"3. OpenOffice can be distributed to students without cost."
Yes. Try convincing your mom that you need a couple hundred bucks to upgrade your computer software because your school just upgraded and you want to be able to work on your homework at home and in the schools computer lab or library. Just after they spent the money to buy the computer in the first place. Okay and now try asking if your Mom is a poor and working 60 hours a week and commuting another 10 just to feed you and keep a roof over your head. Those extra hour that you could work on a paper beyond the hours that you library is open could make a big difference early on in your life. Computers can be had for just a few hundred bucks, which is within range of many people. But add to that the costs of retail Office, then you just excluded a lot of people.
I would think this is the reason a truly civic minded institution would be interested in free software the most. If you standardize on MS Office, that means students of low income will be put at an even grater disadvantage.
MS Office seems specifically designed to make your life miserable when trying to work on documents on two different versions of the software. Making sure that an business has a standard version is hard enough, but making sure parents of your students standardize on one version and can afford to ugrade when the school does is unworkable.
"Open source, and the volunteer way in which it is done, is basically the utopian communism that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. were striving to get to, but fucked up.
Real communism is not people being forced to be "equal". It is the unselfish sharing of everything, and volunteering your time and effort for the greater good."
And singing and puppies, don't forget the puppies or the happy thoughts.
Just don't mention that fundamental to any government's ability to compel people is the threat and use of violence. This is just as true for the most democratic governments and the most dictatorial. Otherwise it isn't government.
So, those countries you cited "fucked up" precisely because they imposed a system on people that is predicated upon forced labor. People are "given" what they need and from them is taken whatever labor they are deemed capable of providing. And those people are punished if they don't or won't provide whatever it is they are thought to be capable of. Communism has nothing to do with voluntary contributions to society inherent in open source development or charity, but rather communism is based upin forced labor and servitude. Communism is very little different than bourgeois capitalism in effect, except that direction over the means of production is determined by political influence rather than family or personal wealth. Where who you know becomes the only wealth that matters.
In many ways America has become more an more an example of communism at work, where most people "receive" just enough to live on and are essentially forced more and more to work for others benefit rather than our own, but that is another debate.
The reason that all communist countries became political dictatorships isn't some statistical aberration, but rather it is the result of the system itself. To compare the free sharing of ideas inherent to the open source movement, with Communism is just to ignore the truth and to ignore the historical basis of the movement itself. And worse disrespects the memories of millions of people who died as a direct result of Communism's application.
Compare Open source to the scientific method, or to the work of charity or to religion, but not a system based upon coercion and forced labor.
Thanks for that link. I like that it seems to be a customizable RSS feed for any search result you want.
RSS seems like the right thing to do, like google providing free pop access for gmail, but it circumvents their advertising revenue model. If it doesn't become too successful, then it wouldn't threaten their advertising, though if it starting cutting into the bottom line they could throw ads into their RSS feeds I suppose.
Wouldn't this be counterproductive for google news? I mean presumably the RSS feeds go directly to the articles not to the google news page itself. So, whatever indirect benefit from aggregating news they are currently deriving from news.google.com would be even more indirect.
Yes, because waiting for my mail order RAM to turn up, finding it's buggered and then having to spend a month trying to convince the supplier to get their finger out doing their slow-as-treacle RMA procedure is such a good use of my time... (Not to mention the very real chanced that the replacement RAM will be just as screwed)
You get what you pay for. If you want tested RAM, pay for tested RAM. There is nothing wrong with wanting to pay less for an untested product if you have some understanding of what you are getting and what the risks are in time, money and other resources. Hopefully there would at least be some minimum warranty to fall back on.
"I have no way of knowing, but at the rate technology is going right now, we'll probably have something capable of blowing the thing into gravel by 2035. Or at least something that we can knock it out of the way with."
Sure as long Moore's law continues as it has, then intel's processor should be able to generate enough heat by 2035 to melt the damn thing.
Also, I have been using it for an internally deployed and developed web app, since there are just a few users and support is less of an issue.
Once native support is included in firefox, then I would have no problem putting it into a public facing web site.
The road to adoption will be much smoother than flash was or is, simply because it is an open nonproprietary xml format which will have native browser support. Developers will find it much easier to integrate with their web apps and html because they can just output svg xml.
But the cart won't preceed the horse here, no popular public web site will incorporate svg until native browser support is included, but once it is included there is a community of developers ready and willing to provide content.
after you add in all the fuel consumed making the roads and the fact that asphalt itself is made from crude oil derivative and the fact that the fuel economy of a small plane is similar to a car, I wonder if private air transportation wouldn't be a lot more efficient and less destructive of our environment.
My guess is that Adobe's support for SVG will disappear soon; while I'd like SVG to succeed, there is no way that Adobe will cannibalize their income stream that they got from Macromedia.
macromedia makes money on the Flash creation software, not directly on the use of flash on websites. For Adobe, having PDF be an open document format has protected Adobe from a lot of criticism and calls for an alternative. SVG was created largely beacuse Flash was proprietary, but it is also very nice that it is an open xml standard. It would make more sense for Adobe to roll SVG support into their Flash MX (or whatever they call their creator tool these days).
Otherwise SVG will just continue to grow and people will create new better tools to manage the xml. And Adobe will likely be stuck with an open source competitor that has native support in Firefox (and IE would likely follow unless they pay Microsoft big money not to include it).
Either way Adobe should just continue to embrace svg, because they aren't going to be able to kill it and if they try it will just come back stronger than before.
Though I could see a situation were Adobe hobbles their plugins so that it won't provide the functionality of flash. The best thing to do here is to finish building svg support into firefox where it belongs and to push ahead regardless of what adobe decides.
There's also the curious case that typefaces can't be copyrighted in the US. They are considered "property", but not "intellectual property", or something to that effect, while the names can be trademarked. So, they can be copied ("Arial" is basically a copy of "Helvetica", for instance), but not duplicated (you can't call your Helvetica-clone face "Helvetica").
If the font can't be copyrighted, but only the font name can be copyrighted, then how would using a GPL'd font cause a problem again? Something is a miss here. Is this just Sunday evenning foolery?
Voting isn't a freedom, it is a means towards a more righteous government. That each of us has the ability to vote and change our laws in concert with the majority is the only thing that makes any law legitimate in the first place. There is nothing sacred about the law, it is merely the expressed will of society. But if you refuse to let a portion of society express its will, then you don't have a law you have a dictate. I would support exile if there was anyplace left to send someone, but as long as people are subject to the law, they must be equal before it and have as much ability to change it as any other person.
What possible justifiable fear does someone have about a felon voting? Are you afraid that criminals will overturn the laws that put them in prison? That is exactly as it should be.
If you support the taking away the felon's vote, you are just going down the path to tyranny. And that path ends badly.
I find it funny that only after Ross Perot stirred the pot in 1992 did we see movement on campaign finance. To the effect that the Party Duopoly has conspired to carve up the country along party lines to the exclusion of real debate about the future of this country. Ross Perot was talking about the budget and all the two parties wanted to talk about was how to spend the scraps from the table. It took a Billionaire to threaten the two party's hold on power and begin a non academic discussion on the dangers that this country faces.
Everywhere we look we face oppressive debt which is being thrust upon us. Freedom isn't based on a piece of paper, but on our ability to go out and stand on our own feet. This country needs to start working towards freedom again and not for the usury of a political elite.
Otherwise we are going to need our own land reform, debt forgiveness and revolution if our corrupt politicians keep seeking the same illusive power over others.
In this sense, I think the Internet is not "public communication" because it is listener initiated. In other words, individual members of the public have to request the materials (by visiting web sites, viewing blogs, subscribing to mailing lists, etc.) to be contacted.
And flipping to CNN on your cable or purchasing a newspaper or magazine is different how?! Or what about going to church? If your minister expresses a political view, then he jeapordizes the church's tax exempt status. Freedom of speech, my ass.
Truth is that big business has taken over all other forms of media and they are used to working with government corruption, so they aren't putting up much of a fight surrendering our legal rights. But the Politicians understand that if they come after the bloggers, they will unleash a war which would topple the corrupt campaign speech laws, which are clearly nothing more than an attempt to consolidate power into the hands of the current political elite.
If passed, then this is nothing more than a tactical retreat in a war against our freedom.
I think that doing the math for people would open yourself up for liability. So, I was thinking of just having the forms without any calculations. Some of the calculations can get tricky, especially once you get into AMT and making decisions based on what works out better for you to take as a deduction. So, just make it look like the pdf version of the 1040 (maybe even just accept the filled in pdf as an input). But just keep it simple.
Make it a j2ee web app and there shouldn't be questions about scalability.
It isn't as if the IRS couldn't figure out how to do it online directly. It is about Congress trying to create meaningless jobs on the backs of the american taxpayer. The tax preparation industry is a big industry with a lot of jobs, and letting the IRS offer tax forms online would do a great deal to cut out the middleman. Of course this would be good for most americans, but bad for the tax industry. Problem is that people blame the IRS, when it is really Congress calling the shots on this.
As an aside, I've looked at the specification for third parties to submit electronically to the IRS:
I figure I could create a basic IRS web front end, (no wizard, just forms), with a small team of developers.
But the IRS already has the infrastructure to do this. Certainly a budget of no more than 2 million dollars could get this done and be built upon the existing infrastructure built for third parties. I realize the technical challenges of providing a scalable front end to serve all taxpayers, but the IRS has the resources to do this.
The point is that you are calling something BS based upon a false premise. Your just being silly, science has absolutely nothing to do with this "Law". Law is an overloaded word that can mean different things.
"The "law" will be stretched to include multiprocessing and a multitude of other improperly attributed leaps in technology... (this helps to solidify how much BS is so called science)"
Moore's law was never a scientific law, more an engineering/business law, which are almost always merely extrapolations of current trends. In this case Moore's law was as much a prediction as a guide for growing the business.
"The Soviets also haven't launched nearly as many astronaut missions; consequently, I was not talking about rates of casualties, but the rates of rocket failures"
Rates of rocket failure are inconsequential to a point about safety. Politicians are willing to take more risks with money than with human passengers, after all doing something once is an accomplishment doing something more than once is a job.
I am not suggesting that the space shuttle is a terrible spacecraft, but rather that your assertion that it is the best and by implication the best possible is misleading. We have learned a lot from the space shuttle and NASA is not looking to replace the shuttle with a craft designed along the same lines. NASA is looking to Soyuz and Apollo as the model for a well conceived passenger space craft using proven technology, rather than an updated version of the space shuttle. The fact that the shuttle is a bigger craft with a larger crew far from mitigates any statistics, but rather it is itself one of the major design criticisms. The space shuttle wasn't a terrible spacecraft, and I believe we are better off for it having flown. But to imply that the shuttle is the safest is to treat a bit too litely two major in flight failures.
Your point about possible cover ups is well taken, but that likely applies to both sides.
Bottom line is that I would fly on the space shuttle if given the opportunity, but I'd feel reasonably safer on the soyuz.
"Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide."
And more so amongst reusable space shuttles it has the best failure rate in the history of mankind. In fact it could be said to set the standard for reusable space shuttle safety.
Well, wait lets see the only other manned program hasn't had a loss of life since 1971... so in a field of two, the space shuttle has the second best safety record. I can see what you are saying... just limit the comparison to one that is favorable to your view point and you get the optimal result.
I'll grant you that going into orbit on rockets is an inherently dangerous thing to do, but I think it has been shown convincingly in engineering that a simpler spacecraft design which is optimized for human passengers will increase safety.
The current failure rate is something to live with and be aware of, but nothing to be proud of.
I'm surprised this would be considered for open water applications. seems that little motor would be hardly enough power to get through a stiff wind without exhausting its power supply. I guess thats why it is considered a field "test", but I think the best suited application would probably for scouting just ahead of ground forces in an urban, mountain or forest environment.
Then again, maybe that little engine puts out such a buzzing that you can here it for miles unless you have the cover from the sound of waves and wind.
All this ruling says is that you can use the trademarked name to reference the company you are criticizing even in a url. This web site clearly contains information that is critical of Bosley Medical Institute and this person is not trying to compete with them by misleading. Heck even pepsi and coke can use eachothe's trademarks in commercials when the point is to levy criticism. The principal test here is confusion and the effect of confusion. Do a google search for bosleymedical.com and you will even see that the search result makes it clear that this site is a critical site and not bosley medical institute itself.
What they cannot do is put content that is critical on the site just to ask them for money to shut them up. Be like me picketing a store and asking the owner to pay me to go away.
Slashdot Mirror
So you should know better, than you do.
"3. OpenOffice can be distributed to students without cost."
Yes. Try convincing your mom that you need a couple hundred bucks to upgrade your computer software because your school just upgraded and you want to be able to work on your homework at home and in the schools computer lab or library. Just after they spent the money to buy the computer in the first place. Okay and now try asking if your Mom is a poor and working 60 hours a week and commuting another 10 just to feed you and keep a roof over your head. Those extra hour that you could work on a paper beyond the hours that you library is open could make a big difference early on in your life. Computers can be had for just a few hundred bucks, which is within range of many people. But add to that the costs of retail Office, then you just excluded a lot of people.
I would think this is the reason a truly civic minded institution would be interested in free software the most. If you standardize on MS Office, that means students of low income will be put at an even grater disadvantage.
MS Office seems specifically designed to make your life miserable when trying to work on documents on two different versions of the software. Making sure that an business has a standard version is hard enough, but making sure parents of your students standardize on one version and can afford to ugrade when the school does is unworkable.
"Open source, and the volunteer way in which it is done, is basically the utopian communism that the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, etc. were striving to get to, but fucked up.
Real communism is not people being forced to be "equal". It is the unselfish sharing of everything, and volunteering your time and effort for the greater good."
And singing and puppies, don't forget the puppies or the happy thoughts.
Just don't mention that fundamental to any government's ability to compel people is the threat and use of violence. This is just as true for the most democratic governments and the most dictatorial. Otherwise it isn't government.
So, those countries you cited "fucked up" precisely because they imposed a system on people that is predicated upon forced labor. People are "given" what they need and from them is taken whatever labor they are deemed capable of providing. And those people are punished if they don't or won't provide whatever it is they are thought to be capable of. Communism has nothing to do with voluntary contributions to society inherent in open source development or charity, but rather communism is based upin forced labor and servitude. Communism is very little different than bourgeois capitalism in effect, except that direction over the means of production is determined by political influence rather than family or personal wealth. Where who you know becomes the only wealth that matters.
In many ways America has become more an more an example of communism at work, where most people "receive" just enough to live on and are essentially forced more and more to work for others benefit rather than our own, but that is another debate.
The reason that all communist countries became political dictatorships isn't some statistical aberration, but rather it is the result of the system itself. To compare the free sharing of ideas inherent to the open source movement, with Communism is just to ignore the truth and to ignore the historical basis of the movement itself. And worse disrespects the memories of millions of people who died as a direct result of Communism's application.
Compare Open source to the scientific method, or to the work of charity or to religion, but not a system based upon coercion and forced labor.
God Damned Communists.
Thanks for that link. I like that it seems to be a customizable RSS feed for any search result you want.
RSS seems like the right thing to do, like google providing free pop access for gmail, but it circumvents their advertising revenue model. If it doesn't become too successful, then it wouldn't threaten their advertising, though if it starting cutting into the bottom line they could throw ads into their RSS feeds I suppose.
Wouldn't this be counterproductive for google news? I mean presumably the RSS feeds go directly to the articles not to the google news page itself. So, whatever indirect benefit from aggregating news they are currently deriving from news.google.com would be even more indirect.
Yes, because waiting for my mail order RAM to turn up, finding it's buggered and then having to spend a month trying to convince the supplier to get their finger out doing their slow-as-treacle RMA procedure is such a good use of my time... (Not to mention the very real chanced that the replacement RAM will be just as screwed)
You get what you pay for. If you want tested RAM, pay for tested RAM. There is nothing wrong with wanting to pay less for an untested product if you have some understanding of what you are getting and what the risks are in time, money and other resources. Hopefully there would at least be some minimum warranty to fall back on.
"I have no way of knowing, but at the rate technology is going right now, we'll probably have something capable of blowing the thing into gravel by 2035. Or at least something that we can knock it out of the way with."
Sure as long Moore's law continues as it has, then intel's processor should be able to generate enough heat by 2035 to melt the damn thing.
Also, I have been using it for an internally deployed and developed web app, since there are just a few users and support is less of an issue.
Once native support is included in firefox, then I would have no problem putting it into a public facing web site.
The road to adoption will be much smoother than flash was or is, simply because it is an open nonproprietary xml format which will have native browser support. Developers will find it much easier to integrate with their web apps and html because they can just output svg xml.
But the cart won't preceed the horse here, no popular public web site will incorporate svg until native browser support is included, but once it is included there is a community of developers ready and willing to provide content.
after you add in all the fuel consumed making the roads and the fact that asphalt itself is made from crude oil derivative and the fact that the fuel economy of a small plane is similar to a car, I wonder if private air transportation wouldn't be a lot more efficient and less destructive of our environment.
My guess is that Adobe's support for SVG will disappear soon; while I'd like SVG to succeed, there is no way that Adobe will cannibalize their income stream that they got from Macromedia.
macromedia makes money on the Flash creation software, not directly on the use of flash on websites. For Adobe, having PDF be an open document format has protected Adobe from a lot of criticism and calls for an alternative. SVG was created largely beacuse Flash was proprietary, but it is also very nice that it is an open xml standard. It would make more sense for Adobe to roll SVG support into their Flash MX (or whatever they call their creator tool these days).
Otherwise SVG will just continue to grow and people will create new better tools to manage the xml. And Adobe will likely be stuck with an open source competitor that has native support in Firefox (and IE would likely follow unless they pay Microsoft big money not to include it).
Either way Adobe should just continue to embrace svg, because they aren't going to be able to kill it and if they try it will just come back stronger than before.
Though I could see a situation were Adobe hobbles their plugins so that it won't provide the functionality of flash. The best thing to do here is to finish building svg support into firefox where it belongs and to push ahead regardless of what adobe decides.
read a old discussion about fireox support here
There's also the curious case that typefaces can't be copyrighted in the US. They are considered "property", but not "intellectual property", or something to that effect, while the names can be trademarked. So, they can be copied ("Arial" is basically a copy of "Helvetica", for instance), but not duplicated (you can't call your Helvetica-clone face "Helvetica").
If the font can't be copyrighted, but only the font name can be copyrighted, then how would using a GPL'd font cause a problem again? Something is a miss here. Is this just Sunday evenning foolery?
Voting isn't a freedom, it is a means towards a more righteous government. That each of us has the ability to vote and change our laws in concert with the majority is the only thing that makes any law legitimate in the first place. There is nothing sacred about the law, it is merely the expressed will of society. But if you refuse to let a portion of society express its will, then you don't have a law you have a dictate. I would support exile if there was anyplace left to send someone, but as long as people are subject to the law, they must be equal before it and have as much ability to change it as any other person.
What possible justifiable fear does someone have about a felon voting? Are you afraid that criminals will overturn the laws that put them in prison? That is exactly as it should be.
If you support the taking away the felon's vote, you are just going down the path to tyranny. And that path ends badly.
I find it funny that only after Ross Perot stirred the pot in 1992 did we see movement on campaign finance. To the effect that the Party Duopoly has conspired to carve up the country along party lines to the exclusion of real debate about the future of this country. Ross Perot was talking about the budget and all the two parties wanted to talk about was how to spend the scraps from the table. It took a Billionaire to threaten the two party's hold on power and begin a non academic discussion on the dangers that this country faces.
Everywhere we look we face oppressive debt which is being thrust upon us. Freedom isn't based on a piece of paper, but on our ability to go out and stand on our own feet. This country needs to start working towards freedom again and not for the usury of a political elite.
Otherwise we are going to need our own land reform, debt forgiveness and revolution if our corrupt politicians keep seeking the same illusive power over others.
In this sense, I think the Internet is not "public communication" because it is listener initiated. In other words, individual members of the public have to request the materials (by visiting web sites, viewing blogs, subscribing to mailing lists, etc.) to be contacted.
And flipping to CNN on your cable or purchasing a newspaper or magazine is different how?! Or what about going to church? If your minister expresses a political view, then he jeapordizes the church's tax exempt status. Freedom of speech, my ass.
Truth is that big business has taken over all other forms of media and they are used to working with government corruption, so they aren't putting up much of a fight surrendering our legal rights. But the Politicians understand that if they come after the bloggers, they will unleash a war which would topple the corrupt campaign speech laws, which are clearly nothing more than an attempt to consolidate power into the hands of the current political elite.
If passed, then this is nothing more than a tactical retreat in a war against our freedom.
I think that doing the math for people would open yourself up for liability. So, I was thinking of just having the forms without any calculations. Some of the calculations can get tricky, especially once you get into AMT and making decisions based on what works out better for you to take as a deduction. So, just make it look like the pdf version of the 1040 (maybe even just accept the filled in pdf as an input). But just keep it simple.
Make it a j2ee web app and there shouldn't be questions about scalability.
It isn't as if the IRS couldn't figure out how to do it online directly. It is about Congress trying to create meaningless jobs on the backs of the american taxpayer. The tax preparation industry is a big industry with a lot of jobs, and letting the IRS offer tax forms online would do a great deal to cut out the middleman. Of course this would be good for most americans, but bad for the tax industry. Problem is that people blame the IRS, when it is really Congress calling the shots on this.
0 .h tml
As an aside, I've looked at the specification for third parties to submit electronically to the IRS:
http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=118575,0
I figure I could create a basic IRS web front end, (no wizard, just forms), with a small team of developers.
But the IRS already has the infrastructure to do this. Certainly a budget of no more than 2 million dollars could get this done and be built upon the existing infrastructure built for third parties. I realize the technical challenges of providing a scalable front end to serve all taxpayers, but the IRS has the resources to do this.
They just lack Congress' will.
The point is that you are calling something BS based upon a false premise. Your just being silly, science has absolutely nothing to do with this "Law". Law is an overloaded word that can mean different things.
I refer you to href="http://www.answers.com/law&r=67 and more importantly to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law
Moore's law is more akin to "the law of supply and demand" rather than the "law of gravity"
"The "law" will be stretched to include multiprocessing and a multitude of other improperly attributed leaps in technology... (this helps to solidify how much BS is so called science)"
Moore's law was never a scientific law, more an engineering/business law, which are almost always merely extrapolations of current trends. In this case Moore's law was as much a prediction as a guide for growing the business.
"The Soviets also haven't launched nearly as many astronaut missions; consequently, I was not talking about rates of casualties, but the rates of rocket failures"
Rates of rocket failure are inconsequential to a point about safety. Politicians are willing to take more risks with money than with human passengers, after all doing something once is an accomplishment doing something more than once is a job.
I am not suggesting that the space shuttle is a terrible spacecraft, but rather that your assertion that it is the best and by implication the best possible is misleading. We have learned a lot from the space shuttle and NASA is not looking to replace the shuttle with a craft designed along the same lines. NASA is looking to Soyuz and Apollo as the model for a well conceived passenger space craft using proven technology, rather than an updated version of the space shuttle. The fact that the shuttle is a bigger craft with a larger crew far from mitigates any statistics, but rather it is itself one of the major design criticisms. The space shuttle wasn't a terrible spacecraft, and I believe we are better off for it having flown. But to imply that the shuttle is the safest is to treat a bit too litely two major in flight failures.
Your point about possible cover ups is well taken, but that likely applies to both sides.
Bottom line is that I would fly on the space shuttle if given the opportunity, but I'd feel reasonably safer on the soyuz.
"Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide."
... just limit the comparison to one that is favorable to your view point and you get the optimal result.
And more so amongst reusable space shuttles it has the best failure rate in the history of mankind. In fact it could be said to set the standard for reusable space shuttle safety.
Well, wait lets see the only other manned program hasn't had a loss of life since 1971... so in a field of two, the space shuttle has the second best safety record. I can see what you are saying
I'll grant you that going into orbit on rockets is an inherently dangerous thing to do, but I think it has been shown convincingly in engineering that a simpler spacecraft design which is optimized for human passengers will increase safety.
The current failure rate is something to live with and be aware of, but nothing to be proud of.
I'm surprised this would be considered for open water applications. seems that little motor would be hardly enough power to get through a stiff wind without exhausting its power supply. I guess thats why it is considered a field "test", but I think the best suited application would probably for scouting just ahead of ground forces in an urban, mountain or forest environment.
Then again, maybe that little engine puts out such a buzzing that you can here it for miles unless you have the cover from the sound of waves and wind.
Economies and nations need intellectual property (IP) to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
The GPL is an exercise of intelectual property rights, not a subversion of those rights.
"If the URL says something then it damn well better be that thing."
And a "slashdot" is what exactly?
And how about "RedHat"?
All this ruling says is that you can use the trademarked name to reference the company you are criticizing even in a url. This web site clearly contains information that is critical of Bosley Medical Institute and this person is not trying to compete with them by misleading. Heck even pepsi and coke can use eachothe's trademarks in commercials when the point is to levy criticism. The principal test here is confusion and the effect of confusion. Do a google search for bosleymedical.com and you will even see that the search result makes it clear that this site is a critical site and not bosley medical institute itself.
What they cannot do is put content that is critical on the site just to ask them for money to shut them up. Be like me picketing a store and asking the owner to pay me to go away.
"If the URL says something then it damn well better be that thing."
And a "slashdot" is what exactly?