I do believe they can only get away with that if they have a disclaimer saying "Pert Plus is a registered trademark owned by... "
Also, it's not about confusion, it's about using a trademark to make money and promote the competition. If there was brand confusion on top of that, they'd have a case for diminishing the value of their brand, which is a breast of a different cup size.
That's a good point, but the quote from the judge makes it sound like their selling ads for Windex triggered by searches for "Windows". That would be one thing, because clearly there could be more than one intent of that search term. But I maintain that there is very little likelyhood that someone searching for playboy isn't looking for boobies. And I'm not talking about the bird.:-)
It's the selling of banner ads - profiting from the trademark - that I take issue with. I certainly don't think they should be banned from indexing any term, trademark or not. It's not like their targeting BMW owners using automobile registration records, they're selling the term, which is a trademark.
I'll concede that it's a gray area, but I don't think it's as black and white as the op/ed part of the original post would suggest.
Does anyone believe for a second that the people placing ad buys on the terms playboy and playmate are not specifically trying to target people looking for Playboy Playmates? When a trademark is the same as a common word, shouldn't the determination be made based on intent? Maybe some users searching for "playboy" might mean the english term, but that's not who the advertisers are targeting. They are making money off a trademarked name, and as far as I'm concerned, that's wrong.
No, here's an Offtopic Troll post, just so you know the difference:
Obviously the people moderating my post are not from the US. And they call us insensative clods! I'm gonna go to McDonald's and get some Freedom Fries. Biznitches.
Ouch!:-)
I guess that's what's behind SnapStream dropping all references to the prismiq from their site. A while back they were saying they were going to be able to "seamlessly integrate" with the prisimiq.
Just get a PisimiQ - they've been out for months. ThinkGeek carries them, and you can surf the web and e-mail with it too. Or you could get Lite-On's DVD player that plays DivX from Data DVD-R/+R's. I agree it's a good concept, but I think they're a little late. And personally, I'd rather have the "spaghetti" of a single ethernet cable rather than worry about the MicroWave on the other side of the wall screwing up my movie when I'm nuking a bag of popcorn - not to mention what happens when your next door neighbor gets the same box and decides to hook it up to a cantenna:-)
I may have heard it here first, but it was quite a while ago in an article showing how to configure a backpack and small LCD screen so you could walk around and view wireless cameras. Had nothing to do with 802.11x
Some guy bought one of those wireless camera/receiver combos and hooked the receiver up in his backpack with a little LCD screen. Then he walked around a big city and interecepted security cams and such. I think his conclusion was it was really boring.:-)
At least with one of these you might get to see some more interesting things... I wonder how long it will be before someone develops a PC based client for the server software for these media boxes. Although the transmission protocol may be standard, I imagine the server and stream formats are all different between this one, Gateway's, and the handful of other ones on the market. That would make "war viewing" pretty difficult.
Think how many people could install and config a router and an AP, versus the number of people that can plug in one of the self-contained wireless routers? "
That sentence makes my head hurt. What does this have to do with the Press Release? Nobody configures these things anyhow. Is LinkSys still publishing a warning in their WAP docs not to change the default security settings? It's like if Schlage put a warning on their door locks not to lock the door, or you might not be able to get in your house. I bet it cuts down on the support calls.:-)
Actually, it's not the same at all. Other than a "web bug" image that's easily spotted by programs like SpamAssassin or looking at the code, you can't tell the IP address of someone who's read a particular e-mail. The fact that they had to use this program tells me that the guy was using anonymous remailers and/or proxies to hide his identity in the sent mail. Unless the guy is really stupid (which, of course, obviously he is), seems like he would have spotted any FBI malware or web bugs in the code of the e-mail. So the "paranoid llons" are most likely concerned about how this is even possible.
I think in this case it's a moot point - they got a warrant, which to me makes it pretty above-board - at least there was some judicial oversight. The scary part is that with the Patriot Act II now in place, it would be easy for an agency to use a tool like this without judicial review.
Personally, I think it's a bunch of hooey - FUD as a preventative measure to keep people smarter than the bozo they caught from trying it. But it's just silly - anyone smart enough try something like this and not get busted would be smart enough not to try it in the first place! Did this guy think Best Buy had the ability to shell out $25 million (presumably in suitcases full of cash) without raising some eyebrows?
Don't listen to them- I totally said Whoo Hoo! When I read this. In fact, I busted a gut laughing when I saw your post, just after sent a message to my bud about this with that as the subject:-)
>P.S. We don't need a new branch of government. We (IT people) need to start running for political offices.
Good Point - but I think we're all too smart to go into politics:-)
>You misunderstand. The tax would be on _ISPs_. It would be up to them to collect from their customers.
I didn't see that... but even so, there's still no way to apply the tax to the actual senders. If anything it should be a fine, not a tax. The ISP that refused to shut down their customer who was sending over 300 copies of Sobig a day to us alone (I can only imagine what the total daily sent message count was) during the last go-round should have been fined into bankruptcy. And the customers should be fined too- if you're machine is being used to send Spam, with or without your knowledge, you should be fined. If it was without your knowledge and you get your machine cleaned and reasonably protected, then the fine should be waived. Most of the Spam and viruses sent clearly show the IP addresses of compromised machines. The problem is there's no consistent, simple way to report them, and most of the time when you do bother to report it to their ISP, nothing is done.
If you could track spammers down and collect a tax, then you could just as easily track them down and prosecute them for fraud, which the majority of spammers commit in one way or another. All this would do is tax law-abiding citizens, and encourage more credit card fraud, viruses, trojans and ID theft on the part of Spammers so they could stay anonymous (or pay the tax with someone else's credit card). We need a new branch of government - the IT branch - because no other branch has a clue when it comes to this crap.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. And they should use the DMCA to sue you if you don't. And if you get hit by a bus before you get a chance to use it, they should be paid from your estate.
Seriously, someone replied to my posts with a very good solution- they should rent the camera for free with a small deposit instead of selling it. Then their rights would be clear. You have to remember that so far Ritz hasn't said anything (to my knowledge) about this. They may be fine with hacking the camera. I've changed my opinion through this discussion as will. Since they chose to sell it instead of renting or loaning it, then that's their problem, I guess.
Yeah, I have a scanner, I was just being lazy. This was a while ago, and I told my wife to get the 5 rolls she was developing on PhotoCD. Had I known it was going to be like $10 or $12 for each roll, and the quality would stink, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Live and learn. Personally, I think they're going to have to come up with a much better option if they want to keep any of the novices using film for too much longer. The quality wouldn't even have to be better, but when you can buy a respectable digital camera for the price of maybe a dozen PictureCD's, it's not going to take long to figure it out. What surprises me is someone like HP doesn't aggresively market one of their digital camera / photo printer packages as a stand-alone solution. Instead of saying you can use it without a computer in small print, they should say you can use it with a computer in small print.
Oh that's a wonderful little piece of marketing, isn't it now? You're right- at least about the picture CD. I probably just wasn't listening. And they expect their "photo lab" clerks to know the difference. My God, what a rip off! How the heck much do they charge for a PhotoCD? I just checked, and these PictureCD shots are 1536x864. Lame. Thanks for the schooling.:-)
That's what I remembered from when they first came out, but the last time I got PhotoCD's (Kodak PhotoCD's), there we no files anywhere near that high of a resolution. I'll look at them again when I get home tonight, but that's what ticked me off about how expensive they were (something like $10 or $12 each on top of the film processing cost).
I really don't think it's complicated at all. Forget about contracts, EULAs and the law - Ritz is selling you that camera with the understanding that it's $10.99 because you will bring it to them for processing. Otherwise, you couldn't touch that camera for under $50, anywhere, period.
My point is hacking the camera is taking advantage of them, and you can't use the excuse that they're price-fixing CD's or charging more for ink than Dom Perignon. They charge comparable fees for processing, and provide the added value of a CD so you don't have to come back to them for reprints or enlargements. That's all I'm saying. That and it seems that everyone here is so wrapped up in the DMCA and getting screwed by the RIAA and Lexmark that all companies are bad, and screwing them is good. I just disagree, if only in this case.
Actually, in another part of this thread I compared it to inkjets, mentioning how at least with the Ritz camera, they're not trying to rip people off like printer companies do with ink that costs more than Dom Perignon.
I also mentioned that the cost of the camera and developing is in line with disposable film cameras, with which you don't get a CD so you can print as many as you want on your own printer. That's the only reason I'm defending Ritz at all- they seem to be trying to offer greater value for the same price. And this model (as well as with injets, even considering the overpriced ink) allows people who otherwise couldn't afford the technology to participate.
Good points, although I still don't agree completely. You're probabaly right about not enough thought going into it- they probably were rushing to market to be the first, which isn't such a bad thing, if they learn from their mistakes and tweak the product.
The $100 to $200 figure was what I suspect you'd have to pay to get the equivelent of a hacked Ritz camera. Probably closer to the $100 figure, since although the resolution is more in the $200 range, I seem to remember that it doesn't have a display. I was trying to estimate it's "street" value if it were intended to be used as a standard digital camera.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still maintain that it is not moral or ethical. I will concede the net result may be harmless, if the benefits of showing them the error of their ways offsets the losses they experience from the cameras that get hacked without generating any revenue to offset the cost.
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You got me on that... but I don't know that they're are alot of ads bought for those terms that aren't targeting the boobie admirer demographic.
Then again I could be wrong.
"Maybe we should just leave nature to its simple, one-assed schematics."
I do believe they can only get away with that if they have a disclaimer saying "Pert Plus is a registered trademark owned by... "
Also, it's not about confusion, it's about using a trademark to make money and promote the competition. If there was brand confusion on top of that, they'd have a case for diminishing the value of their brand, which is a breast of a different cup size.
Now that we can certainly agree on! :-)
Yes, but 666607 is as close as I could get being this late to join the fun, Mr. 256924!
That's a good point, but the quote from the judge makes it sound like their selling ads for Windex triggered by searches for "Windows". That would be one thing, because clearly there could be more than one intent of that search term. But I maintain that there is very little likelyhood that someone searching for playboy isn't looking for boobies. And I'm not talking about the bird. :-)
It's the selling of banner ads - profiting from the trademark - that I take issue with. I certainly don't think they should be banned from indexing any term, trademark or not. It's not like their targeting BMW owners using automobile registration records, they're selling the term, which is a trademark.
I'll concede that it's a gray area, but I don't think it's as black and white as the op/ed part of the original post would suggest.
Does anyone believe for a second that the people placing ad buys on the terms playboy and playmate are not specifically trying to target people looking for Playboy Playmates? When a trademark is the same as a common word, shouldn't the determination be made based on intent? Maybe some users searching for "playboy" might mean the english term, but that's not who the advertisers are targeting. They are making money off a trademarked name, and as far as I'm concerned, that's wrong.
Cool- that beats the crap out of typing in "430 kph in mph" at Google!
Your search - 430 kph in assyrian cubits per blink - did not match any documents.
No, here's an Offtopic Troll post, just so you know the difference:
Obviously the people moderating my post are not from the US. And they call us insensative clods! I'm gonna go to McDonald's and get some Freedom Fries. Biznitches.
That's 267.189613 to you and me
Ouch! :-)
I guess that's what's behind SnapStream dropping all references to the prismiq from their site. A while back they were saying they were going to be able to "seamlessly integrate" with the prisimiq.
Just get a PisimiQ - they've been out for months. ThinkGeek carries them, and you can surf the web and e-mail with it too. Or you could get Lite-On's DVD player that plays DivX from Data DVD-R/+R's. I agree it's a good concept, but I think they're a little late. And personally, I'd rather have the "spaghetti" of a single ethernet cable rather than worry about the MicroWave on the other side of the wall screwing up my movie when I'm nuking a bag of popcorn - not to mention what happens when your next door neighbor gets the same box and decides to hook it up to a cantenna :-)
I may have heard it here first, but it was quite a while ago in an article showing how to configure a backpack and small LCD screen so you could walk around and view wireless cameras. Had nothing to do with 802.11x
:-)
Some guy bought one of those wireless camera/receiver combos and hooked the receiver up in his backpack with a little LCD screen. Then he walked around a big city and interecepted security cams and such. I think his conclusion was it was really boring.
At least with one of these you might get to see some more interesting things... I wonder how long it will be before someone develops a PC based client for the server software for these media boxes. Although the transmission protocol may be standard, I imagine the server and stream formats are all different between this one, Gateway's, and the handful of other ones on the market. That would make "war viewing" pretty difficult.
Think how many people could install and config a router and an AP, versus the number of people that can plug in one of the self-contained wireless routers? "
:-)
That sentence makes my head hurt. What does this have to do with the Press Release? Nobody configures these things anyhow. Is LinkSys still publishing a warning in their WAP docs not to change the default security settings? It's like if Schlage put a warning on their door locks not to lock the door, or you might not be able to get in your house. I bet it cuts down on the support calls.
Actually, it's not the same at all. Other than a "web bug" image that's easily spotted by programs like SpamAssassin or looking at the code, you can't tell the IP address of someone who's read a particular e-mail. The fact that they had to use this program tells me that the guy was using anonymous remailers and/or proxies to hide his identity in the sent mail. Unless the guy is really stupid (which, of course, obviously he is), seems like he would have spotted any FBI malware or web bugs in the code of the e-mail. So the "paranoid llons" are most likely concerned about how this is even possible.
I think in this case it's a moot point - they got a warrant, which to me makes it pretty above-board - at least there was some judicial oversight. The scary part is that with the Patriot Act II now in place, it would be easy for an agency to use a tool like this without judicial review.
Personally, I think it's a bunch of hooey - FUD as a preventative measure to keep people smarter than the bozo they caught from trying it. But it's just silly - anyone smart enough try something like this and not get busted would be smart enough not to try it in the first place! Did this guy think Best Buy had the ability to shell out $25 million (presumably in suitcases full of cash) without raising some eyebrows?
...or is anyone else a little apprehensive about pairing the phrases "magnetic induction" and "headset"?
Don't listen to them- I totally said Whoo Hoo! When I read this. In fact, I busted a gut laughing when I saw your post, just after sent a message to my bud about this with that as the subject :-)
>P.S. We don't need a new branch of government. We (IT people) need to start running for political offices. Good Point - but I think we're all too smart to go into politics :-)
>You misunderstand. The tax would be on _ISPs_. It would be up to them to collect from their customers.
I didn't see that... but even so, there's still no way to apply the tax to the actual senders. If anything it should be a fine, not a tax. The ISP that refused to shut down their customer who was sending over 300 copies of Sobig a day to us alone (I can only imagine what the total daily sent message count was) during the last go-round should have been fined into bankruptcy. And the customers should be fined too- if you're machine is being used to send Spam, with or without your knowledge, you should be fined. If it was without your knowledge and you get your machine cleaned and reasonably protected, then the fine should be waived. Most of the Spam and viruses sent clearly show the IP addresses of compromised machines. The problem is there's no consistent, simple way to report them, and most of the time when you do bother to report it to their ISP, nothing is done.
If you could track spammers down and collect a tax, then you could just as easily track them down and prosecute them for fraud, which the majority of spammers commit in one way or another. All this would do is tax law-abiding citizens, and encourage more credit card fraud, viruses, trojans and ID theft on the part of Spammers so they could stay anonymous (or pay the tax with someone else's credit card). We need a new branch of government - the IT branch - because no other branch has a clue when it comes to this crap.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying. And they should use the DMCA to sue you if you don't. And if you get hit by a bus before you get a chance to use it, they should be paid from your estate.
Seriously, someone replied to my posts with a very good solution- they should rent the camera for free with a small deposit instead of selling it. Then their rights would be clear. You have to remember that so far Ritz hasn't said anything (to my knowledge) about this. They may be fine with hacking the camera. I've changed my opinion through this discussion as will. Since they chose to sell it instead of renting or loaning it, then that's their problem, I guess.
Yeah, I have a scanner, I was just being lazy. This was a while ago, and I told my wife to get the 5 rolls she was developing on PhotoCD. Had I known it was going to be like $10 or $12 for each roll, and the quality would stink, I certainly wouldn't have done it. Live and learn. Personally, I think they're going to have to come up with a much better option if they want to keep any of the novices using film for too much longer. The quality wouldn't even have to be better, but when you can buy a respectable digital camera for the price of maybe a dozen PictureCD's, it's not going to take long to figure it out. What surprises me is someone like HP doesn't aggresively market one of their digital camera / photo printer packages as a stand-alone solution. Instead of saying you can use it without a computer in small print, they should say you can use it with a computer in small print.
Oh that's a wonderful little piece of marketing, isn't it now? You're right- at least about the picture CD. I probably just wasn't listening. And they expect their "photo lab" clerks to know the difference. My God, what a rip off! How the heck much do they charge for a PhotoCD? I just checked, and these PictureCD shots are 1536x864. Lame. Thanks for the schooling. :-)
That's what I remembered from when they first came out, but the last time I got PhotoCD's (Kodak PhotoCD's), there we no files anywhere near that high of a resolution. I'll look at them again when I get home tonight, but that's what ticked me off about how expensive they were (something like $10 or $12 each on top of the film processing cost).
I really don't think it's complicated at all. Forget about contracts, EULAs and the law - Ritz is selling you that camera with the understanding that it's $10.99 because you will bring it to them for processing. Otherwise, you couldn't touch that camera for under $50, anywhere, period.
My point is hacking the camera is taking advantage of them, and you can't use the excuse that they're price-fixing CD's or charging more for ink than Dom Perignon. They charge comparable fees for processing, and provide the added value of a CD so you don't have to come back to them for reprints or enlargements. That's all I'm saying. That and it seems that everyone here is so wrapped up in the DMCA and getting screwed by the RIAA and Lexmark that all companies are bad, and screwing them is good. I just disagree, if only in this case.
Actually, in another part of this thread I compared it to inkjets, mentioning how at least with the Ritz camera, they're not trying to rip people off like printer companies do with ink that costs more than Dom Perignon.
I also mentioned that the cost of the camera and developing is in line with disposable film cameras, with which you don't get a CD so you can print as many as you want on your own printer. That's the only reason I'm defending Ritz at all- they seem to be trying to offer greater value for the same price. And this model (as well as with injets, even considering the overpriced ink) allows people who otherwise couldn't afford the technology to participate.
Hey, I was right! Intelligent Conversation! :-)
Good points, although I still don't agree completely. You're probabaly right about not enough thought going into it- they probably were rushing to market to be the first, which isn't such a bad thing, if they learn from their mistakes and tweak the product.
The $100 to $200 figure was what I suspect you'd have to pay to get the equivelent of a hacked Ritz camera. Probably closer to the $100 figure, since although the resolution is more in the $200 range, I seem to remember that it doesn't have a display. I was trying to estimate it's "street" value if it were intended to be used as a standard digital camera.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but I still maintain that it is not moral or ethical. I will concede the net result may be harmless, if the benefits of showing them the error of their ways offsets the losses they experience from the cameras that get hacked without generating any revenue to offset the cost.