Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Favoritism, Alternacy, Moo
Speak of the devil -- Arrgh writes: "PC Magazine has posted a more favourable review (4 out of 5 stars) of the Zaurus--they had none of the sync problems Walt Mossberg wrote about."
Give money to these guys, please. Jeff Gerhardt of the American Open Technology Consortium writes after the post about this "GeekPAC" on Slashdot.
"Although the last 24 hours was one hell of a pain in the ass, at 4:00 am we were through with that second draft and in large measure due to the constructive comments from the /. community. Yes I got a lot of nutty emails about how I should be working on more important issues like global warming and ending "greed" (can you believe that one??? how the hell can we do that.), but for the most part the comments were well thought out. As a whole I think that the whole /. community should be proud.In particular I have pages of operational suggestions and contact names across the US. The suggestion that has tickled me the most is a suggestion for a fund raising methodology for the "PAC" organization. This came from a couple guys who were debating the idea between the two of them, until it really solidified into a plan. And, we are going to do it. The plan is simple and uses the thing we love so much, technology.
We will set up a series of paypal account links, having created a category for every House or Senate member that appeals to our overall goals and objectives. If then there is a news item about an issue and one of these "good guy" politicos does something to help the cause, the PAC will write a 2-3 sentence quote that will happen to have the paypal link included inside the quote. Media sites will then be able to include the link as a part of the quote, because afterall its news right (wink wink)!!!!
This would then facilitate the people _out there_ to throw a buck at the good guy as a impulse purchase to show gratitude. It need some refinement, but I think it provides portals an opportunity to provide a political opportunity to their communities, without looking too overtly political in the process."
No more Portable Monopoly. Dr.Jones writes "...well, not really. It seems Portable Monopoly is being forced to give up their web address 'Due to legal issues with Hasbro over the usage of the word "monopoly"'. Fortunately, they will have a new site up next week (Triton Labs), and they're still on target to ship the lighting kit next month. Seems like a bit of a stretch on Hasbro's part though."
Not as much of a stretch maybe as Parker Brothers claiming the word clue.com.;)
Do cows wake up and smell the Rosen? prostoalex writes: "Newsfactor has a story on Hillary Rosen expressing dissatisfaction with Gateway's ad campaign. Who would have thought?"
... and routing around it. With a nice detailed followup to a recent Ask Slashdot post, Dr. Zowie writes: "For those who want to use alternative DNS roots but are stuck behind port-80 proxies, a simple solution may exist, thanks to several folks who wrote in to suggest it. Section 5 of RFC 2068 gently deprecates using relative URI's in HTTP requests, and in fact most web clients generate absolute URI's even though relative URI's are allowed by the standard. My ISP's not-quite-transparent proxy directs outbound port 80 packets correctly if (and only if) there's a relative URI in the request. A little 10-line local proxy that munges absolute URI's into relative URI's before emitting them to the ISP seems to solve the problem for now: I can retrieve all the nice goodies that most of you can't at www.dev.null, , www.computer.geek, and paradox.null.
Oh, and if you live near the Colorado front range and aren't a purist about routing, Peak to Peak is a pretty good outfit for dialup and DSL service. Their tech support is extremely accessible and quite good (though our views differ on the correctness of payload-switched routing)."
Update: 04/12 06:41 GMT by T : Richard Sexton writes: "While it's great to see your continued coverage of Open Roots can I just put in a quick plug for ORSC? We're older and have way more tlds.
The coordination amongst Open Roots takes place at IRON; for lack of a better term, it's the Open IANA."
Kissing and making nice. panker writes "Sun had previously given JavaRanch a cease and desist order because of a trademark issue. Sun is now backing down and being friends. Slashdot covered the first half of this issue earlier."
Due to legal issues with Hasbro over the usage of the word "monopoly"
In a "free" country, the only legal issue would be the punitive damages Hasbro had to pay for trying to intimidate someone from using a word that they clearly have no reasonable claim over.
Unless, that is, Hasbro invented the word. But either way, I guess that doesn't apply around here.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
Do you have any idea how stupid you sound given the blatant fact biasing found in every single RIAA report?
No, nor if you gave a few million dollars to the underground artists, that wouldn't improve the quality of music available for sale would it?
No more Portable Monopoly. Dr.Jones writes "...well, not really. It seems Portable Monopoly is being forced to give up their web address 'Due to legal issues with Hasbro over the usage of the word "monopoly"'. Fortunately, they will have a new site up next week (Triton Labs), and they're still on target to ship the lighting kit next month. Seems like a bit of a stretch on Hasbro's part though."
Forced to give up their website? From the news on the site, I would guess that the URL is being changed simply to avoid hassle and pricy legal bills that are necessary to fight this out in court. When will companies realise that going after companies and websites with similar words to their products does nothing but anger techies and bring them a lot of hostile PR.
I would think Portable Monopoly would win in court in this one, it was not registered in bad faith, it has a legit function, and is not confusing to hasbro.com
I suppose hasbro will argue that they have a portable version of their monopoly game.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
This pretty well states it all.
On Arrakis: early worm gets the bird. Magister mundi sum!
Support the option of open source and/or free software technology development business models as a viable alternative to the close source business model.
What the hell does that have to do with Congress? Are they now in the business of deciding what business models are viable or not? Does someone really think that some Senator from Podunk can wave a magic wand the laws of economics will change?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Point... but I like THIS better:
- "The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has charged that a Gateway (NYSE: GTW) advertising campaign that declares support for digital music downloads uses "misleading scare tactics" to frighten consumers into buying more of the company's products."
This from a consortium almost as good at scare tactics as Microsoft! (Meaning when they're convincing congress they need 'protecting' -- tariffs on blank media, copyright extensions, etc...) Oh well. I guess they know 'em when they see 'em.(My emphasis, of course.)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
Last time I checked, PortableMonopoly.com had nothing to do with board games or anything remotely related to the Monopoly trademark. Also, at last glance, "monopoly" was a common English word. How the hell can Hasbro enforce this? Is the trademark on the word "Monopoly" any more legit than the trademark on the word Windows? And if so, does it justify this strong-arm action outside of the realm of board games?
Bleh
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
"If only they would devote a little bit of the millions of dollars they're spending on this ad campaign to help stop illegal downloading ... but that wouldn't help them sell more CD burners, would it?"
Said by Hilary Rosen.
How is it Gateway's responsiblity to spend actual money to police that? Somehow I don't see Gateway having Morpheous-type software preinstalled on its systems. A computer company sells a computer to its users and provides support for the software it provides with the computer, thats it. No more. Do you actually expect Gateway, Dell, HP or any other OEM to limit its user's options? Its called capitialism Hilary, it means that people sell things to make money. If somebody uses some product you sell for an illegal use, its not your problem. Its the Polices' problem.
While we are at it, lets sue the gun industry for making things that kill people. Lets sue the beer industry for drunk drivers. Lets sue the auto industry for making 2000 lb. objects that hit people walking on the sidewalk every once and a while. Etc Etc Etc
Its the users responsibility to police themselves, you break the law, you go to jail, not the person who sold you the computer.
Thing is, Gateway's Web site has links to a site that promotes legal downloading and burning, without a trace of DRM. The Elwood track is also properly licensed for burning. Gateway's not offering Gnutella and saying "Go nuts!"
Seems to me that there are perfectly good solutions to illegal downloading that the RIAA is completely oblivious to.
--- Work, worry, consume, die. It's a wonderful life. -- Bill Griffith
While Rosen contends that digital piracy caused a 10 percent decline in record sales during 2001, the Yankee Group's Jones said he believes other factors could at least partially account for that figure.
"Certainly, digital media has hurt the record industry, there's no doubt about that. But who knows whether it was the economy, the fact that they weren't putting out hit records, or whether it really was digital downloads," Jones said.
Sounds like the RIAA is trying to use the same type of login the pro-Napster folks were using (when Napster was up and running, record sales were up, so Napster was good for the industry). Neither arguments are very good, since so many factors influence the way people buy music. Correlation != Causation.
It's nice that you said that Dr. Zowie's using a 10-line proxy to be able to use alternate routes, but what's its name, where do we get it, and/or what's the source code? Thanks!
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Oblivious to? No, more like hoping they'll wither away and quit competing with the half-assed and over-priced download sites that the RIAA directly controls and profits from before Congress realizes which direction the political breeze is going and forces them to license their music libraries to anyone for a reasonable (i.e. not set by the RIAA but 'YIKES!' Congress) fee.
On one hand, I'm very excited about this GeekPAC business - this is incredibly cool, and god bless 'em, and I'm absolutely in favor of it, and all that.
But on the other, giving congressmonkeys monetary tips for doing what we want... that is just... icky. WTF, the system done got broke somewhere if this is the only way we can get our elected representatives to represent us. What a drag.