

Wikipedia explains it better than I could http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higher-order_function

I learned from this in 2006-2007.

I've got a dev team of ten, working mostly on iOS and android game apps for hire. We've done 8 iOS/android games in the last couple years, some of them AAA, some not.

Paid ($1) games of a decent quality typically generate sales between 40 and 100 thousand; and can do much better if 'everything goes right'. Development costs are roughly the same. For apps, seems around 75% of cost is on the engineering side. Design is all from third parties here but included in the above figures.

Work is enjoyable.

Can you recommend any of the third party design firms that are good with game design ? I run a shop similar to what you do, but we are mainly focussed on building products for Startups and now venturing into Enterprises.

As a point of data, I would pay $8 for this as someone that has never read PhD comics before.

Looks fun.

I also find the tone of that post aggressive and a majority of the criticism unfounded.

I agree with the criticism about lack of visual hierarchy. Feel as if the whole page doesn't really take the user's goals into account as much as it should. I'll try to send a detailed e-mail about my thoughts as soon as I get a free minute.

Really appreciate that, dashN9ne. Looking forward to reading it as we fix things up.

The funding had its plug pulled at least once (or not renewed), afaik. The authors continued on despite this and more funding was found. Indie Game the Movie chronicles some of this.

Thanks for thoughtful exploration. Here are some of my open questions.

Should patents be abolished and copyright extended to cover non-transcribed acts of copying (e.g. pharma, creating the same program with different source)? Is copyright or short term patents (7 years? 15 years?) a viable alternative?

What are some downsides of not having patents in their current form? In a shorter term form?

How do we move beyond patents as a society and business community?

I think that copyright, with a shorter term, is a very reasonable model for pharmaceuticals given the current FDA process, but it is not complete. The FDA still frowns upon off label use -- but the challenges in medical regulation are for another, longer discussion.

I do think that patents allow for a brief period, post product release, of allowing one to recoup the costs of initial investment. But if I were to rearrange the terms, I would suggest that the patent expire 3 years post-initial commercial release, or 15 years after filing -- whichever is shorter.

Generally, I think that we should force more creativity out of our thieves. I think the patent system should revert to something much closer to copyright.

In the meantime, groups of companies could support defensive patent pools, or the patent pledge.