Actually, the Coca-Cola company has been known to sue restaurants that serve Pepsi to customers who ask for a "Coke" in order to protect their trademark. (Their trademark on "Cola" was already ruled to be too diluted, so Pepsi-Cola was allowed to keep its name.) This happened to the local "Wendy's" franchise in Little Rock, and afterwards all the workers were trained to come back with "Would Pepsi be O.K.?"
I think that Kleenex is still trying to protect their trademark, as well. In both of these cases, I'd agree that common usage indicates that the trademark is diluted, but the courts haven't seen it that way thus far.
Bayer tried to protect its trademark on "aspirin" too late in the U.S., so here we have a huge generic market. In Europe, it's still in vigor (in several forms -- Aspirin, Aspirina, etc.), making it harder for the competition, which must bill themselves as acetylsalicylic acid.... This also has the result that aspirin is more of a "big deal" in Europe -- more packaging, bigger tablets, etc.
So it is possible to get a court to rule dilution of a trademark, but it would seem to be difficult to get them to do so, based on the widespread use of the examples cited above.
(Imagine if they applied that standard to books, too!)
Actually, I think they do apply that standard to books. When a book comes through on ILL, the library doesn't have the right to photocopy it and put it on file for future reference. They can just distribute the book that they received to the person who requested it, returning it to the lending library afterwards. Similarly, under this law, the library can't keep a copy of every document viewed on its computers to create a local collection. Whether this is a sensible regulation in the case of Internet data is another question, but it is analogous to the situation with books.
As to competition with commercial sites, I assume they're saying that the library can't buy a subscription to a pay-only site and make that available for free for everyone who comes to the library. I think that's perfectly reasonable. If a library user pays for such a site and wants to access it from the library, that would be different, of course.
All of which is not to say that I'm defending the DMCA (and DMCA-like legislation), but we shouldn't be getting upset about the wrong aspects of the legislation either.
An example of natural selection that is often cited is that of the giraffe who has a long neck, enabling him to get leaves from the highest branches of a tree, thus having a real advantage over a short-necked contemporary. But what practical advantage did the proto-giraffe who had a neck 1mm longer than his colleagues have that caused him to be the only one to pass on his genetic material? The advantage of a neck that's 1m longer is obvious, but when we're talking about small steps over long periods of time, the argument is a bit more tenuous.
And if we're doing random mutations, the descendents of this super-giraffe that had his extra millimeter of neck could well get stuck with shorter necks and die off. Even if we posit 50% positive mutations and 50% negative mutations, the expected value of the Markov chain comes out to 0. The truth of the matter is, it's more like 90% negative mutations and 10% positive, which, of course, will rapidly diverge out to minus infinity (extinction).
The system needs a constant series of "nudges" or a "plan" if it is to reach more advanced forms. Perhaps this is encoded somewhere in DNA that we don't yet understand; if you're a 2001 fan, there are always monoliths to explain this. I tend toward saying that the plan is somewhere encoded in nature, but that a plan that detailed had to have been put there intelligently -- that is, God exists.
Really it's the same argument SETI is using -- if we find order in the midst of the randomness, there must be intelligence involved.
It's interesting to see the gaps in the fish's translation here... The list of language names ends up part in English, part in French, and part in German. But the best is "Mandarin Chinese" = "Chinese of tangerine".
Pluto has an atmosphere for only part (about 40 years) of its orbit. By 2020, the atmosphere will have frozen away, and the opportunity to study it will be lost for another 230 years or so.
Also, if the takeoff doesn't take place within 6 years, they won't be able to use the gravity of Jupiter to speed up the trajectory. Hence, if there's going to be a probe to Pluto, it really should be done as soon as possible.
If Lieberman were to win, the Senate would almost certainly be 51-49 in favor of the Republicans, as Lieberman's seat would be filled by appointment by his Republican governor.
If Bush wins, Lieberman would stay in Congress and it would indeed be 50-50, with Cheney as a tie-breaker.
Of course, they created 15 embryos to guarantee a match for Molly, of which 14 were destroyed. That is, the mother had 14 in vitro abortions and then goes on about how she could never have an abortion.
My company has its internal mail on an MS Exchange network, with everyone using Outlook 98 or 2000, except for me in Linux. Thus, I have considerable experience in this subject.
Microsoft thought that everyone would like to have boldface, italics, etc. in their mail without having to use HTML, (because spacing is harder to control there, presumably). So, they invented a format to send formatting information.
This is a registered MIME type, but if you don't have a Microsoft client, you can't read it.
This would be no big deal if it stopped here. However, the TNEF format puts cute little icons of the attachments into the mail, which must be defined in the TNEF block. Furthermore, all of the attachments are encoded into the TNEF block as well.
Thus, a typical message would say. "Hey dude, check out this attachment!". You would see an MS-TNEF attachment that you would be unable to open.
There are several programs available to sort through the TNEF attachment and find the real attachments (which are just directly quoted inside of the TNEF). Search for tnef on Freshmeat.
"Cerberus" is the three-headed dog from Greek mythology, if you pass the name through a Latin filter first. (Latin doesn't use K much, and "us" is a more common ending in Latin.) If you try to be faithful to the Greek, which has Kappa Epsilon Rho Beta Epsilon Rho Omicron Sigma -- you get Kerberos.
"Cerebus", on the other hand, is an aardvark with an attitude, from the comic book of the same name, written and drawn by Dave Sim.
I don't think there's too much trouble with losing games and other applications as the hardware that runs them obsoleces... New ones will be created, and the best of the old will be ported.
As to the data already archived on various media, there could indeed be a problem if people fail to move the data to newer media... Think of your pile of 5 1/4" disks that's just rotting in the corner because your new computer only has a 3 1/2" drive -- and that's not even a huge leap in technology.
There's also the question of formats, especially for users of M$. After two revisions of the software, it can't read any of the old data! Try reading a Word 6 document in Word 97 for laughs, especially if you use any special characters ü á € in your documents...
Computer programming and the Internet are one of the few really equal opportunity workplaces in the world, or at least should be. Differences in physical abilities between men and women are not applicable here. Since most feminists insist that women are smarter than men, they should even have an advantage...
Ultimately, one is judged here by what he/she/it (gotta love inclusive language) can code...
You know, this means we can blame a large part of the problem on Microsoft... (What else is new?) After all, they are pushing a "weve got an application to do whatever you want" mentality. Even people inclined to program get shunted off into Visual Basic, which really isn't the same...
Then again the spiffyness of the current crop of games has a lot to do with the lack of interest. I mean, when you see "Super Star Trek" programmed in BASIC, it just calls out to you, "You can do better than this! Go ahead, hack the code!" When you see a modern mega-graphic superduper blockbuster game, the reaction is more, "Wow. I could never do that in a million years." So instead of getting a C compiler and figuring out how to do it themselves, kids just go buy a copy of Quake 7 or Doom 13...
Actually there is a group out there billing themselves CyberMonks... They've got a "religious rule" and they apparently meet together in a chat room. Each "virtual monastery" has its own webpage. No, I'm serious! Really! Here's the URL: http://members.aol.com/OMFSI I guess geeks can be spiritual too... (although if you translate their rule, they don't seem to be as Catholic as one might think...)
How about Kurt Gödel, who set Mathematics on its ear, freed it from Logicism, and was an all around strange guy to boot? I mean, he basically changed the whole direction of mathematics, which indirectly changed the whole direction of physics, which....
IHS or JHS is from an incomplete transliteration of the Greek spelling 'IHSOYS (The Ss should be sigmas) into Latin. Since the Greek H makes a long E sound, it should read IES. But that's not what tradition did. They transliterated the Sigma into S, but left the Eta looking like an H.
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I think that Kleenex is still trying to protect their trademark, as well. In both of these cases, I'd agree that common usage indicates that the trademark is diluted, but the courts haven't seen it that way thus far.
Bayer tried to protect its trademark on "aspirin" too late in the U.S., so here we have a huge generic market. In Europe, it's still in vigor (in several forms -- Aspirin, Aspirina, etc.), making it harder for the competition, which must bill themselves as acetylsalicylic acid.... This also has the result that aspirin is more of a "big deal" in Europe -- more packaging, bigger tablets, etc.
So it is possible to get a court to rule dilution of a trademark, but it would seem to be difficult to get them to do so, based on the widespread use of the examples cited above.
Actually, I think they do apply that standard to books. When a book comes through on ILL, the library doesn't have the right to photocopy it and put it on file for future reference. They can just distribute the book that they received to the person who requested it, returning it to the lending library afterwards. Similarly, under this law, the library can't keep a copy of every document viewed on its computers to create a local collection. Whether this is a sensible regulation in the case of Internet data is another question, but it is analogous to the situation with books.
As to competition with commercial sites, I assume they're saying that the library can't buy a subscription to a pay-only site and make that available for free for everyone who comes to the library. I think that's perfectly reasonable. If a library user pays for such a site and wants to access it from the library, that would be different, of course.
All of which is not to say that I'm defending the DMCA (and DMCA-like legislation), but we shouldn't be getting upset about the wrong aspects of the legislation either.
And if we're doing random mutations, the descendents of this super-giraffe that had his extra millimeter of neck could well get stuck with shorter necks and die off. Even if we posit 50% positive mutations and 50% negative mutations, the expected value of the Markov chain comes out to 0. The truth of the matter is, it's more like 90% negative mutations and 10% positive, which, of course, will rapidly diverge out to minus infinity (extinction).
The system needs a constant series of "nudges" or a "plan" if it is to reach more advanced forms. Perhaps this is encoded somewhere in DNA that we don't yet understand; if you're a 2001 fan, there are always monoliths to explain this. I tend toward saying that the plan is somewhere encoded in nature, but that a plan that detailed had to have been put there intelligently -- that is, God exists.
Really it's the same argument SETI is using -- if we find order in the midst of the randomness, there must be intelligence involved.
It's interesting to see the gaps in the fish's translation here... The list of language names ends up part in English, part in French, and part in German. But the best is "Mandarin Chinese" = "Chinese of tangerine".
Also, if the takeoff doesn't take place within 6 years, they won't be able to use the gravity of Jupiter to speed up the trajectory. Hence, if there's going to be a probe to Pluto, it really should be done as soon as possible.
If Lieberman were to win, the Senate would almost certainly be 51-49 in favor of the Republicans, as Lieberman's seat would be filled by appointment by his Republican governor.
If Bush wins, Lieberman would stay in Congress and it would indeed be 50-50, with Cheney as a tie-breaker.
Of course, they created 15 embryos to guarantee a match for Molly, of which 14 were destroyed. That is, the mother had 14 in vitro abortions and then goes on about how she could never have an abortion.
My company has its internal mail on an MS Exchange network, with everyone using Outlook 98 or 2000, except for me in Linux. Thus, I have considerable experience in this subject.
Microsoft thought that everyone would like to have boldface, italics, etc. in their mail without having to use HTML, (because spacing is harder to control there, presumably). So, they invented a format to send formatting information.
This is a registered MIME type, but if you don't have a Microsoft client, you can't read it.
This would be no big deal if it stopped here. However, the TNEF format puts cute little icons of the attachments into the mail, which must be defined in the TNEF block. Furthermore, all of the attachments are encoded into the TNEF block as well.
Thus, a typical message would say. "Hey dude, check out this attachment!". You would see an MS-TNEF attachment that you would be unable to open.
There are several programs available to sort through the TNEF attachment and find the real attachments (which are just directly quoted inside of the TNEF). Search for tnef on Freshmeat.
"Cerberus" is the three-headed dog from Greek mythology, if you pass the name through a Latin filter first. (Latin doesn't use K much, and "us" is a more common ending in Latin.) If you try to be faithful to the Greek, which has Kappa Epsilon Rho Beta Epsilon Rho Omicron Sigma -- you get Kerberos.
"Cerebus", on the other hand, is an aardvark with an attitude, from the comic book of the same name, written and drawn by Dave Sim.
I don't think there's too much trouble with losing games and other applications as the hardware that runs them obsoleces... New ones will be created, and the best of the old will be ported.
As to the data already archived on various media, there could indeed be a problem if people fail to move the data to newer media... Think of your pile of 5 1/4" disks that's just rotting in the corner because your new computer only has a 3 1/2" drive -- and that's not even a huge leap in technology.
There's also the question of formats, especially for users of M$. After two revisions of the software, it can't read any of the old data! Try reading a Word 6 document in Word 97 for laughs, especially if you use any special characters ü á € in your documents...
Ultimately, one is judged here by what he/she/it (gotta love inclusive language) can code...
Then again the spiffyness of the current crop of games has a lot to do with the lack of interest. I mean, when you see "Super Star Trek" programmed in BASIC, it just calls out to you, "You can do better than this! Go ahead, hack the code!" When you see a modern mega-graphic superduper blockbuster game, the reaction is more, "Wow. I could never do that in a million years." So instead of getting a C compiler and figuring out how to do it themselves, kids just go buy a copy of Quake 7 or Doom 13...
Actually there is a group out there billing themselves CyberMonks... They've got a "religious rule" and they apparently meet together in a chat room. Each "virtual monastery" has its own webpage. No, I'm serious! Really! Here's the URL: http://members.aol.com/OMFSI I guess geeks can be spiritual too... (although if you translate their rule, they don't seem to be as Catholic as one might think...)
How about Kurt Gödel, who set Mathematics on its ear, freed it from Logicism, and was an all around strange guy to boot? I mean, he basically changed the whole direction of mathematics, which indirectly changed the whole direction of physics, which....
IHS or JHS is from an incomplete transliteration of the Greek spelling 'IHSOYS (The Ss should be sigmas) into Latin. Since the Greek H makes a long E sound, it should read IES. But that's not what tradition did. They transliterated the Sigma into S, but left the Eta looking like an H.