Regarding the installation script not working, I delved into it and discovered that all it eventually really does is run another installation program. So ignore the script and just run:./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/glibc-2.1/setup.gtk...for a gtk GUI install, or:./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup...for a text-mode install (didn't test this one). Ignore the "total progress" bar in the installer, as it appears to be completely nonfunctional. Once the installer is done copying files, exit and run./fixinstall. Then you need to fix a couple broken symlinks; cd into the "lib" and "miles" subdirectories, and it should be relatively obvious what needs to be fixed.
Whee, you're done. Run the game, enter your SoU CD key, and you're golden.
This is not a new suggestion. I, for one, was proposing this to everyone who'd listen within the ICANN formation process since the very beginning, but I was met with nothing but stony silence in response.
Everyone agrees that there are no technical reasons this wouldn't work. The root servers are easily capable of handling referrals for an unlimited number of TLDs, which is obvious when you realize they're currently handling referrals for all the.com second-level domains *directly*.
The frank answer to why this isn't on the table for discussion is a political one; it's simply not in the best interests of the corporatists who run the DNSO (and the ICANN board, for that matter). The corporations running the registries and registrars are afraid of their cozy profit model being shaken up by any such change. Likewise, the corporations everywhere who are abusing intellectual property law in regards to the domain name system would fight tooth and nail against opening the floodgates to potentially thousands of new TLDs, since they'd be functionally unable to continually steal all possible domains vaguely related to their names and trademarks.
Thus, while this is clearly the fairest and healthiest long-term solution for the good of normal non-abusive users of the Net, I am sadly forced to conceed that it is unlikely ever to be implemented.
Um, hello? I for one would never even consider using a laptop that weighed more than 3 pounds or was too big to hold comfortably (and safely) in one hand. If you want a huge bulky machine with a 15" monitor, for crying out loud, buy a freaking desktop. The whole point of having a laptop is small size, aka portability. If you can feel the weight of your laptop in your backpack, you bought the wrong machine. When you can get a P-II 400MHz machine with 128MB RAM, a 12GB drive, a keyboard that is easily large enough for anyone to touch-type on, and every other feature of a full-sized machine in a case only minimally larger than a VHS tape (and half the thickness, for that matter), how on earth does that equal "not useful"? Sheesh.
Isnt' using kleenex as a domain name treading on think ice vis-a-vis proper use of trademarks under trademark law?
Sure is. Seems to me that if a company uses for its domain name an isolated trademark out of its relevant context, they are responsible for the dilution of their own trademark.
These sorts of disputes are precisely what trademark law addresses in the "real world." Since these disputes also occur on the Net, don't the same arbitration procedures seem to apply?
No.
Trademark law in the Real World is very specifically limited in geographic scope. It has to be. There is no legal authority that every nation of the world is obliged to respect. The DNS namespace is inherently global in scope. Shall we hold it accountable to the trademarks registered in every country in the world, many of which overlap and contradict each other? Shall we decide that one country's system of registered trademarks should be definitive world-wide? (If so, then whose? Russia's? France's? Iraq's? The United States'?)
No, we shouldn't. It is inherently inappropriate to apply trademark law to the DNS namespace, and any attempt to do so will be unjust, arbitrary, and painfully unworkable.
>Shouldn't Kodak be allowed to translate that identifying mark to the Internet?
No.
Not unless they have secured unambiguous trademark rights in every independant nation of the world, as well as in every sector of the economy in those nations that make such distinctions (as does US trademark law). If they do that, then *maybe* they could assert such a claim.
Otherwise, they have no more compelling right to the name than does some guy named Zolar Kodak who runs "Kodak's Canoe Rentals" in the middle of the jungle of Booga-Booga Land. The principle of first-come-first-served is the only reasonable way for the system to operate. Certainly a corporation with the resources of Kodak (the photography-related one) could probably arrange to come to a mutually acceptable resolution with Mr. Z. Kodak if they cared enough about a domain name which he had registered, but suggesting that they have superior rights to the name because they are a large US corporation and his is a small Boogan corporation is utterly preposterous and demonstrates an astonishing degree of US-centrism.
People should be less concerned with the national origins of those on the board, which is largely irrelevant to the issues under discussion, and be much more concerned with what other interests these individuals represent, and where they stand on the important issues they will be deciding.
Anyone who thinks the three appointees from the DNSO are not representatives of a very narrow faction hasn't been paying very much attention. It has nothing to do with regional representation; they are all vocal advocates of corporate interests, and very much against any sort of rights or protections for the individual domain name owner. So far the DNSO has no provision whatsoever for representation of individual domain name owners. This to me is the most disappointing and frightening development in the SOs thus far.
Check out http://www.idno.org/ for more information on this issue, and make your voice heard.
>On the contrary: domain name = trademark when it >comes to.coms and it always should be. Otherwise >you'll get a bunch of ripoffs that use big names >to provide you with porn ads.
Not true. Trademark law has never been directly applicable to domain names, and unless the laws worldwide are drastically rewritten in utterly preposterous ways, it never really can be.
The reasons are many.
1) Trademarks are always limited to a specific geographic region, whereas domain names are inherently global in scope. I may have all rights to FooBar Inc. in California, but there are no legal restrictions on the use of the same name in Massachusetts (or, for that matter, China).
2) With very few exceptions, trademarks are only enforceable within a limited type of industry. If my FooBar, Inc. makes bicycles, there can be another FooBar, Inc. in the same town that sells groceries, and no trademark infringement can be said to have occurred. We can, in fact, both have a registered trademark for the same name. Check out http://www.naming.com/icclasses.html for a listing of trademark classes by industry. Domain names, of course, have no such specificity, especially in the extremely generic.com TLD.
3) Trademarks are adjectives, which are used in a specific context, not generic words floating about in a vacuum. I cannot trademark the term "FooBar" and claim trademark infringement every time someone utters those sylables or prints them on a web page. Phrases like "FooBar bicycles" or "FooBar cycling products" are needed to establish context. Domain names exist outside of any context.
4) In order for trademark infringement to be established, most jurisdictions require the plaintif to demonstrate that an average individual could reasonably be confused by the use of the mark. This is clearly not the case if, as you suggest, ibm.com was being used to distribute porn, nor was it the case when Prema Toys tried to steal pokey.org from a 12-year-old kid. Again, a domain name in and of itself has no context from which to establish trademark infringement.
No, trademark law as it stands is not sufficient to determine ownership of domain names. Real infringements can and will occur, but the courts are more than capable of sorting those out. The tried and true "first come, first served" principle is the only fair way for the registrars and registries to handle this matter.
Under the current ICANN guidelines, there is nothing that requires accredited registrars to be commercial entities. It seems to me that a great many of the current problems would be solved by setting up a not-for-profit, cooperative registrar operated for the public benefit.
The actions of the Commerce Department and ICANN have all been predicated on the assumption that the area of domain name registration services was necessarily a commercial arena. This has clearly not been the case for the majority of the lifetime of the DNS system, and is only a peculiar aberration of the past four years. The namespace is a virtually unlimited resource, and providing service for a given domain name need not incur any expense beyond a miniscule fraction of the annual operating costs of the registry and the root servers. So why not form an organization that operates with that understanding, charging name owners only the actual costs of maintaining the infrastructure for the period of registration? With tens of millions of names registered, you're a fool if you think US$70 each is equitable.
If I live by a vast, crystal clear mountain lake, why should the authorities force me to only drink water sold in small pricey bottles by a number of "accredited competitive water service providers"?
The current system will benefit no one except the commercial competitors in a completely artificial and unnecessary marketplace. Time to knock them out of the way and do something that benefits everyone.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding the installation script not working, I delved into it and discovered that all it eventually really does is run another installation program. So ignore the script and just run: ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/glibc-2.1/setup.gtk ...for a gtk GUI install, or: ./setup.data/bin/Linux/x86/setup ...for a text-mode install (didn't test this one). Ignore the "total progress" bar in the installer, as it appears to be completely nonfunctional. Once the installer is done copying files, exit and run ./fixinstall. Then you need to fix a couple broken symlinks; cd into the "lib" and "miles" subdirectories, and it should be relatively obvious what needs to be fixed.
Whee, you're done. Run the game, enter your SoU CD key, and you're golden.
This is not a new suggestion. I, for one, was proposing this to everyone who'd listen within the ICANN formation process since the very beginning, but I was met with nothing but stony silence in response.
.com second-level domains *directly*.
Everyone agrees that there are no technical reasons this wouldn't work. The root servers are easily capable of handling referrals for an unlimited number of TLDs, which is obvious when you realize they're currently handling referrals for all the
The frank answer to why this isn't on the table for discussion is a political one; it's simply not in the best interests of the corporatists who run the DNSO (and the ICANN board, for that matter). The corporations running the registries and registrars are afraid of their cozy profit model being shaken up by any such change. Likewise, the corporations everywhere who are abusing intellectual property law in regards to the domain name system would fight tooth and nail against opening the floodgates to potentially thousands of new TLDs, since they'd be functionally unable to continually steal all possible domains vaguely related to their names and trademarks.
Thus, while this is clearly the fairest and healthiest long-term solution for the good of normal non-abusive users of the Net, I am sadly forced to conceed that it is unlikely ever to be implemented.
too small to be useful as a "real" laptop
Um, hello? I for one would never even consider using a laptop that weighed more than 3 pounds or was too big to hold comfortably (and safely) in one hand. If you want a huge bulky machine with a 15" monitor, for crying out loud, buy a freaking desktop. The whole point of having a laptop is small size, aka portability. If you can feel the weight of your laptop in your backpack, you bought the wrong machine. When you can get a P-II 400MHz machine with 128MB RAM, a 12GB drive, a keyboard that is easily large enough for anyone to touch-type on, and every other feature of a full-sized machine in a case only minimally larger than a VHS tape (and half the thickness, for that matter), how on earth does that equal "not useful"? Sheesh.
Isnt' using kleenex as a domain name treading on think ice vis-a-vis proper use of trademarks under trademark law?
Sure is. Seems to me that if a company uses for its domain name an isolated trademark out of its relevant context, they are responsible for the dilution of their own trademark.
- Paul
These sorts of disputes are precisely what trademark law addresses in the "real world." Since these disputes also occur on the Net, don't the same arbitration procedures seem to apply?
No.
Trademark law in the Real World is very specifically limited in geographic scope. It has to be. There is no legal authority that every nation of the world is obliged to respect. The DNS namespace is inherently global in scope. Shall we hold it accountable to the trademarks registered in every country in the world, many of which overlap and contradict each other? Shall we decide that one country's system of registered trademarks should be definitive world-wide? (If so, then whose? Russia's? France's? Iraq's? The United States'?)
No, we shouldn't. It is inherently inappropriate to apply trademark law to the DNS namespace, and any attempt to do so will be unjust, arbitrary, and painfully unworkable.
- Paul
>Shouldn't Kodak be allowed to translate that identifying mark to the Internet?
No.
Not unless they have secured unambiguous trademark rights in every independant nation of the world, as well as in every sector of the economy in those nations that make such distinctions (as does US trademark law). If they do that, then *maybe* they could assert such a claim.
Otherwise, they have no more compelling right to the name than does some guy named Zolar Kodak who runs "Kodak's Canoe Rentals" in the middle of the jungle of Booga-Booga Land. The principle of first-come-first-served is the only reasonable way for the system to operate. Certainly a corporation with the resources of Kodak (the photography-related one) could probably arrange to come to a mutually acceptable resolution with Mr. Z. Kodak if they cared enough about a domain name which he had registered, but suggesting that they have superior rights to the name because they are a large US corporation and his is a small Boogan corporation is utterly preposterous and demonstrates an astonishing degree of US-centrism.
- Paul
People should be less concerned with the national origins of those on the board, which is largely irrelevant to the issues under discussion, and be much more concerned with what other interests these individuals represent, and where they stand on the important issues they will be deciding.
- Paul
Anyone who thinks the three appointees from the DNSO are not representatives of a very narrow faction hasn't been paying very much attention. It has nothing to do with regional representation; they are all vocal advocates of corporate interests, and very much against any sort of rights or protections for the individual domain name owner. So far the DNSO has no provision whatsoever for representation of individual domain name owners. This to me is the most disappointing and frightening development in the SOs thus far.
Check out http://www.idno.org/ for more information on this issue, and make your voice heard.
- Paul
>On the contrary: domain name = trademark when it >comes to .coms and it always should be. Otherwise >you'll get a bunch of ripoffs that use big names >to provide you with porn ads.
.com TLD.
Not true. Trademark law has never been directly applicable to domain names, and unless the laws worldwide are drastically rewritten in utterly preposterous ways, it never really can be.
The reasons are many.
1) Trademarks are always limited to a specific geographic region, whereas domain names are inherently global in scope. I may have all rights to FooBar Inc. in California, but there are no legal restrictions on the use of the same name in Massachusetts (or, for that matter, China).
2) With very few exceptions, trademarks are only enforceable within a limited type of industry. If my FooBar, Inc. makes bicycles, there can be another FooBar, Inc. in the same town that sells groceries, and no trademark infringement can be said to have occurred. We can, in fact, both have a registered trademark for the same name. Check out http://www.naming.com/icclasses.html for a listing of trademark classes by industry. Domain names, of course, have no such specificity, especially in the extremely generic
3) Trademarks are adjectives, which are used in a specific context, not generic words floating about in a vacuum. I cannot trademark the term "FooBar" and claim trademark infringement every time someone utters those sylables or prints them on a web page. Phrases like "FooBar bicycles" or "FooBar cycling products" are needed to establish context. Domain names exist outside of any context.
4) In order for trademark infringement to be established, most jurisdictions require the plaintif to demonstrate that an average individual could reasonably be confused by the use of the mark. This is clearly not the case if, as you suggest, ibm.com was being used to distribute porn, nor was it the case when Prema Toys tried to steal pokey.org from a 12-year-old kid. Again, a domain name in and of itself has no context from which to establish trademark infringement.
No, trademark law as it stands is not sufficient to determine ownership of domain names. Real infringements can and will occur, but the courts are more than capable of sorting those out. The tried and true "first come, first served" principle is the only fair way for the registrars and registries to handle this matter.
Under the current ICANN guidelines, there is nothing that requires accredited registrars to be commercial entities. It seems to me that a great many of the current problems would be solved by setting up a not-for-profit, cooperative registrar operated for the public benefit.
The actions of the Commerce Department and ICANN have all been predicated on the assumption that the area of domain name registration services was necessarily a commercial arena. This has clearly not been the case for the majority of the lifetime of the DNS system, and is only a peculiar aberration of the past four years. The namespace is a virtually unlimited resource, and providing service for a given domain name need not incur any expense beyond a miniscule fraction of the annual operating costs of the registry and the root servers. So why not form an organization that operates with that understanding, charging name owners only the actual costs of maintaining the infrastructure for the period of registration? With tens of millions of names registered, you're a fool if you think US$70 each is equitable.
If I live by a vast, crystal clear mountain lake, why should the authorities force me to only drink water sold in small pricey bottles by a number of "accredited competitive water service providers"?
The current system will benefit no one except the commercial competitors in a completely artificial and unnecessary marketplace. Time to knock them out of the way and do something that benefits everyone.