Yes, you're right. If the people who draft the rules write them poorly, then the loopholes will be exploited. It's more disgust that they left these loopholes; even that these loopholes might have been intentional on the part of some of the original drafters of the process.
Most likely the quorum being half of voting members is a common set of rules for ISO groups. Apparently this has never been a problem in the past...
You can have a trademark all you want, if someone has at least the same "reason" to have a domain, you have no case.
Trademarks are specific to both geography and type of business.
Ferrero lost a case for the domain "kinder.at" (with "kinder" being their trade mark, before German legislation made trademarking common words illegal ("kinder" means "children" in German)) against (IIRC) some youth organisation.
.at is actually Austria, even though German is a common language there it isn't Germany.
is to turn a few of them over to so of the crackers, reverse compile them, and lets see exactly how many bugs there are? In particular, I want to know, were the elections valid.
Assuming you don't want to do something easier than searching for valid elections on these machines. Like looking for honest politicans or extra terrestial intelligence.
ALL have locked handsets to their networks, ALL wanted money to unlock even after the contract period was
up.
The latest of these was Orange two nights ago who wanted £20 to unlock a k800i after 14 months on a 12 month contract.
Even at current exchange rates the US T-Mobile fee is closer to £100 though.
The DaVinci boys are gonna get my money instead...
Exactly there are other alternatives, which does not appear to be the case in the US.
Ideally, if these two people actually invented the technology, then they should get paid for it. If people get paid for inventions, then they are more likely to continue to invent, as are others.
At least this is the theory behind patents existing in the US. AFAIK this has never actually been tested.
A patent allows them to shop the technology around and sell it.
Assuming that anyone wants to buy the "invention" and the patent was correctly awarded in the first place.
Without patents, large companies could steal the technology and there would be no monetary reward for small inventors.
This can easily happen even with patents. Either large company says "see you in court" or they say "you might have a patent, but we have 20 applicable to your invention"...
I think many of us would make the argument, for example, that we have a) used the Internet to discover content that we've later gone on to pay for, but also b) we've also downloaded some content "for free" that really we would have never seen enough value in to pay for anyway (although perhaps we might have, if we could have chosen to pay less for it than was asked). So for certain pieces of content we fall into category A, and category B shouldn't really have much impact on a business - if I wasn't going to pay anyway who cares? The only impact is if the number of people in category A decreases.
Actually there is catagory C. People who would have bought the product it they couldn't get it for free. Those making a fuss about "piracy" insist of assuming that every downloader is in this catagory. What actaully matters is the relative sizes of catagorys A and C. The size of catagory B (probably the actual majority), even the total number of downloaders is simply irrelevent. Only if catagory C is significently larger than catagory A is there an actual "piracy problem".
The rest will avoid stealing if they can. They will however steal if you force them by making the "legitimate" product unusable for them. These are the majority.
The same holds if you make the "legitimate product" over complex/difficult to buy. e.g. Telling people you don't want their money because they live in the wrong country does tend to build good business relations.
big wig life support analysts aren't convinced complicated regenerative systems, especially crops, will actually make for a cheaper lunar or orbital system. The farther you are away from earth, however, the more sense it makes. One could make the argument that we should test crops on the moon for eventual deployment on Mars, but it would be a very expensive experiment.
However it make make less sense if plan on going further away from the Sun. Something like Earth-Sol L4/L5 makes rather more sense here than Mars.
There is a phone company here in Australia called 'Three'. Their logo is the numeral 3.
Typically logos are quite specific pieces of artwork. If they include text the font, font colour, relative size of the text, is part of the definition.
In the UK, Barclays Bank have trademarked the phrase 'hole in the wall' for their ATMs. I'm sure there must be prior art and that they didn't invent the term, but no-one seems to have complained yet.
But they didn't get a trademark on "Cash Machine", "Money Dispenser", "Bank Machine" or even the American "ATM". The phrase they trademarked is something other than a plain langauge description of their business, goods, services, etc. Note that a piece of common vocabulary used outside of it's normal context can be considered a good trademark. e.g. "Amazon" as a book seller. But it probably wouldn't be such a good idea to try and use it as a trademark for boat trips on the Amazon river or a women's athletics team.
I couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
The point of such FUDing is to be as non-specific as possible. If Microsoft made any specific accusation it could be critically evaluated (and quite possibly debunked). The main irony here is that if the "intellectual property" in question is software patents then they are 100% bogus where Ballmar made his announcement.
I am sure in the U.K. that the military trains at least some of their soldiers how to improvise weapons/explosives etc...are they going to arrest those soldiers?
They may well not all be "soldiers". The "Dad's Army" element of the WWII "Home Guard" was partly cover for training people to resist a German invasion. Such things undoubtely continued throughout the "cold war" as well as being relevent to Allied support of the French Resistance.
As long as any country has enemies and those enemies have no armies or nukes, that country will be the target of terrorist attacks.
It isn't even that simple. There are plenty of examples of nation states which do have armies enguaging in (and supporting) terrorist attacks. Terrorists directly attached to armies are typically called "special forces" or "commandos". Goverments also frequently support terrorists for reasons of "plausible denyability", rather unsuprisingly it's the richest and most militarily powerful governments most likely to do this.
But then the last two lots of bombings in the UK failed to go off due to poor workmanship and who knows possibly rubbish instructions.
Assuming you mean the cars containing gas bottles to call these "bombings" is stretching the meaning of the term. On the other hand Miles Cooper did appear capable of building working bombs. But as he is white with links to "animal rights" terrorists. Part of the problem with this "war on terror" hysteria is the authorities "crying wolf", with the help of the mass media. Whilst tending to overlook the "wrong sort" of "terrorists". Whereas in actual fact anti-abortion and animal rights terrorists are probably far more plentiful (and actually dangerous to members of the public) than "Islamists". At least when it comes to Europe and Noth America.
In the UK if you know someone is planning a terrorist operation and fail to report it to the authorities you can find yourself in jail.
Unless those planning it are "the authorities" or those they consider "friendly" in which case you are more likely to find yourself in jail if you do go to the police.
However, since the sort of thing described here is hardly in the interests of national security nor necessary in a democratic society, I fail to see how that exception applies.
All too often "national security" equates to "ensuring that some official does not look like (too much of) an idiot". In some cases this can require several people working full time:)
A police state would go through, say, the government opponent's garden shed and find some sodium chlorate weedkiller, and arrest the opponent on the grounds that this is an ingredient for explosives and useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.
If they don't have a shed just say they have "One of the components of the most powerful binary explosive known". Just don't let on that the other component is antimatter.
America, Australia, Germany, and the UK do not have fully educated citizens. Most in all countries happily trade their freedoms for "security".
Which is even at best a false dicotamy. In many cases handing more power over to "the state" actually reduces the security of the populace.
Making it illegal for someone to posses knowlege in book or document form is the first step in ensuring populace control.
And to make it harder to spot when something is not what it appears to be.
sorry but even If I had a "suicide bomber for dummies" book that was 100% accurate and even had detailed maps on how to blow parliament up and ensure that all within were killed it would NOT help the terrorist Islamic extremists that are the current global bogeymen.
All the other terrorists are probably laughing at this obsession.
There was probably more information useful for bomb-making in my A-level chemistry textbook (which I read at the age of 17) than in the Anarchist's Cookbook. Perhaps we should arrest everyone studying chemistry (and presumably physics, engineering...).
Though it's a wonder how the supposed "Terrorist Doctors" managed to make it into medical school without knowing how to built a working carbomb. (About the only way they were any threat to anyone was by being bad drivers.)
There are words that describe attempting to keep knowledge from the population, and criminalising people just for reading or watching something.
Maybe the government wants to get rid of anyone with enough knowlage to laugh at some of the stupid consipracy theories they have been pushing recently.
And lo- the absurdities continue. How much more of this legalism must we endure before their system implodes?
Maybe the judge is continuing the case in the hope that the plaintiffs will give themselves enough rope to hang themselves, thus he won't be bothered by such cases ever again.
Been to parties that have been busted up because the music was too loud. Never been to a party that was busted up for copyright infringement.
Doubt that whoever complained about the noise would be sued for "copyright infringement", either.
Come to think of it, I better read the license agreement for my sirirus radio. Maybe they specify the number of people who are allowed to be listening to the radio along with me in my car.
Yes, unless I actually want to listen to it, it's more akin to pollution.
Specifically noise pollution...
If I could link to the Canadian farmer being sued by Monsanto because his crops were contaminated by their GM varieties (against his will), I would.
This is probably far more serious since these weeds destroyed his crop and quite possibly his ability to farm the same plant species. Noise pollution from unwanted music typically does not prevent you from listening to music you may want to listen to. Even when you have noise pollution impinging on your own property the law will tend to protect you...
My 14 year old infected her computer the other day when she received a copy of a IM worm that disguised itself as a.zip file and said "here are my new pics".
This probably wouldn't work as well if the likes of Windows didn't use the "extension" to work out what icon to display, then used something akin to/etc/magic to work out what to do with it when you clicked on it. If things were consistent either it would be obviously an executable or clicking on it would generate a message along the lines of "corrupt ZIP file".
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, you're right. If the people who draft the rules write them poorly, then the loopholes will be exploited. It's more disgust that they left these loopholes; even that these loopholes might have been intentional on the part of some of the original drafters of the process.
Most likely the quorum being half of voting members is a common set of rules for ISO groups. Apparently this has never been a problem in the past...
You can have a trademark all you want, if someone has at least the same "reason" to have a domain, you have no case.
Trademarks are specific to both geography and type of business.
Ferrero lost a case for the domain "kinder.at" (with "kinder" being their trade mark, before German legislation made trademarking common words illegal ("kinder" means "children" in German)) against (IIRC) some youth organisation.
.at is actually Austria, even though German is a common language there it isn't Germany.
is to turn a few of them over to so of the crackers, reverse compile them, and lets see exactly how many bugs there are? In particular, I want to know, were the elections valid.
Assuming you don't want to do something easier than searching for valid elections on these machines. Like looking for honest politicans or extra terrestial intelligence.
I don't think the iPhone even has UI to enter a code to unlock the phone.
Hence the need to use "hacks" to unlock this phone.
ALL have locked handsets to their networks, ALL wanted money to unlock even after the contract period was up. The latest of these was Orange two nights ago who wanted £20 to unlock a k800i after 14 months on a 12 month contract.
Even at current exchange rates the US T-Mobile fee is closer to £100 though.
The DaVinci boys are gonna get my money instead...
Exactly there are other alternatives, which does not appear to be the case in the US.
Ideally, if these two people actually invented the technology, then they should get paid for it. If people get paid for inventions, then they are more likely to continue to invent, as are others.
At least this is the theory behind patents existing in the US. AFAIK this has never actually been tested.
A patent allows them to shop the technology around and sell it.
Assuming that anyone wants to buy the "invention" and the patent was correctly awarded in the first place.
Without patents, large companies could steal the technology and there would be no monetary reward for small inventors.
This can easily happen even with patents. Either large company says "see you in court" or they say "you might have a patent, but we have 20 applicable to your invention"...
I think many of us would make the argument, for example, that we have a) used the Internet to discover content that we've later gone on to pay for, but also b) we've also downloaded some content "for free" that really we would have never seen enough value in to pay for anyway (although perhaps we might have, if we could have chosen to pay less for it than was asked). So for certain pieces of content we fall into category A, and category B shouldn't really have much impact on a business - if I wasn't going to pay anyway who cares? The only impact is if the number of people in category A decreases.
Actually there is catagory C. People who would have bought the product it they couldn't get it for free. Those making a fuss about "piracy" insist of assuming that every downloader is in this catagory. What actaully matters is the relative sizes of catagorys A and C. The size of catagory B (probably the actual majority), even the total number of downloaders is simply irrelevent.
Only if catagory C is significently larger than catagory A is there an actual "piracy problem".
The rest will avoid stealing if they can. They will however steal if you force them by making the "legitimate" product unusable for them. These are the majority.
The same holds if you make the "legitimate product" over complex/difficult to buy. e.g. Telling people you don't want their money because they live in the wrong country does tend to build good business relations.
big wig life support analysts aren't convinced complicated regenerative systems, especially crops, will actually make for a cheaper lunar or orbital system. The farther you are away from earth, however, the more sense it makes. One could make the argument that we should test crops on the moon for eventual deployment on Mars, but it would be a very expensive experiment.
However it make make less sense if plan on going further away from the Sun. Something like Earth-Sol L4/L5 makes rather more sense here than Mars.
There is a phone company here in Australia called 'Three'. Their logo is the numeral 3.
Typically logos are quite specific pieces of artwork. If they include text the font, font colour, relative size of the text, is part of the definition.
In the UK, Barclays Bank have trademarked the phrase 'hole in the wall' for their ATMs. I'm sure there must be prior art and that they didn't invent the term, but no-one seems to have complained yet.
But they didn't get a trademark on "Cash Machine", "Money Dispenser", "Bank Machine" or even the American "ATM". The phrase they trademarked is something other than a plain langauge description of their business, goods, services, etc.
Note that a piece of common vocabulary used outside of it's normal context can be considered a good trademark. e.g. "Amazon" as a book seller. But it probably wouldn't be such a good idea to try and use it as a trademark for boat trips on the Amazon river or a women's athletics team.
I couldn't tell from the article, but which intellectual property is MS saying open source solutions are infringing on? Or am I misunderstanding the issue?
The point of such FUDing is to be as non-specific as possible. If Microsoft made any specific accusation it could be critically evaluated (and quite possibly debunked).
The main irony here is that if the "intellectual property" in question is software patents then they are 100% bogus where Ballmar made his announcement.
I am sure in the U.K. that the military trains at least some of their soldiers how to improvise weapons/explosives etc...are they going to arrest those soldiers?
They may well not all be "soldiers". The "Dad's Army" element of the WWII "Home Guard" was partly cover for training people to resist a German invasion. Such things undoubtely continued throughout the "cold war" as well as being relevent to Allied support of the French Resistance.
As long as any country has enemies and those enemies have no armies or nukes, that country will be the target of terrorist attacks.
It isn't even that simple. There are plenty of examples of nation states which do have armies enguaging in (and supporting) terrorist attacks. Terrorists directly attached to armies are typically called "special forces" or "commandos". Goverments also frequently support terrorists for reasons of "plausible denyability", rather unsuprisingly it's the richest and most militarily powerful governments most likely to do this.
But then the last two lots of bombings in the UK failed to go off due to poor workmanship and who knows possibly rubbish instructions.
Assuming you mean the cars containing gas bottles to call these "bombings" is stretching the meaning of the term. On the other hand Miles Cooper did appear capable of building working bombs. But as he is white with links to "animal rights" terrorists.
Part of the problem with this "war on terror" hysteria is the authorities "crying wolf", with the help of the mass media. Whilst tending to overlook the "wrong sort" of "terrorists". Whereas in actual fact anti-abortion and animal rights terrorists are probably far more plentiful (and actually dangerous to members of the public) than "Islamists". At least when it comes to Europe and Noth America.
In the UK if you know someone is planning a terrorist operation and fail to report it to the authorities you can find yourself in jail.
Unless those planning it are "the authorities" or those they consider "friendly" in which case you are more likely to find yourself in jail if you do go to the police.
One thing the headline, summary and article itself don't make clear is that this guy had half a kilo of potassium nitrate,
But no mention of sulpher or carbon. Or indeed anything else you might be able to use together with potassium nitrate to make any kind of explosive.
250g of calcium chloride,
Just as well they didn't look in the kitchen then they might have found sodium chloride even potassium chloride...
However, since the sort of thing described here is hardly in the interests of national security nor necessary in a democratic society, I fail to see how that exception applies.
:)
All too often "national security" equates to "ensuring that some official does not look like (too much of) an idiot". In some cases this can require several people working full time
A police state would go through, say, the government opponent's garden shed and find some sodium chlorate weedkiller, and arrest the opponent on the grounds that this is an ingredient for explosives and useful in the preparation of an act of terrorism.
If they don't have a shed just say they have "One of the components of the most powerful binary explosive known". Just don't let on that the other component is antimatter.
America, Australia, Germany, and the UK do not have fully educated citizens. Most in all countries happily trade their freedoms for "security".
Which is even at best a false dicotamy. In many cases handing more power over to "the state" actually reduces the security of the populace.
Making it illegal for someone to posses knowlege in book or document form is the first step in ensuring populace control.
And to make it harder to spot when something is not what it appears to be.
sorry but even If I had a "suicide bomber for dummies" book that was 100% accurate and even had detailed maps on how to blow parliament up and ensure that all within were killed it would NOT help the terrorist Islamic extremists that are the current global bogeymen.
All the other terrorists are probably laughing at this obsession.
There was probably more information useful for bomb-making in my A-level chemistry textbook (which I read at the age of 17) than in the Anarchist's Cookbook. Perhaps we should arrest everyone studying chemistry (and presumably physics, engineering...).
Though it's a wonder how the supposed "Terrorist Doctors" managed to make it into medical school without knowing how to built a working carbomb. (About the only way they were any threat to anyone was by being bad drivers.)
There are words that describe attempting to keep knowledge from the population, and criminalising people just for reading or watching something.
Maybe the government wants to get rid of anyone with enough knowlage to laugh at some of the stupid consipracy theories they have been pushing recently.
And lo- the absurdities continue. How much more of this legalism must we endure before their system implodes?
Maybe the judge is continuing the case in the hope that the plaintiffs will give themselves enough rope to hang themselves, thus he won't be bothered by such cases ever again.
Been to parties that have been busted up because the music was too loud. Never been to a party that was busted up for copyright infringement.
Doubt that whoever complained about the noise would be sued for "copyright infringement", either.
Come to think of it, I better read the license agreement for my sirirus radio. Maybe they specify the number of people who are allowed to be listening to the radio along with me in my car.
As well as your Hi-Fi, TV, etc, etc.
Yes, unless I actually want to listen to it, it's more akin to pollution.
Specifically noise pollution...
If I could link to the Canadian farmer being sued by Monsanto because his crops were contaminated by their GM varieties (against his will), I would.
This is probably far more serious since these weeds destroyed his crop and quite possibly his ability to farm the same plant species. Noise pollution from unwanted music typically does not prevent you from listening to music you may want to listen to. Even when you have noise pollution impinging on your own property the law will tend to protect you...
It's unavoidable in Windows to use the Registry.
It's perfectly possible for an application to ignore the registry. There's also a rather long list of Windows applications which mis-use the registry.
My 14 year old infected her computer the other day when she received a copy of a IM worm that disguised itself as a .zip file and said "here are my new pics".
/etc/magic to work out what to do with it when you clicked on it. If things were consistent either it would be obviously an executable or clicking on it would generate a message along the lines of "corrupt ZIP file".
This probably wouldn't work as well if the likes of Windows didn't use the "extension" to work out what icon to display, then used something akin to