While there have been a few cases of big companies going after a small, legitimate player who happens to have a domain name containing their trademark (ajax.org comes to mind), this is certainly not the norm. I do not agree that this is a 'great precedent'.
As a small-time businessman, I would be extremely frustrated if a domain name speculator decided to hold a domain name containing my trademark hostage to try and extort a few dollars from me. To protect against this, I've been reflexually registering domain names left and right which have anything to do with my work. This is annoying, time consuming, and expensive.
Trademark law is designed to provide protection to a term, phrase, or symbol to identify a specific product or company. Allowing unbridled infringement in the domain name area is dangerous business, and serves to dilute the value of that company's mark.
It is rarely the case of a 'big evil corporation' going after the little guy. Usually, it's an opportunist huckster trying to scam a few bucks off of value that they did not create. They get no sympathy or support from me, and I'm suprised that they're getting it from folks in this forum.
Not only would this be better appeal to hackers in the near term, but the more people that void the warranty, and thus fry their processors/motherboard, the more products they're likely to sell.
Very strange business model, if they actually cooked it up.
NASA expenditures are a tremendous waste of your and my money. Their last few missions have been little more than PR stunts designed to compel people to continue to support them. (Glenn, ferchrissakes!)
When I was working for a large research/engineering firm, we had a couple of NASA execs coming in to ask us about 'Building a themed attraction' around the Pathfinder mission.. this is right after they realized the kind of PR their web site generated. They even gleefully used the words "We want it to be just like Disney world!". I almost threw them out of my office.
I, for one, am absolutely thrilled that we're reducing the funding for this tax-subsidized playpen. If you want entertainment, pay for it. Don't force me to. Good riddance.
I find this attitude disturbing; after reading through the claims, it looks like there is very little here that is novel or even interesting.
This kind of Linus-worship is clouding the judgement of lots of folks on this site. Just because it has to do with Linus/Transmeta DOES NOT mean it is unique, innovative, or novel. They might be working on cool things, but judge them for their accomplishments, not just because Linus happens to work there.
Obviously there's no danger of anything catastrophic happening.
The controversey certainly did bring a lot of attention to the project, though, didn't it? I wonder if they have a really slick publicist, or just lucked out.
With threats of science funding cuts, this sort of thing is getting more frequent.
I really like the apparent strategy of these security companies, who, when they become the first to find a hole, get a whole lot of good PR and advertising.
While distributed computing protocols would probably be useful to those who own many machines, or have access to them (in a university, say), I highly doubt that people would be willing to allow remote delegation of their spare cycles for someone else's pet project.
Tasks like breaking encryption (especially when prizes are involved) is general enough that people would want to participate, and I think that using distributed computing for SETI searches is an excellent idea. But I'm not sure I'd want some 'group' somewhere delegating my spare cycles without some real compensation.
Speaking of SETI, has there been any progress on getting this going? Such a better idea than silly encryption breaking lotteries.
I got a demo of this mouse during a recent (but generally unimpressive) visit/tour of M$ R&D.
A cheap CCD camera images the surface you're moving on and essentially cross-correlates the received image with previous ones, providing an estimate of displacement. A small lamp near the camera illuminates the mousepad/table/jean surface underneath.
It works well on any surface that's textured 'enough' to see some pattern and perform the correlation. Apparently you don't need much, and it's nice to not rely on mechanical friction.
The mouse prototype (I didn't see the product) was an impressive piece of technology; and the inventor, I have to admit, seemed like a competant, level-headed engineer.
It was also kinda cool to see the 'mouse-eye's' (well, maybe it's belly's) view of the mousepad on a monitor during test use..
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While there have been a few cases of big companies going after a small, legitimate player who happens to have a domain name containing their trademark (ajax.org comes to mind), this is certainly not the norm. I do not agree that this is a 'great precedent'.
As a small-time businessman, I would be extremely frustrated if a domain name speculator decided to hold a domain name containing my trademark hostage to try and extort a few dollars from me. To protect against this, I've been reflexually registering domain names left and right which have anything to do with my work. This is annoying, time consuming, and expensive.
Trademark law is designed to provide protection to a term, phrase, or symbol to identify a specific product or company. Allowing unbridled infringement in the domain name area is dangerous business, and serves to dilute the value of that company's mark.
It is rarely the case of a 'big evil corporation' going after the little guy. Usually, it's an opportunist huckster trying to scam a few bucks off of value that they did not create. They get no sympathy or support from me, and I'm suprised that they're getting it from folks in this forum.
Not only would this be better appeal to hackers in the near term, but the more people that void the warranty, and thus fry their processors/motherboard, the more products they're likely to sell.
Very strange business model, if they actually cooked it up.
NASA expenditures are a tremendous waste of your and my money. Their last few missions have been little more than PR stunts designed to compel people to continue to support them. (Glenn, ferchrissakes!)
When I was working for a large research/engineering firm, we had a couple of NASA execs coming in to ask us about 'Building a themed attraction' around the Pathfinder mission.. this is right after they realized the kind of PR their web site generated. They even gleefully used the words "We want it to be just like Disney world!". I almost threw them out of my office.
I, for one, am absolutely thrilled that we're reducing the funding for this tax-subsidized playpen. If you want entertainment, pay for it. Don't force me to. Good riddance.
I find this attitude disturbing; after reading through the claims, it looks like there is very little here that is novel or even interesting.
This kind of Linus-worship is clouding the judgement of lots of folks on this site. Just because it has to do with Linus/Transmeta DOES NOT mean it is unique, innovative, or novel. They might be working on cool things, but judge them for their accomplishments, not just because Linus happens to work there.
Obviously there's no danger of anything catastrophic happening.
The controversey certainly did bring a lot of attention to the project, though, didn't it? I wonder if they have a really slick publicist, or just lucked out.
With threats of science funding cuts, this sort of thing is getting more frequent.
Ignorance is bliss.
I really like the apparent strategy of these security companies, who, when they become the first to find a hole, get a whole lot of good PR and advertising.
While distributed computing protocols would probably be useful to those who own many machines, or have access to them (in a university, say), I highly doubt that people would be willing to allow remote delegation of their spare cycles for someone else's pet project.
Tasks like breaking encryption (especially when prizes are involved) is general enough that people would want to participate, and I think that using distributed computing for SETI searches is an excellent idea. But I'm not sure I'd want some 'group' somewhere delegating my spare cycles without some real compensation.
Speaking of SETI, has there been any progress on getting this going? Such a better idea than silly encryption breaking lotteries.
I got a demo of this mouse during a recent (but generally unimpressive) visit/tour of M$ R&D.
A cheap CCD camera images the surface you're moving on and essentially cross-correlates the received image with previous ones, providing an estimate of displacement. A small lamp near the camera illuminates the mousepad/table/jean surface underneath.
It works well on any surface that's textured 'enough' to see some pattern and perform the correlation. Apparently you don't need much, and it's nice to not rely on mechanical friction.
The mouse prototype (I didn't see the product) was an impressive piece of technology; and the inventor, I have to admit, seemed like a competant, level-headed engineer.
It was also kinda cool to see the 'mouse-eye's' (well, maybe it's belly's) view of the mousepad on a monitor during test use..
I still have no plans to buy one.