This year's Super Bowl, Apple is skipping the product ad and going political. It's going to be a remake of the 1984 ad, only with a different face on the screen. And this time, the babe gets caught by security before smashing the screen. At the end, the head of the security forces pulls off his helmet to reveal:
If you ask for a "Pepsi", they're perfectly free to offer you a "Coke" instead, without infringing on the Pepsi trademark. Assuming they actually bring you a Coca-Cola brand soft drink, they aren't infringing on that trademark either.
How is this different? The searcher asked for "Penthouse" and (figuratively) got asked "wouldn't you rather have 'Big-uns' instead?". If the ad or link for "Big-uns" was confusingly similar to "Penthouse", the suit should be against them, not the search engine.
Case 10: OS X
Apple wanted to have a solid, memory-protected, pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-processor friendly operating system. Their existing code base was a hodgepodge, some of it still in 68000 assembler and running in emulation. It was written for a single processor system with no memory protection, now supporting co-operative multitasking through the extension of a hack.
Apple REALLY didn't want to rewrite this, angering developers and taking a lot of their time. So they tried to bring their current code base up to standard. They failed. Several times. Sometimes code really IS too crufty to save, and a rewrite is necessary. Whether Joel Spolsky thinks so or not.
They fired you AFTER you resigned? And now they're claiming you were fired for "Gross Misconduct"? Make a federal case out of it with the NLRB... them firing you after you resigned ought to be persuasive.
Actually there's a lot of stuff which looks unobvious or novel AFTER the fact. As in it provokes the reaction "I never would have thought of that".
The idea of writing a new directory to a drive to make a file look deleted doesn't cut it. Not in 1995 anyway. Nor does the idea of making a CD image in memory or on the hard drive which looks like a CD -- if you remember back before CD burners, you'd do exactly that on a hard drive, then send the entire hard drive in to a company which would make a master and press it. Skipping the part about mailing it in is certainly an obvious extension once you have the CD burner,
If this is the same levy as before, it only applies to _blank_ media. That is, media without any sounds on it. So the iPod in Canada could just come with a copy of "Steve Jobs Sings" prerecorded, and no levy.
They don't. All they need to do, as another poster pointed out, is make ONE image, using some already licensed device. Such as a PC running Windows. Then they can create all their preformatted cards by block-copying the card made with the licensed device. Even if the patents are airtight, there's no claim to be made here.
RTFA:
"In most cases, a perfect digital copy is unnecessary; many DVD-copying applications make good-enough copies--copies that users can't tell from the originals--from analog outputs. "
"Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled on DVD protection, stating that publishing trade secrets circumvents protection schemes as covered under the DMCA. "
I don't remember any such ruling. I remember a DMCA ruling from the 2nd Circuit, and a trade secret ruling from the California Supreme Court, but no US Supreme Court ruling at all. Anyone know if this is confusion on the part of the author, or if there really was such a ruling?
It's a portable lamp, hung by some of the cables. If it's got the usual 100W bulb in it, it easily gets hot enough when on to melt the cable insulation, too. All part of the atmosphere, I suppose.
1) The clause forbidding you from modifying and making derivatives of the specification. Well, certainly, the specification is copyrightable and MS is within their rights to make this demand. Any reverse-engineered description of the file format would not be covered by this clause
2) The part claiming various restrictions on implementing the specifications. This one's just plain strange. MS doesn't say they've patented the format. Nor do they say that they haven't. They simply suggest that they _might_ have. And if you want to be covered if they have, you've got to accept their terms. Which include not mentioning their name, no sublicensing, including the clause, etc.
IF they have a valid patent, they can enforce this. They can enforce it even if you never looked at the specification. Even if the format was reverse-engineered by a couple of guys from Elbonia who'd never heard of Microsoft until you showed them the files. Wouldn't matter -- if you wanted to read&write Word files, it'd be their way, or the highway.
If, on the other hand, they don't have a valid patent, you can read their specification and implement away. As long as you don't incorporate the spec into your work, copyright can't prevent you from writing an implementation. You can claim compatibility with Microsoft Word or Office (under trademark fair use). You don't have to include any verbiage of theirs. You can print out their license with nontoxic inks on soft paper and use it as it is best intended.
So which is it? Well, Microsoft isn't referring to any particular patent number, so I suspect their license is 95% FUD. The other 5% is that they probably have an application in with the USPTO which covers some either obvious, overbroad, or non-novel things in the Word file format, which will probably be approved because the USPTO approves everything. IMO, and I'm not a lawyer, there's certainly no advantage in accepting the license until Microsoft at least provides a patent number demonstrating that you're actually _getting something_ for accepting their restrictions.
Of course there's a first amendment right to distribute trade secrets. Not to obtain them, perhaps, but to distribute them once you have them falls quite definitely under freedom of speech and/or of the press.
The Diebold case really is a copyright case (one which reveals one of the many problems with copyright in general, though) and not really relevant.
Best Buy is claiming a copyright on uncopyrightable information in order to take advantage of procedures which are not available in trade secret cases. About the only way that crap is going to stop is if someone stands up to them and refuses to remove the information, and gets sued, and wins. Not likely to happen because of the unevenness of the stakes (getting bankrupted versus not getting to censor prices) and the unevenness of the "war chest" (Best Buy: millions, threatened sites: diddlysquat).
Slashdot Mirror
Already been done. "Smurfing" is sending an ICMP echo packet with a forged source address to a broadcast address.
Informative? The Imperial fluid ounce is not the same as the US fluid ounce. 1 fl. oz (US) = 1.0408 fl oz (UK)
That's an HETLA.
17 USC 512 doesn't codify a cease-and-desist. It hands out the power of a temporary restraining order to copyright holders.
Eat right, exercise regularly, die anyway. (As for the NYT, they're indexed by Google, hint, hint)
This year's Super Bowl, Apple is skipping the product ad and going political. It's going to be a remake of the 1984 ad, only with a different face on the screen. And this time, the babe gets caught by security before smashing the screen. At the end, the head of the security forces pulls off his helmet to reveal:
"John Ashcroft. Why 2004 WILL be like _1984_"
If you ask for a "Pepsi", they're perfectly free to offer you a "Coke" instead, without infringing on the Pepsi trademark. Assuming they actually bring you a Coca-Cola brand soft drink, they aren't infringing on that trademark either.
How is this different? The searcher asked for "Penthouse" and (figuratively) got asked "wouldn't you rather have 'Big-uns' instead?". If the ad or link for "Big-uns" was confusingly similar to "Penthouse", the suit should be against them, not the search engine.
Case 10: OS X Apple wanted to have a solid, memory-protected, pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-processor friendly operating system. Their existing code base was a hodgepodge, some of it still in 68000 assembler and running in emulation. It was written for a single processor system with no memory protection, now supporting co-operative multitasking through the extension of a hack. Apple REALLY didn't want to rewrite this, angering developers and taking a lot of their time. So they tried to bring their current code base up to standard. They failed. Several times. Sometimes code really IS too crufty to save, and a rewrite is necessary. Whether Joel Spolsky thinks so or not.
17 USC 1201: Write a DVD player, go to jail.
They fired you AFTER you resigned? And now they're claiming you were fired for "Gross Misconduct"? Make a federal case out of it with the NLRB... them firing you after you resigned ought to be persuasive.
Unfortunately, most of these bad patents are broad enough that they essentially patent the goal rather than the technique.
Actually there's a lot of stuff which looks unobvious or novel AFTER the fact. As in it provokes the reaction "I never would have thought of that".
The idea of writing a new directory to a drive to make a file look deleted doesn't cut it. Not in 1995 anyway. Nor does the idea of making a CD image in memory or on the hard drive which looks like a CD -- if you remember back before CD burners, you'd do exactly that on a hard drive, then send the entire hard drive in to a company which would make a master and press it. Skipping the part about mailing it in is certainly an obvious extension once you have the CD burner,
If this is the same levy as before, it only applies to _blank_ media. That is, media without any sounds on it. So the iPod in Canada could just come with a copy of "Steve Jobs Sings" prerecorded, and no levy.
They don't. All they need to do, as another poster pointed out, is make ONE image, using some already licensed device. Such as a PC running Windows. Then they can create all their preformatted cards by block-copying the card made with the licensed device. Even if the patents are airtight, there's no claim to be made here.
ATMs _are_ mission critical. They aren't life critical.
RTFA: "In most cases, a perfect digital copy is unnecessary; many DVD-copying applications make good-enough copies--copies that users can't tell from the originals--from analog outputs. "
From the article:
"Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled on DVD protection, stating that publishing trade secrets circumvents protection schemes as covered under the DMCA. "
I don't remember any such ruling. I remember a DMCA ruling from the 2nd Circuit, and a trade secret ruling from the California Supreme Court, but no US Supreme Court ruling at all. Anyone know if this is confusion on the part of the author, or if there really was such a ruling?
I suggest Viking/thrall.
Screw that. If enough hackers (old sense) pick a different word, they'll steal that one to mean something bad too.
(But then again, "hacker" never really did have the squeaky-clean meaning current self-described white-hats assign to it.)
It's a portable lamp, hung by some of the cables. If it's got the usual 100W bulb in it, it easily gets hot enough when on to melt the cable insulation, too. All part of the atmosphere, I suppose.
And the best part about it is this is a new source of registration-not-required New York Times links.
There's a couple issues here:
1) The clause forbidding you from modifying and making derivatives of the specification. Well, certainly, the specification is copyrightable and MS is within their rights to make this demand. Any reverse-engineered description of the file format would not be covered by this clause
2) The part claiming various restrictions on implementing the specifications. This one's just plain strange. MS doesn't say they've patented the format. Nor do they say that they haven't. They simply suggest that they _might_ have. And if you want to be covered if they have, you've got to accept their terms. Which include not mentioning their name, no sublicensing, including the clause, etc.
IF they have a valid patent, they can enforce this. They can enforce it even if you never looked at the specification. Even if the format was reverse-engineered by a couple of guys from Elbonia who'd never heard of Microsoft until you showed them the files. Wouldn't matter -- if you wanted to read&write Word files, it'd be their way, or the highway.
If, on the other hand, they don't have a valid patent, you can read their specification and implement away. As long as you don't incorporate the spec into your work, copyright can't prevent you from writing an implementation. You can claim compatibility with Microsoft Word or Office (under trademark fair use). You don't have to include any verbiage of theirs. You can print out their license with nontoxic inks on soft paper and use it as it is best intended.
So which is it? Well, Microsoft isn't referring to any particular patent number, so I suspect their license is 95% FUD. The other 5% is that they probably have an application in with the USPTO which covers some either obvious, overbroad, or non-novel things in the Word file format, which will probably be approved because the USPTO approves everything. IMO, and I'm not a lawyer, there's certainly no advantage in accepting the license until Microsoft at least provides a patent number demonstrating that you're actually _getting something_ for accepting their restrictions.
Of course there's a first amendment right to distribute trade secrets. Not to obtain them, perhaps, but to distribute them once you have them falls quite definitely under freedom of speech and/or of the press.
The Diebold case really is a copyright case (one which reveals one of the many problems with copyright in general, though) and not really relevant.
Best Buy is claiming a copyright on uncopyrightable information in order to take advantage of procedures which are not available in trade secret cases. About the only way that crap is going to stop is if someone stands up to them and refuses to remove the information, and gets sued, and wins. Not likely to happen because of the unevenness of the stakes (getting bankrupted versus not getting to censor prices) and the unevenness of the "war chest" (Best Buy: millions, threatened sites: diddlysquat).
They don't use the trade secret law for two reasons
1) No automatic DMCA gag order. They can send a cease-and-desist, but FatWallet obtains no protection by obeying it, so they have no reason to do so.
2) Trade secrets aren't mentioned in the Constitution, so if they were to try to sue, the First Amendment might just get in the way.
Bozo bit. And it was called that (by Apple documentation) way back in the earliest days, too.