Yep... I first noticed the virus when I got one in my spamfolder. With someone's forgotten-password request from Classmates.com. Nifty.
I probably violated the DMCA or something, but I logged in, looked up his email address, changed his password, and dropped him an email. Hope the first person who gets a really important password from him does the same.
Countercite, I think... 1995 3.6L Ford Windstar owners got their money back if they had to replace a blown headgasket between 60K (the old warranty) and 100K (the settlement) miles. I assume this was a result of the class-action suit. (I just know I got my $1400 refunded out of the deal. No interest, but we never expected to see *any* of that money again.)
Well, why not? It makes people feel like they're getting a really good deal when they pick up the pattern for a buck or two, or even at "half price." And if somebody actually pays full pop, well... 4. Profit!
The story certainly paints it as though McCall's was directly forbidding the sale, but that's not what the Monsterpatterns folks posted on their web forum.
And yeah, I'm certainly inclined to think it's fair use, and that they *still* don't have much of a case, but it at least explains what "copying" was going on, and thus how the DMCA got brought into play: McCall's ran to the ISP and said "Waah, they're copying our packet pictures and we're going to sue them, but if you pull their stuff RIGHT NOW the DMCA will protect you," so the ISP caved. (They've got a new ISP, in case anyone's wondering.)
It's an indirect way to quash competition. Presumeably they're also going a more direct way, by asking their suppliers to more thoroughly destroy the "expired" packets, but that'll take longer to get through the pipeline. I *am* going to have to ask my fabric-store buddies if anything has come down from corporate, or from McCall's to the stores directly.
Except that using an image of an otherwise copyrighted image for the purpose of selling the product is one of the uses specifically allowed by the USA copyright laws. No one can prevent you from taking your own pictures of their copyrighted item/design for the purpose of selling that item.
Oh, I'm not saying it *is* a copyright violation. I'm just pointing out that there *is* some copying involved, contrary to what the article tries to imply (and what the doctrine-of-first-sale confusion here addresses).
McCall's isn't saying the patterns can't be sold. Wait. Let me say that a little louder.
MCCALL'S ISN'T SAYING THE PATTERNS CAN'T BE SOLD.
Their gripe is with Monsterpatterns putting pictures of the patterns on the website. You know: reproducing (as in making a COPY of) the copyrighted art/photographs on the cover of the patterns.
It's still a bit underhanded, but it makes a certain sort of sense, far more than "you can't resell the physical pattern."
Here's the forum message where the rep (owner?) says "Today The Mccall pattern company through their attorneys have told our web host company that we are 'infringing on their copyrights' by displaying pictures of patterns that we own."
Okay, I may be one of the few slashdotters who sews (for a living, yet... it's slightly more profitable, in the right areas, than writing code from home. Go figure), and it's not really relevant to the issue itself, but...
Monsterpatterns is selling stuff for "30-40% off retail"?? If that's cover price, that's highway robbery, never mind where the patterns came from. McCall, Butterick and Vogue patterns are *normally* sold for 50% off cover. Most places (JoAnn, Hancock, etc.) have rotating sales where one particular line is a buck a pattern.
I guess Monsterpatterns (and the sewing stores) are targeting the folks that want a particular pattern RIGHT NOW and are willing to pay the fairly-outrageous cover prices ($9-15) on them.
(In other Slashdot-relevant news, I'm trying to decide on an appropriate "open-source" license for sewing patterns.)
Yup. IIRC a character was called different things by different people, which was okay (though I probably lost some of the subtleties of what different usages said about different relationships), but it was the third-person authorial usage that switched. Maybe it was symbolic, but if so the meaning blew past me.
Guess I should go tackle it again, while I'm waiting for _The Lord of Castle Black_ and _A Feast For Crows_.
I ran into that... midway through the book, it seemed like *everyone* changed names. I keep wondering if maybe it was just the translation, but surely that wouldn't have affected the names. Everyone went from last names to first names, or maybe it was the other way around.
Re:Out with the old and in with the new
on
RIAA vs The Economy
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A good sign of how well CD distribution is dying is the ill fated "Wherehouse" music stores. To my knowledge here in san jose, they are all gone. CD sales just slipped into the toilet and all their stores have just vanished.
Countering anecdote with anecdote: We had a Wherehouse or three here, and they're gone, but I didn't take it as a sign that CD sales in general slipped into the toilet, but rather that the store I checked out was a few blocks from a Best Buy whose prices were several dollars cheaper on any given disc. We used to buy from there once in awhile, but once we started being able to preview stuff (by which I mean listen to samples on artists' sites) on the web, there was no reason to pay the extra.
Far as I can tell, Best Buy still dedicates the same amount of space to CDs as they have for the last few years; I don't know if that indicates anything about their sales levels, but I would guess it might.
If you take that equilateral triangle, then scribe an arc between each pair of points using the third point as the center, you'll have a non-round shape that won't fall in, though.
There are a heck of a lot of variants on the flaming bird theme, as any Phoenyx.net staffer could tell you. (Of course, some are harder to spell than others, which is why our most recent machine name is merely "roc".)
Still, I won't complain that they changed the name... you have no idea how hard it is to *properly* spell "Phoenix" after eighteen years of "Phoenyx."
We've considered renaming The Phoenyx, since (1) the name was come up with back in the day when you had to remember a number, not a domain name, so we didn't consider that (2) people have enough trouble getting the O and E in the right order (there's a reason those letters are red in our logo) much less remembering the Y.
CNN featured a site which subsequently got, er, cnn'd, though it probably got publicized elsewhere. Interestingly, CNN's article about the site being overloaded doesn't reference their own earlier article publicizing it...
... the situation sucks. I've got decent broadband, because I live within rock-throwing distance of the center of Kansas' largest city. Go just a few miles out into the suburbs, and you're stuck with ~24K dialup. The cable company isn't much better... you get a satellite dish or an antenna mast if you want more than broadcast, so don't even think about a cable modem. I don't even want to think about what it'd be like in a rural area. I've pointed a lot of people at the various co-op articles Slashdot has had.
I've heard horror stories about SBC's DSL, though; we're lucky enough to be on a better local provider, but I think we just got bumped back to SBC for some of our connectivity since our dry-copper-pair provider went belly-up last week.
I emailed their tech support to point out that they weren't accepting my email address because it was supposedly invalid, and I got this back (cut and pasted with quirks intact):
"Your email address as a + in it, characters such as though are not supported in our system."
That was the entirety of the response. No "Here's an alternative," nuthin'.
I have to admit to a bit of snippiness in my response to that, but at least I refrained from saying "Well, duh, wasn't that what *I* just told *you*? I wanted an answer, not a rephrasing of my question."
In order to opt out of their email and phone lists, you have to send them an email (no checkboxes).
It's all moot in my case, though... it believes that my email address contains an invalid character, and won't accept it at all. I seem to recall someone else (eBay?) refusing addresses that contained a "+"... guess they don't like us using username-extensions to track *them*.
It's been ten years since we (pretty much at random) bought an RCA 19" TV. My husband has finally decided he needs a TV that's larger than a monitor, and I thought I'd surprise him by buying a 27" or larger for Christmas.
Egad.
As near as I can figure, everybody seems to agree that Orion is get-what-you-pay-for (though the Orion I looked at in the store looked much nicer than the RCAs and Sanyos next to them, which is annoying), but otherwise as near as I can tell the rest are interchangeable, and I should just buy whatever has the right connectors.
This does not seem right to me, but darned if I can find any information that's more, well, informational.
I'd be happy to license *my* trademark to them...
on
Phoenix To Change Name
·
· Score: 2
Do what I do - send e-mails to all users that say, "Please reply to this email once your have updated your anti-virus software."
Um... I run a mailing list server. I don't *send* my users attachments, and I can't control what other email comes in (if I could, I'd make 'em stop using Hotmail, for one thing).
The chief problem seems to be users of active mailing lists send each other viruses (with names of *other* mailing list members in the From field, of course), and it just keeps getting passed around. Just when you think you've educated everybody, somebody pops up and says "I got it because I use Outlook, which automatically opens attachments! It's not my fault!" And then they get testy when you ask what rock they've been living under.
If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them
You don't have to do "stupid" things anymore... "somewhat clueless" will suffice. I just got a faux bounce message, sent to the error address of one of the Phoenyx' mailing lists. Looks perfectly normal, except that it alleges that the bounced message is contained in the attachment. (Maybe it is, but so is Klez or a variant thereof, so I didn't look further.) Even if you "don't open attachments, even from people you know," I suspect that one might slip under the radar. It certainly got past someone somehow, unless I happen to be the lucky recipient of a first-gen distribution.
(Of course, perhaps "running a computer without a virus checker" itself "stupid." In which case, some of us stupid people have still never gotten a virus.)
All I'm seeing is Klez (and a lot of it), at least from a rough scan of the Phoenyx' logs... you wouldn't happen to have a nice pattern-suitable-for-grepping-for, would you?
Slashdot Mirror
Yep... I first noticed the virus when I got one in my spamfolder. With someone's forgotten-password request from Classmates.com. Nifty.
I probably violated the DMCA or something, but I logged in, looked up his email address, changed his password, and dropped him an email. Hope the first person who gets a really important password from him does the same.
You'd have to be pretty clueless to lose your stuff that way.
News flash: the average home user *is* pretty clueless.
Countercite, I think... 1995 3.6L Ford Windstar owners got their money back if they had to replace a blown headgasket between 60K (the old warranty) and 100K (the settlement) miles. I assume this was a result of the class-action suit. (I just know I got my $1400 refunded out of the deal. No interest, but we never expected to see *any* of that money again.)
Well, why not? It makes people feel like they're getting a really good deal when they pick up the pattern for a buck or two, or even at "half price." And if somebody actually pays full pop, well... 4. Profit!
The story certainly paints it as though McCall's was directly forbidding the sale, but that's not what the Monsterpatterns folks posted on their web forum.
And yeah, I'm certainly inclined to think it's fair use, and that they *still* don't have much of a case, but it at least explains what "copying" was going on, and thus how the DMCA got brought into play: McCall's ran to the ISP and said "Waah, they're copying our packet pictures and we're going to sue them, but if you pull their stuff RIGHT NOW the DMCA will protect you," so the ISP caved. (They've got a new ISP, in case anyone's wondering.)
It's an indirect way to quash competition. Presumeably they're also going a more direct way, by asking their suppliers to more thoroughly destroy the "expired" packets, but that'll take longer to get through the pipeline. I *am* going to have to ask my fabric-store buddies if anything has come down from corporate, or from McCall's to the stores directly.
Except that using an image of an otherwise copyrighted image for the purpose of selling the product is one of the uses specifically allowed by the USA copyright laws. No one can prevent you from taking your own pictures of their copyrighted item/design for the purpose of selling that item.
Oh, I'm not saying it *is* a copyright violation. I'm just pointing out that there *is* some copying involved, contrary to what the article tries to imply (and what the doctrine-of-first-sale confusion here addresses).
Ah ha. Doing a little more homework...
McCall's isn't saying the patterns can't be sold. Wait. Let me say that a little louder.
MCCALL'S ISN'T SAYING THE PATTERNS CAN'T BE SOLD.
Their gripe is with Monsterpatterns putting pictures of the patterns on the website. You know: reproducing (as in making a COPY of) the copyrighted art/photographs on the cover of the patterns.
It's still a bit underhanded, but it makes a certain sort of sense, far more than "you can't resell the physical pattern."
Here's the forum message where the rep (owner?) says "Today The Mccall pattern company through their attorneys have told our web host company that we are 'infringing on their copyrights' by displaying pictures of patterns that we own."
Okay, I may be one of the few slashdotters who sews (for a living, yet... it's slightly more profitable, in the right areas, than writing code from home. Go figure), and it's not really relevant to the issue itself, but...
Monsterpatterns is selling stuff for "30-40% off retail"?? If that's cover price, that's highway robbery, never mind where the patterns came from. McCall, Butterick and Vogue patterns are *normally* sold for 50% off cover. Most places (JoAnn, Hancock, etc.) have rotating sales where one particular line is a buck a pattern.
I guess Monsterpatterns (and the sewing stores) are targeting the folks that want a particular pattern RIGHT NOW and are willing to pay the fairly-outrageous cover prices ($9-15) on them.
(In other Slashdot-relevant news, I'm trying to decide on an appropriate "open-source" license for sewing patterns.)
Yup. IIRC a character was called different things by different people, which was okay (though I probably lost some of the subtleties of what different usages said about different relationships), but it was the third-person authorial usage that switched. Maybe it was symbolic, but if so the meaning blew past me.
Guess I should go tackle it again, while I'm waiting for _The Lord of Castle Black_ and _A Feast For Crows_.
I ran into that... midway through the book, it seemed like *everyone* changed names. I keep wondering if maybe it was just the translation, but surely that wouldn't have affected the names. Everyone went from last names to first names, or maybe it was the other way around.
A good sign of how well CD distribution is dying is the ill fated "Wherehouse" music stores. To my knowledge here in san jose, they are all gone. CD sales just slipped into the toilet and all their stores have just vanished.
Countering anecdote with anecdote: We had a Wherehouse or three here, and they're gone, but I didn't take it as a sign that CD sales in general slipped into the toilet, but rather that the store I checked out was a few blocks from a Best Buy whose prices were several dollars cheaper on any given disc. We used to buy from there once in awhile, but once we started being able to preview stuff (by which I mean listen to samples on artists' sites) on the web, there was no reason to pay the extra.
Far as I can tell, Best Buy still dedicates the same amount of space to CDs as they have for the last few years; I don't know if that indicates anything about their sales levels, but I would guess it might.
search the referrer logs ... for funny searches"
Exclude Altavista, though, or you'll be getting a lot of false positives from Webcollage.
If you take that equilateral triangle, then scribe an arc between each pair of points using the third point as the center, you'll have a non-round shape that won't fall in, though.
There are a heck of a lot of variants on the flaming bird theme, as any Phoenyx.net staffer could tell you. (Of course, some are harder to spell than others, which is why our most recent machine name is merely "roc".)
Still, I won't complain that they changed the name... you have no idea how hard it is to *properly* spell "Phoenix" after eighteen years of "Phoenyx."
We've considered renaming The Phoenyx, since (1) the name was come up with back in the day when you had to remember a number, not a domain name, so we didn't consider that (2) people have enough trouble getting the O and E in the right order (there's a reason those letters are red in our logo) much less remembering the Y.
CNN featured a site which subsequently got, er, cnn'd, though it probably got publicized elsewhere. Interestingly, CNN's article about the site being overloaded doesn't reference their own earlier article publicizing it...
I'm naming my first son Xircom, as it must mean fearless and indestructable.
I dunno... I don't think he'd make it through a load of laundry as well.
... the situation sucks. I've got decent broadband, because I live within rock-throwing distance of the center of Kansas' largest city. Go just a few miles out into the suburbs, and you're stuck with ~24K dialup. The cable company isn't much better... you get a satellite dish or an antenna mast if you want more than broadcast, so don't even think about a cable modem. I don't even want to think about what it'd be like in a rural area. I've pointed a lot of people at the various co-op articles Slashdot has had.
I've heard horror stories about SBC's DSL, though; we're lucky enough to be on a better local provider, but I think we just got bumped back to SBC for some of our connectivity since our dry-copper-pair provider went belly-up last week.
I emailed their tech support to point out that they weren't accepting my email address because it was supposedly invalid, and I got this back (cut and pasted with quirks intact):
"Your email address as a + in it, characters such as though are not supported in our system."
That was the entirety of the response. No "Here's an alternative," nuthin'.
I have to admit to a bit of snippiness in my response to that, but at least I refrained from saying "Well, duh, wasn't that what *I* just told *you*? I wanted an answer, not a rephrasing of my question."
In order to opt out of their email and phone lists, you have to send them an email (no checkboxes).
It's all moot in my case, though... it believes that my email address contains an invalid character, and won't accept it at all. I seem to recall someone else (eBay?) refusing addresses that contained a "+"... guess they don't like us using username-extensions to track *them*.
It's been ten years since we (pretty much at random) bought an RCA 19" TV. My husband has finally decided he needs a TV that's larger than a monitor, and I thought I'd surprise him by buying a 27" or larger for Christmas.
Egad.
As near as I can figure, everybody seems to agree that Orion is get-what-you-pay-for (though the Orion I looked at in the store looked much nicer than the RCAs and Sanyos next to them, which is annoying), but otherwise as near as I can tell the rest are interchangeable, and I should just buy whatever has the right connectors.
This does not seem right to me, but darned if I can find any information that's more, well, informational.
(Look at the "headers.")
Do what I do - send e-mails to all users that say, "Please reply to this email once your have updated your anti-virus software."
Um... I run a mailing list server. I don't *send* my users attachments, and I can't control what other email comes in (if I could, I'd make 'em stop using Hotmail, for one thing).
The chief problem seems to be users of active mailing lists send each other viruses (with names of *other* mailing list members in the From field, of course), and it just keeps getting passed around. Just when you think you've educated everybody, somebody pops up and says "I got it because I use Outlook, which automatically opens attachments! It's not my fault!" And then they get testy when you ask what rock they've been living under.
If a sizable part of the population need to use computers, there will always be a significant number of those who do stupid things from them
You don't have to do "stupid" things anymore... "somewhat clueless" will suffice. I just got a faux bounce message, sent to the error address of one of the Phoenyx' mailing lists. Looks perfectly normal, except that it alleges that the bounced message is contained in the attachment. (Maybe it is, but so is Klez or a variant thereof, so I didn't look further.) Even if you "don't open attachments, even from people you know," I suspect that one might slip under the radar. It certainly got past someone somehow, unless I happen to be the lucky recipient of a first-gen distribution.
(Of course, perhaps "running a computer without a virus checker" itself "stupid." In which case, some of us stupid people have still never gotten a virus.)
All I'm seeing is Klez (and a lot of it), at least from a rough scan of the Phoenyx' logs... you wouldn't happen to have a nice pattern-suitable-for-grepping-for, would you?
like White Wolf
Why am I suddenly reminded of the phrase "Hey, netpunks"?