Slashback: Wireless, Radio, Ralsky

Slashback with more on GNU Radio; BeUnited's ongoing bid for Gobe Productive's source code; AOL, IM and the USPTO; the consequences one observer faced for watching spammer Alan Ralsky and more. Read on for the details.

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?"

Comments

The VMS PHONE utility is just like TERM-talk too

[sys$manager]

I assume that PHONE on VMS has been around a lot longer than any of the current IM systems, but not as long as TERM-talk. It has basically the same functionality as described on the TERM-talk site.

Nissan

[intermodal]

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.

Re:Nissan

[BJH]

So, you're saying that just the fact that one company is larger than another immediately gives the larger one first rights to the best domain names.

Hmmm...

Re:Nissan

[Pentagram]

If both are using it for commercial purposes, then the entity that has more to gain from it is more entitled to it

I assume you're not serious. Surely whoever registers it first is entitled to it?

Government: "Clearly Nissan (motors) will make more cash from that domain, so hand it over!"

Seems a bit totalitarian, to say the least. What happens if Mr. Nissan builds up a company that is bigger than Nissan? Does the domain switch back and forth?

Re:Nissan

[Ytrew Q. Uiop]

Well, basically, yeah. Given that only one entity can have the name, the question arises of who is more entitled to it.

The usual rule is the person who is currently renting something is entitled to use it. ;-)

Domain name lookups are esentially listings rented by ICANN; Uzi Nissan paid money for his listing, and then Nissan Motors decided to sue to take it away. The court was wrong.

If both are using it for commercial purposes, then the entity that has more to gain from it is more entitled to it.

I disagree. It's expropriation of property rights that you're talking about, for corporate, not public, gain. That's a textbook definition of corruption -- taking from the poor to give to the rich.

Imagine if this happened in the real world! People would howl bloody murder if their address was taken away! Companies already name streets after themselves: there's 1 Microsoft Way in Redmond, 1 Blue Jay Way at the Sky Dome ... if this became a trend, should I get evicted from my house at 1 Victoria Street because "Victoria's Secret" has customers who are too lazy to read a map?

Your answer would seem to be "yes" -- after all, they have "more to gain" from owning that particular address than I do.

So big companies do, indeed, have first rights to the best domain names.

How do you know the big companies have more to gain than small companies? Can you prove that a smaller company, (say, Microsoft in the early days), won't eventually out-compete a large company (say, IBM?)

I notice also that non-profit organizations don't seem to fit into your worldview. Should they be denied web pages, because you only value profit in your metric? Should freedom of speech exist only if you have enough money to merit it?

Do you really think that the rich should have more rights because they're rich?
--
AC

Mea Culpa

[unicorn]

Dear god. Does this mean that the editors are actually going to edit? Next thing you know they'll start reading posts to make sure they aren't dupes.

Re:Mea Culpa

[Random Data]

Dear god. Does this mean that the editors are actually going to edit? Next thing you know they'll start reading posts to make sure they aren't dupes.

Dear god. Does this mean that the editors are actually going to edit? Next thing you know they'll start reading posts to make sure they aren't dupes.

Threatening phone calls?

[hng_rval]

Operator: Hello, Mr Johnson?
Jon: Mr Jameson actually.
Operator: Did you take pictures of my house?
Jon: Yes, so what??
Operator: Perhaps you'd be interested in our new line of digital cameras?
Jon: What? No, god no...

(Here comes the threatening part..)
Operator: But my camera now bitch or you'll get a call like this every hour for the new 15 years.

Jon: Noooooooooooooooooooo (dies in horrible spam anguish)

Ralsky's thugs are amatuers.

[ChangeOnInstall]

Some facts regarding the harassing phone calls:

It's fairly easy to turn a license plate number into a name. I figured out how to do it last week trying to reregister my truck. While making the appointment with the DMV, they asked for my plate number, which I gave, and they said my name back to me. I had provided no information other than the plate number. While I'm not absolutely certain, I believe there are a fair number of other ways through which to obtain this someone's name from their plate, e.g. if you have friends in the police or DMV.

The rest of the information used can easily be obtained from semi-public records using services such as Lexis-Nexis. This includes info such as your driver's license number, address, previous addresses, telephone, vehicle registrations, creditors, etc. If you have a state and a name, you can obtain a tremendous amount of info about a person fairly easily. Lawyers and private investigators have accounts with these services.

Overall, Ralsky's tactic is not very impressive. This man really needs to hire some higher quality goons.

What is this fascination with .com domains?

[deek]

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

The reason the eye was removed...

[WillRobinson]

Either we poked a stick in it. Or they realized, it could only see half the world.

It seems like the Nissan case turned out OK

[Fizgig]

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?

Evil spammers.

[pla]

How really strange. I found one particular part of the call transcripts rather interesting...

"You don't know who the hell you were fucking with yesterday, man, you got the wrong guy, you don't even have the guy that you think you have"

Anyone else see a strong possibility of Ralsky having a deep dark secret that someone believed poor Rich had accidentally caught on film? Like meeting with someone to put a hit on Ralsky's detractors, or using the supposedly lucrative spam biz to launder mob money, or the like?

Yeah, slam me for baseless speculation, but the guy doesn't exactly have the cleanest legal record, and that quote just strikes me as so *REALLY* bizarre. Don't have the right guy? What does *that* mean?

Simpsons goons?

[helix400]

This man really needs to hire some higher quality goons.

Homer: [answering the door] Who is it?
Voice: Goons.
Homer: Who?
Voice: Hired goons.
Homer: Hired goons? [opens the door]
Goons: [take Homer roughly away]

(Aaah yes...The Simpsons Archive. Best site ever!)

Re:Anti-spam nuts

[pla]

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".

Look carefully

[dmaxwell]

C1everNickName versus CleverNickName.

This is an imposter.

Maybe Wil needs to end his posts with:

"The real CleverNickName has a uid of 129189."

you slashdotted my cablemodem

[trelaneopn]

just for kicks, 2mbit.com is hosted on my cablemodem. (the link which shows the mirrors hosting the pictures of ralsky's house). I'd like to thank the committee and everyone who made the slashdotting of my cablemodem possible. I hope they don't can my account, but if they do it's been nice knowing you.

Did the ICQ people use PLATO's TERM-talk?

[platopeople]

What I am curious about is whether or not any of the four ICQ/Mirabilis gentlemen, or the investor father of one of them (Vardi), had any exposure to the PLATO system -- specifically, exposure to TERM-talk -- prior to developing ICQ.

I wonder this because Control Data Israel had a PLATO system installed in Israel in the 1980s and it was used extensively by the Israeli Defence Force, and it is known that at least some of ICQ's founders served in the IDF before the founded ICQ.

I've contacted the ICQ folks but none of responded to me.

- Brian (brian@platopeople.com)

$740,000 for THAT?

[Dr. Mu]

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.