I don't know anyone who calls their vacuum a hoover. I call mine a roomba.
Anyway, it may be that Hoover's brand isn't dilute enough, or it just may be that no company has ever tried it, but it does happen that companies do lose some or all of their trademark rights if their brand names become common coin.
Yes, they are (or rather, they have). Google sent out a round of letters in 2003 and 2006 to various websites where "google" was being used as a verb. Google "google trademark protection" for examples.
True. Of course, it's a somewhat dangerous game to play, actually losing the trademark would be a big fail for Adobe. The resulting flood of ersatz photoshop products would wash the marginal gains in brand awareness away.
Also, Adobe's brand would be eroded, not marginally boosted, if there were actually a feature-for-feature competitor for it's product. Note how kleenex is such a generic term, because there is no real difference between a Kleenex, and any other brand of paper snot-wipes.
Even Adobe discourages the use of "photoshop" as a verb. You know why, right? If they let "photoshop" be corrupted in the language as a verb, they would eventually lose the trademark rights to the name. Eventually, companies would be able to get away with naming their software "MS Photoshopping Program" or "Gimp Photoshop Utility" or whatever, and Adobe wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
Are you sure now, that you want to discourage people from using "photoshop" as a verb?
In other words, in Judaism and Christianity, there is no "Us" and "Them" - only "Us". The fact that you have missed this - especially with regards to Christianity - tells me you don't know much about practicing Christians or Jews. It should have told you much about "practicing Christians or Jews" and what they don't know about their own religions.
I disagree. It seems to me that the Republicans want to know what you doing. The Democrats want to tell you what to do. It's not Republicans telling what kind of car I should drive, what kind of food I can eat and if, when, and where I want to have a cigarette. It's not Republicans telling me what kind of health care I should have and it's not Republicans trying to take away my money to give it to someone else. It's not Republicans who are trying to use taxes to affect my behavior (carbon and gas taxes) and it's not Republicans who want to put a remote control on my thermostat so they can turn my AC down if THEY think I'm using too much electricity.
Clearly you have no understanding of consequences. It's not that anyone wants to tell you what kind of car to drive, or how high to turn up your air conditioning, it's that the consequence of you (and by "you" I really mean all of Western society above the poverty line) consuming oil and electricity without limit is that "you" are consuming finite products (oil) and one of the byproducts of your consumption is CO2, the excess of which is warming up the planet in an alarming way.
As to health care, the real objective of universal health care isn't to tell you what kind of health care to buy, the real objective is to provide health care to people based one what they need, not on what they can purchase. Health care in the rest of civil society is a right, not a product. Let me repeat that: Health care is a human right, not a product. The Democrats want to bring the USA in line with the rest of the civilized world (not the Western world, as universal health care is not exclusive to the West).
And here's a clue for you; unless the Republicans are going to eliminate taxes altogether, they are affecting your behaviour with tax laws. They just want different behaviour out of you than the Dems do. The entire purpose of a government, regardless of its political leanings or level of authoritarianism (or lack thereof) is to control people's behaviour. Perhaps you should analyse the ways your behaviour is being guided by the current government (and how much different it isn't under a Democrat government).
Gee, I guess my actual real world experience selling software, and getting paid commissions based on what the actual margins are doesn't count for anything at all. Here's a hint: if they're always offering a 50% discount, it's not really a discount any more, despite what they tell you. And also, I know that the largest retailers will get better wholesale prices than the next tier down, because software companies rely on them and not the other way around. As for internet/mail order outfits like Amazon, I'd expect their prices to be lower because they don't have to pay for retail locations or sales associates.
...And anyone trying to make a 30% cut sound like a big deal apparently doesn't know that most retail software gives 50% or more to the retailer... From what orifice did you pull this number? Software margins in retail stores are abysmal. In the store I worked in (a nationwide electronics retailer in small-footprint stores, in Canada), the margins were in the order of 5%, maybe. If the store was so unfortunate as to buy one too many copies of a title, or worse yet, have an unpopular title that dropped in price to clear, the retailer was bleeding money. Large big-box retailers make some money on software, but only through volume, and even then I'd bet that they don't make very much.
Sfing_ter was not replying to you. The reply was directed at an Anonymous Coward whose post got buried due to not having any good karma. The AC was replying to you. Hope this helps.
If video footage of a crime in-the-act is caught, should it reasonably be expected that all of the above information about the digital camcorder be provided to validate the evidence? The storage media also?.. and the computer used to view and process?
No, but they'd reasonably ask to see the actual footage... not the result of a face recognition system and a copy of the suspect's driver's license. And if photography were only a decade or three old, and had been known to photograph the wrong person?
I suspect that the demands are probably more than they need, and I suspect they don't expect to get all they're asking for, but I don't think it's unreasonable to demand more details than you would of a videotape. You're on the right track. Private Investigators who do surveillance for me routinely record the serial numbers of the cameras they use, and the original tapes are stored by them, specifically so that if necessary, the original recorder and the original tape can be produced to a judge, to show that there was no tampering. If questioned about the design of the tape recorder, one would say that the recorder is an off the shelf Sony (for example) and works the same way Your Honour's tape recorder works at home. The other side could challenge this, but they'd have to bring in an expert, with expert evidence, and demonstrate how a stock video camera could be altered...etc.
What makes this case unusual is that there isn't a "stock, off the shelf" packet sniffer/IP tracer/file analyser/whatever to compare to. This is the leverage needed to force production of the source, methods, etc. The methods used by the RIAA's investigator have previously been the domain of crackers and spies, and there probably isn't any case law on them at all. The RIAA should have to start from scratch (the danger is, of course, that if they win, precedent has been set, and their methods become an acknowledged standard).
Hrm, I think you're not taking into account 1) the fact that discovery decisions are made very much on the specific facts of a case, and thus hypothetical situations are practically a useless guide and 2) many, nay most, judges don't like being told they shouldn't know something, and might even get a perverse pleasure out of forcing the Plaintiffs to reveal everything, and finally 3) if a precedent is going to be set, the judge (especially Canadian ones that don't need to be elected but do need to keep the number of appeals down) will go overboard and bring in material that is only somewhat relevant, just to cover all the bases. It's been my indirect experience (I'm a law clerk, and not qualified to give out any legal advice, by the way, not a lawyer) that judges don't like attitude from lawyers, forget quickly what it was like to be a lawyer, and have no great liking for corporations.
More specifically, in the Discovery period, the adversarial lawyer can demand evidence that has a "semblance of relevance", just in case it might be relevant. If it's not really relevant the judge would rule it so in voir dire before a jury heard it. Of course, the Discovery may be more limited in the US, I don't know anything about that. Your friend the judge, talking about breathalysers, might change his mind if one of the lawyers provided, say, precedents from the US courts where the source and schematics of a breathalyser machine has already been opened up. Canadian Courts can accept US decisions as precedent if a Canadian judge hasn't already decided on an issue.
Why should your children benefit from your works after you're dead? No really, what's so special about artistic creations that we should pay your kids for work you did, particularly when (presumably) you've already been paid for it?
The value of art over and above other creative endeavours is that it benefits society as a whole, so why should we, after you're dead, prevent your creation from passing into the Public Domain, where society as a whole can reproduce it, enjoy it, and individuals can use it as the basis for creating new, culturally enriching works. This is why artists of all types get copywrite protection: society hands you a limited monopoly over your work, which allows you to charge money for it not once, but as long as your monopoly allows you to. In exchange, society as a whole gets to own your work after your monopoly expires.
Personally, I believe the copywrite terms should be far shorter than the lifespan of the content creator, and I know I'm not alone. To extend that monopoly beyond your lifetime is simply absurd, and has no reasonable justification, other than to enrich corporations long after their content producers have died. There is no good reason why someone who didn't actually do any of the creating should automatically be entitled to enrich themselves from the created work.
Personally, I don't see how reading your dreams, even if you could read the dreams accurately, could incriminate you. Dreams are primarily fiction, even when they pull details from your real life. How can a police officer, or judge, or jury, distinguish between the dreams of actual memories, and the ones that are merely random neuron firings or wish-fulfilment fantasies?
The Governor General, though officially appointed by the Queen, is generally named by the Government.
Re:Not any more unrealistic than the MPAA's figure
on
The $54 Million Laptop
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· Score: 1
$54M might not be as unreasonable as you think. In terms of general damages, she's entitled to replacement of her laptop, reimbursement for anything of value in the laptop (purchased software, hardware additions, and probably any product she created that has any value). She's probably also entitled to her time and money spent dealing with Best Buy, and also a few years of credit protection. This would all come due if Best Buy were found negligent. Of course, if a judge or jury found that BB's behaviour was actually malicious (and I think there might be a good case here for it), then punitives would apply. The whole point of punitive damages is that they are supposed to hurt. A lot. The award would have to be big enough to make Best Buy smart. The other neat thing about punitive damages is that most insurance policies don't cover them, so the cost has to come out of the company coffers, and not from their Insurer. If punitive damages are involved, and if this woman can prove it (the burden of proof is usually higher for punitive damages), $54M could be well within reasonable range.
No, you're wrong (though you bring up points that Samsung's lawyers will probably bring up).
A judge or a jury (especially a jury) doesn't have to accept your definition of a defective Blu-Ray disc. If the judge or jury decides that the whole standards issue wasn't made sufficiently clear to the purchaser, or decides that it's a red herring (which many posters suggest is the case, i.e. the player doesn't even meet 1.0 standards), then paragraph 5 of the pleadings covers that. If I were the plaintiff I'd bring in a stack of discs and a handful of players and just keep trying different discs in different players, and demonstrate that the discs don't play. The Defence will look like dissembling liars when they try to explain the subtleties of different versions, standards, etc.
The injury that the Plaintiff has suffered is that he has spent money on a Player and disc that allegedly don't work as advertised. If you don't like the term Injury, read Damages instead, it's basically the same thing. He may be claiming other emotional or mental injuries, and as ridiculous as that seems, he'll probably get some money if he can find a psychiatrist to say he's scarred mentally for life because he couldn't watch his favourite movie.
I would also note that many, many pleadings in a Statement of Claim are of course boilerplate, in other words, you throw in every possible argument you can think of, and every damage you could possibly suffer, even if you haven't yet gotten evidence for these, in case such evidence shows up in the future.
And lastly, Samsung, by putting out a Blu Ray player, is warranting that it will work with Blu-Ray discs. The issue for the Plaintiff isn't that he's not getting his picture-in-picture feature, he's alleging that there are several discs that don't work at all, and Samsung isn't fixing this problem. Samsung doesn't even have to make an explicit claim, just building a player and throwing the BluRay logo on it is sufficient to open themselves up to liability.
At the risk of being pedantic...
God is not a logical fallacy, God is a premise, the truth value of which cannot be proven or disproven.
and
If people don't post drunk the rest of us won't laugh as much.
1) Tiger/Leopard: We haven't upgraded. I'm waiting to see if there is significant improvement to make it worthwhile. I'm also waiting for the bugs to be fixed. The point isn't that Leopard is a great improvement over Tiger, it's that (in my opinion) Leopard/Tiger are both better than Vista/XP. A lot better.
2) I don't appreciate being called a liar by some prick on the Internet. It's not worth my time or energy to lie to a bunch of faceless strangers I can't see, don't care about, and whose opinion doesn't really affect my life. Having said that, let me point out that it's my wife, not me, complaining about her work PC. She likes to run a lot of software, all at the same time. Tiger handles this gracefully, XP (not Vista, despite being new, they don't want Vista at work, surprise, surprise)does not. Now to be fair, it is a new computer, and I did tell her to see if the drivers and firmware had all been updated, and failing that, to see if they can do RAM testing, to see if that's the issue, but the fact remains that she hates using XP, and isn't going to like Vista any better. I could itemize all the reasons why, but I'm at work now, and I've already taken up too much time on this.
We both know that anecdotal evidence is not really evidence at all, so try to take my original post for what it was, a description about what many (by no means all) normal computer users are feeling, not a dispassionate review of two or three different operating systems. You are happy with your Windows experience, I've become tired of the Windows experience and have decided to bail out. A lot of people are thinking of bailing, more and more all the time. The whole "Vista sucks, XP rocks!" is just a side effect of that.
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I don't know anyone who calls their vacuum a hoover. I call mine a roomba. Anyway, it may be that Hoover's brand isn't dilute enough, or it just may be that no company has ever tried it, but it does happen that companies do lose some or all of their trademark rights if their brand names become common coin.
Yes, they are (or rather, they have). Google sent out a round of letters in 2003 and 2006 to various websites where "google" was being used as a verb. Google "google trademark protection" for examples.
True. Of course, it's a somewhat dangerous game to play, actually losing the trademark would be a big fail for Adobe. The resulting flood of ersatz photoshop products would wash the marginal gains in brand awareness away.
Also, Adobe's brand would be eroded, not marginally boosted, if there were actually a feature-for-feature competitor for it's product. Note how kleenex is such a generic term, because there is no real difference between a Kleenex, and any other brand of paper snot-wipes.
Are you sure now, that you want to discourage people from using "photoshop" as a verb?
Clearly you have no understanding of consequences. It's not that anyone wants to tell you what kind of car to drive, or how high to turn up your air conditioning, it's that the consequence of you (and by "you" I really mean all of Western society above the poverty line) consuming oil and electricity without limit is that "you" are consuming finite products (oil) and one of the byproducts of your consumption is CO2, the excess of which is warming up the planet in an alarming way.
As to health care, the real objective of universal health care isn't to tell you what kind of health care to buy, the real objective is to provide health care to people based one what they need, not on what they can purchase. Health care in the rest of civil society is a right, not a product. Let me repeat that: Health care is a human right, not a product. The Democrats want to bring the USA in line with the rest of the civilized world (not the Western world, as universal health care is not exclusive to the West).
And here's a clue for you; unless the Republicans are going to eliminate taxes altogether, they are affecting your behaviour with tax laws. They just want different behaviour out of you than the Dems do. The entire purpose of a government, regardless of its political leanings or level of authoritarianism (or lack thereof) is to control people's behaviour. Perhaps you should analyse the ways your behaviour is being guided by the current government (and how much different it isn't under a Democrat government).
Stupidity, alas, is too often a virtue, and not a sin.
Gee, I guess my actual real world experience selling software, and getting paid commissions based on what the actual margins are doesn't count for anything at all. Here's a hint: if they're always offering a 50% discount, it's not really a discount any more, despite what they tell you. And also, I know that the largest retailers will get better wholesale prices than the next tier down, because software companies rely on them and not the other way around. As for internet/mail order outfits like Amazon, I'd expect their prices to be lower because they don't have to pay for retail locations or sales associates.
I'm sorry, I thought Cosmo _is_ pervasive transgenerational indoctrination.
...And anyone trying to make a 30% cut sound like a big deal apparently doesn't know that most retail software gives 50% or more to the retailer... From what orifice did you pull this number? Software margins in retail stores are abysmal. In the store I worked in (a nationwide electronics retailer in small-footprint stores, in Canada), the margins were in the order of 5%, maybe. If the store was so unfortunate as to buy one too many copies of a title, or worse yet, have an unpopular title that dropped in price to clear, the retailer was bleeding money. Large big-box retailers make some money on software, but only through volume, and even then I'd bet that they don't make very much.Sfing_ter was not replying to you. The reply was directed at an Anonymous Coward whose post got buried due to not having any good karma. The AC was replying to you. Hope this helps.
No, but they'd reasonably ask to see the actual footage... not the result of a face recognition system and a copy of the suspect's driver's license. And if photography were only a decade or three old, and had been known to photograph the wrong person?
I suspect that the demands are probably more than they need, and I suspect they don't expect to get all they're asking for, but I don't think it's unreasonable to demand more details than you would of a videotape. You're on the right track. Private Investigators who do surveillance for me routinely record the serial numbers of the cameras they use, and the original tapes are stored by them, specifically so that if necessary, the original recorder and the original tape can be produced to a judge, to show that there was no tampering. If questioned about the design of the tape recorder, one would say that the recorder is an off the shelf Sony (for example) and works the same way Your Honour's tape recorder works at home. The other side could challenge this, but they'd have to bring in an expert, with expert evidence, and demonstrate how a stock video camera could be altered...etc.
What makes this case unusual is that there isn't a "stock, off the shelf" packet sniffer/IP tracer/file analyser/whatever to compare to. This is the leverage needed to force production of the source, methods, etc. The methods used by the RIAA's investigator have previously been the domain of crackers and spies, and there probably isn't any case law on them at all. The RIAA should have to start from scratch (the danger is, of course, that if they win, precedent has been set, and their methods become an acknowledged standard).
Hrm, I think you're not taking into account 1) the fact that discovery decisions are made very much on the specific facts of a case, and thus hypothetical situations are practically a useless guide and 2) many, nay most, judges don't like being told they shouldn't know something, and might even get a perverse pleasure out of forcing the Plaintiffs to reveal everything, and finally 3) if a precedent is going to be set, the judge (especially Canadian ones that don't need to be elected but do need to keep the number of appeals down) will go overboard and bring in material that is only somewhat relevant, just to cover all the bases. It's been my indirect experience (I'm a law clerk, and not qualified to give out any legal advice, by the way, not a lawyer) that judges don't like attitude from lawyers, forget quickly what it was like to be a lawyer, and have no great liking for corporations.
More specifically, in the Discovery period, the adversarial lawyer can demand evidence that has a "semblance of relevance", just in case it might be relevant. If it's not really relevant the judge would rule it so in voir dire before a jury heard it. Of course, the Discovery may be more limited in the US, I don't know anything about that. Your friend the judge, talking about breathalysers, might change his mind if one of the lawyers provided, say, precedents from the US courts where the source and schematics of a breathalyser machine has already been opened up. Canadian Courts can accept US decisions as precedent if a Canadian judge hasn't already decided on an issue.
Unless of course the event occurred 6499 years ago, in which case Judgment will be coming soon after all!!!!!11!!!
Why should your children benefit from your works after you're dead? No really, what's so special about artistic creations that we should pay your kids for work you did, particularly when (presumably) you've already been paid for it?
The value of art over and above other creative endeavours is that it benefits society as a whole, so why should we, after you're dead, prevent your creation from passing into the Public Domain, where society as a whole can reproduce it, enjoy it, and individuals can use it as the basis for creating new, culturally enriching works. This is why artists of all types get copywrite protection: society hands you a limited monopoly over your work, which allows you to charge money for it not once, but as long as your monopoly allows you to. In exchange, society as a whole gets to own your work after your monopoly expires.
Personally, I believe the copywrite terms should be far shorter than the lifespan of the content creator, and I know I'm not alone. To extend that monopoly beyond your lifetime is simply absurd, and has no reasonable justification, other than to enrich corporations long after their content producers have died. There is no good reason why someone who didn't actually do any of the creating should automatically be entitled to enrich themselves from the created work.
Personally, I don't see how reading your dreams, even if you could read the dreams accurately, could incriminate you. Dreams are primarily fiction, even when they pull details from your real life. How can a police officer, or judge, or jury, distinguish between the dreams of actual memories, and the ones that are merely random neuron firings or wish-fulfilment fantasies?
The Governor General, though officially appointed by the Queen, is generally named by the Government.
$54M might not be as unreasonable as you think. In terms of general damages, she's entitled to replacement of her laptop, reimbursement for anything of value in the laptop (purchased software, hardware additions, and probably any product she created that has any value). She's probably also entitled to her time and money spent dealing with Best Buy, and also a few years of credit protection. This would all come due if Best Buy were found negligent. Of course, if a judge or jury found that BB's behaviour was actually malicious (and I think there might be a good case here for it), then punitives would apply. The whole point of punitive damages is that they are supposed to hurt. A lot. The award would have to be big enough to make Best Buy smart. The other neat thing about punitive damages is that most insurance policies don't cover them, so the cost has to come out of the company coffers, and not from their Insurer. If punitive damages are involved, and if this woman can prove it (the burden of proof is usually higher for punitive damages), $54M could be well within reasonable range.
I wish I still had my mod points...I'd mod you up for that one.
...that would require the Government to actually enforce the laws they themselves broke in the first place... There, fixed that for you.
No, you're wrong (though you bring up points that Samsung's lawyers will probably bring up).
A judge or a jury (especially a jury) doesn't have to accept your definition of a defective Blu-Ray disc. If the judge or jury decides that the whole standards issue wasn't made sufficiently clear to the purchaser, or decides that it's a red herring (which many posters suggest is the case, i.e. the player doesn't even meet 1.0 standards), then paragraph 5 of the pleadings covers that. If I were the plaintiff I'd bring in a stack of discs and a handful of players and just keep trying different discs in different players, and demonstrate that the discs don't play. The Defence will look like dissembling liars when they try to explain the subtleties of different versions, standards, etc.
The injury that the Plaintiff has suffered is that he has spent money on a Player and disc that allegedly don't work as advertised. If you don't like the term Injury, read Damages instead, it's basically the same thing. He may be claiming other emotional or mental injuries, and as ridiculous as that seems, he'll probably get some money if he can find a psychiatrist to say he's scarred mentally for life because he couldn't watch his favourite movie.
I would also note that many, many pleadings in a Statement of Claim are of course boilerplate, in other words, you throw in every possible argument you can think of, and every damage you could possibly suffer, even if you haven't yet gotten evidence for these, in case such evidence shows up in the future.
And lastly, Samsung, by putting out a Blu Ray player, is warranting that it will work with Blu-Ray discs. The issue for the Plaintiff isn't that he's not getting his picture-in-picture feature, he's alleging that there are several discs that don't work at all, and Samsung isn't fixing this problem. Samsung doesn't even have to make an explicit claim, just building a player and throwing the BluRay logo on it is sufficient to open themselves up to liability.
Isn't there an Emacs command that does that?
At the risk of being pedantic... God is not a logical fallacy, God is a premise, the truth value of which cannot be proven or disproven. and If people don't post drunk the rest of us won't laugh as much.
Yeah, sites that have advertising suck! *looks up* oh, wait...
1) Tiger/Leopard: We haven't upgraded. I'm waiting to see if there is significant improvement to make it worthwhile. I'm also waiting for the bugs to be fixed. The point isn't that Leopard is a great improvement over Tiger, it's that (in my opinion) Leopard/Tiger are both better than Vista/XP. A lot better.
2) I don't appreciate being called a liar by some prick on the Internet. It's not worth my time or energy to lie to a bunch of faceless strangers I can't see, don't care about, and whose opinion doesn't really affect my life. Having said that, let me point out that it's my wife, not me, complaining about her work PC. She likes to run a lot of software, all at the same time. Tiger handles this gracefully, XP (not Vista, despite being new, they don't want Vista at work, surprise, surprise)does not. Now to be fair, it is a new computer, and I did tell her to see if the drivers and firmware had all been updated, and failing that, to see if they can do RAM testing, to see if that's the issue, but the fact remains that she hates using XP, and isn't going to like Vista any better. I could itemize all the reasons why, but I'm at work now, and I've already taken up too much time on this.
We both know that anecdotal evidence is not really evidence at all, so try to take my original post for what it was, a description about what many (by no means all) normal computer users are feeling, not a dispassionate review of two or three different operating systems. You are happy with your Windows experience, I've become tired of the Windows experience and have decided to bail out. A lot of people are thinking of bailing, more and more all the time. The whole "Vista sucks, XP rocks!" is just a side effect of that.