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Auld Monitors: Monitor World

PCI Vendor and Device lists

( maybe you can get Knoppix to tell you, with "lspci", what a device is, for the previous one...

Many know of Adrian's Rojak Pot BIOS guide, sometimes useful for weird BIOS 'features' like the older "Format HD" that doesn't tell you this is for old RLL drives... even though no ESDI/RLL drives were sold in the year the mobo was made... (ouch)

I bookmarked, but haven't bothered with yet, HardwareSecrets.com, maybe it's got the stuff youse want...

-sigh- I USED to have a link to a (Russian?) site that listed all sorts of old drives' jumpers ( not the clothing ), dunno what happened to that one...

If you find more such gems, add 'em, eh?

Cheers,

-me

Okay I'm an idiot. Shoot me. The gist of the letter (found it) Does state that Jim's use of the name and logo may mislead people to believe he was associated with or endorsed by the PCI-SIG group. It does not, however, say that the website must be taken down, only that it must be modified and they, PCI-SIG, assured that there will be no confusion of his affiliation with PCI-SIG (or lack thereof, in this case).

If I'd been him, I would have just removed the logos and pasted a big "This website is not affiliated with PCI-SIG in any way, shape, or form." disclaimer. I still think his use of the logos was their main complaint, however. And before you go thinking that PCI-SIG is a big evil company bent on mass domination because they didn't want any possible confusion, the first communication directly says "request that you work through IBM to investigate the possibility of creaing a similar database of PCI(r) Vendor ID numbers..."

My immediate thought when I saw the first slashdot post, saw that Mr. Boemler had taken down the site, and read the general /. audience's response, was: "Geezus criminy, you people are all overreacting."

That's been my thought since reading the CND letter. I don't recall it saying anything about the site itself, just its use of the logos. I can't find the letter itself anymore (looks like it's been removed from the site), but there isn't a single PCI-SIG logo anywhere on it.

Here are the first 10 hits of a GOOGLE search for "PCI" (somewhat edited by me). As you see, the Term is not that individual...

1. PCI Geomatics Home Page - Committed to GEO-Intelligence Solutions
   PCI Geomatics is a worldwide-class leader in the geomatics software industry. ...
   Description: Software provider for remote sensing, photogrammetry, cartography, spatial analysis, and GIS.
2. PCI News
   Welcome to the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI), headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with membership throughout the world. ...
   Description: Organizational site includes trade, technical and public affairs information for precast/prestressed...
3. PCI-SIG - Home
   PCI-SIG Logo, ... Free Members Only Technical Support View the PCI-SIG Integrators
   Description: Unincorporated association of members of the microcomputer industry set up to for the purpose of monitori...
4. pci.chadwyck.com/
   [Periodicals Contents Index]
5. pcift.chadwyck.co.uk/
   [Periodicals Contents Index]
6. PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS INC.
   The summary for this Japanese page contains characters that cannot be correctly displayed in this language/character set.
7. pci.chadwyck.co.uk/ [Periodicals Contents Index]
8. PCI Vendor and Device Lists
   PCI Vendor and Device Lists. This page is primarily intended as an engineering resource for people who need to deal with computers built around the PCI bus.
9. PCI Technologies Inc. designs and manufactures custom and ...
   Description: Designs and manufactures filters and traps, as well as test signal generators and splitting/combining...
10. PICMG - PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group
    The PICMG (PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group) is a consortium of over 250 companies who collaboratively develop specifications that adapt PCI ...
    

Bye, Pat!

Don't copy it, but feel free to make similar points. My take on this is this is probably a young, inexperienced lawyer who thought it was big and cool to go in with all guns blazing, and is now (I suspect) desperately trying to dig himself out of the shit. If, on the other hand, PCI-SIG actually instructed him to write in these terms, they deserve everything they get.

Dear Michael Cohen

I appreciate that you're probably getting a lot of grief from strangers today, and probably feel bewildered and a little hurt. You probably feel that you were just doing your job, and that people (including me) are just shooting the messenger.

That's true, of course, to a degree. But in this case it isn't an adequate excuse. Yes, as a lawyer, your job is, in the end, to do what your client instructs. But when your client instructs you to do something extraordinarily foolish and liable to cause grave damage to your clients' own interests, part of a responsible lawyers duty is to councel caution and reflection.

Your clients members are, as a consequence of your action, denied access to a data resource which is vital to them. To replace this resource, which you have by your action denied to them, will cost them many thousands of dollars, delay development of new devices, and cause untold confusion. At the same time, their goodwill and reputation among the technical community on which they depend is in tatters. What possible benefit did you see to your client, and how do you propose that they should go about repairing the damage that has been caused?

After a letter as unnecessarily offensive and aggressive as that which is posted here http://www.yourvote.com/pci/Scanned_.pdf over your signature, saying sorry is not likely to be enough. This isn't a matter of ego, virility, and big swinging dicks. It's a community where people provide resources out of good will and a spirit of co-operation, and you cannot simply go rampaging about in your elephant boots. You (and your clients) have a very great deal of humble pie to eat.

Yours Sincerely

Simon Brooke

Chief Technical Officer, Scaffie Ltd.

They hung their case on the PCI logo on my site, but since they claim I don't have the right to even use the three letters "PCI", they clearly want my site gone entirely.

The second part of the C&D letter requests that he work through IBM to basically get this made into an "official" page under the auspices of PCI-SIG or IBM, which is a PCI-SIG member. So what I don't get is, why does it appear that Jim flipped out and decided to take the site down? I'll agree that PCI-SIG's method of contacting him was pretty poorly executed, but they never demanded that he take the site down, and their suggestion that they would rather the site be "official", that they indeed want the data available.

So why does the site need to go away, exactly?

That said I am letting them know I'm unhappy and will be avoiding PCI whenever possible.

I've written a similar letter to the people referenced at this page at the time of writing (which I now understand may be slightly errant, but atleast the lawyer will receive a copy, which is the important part. I may send a follow-up to a proper leading member of the PCI-SIG group should I find a valid address to do so).

I would not be at all surprised if the first that the PCI-SIG people heard about this entire situiation was through slashdot.

They retain the lawyers to do things like this so that they don't have to.

Here was their very first communication... (they sent me this scanned image as a "confirmation" of a copy they claim to have sent two weeks earlier, but I received no snail-mail).

You only received the scanned image per email, but never signed for the receipt of the letter? WTF!? You could have entirely disregarded the email as a joke, because anyone could have sent it. After all, you never ever got a certified letter from them!

But apparently, you chose the publicity instead. Your site, your database, your choice, I suppose.

PCI-SIG owns the exclusive rights to use the "PCI" family of trademarks ... including the mark and logo "PCI" bearing U.S. Trademark Registration Number ...

Seems to me that they only are staking out legal grounds for complaining about the logo. Never mind that they object to the letters PCI - they don't claim legal ownership of the letters.

Your use of PCI-SIG's trademarked name and logo on your website is likely to cause consumer confusion in the marketplace as to sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement of the website by PCI-SIG

So the actual complaint is that PCI-SIG's lawyers are concerned that Boemler's site might be implying PCI-SIG is endorsing his material. I can't guess how many sites include a disclaimer - but if Boemler adds one, I'd think that would handle their complaint.

Your website indicates that you are an employee of IBM, a PCI-SIG member.

Maybe this is part of their complaint? But this is also playing dirty - they're threatening the guy's job. Not outright, but it's implied. I already don't like these lawyers.

But: (and with the IANAL) PCI-SIG is complaining about the use of the logo. Then they are putting forward the removal of the name and logo as a solution. Scare tactics, they want him to completely cave in ... but they haven't staked out enough ground (yet?) to demand the whole thing.

This means that if he follows through on their suggestions, his resource will become an offical one backed by PCI-SIG. This entire matter hardly seems unreasonable. I certainly wish more companies would make similar offers of, "your unofficial resource for our product is infringing on our trademark, but we'd like let you move it onto our web site instead."

The PCI bus already uses vendor and device ids. Here is a list of PCI vendor ids. If you click on the Vendor/ID you will get a list of the known device ids held by that vendor.

And don't you think 64bits for vendor and device is a bit much? That would allow for 18446744073709551616 vendors with an allotment of the same number of devices for each one.