They have to go after it, because it is an infringing use of their Trademark. Otherwise, they lose the trademark.
Not true, as pointed out in the article. Since the guy has every right to do what he's doing, they have no obligation to even attempt to stop it. In general, you are correct, but not for this. Their position is like saying that the news couldn't do a story on Microsoft because the name is a trademark. Bullshit.
They're just getting edgy here, and probably they fear a slippery slope argument into ubiquity (and thus lack of trademark), but this is ridiculous.
It's funny, because Google got where it was because people trusted them (ie, their search results wouldn't be confounded with ads). Google is pretty well respected among net users. I dunno why they would want to go off sounding like a bunch of assholes. Probably a case of marketing not talking to legal.
There are solutions
on
NYT on RFID Tags
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
You are right, of course. The idea that anyone would try to make a national panty database sounds ridiculous, but they've done more ridiculous things. I think a law or something stipulating that they have to be removed/deactivated before you leave the store would work. But I don't see *that* happening.
The thing is, there are situations where you will want it to keep working after you leave. Like you return the item, but you don't have your receipt, like it said in the article (yeah, I RTFA!:>) It would be great if the RFID from the item was stored with the purchase price in the database. And that necessitates the thing staying alive.
So stores WILL be able to determine your buying history if you use a CC to pay(Grocery stores do now - with that little card they extorted you into giving them each time). And I bet the RFID manufacturer ends up selling these things in consecutive runs of ID #'s - making it EASY for the feds to determine where the panties were bought and to correlate them with a CC#, then a mailing address, etc.
So what do we do? I think consumers will need to educate themselves a bit - especially with regard to where they buy clothing. We will need a privacy policy law like with the net. Try to pay for clothing with cash. And the greatest hope, I swear to God, will be sensationalist journalism. Even regular people will be creeped out by the idea of being tracked by their underwear. And you know Dateline or one of those crappy shows will do a thing on it if the NYTimes is on it now.
Also, I plan on using a big fscking magnet on my clothes from now on. 5 Tesla should work;)
Maybe UI should be part of the testing process. I know there are a lot of people around here who are pretty computer-savvy but who write crappy code. Yeah, I'm talking about myself here, so what? I wouldn't mind doing some UI testing.
Furthermore, maybe what we need are more customizable UI's. Mozilla is doing a great job with it's skin design tools - maybe other applications could do something like that - provide hooks to the main functions that skin writers could access.
I think the functionality of OSS-ware is getting close to commercial, but the usability still sucks. OpenOffice, for instance, is the most horribly laid out piece of crap I have ever used.
I've noticed that a lot of the people speaking out pro-M$ tend to have high user ID's, like Mr. Politburo here. Now, this could be indicative of/.'s increasing demographic. Or it could be indicative of some serious, and it would seem, pointless astroturfing going on.
Or am I just paranoid as hell? And if so, is that relevant?
It sort of reminds me of the legends of a proposal in the Indiana legislature (though this is probably just a Kentuckian joke) that pi should be exactly 22/7
Actually, it damn near happened, as it was brought up for debate and passed in the house. The only thing that killed it was the lucky presence of a (real) mathematician who was there for other reasons, who had the time to "educate" the senators.
Some things never change.
Also, the math the sponsor introduces is convoluted and wrong, and he came up with 3.2.
...at this point, wouldn't it be a good idea to pick ONE of the scripting languages, and make it a co-standard? Sure, allowing anyone to code in language du jour isn't a great idea, but taking forever to do code simple programs because C takes forever to develop with...well, that ain't so great either.
If Baysean filtering makes its way to the general public -- or is introduced at an ISP level, then it will reduce the amount of spam that gets through to potential customers, and hence make each spamming less profitable.
Right, but any solution that starts with something like "If only everyone would..." is immediately doomed to failure. So, assuming the world is a bunch of retarded chimps (reasonable, I think), now what do we do? Like g'parent said, by the time it hits your filter, you (the ISP) have lost the battle.
The least profitable of the spam messages will dissapear, thereby reducing the loads on our mailboxes and on the ISP as a whole.
That assumes we're near the threshold of spam profitability - but I don't know that that's the case. As someone else responded, all it means is they'll send out more messages to make the same amount of money.
Also, there are ways of tricking Bayes filters. I've never seen exactly how they're implemented, but Bayesian statistics is VERY population-size dependent.
The way they work is basically:
P(spam, given X) ~ P(X,given spam)*P(spam).
Here, X is some piece of email, and P(spam) is the fraction of email, globally, that is spam. So, to trick it, there would be a few ways. First, if there is an ISP you want to hit, send a bunch of innocuous emails that ARE NOT SPAM. Then, send a bunch of spam that share something in common with the innocuous ones you sent. This will have the filter saying "I sometimes see this from non-spam," essentially, which is what you want it saying. The question is how fast the filter learns - could you set it up, then spam for a while before it learns?
...I want it to be me. Note that you don't hear no-name bands quitting because they only make a few thousand $$ a year. They often keep doing it, even if it doesn't pay REAL bills, because they love it.
Software development is a good example. People work for MS because they pay them to. People code for linux because they know they're making something cool for the community at large. However, what if Linus somehow (as if he could) closed the source to linux and started charging $100/copy for it. Would anyone keep coding for free? No.
So people will do something for the love, OR for money, but not for neither. And if someone else is taking advantage of them without giving anything else back, expect them to be pissed.
Doom 3 runs in it's own operating system (the way God intended)!
Intriguing....why the hell *don't* they? Nobody multi-tasks when playing a game like Doom III anyway. They could have a small version of Linux or something on hte game CD. They could have a separate disk of drivers and such for vid cards, and you could store the drivers you need on the HDD.
Get rid of the bloat of windows...and the need to actually *have* windows. Now if only most candyassed game writers will stop using fscking DirectX, maybe this could happen.
it is a theory, or a hypothesis, or an observation. A law in the scientific jargon must be something which is:
6 a : a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under the given conditions b : a general relation proved or assumed to hold between mathematical or logical expressions
I agree,and I would actually give Moore's Law less credit than that. I would infer from your definition that, generally, a "law" is something fundamental and immutable that arises from the underlying nature of certain phenomena. Boyle's gas law is a good example: increase the temperature of a gas at constant pressure, and it expands. This is fundamental and can be explained as such.
Moore's "law" is just a relationship built from Intel's marketing engine and economics. Let's say I was rich and decided to start marketing cheap, low-defect silicon. Moore's "law" suddenly changes.
Basically, Moore's law could change at any time (and has) if Intel decides to accelerate their R&D facilities. Or if they decide to invest more in silicon fab facilities. Or if they decided to raise their prices, allowing them to get a lower yield of smaller-featured chips.
When you get right down to it, Moore's law only holds as long as Intel wants it too. Or, if they get more competition that forces them to accelerate their chip release schedule (like the last 5 years thanks to AMD).
I work in Student Records at a technical college in MN. I will NOT allow anyone to request information over the phone. They must either MAIL or FAX me a request with a hand written signature in order for me to release this information to them...
State and Federal law states that people can request information over the phone if it is going directly to them and *I* feel that it is really that person. Problem here is that I cannot verify if it is really them and the social engineering thing comes into play. So basically I won't accept any phone requests. I feel that I cannot safely determine who the person is if I don't see a handwritten request.
Oh, for chrissakes - handwritten requests are completely and utterly useless. Let me guess, it has to be on letterhead? See parent post regarding availability thereof...
So I fax you a request. It has Police Department letterhead...or something similar. I mean, you don't know what the Jackass Police Department's letterhead looks like. And I sign it as the chief of Jackass Police Department. You don't know what his signature looks like either. And I put my phone number on it - but it has the same area code and extension as the main number, so it could be a non-main phone line. Or maybe I made up a police department that doesn't even exist.
How many E-bay knobs are going to fully check this? Are they going to get a directory assistance to find the PD and check the number? Are they going to talk to the chief, from the phone number they looked up, to make sure he ordered the data? What if they can't find the department's listing (could be a small department, could be I made it up)? Probably none of the above.
When you get down to it, faxed requests are pretty much worthless. Which is why I would want a warrant served by law enforcement personnel who I could easily check up on. As for DNR, I don't believe that helps with ebay.
Sending kiddie porn through the mail is a FEDERAL OFFENSE. There's no need for PA to do anything as there is already a branch of Federal Law Enforcement, the Postal Inspectors, who's job it is to police such things.
To begin with, obviously kiddie porn is disgusting and illegal. Rightfully so. So that's not what the debate is about.
Also, I think there are some issues with your examples:
1. First, it's illegal to possess/electronically transmit kiddie porn, just like it is through the mail. However, evidently PA still felt the need for a new law.
2. Had PA created a new law enforcement agency to do this, with funding, that would be different (a la your "Postal Inspectors" example). But they didn't. They told the ISP's to go do it themselves.
3. They shift the responsibility for *checking content* onto the ISP. No one blames the post office when some kiddie porn gets through. For the PO, there may be someone who has investigative powers, but no one is blamed, fined, etc. when they fail in that regard. I have never heard of a case where a mail carrier was blamed for the package they deliver. Like, say, mail bombs.
4. The post office is not required to check *every letter* coming from "known" kiddie porn senders (from overseas senders, let's say). They are not reuqired to keep any sort of list. The ISP's are effectively being saddled with this burden.
So, ultimately, the new "law" is nothing like the post office regulations. The post office is not forced to investigate all packages for porn. They're not required to keep a "porn list." of known senders. And they get enforcement help from the government when issues arise. This is an unfunded mandate where a private industry (ISP's) is being forced into a policing role that the states or DOJ should take care of.
Why solve your own problems when you can pass a law forcing someone else to?
It shouldn't be illegal to break DRM, but it also shouldn't be illegal to put DRM on a disk.
Two points - we're not talking about making it illegal to use DRM, we're talking about mandatory labeling of their doing it. So really, the right they lose is that of doing DRM *secretly*.
Second, if you oppose labeling, OK - I will too just *as soon* as they make it legal again to defeat DRM.
they'll feel it in their pocketbook. Let the consumer decide
Yeah, but since the music market is controlled by a very few players who are allied by a strong trade group, there won't *be* any choice, nor will they feel it in their pocketbook.
Remember, when Bill gets riled or he's speaking *off script*, he acts like quite a dick. Like the trial for instance, where the DOJ lawyers nailed him on the stand, making him look like the arrogant little man that he is.
If he wasn't prepped for these questions (and given the skill of the interviewer, I doubt he was either), then he might have flipped and gone off exactly as printed.
The PA ISP's need YOU! Make $50/hr scouring the net for kiddie porn!
Sad thing is, they might have to...
Q. Why doesn't PA require the post office to ban ordering of kid pr0n through the mail? Maybe because that's more intuitive and they see how ridiculous it is?
Yeah, I know that. I was making the logical leap that a company that makes x86 vm's for x86 might also be able to make an x86 emulator for mac. I mean, it is kind of a similar market.
Well, that blows...maybe we can BEG vmware to release a version for OS X? Then we could do it the other way around - run windows in the vm.;)
That's what I do now, only my main OS is linux. I run vmware for linux, and keep my windows in a nice safe wrapper. Kind of like a condom for your windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Not true, as pointed out in the article. Since the guy has every right to do what he's doing, they have no obligation to even attempt to stop it. In general, you are correct, but not for this. Their position is like saying that the news couldn't do a story on Microsoft because the name is a trademark. Bullshit.
They're just getting edgy here, and probably they fear a slippery slope argument into ubiquity (and thus lack of trademark), but this is ridiculous.
It's funny, because Google got where it was because people trusted them (ie, their search results wouldn't be confounded with ads). Google is pretty well respected among net users. I dunno why they would want to go off sounding like a bunch of assholes. Probably a case of marketing not talking to legal.
The thing is, there are situations where you will want it to keep working after you leave. Like you return the item, but you don't have your receipt, like it said in the article (yeah, I RTFA! :>) It would be great if the RFID from the item was stored with the purchase price in the database. And that necessitates the thing staying alive.
So stores WILL be able to determine your buying history if you use a CC to pay(Grocery stores do now - with that little card they extorted you into giving them each time). And I bet the RFID manufacturer ends up selling these things in consecutive runs of ID #'s - making it EASY for the feds to determine where the panties were bought and to correlate them with a CC#, then a mailing address, etc.
So what do we do? I think consumers will need to educate themselves a bit - especially with regard to where they buy clothing. We will need a privacy policy law like with the net. Try to pay for clothing with cash. And the greatest hope, I swear to God, will be sensationalist journalism. Even regular people will be creeped out by the idea of being tracked by their underwear. And you know Dateline or one of those crappy shows will do a thing on it if the NYTimes is on it now.
Also, I plan on using a big fscking magnet on my clothes from now on. 5 Tesla should work ;)
Furthermore, maybe what we need are more customizable UI's. Mozilla is doing a great job with it's skin design tools - maybe other applications could do something like that - provide hooks to the main functions that skin writers could access.
I think the functionality of OSS-ware is getting close to commercial, but the usability still sucks. OpenOffice, for instance, is the most horribly laid out piece of crap I have ever used.
Because the windows-only "administrators" I've come into contact with were dumb as shit.
Or am I just paranoid as hell? And if so, is that relevant?
...the funny thing is the people who replied even AFTER the guy who spotted it from the troll bank. It's really getting too damned easy.
Actually, it damn near happened, as it was brought up for debate and passed in the house. The only thing that killed it was the lucky presence of a (real) mathematician who was there for other reasons, who had the time to "educate" the senators.
Some things never change.
Also, the math the sponsor introduces is convoluted and wrong, and he came up with 3.2.
Links: Here and Here
If that was a troll...good job.
...at this point, wouldn't it be a good idea to pick ONE of the scripting languages, and make it a co-standard? Sure, allowing anyone to code in language du jour isn't a great idea, but taking forever to do code simple programs because C takes forever to develop with...well, that ain't so great either.
Right, but any solution that starts with something like "If only everyone would..." is immediately doomed to failure. So, assuming the world is a bunch of retarded chimps (reasonable, I think), now what do we do? Like g'parent said, by the time it hits your filter, you (the ISP) have lost the battle.
The least profitable of the spam messages will dissapear, thereby reducing the loads on our mailboxes and on the ISP as a whole.
That assumes we're near the threshold of spam profitability - but I don't know that that's the case. As someone else responded, all it means is they'll send out more messages to make the same amount of money.
Also, there are ways of tricking Bayes filters. I've never seen exactly how they're implemented, but Bayesian statistics is VERY population-size dependent.
The way they work is basically: P(spam, given X) ~ P(X,given spam)*P(spam). Here, X is some piece of email, and P(spam) is the fraction of email, globally, that is spam. So, to trick it, there would be a few ways. First, if there is an ISP you want to hit, send a bunch of innocuous emails that ARE NOT SPAM. Then, send a bunch of spam that share something in common with the innocuous ones you sent. This will have the filter saying "I sometimes see this from non-spam," essentially, which is what you want it saying. The question is how fast the filter learns - could you set it up, then spam for a while before it learns?
I'm sure there are other ways as well.
Software development is a good example. People work for MS because they pay them to. People code for linux because they know they're making something cool for the community at large. However, what if Linus somehow (as if he could) closed the source to linux and started charging $100/copy for it. Would anyone keep coding for free? No.
So people will do something for the love, OR for money, but not for neither. And if someone else is taking advantage of them without giving anything else back, expect them to be pissed.
Intriguing....why the hell *don't* they? Nobody multi-tasks when playing a game like Doom III anyway. They could have a small version of Linux or something on hte game CD. They could have a separate disk of drivers and such for vid cards, and you could store the drivers you need on the HDD.
Get rid of the bloat of windows...and the need to actually *have* windows. Now if only most candyassed game writers will stop using fscking DirectX, maybe this could happen.
That said, since each tank is only good for 180 miles, this ain't for road trips. Also not good for forgetful people.
Riiiiiight....have they ever done that? Hell no! And I doubt they ever will.
If you're going to troll, at least make it amusing.
...take ln(Value/100) and round down. 9 years for a mil, 2 for a K.
6 a : a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under the given conditions b : a general relation proved or assumed to hold between mathematical or logical expressions
I agree,and I would actually give Moore's Law less credit than that. I would infer from your definition that, generally, a "law" is something fundamental and immutable that arises from the underlying nature of certain phenomena. Boyle's gas law is a good example: increase the temperature of a gas at constant pressure, and it expands. This is fundamental and can be explained as such.
Moore's "law" is just a relationship built from Intel's marketing engine and economics. Let's say I was rich and decided to start marketing cheap, low-defect silicon. Moore's "law" suddenly changes.
Basically, Moore's law could change at any time (and has) if Intel decides to accelerate their R&D facilities. Or if they decide to invest more in silicon fab facilities. Or if they decided to raise their prices, allowing them to get a lower yield of smaller-featured chips.
When you get right down to it, Moore's law only holds as long as Intel wants it too. Or, if they get more competition that forces them to accelerate their chip release schedule (like the last 5 years thanks to AMD).
I work in Student Records at a technical college in MN. I will NOT allow anyone to request information over the phone. They must either MAIL or FAX me a request with a hand written signature in order for me to release this information to them...
State and Federal law states that people can request information over the phone if it is going directly to them and *I* feel that it is really that person. Problem here is that I cannot verify if it is really them and the social engineering thing comes into play. So basically I won't accept any phone requests. I feel that I cannot safely determine who the person is if I don't see a handwritten request.
Oh, for chrissakes - handwritten requests are completely and utterly useless. Let me guess, it has to be on letterhead? See parent post regarding availability thereof...
So I fax you a request. It has Police Department letterhead...or something similar. I mean, you don't know what the Jackass Police Department's letterhead looks like. And I sign it as the chief of Jackass Police Department. You don't know what his signature looks like either. And I put my phone number on it - but it has the same area code and extension as the main number, so it could be a non-main phone line. Or maybe I made up a police department that doesn't even exist.
How many E-bay knobs are going to fully check this? Are they going to get a directory assistance to find the PD and check the number? Are they going to talk to the chief, from the phone number they looked up, to make sure he ordered the data? What if they can't find the department's listing (could be a small department, could be I made it up)? Probably none of the above.
When you get down to it, faxed requests are pretty much worthless. Which is why I would want a warrant served by law enforcement personnel who I could easily check up on. As for DNR, I don't believe that helps with ebay.
To begin with, obviously kiddie porn is disgusting and illegal. Rightfully so. So that's not what the debate is about.
Also, I think there are some issues with your examples:
1. First, it's illegal to possess/electronically transmit kiddie porn, just like it is through the mail. However, evidently PA still felt the need for a new law.
2. Had PA created a new law enforcement agency to do this, with funding, that would be different (a la your "Postal Inspectors" example). But they didn't. They told the ISP's to go do it themselves.
3. They shift the responsibility for *checking content* onto the ISP. No one blames the post office when some kiddie porn gets through. For the PO, there may be someone who has investigative powers, but no one is blamed, fined, etc. when they fail in that regard. I have never heard of a case where a mail carrier was blamed for the package they deliver. Like, say, mail bombs.
4. The post office is not required to check *every letter* coming from "known" kiddie porn senders (from overseas senders, let's say). They are not reuqired to keep any sort of list. The ISP's are effectively being saddled with this burden.
So, ultimately, the new "law" is nothing like the post office regulations. The post office is not forced to investigate all packages for porn. They're not required to keep a "porn list." of known senders. And they get enforcement help from the government when issues arise. This is an unfunded mandate where a private industry (ISP's) is being forced into a policing role that the states or DOJ should take care of.
Why solve your own problems when you can pass a law forcing someone else to?
Two points - we're not talking about making it illegal to use DRM, we're talking about mandatory labeling of their doing it. So really, the right they lose is that of doing DRM *secretly*.
Second, if you oppose labeling, OK - I will too just *as soon* as they make it legal again to defeat DRM.
they'll feel it in their pocketbook. Let the consumer decide
Yeah, but since the music market is controlled by a very few players who are allied by a strong trade group, there won't *be* any choice, nor will they feel it in their pocketbook.
If he wasn't prepped for these questions (and given the skill of the interviewer, I doubt he was either), then he might have flipped and gone off exactly as printed.
Or it could be a troll, whatever. ;)
The PA ISP's need YOU! Make $50/hr scouring the net for kiddie porn!
Sad thing is, they might have to...
Q. Why doesn't PA require the post office to ban ordering of kid pr0n through the mail? Maybe because that's more intuitive and they see how ridiculous it is?
Quite frankly, this is why companies really wanted the DMCA - to prevent reverse engineering when that was the only way to break a monopoly.
Sheesh.
Well, that blows...maybe we can BEG vmware to release a version for OS X? Then we could do it the other way around - run windows in the vm. ;)
That's what I do now, only my main OS is linux. I run vmware for linux, and keep my windows in a nice safe wrapper. Kind of like a condom for your windows.