Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Disputes, Clones, Audio
Needed: One referee. Quixotic1 writes "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
Store in the ammunition box. leonbrooks writes "Recently, images from a presentation by Microsoft Belgium were published on the web. The presentation made some startling (for Microsoft) concessions to Open Source, then set about FUDding the GPL into the ground. I whacked together a point-by-point answer to the anti-GPL FUD. Happy linking ..."
Tithe 10 percent. Luke Francl writes "Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctorow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. ... Check out the list of suggested recipients."
Like obsidian, and coal, and dirt ... salimfadhley writes "Today BBC Radio 4 began serialising Phillip Pullman's popular "Dark Materials" trilogy. The beeb will be broadcasting one episode per week, with a RA stream of the latest episode that can be found on the promotional site. You can find "The Golden Compass" (called "Northern Lights" in Europe) on the website now. This stream will be replaced with episode 2 next Saturday.
The Dark Materials series was originally intended as children's fiction, however owing to excellent storytelling and a significantly darker theme than Harry Potter, has done rather well in U.S. and UK adult market.
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."
Unfamiliar? Read the Slashdot review of the trilogy.
The clones I meet are mostly in pairs. PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports that the Raelian clone claim echoes a hoax of 25 years ago. And while we have better technology now for testing the claim quickly, there is still room for deception, and some people don't trust the science (and pseudoscience) reporter the Raelians appointed to test their claim."
Very Grass, young Good hopper.
The domain name is not a trademark registry. You have no moral claim to the domain name. Your only hope is throwing $1000 at ICANN, who will happily rule in your favor.
You are a clone of your children!
It's located here.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
the more obvious it will become to the courts that the Internet is what it is...a large TCP/IP network. Hopefully, this will happen before they pass so many anti-networking laws that there's no point in trying to preserve the present Internet anymore.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
> "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
Here's a cheap, effective solution: deal with it. The current owner has as much right to it as you do (or more, since ownership is 9/10 of the law).
Try
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
something else I figure is worth posting in Slaskback. But anyways, holy crap, who else saw the banner ad on slashdot for the opening of unix sys. admin. at Blizzard? I wonder who in their HR department gets a bonus for thinking of posting here, nearly guaranteeing getting the best possible applicant.
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
That's the image they project, at least IMO. Never mind the crackpot spiel. They might as well sell tinfoil mind protectors.
...telling us exactly the post time means you had to wait until that exact time to post. Isn't that a little like encouraging First Posting?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The premise of the Dark Materials triology sounds a LOT like the root of the Gnostic Heresey (where new age "gnosticism" comes from, actually.)
In the early days of Christianity, there were three major sects--the Christians, the Jews, and the Gnostics. The Jews were, well, jewish folk who lived as jews but thought that Jesus was the Messiah (sorta like "Jews for Jesus.") The Christians were the to-the-lions folks we all know and love, and the Gnostics--well, the gnostics are why the strong central church formed, and why the Inquisition was so harsh.
The Gnostic Heresy, as I understand it:
There was a God, and Jesus Christ was his living son--but God_the_Creator is not God-the-burning-bush-that-spoke-to-moses. Sometime after creation, a spirit called the Demiurge usurped control over creation, lied to the jews, and pretty much acted the way Christians might imagine "Satan" acting.
The Demiurge created flesh, and so flesh is flawed, and all of humanity is doomed to damnation, save for the accidental banishment from heaven of the goddess/archangel Sophia, who apparantly had no small part in Jesus Christ showing up and mascarading as a person for so many years.
The Gnosic Heresy, btw, was propagated by a series of "revelations" about the faith, sort of like the popular image of how a witch's coven is organized. It was stamped out rather freverently in the early days of Christianity, and hasn't been a going concern as a religion for a great many years.
It hurts me when you say that. It hurts me on the INSIDE.
I am a filthy pirate.
[from the link:] > Known in the OSS community as a "viral" licence.
As the author points out, and as others of us have stated repeatedly: the GPL isn't viral, it's recursive. I've got lots of non-GPL software on my home system, and none of it has ever "caught" the GPL.
The simple rule is: if A is GPL'd and B is derived from A, then B is GPL'd. The rule is "recursive" or "transitive", but not "viral". The OSS community would do itself a favor to quit calling it "viral". (Though in fact the term seems to be more common among complainers than among GPLers, despite what the quoted MS document says.)
Hint to Microsoft: if you don't want to GPL your software, don't derive it from GPL'd software. It's as simple as that -- at least for people who aren't being obtuse willfully.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The guy they asked to do the independant tests wasn't allowed access to the clone, so he has stated it is quite possibly a hoax. More can be found at google news
That is interesting. I had declined to get Pullman's books for my ten-year-old daughter because I had mistaken them for the same kind of thinly-veiled Christian allegory one finds in C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L'Engle. (Both of whom are excellent writers, but I'm too old to be suckered into their self-destructive superstitions.) I will have to stop at the bookstore on the way home and pick them up for her.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I'm not sure what frustrates me more: the fact that the media has been hyping the Raelians' claim of a human clone without any evidence whatsoever, or the fact that the media even seems to realize that they're being silly reporting this BUT DO IT ANYHOW! If the media had any self-respect, they would have learned from the previous hoax and not be covering this new Raelian claim so much. However, they seem perfectly content to give this UFO cult a world stage to prance around on. It's almost as though the media is a semi-willing participant in this (what I assume will be a) clone fraud. Oh sure, they claim they're just reporting "important news". But let's face it: it's really just a bunch of UFO nuts who have made an incredible claim without any evidence whatsoever. This is news? I think the media is just happy to cover this because they know they can milk this for awhile regardless of whether the story is true or not. So sad that our media is willing to whore themselves like this just to entertain the masses.
GMD
watch this
That any moron these days can get media attention with no proof. Want to get attention for your religion/belif/cause/etc and drum up more membership? Just make up something that will get the media and the public paying attention, while never providing as well avoiding proof, and enjoy all the attention/enrollment/donations you and your group could ever want. Just make sure to string them as long as you can.
I can belive that the media has gotten this bad, they don't know what the hell they are reporting on, make stuff up, don't varify their facts, are not responsable for their actions, abuse their power, etc and now they will take anyone's claims with out any proof.
I just heard some news over Police radio - a Slashdot reader was found dead in his Chicago home this morning.
The young man of 32 was found bloodied and bruised by an apparent assault with a number of Stephen King hardback novels.
He was rushed to hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival. Police have begun to compile a list of suspects. It is thought that Stephen King himself may have been responsible for the assault.
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work,
there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
It's important that moderators remember to moderate the poster, not the post.
Ok folks I have my asbestos suit on, and here I go....
The GPL has some serious issues. While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
At the beginning of 2002 I had a BOF at a conference and the topic was Open Source. It was well attended about 40 people, considering it was late at night. But we discussed the issue for a couple of hours. And the conclusion we came on is that Open Source is good for everybody, but the developer.
Open Source is good for the consultant, good for the book author of "professional" books, good for hardware manufacturers, etc. But licenses like the GPL are not good for the developers who actually write the code. Those people cannot get paid what they are due. This is what closed source did.
And we concluded that Open Source can continue so long as as investment is made into the Open Source. But when people cut corners they so easily say, "Ah let the other person take care of that". Basically Open Source promotes takers and not givers. The original Open Source die hards are givers. But the Open Sourcers today are takers. Look at Mandrake, for an example of the problems...
While I hate to admit it, an Open Source tax should be introduced. Without a base investment long term OSS will have issues.....
Ok I am optmistic and think it will work out....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Now to figure out how I can make money on this....
I saw that too. I doubt that the ad guarantees much out of this crowd because:
a.) Probably half of the visitors here use ad blockers (or... subscribe).
b.) A decent portion of the other half are probably underage or don't have the experience asked for by the job requirements (they really aren't requiring *that* much).
c.) Everyone that's left likes working on BNETD too much or thinks Blizzard 'jumped the shark' or something like that... OR realizes that times are tough and quitting your already not terrible job to go work for a videogame company may not be the best decision you make this year.
But I dunno. It might be worth it to see what kind of wacky race they decide to include in Warcraft 4.
Relevant link
I find it absurd that the media gives them this much attention with little proof, yet at just about every opertunity they have to refer to them as a cult and tell us how there is no proof.
Register all trademarks in Turkmenistan... that way, they'll end in ".tm"; you'll be happy that your trademark has been "exported to cyberspace", and we'll be happy that we can ignore you.
-- Terry
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence.
"What does God need with a starship?"
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
And the name of the domain, and I'll tell you who has the better claim to it. How's that?
n theevento ffavorablerulingthatanythingatallwillhappentoprocu reforyouthedomainnameinquestionbutthanksforyourcas hsucker
The Fine Print:(Please squint really hard for effect)
Paymentforservicesinnowayguaranteeseveni
I find it said that increasingly stories labelled as "news" are obviously editorialized descriptions of recent events. Take for a few quotes from the article about the Dark Materials triology:
and
How can this kind of stuff even pretend to be "news"? Is it just because the story is talking about Christians that it gets away with this kind of writing around here?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
How damnably ironic can Timothy be (without trying to be)? The whole point of the $1000 fee is that there's money to be made. You know how much money? Right about $1000, minus expenses. *sigh*
The reality is, the $1000 fee goes towards two main purposes, neither of which is profit. The first is to cover a relatively expensive process (yes, flame on, I know that you would arbitrate and manage claims for free). The second reason is to provide a barrier to entry. "Barrier to entry" sounds evil to most knee-jerk thinkers, but this one is a good barrier. Trust me, I would file claims against every company I didn't like in the world if the fee was only $1. I would have fun with the system. So would everyone else. The $1000 price tag makes me think a bit more before I challenge for a domain name that is "rightfully" mine.
They will either report it when few people are watching/paying attention, run their usuall correction on page 123 next to the obituaries in size -1 font, or never mention it at all.
Once one of the free music bands out there makes a serious hit song I can guarantee they'll get themselves a nice RIAA approved record contract before their next release.
Moicro$oft is at an unfair advantage in the muddy arena of FUD. Everyone who attempts to counter their FUD feels that it is necessary to tell the truth, hoping that truth and moral integrity will prevail over lies, dishonesty, back-stabbing, stealing, and general all aroung a$$holeness for which M$ is famous. I do not believe this is the way to do it. Their outrageous lies should be countered with lies twice as outrageous. Their dishonesty should be fought with every dishonest means at our disposition. In other words, they should be kept on the defensive, busy defending themselves against attacks as unjustified as the attacks they proffer to the clueless. I personally have no moral rules whatsoever in fighting M$. The objective is to neutralize the beast, not with whimpers, but with every unjustified, dishonest, mythomanic, immoral means possible. Only then, will we be in an equal battlezone.
I'll settle any such disputes for $500. Each party agrees to abide by the decision and hold me blameless.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Its not as if you are going to lose custom over it as you said you are a small business.
All you have to do is: don't be hung up on your domain name being identical to your trademark name. Almost nobody's is.
If your trademark is non-descriptive (e.g. nothing about the name "Levi" indicates they sell jeans) then it might really collide with someone else somewhere else in this big world. At best, it might be ambiguous and vague. Maybe combine your trademark with something descriptive, and you could even end up with a better domain name than your vague trademark. (e.g. Which is a better domain name: levi.com or levijeans.com?)
Or if it absolutely must be the same, then use a different TLD. You probably don't have a TLD in your 20-year-old trademark (e.g. that company in Redmond is not named "Microsoft Dot Com") so you had little hope of getting an exact match on the whole string anyway. The original purposes for many of the TLDs are long forgotten and unenforced, so just pick any of 'em, whatever looks pretty. Whatever. You might be surprised at how many websites are not actually hosted in Tuvala.
If there's no dispute, then there's no expense. You can't get more inexpensive than that.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
if you are programming for free, then yes, you can and will be taken advantage of.
Coding, is like any of those other things you jsut described, a service. Coding itself produces something that can be reused easily. Unlike seting up a server, which is subject to many different factors that cause more service to be incurred, once a program is written, it probably won't have to be rewritten as long as the operating enviroment is the same.
I think that most people who are coding for free realize that they will most likely not get paid for their work. Rather, they expect that they will be paid in kudos from other coders.
Not just OSS but all computers will die without users and programmers. Users to tell programmers what they want and programmers to write it. Some programmers are avid users and drive requirements themselves, some only work when the carrot of a paycheck is dangled in front of them.
People were trading source to programs before the GPL. Notice that the internet was the reason that the GPL exploded. All OSS needs to survive is low cost communication. As long as there are programmers, people will trade source and programs made. The best will come from large, orginized shops (most likley), but some gems will come from the masses.
I hereby clone this First Post and claim it as my own!
But now I think I know what it is.. MS is pissed because they are not allowed to steal code. It is only a matter of time until MS is going to have to play the code cards, and we will see how much is taken. It's slightly more than that however, it's the "danger of a good example". MS does not want people to decide on anything else than marketing and market control. Maybe some people will decide by software quality, maybe some other people will decide because they can only trust code they can get their hands on. In the end however, what OS and the GPL are is a slow juggernaut, forever marching ahead that cannot be stopped. Improvements are always coming, the quality is constantly improving. Eventually it will overwhelm companies who do not have a positive image such as Microsoft. On a side note, that is why Apple's charging for iTools is important. Apple should realize in this day and age the only currency you have is the respect and value you have among computer users..and Apple is spending it quickly. Microsoft does not have any at all.
Actually, why not abandon the internet? I am working on a replacement after all... I would like to have been able to keep the internet for myself and those like me, but it was stolen from all of us years ago. I'm sorry, but I don't want to be living on an internet "reservation" (apologies to native americans) which just happens to be only those parts no corporations wanted.
Oh, and since I never made this obvious... I not only don't mind the idea of alternate Meta's, I think it would be good to have several distinct/seperate Meta's in existence. So if you think you have what it takes, build your own!
If you want worldwide you should use .INT that is what it was set aside for.
The top-level domain for international organizations is .ORG. The .INT TLD is designed for international treaty organizations such as ISO, WTO, WIPO, etc.
Will I retire or break 10K?
COM refers to .com.us domains.
www.netscape.com.us could not be found. Please check the name and try again.
vs.
Netscape Network
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'm all in favor of abandoning it. do tell more.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Man you just made my day.
Clones copy YOU!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Don't like, don't use."
Then you run into the George Harrison problem. Under US copyright law, access plus substantial similarity equals copying. If you have seen a piece of code, and you write a similar piece of code several years later, the courts may, depending on the specific Circuit's interpretation of "substantial similarity", consider the later piece of code to be a "derivative work" of the original code and thus subject to whatever license the author of the original code wishes to impose or deny. For this reason, no Microsoft employee is permitted to read code covered by the GNU General Public License.
And how does one GPL a program stored on a proprietary storage medium such as a ROM chip or cartridge? And how does one GPL a program for a platform whose kernel will load only binaries whose hash has been signed by a central authority?
Will I retire or break 10K?
And costs a lot less. Company A wants a website - www.widgets.com, so they get a hosting company just as they do now and publish.
Now Company B argues that they have a claim on www.widgets.com. Ok, now ICANN puts their foot down and states that a domain name is NOT a trademark, and offers to host www.widgets.com for both companies, with links to their main web pages, and possibly some descriptive text indicating what the different possibilities are. Company B's $1000 can go towards relocating company A's pages onto another server.
so www.mcdonalds.com could end up as:
_macdonalds_ the burger chain
_macdonalds_ the Scottish kilt maker
_macdonalds_ the cafe in Lower Aldershot.
Each pays a minimal hosting fee to ICANN (because they're not hosting a vast amount of stuff - just a stack of hyperlinks)) and hosts their pages off somewhere else. It's always struck me as daft that someone thinks up a perfectly good name for a website, then some company comes along and stamps all over them just because there's a name clash.
Ever since the original call-to-arms there's been a number of different organizations listed as worthy of donations. There is an organization that has done more than the FSF, EFF, [your acronym here] combined. That is the US Internet Association of America. They have far more pull and a much better voice in the US government. If you honestly want to see a change in the US laws, this is one organization you need to support.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I thought that had been thoroughly debunked as being phoney in the other article? Just because they had a little "MS" on them didn't make them real.
why are you posting to it?
I'm an athiest. Well, more honestly I suppose you could call me an "apathetic agnostic"; I don't know if there's a God, and I really can't be troubled to care. None the less, shite like this served up as if it were a news story makes me want to vomit.
If it were clearly marked as an editorial piece, then fine; flame on. This, however, was clearly listed under "News". Reprehensable.
GPL requires linked or derived programs to be GPL licenced
LGPL requires only derived programs to be LGPL licenced
Er, sorry. That's a classic fallacy right there, buddy. I want to say it's the fallacy of composition. That's ok, though, Aristotle made the same mistake.
COMPUTER! Whatever happened to Blueberry Muffin?
It's a vaccine, not a virus. It protects a body of work from being destroyed by an embrace/extend infection on the works that spring from the original body.
It is proprietary software that eats away at the software that is available to the public, and more importantly, eats away at the building blocks that are available to users for creating bigger and better works.
The analogy of the so-called "GPL virus" imagines that a parasite is growing within a body- and the body in this analogy is the profit potential offered by monopoly preservation for companies like Microsoft. (Please understand that I am referring to legal intellectual property monopolies, not illegal market domination monopolies such as the one Microsoft was convicted of.) On the other hand, if the body is conceived of as the software available for use and building upon to the public at large, then it's clear that it is proprietary software that shrivels up the "body" in question.
If you have a lot of Microsoft stock options I guess I could see why you'd favor the first analogy, sort of. But if not, I'm puzzled.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute.
People like you worry me. You didn't say they had any kind of a web site, only that they registered the domain.
I hope you meant that "they had a web site up that might confuse our customers" or "we have a famous mark and they are diluting it" or something like that. Not just that your trademark is stored on some hard drive at the domain registrar database and you really would like it for yourself.
I have a couple domains with short non-word names that I registered many years ago. For a while I had a stupid "hello, here are links to my friends' home page" kind of thing, but decided I would just use them for email, which I do.
And I occasionally wonder if some low-life that wants the name is going sue me (or even worst, arbitrate me) just because he wants the domain, and not because I'm actually affecting his business. In court that would be easy to win, but in arbitration I would probably lose.
Heck, that low-life might be YOU (though I doubt it since my contact info is up-to-date and I haven't seen any messages about them).
Please, register your domain in .biz or something for now and don't sue this guy unless he is actually *infringing on your trademark* or he bought the domain *in bad faith*. I don't know how generic the term in question is, but if it's something generic like "ProComputers.com", I doubt it's bad faith.
The last slide has a link to m$'s shared source site, which has a gpl faq doc. Anyone care to comment, or is it just too beFUDdling?
All this guy did in his tired rant is prove Microsoft's point while not addressing any of them. What a fucking moron. Eat it up slopfuckers.
Story I put on kuro5hin, but started as a comment here. *sigh*.
Anybody who has studied early Christianity knows that there were two groups. The Apostlics and the Gnostics.
;)
The two of the many differences being that
1)Apostlic Christianity is more along the lines of what is present today. A hierarchy within a church structure. Example -- I believe (don't quote me) that Catholics have a Pope, then Cardinals, then Bishops, Deacons, etc. with power decreasing further down the line.
2) As I said Apostlic Christianity believes in the apostles, Jesus son of god, etc. like the majority of Christians believe today.
The Gnostics on the other hand
1) Have no hierarchy whatsoever. It doesn't matter if you have been a member for 5 minutes or 50 years, your opinion and input are equal. It doesn't matter if you are adult/child, young/old, man/woman, your opinion and input are equal.
2) They also had many other writtings, of which many came earlier than what people have in there bibles, and took a completely different point of view with the teachings of Jesus. BTW, I will not argue whether he existed or not -- for the sake of arguement let's assume he did. They heard what he said to mean that, and I'm really summermizing here, this world is a fake and rather unplesant. It is presented by a quasi-god(not the devil) and that Jesus came to tell everyone to wake up so they can return to heaven(not as people picture it now) and stop the suffering of which we were all accidently placed.
The Gnostics were actually a much larger group after Jesus, but failed to become the present day Christianity because of the Romans declaring the Apostlic Christianity the one true Christianity because they had a hierarchy similar to the Romans. After all when you hold a meeting to discuss the matter, who from the Gnostics will represent them? They are all equal.
Now, many Christians when they have this first explained to them take the demi-god to be the devil and that sounds an awful lot like what this "Dark Material" story is going for. I don't know, I haven't read it. But if it is a source of material. I find it funny that any Christian who gets upset, is getting upset over a common believe about a misunderstanding of the Gnostic CHRISTIANITY religion by Apostlic CHRISTIANITY that has been turned into a story.
History lesson over.
Can't you people find better things to piss your money away on?
I was told of a similar situation a while back. A religious non profit accidently let a registered domain elapse. In the few days that the domain was available, another person grabbed it and pointed it to a porn advertising site. The non profit registered a similar name and had to communicate the change to all it's members. Of course, quite a bit of ill will was generated. I, however, concluded that a dispute process was not practical, and the fault lied largely with the non profit. For one thing, they did not keep up with the payments to the registrar. For another, it was not very difficult to communicate the change. The money and time was better sent serving the members.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Okay, I propose a real-world test. Let's release one system under GPL, and call it "GNU/Linux". Let's release another under BSD license, and call it "BSD". Then stand back and see if anyone develops for either.
Oh wait, that test has been done. And what do we see? Lots of people are working on Linux and the GNU stuff, even though it is licensed under GPL! (Also, people are working on BSD. Several flavors of BSD, even.)
Look at all the progress GNOME and GNOME apps have made just in the past year. GPL-licensed software is not just surviving, it is thriving.
an Open Source tax should be introduced
Good grief! Who will decide how much this tax will be? Who will decide who gets paid? How much will the tax authority skim for their own purposes? What regulations will exist to regulate what projects may be funded and what projects may not be? What will happen when companies like Microsoft start lobbying the government?
If this happens, it will waste a huge amount of money, add a whole lot of red tape, and attract people interested in milking the system for money, as opposed to people who want to develop software. Bad, bad, bad idea.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
the internet ...i....i ...iiii
I HATE IT!!!!!!
NOOO!!!!!!
don't take my precious!!!!
I MUST HAVE MY INTERNET!!!!!!
If you take ten million lines of GPL code and add a
single line of proprietary code, the result is GPL.
If you take ten million lines of proprietary code and
add a single line of GPL code, the result is still GPL.
Utilizing GPL code is thermodynamically irreversable,
just like utilizing fire. Sometimes it makes economic
sense to do so, sometimes not.
>;k
Is Phillip Pullman a gnostic perchance?
That would only be the case for binaries that have been linked to the GPL libraries. Binaries linked to the MS libraries would be governed by the terms and conditions attached to those.
The fact the source in question can be linked to either is irrelevant. The GPL is intended to prevent the distribution of closed binaries that need GPLed components to run. The GPL would only cover a binary from that code that is linked to the GPL library. It would not cover a binary linked to the MS library. However, If it was the other way around and the code in question was GPLed at the outset and linked to the MS library the resulting binary would probably be illegal to distribute. The license to the MS library is probably incompatible with the GPL.
The GPL has no legal ability to "capture" code that has not been licensed or derived from GPL licenced code in the first place. The FSF can NOT steal MS or anybody's else code by developing a workalike to proprietary vendor's library then using that to claim ownership of source that vendor licensed under his own terms. If your scenario is true, then why couldn't MS develop say a readline workalike; license it under the most draconian terms possible and then claim ownership of every shred of code that is linked to GPL readline 99.99 percent of the time? The answer is they can't. I don't doubt that MS is looking for ways to lawyer OSS out of existence but this isn't one of them.
It is the deliberate act of putting code through a linker that makes it a derivative work of the code being linked to. The GPL has no ability to miracle code in an MS vault through a linker running on a Linux system in Stallman's office. I seriously doubt vendors of proprietary development libraries and tools are gung ho to cut the ground from under their own feet.
Actually Madeleine L'Engle's most important work, "A Wrinkle In Time" has been under fire both from those who are uncomfortable with anything that smacks of Christianity and from the more fanatic fringe of Christianity.
Really, whatever Christianity there is in that book is of a more Unitarian-Universalist bent...not only Jesus is cited as a fighter against The Shadow, but Gandhi and Buddha too. Kindly old ladies who befriend Margaret and are identified as witches doesn't help matters either. And various alien creatures for good measure.
It was one of my favorite books in childhood. Space travel, mysticism, a big gross brain running a planet...cool stuff for someone whose parents wanted to cram Nancy Drew down her throat.
That book would make a great movie...I'd love to see one of the big Anime houses like Ghibli or Gainax or the people who did Escaflowne tackle it. Actually it wouldn't be a bad bit of material for Brad Bird (director of "Iron Giant") at Pixar. Imagine an animated Ixchel! That would be great!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Thus, all is well, you can use the tool, and no worries. But what you CANNOT do is make a tool based wholly or in significant part on it and not make THAT tool GPL.
Same thing with "SLIDE". (LGPL for API linkage, GPL for source derivations). Doesn't this seem natural, anyway?
also note: mmmmm 4d.
Fuck Beta. Fuck Dice
If you release source code that appears to be derived from Microsoft source code
Then Microsoft can't touch you because you didn't have access to the original proprietary source code. Knowingly bringing false lawsuits can get Microsoft's retained attorneys disbarred.
Hence the concept of "clean room" implementations.
Like how Compaq cloned the IBM BIOS. "You say we copied your code? Go to hell, IBM; here's a map."
But Microsoft seems to hypothesize that because many GPL programs have little technical documentation other than the source code itself, the "dirty room" (with access to the source code) will be tempted to paraphrase less when passing information across the wall to the "clean room", weakening the wall between the "dirty room" and the "clean room".
Will I retire or break 10K?
Damn! Not only was the first joke that popped into my head taken, but so were the second and third. Hmm. Do I gripe about how to keep up with people who seem to have unlimited time to read /.. Naw; my day will come. ...
I'd make a resolution to tithe 10%, but I don't do resolutions; and 10% of nothing is
Ok, I'll summarize. We build a new global (ok, not quite that scale, but still could be big) network. We do things right, and we protect its users. We can get rid of some of the cruft, the things that should be gone from the net, but still hand around. We keep the things that work. How?
#1 We need wires, cables, fibers. Since these cost money, and even if they didn't, they're easy to trace, I propose another option. We use VPN tunnels. The flavor isn't so important, ipsec, ptpp, OpenVPN... even all of them together.
#2 Users don't want to be second class citizens. That means a static IP. That means no restrictions on what services they can offer, and none on the services they might want to use... they want to be true peers. The 10.x.x.x offers 16 million IPs, less some overhead. More than enough room for growth, especially if we start *real* planning for IPv6 migration(instead of paying lip service).
#3 Users want privacy, they want protection. This one was tough... and I can't honestly say I've solved it. But I've come damn close, and I continue to make progress. Since it is impossible to communicate with someone without knowing their identity, and thusly holding them vulnerable. In a routed enviroment though, this changes just *slightly*.
If you communicate with only 3 hosts directly, can you know the identity of other hosts? Well, you could force one of those 3 administrators (or the feds could, anyway) to reveal identities.
Unless, those 3 administrators were in foreign countries. And if they in turn, only knew the identities of 2 other individuals besides yourself? What if we trained all new "recruits" to never reveal the identity of their 3 partners, even to close buddies/family/lovers?
Encrypted packet tunnels, with endpoints outside of any single goverment's jurisdiction. Practical, if not perfect, anonymity.
Oh, and free domain names. A network where projects like bnetd wouldn't have any troubles. A way to weed out the AOLers, and all the riffraff. Email accounts where you wouldn't get any spam.
Guys, help me figure this out... it's worth doing.
American media is less a reliable source of news than it is a source of laughable sensationalism.
Mod me down, but it is no secret that CNN and it's ilk dedicate more news to dead white girls than black girls, teen violence than the more prevalent domestic violence, and video games than underfunded schools and social programs.
It is an unfortunate truth that there are people who haven't ceased to be amazed by the distortion such practices put on most of the American public.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Cults have to hack a satellite to get this much media exposure.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The cat is out of the bag... Any data communication system will be subjected to the same laws.
There are things you can do right now. Have everyone use IP6/IPSec/SSH, then have a central server in Sealand, or any other country with few restrictive laws.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The flaws in this are too many to name. Sending packets to sealand will be illegal (if they don't just cut the fibers, that is). It will be impossible to hide the fact that you are doing so, and it will have only one possible meaning.
IPv6 isn't mature. Many apps don't compile well with it, if at all. It's an incredible pain to implement, have you experimented with it? I have.
No, what we need to do, is be able to hide the existence of this free network. Not perfectly, mind you. We need a routed network, where you only know the indentities of your immediate neighbors, of which you have few. And they sit across international borders, immune to any trouble you might get them into. And, in a worst case scenario, where you can claim it was only a small VPN, for private purposes.
And before anyone mentions freenet, keep in mind I like the internet because I get IP connectivity... p2p filesharing isn't enough.
You probably don't have a TLD in your 20-year-old trademark
In fact, the courts prefer trademarks that don't contain the TLD.
(e.g. that company in Redmond is not named "Microsoft Dot Com")
You're right. It's named "Nintendo of America Inc."
Will I retire or break 10K?
If I understand the point correctly, you're pointing out that a Corporation is not a cause. That due to the nature of business and the Corporate structure, a Corporation can not be fully trusted. And that Corporate interest is not about higher causes but what bennefits the Corporation. And I agree. I guess this is the basis for the "Apple hurt me harder brigade" - criticism of those Apple customers who are willing to make any sacrifice if it "helps Apple".
Having said that - just because a Corporation is such, it doesn't mean its the same as any other. The distinctions are made on a case by case bassis. And even then, are due to change over time and worthy of constant scrutiny.
Is RedHat different than Microsoft? Sure. One can point to numerous differences between the two. They're entirely different entities with different modes of business. But, keeping with what has already been said, that doesn't mean RedHat gets off without continued scrutiny.
One of the guidelines to this scrutiny is whether a Corporation's interests coincide with one's own. If the two match, then the business relationship (and it should always remain strickly business) is a good one. But once a Corporation begins to pit its interest against those of its customers, then the customer base should take note.
It might be worth pointing out that a customer's interest can be financial as well as one's own moral code. A Corporation itself may not have morals. But it will mind the morals of its customers if it wishes to retain them.
MS, GPL, FUD.. :).
:)
Couldn'tve done better myself
Seriously though, at this point of the so called "OS arms race" are we at all surprised that MS is doubling up on anti-linux, anti-oss tripe?
Let their business managers waste hours on unreadable flow charts that disprove linux's viability, who cares? I'll be coding trying to make the community a better place for people who want a choice!
On a side note: I'd like to see a little more optimism in our community. I've seen a bit too much "Linux doesn't do that, I hate it because X" for my taste. I'm not saying everyone should "Quit bitching and start coding", but it would be nice if we attacked problems with optimism and acceptance instead of negativity and cynicism.. just my 2 cents.
arcane for life
The is a parody piece I did a few months ago, but its usefullness seems to go on and on and on...
Bush Presses for Identical Twin Ban
-Chris
-- This sig is only a test. If this were a real sig it would say something witty. --
(still me, posting AC since its now offtopic and i'm too damn lazy to learn to do use the personal message thing, which supposedly is there somewhere)
if you're going to do it, I suggest using IPv6 from the beginning if possible. Less to worry about in the future should it grow that large.
Pardon me for taking the side of the enemy, but the Florida lawyer who sued to have a state-appointted guardian watch the child completely destroyed any chance of us seeing if the child was a real clone, much less seeing if the *second* alleged clone child (remember that one?) in the Netherlands is real. If said lawyer does not take his argument to completion, and convinces the court to force CloneAid to identify the child and mother, there is no way in hell they will, as the bonds between child (even a clone) and mother are quite strong and not something to underestimate or toy with.
Granted, this was a predictable move, and gives the Raelians a perfectly good excuse not to have the child DNA tested unless the court forces them to. But we only saw that once in the media, and they'll be certain *never* to say that again </sarcasm>.
---a.) Probably half of the visitors here use ad blockers (or... subscribe).
;-)
That would sort of be me.. STill, the mozilla function "Accept images that come from the originating server only" blocks ads effictvely, if not breaking some sites that pull images from images.server.com and other weird places.
I really like Mozilla
"Guys, I want all this stuff in this whimsical outline I wrote. Come do all the work for me."
I hadn't used Linux in three years (I switched from Linux to Windows 2000 when it was released) and recently I figured I'd give Linux another chance. Here's what I noticed had changed: Nothing. Linux was still the same old hacked together pile of shit I'd been using back in the good old days.
It was difficult to install and the programs still sucked. First I could not get my ethernet adapter to work. Little did I know the driver for a Linksys Etherfast 10/100 is called "Tulip." Who the hell came up with that name I don't know. Then I got to installing X which of course didn't work because I had a usb mouse it couldn't find. So I messed around for a while and got some package installed that made my mouse work. I fired up X and was greeted with that crappy "twm" or whatever it is - you know the default wm for X. I installed Blackbox which I remembered was a good WM when I used Linux 3 years ago - unfortunately it hadn't changed at all over the last three years (at least as far as I could tell). I downloaded the latest Mozilla and ran it on my brand new Debian installation and it wouldn't even start (I ended up having to get some ancient 1.0 version), and of course the fonts still look like something from 1985. I installed KDE and I couldn't help but chuckle -- it looked like a child's toy. So then I figured I'd install Java since I have a few Java programs I use regularly. Of course Debian doesn't have a decent Java packaged -- their version is Sun's JDK 1.1! Talk about stone age! So I went to java.sun.com and got the latest - 1.4.1 - and installed it. I was suprised it actually worked fine, but then after I logged out and logged back in again I was unable to use Java. So I went in and added the Java bin directory to my path, then it was complaining about some library missing or something so I just gave up on that. I had already started copying files from my Windows drive to my Linux partition but by that time I had just had enough of the Linux disorganized mess, so I just interrupted the copy and restarted the computer.
I deleted the Linux partition and went right back to Windows 2000 (with a sigh of relief!) I remembered when I was a Linux enthusiast I loved messing around with my computer because it was a learning experience, but now that I already knew all that stuff I no longer enjoyed hacking around with my computer. What had once been a learning experience was now just boring drudgery since I knew it already. Thankfully I had Windows 2000! On Windows I don't have to worry about every tiny technical detail - I just install programs and they work. When I want to print something I just print it - no searching the dustbins of history for documentation on "lp" and other 1970s era junk. If I want to play a game - play music - browse the web - chat with friends - I just do it. In Windows the computer just works. This I realized was why Linux would never succeed on the desktop, or anywhere else for that matter. Linux is like a house that is built by people who each do a tiny little part of the construction at random and completely ignore one another, and there is no supervisor - it is a complicated, barely functional, mess - oh yes, and all the construction workers are unpaid volunteers who come and go as they please. Would you want a house built like that? No, of course not, you'd be lucky if it didn't collapse on you! The same can be said for Linux. I don't want an operating system that is patched together with dental floss and duct tape by aged hippy volunteers with a joint hanging out of their mouth and a floor littered with beer bottles! In short, Windows Rules, Capitalism is Great, Fuck the GPL, Fuck Linux! That's all.
I think Slashdot is retarded but I love trolling and flaming.
What about freenet? They hold many of the same ideals about a 'free' (freedom) Internet, but have gone about it a somewhat different fashion from what you describe.
Your suggestion is somewhat intriguing though, and sounds (at least to me) like it has the potential to be a lot quicker than freenet's method of guarding anonymity (all my experiences with freenet are that it is quite slow to access due to what I understand is the way files are retrieved).
Will there be goatse? No one wants an internet where goatse is not a verb.
...go to their websites, and search on the keyword "Hamidi". Ken Hamidi is a former Intel employee who claims to have a grievance against Intel. If he put up an "Intel-sucks" website, and Intel tried to shut him down, I'd be on his side. That's not what's happening.
Hamidi claims some "electronic pamphleteering right" to spew his grievances to Intel's current employees via Intel's email system. He sent 6 spams, between 8,000 to 35,000 employees each time before Intel got an injunction against him.
EFF supports him and the ACLU supports him.
OK, so one nutcase gets to harass a "bigcorp" that you don't like, so what. Now imagine every political, religious, etc, nutcase in the country claiming the *RIGHT* to spam everybody at your ISP with their "important message".
It's about consent not content. I don't care if someone is spamming porn, or religion to save my soul, or a "sale" to save a few bucks, or a political party to save my country. If the nutcases get a "right" to bombard you with their garbage, you can kiss email as we know it goodbye.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Well, if so, some other country with liberal laws can be utilized.
Who the hell is "they"? Currently, the only lines to sealand are comming from the UK, but havenco has such a vested interest, that I have no doubt that lines could be run from Holland, Belgium, and/or France if required.
IP6 is not mature? That's a good one! heh.
As for some applications not compiling with it, that's really not a big deal. There are already many apps with IPv6 support, and it doesn't take a great deal of work for developers to add support to others as the demand increases. Besides, you can still use IPv4, just make sure it's going over IPSec, same end result.
Give me a break... You really haven't thought this through.
Gee, like sealand. Besides, if everyone you communicate with was across international borders, you wouldn't have to worry about anything else, hence the sealand idea.
How is this so different from my own suggestion? You make an encrypted connection to another server over national boundaries.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yes but when I was at a Linux conference the CEO of Redhat asked who is using Redhat 8.0. And then he asked who paid for it. All the hands lowered. And do you know what one person said why he did not buy the product? Because he did a couple of beta downloads and tests. Gee whiz, a couple of bug reports and you do not need to buy product anymore.
Yes Redhat is profitable, but I saw from the question by the CEO of Redhat that he would like people to actually start buying more product. Because it costs to develop product.
Open Source users are takers. They do not contribute back. That is the crux of the problem of OSS. Who pays back? Right now OSS is interesting and companies are doing it. But is it because of MS? And if it is a knee jerk reaction to MS then this is NOT good.
BTW I like OSS, but I am just thinking of the longer term ramifications. Eg, the day after MS falls.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Governments spend billions on software. That money comes from taxation. So the revenue raising side of that is already in place and taking money out of your pocket.
The problem lies in the licences that Governments sign up to. The money that the Government raises in taxes is paying for software development, but it goes via companies who own the software. Government could spend some of the money it already raises to spend on software development and use it to develop GPL software.
For example, Government offices need an office suit of some kind, and indeed they have one. Surely the Government office suit should come bundled with Linux for all citizens to use, and perhaps contribute too. We have already paid the taxes!
I think that it's goign to depend on the domain name and the use that the current registrant is putting the name to. If it's a wierd name (lipshit-concrete.com), and he's using it to scam people for your product, then you have a really good case. If the domain is something like Arrow, You've got arrow computing and he's selling bows and arrows, then you soulc be in for a nasty fight.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
It's spelled "intharweb"
How is this so different from my own suggestion? You make an encrypted connection to another server over national boundaries.
In my scheme, there is more than 1 international destination (hopefully all of them), the desination has more than 3 citizens, and the destination isn't already associated with a criminal element (rightly or wrongly).
Gee, like sealand. Besides, if everyone you communicate with was across international borders, you wouldn't have to worry about anything else, hence the sealand idea.
In a routed network, your direct neighbors might be international, and the other hosts could be anywhere. You wouldn't, couldn't know who they are. It doesn't limit how many people you communicate with, just your knowledge of who the rest are.
Sealand, is, and always was a bad idea. Ever heard of single point of failure? Keeping a low profile? Staying away from sensationalist idiots?
for that first hit and see what happens.
Remind me how we define a hit if it is free?
I really get annoyed when I hear about companies using their pocketbooks & the legel system to acquire a URL that they think should belong to them just because of the name of their company. If a company cannot reach an agreement with the owner, get over it and settle on a different url.
"Donated $50 to the American Civil Liberties Union to become a "card-carrying" member. Received an FBI probe for aiding the terrorists."
I understand this is officially to become part of the ACLU membership package! Three cheers for the Fourth Amendment!
I've signed up... Have you?
An online Paper-Rock-Scissors game.
Best of 3 wins.
$5 dollars a game per player.
You have a trademark on the name in association with a particular product or service. You cannot get a trademark on just a name, word or phrase. Just beacuse he is using the same name as you does not automatically mean he's infringing on your trademark. You might not have a leg to stand on for any price.
----
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."
----
I find this rather interesting. I am a christian, though I find this to be somewhat accurate of some religions. In my faith we hold that there was a council heald before the world was formed. As a part of this a savior was chosen. First Jehova said "Here am I, send me" and then second Lucifer said "Here am I, send me". Lucifer wanted all glory for saving all man kind and Jehova (christ) wished to give all glory to the father(god). Lucifer's plan was to force all people to do what they needed to do to return to the father, and Jehova's plan was to allow people to choose and return through faith, repentance, and beliefe on the attonement that he would do for them. Lucifer lead away 1/3 of the hosts of heaven at that time and they were all cast out of the presence of the father (the phrase the devil and his angels comes to mind). Ever since then it has been his goal to make the rest of us miserable as he is. He would have been that god in the paragraph above. He is presently a celestial counterfeit and still sets himself up to be the god of this world. The "Fundementalist Christians" that are offended by this just don't understand how things came to their present state and how much of the book is not quite as ficticious as we would hope.
For clarification on the things about what happend before the world was formed the pearl of great price can be consulted. It is a part of the LDS standard works. If you wish to read it find a mormon and they can help.
PS. some of the things stated above can easily be taken out of their present context and severly altered in their meanings. That cheapens us all, though it happens almost every time there is any sort of a religous discussion.
We already have a website. We specifically did not register the .com that is the subject of this dispute because it is commonly associated with the pornography industry (but wasn't when we founded the company...sigh...). The issue (for us) is confusion of our customers...before, when they typed in companyname.com, they just got a domain-not-found. Now they will find a company operating in the same arena as us -- this isn't a firestone tires and firestone pizza kind of thing. Because the registrant is a US citizen, and because the ICANN generally rules with trademark holders, I think the trademark issue is relavant.
And incidentally, I understand the barrier-to-entry argument for the UDRP. But the argument that the first person to register a domain should be afforded all rights with regards to it simply gives unlimited priveledges to those with lots of money. The whole point of trademarks -- and of the UDRP -- is to preserve the intellectual property rights (in this case, a name) of individuals, even if one side has more money/power/sway/whatever.
I should also say, before I start ducking all the subsequent postings, that we did talk to the registrant, first on the phone, then via registered mail. On the phone, he was pleasant and did not seem tied to the domain name. It was only after a month and two unanswered letters passed that we began thinking about the UDRP. If he had legitimate arguments for the domain, he did not articulate them to us.
Thanks for the suggestions, those of you who offered some.
the sewers belch me up.. the heavens spit me out... from ethers tragic I am born again... and now i'm with you now
I never heard that description of the early church, even though I studied it pretty seriously while pursuing my Biblical studies major.
Gnosticism is nothing more than the first Christian instance of the age-old problem with any faith: how do you make it relevant to new situations without destroying it? Specifically, in order to appeal to Greek intellectuals, several groups added some Greek mythology, superstition, and philosophy to the original message. "Gnosticism" never could be used to describe a single belief system; rather, each group mixed and matched parts of various belief systems depending on location, personal bias, and what fads were floating around in the general populace.
You're right about one thing: the Council of Nicea, in 325 AD, was a response to the various Gnostic groups, including specifically the group headed by Arius. But, at the time, the bishop of Rome's influence was little more than the same influence that makes the bishop of New York more influential than, say, the bishop of Wyoming today: easier access to the means of influence and power. The papacy didn't look anything like it does today until hundreds of years later, after very gradual changes. (For reference, the Great Schism, in which the church split along geographic lines over the power of the Pope, happened in 1054.)
The Gnostic problem has been around ever since; it is a byproduct of the quest to make faith relevant to new times and places.
Like references to "Masonic plots" or "the grassy knoll", references to a power bloc suppressing "true Christianity" in the infancy of the Church are wild speculation with no historical basis.
Geez, nice spoiler on the Pullman books. Notice that the premise you refer to isn't entirely central or clear until the 3rd book.
What is it with these books and spoilers? For those of you who haven't read His Dark Materials, I highly recommend skipping Terry Brooks' introduction: in a single paragraph, it manages to spoil about 4/5ths of the surprises of the series, including all the major characters and some plot...
Making code GPL does not suddenly strip every right you have to that code from you.
If you own the copyright to the code then you are free to license it anyway that you like. Remember, the GPL is just that, a license.
This means that you can't license someone else's copyrighted code (taking someone's proprietary code and adding it to a GPL'd work) unless you are given specific permission from the copyright owner.
Think about it. TrollTech both GPL's and sells licenses for Qt. They can do this because they are the copyright owners.
GPL is only a license.
Copyright is what gives the power.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be
regarded as a criminal offence.
-- Edsger W. Dijkstra, SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 17, Number 5
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