That makes me think... I want to start up a garra rufa pedicure business just so I can call it "Red Dwarf" and be pleased when a few people spot the clever reference. (*)
It'll all be fun and games until the business goes bankrupt because 99% of people don't have a damn clue what it does. Either that or it'll be a smash hit with geeks, who knows?
(*) It has to be a *few* people. If no-one got it, that would suck... but somewhat perversely it would also suck if everyone got it too.
The days when HP could produce ANY world-class widget ended when they stopped being an instrument company at heart, probably in Lou Platt's day, but certainly by the end of the Evil Queen's reign.
I don't know when Lou Platt was in charge, but Agilent, which included HP's electronic and biomechanical instrumentation division, was spun of in 1999.
having "drunk the Kool-Aid" (BTW, the Jonestown [wikipedia.org] incident used Flavor Aid [wikipedia.org], not Kool-Aid, but don't let facts get in the way)
Most of us know that, we just aren't nit-picking pedants... well, okay, we *are* nit-picking pedants, just not enough to correct the culturally-accepted expression.
BTW, wouldn't "drunk the Appleade" be a more appropriate expression here?:-)
Well, we've established that you're a mouth breather anyway.
you really believe [etc]
Er, no. Exactly how did my jokingly observing that a neanderthals probable inability to use a phone is an obvious giveaway in the OP's chat-up line make you think that I did?
Let me guess- you discovered this "truth" recently and you wanted the opportunity to bolster your puffed-up nerd ego and feel superior by giving a "Santa Claus doesn't exist" lecture to some stereotypical woman-ignorant Slashdot geek. Sorry to spoil your fun, but while I may be a geek, I've seen this said countless times before- you're very, *very* far from the first person to point all this out. This is old news.
Since niggers are more primitive technologically and socially maybe they are something something something
tl; dr
You're under the mistaken impression that I was taking you seriously in the first place and would read your half-baked "serious" troll. I wasn't, I was taking the piss.:-P
I never understood why my wife ever willingly married me. Our beautiful daughter, who has a very robust immune system, appears to embody the explanation. That and my indisputable oily Guinea charm.
Want a better immune system for your kiddies?
Call me.
Unlikely... she knows that if you were really Neanderthal, you'd probably be using the phone to bash someone's head in, and you wouldn't even have a clue about the Internet.:-)
Definitely worth reading the article before trolling... it actually states the complete opposite:-
"At least one variety of HLA gene occurs frequently in present day populations from West Asia, but is rare in Africans.
The researchers say that is because after ancient humans left Africa some 65,000 years ago, they started breeding with their more primitive relations in Europe, while those who stayed in Africa did not.
"The HLA genes that the Neanderthals and Denisovans had, had been adapted to life in Europe and Asia for several hundred thousand years, whereas the recent migrants from Africa wouldn't have had these genes," said study leader Peter Parham."
Also
there is a 8-inch uncut nigger cock pumping their precious little angle's pussy
Maybe their little "angle" was just doing it to be obtuse. She can get away with it if she is acute girl after all...
Yes I know what [ATM] also stands for, but when I read that through the first time I was imagining a woman getting money from a bank and was wondering what is wrong with some people.
And then you found out what "ATM" porn actually was... and you *really* wondered what was wrong with some people. I hope....
Anyway, I'm sure there are women out there who certainly *would* get turned on if the amounts of money coming out of the ATM were enough.:-/
It used to (and is obviously where the initials came from in the first place), but it officially doesn't any more. There was some marketing drivel about "Beyond Petroleum", but basically it's meaningless.
However, if one wants to use the former name to note its origins, then it should be pointed out that the current "BP" was actually formed from the merger between BP and Amoco in the late 1990s and was originally known as "BP Amoco" before the name was shortened. So perhaps those insisting on the "British Petroleum" name should refer to it as "British Petroleum / American Oil Company". Though I doubt they will.
Ob-disclaimer, IANAL and I'm assuming you aren't either!
Eh...if these companies are going to be like this, then the current owners should just turn the sites into something completly unrelated and undesirable to the company before they get them. For example...I would totally turn the site into a pron site of some kind before they could get their hands on it. Then see how hard they battle for it in court and see how much they want it after is been marred.
Well, yeah, it's easy to play Internet-Legal-Tough-Guy. I'd like to see you try that one in real life though.
Am I right in guessing that you're going to try to claim that your use of the trademark is in an unrelated field and you'll somehow get away with it because of that?
Because my gut reaction is the fact that until recently the domain/brand clearly *was* associated with an infringing usage and also, I don't know what the legal term for a spoiling tactic is, but I suspect the judge would (correctly) see your behaviour way and that there would be consequences to that.
As I said, IANAL, but I wouldn't want to try that in a real court, and I suspect you wouldn't have the guts to do that in real-life either.
Considering he probably had a hand in this I am sure he would figure it out. He is on their board of directors...
Yeah, this "OMG, Atari are being dicks and s******g on people's nostalgia" thing is ironic. From what I've heard, Atari were just as much dicks in their heyday as well, so the new holders of the name are simply continuing that, er... fine tradition!
I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.
Yeah, Wikipedia says Infogrames got it in 2001 which sounds about right.
Short summary....
* Original Atari Inc. split in 1984 into arcade (Atari Games) and home/computer (Atari Corp.).
* Atari Corp. fizzles out in mid-90s and merges with crappy hard drive maker JTS (effectively winding up Atari Corp.)
* Hasbro buy dormant Atari Corp's rights when JTS goes bankrupt in late-90s.
* Infogrames buy Hasbro's video game division along with Atari IP circa 2001.
* Infogrames renames itself "Atari" shortly afterwards.
Actually, they do have all of Atari, by way of JT Storage (who bought the hardware side of Atari) and Hasbro, who bought the software side, and then also the hardware side from JTS when they went bankrupt
You've got that half right, which is to say... sort of wrong. (^_^)
Although Atari *was* split in 1984- this wasn't between the "software" and "hardware" sides, but between the arcade division (Atari Games, later sold to Midway) and the console and home computer division (which became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp.).
Atari Corp. was the one that merged with JTS in the mid-90s, and apparently they laid off almost all the former Atari Corp. employees shortly afterwards anyway. (Which was probably the intention anyway- Atari Corp. had a lot of money in the bank, but the Jaguar console had flopped, and there were no new products in the pipeline. The merger was effectively a way for the Tramiels to wind up Atari's existing business and re-invest their remaining money in JTS' HDD manufacturing.)
Wikipedia describes the sale to Hasbro as being of "the Atari name and assets". That sounds about right- I doubt JTS' Atari subsidiary was anything more than a rights-holding shell by that point. To me, that's pretty much a break in continuity in anything beyond the name itself.
After all Atari didn't exist for a lot of years. Isn't there some expiration of a trademark when it's not defended for some number (11, in this case) years?
Er, except that you're wrong. The "Atari" brand *has* been used almost continuously in one form or another.
There was the original Atari Inc., later bought by Warner.
In 1984 it was effectively split into Atari Games (arcade) and what became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp. (home computers and consoles). Atari Corp. continued for over a decade using that name before it eventually fizzled out and merged with JTS (a third-rate hard drive manufacturer) in 1996.
When JTS/Atari Corp. went under in 1998, Hasbro's video game division bought the name and some rights, and released some nostalgia-exploiting games under the name. In 2001 or thereabouts, Infogrames bought Hasbro Interactive (including the Atari name) and have used it for the past decade.
At *most* there was a two year gap circa '96-'98 when Atari Corp. was effectively a dormant subsidiary of JTS, and I think Atari Games (the Midway-owned arcade division) was still using the name at that time, only ditching it to avoid name-related confusion when Hasbro acquired the home rights from Atari Corp. So, I don't know where you got "11 years" from.
HP's Eric Cador said [time.com], "In the tablet world, we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."
Even without hindsight making it look stupid... how the f*** can *anyone* utter such mindlessly silly drivel with a straight face? It sounds like a cross between something from David Brent in "The Office" and Homer Simpson.
"chirp chirp. chirp chirp"
The sound of people NOT buying games from Ubistupid or Steam.
Er, the fact that a few Slashdot types are getting pissed off about this says very little. Such people are a very small proportion of potential buyers and way, *way* less representative of and influential on the typical mass-market games buyer than they like to think.
On top of this is the fact that when it comes to the crunch, very few Slashdotters put their money where their mouth is anyway when it's a choice between making a sacrifice and standing up for the principles they've ranted on about or handing over their cash for the latest shiny game or tech-toy. Got news for you, software and hardware companies do not give a toss about your impassioned DRM rant if you buy their product anyway- in fact, it just shows that such rants have no effect on sales and can be ignored.
You have to ask yourself if it's a troll when someone is able to speak with apparent knowledge and insight yet is clearly under the impression that "patents" is spelled "patients". (*)
Or maybe they really *are* making a very strange point about patients? Who knows...
(*) Typo? Nope. It's consistently misspelled several times.
Yeah, I'd have suggested that they call the spin-off "HP", but I think Agilent probably already have a better claim on that name.:-)
The remainder of the current HP could then give themselves a more descriptive name- it's a toss-up between "Crappy Bloatware Inc." and "Bloated Crapware Inc".
"Digital" could work too, though there are a lot of consumers who wouldn't get that it's a name with history behind it, and think that "Digital Computer" is just a redundant way of saying "digital computer" but with uppercase letters.
Except that "Digital"'s old logo was all lower-case anyway!
This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.
No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company.
We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.
Shows you the importance of a name on perception. Often major companies split or spin-off major parts of themselves to the extent that one could question whether the current user of the name is meaningfully the "same" company as the original.
It occurs to me that it may be useful to consider the lineage of the various business entities formed from mergers, takeovers, spinoffs and splits *without* attaching weight to their names. Then- considering lineage, size and business interests- askine oneself whether the current holder of the "big name" is any more clearly the "true" continuation of the original company than any of the others.
In the case of Agilent, it's still (apparently) far smaller than HP which remains the obvious parent, but it could also be argued that it represents the roots of HP.
Motorola is the obvious example that sprung to mind though. It's spun-off or split major parts of itself several times and at the start of this year split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobile, the latter being the business that Google recently bought. But this is after already having spun/split-off its semiconductor divisions in 1999 and 2004, as well as its original radio business (on which it founded its reputation) having been sold off in the 1970s.
Is Motorola "Solutions" (*) still the same Motorola that created the old products people get nostalgic about? That's questionable.
(*) Absolutely meaningless sound-good business expression that's so banally all-pervasive that it doesn't even qualify as a "buzzword" any more.
Slashdot Mirror
That makes me think... I want to start up a garra rufa pedicure business just so I can call it "Red Dwarf" and be pleased when a few people spot the clever reference. (*)
It'll all be fun and games until the business goes bankrupt because 99% of people don't have a damn clue what it does. Either that or it'll be a smash hit with geeks, who knows?
(*) It has to be a *few* people. If no-one got it, that would suck... but somewhat perversely it would also suck if everyone got it too.
To provide out an ever-faithful computer analogy, he basically installed Gentoo on some Mycoplasma genitalium. It wasn't that exciting
I dunno, even *that* doesn't sound particularly exciting given that someone already managed to
install VuDu Linux on a dead badger several years ago.
The days when HP could produce ANY world-class widget ended when they stopped being an instrument company at heart, probably in Lou Platt's day, but certainly by the end of the Evil Queen's reign.
I don't know when Lou Platt was in charge, but Agilent, which included HP's electronic and biomechanical instrumentation division, was spun of in 1999.
Uh, no they don't. The new "Flight" product is apparently written from scratch and doesn't use the add-ons of the old Flight Simulator.
having "drunk the Kool-Aid" (BTW, the Jonestown [wikipedia.org] incident used Flavor Aid [wikipedia.org], not Kool-Aid, but don't let facts get in the way)
Most of us know that, we just aren't nit-picking pedants... well, okay, we *are* nit-picking pedants, just not enough to correct the culturally-accepted expression.
:-)
BTW, wouldn't "drunk the Appleade" be a more appropriate expression here?
LOL
Well, we've established that you're a mouth breather anyway.
you really believe [etc]
Er, no. Exactly how did my jokingly observing that a neanderthals probable inability to use a phone is an obvious giveaway in the OP's chat-up line make you think that I did?
Let me guess- you discovered this "truth" recently and you wanted the opportunity to bolster your puffed-up nerd ego and feel superior by giving a "Santa Claus doesn't exist" lecture to some stereotypical woman-ignorant Slashdot geek. Sorry to spoil your fun, but while I may be a geek, I've seen this said countless times before- you're very, *very* far from the first person to point all this out. This is old news.
Since niggers are more primitive technologically and socially maybe they are something something something
tl; dr
:-P
You're under the mistaken impression that I was taking you seriously in the first place and would read your half-baked "serious" troll. I wasn't, I was taking the piss.
I never understood why my wife ever willingly married me. Our beautiful daughter, who has a very robust immune system, appears to embody the explanation. That and my indisputable oily Guinea charm.
Perhaps she found your "Guinea charm" to be cute?
Either that or she was impressed by your life savings of £1.05?
Want a better immune system for your kiddies? Call me.
Unlikely... she knows that if you were really Neanderthal, you'd probably be using the phone to bash someone's head in, and you wouldn't even have a clue about the Internet. :-)
Must be why white girls give it for nig-nogs.
Definitely worth reading the article before trolling... it actually states the complete opposite:-
"At least one variety of HLA gene occurs frequently in present day populations from West Asia, but is rare in Africans.
.
The researchers say that is because after ancient humans left Africa some 65,000 years ago, they started breeding with their more primitive relations in Europe, while those who stayed in Africa did not
"The HLA genes that the Neanderthals and Denisovans had, had been adapted to life in Europe and Asia for several hundred thousand years, whereas the recent migrants from Africa wouldn't have had these genes," said study leader Peter Parham."
Also
there is a 8-inch uncut nigger cock pumping their precious little angle's pussy
Maybe their little "angle" was just doing it to be obtuse. She can get away with it if she is acute girl after all...
Yes I know what [ATM] also stands for, but when I read that through the first time I was imagining a woman getting money from a bank and was wondering what is wrong with some people.
And then you found out what "ATM" porn actually was... and you *really* wondered what was wrong with some people. I hope....
:-/
Anyway, I'm sure there are women out there who certainly *would* get turned on if the amounts of money coming out of the ATM were enough.
It stands for British Petroleum.
It used to (and is obviously where the initials came from in the first place), but it officially doesn't any more. There was some marketing drivel about "Beyond Petroleum", but basically it's meaningless.
However, if one wants to use the former name to note its origins, then it should be pointed out that the current "BP" was actually formed from the merger between BP and Amoco in the late 1990s and was originally known as "BP Amoco" before the name was shortened. So perhaps those insisting on the "British Petroleum" name should refer to it as "British Petroleum / American Oil Company". Though I doubt they will.
I can't wait for them to replace all that unused fiber with more unused fiber.
You dawg, we heard you liked Internetting so we put some unused fiber in your unused fibe.... ah, sod it- fill in the rest yourselves!
Eh...if these companies are going to be like this, then the current owners should just turn the sites into something completly unrelated and undesirable to the company before they get them. For example...I would totally turn the site into a pron site of some kind before they could get their hands on it. Then see how hard they battle for it in court and see how much they want it after is been marred.
Well, yeah, it's easy to play Internet-Legal-Tough-Guy. I'd like to see you try that one in real life though.
Am I right in guessing that you're going to try to claim that your use of the trademark is in an unrelated field and you'll somehow get away with it because of that? Because my gut reaction is the fact that until recently the domain/brand clearly *was* associated with an infringing usage and also, I don't know what the legal term for a spoiling tactic is, but I suspect the judge would (correctly) see your behaviour way and that there would be consequences to that.
As I said, IANAL, but I wouldn't want to try that in a real court, and I suspect you wouldn't have the guts to do that in real-life either.
Considering he probably had a hand in this I am sure he would figure it out. He is on their board of directors...
Yeah, this "OMG, Atari are being dicks and s******g on people's nostalgia" thing is ironic. From what I've heard, Atari were just as much dicks in their heyday as well, so the new holders of the name are simply continuing that, er... fine tradition!
I worked for Atari briefly in 2003 and got the impression that the name change was fairly recent.
Yeah, Wikipedia says Infogrames got it in 2001 which sounds about right.
Short summary....
* Original Atari Inc. split in 1984 into arcade (Atari Games) and home/computer (Atari Corp.).
* Atari Corp. fizzles out in mid-90s and merges with crappy hard drive maker JTS (effectively winding up Atari Corp.)
* Hasbro buy dormant Atari Corp's rights when JTS goes bankrupt in late-90s.
* Infogrames buy Hasbro's video game division along with Atari IP circa 2001.
* Infogrames renames itself "Atari" shortly afterwards.
I think that's about right. (^_^)
Actually, they do have all of Atari, by way of JT Storage (who bought the hardware side of Atari) and Hasbro, who bought the software side, and then also the hardware side from JTS when they went bankrupt
You've got that half right, which is to say... sort of wrong. (^_^)
Although Atari *was* split in 1984- this wasn't between the "software" and "hardware" sides, but between the arcade division (Atari Games, later sold to Midway) and the console and home computer division (which became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp.).
Atari Corp. was the one that merged with JTS in the mid-90s, and apparently they laid off almost all the former Atari Corp. employees shortly afterwards anyway. (Which was probably the intention anyway- Atari Corp. had a lot of money in the bank, but the Jaguar console had flopped, and there were no new products in the pipeline. The merger was effectively a way for the Tramiels to wind up Atari's existing business and re-invest their remaining money in JTS' HDD manufacturing.)
Wikipedia describes the sale to Hasbro as being of "the Atari name and assets". That sounds about right- I doubt JTS' Atari subsidiary was anything more than a rights-holding shell by that point. To me, that's pretty much a break in continuity in anything beyond the name itself.
Money says they can do anything they want. Bullets say there's a limit to what they can do. But it's only bullets that can say that.
I find your views interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. (^_^)
After all Atari didn't exist for a lot of years. Isn't there some expiration of a trademark when it's not defended for some number (11, in this case) years?
Er, except that you're wrong. The "Atari" brand *has* been used almost continuously in one form or another.
There was the original Atari Inc., later bought by Warner.
In 1984 it was effectively split into Atari Games (arcade) and what became Jack Tramiel's Atari Corp. (home computers and consoles). Atari Corp. continued for over a decade using that name before it eventually fizzled out and merged with JTS (a third-rate hard drive manufacturer) in 1996.
When JTS/Atari Corp. went under in 1998, Hasbro's video game division bought the name and some rights, and released some nostalgia-exploiting games under the name. In 2001 or thereabouts, Infogrames bought Hasbro Interactive (including the Atari name) and have used it for the past decade.
At *most* there was a two year gap circa '96-'98 when Atari Corp. was effectively a dormant subsidiary of JTS, and I think Atari Games (the Midway-owned arcade division) was still using the name at that time, only ditching it to avoid name-related confusion when Hasbro acquired the home rights from Atari Corp. So, I don't know where you got "11 years" from.
HP's Eric Cador said [time.com], "In the tablet world, we're going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus."
Even without hindsight making it look stupid... how the f*** can *anyone* utter such mindlessly silly drivel with a straight face? It sounds like a cross between something from David Brent in "The Office" and Homer Simpson.
"chirp chirp. chirp chirp" The sound of people NOT buying games from Ubistupid or Steam.
Er, the fact that a few Slashdot types are getting pissed off about this says very little. Such people are a very small proportion of potential buyers and way, *way* less representative of and influential on the typical mass-market games buyer than they like to think.
On top of this is the fact that when it comes to the crunch, very few Slashdotters put their money where their mouth is anyway when it's a choice between making a sacrifice and standing up for the principles they've ranted on about or handing over their cash for the latest shiny game or tech-toy. Got news for you, software and hardware companies do not give a toss about your impassioned DRM rant if you buy their product anyway- in fact, it just shows that such rants have no effect on sales and can be ignored.
You have to ask yourself if it's a troll when someone is able to speak with apparent knowledge and insight yet is clearly under the impression that "patents" is spelled "patients". (*)
Or maybe they really *are* making a very strange point about patients? Who knows...
(*) Typo? Nope. It's consistently misspelled several times.
Compaq
Yeah, I'd have suggested that they call the spin-off "HP", but I think Agilent probably already have a better claim on that name. :-)
The remainder of the current HP could then give themselves a more descriptive name- it's a toss-up between "Crappy Bloatware Inc." and "Bloated Crapware Inc".
"Digital" could work too, though there are a lot of consumers who wouldn't get that it's a name with history behind it, and think that "Digital Computer" is just a redundant way of saying "digital computer" but with uppercase letters.
Except that "Digital"'s old logo was all lower-case anyway!
This is the company that built Silicon Valley and for decades was the benchmark for tech innovation, and it's so painful to watch them floundering like this.
No, that was Agilent, the test and measurement company. We're talking about HP, the Printer/Business Services/Bottom-barrel PC company. Totally different.
Shows you the importance of a name on perception. Often major companies split or spin-off major parts of themselves to the extent that one could question whether the current user of the name is meaningfully the "same" company as the original.
It occurs to me that it may be useful to consider the lineage of the various business entities formed from mergers, takeovers, spinoffs and splits *without* attaching weight to their names. Then- considering lineage, size and business interests- askine oneself whether the current holder of the "big name" is any more clearly the "true" continuation of the original company than any of the others.
In the case of Agilent, it's still (apparently) far smaller than HP which remains the obvious parent, but it could also be argued that it represents the roots of HP.
Motorola is the obvious example that sprung to mind though. It's spun-off or split major parts of itself several times and at the start of this year split into Motorola Solutions and Motorola Mobile, the latter being the business that Google recently bought. But this is after already having spun/split-off its semiconductor divisions in 1999 and 2004, as well as its original radio business (on which it founded its reputation) having been sold off in the 1970s.
Is Motorola "Solutions" (*) still the same Motorola that created the old products people get nostalgic about? That's questionable.
(*) Absolutely meaningless sound-good business expression that's so banally all-pervasive that it doesn't even qualify as a "buzzword" any more.