This is incorrect. Companies do not need to enforce copyrights or patents, only trademarks.
He didn't say that they were in danger of losing their copyrighted material, which is presumably what you're referring to. He said "Corporations must act this way to protect themselves," which is a more general statement, and can be true for copyright infringement as well.
"Also, by using the registered trade marks "ODEON" and "ODEON Fanatical
About Film" on your website, our customers have mistakenly thought that
your website was either associated with or endorsed by Odeon."
Do you think that this article would have had a snowball's chance in hell of being posted if it wasn't tied into the Free Software Religion in some way? Blame the editors who won't take it upon themselves to edit.
This is about the fourth time I have heard the "BMP thing" being spouted by a Microsoft / closed-source apologist.
Er... don't know about anyone else, but "They make such bad code knowing that it won't be looked at and hope that the hackers won't be able to find the holes?" doesn't sound much like apologism to me. (Doesn't sound much like proper grammar, either, but I suppose that's beside the point.) If anything, the fact that we haven't heard about a rash of new exploits based on it seems to indicate that broken portions of the code aren't as obvious and easy to fix (or exploit) as some parties like to claim.
My version of free speech includes the freedom to publish a list of IPs -- because I think they are spamming, or for any other reason. That infringes on nobody's right to speech. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that "free speech" means "speech I agree with."
Incidentally, this is seperate from Comcast's right to use their private equipment as they see fit -- which is what blocking ports based on spam reports is.
As horrible as it is to think, I wonder if some sort of legislation (governmental, ICANN, or otherwise) is necessary to keep these systems fair.
And once again, restriction of free speech in the name of "fairness" rears its ugly head...
I recently had Comcast shut down my port 25 access due to spam reports.
The proper thing to do in this case is to stop patronizing Comcast -- or, alternatively, live with it, if it's not that important to you. Telling the government to handle it for you is generally not the way to go.
You do what you are paid to do. In the end, it's the company's reputation and money at stake, so they get to make the calls.
Not if what you're doing is unethical -- because then it effects the well-being of more than just the company.
(For the record, though, I think this is a kind of irrelevant discussion -- because I don't believe for a moment that developing lousy software is unethical. Stupid, but not unethical.)
You are aware that most of that money that they extract from people eventually ends up in someone's pocket, right? And that commonly watched shows will draw more sponsorship dollars?
I would venture to say those that are smart enough to change the User Agent string appropriately, are also smart enough to set it back when not needed so web stats are collected properly.
... But most of those who are smart enough to change the string are probably also smart enough not to waste their time switching the user agent string back and forth.
Obviously, GC is off the table since it doesn't play DVDs.
A gamecube and a dvd player can be had for roughly the same price as a PS2 or XBox, and the standalone DVD player will probably do a better job of it than the consoles. Besides, if you can afford to buy an HDTV, you're not hurting for cash so much that you couldn't afford to buy an extra DVD player.
Look at what games you'd like, and buy based on that. But counting the GC out just because it doesn't double as a DVD player is a bit silly.
Well, I would rather suspect that, at least for some time in the future, we'll continue to have bar codes on the package as well as RFID. And if they get rid of bar codes completely, there are still other options -- for instance, some stores already hand out "rebate reciepts."
It's quite well established that an asteroid impact has a nonzero chance of happening, and that such an impact would cause a great loss of human life. Do you want to back up your assertions that plagues and the greenhouse effect will have similar consequences (such as: citing studies indicating probable loss of life), or are you just blowing hot air because it's the cool thing to do?
It seems that so far Microsoft has not been implicated in the investigation at all, and nobody's accusing him of having introduced AltaVista's code into MSN's project.
I hope you meant "nobody important," or "nobody with any authority," because accusing Microsoft is exactly what everyone in this discussion is doing.
Linux users aren't going to be happy unless it's free (speech) and free (beer).
You underestimate us. We'll still complain about it being a ripoff of commercial software, whine about the GUI toolkit used, complain about how bloated and slow the software is, insinuate that it's a tricky ploy to gather personal information, demand that the company provide free phone support, and then run off and create a dozen sourceforge projects to "clone" the program.
Seems to me that having a government body suddenly grab someone's possessions without compensation is a very bad idea. Not that it doesn't happen all too often.
I'm sure most people would be quick to spot that their supposed 3200+ system is indicating otherwise.
Most? I doubt it. I generally can't remember what speed CPU I've got in my computer -- and I built the thing myself. Although that's probably unusual for the Slashdot crowd, I don't think that it would be too hard to fool the average user. (And by average user, I'm not just talking Grandma who just plays solitaire -- even fairly computer-literate individuals don't generally read all of the information on startup either.)
Slashdot Mirror
Furthermore, the e-mail to Somerville says,
So there is a trademark issue here after all.Do you think that this article would have had a snowball's chance in hell of being posted if it wasn't tied into the Free Software Religion in some way? Blame the editors who won't take it upon themselves to edit.
Incidentally, this is seperate from Comcast's right to use their private equipment as they see fit -- which is what blocking ports based on spam reports is.
(For the record, though, I think this is a kind of irrelevant discussion -- because I don't believe for a moment that developing lousy software is unethical. Stupid, but not unethical.)
Look at what games you'd like, and buy based on that.
His "we're DDR fans" statement sure doesn't make it sound like it's a deal-breaker -- the only thing he mentioned that was was the DVD support.
You are aware that most of that money that they extract from people eventually ends up in someone's pocket, right? And that commonly watched shows will draw more sponsorship dollars?
Look at what games you'd like, and buy based on that. But counting the GC out just because it doesn't double as a DVD player is a bit silly.
Well, I would rather suspect that, at least for some time in the future, we'll continue to have bar codes on the package as well as RFID. And if they get rid of bar codes completely, there are still other options -- for instance, some stores already hand out "rebate reciepts."
That is, if I had one.
Why would we care about generating electricity without steam? It's not like we're going to run out of it.
It's quite well established that an asteroid impact has a nonzero chance of happening, and that such an impact would cause a great loss of human life. Do you want to back up your assertions that plagues and the greenhouse effect will have similar consequences (such as: citing studies indicating probable loss of life), or are you just blowing hot air because it's the cool thing to do?
Well, I suppose that I should admire optimism.
Seems to me that having a government body suddenly grab someone's possessions without compensation is a very bad idea. Not that it doesn't happen all too often.
Oh, here I thought you were going to call it "not innovative" because we've seen it before...
You're my hero, Captain Obvious!