I'm pretty sure that as long as you did not try to claim that they were Scrabble tiles, and simply sold them simply as lettered tiles with score values, intended generally for assorted home word and spelling games, you'd be fine with regards to IP issues.
There are games other than Scrabble which can make use of such tiles, you know... and some of them aren't even the intellectual property of any company.
Yes it does.... but the summary just finished mentioning the North American Scrabble Player's Association, and then suddenly mentions Mattel without offering any indication that the context was being switched.
Got that. Thanks. My confusion was from the following sentences in the summary (emphasis mine).
The co-president of the North American Scrabble Players Association says that he often hears criticism of Scrabble's scoring system, but any change would bring about 'catastrophic outrage'. A spokesman for Mattel says that they have no plans to change the game."
The article is clearer on this point by explicitly pointing out that Mattel is the distributor for Scrabble in Europe, providing sufficient context to understand why Mattel would be mentioned with regards to Scrabble after only just mentioning North America.
Yes... got that. Thanks. The summary explicitly mentioned the "North American Scrabble Players Association" before bringing up Mattel, and without any indication that they were switching contexts. The article is more explicit in this regard, and is clearer.
Okay, yes. Mattel *DOES* make Scrabble... but only *outside* North America.
Considering the second-last sentence in the summary just mentioned the "North American Scrabble Players Association" right before Mattel, I trust you can understand my confusion. The article clarifies the point by noting that Mattel make Scrabble in Europe.
That's the inherent problem with NAT... and CGN in particular. Unless you punch holes in a NAT, the Internet breaks for any end-to-end communication. You can only punch holes in a NAT when you administrate the NAT.
But this is Carrier-Grade NAT.... ie, the NAT is not at the consumer level, but at the ISP level. Can you imagine the nightmarish logistics of having all of the ISP's customers be able to individually punch holes in it for their own applications on a NAT that they don't even actually own?
How do you propose to arrange to penetrate a NAT that you don't administrate? Do you think that an ISP I implementing CGN will just let you punch yur own holes in it for your own applications?
My comment wasn't because necessarily I believe that we might discover some way to exceed the speed of light in the future, it's more because I see such generalizations as being less honest with ourselves about how much we actually know about the universe. I actually *DON'T* think that there might be any way to ever go faster than the speed of light, but I certainly don't *REALLY* know that... it's a belief that comes from what I already understand to be true. But there's absolutely nothing inherent in that understanding that prevents it from actually being incomplete, or even entirely wrong.
All we can honestly and positively say with respect to our knowledge is that based on our current understanding of the universe, there is no known way to ever get something moving faster than the speed of light. Simply asserting it to be impossible without such qualifiers exaggerates our current understanding of the universe by such a degree that it cannot possibly be anything more than a hypothesis and personal belief (even if it were factually true).
Fair point.... but history is overflowing with examples of people asserting "X is impossible", for various values of X, and they were ultimately proven wrong.
It's simply much more honest to say that we just don't know of any way to travel faster than light than to casually assert its impossibility as factual.
I mean, it must be pretty slow if you have to put as one of your news articles that another source mistakenly broadcast something as news when it really wasn't.
Once they receive the C&D in writing, they themselves cannot call back.
Actually, they can contact you, but only once more, and *ONLY* for the purpose of advising you what their next course of action is. Anything else constitutes harassment.
They resell it. And the process happens all over again.
Yes.. this happens. Unfortunately all too often. They get away with it only because people being called don't know their rights. Legally, all C&D details are supposed to be transferred to whomever is taking up the duties of collection. Presumably to initiate legal proceedings.
And IANAL but i believe this is all perfectly legal and in fact encouraged in their scummy little world.
Unfortunately, as you've noticed, a lot of collection companies seem to conveniently ignore what they are supposed to do, by law. Call the FTC on those guys and they'll pay a sizable fine, particularly if it's not the first time they've been ratted on for this.
If they are really reluctant to try to pursue legal action against the debtor (highly likely for small debts), then you might have to wait out the period where the debt is sold from agency to agency, as you call the FTC for each and every one. This can take several months, unfortunately... but unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to actually *prevent* people from breaking the law when they are intent on it. You can only make sure that they at least pay the appropriate penalty when they do. Calling the FTC on companies that do this sort of thing can at least help discourage the practice.
You don't have an address, you don't have a business name, and you probably don't have a real phone number, either. What are you going to do?
Exactly the same thing you do if a stranger keeps calling your place and harassing you. Give whatever details you *DO* have to the police. Permit them to subpoena phone records from the phone company about the recent calls to your number, and let them investigate. Unless the collection agency is calling you from a pay phone, they *will* be caught.
Under absolutely no circumstances would any collection agency that is under federal jurisdiction be able to continue to get away with doing what you're describing unless the people who are wrongfully getting called are simply too lazy or apathetic to exercise their legal rights... and it's those people that empower the disreputable collection agencies that try to pull this sort of bullshit to keep doing it.
Lying to them is stupid... and it completely negates your ability to seek legal remedies. Which you have. Really. I'm not lying here.
If you try to get them to give you their business name and/or address (to send them a C/D) they'll ignore you
This, as I said above, falls under the same category as a caller who refuses to identify himself, which, in the case of repeated calls and the caller's consistent refusal to identify him or herself, is a specific category of telephone harassment, and is *definitely* against the law.
I may not be a lawyer, but I do happen to know a thing or two about collection agencies, and many of the laws that govern them.
Whether you are the debtor or not, collection agencies are required, by law, to honor all C&D requests that are submitted to them, in writing. After they receive the C&D, they are permitted to contact you only once more, and the purpose of that communication is to advise you of their next course of action. If they do not respect the C&D, contact the FTC and your state Attorney General, and advise them that the collection agency has broken the law.
If the agency refuses to give the information necessary for you to send them a C&D in writing, then this falls under the same category as a caller who refuses to identify himself, and if such calls persist without such identification, then it qualifies as full-on telephone harassment. The police can be notified in this case.
Chance and strategy are not opposites. They are orthogonal. Increasing one does not necessarily mean decreasing the other unless the complexity of the game is kept constant.
You know, that's the funny thing I've always found about trying to do accurate software estimates. Because programming is so predominantly a thinking-heavy activity, the time that you're spending trying to figure out how long something is going to take can almost as easily be spent actually doing it.
I've always found it frustrating to try to explain this to people who want estimates on how complex certain tasks are, when you don't actually have enough data on those tasks yet to know, and by the time you do, you'll have already basically solved whatever problem the task was supposed to solve.
... why, exactly, a java application that starts with the security manager turned on should *EVER* somehow need legitimate permission to turn the security manager off?
That, to me, seems so obvious as a basic security measure, it amazes me that software as old as Java would still have such vulnerabilities.
I can see absolutely no reason to start with an unprivileged app that can somehow give itself privilege it did not start with. In reality, such actions should be up to the user to decide *before* they run the app (although that may still be quite vulnerable to social engineering, it would at least remove the technical aspects of the vulnerability).
I'm pretty sure if it's written for a system that you don't actually use at work, that would add a "preponderance of evidence" for the case that you didn't do any part of it at work.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm pretty sure that as long as you did not try to claim that they were Scrabble tiles, and simply sold them simply as lettered tiles with score values, intended generally for assorted home word and spelling games, you'd be fine with regards to IP issues.
There are games other than Scrabble which can make use of such tiles, you know... and some of them aren't even the intellectual property of any company.
Yes it does.... but the summary just finished mentioning the North American Scrabble Player's Association, and then suddenly mentions Mattel without offering any indication that the context was being switched.
The article is clearer on this point by explicitly pointing out that Mattel is the distributor for Scrabble in Europe, providing sufficient context to understand why Mattel would be mentioned with regards to Scrabble after only just mentioning North America.
Yes... got that. Thanks. The summary explicitly mentioned the "North American Scrabble Players Association" before bringing up Mattel, and without any indication that they were switching contexts. The article is more explicit in this regard, and is clearer.
Considering the second-last sentence in the summary just mentioned the "North American Scrabble Players Association" right before Mattel, I trust you can understand my confusion. The article clarifies the point by noting that Mattel make Scrabble in Europe.
Scrabble is Hasbro IP.
Hasbro and Mattel are two *ENTIRELY* separate companies. Rivals, in fact.
Saying that Mattel has no plans to change the game is like saying that Microsoft has no plans to change the iPhone.
That's the inherent problem with NAT... and CGN in particular. Unless you punch holes in a NAT, the Internet breaks for any end-to-end communication. You can only punch holes in a NAT when you administrate the NAT.
But this is Carrier-Grade NAT.... ie, the NAT is not at the consumer level, but at the ISP level. Can you imagine the nightmarish logistics of having all of the ISP's customers be able to individually punch holes in it for their own applications on a NAT that they don't even actually own?
How do you propose to arrange to penetrate a NAT that you don't administrate? Do you think that an ISP I implementing CGN will just let you punch yur own holes in it for your own applications?
Because otherwise, they will just end up running out of ports when they have a larger number of people simultaneously using their services.
Quite quickly too.
This plan is so colossally doomed to fail that I have no words for it.
Where can I buy the popcorn? This is gonna be funny as hell to watch.
My comment wasn't because necessarily I believe that we might discover some way to exceed the speed of light in the future, it's more because I see such generalizations as being less honest with ourselves about how much we actually know about the universe. I actually *DON'T* think that there might be any way to ever go faster than the speed of light, but I certainly don't *REALLY* know that... it's a belief that comes from what I already understand to be true. But there's absolutely nothing inherent in that understanding that prevents it from actually being incomplete, or even entirely wrong.
All we can honestly and positively say with respect to our knowledge is that based on our current understanding of the universe, there is no known way to ever get something moving faster than the speed of light. Simply asserting it to be impossible without such qualifiers exaggerates our current understanding of the universe by such a degree that it cannot possibly be anything more than a hypothesis and personal belief (even if it were factually true).
Fair point.... but history is overflowing with examples of people asserting "X is impossible", for various values of X, and they were ultimately proven wrong.
It's simply much more honest to say that we just don't know of any way to travel faster than light than to casually assert its impossibility as factual.
That we KNOW of..... So far.
I mean, it must be pretty slow if you have to put as one of your news articles that another source mistakenly broadcast something as news when it really wasn't.
Actually, they can contact you, but only once more, and *ONLY* for the purpose of advising you what their next course of action is. Anything else constitutes harassment.
Yes.. this happens. Unfortunately all too often. They get away with it only because people being called don't know their rights. Legally, all C&D details are supposed to be transferred to whomever is taking up the duties of collection. Presumably to initiate legal proceedings.
Unfortunately, as you've noticed, a lot of collection companies seem to conveniently ignore what they are supposed to do, by law. Call the FTC on those guys and they'll pay a sizable fine, particularly if it's not the first time they've been ratted on for this.
If they are really reluctant to try to pursue legal action against the debtor (highly likely for small debts), then you might have to wait out the period where the debt is sold from agency to agency, as you call the FTC for each and every one. This can take several months, unfortunately... but unfortunately, there's nothing you can do to actually *prevent* people from breaking the law when they are intent on it. You can only make sure that they at least pay the appropriate penalty when they do. Calling the FTC on companies that do this sort of thing can at least help discourage the practice.
Exactly the same thing you do if a stranger keeps calling your place and harassing you. Give whatever details you *DO* have to the police. Permit them to subpoena phone records from the phone company about the recent calls to your number, and let them investigate. Unless the collection agency is calling you from a pay phone, they *will* be caught.
Under absolutely no circumstances would any collection agency that is under federal jurisdiction be able to continue to get away with doing what you're describing unless the people who are wrongfully getting called are simply too lazy or apathetic to exercise their legal rights... and it's those people that empower the disreputable collection agencies that try to pull this sort of bullshit to keep doing it.
Lying to them is stupid... and it completely negates your ability to seek legal remedies. Which you have. Really. I'm not lying here.
This, as I said above, falls under the same category as a caller who refuses to identify himself, which, in the case of repeated calls and the caller's consistent refusal to identify him or herself, is a specific category of telephone harassment, and is *definitely* against the law.
I may not be a lawyer, but I do happen to know a thing or two about collection agencies, and many of the laws that govern them.
Whether you are the debtor or not, collection agencies are required, by law, to honor all C&D requests that are submitted to them, in writing. After they receive the C&D, they are permitted to contact you only once more, and the purpose of that communication is to advise you of their next course of action. If they do not respect the C&D, contact the FTC and your state Attorney General, and advise them that the collection agency has broken the law.
If the agency refuses to give the information necessary for you to send them a C&D in writing, then this falls under the same category as a caller who refuses to identify himself, and if such calls persist without such identification, then it qualifies as full-on telephone harassment. The police can be notified in this case.
Where have you been?
Oracle has owned Java since April, 2009, when they bought out Sun.
Beats me... I'd have expected that the kind of people who read websites like this one would know better.
LEGO. Or LEGO bricks. Not Legos. Ever.
Chance and strategy are not opposites. They are orthogonal. Increasing one does not necessarily mean decreasing the other unless the complexity of the game is kept constant.
You know, that's the funny thing I've always found about trying to do accurate software estimates. Because programming is so predominantly a thinking-heavy activity, the time that you're spending trying to figure out how long something is going to take can almost as easily be spent actually doing it.
I've always found it frustrating to try to explain this to people who want estimates on how complex certain tasks are, when you don't actually have enough data on those tasks yet to know, and by the time you do, you'll have already basically solved whatever problem the task was supposed to solve.
That, to me, seems so obvious as a basic security measure, it amazes me that software as old as Java would still have such vulnerabilities.
I can see absolutely no reason to start with an unprivileged app that can somehow give itself privilege it did not start with. In reality, such actions should be up to the user to decide *before* they run the app (although that may still be quite vulnerable to social engineering, it would at least remove the technical aspects of the vulnerability).
A strand of DNA is about 2 nanometers wide... does that help?
I'm pretty sure if it's written for a system that you don't actually use at work, that would add a "preponderance of evidence" for the case that you didn't do any part of it at work.