"Sez you. A reasonable person does not think that lindows and windows are the same word."
Read it on the screen? Perhaps not. Hear it spoken verbally? Nope, there's risk there.
"They also do not think the KDE and windows XP look or act the same. They certainly don't confuse the windows logo with the lindows logo."
Have a look at this screenshot here of Lindows. This is what Walmart is showing us. Sorry bud, that looks a LOT like Windows. Frankly, it wouldn't take long for somebody to buy this computer, then buy a Windows app for it not realizing it's not the same thing.
Simple as that. Damage can be done. The worst part is, the brunt of the damage goes to an unsuspecting customer. That's exactly why trademark law exists in the first place.
"Mmm yes. Somebody held a gun to Bill Gates head and forced him to file the lawsuit. Right on buddy."
He could choose between not filing the suit, and voluntarily give up the trademark. Most would agree that's force. Lindows made a very dumb move.
"I can't be the only Slashdotter to have cracked open a dead hard drive. Those magnets are very very strong."
I had a dead hd at work once. I pulled a magnet out of it and flung it across the hall into my friend's cube. It attached to his desk with a lout CLAP! Programmers in a nerdvana programming trance jump pretty high when loud noises erupt from rare earth metals suddenly clinging to their metal desks.
"and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection."
On the flip side, songs have very distinct beats to them. Drum beats in particular. Just earlier today I was in a noisy restaraunt and I was able to identify a song just by the very faint beat I was hearing. That's a lot of information erased/garbled yet still recognizable. just a few spikes here and there.
Can't say I'm all that surprised. Music's a little easier to identify than dialogue in a movie, though.
"Due in no small part to the fact that they're able to create episodes in a week, if need be."
They really surprised me with their quick turnaround on this show. Wasn't it like half a week after the US Gov't took Elian that South Park had a parody of it? I might have the timing a little off, but I remember going "man, didn't that happen just last Saturday? Son of a bitch!"
"There is no way any reasonable person would confuse windows and lindows. Not only are the names different but the products are very much different."
The name is too similar, the product is too similar. How could somebody 'possibly be confused'? Simple. Go to a store that sells computers. Have the salesman show the lovely couple a new computer. They see it, see something that looks vaguely like Windows (hey, it's their first computer, what do they know?), he calls it Lindows but they didn't catch him saying that as opposed to Windows that they hear all the time. They're happy with their new computer, not realizing that it's not Windows. Then they try to go buy a game. Doh. They find out they're not running Windows.
Simple. It's just a start, too. If Lindows wanted to be aggressive that way, they could do worse. That's why Microsoft was forced to sue them. It's an old story, really. Lots of companies have had to go through this. It's not some new ground that Microsoft is breaking.
"No the rules are not simple. Maybe in your head the rules are simple but in the law rules are very complicated. The test is whether a reasonable person would confuse the two. I don't think any judge would decide that a reasonble person would confuse lindows and windows let alone lindows.com and windows.com."
The judge will look at the similarity of the names. Lindows is one letter away from Windows. The judge will look at the similarity of the products. Both are operating systems. The judge will look for evidence of confusion. Weak point there, this happened before Lindows had much time to get into the market. (That and they virtually gave Bill Gates the raspberry.) The judge will look at the customer for this product. If somebody buys a computer with Lindows pre-installed, they aren't likely to know it's not Windows. Or, to put it another way, it would be easy to confuse them. The judge will also look at the intent of using that name. This is where Lindows will bite the big one. They had absolutely no reason to not realize that a product called Windows existed. Worse, they've taunted MS before.
"First of all no damage was done and no damage would have occured."
There was no time for the damage to be done, and frankly you don't know shit about what would have happened otherwise.
" Secondly MS sued because they got sue happy."
They sued because they had to. They have to defend their trademark or risk losing it due to 'abandonment'. Inescapable fact, sorry.
"Not only is this completely inadmissible it's also totally irrelevent."
It is admissable as the judge will look at Lindows' malicious intent.
"The real damage will be done if the judge throws out the trademark, which as I said he has indicated he might. I suspect MS will settle this for big money rather then risk that."
So you say Lindows is doing Microsoft harm, interesting... Palm should be sued while they're at it.
"Of course they did. Nobody is claiming otherwise. It's a perfectly normal name for a linux distribution."... that is trying to intentionally rile up Microsoft in such a way they know they will immediately end up in court.
"Microsoft sues a lot of people. They are a sue happy organization. They sue 16 year olds for gods sake. Everybody at one time or another will draw fire from MS. They are extremely agressive."
I agree that's a true generalization of Microsoft, but in this particular case, they had to. Already proven that earlier.
"They did no such thing."
By calling it Lindows, oh yes they did.
"Why? Just because you hate them? Just because MS hates them? Because they sell linux? Why?"
Because it has a negative effect on Linux's reputation? Because it's a frivilous case? Because it's a waste of a legal battle they won't win?
"MS is a sleazy, unethical, evil corporation. They will do anything at anytime to destroy people and companies they don't like. They recognize no laws, they know no boundries. They will continue to act that way as long as the evil people running it continue to be in charge. The govts are powerless to stop it."
"1) Windows is a legitemate trademark (questionable)."
It already is a legitimate trademark if they earned themselves the little (R) next to their name. That (R) is not something you get just by saying you have it. You have to go through a lengthy application process to get it. When you haven't earned it yet, they use TM instead. If Lindows wanted to fight that trademark, they should have taken MS to court before choosing that name. "Uh well despite them having that (R), we thought it was invalid so we took it anyway full well knowing they were going to drag us to court over it!"
"2) That a reasonable person would confuse lindows with windows."
That has been debated ad-nauseum here. The rules are simple. The name is too similar, the functions of the product are too similar. This is not a high hurdle, it's well established law with many precedents behind it.
"They did no such thing. They went sue happy in europe while the slow and ponderous US legal system was crawling along. That case has not been settled yet."
So they did catch Lindows before any damage was done, but they didn't? Eh? Guess I don't understand what you meant by that. They *have* to be aggressive with trademarks. Everybody does. That's one of the reasons so many less than life-or-death court cases clog up America's court system. If you don't defend your trademark, you risk losing it.
"You were modded up because you defended MS. It's very common on slashdot for the MS trolls to mod each other up."
Sorry, I don't think that's true in this case.
"Lindows did nothing stupid. They chose a name combining linux and windows."
Wrong. They picked that name on purpose. They wouldn't need a whole hell of a lot of common sense to realize they were going to draw Microsoft's fire. Given the CEO's other MS taunts (like putting up a $250,000 reward to hack the XBOX), well frankly that doesn't help their case.
"MS got all uppidy and started suing them all over the world because they have the money and they knew lindows did not."
Lindows ran up to Microsoft and said "Sue me!!!"
"It's the great tragedy of our time."
It's a tragedy that Lindows is even in business.
"The rich sue everybody else into oblivion."
In a general sense, I do agree with this particular statement. Megacorps in general do have too much legal power just by money alone. Though I don't think Microsoft is guilty of being abusive in this particular case, I do happily concede they have done it before.
"So do we have some context, now? You're latching on to arguments that are years old."
Um, no. Linux isn't very wide-spread, especially compared to Windows. Sorry, that statement still stands, and will continue to stand for at least a couple of more years. If it helps, I'm thinking about as a desktop OS. I'm not thinking about servers etc where Linux is inarguably the best choice.
" The alternative is to go buy some install CDs or get the preloaded distribution that comes on these systems."
My rebuttal had to do with the value of this particular distro as it could be pre-bundled with the hardware, kinda like how you'd buy a Mac with all the working pieces ready to go. We agree on this point, too bad you're too busy seeing 'anti-Linux' in everything I say.
"Try to hunt down drivers? Recall that nearly all hardware support comes from the kernel or X."
And the ones that aren't supported are a total pain in the ass to go get downloaded and configured. I know this from experience, not from anecdote.
" You weren't pointing out flaws in what I replied to, though. You were making a snide comment about how few people run linux. Hardly constructive criticism, by my reading."
Snide answer to a snide comment. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Funny thing is, it's not so 'non-constructive'. I'm hesitant to go into more detail, though, as you seem pretty much bent on proving I'm anti-Linux. I don't think you're actually listening to me.
"I wish there was a Snopes for Engineers, where people could ask their questions that have already been answered a hundred times, and not waste everyone's time because they couldn't do a few simple searches and find the answer (which is NO) on their own."
Can you honestly blame people for not wanting to just throw out a $2,000 hunk of plastic? Lighten up, man.
"Should Ask Slashdot be replaced with a form that queries Google?"
No.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong in posting this question to a group of geeks like us. Interesting results can develop, and discussion is usually a good thing. Perhaps people who haven't considered recycling LCDs will be inspired, you never know.
"They were using Windows for about 10+ years before they trademarked it.... Just shows you how much the law has swung in favor of corporations."
Or maybe it shows us that Microsoft had the name long enough to get the trademark. When you're big enough, and have been around long enough, things like this can happen. The laws may very well have softened, but nobody seems to recognize that one of the important factors of this matter is how long Microsoft has had that name for that product.
"Please list how MS was ACTUALLY harmed by the lindows name. Did their profits go down? Did they lose customers? Did they get calls from customers who were confused?"
I guess you missed the part where I said "in a legal sense". Seeing as how Microsoft caught them before they had a chance to do any damage, I can't really answer that question for you.
"BTW: Maybe it's fun to bash ms here but defending poor helpless corporations like MS seems to get the mod points."
Not sure I understand what that statement actually meant. I don't think I was modded up for defending Microsoft, but rather for pointing out how stupidly Lindows went about this.
"why didn't they look at following their own comment about the "W" being all the problem and change it to something like LindOS and say that now it was a completely different name and wouldn't impinge on Microsoft's trademark?"
a.) It could still be phoenetically read as "Lindows".
b.) Microsoft used to have a product called MS-DOS. Not as damning as Windows vs. Lindows, but seeing as how they've already gone to court over having a product name that was too similar, it's easy to imagine that they didn't want to ruffle the feathers of MS's legal team.
"What are these see-through things in most of the outside walls of my house called?"
What's that fruit you're eating? Apple! What's that light coming from outside? The Sun! Who's that chick from the Matrix? The Oracle! Who's your date from last weekend? Palm!
"I think Microsoft's reasoning was "---" stood for "dow", which was still, somehow, theirs... I guess in that case, bleeping out cusswords or saying f--k is the same as just saying / writing them. "
You hit the nail on the head, except it works against the point you were aiming for. Seeing as how Lindows was already established as "Lindows" and the damage was already done (in the legal sense), then --- change really isn't doing anything to alleviate the problem, now is it?
To put it in simpler terms: They probably could have gotten away with Lin---s if they hadn't already gotten into a legal battle over the name "Lindows".
It's fun to bash Microsoft over this matter, afterall it is the 'cool' thing to do here at Slashdot, but the reality is that the CEO of Lindows has intentionally and maliciously made trouble for Microsoft. If the companies' roles in this matter were reversed, the general judgement about who's really guilty wouldn't suddenly change. Microsoft would still be the bad guy.
Slashdot Mirror
"Sez you. A reasonable person does not think that lindows and windows are the same word."
Read it on the screen? Perhaps not. Hear it spoken verbally? Nope, there's risk there.
"They also do not think the KDE and windows XP look or act the same. They certainly don't confuse the windows logo with the lindows logo."
Have a look at this screenshot here of Lindows. This is what Walmart is showing us. Sorry bud, that looks a LOT like Windows. Frankly, it wouldn't take long for somebody to buy this computer, then buy a Windows app for it not realizing it's not the same thing.
Simple as that. Damage can be done. The worst part is, the brunt of the damage goes to an unsuspecting customer. That's exactly why trademark law exists in the first place.
"Mmm yes. Somebody held a gun to Bill Gates head and forced him to file the lawsuit. Right on buddy."
He could choose between not filing the suit, and voluntarily give up the trademark. Most would agree that's force. Lindows made a very dumb move.
.. if there's an Animal House reference to be made here, I can't think of it. Curses.
"Methinks you missed the joke. Watch Back to the Future for the reference."
Methinks you missed my joke. I was trying to imply that he could have negative ping times.
Oh well, if I blew it I blew it.
"I can't be the only Slashdotter to have cracked open a dead hard drive. Those magnets are very very strong."
I had a dead hd at work once. I pulled a magnet out of it and flung it across the hall into my friend's cube. It attached to his desk with a lout CLAP! Programmers in a nerdvana programming trance jump pretty high when loud noises erupt from rare earth metals suddenly clinging to their metal desks.
"Open to suggestions here."
Subspace!!
"whats the use in going past 88 mph anyways?"
You could have ping times that'd make the sysadmin's eyebrows go up.
"and I'm amazed that AT&T can make this happen, given the reduced fidelity of a wireless phone connection."
On the flip side, songs have very distinct beats to them. Drum beats in particular. Just earlier today I was in a noisy restaraunt and I was able to identify a song just by the very faint beat I was hearing. That's a lot of information erased/garbled yet still recognizable. just a few spikes here and there.
Can't say I'm all that surprised. Music's a little easier to identify than dialogue in a movie, though.
"You would think people would be able to survive without food for 90 minutes."
Don't be so dramatic. It's not about being able to survive, it's about comfort. Watching a movie while you're thirsty or hungry actually kinda sucks.
Hehe. The Register has had some fun with this organization name, too.
"Due in no small part to the fact that they're able to create episodes in a week, if need be."
They really surprised me with their quick turnaround on this show. Wasn't it like half a week after the US Gov't took Elian that South Park had a parody of it? I might have the timing a little off, but I remember going "man, didn't that happen just last Saturday? Son of a bitch!"
"There is no way any reasonable person would confuse windows and lindows. Not only are the names different but the products are very much different."
The name is too similar, the product is too similar. How could somebody 'possibly be confused'? Simple. Go to a store that sells computers. Have the salesman show the lovely couple a new computer. They see it, see something that looks vaguely like Windows (hey, it's their first computer, what do they know?), he calls it Lindows but they didn't catch him saying that as opposed to Windows that they hear all the time. They're happy with their new computer, not realizing that it's not Windows. Then they try to go buy a game. Doh. They find out they're not running Windows.
Simple. It's just a start, too. If Lindows wanted to be aggressive that way, they could do worse. That's why Microsoft was forced to sue them. It's an old story, really. Lots of companies have had to go through this. It's not some new ground that Microsoft is breaking.
... Rogue Squadron 3 didn't do so well for Factor 5. Losing money perhaps?
"No the rules are not simple. Maybe in your head the rules are simple but in the law rules are very complicated. The test is whether a reasonable person would confuse the two. I don't think any judge would decide that a reasonble person would confuse lindows and windows let alone lindows.com and windows.com."
... that is trying to intentionally rile up Microsoft in such a way they know they will immediately end up in court.
The judge will look at the similarity of the names. Lindows is one letter away from Windows. The judge will look at the similarity of the products. Both are operating systems. The judge will look for evidence of confusion. Weak point there, this happened before Lindows had much time to get into the market. (That and they virtually gave Bill Gates the raspberry.) The judge will look at the customer for this product. If somebody buys a computer with Lindows pre-installed, they aren't likely to know it's not Windows. Or, to put it another way, it would be easy to confuse them. The judge will also look at the intent of using that name. This is where Lindows will bite the big one. They had absolutely no reason to not realize that a product called Windows existed. Worse, they've taunted MS before.
"First of all no damage was done and no damage would have occured."
There was no time for the damage to be done, and frankly you don't know shit about what would have happened otherwise.
" Secondly MS sued because they got sue happy."
They sued because they had to. They have to defend their trademark or risk losing it due to 'abandonment'. Inescapable fact, sorry.
"Not only is this completely inadmissible it's also totally irrelevent."
It is admissable as the judge will look at Lindows' malicious intent.
"The real damage will be done if the judge throws out the trademark, which as I said he has indicated he might. I suspect MS will settle this for big money rather then risk that."
So you say Lindows is doing Microsoft harm, interesting... Palm should be sued while they're at it.
"Of course they did. Nobody is claiming otherwise. It's a perfectly normal name for a linux distribution."
"Microsoft sues a lot of people. They are a sue happy organization. They sue 16 year olds for gods sake. Everybody at one time or another will draw fire from MS. They are extremely agressive."
I agree that's a true generalization of Microsoft, but in this particular case, they had to. Already proven that earlier.
"They did no such thing."
By calling it Lindows, oh yes they did.
"Why? Just because you hate them? Just because MS hates them? Because they sell linux? Why?"
Because it has a negative effect on Linux's reputation? Because it's a frivilous case? Because it's a waste of a legal battle they won't win?
"MS is a sleazy, unethical, evil corporation. They will do anything at anytime to destroy people and companies they don't like. They recognize no laws, they know no boundries. They will continue to act that way as long as the evil people running it continue to be in charge. The govts are powerless to stop it."
I agree.
"1) Windows is a legitemate trademark (questionable)."
It already is a legitimate trademark if they earned themselves the little (R) next to their name. That (R) is not something you get just by saying you have it. You have to go through a lengthy application process to get it. When you haven't earned it yet, they use TM instead. If Lindows wanted to fight that trademark, they should have taken MS to court before choosing that name. "Uh well despite them having that (R), we thought it was invalid so we took it anyway full well knowing they were going to drag us to court over it!"
"2) That a reasonable person would confuse lindows with windows."
That has been debated ad-nauseum here. The rules are simple. The name is too similar, the functions of the product are too similar. This is not a high hurdle, it's well established law with many precedents behind it.
"They did no such thing. They went sue happy in europe while the slow and ponderous US legal system was crawling along. That case has not been settled yet."
So they did catch Lindows before any damage was done, but they didn't? Eh? Guess I don't understand what you meant by that. They *have* to be aggressive with trademarks. Everybody does. That's one of the reasons so many less than life-or-death court cases clog up America's court system. If you don't defend your trademark, you risk losing it.
"You were modded up because you defended MS. It's very common on slashdot for the MS trolls to mod each other up."
Sorry, I don't think that's true in this case.
"Lindows did nothing stupid. They chose a name combining linux and windows."
Wrong. They picked that name on purpose. They wouldn't need a whole hell of a lot of common sense to realize they were going to draw Microsoft's fire. Given the CEO's other MS taunts (like putting up a $250,000 reward to hack the XBOX), well frankly that doesn't help their case.
"MS got all uppidy and started suing them all over the world because they have the money and they knew lindows did not."
Lindows ran up to Microsoft and said "Sue me!!!"
"It's the great tragedy of our time."
It's a tragedy that Lindows is even in business.
"The rich sue everybody else into oblivion."
In a general sense, I do agree with this particular statement. Megacorps in general do have too much legal power just by money alone. Though I don't think Microsoft is guilty of being abusive in this particular case, I do happily concede they have done it before.
"So do we have some context, now? You're latching on to arguments that are years old."
Um, no. Linux isn't very wide-spread, especially compared to Windows. Sorry, that statement still stands, and will continue to stand for at least a couple of more years. If it helps, I'm thinking about as a desktop OS. I'm not thinking about servers etc where Linux is inarguably the best choice.
" The alternative is to go buy some install CDs or get the preloaded distribution that comes on these systems."
My rebuttal had to do with the value of this particular distro as it could be pre-bundled with the hardware, kinda like how you'd buy a Mac with all the working pieces ready to go. We agree on this point, too bad you're too busy seeing 'anti-Linux' in everything I say.
"Try to hunt down drivers? Recall that nearly all hardware support comes from the kernel or X."
And the ones that aren't supported are a total pain in the ass to go get downloaded and configured. I know this from experience, not from anecdote.
" You weren't pointing out flaws in what I replied to, though. You were making a snide comment about how few people run linux. Hardly constructive criticism, by my reading."
Snide answer to a snide comment. Garbage In, Garbage Out. Funny thing is, it's not so 'non-constructive'. I'm hesitant to go into more detail, though, as you seem pretty much bent on proving I'm anti-Linux. I don't think you're actually listening to me.
"I wish there was a Snopes for Engineers, where people could ask their questions that have already been answered a hundred times, and not waste everyone's time because they couldn't do a few simple searches and find the answer (which is NO) on their own."
Can you honestly blame people for not wanting to just throw out a $2,000 hunk of plastic? Lighten up, man.
"Should Ask Slashdot be replaced with a form that queries Google?"
No.
Seriously, there's nothing wrong in posting this question to a group of geeks like us. Interesting results can develop, and discussion is usually a good thing. Perhaps people who haven't considered recycling LCDs will be inspired, you never know.
Quitcherbitchen.
"They were using Windows for about 10+ years before they trademarked it. ... Just shows you how much the law has swung in favor of corporations."
Or maybe it shows us that Microsoft had the name long enough to get the trademark. When you're big enough, and have been around long enough, things like this can happen. The laws may very well have softened, but nobody seems to recognize that one of the important factors of this matter is how long Microsoft has had that name for that product.
"I'd say Lin--s sounds A LOT like Linus rather than ANYTHING having to do with Microsoft."
That might be true of Lindows wasn't already taken to court over the trademark dispute.
"Please list how MS was ACTUALLY harmed by the lindows name. Did their profits go down? Did they lose customers? Did they get calls from customers who were confused?"
I guess you missed the part where I said "in a legal sense". Seeing as how Microsoft caught them before they had a chance to do any damage, I can't really answer that question for you.
"BTW: Maybe it's fun to bash ms here but defending poor helpless corporations like MS seems to get the mod points."
Not sure I understand what that statement actually meant. I don't think I was modded up for defending Microsoft, but rather for pointing out how stupidly Lindows went about this.
"why didn't they look at following their own comment about the "W" being all the problem and change it to something like LindOS and say that now it was a completely different name and wouldn't impinge on Microsoft's trademark?"
a.) It could still be phoenetically read as "Lindows".
b.) Microsoft used to have a product called MS-DOS. Not as damning as Windows vs. Lindows, but seeing as how they've already gone to court over having a product name that was too similar, it's easy to imagine that they didn't want to ruffle the feathers of MS's legal team.
"Please await *drumroll* LinFire 0.9 any day now.."
What happened to calling it "Linternet Explorer?"
"What are these see-through things in most of the outside walls of my house called?"
What's that fruit you're eating? Apple! What's that light coming from outside? The Sun! Who's that chick from the Matrix? The Oracle! Who's your date from last weekend? Palm!
"I think Microsoft's reasoning was "---" stood for "dow", which was still, somehow, theirs... I guess in that case, bleeping out cusswords or saying f--k is the same as just saying / writing them. "
You hit the nail on the head, except it works against the point you were aiming for. Seeing as how Lindows was already established as "Lindows" and the damage was already done (in the legal sense), then --- change really isn't doing anything to alleviate the problem, now is it?
To put it in simpler terms: They probably could have gotten away with Lin---s if they hadn't already gotten into a legal battle over the name "Lindows".
It's fun to bash Microsoft over this matter, afterall it is the 'cool' thing to do here at Slashdot, but the reality is that the CEO of Lindows has intentionally and maliciously made trouble for Microsoft. If the companies' roles in this matter were reversed, the general judgement about who's really guilty wouldn't suddenly change. Microsoft would still be the bad guy.
"There has been many generations of video cards now .. but the prices doesnt seem to come down that much .."
They have on the older cards.