... and even then, it doesn't always work. In the extreme case, you can always copy code using a pen and paper. Unless you're thinking of introducting full cavity searches, you're spinning your wheels. Give up on this "prevention" avenue. Focus more on your hiring process, write up a strict code of conduct, and don't be afraid to fire employees who are caught violating these terms.
I guess that makes sense. Myself, I would have thought that instead of using "johndow.law.pro" and "johndow.md.pro", there could have been "johndow.law" and "johndow.md". But then, the whole "pro" domain must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
... a law firm called Smith Jones could get "smithjones.law.pro."... ICANN later allowed second-level names -- such as "smithjones.pro" -- as long as the individual or firm already has a third-level name.
Aside from profit (you pay for two domains if you want the 2nd level one), what was the reason for this restriction in the first place?
There is a serious, design driven lack of any way to edit PDFs. As in, I create a PDF in an application foo, send it to my friend who also has foo, they make changes and send it back.
Just out of curiosity, why are you exchanging PDF files (which are designed to be rendered) instead of $APPLICATION files (which are designed to be edited)?
I always assumed that converting to PDF was the final step, not a repeated intermediate one.
The next-best option available is to... send back and forth the original files, exporting to PDF when you need to. But you're not editing PDFs if you do that.
Why is it essential to be editing PDFs? Maybe I just don't understand your application or field, though.
Java is fine and dandy, but anyone who's had lots of experience with C++ might feel a bit more at home using wxWidgets. I've done a bit of work using wxWidgets, and it's pretty spiffy.
I will admit, however, that the majority of my stuff has been for Windows/Linux cross-compatibility, with little focus on Macs.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is).
Reverse engineering is not copying. Reverse engineering involves determining how an application works, so that you can write an equivalent application that performs similar functionality. It provides a means to the same end, even if the application itself takes different routes.
Back when I was grading papers, I used to recommend the exact opposite to the students -- turn off the "instant" spell-checker, then run the "full" spell-checker and re-read the paper. I found that, in many cases, students would correct anything that had a red squiggle underneath it, but would get a false sense of security that all of the errors had been detected by the word processor.
Oddly enough, when they had a squiggle-free page before them, they were much more attentive to detail and caught the "spelled-correctly-but-used-inappropriately" words.
If [you] go to the site, you can clearly see it is not the company's actual site. The court also ruled this.
Absolutely. But the point I was trying to make was that the URL suggests that it is the company's website. Validity of assumptions aside, people usually assume that a company uses its name as the basis for its homepage. If I wanted online information about Ford trucks, for example, I'd assume that I could find it at "ford.com". Cybersquatting excepted, this is usually the case.
This ruling clearly nullifies those types of assumptions. I suppose that one of the (debatably) more sinister things to do would be to discover some new company that will be competing in your field. For $5 a pop, you can register 100 domains along the lines of "companyname.com", "companynamesite.com", "companyname[etc].com",... and, as long as you can "clearly see it is not the company's actual site", then this ruling should protect you against being sued. $500 is pretty cheap to ensure that the new company has a hard-to-remember, non-intuitive URL.
Again, just one of those "interesting" observations, IMO. I usually go with the "register your domain early" camp.
It is hard to say X sucks, if you can't say X... Don't you think [it] is reasonable to [have] the domain verizonsucks.com and verizonreallysucks.com if you are saying they suck.
The interesting part, IMO, is that he isn't using the domain "bosleymedicalsucks.com" or "bosleymedicalreallysucks.com". He's using "bosleymedical.com" which, to me, sounds pretty close to a valid company-registered name.
Without prior knowledge of this guys website, I would assume that "bosleymedical.com" was the company's actual site. Especially when the only difference is the lack of "Institute" in the name.
In Canada every bill presented to parliament will pass in the US that's not the case.
Actually, with out minority government (less than 1/2 of a single party), that's not true at all. In fact, if major bills/budgets/etc. are presented to parlaiment and do not pass, then a new election can be triggered due to lack of confidence.
Dude, you need to stop getting your news from Fox. Your country is on the brink of totalitarianism. The fear and jingoism (er.. sorry.. "patriotism") that you guys promote is disgusting. Withdraw from Iraq and stop pissing in everyone else's pool please.
As a Canadian, I have no clue what you're talking about. When did we join the US in Iraq?
Canada is starting to resemble Orwell's 1984. There are all kinds of things you can't say there now.
From TFA:
Gomery slapped a ban on Brault's testimony last week to ensure the Montreal ad exec would be able to find an unbiased jury for his fraud trial set for next month.
This thing actually happens fairly often up here. In some cases, it's fairly reasonable. In this case, however, it does seem to be a bit over the top, and a stretch.
How would forking help? If you read the article...
It turns out, that Matt is hosting a bunch of articles on subjects like asbestos, insurance and debt consolidation on his PR8 website in order to cover costs and furthering the project.
So it's not an issue of Joe Blogger's Wordpress software being used to spam Google (although most blogs are susceptible to this). It's an issue of Wordpress's creator using the Wordpress.org site to host "spam" articles.
An intelligent burglar would spend more time casing a target and keeping track of comings and goings of people.
Seems to me than an intelligent burglar would avoid all of that long-and-drawn-out scoping and simply head to the airport, where he watches for Mom-and-Dad-and-Billy-and-Suzie getting on their flight. You don't really need to know someone's "comings and goings" if you know they're on a 4-hour flight to Vegas, leaving 2 hours from now. That gives you at least 10 hours of time right there.
They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s.
I remember being a wee kid, and doing some simple programming on an 80s Compaq behemoth as well. I had a floppy disk (5 1/4", of course) that held roughly 20-30 games on it. Nothing like launching up Frogger and staring at the miniscule 6"x6" green-monochrome screen for hours. I'm surprised I don't wear glasses today.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I took a job a few years back, and noticed that we are using said Compaq as a status/communications monitor in one of our test machines.
So if some phisher has access to put a redirect on sesamestreet.com, he could simply upload the content of asianhookers.com
My understanding is that it doesn't work this way at all. I believe what happens is that the hijacker sets up a page/site that redirects to your own site. Google then crawls the link, and erroneously indexes the content from your page with the URL of the redirecting page. From there, it's trivial to change the redirect on the fake page to someplace else, and maintain the appearance of containing your original content.
I might be slightly off in this simplification, though. Someone correct me if necessary.
Carmack also made it clear that he was trying to free up all of those things from various legal departments but couldn't pry them loose. Even though they couldn't free up the original graphics id software did try to make Doom as free as possible (aside from artwork)
Yes, but still, that's Carmack's choice. If a group of programmers spontaneously created FreeDoom without Carmack's endorsement, he'd be free to launch a lawsuit.
Hasbro has made no efforts whatsoever to free up scrabble, wants to keep a tight grip on it, and control as much of their profit as possible. So comparing this to free-doom doesn't work so well.
Parent's comparison, not mine. But this is exactly why Hasbro is up in arms over e-Scrabble -- it suggests it's affiliated with Hasbro, by using the "Scrabble" moniker, and it capitalizes (albeit through popularity, and not through financial gain) on Scrabble's reputation. Lawsuits like this go to court (or settle) all the time, under the charge of "consumer confusion" and "false representation".
I think that the main problem was that the guy was running a game called "e-Scrabble". Of course Hasbro will be up in arms. Had it been given a different name, it might have been harder for Hasbro to make a case.
That would be his choice not to pursue litigation, though. I imagine that he would be within his rights to seek legal action against someone who put out a game if it was clear that it was 99% similar, with a nearly identical name. But he seems OK with FreeDoom as is.
Clearly, companies like Hasbro don't feel the same.
Slashdot Mirror
... and even then, it doesn't always work. In the extreme case, you can always copy code using a pen and paper. Unless you're thinking of introducting full cavity searches, you're spinning your wheels. Give up on this "prevention" avenue. Focus more on your hiring process, write up a strict code of conduct, and don't be afraid to fire employees who are caught violating these terms.
Just my $0.02.
I guess that makes sense. Myself, I would have thought that instead of using "johndow.law.pro" and "johndow.md.pro", there could have been "johndow.law" and "johndow.md". But then, the whole "pro" domain must have seemed like a good idea at the time.
Aside from profit (you pay for two domains if you want the 2nd level one), what was the reason for this restriction in the first place?
Just out of curiosity, why are you exchanging PDF files (which are designed to be rendered) instead of $APPLICATION files (which are designed to be edited)?
I always assumed that converting to PDF was the final step, not a repeated intermediate one.
Why is it essential to be editing PDFs? Maybe I just don't understand your application or field, though.
Java is fine and dandy, but anyone who's had lots of experience with C++ might feel a bit more at home using wxWidgets. I've done a bit of work using wxWidgets, and it's pretty spiffy.
I will admit, however, that the majority of my stuff has been for Windows/Linux cross-compatibility, with little focus on Macs.
Now everyone's mad because the author of the software is not happy about his product essentially being copied (which is what reverse engineering is).
Reverse engineering is not copying. Reverse engineering involves determining how an application works, so that you can write an equivalent application that performs similar functionality. It provides a means to the same end, even if the application itself takes different routes.
the red squigle under the mispelled word
Back when I was grading papers, I used to recommend the exact opposite to the students -- turn off the "instant" spell-checker, then run the "full" spell-checker and re-read the paper. I found that, in many cases, students would correct anything that had a red squiggle underneath it, but would get a false sense of security that all of the errors had been detected by the word processor.
Oddly enough, when they had a squiggle-free page before them, they were much more attentive to detail and caught the "spelled-correctly-but-used-inappropriately" words.
I don't see much difference between a proof verified by a bunch of independently written computer programms and a proof verified by a bunch of humans.
Indeed. In all likelyhood, those programs will be written by humans anyway, using similar logic as humans would apply to a proof anyway.
If [you] go to the site, you can clearly see it is not the company's actual site. The court also ruled this.
Absolutely. But the point I was trying to make was that the URL suggests that it is the company's website. Validity of assumptions aside, people usually assume that a company uses its name as the basis for its homepage. If I wanted online information about Ford trucks, for example, I'd assume that I could find it at "ford.com". Cybersquatting excepted, this is usually the case.
This ruling clearly nullifies those types of assumptions. I suppose that one of the (debatably) more sinister things to do would be to discover some new company that will be competing in your field. For $5 a pop, you can register 100 domains along the lines of "companyname.com", "companynamesite.com", "companyname[etc].com", ... and, as long as you can "clearly see it is not the company's actual site", then this ruling should protect you against being sued. $500 is pretty cheap to ensure that the new company has a hard-to-remember, non-intuitive URL.
Again, just one of those "interesting" observations, IMO. I usually go with the "register your domain early" camp.
It is hard to say X sucks, if you can't say X... Don't you think [it] is reasonable to [have] the domain verizonsucks.com and verizonreallysucks.com if you are saying they suck.
The interesting part, IMO, is that he isn't using the domain "bosleymedicalsucks.com" or "bosleymedicalreallysucks.com". He's using "bosleymedical.com" which, to me, sounds pretty close to a valid company-registered name.
Without prior knowledge of this guys website, I would assume that "bosleymedical.com" was the company's actual site. Especially when the only difference is the lack of "Institute" in the name.
In Canada every bill presented to parliament will pass in the US that's not the case.
Actually, with out minority government (less than 1/2 of a single party), that's not true at all. In fact, if major bills/budgets/etc. are presented to parlaiment and do not pass, then a new election can be triggered due to lack of confidence.
Dude, you need to stop getting your news from Fox. Your country is on the brink of totalitarianism. The fear and jingoism (er.. sorry.. "patriotism") that you guys promote is disgusting. Withdraw from Iraq and stop pissing in everyone else's pool please.
As a Canadian, I have no clue what you're talking about. When did we join the US in Iraq?
Oh, wait. You just assumed...
Canada is starting to resemble Orwell's 1984. There are all kinds of things you can't say there now.
From TFA:
This thing actually happens fairly often up here. In some cases, it's fairly reasonable. In this case, however, it does seem to be a bit over the top, and a stretch.
A far cry from 1984, though.
Who in the right mind would allow random Flash applications access to their camera and microphone? What use would this have?
Flash-based chat rooms, perhaps? I recall seeing a how-to article for this exact purpose somewhere on Macromedia's site a few years back.
Wouldn't that defeat the purpose of the "flash" plugin?
So, did they remove pages/sites that are running Wordpress, or did they remove pages from Wordpress.org?
I suspect the latter. The Wordpress.org site is hosting hidden content, not the average user's blog.
Is this one case where forking isn't a bad thing?
How would forking help? If you read the article...
So it's not an issue of Joe Blogger's Wordpress software being used to spam Google (although most blogs are susceptible to this). It's an issue of Wordpress's creator using the Wordpress.org site to host "spam" articles.
An intelligent burglar would spend more time casing a target and keeping track of comings and goings of people.
Seems to me than an intelligent burglar would avoid all of that long-and-drawn-out scoping and simply head to the airport, where he watches for Mom-and-Dad-and-Billy-and-Suzie getting on their flight. You don't really need to know someone's "comings and goings" if you know they're on a 4-hour flight to Vegas, leaving 2 hours from now. That gives you at least 10 hours of time right there.
Just my opinion. YMMV.
Then again, judging by how popular it is I guess it must be worth it to some people.
I'd wager that only a small percentage, say < 10%, have actually paid for it. It's also incredibly "popular" on the P2P networks.
does it still play frogger?
Heh, now that would be something to try. :)
They have the compaq luggable I learned BASIC on in middle school in the 80s.
I remember being a wee kid, and doing some simple programming on an 80s Compaq behemoth as well. I had a floppy disk (5 1/4", of course) that held roughly 20-30 games on it. Nothing like launching up Frogger and staring at the miniscule 6"x6" green-monochrome screen for hours. I'm surprised I don't wear glasses today.
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I took a job a few years back, and noticed that we are using said Compaq as a status/communications monitor in one of our test machines.
Good times.
So if some phisher has access to put a redirect on sesamestreet.com, he could simply upload the content of asianhookers.com
My understanding is that it doesn't work this way at all. I believe what happens is that the hijacker sets up a page/site that redirects to your own site. Google then crawls the link, and erroneously indexes the content from your page with the URL of the redirecting page. From there, it's trivial to change the redirect on the fake page to someplace else, and maintain the appearance of containing your original content.
I might be slightly off in this simplification, though. Someone correct me if necessary.
Carmack also made it clear that he was trying to free up all of those things from various legal departments but couldn't pry them loose. Even though they couldn't free up the original graphics id software did try to make Doom as free as possible (aside from artwork)
Yes, but still, that's Carmack's choice. If a group of programmers spontaneously created FreeDoom without Carmack's endorsement, he'd be free to launch a lawsuit.
Hasbro has made no efforts whatsoever to free up scrabble, wants to keep a tight grip on it, and control as much of their profit as possible. So comparing this to free-doom doesn't work so well.
Parent's comparison, not mine. But this is exactly why Hasbro is up in arms over e-Scrabble -- it suggests it's affiliated with Hasbro, by using the "Scrabble" moniker, and it capitalizes (albeit through popularity, and not through financial gain) on Scrabble's reputation. Lawsuits like this go to court (or settle) all the time, under the charge of "consumer confusion" and "false representation".
I think that the main problem was that the guy was running a game called "e-Scrabble". Of course Hasbro will be up in arms. Had it been given a different name, it might have been harder for Hasbro to make a case.
Carmack doesn't have anything against FreeDoom
That would be his choice not to pursue litigation, though. I imagine that he would be within his rights to seek legal action against someone who put out a game if it was clear that it was 99% similar, with a nearly identical name. But he seems OK with FreeDoom as is.
Clearly, companies like Hasbro don't feel the same.
Anyone who copies a product like Scrabble but expects not to be sued is naive beyond imagination. Get a clue.
No, no, no. Hasbro owns Clue as well.