That isn't an example of irony at all, unless you are following the "Alanis Morissette" theory whereby anything can be called ironic without consideration of it's actual relevence to irony.
Part of the problem is if there's a word to describe what frequently gets called 'irony', most people (including myself) don't know it. You end up with a well-known concept which has no label for it. The closest fit people have adopted is irony.
It would seem that situational irony is what most people are currently using when they say irony.
Got an alternate word, or are you just going to keep saying "oh noes, that's not really irony"?
Did I miss some sort of shift in terminology? When did virtual machines start getting referred to as "Appliances"? When I think "appliance", I usually think of toasters, microwaves, stoves, refrigerators, etc. Images for operating systems is the last thing that comes to mind.
I think it becomes an 'appliance' when it comes already configured and downloadable to you like a black box.
VMware currently hosts some large number here. Like an 'appliance', you plug it in and go without worrying about the fiddly bits.
Of course, if you want to install it all from scratch, go ahead.:-P
This is the same thing, Microsoft want openness from the likes of Symbian, Apple, Google, etc., which they'll follow with their "extensions", then they'll lock the whole thing up just like Apple's done. As far as users are concerned, this would be the same as the current situation, the only difference would be which company has control.
Moreover, anyone who actually has a 60 petabyte system isn't using it for ripped music. I know people with multiple terabytes at home, but sure as hell not petabytes -- that's still a monstrous data-center level of a system.
Methinks some hyperbole is in that statement. (And, if he *does* have 60PB of storage, I want to know what he's running it on.)
The people who send bullshit bank or fraudulent emails asking for your information is not legal spam.
No, it's a complete scam, and should be pursued and prosecuted as such.
Most mailers send out real products that people want and ads such as debt consolidation and stuff like that. It's from real companies, it's not all bullshit.
Horseshit. Penis enlargement? Cialis? A degree without university? Designer goods? Canadian pharmacies dispensing cheap drugs? Some chick who is waiting at an internet cafe to talk with me?
There's so much stuff out there that is so outright fraudulent, that in my books, I simply refuse to believe that it's possible or safe to pick the wheat from the chaff and identify legit products. Anyone choosing that form of advertising is summarily tuned out as being crap.
If you're marketing your product by unsolicited emails to gazillions of people, at the very best you're an ass, and at the very worst, a complete scam artist. Want to be treated like a legitimate company? Don't act the same as the guys peddling fake prescriptions or just running cash scams.
You simply can't tell the general populace that since maybe 5% of the spam you receive isn't just plain bullshit we should try to give the rest of the benefit of the doubt. The only way to really respond to this is to tell everyone as loudly as possible that they simply should not trust commercial or financial email unless they can 100% verify its source. And, if you're 100% sure you know how to be 100% sure, err on the side of being cautious.
Educating people to not risk falling prey to this shit, and it will go away.
So far, anti spam legislation has been completely toothless. Do you know how many emails I see which claims to be from a company and gives the links to their opt-out that are completely bogus? All it did is tell people how to format their message to look legit.
Really, at this point, who is falling for this stuff?
Seriously? There's a lot of people coming onto the web who have never been there. I was stunned last year when my retired (not computer literate) parents bought a laptop and got a broadband connection.
Increasingly everyone is being told that if you're not on line you're missing out on something. Unfortunately, the sophistication and knowledge required to do this safely belies the ease with which people can connect and then if they don't know anything about such things, they're at risk. People just aren't being made aware of the danger, and don't really understand all of the ways that they can get into trouble.
When my parents first went on-line, I gave them a fairly stern lecture telling them of what to be wary of -- specifically I said don't ever give any identifying information to a site you don't know and trust, and trust almost nothing which comes into your inbox, especially if it's claims to be from a bank or the government. So far, a healthy dose of skepticism about the truth of what's in their inbox has probably served them fairly well.
The world hasn't exhausted its supply of people who just don't know all of the risks and dodgy areas they need to watch out for, and the tools they're using may not be nearly as safe as we'd like. The fact that it's being marketed as easy to do without explaining some of the danger is a contributing factor.
Is there still money in spam, other than the money from selling the spam lists and spam network?
Of course there is, otherwise you wouldn't see it. It only has to have a very small hit rate to be hugely profitable. When you're sending a couple of million emails at a time, the 1% of people who fall for it are plenty enough.
Ok, not trying to be overly critical here, but the bunker was intended to protect people from nukes, not to store nukes. What's with the canada-has-nukes business?
Well, we have one of the few nuclear reactors which is used to make medical isotopes for the world supply. We also have some nuclear power plants.
But, you're right. We don't have those kinds of weapons, and don't want them. Our military has largely had peace-keeping and aid missions for the last few decades.
I'm just amazed that they thought someone would bother nuking Canada. The only people I can think of who would bother are Boston Bruins fans but they would just hit Montreal.
And, even the Bruins fans will recall the Christmas trees we've been sending down for the last 90 years in gratitude for help after the Halifax Explosion.. There's actually a fairly strong bond between Atlantic Canada and the New England states -- a lot of Empire Loyalists left that area to come to Canada after the Civil war. Some of my ancestors included.
But, on a more serious note, Halifax is a sheltered, deep harbour with a Navy base and an air base. Growing up there during the last bits of the cold war, we were all aware of the fact that we were on the list. It was kind of a depressing fact when we were kids and there was more saber rattling.:(
If you've coded, then you're half way there, since you actually understand what the job entails.
Understand what the project is, and understand that you need to be the middle layer between the upper management and the people doing the work so stuff doesn't get out of hand and things don't get promised that can't be made to happen. Handle the scheduling and planning with some degree of skill, and push back if upper management is falling victim to scope creep or is trying to turn the project into a death march.
Too often I've seen some n00b of a PM who really doesn't understand the technical/resourcing issues at hand. After telling them that what they're asking for is ridiculous, out of scope, or downright not achievable I've been overruled so that they could appear to be saying yes to management or the customer. Eventually after that person was canned, I found myself saying "that was never going to be possible" and when I was asked why, I told them in no uncertain terms, and explained the previous person had completely ignored all of the technical advice to the contrary. That got met with completely incredulous stares.
You'll need to be able to rely on your own judgement to know if they're sand bagging or being serious when they tell you a feature can't be done at all or in the timeline you need to do it. The worst thing I've seen is when Marketing gets handed over the reins over a technical product, and then proceeds to make promises from their backside and simply not listen to the technical staff when they object. Unfortunately, some of those people can't be made to understand that the only reasonable response to some requests can only be "no damned way", so they turn the situation into one that's untenable.
We're developers, we're not THAT hard to understand. But, we don't want to deal with too much of the scheduling stuff or fight the bureaucracy, and we don't want to be on the receiving end of some idiot who thinks that can promise a flying car. Treat us with respect, listen to us, bring your own ideas but don't be too focused or limited by them unless this is your subject expertise, and don't turn the situation into a Dilbert cartoon of management by ineptness and intimidation.
If you make it easier to do our jobs without needing to beat down unreasonable demands, and actually do things which help us to move forward in the software cycle, we'll respect you and treat you like one of the team. If you don't, well, we might go all BOFH on you and that stash of animal porn we planted on your laptop will be discovered.;-)
But the stupidity is in his expectation of cashing in on this, not in the trademark being issued, which is what people keep complaining about.
I just have no idea how you can bend the concept of trademark to even consider cashing in on this.
These get used as punctuation, and unless you're specifically using it in a way that interferes with him using this as a trade mark (ie. an identifying brand for your company) I just can't see how he's thinking of making anyone else license this from him. It sounds like he's trying to conflate copyright and trademark into one here.
If he's running a company as "Superfone;-)" then maybe you could argue that "Happyfone;-)" might infringe on this as a trademark. But, there's no other situation I can think of in which trademark applies here.
It's probably just a publicity stunt, really.
Entirely possible, but I've long since stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to such people. The world really is full of weasels hoping to cash in.:-P
Good insight. With my salary a 15 minute loss would be $3000 lost per year. However shutdown time is not something I have to sit and watch, and it doesn't really take 10 minutes to bootup
No, but by the time I open my source-coded control program, my mail, my IM client, the document I was editing, my development environment, my trouble ticket application, my folders to check the nightly builds, and all that other crap, this really would be many minutes of wasted time for me each morning.
An IT mandated policy of turning off the machine every night is going to be about as useful to me as scheduling the antivirus to run at 9am and chew 100% CPU time until noon. This really did happen in our shop, and after they almost got lynched because the AV was eating our entire mornings, they recanted. For a few hours each morning, literally everyone's machine was completely unusable; people were NOT happy.
I have now copyrighted the word 'fuck', and would like to offer it's use to the world for the low, low price of $0.05 USD. Users may buy a volume license of 30 uses for a dollar. Sysadmins may obtain an unlimited license for $20/year.
Fuck! That's fucking fucked, you fucking fucker. How the fuck do you think you can claim any fucking copyright on the use of word fuck?
I'm so confused and amazed at the lack of understand of the difference between a patent, a copyright, and a trademark around these parts. Trademarking something does not mean that no one can ever use it again for any reason at all.
Ah, but here's what I don't get: You can only trademark something for the specific area of business you engage in, and as an identifying mark for your business. And, TFS seems to indicate this trademark was granted by the parent office (which, I assume in Russia is one and the same) and he expects to license it for big cash.
So, in exactly what area of business has he expressly gotten this as a trademark? Internet connections? IM? Document editors? Online forums? Cell phones? Graffiti?
What companies in what specific area of business does this guy wants to charge a "license" to for this ridiculous "trademark"?? Because, I completely fail to see how any of the people he wants to make cough up will be competing with him in terms of his specific trademark? Unless someone is using it as part of a company name or slogan in his specific area of industry, it's essentially punctuation, and therefore irrelevant.
Even the existence of "MS Word" does not preclude from me calling something a "word processor" as that was the industry term for such a product long before "Word" was a specific product. Microsoft can't restrict my use of the English language, merely to have a competing product called "Word". There are limitations on how broad a trademark can be applied, as you've pointed out. I'm just not convinced that as presented, this guy will satisfy any of them.
In short, misconceptions and general lack of understanding of difference between patent and trademarks aside... what is the merit of this guys claim to this and who can he force to license it from him??? Simply using this in the eay emoticons have been always used is not an infringement on his trade rights.
Given that this has been in common usage in email and the like for a very long time (I've been using;-) for at least 15 years now) how in the hell can this be trademarked??
I realize patents have prior art, and we're talking about a Russian institution (from which I'm told you can likely buy anything) -- but how in the hell can a widely used emoticon which likely predates this guy using it in any way shape or form be trademarked??? Isn't this kinda like trademarking "the" or something??
I'm sure he'll be able to extort a little money out of one of the big companies. But, really, this makes no sense whatsoever to me.
The Bears and Elk up in canada cant hold down shift, so using any punctuation in the password will protect the computers from the majority of the animals.
Wait, you're saying that American bears and elk can hold down the shift key?
Still wouldn't keep out the raccoons or squirrels though, those suckers are clever.:-P
These types of mind-controlled prosthesis are just the beginning. When we know how to link mechanical devices to our brains we can start using alternative limbterfaces (just coined that one!) and training ourselves to use those instead of our familiar arms and legs.
I for one welcome our new limbterface overlords.:-P
It might be jarring to start seeing people with strange limb configurations, let alone additions for self gratification -- nobody would shake your hand for instance.
Besides, I should think that having a hand with a hole in it like a vagina would make things like eating smarties difficult. And, who is going to ask their doctor for the Wank-Master 9000 upgrade for their prosthetic? I mean, a vagina in the middle of your palm?
We got them in our office this year. When one broke down (after two days) they had two technicians in working on it for half a day until they just replaced it. When it was open, it had a ridiculous amount of stuff which looks more like it belongs inside of a computer than a coffee maker. It really is a ridiculously over-engineered thing, and it uses coffee in single-pack mylar bags with lots of plastic and other junk.
Never underestimate how much complexity and cost people will put into the pursuit of coffee.
Heck, go price a good quality espresso machine -- it'll set you back more than a big screen TV!!
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, he's got a 4-digit ID on Slashdot and a user name with a reference to Dune ... he already knows he's a geek. :-P
Cheers
Part of the problem is if there's a word to describe what frequently gets called 'irony', most people (including myself) don't know it. You end up with a well-known concept which has no label for it. The closest fit people have adopted is irony.
It would seem that situational irony is what most people are currently using when they say irony.
Got an alternate word, or are you just going to keep saying "oh noes, that's not really irony"?
Cheers
I think it becomes an 'appliance' when it comes already configured and downloadable to you like a black box.
VMware currently hosts some large number here. Like an 'appliance', you plug it in and go without worrying about the fiddly bits.
Of course, if you want to install it all from scratch, go ahead. :-P
Cheers
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
Cheers
So, we're back to disease ridden prostitute then? I'm confused.
Cheers
Moreover, anyone who actually has a 60 petabyte system isn't using it for ripped music. I know people with multiple terabytes at home, but sure as hell not petabytes -- that's still a monstrous data-center level of a system.
Methinks some hyperbole is in that statement. (And, if he *does* have 60PB of storage, I want to know what he's running it on.)
Cheers
No, it's a complete scam, and should be pursued and prosecuted as such.
Horseshit. Penis enlargement? Cialis? A degree without university? Designer goods? Canadian pharmacies dispensing cheap drugs? Some chick who is waiting at an internet cafe to talk with me?
There's so much stuff out there that is so outright fraudulent, that in my books, I simply refuse to believe that it's possible or safe to pick the wheat from the chaff and identify legit products. Anyone choosing that form of advertising is summarily tuned out as being crap.
If you're marketing your product by unsolicited emails to gazillions of people, at the very best you're an ass, and at the very worst, a complete scam artist. Want to be treated like a legitimate company? Don't act the same as the guys peddling fake prescriptions or just running cash scams.
You simply can't tell the general populace that since maybe 5% of the spam you receive isn't just plain bullshit we should try to give the rest of the benefit of the doubt. The only way to really respond to this is to tell everyone as loudly as possible that they simply should not trust commercial or financial email unless they can 100% verify its source. And, if you're 100% sure you know how to be 100% sure, err on the side of being cautious.
Educating people to not risk falling prey to this shit, and it will go away.
So far, anti spam legislation has been completely toothless. Do you know how many emails I see which claims to be from a company and gives the links to their opt-out that are completely bogus? All it did is tell people how to format their message to look legit.
Cheers
Seriously? There's a lot of people coming onto the web who have never been there. I was stunned last year when my retired (not computer literate) parents bought a laptop and got a broadband connection.
Increasingly everyone is being told that if you're not on line you're missing out on something. Unfortunately, the sophistication and knowledge required to do this safely belies the ease with which people can connect and then if they don't know anything about such things, they're at risk. People just aren't being made aware of the danger, and don't really understand all of the ways that they can get into trouble.
When my parents first went on-line, I gave them a fairly stern lecture telling them of what to be wary of -- specifically I said don't ever give any identifying information to a site you don't know and trust, and trust almost nothing which comes into your inbox, especially if it's claims to be from a bank or the government. So far, a healthy dose of skepticism about the truth of what's in their inbox has probably served them fairly well.
The world hasn't exhausted its supply of people who just don't know all of the risks and dodgy areas they need to watch out for, and the tools they're using may not be nearly as safe as we'd like. The fact that it's being marketed as easy to do without explaining some of the danger is a contributing factor.
Of course there is, otherwise you wouldn't see it. It only has to have a very small hit rate to be hugely profitable. When you're sending a couple of million emails at a time, the 1% of people who fall for it are plenty enough.
Cheers
Doh!! My bad. Yes, of course, Revolutionary not Civil war.
Thanks for the correction. :-P
Cheers
Well, we have one of the few nuclear reactors which is used to make medical isotopes for the world supply. We also have some nuclear power plants.
But, you're right. We don't have those kinds of weapons, and don't want them. Our military has largely had peace-keeping and aid missions for the last few decades.
Cheers
And, even the Bruins fans will recall the Christmas trees we've been sending down for the last 90 years in gratitude for help after the Halifax Explosion.. There's actually a fairly strong bond between Atlantic Canada and the New England states -- a lot of Empire Loyalists left that area to come to Canada after the Civil war. Some of my ancestors included.
But, on a more serious note, Halifax is a sheltered, deep harbour with a Navy base and an air base. Growing up there during the last bits of the cold war, we were all aware of the fact that we were on the list. It was kind of a depressing fact when we were kids and there was more saber rattling. :(
Cheers
Badgers???!!! We don' need no steenking badgers. :-P
Cheers
If you've coded, then you're half way there, since you actually understand what the job entails.
Understand what the project is, and understand that you need to be the middle layer between the upper management and the people doing the work so stuff doesn't get out of hand and things don't get promised that can't be made to happen. Handle the scheduling and planning with some degree of skill, and push back if upper management is falling victim to scope creep or is trying to turn the project into a death march.
Too often I've seen some n00b of a PM who really doesn't understand the technical/resourcing issues at hand. After telling them that what they're asking for is ridiculous, out of scope, or downright not achievable I've been overruled so that they could appear to be saying yes to management or the customer. Eventually after that person was canned, I found myself saying "that was never going to be possible" and when I was asked why, I told them in no uncertain terms, and explained the previous person had completely ignored all of the technical advice to the contrary. That got met with completely incredulous stares.
You'll need to be able to rely on your own judgement to know if they're sand bagging or being serious when they tell you a feature can't be done at all or in the timeline you need to do it. The worst thing I've seen is when Marketing gets handed over the reins over a technical product, and then proceeds to make promises from their backside and simply not listen to the technical staff when they object. Unfortunately, some of those people can't be made to understand that the only reasonable response to some requests can only be "no damned way", so they turn the situation into one that's untenable.
We're developers, we're not THAT hard to understand. But, we don't want to deal with too much of the scheduling stuff or fight the bureaucracy, and we don't want to be on the receiving end of some idiot who thinks that can promise a flying car. Treat us with respect, listen to us, bring your own ideas but don't be too focused or limited by them unless this is your subject expertise, and don't turn the situation into a Dilbert cartoon of management by ineptness and intimidation.
If you make it easier to do our jobs without needing to beat down unreasonable demands, and actually do things which help us to move forward in the software cycle, we'll respect you and treat you like one of the team. If you don't, well, we might go all BOFH on you and that stash of animal porn we planted on your laptop will be discovered. ;-)
Cheers
I just have no idea how you can bend the concept of trademark to even consider cashing in on this.
These get used as punctuation, and unless you're specifically using it in a way that interferes with him using this as a trade mark (ie. an identifying brand for your company) I just can't see how he's thinking of making anyone else license this from him. It sounds like he's trying to conflate copyright and trademark into one here.
If he's running a company as "Superfone ;-)" then maybe you could argue that "Happyfone ;-)" might infringe on this as a trademark. But, there's no other situation I can think of in which trademark applies here.
Entirely possible, but I've long since stopped giving the benefit of the doubt to such people. The world really is full of weasels hoping to cash in. :-P
Cheers
No, but by the time I open my source-coded control program, my mail, my IM client, the document I was editing, my development environment, my trouble ticket application, my folders to check the nightly builds, and all that other crap, this really would be many minutes of wasted time for me each morning.
An IT mandated policy of turning off the machine every night is going to be about as useful to me as scheduling the antivirus to run at 9am and chew 100% CPU time until noon. This really did happen in our shop, and after they almost got lynched because the AV was eating our entire mornings, they recanted. For a few hours each morning, literally everyone's machine was completely unusable; people were NOT happy.
Cheers
Fuck! That's fucking fucked, you fucking fucker. How the fuck do you think you can claim any fucking copyright on the use of word fuck?
No $0.40 for you. :-)
Cheers
What, spell bolour with a K? Why didn't I think of that? Silly bunt!
Cheers
Ah, but here's what I don't get: You can only trademark something for the specific area of business you engage in, and as an identifying mark for your business. And, TFS seems to indicate this trademark was granted by the parent office (which, I assume in Russia is one and the same) and he expects to license it for big cash.
So, in exactly what area of business has he expressly gotten this as a trademark? Internet connections? IM? Document editors? Online forums? Cell phones? Graffiti?
What companies in what specific area of business does this guy wants to charge a "license" to for this ridiculous "trademark"?? Because, I completely fail to see how any of the people he wants to make cough up will be competing with him in terms of his specific trademark? Unless someone is using it as part of a company name or slogan in his specific area of industry, it's essentially punctuation, and therefore irrelevant.
Even the existence of "MS Word" does not preclude from me calling something a "word processor" as that was the industry term for such a product long before "Word" was a specific product. Microsoft can't restrict my use of the English language, merely to have a competing product called "Word". There are limitations on how broad a trademark can be applied, as you've pointed out. I'm just not convinced that as presented, this guy will satisfy any of them.
In short, misconceptions and general lack of understanding of difference between patent and trademarks aside ... what is the merit of this guys claim to this and who can he force to license it from him??? Simply using this in the eay emoticons have been always used is not an infringement on his trade rights.
Cheers
Well, there's rather a lengthy waiting time to get it sorted out, but it can be done with some careful planning. :-P
Cheers
Given that this has been in common usage in email and the like for a very long time (I've been using ;-) for at least 15 years now) how in the hell can this be trademarked??
I realize patents have prior art, and we're talking about a Russian institution (from which I'm told you can likely buy anything) -- but how in the hell can a widely used emoticon which likely predates this guy using it in any way shape or form be trademarked??? Isn't this kinda like trademarking "the" or something??
I'm sure he'll be able to extort a little money out of one of the big companies. But, really, this makes no sense whatsoever to me.
Cheers
Wait, you're saying that American bears and elk can hold down the shift key?
Still wouldn't keep out the raccoons or squirrels though, those suckers are clever. :-P
Cheers
I for one welcome our new limbterface overlords. :-P
It might be jarring to start seeing people with strange limb configurations, let alone additions for self gratification -- nobody would shake your hand for instance.
Besides, I should think that having a hand with a hole in it like a vagina would make things like eating smarties difficult. And, who is going to ask their doctor for the Wank-Master 9000 upgrade for their prosthetic? I mean, a vagina in the middle of your palm?
Cheers
Gee, geeks put ridiculous amount of technology into the problem of making a cup of coffee. Film at 11.
I mean, when web cams first came out, people were putting them next to coffee machines to be able to know if there's a pot on.
This isn't exactly a new phenomenon. :-P
Cheers
You've clearly never seen one of these.
We got them in our office this year. When one broke down (after two days) they had two technicians in working on it for half a day until they just replaced it. When it was open, it had a ridiculous amount of stuff which looks more like it belongs inside of a computer than a coffee maker. It really is a ridiculously over-engineered thing, and it uses coffee in single-pack mylar bags with lots of plastic and other junk.
Never underestimate how much complexity and cost people will put into the pursuit of coffee.
Heck, go price a good quality espresso machine -- it'll set you back more than a big screen TV!!
Cheers
Or, masturbate.
Come on, we're all thinking it. ;-)
Cheers