Build a Broadband Co-Op! Just don't make the taxpayer pay for it.
For the most part, it takes something the size of a municipality to put together something that size. Most of these companies already have government-mandated control of our communication -- that's really not too far from tax capability.
Adam Smith considered big business to be roughly the same as big government... Both result in centralized planning, local market inflexibility and sucking capital out of the local market.
A municipal communicatins corporation provides local control of communications capability.
I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. Ever since the dawn of the Telephone era, they had a municipal telephon company -- once again started because the big players didn't consider a small town in the middle of the praries (early 1900's) worth investing in. The company ran at a profit, and helped to lower Edmonton's taxes.
Now it's owned by Telus -- a multi-provincial conglomerate partly owned by MCI. I really don't see much of an advantage in the new setup.
Some people seem to think that large corporations have some sort of constitutional right to profit -- they don't. The original purpose of corprations was to pool community resources to provide a service to the community. Whether those pooled resources come from Bill Gate's Windows Tax, or a municipal levy doesn't make much of a difference to my pocket book -- either way the money's gonna be coming out of my pocket. With a municipal company, at least most of the profit and control is going to stay local.
If a company feels that my community is worth investing in, then they should do it -- now. If they're not willing to do so, then they shouldn't be getting in the way of anybody else providing the service that they're not willing to -- governmental or otherwise.
If the commercial companies claim that it costs $70/month to serve customers in an area, but a community group manages to do it for $30, what does this mean about the $50/month service that they're 'providing' in the high-profit areas?
It's not just that they don't want municipalities competing against them -- they don't want groups competing against them who have open books.
Silly thing is your original post is mostly accurate. Copyright, Tradamark and Patent are very different animals, and Copyright and Trademark wouldn't normally intersect like this, because most people wouldn't be stupid enough to trademark something that they didn't have copuyright permission for.
If I was an IP lawyer I might take this on pro bono to see if I could successfully sue them for violating copyright with the trademark application.
Even though this guy is applying for a Trademark, he's applying for a trademark on the logo. The logo artwork is copyright, and any inappropriate use if it would be a violation of the artist's copyright. Tradmarking artwork shouldn't trump Copyright. I'd expect that most people interested in getting a logo tradmarked would make sure that they had the copyrights locked down first.
In other words: if he succeeds in getting the trademark on Mame, he could end up with a registered logo that he's at risk of being sued for if he actually uses it in public.
(It'd almost be funny to see him being sued for using it in his first 'cease and decist' letter)
That having been said, sending the USPTO an email about this application with a well-chosen URL from the WayBack machine might torpedo this application (at least I hope so -- IANAL)
__________________
Btw: With SCOXE at risk of being delisted, Darl McBride may be looking for somewhere else to be a public puncing bag.
If they go almost-bankrupt as a result of the class-action suit, it might cause them to be more careful about who they allow to do searches. Truth of the matter is that the only reason we even know the scale of this is that California had a left-wing commie customer notification law on the books, otherwise they would have probably just sent out notices to thousand of the most seriously affected and hoped that nobody noticed a larger pattern.
As it is, even a class-action suit might not cost them as much as they gain by allowing anybody and their dog to make a query. I've actually been quietly expecting this sort of event for years.
I can do it OK, too, but it's a lot more work than convergent. It was actually kinda funny getting the 'impossible' from her after my boss (at a physical biochemistry lab) had shown me how to do it. I can still do cross-eyed in 2 seconds flat, but divergent is almost like meditation.
I think that a couple of people pointed to new 'good Samaritan' laws which absolve you of liability and require actions under some circumstances. Even lacking such laws, I think that -- although it would be pushing the envelope -- it might be possible to convince a jury that a callous enough refusal act is essentially equivalent to active support of the injury/death.
(e.g. not even trying to tell someone that there are 7 hungry sharks in the pool they're about to go swimming in.)
It's based on market share, and the effect on customers. Bsides, there are companies that make money off of WINE -- they just don't (necessarily) make it by directly selling the product.
For being one of a very small minority who actually got the point, can read deeper than the literal level, and who doesn't think that I am a professional pyromaniac - thank you.
Part of the thing is that I think that the literal aspect of your analogy is wrong -- which doesn't help. You might not be required to actively use your fire extinguisher, but actively denying me access to it (if I knew it was there) {w,c}could get you sued or arrested.
You're not required to actively put yourself at risk, but wilfully refusing to take on obvious and trivial action to save someone might reach into the space of (criminal) negligence. Even if the law is on your side, I can certainly see the claim of no moral burden being upsetting. For most people there's a big difference between moral burden and legal.
If I saw you engulfed in flames, I would be under no legal or ethical obligation to give you the benefit of my fire extinguisher.
I would liken this to locking the door on you so you couldn't reach the swimming pool. This is an active action on their part to deny people access to updates. The rules are different for inaction, and wilful misconduct or neglect.
Even refusing updates to people using a legit copy of WINE ia questionable, since some people will use Linux to access the 'net because MS Windows is so insecure.
On the other hand, given the already known security flaws and weaknesses of ActiveX, I'm not all that pleased about requiring an ActiveX control download and installation for demonstrating that I'm legal. No telling what that control is doing. It could be sending all my Quicken data files to MS or something. Well, at least I can run the standalone program.
And just what can an Active-X program do that a standalone couldn't? Evem of you disconnect from the 'net to keep it from 'calling home', it can still spawn a background task that waits until you reconnect.
Basically the point is that, if push comes to shove, MS could look for something far more subtle that would be all but impossible for the WINE group to work around. It's far better to go after this on a political level.
In any case, you don't want to get into an arms race with Microsoft on something like this... It's real easy to start eating time figuring out what they're using to check this time.
Among other things, if they are wilfully blocking users from getting updates for software that they've bought just because they're running under wine vs Windows, this becomes an anti-trust issue.
The other workaround is to not need any updates from Microsoft for directly Windows related software... This is obviously the more permanent solution -- don't depend on Microsoft for anything, but it doesn't work for updates to things like Word and Excel. For those updates, you pretty much have to convince MS to stop blocking WINE users from getting updates.
Oh my, I guess Bill Gates will have to find another message to preach besides "OSS is unsafe, unsupported, and costs more than Microsoft products."
Oh, he's already got messages besides that one. The fact that most of them are untrue, misleading and/or misdirection won't stop him from using those cliches. Nor will it stop him from using this piece of FUD.
If Al Quaeda buys even a small piece of that they could steal the identity of a few hundred US citizens... and probably do it in a
way that wouldn't attract a whole lot of attention. (most people aren't going to complain about their credit rating improving).
COmbine this with the US actually trusting ID to be accurate -- I mean, it's not like the 9/11 hijackers even bothered to fake their identity, anyways.
Sattelite links were one of the methods of doing phone calls for the longest of times. It's not that bad. You just get used to it. It's even longer RTTs to the moon, and they had active conversations with the apllo astronauts all the time.over the place.
It's not transparent, but it's completely functional.
Slashdot Mirror
This is what you get for not rioting in the streets when they announced that companies like Diebold were 'counting' your stinking votes.
Mr. Osamma Bin Ladin is appointed the head of the homeland defence department.... I mean, who better to tell us how a terrorist thinks?
For the most part, it takes something the size of a municipality to put together something that size. Most of these companies already have government-mandated control of our communication -- that's really not too far from tax capability.
Adam Smith considered big business to be roughly the same as big government... Both result in centralized planning, local market inflexibility and sucking capital out of the local market.
A municipal communicatins corporation provides local control of communications capability.
I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. Ever since the dawn of the Telephone era, they had a municipal telephon company -- once again started because the big players didn't consider a small town in the middle of the praries (early 1900's) worth investing in. The company ran at a profit, and helped to lower Edmonton's taxes.
Now it's owned by Telus -- a multi-provincial conglomerate partly owned by MCI. I really don't see much of an advantage in the new setup.
Some people seem to think that large corporations have some sort of constitutional right to profit -- they don't. The original purpose of corprations was to pool community resources to provide a service to the community. Whether those pooled resources come from Bill Gate's Windows Tax, or a municipal levy doesn't make much of a difference to my pocket book -- either way the money's gonna be coming out of my pocket. With a municipal company, at least most of the profit and control is going to stay local.
If a company feels that my community is worth investing in, then they should do it -- now. If they're not willing to do so, then they shouldn't be getting in the way of anybody else providing the service that they're not willing to -- governmental or otherwise.
It's not just that they don't want municipalities competing against them -- they don't want groups competing against them who have open books.
If I was an IP lawyer I might take this on pro bono to see if I could successfully sue them for violating copyright with the trademark application.
In other words: if he succeeds in getting the trademark on Mame, he could end up with a registered logo that he's at risk of being sued for if he actually uses it in public.
(It'd almost be funny to see him being sued for using it in his first 'cease and decist' letter)
That having been said, sending the USPTO an email about this application with a well-chosen URL from the WayBack machine might torpedo this application (at least I hope so -- IANAL)
__________________
Btw: With SCOXE at risk of being delisted, Darl McBride may be looking for somewhere else to be a public puncing bag.
As it is, even a class-action suit might not cost them as much as they gain by allowing anybody and their dog to make a query. I've actually been quietly expecting this sort of event for years.
I can do it OK, too, but it's a lot more work than convergent. It was actually kinda funny getting the 'impossible' from her after my boss (at a physical biochemistry lab) had shown me how to do it. I can still do cross-eyed in 2 seconds flat, but divergent is almost like meditation.
I think that a couple of people pointed to new 'good Samaritan' laws which absolve you of liability and require actions under some circumstances. Even lacking such laws, I think that -- although it would be pushing the envelope -- it might be possible to convince a jury that a callous enough refusal act is essentially equivalent to active support of the injury/death.
(e.g. not even trying to tell someone that there are 7 hungry sharks in the pool they're about to go swimming in.)
It's based on market share, and the effect on customers. Bsides, there are companies that make money off of WINE -- they just don't (necessarily) make it by directly selling the product.
Part of the thing is that I think that the literal aspect of your analogy is wrong -- which doesn't help. You might not be required to actively use your fire extinguisher, but actively denying me access to it (if I knew it was there) {w,c}could get you sued or arrested.
You're not required to actively put yourself at risk, but wilfully refusing to take on obvious and trivial action to save someone might reach into the space of (criminal) negligence. Even if the law is on your side, I can certainly see the claim of no moral burden being upsetting. For most people there's a big difference between moral burden and legal.
Damn. Now I have Mod points, but I can't use them in this article, or I'd give you a +1 Funny. (or a +1 Insightfull).
Personally, I'd run screaming.
Did anybody manage to grab a mirror of the article (and preferrably pictures) before they shut down the page?
Ever heard the phrase "morbid humor"??
(of course, you will have to enable html formatting to make that work).
What do you expect from someone who slagged Bush?
I would liken this to locking the door on you so you couldn't reach the swimming pool. This is an active action on their part to deny people access to updates. The rules are different for inaction, and wilful misconduct or neglect.
Even refusing updates to people using a legit copy of WINE ia questionable, since some people will use Linux to access the 'net because MS Windows is so insecure.
And just what can an Active-X program do that a standalone couldn't? Evem of you disconnect from the 'net to keep it from 'calling home', it can still spawn a background task that waits until you reconnect.
In any case, you don't want to get into an arms race with Microsoft on something like this... It's real easy to start eating time figuring out what they're using to check this time.
Among other things, if they are wilfully blocking users from getting updates for software that they've bought just because they're running under wine vs Windows, this becomes an anti-trust issue.
The other workaround is to not need any updates from Microsoft for directly Windows related software... This is obviously the more permanent solution -- don't depend on Microsoft for anything, but it doesn't work for updates to things like Word and Excel. For those updates, you pretty much have to convince MS to stop blocking WINE users from getting updates.
For Microsoft, customers appear to be little more than a necessary evil between MS and it's profits.
Oh, he's already got messages besides that one. The fact that most of them are untrue, misleading and/or misdirection won't stop him from using those cliches. Nor will it stop him from using this piece of FUD.
If Al Quaeda buys even a small piece of that they could steal the identity of a few hundred US citizens... and probably do it in a way that wouldn't attract a whole lot of attention. (most people aren't going to complain about their credit rating improving).
COmbine this with the US actually trusting ID to be accurate -- I mean, it's not like the 9/11 hijackers even bothered to fake their identity, anyways.
(of course, I've never hired a diet coach, either).
It's not transparent, but it's completely functional.