I would bet that somebody definitely had access to (but might not have found) encrypted credit card data, and since Sony can't be sure who it was they had to cautiously tell everyone about the worst case scenario.
You're a bit late to the party - numerous people have already reported that unauthorized transactions have been made on their credit/debit cards.
Declining sales after the Second World War prompted Duncan to launch a comeback campaign for his trademarked "Yo-Yo" in 1962 with a series of television advertisements. The media blitz was met with unprecedented success; thanks in great part to the introduction of the Duncan Butterfly, the yo-yo was more accessible to the beginner than ever.
This success would be short-lived, however, and in a landmark trademark case in 1965, a federal court's appeals ruled in favor of the Royal Tops Company, determining that yo-yo had become a part of common speech and that Duncan no longer had exclusive rights to the term.
Oh, and just to be clear, I didn't dig that up; I'd give credit where credit is due, but Anonymous Coward came up with that so I can't. But I don't take credit for finding it.
So: dear Apple, no, sorry, you cannot trademark "app store". You can't create a "Salesforce AppStore", but you can create an "Apple App Store" or an "Amazon AppStore" or any other sort of app store called an "app store".
"Kleenex" has no intrinsic meaning. It obviously has something to do with "clean", but it does not intrinsically mean "a tissue paper with which to clean".
"Laundromat" is more border-line because it is the combination of "laundry" and "automatic", and it came into general use before someone was able to trademark it. However, a phrase like "Suit Cleaners" or "Tux Rental" would be obviously much too generic to be trademarkable. Similarly "App Store" is simply a store that sells apps and no one company can prevent other companies from calling their stores that sell apps "app stores".
"Shop" is no more nor less descriptive than "mechanic". One of the definitions of "shop" is a place where things are repaired/crafted. Hence you have plenty of businesses with a "shop" where metal work, or carpentry, or painting, or any number of other repairs/crafts are performed.
By the same logic if someone had first called his business "The Auto Mechanic" nobody else could have used the phrase "auto mechanic". And then somebody could trademark "Auto Repair". And someone could trademark "Auto Shop". And someone could trademark "Auto Service". And pretty soon there'd be nothing left to descriptively call a business that does work on automobiles, because of idiots giving trademarks to any idiot who files for a generic phrase.
You missed his point. If "Kleenex" produces "Kleenex Tissue Paper", can no-one else produce "tissue paper"? Of course they can; it is a generic phrase that describes something: tissue paper. They can't call it "Kleenex" but they can call it tissue paper, because that's what it is.
Similarly the existence of an "Apple App Store" does not prevent Amazon from creating an "Amazon AppStore". Nobody can start a computing company named "Apple", but they can create an app store and call it that, because that's what it is.
It's not about the word "App" (unless there's something in the TFA I missed).
This part, I think.
Based on their common meaning, the words “app store” together denote a store for apps, such as the app stores operated by Amazon and Apple. The American Dialect Society, a leading group of U.S. linguists, recently voted “app” as the “Word of the Year” for 2010, noting that although the word “has been around for ages,” it “really exploded in the last 12 months” with the “arrival of ‘app stores’ for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers.”
"App" is a commonly-used word, and a store that sells apps is an app store. Letting someone trademark "App Store" is about as stupid as letting someone trademark "Rental Car". Or "Chinese Restaurant". Or "Car Wash". Or "Plumbing Service". Or any other combination of two purely descriptive words that together mean no more nor less than the combination of their meanings individually.
Never, ever use a debit card for anything other than a card present PIN type transaction for exactly this reason.
That's a bit like saying your excellent driving habits will make the thief less likely to wreck your car if it gets stolen.
Get a credit card, put the purchase on it, then pay it off immediately.
In other words, don't use debit cards, and use your credit cards as if they were debit cards, i.e. don't use them to loan yourself money that you don't have. I concur on both points.
I wouldn't use my debit card at all if it weren't that a certain grocery store only accepts cash or debit cards. But at least my debit card never leaves my hand, so I can be reasonably sure that as long as they're following the correct procedures my card info will still be safe. If you have to hand the card to someone, though, it only takes a second for them to run it through a magnetic skimmer, and it only takes one such dishonest employee to have your account emptied out.
If they entered more than a word or two the set of misspelled permutations would get prohibitively large rather quickly.
I could see spell-checking the phrase and correcting any unknown words with their top matches, though. After that it should be pretty safe to assume it will be the same every time it was entered regardless of spelling (unless it was spelled really badly). Hash both the original and the spell-checked answer.
I don't conceptually like the security question anyway, though. They are really just simple, low-security passwords with a fairly obvious hint. They're a concession to users who can't remember secure passwords, to avoid the extra tech support work created by resetting people's forgotten passwords. I treat security questions as extra passwords, and it's unfortunate that the websites usually don't clarify how long the answer may be and which characters are significant. Generally I use alphanumeric with no symbols, mixed case (although I realize most systems will probably ignore the capitalization - it doesn't hurt anything to have it)... but even then there's the question of how long it may be. Usually I find that 16-20 digits works okay.
Doesn't matter. Any corporate body trying to sue itself would get thrown out of court.
Whatever internal processes they have had better be able to deal with it, because otherwise they have authorized agents doing stuff that other authorized agents don't want them to do.
If you and someone else are joint owners of intellectual property and the other guy decides to post it on the internet free for the taking, guess what? He's authorized to do so, and there's nothing you can do about it.
if (random() <.4) option1(); else if (random() <.1) option2(); else if (random() <.1) option3();
Then option1 will occur 40% of the time, but option2 and option3 are not going to occur 10% of the time. They will occur 6% of the time* and and 5.4% of the time**, respectively.
* (1 - 0.4) x 0.1 = 0.06 ** (1 - 0.4 - 0.06) x 0.1 = 0.054
I checked and it seems to lock up Firefox 4.0 pretty well too. Can't seem to lock up Opera's interface, though... even when it consumes a full core I can still click the back/home/close buttons.
I tweaked it a little and added a random delay. For even more fun, you could make it something like a 1% chance on any onScroll or onClick event...
function f(){document.body.innerHTML+="<div style='height:1px;width:1px;position:absolute;'></div>";window.setInterval("f();",1);}for(var i=0,t=Math.random()*5000+5000;i<5000;i++)setTimeout('window.setInterval("f();",1);',t);
Slashdot Mirror
That's mainly because Google has a trademark on the name Android and using it implies that the product is certified by Google.
First of all, you are completely wrong. "App" had been used, however, it was not in wide use until Apple revealed the App Store.
Yeah, no big-name companies like Google had used it in any well-known products like Google Apps... oh wait, they did.
I would bet that somebody definitely had access to (but might not have found) encrypted credit card data, and since Sony can't be sure who it was they had to cautiously tell everyone about the worst case scenario.
You're a bit late to the party - numerous people have already reported that unauthorized transactions have been made on their credit/debit cards.
But Microsoft doesn't have any right to claim the acronym SQL. They just created their own flavor of SQL which they wrote a server to implement.
Owned it, yes... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yo-yo#1960s_resurgence
Declining sales after the Second World War prompted Duncan to launch a comeback campaign for his trademarked "Yo-Yo" in 1962 with a series of television advertisements. The media blitz was met with unprecedented success; thanks in great part to the introduction of the Duncan Butterfly, the yo-yo was more accessible to the beginner than ever.
This success would be short-lived, however, and in a landmark trademark case in 1965, a federal court's appeals ruled in favor of the Royal Tops Company, determining that yo-yo had become a part of common speech and that Duncan no longer had exclusive rights to the term.
Another resource: http://yoyowiki.org/wiki/Duncan
Really, no mention of "It's not a Yo-Yo if it isn't a Duncan"?
Oh, and just to be clear, I didn't dig that up; I'd give credit where credit is due, but Anonymous Coward came up with that so I can't. But I don't take credit for finding it.
Why a shitload? One is enough. Here:
December 12, 2006 — Salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the technology and market leader in on-demand business services, today announced its AppStore vision and monetization strategy for the AppExchange marketplace.
So: dear Apple, no, sorry, you cannot trademark "app store". You can't create a "Salesforce AppStore", but you can create an "Apple App Store" or an "Amazon AppStore" or any other sort of app store called an "app store".
Still, I don't believe products were marketed as "apps" before Apple.
Google Apps is older than the Apple App Store.
Neither had I, but it was still pretty obvious what it meant...
"Kleenex" has no intrinsic meaning. It obviously has something to do with "clean", but it does not intrinsically mean "a tissue paper with which to clean".
"Laundromat" is more border-line because it is the combination of "laundry" and "automatic", and it came into general use before someone was able to trademark it. However, a phrase like "Suit Cleaners" or "Tux Rental" would be obviously much too generic to be trademarkable. Similarly "App Store" is simply a store that sells apps and no one company can prevent other companies from calling their stores that sell apps "app stores".
"Shop" is no more nor less descriptive than "mechanic". One of the definitions of "shop" is a place where things are repaired/crafted. Hence you have plenty of businesses with a "shop" where metal work, or carpentry, or painting, or any number of other repairs/crafts are performed.
By the same logic if someone had first called his business "The Auto Mechanic" nobody else could have used the phrase "auto mechanic". And then somebody could trademark "Auto Repair". And someone could trademark "Auto Shop". And someone could trademark "Auto Service". And pretty soon there'd be nothing left to descriptively call a business that does work on automobiles, because of idiots giving trademarks to any idiot who files for a generic phrase.
You missed his point. If "Kleenex" produces "Kleenex Tissue Paper", can no-one else produce "tissue paper"? Of course they can; it is a generic phrase that describes something: tissue paper. They can't call it "Kleenex" but they can call it tissue paper, because that's what it is.
Similarly the existence of an "Apple App Store" does not prevent Amazon from creating an "Amazon AppStore". Nobody can start a computing company named "Apple", but they can create an app store and call it that, because that's what it is.
It's not about the word "App" (unless there's something in the TFA I missed).
This part, I think.
Based on their common meaning, the words “app store” together denote a store for apps, such as the app stores operated by Amazon and Apple. The American Dialect Society, a leading group of U.S. linguists, recently voted “app” as the “Word of the Year” for 2010, noting that although the word “has been around for ages,” it “really exploded in the last 12 months” with the “arrival of ‘app stores’ for a wide spectrum of operating systems for phones and computers.”
"App" is a commonly-used word, and a store that sells apps is an app store. Letting someone trademark "App Store" is about as stupid as letting someone trademark "Rental Car". Or "Chinese Restaurant". Or "Car Wash". Or "Plumbing Service". Or any other combination of two purely descriptive words that together mean no more nor less than the combination of their meanings individually.
There was no success with the phrase "App" to piggy back off before Apple started using it.
Bullshit. "Google Apps" has been around since 2006. Apple's "App Store" only debuted in '08.
Never, ever use a debit card for anything other than a card present PIN type transaction for exactly this reason.
That's a bit like saying your excellent driving habits will make the thief less likely to wreck your car if it gets stolen.
Get a credit card, put the purchase on it, then pay it off immediately.
In other words, don't use debit cards, and use your credit cards as if they were debit cards, i.e. don't use them to loan yourself money that you don't have. I concur on both points.
I wouldn't use my debit card at all if it weren't that a certain grocery store only accepts cash or debit cards. But at least my debit card never leaves my hand, so I can be reasonably sure that as long as they're following the correct procedures my card info will still be safe. If you have to hand the card to someone, though, it only takes a second for them to run it through a magnetic skimmer, and it only takes one such dishonest employee to have your account emptied out.
If they entered more than a word or two the set of misspelled permutations would get prohibitively large rather quickly.
I could see spell-checking the phrase and correcting any unknown words with their top matches, though. After that it should be pretty safe to assume it will be the same every time it was entered regardless of spelling (unless it was spelled really badly). Hash both the original and the spell-checked answer.
I don't conceptually like the security question anyway, though. They are really just simple, low-security passwords with a fairly obvious hint. They're a concession to users who can't remember secure passwords, to avoid the extra tech support work created by resetting people's forgotten passwords. I treat security questions as extra passwords, and it's unfortunate that the websites usually don't clarify how long the answer may be and which characters are significant. Generally I use alphanumeric with no symbols, mixed case (although I realize most systems will probably ignore the capitalization - it doesn't hurt anything to have it)... but even then there's the question of how long it may be. Usually I find that 16-20 digits works okay.
Doesn't matter. Any corporate body trying to sue itself would get thrown out of court.
Whatever internal processes they have had better be able to deal with it, because otherwise they have authorized agents doing stuff that other authorized agents don't want them to do.
If you and someone else are joint owners of intellectual property and the other guy decides to post it on the internet free for the taking, guess what? He's authorized to do so, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Apple did not invent the concept of an "application store", i.e. a store that sells computing applications.
That made no sense. At all.
More importantly, Apple knew that "App" was already a generic, commonly-used term and was trying to piggy back off its success.
The point is that for code like this:
if (random() < .4) option1(); .1) option2(); .1) option3();
else if (random() <
else if (random() <
Then option1 will occur 40% of the time, but option2 and option3 are not going to occur 10% of the time. They will occur 6% of the time* and and 5.4% of the time**, respectively.
* (1 - 0.4) x 0.1 = 0.06
** (1 - 0.4 - 0.06) x 0.1 = 0.054
I think the "news" is that Amazon has responded with exactly what everyone had already predicted they'd respond with:
"App Store" is too generic.
I checked and it seems to lock up Firefox 4.0 pretty well too. Can't seem to lock up Opera's interface, though... even when it consumes a full core I can still click the back/home/close buttons.
I tweaked it a little and added a random delay. For even more fun, you could make it something like a 1% chance on any onScroll or onClick event...
function f(){document.body.innerHTML+="<div style='height:1px;width:1px;position:absolute;'></div>";window.setInterval("f();",1);}for(var i=0,t=Math.random()*5000+5000;i<5000;i++)setTimeout('window.setInterval("f();",1);',t);
Really, it bothers you that much to get junk mail?