Y'think? Pro basketball players probably have fun doing stuff they love; I don't think that makes them geeks.
Even if one doesn't understand the mechanics, to be a geek, one must at least be intrigued by them. And arguably a true geek would spend all night figuring them out.
There's new and silly laws in place. Software that "could be used" to defeat copy-protection schemes is now illegal. Yes, that's right, your favorite debugger is now illegal.
Yes -- of breech of contract, of "unauthorized use". But that's not literally "taking". There may be an analogy or allegorical comparison (perhaps even under some laws) to theft, but it's not the same thing.
Right, whatever. The term "Linux" technically refers to the kernel (just like "Solaris" refers to the SunOS kernel). But in common usage, "Linux" refers to a unix-like OS built around that kernel and with essential tools and libraries from GNU as well as other important components like XFree86. (Just like Sun started calling their entire OS Solaris after SunOS 4.)
What is Linux, then? Well, it's "unix-like", despite the FAQ's claim that this term is a trademark violation. Personally, I'm sceptical of the continued validity of the "UNIX" mark (once something enters common usage, it can't be a trademark), but there've been no court challenges, so it stands.
I never said ascii wasn't flexible. I said that Project Gutenberg should be flexible.
My complaint isn't with ascii -- I'd certainly advocate than any markup language be ascii or unicode based -- but with plain ascii, which loses formatting (both aesthetic and functional) and other important content. It's not sufficient for a project like this.
As for HTML 1.0 -- it wasn't called that, but that's what it was.
Why should Coca Cola be entitled to all domains which contain one of their trademarks? Take a look through the US trademark database (or use this nicer UI to search) -- almost every word you can think of is a trademark. In fact, so is every letter of the alphabet, multiple times over. So's my first name!
Trademarks were not designed to scale globally. They are made to work with geographical restrictions, and most importantly, within certain classes of goods and services. In the US, "Coke" is a trademark of the Coca-Cola Company within class 32 (Non-alcoholic maltless beverages...) and a few other classes in which they sell products. If you're not selling something in one of those classes, and you're not doing something that could confuse or dilute their trademark, there's no way you can be violating their trademark.
The important thing about domain names is that there is no way to tell what class of goods/services a site belongs to simply by looking at the name. You can't even tell if they're even selling anything! The only way that a domain name might be a trademark violation is if it's being used in a bad way. It can't be in violation on its own.
Unfortunately, a lot of large corporations don't like it this way, and it's possible we'll see the law changed so that any mention of any trademark anywhere has to be approved by the trademark holder. That's unfortunate for us as individuals (or even small businesses) -- we're literally having our language stolen from us.
"Ralph" is a registered trademark of Polo Ralph Lauren. "Barry" is a registered trademark of Lanman & Kemp-Barclay and others.
Should those companies have the right to stop you from using those names to prevent confusion? ("There are better names for a person to use, anyway...")
A "reasonable person" should make no assumptions about any trademark issues based solely on a domain name.
Once you have the content in a decent markup language (something nice and simple like HTML, perhaps) it can be converted to other nicely-formatted pages. With plain ASCII, you just plain don't have the formatting information -- it's essentially a lossy way of storing books.
HTML may be replaced by updated standards, but it's not going "out the window". And even if it would, there would be a simple migration path.
(As a side point -- Unicode will make ASCII obsolete....)
Not to be a redhat cheerleader or anything, but: RH does give you a choice of Gnome, KDE, or "just plain". And I believe that with Anaconda, they're working on the unified install/admin tool.
Not that any of this makes Red Hat better than SuSE -- in fact, it mostly demonstrates that it's good to have competition.
Slashdot Mirror
--
--
--
--
Even if one doesn't understand the mechanics, to be a geek, one must at least be intrigued by them. And arguably a true geek would spend all night figuring them out.
--
--
--
But either way, you can go to this *and* go see RMS.
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
--
What is Linux, then? Well, it's "unix-like", despite the FAQ's claim that this term is a trademark violation. Personally, I'm sceptical of the continued validity of the "UNIX" mark (once something enters common usage, it can't be a trademark), but there've been no court challenges, so it stands.
--
--
My complaint isn't with ascii -- I'd certainly advocate than any markup language be ascii or unicode based -- but with plain ascii, which loses formatting (both aesthetic and functional) and other important content. It's not sufficient for a project like this.
As for HTML 1.0 -- it wasn't called that, but that's what it was.
--
As for ascii being a subset of unicode -- yes, of course. And web browsers still can view HTML 1.0.
--
Trademarks were not designed to scale globally. They are made to work with geographical restrictions, and most importantly, within certain classes of goods and services. In the US, "Coke" is a trademark of the Coca-Cola Company within class 32 (Non-alcoholic maltless beverages...) and a few other classes in which they sell products. If you're not selling something in one of those classes, and you're not doing something that could confuse or dilute their trademark, there's no way you can be violating their trademark.
The important thing about domain names is that there is no way to tell what class of goods/services a site belongs to simply by looking at the name. You can't even tell if they're even selling anything! The only way that a domain name might be a trademark violation is if it's being used in a bad way. It can't be in violation on its own.
Unfortunately, a lot of large corporations don't like it this way, and it's possible we'll see the law changed so that any mention of any trademark anywhere has to be approved by the trademark holder. That's unfortunate for us as individuals (or even small businesses) -- we're literally having our language stolen from us.
--
Should those companies have the right to stop you from using those names to prevent confusion? ("There are better names for a person to use, anyway...")
A "reasonable person" should make no assumptions about any trademark issues based solely on a domain name.
--
HTML may be replaced by updated standards, but it's not going "out the window". And even if it would, there would be a simple migration path.
(As a side point -- Unicode will make ASCII obsolete....)
--
Not that any of this makes Red Hat better than SuSE -- in fact, it mostly demonstrates that it's good to have competition.
--