Wow. 'Bile bile bile hate hate hate I say it's awful and the Drudge Report links to me so I should know. Nobody likes her and everybody hates her and she used to be a conservative and now she's a liberal and I hate her and AH is actually *nice* to people she is trying to convince to do something and I'm not a part of 'THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA' so I should know. She's having lots of trouble raising money and Hollywood is a bunch of liberal whackos who would do something like this only they won't do something like this and I'm a REAL member of the media so I should know.'
Really sort of hard to say whether she actually read anything off of the site before writing this, but my guess is that she had it ready three weeks in advance. She only mentions the actual content of the site in a couple of places, and those could very well have come from a few seconds of looking at the layout.
First off, Steve Jobs might be a little bit hip, but he's not cool except to the Mac faithful, the only ones who really care who he is (that's my opinion, though. I might be wrong)
Well, he was voted 'best-dressed CEO' by Style magazine (sadly, they pulled the article off the web). Does that count? (Maybe not.)
Up here we have to have everything labled in French and English, so some government git will have the sorry job of fitting Apple's Bonjour to that regulation.
Well, for the English, it's already done for you: Bonjour
You're saying, "TigerDirect could have emailed Apple a year ago and said, 'Your OS conflicts with the name of our company.' But Apple could have said 'We don't plan to ship it as a product, it's just a code name' so that's not the proper way to do it."
So, er, let's say that Apple said that. Then there are two possibilities: one, Apple doesn't ship something named Tiger. Presumably TigerDirect is happy? Two, Apple does, and that piece of email is a major exhibit in the lawsuit: clearly, TigerDirect did not wait until the moment of maximum damage, but started reacting earlier, which would cast them in a much more positive light. In either case, this is a big win for TigerDirect.
A much more likely result of sending that email would be that Apple sends back a polite lawyer's note saying 'We don't recognize your right of exclusive use of the word Tiger in reference to computer operating systems, and intend to use it ourselves.' Then TigerDirect could have sued Apple to stop them from using the name, with that letter as evidence of intent. And it all could have been handled long before the release date. Of course, Apple could also have failed to reply, but that's not germane, because you're arguing that TigerDirect shouldn't have done anything until now anyway. And, anyway, if that had happened, it would have been in TigerDirect's press release.
In fact, there are ONLY two reasons not to do this that I can see: One, you don't know about the product/name beforehand, or have absolutely no indication that the codename will be used as a product name. This is clearly not the case unless TigerDirect is staffed by people without two brain cells to rub together, because both 10.2 and 10.3 were marketed under their code names (Jaguar and Panther? Remember?) Two, you wish to cause as much disruption to the release as possible, so you announce your lawsuit where it will harm the other company as much as possible. In turn, there are two reasons to do this: because you're out to damage the company in question (unlikely) or because you are hoping for an extremely lucrative settlement/licensing deal, because having a judge stop the shipment of the product in question would cause enormous monetary harm to the company in question.
Given my previous dealings with TigerDirect, my guess is that ever since 'Jaguar' was released the management, along with the entire customer service team, were sitting in their back rooms salivating and chanting "please make the next one Tiger, please make the next one Tiger' in the hopes of exactly this situation.
As partial corroboration for this guess, I can tell you that the customer service reps were certainly doing something other than providing, oh, say, customer service.
In this case Tiger Direct couldn't know that Tiger was going to be used in the promotion of the product.
Umm. Because they 1) Knew that 'Jaguar' and 'Panther' were the code names of last two Mac OS X releases; and 2) Knew that in both cases the code names names of each release were used in advertising and on the boxes?
They would have to have been pretty amazingly stupid not to have realized that 'Tiger' was going to be used in this case. Especially given that it was used in the WWDC last year, when the code names for every other product that Apple was demoing were not used. But, of course, I suppose it is conceivable that TigerDirect actually is as ignorant as you are of this sort of thing. Despite the fact that they actually SELL these products. Sadly, that may even be a defense in the eyes of the law.
And in the computer space, Tiger Direct clearly owns "Tiger."
I'm glad you have decided that the entire space of 'things having to do with computers' is one copyright 'namespace', but the courts have decided no such thing. It might be true, it might not, but it is hardly clear-cut, and there have been decisions in both directions over the years. Plus, of course, you also have to show that TigerDirect vs. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is going to cause customer confusion. Are you confused?
Their request that Apple be forced to change all their advertising at this point is proper, because that's exactly the kind of change they could have expected based on Apples past behavior.
You clearly have absolutely no concept of what Apple's past behavior is, at least with respect to their last two operating systems. I can see why you've been moderated as 'funny', although in this case I'm not sure I'd consider that a '+1' mod.
Tiger has the money to hire halfway competent lawyers, and they're going to mop the floor with Apple if it goes to trial.
Again, it's good to know that you know how this legal mumbo-jumbo will play out, when the one person that I know that is conversant with copyright and trademark law, a law clerk for a IP law firm, wasn't willing to even speculate on which way this could go. Amazingly, you, who clearly don't know anything about trademark law or the facts of the case, are perfectly happy to go on record with an absolutely firm prediction.
But I should be used to that by now: on Slashdot, the less someone knows about any particular subject, the more force he uses in expressing his opinion.
The real disturbing revealation of *this* particular story, is that the guy who's name appears on all of Redhat's documents doesn't know the law from stereo instructions.
Why doesn't it surprise me that someone who posts angry 'absolute truths' about subjects he is worse than clueless about is also incapable of detecting humor?
You've obviously never used Server Admin or Workgroup Manager.
*snicker* I'm not sure which way you meant this, but given that I've always found both Server Admin and Workgroup Manager to be an order of magnitude more obtuse than they ever needed to be, given that they shipped from Apple, you definitely got a chuckle out of me with that line.
Admittedly, they are still easier to use than the majority of the admin tools out there that do the same things... but damn, if Apple normally only did 'better than the majority', they'd be out of business five times over by now.
You might also want to mention the fact that they often ship used products as new, almost never actually refund money for defective products, send out rebate checks less than 50% of the time, advertise rebates that no longer exist for months after they've expired, and in general simply ignore most customer service requests.
They've been slimy and awful for as long as they've been in business, and they've been in business for quite a long time, really. (Well, for a computer-related company, anyway.)
So I take it that the title 'You Fuckers' was meant in a kind and loving sense?
I actually got a good giggle out of this, because I think you honestly believe that titling a comment 'You fuckers' and calling everyone who disagrees with you 'brainwashed' is not flame-bait.
But okay, I'll bite... perhaps you're complaining about the moderation because you don't really know what 'flame-bait' means. Flame-bait doesn't necessarily mean that the person who is posting is wrong... it just means that their comment was posted in just a way as to invite flamage.
For example: if I posted that I thought that desktop Linux was really coming along, and that more people really ought to consider it as an alternative to Windows, I wouldn't be modded down as flamebait. If I posted that desktop Linux still had too many usability problems and that Windows was still better for end users, I wouldn't either. If I posted that I thought anyone who used Windows when Linux was available was a cretin who shouldn't be allowed to breed, I would almost certainly be modded down as flamebait (unless I said it in a fucking hilarious way), and the same goes for saying the same thing about people using desktop Linux.
So, in case you still can't see what you did, a helpful hint: calling people 'fuckers' because they believe different things than you, even if what they believe is so obviously wrong that you just can't imagine anyone actually believing it and it makes you nauseous to even consider the idea that anyone could believe it... well, that invites flames. And thus is flame-bait.
No, but being slimy bastards who have time and again proven to use unethical and illegal business practices does make it more likely that that's what they're doing here. Given that I don't know the particulars of the case, nor the particulars of the law and precedent in cases such as this, I am quite likely to believe that they are just being complete asshats who want a piece of the action from Tiger, solely based upon what I know about the company.
If Apple were shipping Mac OS X 10.5 'Small Dog,' and Small Dog Electronics were suing them, I would give the matter much more consideration, because I know that Small Dog bends over backwards to be fair to its customers, that they've gotten several awards for how well they treat their employees, that they've gotten other awards for socially responsible business practices, and that they send out cute little plastic doggies with every order. They are a credible company; TigerDirect is not.
And, in fact, I would give the matter much more consideration if TigerJoe's Excellent Software Software, which I'd never heard of before, sued Apple. Because they haven't proven themselves totally unreliable and slimy.
So, in summation, you're wrong when you say that being jerks does not deprive them of any rights: it deprives them, in my mind, to the fred-given right of 'the benefit of the doubt.' Okay, so it's not a legal right, but I'd have to say that it's a pretty important one, taken en masse.
Point one: Absolutely right on. A trademark issuance can take bloody forever, especially if someone is contesting it. If someone is contesting it who actually has a case, no matter how weak, and who actually wants to stretch it out, it can take ten years.
Point two:
Oh and Tiger Direct is not really a "third-rate mail order house" They have been around for quite awhile.
So have 'Smith Bros. Cough Drops'. (Sugar and gelatin, no medication at all.) So have those fake-Disney cartoons you see at drug stores, with voice acting that would gag any Junior High School theatre production and animation that would gag any three-year-old with a crayon. So has Windows, come to that. Just because they've been around for a while doesn't make them first-rate, or even second-rate. Me, I'd say that even third-rate is too generous for them: I've known three people who ordered from them, and three people who were burned by them shipping the wrong merchandise and not taking it back, shipping used merchandise as new, and ignoring rebates.
One person got shipped a video card that had obviously been opened, and which didn't work. Matrox wouldn't take it back, because it was OEM, and Tiger wouldn't take it back because they didn't feel like it. And, to add insult to injury, the bar code was already cut from the box it came in, so he didn't even get to claim the rebate they'd promised him. Not that they would have sent it in any case.
I think you statement catagorizes you as an Apple fanboy.
I think 'you statement' qualifies you as a person who doesn't bother to do even the most rudimentary research (say, searching for 'TigerDirect' on google and checking out all the customer complaints) before passing judgment on other people. Am I right?
As far as I can determine, they don't have any customer support at all. Just a few people who will talk to you on the phone, promise to do something to help you, and then forget about you as soon as you hang up the phone.
On the other hand, the guy with the Honda has a car that pretty much spanks the repair record of the BMW so badly that the Honda probably won't go into the shop more than once in those entire first ten years anyway, whereas the BMW will spend, over those same ten years, three dozen times as much time in the shop.
Hondas (and Acuras) kick ass. Mine is 9 years old, and the only problem I've had with it was a manufacturing defect in the driver's seat.
If, when you have kids, the world becomes a scary, evil place entirely full of predators just waiting to leap out at a moment's inattention and grab your kids......well, I guess I'm glad I'm not going to have kids, because I like living in the world I'm in right now. That would be the 'reality-based' world, where a kid is more likely to be hit by lightning than be targeted by an internet predator, and the famous '1/3 of all children are sexually molested' statistic is only true if you count 'the time little Jessica accidentally walked in on Uncle George in the bathroom' as sexual molestation. (It's true. They do. Also playing doctor with other kids, that's sexual molestation. And some other pretty outrageous stuff as well.)
I thank the diety every time I imagine growing up in these times. When I grew up, I ran rampant over three miles of beach and two or three miles of semi-suburban neighborhood, unsupervised, from age 5 on up. And yet, the statistics of crimes against children are LOWER NOW than they were then.
It's just that we're a bunch of insane paranoiacs now, and, apparently, oddly enough, we weren't then.
Not impossible. Just expensive. Java 1.5 release candidates have been available to ADC Select members for several months. My company has a membership, and FC1, the version that's up there now, works great.
...it's illegal for you to run Apache, OpenSSHd, and PostgreSQL on your Windows machine. Or, at least, it's illegal for you to actually serve more than one person off of them. The license doesn't let you have multiple people connecting to your machine like that, if I recall correctly.
When Microsoft comes out with security patches, let alone actually comes out with a new version of something, it's on the front page of Slashdot. Where have you been that you don't notice this.
Dell changes the computers it offers weekly, sometimes daily. I'm not talking about EACH machine, mind you, but something somewhere at Dell is always changing. In one memorable day they changed the same laptop TWICE in the same day, and I managed to order the middle one which didn't exist by the time my order actually got to our Dell rep. (They changed the CPU of the laptop, and then discontinued the model, in the same day. Frankly bizarre.)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. 'Bile bile bile hate hate hate I say it's awful and the Drudge Report links to me so I should know. Nobody likes her and everybody hates her and she used to be a conservative and now she's a liberal and I hate her and AH is actually *nice* to people she is trying to convince to do something and I'm not a part of 'THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA' so I should know. She's having lots of trouble raising money and Hollywood is a bunch of liberal whackos who would do something like this only they won't do something like this and I'm a REAL member of the media so I should know.'
Really sort of hard to say whether she actually read anything off of the site before writing this, but my guess is that she had it ready three weeks in advance. She only mentions the actual content of the site in a couple of places, and those could very well have come from a few seconds of looking at the layout.
-fred
-fred
...this.
-fred
You're a sick'un, aren't you?
Mind like that, you could probably get a job in Hollywood. Or, with the current administration, in Washington DC.
No, that was not a compliment.
-fred
Ahh. I'd wondered what the opposite of 'mod point sodomy' was. Now I know.
-fred
Hah! That's what, say, cron would do.
launchd sends an Apple Event at 5:59, that says:
"Au revoir, Bonjour!"
And, after a little negotiation between it and Bonjour, Bonjour quits voluntarily. None of this messy process murder.
And then, of course, at 5:59:59, launchd sends an Apple Event to Bonsoir:
"Bonjour, Bonsoir!"
For the French, may I humbly suggest the name Yo!
-fred
Especially since I can't actually remember most of the words.
Particle man hates particle board!
Yeah.
-fred
Nope, I'd have to say it's dead-on accurate.
-fred
That's funny, my take on this is that it's making fun of TigerDirect's lawsuit.
How do you figure?
-fred
That's a scary argument.
You're saying, "TigerDirect could have emailed Apple a year ago and said, 'Your OS conflicts with the name of our company.' But Apple could have said 'We don't plan to ship it as a product, it's just a code name' so that's not the proper way to do it."
So, er, let's say that Apple said that. Then there are two possibilities: one, Apple doesn't ship something named Tiger. Presumably TigerDirect is happy? Two, Apple does, and that piece of email is a major exhibit in the lawsuit: clearly, TigerDirect did not wait until the moment of maximum damage, but started reacting earlier, which would cast them in a much more positive light. In either case, this is a big win for TigerDirect.
A much more likely result of sending that email would be that Apple sends back a polite lawyer's note saying 'We don't recognize your right of exclusive use of the word Tiger in reference to computer operating systems, and intend to use it ourselves.' Then TigerDirect could have sued Apple to stop them from using the name, with that letter as evidence of intent. And it all could have been handled long before the release date. Of course, Apple could also have failed to reply, but that's not germane, because you're arguing that TigerDirect shouldn't have done anything until now anyway. And, anyway, if that had happened, it would have been in TigerDirect's press release.
In fact, there are ONLY two reasons not to do this that I can see:
One, you don't know about the product/name beforehand, or have absolutely no indication that the codename will be used as a product name. This is clearly not the case unless TigerDirect is staffed by people without two brain cells to rub together, because both 10.2 and 10.3 were marketed under their code names (Jaguar and Panther? Remember?)
Two, you wish to cause as much disruption to the release as possible, so you announce your lawsuit where it will harm the other company as much as possible. In turn, there are two reasons to do this: because you're out to damage the company in question (unlikely) or because you are hoping for an extremely lucrative settlement/licensing deal, because having a judge stop the shipment of the product in question would cause enormous monetary harm to the company in question.
Given my previous dealings with TigerDirect, my guess is that ever since 'Jaguar' was released the management, along with the entire customer service team, were sitting in their back rooms salivating and chanting "please make the next one Tiger, please make the next one Tiger' in the hopes of exactly this situation.
As partial corroboration for this guess, I can tell you that the customer service reps were certainly doing something other than providing, oh, say, customer service.
-fred
1) Knew that 'Jaguar' and 'Panther' were the code names of last two Mac OS X releases; and
2) Knew that in both cases the code names names of each release were used in advertising and on the boxes?
They would have to have been pretty amazingly stupid not to have realized that 'Tiger' was going to be used in this case. Especially given that it was used in the WWDC last year, when the code names for every other product that Apple was demoing were not used. But, of course, I suppose it is conceivable that TigerDirect actually is as ignorant as you are of this sort of thing. Despite the fact that they actually SELL these products. Sadly, that may even be a defense in the eyes of the law.I'm glad you have decided that the entire space of 'things having to do with computers' is one copyright 'namespace', but the courts have decided no such thing. It might be true, it might not, but it is hardly clear-cut, and there have been decisions in both directions over the years. Plus, of course, you also have to show that TigerDirect vs. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is going to cause customer confusion. Are you confused?You clearly have absolutely no concept of what Apple's past behavior is, at least with respect to their last two operating systems. I can see why you've been moderated as 'funny', although in this case I'm not sure I'd consider that a '+1' mod.Again, it's good to know that you know how this legal mumbo-jumbo will play out, when the one person that I know that is conversant with copyright and trademark law, a law clerk for a IP law firm, wasn't willing to even speculate on which way this could go. Amazingly, you, who clearly don't know anything about trademark law or the facts of the case, are perfectly happy to go on record with an absolutely firm prediction.
But I should be used to that by now: on Slashdot, the less someone knows about any particular subject, the more force he uses in expressing his opinion.Why doesn't it surprise me that someone who posts angry 'absolute truths' about subjects he is worse than clueless about is also incapable of detecting humor?
-fred
*snrk* God, I wish I'd thought of that before I posted it.
-fred
Admittedly, they are still easier to use than the majority of the admin tools out there that do the same things... but damn, if Apple normally only did 'better than the majority', they'd be out of business five times over by now.
-fred
You might also want to mention the fact that they often ship used products as new, almost never actually refund money for defective products, send out rebate checks less than 50% of the time, advertise rebates that no longer exist for months after they've expired, and in general simply ignore most customer service requests.
They've been slimy and awful for as long as they've been in business, and they've been in business for quite a long time, really. (Well, for a computer-related company, anyway.)
-fred
I actually got a good giggle out of this, because I think you honestly believe that titling a comment 'You fuckers' and calling everyone who disagrees with you 'brainwashed' is not flame-bait.
But okay, I'll bite... perhaps you're complaining about the moderation because you don't really know what 'flame-bait' means. Flame-bait doesn't necessarily mean that the person who is posting is wrong... it just means that their comment was posted in just a way as to invite flamage.
For example: if I posted that I thought that desktop Linux was really coming along, and that more people really ought to consider it as an alternative to Windows, I wouldn't be modded down as flamebait. If I posted that desktop Linux still had too many usability problems and that Windows was still better for end users, I wouldn't either. If I posted that I thought anyone who used Windows when Linux was available was a cretin who shouldn't be allowed to breed, I would almost certainly be modded down as flamebait (unless I said it in a fucking hilarious way), and the same goes for saying the same thing about people using desktop Linux.
So, in case you still can't see what you did, a helpful hint: calling people 'fuckers' because they believe different things than you, even if what they believe is so obviously wrong that you just can't imagine anyone actually believing it and it makes you nauseous to even consider the idea that anyone could believe it... well, that invites flames. And thus is flame-bait.
Dickhead.
-fred
PS: By the way, you're also wrong.
No, but being slimy bastards who have time and again proven to use unethical and illegal business practices does make it more likely that that's what they're doing here. Given that I don't know the particulars of the case, nor the particulars of the law and precedent in cases such as this, I am quite likely to believe that they are just being complete asshats who want a piece of the action from Tiger, solely based upon what I know about the company.
If Apple were shipping Mac OS X 10.5 'Small Dog,' and Small Dog Electronics were suing them, I would give the matter much more consideration, because I know that Small Dog bends over backwards to be fair to its customers, that they've gotten several awards for how well they treat their employees, that they've gotten other awards for socially responsible business practices, and that they send out cute little plastic doggies with every order. They are a credible company; TigerDirect is not.
And, in fact, I would give the matter much more consideration if TigerJoe's Excellent Software Software, which I'd never heard of before, sued Apple. Because they haven't proven themselves totally unreliable and slimy.
So, in summation, you're wrong when you say that being jerks does not deprive them of any rights: it deprives them, in my mind, to the fred-given right of 'the benefit of the doubt.' Okay, so it's not a legal right, but I'd have to say that it's a pretty important one, taken en masse.
-fred
Point two:So have 'Smith Bros. Cough Drops'. (Sugar and gelatin, no medication at all.) So have those fake-Disney cartoons you see at drug stores, with voice acting that would gag any Junior High School theatre production and animation that would gag any three-year-old with a crayon. So has Windows, come to that. Just because they've been around for a while doesn't make them first-rate, or even second-rate. Me, I'd say that even third-rate is too generous for them: I've known three people who ordered from them, and three people who were burned by them shipping the wrong merchandise and not taking it back, shipping used merchandise as new, and ignoring rebates.
One person got shipped a video card that had obviously been opened, and which didn't work. Matrox wouldn't take it back, because it was OEM, and Tiger wouldn't take it back because they didn't feel like it. And, to add insult to injury, the bar code was already cut from the box it came in, so he didn't even get to claim the rebate they'd promised him. Not that they would have sent it in any case.I think 'you statement' qualifies you as a person who doesn't bother to do even the most rudimentary research (say, searching for 'TigerDirect' on google and checking out all the customer complaints) before passing judgment on other people. Am I right?
-fred
They don't have shoddy customer support.
As far as I can determine, they don't have any customer support at all. Just a few people who will talk to you on the phone, promise to do something to help you, and then forget about you as soon as you hang up the phone.
-fred
On the other hand, the guy with the Honda has a car that pretty much spanks the repair record of the BMW so badly that the Honda probably won't go into the shop more than once in those entire first ten years anyway, whereas the BMW will spend, over those same ten years, three dozen times as much time in the shop.
Hondas (and Acuras) kick ass. Mine is 9 years old, and the only problem I've had with it was a manufacturing defect in the driver's seat.
-fred
If, when you have kids, the world becomes a scary, evil place entirely full of predators just waiting to leap out at a moment's inattention and grab your kids... ...well, I guess I'm glad I'm not going to have kids, because I like living in the world I'm in right now. That would be the 'reality-based' world, where a kid is more likely to be hit by lightning than be targeted by an internet predator, and the famous '1/3 of all children are sexually molested' statistic is only true if you count 'the time little Jessica accidentally walked in on Uncle George in the bathroom' as sexual molestation. (It's true. They do. Also playing doctor with other kids, that's sexual molestation. And some other pretty outrageous stuff as well.)
I thank the diety every time I imagine growing up in these times. When I grew up, I ran rampant over three miles of beach and two or three miles of semi-suburban neighborhood, unsupervised, from age 5 on up. And yet, the statistics of crimes against children are LOWER NOW than they were then.
It's just that we're a bunch of insane paranoiacs now, and, apparently, oddly enough, we weren't then.
-fred
Not impossible. Just expensive. Java 1.5 release candidates have been available to ADC Select members for several months. My company has a membership, and FC1, the version that's up there now, works great.
$500/year.
-fred
...it's illegal for you to run Apache, OpenSSHd, and PostgreSQL on your Windows machine. Or, at least, it's illegal for you to actually serve more than one person off of them. The license doesn't let you have multiple people connecting to your machine like that, if I recall correctly.
-fred
When Microsoft comes out with security patches, let alone actually comes out with a new version of something, it's on the front page of Slashdot. Where have you been that you don't notice this.
Dell changes the computers it offers weekly, sometimes daily. I'm not talking about EACH machine, mind you, but something somewhere at Dell is always changing. In one memorable day they changed the same laptop TWICE in the same day, and I managed to order the middle one which didn't exist by the time my order actually got to our Dell rep. (They changed the CPU of the laptop, and then discontinued the model, in the same day. Frankly bizarre.)
-fred