They're trying to broaden their base of professionals who know the idiosyncracies (to say the least) of their OS, see...
Incidentally, there's money to be made here. I use it at work. Extensively. We're a Tru64 shop. I get paid pretty well for knowledge I acquired a few years ago working for a company that happened to run its web server on Digital Unix because it's what we had lying around.
Why, now, a Tru64 shop? Well... we're running HUGE Oracle databases with a 3rd-party ERP system layered on top of them, for one. Another box runs a commercial database package for libraries, for which Tru64 is the preferred install platform.
And what sorts of nice things do you get out of Tru64 (TruCluster notwithstanding)? How about (this is a seriously incomplete list):
AdvFS, a true journaling filesystem with the capability to layout filesets (think of them as partitions) across multiple drives, bundling drives together as logical devices, etc.
The ability to do (or have it do for you) REAL hardware diagnostics on an Alpha. As in, "CPU1 fan failure, shutting down".
The ability (if you're running Compaq hardware and are willing to pay for it) to get SPECTACULAR warranty work... as in, fast, friendly field-service -- essential if you're running a large data center.
Options like C2 security...!
Don't get me wrong... I love open source software. I run both Linux and FreeBSD. But, what we're talking about here is a large industrial product, as in, competing with E-class Sun boxes and IBM mmf's. It wasn't designed to run a website for "Joe's T-Shirt Shack" and it would be overkill to select it for that... unless you happen to have (like we did a couple jobs ago) the hardware lying around.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Aren't they the old-style green-on-white New Hampshire plates, with the name "Digital" where the "New Hampshire" would be, "UNIX" as the tag number, and the customary "Live Free or Die" across the bottom?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I used to live in Denton, it's basically a large college town, not-too-far from Dallas, with two major state universities in it and a student population of more than 30,000. It's a lot like, say, Berzerkely or Boulder. So this isn't Podunk, USA, as has been described. Ponder is en route to Fort Worth from Denton, and was fast becoming an "affluent suburb" (the result, no doubt, of the nearby Alliance Airport and Texas Motor Speedway) when we left two years ago. Again, this is a MAJOR urban area -- not as backwater as some people might think.
That said, there is a tendency to err a bit to the PC-extreme among educators in the area. Case in point: At a church service a couple of years ago, on what we Lutherans call "Reformation Sunday" a member of the congregation (who was in the administration of one of the local junior high schools) was giving a brief historical talk on Martin Luther, the theses, the church door, etc. Only, and this was subsequently attributed to conditioning from her work environment, every time she went to say "Martin Luther" she uttered "Martin Luther King"... so we instead wound up listening (and barely containing our laughter) to a frank historical talk on actions Martin Luther King allegedly committed in Europe more than 400 years prior to his birth!
In the absence of any other rights we have in this country, one that is generally regarded as inalienable to all persons is Habeas Corpus. You can't hold someone for an inordinate amount of time without charging them with anything. Period. Not only does this kid stand to make a fortune off of this, but I doubt it would be unreasonable to expect that Judge Whitten may wind up doing some time in jail herself on Federal civil rights charges. If she doesn't, there's the REAL tragedy in this story -- someone needs to send a clear message to the people administering our legal system that THEIR mistakes often have serious consequences.
Where are the grammarians in all of this? If school administrators can't distinguish between fiction writing and a statement of intent, how did they graduate from college in the first place? Oh, wait, they were ed majors, that explains a lot...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Selling options on your own stock - especially puts, but also calls - just doesn't seem right and should probably be illegal.
If I'm a big company whose stock is trading at, say, $100, and I sell you a $110 put for $3 for three months from now, then isn't that basically just me selling you a warranty on how much the stock is going to appreciate in the next three months? In simple form, if it stays the same, I'm out $7... if it goes up more than $10, you're out $3. Sounds an awful lot like insurance (or bet-hedging, which is really what insurance is) to me.
This isn't baseball, you don't have to worry about things like point-shaving... if companies selling their own derivatives bothers you, don't buy them -- no company in their right mind would "take a dive" to make money off their own derivatives, the bloodbath they'd suffer at the hands of their own shareholders would be horrific.
FYI: I am seriously considering divesting myself of some of my own tech holdings, but more because I don't feel particularly comfortable with both my investments and my earnings coming from the same sector. And that's what investment is all about, really... deciding what risks you're willing to expose your assets to in order to take a chance on growing them.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
That`s not what the patents are for. The patents prevent other researchers from working on the same gene. This means that a company can hold onto a gene that could be a useful target for gene therapy, and no other company would be allowed to research it, even if the company who filed the patent thought it not worth their while to look into it.
If I remember correctly there is a principle in patent law (at least in the US) regarding "public interest", that is, that in order to keep your patent defensible you have to demonstrate that it is being commercially deployed/explored/etc. This is to prevent, for example, Exxon from researching a new fuel additive that would enable cars with 6-cyl., 2.4 L engines to get 50 mpg, and then patenting it specifically to keep it off the market for 17 years.
So, I suppose that the same would apply here -- if Celera obtains a patent for a particular gene that they choose not to further pursue, and, say 5 years later Merck discovers that therapy involving that gene could prove useful in treating, say, Alzheimer's, then my understanding of patent law is that Celera would have no choice other than to negotiate a licensing arrangement with Merck or risk having their patent overturned altogether. Now if Celera could demonstrate a previous licensing arrangement with, say, Bayer, granting them exclusive therapeutic research rights involving the gene, then it would be another story -- because Celera would in effect be "using" the patent.
Anyone with a clearer understanding of US IP law want to clarify this for me? Like I said, this is just based on what I've read on it...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
800 on the math SAT implies that you answered EVERY SINGLE question CORRECTLY. No blanks, no errors. Are you telling me that 5% of the HS seniors who take the SAT do that, which is what 95th percentile implies?
The way the SAT is designed (and they keep "tweaking" to get it right, or "less right", depending on who you talk to) is to have a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, and truncation at 3 standard deviations either direction (ie. you can't score less than 200 or more than 800). Your end result is that (in theory) 600 represents roughly the 83rd percentile, 700 represents roughtly the 97th, and 800 is somewhere in the upper end of the 99th -- if they needed to additionally differentiate among people in the 99th percentile, they would add more difficult questions, believe me.
As an aside, I found out about my 800 math score while I was at Boys' State (I took the SAT in April of my Junior year). I was so excited I nearly bounced off the walls, and did wind up managing to get quite a bit of attention with the amount of noise I was making that late at night on an otherwise-deserted university campus. And that, even though I was quite aware that with the expectations people had grown to have of me in high school, anything less would have been unacceptible. As it was, I found my verbal score (still pretty high, but not where I had wanted it to be) slightly disappointing, but that's another story...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Indirectly boycotting online bookstores anyway. But for one or two obsure titles I've bought from Spree, I have pretty much avoided it... Why? Allow me to give you a list:
I like local bookstores. Not the piddling little 3000-sf jobs that have all-but-been-obsoleted, but the full-service B&N and Borders stores that you get half-a-dozen-or-more of in a decent-sized metro area. I like the idea of getting in my car, driving over to one, having a mocha latte, and browsing shelves that already contain 98% of the titles I'd be interested in and I don't have to either wait for or pay for shipping to acquire.
While I'm on the subject of paying for shipping, let me point out what a COLOSSAL WASTE of natural resources demand-shipping one or two titles is. At a less successful point in my life, I worked receiving for a bookstore. The books came packaged in large boxes, using each other as packing material, typically 15-20 to a box. Usually, about 30 boxes would be palletized and wrapped and shipped by truck. Bulk freight. Cheap and efficient. Contrast that with packaging and cushioning one title and UPSing it (with several sorts along the way) to your front door. This is like ordering a computer CASE through the mail: You may save $10 off what your local dealer would charge, but you'll pay $25 for the shipping. Just because Amazon may save a little based on how much they ship that way doesn't mean the REAL costs (it's economics, resources can only be allocated once, somebody [UPS' marketers?] still pays for it) still aren't there.
What is that that cDc says? "Save yourself, go outside, DO SOMETHING!" There's a moral to this story... spending an hour or so inside a PHYSICAL Barnes and Noble store would probably do many of Amazon's customers (and other wireheads, myself included) a lot of good.
Did I mention that I like mocha lattes?
Those comfy chairs at Barnes and Noble are made through an exclusive arrangement with the vendor. It's the only place you can sit in those chairs.
The people who work in those stores are mostly local college kids. That's local labor folks. It's generally a good thing. It's why e-commerce has gotten such a bad rap with so many local politicians.... Do yourselves, your communities, and the environment a favor and only buy online those things which you cannot source locally.
Mmmm... mocha lattes...
Back to the social aspects for a minute: In my bookstore-working era, one of my coworkers had been sent to suburban Detroit for training for a couple of weeks, before being given the management of the music department of one of the local stores. During the course of his working in Detroit, he had the opportunity to sell (yes, as in "assist in making selections") CDs to Aretha Franklin. To wit, in the real world, you never know who you're going to run into; in your den, you have a pretty good idea.
All this typing is making me thirsty. I could really use a mocha latte.
For the shape conscious to contemplate: It is substantially harder to gain weight while you're standing up. Even our quasi-bipedal orangutan cousins have figured THAT one out.
I really REALLY like mocha lattes.
Something you won't walk past on the way into Amazon: Four aisles of sale tables. You might find something that catches your eye and winds up changing your life, a title whose existence you wouldn't have even contemplated while shopping at Amazon.
I think I'm going to get ready now and go buy a mocha latte. At a bookstore. Maybe I'll browse titles for expectant fathers while I'm there. And check out the maps. I haven't bought any new maps lately. And I'm certainly not inclined to pay $3.00 shipping on a $2.95 map! *g*
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
They (the Federal Government) don't have a blanket exemption on being sued, but they do have a few sneaky loopholes on HOW they can be sued...
I see this (the patent issue) as an opportunity for a number of people to get together and sue the government (a la Bernstein's suit over crypto regs) using a variation on the argument RMS makes:
Existing US patent practices on software algorithms are unconstitutional, because they constitute an illegal prior restraint of a protected form of expression (namely, source code).
I think that in particular, if the Court continues to uphold Bernstein (I have a feeling it is headed to the Supreme Court assuming the ruling is held by the full Court of Appeals) then this argument has particular merit, since there will be prior case law specifying that source code is, in fact, protected speech.
Anyone else in?:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I doubt they stopped Tom Williams from attending either when he was CEO of Desert Island or after it was acquired by Apple. I can't confirm this, but...
I've seen kids on the show floor at Comdex before, ironically most of them had "Conference" passes, not "Exhibit Hall" passes, so it seems to me that they were more than willing to bend the rules a bit for people involved in their symposia.
Some of the things that go on at Comdex, even in the post-Adultdex era, are unsuitable for minors... there are an awful lot of showgirls/models/strippers/bunnies who get hired by companies to help "hostess" the booths and whose conduct would be questionable in an all-ages context.
This is Nevada we're talking about, arguably a close second to Utah as the most restrictive state in the union toward minors. There are mining exhibits (no pun intended) in Virginia City that minors are prohibited from entering. The Nevada mentality toward kids seems to be "Lock 'em upstairs at Circus Circus and throw away the key..."
I'm sure that if the LVCVB had their way, Comdex would have a 21yo-minimum. 18-20yo's can't drink (which kills where they make their money on those $5.99 steak dinners), can't gamble (where their bread-and-butter is), and don't generally (there are exceptions) rent cars (which in Vegas is also big $ -- people rent tasty convertibles with their winnings and cruise the strip). Vegas takes enough of a beating on Comdex already... why do you think they jack up the hotel rates? Yes, because they can, but also because techies tend to be smarter-than-the-average-bear and don't typically drop a couple thousand a night at the tables. If not for the sales guys *g*, the casinos would go broke that week.... If there were another city in America with enough hotellage to accommodate the show, I'm sure the Vegasvolk would love to see it go -- it has a negative impact on THEIR real business (leisure travelers explicitly avoid Vegas that week, for obvious reasons).
To the people who say it's about selling stuff... the show rules actually explicity prohibit selling merchandise on the show floor...
If you're going to go to Comdex, leave your dress shoes at home. The convention centers all have concrete floors, and their murder on your feet... if your boss insists on coat-n-tie, wear a nice suit and a pair of black 'boks -- your feet will thank you for it...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I prefer to think of programming as more art form than engineering practice -- the inner elegance of a design is how code should be judged, not whether it can "still make coffee after withstanding a load of -10 g's"... Licensure would take a lot of the artistry and enjoyability out of the industry, relegating us to little more than glorified plumbers, repairing the infrastructure of the next century.
Quite frankly, I would say a solid footing in the Liberal Arts contributes significantly more to whether a programmer can understand and meet customer requirements than whether or not he happened to take 2 1/2 years of Scheme as part of his undergraduate CS program at the Punxatawnie Institute of Technology. (I have both a BA and an MS in math, incidentally, and little "formal" training).
I have yet to see a "real world" problem that this notion of licensure would actually address. It looks as if this wants to be a nearsighted approach to addressing the Y2K mythos, but the reality is that (like so many things) when most of the non-Y2K-compliant software still in use was deployed, it (2 digit years) was "not a bug, but a feature" (lower memory consumption, etc., when memory was at a premium and code was cheap).
So, like so many others who have posted on this earlier, I'm going to say "let the free market dictate things, not licensure" -- but for arguably different reasons.:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
umm no, read the new york times article which does a fairly healthy job of describing what the court interpreted as "fair use" of a trademark...
if you are actually publishing real information about a product, you're within that scope. (IANAL, BTW)
and for those of you spreading FUD about having to register for the times' site, think about what you're really admitting to -- that you are viewing the website of one of the most-heavily ciruclated papers on the planet -- not really much of your privacy sacrificed to acknowledge that, is there?
personally, i think this ruling is a *GOOD THING*. a lot of companies are implementing underhanded marketing tactics to get listed higher on search engines when ppl are looking for their primary competitor (again, if everyone used Google, this wouldn't be a problem, but...), which makes the net less useful, which makes all of us less money/satisfied/popular/whatever.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Between AOL's model and Open Source development is this:
AOL holds these ppl's accounts over their heads -- they can't simply cease to volunteer and keep the same "screen name" (is that the correct term? I don't do AOL) that they have given out to everyone and his brother, the way I understand it... so they either change their entire identity (a pain in the !#$ to all of us who have moved and lost addresses, etc.) or keep doing it, right?
Open Source is a business model that has been in place in this country for years, under another name: Amish Barn-Raisings. Barns are certainly critical to the business of an Amish farmer, BUT the compensation involved is, in fact along the lines of "and one day I will ask you to do me a favor...". Similarly, I'll code up a couple routines for your browser, and then later you can code up a couple routines for my scanner-driver... Never mind the compensation associated with the right to use a better product because you, like others, contributed to its development!?!! Also, remember, nobody develops FOR Red Hat because Red Hat doesnt retain ownership of the product... They are simply facilitating development in return for the right to distribute nonexclusively a better piece of software.
And beta-testers certainly get compensated -- they get early access to the "latest and greatest" package... it's work-for-trade just like any other non-negotiable compensations.
Plus, there are exceptions to the FLSA, even in the for-profit arena... unpaid internships are a form of volunteer work (in return for experience) too... how many hospitals could remain operating as effectively without candy stripers?
So whether AOL can prevail or not, I wouldn't take this case as any sort of a "broader threat" to the sorts of volunteerism we actually care about.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I'm betting (1) the url of the entry page changes daily as well and (2) the filename/url of the gnome footprint changes daily and probably will NOT contain the word "gnome". Heck, just to confuse you, they may change the way the image is rendered (gif/jpeg/png, interlaced/non-interlaced, etc.) just to prevent people from spidering the pages on the site and bdiff'ing the images...
If you really wanted to get serious about writing a spider, you would have to grab each image as its called from each page and compare it (pixelwise, using an image library like ImageMagick) against a "known-good" copy of the footprint...
given the amount of processor time spidering and pixelwise-comparing the images will consume, it sounds to me like it is ALMOST less-intensive to actually play:)
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
a device called a "rat" (not sure who makes/made it) that was essentially a grossly oversized mouse that sits on the floor under your desk, operated by your feet... one of the guys i used to work with was fond of them (although he still actually preferred an optical mouse for his own use...).
Notice that he said he was logging in via DSL. Some DSL implementations pretend to be ethernet to a connecting machine, so I wouldn't be surprised if the other computers he was able to see were not, in fact, on his LAN at work, but rather were on the same DSL provider as he was. Something I presume that pcanywhere probably was neither built to expect, nor thoroughly tested on... just a guess, but when I read "DSL" in his article, my ears pricked up...
I guess they can't read very well, then...
on
Rumours
·
· Score: 1
From provision 0 of the GPL:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."
Slashdot Mirror
They're trying to broaden their base of professionals who know the idiosyncracies (to say the least) of their OS, see...
Incidentally, there's money to be made here. I use it at work. Extensively. We're a Tru64 shop. I get paid pretty well for knowledge I acquired a few years ago working for a company that happened to run its web server on Digital Unix because it's what we had lying around.
Why, now, a Tru64 shop? Well... we're running HUGE Oracle databases with a 3rd-party ERP system layered on top of them, for one. Another box runs a commercial database package for libraries, for which Tru64 is the preferred install platform.
And what sorts of nice things do you get out of Tru64 (TruCluster notwithstanding)? How about (this is a seriously incomplete list):
Don't get me wrong... I love open source software. I run both Linux and FreeBSD. But, what we're talking about here is a large industrial product, as in, competing with E-class Sun boxes and IBM mmf's. It wasn't designed to run a website for "Joe's T-Shirt Shack" and it would be overkill to select it for that... unless you happen to have (like we did a couple jobs ago) the hardware lying around.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Aren't they the old-style green-on-white New Hampshire plates, with the name "Digital" where the "New Hampshire" would be, "UNIX" as the tag number, and the customary "Live Free or Die" across the bottom?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Selling options on your own stock - especially puts, but also calls - just doesn't seem right and should probably be illegal.
If I'm a big company whose stock is trading at, say, $100, and I sell you a $110 put for $3 for three months from now, then isn't that basically just me selling you a warranty on how much the stock is going to appreciate in the next three months? In simple form, if it stays the same, I'm out $7... if it goes up more than $10, you're out $3. Sounds an awful lot like insurance (or bet-hedging, which is really what insurance is) to me.
This isn't baseball, you don't have to worry about things like point-shaving... if companies selling their own derivatives bothers you, don't buy them -- no company in their right mind would "take a dive" to make money off their own derivatives, the bloodbath they'd suffer at the hands of their own shareholders would be horrific.
FYI: I am seriously considering divesting myself of some of my own tech holdings, but more because I don't feel particularly comfortable with both my investments and my earnings coming from the same sector. And that's what investment is all about, really... deciding what risks you're willing to expose your assets to in order to take a chance on growing them.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
That`s not what the patents are for. The patents prevent other researchers from working on the same gene. This means that a company can hold onto a gene that could be a useful target for gene therapy, and no other company would be allowed to research it, even if the company who filed the patent thought it not worth their while to look into it.
If I remember correctly there is a principle in patent law (at least in the US) regarding "public interest", that is, that in order to keep your patent defensible you have to demonstrate that it is being commercially deployed/explored/etc. This is to prevent, for example, Exxon from researching a new fuel additive that would enable cars with 6-cyl., 2.4 L engines to get 50 mpg, and then patenting it specifically to keep it off the market for 17 years.
So, I suppose that the same would apply here -- if Celera obtains a patent for a particular gene that they choose not to further pursue, and, say 5 years later Merck discovers that therapy involving that gene could prove useful in treating, say, Alzheimer's, then my understanding of patent law is that Celera would have no choice other than to negotiate a licensing arrangement with Merck or risk having their patent overturned altogether. Now if Celera could demonstrate a previous licensing arrangement with, say, Bayer, granting them exclusive therapeutic research rights involving the gene, then it would be another story -- because Celera would in effect be "using" the patent.
Anyone with a clearer understanding of US IP law want to clarify this for me? Like I said, this is just based on what I've read on it...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
800 on the math SAT implies that you answered EVERY SINGLE question CORRECTLY. No blanks, no errors. Are you telling me that 5% of the HS seniors who take the SAT do that, which is what 95th percentile implies?
The way the SAT is designed (and they keep "tweaking" to get it right, or "less right", depending on who you talk to) is to have a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, and truncation at 3 standard deviations either direction (ie. you can't score less than 200 or more than 800). Your end result is that (in theory) 600 represents roughly the 83rd percentile, 700 represents roughtly the 97th, and 800 is somewhere in the upper end of the 99th -- if they needed to additionally differentiate among people in the 99th percentile, they would add more difficult questions, believe me.
As an aside, I found out about my 800 math score while I was at Boys' State (I took the SAT in April of my Junior year). I was so excited I nearly bounced off the walls, and did wind up managing to get quite a bit of attention with the amount of noise I was making that late at night on an otherwise-deserted university campus. And that, even though I was quite aware that with the expectations people had grown to have of me in high school, anything less would have been unacceptible. As it was, I found my verbal score (still pretty high, but not where I had wanted it to be) slightly disappointing, but that's another story...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Indirectly boycotting online bookstores anyway. But for one or two obsure titles I've bought from Spree, I have pretty much avoided it... Why? Allow me to give you a list:
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
They (the Federal Government) don't have a blanket exemption on being sued, but they do have a few sneaky loopholes on HOW they can be sued...
:)
I see this (the patent issue) as an opportunity for a number of people to get together and sue the government (a la Bernstein's suit over crypto regs) using a variation on the argument RMS makes:
Existing US patent practices on software algorithms are unconstitutional, because they constitute an illegal prior restraint of a protected form of expression (namely, source code).
I think that in particular, if the Court continues to uphold Bernstein (I have a feeling it is headed to the Supreme Court assuming the ruling is held by the full Court of Appeals) then this argument has particular merit, since there will be prior case law specifying that source code is, in fact, protected speech.
Anyone else in?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It appears that we've managed to seriously impede Ars Technica's ability to service all the requests they're getting at the moment...
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
It looks like woz.org is down this morning... hmmm... did we /. the woz himself?
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I prefer to think of programming as more art form than engineering practice -- the inner elegance of a design is how code should be judged, not whether it can "still make coffee after withstanding a load of -10 g's"... Licensure would take a lot of the artistry and enjoyability out of the industry, relegating us to little more than glorified plumbers, repairing the infrastructure of the next century.
:)
Quite frankly, I would say a solid footing in the Liberal Arts contributes significantly more to whether a programmer can understand and meet customer requirements than whether or not he happened to take 2 1/2 years of Scheme as part of his undergraduate CS program at the Punxatawnie Institute of Technology. (I have both a BA and an MS in math, incidentally, and little "formal" training).
I have yet to see a "real world" problem that this notion of licensure would actually address. It looks as if this wants to be a nearsighted approach to addressing the Y2K mythos, but the reality is that (like so many things) when most of the non-Y2K-compliant software still in use was deployed, it (2 digit years) was "not a bug, but a feature" (lower memory consumption, etc., when memory was at a premium and code was cheap).
So, like so many others who have posted on this earlier, I'm going to say "let the free market dictate things, not licensure" -- but for arguably different reasons.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
umm no, read the new york times article which does a fairly healthy job of describing what the court interpreted as "fair use" of a trademark...
if you are actually publishing real information about a product, you're within that scope. (IANAL, BTW)
and for those of you spreading FUD about having to register for the times' site, think about what you're really admitting to -- that you are viewing the website of one of the most-heavily ciruclated papers on the planet -- not really much of your privacy sacrificed to acknowledge that, is there?
personally, i think this ruling is a *GOOD THING*. a lot of companies are implementing underhanded marketing tactics to get listed higher on search engines when ppl are looking for their primary competitor (again, if everyone used Google, this wouldn't be a problem, but...), which makes the net less useful, which makes all of us less money/satisfied/popular/whatever.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
Between AOL's model and Open Source development is this:
AOL holds these ppl's accounts over their heads -- they can't simply cease to volunteer and keep the same "screen name" (is that the correct term? I don't do AOL) that they have given out to everyone and his brother, the way I understand it... so they either change their entire identity (a pain in the !#$ to all of us who have moved and lost addresses, etc.) or keep doing it, right?
Open Source is a business model that has been in place in this country for years, under another name: Amish Barn-Raisings. Barns are certainly critical to the business of an Amish farmer, BUT the compensation involved is, in fact along the lines of "and one day I will ask you to do me a favor...". Similarly, I'll code up a couple routines for your browser, and then later you can code up a couple routines for my scanner-driver...
Never mind the compensation associated with the right to use a better product because you, like others, contributed to its development!?!!
Also, remember, nobody develops FOR Red Hat because Red Hat doesnt retain ownership of the product... They are simply facilitating development in return for the right to distribute nonexclusively a better piece of software.
And beta-testers certainly get compensated -- they get early access to the "latest and greatest" package... it's work-for-trade just like any other non-negotiable compensations.
Plus, there are exceptions to the FLSA, even in the for-profit arena... unpaid internships are a form of volunteer work (in return for experience) too... how many hospitals could remain operating as effectively without candy stripers?
So whether AOL can prevail or not, I wouldn't take this case as any sort of a "broader threat" to the sorts of volunteerism we actually care about.
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
I'm betting (1) the url of the entry page changes daily as well and (2) the filename/url of the gnome footprint changes daily and probably will NOT contain the word "gnome". Heck, just to confuse you, they may change the way the image is rendered (gif/jpeg/png, interlaced/non-interlaced, etc.) just to prevent people from spidering the pages on the site and bdiff'ing the images...
:)
If you really wanted to get serious about writing a spider, you would have to grab each image as its called from each page and compare it (pixelwise, using an image library like ImageMagick) against a "known-good" copy of the footprint...
given the amount of processor time spidering and pixelwise-comparing the images will consume, it sounds to me like it is ALMOST less-intensive to actually play
This is my opinion and my opinion only. Incidentally, IANAL.
a device called a "rat" (not sure who makes/made it) that was essentially a grossly oversized mouse that sits on the floor under your desk, operated by your feet... one of the guys i used to work with was fond of them (although he still actually preferred an optical mouse for his own use...).
Notice that he said he was logging in via DSL. Some DSL implementations pretend to be ethernet to a connecting machine, so I wouldn't be surprised if the other computers he was able to see were not, in fact, on his LAN at work, but rather were on the same DSL provider as he was. Something I presume that pcanywhere probably was neither built to expect, nor thoroughly tested on... just a guess, but when I read "DSL" in his article, my ears pricked up...
From provision 0 of the GPL:
"Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this
License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not
restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents
constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running
the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does."
Or does the aging, bloated Falwell bear a more-than-subtle resemblance to Tinky Winky in the two photos in the CNN story?