The dead turn up to win the battle at Minas Tirith, (ROTK nitpick 40). This has two major bad effects: (1) It completely devalues all of the heroism of the soldiers of Gondor and Rohan - the only effect they had was to delay the outcome long enough for the dead to arrive, and that could have happened in time without them had Aragon just left for the paths of the dead a day earlier.
i disagree. The soldiers did not know Aragorn was bringing an army of the dead to save them. They believed they were fighting a battle they could not win, but they did it anyway. Their heroism doesnt come from winning an impossible fight, it comes from fighting when they know it's impossible. it certainly wasnt diminished when they chose to march on the black gates when they knew they couldnt win that fight either.
(2) The structure of TLoTR has a climax that is locatable to a single sentence: the good guys are disparing when the corsair's ships come up the river, thinking that Pelagir has fallen, and reinforcements are coming for the enemy. Then the clouds break and Aragon's royal banner is unfurled on the lead ship. There was much rejoicing. This should have made for a hugely cinematic moment, but instead we got light humour (Aragon, Gimli, Legolas jumping on to the dock and making a comment about 'plenty of orcs for everyone.')
that could have been a nice cinematic moment as well. the way it was done in the movie didnt really bother me though.
I'm pretty sure thats false... The Mcdonald's Golden Arches are a trademark. I'm violating thier trademark if I sell UPSs for computers and market them with the McDonald's Logo.
trademarks are specific to the product or service being sold.
from the requirements for applying for a trademark (U.S. Trademark Law section 2.32): "A list of the particular goods or services on or in connection with which the applicant uses or intends to use the mark."
Unless McDonalds sells UPSs, you would not be infringing their trademark. You might be diluting their trademark, and they could possibly come after you for that, but that is distinctly different from trademark infringement.
I'm also pretty sure it would still be trademark infirngment if I made the arches purple instead of gold, so don't try to tell me that because he spelled it differently he can get away with it.
Actually, color trademarks require the holder to specify in detail the colors used in the trademark. Section 2.52 of the U.S. Trademark Law: "Color marks. If the mark includes color, the drawing must show the mark in color, and the applicant must name the color(s), describe where the color(s) appear on the mark, and submit a claim that the color(s) is a feature of the mark. "
Once again, it would not be trademark infringement. It would be trademark dilution.
He is selling a product using using someone else's tradmark. He has admitted that he specificly choose the name because he thought it would be cool to use something that sounds like thier name.
section 2.52 of the U.S. trademark law requires a detailed description of the sound if the mark is a sound. Microsoft's trademark doesnt appear to include a detailed description of the sound of pronouncing it in english. (i couldnt verify this to make absolutely sure because the uspto's trademark search engine is down, but microsoft's trademark use guidelines for the registered mark have no information about any pronunciation guidelines)
Everyone is happy except the people who want to "stick it to Microsoft" in any way they can.
i'm not trying to "stick it to Microsoft" and i'm not saying that the way the issue was resolved was bad. I'm saying that it is not a clear case of trademark infringement. I also said they might be able to get him on trademark dilution.
he's selling services that microsoft doesn't offer. for trademark infringement, he'd have to be using a similar (or the same) mark to sell goods or services that are in the same market as microsoft.
it isnt trademark infringement either. that would require him to be selling software and for the marks to be very similar in a way that would cause confusion in the market. I dont think anyone would confuse these two names as the same company.
they might have had a case for trademark dilution, though.
if his site constituted a parody or criticism of microsoft, it'd probably be protected from both claims.
and you probably wouldn't ever see someone branding linux (or any other software) with the microsoft name since that would be trademark counterfeiting and that violates federal law, and possibly the relevant state's laws as well.
except that history does not support your definition of minimum wage. It exists because the government has determined that there is no work that is worth less than that amount.
However, on a macro scale, the boards that the shareholders of these major companies elect have determined that a high salary is justified for CEOs. Otherwise, these boards argue, they wouldn't be able to attract the more qualifed candidates for these types of positions.
so the problem is that the CEOs arent willing to work for minimum wage?
hmm. maybe they should look into outsourcing those jobs overseas.
i love it when people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in base salary complain that the problem is that college graduates aren't willing to work for minimum wage.
If i wanted to work for minimum wage, i would have skipped college and gotten a lucrative job in the food services industry. By now, i could have been assistant manager.
1982: Tron lost Best Special Effects to a muppet (E.T.).
the real irony of this one is that one of the reasons this happened is because people considered it cheating that they used computers to create the effects for them.
considering where effects are now, it might be time for them to create a special, posthumous award to correct that. They could call it the "We're really fucking stupid" award and it could be given every year to a film that was screwed over for obviously bullshit reasons 5 or more years ago.
I thought white vans were only for luring children into. What is this world coming to?
exactly. We need some standardization here. If satelite decoder sellers start using white vans, it'll dilute the meaning of the white van as a trademark of pedophiles. If this is allowed to continue, soon our children won't know if the creepy old man in the white van is someone to fear, or someone from which to buy cheap, cracked, satellite receiver hardware.
We need tough new stereotype protection laws in this area. And paint should be illegal since it can be used to circumvent the colour the van was when it was purchased.
Won't someone think of the children?
(this public service announcement brought to you by the letters D, R, and M in coordination with the number 666 and the P.O.R.C Council.)
My favorite quote from an LA city attorney: 'If you carry one of these into a movie theater, you have to ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"'"
In related news, lawyers for the MPAA have filed a copyright infringement suit against the District Attorney's office for Los Angeles. The MPAA has hired attorney Kevin McBride to represent them in this action. He explained their position by saying, "The office of the District Attorney has shown a wanton disregard for the intellectual property of our clients. These signature statements are valuable commodities and their abuse by unlicensed consumers is damaging that value. If this kind of theft is allowed to go unchecked, it could be the end of the entire motion picture industry." The Los Angeles District Attorney's office responded by releasing a statement that read simply, "Jesus Christ". No further comment was available.
Linux/Unix is fundamentally secure, windows is fundamentally open designed as a disconnected workstation and slowly being secured. This is NOT Microsofts fault for marketting reasons they have to move the code base slowly or there are too many problems.
I'm going to disagree with the absolute statement that this isnt Microsoft's fault. I agree that the design of Windows not taking into account network security issues at it's inception is not their fault. it wasn't on the radar as an issue facing personal computers when windows was originally written. However, building products you are going to market as a server that don't take into account network security is absolutely their fault. Building applications that are designed to be used across a network (like IE and Outlook) and not seriously considering the security threat to the system that they create is their fault. Actively adding features to those applications that hamstring any attempt to secure the machine is their fault. Claiming your stuff is secure while trying to crush anyone who exposes that it isnt; that's their fault too.
So there's plenty of security related issues with Microsoft that absolutely are their fault.
Gandma and gradpa will not compile the kernel. They will use the standard upgrade path of binary packages. They will trust the source computer has not been compromised as Microsoft users trust the Microsoft site is not compromised.
This is a great reason why security issues with computers used in the upgrade path should be disclosed quickly and the clean up process should be transparent.
The honesty of OSS groups to disclose information about vulnerabilities is one of it's strengths.
Boies first came to prominence in the Microsoft case. Athough the case was initially 'won' it was overturned on appeal. This has been Boies best result so far.
this is not where Boies came to prominence. He was involved in the IBM antitrust suit (on IBM's side).
Also, the conviction of Microsoft was not overturned on appeal. It was upheld on appeal. The punishments were overturned and it was remanded for a new punishment phase. The conviction for being a predatory monopoly still stands on Microsoft.
In the Florida recount case Boies lost what should have been a slam dunk case, demanding that the state perform a recount required by the election laws. Boies lost in this case because he was outmaneuvered by the Republican party lawyers who ran rings arround him.
he lost the election recount case because he was asking for a recount to be done in a way that violated the election laws of florida.
Meaning you steal what I've obtained through voluntary trade? How is this not an initiation of force?
because when i was 6, i believed all cars belonged to me. My claim precedes the claim of the person you bought it from.
And there lies the problem: You failed to observe my rightful ownership of property.
outside of a government providing definitions for it, who determines whose ownership is rightful? Who had rightful ownership of Jerusalem during the crusades?
Have you signed over your home and land to the Native Americans it was forcibly taken from?
i wasnt disputing that rights are subject to change without notice. I was just observing that by definition inalienable rights cannot be taken away. So any change to them could only be to add additional inalienable rights.
your use of the word "nearly" implies you accept that life existed prior to those concepts. That doesnt change the fact that life existed outside the concept of property and therefore life was clearly sustained without property.
Second, you don't seem to understand the difference between "initiation of force" and "force in self-defense". They are opposites. The first is immoral; the second is not. Rand's philosphy forbids the first, and approves the second.
that car you drive around... i claim it as my property. give it back or i'll be forced to defend myself. (yeah, i know you think it's yours, but i dont recognise your claim to it so it doesnt count)
well, technically in the U.S. you have inalienable rights. Those rights could only ever be added to (as far as change goes). Since they are inalienable, they can never be taken from you (legally) with or without your permission.
Think Tripoly in 1790 for the first example that I can think of
uh...Tripoli declared war on the United States before we started blockading them. The war started over the United State's refusal to pay protection money to ensure the safety of U.S. merchant vessels.
If he sets foot inside of US territory, even if he is kidnapped and brought onto US territory, he can be arrested, held, tried, and jailed.
that's true for anyone charged with a crime in any country they are not currently in. The question is did the crime he is alleged to have committed occur inside the jurisdiction of the United States?
Fortunately, the european union countries have not instituted their DMCA workalike laws yet (at least, i dont think they have.) so he will probably be ok as long as he stays out of the U.S.
My personal opinion is that GameSpy should die. I got my lifetime registration for gamespy back when it was quakespy and hate surfas for destroying a great product. He also ruined planetquake. (so, i guess you can say i'm biased) I believe him when he says he told Gamespy and they ignored him. I also believe their responses are lies. It's exactly the behaviour i would expect from surfas and fits with his behaviour patterns from all accounts i've heard of people who had to deal with him.
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The dead turn up to win the battle at Minas Tirith, (ROTK nitpick 40). This has two major bad effects:
(1) It completely devalues all of the heroism of the soldiers of Gondor and Rohan - the only effect they had was to delay the outcome long enough for the dead to arrive, and that could have happened in time without them had Aragon just left for the paths of the dead a day earlier.
i disagree. The soldiers did not know Aragorn was bringing an army of the dead to save them. They believed they were fighting a battle they could not win, but they did it anyway. Their heroism doesnt come from winning an impossible fight, it comes from fighting when they know it's impossible.
it certainly wasnt diminished when they chose to march on the black gates when they knew they couldnt win that fight either.
(2) The structure of TLoTR has a climax that is locatable to a single sentence: the good guys are disparing when the corsair's ships come up the river, thinking that Pelagir has fallen, and reinforcements are coming for the enemy. Then the clouds break and Aragon's royal banner is unfurled on the lead ship. There was much rejoicing. This should have made for a hugely cinematic moment, but instead we got light humour (Aragon, Gimli, Legolas jumping on to the dock and making a comment about 'plenty of orcs for everyone.')
that could have been a nice cinematic moment as well. the way it was done in the movie didnt really bother me though.
I'm pretty sure thats false... The Mcdonald's Golden Arches are a trademark. I'm violating thier trademark if I sell UPSs for computers and market them with the McDonald's Logo.
:
trademarks are specific to the product or service being sold.
from the requirements for applying for a trademark (U.S. Trademark Law section 2.32):
"A list of the particular goods or services on or in connection with which the applicant uses or intends to use the mark."
Unless McDonalds sells UPSs, you would not be infringing their trademark. You might be diluting their trademark, and they could possibly come after you for that, but that is distinctly different from trademark infringement.
I'm also pretty sure it would still be trademark infirngment if I made the arches purple instead of gold, so don't try to tell me that because he spelled it differently he can get away with it.
Actually, color trademarks require the holder to specify in detail the colors used in the trademark.
Section 2.52 of the U.S. Trademark Law
"Color marks. If the mark includes color, the drawing must show the mark in color, and the applicant must name the color(s), describe where the color(s) appear on the mark, and submit a claim that the color(s) is a feature of the mark. "
Once again, it would not be trademark infringement. It would be trademark dilution.
He is selling a product using using someone else's tradmark. He has admitted that he specificly choose the name because he thought it would be cool to use something that sounds like thier name.
section 2.52 of the U.S. trademark law requires a detailed description of the sound if the mark is a sound. Microsoft's trademark doesnt appear to include a detailed description of the sound of pronouncing it in english. (i couldnt verify this to make absolutely sure because the uspto's trademark search engine is down, but microsoft's trademark use guidelines for the registered mark have no information about any pronunciation guidelines)
Everyone is happy except the people who want to "stick it to Microsoft" in any way they can.
i'm not trying to "stick it to Microsoft" and i'm not saying that the way the issue was resolved was bad. I'm saying that it is not a clear case of trademark infringement. I also said they might be able to get him on trademark dilution.
he's selling services that microsoft doesn't offer. for trademark infringement, he'd have to be using a similar (or the same) mark to sell goods or services that are in the same market as microsoft.
it isnt trademark infringement either. that would require him to be selling software and for the marks to be very similar in a way that would cause confusion in the market. I dont think anyone would confuse these two names as the same company.
they might have had a case for trademark dilution, though.
if his site constituted a parody or criticism of microsoft, it'd probably be protected from both claims.
and you probably wouldn't ever see someone branding linux (or any other software) with the microsoft name since that would be trademark counterfeiting and that violates federal law, and possibly the relevant state's laws as well.
The SCO Group (Nasdaq: SCOX - News) helps millions of customers in more than 82 countries to grow their businesses everyday.
you're just misreading this statement.
"their" is intended to mean SCO's businesses.
that's what the lawsuits and licensing schemes are all about....helping millions of customers grow SCO's litigation and licensing businesses.
except that history does not support your definition of minimum wage. It exists because the government has determined that there is no work that is worth less than that amount.
However, on a macro scale, the boards that the shareholders of these major companies elect have determined that a high salary is justified for CEOs. Otherwise, these boards argue, they wouldn't be able to attract the more qualifed candidates for these types of positions.
so the problem is that the CEOs arent willing to work for minimum wage?
hmm. maybe they should look into outsourcing those jobs overseas.
i love it when people making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in base salary complain that the problem is that college graduates aren't willing to work for minimum wage.
If i wanted to work for minimum wage, i would have skipped college and gotten a lucrative job in the food services industry. By now, i could have been assistant manager.
somehow, i think the arson conviction would be worse than the incitement conviction...
but that's just me.
If you yell "Fire!" in a burning theater, you're going to jail.
absolutely untrue.
You can yell "Fire!" in a theatre that is, in fact, burning.
the legal reference to yelling fire in a theatre is from the 1919 case Schenck vs. U.S. where it says:
"The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic."
(note the word "falsely")
1982: Tron lost Best Special Effects to a muppet (E.T.).
the real irony of this one is that one of the reasons this happened is because people considered it cheating that they used computers to create the effects for them.
considering where effects are now, it might be time for them to create a special, posthumous award to correct that. They could call it the "We're really fucking stupid" award and it could be given every year to a film that was screwed over for obviously bullshit reasons 5 or more years ago.
I thought white vans were only for luring children into. What is this world coming to?
exactly. We need some standardization here. If satelite decoder sellers start using white vans, it'll dilute the meaning of the white van as a trademark of pedophiles. If this is allowed to continue, soon our children won't know if the creepy old man in the white van is someone to fear, or someone from which to buy cheap, cracked, satellite receiver hardware.
We need tough new stereotype protection laws in this area. And paint should be illegal since it can be used to circumvent the colour the van was when it was purchased.
Won't someone think of the children?
(this public service announcement brought to you by the letters D, R, and M in coordination with the number 666 and the P.O.R.C Council.)
And why do we have military bases there? They said they want to discourage tourism. This makes me want to go there and check it out.
Antarctica is where the second stargate was discovered. Who knows what other alien technology is frozen in the ice, just waiting to be discovered...
My favorite quote from an LA city attorney: 'If you carry one of these into a movie theater, you have to ask yourself, "Do I feel lucky?"'"
In related news, lawyers for the MPAA have filed a copyright infringement suit against the District Attorney's office for Los Angeles. The MPAA has hired attorney Kevin McBride to represent them in this action. He explained their position by saying, "The office of the District Attorney has shown a wanton disregard for the intellectual property of our clients. These signature statements are valuable commodities and their abuse by unlicensed consumers is damaging that value. If this kind of theft is allowed to go unchecked, it could be the end of the entire motion picture industry."
The Los Angeles District Attorney's office responded by releasing a statement that read simply, "Jesus Christ". No further comment was available.
Linux/Unix is fundamentally secure, windows is fundamentally open designed as a disconnected workstation and slowly being secured. This is NOT Microsofts fault for marketting reasons they have to move the code base slowly or there are too many problems.
I'm going to disagree with the absolute statement that this isnt Microsoft's fault. I agree that the design of Windows not taking into account network security issues at it's inception is not their fault. it wasn't on the radar as an issue facing personal computers when windows was originally written.
However, building products you are going to market as a server that don't take into account network security is absolutely their fault.
Building applications that are designed to be used across a network (like IE and Outlook) and not seriously considering the security threat to the system that they create is their fault. Actively adding features to those applications that hamstring any attempt to secure the machine is their fault.
Claiming your stuff is secure while trying to crush anyone who exposes that it isnt; that's their fault too.
So there's plenty of security related issues with Microsoft that absolutely are their fault.
Gandma and gradpa will not compile the kernel. They will use the standard upgrade path of binary packages. They will trust the source computer has not been compromised as Microsoft users trust the Microsoft site is not compromised.
This is a great reason why security issues with computers used in the upgrade path should be disclosed quickly and the clean up process should be transparent.
The honesty of OSS groups to disclose information about vulnerabilities is one of it's strengths.
Good point. We only slaughter subhuman non-whites, or non-Americans, and not usually by the millions. So clearly we're civilized.
what a load of crap.
we slaughter whites and americans too.
We're civilized because we feel really bad about it later (if anyone asks us).
Boies first came to prominence in the Microsoft case. Athough the case was initially 'won' it was overturned on appeal. This has been Boies best result so far.
this is not where Boies came to prominence. He was involved in the IBM antitrust suit (on IBM's side).
Also, the conviction of Microsoft was not overturned on appeal. It was upheld on appeal. The punishments were overturned and it was remanded for a new punishment phase. The conviction for being a predatory monopoly still stands on Microsoft.
In the Florida recount case Boies lost what should have been a slam dunk case, demanding that the state perform a recount required by the election laws. Boies lost in this case because he was outmaneuvered by the Republican party lawyers who ran rings arround him.
he lost the election recount case because he was asking for a recount to be done in a way that violated the election laws of florida.
Meaning you steal what I've obtained through voluntary trade? How is this not an initiation of force?
because when i was 6, i believed all cars belonged to me. My claim precedes the claim of the person you bought it from.
And there lies the problem: You failed to observe my rightful ownership of property.
outside of a government providing definitions for it, who determines whose ownership is rightful?
Who had rightful ownership of Jerusalem during the crusades?
Have you signed over your home and land to the Native Americans it was forcibly taken from?
i wasnt disputing that rights are subject to change without notice. I was just observing that by definition inalienable rights cannot be taken away. So any change to them could only be to add additional inalienable rights.
your use of the word "nearly" implies you accept that life existed prior to those concepts. That doesnt change the fact that life existed outside the concept of property and therefore life was clearly sustained without property.
Second, you don't seem to understand the difference between "initiation of force" and "force in self-defense". They are opposites. The first is immoral; the second is not. Rand's philosphy forbids the first, and approves the second.
that car you drive around...
i claim it as my property. give it back or i'll be forced to defend myself.
(yeah, i know you think it's yours, but i dont recognise your claim to it so it doesnt count)
well, technically in the U.S. you have inalienable rights. Those rights could only ever be added to (as far as change goes). Since they are inalienable, they can never be taken from you (legally) with or without your permission.
If you went by GoNINzo back in the days when PlanetQuake didnt suck and QuakeSpy didnt have Surfas taint, I think i remember you.
i guess we're old, eh?
well, scrolling down the comments, i see italy has a DMCA-alike law. He may be in trouble.
Think Tripoly in 1790 for the first example that I can think of
uh...Tripoli declared war on the United States before we started blockading them. The war started over the United State's refusal to pay protection money to ensure the safety of U.S. merchant vessels.
If he sets foot inside of US territory, even if he is kidnapped and brought onto US territory, he can be arrested, held, tried, and jailed.
that's true for anyone charged with a crime in any country they are not currently in. The question is did the crime he is alleged to have committed occur inside the jurisdiction of the United States?
Fortunately, the european union countries have not instituted their DMCA workalike laws yet (at least, i dont think they have.) so he will probably be ok as long as he stays out of the U.S.
My personal opinion is that GameSpy should die. I got my lifetime registration for gamespy back when it was quakespy and hate surfas for destroying a great product. He also ruined planetquake.
(so, i guess you can say i'm biased)
I believe him when he says he told Gamespy and they ignored him. I also believe their responses are lies. It's exactly the behaviour i would expect from surfas and fits with his behaviour patterns from all accounts i've heard of people who had to deal with him.
but that's just my opinion, i could be wrong.