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etoy.com Returns
The lawyers have been on the phone, and etoy.com is finally back up, after over two months of outage. Hopefully this marks the an end to all the legal wranglings with eToys. See the most recent story for the details on what's happened over the last few weeks.
clearly in this sector delivery times are critical, and matter to their customer base much more than a bit of corporate bulldozing. Remember, your average net consumer doesn't care about (until recently) obscure European conceptual artists. They care about getting little Jonny's toy on time, and eToys were below industry standard here.
I think that the result is fantastic, and was registered on toywar a while back, but I, and the average slashdotter, are not the same as the standard net user. The stock fall had very little to do with the domain dispute.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
True, true, true.
Seek help first. I have in the past been in such a state of mind. I never thought the possibility existed that I might come into a different state of mind where things would be even a little bit more tolerable. I did not believe those who said you will someday be able to tolerate living.
I am here now, though. It is many years later and it took a long time, but my life has become tolerable. I enjoy living. I'm not sure about whether those who told me to keep up hope were right or not, I just know that I am here now and living life is not that bad. Before I thought I could not go on and that things could not change. Instead I am here okay now today. Keep yourself alive, out of all the things you do. That is the first and most important step. If you feel unsafe, let somebody around you know. Allow others to help you if you will not be able to help yourself.
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
As I understand it, they won against the perliminary injunction (every corporation's favorite legal device), but the RIAA continued the lawsuit untill Diamond ran out of cash, at which point Diamond gave in. It may be that my facts are wrong regarding this case, but there are plenty of other, similar events which illustrate the same point.
My Rio is one of the first ones made, and has no copy protection. It will probably be worth something by the time my friend gives it back. :)
------
-Everything has a cause
-Nothing can cause itself
-You cannot have an infinite string of causes
Way to go! They finally get their site back up and slashdot posts a link to it, thereby ensuring it becomes flooded!
... for sucking. I support their right to their own name, but they should learn good web design. Frames and a shitty MIDI playing in the background... ack. Plus that ultra-annoying way they have of writing (see the title of the page, "TOYWAR.parade", like it's some kind of badly written class variable...
TOYWAR.parade = 6;
Anyway, this is not a troll. Go to www.etoy.com and see the horrible site design for yourself.
FUCK UP!!!!!!
You should be aware that toywar managed to get several people to QUIT etoys ?
:)
I am pretty certain that it was toywar that did most of the stock-crashing. They drove the stocks down with false orders, threatening emails, flaming emails, and so forth. The entire company got the "wrath of the internet" poured down their shirts. They didn't have a chance.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - arcade@kvine-nospam.sdal.com - arcade@efnet
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
First we have this wonderful timeline of events and eToys' stock price. But perhaps that's all propaganda...
Who is eToys target customer?
That would be net-savvy or at least net-capable people. The kind of people that would be bound to come across the massive amount of unfavorable eToys press. The kind of people who would have to be blind to miss half the protest sites if they did a search on eToys.
Who is eToys target investor?
People who are subject to all of the above but also get to read all the bad investor news.
To top it all off, you have people who realize that if Etoys is looking at controlling the etoy.com content we should wonder what kind of content they have. Now the FCC does too. Hmmm, I wonder who sent the information on over 350 mismarketed products?
No. Toywar had nothing to do with the fall of eToys, and Slashdot is a powerless entity as well. The only people who want you to believe that is companies who don't want to face their own toywar.
-----
No Zen is good zen
Okay, thanks for all your replies. I want to clarify a few things, for one, I posted as A/C because I was affraid someone may try to contact me or something and I did'nt want that. Now as you can see I am not dead, last night I felt really depressed and that note was serious, but I took one of my pills and about an hour later I started to feel better. Anyway, for the person who posted information saying paxil is for a certain type of anxiety... it's the one I have, Last time I ate out was november 1998, I never go anywhere, when I see people I get all tense and hot, and if I have to talk my eyes water and I stutter and feel sick. This has gotten a little better over the past few months, my therapist took me out for coffee once a week and recently I started to order it myself, and last week I went to a resteraunt for the first time since nov 1998 (as i said earlier). I just feel out of place, like I'm in a kids body and everyone else is adults, I feel mature mentally, I'm not like most teens, I don't do drugs or stupid things. I just want to get better, get a job, and get a girlfriend (I want the latter most). The paxil/therapy has been working but now I feel like it's not going any further, I think I need to up the dose of my medicine.
So anyway, I don't think I'll be killing myself and if I ever feel like I want to I'll try to think of all the responces I received (I'll even put some grits in my pants for one of you =P)
That is all, sorry for any inconvenionce.
(I ran a spell checker on my notice of suicide, as you can probably tell I didn't bother checking this post =P)
The fundamental goal of E-Toys, like any corporation, is to make money for its shareholders. Have you seen what this action did to its stock price? See that peak at the left, that's when they filed suit. By Xmas, they were less than half that value, during a very busy and very profitable shopping season. By now, their share price is below their initial IPO value of $19.
There was no legal precident set, but hopefully we have set the meme in corporate minds that if you take frivolous action against people on the internet, you risk a Public Relations and Financial disaster. If the cause is just, we don't need the courts anymore.
Legal backing would have been nice, but the US Courts have an iffy record of upholding peoples rights in the face of high paid corporate lawyers, so unless the courts change I wouldn't count on their help.
----
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Exactly... which is why etoy should get a trademark on etoy.com and then sue etoys.com for their name. They'd have more a chance to win then etoys did. and that would be real funny, at least the temporary injunction.
The battles over, but the war isn't.
Today clinical psychology is surprisingly effective at treating many things through combination drug and social skills training.
Right, so you've created a system of beliefs which, applied to themselves, tell you "yup, we're correct!" It's not unlike creating a car which "drives" so long as you define "drive" as "to sit there." It's the same with your notion of being cured. Western medicine disgusts me with how full it is of itself, especially in its legal sanctions. In most of the USA, if you so much as mention commiting suicide, you can be locked down in a psych ward for 3 days and not allowed to leave *for any reason*, and asked to pay the thousands of dollars afterwards. This is sick and stupid. If you are the sort who believes in psychology, economics, and other such ghostly beliefs, then i doubt you particularly care to hear this that I say. I would however encourage you highly to step away for a minute and imagine that perhaps everything you know is wrong, and wonder if it constitutes a miracle of science that we can turn a schizoprenic into the rest of us, or if that is more an inexcusable compromise of his or her identity.
If you want to stop boycotting, and get straight to the point here is the ceo's email addy.
Toby Lenk
President and CEO, Etoys
toby@etoys.com
Phone 310-664-8100 (i doubt this is direct line, but not sure)
ummm.... be responsible.
http://jones.ling.indiana.edu/~prrodrig
If this isn't a joke... email bayushi_kachiko@hotmail.com. If it is, it's a spam account anyway, so I've lost nothing.
And you, my friend are the unsuspecting victim of a troll (in the old-school sense).
Henri Poincaré
I really hope this is not serious, but if it is then I strongly urge you not to do it. As Poincaré says, the moments are everything, and the nights fade into nothingness in those fleeting moments of clarity or emotion. Don't rely on the doctors, rely on yourself and let the docs help if you need them to. There are always options, and the best one is usually to just go and attack the problems head on.
good luck
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Does anyone know if NSI can delete, remove domains if you register them with other registars? It seems like they still own the main boxes, can the still arbitraraly delete domains if someone else sets them up?
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
YHBT. YHL. HAND. Look it up, if you don't grok.
If you were to consider trolling an art, then that should be moderated down. It sucked. If it's art, that's bad art. It would be like the drawing of a 2 year old. It was a lame and pathetic rehash of the clichéd. RWM (right wing maniac).
If you want art, just look in trolltalk (although I'm not sure if it's still being updated) for the posts by 80md, 70% or ell7. Or the funny stuff by OSM or that 'g'whatever guy.
This was just sad. No one was fooled by that, no one
[ c h a d o k e r e ]
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
And you, my friend are the unsuspecting victim of a troll (in the old-school sense).
.. what's the "new-school sense" of trolling? Just because these idiot spammers call themselves "trolls" doesn't make them so. The last I checked, the Jargon File didn't say "to spam Slashdot with shit" under the definition of Troll ..
All right, I give up
<<
:).
:) posted these
No. Toywar had nothing to do with the fall of eToys, and Slashdot is a powerless entity as well. The only people
who want you to believe that is companies who don't want to face their own toywar.
>>
Estimating the damage, the Etoys vs. Etoy battle
contributed to ETYS stock.
ETYS stock went up about 10% as soon as
Etoys announced the end of the legal battle (to go
down really bad again later after they had
announced their 4th Q. results
So we can estimate that the Etoy vs Etoys battle
had a short term 10% downward effect on ETYS.
Long term effects on ETYS stock price are
difficult to find out.
But think about that some people digged into ETYS
fincancials _because_ they were offended by Etoys
bullying. And people found out that ETYS had
a huge market cap and that there were still a
lot of shares waiting to dilute shareholder value.
And those people (me included
facts to every investors board they could find
on the Net.
You may speculate whether people would have
invested so much time into ETYS fincancial
statements and telling their findings to every
ETYS investor they could find, without the Etoys
vs. Etoy battle.
These long term depressing effects on ETYS stock
value were still in effect after the battle was
announced dead.
Estimating the long term effects on the stock
value to be the same size as the short term
effect (I think they are bigger because they
should work in a cumulative way) gives us a total
of 20% in the decline of ETYS stock.
"Klinton" may have been overkill, but I was on a roll, you know? Inspiration comes and goes as it pleases. My muse is a "loud, dirty, boozy girl", as Dylan Thomas said in another context entirely.
--80md
I've suffered from anxiety attacks a few years ago. And basically I can agree with you, that they definitely suck. The psychiatrist I saw a few times also wanted me to take Paxil. I wasn't sure of this method of treatment, so I stopped. I then saw a psychologist who specialized in anxiety disorders, through behavioral cognitive therapy, and let me tell you she did wonders.
You can make life enjoyable again, but don't expect it to happen overnight. I know that in the midst of anxiety and/or depression it's tough to realize that life can again be enjoyable, but bear with it. You can overcome it.
I'll list here a few points which may help you. Firstly, realize that anxiety and depression are rather common occurrances. It's been said that they're the common cold of 'mental illness'. About 30% of the population experiences anxiety at various points of their lives, and in various degrees of severity. Also, please realize that at your age (17 I presume) life can get pretty tumultuous, so these sorts of feelings are normal.
Secondly, find yourself a good psychologist or social worker (ie, not psychiatrist) to talk to (I'm not sure if you have yet). Preferrably one that specializes in a similar field to what you're suffering (ie, anxiety or depression). Myself and my friends have been unsatisfied with some of the psychiatrists, because sometimes they want to give you medication to cure your troubles instead of getting to the actual issues at hand. That's why specialists that don't prescribe medicine are excellent to talk to. Some methods like cognitive therapy can be great because they help you rationalize what your anxieties are. also, other methods dealing with relaxation, hypnosis, and meditation exist which have helped me, as well.
Thirdly, sometimes medication can be necessary if the axniety/depression are rather debilitating at first. There are plenty of anti-anxiety and anti-depression drugs out there, one of those may be better for you than paxil. Also, I'm no doctor so don't quote me, but I've been told that Paxil is used for a specific type of anxiety-prone way of thinking, which perhaps you're not subject to.
So, talk to your therapist about these things, and/or find another professional to talk to. And keep faith in yourself that you can do it.
Good Luck!!
To be honest, the suicide one didn't do much for me at all. Suicide-threat-as-joke strikes me as a cheap gimmick. The fact that s/he reposted it in several discussions lost points with me as well. De gustibus non disputandem est and all that. As for mine being "crap", well, hey. It ain't my best work, I'll grant you that.
--80md
. . . but I did write it.
By the way, I still think it was a respectable effort. Not a classic, perhaps, but I'm not ashamed to put my name on it . . . so to speak
Are any worthwhile trolls still posting in trolltalk? I'd think that all the old posts would have expired by now. I haven't been there in a few weeks. Too many losers. It's a bummer, 'cause I don't meet new funny trolls any more. Hey, what the hell, it was too weird to last anyway.
--80md
Don't overdo it. It stops being funny if we overdo it. IMHO trolls, be they "works of art" or otherwise (and I'm certainly not the one to judge w/ my own work), should always be moderated by exactly the same standards as other posts. Why the hell wouldn't they be? A post is a post is a post. A good one is good. Enough moderators have a sense of humor and enough readers browse at -1. I don't have any complaints.
:)
"They wrote long-winded arguments arguing over nothing of consequence!"
Hey, I like that line!
--80md, the troll to whom you responded
It was a revision bug. There's a noun missing. I don't recall what it was, though.
I saw it also. I think they did it on purpose. If they claim the parody aspect. they more than likely will get away with it. Too bad they;re being so flamboyant, betcha it'll come back to haunt them.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
It's the AntiChrist who's the Big Brother Corporatism actually.
TEST TEST TEST
TEST TEST TEST 2
I would like to know if this site that everyone and their mother dhas been fighting, screaming, and crusading about is interesting or not?
I hdard it was some kind of fring art groupf however I would like to hear the straight dope (no flames or troll moderation thankyou)
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
And what better way to break it in then with the good ol' fashioned Slashdot effect =)
Let's hope that this is REALLY all over now.
(IIRC, the court order simply said that etoy couldn't use it, not that they couldn't own it.)
_________________
rooooar
If I were etoy, I'd change my domain tomorrow. And then I'd laugh until a hernia popped clean out of my abdomen and shot across the desk.
Esperandi
It's legal crap like this that almost makes me sick - people contorting the truth for their own benefit and screwing with others' lives. Can't we all just get along? Well, most of us, with the small exception of murderers, rapists, serial killers . . . Well, I'm sure the LAWYER is not the epitome of the american citizen the founding fathers had in mind . . .
-Leo
I wondered the same myself. When the article was first posted on /. that etoy had "won," I pointed Netscape over to their site to see how things were going. I half expected some sort of party going on. I was disappointed, however, when I found out that their site was down... what's the deal with this? Can etoy sue for something like this? I'm not advocating going off and suing everyone that is bad/gets in your way, but heck, I figure that if they're going to make a point, they need to make it.
Just my $0.0000002 worth.
Insert mind here.
Megacorp always wins.
*sigh*
ICQ: 49636524
snowphoton@mindspring.com
Got Rhinos?
But the way they're celebrating on the site is just a bit over-pretentious, don't you think? There's no need for the military theme, and absurdly-loud looping "Yankee Doodle" in the background, and the bit about keeping the site up for a while damn week.
Come on, etoy; you're supposed to be the good guys; no need to gloat. I know it feels good, especially after this long of a battle, but honestly, this is just tasteless.
i submitted this and it was rejected, what going on?
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Speaking of an outburst of mindless...
That's the pot calling the kettle black.
read the fine print, if it was submitted by someone before me it would say "bag 'o donuts writes...."
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
How do you like them apples ? 19.12 US $ MSFT 97.10 US $ SUN MSFT CPU: Intel Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz # of CPUs: 96 Cluster: Y SUN CPU: Ultra SPARC II 400MHz # of CPUs: 96 Cluster: Y Transactions per Minute MSFT 227079 SUN 135461 http://www.tpc.org
Now, thanks to the /. effect, they're having a relapse:
"There was no response. The server could be down or is not responding."
-Netscape
Geeky modern art T-shirts
1
2
3
4
5
Umm, no they didn't. Etoys dropped the suit in the face of public pressure, the courts did nothing but grant the injunction AGAINST etoy.
No ruling for justice here. The US courts maintain their current status of "money talks".
7
Read a great article in Telepolis http://www.heise.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/5843/1.ht ml
E-Toys managed to shutdown etoy.com through the holiday season. My guess is that that is all they wanted. They probably knew that they had no chance before they filed the lawsuit. But they knew that they could create a temporary disturbance.
Of course, they aren't the first ones to do this. The RIAA has been doing this sort of thing for years. They had no legal grounds on which to sue Diamond, yet Diamond was eventually forced to incorporate the RIAA's copy-protection features into the Rio because they did not have the money to continue the lawsuit. The MPAA is also fond of this sort of strategy.
We need to stop this bullshit. It seems that corporations have been gaining way too much power lately. If we don't do something, I fear that this will continue until we are living in a virtual dictatorship, with the real government completely under the control of the big corporations. Call me paranoid, but it seems to be the trend everywhere outside the Open Source community.
------
-Everything has a cause
-Nothing can cause itself
-You cannot have an infinite string of causes
Dear Moderators:
The parent of this comment raises an interesting although incorrect point. Please do not moderate it down. There is a fine line between genius and trolling, and for you, the moderator, to declare yourself fit to judge which side of the line this post sits is ludicrous.
The parent is a work of art, and should be judged as such. It should not be held to the same Rules of Moderation as other posts are held; in fact, it should be lauded as art. The group over at etoy.com are artists as well. They were PERSECUTED for their art! Okay, their domain name. But as Public Enemy once said, "Fight the Power! Fight the Power that be!"
So I ask you, dear moderator, to fight the power. Make a political statement. Mark the parent as "underrated". Don't be concerned about being held accountable, this is one of the loopholes of Slashdot moderation. This is an issue that we must fight! This is YOUR right online! (Ha! No longer off-topic!) The people that made this site great were those who stood up and said "WE MUST MAKE THIS SITE GREAT!" They fought the power! They wrote long-winded arguments arguing over nothing of consequence!
So anyway, mark the parent comment up, kay?
Thanks.
Um, have you even read any of the stories on the topic? etoy owned the name years before etoys even existed
========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Not the posting. But the fact that now we can't tell if the person who is posting this is serious or just a troll.
Remember the parable of the boy who cried wolf? Well, this is what happens.
Is the boycott over? Can I buy my Pokemon stuff now?
drugs like paxil are a crock of shit, as is the whole "science" of clinical psychology.
This is incorrect. The founders of psychology (like Freud) were kooks who spouted bullshit, but this is true of the founders of many fields. Today clinical psychology is surprisingly effective at treating many things through combination drug and social skills training.
Example: you can ``cure'' a schitophrenic person by giving them drugs which suppress the halucinations and trainging them to deal with the fact that the halucinations they do experence are halucinations. When the person is taken off drugs they now know not to start yelling and screaming when they experence soemthing which fits the usuall dillusional patterns sicne they don't yell and scream they can deal with the rest of the world more effectivly.. and they end up having few halucinations period.
Now, I should say that clinical psychology is not a science. It is a branch of medicin which is also not a science. Experemental psychology is a science just as biology is a science.
Ok, didn't Diamond win the suit the RIAA brought against them? How did they get forced into adding copy protection crap into their product?
Did I miss something of great importance here?
Not the posting. But the fact that now we can't tell if the person who is posting this is serious or just a troll.
I assume it was a troll, but I do value the moments pause (shock) it gave me to read the post. Trolls are a form of performance art. Admitadly, most of them are crappy art, but a few like the above post are really good art (if they are intended as art). The fealing of shock I got by looking at that post was exactly the fealing I get by looking at a strange and interesting piece of art. Now, if someone dose it again it will jsut be lame, but I would like to thank the troll who posted that for posting it.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Isn't this just great? A gang of European homosexuals and drug abusers steals (yes, steals) the "good name" of an honest company, and the tort monster chews them up and spits them out. "Sorry guys! You don't own your own name any more!"
To put it bluntly, etoy.com didn't rip off the etoys.com name. Quite the contrary; etoy.com was up and running a full two years before etoys.com ever existed. Etoys.com is the real ripoff, not etoy.com.
And by the way, where did you ever get the idea that the etoy.com crew was "a gang of European homosexuals and drug abusers"? They are European, but I've never seen anything indicating that they were, or weren't for that matter, either gay or drug users. I very much doubt you've got proof either. Or are you just being a prejudiced bastard? The latter seems quite likely.
By the way, the only way I can see that you'd even get that idea is if you knew what it was they did. In which case, I find it very hard to believe that you wouldn't know that etoy.com had the name long before etoys.com did. Or are you one of those types that believe that those with money should be allowed to plunder those who do not, simply because they have the resources to do so?
Before I go any further I should state that I am, in fact, a capitalist. So don't go accusing me of being a socialist of any kind.
If you don't own your own name, what do you own? Not much. Just whatever pittance is left to you by the radical leftists who control the government.
Agreed, totally. Etoy.com does own its own name. Etoys.com would have stolen it given the chance, but thankfully the courts ruled for justice (a nice change).
Do they even care what a savage disincentive this is for business?
What, the fact that you can't steal from someone else? How's that a disincentive for business (well, those businesses that don't involve stealing anyway)?
"Freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength" quoth the famous Socialist George Orwell
If you're going to quote, please quote in context. You completely ruin the effect otherwise.
Yet another irrational outburst of mindless has swept Slashdot.
Yep. And I feel bad for responding to it, but you've left me little in the way of a choice, since I can't mod this one down.
By the way, I think the word you were looking for was "mindlessness." "Mindless" is an adjective; "mindlessness" is a noun. You can't have a "wave of mindless."
Ho, hum. I doubt very much that any of you have any concept of property rights at all.
You're right; you don't have any concept of property rights at all (and you're certainly a part of "any of you [Slashdotters]"). At least, not as applies to people. You appear to be the type who thinks that a business can take anything owned by an ordinary person with no compensation therefor, simply because as you seem to see it business is always right. Furthermore, you seem to be so ardent in your beliefs that you don't even bother to research the things you argue about, at least not thoroughly enough to make any real arguments. And I haven't even touched on your apparent bigotry yet. But that's for another post.
I have just visited etoy.com and there isn't much there. However, there is a link to toywar.com. That site contains lego models which flame etoys.com. I don't know what kind of content was on etoy.com before the court case, but if someone threatened my financial gain using my own ideas, I would be upset, too. As much as I support free speech and business competition, it can be looked at from both ways. You have a company trying to pursue the American dream, or you have a website trying to gain some publicity and flaming the competition. Oh well.
Before the lawsuit, who had heard of etoy? I know I hadn't. And was there any chance of such a poorly designed site being mentioned repeatedly in the news? Probably not. etoy.com recieved more publicity from this lawsuit than they could have ever hoped to recieve in any other way. And etoy.com was never even in competition with etoys.com, right? So what was really behind this lawsuit?
The "parade" at the bottom of the screen has a guy in a green wheelchair which has "eToys" written on its wheel. Not the 's'. If they didn't infringe the trademark before, they do now ;-)
Come on, it's so obvious that was a troll. Try being a little more subtle, 80md (at least I think that was you). The "Klinton" part especially gave it away.
Well, since you didn't use your real name, I'm assuming it's just a joke. Does your suicide letter request that you be buried with hot grits in your pants? Will Natalie Portman be at the funeral?
Add to that being tired and you make lots more errors than usual
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Signal. . . Is that you??
you were probably not the first person to submit it.
drugs like paxil are a crock of shit, as is the whole "science" of clinical psychology. inventing the term "social anxiety disorder" so you can tell people they have it is about the dumbest idea this side of the ford pinto. In case this isn't a joke, seek alternatives to doing what people tell you. It sounds to me like you need a friend, and I can't imagine a worse context in which to forge a friendship than "awknowedge that you think I'm smarter than you, then pay me money so I can tell you you're fucked up and take my word on some chemicals to stuff yourself full of."
in closing, I really hope you don't go through with this, and I hope that people like this stop making your life worse than it need be.
If they were thinking ahead, they would have trolled for some banner sales to be on thier site when it came back up. When I went to the site earlier there were none. Too bad, they could have re-couped some of those legal expenses just from the /. hits alone.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.