That's not how genericity of a trademark works.
If Microsoft were in the business of selling large crystal panes that you can attach to walls to see through them, then yes, it couldn't call them "windows", because you're using the generic word for that product. It's just like Apple isn't selling produce, so they can use that common word as a trademark. The genericity of a trademark depends on the domain to which it is applied. In the case of "app store", Microsoft has a good case, because Apple is trying to trademark the general shortening of "application". I don't think the shortening of "application store" to "app store" will be able to withstand the attack of genericity.
"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction" —John Steinbeck:
Did you read the Pacman Dossier linked from TFA? They specifically say how the best player in the world doesn't play by memorising a pattern, because that's too inflexible. If you make a mistake while executing the pattern, memorisers are at loss to how to recover from that mistake. On the other hand, learning ghost behaviour allows you to adapt much better and removes that inflexibility, and this is how the best player in the world racked up a perfect score.
I actually offered just that while going through airport security recently. I got selected on both directions of my trip. I opted out twice. I offered both times to strip instead of being probed. The first pat down actually wasn't that bad, no touching of my genitals. The second one touched them very briefly.
I wore a long skirt with nothing underneath, but they didn't seem to take any note of that.
I also wasn't brave enough to make too much of a fuss, because as a foreign national, I thought I couldn't afford dealing with the problems if they had happened (e.g. being stranded in a foreign airport in a foreign country). I did tell them I was opting out due to 4th amendment issues, because they asked me why I was opting out, and were writing it down.
The point of a patent is to encourage people to invent.
People have this huge idea that patents are there in order to give people an incentive to create. That's mostly what copyright is supposed to do, not patents. The point with patents is to get rid of guild secrets. The essential point of a patent is that you carefully describe how your invention works in exchange of the state granting you a temporary monopoly on your invention. The alternative to patents is that you have to use a trade secret in order to exploit your invention without the state-granted monopoly.
Patents right now are completely broken because they are not actually disclosing any secrets, just expressing obvious facts. That is the real reason they're broken. Not because they're stifling innovation. Innovation is happening of its own accord.
Patents don't affect innovation. They affect patent warfare, but were supposed to kill or discourage trade secrets.
You're a webdev? I know you said you don't want to keep doing that, but what else are you happy doing?
Right now, GNU Octave is looking to rebrand itself and is starting a website to rival Matlab Central. The The Octave-Forge pages also need help, and a hot new designer star just recently came along who is helping us with logo and brand image design. His name is Fotios Kasolis.
You could do a lot of good if you got involved with us. Plus, Octave itself is interesting if you're into mathematics and numerical analysis.
In the US, for example, (get this) corporations are now considered to be people and to have the same rights of free speech!
Old news is old... like, 19th century old... Corporations have been considered to be people since the 14th ammendment passed... Which is really perverse, when you realise that the amendment was intended for the protection of newly freed slaves, and instead it was overwhelmingly used to grant corporations property rights.
If it's anecdotes you want, I can provide a counteranecdote.
My mom runs Debian. She learned how to use a mouse about a year and a half ago. She was getting pretty fed up with Windows, antivirus popup this, ad over here, Sony Vaio crapware all over the place.
With Debian, her experience has been much more pleasant, in her own words "a lot less bullshit", and she doesn't miss the ads I adblocked for her in Iceweasel.
Sure, she didn't install or configure Debian... I did that for her, but someone else took the chore of installing and configuring OS X for the hardware it's running on. If you were to install a half-assed version of OS X on some unfamiliar hardware, your user would have the same experience. I chose what the default apps would be, I chose default formats that would be the least hassle for her, I was her one-time sysadmin, and have forgotten about it since. She now uses her Debian laptop mostly for Facebook, email, and opening MSFT Office attachments her friends send her. All works without a hitch. If you or someone else had taken the time to config Ubuntu for your friend, I think your anecdote would be different.
You could argue that it should just work "out of the box" for all possible hardware, but given the scope of Linux and free software in general, this is an impossible task. There are too many boxes out there.
I find it profoundly unsatisfying that you have to ask this question.
It's not your fault; it's the structure of the educational system. You
are clearly not interested in mathematics, since you just want to cram
and pass some test. You don't specify exactly for what you need
mathematics, but I'm guessing it's for some other thing, possibly
something computer related.
It's a big lie that you'll ever use calculus for anything except for
specialised degrees (and if you were to use it for anything you
personally would want to do in your future, you would already be
interested in it). It's also profoundly strange that calculus seems to
be pinnacle of mathematical education if you're not going to go on to
study something like mathematics itself or physics.
To put my frustration another way, why doesn't anybody ever ask
similar questions for sculpture, or Schaum's Outlines on Basket
Weaving or all the other myriad useless things we humans do for our
edification? Why is western society obsessed with mathematics, deluded
into thinking it's useful in general, and why are people so stressed
over learning this useless and dryly-presented subject? Why aren't you
required to achieve a certain level of chess expertise before you can
complete a computer science degree? A lot of early computer science
was concerned with chess playing, let us not forget!
It's pointless. It's pointless to cram for exams about subjects you
don't care about in order to satisfy requirements you don't genuinely
need.
My recommendation is, are you really interested in learning this
stuff? If so, just spend hours and hours in your local university
library in the math section browsing books you're interested in. If
you're not really interested, go grab some Schaum's Outlines or the
Complete Idiot's guide or whatever, and use that to pass whatever
bureaucratic and pointless requirement your educational institute
imposes before you're allowed to study what you really want to study.
I recently had to deal with Codeplex in order to track down a bug on code hosted therein that we were using at my workplace. This is fine, I am quite happy to work with free projects in order to track down bugs. Unfortunately, I got the impression that Codeplex doesn't "get" what free collaboration is about.
For instance, it has a clickthrough for GPL and other free licenses. While harmless, it is annoying and shows that Microsoft doesn't "get" it. I also had issues doing an svn checkout of the code, since it looks like the svn repositories are hidden except for Codeplex developers. They did eventually gave me a URL to an svn checkout, but I had to ask, and it wasn't exposed in the site's web interface. I overall got the impression that unless there was some way to track me (e.g. with a username), I wasn't welcome to look at or contribute to their code. Regardless, I did eventually track down the bug and submitted a patch which got accepted.
My question, why these hoops? Is there still some restraint from Microsoft from allowing free collaboration? Do old habits die hard, is that why there are clickthroughs for free licenses, hidden svn repositories, mandatory registration? What can you tell me about the historical non-free culture in Microsoft and how it is adapting to free culture?
It's the same story all over again. Once the information is out, there's no way to lock it down again, at least, not without severely affecting our modern means of conveying information, and even that seems unthinkable. Essentially, it's impossible, no matter how many laws you make. Iranian dissenters can find proxies over the internet, samizdat dissemination in Soviet Russia; it's everywhere. The technology for instant everpresent information can't be unlearned. We've spent many centuries perfecting it since Gutenberg's printing press.
Our society would do well to simply accept the present state of instant and everpresent information instead of trying to suppress it.
Users are illiterate, for the most part. Their computer already talks too much to them and most of the time has nothing interesting to say, so they reckon it's safe to ignore it all the time.
That being said, *which* default password are we talking about? Which authentication method is ssh using on an iPhone? Arstechnica for a similar incident suggests that it's Apple who is setting default passwords, not the distributors of the jailbreaking software. Is this accurate?
Slashdot Mirror
MAME isn't open source, though. It forbids commercial use.
I see what you did there...
Since when has a University Professors role been "intellectuals working for the public good"?
Since they were mostly paid by with tax money.
...that the guys most paranoid about people listening in on their conversations are the ones with the least interesting things to say...?
Such as Julian Assange. Pffft, who needs encryption and Swedish server bunkers.
That's not how genericity of a trademark works. If Microsoft were in the business of selling large crystal panes that you can attach to walls to see through them, then yes, it couldn't call them "windows", because you're using the generic word for that product. It's just like Apple isn't selling produce, so they can use that common word as a trademark. The genericity of a trademark depends on the domain to which it is applied. In the case of "app store", Microsoft has a good case, because Apple is trying to trademark the general shortening of "application". I don't think the shortening of "application store" to "app store" will be able to withstand the attack of genericity.
Here.
The article doesn't say exactly what the summary says. This is a clear case of Science news cycle.
"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction" —John Steinbeck:
Did you read the Pacman Dossier linked from TFA? They specifically say how the best player in the world doesn't play by memorising a pattern, because that's too inflexible. If you make a mistake while executing the pattern, memorisers are at loss to how to recover from that mistake. On the other hand, learning ghost behaviour allows you to adapt much better and removes that inflexibility, and this is how the best player in the world racked up a perfect score.
I actually offered just that while going through airport security recently. I got selected on both directions of my trip. I opted out twice. I offered both times to strip instead of being probed. The first pat down actually wasn't that bad, no touching of my genitals. The second one touched them very briefly.
I wore a long skirt with nothing underneath, but they didn't seem to take any note of that.
I also wasn't brave enough to make too much of a fuss, because as a foreign national, I thought I couldn't afford dealing with the problems if they had happened (e.g. being stranded in a foreign airport in a foreign country). I did tell them I was opting out due to 4th amendment issues, because they asked me why I was opting out, and were writing it down.
Yeah, in case anyone else thought the name was familiar...
Fuck. :-(
It was a pleasure to burn...
People have this huge idea that patents are there in order to give people an incentive to create. That's mostly what copyright is supposed to do, not patents. The point with patents is to get rid of guild secrets. The essential point of a patent is that you carefully describe how your invention works in exchange of the state granting you a temporary monopoly on your invention. The alternative to patents is that you have to use a trade secret in order to exploit your invention without the state-granted monopoly.
Patents right now are completely broken because they are not actually disclosing any secrets, just expressing obvious facts. That is the real reason they're broken. Not because they're stifling innovation. Innovation is happening of its own accord. Patents don't affect innovation. They affect patent warfare, but were supposed to kill or discourage trade secrets.
Y'know what, I was thinking the same, because it's a widely acknowledged fact that change sucks, but this guy has convinced me otherwise.
You're a webdev? I know you said you don't want to keep doing that, but what else are you happy doing?
Right now, GNU Octave is looking to rebrand itself and is starting a website to rival Matlab Central. The The Octave-Forge pages also need help, and a hot new designer star just recently came along who is helping us with logo and brand image design. His name is Fotios Kasolis.
You could do a lot of good if you got involved with us. Plus, Octave itself is interesting if you're into mathematics and numerical analysis.
Old news is old... like, 19th century old... Corporations have been considered to be people since the 14th ammendment passed... Which is really perverse, when you realise that the amendment was intended for the protection of newly freed slaves, and instead it was overwhelmingly used to grant corporations property rights.
I'm not making this up.
ZOMBO
If it's anecdotes you want, I can provide a counteranecdote.
My mom runs Debian. She learned how to use a mouse about a year and a half ago. She was getting pretty fed up with Windows, antivirus popup this, ad over here, Sony Vaio crapware all over the place.
With Debian, her experience has been much more pleasant, in her own words "a lot less bullshit", and she doesn't miss the ads I adblocked for her in Iceweasel.
Sure, she didn't install or configure Debian... I did that for her, but someone else took the chore of installing and configuring OS X for the hardware it's running on. If you were to install a half-assed version of OS X on some unfamiliar hardware, your user would have the same experience. I chose what the default apps would be, I chose default formats that would be the least hassle for her, I was her one-time sysadmin, and have forgotten about it since. She now uses her Debian laptop mostly for Facebook, email, and opening MSFT Office attachments her friends send her. All works without a hitch. If you or someone else had taken the time to config Ubuntu for your friend, I think your anecdote would be different.
You could argue that it should just work "out of the box" for all possible hardware, but given the scope of Linux and free software in general, this is an impossible task. There are too many boxes out there.
I find it profoundly unsatisfying that you have to ask this question.
It's not your fault; it's the structure of the educational system. You are clearly not interested in mathematics, since you just want to cram and pass some test. You don't specify exactly for what you need mathematics, but I'm guessing it's for some other thing, possibly something computer related.
It's a big lie that you'll ever use calculus for anything except for specialised degrees (and if you were to use it for anything you personally would want to do in your future, you would already be interested in it). It's also profoundly strange that calculus seems to be pinnacle of mathematical education if you're not going to go on to study something like mathematics itself or physics.
To put my frustration another way, why doesn't anybody ever ask similar questions for sculpture, or Schaum's Outlines on Basket Weaving or all the other myriad useless things we humans do for our edification? Why is western society obsessed with mathematics, deluded into thinking it's useful in general, and why are people so stressed over learning this useless and dryly-presented subject? Why aren't you required to achieve a certain level of chess expertise before you can complete a computer science degree? A lot of early computer science was concerned with chess playing, let us not forget!
It's pointless. It's pointless to cram for exams about subjects you don't care about in order to satisfy requirements you don't genuinely need.
My recommendation is, are you really interested in learning this stuff? If so, just spend hours and hours in your local university library in the math section browsing books you're interested in. If you're not really interested, go grab some Schaum's Outlines or the Complete Idiot's guide or whatever, and use that to pass whatever bureaucratic and pointless requirement your educational institute imposes before you're allowed to study what you really want to study.
I want to hear you had to go to the hospital for an emergency maxilofacial reconstruction.
you don't have to deal with all of those hypocrites, phonies, and rubes we encounter in real life.
Holden? Is that you?
I recently had to deal with Codeplex in order to track down a bug on code hosted therein that we were using at my workplace. This is fine, I am quite happy to work with free projects in order to track down bugs. Unfortunately, I got the impression that Codeplex doesn't "get" what free collaboration is about.
For instance, it has a clickthrough for GPL and other free licenses. While harmless, it is annoying and shows that Microsoft doesn't "get" it. I also had issues doing an svn checkout of the code, since it looks like the svn repositories are hidden except for Codeplex developers. They did eventually gave me a URL to an svn checkout, but I had to ask, and it wasn't exposed in the site's web interface. I overall got the impression that unless there was some way to track me (e.g. with a username), I wasn't welcome to look at or contribute to their code. Regardless, I did eventually track down the bug and submitted a patch which got accepted.
My question, why these hoops? Is there still some restraint from Microsoft from allowing free collaboration? Do old habits die hard, is that why there are clickthroughs for free licenses, hidden svn repositories, mandatory registration? What can you tell me about the historical non-free culture in Microsoft and how it is adapting to free culture?
It's the same story all over again. Once the information is out, there's no way to lock it down again, at least, not without severely affecting our modern means of conveying information, and even that seems unthinkable. Essentially, it's impossible, no matter how many laws you make. Iranian dissenters can find proxies over the internet, samizdat dissemination in Soviet Russia; it's everywhere. The technology for instant everpresent information can't be unlearned. We've spent many centuries perfecting it since Gutenberg's printing press.
Our society would do well to simply accept the present state of instant and everpresent information instead of trying to suppress it.
Users are illiterate, for the most part. Their computer already talks too much to them and most of the time has nothing interesting to say, so they reckon it's safe to ignore it all the time.
That being said, *which* default password are we talking about? Which authentication method is ssh using on an iPhone? Arstechnica for a similar incident suggests that it's Apple who is setting default passwords, not the distributors of the jailbreaking software. Is this accurate?