Send him a polite note explaining that he is mistaken. Your were the victim of a virus, and the virus forged your name on the email. Communication like this is important if you do every end up in court (IANAL though!). An attempt to mitigate (or in this case, explain) the damage is required.
If you DO ever end up in court, after sending the polite note and getting a lawyer, point out that you have no money for him to take, and that if he does sue you, he'll look like a fool. If the CEO continues to press the suit, carry through on your end and go public.
There are tons of ways for ordinary people to do this. One is your local TV station. My TV station has something called "Channel 3 Reports" which is basically a cosumer line where people can complain if they feel cheated by a business. Channel 3 will send a reporter to the business and make them answer a few questions on camera. This can be REALLY embarrassing, espcially if there is any chance that the business did make a mistake. Many people would rather settle than have a hostile interview on camera.
Newspapers are also your friend. Alternative ones like the "News and Review" will often do interviews with ordinary people who have run afoul of some large business or government agency. Larger papers too might be interested to run your story.
I think enough bad press, and hints of more, will end just about any unfair suit from a CEO who has a company and business to worry about.
Be smart. Be polite. Be truthful. And be persistant. That I think will get you out of any jam that truly isn't your fault.
Peace.
Re:"Linux kernel" because it's a trademark
on
Linux Kernel 3.0?
·
· Score: 1
> Under USA trademark law, product and brand names are adjectives
After being traumatized by sentencing diagraming in Catholic high school, I find it amusing that there's a part of speech actually defined by LAW.
It like english class can actually keep you out of jail or something. ^_^
This article is talking about changes in the Northen Atlantic ocean, which will affect only Eurpoe and the North American atlantic seaboard.
The South Atlantic (Central and South America) and Africa will either be unaffeted, or actually experience warmer temperatures.
And there doesn't seem to be an equivalent system for the Pacific Ocean. Judging from their diagram, the much larger Pacific doesn't depend on salinity for it's circulation.
Out here on the West Coast it's global warming as far as the eye can see, with disasterous effects for the California economy, and our water. (California is expected to lose something like 80% of it's water in the next 100 years.) An ice age in europe does nothing to aleviate that. Just thought I'd point this tid bit out.
> Launch headline suggests that Bon Jovi album might be delayed because of the lawsuit."
So I'm guessing Universal picked Bon Jovi to debut this technology for a reason. If the suit against them has any merit, then Universal knew it was in the wrong and decided to try to use this PIN stuff anyway. I assume that Bon Jovi's fan base is no longer what it was, so perhaps Universal picked a band that wouldn't lose them huge amounts of money if it was delayed?
Not exactly a vote of confidence in ol' Bon Jovi, ya ask me! ^_^
This is standard practice. Companies own the patents that result from your work on company time (some claim all patents, company time or not, which is a little murkier).
This guy invented something on company time and that's it.
I was reading elsewhere though, that the real tragedy is that Japanese companies do not reward their employs for the patents they do file. In the US, "real" companies will give employs 1-2K $ (or more) for patents, just because companies like to own patents. If it's a BIG patent, the inventor is more hansomely reward (often with stock and options).
Because of this, Japanese employees really don't have much incentive to work on hard patents for their companies. Their are probably exceptions -- Sony comes to mind as a company that almost surely has a more sensible patent reward system. But many "common" Japanses companies don't see things as Sony does, and overall this tends to hurt the Japanese economy.
So that's what's really going on here. This guy is trying to call attention to the fact that the common patent system in his country is broken and needs attention.
Anyone remember the 1978 TV show "Quark"? Sorry no links (I don't think there are any!) but a search will turn up the phrase "tv show quark" on plenty of fan websites. Quark was a parody of the original Star Trek TV show. I wish I could get my hands on some old episodes of that show to compare with Firefly. As I remember the ship in Quark was also a transport, just liek Firefly.
Final thought: Firefly reminds me a lot more of Galaxy Quest the TV Show than a straight parody of Star Trek.
> XFS enabled kernels are huge, and that creates a slight problem when booting from floppy.
I think the trick to this is to have a/boot partition, and a/root partition, and make them both ext2. Then you can boot from a floppy, and then boot the larger image on the boot partition. That was the reason given for having those partitions in the Linux Stadard Base documents, anyway.
But I'm an engineer, not an IT person, so I could be mistaken as I've never attempted to do it myself.
In this case, step 2 == $100,000,000 marketing campaign, and twisting the arms of PC manufatures to put only MS's new OS on their machines. I.e., it'll probably work just fine, unfortunately.
In other gaming news, I think it's time to take the link to Old Man Murry off of the front page of Slashdot. Old Man Murry has been AOL for quite a while now and it's time to give up on them, at least until they actually get their site back up. Maybe the link could be replaced with Penny Arcade or something.
No, it won't happen. I'll see features at the movies, I'll just vote with my DVD dollars elsewhere.
BTW, Lilo and Stitch is one of the best animated features from Disney in a long time. Probably the best since Dumbo and Snow White. And it's out now.:-) Go see it if you haven't.
As a fan of animated features in general, I'm really happy that there seems to have been something of a renaissance in the genre, more or less lead by Pixar. Pixar has done some great, and more important, creative and entertaining films in the last few years. They are also doing the language dubing along with Disney for Spirited Away. Spirited Away looks great, can't wait until it comes out.
I'm not going to cut myself off from animated features just because of some silly copy issues. I'll fight those battles with the medium that actually concerns them, by copying what I want anyway, legally, as it's always be legal to do so for personal use.
Are you sure? Quote: "You can copy the CD, but without the card the software won't run." That sure sounds like it could be used as a runtime dongle to me. In fact the first thing I thought of when I read that sentence was "Huh, somebody's acutally figured out a way to add a dongle with out extra hardware or f'ing up your parrallel port. Kinda a neat hardware trick."
I don't know of course but it seems to me that someone could make if a dongle if they wanted to.
Hmm, this gadget doesn't seem like something you'd put on a Warcraft CD. Too expensive, and also for the reason you mention (kids getting their dirty mits all over the optical smart card thing, rendering it usless), the customer support would be a potential nightmare for Blizzard.
It does seem like soemthing that Mircosoft would put on a $279 CD of MS Office, to stop IT staff from making a few extra copies or to stop employees from making a personal copy at home. It might work too, as the support costs for high end packages might justify the cost of the smart card dohickey.
Hmm, but you'd have to insert a differt CD every time you'd want to start a different program, and if you want to store your Excel spread sheet on a CD-RW, it'd be a two step process, or you'd need two drives.
Kinda a wash if you ask me. Not suited to low end, and the high end would probably complain too much. Shrug. We'll see I guess.
With VisionTek simply vanishing, this leaves a huge gap for NVIDIA to fill. VisionTek was the number one retailer of NVIDIA based VidCards in North America. Hercules has moved to ATi products, Creative is gone for NVIDIA as well with the purchase of 3dLabs, and Elsa's (which is now bankrupt) top-end VidCards were built by VisionTek anyway.
> Windows 2000 and XP have obvious benefits over Windows 98
My Win 98 system is actually pretty stable for what I use it for. Why should I spend the $$ to upgrade when it works good enough?
When Windows 95 came out, I upgraded in a hurry, because Windows 3.x was a real dog. When windows 98 came out, I waited a bit but upgraded within a year, after most of the bugs were ironed out. Now I have a new BYO system which runs Win 2k and the 98 system is "backup".
Most users won't touch something that works well enough, as my personal example shows. What does this mean for Open Source OS's? Put something on a customers computer that works well enough for them, and they'll never bother to replace it. The trick is to get the Open Source OS on there first.
The browser I'm using rignt now, Opera 6.03, ID's as MS 5.0, so really these statistics may be slightly scewed as browsers attempt to emulate as much as possible "de facto" standards.
Er, it's not? Well bugger me for a l33t d00d, I guess I was mistaken. 'Course, my incorrect "open-source" comment was modded higher than your accurate statement, so at least good ol' Slashdot hasn't changed:-)
I'm not a die hard open source fanatic by any means. I use Windows 2000 most of the time, and I only occasionally boot to my Linux partition to play.
A few months ago however, I tried out Opera. After using it a bit I discovered the "Disable Pop Ups" option and there was no way I'd go back to IE then. Even now when I have to switch for some compatibility issue (not often, only the really small web sites seem to have IE dependant features), I'm amazed at how annoying all the pop ups immediately become.
This is one of the best things that Open Source can do to convert users. Provide features that consumers (like me) truly want and the big boys won't give them.
Don't forget about digital projectors. I was at a home movie night not too long ago where someone brought one from work. What a neat toy! We had a screen set up a one end of the living room with an absolutely huge, crisp picture. I was really impressed.
Then when it was over, we folded up the screen and put the projector in it's cabinet, and all that space was reclaimed. If you had a permanent projector mounted strategically, and one of those automatic screens that roll up into the ceiling, it would be pretty sweat.
Natalie Portman? The actress from episode one? Hmm, I don't get it. Natalie Portman is 21, skinny, and ethnically Israeli. What's she got to do with hot grits?
No, you can't use wireless for a boot disk, I know. But with the recent news about Dell trying to make floppies obsolete, reported here on Slashdot, I just wondered if WiFi would be a good replacement instead of some other removeable media like compact flash.
There no moving parts to WiFi, so there's nothing to ever wear out. And the "media" is even cheaper than $1 floppies -- it's free!
Hmmm, now the only problem is geting companies to agree to a standard for the devices so there's no drivers. And some standard protocol so that everyone can always interchanged data. How many decades will that take? *grin* I suppose you shouldn't toss out your 3 1/2 " drives just yet...
Slashdot Mirror
If you DO ever end up in court, after sending the polite note and getting a lawyer, point out that you have no money for him to take, and that if he does sue you, he'll look like a fool. If the CEO continues to press the suit, carry through on your end and go public.
There are tons of ways for ordinary people to do this. One is your local TV station. My TV station has something called "Channel 3 Reports" which is basically a cosumer line where people can complain if they feel cheated by a business. Channel 3 will send a reporter to the business and make them answer a few questions on camera. This can be REALLY embarrassing, espcially if there is any chance that the business did make a mistake. Many people would rather settle than have a hostile interview on camera.
Newspapers are also your friend. Alternative ones like the "News and Review" will often do interviews with ordinary people who have run afoul of some large business or government agency. Larger papers too might be interested to run your story.
I think enough bad press, and hints of more, will end just about any unfair suit from a CEO who has a company and business to worry about.
Be smart. Be polite. Be truthful. And be persistant. That I think will get you out of any jam that truly isn't your fault.
Peace.
After being traumatized by sentencing diagraming in Catholic high school, I find it amusing that there's a part of speech actually defined by LAW.
It like english class can actually keep you out of jail or something. ^_^
The South Atlantic (Central and South America) and Africa will either be unaffeted, or actually experience warmer temperatures.
And there doesn't seem to be an equivalent system for the Pacific Ocean. Judging from their diagram, the much larger Pacific doesn't depend on salinity for it's circulation.
Out here on the West Coast it's global warming as far as the eye can see, with disasterous effects for the California economy, and our water. (California is expected to lose something like 80% of it's water in the next 100 years.) An ice age in europe does nothing to aleviate that. Just thought I'd point this tid bit out.
So I'm guessing Universal picked Bon Jovi to debut this technology for a reason. If the suit against them has any merit, then Universal knew it was in the wrong and decided to try to use this PIN stuff anyway. I assume that Bon Jovi's fan base is no longer what it was, so perhaps Universal picked a band that wouldn't lose them huge amounts of money if it was delayed?
Not exactly a vote of confidence in ol' Bon Jovi, ya ask me! ^_^
This guy invented something on company time and that's it.
I was reading elsewhere though, that the real tragedy is that Japanese companies do not reward their employs for the patents they do file. In the US, "real" companies will give employs 1-2K $ (or more) for patents, just because companies like to own patents. If it's a BIG patent, the inventor is more hansomely reward (often with stock and options).
Because of this, Japanese employees really don't have much incentive to work on hard patents for their companies. Their are probably exceptions -- Sony comes to mind as a company that almost surely has a more sensible patent reward system. But many "common" Japanses companies don't see things as Sony does, and overall this tends to hurt the Japanese economy.
So that's what's really going on here. This guy is trying to call attention to the fact that the common patent system in his country is broken and needs attention.
Final thought: Firefly reminds me a lot more of Galaxy Quest the TV Show than a straight parody of Star Trek.
I think the trick to this is to have a /boot partition, and a /root partition, and make them both ext2. Then you can boot from a floppy, and then boot the larger image on the boot partition. That was the reason given for having those partitions in the Linux Stadard Base documents, anyway.
But I'm an engineer, not an IT person, so I could be mistaken as I've never attempted to do it myself.
So what's the next phase?
"2. Arguing over phase 1. Time frame: 3 to 5 years."
step 2. ???
step 3. profit!
In this case, step 2 == $100,000,000 marketing campaign, and twisting the arms of PC manufatures to put only MS's new OS on their machines. I.e., it'll probably work just fine, unfortunately.
Obviously a trick question, designed to get an early start on those people who might become eligible for the Darwin awards in the near future.
In other gaming news, I think it's time to take the link to Old Man Murry off of the front page of Slashdot. Old Man Murry has been AOL for quite a while now and it's time to give up on them, at least until they actually get their site back up. Maybe the link could be replaced with Penny Arcade or something.
As a fan of animated features in general, I'm really happy that there seems to have been something of a renaissance in the genre, more or less lead by Pixar. Pixar has done some great, and more important, creative and entertaining films in the last few years. They are also doing the language dubing along with Disney for Spirited Away. Spirited Away looks great, can't wait until it comes out.
I'm not going to cut myself off from animated features just because of some silly copy issues. I'll fight those battles with the medium that actually concerns them, by copying what I want anyway, legally, as it's always be legal to do so for personal use.
I don't know of course but it seems to me that someone could make if a dongle if they wanted to.
It does seem like soemthing that Mircosoft would put on a $279 CD of MS Office, to stop IT staff from making a few extra copies or to stop employees from making a personal copy at home. It might work too, as the support costs for high end packages might justify the cost of the smart card dohickey.
Hmm, but you'd have to insert a differt CD every time you'd want to start a different program, and if you want to store your Excel spread sheet on a CD-RW, it'd be a two step process, or you'd need two drives.
Kinda a wash if you ask me. Not suited to low end, and the high end would probably complain too much. Shrug. We'll see I guess.
Sounds like somebody's being "retentive" alright.
With VisionTek simply vanishing, this leaves a huge gap for NVIDIA to fill. VisionTek was the number one retailer of NVIDIA based VidCards in North America. Hercules has moved to ATi products, Creative is gone for NVIDIA as well with the purchase of 3dLabs, and Elsa's (which is now bankrupt) top-end VidCards were built by VisionTek anyway.
My Win 98 system is actually pretty stable for what I use it for. Why should I spend the $$ to upgrade when it works good enough?
When Windows 95 came out, I upgraded in a hurry, because Windows 3.x was a real dog. When windows 98 came out, I waited a bit but upgraded within a year, after most of the bugs were ironed out. Now I have a new BYO system which runs Win 2k and the 98 system is "backup".
Most users won't touch something that works well enough, as my personal example shows. What does this mean for Open Source OS's? Put something on a customers computer that works well enough for them, and they'll never bother to replace it. The trick is to get the Open Source OS on there first.
The browser I'm using rignt now, Opera 6.03, ID's as MS 5.0, so really these statistics may be slightly scewed as browsers attempt to emulate as much as possible "de facto" standards.
Er, it's not? Well bugger me for a l33t d00d, I guess I was mistaken. 'Course, my incorrect "open-source" comment was modded higher than your accurate statement, so at least good ol' Slashdot hasn't changed :-)
A few months ago however, I tried out Opera. After using it a bit I discovered the "Disable Pop Ups" option and there was no way I'd go back to IE then. Even now when I have to switch for some compatibility issue (not often, only the really small web sites seem to have IE dependant features), I'm amazed at how annoying all the pop ups immediately become.
This is one of the best things that Open Source can do to convert users. Provide features that consumers (like me) truly want and the big boys won't give them.
Then when it was over, we folded up the screen and put the projector in it's cabinet, and all that space was reclaimed. If you had a permanent projector mounted strategically, and one of those automatic screens that roll up into the ceiling, it would be pretty sweat.
Just throwing random ideas at ya...
I'm missing something, please explain.
Yes, and what were we smoking, hmmm?
There no moving parts to WiFi, so there's nothing to ever wear out. And the "media" is even cheaper than $1 floppies -- it's free!
Hmmm, now the only problem is geting companies to agree to a standard for the devices so there's no drivers. And some standard protocol so that everyone can always interchanged data. How many decades will that take? *grin* I suppose you shouldn't toss out your 3 1/2 " drives just yet...