It's not a question of category - when news deals with the subject of the trademark, the First Amendment is an absolute defense to infringement. In this case, the article was about insider trading, not about NYSE specifically. There isn't a strong enough link between this specific stock exchange and an illegal act performed by people who may have never even set foot in the NYSE. I'm not sure how it works in your jurisdiction, but here, a cease and desist (C&D) is a letter you send to the offender asking them to stop infringing and if it is ignored, it is often a precursor to a lawsuit.
For those outside the trademarks field, the two reasons for this level of control is to 1) protect the public from unscrupulous use and 2) protect the reputation of the mark. For example, if the company you worked for installed Christmas trees (but not the Rockefeller tree), it could easily be construed that your company installed the tree at Rockefeller Center. As to the second reason, imagine instead that your company produced Agent Orange and you wanted to clean up your image with a picture of the Rockefeller tree. In that case, the folks at Rockefeller Center may not want to be associated with them. Thus, they should have the right to control how their image was used. (Outside of the broad "newsworthiness" exception, of course.)
(I'm not a lawyer yet, but I'm studying for the New York bar this summer, so that must count for something.)
Amazon is not using the "App Store" moniker for their mac store because if they do, they may automatically lose standing in the original Android App Store action. Apple has not yet received their temporary restraining order, but if they do, it will automatically apply to Amazon's Mac App Store. At that point Amazon either complies (and rebrands their site - $$) or does not and forfeits standing in the Apple action. (Essentially, if you decide to violate the rules imposed by the court, the court expects that you'll ignore an adverse ruling.) The pertinent case is Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc.. It's an interesting case and once again affirms that the fundamentals of American civil procedure owe a tremendous debt to topless dancers.
Imagine if we could get to the point where riding in a car was as safe as riding in a plane!
Yeah, then my obnoxious friends wouldn't have any factoids to spew when I tell them I'm flying somewhere. ("You know, you're more likely to get killed on the way to the airport...") Both of my local airports are in Queens, NY - of course I am!
Make it take a driver's test - it's already required for humans so it should be required for machines. In fact, every single combination (or version) should be tested on the roads. In addition to the marginal test requirements (parallel parking, K-turns, lane changes, etc.) I'd also throw in other things like "The bouncing ball rolling into the street" test (answer: dead stop because there is invariably a kid running after it) and the "Squirrel gets halfway into lane and freezes up" test (answer: slow down if possible, otherwise carry on). I have no doubt that the cars could pass a regular driver's test - it's the unexpected events that may separate the machines from the meat.
Mod parent up. I trust the engineers at Google ("Do no evil" be damned) a hell of a more than I trust drivers on the Long Island Expressway. For those of you who are afraid of a computer driving the car, remember there is still a modicum of predictability. Additionally, they may drive slower and take fewer risks than the average New York driver. A computer won't chance a narrow no-signal lane change just to get to work thirty seconds earlier.
The short answer is that they have two senators and their vote actually does count. The 25 least populous states combine to only about 17% of the US population. That means that 17% of the country controls half of the senate. In the history of the US, the disparity in population has never been so high. Thus, we have senators from my home state (population 19 million) begging senators from Wyoming (pop. ~560,000) and Vermont (pop. ~625,000) for an equal share of federal attention.
What you are referring to is called an "adverse inference" in legal circles.
It isn't handed out at the drop of the hat and usually indicates the mood of the judge. An adverse inference in your favor (say when videos go "missing") mean it is time to work on your dismissal motion. An adverse inference against you means you should start drafting your appeal...
Agreed, however this should not come as a surprise. Your ISP is in the business of connecting the tubes to your house, not fiercely fighting for your civil liberties. Fighting for your privacy is your responsibility and you should never expect it to be done for you. Also, I am not sure about your last statement - it would be tantamount to bribing a witness, but nevertheless the ISPs want to be on good terms with the media companies.
Agreed. I have been a reader for most of those 13.5 years and through every revision Slashdot is consistently awful on mobile devices. Let's hope v.4 is designed with such cutting edge technology in mind....
It's a fair point - I'm in law school, so I'm paying good (borrowed) money to become an asshole. I wrote the response to point out that your over-education didn't save you from using the expression "very not alone." Obviously, this is slashdot so we don't expect the Queen's English.
I think most people can agree that some, if not most, of the crap they learned in college has no direct applicability to their job. I think that the real problem is that most jobs are designed to be filled a by a class of people - think "Ruby Programmers" over "A Ruby Programmer Who Writes Code Just Like You Do." When your average PHB looks looks at the stack of resumes on his desk he has to differentiate them by some objective standard - a degree in anything is one of the ways that they do it. Is it the right thing to do? Probably not, but it does show that you can get through a varied amount of material, including stuff that you find boring. Perhaps he is going to take you off an (interesting) accounting project and move you to project that involves making easy-to-use software for sociologists (boring). One way to make sure you that you are going to stick around for both the interesting and boring projects is to see that you were able to survive [insert stupid course topic here]. Your general premise, that much of the stuff you learn in college has no practical value, is spot on though.
And while I have no data, if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, I am very not alone in this.
Did you say that you tested out of the required English classes?
Aside, possibly, from reading comprehension and writing skills, but those were not developed in college - I tested out of all the required English classes and all but one of the history classes - merely honed.
Well said. One issue that everyone seems to be missing here is that the lawyer was paid from a settlement. So before we start throwing out angry calls to reform the legal system and even a few tortured comparisons to universal healthcare, let's remember that the school district's lawyers agreed to that amount. The money wasn't mandated by a back-room middle-of-the-night-passsed-by-Congress law. It was agreed to by the losing party (the school), probably because they thought that they would lose even more money if a jury had to come up with a number.
Most slashdotters agree that this was the verdict was correct and if we had been collectively sitting on the jury we would probably award a big number to punish the elected officials who approved this program. The school board has the headache of finding money to pay off their mistake. In the next school board election, you can rest assured that anyone who runs against an incumbent is going to use this settlement to beat their opponent over the head.
While all patent trolls may be non-practicing entities (NPEs), not all NPEs are patent trolls. Individual inventors, the kind that don't have the spare four or five billion dollars necessary to build a processor lab, are NPEs and often unfairly get labelled trolls. Also, don't forget universities and government laboratories. Under the parent's definition of troll, anyone who invents something but doesn't follow through with marketing a product must necessarily be a troll. The intellectual property world is more complicated than that. Real trolls can be NPEs or companies trying to squeeze their competitors - in fact, the latter is much more common than the former.
This is why I would like standards bodies to have the ability to call for patents, and any patent claim not made within a reasonable time frame is forfeit as related to that standard.
Even if the patent is not included in the standard, the standard might still infringe upon it. I think the scenario you are thinking of is similar to what happened with Rambus a few years ago - they massaged the standard to cover patents that they owned and then sued after it was adopted. A more realistic scenario is that my tiny telecommunications company owns a patent on compressing audio that gets included in a larger standard. The company may not have any representatives involved in the standard - in fact, they might not even know that there is an infringing proposal.
I think the latter scenario is a lot more common and of course, the standards organization is still (rightfully) on the hook for liability.
You make a good point, but I would argue that we need to drop scripted applications wholesale. I realize that I am probably in the minority, but I see scripted apps as an analog to the advent of Visual BASIC. (Yes, I'm old.) Prior to the VB days, you had to know something about programming to spit out an application. VB helped a lot of people write a lot of applications, but it lowered the bar for what we consider an "application" or even a "programmer." A scripted app is great for something quick and dirty, but when it comes down making something you want to sell or rely upon, scripted apps are limited not by the host operating system, but by the most limited operating system which your player supports.
Before Apple sunk their teeth into flash, a lot of the posters here also bashed it. It is ironic that as soon as an 800 lb gorilla attacks it, taco and dawson rush to defend it as a superior alternative. Does everyone remember what a pain in the ass it was to get flash support on linux systems? Now that it is available, it is just another user-approved attack vector.
H.264 is not perfect, or "free" at all but every criticism Jobs has made of flash is spot on: flawed security, resource pig AND THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR for cross platform development. For God's sake, can we please just flash die for a more modern alternative?
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a question of category - when news deals with the subject of the trademark, the First Amendment is an absolute defense to infringement. In this case, the article was about insider trading, not about NYSE specifically. There isn't a strong enough link between this specific stock exchange and an illegal act performed by people who may have never even set foot in the NYSE. I'm not sure how it works in your jurisdiction, but here, a cease and desist (C&D) is a letter you send to the offender asking them to stop infringing and if it is ignored, it is often a precursor to a lawsuit.
Also, the C&D can only address the image - not the article itself.
For those outside the trademarks field, the two reasons for this level of control is to 1) protect the public from unscrupulous use and 2) protect the reputation of the mark. For example, if the company you worked for installed Christmas trees (but not the Rockefeller tree), it could easily be construed that your company installed the tree at Rockefeller Center. As to the second reason, imagine instead that your company produced Agent Orange and you wanted to clean up your image with a picture of the Rockefeller tree. In that case, the folks at Rockefeller Center may not want to be associated with them. Thus, they should have the right to control how their image was used. (Outside of the broad "newsworthiness" exception, of course.)
(I'm not a lawyer yet, but I'm studying for the New York bar this summer, so that must count for something.)
Amazon is not using the "App Store" moniker for their mac store because if they do, they may automatically lose standing in the original Android App Store action. Apple has not yet received their temporary restraining order, but if they do, it will automatically apply to Amazon's Mac App Store. At that point Amazon either complies (and rebrands their site - $$) or does not and forfeits standing in the Apple action. (Essentially, if you decide to violate the rules imposed by the court, the court expects that you'll ignore an adverse ruling.) The pertinent case is Doran v. Salem Inn, Inc.. It's an interesting case and once again affirms that the fundamentals of American civil procedure owe a tremendous debt to topless dancers.
Imagine if we could get to the point where riding in a car was as safe as riding in a plane!
Yeah, then my obnoxious friends wouldn't have any factoids to spew when I tell them I'm flying somewhere. ("You know, you're more likely to get killed on the way to the airport...") Both of my local airports are in Queens, NY - of course I am!
Make it take a driver's test - it's already required for humans so it should be required for machines. In fact, every single combination (or version) should be tested on the roads. In addition to the marginal test requirements (parallel parking, K-turns, lane changes, etc.) I'd also throw in other things like "The bouncing ball rolling into the street" test (answer: dead stop because there is invariably a kid running after it) and the "Squirrel gets halfway into lane and freezes up" test (answer: slow down if possible, otherwise carry on). I have no doubt that the cars could pass a regular driver's test - it's the unexpected events that may separate the machines from the meat.
Mod parent up. I trust the engineers at Google ("Do no evil" be damned) a hell of a more than I trust drivers on the Long Island Expressway. For those of you who are afraid of a computer driving the car, remember there is still a modicum of predictability. Additionally, they may drive slower and take fewer risks than the average New York driver. A computer won't chance a narrow no-signal lane change just to get to work thirty seconds earlier.
The short answer is that they have two senators and their vote actually does count. The 25 least populous states combine to only about 17% of the US population. That means that 17% of the country controls half of the senate. In the history of the US, the disparity in population has never been so high. Thus, we have senators from my home state (population 19 million) begging senators from Wyoming (pop. ~560,000) and Vermont (pop. ~625,000) for an equal share of federal attention.
What you are referring to is called an "adverse inference" in legal circles.
It isn't handed out at the drop of the hat and usually indicates the mood of the judge. An adverse inference in your favor (say when videos go "missing") mean it is time to work on your dismissal motion. An adverse inference against you means you should start drafting your appeal...
Agreed, however this should not come as a surprise. Your ISP is in the business of connecting the tubes to your house, not fiercely fighting for your civil liberties. Fighting for your privacy is your responsibility and you should never expect it to be done for you. Also, I am not sure about your last statement - it would be tantamount to bribing a witness, but nevertheless the ISPs want to be on good terms with the media companies.
Agreed. I have been a reader for most of those 13.5 years and through every revision Slashdot is consistently awful on mobile devices. Let's hope v.4 is designed with such cutting edge technology in mind....
It's a fair point - I'm in law school, so I'm paying good (borrowed) money to become an asshole. I wrote the response to point out that your over-education didn't save you from using the expression "very not alone." Obviously, this is slashdot so we don't expect the Queen's English.
I think most people can agree that some, if not most, of the crap they learned in college has no direct applicability to their job. I think that the real problem is that most jobs are designed to be filled a by a class of people - think "Ruby Programmers" over "A Ruby Programmer Who Writes Code Just Like You Do." When your average PHB looks looks at the stack of resumes on his desk he has to differentiate them by some objective standard - a degree in anything is one of the ways that they do it. Is it the right thing to do? Probably not, but it does show that you can get through a varied amount of material, including stuff that you find boring. Perhaps he is going to take you off an (interesting) accounting project and move you to project that involves making easy-to-use software for sociologists (boring). One way to make sure you that you are going to stick around for both the interesting and boring projects is to see that you were able to survive [insert stupid course topic here]. Your general premise, that much of the stuff you learn in college has no practical value, is spot on though.
And while I have no data, if the scuttlebutt is to be believed, I am very not alone in this.
Did you say that you tested out of the required English classes?
Aside, possibly, from reading comprehension and writing skills, but those were not developed in college - I tested out of all the required English classes and all but one of the history classes - merely honed.
"Honed" might be an exageration.
An anonymous reader writes
Anonymous.... OR INVISIBLE??!?!?
I guess it would be worse if your name was James Brown...
Well said. One issue that everyone seems to be missing here is that the lawyer was paid from a settlement. So before we start throwing out angry calls to reform the legal system and even a few tortured comparisons to universal healthcare, let's remember that the school district's lawyers agreed to that amount. The money wasn't mandated by a back-room middle-of-the-night-passsed-by-Congress law. It was agreed to by the losing party (the school), probably because they thought that they would lose even more money if a jury had to come up with a number.
Most slashdotters agree that this was the verdict was correct and if we had been collectively sitting on the jury we would probably award a big number to punish the elected officials who approved this program. The school board has the headache of finding money to pay off their mistake. In the next school board election, you can rest assured that anyone who runs against an incumbent is going to use this settlement to beat their opponent over the head.
It learned to spell from Slashdot's editors!
Actually, that is the way it has been since nearly the beginning. Or at least 1824.
Puff, puff, give!
Ha ha ha - you're other comment is correct. It is important to keep an eye out for spin when you hear the term "patent troll."
non-practising entities [patent trolls]
While all patent trolls may be non-practicing entities (NPEs), not all NPEs are patent trolls. Individual inventors, the kind that don't have the spare four or five billion dollars necessary to build a processor lab, are NPEs and often unfairly get labelled trolls. Also, don't forget universities and government laboratories. Under the parent's definition of troll, anyone who invents something but doesn't follow through with marketing a product must necessarily be a troll. The intellectual property world is more complicated than that. Real trolls can be NPEs or companies trying to squeeze their competitors - in fact, the latter is much more common than the former.
This is why I would like standards bodies to have the ability to call for patents, and any patent claim not made within a reasonable time frame is forfeit as related to that standard.
Even if the patent is not included in the standard, the standard might still infringe upon it. I think the scenario you are thinking of is similar to what happened with Rambus a few years ago - they massaged the standard to cover patents that they owned and then sued after it was adopted. A more realistic scenario is that my tiny telecommunications company owns a patent on compressing audio that gets included in a larger standard. The company may not have any representatives involved in the standard - in fact, they might not even know that there is an infringing proposal.
I think the latter scenario is a lot more common and of course, the standards organization is still (rightfully) on the hook for liability.
You make a good point, but I would argue that we need to drop scripted applications wholesale. I realize that I am probably in the minority, but I see scripted apps as an analog to the advent of Visual BASIC. (Yes, I'm old.) Prior to the VB days, you had to know something about programming to spit out an application. VB helped a lot of people write a lot of applications, but it lowered the bar for what we consider an "application" or even a "programmer." A scripted app is great for something quick and dirty, but when it comes down making something you want to sell or rely upon, scripted apps are limited not by the host operating system, but by the most limited operating system which your player supports.
Before Apple sunk their teeth into flash, a lot of the posters here also bashed it. It is ironic that as soon as an 800 lb gorilla attacks it, taco and dawson rush to defend it as a superior alternative. Does everyone remember what a pain in the ass it was to get flash support on linux systems? Now that it is available, it is just another user-approved attack vector. H.264 is not perfect, or "free" at all but every criticism Jobs has made of flash is spot on: flawed security, resource pig AND THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR for cross platform development. For God's sake, can we please just flash die for a more modern alternative?
You will no longer need to be a "geek" to give MacOS a serious test drive.
Right. Except for the virtualization part.