It's too bad you posted anonymously because you might have learned something about trademarks otherwise. You can in fact lose a trademark. The article Losing Trademark Rights by Saleem Erakat explains how this can occour.
I was specifically referring to generecide which essentially means you can lose your trademark if your trademark becomes the generic description for the class of products. Xerox for example, launched a major add campaign during the early 80s (I think I got that era right) pushing people to call a photocopy a copy and not a xerox for the sole purpose of protecting their copyright. The article I cited above indicates that Kleenex, your example, has in fact lost its trademark... but I haven't verified that w/ a third party.
You were most likely thinking of patent law, in which prior art comes to bear on the validity of the patent. Or you have an incomplete understanding of trademark law. In either case, you're an ass for thinking you knew more than you did.
One alternative would be to embrace the idea of calling an OS "windows". This would make the name common place and could eliminate Microsoft's trademark. All we have to do is get everyone to subsitute "Windows" for "OS"... and since that will not happen I vote for "Bill Gates is a Jerk", not because it's true, but because it catchy.
You're assuming they actually count the emails, which they may, and could. But it's very possible that the policy was simply put in place to smack spammers when they cause trouble. For example outbound spam increases the load on one of their SMTP servers enough to generate a threshold ticket to their NOC, which they investigate, identify the cause as spam, identify the user and send them an email saying... oh look you've violated our policy we're shutting down your account. By setting the email per minute ratio so low they don't have to worry about nitpicking over the details of how many emails where actually sent, because any spammer who would cause them a problem is going to seriously exceed the threshold.
I like the technical approach to calculating normal email patterns though, it's MUCH more interesting.
I agree. This is just a policy change to make it easier to deal with real spammers. By lowering the threshold so low, any real spammer will be in clear violation of the policy and BigPond can avoid bickering over the details of how many hundreds of messages were sent in such a short period of time. I doubt they'll even really investigate the lower threshold abusers simply because it would be way too much work.
By reducing traditional advertising effectiveness Tivo will help usher in on-demand content and hopefully a diversity of unique and specialized (although less extravagent) programming. Broadcasters will have to make the up the advertising revenue shortfalls by passing the costs along to viewers, and the only way viewers are going to shell out their cash is if the content is worth watching. So expect more premium channels with focused audience types and unique on-demand options that allow broadcasters to get more of your money.
It's probably a good thing the "Friends" are getting out while the getting is good. In a few years they may only make a several-hundred thousand dollars an episode as opposed to the million they make todays. The horror!!
This is an easy fix. We need to deploy an orbital system of powerful and precise laser and missle weapons to take care of all of that space junk... and anything else that gets in the way of our domination of space... muhahahah!
So would anyone take a shot at actually specifying the hardware and cost for a 1 Petabyte system? Include HDs, systems, # of racks, (don't forget the switches for the network). Assume no RAID.
Well... this would be a STAN (storage tank area network). See, the key difference is that this technology combines the data into a "tank" and the SAN doesn't. Sorry for having to use all this technical jargon.
- Let these kids wear their tinfoil hats. - I for one welcome our new wi-fi overlords. - In Soviet Russia Wi-Fi networks sue your parents.
And bold enough to strike out on my own.
Everyone knows that the public school system is under the control of a secret government mind control program, which is secretly under control of a group of European wealth mongers known as the pentaverit, which in turn is secretly under the control of an alien super-species. Obviously Wi-Fi is a mind control tool, devised to poison the minds of our youth and make them slaves to the government-pentaverit-alien super species overlords. So I say, stop going to school and start watching more television and playing more video games.
I have a Comcast cable modem in metro Atlanta and just received a notice that my service would be upgraded to 3Mb/s download from the ~1.4Mb/s that it currently is. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me and I don't see any strings attached at this point.
As my straw man has been burned to the ground... I'll step back and take another shot at this.
Let me acknowledge a few of points that I consider to be excellent.
The definition of SPAM as unsolicited bulk mail... um yeah I should have known that... and that answered most of my questions (rants).
hankaholic's response to this post about moderation in legislation was on target. I agree that legislation banning forging one's identity would be of value and doesn't at first glance appear to be overly broad. Also, legislation against fraud should be applied or expanded to take care of those who use email to engage in fraudalent activities.
Now to clarify and expand of my original points, with what is hopefully a more controlled tone.
SPAMing is a business based on the idea that by sending out 10s of thousands of emails you'll end up w/ a few people who actually buy the product. The ratio of takers to receivers is something like.1% or less. By adding filters you don't immediatly resolve the underlying problem (receiving the spam), but the costs for the spammer are driven up. As the ratio of suckers to recievers drops spammers make less money and eventually the whole enterprise becomes less profitable than some other alternative means of "marketing".
If legislation were to be used it would need to sufficiently clear and limited as to avoid penalizing individuals who SPAM in ignorance, not for harmful or business purposes. For example someone who forwards a lame joke onto their acquaintances should not be subject to legal action (annoying as it may be). Also, unsolicited should be qualified to ensure that a business that received permission to send email to an email address is not penalized if that email address changes hands and the new owner never authorized the receipt of email (how is the business to know the email address changed hands?).
Legislation that mandated opt. out options for SPAM and that mandated that the user's privacy was protected during the opt out policy might be acceptable, with very harsh penalties for violation of one's privacy rights.
So the end solution may in fact look like a combination of technology and legislation that delicately extends existing law into the realm of the Internet.
Thanks for burning the straw man, and by the way... watch your tone;)
Bulk emailing, like any business is a numbers game. By significantly decreasing the # of successful responses to a set of SPAM (through filters) the business costs remain the same w/ the returns dropping. Eventually the business is no longer feasible.
[INCREASE TONE] SPAM absolutely does not need to be fought in the courts when the markets can work this out on their own (as we see w/ these filters). In the end we'll have better technology for sorting and filtering emails which can be applied to other applications and the spammers will be gone or significantly reduced.
[BREATHE... BREATHE...] Legislation would only be valid in the country in which the legislation was enacted so spammers could simply move their operations to a SPAM friendly country.
[GRADUALLY INCREASE TONE] Also, what constitues spam? What if I only send 10,000 emails out? What if I change the email each time I send it so it's unique to you? What if I'm not selling anything? What if someone comrpomised my system and sent all the emails from my PC? Why shouldn' ISPs be liable too... yeah, why are they letting people send those SPAMs... let's sue them too... somebody get a rope!!
[BEGIN ALL OUT RANT!] So the moral of the story is... everyone remain calm... keep working on your filters and other new technologies... and soon we'll have fewer spammers and better tech and some intelligent hacker out there will have a whole heap load of cash for coming up w/ the solution.
Of course w/ all of the existing hideous legislation we have today... SCO may announce that they are diversifying into bulk emailing and that they have a patent on any spam filtering algorythms and therefore if you ever remove any of their emails you must send them a $699 licensing fee for the use of their IP.
I agree that reliability is a key component of the cost/value equation. One addition I'd make to your comments is that these licensing policies drive up the total cost of owning the hardware so if their is a competitive product out their... it's worth taking a good hard look at. Of course this is a moot point if the you need a Cisco feature that the competition doesn't provide.
The 6500 is a rock solid core switch platform (and you pay for it). Since we're talking about Cisco though it's worth mentioning that Foundry Networks and Extreme Networks both have good quality equipment and in some cases can be used in place of the 6500.
Your argument was valid during the boom, but controlling and reducing costs has taken a much more important roll in decision making in today's economy. You would be just as susceptible to getting canned (or at least getting dinged on your next performance evaluation) if you have to tell your boss that he/she can't recoup any of their investment in the hardware.
The real question is when will this danged turtle die or the one underneath him or the one underneath him? With turtles all the way down... my gosh it could be immanent! How can anyone sleep soundly w/ that on their mind?
Yes, this point has been made over and over and over and over again. But hey it really is a great point, although it's not nearly as damning as the fact that SCO released the Caldera Linux distribution under the GPL. Now that's a good point!
You're a troll... but nonetheless... will BSD be free from future claims. The SCO issue itself isn't too much of a big deal. The real problem is the susceptibility of collaborative open source products to IP infringement.
Slashdot Mirror
It's too bad you posted anonymously because you might have learned something about trademarks otherwise. You can in fact lose a trademark. The article Losing Trademark Rights by Saleem Erakat explains how this can occour.
I was specifically referring to generecide which essentially means you can lose your trademark if your trademark becomes the generic description for the class of products. Xerox for example, launched a major add campaign during the early 80s (I think I got that era right) pushing people to call a photocopy a copy and not a xerox for the sole purpose of protecting their copyright. The article I cited above indicates that Kleenex, your example, has in fact lost its trademark... but I haven't verified that w/ a third party.
You were most likely thinking of patent law, in which prior art comes to bear on the validity of the patent. Or you have an incomplete understanding of trademark law. In either case, you're an ass for thinking you knew more than you did.
One alternative would be to embrace the idea of calling an OS "windows". This would make the name common place and could eliminate Microsoft's trademark. All we have to do is get everyone to subsitute "Windows" for "OS"... and since that will not happen I vote for "Bill Gates is a Jerk", not because it's true, but because it catchy.
Microsoft does provide free online support via their online Knowledge Base. Sun will no doubt provide something very similar.
You're assuming they actually count the emails, which they may, and could. But it's very possible that the policy was simply put in place to smack spammers when they cause trouble. For example outbound spam increases the load on one of their SMTP servers enough to generate a threshold ticket to their NOC, which they investigate, identify the cause as spam, identify the user and send them an email saying... oh look you've violated our policy we're shutting down your account. By setting the email per minute ratio so low they don't have to worry about nitpicking over the details of how many emails where actually sent, because any spammer who would cause them a problem is going to seriously exceed the threshold.
I like the technical approach to calculating normal email patterns though, it's MUCH more interesting.
I agree. This is just a policy change to make it easier to deal with real spammers. By lowering the threshold so low, any real spammer will be in clear violation of the policy and BigPond can avoid bickering over the details of how many hundreds of messages were sent in such a short period of time. I doubt they'll even really investigate the lower threshold abusers simply because it would be way too much work.
By reducing traditional advertising effectiveness Tivo will help usher in on-demand content and hopefully a diversity of unique and specialized (although less extravagent) programming. Broadcasters will have to make the up the advertising revenue shortfalls by passing the costs along to viewers, and the only way viewers are going to shell out their cash is if the content is worth watching. So expect more premium channels with focused audience types and unique on-demand options that allow broadcasters to get more of your money.
It's probably a good thing the "Friends" are getting out while the getting is good. In a few years they may only make a several-hundred thousand dollars an episode as opposed to the million they make todays. The horror!!
This is an easy fix. We need to deploy an orbital system of powerful and precise laser and missle weapons to take care of all of that space junk... and anything else that gets in the way of our domination of space... muhahahah!
Umabomer? Is that one of the villians in Kill Bill Vol. 2?
So would anyone take a shot at actually specifying the hardware and cost for a 1 Petabyte system? Include HDs, systems, # of racks, (don't forget the switches for the network). Assume no RAID.
But do they have a "tank"? That's the real question here.
Well... this would be a STAN (storage tank area network). See, the key difference is that this technology combines the data into a "tank" and the SAN doesn't. Sorry for having to use all this technical jargon.
Please use SVG to describe the field and location of the players.
- Let these kids wear their tinfoil hats.
- I for one welcome our new wi-fi overlords.
- In Soviet Russia Wi-Fi networks sue your parents.
And bold enough to strike out on my own.
Everyone knows that the public school system is under the control of a secret government mind control program, which is secretly under control of a group of European wealth mongers known as the pentaverit, which in turn is secretly under the control of an alien super-species. Obviously Wi-Fi is a mind control tool, devised to poison the minds of our youth and make them slaves to the government-pentaverit-alien super species overlords. So I say, stop going to school and start watching more television and playing more video games.
Who are these moderators? This one is WAY too obvious...
Sun was founded in 1982... see Sun's website
Bruce Perens worked for HP... see article here
The Checkpoint firewall is not a Sun product... see Checkpoint Software Technologies
I have a Comcast cable modem in metro Atlanta and just received a notice that my service would be upgraded to 3Mb/s download from the ~1.4Mb/s that it currently is. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me and I don't see any strings attached at this point.
Everyone knows that once the robots have you in their grasp you cannot escape... because their made of metal.
If the MPAA had their way..
I don't know why C/C++ have such a strangle hold on the software market?
What... no laughter?
Let me acknowledge a few of points that I consider to be excellent.
Now to clarify and expand of my original points, with what is hopefully a more controlled tone.
SPAMing is a business based on the idea that by sending out 10s of thousands of emails you'll end up w/ a few people who actually buy the product. The ratio of takers to receivers is something like
If legislation were to be used it would need to sufficiently clear and limited as to avoid penalizing individuals who SPAM in ignorance, not for harmful or business purposes. For example someone who forwards a lame joke onto their acquaintances should not be subject to legal action (annoying as it may be). Also, unsolicited should be qualified to ensure that a business that received permission to send email to an email address is not penalized if that email address changes hands and the new owner never authorized the receipt of email (how is the business to know the email address changed hands?).
Legislation that mandated opt. out options for SPAM and that mandated that the user's privacy was protected during the opt out policy might be acceptable, with very harsh penalties for violation of one's privacy rights.
So the end solution may in fact look like a combination of technology and legislation that delicately extends existing law into the realm of the Internet.
Thanks for burning the straw man, and by the way... watch your tone
Bulk emailing, like any business is a numbers game. By significantly decreasing the # of successful responses to a set of SPAM (through filters) the business costs remain the same w/ the returns dropping. Eventually the business is no longer feasible.
[INCREASE TONE]
SPAM absolutely does not need to be fought in the courts when the markets can work this out on their own (as we see w/ these filters). In the end we'll have better technology for sorting and filtering emails which can be applied to other applications and the spammers will be gone or significantly reduced.
[BREATHE... BREATHE...]
Legislation would only be valid in the country in which the legislation was enacted so spammers could simply move their operations to a SPAM friendly country.
[GRADUALLY INCREASE TONE]
Also, what constitues spam? What if I only send 10,000 emails out? What if I change the email each time I send it so it's unique to you? What if I'm not selling anything? What if someone comrpomised my system and sent all the emails from my PC? Why shouldn' ISPs be liable too... yeah, why are they letting people send those SPAMs... let's sue them too... somebody get a rope!!
[BEGIN ALL OUT RANT!]
So the moral of the story is... everyone remain calm... keep working on your filters and other new technologies... and soon we'll have fewer spammers and better tech and some intelligent hacker out there will have a whole heap load of cash for coming up w/ the solution.
Of course w/ all of the existing hideous legislation we have today... SCO may announce that they are diversifying into bulk emailing and that they have a patent on any spam filtering algorythms and therefore if you ever remove any of their emails you must send them a $699 licensing fee for the use of their IP.
I agree that reliability is a key component of the cost/value equation. One addition I'd make to your comments is that these licensing policies drive up the total cost of owning the hardware so if their is a competitive product out their... it's worth taking a good hard look at. Of course this is a moot point if the you need a Cisco feature that the competition doesn't provide.
The 6500 is a rock solid core switch platform (and you pay for it). Since we're talking about Cisco though it's worth mentioning that Foundry Networks and Extreme Networks both have good quality equipment and in some cases can be used in place of the 6500.
Your argument was valid during the boom, but controlling and reducing costs has taken a much more important roll in decision making in today's economy. You would be just as susceptible to getting canned (or at least getting dinged on your next performance evaluation) if you have to tell your boss that he/she can't recoup any of their investment in the hardware.
The real question is when will this danged turtle die or the one underneath him or the one underneath him? With turtles all the way down... my gosh it could be immanent! How can anyone sleep soundly w/ that on their mind?
Yes, this point has been made over and over and over and over again. But hey it really is a great point, although it's not nearly as damning as the fact that SCO released the Caldera Linux distribution under the GPL. Now that's a good point!
You're a troll... but nonetheless... will BSD be free from future claims. The SCO issue itself isn't too much of a big deal. The real problem is the susceptibility of collaborative open source products to IP infringement.