Re:Trip down memory lane
on
20 Years of NES
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· Score: 2, Informative
While I can understand N's reluctance to release an uncensored MK, it was somewhat hypocritical since the SNES version of Street Fighter II (which came out earlier) features the fighters vomiting blood in big streams.
Actually, Nintendo forced them to recolor the blood as vomit in the first version, then relaxed their requirement for later releases based on fan pushback.
At the time it was considered that Nintendo was being far too strict. If only we could have seen the slippery slope ahead of us.
Re:NES #1? Ignorance.
on
20 Years of NES
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· Score: 4, Insightful
PacMan was prior to the Video Game Crash. After the Video Game Crash, all the people who'd spent MegaBucks on Atari, Intellivison, and Coleco systems were left out in the cold with highly expensive hardware and no software to buy. A LOT of consumers became rather despondant over this, thus the line "Americans hated video games." It was so bad that Nintendo called the console an "Entertainment System" and marketed a Robot with it to keep people from thinking of it as Another Video Game Console(TM).
Originally, Nintendo was also going to market a disk drive (which was available for the Fanicom in Japan) so that people could use it as a home PC. As it turned out, the market accepted the Nintendo well enough that they eventually ditched the whole "home computer" idea.
At least in theory, it also meant that games had to meet Nintendo's expectations for content. Of course, it wasn't until the SuperNES days that Nintendo *really* cracked down on game quality.:-)
Is it just me, or was the target of the link devoid of anything except ads?
Click on the images. They're a form of navigation, not ads. You'll note that they say "monday", "tuesday", "wednesday", etc. The series is only half complete.
Trip down memory lane
on
20 Years of NES
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· Score: 5, Informative
Ah yes, the good old days of gaming. Back when games had to be fun rather than bloody. I always found it nice that Nintendo took a solid stance about the family playability of games. It meant that the games had to be sold on the basis of something other than blood and gore. While there were quite a few Nintendo games that sold because they were either a) cheap or b) had a movie license (Karate Kid anyone?), a large number of the games for the old system were just good. Nintendo's "Seal of Quality" program came out, it helped keep the overall quality of games high, again because they had to be competitive on something other than shock factor. Not that the graphics of the time allowed much of that anyway...
When the SuperNES came out, it wasn't long before the issue of blood and gore came up, especially in the light of the SuperNES's new graphics capabilities. But Nintendo pushed back at game creators and kept that era of gaming fun. Even more so because Nintendo didn't approve games that didn't meet their playtester approval.
Then the Playstation came out, and despite its technical superiority, it sucked. But they had the Blood and Gore (and Loading...), and plenty of boring 3D games that only sold due to shock factor. But eventually Sony pushed long enough and hard enough, and now we have the games of today. Even Nintendo gets into the whole "adult" thing with their postively revolting Conq the Squirrel game. Thanks Sony.:-(
I was just about to point out a fun trick of searching Google News for the article to read it without registering. Then I clicked on the link and realized that it doesn't require registration. How odd...
We used to joke that the only redundant things in the entire systems were the heaters and the SSPAs.
Ah, but the heaters are highly reliable. You guys should have removed half of them. Just think, you could have saved a massive 2-3 grams on the launch weight!:-P
Just remember that Yoper uses static linking of libraries to speed things up.
Really? I wasn't aware of that. As far as I knew, most of there performance tweaks were the result of targetting the 686 architecture. Still, static linking really doesn't bother me much. My old machine had 512MB. My new machine has 1GB. Neither one really felt a "strain" from static linking. To me, the overall experience is far more important. Yoper excels in that area.:-)
I can't speak for Slackware, but I do know that Yoper has an excellent variation on KDE. I didn't realize this was Yoper-specific until later, but Yoper has tweaked the hell out of the KDE settings as well as added a rather slick Mac OS X-ish control panel.
If you get a chance, go give it a try. It's a very enjoyable distro to use. (Once you get past the rather crude install, that is.)
On another note, does anyone know what happened to the Yoper website? It's been down for weeks. They' finally put up a "We're working on it" page, but they haven't offered much info. I was starting to think about emailing them to find out what happened!
Geez, you're in a grumpy mood today. Excuse me for trying to combat the invariable idiocy around here with some informative links. I'm sure you'd much rather have 50 more "This isn't CmdrTaco's blog!" entries as opposed to the variety of interesting and funny responses generated by my post.
You should change your sig to "Breakfast Pants: Working against intelligent postings for over 3 years!" (Replace the number of years as appropriate.)
These things are horribly over-engineered. Not that it is a bad thing they are proving so resilliant, but we're now at 8x the "designed" life span. In my mind, that means they could have probably built it half as robust and still been outstanding pieces of machinery(and alot less expensive).
If I may interject, WHO says they're overengineered? In fact, to the best of my knowledge they are anything *but* overengineered. When the Spirit rover had technical difficulties shortly after landing, one of the things that came out was the lack of backup systems and the inability of the craft to keep its solar panels clean. Things that many of us wished the rovers had were RTGs, Solar Panel Wipers, Longer Lasting Batteries, Redundant Computers, Larger Storage Capacity, Anything but Vx[Doesn't]Works, etc. NASA hadn't put many of these goodies onboard because the rovers were built in a relative hurry, with all expectations of short lifespans.
Unexpectedly, it turned out that pretty much all the components on the rovers far exceeded their expected lifetimes. As far as the engineers are concerned, the solar panels should be caked, the batteries shouldn't hold a charge, the wheels should be gunked up, and the computers should have no remaining capacity. Yet the rovers live on. Very puzzling for the engineers, but very nice for the scientists.:-)
Just because you already typed it didn't mean you had to post it.
Uh, yeah. Maybe because if you wait, there becomes no reason in posting? I don't know if you've paid much attention to how Slashdot works, but in 5-10 minutes after going live, a new post will potentially end up 100's of posts down. Especially on an article where 99% of the posts say, "CmdrTaco shouldn't use Slashdot as a blog!"
instead of wasting our time.
Because reading all those links (~1 per setence) as opposed to all the uninformative "CmdrTaco shouldn't use Slashdot as a blog!" posts was so unhelpful. Yeash.
Possibly, if the satire is confusing. The Onion's satire is not confusing.
It's not confusing to you, because you're fully acquanted with the Onion. Having lived and worked in Madison, Wisconsin I can say with certainty that we always had a good chuckle when the next poor sap confused the paper with the real thing. The Onion is NOT obvious satire as its layout is designed to evoke the image of a real newspaper. Only through careful investigation does one realize its satirical purpose. The use of the geniuine Presidential Seal *is* likely to cause confusion for anyone unfamiliar with it.
In any event, 18 USC 731 doesn't say anything about confusion. You're trying to apply trademark laws to the situation, and they don't apply.
No, you're trying to apply it. You're saying that Satire is a free speech issue, but the only places it's codified is in Trademark or Copyright law. The law regarding the Presidential Seal does NOT codify Satire, and quite likely prohibits it if the genuine seal is used.
That's a nice straw man you built. Unfortunately, I never claimed that the use of the seal on a commercial product was always protected by the First Amendment. Only that its use in satire was overwhelmingly likely to be protected speech.
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Satire is a very narrow area that one can easily fall out of if they're not careful. Assuming that a judge maintains your satire defense, The first question that a judge is likely to ask is, "Does removing the Seal from the article remove anything from the Satire?" The judge would probably answer that with a "No" as the Presidential Seal is not being parodied, nor does it play any crucial role in the real parody.
That's why I'm arguing such seeming nonsense. Because you are arguing the exact same thing, but trying to cover it over with "Satire".
The Presidential seal is not covered by trademark. Therefore 15 USC 1125 does not apply.
Which has been my point from the getgo! Yet you yourself seem to think that the Seal can be argued under Trademark law, the ONLY codified protection afforded for such parodies!
If you're going to try and prove that "the Supreme Court will apply trademark rules to a non-trademarked item," you probably shouldn't reference three cases (Bean, Jordache, and Mutual of Omaha) that are all about trademark infringement of actual trademarks.
Actually, the L.L. Bean case is particularly salient as the Supreme court found that denying parody "rights" was not an offsense of the First Amedment. Your argument is that the use of the Seal *is* protected by the First Amendment, but the case law says otherwise. The overturning of the L.L. Bean decision was only done so because:
"The article was labelled as "humor" and "parody" in the magazine's table of contents section; it took up two pages in a one-hundred-page issue; neither the article nor appellant's trademark was featured on the front or back cover of the magazine. Drake did not use Bean's mark to identify or promote goods or services to consumers; it never intended to market the "products" displayed in the parody."
In other words, the publisher took all precautions to mark the item as Satire. In the Onion case, the article was a "front page" item on the website (and presumably the paper itself), as a front page item it markets the paper itself (which is for commercial purposes via advertising). And different from the L.L. Bean case, the actual Seal is used as opposed to a likeness of the mark.
I have no info on the overturning of the Jordache case, so I'll have to concede that one.
FWIW, the litmus test for parodies was established in the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Inc. v. Pussycat Cinema, Ltd. case. The court concluded that the defendants could have found many alternative ways to "comment on 'sexuality in athletics' without infringing plaintiffs trademark"; thus, a preliminary injunction did not infringe the defendants' First Amendment rights.
Actually, I typed all that before the article went live. Only then did I realize there was much more to the text than the front page had let on. (The mysterious future doesn't give a whole lot of info unless you burn through your subscription at a super-fast rate.) I still had several links that Taco didn't (including an actual link to the rules he violated), so I went ahead and posted.
The only downside is that I did all that research on the problem, only to find that Taco already knew most of it.
Completely unrelated, but there's an interesting story that happens in just about every Navy that uses the title "Sailor" for enlisted personnel. (So far I've heard second hand reports from both the U.S. and Russian Navies.)
Every so often a fellow enlists who's last name actually *is* Sailor in the native language. More often than not, this drives his superiors nuts as they have to address him as "Sailor Sailor". Since he isn't an officer they can't give him an honorary promotion to prevent confusion, so more often than not he gets his first promotion free just so everyone doesn't have to deal with with the double name.:-)
(Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".)
Welcome to the club, Taco. Unfortunately, their naming rules are extremely loose and open to interpretation. In particular, you seem to be in violation of the Titles Rule which states:
Fantasy titles should be earned through the mechanics of the game, and should not be recreated through character naming. This category includes names which:
Consist of any title prefix attached to a character's name be it fantasy-based or not (i.e. Kingmike, Presidentsanchez)
Because of this rule, you need to remove the title from your name and go by just "Taco", or choose a completely different handle.
It sucks, but them's the breaks. If you don't like it, well, feel free to start a write-in/call-in/email-in/protest-march-in campaign to get them to change their rules. Here's their webform.
That's because his quote was intended to convey: "Time is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one."
To put this into perspective, through relativity he found that "time" does not flow as was so often thought in the past. Rather it is a rather static entity that is described by a higher dimension that we cannot percieve directly. Since we cannot percieve the fourth dimension directly, we instead perceive snapshots of it on a three dimensional plane, thus producing the "illusion" of time.
Of course, Quantum Mechanics throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing, as it shows that the fourth dimension may be more fluid than Einstein had original predictied. In the same vein, one of the most frustrating things for Einstein was that he couldn't eliminate the possibility of time travel. If time travel were possible (as in having the ability to change events that were already causually experienced) it would completely muck up Einstein's idea of a causual and static timeline. Thus his famous quote: "I, at any rate, am convinced that [God] does not throw dice." (To which Neils Bohr reportedly replied, "Stop telling God what to do with his dice.")
Your "Specific Impulse" which (since you have no knowledge of this aspect)
*Ahem*. It's too bad that I have "no knowledge of this aspect," (~450 vacuum for the SSMEs, BTW) because then I might be inclined to point out that the specific impulse doesn't matter in this instance. Isp would matter if we could calculate comparitive Delta-Vs for a rocket and the elevator, but I'm afraid that a Space Elevator will only ever be capable of imparting one Delta-V. i.e. The Delta-V obtained by the time the elevator reaches the top of the wire. This makes such a comparison meaningless.
When it comes down to it though, a Space Elevator can be far more efficient and cost effective than a rocket. (Which, you'll pardon me if I thought that part was bleeding obvious.) However, (and this is where we get to my original point) it's not magic and there will be difficulties and tradeoffs to be made. For example, a single space elevator would only be cheaper after years (perhaps decades) of continuous use. A set of rockets would cost far less in the short term. Or to use an analogy I'm certain you're so familiar with, it's the difference in thrust in an Ion Engine vs. the Thrust of a Solid Rocket Booster. No, I won't explain the analogy, because I'm sure you got it. (Right?)
Also, you also missed schemes involving energy recovery from inbound cargoes.
Several people have mentioned these schemes, but they are not in any of the current Space Elevator engineering plans. Until they are seriously considered by the engineers (who I'm sure realize the difficulties inherent in having two objects connected by a thin wire across hundreds of miles with wildly different lateral velocities) I'm afraid that it's not a point worth arguing over.
Falsely inciting a panic in a crowded place is a valid exception to the First Amendment. Using the Presidential seal in a satirical context does not qualify as inciting a panic.
Oh, but it can. If the satirical context is alarming, AND the Presidential Seal is used in such a way as to potentially cause confusion about its reality, then the entire Presidential Office has been misused to cause alarm. Publishing an article stating that the President will hire someone to do his job, even if believed by only a small number of people, CAN incite a panic.
Using the Presidential seal in a satirical context does not qualify as libel or slander.
True. Which makes this example merely a demonstration of the limitations of free speech.
Using the Presidential seal in a satirical context does not qualify as threatening the public safety.
The Presidential Seal is intended to carry the full weight of the Presidential Office, ESPECIALLY in an emergency. Confusion caused by the use of the Seal in a satirical context may cause confusion about the reality of a REAL emergency situation.
For an example, let's take the Television show "West Wing". While I'm sure they use the seal in the background (as one would expect of such a show), they do NOT to my knowledge use it as a primary logo in a fashion similar to the Battlestar Galactica logo. If they did so, the Presidential Office would likely shut them down. Now consider if they actually DID use the Seal in such a fashion without getting shut down. Imagine all the people who would have previously had their attention grabbed by a Special Report bearing the Presidential Seal who now ignore it because they think it's a TV show.
It's the same with the Onion. Real newspaper or not, they are devaluing the weight of the Seal even in real newspapers.
If the proprietor of the restaurant doesn't mind you screaming your political views at the top of your lungs, then the government can do nothing. (They might be able to charge you with disturbing the peace if someone else complains.)
Exactly. Again, an excellent example of the limitation of free speech. Even though the Proprietor may have no issue with your screaming at the top of your lungs, other people within hearing range may not be so forgiving. Thus the government CAN charge you with distirbing the peace, despite your first amendment rights.
[Charging for a private theater is] not a form of speech and hasn't got anything to do with the First Amendment.
Isn't it? Your argument is that the use of an official government seal (one that is protected by law and requires extreme protection for the safety of the country) on a commercialized product is "Free Speech". If you can so easily discount the protections afforded to such an important piece of media, what makes a Lord of the Rings DVD so special? After all, it's only covered by FCC regulations prohibiting such activities. By your logic that should be insufficient as long as you can find some way to work it under the "Free Speech" clause.
What the federal trademark dilution statute does (15 U.S.C. 1125(c)) is make parody and satire, especially in advertisements and commercials, a high risk endeavor. For example, where there's a negative or unwholesome connotation about a "famous" mark, courts are likely to enjoin use.
Now if we're going to argue that the Supreme Court will apply trademark rules to a non-trademarked item, then we need to take this caselaw all the way. For example, from L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc.:
The court also held that enjoining the publication of a parody to prevent trademark dilution did not offend the first amendment.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
Oh, well in that case why don't you go into a theater and scream "FIRE!" You'll have ample opportunity to test your legal theory then. When you're done there, you can spread the word that Gerber baby food has been poisoned to kill off babies. Then try going into an airport and joking about the "bomb" in your bag. And let's not forget going into a crowded restaurant and screaming your political views at the top of your lungs. Ooo! And how about converting your home into a movie theater and showing the Lord of the Rings DVD you just bought for $3.00 a head!
You do that, and we'll see how well your literal interpretation of the first amendment holds up.
1. It states "Reproduces". The Onion reproduced the image for wide distribution. 2. The Onion is also a printed newspaper, so there is a physical reproduction in addition to the electronic.
By your reading of paragraph B, if a reporter took a picture of the president at a press conference and then a newspaper ran the picture, they'd be violating paragraph B.
That would be in the standard list of exceptions, as well as a reproduction authorized by the President's Office. (When the president is standing next to or behind his seal, he's doing it to signify that he is making a statement as the President of the US, and not as the man who happens to occupy the office at the moment.) Otherwise, yes, you could get in trouble for reproducing the seal.
all of the parodies on SNL and in Mad Magazine are illegal
How do you know that they:
a) Didn't ask for exceptions? b) Don't fall under the exceptions granted by the President's Office (e.g. Encyclopedias are exempted.) c) Use the actual Seal rather than an obvious parody? (e.g. Mad Magazine probably uses a cartoonish variation that would not be mistaken for the real thing.)
There's plenty of wiggle room here for the Onion to be in violation while others are not.
And this is particularly true if The Onion can show that they are being singled out here.
Depends. Are shows like the West Wing using the real Presidential Seal? If so, do they fall under current Presidential Regulations that permit it's use? Does the Onion fall under those regulations as well?
The current answers seem to be Yes, Yes, and No. If that is the case, the Onion is in VERY hot water.
It's also a matter of the 1st Ammendment, particularly as it relates to political satire.
It's not quite so cut and dry, though. The Presidential Seal (and Senate Seals) have very special protections to ensure that they're always used correctly. Satire is protected only under copyright and trademark law as "Fair Use". Since the seals are protected under separate laws, the Satire defense is likely to not hold water.
Slashdot Mirror
While I can understand N's reluctance to release an uncensored MK, it was somewhat hypocritical since the SNES version of Street Fighter II (which came out earlier) features the fighters vomiting blood in big streams.
Actually, Nintendo forced them to recolor the blood as vomit in the first version, then relaxed their requirement for later releases based on fan pushback.
At the time it was considered that Nintendo was being far too strict. If only we could have seen the slippery slope ahead of us.
PacMan was prior to the Video Game Crash. After the Video Game Crash, all the people who'd spent MegaBucks on Atari, Intellivison, and Coleco systems were left out in the cold with highly expensive hardware and no software to buy. A LOT of consumers became rather despondant over this, thus the line "Americans hated video games." It was so bad that Nintendo called the console an "Entertainment System" and marketed a Robot with it to keep people from thinking of it as Another Video Game Console(TM).
Originally, Nintendo was also going to market a disk drive (which was available for the Fanicom in Japan) so that people could use it as a home PC. As it turned out, the market accepted the Nintendo well enough that they eventually ditched the whole "home computer" idea.
At least in theory, it also meant that games had to meet Nintendo's expectations for content. Of course, it wasn't until the SuperNES days that Nintendo *really* cracked down on game quality. :-)
Is it just me, or was the target of the link devoid of anything except ads?
Click on the images. They're a form of navigation, not ads. You'll note that they say "monday", "tuesday", "wednesday", etc. The series is only half complete.
Ah yes, the good old days of gaming. Back when games had to be fun rather than bloody. I always found it nice that Nintendo took a solid stance about the family playability of games. It meant that the games had to be sold on the basis of something other than blood and gore. While there were quite a few Nintendo games that sold because they were either a) cheap or b) had a movie license (Karate Kid anyone?), a large number of the games for the old system were just good. Nintendo's "Seal of Quality" program came out, it helped keep the overall quality of games high, again because they had to be competitive on something other than shock factor. Not that the graphics of the time allowed much of that anyway...
:-(
When the SuperNES came out, it wasn't long before the issue of blood and gore came up, especially in the light of the SuperNES's new graphics capabilities. But Nintendo pushed back at game creators and kept that era of gaming fun. Even more so because Nintendo didn't approve games that didn't meet their playtester approval.
Then the Playstation came out, and despite its technical superiority, it sucked. But they had the Blood and Gore (and Loading...), and plenty of boring 3D games that only sold due to shock factor. But eventually Sony pushed long enough and hard enough, and now we have the games of today. Even Nintendo gets into the whole "adult" thing with their postively revolting Conq the Squirrel game. Thanks Sony.
I was just about to point out a fun trick of searching Google News for the article to read it without registering. Then I clicked on the link and realized that it doesn't require registration. How odd...
We used to joke that the only redundant things in the entire systems were the heaters and the SSPAs.
:-P
Ah, but the heaters are highly reliable. You guys should have removed half of them. Just think, you could have saved a massive 2-3 grams on the launch weight!
SHEEP in the big city!
Staring:
SHEEP!
General Specific
Private Public
Mad Scientist (That's ANGRY Scientist! ANGRY!)
The Announcer!
I loved that show. Now if only Cartoon Network had made more of it.
Just remember that Yoper uses static linking of libraries to speed things up.
:-)
Really? I wasn't aware of that. As far as I knew, most of there performance tweaks were the result of targetting the 686 architecture. Still, static linking really doesn't bother me much. My old machine had 512MB. My new machine has 1GB. Neither one really felt a "strain" from static linking. To me, the overall experience is far more important. Yoper excels in that area.
I can't speak for Slackware, but I do know that Yoper has an excellent variation on KDE. I didn't realize this was Yoper-specific until later, but Yoper has tweaked the hell out of the KDE settings as well as added a rather slick Mac OS X-ish control panel.
If you get a chance, go give it a try. It's a very enjoyable distro to use. (Once you get past the rather crude install, that is.)
On another note, does anyone know what happened to the Yoper website? It's been down for weeks. They' finally put up a "We're working on it" page, but they haven't offered much info. I was starting to think about emailing them to find out what happened!
Geez, you're in a grumpy mood today. Excuse me for trying to combat the invariable idiocy around here with some informative links. I'm sure you'd much rather have 50 more "This isn't CmdrTaco's blog!" entries as opposed to the variety of interesting and funny responses generated by my post.
You should change your sig to "Breakfast Pants: Working against intelligent postings for over 3 years!" (Replace the number of years as appropriate.)
These things are horribly over-engineered. Not that it is a bad thing they are proving so resilliant, but we're now at 8x the "designed" life span. In my mind, that means they could have probably built it half as robust and still been outstanding pieces of machinery(and alot less expensive).
:-)
If I may interject, WHO says they're overengineered? In fact, to the best of my knowledge they are anything *but* overengineered. When the Spirit rover had technical difficulties shortly after landing, one of the things that came out was the lack of backup systems and the inability of the craft to keep its solar panels clean. Things that many of us wished the rovers had were RTGs, Solar Panel Wipers, Longer Lasting Batteries, Redundant Computers, Larger Storage Capacity, Anything but Vx[Doesn't]Works, etc. NASA hadn't put many of these goodies onboard because the rovers were built in a relative hurry, with all expectations of short lifespans.
Unexpectedly, it turned out that pretty much all the components on the rovers far exceeded their expected lifetimes. As far as the engineers are concerned, the solar panels should be caked, the batteries shouldn't hold a charge, the wheels should be gunked up, and the computers should have no remaining capacity. Yet the rovers live on. Very puzzling for the engineers, but very nice for the scientists.
Just because you already typed it didn't mean you had to post it.
Uh, yeah. Maybe because if you wait, there becomes no reason in posting? I don't know if you've paid much attention to how Slashdot works, but in 5-10 minutes after going live, a new post will potentially end up 100's of posts down. Especially on an article where 99% of the posts say, "CmdrTaco shouldn't use Slashdot as a blog!"
instead of wasting our time.
Because reading all those links (~1 per setence) as opposed to all the uninformative "CmdrTaco shouldn't use Slashdot as a blog!" posts was so unhelpful. Yeash.
Possibly, if the satire is confusing. The Onion's satire is not confusing.
It's not confusing to you, because you're fully acquanted with the Onion. Having lived and worked in Madison, Wisconsin I can say with certainty that we always had a good chuckle when the next poor sap confused the paper with the real thing. The Onion is NOT obvious satire as its layout is designed to evoke the image of a real newspaper. Only through careful investigation does one realize its satirical purpose. The use of the geniuine Presidential Seal *is* likely to cause confusion for anyone unfamiliar with it.
In any event, 18 USC 731 doesn't say anything about confusion. You're trying to apply trademark laws to the situation, and they don't apply.
No, you're trying to apply it. You're saying that Satire is a free speech issue, but the only places it's codified is in Trademark or Copyright law. The law regarding the Presidential Seal does NOT codify Satire, and quite likely prohibits it if the genuine seal is used.
That's a nice straw man you built. Unfortunately, I never claimed that the use of the seal on a commercial product was always protected by the First Amendment. Only that its use in satire was overwhelmingly likely to be protected speech.
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Satire is a very narrow area that one can easily fall out of if they're not careful. Assuming that a judge maintains your satire defense, The first question that a judge is likely to ask is, "Does removing the Seal from the article remove anything from the Satire?" The judge would probably answer that with a "No" as the Presidential Seal is not being parodied, nor does it play any crucial role in the real parody.
That's why I'm arguing such seeming nonsense. Because you are arguing the exact same thing, but trying to cover it over with "Satire".
The Presidential seal is not covered by trademark. Therefore 15 USC 1125 does not apply.
Which has been my point from the getgo! Yet you yourself seem to think that the Seal can be argued under Trademark law, the ONLY codified protection afforded for such parodies!
If you're going to try and prove that "the Supreme Court will apply trademark rules to a non-trademarked item," you probably shouldn't reference three cases (Bean, Jordache, and Mutual of Omaha) that are all about trademark infringement of actual trademarks.
Actually, the L.L. Bean case is particularly salient as the Supreme court found that denying parody "rights" was not an offsense of the First Amedment. Your argument is that the use of the Seal *is* protected by the First Amendment, but the case law says otherwise. The overturning of the L.L. Bean decision was only done so because:
"The article was labelled as "humor" and "parody" in the magazine's table of contents section; it took up two pages in a one-hundred-page issue; neither the article nor appellant's trademark was featured on the front or back cover of the magazine. Drake did not use Bean's mark to identify or promote goods or services to consumers; it never intended to market the "products" displayed in the parody."
In other words, the publisher took all precautions to mark the item as Satire. In the Onion case, the article was a "front page" item on the website (and presumably the paper itself), as a front page item it markets the paper itself (which is for commercial purposes via advertising). And different from the L.L. Bean case, the actual Seal is used as opposed to a likeness of the mark.
I have no info on the overturning of the Jordache case, so I'll have to concede that one.
FWIW, the litmus test for parodies was established in the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, Inc. v. Pussycat Cinema, Ltd. case. The court concluded that the defendants could have found many alternative ways to "comment on 'sexuality in athletics' without infringing plaintiffs trademark"; thus, a preliminary injunction did not infringe the defendants' First Amendment rights.
Again,
Actually, I typed all that before the article went live. Only then did I realize there was much more to the text than the front page had let on. (The mysterious future doesn't give a whole lot of info unless you burn through your subscription at a super-fast rate.) I still had several links that Taco didn't (including an actual link to the rules he violated), so I went ahead and posted.
The only downside is that I did all that research on the problem, only to find that Taco already knew most of it.
*sigh*
Such is life.
Completely unrelated, but there's an interesting story that happens in just about every Navy that uses the title "Sailor" for enlisted personnel. (So far I've heard second hand reports from both the U.S. and Russian Navies.)
:-)
Every so often a fellow enlists who's last name actually *is* Sailor in the native language. More often than not, this drives his superiors nuts as they have to address him as "Sailor Sailor". Since he isn't an officer they can't give him an honorary promotion to prevent confusion, so more often than not he gets his first promotion free just so everyone doesn't have to deal with with the double name.
(Note that in the U.S. Navy, the actual rank and name tends to be "Seaman".)
Because of this rule, you need to remove the title from your name and go by just "Taco", or choose a completely different handle.
It sucks, but them's the breaks. If you don't like it, well, feel free to start a write-in/call-in/email-in/protest-march-in campaign to get them to change their rules. Here's their webform.
That's because his quote was intended to convey: "Time is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one."
To put this into perspective, through relativity he found that "time" does not flow as was so often thought in the past. Rather it is a rather static entity that is described by a higher dimension that we cannot percieve directly. Since we cannot percieve the fourth dimension directly, we instead perceive snapshots of it on a three dimensional plane, thus producing the "illusion" of time.
Of course, Quantum Mechanics throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing, as it shows that the fourth dimension may be more fluid than Einstein had original predictied. In the same vein, one of the most frustrating things for Einstein was that he couldn't eliminate the possibility of time travel. If time travel were possible (as in having the ability to change events that were already causually experienced) it would completely muck up Einstein's idea of a causual and static timeline. Thus his famous quote: "I, at any rate, am convinced that [God] does not throw dice." (To which Neils Bohr reportedly replied, "Stop telling God what to do with his dice.")
Your "Specific Impulse" which (since you have no knowledge of this aspect)
*Ahem*. It's too bad that I have "no knowledge of this aspect," (~450 vacuum for the SSMEs, BTW) because then I might be inclined to point out that the specific impulse doesn't matter in this instance. Isp would matter if we could calculate comparitive Delta-Vs for a rocket and the elevator, but I'm afraid that a Space Elevator will only ever be capable of imparting one Delta-V. i.e. The Delta-V obtained by the time the elevator reaches the top of the wire. This makes such a comparison meaningless.
When it comes down to it though, a Space Elevator can be far more efficient and cost effective than a rocket. (Which, you'll pardon me if I thought that part was bleeding obvious.) However, (and this is where we get to my original point) it's not magic and there will be difficulties and tradeoffs to be made. For example, a single space elevator would only be cheaper after years (perhaps decades) of continuous use. A set of rockets would cost far less in the short term. Or to use an analogy I'm certain you're so familiar with, it's the difference in thrust in an Ion Engine vs. the Thrust of a Solid Rocket Booster. No, I won't explain the analogy, because I'm sure you got it. (Right?)
Also, you also missed schemes involving energy recovery from inbound cargoes.
Several people have mentioned these schemes, but they are not in any of the current Space Elevator engineering plans. Until they are seriously considered by the engineers (who I'm sure realize the difficulties inherent in having two objects connected by a thin wire across hundreds of miles with wildly different lateral velocities) I'm afraid that it's not a point worth arguing over.
Oh, but it can. If the satirical context is alarming, AND the Presidential Seal is used in such a way as to potentially cause confusion about its reality, then the entire Presidential Office has been misused to cause alarm. Publishing an article stating that the President will hire someone to do his job, even if believed by only a small number of people, CAN incite a panic.
Using the Presidential seal in a satirical context does not qualify as libel or slander.
True. Which makes this example merely a demonstration of the limitations of free speech.
Using the Presidential seal in a satirical context does not qualify as threatening the public safety.
The Presidential Seal is intended to carry the full weight of the Presidential Office, ESPECIALLY in an emergency. Confusion caused by the use of the Seal in a satirical context may cause confusion about the reality of a REAL emergency situation.
For an example, let's take the Television show "West Wing". While I'm sure they use the seal in the background (as one would expect of such a show), they do NOT to my knowledge use it as a primary logo in a fashion similar to the Battlestar Galactica logo. If they did so, the Presidential Office would likely shut them down. Now consider if they actually DID use the Seal in such a fashion without getting shut down. Imagine all the people who would have previously had their attention grabbed by a Special Report bearing the Presidential Seal who now ignore it because they think it's a TV show.
It's the same with the Onion. Real newspaper or not, they are devaluing the weight of the Seal even in real newspapers.
If the proprietor of the restaurant doesn't mind you screaming your political views at the top of your lungs, then the government can do nothing. (They might be able to charge you with disturbing the peace if someone else complains.)
Exactly. Again, an excellent example of the limitation of free speech. Even though the Proprietor may have no issue with your screaming at the top of your lungs, other people within hearing range may not be so forgiving. Thus the government CAN charge you with distirbing the peace, despite your first amendment rights.
[Charging for a private theater is] not a form of speech and hasn't got anything to do with the First Amendment.
Isn't it? Your argument is that the use of an official government seal (one that is protected by law and requires extreme protection for the safety of the country) on a commercialized product is "Free Speech". If you can so easily discount the protections afforded to such an important piece of media, what makes a Lord of the Rings DVD so special? After all, it's only covered by FCC regulations prohibiting such activities. By your logic that should be insufficient as long as you can find some way to work it under the "Free Speech" clause.
Now, I'd like to introduce you to a page on Copylaw.com. And I quote:
Now if we're going to argue that the Supreme Court will apply trademark rules to a non-trademarked item, then we need to take this caselaw all the way. For example, from L.L. Bean, Inc. v. Drake Publishers, Inc.:
I would al
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
Oh, well in that case why don't you go into a theater and scream "FIRE!" You'll have ample opportunity to test your legal theory then. When you're done there, you can spread the word that Gerber baby food has been poisoned to kill off babies. Then try going into an airport and joking about the "bomb" in your bag. And let's not forget going into a crowded restaurant and screaming your political views at the top of your lungs. Ooo! And how about converting your home into a movie theater and showing the Lord of the Rings DVD you just bought for $3.00 a head!
You do that, and we'll see how well your literal interpretation of the first amendment holds up.
1. It states "Reproduces". The Onion reproduced the image for wide distribution.
2. The Onion is also a printed newspaper, so there is a physical reproduction in addition to the electronic.
By your reading of paragraph B, if a reporter took a picture of the president at a press conference and then a newspaper ran the picture, they'd be violating paragraph B.
That would be in the standard list of exceptions, as well as a reproduction authorized by the President's Office. (When the president is standing next to or behind his seal, he's doing it to signify that he is making a statement as the President of the US, and not as the man who happens to occupy the office at the moment.) Otherwise, yes, you could get in trouble for reproducing the seal.
all of the parodies on SNL and in Mad Magazine are illegal
How do you know that they:
a) Didn't ask for exceptions?
b) Don't fall under the exceptions granted by the President's Office (e.g. Encyclopedias are exempted.)
c) Use the actual Seal rather than an obvious parody? (e.g. Mad Magazine probably uses a cartoonish variation that would not be mistaken for the real thing.)
There's plenty of wiggle room here for the Onion to be in violation while others are not.
Doesn't matter. Paragraph (a) and Paragraph (b) are separate. If they violate Paragraph (b), the logic of Paragraph (a) won't save them.
And this is particularly true if The Onion can show that they are being singled out here.
Depends. Are shows like the West Wing using the real Presidential Seal? If so, do they fall under current Presidential Regulations that permit it's use? Does the Onion fall under those regulations as well?
The current answers seem to be Yes, Yes, and No. If that is the case, the Onion is in VERY hot water.
It's also a matter of the 1st Ammendment, particularly as it relates to political satire.
It's not quite so cut and dry, though. The Presidential Seal (and Senate Seals) have very special protections to ensure that they're always used correctly. Satire is protected only under copyright and trademark law as "Fair Use". Since the seals are protected under separate laws, the Satire defense is likely to not hold water.