Why are 'social coordination' skills going to be most needed in the near future?
Because there will be more people, and more technology.
The first change increases the value of being able to successfully cooperate with other humans. The second change decreases the value of physical strength, agility, and wilderness-survival skills.
that the world at large is turning more socialized and more statist?
It is trivial to observe that statism increases along with the world population. Or are you anticipating a sudden reversion to tribal anarchy?
Of course, the underlying problem with this thesis is the presumption that men hunted while women foraged.
That is not a problem with the thesis. No one supporting that position needs to claim "men hunted to the exclusion of foraging". "Women foraged to the exclusion of hunting" is enough.
While there is evidence that men hunted, there is no evidence that they did not assist in the foraging
You clearly state there that men hunted more than women (in fact you don't suggest that women hunted at all), which exactly supports the idea that women would lack long-range navigational abilities.
and in fact fingerprints in pottery seem to indicate
By the time the first pottery was invented (Jomon culture), "hunter-gatherer" society patterns were no longer influencing the genome. It was only 10,000 years ago- not enough time for any biological evolution to occur. Ceramic technology was invented by modern humans.
It's not the RECORDING industry that's ailing -- it's the MEDIA DISTRIBUTION industry.
Actually you mean the "content distribution" industry.
The media industry is the one that creates the transfer media to place audio files on. Blank CD-Rs and such (which are more profitable for discmakers than pre-recorded CDs). Their business is growing.
Because if the RIAA placed the file on the network, then it wasn't illegal for the guy to download it.
We can be sure that a detective working for the RIAA engaged in transfers over a P2P network to discover this infringement. We don't know if he was uploading or downloading- but whatever direction the transfer took place in, somebody might argue that "one of the parties was working for the copyright hold and thus authorized to copy the material, therefore the whole transaction was legal".
Yes, that sounds like a clever defense. I considered it myself.
However no reasonable judge will allow this. It is much to easy to show that the downloader had zero expectation that the person sending him the file was an agent of the copyright holder. (In a similar but more extreme situation, a man was just arrested for hiring a federal agent to kill his wife. Even though he wasn't really hiring a murderer, he thought so, and that's what matters)
Furthermore, even if that particular violation is thrown out of court as some kind of entrapment (which won't happen for several reasons), the RIAA represents thousands of musicians. A search of his computer after arrest will undoubtably turn up other files that were gotten from different sources, and he can be tried on those. He may be threatened with thousands of counts of copyright violation, each one a potention 6+ month sentence.
It's only piracy if you obtain your copy from an illegitimate source,
To be technically and legally correct, it's only "piracy" if you seize it from a ship by force. Piracy, after all, is a violent crime committed on or near the ocean.
It's not likely to help much. But demonstrating that a law has ludicrous effects when interpreted strictly may help scale back the scope before it becomes entrenched.
However, his example won't work. Agents of the RIAA honestly have a strong belief that a Verizon user downloaded one of their songs (of course they know- they sent it to him over P2P). Unless he can catch someone downloading a college essay, then his written request won't have any authority.
non-combat units don't commonly have GPS equipment.
What? A unit can get equipped with GPS for just $100. If they're non-combat, that's even more reason they can grab civilian gear- it's good enough, and a lot better than nothing.
Even some SOF troops carry COTS Garmins, as the MILSPECs are just too bulky for what they need to do.
Hmm, I didn't spend much time at Stottler Henke's booth at IITSEC (although they passed out a great little invitation card, featuring an infantryman with an RS-232 port out the side of his neck).
Slashdot readers might like to know that the primary platform for the OTB software referenced in that paper is Linux. (In fact, at one point the recommended distribution was Progeny Debian).
The really amusing thing about Stottler Henke is that although their main customer focus is on the US DoD, they've also released products for games like NeverWinter Nights.
You mean, build decoy-drones which broadcast fake signals?
Because otherwise, the fact that those 1500 transmissions come from exactly 225 bearings will look suspicious. It's much more likely that an enemy would just detect radio signals to pick up where the unit is, rather than attempting unreasonable task of decrypting the actual messages.
The only way they could realistically eavesdrop on the contents of the transmissions would be if a valid US receieved was captured intact- in which case the SecurId (or equivalent) would be captured along with it.
So I've little doubt that it's pretty common in the actual military as well.
I doubt it strongly. If you worked for a defense contractor long, you know there is a HUGE difference between the equipment used in stateside research labs and what is deployable in the field.
Software thats going to be run in actual military combat should always be compact, embedded systems code. We all know the story of the battleship running Windows NT, which only demonstrates why this is a bad idea- and the military is usually completely aware of this.
As described in the story, FCB2B is run on armored vehicles on a real battlefield. And as I said in my post, it is insane to think that the designers of a vehicle like that would pack on 2 separate computers to run separate client and server. It's just as crazy to imagine that they would run a remote X11 application from a moving tank (secure bandwidth is very, very scarce), or that they would emulate Unix inside an emulated session on Windows.
Slightly more probablye is that they're running a ported Unix program which still displays over a TCP (loopback) connection to an Xserver. The DoD has done this for some R&D applications (like older versions of EADSIM), but it still seems unlikely for something that'll be carried into battle.
Besides, the icon on the bottom of the screenshot is a red X. Isn't Exceed's logo a green bird?
Obviously, we needed a Unix environment to program computers that would be rinning Unix in the field.
Even Unix is normally considered too newflangled and unpredictable to run in "the field".
I can't even BEGIN to imagine just HOW many windows PCs are out there,
Microsoft can give you some info if you really want the painful details.
I've discovered that this is stupidly common within other government contractors as well, and not uncommon outside.
Take heart, the goverment may be learning a lesson. Someday they may pull the defense contractors along with them. Until then, Lockheed and the rest will remain big Microsoft VARs.
The slide says "integrated into the various platforms at brigade and below". But in that context (and in general when discussing military planning), a "platform" is anything which can have a gun put on it (tanks, APCs, helicopters, ships, etc. Even people)
Is there any other source suggesting it's cross-platform in a software sense?
Here are two screenshots (reg req?) of FBCB2, a battlefield force-viewing program.
Can someone tell me what OS it's running on?
Plainly FBCB2 is using X11 windows to draw the display. But the open "Start" menu in the lower-left strongly resembles Microsoft Windows(tm), except for the replacement of the "Flying Window" logo with a yellowish blob.
It seems excessively fragile to be running two boxes for the software and it's display- could it be that FBCB2 is a Unix program, but the Army has adapted a Microsoft-like X11 window manager to make their troops feel more comforatable with it?
I suggest you double check before making any unadvised remarks and spreading any more FUD.
And I suggest you look up "FUD" in the dictionary before tossing out accusations. (I'll help: "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt". Nothing that has bearing to this discussion)
No they won't. In my Start Menu it clearly says Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, etc. And so does the title bar of the app. IE clearly appends Microsoft Internet Explorer to the title of every page... check your IE titlebar.
Apparently just because names are too long to be useful doesn't stop Microsoft from printing their brand in front of everything. Does this really mean the taskbar is like this?
I know that Windows 98(tm) did that, but I'd assumed it was fixed by now. If not, you have my sympathies. But regardless of how Microsoft marketers chose to clutter their onscreen displays, the fact remains that human beings will not tolerate using the longer names in speaking or casual correspondence.
(Microsoft relies on this effect. When they pick a name like "Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Paint", "Microsoft Word", "Microsoft dot net", or "Microsoft Document", they do it with the expectation that everyone will be forced to drop the corporate prefix on the name. In this way they essentially trademark generic terms. I can no longer tell someone to send me a picture as "a bitmap format" without explaining to him that this in no way implies *.BMP)
Please do a search on Google for "Firebird web browser" and let me know on which position you'll find any form of link to the Firebird DB.
That query isn't what people wanting to try a new browser will type in. Search for anything like "firebird download" to see what'll really happen.
In this discussion, they've been called "FirebirdSQL" to distinguish them from the newcomer "Firebird (web browswer)" project. But previously and in general, they were "Firebird".
Who is the worse culprit, those who engage in friendly fire, or those who return the fire _knowing_ it's friendlies they're shooting at?
From a military standpoint (not an analogy, since that analogy doesn't work), the party of the first part bears all the culpablity. Once a supposed teammate opens fire on me, I have every right to shoot him in self-defense.
Well, of course it does. There's just been a big rush of sites talking about this problem posting links to them. Google is nothing if not adaptable.
That has nothing to do with it. Search for "firebird download", "firebird bugs", or "firebird ML archive" and you get exactly that database project. It is confusion in those areas that they want to prevent.
There is no such thing as "prior art" for trademarks or copyright
Sure there is. If someone uses a term as a public identifier, other people cannot come along and claim a similar term as a new trademark (without going through an analysis of whether or not the trademark will introduce confusion with the existing usage).
No one has a trademark on "Web Browser", but that doesn't mean I can go apply for one. The term is already in common use, and my trademark would confuse existing markets. "FireBird" is also already in wide use.
See, for example, the lawsuit over "etoy.com". A website of that name already existed when the trademark "etoys.com" was registered. Because of that, the trademark was significantly weakened.
The act of "trademark sniping"- learning or guessing what a new product name will be, and registering your own application before the developer gets around to it- is a civil offense, although rarely proven (because companies with enough lawyers to challenge those things find it easier to just register their own marks quickly).
Surely the whole community can come up with something inbetween these useless "cute" names and the mundane dry clearness of the "explorer" and "navigator" names, and have something that's original, informative and catchy enough for non-geeks to use without feeling ridiculous.
This problem has a lengthy history in the free software movement.
In fact, it reaches all the way back to the naming of the GNU project. I can hardly think of a name that would be more hostile to a non-technical enduser.
"Hey, it says I should try installing a 'New' library"
"Oh, how do you pronounce that again?"
"And does that stand for anything?"
(For those unfamiliar, "GNU" is an "infinitely recursive acryonym", a term that'll elicit chuckles from maths students and confusion from anyone else. It stands for "GNU is Not Unix")
RMS is infamous for complaining that "Linux" was used to describe systems that should've properly been called "GNU"- but he has only himself to blame. Compared to "GNU", "Linux" is vastly easier for the average person to pronounce and to distinguish from other words. I just don't think a TV anchor could read "GNU" on the air- and if one did, few of the viewing audience would manage to punch it into a search-engine.
Don't have to, everyone will call the web browser Mozilla Firebird.
No they won't. "Mozilla Firebird" is too many syllables to use in everyday speech, just like people don't say "Microsoft Powerpoint" much either. It's too long to put on "Start" menus or window titlebars. The browser will inevitably be abbreviated to just "Firebird". In the prior version of that web-browser, "Phoenix" was always used instead of "Mozilla Phoenix", both in speech and on the web- why will it be different after the renaming?
A simple google search for Firebird + Security NOT "Mozilla Firebird" will bring up all the relevant issues for the Firebird database.
Thus imposing a new cost on all users of the pre-existing SQL project. That's what trademark protection is supposed to avoid.
Everyone knows what a web browser looks like. The icons for these applications will be very different.
Assuming they have icons, how could they really be different? Both will show a reddish bird-thing. What else can they do?
The answer I got was as long as a software product wasn't competiting directly with another software product in the same market (hence, the web browser market or database market), then it is ok to have similar names.
That is incorrect. Trademark interference is judged based on likelihood of producing confusion. SQL products and web-browsers may not be in the same market in terms of competing for customers, but they are in the same marketplace in terms of how the programs are distributed and supported.
Pick up the latest software catalog and see how many names are the same or very similar.
Very, very few. In fact, the only examples I can find are related products from the same vendor.
Mozilla users? Any Mozilla user knows that http://www.mozilla.org is the Mozilla web site. The media and all download sites correctly link to the Mozilla web site whenever talking/promoting the product.
The new users that "Mozilla Firebird" wants to get won't think of themselves as "Mozilla" users, they will be looking for "Firebird web browser". Browser-users don't have the same level of sophistication as SQL operators, so many of them will stumble upon the websites firebird.org, firebird.com, and the sourceforge FirdBird SQL project. A small fraction of them will submit bugs to the tracking system, and send angry messages to the mailing lists complaining that the web-browser is hard to install.
Since Mozilla spinoffs will tend to have large numbers of unskilled users, those annoyances can be significant. Responding to all those misdirected messages will slow down the developers of the original project, and make them less willing to contribute to Open Source. I expect that after getting flooded like that, they'll change the name or create prominent links on their homepage to the "other Firebird".
A large, popular project can be a latecomer to a name, and will wind up shoving aside the little guys who had been using it longer.
It was wrong when Microsoft did it to InternetExplorer.com (until they paid it off), when Digital did it to altavista.com (until they paid too), and when etoys.com did it to etoy.com (until the judge smacked them). When 2 Open Source projects (one backed by a huge corporation) do it to each other, it's still wrong.
my use of the term 'firebird' to name my cat shouldn't infringe upon your ability to use it for your DB; your DB shouldn't infringe upon someone else using it for a web browser.
So Microsoft's use of "Access" for a database shouldn't infringe upon me naming a photo-editing program that?
Besides, nothing seems so childish as "he took my name, I was using it first". This is the mentality that has tied up the WIPO and caused all kinds of lawsuits.
No, that is the mentality that created the WIPO. They're not "tied up", they're doing the job they were intended to. What you call childish is the basis for legions of grown-up laws.
Many "intellectual property" rights are of arguable value, but trademark protection is the most defensible of them. If you disagree with the concept, then you've got a high burden of proof to explain why.
I'd love features like the Zaurus, I enjoy 1-3 month battery life.
I feel that one of the big marketing oversights Sharp made with the Zaurus is failing to produce an "entry-level" model. Their first Linux Zaurus product cost nearly $400 at launch, because of high-end features- which are actually detriments to some buyers. The gorgeous color screen made battery-life horrible, and the physical QWERTY keyboard made it bulkier than any Palm or PocketPC.
Releasing a greyscale, no-keyboard model would've increased their marketshare by enticing buyers who value mobile uptime and portability. And, a little extra developer mindshare could've gone a long way towards increasing the number of 3rd party apps supporting the product line.
POSIX-compatible kernel is completely inappropriate for a Palm-style handheld.
It takes much more than a kernel to be POSIX compatible. Using Linux in no way implies all the POSIX miscellany (although that's what the other poster wanted).
However, the more important point is that new PDAs being designed today are not "Palm style" handhelds. Today's new hardware is completely different from the 1996 PalmPilots. A minimalist, single-tasking, manual allocation API that was fine for scraping along in 1 megabyte of RAM becomes a drawback moving into a future of 64+ megabytes and always-on WiFi networking. Analogies to MS-DOS and the hardware evolution from 086 to Pentium are fully applicable.
How about a 47K full scientific calculator?
Ok, is 23k acceptable? (opie-calculator) And if it had been targeted for a smaller device, with a 160x160 2 bit screen instead of something better than 1991-era VGA, the size would be even smaller. Games for a more powerful PDA like a PocketPC or Zaurus will often use around 8 times as much graphical data than a minimalist Palm version. The programmers could reduce that storage use if they wanted, but they feel customers demand the artwork.
Let me mention that the Zaurus is a bad PDA, because Sharp bought to fully into the idea that providing an interface basically compatible with desktop Unix (POSIX + Qt) would magically provide them with a suite of great PIM applications. But they ignored good old-fashioned listening to the customers and watching the competition. The fact that desktop-like programming worked on the device lead them to ship naively developed programs that, while functioning, were not intuitive, fast, or scalable. And the color screen let them draw pretty icons and shaded buttons that become unreadable in normal lighting conditions, where a monochrome Palm is still somewhat legible.
The root of the Zaurus problem is that the manufacturer neither paid developers for continual software improvements in response to customer feedback, nor fully open-sourced their code to permit "community" upgrades. It's taken more than a year for the open-source replacement software to become adequate, and the Zaurus lost a big opportunity for marketshare in that time.
Is it true in simlife that you can create the girls as lesbians?
Characters in The Sims have basically no conception of gender. Any 2 adults can become physically affectionate based only on the strength of their emotional relationship, which ignores gender completely (although the player may have pushed them in directions matching his own preference).
Only when it's time to make a baby do homosexual Sim-couples run into snags...
Slashdot Mirror
Why are 'social coordination' skills going to be most needed in the near future?
Because there will be more people, and more technology.
The first change increases the value of being able to successfully cooperate with other humans.
The second change decreases the value of physical strength, agility, and wilderness-survival skills.
that the world at large is turning more socialized and more statist?
It is trivial to observe that statism increases along with the world population. Or are you anticipating a sudden reversion to tribal anarchy?
Of course, the underlying problem with this thesis is the presumption that men hunted while women foraged.
That is not a problem with the thesis. No one supporting that position needs to claim "men hunted to the exclusion of foraging". "Women foraged to the exclusion of hunting" is enough.
While there is evidence that men hunted, there is no evidence that they did not assist in the foraging
You clearly state there that men hunted more than women (in fact you don't suggest that women hunted at all), which exactly supports the idea that women would lack long-range navigational abilities.
and in fact fingerprints in pottery seem to indicate
By the time the first pottery was invented (Jomon culture), "hunter-gatherer" society patterns were no longer influencing the genome. It was only 10,000 years ago- not enough time for any biological evolution to occur. Ceramic technology was invented by modern humans.
Congratulations, both of you can read the story department: "in-memoriam-maude-flanders".
Micheal beat you to it.
It's not the RECORDING industry that's ailing -- it's the MEDIA DISTRIBUTION industry.
Actually you mean the "content distribution" industry.
The media industry is the one that creates the transfer media to place audio files on. Blank CD-Rs and such (which are more profitable for discmakers than pre-recorded CDs). Their business is growing.
Because if the RIAA placed the file on the network, then it wasn't illegal for the guy to download it.
We can be sure that a detective working for the RIAA engaged in transfers over a P2P network to discover this infringement. We don't know if he was uploading or downloading- but whatever direction the transfer took place in, somebody might argue that "one of the parties was working for the copyright hold and thus authorized to copy the material, therefore the whole transaction was legal".
Yes, that sounds like a clever defense. I considered it myself.
However no reasonable judge will allow this. It is much to easy to show that the downloader had zero expectation that the person sending him the file was an agent of the copyright holder. (In a similar but more extreme situation, a man was just arrested for hiring a federal agent to kill his wife. Even though he wasn't really hiring a murderer, he thought so, and that's what matters)
Furthermore, even if that particular violation is thrown out of court as some kind of entrapment (which won't happen for several reasons), the RIAA represents thousands of musicians. A search of his computer after arrest will undoubtably turn up other files that were gotten from different sources, and he can be tried on those. He may be threatened with thousands of counts of copyright violation, each one a potention 6+ month sentence.
It's only piracy if you obtain your copy from an illegitimate source,
To be technically and legally correct, it's only "piracy" if you seize it from a ship by force. Piracy, after all, is a violent crime committed on or near the ocean.
It's not likely to help much. But demonstrating that a law has ludicrous effects when interpreted strictly may help scale back the scope before it becomes entrenched.
However, his example won't work. Agents of the RIAA honestly have a strong belief that a Verizon user downloaded one of their songs (of course they know- they sent it to him over P2P). Unless he can catch someone downloading a college essay, then his written request won't have any authority.
non-combat units don't commonly have GPS equipment.
What? A unit can get equipped with GPS for just $100. If they're non-combat, that's even more reason they can grab civilian gear- it's good enough, and a lot better than nothing.
Even some SOF troops carry COTS Garmins, as the MILSPECs are just too bulky for what they need to do.
Hmm, I didn't spend much time at Stottler Henke's booth at IITSEC (although they passed out a great little invitation card, featuring an infantryman with an RS-232 port out the side of his neck).
Slashdot readers might like to know that the primary platform for the OTB software referenced in that paper is Linux. (In fact, at one point the recommended distribution was Progeny Debian).
The really amusing thing about Stottler Henke is that although their main customer focus is on the US DoD, they've also released products for games like NeverWinter Nights.
You mean, build decoy-drones which broadcast fake signals?
Because otherwise, the fact that those 1500 transmissions come from exactly 225 bearings will look suspicious. It's much more likely that an enemy would just detect radio signals to pick up where the unit is, rather than attempting unreasonable task of decrypting the actual messages.
The only way they could realistically eavesdrop on the contents of the transmissions would be if a valid US receieved was captured intact- in which case the SecurId (or equivalent) would be captured along with it.
So I've little doubt that it's pretty common in the actual military as well.
I doubt it strongly. If you worked for a defense contractor long, you know there is a HUGE difference between the equipment used in stateside research labs and what is deployable in the field.
Software thats going to be run in actual military combat should always be compact, embedded systems code. We all know the story of the battleship running Windows NT, which only demonstrates why this is a bad idea- and the military is usually completely aware of this.
As described in the story, FCB2B is run on armored vehicles on a real battlefield. And as I said in my post, it is insane to think that the designers of a vehicle like that would pack on 2 separate computers to run separate client and server. It's just as crazy to imagine that they would run a remote X11 application from a moving tank (secure bandwidth is very, very scarce), or that they would emulate Unix inside an emulated session on Windows.
Slightly more probablye is that they're running a ported Unix program which still displays over a TCP (loopback) connection to an Xserver. The DoD has done this for some R&D applications (like older versions of EADSIM), but it still seems unlikely for something that'll be carried into battle.
Besides, the icon on the bottom of the screenshot is a red X. Isn't Exceed's logo a green bird?
Obviously, we needed a Unix environment to program computers that would be rinning Unix in the field.
Even Unix is normally considered too newflangled and unpredictable to run in "the field".
I can't even BEGIN to imagine just HOW many windows PCs are out there,
Microsoft can give you some info if you really want the painful details.
I've discovered that this is stupidly common within other government contractors as well, and not uncommon outside.
Take heart, the goverment may be learning a lesson. Someday they may pull the defense contractors along with them. Until then, Lockheed and the rest will remain big Microsoft VARs.
Given that it is platform agnostic
Where do you get that?
The slide says "integrated into the various platforms at brigade and below". But in that context (and in general when discussing military planning), a "platform" is anything which can have a gun put on it (tanks, APCs, helicopters, ships, etc. Even people)
Is there any other source suggesting it's cross-platform in a software sense?
Here are two screenshots (reg req?) of FBCB2, a battlefield force-viewing program.
Can someone tell me what OS it's running on?
Plainly FBCB2 is using X11 windows to draw the display. But the open "Start" menu in the lower-left strongly resembles Microsoft Windows(tm), except for the replacement of the "Flying Window" logo with a yellowish blob.
It seems excessively fragile to be running two boxes for the software and it's display- could it be that FBCB2 is a Unix program, but the Army has adapted a Microsoft-like X11 window manager to make their troops feel more comforatable with it?
And I suggest you look up "FUD" in the dictionary before tossing out accusations. (I'll help: "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt". Nothing that has bearing to this discussion)
No they won't. In my Start Menu it clearly says Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Word, etc. And so does the title bar of the app. IE clearly appends Microsoft Internet Explorer to the title of every page... check your IE titlebar.
Apparently just because names are too long to be useful doesn't stop Microsoft from printing their brand in front of everything. Does this really mean the taskbar is like this?
[Microso...][Microso...][plans - Mi...][Microso...][letter - Mi...]
I know that Windows 98(tm) did that, but I'd assumed it was fixed by now. If not, you have my sympathies. But regardless of how Microsoft marketers chose to clutter their onscreen displays, the fact remains that human beings will not tolerate using the longer names in speaking or casual correspondence.
(Microsoft relies on this effect. When they pick a name like "Microsoft Windows", "Microsoft Paint", "Microsoft Word", "Microsoft dot net", or "Microsoft Document", they do it with the expectation that everyone will be forced to drop the corporate prefix on the name. In this way they essentially trademark generic terms. I can no longer tell someone to send me a picture as "a bitmap format" without explaining to him that this in no way implies *.BMP)
Please do a search on Google for "Firebird web browser" and let me know on which position you'll find any form of link to the Firebird DB.
That query isn't what people wanting to try a new browser will type in. Search for anything like "firebird download" to see what'll really happen.
But no, they have been using "Firebird" as a single word.
In this discussion, they've been called "FirebirdSQL" to distinguish them from the newcomer "Firebird (web browswer)" project. But previously and in general, they were "Firebird".
Am I missing something
Yes, you are missing the fact that "The Mozilla Browser" and "The Browser formly known as Phoenix" are separate entities.
Both of them use the "Mozilla Web Client" libraries internally, but to the user, they are different pieces of software.
Who is the worse culprit, those who engage in friendly fire, or those who return the fire _knowing_ it's friendlies they're shooting at?
From a military standpoint (not an analogy, since that analogy doesn't work), the party of the first part bears all the culpablity. Once a supposed teammate opens fire on me, I have every right to shoot him in self-defense.
Well, of course it does. There's just been a big rush of sites talking about this problem posting links to them. Google is nothing if not adaptable.
That has nothing to do with it. Search for "firebird download", "firebird bugs", or "firebird ML archive" and you get exactly that database project. It is confusion in those areas that they want to prevent.
There is no such thing as "prior art" for trademarks or copyright
Sure there is. If someone uses a term as a public identifier, other people cannot come along and claim a similar term as a new trademark (without going through an analysis of whether or not the trademark will introduce confusion with the existing usage).
No one has a trademark on "Web Browser", but that doesn't mean I can go apply for one. The term is already in common use, and my trademark would confuse existing markets. "FireBird" is also already in wide use.
See, for example, the lawsuit over "etoy.com". A website of that name already existed when the trademark "etoys.com" was registered. Because of that, the trademark was significantly weakened.
The act of "trademark sniping"- learning or guessing what a new product name will be, and registering your own application before the developer gets around to it- is a civil offense, although rarely proven (because companies with enough lawyers to challenge those things find it easier to just register their own marks quickly).
This problem has a lengthy history in the free software movement.
In fact, it reaches all the way back to the naming of the GNU project. I can hardly think of a name that would be more hostile to a non-technical enduser.
"Hey, it says I should try installing a 'New' library"
"Oh, how do you pronounce that again?"
"And does that stand for anything?"
(For those unfamiliar, "GNU" is an "infinitely recursive acryonym", a term that'll elicit chuckles from maths students and confusion from anyone else. It stands for "GNU is Not Unix")
RMS is infamous for complaining that "Linux" was used to describe systems that should've properly been called "GNU"- but he has only himself to blame. Compared to "GNU", "Linux" is vastly easier for the average person to pronounce and to distinguish from other words. I just don't think a TV anchor could read "GNU" on the air- and if one did, few of the viewing audience would manage to punch it into a search-engine.
Don't have to, everyone will call the web browser Mozilla Firebird.
No they won't. "Mozilla Firebird" is too many syllables to use in everyday speech, just like people don't say "Microsoft Powerpoint" much either. It's too long to put on "Start" menus or window titlebars. The browser will inevitably be abbreviated to just "Firebird". In the prior version of that web-browser, "Phoenix" was always used instead of "Mozilla Phoenix", both in speech and on the web- why will it be different after the renaming?
A simple google search for Firebird + Security NOT "Mozilla Firebird" will bring up all the relevant issues for the Firebird database.
Thus imposing a new cost on all users of the pre-existing SQL project. That's what trademark protection is supposed to avoid.
Everyone knows what a web browser looks like. The icons for these applications will be very different.
Assuming they have icons, how could they really be different? Both will show a reddish bird-thing. What else can they do?
The answer I got was as long as a software product wasn't competiting directly with another software product in the same market (hence, the web browser market or database market), then it is ok to have similar names.
That is incorrect. Trademark interference is judged based on likelihood of producing confusion. SQL products and web-browsers may not be in the same market in terms of competing for customers, but they are in the same marketplace in terms of how the programs are distributed and supported.
Pick up the latest software catalog and see how many names are the same or very similar.
Very, very few. In fact, the only examples I can find are related products from the same vendor.
Mozilla users? Any Mozilla user knows that http://www.mozilla.org is the Mozilla web site. The media and all download sites correctly link to the Mozilla web site whenever talking/promoting the product.
The new users that "Mozilla Firebird" wants to get won't think of themselves as "Mozilla" users, they will be looking for "Firebird web browser". Browser-users don't have the same level of sophistication as SQL operators, so many of them will stumble upon the websites firebird.org, firebird.com, and the sourceforge FirdBird SQL project. A small fraction of them will submit bugs to the tracking system, and send angry messages to the mailing lists complaining that the web-browser is hard to install.
Since Mozilla spinoffs will tend to have large numbers of unskilled users, those annoyances can be significant. Responding to all those misdirected messages will slow down the developers of the original project, and make them less willing to contribute to Open Source. I expect that after getting flooded like that, they'll change the name or create prominent links on their homepage to the "other Firebird".
A large, popular project can be a latecomer to a name, and will wind up shoving aside the little guys who had been using it longer.
It was wrong when Microsoft did it to InternetExplorer.com (until they paid it off), when Digital did it to altavista.com (until they paid too), and when etoys.com did it to etoy.com (until the judge smacked them). When 2 Open Source projects (one backed by a huge corporation) do it to each other, it's still wrong.
my use of the term 'firebird' to name my cat shouldn't infringe upon your ability to use it for your DB; your DB shouldn't infringe upon someone else using it for a web browser.
So Microsoft's use of "Access" for a database shouldn't infringe upon me naming a photo-editing program that?
Besides, nothing seems so childish as "he took my name, I was using it first". This is the mentality that has tied up the WIPO and caused all kinds of lawsuits.
No, that is the mentality that created the WIPO. They're not "tied up", they're doing the job they were intended to. What you call childish is the basis for legions of grown-up laws.
Many "intellectual property" rights are of arguable value, but trademark protection is the most defensible of them. If you disagree with the concept, then you've got a high burden of proof to explain why.
I'd love features like the Zaurus, I enjoy 1-3 month battery life.
I feel that one of the big marketing oversights Sharp made with the Zaurus is failing to produce an "entry-level" model. Their first Linux Zaurus product cost nearly $400 at launch, because of high-end features- which are actually detriments to some buyers. The gorgeous color screen made battery-life horrible, and the physical QWERTY keyboard made it bulkier than any Palm or PocketPC.
Releasing a greyscale, no-keyboard model would've increased their marketshare by enticing buyers who value mobile uptime and portability. And, a little extra developer mindshare could've gone a long way towards increasing the number of 3rd party apps supporting the product line.
POSIX-compatible kernel is completely inappropriate for a Palm-style handheld.
It takes much more than a kernel to be POSIX compatible. Using Linux in no way implies all the POSIX miscellany (although that's what the other poster wanted).
However, the more important point is that new PDAs being designed today are not "Palm style" handhelds. Today's new hardware is completely different from the 1996 PalmPilots. A minimalist, single-tasking, manual allocation API that was fine for scraping along in 1 megabyte of RAM becomes a drawback moving into a future of 64+ megabytes and always-on WiFi networking. Analogies to MS-DOS and the hardware evolution from 086 to Pentium are fully applicable.
How about a 47K full scientific calculator?
Ok, is 23k acceptable? (opie-calculator) And if it had been targeted for a smaller device, with a 160x160 2 bit screen instead of something better than 1991-era VGA, the size would be even smaller. Games for a more powerful PDA like a PocketPC or Zaurus will often use around 8 times as much graphical data than a minimalist Palm version. The programmers could reduce that storage use if they wanted, but they feel customers demand the artwork.
Let me mention that the Zaurus is a bad PDA, because Sharp bought to fully into the idea that providing an interface basically compatible with desktop Unix (POSIX + Qt) would magically provide them with a suite of great PIM applications. But they ignored good old-fashioned listening to the customers and watching the competition. The fact that desktop-like programming worked on the device lead them to ship naively developed programs that, while functioning, were not intuitive, fast, or scalable. And the color screen let them draw pretty icons and shaded buttons that become unreadable in normal lighting conditions, where a monochrome Palm is still somewhat legible.
The root of the Zaurus problem is that the manufacturer neither paid developers for continual software improvements in response to customer feedback, nor fully open-sourced their code to permit "community" upgrades. It's taken more than a year for the open-source replacement software to become adequate, and the Zaurus lost a big opportunity for marketshare in that time.
Is it true in simlife that you can create the girls as lesbians?
Characters in The Sims have basically no conception of gender. Any 2 adults can become physically affectionate based only on the strength of their emotional relationship, which ignores gender completely (although the player may have pushed them in directions matching his own preference).
Only when it's time to make a baby do homosexual Sim-couples run into snags...
We are not mammals, we're quadrupeds.