I love how there are so many total fucking Luddites on a supposed tech forum.
How many people would really miss any of these features if they weren't there?
How many people would REALLY miss their cell phone at all? If you get into such stupid questions as "Who NEEDS that?" the answer is always "Well, nobody really NEEDS it... it's just nice to have if you have a use for it."
There's a huge difference between having a real PDA and some token naff organiser thing on a mobile phone. A real MP3 player would have far more capacity than the recently announced phones. A real calculator or computer system can blow away anything integrated into any phone I've ever seen. A real digital camera can produce vastly higher resolution images than any phone.
So fucking what if you can store 12,000 songs on your new whiz-bang MP3 player? Even at home I'm rarely listening to more than 20-30 songs in rotation so having enough room for that many songs on a phone is a nice feature. Okay, a real calculator can beat up a phone calculator... so what? Who uses a calculator so often that they carry one in their pocket every day? But how many that almost never use one will be glad there's one on their phone that one time they need it? Why are you worried about the resolution of a camera phone anyway? The point isn't super shiny photo-quality images the point is to send something immediately.
For every argument you make against including something on a phone, I can make ten why it SHOULD be on there.
Even ignoring that, how often do people really need to take all of these things everywhere they go anyway? I don't see the convenience, nor even the novelty value, and apparently neither does pretty much everyone I know or walk past in the street.
The question isn't "how often do people need to take these things with them?", it's "how often do you need these things and not have them?"
I'll bet you a drink that when large parts of mobile phone networks start dying because all the 3G/4G devices running $MOBILE_OS got infected with a virus within minutes, people find giving up all the naff extras a small price to pay for being able to make a call when they need to.
Line up the Red Bull, 'cause I'll be thirsty. Cameras, text messaging, PDA functionality, MP3 players... they make too much sense and are too useful to give up.
Like I said before, YOU might not find these things useful, but SOMEONE does.
If one in a hundred people find a use for something, that's 3.5 million people that use it in this country alone. That's a LOT of potential users for something that is trivial to implement and will only bother people that are large enough asshats to complain about something that has no impact on their life whatsoever.
My phone was a freebie about four years ago when
I signed up, and still has way more features than I ever want or need.
I highlighted the key words there for you. You may not use those features, but someone does, and probably on a very regular basis.
I don't need it to be a low quality digital camera, hard-to-use PDA, sub-standard web browser, trivial calculator, poor-capacity MP3 player, pathetically quiet alarm clock, and all the other junk. Nor do I need it to run some super-complicated operating system that's ripe for attacking.
So you'd rather carry around a camera, a PDA, a calculator, an MP3 player, an alarm clock, and all the other junk instead of having it all in one convenient package? I hope you have a lot of pockets...
All of those questions reek of the junior high mentality, which Debian is an unrivaled breeder of.
Why even have a trademark?
"Introducing Debian Windows..." "SCO has announced 'Debian SCO' for x86 systems..." "Red Hat Enterprise Debian" "Bob's Distribution of Debian That Comes With Free Kiddie Porn and Marijuana" Extreme examples, but you get the point.
What is the approval process for using the Debian trademark? Should some groups get automatic approval, or should Debian leverage its trademark to compel vendors to contact Debian?
It seems pretty fucking simple. Everything else Debian is put to a vote... why not this? "No to Microsoft and SCO, yes to Bob as long as he removes the kiddie porn and doubles the weed."
Can we apply the Copyleft principle to trademark? That is, how can we turn trademark on its head and make it a tool to promote the open and free use of Debian and other projects instead of a device to restrict the rights of others?
The real question is... DO YOU NEED TO? The answer is "Fuck no." Trademarks are distinct from copyright and patent law in that you must defend your marks... but you don't have to defend them from EVERYONE. If company A and B use the name Debian, that doesn't mean you have to let company C do the same, even if you never gave A and B permission to use them. Situations like that have come up many times in court, and the mark holder usually prevails.
When you talk about Linux, you are talking about an operating system based on the Linux kernel.
WHICH ONE?
You wouldn't say "Microsoft Windows is a popular linux", or talk about the "FreeBSD linux", or say "OS X is based on the Mach micro-linux", because the generic term is "operating system" or "kernel", and "Linux" is the unique name for a particular kernel used to power a particular set of operating systems.
Tell that to all the distributions that use "Linux" in their name. It's not "Red Hat Enterprise Operating System Based on the Linux Kernel". It isn't "Mandriva Software to Operate a Computer With the Linux Kernel as its Base". It's "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" and "Mandriva Linux".
Like it or not, "Linux" has come to refer GENERICALLY to an operating system with the Linux kernel as its core. Your argument does nothing but affirm that the Australian court's decision was CORRECT.
When you talk about Linux, you are talking about an operating system based on the Linux kernel.
Of which there are HUNDREDS, many operating with the word "Linux" in their name, entirely unabated, for over a decade. Let's change the target a little. Say Xerox had let other companies use the word "Xerox" in all of their advertisements, even in the company names, for over a decade without even applying for a trademark. Then all of a sudden they decide they want that trademark and apply for it. Well, you have "Dave's Xerox Company", "Bob's Xerox Emporium", "Epson Xeroxes", "Lexmark Xeroxes", "Hewlett-Packed Xeroxes", and so on. It is the SAME EXACT SITUATION with Linux, whether you like it or not.
Before anyone attacks me with a +3 Zealot Sword, I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that the reason this is a GPL issue is because of the openness with which anyone can use anything under the GPL. Unless you secure your trademarks up front, you risk using them due to your mark becoming generic. How many different distributions have used "Linux" in their name in the past 10+ years?
A free operating system logo made on a non-free graphics app running on a non free operating system, created with non-free default settings and a non-free font used throughout debian. That's just wrong.
Incorrect. If the Lindows case had gone to court, MS would most likely have lost their mark on the word "Windows", but not on "Microsoft Windows". But they didn't let that happen. They paid Lindows $20 million if they agreed to a name change, which they did.
The wrestling WWF was operating as the "WWF" with permission from the other WWF (World Wildlife Fund). The animal WWF got pissed over the way the wrestling WWF was using the WWF trademark and decided to revoke that permission.
That was precisely the findings of the Australian court. After reviewing the materials that the Australian LUG's lawyer provided, the stuff that was supposed to show the trademark request was valid, the judge determined that there were already far too many uses of the word "Linux" in general computing use already for anyone to make a claim at this time.
It has nothing to do with how common the word is. What matters is the common application. Trying to get a trademark on the word "computer" when you're in the PC business won't fly. If you're naming a snack food "computer", that's a different thing entirely.
No. No it's not. This is where the double edged sword of GPL in the business world rears its head. Linux was found to not be distinctive because there are already so many companies that use the mark freely. How many companies were called "Apple Computers" before they got the trademark? How many "Microsoft Windows" were there? Compare that with how many companies used the word "Linux" in their product names before the Australian application. Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Mandriva... the list goes on. There are so many distributions and have been for so long that coming in only now to try and protect the mark is a waste of time and money.
It puts the Linux world in a Catch 22. Either you argue that the mark is valid after over a decade of free use by anyone, thereby saying that you would support submarine litigation and/or licensing of the Linux name to companies that were previously using it, or you admit that the mark is invalid and nobody has the right to control it. There is no in-between on the issue.
It's nothing to do with carelessness. Around the turn of the 17th century, there was a great U drought in the Americas. Printing presses were stopped all over the country as the sudden surge in popularity of what was known colloquially as the "News on Paper" led to a shortage of U's. It was soon followed by a similar lack of S. In an effort to stem the "Great S and U drought of '08", future President Jimmy Carter convinced W.C. Fields to talk John D. Rockefeller into a cunning plan. By replacing certain S's with Z's and removing vestigial U's, there were just enough letters to go around. This early exercise in letter economy led directly to modern internet parlance such as "OMG U R SO GAY!" and "ROTFLMFAOWGAHTYM!"
but it doesn't protect your most valuable data (e.g. -- yours)
I hate to say things like this, but someone mod this guy up. If your/bin gets hosed, that is absolutely no problem. Anyone with a Knoppix CD can fix that in a heartbeat. But losing everything in/~ is another story. Geeks like to pretend that nothing useful exists in/~, which just shows you how out of touch with reality most of them are...
I'm sorry to inform all of you Stallman-suckers, but Free Software IS Open Source. It doesn't work the other way around, which was sort of the point, but you really need to deal with this fact because... really... you just sound pathetic.
Thier policies toward code changes have nothing to do with thier license agreement.
Which just goes to show that open source is pretty fucking useless unless you want to fork the entire fucking codebase of everything you submit a patch for.
Actually, no you weren't. Don't is an acceptable contraction for the phrase "do not" as well as "does not". While it is mostly used for the former, both are correct.
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I've lived in Texas for 24 years and have never met one...
How many people would REALLY miss their cell phone at all? If you get into such stupid questions as "Who NEEDS that?" the answer is always "Well, nobody really NEEDS it... it's just nice to have if you have a use for it." So fucking what if you can store 12,000 songs on your new whiz-bang MP3 player? Even at home I'm rarely listening to more than 20-30 songs in rotation so having enough room for that many songs on a phone is a nice feature. Okay, a real calculator can beat up a phone calculator... so what? Who uses a calculator so often that they carry one in their pocket every day? But how many that almost never use one will be glad there's one on their phone that one time they need it? Why are you worried about the resolution of a camera phone anyway? The point isn't super shiny photo-quality images the point is to send something immediately.
For every argument you make against including something on a phone, I can make ten why it SHOULD be on there. The question isn't "how often do people need to take these things with them?", it's "how often do you need these things and not have them?" Line up the Red Bull, 'cause I'll be thirsty. Cameras, text messaging, PDA functionality, MP3 players... they make too much sense and are too useful to give up.
Like I said before, YOU might not find these things useful, but SOMEONE does.
If one in a hundred people find a use for something, that's 3.5 million people that use it in this country alone. That's a LOT of potential users for something that is trivial to implement and will only bother people that are large enough asshats to complain about something that has no impact on their life whatsoever.
So what you mean is "Tell people to stop voting."
Like it or not, "Linux" has come to refer GENERICALLY to an operating system with the Linux kernel as its core. Your argument does nothing but affirm that the Australian court's decision was CORRECT. Of which there are HUNDREDS, many operating with the word "Linux" in their name, entirely unabated, for over a decade. Let's change the target a little. Say Xerox had let other companies use the word "Xerox" in all of their advertisements, even in the company names, for over a decade without even applying for a trademark. Then all of a sudden they decide they want that trademark and apply for it. Well, you have "Dave's Xerox Company", "Bob's Xerox Emporium", "Epson Xeroxes", "Lexmark Xeroxes", "Hewlett-Packed Xeroxes", and so on. It is the SAME EXACT SITUATION with Linux, whether you like it or not.
Before anyone attacks me with a +3 Zealot Sword, I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that the reason this is a GPL issue is because of the openness with which anyone can use anything under the GPL. Unless you secure your trademarks up front, you risk using them due to your mark becoming generic. How many different distributions have used "Linux" in their name in the past 10+ years?
Incorrect. If the Lindows case had gone to court, MS would most likely have lost their mark on the word "Windows", but not on "Microsoft Windows". But they didn't let that happen. They paid Lindows $20 million if they agreed to a name change, which they did.
The case never made it to trial.
The wrestling WWF was operating as the "WWF" with permission from the other WWF (World Wildlife Fund). The animal WWF got pissed over the way the wrestling WWF was using the WWF trademark and decided to revoke that permission.
Here's a link to a story about it.
Note that Apple Computers operates under a similar deal with Apple Records, and ran into some trouble with them over starting up iTunes.
That was precisely the findings of the Australian court. After reviewing the materials that the Australian LUG's lawyer provided, the stuff that was supposed to show the trademark request was valid, the judge determined that there were already far too many uses of the word "Linux" in general computing use already for anyone to make a claim at this time.
It has nothing to do with how common the word is. What matters is the common application. Trying to get a trademark on the word "computer" when you're in the PC business won't fly. If you're naming a snack food "computer", that's a different thing entirely.
No. No it's not. This is where the double edged sword of GPL in the business world rears its head. Linux was found to not be distinctive because there are already so many companies that use the mark freely. How many companies were called "Apple Computers" before they got the trademark? How many "Microsoft Windows" were there? Compare that with how many companies used the word "Linux" in their product names before the Australian application. Red Hat, Debian, Suse, Mandriva... the list goes on. There are so many distributions and have been for so long that coming in only now to try and protect the mark is a waste of time and money.
It puts the Linux world in a Catch 22. Either you argue that the mark is valid after over a decade of free use by anyone, thereby saying that you would support submarine litigation and/or licensing of the Linux name to companies that were previously using it, or you admit that the mark is invalid and nobody has the right to control it. There is no in-between on the issue.
It's nothing to do with carelessness. Around the turn of the 17th century, there was a great U drought in the Americas. Printing presses were stopped all over the country as the sudden surge in popularity of what was known colloquially as the "News on Paper" led to a shortage of U's. It was soon followed by a similar lack of S. In an effort to stem the "Great S and U drought of '08", future President Jimmy Carter convinced W.C. Fields to talk John D. Rockefeller into a cunning plan. By replacing certain S's with Z's and removing vestigial U's, there were just enough letters to go around. This early exercise in letter economy led directly to modern internet parlance such as "OMG U R SO GAY!" and "ROTFLMFAOWGAHTYM!"
Isn't history wonderful?
SHUSH! We can't be having FACTS in this discussion! *sticks fingers in ears* I CAN'T HEAR YOU! LALALALALALALALA!
Ponce de Leon was murdering the native people over here as far back as the early 1500's.
You seem to be a prime example of an open source developer.
I'm sorry to inform all of you Stallman-suckers, but Free Software IS Open Source. It doesn't work the other way around, which was sort of the point, but you really need to deal with this fact because... really... you just sound pathetic.
You expected anything more than stupid and insulting from an obvious GNU fanatic? What planet do you live on?
Sea Monkeys + Semen = SeaCiety
Actually, no you weren't. Don't is an acceptable contraction for the phrase "do not" as well as "does not". While it is mostly used for the former, both are correct.
I was going to guess that you were about 15, then I saw your signature and had it confirmed.