Slashdot Mirror
Lindows becomes Lindash
Daveh writes "The Register is reporting that 'The operating system Lindows is now available as Lin---s (pronounced: Lin-dash) in those countries where Microsoft has blocked the availability of the desktop Linux distribution. The new name complies with a recent Amsterdam court ruling (PDF), the San Diego company says.' There are a few new sites to reflect the name change, including Lin---s.com and Lindash.nl."
But that is the stupidest name I have ever heard... I hope someone named Linda sues them :)
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
I guess that's one way to dash Microsoft's evil plan.
That's pretty f------ g--.
They obviously arn't happy about the change, seeing as how their current front-page picture shows a hang-man with only d, o, w left in the letter-box. (Lin_ _ _ s might be a better way to put it.)
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
In a related story. Bill Gates has decided to rename Windows to be close to this product. The new proposed name is Balder-Dash (in honor of Steve Ballmer)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
it's a bit slapdash
--
code newbie: help for coding newbies
the distro formerly known as LindowsOS would have been better.
This is infantile. If you are being forced to change your name, just do it. Having a name like Lin---s.com is just plain dumb. The graphic on the one site is hangman with D,O,W remaining.
Other programs have had to do this before and at least they had the decency to come up with something more original. I suppose when you start out with something as unoriginal as Windows/Lindows they what do you expect?
It truly is sad to think that Microsoft can block distribution of a particular flavor of Linux. I guess when you can't win in the free marketplace, you resort to sleazy underhanded tactics such as this.
changes name of of lindows to lind-hash.
BSD may be forced also to change it's name to BUD.
lysergically yours
Lin---s? I feel like I'm on some kind of game show.
I'd like to buy a vowel!
the names...
winix
uniwindows
linuows
microsnix
lindix
Next on Slashdot: Microsoft is suing all companies with products that start with a W.
Microsoft is now known as Micro---- (pronounced: Microdash). This is to settle a lesser known lawsuit with video game maker SquareSoft.
Lindows will now sue Microdash for trademark violations.
Will it ever end?
Cases like this boggle the mind. Now all they had to do was change their name to something (albeit strange) catchy, and they get even more free publicity. Windows on the other hand, continues to foster its bully image and ends up really not accomplishing too much at all.
What a waste of everyone's time and money.
F---edcompany maybe?
As a double bonus is gets around any Microsoft-friendly internet censorware that has lindows.com blocked as "terrorist" or "hate speech".
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
visionary [vi'sion'ar'y] adj 1. full of foresight: characterized by unusually acute foresight and imagination
Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) Reference Library 2002. (C) 1993-2001 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Good for Lindows. Too bad being a visionary is copyrighted by Microsoft.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Hilarious ... another great moment in sarcasm history, and yet rather thought-provoking on the question of intellectual property.
-- (Score:i, Imaginary)
Lin---s reminds me of this cartoon. Fill in the blanks? What else can we stick in those three dashes? I'd grep my /usr/dict/words if I wasn't in Windows.
They could've renamed it Linfox instead.
Might I suggest:
lin-XXX.com
Mod +5 Drunk
Microsoft sues dictionary.com for trademark infringement.
- (-) n.
An opening constructed in a wall or roof that functions to admit light or air to an enclosure and is often framed and spanned with glass mounted to permit opening and closing.
Lindash isn't too bad of an OS name. But why not just spell it lindash? It would be much easier
Should've changed it to Lackintosh.
! up job, boys--now put on your ^s, head down to the big \ at the local # |, and party 'till you see *s!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
At least they didn't rename themselves GNU/Xenix.
*gong*
Then it would become L-----s.
(Not that it's likely, of course. Heh.)
---!
"Lindash. Lindash. I like it. It sounds fast. It will make your computer run quickly. And it's Linux, so you know it'll be stable.
"Yeah, I like Lindash a lot. And it sounds WAY better than Laguar or Lanther."
For one, they're already using S and O and neither have been crossed out. They've already missed 18 times. Unless they're counting every bone in the hangman's body, the game should be over.
Linuendows
Rmrember taht one?
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
How'm I supposed to search for "lin---s" in google, for example? Please don't break out the meta-escape, its already past time for a headache remedy on this Lindows name issue ...
;)
A better name would've been "Lintel", but okay, I guess the Dutch Govt' wouldn't have seen the humor in that name-switch, eh?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
What a stupid name. Noone but a bunch of geeks (who wont pay for lindows anyways) gets the joke.
I'd have come up with something original, and marketted it as a great commercial OS - highlighting its actual features, rather than running it as the "MS is teh ghey!!1!! lOOLOL GAYER THEN AIDS!!1!" system.
Move over, HURD, here comes Lin---s.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
It would be a good homage to Homer Simpson too..
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Rmedins me of tihs sotry...
# fuser -v
#
Truly, it is the name made by geeks for geeks.
Why is it that some geeks, who are supposed the intellectually elite, come up with the most stupid ideas ever? I say some, because that would be an insult to me and the rest of the minority of the geek population.
If my first impression hadnt been guided by /. I would've read it out loud as:
Linn-ess
Sounds like Linus, eh.
Oh for crap's sake. Can't they just get the Mozilla people to rattle off a few dozen name candidates? Their projects change names with every CVS commit.
--riney
"Yes, this is horrible, this idea." - Samir
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Michael Robertson is as much interested in the fight with MS as the future of his company, which he is using as a vehicle. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing - Lindows is privately held, after all, so he can do what he likes, and I respect his convictions. What Robertson really would like to see, I think even *more* than the success of Lindows, would be for a US court to strip Windows of trademark protection.
I think what they're doing is right on. Lindows tried protesting M$'s ridiculous assertion (that it can trademark a word common in the English language and in computing circles *before* there was ever a Microsoft Windows(tm)) in the courts. Now they can continue their protest of this ridiculous ruling via their new name... and they rightly should protest. The European ruling is idiotic.
The US courts are more reasonable, and likely won't let Microsoft pull words from the English language/computing circles like European courts have. Lindows is a great marketing name for a linux desktop solution, combining linux, a term the average joe may be unfamiliar with, with windows, a term most people use in reference to their computer everyday (not M$ Windows(tm), but those little boxes people are used to dealing with on their desktops in *any* OS environment, when they are instructed to "close the window" etc.). Trademarking the word "windows" is like trademarking the words "mouse" or "cursor".
I don't know much about the distro or the company... but I give them props for their name. Marketing wit is something the linux community can always use more of.
this gave the wine an underground cachet. So the next year he just had the lables printed with the black dash. This was great till Taylor wines sued him again, and arguning before the same judge, won the case that the black mark had become identified with "taylor".
So the next year he left off the black mark and instead just put oil paintings of his deceased relatives on the bottles with the captions, joe TAYLOR. mary TAYLOR, etc....
Taylor wines sued him again. So he once again he erased the name and left the pictures that every one now recognized as the taylor family portraits. .
Taylor sued again and won. He was ordered to turn over the lables so he loaded them in the manure spreader and spread them around taylor wines office building.
Finally he altered all the portraits to cyclopses and dared them to say he was related. Around then he also adopted the name "bully hill winery". ANd there it ended.
I'd say lindash should just use a strategically placed Star or fig leaf to cover the last part of its name.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I hate MS, but I hate what Michael Robertson is doing more. Lindows, the name, implies 100% compatibility with Windows programs. Therefore, it does dilute the windows trademark. Even worse, it doesn't deliver on that compatibility because of a previous lawsuit MS filed.
Sigh, someone is gonna burn, even if it is just my moderator points.
C#.
:-)
Seriously, how the hell are you going to market that?
This reminds me of the case study done on white wines. Turns out that approx 75% of white wine drinkers prefer Gewertztraminer to Chardonnay grapes. Yet Chardonnay is still the top white grape in the world. Why? Because people can't pronounce Gewurtztraminer (Guh-vurtz-trah-mihn-er), and don't want to sound stupid.
Good luck with that dash thing, folks. Let me know how it works out for you.
What does it mean to wake out of a dream
and be wearing someone else's shorts?
BNL, Born on a Pirate Ship (1998)
This is further proof that MS should have just let this one go. This is again front page news on slashdot, which they may not care about... I also bet that this is news in any of those countries (which lindows wouldn't have had)... plus all of the tech journals in the US and Europe, plus it'll probably second page news on many sites and papers... AND it's one more reason all of the geeks have to hate Microsoft for being a big dumb bully.
Microsoft has from the beginning of this, given Roberson(SP?) (Lindows CEO) more free advertising opportunities than his product could have ever given him.
Keep it up Microsoft... one of these shots in the foot will keep you from walking!
Certainly every man at his best state is but vapor
to put a green bar over the letter S in their hangman game...
I emailed Micheal Robertson several months ago and asked why he is using the -indows in his company name. I flat out told him that even though it is definitely a Linux distro, using the -indows associates his product with insecure, unreliable, expensive, proprietary software. And so I asked "What's the point of using the L- if the rest is -indows?". Obviously his whole point of Lindows is create an OS clearly distinguishable from Microsoft software (and the negative connotation). It would make much more sense to come up with a nice prefix for -nix. Of course he said something about how windows is a generic term and he should be able to use however he wants. I can't find the exact email anymore. He's so hung up on if he "could" that he doesn't consider if he "should".
Lindowpane. if anybody out there is old enough to get the LSD pun.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
In dutch: "Beveelt Lindows.com om binnen acht dagen na betekening van dit vonnis de toegang voor de website(s) van Lindows.com waarop zij programmatuur aanbiedt onder de naam "Lindows", "Lindows.com", en "LindowsOS", inclusief maar niet beperkt tot de website op URL http://www.lindows.com, ontoegankelijk te maken voor bezoekers uit Belgie, Nederland en Luxemburg." , which roughly translates to:
"(The court) Orders a verdict under which Lindows.com is to block access to the website of Lindows.com where she offers software under the name of "Lindows", including but not limited to the website at URL http://www.lindows.com, to all vistors from Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxembourg."
I can still access it, even though I'm from Holland, but I feel I still have the right to get the Lindows product from Lindows.com as I please.
This view of the "Internet", and the websites that it houses is quite stalinistic in my humble opinion.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Trademark, not copyright, but you're correct.
All they want is the name changed, they're not trying to stop them from selling it.
Yes, it's a stupid name, however what I think many people here are overlooking is this statement from Michael Robertson:
"Any action from Microsoft to block Lin---s will show their true intentions are not to protect their trademark, but to eliminate competition and maintain their monopoly."
Basically he's bear baiting.
Seeing that Walmart pushed Lindows into the "mainstream" they should just buy it and relabel it either Walmart/OS or W/OS.
If not what about LinBash?
Lindows was a lame name to begin with anyway.
...you don't let engineers do your marketing.
from their news release on the topic ...
Copyright (C) 2004 Lindows.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way - in fact, we don't even really like them because they are suing us.
vodka, straight up, thank you!
The judge has instructed the jury to evaluate the Trademark of Windows as it was before it was "Given" to MS. They will loose and we can call our favorite OS, Windows for Linux, Windows for BSD etc.
Help fight continental drift.
-
Sponsoring several open source projects:
-
kde-look.org
- kde-apps.org
-
Mozilla
-
Nvu
-
gaim
-
And the list goes on
...
-
Hiring Everaldo
Yeah, let's hope they go belly up. Now, who is the baby ?LINL Is Not Lindows
It has a nice ring to it, and as far as I know... no one is marketing anything under the name longhorn.... right?
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
Many years ago, Apple was developing a new computer under the code name "Carl Sagan". Well, Carl Sagan learned of this and had his lawyers send a C&D letter to Apple. So Apple changed the code name to "Butt-Head Astronomer". A few details are here.
Maybe Lindows should be named Butt-Head CEO?It's not "Windows" with an "L," you dolt! It's a combination of two similar words:
LINux
+winDOWS
--------
LINDOWS
There's no question it's partially a play of "Windows", but it's as much of a play off of "Linux". And no one is going to mistake the Lindows brand as representing Windows (nor do they want people to). They want people to see it as a LINux that's winDOWS like (user friendly, etc.).
Personally, I think Lindows is annoying, and I would never pay for it. But this isn't a ripoff of Windows's name, it's mix of two words (and the Windows name hardly deserves trademark status).
The Lindows name is similar enough to Windows, however, that the simple fact that it was partially derived from that word means a court could find for Microsoft.
-Dan
wintech doesn't claim to produce a competing product to what microsoft makes, and wintech doesn't have a website that claims their product is a replacement for windows, and wintech doesn't create a product made to look and work as much like windows as possible.
Thats the difference
Look at it this way. is lindows the victim of an unfortuneate naming coincidence ?
No. They're a linux distribution who's only reason for existance is to try and be as much like windows as possible, but not windows. And their name reflects exactly that purpose.
I'm sure you'll agree that i cant stard Fjord Motor Company, a car maker.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
It's a self-fufilling prophecy. When google gets it in it's database from slashdot, it will then exist :)
And then we'll have to refer to those household objects as casements, skylights, transoms, portholes, panes, windowpanes, or glass. (Yes, I got all those synonyms from M$ Word's "thesaurus", which interestingly did not provide "operating system" as a synonym for "windows" ;-)
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Linsoft? Micronux TuxXP
Lindows isn't stupid and there is nothing to get away with in the US. All Lindows has to prove is that, at the time Microsoft decided to name its OS Windows, that the term windows was a generic term for all GUIs. The jury will not have to consider whether or not consumers will currently be confused, because that's not the issue.
Lindows will certainly win their case against Microsoft.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I think the Wine folks should sue him. Just for the fun of it! ;-)
Just say it like Homer: Lin-DOH!
(Does Fox have a trademark on "DOH"?)
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Since we studied this in a law class last semester:
For a company to win in a trademark case, the biggest factor is showing that the allegedly infringing trademark is likely to cause confusion in a normal consumer. So it doesn't have to be precisely the same or anything, it just has to be to the point that your normal consumer might get confused by it, and hence you'd have your bussiness hurt.
That's why if it is two totally different products, there's usually not a problem. No one is going to mistake software called Firebird for the car called Firebird, two totally different thigns. However Windows and Lindows were both OSes, and Lindows selling point is being like Windows (similar interface, alleged compatibility, always root, etc).
That's probably why MS had a fairly strong case, since it seemed reasonable that a normal consumer would get confused. I think that is a reasonable statement, a non-savvy user could easily buy a Lindows machine believing it to the same as Windows.
The statements made by the developers of Lindows don't help either. As memory serves, they were touting it as a Windows replacement, and actually had to back down on some claims because they couldn't get compatibility as good as they thought. That sort of thing is factored in.
Because of Microsoft Bill Gates is able to give lots of financial aid to charities. Should we therefore support Microsoft in everything it does?
Lindows helps support a few Open Source projects. I thank them. That doesn't mean we can't disagree with their vision of the future of desktop Linux. Lindows is a proprietary Linux whose goal is to get all of its users paying a monthly fee for its click-n-run program. If their model succeeds then the future of Linux is one more akin to what Microsoft offers than what backers of GNU have in mind. I'm not going to even say which one is right or wrong(although you could probably guess how I feel), but you can't blame someone for disagreeing with what Lindows represents.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Who is this Linda and her new shell?
Some people still don't seem to get it. There is no operating system called windows, no product called windows, and certainly no trademark on the word windows for ANY use including operating systems or graphical windowing systems.
There is a series of operating systems put out by a company called Microsoft. It's called "Microsoft Windows", and people have nicknamed it due to it's monopoly err prevailance to simply "windows".
People think Lindows is similar to the nickname "Windows" and is a product line of the same type and therefore infringes. That's fine and dandy but you cannot infringe on a NICKNAME that isn't trademarked and furthermore is actually in the public domain and untrademarkable regardless.
If Microsoft had a trademark on windows, and the name lindows could confuse customers, then they'd have a case. But since they nor any other company can trademark the term, and the term is merely a nickname to begin with, lindows and windows can be confused all day long and there is STILL no valid case for Microsoft.
Lindows is supposed to help windows users migrate to Linux, right? So i'm supposed to tell my mom, or whoever i'm encouraging to switch, that they need to download "Lin---"? I don't care if it has the convenient "pronounciation" lindash. They won't be able to google it, or be sure that they've found the right product even if they do find the right page. I can just see a person thinking, after being recommended Lindows from a *nix fan, "Now, was that Lin--, Lin----, Lin___"??? Perhaps this name is a form of protest, but as far as a marketable name, its just horrible.
Among the obvious, it is an easy replace all within the code with the same amount of characters only replacing the last three.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".