Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Dilemma, Privacy, Chess
Front-row seats. zer0vector writes "The previously mentioned camera that was attached to the external fuel tank on Atlantis gave some great shots of launch this afternoon on NASA TV. During the feed, it looked like the ejection of the solid rocket boosters damaged or obscured the camera, leading to a fuzzy image during the fuel tank separation stage."
SkyNet has not yet achieved consciousness. DrEnter writes "According to this Yahoo article, Vladimir Kramnik has defeated 'Deep Fritz' (apparently the world's most powerful chess computer) to take the lead, 2.5-0.5 (the first game was a draw). You can find out more details at the contest site."
Damned if you do, but also if you don't. cybaea writes "A recent article in InfoWorld argues that the latest Windows 2000 and Windows XP Service Packs may be illegal for health care providers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. To make matters worse, not installing the Service Packs may also be illegal. Damned if you do, damned if you don't ..."
Dad, please switch to a real operating system. It's still spreading. deego writes " An e-mail-borne computer virus that lets crackers control infected Windoze machines remotely continues to spread and constitutes the most severe attack this year. The worm, known as W32.Bugbear, or I-Worm.Tanatos, infects computers that use Microsoft's Windows operating systems. It was first spotted a week ago and has spread to dozens of countries. Article here."
Please sit down first. calib0r writes "CNN.com is running an article on the most recent events dealing with the nissan.com lawsuit. Salon.com ran an article about this a few months ago. More information can also be found here."
Just about EVERYTHING is illegal under HIPAA. I've never seen such ridiculously stringent specs. If you want a good laugh, check out www.hipaacomply.com and read through the technology FAQ's. Even faxing is restricted.
What's your damage, Heather?
How do I get privacy while playing chess on the internet while making sure I don't get the bugbear virus?
Kramnik gets $1,000,000 if he wins, $800,000 if he draws, and $600,000 if he loses. I knew I wasn't spending all that time on Yahoo! Chess for nothing...
It's laughable to say that Deep Fritz is the strongest computer programme - Deep Blue (that defeated Kasparov) evaluated 200 million positions per second compared to Deep Fritz's 3-4 million. Deep Blue was running on an IBM-made supercomputer. Fritz isn't.
Grr! Arg!
But Uzi Nissan, whose family name is also the name of a month in Hebrew and Arabic[...]
"We've always seen this case as protecting the Nissan brand and not about money," he said. "What we are saying is the word Nissan by itself is our registered trademark and we're the only ones with the right to use the name Nissan by itself."
It gets better - Nissan Motor has registered the domain name nissancomputer.com which they'll "give" to Nissan Computers if Nissan Motor get given the nissan.com domain name. Now, if they've brought nissancomputer.com with the express purpose of squatting on it for exchange of monies, services or goods (for example, a domain name) - surley that's a blatant case of cybersquatting by Nissan Motor?
Have each machine analyze a different two-ply scenario, and play the min-max move. Granted, this only scales "linearly" (as opposed as the holy grail of parallelizing the alpha-beta search algorithm) but a one move deeper search could be enough to trounce Kramnik.
If Nissan Motors wanted to have an exclusive name, they should have made one up.
They took an existing word (in 2 languages, nonetheless) which also happens to be a surname. Now, they can't expect exclusive rights over that name.
While this isn't man vs machine as the casual observer may think, but chess playing man vs programming man, how long until programming man is able to win soundly all the time? I don't mean to offend the chess players out there, but I find it very hard to believe that the advances in both processing power and programming knowledge will eventually catch up to chess knowledge. According to Moore's law processing powers is doubling every 18 months, and I would venture that programming knowledge of AI's is progressing faster than chess knowledge given the youth of the former's frield and the extensive history of the latter's.
That said, even while as a programmer I'm somewhat rooting for Deep Fritz, as a fellow man I can't help but be in awe of the fact that Kramnik is able to think better than a machine that "thinks" millions of times faster than him.
- Bugbear actually uses one of forty different subject lines. It also sometimes throws in some random data, just for fun.
- Bugbear is a descendant of Badtrans, a nasty but not particularly widespread virus from earlier this year. The keystroke logger seems to have been borrowed bit-for-bit (at least in the copy I isolated and analysed).
JousterEnjoy.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
There is no way to save users from themselves. If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them. These problems will continue no matter how secure Windows becomes. These problems will occur on any software platform that is simple enough for the general population to use.
Actually, with a certain class of user, Windows' automatic updates make Windows more secure than Linux. Amoung windows users, that class is rather large. We may see less of the Code Red Viruses, but the Shoot Yourself in the Foot Viruses will continue.
Linux does have one advantage though. It is intensely hard to install programs for Linux. It is so complicated that it is very hard to automate. And as long as users have to install viruses by hand, and download the correct libraries to get them to run, you can be sure that Linux users won't have to worry much about a Linux virus spreading like wildfire across the net.
Can I register a domain name SomeCompany.com and then do the following:
My response would have been, "damn right, freedom of speech..."
But now, I'm just confused.
What did he do that violated any laws?
He's paid $2.2 million in legal fees. It's not like he had a choice about showing up in court to defend himself.
Now Nissan motors can take his domain name after all the legal bills? And if not, he'll be ordered to give them financial reparations for "diluting their brand name?"
"During the feed, it looked like the ejection of the solid rocket boosters damaged or obscured the camera, leading to a fuzzy image during the fuel tank separation stage."
Bring on anti-NASA the conspiracy theories...
forget it.
Does it annoy anyone else that NASA spent $750,000 on the technical equivalent an X-10 webcam?
And it failed! I mean, what the hell?
Private space enterprises deserve to eat NASA's breakfast, dinner AND lunch once they get started.
Interesting. I wonder if they'll be requiring Uzi Nissan to change his last name as well... after all, Nissan owns it...
Also, it bear mentioning that Uzi has spent well in excess of one million dollars defending his own last name from these assholes who didn't even use the name "Nissan" in the States until well after Uzi had registerred the domain and used it for his own business.
The corporate swines have also been using dirty tricks like filing suit across the county from where Uzi lives, in an attempt to sap his finances so he can't defend himself. (These are things Uzi himself talked about at H2K2, if you're curious about my sources)
That is a ridiculous statement! If you read through all the things listed maybe you would realise some people _can't_ install microsoft's patches because of there EULA requirements.
... is NOT a computer. It's just a software program than can run on your local pc, and if you know where to look, you can get it.
Deep Blue was a real computer, much more powerful than the 8 cpu Compaq that is running Deep Fritz, although the chess algorithms were less efficient.
Btw, i don't think computers will conquer the world as much ppl think it. Remember, computers are made by humans. Until computers can think on their own (no, computers don't think, they just execute instructions, they can emulate thinking but it's not really that) human race will always win.
Now, the end of the world will be probably when the viruses exterminate the human race, but that's another topic...
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
...the scariest part has to be that they let a Windows operating system anywhere near brain surgery....
During the feed, it looked like the ejection of the solid rocket boosters damaged or obscured the camera...
That can be a problem for the crew too, or used to be. Each SRB has rocket motors that separate it from the external tank at around two minutes MET. Debris from these motors can get on the forward orbiter windows. Not too many years ago the shuttle flight software was changed - a "window washer" mod - to fire the FU RCS jets for a few seconds at SRB seperation to keep the windscreen clear of debris.
Just thought you'd be interested to know...
--JIm
Do I even need to mention the even easier alternatives such as rpm and apt-get?
I could add the functionality to mozilla to automatically install anything downloaded in a matter of an hour or so, but why take the security risk?
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I believe Clark has the right idea
"...the health care industry needs to go to Microsoft with a joint NDA (nondisclosure agreement) and indemnification agreement, requiring Microsoft to hold their HIPAA-compliant customers harmless should patient information be leaked via this mechanism."
Not a prayer that MS would agree, but it will be interesting when they get pulled into court the first time a provider claims it was the update and MS forced them to allow it.
The regulatory oversight may do more to open MS software than the DOJ. Logic, reason, and innovation are not the watch words of these organizations. Regulations were passed, comply or be destroyed.
It is hard for me to decide who I want to win. MS or the regulators...
The real test of playing strength is results, of course. Although we have too small a sample size (for both chess computers) to be truly scientific, so far it looks like Deep Blue was stronger than Deep Fritz.
Grr! Arg!
Agreed on this. You're not allowed to trademark common words, like orange, hand or March. If your company name happens to be the name of a month in another language, you shouldn't be allowed to go into a fit everytime someone uses it.
Further,
The auto company didn't sue until 1999, but the judge said that five-year wait wasn't too long because Nissan didn't initially know the impact the Internet would have on business.
Then looks like Nissan should have had a little more foresight. IANAL but if you don't defended your trademark when you become aware of someone else using it, then it's become diluted.
A user has given a "Troll" (-1) moderation to your comment.1 0&mode=nested&tid=167
Dad, please switch to a real operating system.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/07/18412
"Derp de derp."
We've been told at my University that we (as system administrators) can go ahead and click the "I accept" on any Microsoft service pack or hotfix, our licensing agreement with M$ overrides anything they put in a EULA.
Microsoft could actually wind up violating their own agreement if they take action not specified in the big license.
Lol!!
I see you ran across my post here!
Does anyone honestly beleive that this guy wasn't trying to take advantage of Nissan's trademark? That he didn't cackle with glee when he registered the address? If you aren't going to use English as the standard for judging common words then you need to use common sense. For all I know "Kodak" is the most common surname in Mongolia. The fact that this has gone to court tells me that Mr. Nissan played hardball when they were negotiating a payoff; I'm guessing he demanded seven (maybe eight?) figures like most cybersquatters instead of just taking a fair settlement for his lucky last name.
Of course my definition of "problem" may be different from yours. If ./configure says clearly that I need a library and I can go to freshmeat or the application's website and download and install that library, I don't consider that to be a "problem".
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And then for 99% of a REAL operating systems programs...
Double click.
Yes.
Next.
Next.
Next.
wait...
Next.
Finnish.
So after clicking "Next" we turn into Linus? GREAT!
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
Ummm... sorry dude, but you you don't seem to have a clue about Linux. It is so complicated that it is very hard to automate. - actually, UNIX variants are insanely simple to automate, you really need some exposure to UNIX or Linux.
Double-click
Enter root password
wait...
done
In fact, I'd be suprised if someone hasn't done so already.
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Of course, Japanese people with that name are just as SOL.
These guys are like aliens- just remember that.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them. These problems will continue no matter how secure Windows becomes.
What gets me about some users is that they'll call me up concerned if two icons switch positions, but they get an email like this from a friend and actually find and delete jdbgc.exe themselves. Go figure.
The following email (the typical jdbgc.exe hoax) was circulated recently at my company, and one senior admin secretary sent it out to EVERYONE in her address book as it instructed. I sent out an email to my users saying that this is a known hoax and that if there were a new virus out there that McAfee, Norton and *I* would know about it before their email friends did.
I can't imagine why they thought otherwise.
Disclaimer: HOAX EMAIL! Do NOT delete the file or you will mess up IE's Java implementation.
-----
I found the little bear in my machine because of that I am sending this message in order for you to find it in your machine. The procedure is very simple:
The objective of this e-mail is to warn all Hotmail users about a new virus that is spreading by MSN Messenger. The name of this virus is jdbgmgr.exe and it is sent automatically by the Messenger and by the address book too. The virus is not detected by McAfee or Norton and it stays quiet for 14 days before damaging the system.
The virus can be cleaned before it deletes the files from your system. In order to eliminate it, it is just necessary to do the following steps:
1. Go to Start, click "Search"
2.- In the "Files or Folders option" write the name jdbgmgr.exe
3.- Be sure that you are searching in the drive "C"
4.- Click "find now"
5.- If the virus is there (it has a little bear-like icon with the name of jdbgmgr.exe DO NOT OPEN IT FOR ANY REASON
6.- Right click and delete it (it will go to the Recycle bin)
7.- Go to the recycle bin and delete it or empty the recycle bin.
IF YOU FIND THE VIRUS IN ALL OF YOUR SYSTEMS SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ALL OF YOUR CONTACTS LOCATED IN YOUR ADDRESS BOOK BEFORE IT CAN CAUSE ANY DAMAGE.
-----
Disclaimer: The above is a HOAX! Do not follow its advice!
While plenty of web sites, blogs, and usenet discussions informatively describe and criticize the heavy handed tactics of companies like Nissan, Molson Canadian, and Gateway (2000), these companies need to start hearing vocally from consumers who will not buy their brands based on their overbearing legal tactics and we should compile and distribute a list of companies to target. More important than a boycott itself, the average joe and especially these company's dealers, sales, and marketing people need to know WHY we're upset.
Whenever these cases come up we read the lawyers and spokespeople telling us they have to do this to "protect the brand", or to "prevent consumers from being confused". Real squatters aside, this is generally total crap. Consumers in any demographic able to buy a car will quickly realize Nissan Computer != Nissan Motors and while brands need to be protected to a certain extent in order to avoid becoming generic (like kleenex, or xerox) the chance of "nissan" becoming a generic term is slim to none (and not just because it doesn't have an 'x'). Trademarks apply to specific categories only, and this limitation should help to prevent dilution happening from unrelated uses of the same mark. Companies that try to over extend their marks should do so only at their own risk, and I bet that willy nilly suing other users probably does more to imply dilution than just leaving things be (Ob.IANAL but this should be true even if it's not the actual law).
Actually, I doubt any of these cases stem from the marketing department, more likely the lawyers are trying to justify their salaries and budgets. But if the sales and marketing people thought these tactics were hurting their brand they could override legal in a second. Enough slashdotters are young professionals with a well paying job and interest in new products to present a very attractive demographic to these people. Let them know you're pissed!
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
I have to agree with you on the automation point, as long as you understand shell programming. He does have a point though in the fact that you can't install a virus on linux just by reading an email. Even if the mail client allowed it, you would only be affecting your personal account, not the entire machine. As far as email viruses are concerned, I say long live difficult installation.
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What I don't understand about the whole lawsuit is how Nissan (motors) can prove that they own the rights to that name. Uzi was apparently around before Nissan became any sort of MAJOR advertising spender ($400 million last year).
.02
The judge decided that the Internet wasn't that big of a deal in 1994, so the 5 year span between the registration of nissan.com and 1999 when they sued was ok. WHAT? Explain to me how this is ok? Uzi had it first, tough shit if they didn't decide that the Internet wasn't all that important.
Early bird gets the worm. Money should have no bearing on who gets what domain.
If I were Uzi, I would tell them to use nissancomputer.com for themselves.
Just my worthless
Press releases touting this week's match boast that Fritz has beaten both Kasparov and Deep Blue. The win over Kasparov came, however, in a super fast kind of chess, where computers have a decided edge. And Fritz didn't really beat Deep Blue-it beat an early version of its software running on slower hardware.
Do I think that there is an added value to better algorithms and pruning methods over pure computational firepower? Sure, but you need to keep in mind that now that Deep Blue has been disassembled, there is no way to get an honest, head to head comparison.
As if it matters, I still get my but kicked by good old GNU Chess.
So who is naming these viruses? :)
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
It's true. Real men program where there's no effective evaluation algorithm. Regardless of the massive search space for go, there's no way to accurately judge a position (hence no minimax or a-b pruning); in a year you can become as good as the best go program out there.
Not a 'cybersquatter'
The judge ruled early on that Hooters wasn't a "cybersquatter," the name for Wildlife speculators who catch sought-after birds in about 30 places a year, hoping to resell them for hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Hooters(R) applied for trademark in 1994, a company which was founded in 1991. Grand opening was in 1996.
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) didn't sue until 1999, but the judge said that five-year wait wasn't too long because WWF was too busy suing the-now "World Wresting Entertainment" company because they overrated the impact the Internet would have on business.
"By 1999, HOOTERS(R) restaurants had transformed into an essential marketing tool, with the ability to reach millions of potential customers throughout the United States and around the world," Pregerson said.
The court said HOOTERS altered their newest promotional materials at that time to add advertisements to drive traffic and money to the World Wildlife Fund web site.
"Clearly, HOOTERS(R) was capitalizing upon the traffic that was coming to HOOTERS(R) restaurants in search of the Wildlife Fund," Pregerson said.
~xintegerx
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Remember the good old days when we used to laugh at the people that thought they could get viruses (viri, whatever) from email?
Automation is insanely simple, yes, but you try writing a script that will install something big without problems on all Linux platforms. You have the apt-get solution, which isn't a solution, because all you are really doing is limiting packages to old stuff. And you have the rpm solution which winds up being pretty complicated. If you have something better, there are quite a few distribution companies that would really like to hire you.
Well, at least his first name isn't already taken or anything.
I wish there was a band called Uzi Nissan. I'd totally be into them.
Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation. -debord
Isn't there prior judgement in the case Maggie Vs Maggie where food company lost to little because the guy wasn't cybersquating?
/.
I remember this was featured a while back on
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
The main problem is that open source developers aren't as concerned about ease of installation as the distributors. Developers make it installable and the distributors make it easily installable.
Personally, I think it works out perfectly. People who want and need a stable, easy to install, solution just wait for the next version of their favorite distro to come out. People who have the knowledge to compile and install software can use the bleeding edge, possibly unstable versions. Most commercial software for Linux (stuff that doesn't come on distro CDs) features installshield style installation programs and the ones that don't are aimed at developers anyway.
My parents run Mandrake on their computer and couldn't care less if they have the latest minor increment of Mozilla or not. Give distributors the credit they deserve for doing what they do well -- resolving dependencies so we don't have to.
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If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them
You don't have to do "stupid" things anymore... "somewhat clueless" will suffice. I just got a faux bounce message, sent to the error address of one of the Phoenyx' mailing lists. Looks perfectly normal, except that it alleges that the bounced message is contained in the attachment. (Maybe it is, but so is Klez or a variant thereof, so I didn't look further.) Even if you "don't open attachments, even from people you know," I suspect that one might slip under the radar. It certainly got past someone somehow, unless I happen to be the lucky recipient of a first-gen distribution.
(Of course, perhaps "running a computer without a virus checker" itself "stupid." In which case, some of us stupid people have still never gotten a virus.)
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Since neither Hebrew nor Arabic is written with Latin characters, I find the "it's the name of a month" argument rather weak. Furthermore, the owner of www.nissan.com is incorporated in the United States, where "Nissan" cannot be considered a common word
As far as the "waiting until 1999" argument goes, it sounds like Nissan is claiming he didn't infringe until 1999 when he started linking to car sites, meaning he was generating revenue based on visitors who were looking for www.nissanmotors.com.
I think this argument holds water.
However, the remedy the company is asking for is way out of proportion. Nissan Motors should be granted an injunction against www.nissan.com being used to adverstise cars.
Which reminds me of the shooting spree near DC.
There is a nice and simple way around this, though; gcc has a -static flag that compiles required library functions into the binary, removing library dependencies.
Thus, if you were designing a compiled-only, work-for-almost-all-linux-distros, you keep your binaries (relatively) small, and compile them statically.
So--if you can find a good remote-root linux exploit that's rather common, write your virus and compile it with no machine optimizations, ELF binary format, stripped, and static. That should be sufficient to get your payload down to a few kb, if you're not being really extreme. (No optimizations because you don't want to limit yourself to a specfic processor--why target only a Pentium III or higher, when you could target the whole i386/ia64 architecture family? :)
Disclaimer: I do not advocate virus-writing; nor do I, or have ever in the past, actually written malicious code. I am only stating that there's a workaround for dependency issues, even if you aren't gonna pass around the sources. (The virus reference is mostly to keep on topic.)
But '-static' does still make for a larger binary.... This is where you can still shrink it down, though, by specifying that you originally compile your code using the -I/{path-to-library}/ form; use a smaller library, like uClib.
nissan can mean "daily output" or "daily visit" or, and this may be a stretch "2, 3" I searched for it here: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/ wwwjdic?1C
As far as email viruses are concerned, I say long live difficult installation.
I'm with you, if it takes a "Difficult Install" to maintain a virus free system, then I am there. Long Live the difficult install.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Just the tank camera, no cutaways, all the way from launch to SRB seperation.
Play it fast (hold the frame advance button down) for another cool view of the whole launch in about 15 seconds.
One simple rule for its versus it's
Why isn't Nissan forced to use the name "Nissan Cars"? Only the Nissan family can use "Nissan" on its own. Otherwise, they would dilute the value of a name that's built up a reputation over many generations!
It's for lobotomies.
What does apt-get have to do with "old stuff"? The Debian unstable and experimental repositories are some of the most current available. Besides, anyone can set up their own apt repository, and put whatever versions of whatever packages they want in it.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Nice troll! You even had me going until the last paragraph. :)
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
If you read through all the things listed maybe you would realise some people _can't_ install microsoft's patches because of there EULA requirements.
Let's see...
Unpatched windows: Bugbear.
Patched windows: No bugbear, but all your file are belong to Microsoft.
LindowsOS: Different enough from the Win9x and WinNT lines that it may not catch the same viruses. Definitely comes with a mailer that's not susceptible to the iframe bug.
Fourth option. Fifth option. Sixth option. Seventh option.
Choose the one most appealing to you.
Will I retire or break 10K?
[My first /. post]U sApplication/1,9375,,00.htmlo u_help.htm
re: "Kodak" may mean something in another language...
dictionary.com says: "1 entry found for nissan: the seventh month of the civil year; the first month of the ecclesiastic year (in March and April)"
And it has been so and also recorded in dictionaries *way* before the Internet.
I went to
http://www.nissanusa.com/global/contactus/Contact
and
http://www.ncchelp.org/How_Can_you_Help/how_can_y
and sent this email:
"Formerly Dear Nissan Motors,
I have a white Nissan pickup with the word Nissan written in large black letters on the back. After reading about your lawsuit with the rightful owner of www.nissan.com, I am greatly embarrassed to have a Nissan. I plan on displaying a sign in my back glass that says 'Nissan is stealing nissan.com! See ncchelp.org'
By the way, why the @*#! didn't you go after and/or use www.nissanmotor.com ? It looks like the blank website of a cyber squatter:
nissanmotor.com
Registrant: Cha Sang Woo
816 Yeonam-Dong Buk-Gu Ulsan KOREA
Domain Name: nissanmotor.com
Registrar: NETPIA.COM, INC.(http://www.ibi.net)
Record created on........: 29-Dec-2000 EST.
Record expires on........: 29-Dec-2003 EST.
Record last updated on...: 11-Jul-2002 10:04:29 EST."
If ./configure says clearly that I need a library and I can go to freshmeat or the application's website and download and install that library, I don't consider that to be a "problem".
Reconsider your definition of "problem." What you're describing is most definitely a dependency problem. It's just that you're happy with solving dependency problems.
Just because his name is Nissan doesn't mean that he has the exclusive rights to any property with "Nissan" attached to it. He already owns nissan.net as well. Let's look at it from an independent judge's perspective:
Both sides want nissan.com. Why? They either feel that:
A. nissan.com will get more traffic and thus generate more revenue than some alternative, or
B. nissan.com is more representative of their company's name
As for A, what would cause nissan.com to get more traffic than "nissanmotors.com" or "nissancomputer.com"? People around the world recognize the Nissan brand name. Common sense would dictate that an overwhelming percentage of traffic seen to nissan.com [i]stems from that recognition, which Nissan (the car company) has carefully cultivated and paid for since 1933 when Nissan was incorporated in Japan[/i]. To continue to grant Mr. Uzi Nissan a monopoly on the domain "nissan.com" to promote his own company would be to allow his company to capitalize on the name recognition he did not establish. This fact does not seem to be in dispute. (Mr. Nissan would add, however, that the coincidence of his name should not be held against him.)
As for B, both sides feel THEY have the right to use the name Nissan, and they do. As it happens, Mr. Nissan was first to claim nissan.com. Nissan Motors, however, was clearly the first to stake out recognition of "Nissan" as a brand name. Which one should legally be priority?
It is fair to say that Mr. Nissan knew that registering nissan.com would be disputed by Nissan Motors. He chose to register nissan.com anyway, and it must be assumed that he did so because he felt he would be better served by nissan.com than nissancomputers.com or something else. It is also fair to say that he knew that by picking nissan.com he would receive more traffic to his address than a small computer store in North Carolina would normally receive, and that this traffic is a result of the name conflict with Nissan Motors.
Nissan Motors clearly has more at stake in its name than Mr. Nissan has in his company. Forcing Mr. Nissan to relocate to a different address will have some cost, but this cost is small compared to the potential commerce that is being impeded by the naming mismatch. Clearly, the public does not expect to get Nissan Computer Corp of Raleigh, NC when they type "www.nissan.com" into their web browsers.
The cost to commerce as a whole must be taken into consideration, and weighed against the cost to Mr. Nissan for relocation.
Judgment? plaintiff [Nissan Motors] may use nissan.com, but must pay a reasonable fee for costs of relocating Mr. Nissan's site.
Steven N. Severinghaus
file-ownership is determined upon installation of a modern Microsoft operating system. All your anti-MS posts are belong to punk-kitty.
Blar.
Is this some kind of "trusted computing"/Palladium version of Earth, created by Microsoft, to answer the question "What is the meaning of life, the universe, and Microsoft?
If it is...I want a copy of that OS...it doesn't crash for seven billion years! However, a product flaw causes lazers to vaporize the hardware when it does crash...
Great troll. How many of those words did you learn this week in Operating Systems class?
.rpm or .deb.
:)
dependency issues really only come into play from the distribution of binary-only packages, a la the
Of course, unless you want to build a package that depends on another library. You still need the object code from the library, regardless if you link it in now (static) or later (shared). Alas, dependancy problems still exist for everyone.
So--if you can find a good remote-root linux exploit that's rather common, write your virus and compile it with no machine optimizations, ELF binary format, stripped, and static.
Machine optimizations? When was the last time you built a virus with MMX instructions? Seriously now. But definately make sure that your virus is stripped - nobody wants those pesky debug statements around.
use a smaller library, like uClib.
I wonder how Erik Andersen would feel if he knew that there is a whole group of script kiddies ready to start compiling new viruses with the chewy goodness of Uclibc...
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Since neither Hebrew nor Arabic is written with Latin characters, I find the "it's the name of a month" argument rather weak.
Erm... if you want to take that tack... "Nissan" in Japanese isn't written with Latin characters either.
---
Dum de dum.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
He's my friend. He sits a couple of cubes down from me. We trade amusing/interesting posts back and forth.
From the article:
... what do you think?
[The car company] has registered the domain name nissancomputer.com, and Dutcher said the company will give that Web address to Uzi Nissan if he's ordered to turn over his domains to the car company.
Looks like Nissan Motors are cybersquatting to me
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
"Datsun was used for passenger cars. However in 1982 the corporate name "Nissan" started being used for all new lines for passenger vehicles too"
"U.S. District Judge Dean D. Pregerson is expected to decide by November whether the coveted Internet addresses go to the automaker or stay with the man who's used his family name on a succession of businesses -- from mobile auto repair to exporting to computers _ since he came to Raleigh two decades ago."
Who started using the name first? I'll bet this guy is more than 20 years old, which is how long Datsun has been using the name Nissan.
If Datsun changed it's name to Nissan after this guy went into business, he could have a case for taking the entire use of the name from them.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Lots of things have gone to hell when they became too "easy". This ease means the ability to be grasped by a moron, rather than actually utility of use by a skilled user.
Hence the number of morons on the Internet these days...it's so sad that I'm 21 and I can remember a time when if I went surfing randomly I would likely come across mostly pages of people smarter than I, whereas now it's a bunch of babbling "blogs" written by preteens who can't speak correctly and believe the world is all about consumerism and their junior high boyfriends.
Good point. Can't argue with that.
This space intentionally left blank.
So technically, they BOTH have rights to the name, perhaps even equal rights to it. The guy should probably get to keep it, but come on, he should have known Nissan would come calling when he hit 'submit' on NetSol's website way back when. The judge should do something creative - like disallowing BOTH of them from using the name, he gets to use www.nissancomputers.com, and Nissan has to use www.nissancars.com.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
since Micro$oft has put in all the nice DRM goodies in their updates, I don't want to apply any of the patches. However, that leaves me vulnerable to the things that the patches are supposed to 'fix'. *sigh* I guess my Windows machine is screwed either way....(wanders off to go install Mandrake 9 on his Linux Box :)
This is probably posted already buy you can view this video on Space.com Here.
It's pretty sweet.
I remember a trek episode where spock diagnoses the computer is malfunctioning because earlier that week he'd programmed it to play 3d chess, and now he was able to beat his own program. I guess in the far future programming languages are really really good. Man in the real world I can outplay my own programs far too easily. :P
Then again Spock was WAY overrated at 3d chess. Kirk beat him routinely using "illogical" moves. Wait until he plays my little sister, she's the master of illogical moves!
I thought that if you registered your last name as a domain name that no one else could take it from you..because it's YOUR NAME! Am I wrong here? Seems to me that HE has more right to HIS OWN NAME then some car comapny does...especially when they were Datsun for many years BEFORE they changed their name to Nissan!
there ? A REALLY simple HONEST answer would be for BOTH sites to place a nice visible link on each site with a little goodwill plug for each other. They are not in competition, and if the issue is not REALLY money but name recognition and family honor that should suffice. But of course we all realize common sense went the way of the dodo and the tazmanian tiger....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Corporations should only get their stock ticker as a domain name and name servers would provide a list of possible matches based on the search term.
These morons are not worried at all about the patient's information, they seek way to cover their fscking ass.
And again "who is responsible" ! In other words "we don't give a shit if the patient dies, as long as we are not held responsible" !
I can, for instance, look at a picture of my wife and identify her as my wife in a fraction of a second. The best image-recognition software in the world can't reliably do even that simple task.
That's extremely unfair since no computer has a wife (or husband). We all know that computers can't get married to people -- possibly explaining why so many of the guys on Slashdot are single.
Verse 1:
Mi-cro-soft is a piece of shit,
A piece of shit,
A piece of shit,
Mi-cro-soft is a piece of shit,
La la la la la
Verse 2:
Win-doze is a piece of shit,
A piece of shit,
A piece of shit,
Win-doze is a piece of shit,
La la la la la
Voiceover:
I'll HUFF and I'll PUFF and I'll MAKE your computer crash!
This is because Microsoft does not worry about making their products work right. They have this enormous cash cow. All they have to do is make the graphics stupider, put more bugs in, and release it as the great new operating system that will save the day. And then the IDIOTS who use that piece of crap software wonder why bad stuff happens to their data.
LISTEN UP PEOPLE! There is an alternative! Or, more accurately, there ARE alternatives! PLURAL! All you have to do is get Linux or *BSD! Big successful companies like IBM and Apple are supporting these great systems! There is a TON of software out there for them! So yeah, you might not have all the whiz-bang UGLY *G*A*R*B*A*G*E* that comes with that piece of *G*A*R*B*A*G*E* , uh, what's it called? Oh yeah--WINDOWS. That piece of GARBAGE!!! Use free software. Make those evil people that make the garbage go out of business! That will bring joy and happiness to the world!!!
Ok, well maybe it ain't happening in the next two weeks. Ooooooooh well. It's nice to dream about it. TIME FOR ANOTHER BEER (as in free)!
The Russians, when faced with the same problem used a pencil.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
... doesn't not a legally binding contract make. Mainly because there is no way to prove whether you were the one who clicked it. This is why EULAs have never stood up in court (at least in the EU). The only way they could be made legally binding is for the software company to insist you return a signed form before allowing you to run setup.exe.
EULA's are not legally binding. At least not where I live, and even in the US they are surrounded by legal controvercy.
Basically; don't read them, don't care.
Since neither Hebrew nor Arabic is written with Latin characters, I find the "it's the name of a month" argument rather weak.
FWIW, in Turkish which does use Latin characters, the word for April is also pronounced "Nissan" but is spelled "nisan". (English obviously needs the double 'S' to stop the "i" from becoming a long sound).
Besides, the guy is not trying to sell cars under the name of Nissan, just computers. Seems to me to be similiar to the Apple (records) vs Apple (computer). It's easy enough to distinguish the companies because they are in totally different markets.
As far as the "waiting until 1999" argument goes, it sounds like Nissan is claiming he didn't infringe until 1999 when he started linking to car sites, meaning he was generating revenue based on visitors who were looking for www.nissanmotors.com.
Oops! Sorry, I missed that bit in the OP (makes note to self to drink some more coffee).
[Event "Brains in Bahrain Man-Machine Match"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "2002.10.08"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Deep Fritz"]
[Black "Kramnik, Vladimir"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C45"]
[PlyCount "100"]
[EventDate "2002.10.04"]
[SourceDate "2002.10.04"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Bc5 5. Nxc6 Qf6 6. Qd2 dxc6 7. Nc3 Ne7
8. Qf4 Be6 9. Qxf6 gxf6 10. Na4 Bb4+ 11. c3 Bd6 12. Be3 b6 13. f4 O-O-O 14. Kf2
c5 15. c4 Nc6 16. Nc3 f5 17. e5 Bf8 18. b3 Nb4 19. a3 Nc2 20. Rc1 Nxe3 21. Kxe3
Bg7 22. Nd5 c6 23. Nf6 Bxf6 24. exf6 Rhe8 25. Kf3 Rd2 26. h3 Bd7 27. g3 Re6 28.
Rb1 Rxf6 29. Be2 Re6 30. Rhe1 Kc7 31. Bf1 b5 32. Rec1 Kb6 33. b4 cxb4 34. axb4
Re4 35. Rd1 Rxd1 36. Rxd1 Be6 37. Bd3 Rd4 38. Be2 Rxd1 39. c5+ Kb7 40. Bxd1 a5
41. bxa5 Ka6 42. Ke3 Kxa5 43. Kd4 b4 44. g4 fxg4 45. hxg4 b3 46. Kc3 Ka4 47.
Kb2 f6 48. Bf3 Kb5 49. g5 f5 50. Kc3 Kxc5 0-1
In the Deep Blue vs Kasparov match, they had _people_ tweaking and tuning Deep Blue between matches.
That's unfair. It's like playing against a different unknown opponent for each game. Worse it's actually playing against a team of people aided by a powerful machine.
The Kramnik vs Fritz match seems fairer.
The rules for registering domain names have been made public since the beginning. Companies had the option of defending their trademarks from the start, if some of them didn't believe the internet could be a source of profits, that's their problem. If company managers have been too lazy to keep abreast of the technology, they should pay for it now, registered domain names are "intellectual property" and should be treated as such.
file-ownership is determined upon installation of a modern Microsoft operating system.
More specifically, upon installation of Microsoft Windows XP, the user agrees to an End User License Agreement. One reading of the Windows Media Player EULA implies that Microsoft reserves the right to leave a backdoor in the NTFS permissions that reveals significant portions of the contents of your hard disk.
Not to mention "My Computer", "My Documents", etc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
That still doesn't change the fact that the latest service packs for XP and 2000 (and Windows Media Player) provide a back door for remote access by MS and any third parties that they decide to provide access to.
Given their history, how secure do you suppose that service is going to be?
I'll stick with NAV, thank you, which, amusingly enough, picked out Bugbear from an email sent to me this morning.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
Deep Fritz uses the G4 processor.
As Apple keeps telling us, you can't compare simply by specs. Some computers are just faster no matter what the numbers say.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Simply give NissanMotor.com the option of having a link to their site on his page. ...Perhaps you were looking for Nissan Motors.... Nissan should, of course, pay for this link. He registered his own family business long ago. The fact that it is, and has been his family name for generations SHOULD exhonerate him. Its ridiculous that one cannot own a domain of one's own name. (unless it's already taken, of course).
Next.
Finnish.
It tricks users into switching to a Finnish language set? Neat-o...
A friend of mine pointed out that Domino.com could be easily claimed by any one of several companies: A pizza company, a sugar company, or a software company.
This is a very sordid and very nasty issue. If you want a view from the front lines look here.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Our society has come to the point where a corporate name that has been around only 20yrs or so can come along and demand that a person cannot use his last name, which has been around for 100's of years.
That's sick
That still doesn't change the fact that the latest service packs for XP and 2000 (and Windows Media Player) provide a back door for remote access by MS and any third parties that they decide to provide access to.
Do they really?
Or does the EULA just resrve the right to do so?
There is a difference.
The Nissan brand name is so valuable that they wouldn't risk it when they first sold cars in America, waiting until the name change cost multi-millions of dollars. Same spineless company.
From the Salon acticle, Nissan-the-man's POV on the advertising:
"In 1999 we had 23 advertisers on our site," he continues. "Three of them were auto-related companies. [Nissan Motors] is claiming they were automotive companies. But none of them were selling or were in the business of selling cars or car accessories."
Dunno it it's true, of course, but that's what the judiciary is for.
yes, we have no bananas
An open letter to: webmaster@NissanUSA.com.
Can you tell me how to get a hold of
the Nissan Computer company? I know
it's located in Raleigh NC USA and I
thought that I could find it by typing
NISSANUSA.COM. But instead I got a
Japanease Car company? What gives you
the right to highjack this name?
Could you e-mail me the link to the
Nissan Computer company? BTW I checked
nissan computer.com but I think
someone is cybersquatting on that name,
trying to convince Mr Uzi to pay them
for it. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Mark
Briefly: German domain-name squatter snaps up "Shell.de." The German division of Royal Dutch/Shell negotiates to buy it in 1996, but won't pay the freight, and drops the matter. Couple years later Andreas Shell, owner of a publicity and translation business, buys the domain name (I'll bet the price had dropped a ton now that the oil giant had taken a pass), and set up his Web site.
Then Shell Oil tried to win in court what it lost in negotiations, and sued for the rights to the domain name. Astonishingly, the German high court ruled in the oil giant's favor. The judge's decision is full of flip-flops--on the one hand, he says everyone has the right to the domain name of his own name, whether for personal or business use--then he contradicts himself and says that such a right evaporates when you look at the relative sizes of the two. His ruling was based in part on what he conjectured the average user would expect when surfing to that site.
Why couldn't the judge have simply ordered Herr Shell to prominently display a link to Shell Oil on his Web site?
I'm not so conservative as to hold the "ownership is nine-tenths of the law" kind of views, but that, plus the fact that it was the guy's *name*, for heaven's sake, makes me think this was a really rotten decision. I'm sorry that I can't see a better or fairer way to award domain names than first-come-first-served, squatters be damned.
Good point, Alexo. There is a difference between allowing the vendor to install a remotely accessible service on your system and merely giving them permission to do so.
Sort of like giving a person your permission to shoot you in the head. Just because you tell them it's alright to do so, doesn't necessarily mean that they will.
If it's all the same to you, I would rather not give them the permission in the first place. Nor will I hand them the gun with which to do it.
That said, I am not going to install their service packs and, thus, I am not going to give them the opportunity to install such services on my systems.
Do they really install a back door? I'm not even going to allow the risk inherent in finding out.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
While Slashdot has a habit of repeating stories, this is the first time I think I've seen Slashdot link an article discussing an issue first raised in an Ask Slashdot.
In reality the ability of a virus to install itself is about equal on both platforms and is trivial. The trick is to get to a position where the virus has the ability to do the installation. Supposedly this is harder on Linux than Windows and this is the real difference.
Automatic update has it's good and bad points. Although it gets bug fixes installed, it also means a great deal more uniformity for the machines that makes virii easier to spread. It is also possible that a virus will disable it or hijack it for it's own purposes, thus leading people to believe they are in better shape than they really are. However these are minor, the big worry about automatic update is it really is a mechanism for MicroSoft (or Apple, or RedHat) to exert final control over your machine and absoutely should not be trusted by anybody. You should be able to easily turn it off, get a list of the updates, and be assurred they are not installed until you have confirmation from other sources that "update x.y.z is ok".
How can you separate minimax and pruning? One is generating the tree, the other is optimizing it.
Seems you just sepearated it to me. A-b pruning is one particular method of pruning a minimax tree. Quoting Norvig & Russell from "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach":
"The particular technique we will examine [for pruning a minimax tree] is called alpha-beta pruning"
So as you see, Microsoft did innovate!
RMN
~~~
THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #14 -- VALGOL
VALGOL is enjoying a dramatic surge of popularity across the
industry. VALGOL commands include REALLY, LIKE, WELL, and Y*KNOW.
Variables are assigned with the =LIKE and =TOTALLY operators. Other
operators include the "California booleans", AX and NOWAY. Loops are
accomplished with the FOR SURE construct. A simple example:
LIKE, Y*KNOW(I MEAN)START
IF PIZZA =LIKE BITCHEN AND
GUY =LIKE TUBULAR AND
VALLEY GIRL =LIKE GRODY**MAX(FERSURE)**2
THEN
FOR I =LIKE 1 TO OH*MAYBE 100
DO*WAH - (DITTY**2); BARF(I)=TOTALLY GROSS(OUT)
SURE
LIKE, BAG THIS PROGRAM; REALLY; LIKE TOTALLY(Y*KNOW); IM*SURE
GOTO THE MALL
VALGOL is also characterized by its unfriendly error messages. For
example, when the user makes a syntax error, the interpreter displays the
message GAG ME WITH A SPOON! A successful compile may be termed MAXIMALLY
AWESOME!
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...