I hear of all these proprietary ways to handle non-ascii domain names and constantly fail to see why people cannot wait for the IETF IDN Working Group to finish their work.
First some background: Students at technical universities in Sweden generally own overalls in the colour of their student union section (a section usually roughly corresponds to one educational programme). These are worn at various parties. The students also design "patches" with their section or school logo, the "logo" of some big party or just a funny cartoon and sew these on their overalls.
When Bill Gates received his doctorate, the IT section at KTH started distributing a patch with a picture of Gates wearing a doctor's hat and with the text "You pay - you get".
There are some rather clear cases of prior art here. Back in the days when US export restrictions were slightly harder, I remember being stopped from downloading numerous pieces of software (for example, various Kerberos packages from MIT come to mind) by websites claiming that my computer was not located in the US. I have some vague recollection that Eudora and maybe also Netscape had similar protection.
I made som experiments and, IIRC, I was allowed to download the software from, in some cases, an IP address that had a PTR record to a domain registered to an entity in the US or, in other cases, one that had a PTR record to a domain under a non-cc TLD (even if it was registered to an entity outside the US).
If someone knows how to report prior art to the PTO, please feel free to do so. Unfortunately, the places that I remembered as having protection like that once now either have no protection (due to relaxed legislation) or other forms of protection.
I used to drive a Heisenberg mobile...
on
Quantum Holography
·
· Score: 1
...but every time I looked at the speedometer - I got lost!
This is another possible application of the radio tags/high-tech barcodes discussed recently here on Slashdot. That, too, was a Motorola thing... I wonder what they are up to?
However, as suggested in the article, it is unclear whether this would be entirely legal everywhere, considering the severe free trade implications. There have, as you know, been discussions on this regarding DVD region coding as well.
IANAL, but I do not believe a scheme like this would ever be accepted in the EU/EFTA/ECC region. I won't make any bets about the US, though.
Folks, do something productive instead: learn programming and drive Steinberg and Powell's other clients out of existence by writing better open source software; don't blindly post their stuff.
Even if there aren't open source alternatives to the programs of these companies that live up to the same standards, at least in some cases there are free-as-in-beer programs that are even better.
In the field of musical notation, for example, a company called NoteHeads has created a program called Igor Engraver that in several recent reviews has received very high scores, and that is endorsed by a number of prominent musicians. A couple of months ago these guys thought "ah, what the heck" (ok, they did have some sensible reasons) and released it as freeware.
If you need to do musical notation, I can tell you it's definately worth a try. Currently only for Macs, unfortunately, but a Windows version is supposed to come during the next couple of weeks.
All this is governed by the German Trademark Act of October 25, 1994 (Bundesgesetzblatt I, p.3082).
If I spoke German, which I don't, I would translate the proper passage for you and write it here. Instead, I provide a link to the complete text in German. The more daring ones among you can use Babelfish to translate it.
What will be interesting to see following the Iridium flop is how other, similar projects such as Globalstar - to mention only one - will develop. Will they, too, go out of business? And those that have not yet even started launching satellites, will they ever do so? My personal belief is that, sooner or later, there will arise some sort of need for a global comunications network. The question is only, how far away is that? Obviously, we are not there just yet.
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I hear of all these proprietary ways to handle non-ascii domain names and constantly fail to see why people cannot wait for the IETF IDN Working Group to finish their work.
First some background:
Students at technical universities in Sweden generally own overalls in the colour of their student union section (a section usually roughly corresponds to one educational programme). These are worn at various parties. The students also design "patches" with their section or school logo, the "logo" of some big party or just a funny cartoon and sew these on their overalls.
When Bill Gates received his doctorate, the IT section at KTH started distributing a patch with a picture of Gates wearing a doctor's hat and with the text "You pay - you get".
It was immensely popular. I own two. =)
There are some rather clear cases of prior art here. Back in the days when US export restrictions were slightly harder, I remember being stopped from downloading numerous pieces of software (for example, various Kerberos packages from MIT come to mind) by websites claiming that my computer was not located in the US. I have some vague recollection that Eudora and maybe also Netscape had similar protection.
I made som experiments and, IIRC, I was allowed to download the software from, in some cases, an IP address that had a PTR record to a domain registered to an entity in the US or, in other cases, one that had a PTR record to a domain under a non-cc TLD (even if it was registered to an entity outside the US).
If someone knows how to report prior art to the PTO, please feel free to do so. Unfortunately, the places that I remembered as having protection like that once now either have no protection (due to relaxed legislation) or other forms of protection.
...but every time I looked at the speedometer - I got lost!
However, as suggested in the article, it is unclear whether this would be entirely legal everywhere, considering the severe free trade implications. There have, as you know, been discussions on this regarding DVD region coding as well.
IANAL, but I do not believe a scheme like this would ever be accepted in the EU/EFTA/ECC region. I won't make any bets about the US, though.
Even if there aren't open source alternatives to the programs of these companies that live up to the same standards, at least in some cases there are free-as-in-beer programs that are even better.
In the field of musical notation, for example, a company called NoteHeads has created a program called Igor Engraver that in several recent reviews has received very high scores, and that is endorsed by a number of prominent musicians. A couple of months ago these guys thought "ah, what the heck" (ok, they did have some sensible reasons) and released it as freeware.
If you need to do musical notation, I can tell you it's definately worth a try. Currently only for Macs, unfortunately, but a Windows version is supposed to come during the next couple of weeks.
All this is governed by the German Trademark Act of October 25, 1994 (Bundesgesetzblatt I, p.3082).
If I spoke German, which I don't, I would translate the proper passage for you and write it here. Instead, I provide a link to the complete text in German. The more daring ones among you can use Babelfish to translate it.
What will be interesting to see following the Iridium flop is how other, similar projects such as Globalstar - to mention only one - will develop. Will they, too, go out of business? And those that have not yet even started launching satellites, will they ever do so?
My personal belief is that, sooner or later, there will arise some sort of need for a global comunications network. The question is only, how far away is that? Obviously, we are not there just yet.