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Quote: A federal appeals panel has ruled that the operator of Bargainbeanies.com is not violating the trademark of Beanie Babies creator Ty by offering used dolls through the Web address. The case is significant because it supports the ability of second-hand resellers to market and hawk their wares over the Internet without running afoul of trademark laws.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-961090.html?tag=cd_m h

Virtually every word is trademarked, be it Alpha to Omega or Aardvark to Zulu, most many times over. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with five trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). This could be any acronym or initialism - including the famous International Trade Centre (ITC) or International Monetary Fund (IMF).

You can legally use any word, words or initials to start a new business without registering a trademark - providing you are not passing off, of course. Take for example the word 'apple'. It is legally used by thousands of businesses - large and small all over the world. Indeed, it is impossible that they all register themselves as trademarks - they are bound to conflict with many others, being confusingly similar. In my local phone book alone, there are at least five using this word - two garages (seems not connected), a car centre, fruit growers and a decorating firm.

The authorities hide the simple solution to this conflict. From correspondence with them and their response, I believe them corrupt. Why? For a start, trademark holders do not own the vast majority of domains - it is obvious that something is needed to replace the registered trademark symbol - a new TLD of .reg would do that. This is for the same reasons, primarily to advise people that the mark is legally registered and protected by law. It is indisputable fact that the answer to domain and trademark problems was self-evident and is easier to use than the telephone. Honest lawyers have ratified the solution.

To see major findings please visit WIPO.org.uk - not associated with UN WIPO.org. Although I use the initials WIPO, it is obvious to even the 'crooks' in UN WIPO that this site not associated with them. Same as is obvious to those at AOL that pengaol.org is not associated with them.

Somebody mod the parent to this up!

This is reason enough for Linux and other OSS projects to be wary of wedding themselves to proprietary software whose licensing can change on a whim. Of course, such an event would hamper kernel development, for a time anyhow, but it would also light a fire under developers' arses to improve CVS (or write a new OSS product) out of necessity, after which I imagine we'd hear "never again!" shouted from open source rooftops.

This kinda reminds me of when de Raadt removed IPFilter from OpenBSD's ports tree over restrictive licensing and the OpenBSD crew took it upon themselves to develop pf from the ground up.

Which marketplace did you mean? It seems to me that the only marketplace of which Apple is a part is the Apple marketplace.

Hmmm, Gateway seems to disagree.

Apple has tried this several times, and Compaq has as well (tellingly, Compaq doesn't off this product / capability any more).

I'm not sure folks - and by that I mean the mass market, not geeks - are ready for this. I understand the HP product can record, unlike the MacTV (I own one, btw, as well as one of their 5500's which has a TV tuner card) or the Compaq machine but it seems like most people park their PC in one room and the TV in the other.

PC / TV convergence? Well, your toaster has been next to your refrigerator for 50+ years, and they haven't converged yet. I don't see a mass market for this now, and there clearly hasn't been in the past.

Nice box though.

Thanks to Balmer and our good Linux-friendly friend news.com, we have more wonderful Microsoft quotes.

Balmer Quote 1: The truth is, we probably made (.Net) a little harder to understand than we (should) have.

Balmer Quote 2 (in which Balmer makes it quite plain that he's going to drive home the point that the marketroids prepped him with -- that XML is Good, money should be spent on XML, and .Net is obviously XML): Well, the benefit of .Net is XML...We take the XML connection and we extended it across both client and server -- while other guys are only server-focused. It's about connecting people to people, people to information, businesses to businesses, businesses to information, and so on. That is the benefit....it's a set of code we ship that...people use to help build applications that process XML information....it's getting to be conventional wisdom that the future of IT is around XML. But I'd like conventional wisdom to be that XML brings benefits today, and the best way to participate in the XML revolution -- in terms of user benefits and productivity -- is Visual Studio.Net.

Balmer Quote 3 (in which Balmer shows himself happily living in his own world): A Yankee Group study says 40 percent of corporations surveyed were looking at operating system alternatives such as Linux, in part because of the Microsoft licensing program. But I think they are okay with where they are.

Balmer Quote 4: The Linux [platform] hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that's not very good.

Balmer Quote 5: There has yet to be any innovation, new features or new capabilities out of the Linux platform. [Me -- so how the hell has *Microsoft* pushed technology forward?] But I don't think anyone should expect anything innovative coming out of that [Linux] world.

Balmer Quote 6: And we are going to have as or more a community as Linux does. [Me -- in your wet dreams, Balmer]

Balmer Quote 7 (in which Balmer discusses the buggy nature of Windows): ...next major Windows release, called Longhorn. I'm sure we will have some service packs in between.

Thanks to Balmer and our good Linux-friendly friend news.com, we have more wonderful Microsoft quotes.

Balmer Quote 1: The truth is, we probably made (.Net) a little harder to understand than we (should) have.

Balmer Quote 2 (in which Balmer makes it quite plain that he's going to drive home the point that the marketroids prepped him with -- that XML is Good, money should be spent on XML, and .Net is obviously XML): Well, the benefit of .Net is XML...We take the XML connection and we extended it across both client and server -- while other guys are only server-focused. It's about connecting people to people, people to information, businesses to businesses, businesses to information, and so on. That is the benefit....it's a set of code we ship that...people use to help build applications that process XML information....it's getting to be conventional wisdom that the future of IT is around XML. But I'd like conventional wisdom to be that XML brings benefits today, and the best way to participate in the XML revolution -- in terms of user benefits and productivity -- is Visual Studio.Net.

Balmer Quote 3 (in which Balmer shows himself happily living in his own world): A Yankee Group study says 40 percent of corporations surveyed were looking at operating system alternatives such as Linux, in part because of the Microsoft licensing program. But I think they are okay with where they are.

Balmer Quote 4: The Linux [platform] hardly runs any applications, except a bunch of shareware stuff that's not very good.

Balmer Quote 5: There has yet to be any innovation, new features or new capabilities out of the Linux platform. [Me -- so how the hell has *Microsoft* pushed technology forward?] But I don't think anyone should expect anything innovative coming out of that [Linux] world.

Balmer Quote 6: And we are going to have as or more a community as Linux does. [Me -- in your wet dreams, Balmer]

Balmer Quote 7 (in which Balmer discusses the buggy nature of Windows): ...next major Windows release, called Longhorn. I'm sure we will have some service packs in between.

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
  
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
  
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.
  

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!
  

• Lameness filters (It blocks a lot of legitmate posts)
• Unnessary posting delays. Hasnt taco learned to touch type? A lot of posts are typed in less than 20 seconds and it is a ANNOYING DELAY! 2 minute ban? Come on, so some are faster then others, big deal, some people have more to say than others
• Broken moderation system, The whole point is to sort the gems from the crap, yet a lot of posts designed to make a LIVELY DISCUSSION are MODERATED as flamebait! Come on, not everyone likes X, but just because some one bashes it dosent mean its Flamebait. Flame bait is more useful for DIRECT INSULTS and not legitmate discussions.

• Crapfloods, a meaningless flood of random letters or text, which the lameness filter does a crappy job at trying to stop, besides trolls have written tools using the opensource slashcode to generate crapfloods which bypass the filter
• Links to offensive websites, the most common one is known a http://www.goatse.cx, a awful site which shows a bleeding anus being stretched on the front page. Trolls sneak these links in by posting messages that look legitimate, but infact are sneaky redirects to the site. Common examples include rd.yahoo.com, www.linux-kernel.tk, goatsex.cjb.net, and googles "Im feeling lucky".
• Trying to break slashdot, this is actually a good thing, as it helps test slashdot for bugs. Famous examples include the goatse.cx javascript pop-up, the pagewidening post and the browser crashing post!

When we now consider the right to Free software a basic human right, I think we are all starting to take ourselves a little too seriously

The notion that software expressed in source code is a form of speech has been established in U.S. courts, at least. An attack on the "right" to free software is an attack against a category of free speech, and would represent an erosion of the entire category of free speech rights.

It's not like someone is trying to outlaw the writing of Free software, or suppress the Free software movement

In the recent past, the idea of free software was seriously threatened by a number of high-profile cases, mostly around the topic of encryption. There are many pending and emerging cases involving patents, so-called 'intellectual property' and Digital Rights. All of these represent an effort by various established interests to classify free software as an infrigement on their rights.

Nobody expected Habeus Corpus to come under attack in the United States, 18 months ago. Surprising and drastic things happen in a very short time.

Free software is good. But that doesn't mean that all software should be Free.

It is proposed that all software used by Human Rights workers in the field should be free software (Software Libre,) wherever it is at all possible.

It is also advanced that there are inherent inequalities in the control and trust relationships with proprietary vendors - which might be acceptable parts of a social contract for home use or doing business. Nonetheless this is a repugnant situation and represent an unacceptable risk to the mission of the workers and the well-being of subjects in Human Rights field-work.

The case in question is not frivalous. MS is correct. The mod chips are illegal under current law. They are circumvention devices. They contain copyrighted code. The names probably even infringe on trademark.

That's far from certain or correct:

A) Whether the mod chips are "circumvention devices" is certainly matter a debate. Witness a recent Sony case in Australia (whose law is similar to the U.S.'s DMCA), which found the chips not to be a "circumvention device" under the law. And thus, not illegal.

B) There's a very good chance the chips do not contain any code that is copyrighted by MS. They don't need to. They might reverse-engineer some technical information, and use that to create their own code, but that is not the same as copying MS code, and does not infringe on any MS copyrights.

C) The names may infringe on trademarks, but that does not make the product itself illegal. It just makes selling it under that name illegal - the company could still sell the product under a non-trademark-infringing name.

Yes. That's how courts work. You sue or are sued. A judge decides.

The alternative is no courts, just executive authority to arrest/imprision/confiscate. That has a history of working really well. You think corporations are too powerful now?

Judges toss lawsuits everyday of the week. Its a routine part of the legal system.

I think you're missing the larger, implicit point of the previous poster's comment. It's not that we shouldn't have a judicial system, it's that the current system has a significant bias towards those with wealth. I.e. someone with wealth can afford to file a suit they know is without merit, because it will cost the target of the suit legal fees. If the target doesn't have the money for a lawyer, the wealthy (corporation or individual) essentially wins by default because the target has to stop doing what they're doing, regardless of if it's actually legal. Sure, the suit will eventually get tossed, but in the meantime those bills sure add up fast. Many people can't afford that.

The solution isn't to scrap the legal/judicial system, it's to improve it. How to do that is an interesting and complex question. It's not clear how to easily discourage this sort of legal skirmishing without discouraging legitimate claims as well.

Microsoft did something in the best interests of the consumer. Isn't that a sign of the apocalypse?

No, it's a sign that:

a.) the consumer was wrong
b.) MS has found another way to do the same thing without the consumer finding out
c.) all of the above

Seriously, though, this has happened before. Just keep an eye out in the future.

I think the problem is that the government and various commercial entities keep changing/adding to the statutes in ways that make it easier to "lawfully" track down your identity. Even if it's "legal" to beat an ISP owner with a brick until he gives the IP logs for last Tuesday, it goes against the original intent. Obviously, that example is hyperbole, but very recently, the RIAA was trying to use the infamous DMCA to force Verizon to reveal their user logs.

Are you certain? :)

I went and checked what Ballmer is reported to have said; it looks as if you're right. That makes better sense than what I was remembering, anyway. Of course, lower TCO is only one dimension on which we (or they) can add value.

Back to the point I was making: any value which MS adds to Windows, they can extract from the customer, up to the point that its TCO equals that of the substitute good (Linux, in this forum). If the TCO of Windows is less than that of Linux, MS is leaving money on the table.

Thus, in the long term, leaving aside loss-leader deals, Windows TCO must be >= Linux TCO.

I've been looking a bit into the group that did the study: The Robert Francis Group. I'm having a hard time really finding much information about them. It looks like they are basically an analyst group like Gartner. I found some CNET articles, one involving Sun and another involving Microsoft. In both cases, it looks like the analyst was just there to bash the two of them.

I'm wondering if there is a history of bias against the two companies in favor of Linux/IBM. It does look like they are general pro-Linux and GPL in their recommendations. But their bias could be based on the various studies they have done in the past. Does anyone else know anything about this group?

I've been looking a bit into the group that did the study: The Robert Francis Group. I'm having a hard time really finding much information about them. It looks like they are basically an analyst group like Gartner. I found some CNET articles, one involving Sun and another involving Microsoft. In both cases, it looks like the analyst was just there to bash the two of them.

I'm wondering if there is a history of bias against the two companies in favor of Linux/IBM. It does look like they are general pro-Linux and GPL in their recommendations. But their bias could be based on the various studies they have done in the past. Does anyone else know anything about this group?

Credit Suisse First Boston analyst George Gilbert estimated Microsoft's hardware subsidy at $20 to $40 per Xbox, putting the company on track to make money on the Xbox sooner than expected.

I disagree, they're widely used by CS undergrads as well :-)

But in all seriousness, handhelds are of great use and importance corporate america. I know many people that couldn't live for more than a day if they were disconnected from their Outlook contact list. While I agree that handhelds are worthless for children, and non tech-savvy parents, they do have a niche in society that uses them quite effectively.

Palm isn't going anywhere just yet, and if this this works out then they might even have an edge on the Pocket PC market.

Personally I think that the fine fine hackers of the Xbox Linux project have done a great job. Part of their motivation is the $200,000 prize, another part of the motivation is that Micro$oft is losing a bundle on each Xbox sold for which no games are bought -- but -- IMHO the bigger parts of the motivation is the pure hacking challenge and the quest for freedom in using hardware you own.

Personally I think that the fine fine hackers of the Xbox Linux project have done a great job. Part of their motivation is the $200,000 prize, another part of the motivation is that Micro$oft is losing a bundle on each Xbox sold for which no games are bought -- but -- IMHO the bigger parts of the motivation is the pure hacking challenge and the quest for freedom in using hardware you own.

/*
* This program is for setting TTF files to Installable Embedding mode.
*
* Note that using this to embed fonts which you are not licensed to embed
* does not make it legal.
*
* This code was written by Tom Murphy 7, and is public domain. Use at your
* own risk...
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

void fatal();

int main (int argc, char**argv) {
FILE * inways;
if (argc != 2)
printf("Usage: %s font.ttf\n\nPublic Domain software by Tom 7. Use at your own risk.\n",argv[0]);
else if (inways = fopen(argv[1],"rb+")) {
int a,x;
char type[5];
type[4]=0;
fseek(inways,12,0);
for (;;) {
for (x=0;x<4;x++) if (EOF == (type[x] = getc(inways))) fatal();
if (!strcmp(type,"OS/2")) {
int length;
unsigned long loc, fstype, sum=0;
loc=ftell(inways); /* location for checksum */
for (x=4;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
fstype = fgetc(inways) << 24; fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
fstype |= fgetc(inways) << 8 ; fstype |= fgetc(inways) ;
length = fgetc(inways) << 24; length |= fgetc(inways) << 16;
length |= fgetc(inways) << 8 ; length |= fgetc(inways) ;
/* printf("fstype: %d length: %d\n",fstype,length);*/
if (fseek(inways,fstype+8,0)) fatal(); fputc(0,inways); fputc(0,inways);
fseek(inways,fstype,0); for (x=length;x--;)
sum += fgetc(inways); fseek(inways,loc,0); /* write checksum */
fputc(sum>>24,inways); fputc(255&(sum>>16),inways);
fputc(255&(sum>>8 ), inways); fputc(255&sum , inways);
fclose(inways); exit(0);
}
for (x=12;x--;) if (EOF == getc(inways)) fatal();
}

} else
printf("I wasn't able to open the file %s.\n", argv[1]);
}

void fatal() { fprintf(stderr,"Malformed TTF file.\n");
exit(-1); }

And how many degrees of separation is this from Kevin Bacon?

Their lawyers would have told them, "Sure you can fight it, but does that link actually have any value?"

Their lawyers would have told them, "Sure you can fight it, but does that link actually have any value?"

That is totally bunk. Bills are introduced late in the session with the express purpose of staking out ground for the next session. All of the copyright bills good and bad are basically trial balloons.

Boucher is a pretty sharp guy, and his bill has some big names supporting it (if you consider Intel, Verizon, Philips, Sun and Gateway big names). There is a major copyright fight brewing in Congress next term, and what you are seeing now is some early positioning. For example, Boucher's bill will be worked in the Commerce Committee and not the Judiciary Committe, which normally handles IP. That's because Coble, the chair, loves the DMCA.

By the way, according to Declan's ArticleBoucher's bill is co-sponsored by John Doolittle, R-Calif. It's nice to see bipartisan support.

Aside from the content of the Boucher-Doolittle bill, this C|NET article mentioned something else important about it: Rep. Boucher had it introduced not in the House Judiciary Committee, where Intellectual Property subcommittee chairman Howard Coble would be a fierce opponent to it, but in the friendlier world of the Commerce Committee. Whether or not you like what the bill actually says - and that doesn't even matter, since it won't happen this year - Boucher's strategical move is an extremely useful tactic in getting such legislation passed (or, for that matter, even acknowledged) in the future.

FYI, it was announced today that Charles James, current head of AntiTrust division at DoJ, and who crafted the sell-out settlement, is resigning to become Cheveron's general counsel. Article is here.

What is "fair"?
Is this fair?
Is a limit of $7.90 OK?
How much is a song worth without the physical medium?
"Electrons are free" (+ tax and delivery)

The Xbox sells badly in Europe

Xbox sales very low

Microsoft takes heavy losses on the Xbox

Profit off for Microsoft

Yes, I could go on.

Anybody else think it's kinda funny that Amazon.com is selling a book on web security?

Weaselmancer

I don't think that I did prove your point though, all I said was that Intel's offering was selling for less; acquisition price as you noted, and performing comparably. Actually I was just repeating the comments made by the post you replied to. I have no hard data about what their actual costs to manufacture an Itanium are, nor did I post any. I'll go along, however, and speculate that they're not recouping their R&D costs at the moment, but are instead hoping that lower costs will mean larger acceptance. If dumping is illegal in domestic trade I'm sure Intel is selling just at or above actual costs of manufacture. And yes, it is rather doubtless that their strong presence in the PC market is helping to keep their business afloat, along with the networking division and whereever else Intel has diversified to. However, Intel isn't a monopoly on the desktop. A little over a week ago AMD anounced it has about 19% market share. Here's a read about it. That doesn't count the people using Macs or older Sun's or SGI's or anything, though that is a pretty small portion. Just because it's their architecture that has a monopoly on the PC market doesn't mean that they have a monopoly. Had you made the assertion before the Athlon, however, I would have been quite inclined to agree.

This proves you know little...
See, now you have to go and be a jerk. I hadn't read about VLIW, and thus EPIC's compiler optimizations not carrying forward generations. A simple pointing it out would have sufficed. If you could supply a link with detail I would appreciate it. The best I've found is that because of heavy compile time optimization future EPIC processors may run the code essentially the same since the number of functional units the code was compiled for remains the same in the compiled code. And while a recompile would make it all better, I too would rather have it just work with a new processor.
It'll still run older code though and it doesn't sound like they're changing the ISA in a way that would break it with their next Itanium. That was the basis of my statement.

I'm actually kinda upset that we're going to see only one more Alpha. I wish DEC and then Compaq would have done something about marketing or anything to keep the things around. Why Intel, upon aquiring a lot of the talent that went into Alpha, isn't going to do more to further what the Alpha had going is beyond me. Intel would have a hell of an offering if they extended the Alpha.

And why EPIC indeed. The performance of the Itanium shows that it isn't a total flop, despite whatever issues about size/heat/actual cost are brought up. I don't think that at this stage you can classify the Itanium line as inferior. The performance is on par and we've yet to really see how it scales. If, when Itanium 2 has gone though its rigors, I hear that there are a whole slew of problems and performance is going nowhere I'll be the next to say that there are problems with the architechture. I'm not about to discount it on the basis of size, heat, or potential issues. Of course, I'd probably wait to see if I were thinking about buying one too.

Lastly again I'm not sure about the power of the IA-32 deal. I'm no EE, but looking around at Intel's and Motorola's pages I see the Pentium 4 with a core voltage no higher than 1.75V and the G4 fixed at 1.8V. From personal experience I've run a dual Pentium 3 with two hard drives, two cd drives, two floppies, and a decently powered video card off of a 235W power supply. My 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 has a 300W power supply and is perfectly happy. I couldn't find a smaller one, and I'm not sure if it needs that kind of power either. Comparably I did a little poking around and the G4 cube uses a modest 205W power supply (part 611-0150) and I found a G4 power supply (part 661-2303) that's a 235W piece. From the images, however, that one didn't appear to have the ability to run many drives off of it. So while the numbers are smaller I'm not sure I'd call it absurd to have a machine as powerful as the IA-32 line with power requirements at least in the neighborhood of where Apple's are. Heck, Apple doesn't post much information about what is used where, so I'm not sure the newer, comparable G4's can even use the 235W power supply either. I would say from my experience that most of the older G4 models were comparable in performance to my dual Pentium 3 machine. The cubes I've used always seemed slower.

>Why is it people think they can just make up whatever crap they want about apple and people will believe it?

I didn't author any of those links. Sorry you seem to think the entire world is against you (including PBS).

>The G4 Cube had no quality problems that I've ever heard of

Please search the web a little, and/or read more magazines, or talk to more people. Your choice.

I'll provide you with some G4 Cube problem links:

One
Two
Three - Admittance from Steve Jobs himself that G4 Cubes don't have the quality users expect from Apple
Four
Five

And so on. It doesn't matter if they were cracks or mold lines -- either way they show a lack of quality assurance. If this were my car and Apple said "Oh, those ripples on the bodywork are just caused by the type of paint we used" I'd still say it stinks.

>ARe you really so stupid you believe what you're shovelling?

Are you so blinded by your mac fanatacism that you can't admit Apple could have made mistakes in its engineering of the G4 Cube?

>You cant even remember the show, and what steve said was "Mcirosoft, just doesn't have a sense of style"

You can't remember the part where he ignores Woz, his partner, for the company. A total lack of sympathy is an emotional problem, IMHO.

Not to mention the Newton thing -- what's your excuse for that? Or did you skip over it because you have no answer and are again blinded by Mac zealotry?

Bill Simon is running for Governor of California and created this clever parody site about his opponent, incumbent Gray Davis. Ebay is not too pleased.

"MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston, an inventor and patent attorney who has been granted four online auction-related patents since 1998 and has some 10 others pending, said he sued eBay in 2001 after negotiations broke down over the auction site's offer to purchase his patents.

The company first contacted Woolston in 2000 with an interest in buying the patents. E-mail to that effect is expected to figure prominently in the case because it indicates that eBay knew about Woolston's patents but continued to infringe them, he said.

"We expect to be vindicated at trial," Woolston said. "They are rank infringers." ...

At the heart of the case is patent paperwork Woolston filed less than five months before eBay founder Pierre Omidyar spent Labor Day weekend of 1995 creating the first iteration of his auction site. Today, eBay is one of the most successful online businesses, with nearly $750 million in revenue last year and continued profitability."

For the lazy, news.com originally reported the story early September:

eBay, one of the biggest success stories on the Web, is being threatened with a patent infringement lawsuit that could force it to modify its winning auction format.

A loss could compel the Internet auction company to pay millions of dollars inroyalties and damages and even to make significant changes to its business model.

MercExchange founder Thomas Woolston, an inventor and patent attorney who has been granted four online auction-related patents since 1998 and has some 10 others pending, said he sued eBay in 2001 after negotiations broke down over the auction site's offer to purchase his patents.

...

Vint talking about the myth

Note he does mention that being Defense-funded, it did have to display some potential for some military usage. So I would agree that it wasn't developed "to survive a nuclear war" but it was likely funded because it could serve a military purpose (command and control capability enhancement).

Wait, wasn't that the HOT Rod and Hot Wheels PC offered with the Barbie PC?

CNET has more details on this problem:

cnet technews

From the article:

"This is top priority","We are proceeding with all due speed." - Christopher Budd, Microsoft security response center

I've been working on a story for New Architect about RIAA's lawsuit against Verizon and in that case (as well as this one), the RIAA appears to have little regard for standard legal procedure--according to those I interviewed, it's trying to subpoena information about a P2P file trader without presenting evidence of wrongdoing and without actually filing a legal action against that person. In effect, the RIAA wants the law and your ISP to view you as guilty until proven innocent where copyright claims are concerned. It's a sound legal strategy, actually--certainly, it's more cost effective than trying to sue several million music fans.

Quite some time ago, there were many reports of an AOL client for Linux being leaked to the net, even on /.. I have tried and used this AOL client, it was an internal build that only worked on their networks, so it was really pointless, but yes it did run, and just sat there. So, it's probably not running on Wine at all, though there was one comment from a guy that WINE CVS does run AOL7. We'll have to wait and see. There's also this application for Linux users Logik

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=spyware& tg=dl-2001

I would personally recommend Lavasoft Ad-Aware from Lavasoft.de. "Ad-aware is a free multi spyware removal utility that scans your memory, registry and hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them safely. It is updated frequently. If you are new to Ad-aware, we recommend you read the getting started tutorial."

Don't forget to download the Reference file Updater v2.01 for Ad-aware.

According to download.com, there have been more than 124 million downloads of KaZaA Media Desktop 2.0. And that's just one of the p2p programs. (One that I don't use). Admittedly there are some multiple downloads and international downloads. And merely the newest version of that program. But it's still a damn big number. Make no mistake--the efforts of te ACLU and the EFF on this issue (wait, has the ACLU done anything about this issue?) would be completely meaningless were it not for these multitudes.

That was Gator's business model over a year ago. Except they literally replaced ads on web pages that the user went to. Fortunately, the court system has consistently blocked them

That was Gator's business model over a year ago. Except they literally replaced ads on web pages that the user went to. Fortunately, the court system has consistently blocked them

Silly Mods, this isn't insightful, this is wrong.


Sony becoming a sleeper PC giant

An actual article here on ZDnet. It actually provides some background and some additional instances.

BTW, the first link is to an article on Netscape.com. I guess their department of redundancy department decided it should be netscape.com.com. At least the link works.

Here's ZDNet's article. It has a different picture with it. You can find it here.

GnuPG is definitely, certainly, and really the way to go with secure encryption and security systems, here's why..

The simple and undisputed -- and often argued -- fact is that we've come a long way, and the majority of large businesses are now using Linux as both a desktop and server OS which means these things are efficient to do.

GnuPG's (shouldn't that be GNUPG since GNU is an acronym?) ease of use and its (almost) seamless connectivity with most Linux communications applications allows the average workplace user to encrypt documents and files, preventing PR-disasteresque leaks -- such as the recent leak of the salary details of Lycos' staff to InternalMemos.com..

The seamless and very good encryption and decryption system allows staff of lots of big and small companies to simultaneously access and also work on their valuable and secure data as usual, but means that even if sites like F**kedCompany get hold of it, it's no use to them. Copying and pasting will just result in goobledygook being produced.

GnuPG's automated hyperencryption routines also mean that it could have some extremely useful and oblique military functionality, allowing our brave patriots to fight terrorism around the world.

One such example is in the encryption of numeric data such as numbers like digits between 0 and digits under 9. These encyrption routines can improve the efficiency of this by 24%.

And if they can't get the criminal charges to stick, they will probably charge them with civil crimes for using hyperlinks.....

Bluecurve (the trademarked term is left over from an earlier Red Hat acquisition) will help Red Hat keep control over the effort to unify the two interfaces, Troan said. Although Bluecurve is open-source software, letting programmers change it if they wish, people won't be able to call modified projects Bluecurve because of the trademark, he said.