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Slashback: Wireless, Radio, Ralsky
Don't Post While Sleepy: Hi, Chrisd here apologizing about that false post on Sony/Nintendo Playstation Trademark Settlement. Oops. Doh. No excuse. Mea Culpa. I'll be more careful next time.
Is "Rubber stamping everything" a patentable business practice? Brian Dear writes "With all the news these days about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issuing a patent to AOL/ICQ/Mirabilis for Instant Messaging, I thought the Slashdot community would be interested in reading about TERM-talk on PLATO, which was announced on the PLATO network on this day in 1973. Here is the URL with a screen shot of the actual announcement."
Turing, Marconi and Rosen: pick any two. squiggleslash writes "Salon is running an informative and sympathetic story about GNU radio. The article discusses how the project could end up pre-empting the Hollywood producers and other content cartel's attempts to destroy modifiable consumer hardware by creating a blatently legitimate space where programmable hardware is a requirement, as well as opening up radio to groups outside of the current cabals. Good stuff."
We've mentioned quite a bit about GNU Radio before (see also Eric Blossom's interview questions and answers; this article delves into the fight that the GNU Radio folks are gearing up for over broadcast flags.
Suiteness and light. To follow up on our mention of the effort to buy from Gobe (and release as Free software) the sourcecode of Gobe Productive, Simon Gauvin of beunited.org writes "beunited.org has been pledged over $10,000.00 by the public and corporate community for the release of Gobe Productive for BeOS. Linux users have also pledged, and we encourage more members of the Linux community to participate for the release of the Linux version. Call all your friends and send them over to beunited.org to help raise awareness!"
Here's the relevant discussion thread if you'd like to learn more about this effort; I wish the site had a bar chart of some sort showing how much money was currently raised, and an obvious PayPal link or similar. Note that for now, beunited's first goal is to open the source for the BeOS version of Productive.
Ralsky, Ralsky, Ralsky ... IsoRashi writes "Over at the Register they have this short article about a guy who took some photos of spammer Alan Ralsky's home. After taking the photographs, the man was chased by someone in a black jaguar and he began receiving threatening phone calls the next day. Here is a direct link to the site the photographer set up."
Read your TOS carefully before you start downloading ... Sergeant Beavis writes "Nate Carlson was kind enough to create a HOWTO for connecting your Linux box to Sprint's Vision network via a Sanyo SCP-4900 phone. However Sanyo's store shows the cable to be out of stock. Now comes FutureDial to the rescue with both the USB cable and SnapDialer software for connecting to the Vision network with Windows instead of Linux. Oh, the cable only cost $19.99 at your local Radio Shack. Enjoy!"
And let this be a lesson (of sorts) to you! gh0ul writes "Looks like Uzi Nissan (for those of you who don't recall owns nissan.com) has lost his fight with Nissan Motors to keep his nissan.com (last name by birthright/company) domain. The site now reads "In compliance with a ruling issued by the United States District Court in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002, in the lawsuit of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. v. Nissan Computer Corporation, this web site has been converted to non-commercial use." Are we ever going to have any protection against these kind of things?"
The Eye was never there. You never saw it. It was not creepy. Finally, Rob writes "The creepy all-seeing eye logo from John Poindexter and the Total Information Awareness project is suddenly missing from the TIA web site. Old site ; Current site Perhaps TIA is seeking suggestions for a new logo?"
That's ridiculous. Nissan is his last name, and his company's name. There needs to be some sort of public outcry one of these days.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Is there a forum for this stuff? Ever since the vaunted great release of "Slash2" (or whatever it's called), it seems like the rate of failure has dramatically increased. I know this comment will probably be listed at -1, but since I can't login (cookies are hard!) that's what I get.
I am sick of hearing that "the law still affects the internet" and all that shit!
The fact of that matter is that the internet(more specifically the web) is treated harsher by the law, and not just to "send a message!!!"
If it was a billboard, a newspaper, or a shop, the man would have been able to keep it! But no, because it was on the net; he lost it.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
As far as I'm concerned, anything that ends with .com _should_ indicate that the domain is a company! I feel that it's just plain wrong for personal websites to be setup in the .com TLD.
Having said that, though, Uzi Nissan does have a business in that name. He is most definitely entitled to keep the domain name. I really wish there was a transcript of the conclusion that the Judge came to. I'd really like to know the reason why Nissan Motors won the case.
DeeK
According to this article, Uzi Nissan was told to stop using his site to show car ads. That is a case of trademark dilution. If the guy's just selling computers, then I'm all for him keeping the domain. If he's trying to branch out into the auto business, then he's clearly abusing Nissan-the-car-company's trademark. So he gets to keep the domain, but not show car ads. Sounds like everything's good, right?
These anti-spam nuts are beginning to act a lot like the anti-abortion nuts. Posting personal information about spammers online, making threats against them. Very similar to the so-called "wanted posters" that anti-abortionists post on their sites.
Taking pictures of someone's house, from the street, does not break the law (though you could argue it borders on stalking). Accessing public records to find things like addresses and phone numbers does not break the law. By Ralsky's own public statements, signing people up against their will for "exciting commercial opportunities" does not break the law.
Making threatening phone calls to a random person *does* break the law. Parking outside their house with the deliberate intent of scaring the hell out of them *does* break the law. Sending spam to people after they have opted out *does* break the law (in many states).
See the pattern? As much as I usually don't believe in such extremes, this really does look look like a case of "good guys vs bad guy".
So, you feel that taking photos from a public street is some sort or threat or harm against Ralsky?
So taking photos from a public street shows a lack of respect?
I have two things to say to your ridiculously ignorant point of view;
- those who want my respect shall earn it
- act as you would have others act upon you
(as one would reasonably expect others in one's own society to share the same values, you can expect others around you to act in manner similar to you)
Ralsky has already acted like a total asshole, he won't stop because of some pseudo-christian claptrap that depends on others having morals and a conscience to control their actions. The "turn the other cheek" stuff won't work on someone that won't eventually realize what they are doing wrong. It only works on people that wake up and "see" what they are doing is wrong.
Ralsky may change his ways, he may not. If he changes, it sure as hell won't be because someone was NICE to him. If he does not, people may take out their frustrations on him. He'll have to deal with that as part of the price of that big old (nasty looking) yuppie palace he bought himself.
For God's sake, stop hitting back and turn the other cheek. How else will we be able to stop this (imo) unfair treatments?
Hit back HARDER! At some point you both laugh at the pain you caused each other and agree to stop it, or one of you has to hide the body. Which is plenty hard and makes you sweat a lot, plus it's a hassle, so you tend to not get in any more fights. God, the death of common sense around here is annoying... *SMACK*
And yes, you might be stupid. The guy took some pictures of Ralsky's house - I would hardly call that 'hitting back' or disrespectful. Someone threatening this guy... that's hitting back. Or just hitting if you consider that the first 'hit' was taking a picture.
Furthermore, this isn't one of those turn the other cheek situations - the guy who took the pictures is getting anonymous threatening phone calls. He damned well better protect himself, turning the cheek could get him killed.
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Funny? Perhaps. More sad than funny, as it's pretty much the truth.
Come on, it would take two seconds to use google. Nissan's domain is nissan-usa.com, They have it all their advertizements.
This guy has had that domain while Nissan was still called 'datsun'.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
"An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind." - Gandhi
I'm all for self-defense. (Not only am I for it, I teach it.) Retribution, however, is counterproductive.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The sad thing about Mr. Ralsky's house is its proximity to his neighbors. In these parts, when someone pays three-quarter mil, they get some acreage to spread out in. Hell, he's crammed cheek-to-jowl with his neighbors like poor people! And where are the trees? Tsk. Such taste.
After hearing Prof. David Cole from Georgetown Law talk about the TIA program yesterday on NPR (available at npr.org, search for TIA), I'm beginning to wonder if the whole thing is a lightning rod, or litmus test for the publics tolerance of civil liberty erosion.
Think about it: Let's put a guy convicted of lying to congress and overstepping his authority in charge of a military program to gather information about every US citizen. We'll announce it publicly and we'll set up a web site with a creepy (best description for it) logo with the "all seeing eye" that will immediately attract the attention of conspiracy theorists. While the public screams about the mind bogglingly sinister program, the REAL stuff will be going on, which is way more subtle than a $250 million boondoggle sci-fi technology program. The whole scam might be a project from that new government office of misinformation (that still appears to exist, despite the public outcry).
Man, I'm spending too much time on this stuff. Back to the EFF web site.
--g
This would make a much better comparison if clinic workers were grabbing thousands of random people off the streets and performing operations on them. It would be a better point if anti-spam sites listed the home addresses of spammers with violent speach, blood-dripping graphics, and X-ed off the portraits of those who had been murdered.
It does make one good point - physical threats against spammers do no good. But then, the focus of this story thread has not been threatening the spammer in question. It has been uncovering his operation. And repaying the "service" this individual has performed for so many others.
Perhapse it wasn't wise. But it does underscore that those behind these large scale spamming operations play rather fast and loose with morality and legal action. Those who decide to oppose spammers should keep this in mind and be prepared for this kind of behavior.