Since you wouldn't be trademarking it, you would be trademarking the name that you use to resell a version of that VFAT implementation.
VFAT itself isn't eligable for trademark protection -- it's possibly eligible for patent protection, and implementations are certainly eligible for copyright protection. Likewise, the MAME code isn't eligible for trademark protection, and this guy isn't trying to trademark the code -- rather, he's trying to trademark the name and the logo. Those, and not the code, are elements that are eligible for trademark protection.
It's much more similar to you being a reseller of HP computers and applying for a trademark on their case design.
You might be able to patent a case design, but you couldn't really trademark it. You might be able to trademark a particular view of a case with the given design if you used it as a company logo, but you couldn't trademark the case design itself. Likewise, this guy can't trademark MAME itself -- it simply isn't eligible.
They do relate. You can't trademark something you don't have the copyright to
Sure you can. I could license the DOS implementation of VFAT from Microsoft and resell it under the name CompatibleUbiquitousSuckFS (as long as the licensing agreement didn't prohibit that). If I did, I could get a trademark for CompatibleUbiquitousSuckFS, even though I don't own rights to that implementation of FAT32, just permission to resell it as my own product.
It's "copyright", and yes, unless the prior holder actually moves to transfer ownership (in writing), they retain it. Doesn't have much to do with this, though.
That's because Microsoft knows how to act like a publicly owned company...whereas Google knows how to gain the public's trust. That latter bit is a useful thing to have -- even for a publicly owned company.
I held out on signing up for an account for a while -- thought Taco would change his mind, declare it a failed experiment, whatever. It was gratifying when he wiped the users table -- but it might have been interesting if I'd been more gung ho, just for the bragging rights.
It probably won't cause a problem if nobody in the company can install screen savers, desktop images, custom sounds, their favourite media player, or games. What does cause a problem is when your engineers cannot install the software they need to do their work.
Right. This is why, when another reply asked about setting the noexec flag on user-writable mounts, my answer was basically, "why would we do that?". Users have all the permissions necessary to install software in their own space on the system, and on Linux almost all software supports just that.
No, and I don't see any need to. Users are free to run sofware they install within their own accounts -- being developers, this is a frequent requirement.
"Windows is hard because we haven't bothered to do so."
More akin to: Windows is hard because users have expectations, gained based on home use, which are broken by proper security policies, and IT doesn't have the political clout to transitions those users to an environment that breaks their expectations.
There are also cost issues -- getting Windows equivalents to some of the functionality we use for managing our Linux systems would imply going to Windows Server 2003, buying a bunch of Windows licenses, buying a bunch of 3rd-party tools with licenses for those, etc. For the time being, we're a fairly low-budget operation.
In other words, you guys are proposing a technological solution (Linux) to a political problem (user desktop control, admin saavy).
Damn straight, but it works! We sit the user down in front of a Linux desktop, and they don't expect to have administrative rights, so the political issue is entirely circumvented.
Do an incremental rsync of their home directories everynight and if something ever goes wrong just delete their home and replace it with a good copy.
I know this is a bit offtopic, but... AFS's support for backup volumes provides basically this same thing as a feature built into the filesystem. Furthermore, it lets the administrator issue commands (from any node on the network) like "move this volume from partition 1 on file server A to partition 3 on file server B"; the data gets moved, and the clients are notified to use the new fileserver for files on that volume with no further work. You can also have read-only volumes be located on multiple fileservers, and the clients will automatically load-balance between them; further, updates to these read-only volumes can be made by an admin editing a read-write copy of the volume, and then pushed over to the read-only volume as a single transaction.
Making it performant can be a PITA, but from an administration perspective it's really neat stuff.
I hear this secretary vs. technical staff argument all the time, but in truth it's the techies who think the are immune to virus and such, and head out on the net to surf willy-nilly,picking up communicable diseases and bringing them home to the network.
The techies are immune -- at least at my site, where the tech staff's machines run Linux, and their browsing software is loaded off an AFS share that's kept up to date with current security patches. Similarly, they don't have root on their workstations, so there's not much they can mess up.
The business types, on the other hand, insist on staying with Windows and using Outlook for their email; they have far more problems. (I'm not speaking just as a techie, but as a techie who was once IT lead and who is presently an advisory member of IT; as such, at least wrt my site, I know of what I speak).
I honestly tried to write a reply in Spanish, but found that, without resorting to reference material, I can no longer pretend to be remotely fluent. Consequently, I give up.
If you'd pointed out only that English was your 3rd language in your initial reply, I'd have been fine with that and apologized for my initial behaviour -- it's the ad hominem that caused this to escalate as it did. Nonetheless, having had a taste of my own medicine (attempting to write a well-formed reply in my second language, which I haven't used in over six years) -- I'm sorry, I admit defeat, I apologize; but next time you're in a similar situation, please point out that English is your 3rd language before you start attacking the person who's criticizing.
People who abuse their first language have far less excuse, and my hope is that making it clear to them that this behaviour is socially unacceptable will help in some way to curb the practice.
Again, I don't see where I generalized beyond stating that our nation (as a group) allows this, which is simply a statement of fact: it happens and there isn't much being done about it.
Would you argue that the average US citizen "allows" persecution of Christians in Burma, because it happens and there isn't much being done about it? Most of us aren't in a position to make an impact without going far out of our way.
If you need hard data to see that not enough people care about stopping prison rape to get anything done about it, well, good luck to you.
Well, there's a delta between "not enough people consider prison rape a Bad Thing" and "not enough people care enough to become politically active to help stop prison rape". Whatever constitutes "enough", I'd suggest that most individuals are opposed (consider it a Bad Thing) while very few are sufficiently concerned to become politically active on the topic. There's also a subset that are unopposed, but while they may be vocal when the subject is raised, I suggest that they're a small minority.
Your post inferred that the population in general is not only unwilling to take political action, but unopposed. I disagree with that inference.
The -real- risk interval is the time between when a problem is first exploited and when it is fixed, not the difference between when it is reported and when it is fixed.
The stock Microsoft argument is that most of their vulnerabilities are discovered by crackers analyzing Microsoft's security updates to determine what vulnerability said patch closes. Their argument is that, for most vulnerabilities, the window opens when they release a patch and closes when that patch is applied -- the exceptions being cases where a 3rd party discloses it to the public first.
I'm not in a position to know anything about the truthfulness of this statement, of course, and the whole security-through-obscurity outlook it promotes is just dangerous... but then, there might be *something* there.
If one can talk about nations (or any group of people) at all one is going to have to do _some_ generalizing.
One can single out the group to which the criteria applies (say, referring to "those who see rape as a criminal's just deserts"). Unless you have actual data (such as a survey run using published methodology by a respected research organization), any reference to what "the nation" may think is simply a guess.
Most of us don't care about the content owner having control; rather, we care about the end user (1) having control, and (2) having accurate information [ie. knowing if a link is provided by the content owner or by some other tool]. Google's implementation meets both those criteria.
A system in which an attacker can only cause a failure of which one party will be notified is more secure than a system in which an attacker can cause a failure of which neither party is notified.
By your definition, nothing is "secure" and the word is meaningless.
Disagree -- there exist, or can exist, systems with better security properties than encrypted email. On can, for instance, build a messaging system which will guarantee that the sender will be notified within [X] hours if the message hasn't been received by the recipient. Sure, the messanger you hired might be shot on his way over to your buddy's fortress (or his way back with the signed receipt) -- but you'll find out that he's missing.
A system in which an attacker can only cause a failure of which one party will be notified is more secure than a system in which it's guaranteed that at least one party will be notified of any failure.
Slashdot Mirror
Per subject. I withdraw my claim that the case design can't be trademarked.
The logo's certainly copyrightable.
Since you wouldn't be trademarking it, you would be trademarking the name that you use to resell a version of that VFAT implementation.
VFAT itself isn't eligable for trademark protection -- it's possibly eligible for patent protection, and implementations are certainly eligible for copyright protection. Likewise, the MAME code isn't eligible for trademark protection, and this guy isn't trying to trademark the code -- rather, he's trying to trademark the name and the logo. Those, and not the code, are elements that are eligible for trademark protection.
It's much more similar to you being a reseller of HP computers and applying for a trademark on their case design.
You might be able to patent a case design, but you couldn't really trademark it. You might be able to trademark a particular view of a case with the given design if you used it as a company logo, but you couldn't trademark the case design itself. Likewise, this guy can't trademark MAME itself -- it simply isn't eligible.
They do relate. You can't trademark something you don't have the copyright to
Sure you can. I could license the DOS implementation of VFAT from Microsoft and resell it under the name CompatibleUbiquitousSuckFS (as long as the licensing agreement didn't prohibit that). If I did, I could get a trademark for CompatibleUbiquitousSuckFS, even though I don't own rights to that implementation of FAT32, just permission to resell it as my own product.
It's "copyright", and yes, unless the prior holder actually moves to transfer ownership (in writing), they retain it. Doesn't have much to do with this, though.
IBM was a monopoly in many industries for a while, too. But the difference was neither abused that position, at least enough to warrant attention.
Not true.
That's because Microsoft knows how to act like a publicly owned company ...whereas Google knows how to gain the public's trust. That latter bit is a useful thing to have -- even for a publicly owned company.
Mmm.
I held out on signing up for an account for a while -- thought Taco would change his mind, declare it a failed experiment, whatever. It was gratifying when he wiped the users table -- but it might have been interesting if I'd been more gung ho, just for the bragging rights.
Right now Im wrestling with verizon to get me broadband. My neigbor has it and he lives on the same DRIVEWAY!!!!
Can't convince your neighbor to let you share his connection?
Here's the difference: It's off by default, and you have to click a button to make it work -- for the single page that you're on.
Further, it's not limited to working with Google Maps -- you can tell it to use Yaho! Maps or MapQuest if you like, instead.
It probably won't cause a problem if nobody in the company can install screen savers, desktop images, custom sounds, their favourite media player, or games. What does cause a problem is when your engineers cannot install the software they need to do their work.
Right. This is why, when another reply asked about setting the noexec flag on user-writable mounts, my answer was basically, "why would we do that?". Users have all the permissions necessary to install software in their own space on the system, and on Linux almost all software supports just that.
In otherwords, you may have just technologically segregated the Docile from the Problematic.
Probably.
Makes our lead IT guy happy, because he can farm out support issues from the problematic ones to his assistant hired for Windows support.
No, and I don't see any need to. Users are free to run sofware they install within their own accounts -- being developers, this is a frequent requirement.
I know this is a bit offtopic, but... AFS's support for backup volumes provides basically this same thing as a feature built into the filesystem. Furthermore, it lets the administrator issue commands (from any node on the network) like "move this volume from partition 1 on file server A to partition 3 on file server B"; the data gets moved, and the clients are notified to use the new fileserver for files on that volume with no further work. You can also have read-only volumes be located on multiple fileservers, and the clients will automatically load-balance between them; further, updates to these read-only volumes can be made by an admin editing a read-write copy of the volume, and then pushed over to the read-only volume as a single transaction.
Making it performant can be a PITA, but from an administration perspective it's really neat stuff.
I honestly tried to write a reply in Spanish, but found that, without resorting to reference material, I can no longer pretend to be remotely fluent. Consequently, I give up.
If you'd pointed out only that English was your 3rd language in your initial reply, I'd have been fine with that and apologized for my initial behaviour -- it's the ad hominem that caused this to escalate as it did. Nonetheless, having had a taste of my own medicine (attempting to write a well-formed reply in my second language, which I haven't used in over six years) -- I'm sorry, I admit defeat, I apologize; but next time you're in a similar situation, please point out that English is your 3rd language before you start attacking the person who's criticizing.
People who abuse their first language have far less excuse, and my hope is that making it clear to them that this behaviour is socially unacceptable will help in some way to curb the practice.
Again, I don't see where I generalized beyond stating that our nation (as a group) allows this, which is simply a statement of fact: it happens and there isn't much being done about it.
Would you argue that the average US citizen "allows" persecution of Christians in Burma, because it happens and there isn't much being done about it? Most of us aren't in a position to make an impact without going far out of our way.
If you need hard data to see that not enough people care about stopping prison rape to get anything done about it, well, good luck to you.
Well, there's a delta between "not enough people consider prison rape a Bad Thing" and "not enough people care enough to become politically active to help stop prison rape". Whatever constitutes "enough", I'd suggest that most individuals are opposed (consider it a Bad Thing) while very few are sufficiently concerned to become politically active on the topic. There's also a subset that are unopposed, but while they may be vocal when the subject is raised, I suggest that they're a small minority.
Your post inferred that the population in general is not only unwilling to take political action, but unopposed. I disagree with that inference.
The -real- risk interval is the time between when a problem is first exploited and when it is fixed, not the difference between when it is reported and when it is fixed.
The stock Microsoft argument is that most of their vulnerabilities are discovered by crackers analyzing Microsoft's security updates to determine what vulnerability said patch closes. Their argument is that, for most vulnerabilities, the window opens when they release a patch and closes when that patch is applied -- the exceptions being cases where a 3rd party discloses it to the public first.
I'm not in a position to know anything about the truthfulness of this statement, of course, and the whole security-through-obscurity outlook it promotes is just dangerous... but then, there might be *something* there.
As bulk mail, it'll probably cost them about $20K to send out snail-mail notices.
I'd be extremely suprised if the cost of mailing out the notices was a noticable fraction of the costs incurred by this incident.
Consider the inevitable class-action suit, the cost of fighting privacy bills (whose supporters just got some extra ammo), and the like.
The ad-hominem really isn't appropriate, in addititon to being false -- yo hablo espanol.
If one can talk about nations (or any group of people) at all one is going to have to do _some_ generalizing.
One can single out the group to which the criteria applies (say, referring to "those who see rape as a criminal's just deserts"). Unless you have actual data (such as a survey run using published methodology by a respected research organization), any reference to what "the nation" may think is simply a guess.
Most of us don't care about the content owner having control; rather, we care about the end user (1) having control, and (2) having accurate information [ie. knowing if a link is provided by the content owner or by some other tool]. Google's implementation meets both those criteria.
That last line should be:
A system in which an attacker can only cause a failure of which one party will be notified is more secure than a system in which an attacker can cause a failure of which neither party is notified.
By your definition, nothing is "secure" and the word is meaningless.
Disagree -- there exist, or can exist, systems with better security properties than encrypted email. On can, for instance, build a messaging system which will guarantee that the sender will be notified within [X] hours if the message hasn't been received by the recipient. Sure, the messanger you hired might be shot on his way over to your buddy's fortress (or his way back with the signed receipt) -- but you'll find out that he's missing.
A system in which an attacker can only cause a failure of which one party will be notified is more secure than a system in which it's guaranteed that at least one party will be notified of any failure.