Back when the web was really taking off, and everyone was talking about how liberating it was, and how empowering it was for small companies and individuals, I had in the back of my mind that somehow someone would come along and just ruin it.
I naturally assumed that it would be large corporations that would find a way to squeeze everything off the web that wasn't run by large corporations, but now I think that it's the patent trolls and the spammers that are going to slow the expansion and development of the web and other internet services to a crawl. No-one other than the big boys can do anything on the web without having to worry about someone popping up and saying, "Ah, hold it right there, I own the whole concept of what it is you're trying to do," and even the large corporations are being stung by this trend.
Oh, and BTW, according to youmaybenext.com, PanIP has been sending threatening notices to more small businesses, despite (or because of) the fact that their (his) e-commerce patent is currently being re-examined.
A lot of fonts render the asterisk as a five-pointed star, which resembles the one Wal*Mart uses in their logo. Everyone's just being consistent with the actual logo, I guess.
Vendors' manufacturing costs will go up, but Wal*Mart will insist that the prices stay the same or even drop, meaning that manufacturers will do what they always do when they deal with Wal*Mart... they'll stick it to the workers.
I refuse to even set foot in a Wal*Mart. That company is beyond the pale when it comes to irresponsible and callous behavior.
IANAHR (holy roller), but if the 'anti-christ' were to emerge in this century, I bet he'd be a Walton.
It shut itself down after receiving a patent infringement notice from PanIP.
PanIP interprets its recently-acquired patent on "Method for digging a hole in the ground and recording and sending data about whatever's there to somewhere else" as applying to the Mars Rover, along with fifty other automated digging machines.
Sixteen targeted automated digging machines, however, are fighting back. "We're going to get together, dig a really big whole, and bury them in it," said the leader of the Hole Digging Machine Legal Defense Group.
I've seen the following passage attributed to Heinlein, and quoted in various blogs and pages, and I thought it fit perfectly here:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Appropriate, I think, as it sounds like SCO is trying to get the government to mandate profitability for SCO.
Marvin the Paranoid Android said it best, "It's the people you meet at this job that really get you down."
To me, the worst working conditions are the ones that put one in contact with the worst kinds of people, whether they be annoying, dangerous, or just frightfully stupid.
Like sales directors who delete files and then blame me for not instructing them to not do that, or that call up customers and tell them that their order didn't arrive on time because I screwed up filling out the FedEx forms (when it was in fact because he gave me the wrong address), or that want to use a PowerBook without ever having to learn anything about operating it.
I used to work in a camera store, and an elderly woman came in and wanted to return the Kodak camera kit that she got for Christmas. She said it didn't work at all, and she was just absolutely disgusted. I noticed that the two AA batteries that came included with the kit were still in their shrinkwrap and hadn't been removed from their little cubbyhole in the styrofoam packing.
"Did you put the batteries in at all?" I asked, wonderingly.
"What? You mean it takes BATTERIES?" she yelped.
"The camera has a flash and an film auto-advance motor, of course it takes batteries," I explained calmly.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! A camera that takes batteries, it's absurd!" And she was serious.
Yes, to me it's not working conditions that suck, it's people that suck.
That unit doesn't use a scroll wheel, though. It has buttons in a circular design, a feature that the reviewer you mention didn't seem to like very much.
I imagine that Apple will consider that device a knock-off of the iPod and file suit. If the device stays in Korea, then perhaps there won't be a problem, but I can't picture Apple letting that thing show up on store shelves in the USA without a fight.
I'd like to see the Vaporware Awards split up into some major categories like "Games," "Software," and "Hardware," or something like that.
I don't eagerly await shipment of new games, being an old fuddyduddy with not a lot of free time, and I'd like to see some actual productivity and imaging products get on that list, in addition to all the games and wrist gadgets.
What about that digital film that was supposed to come along? Whatever happened to that? I've got an old, sturdy 1970s Canon AE-1 Program that's just dying to come out of semi-retirement and use those extra-sharp FD lenses to make digital photos.
As Obi-Wan might say, you can't win, but there are alternatives to downloading.
Your local public library has CDs that you can borrow, usually for a week or so, absolutely free.
Some of the more sophisticated libraries allow you to search and request titles online, so that a CD that's at a library twenty miles away, or currently checked out by someone else, will be sent to your nearest library as soon as it is available. Some libraries will send an email to let you know that your titles have arrived.
Library CDs are often pretty beat up, and many are missing the original booklets or jewel cases, but they will still play in a good player. You can even do your library a favor and use some of that CD repair glop on them so future borrowers can enjoy them as well (assuming that stuff actually works).
Now, I don't advocate that anyone go to their library's website, request a lot of titles that they want online, go pick them up, take them to their office with several networked PCs on a Saturday afternoon, rip the CDs to AAC, burn them onto a couple of blank CD-RWs, take them home, pop them into iTunes, and then transfer them all to an iPod. I couldn't support that. Especially since it's free.
Now that I've let that cat out of the bag, we can expect to see the RIAA confiscating CDs from public libraries across the country, as well as obtaining Patriot Act subpoenas demanding to know the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of every library patron who has ever borrowed a CD. Since librarians have about as much political clout as homeless people (actually a little less), Congress and the media will look the other way.
If videogames became such a hassle and so expensive that people stopped buying them and started spending time with their families and engaging in physical activity.
The horror.
This pointless sarcasm was brought to you by the Committee that Offers to be Flamed Over and Over (COGFOO).
But seriously, I'm an older man, now, and when I think back on my fondest memories, they don't really include any of the time I spent playing videogames. I remember my joy at learning how to make my own photographs from scratch in a real, actual smelly darkroom, and I fondly remember going to outdoor music festivals and playing the guitar and singing around a campfire in the middle of the night, but for some reason I don't well recall how I felt about getting to the end of MYST, or Marathon, or StarCraft, or finally defeating Shang Tsung on the first SNES version of Mortal Kombat.
Videogames are lots of fun, but believe an old man when he tells you that you are not building a lifetime of happy memories by playing them, even when you're doing it with your friends. I don't want to bore anyone with my theories as to why, but they would include the repetition of it, and the lack of physical engagement. I propose that for every hour spent playing videogames, one spends two hours doing something else. Sleeping and working don't count.
He doesn't look to me like he's out of shape. He's got a decent set of pecs on him, and there's definition in his calf muscles. That man does exercise, by the looks of him. I bet he runs and lifts weights.
That reminds me of the segment on Conan outside of the opening of Attack of the Clones where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog goes up to a young woman he finds and exclaims, "Incredible, among all the nerds I've found an actual girl here... you can choose from all kinds of guys who have no idea how to please you!"
Oh, man, for $700 you can go to a place like Sears and get a nice little corner workout center, or, even better, you can join a friggin' gym.
Your whole body needs a whole-body workout. Working out your upper arms and your wrists just exercises your upper arms and your wrists. Don't count on that to reduce your pants size anytime soon.
If this idea is going to succeed, what they need to do is build the videogame into the exercise machine, not the other way around.
I'm picturing it... like a wall-sized screen that has orcs coming at you and you have to defeat them by lifting a 120-lb weight in three 12-rep sets. After the first wave is complete, you have to win a Nascar race by running on a treadmill for twenty minutes, followed by destroying the One Ring by enduring two gruelling sets of inverted crunches.
The gym that installs that system will have a loyal membership of fit and healthy nerds as its reward.
That's a good point, and I'm sure the lawyers for both sides already argued back and forth the same points we would argue, and I'm just going by a sort of gut feeling.
The thing that bothers me is that Netscape wasn't just using "playboy" and "playmate" as keywords... they were selling them to their advertisers. They were making money off of the brand name recognition of those two words, and I'm pretty sure that trademark law disallows that.
The second judge in this case didn't side with Playboy, he or she (can't find the judge's name) just said that Playboy can pursue the lawsuit. Perhaps a jury will find in favor of AOL, or perhaps the parties will settle.
When I first read about this case way back when, I thought, "Oh, geez, Playboy's being ridiculous," but then I thought about it some more and I have to agree that the websites in question were violating Playboy's trademark, in my non-lawyer, non-judge, never-went-to-law-school layman's opinion.
I mean, the words ford and mustang are in the dictionary, too, but wouldn't it violate Ford Motor Company's trademark if those words in a search triggered a banner ad for the Pontiac Grand Am? What about the words chevy and corvette, which are also in the dictionary? How many people think of the words ford, mustang, chevy,and corvette in relation to cars? I bet it's about as many people as would think of the word playboy in relation to a men's magazine.
I disagree with the post, and I think that the first judge in the case got it wrong, not right. I don't think he or she really understood just how the words were being used. The words playboy and playmate were being used to promote a competing product, which, AFAIK, is a violation of trademark law. But maybe another appeals court will feel differently.
IANAHR (HR=holy roller), but in the Gospel, Pontious Pilate was willing to let Jesus go his way, and it was the fickle mob that insisted that Jesus be crucified. Pilate just went along with the crowd to keep order.
I'd say that Bill Gates is more like Caesar in this comparison, distant and probably uninterested. Darl McBride would be Caiaphas, an agent actively seeking the destruction of Jesus and his movement.
Now, who would be Herod? Shall we recast the entire Gospel with people from the Linux movement and its detractors? What fun!
Automatically filing patents and lawuits is the job of the robot lawyer.
Automatically standing around and hindering the robot scientist's work by asking for progress reports every fifteen minutes is the job of the robot project manager.
Automatically asking "What exactly is it you do, again?" is the job of the robot girl at the robot bar where the robot scientist hangs out after work.
"From Adobe's standpoint, all we're concerned about really is that it doesn't have a performance impact on customers, that it's stable and doesn't cause crashes and that it's not going to produce false positives -- that it's going to tell someone that a picture of someone's grandmother is a $20 bill," Connor said.
That's good, because there's nothing like having a top-of-the-line imaging program tell you that your grandmother looks like Andrew Jackson. Yikes!
Beer importers in 1921 found not to be complying with the Volstead Act.
Back then, government agents would raid warehouses and smash barrels with axes (we all remember those scenes from The Untouchables). How about doing the same with spammers? Send agents to their homes and offices to smash up their computers. What fun!
Slashdot Mirror
Back when the web was really taking off, and everyone was talking about how liberating it was, and how empowering it was for small companies and individuals, I had in the back of my mind that somehow someone would come along and just ruin it.
I naturally assumed that it would be large corporations that would find a way to squeeze everything off the web that wasn't run by large corporations, but now I think that it's the patent trolls and the spammers that are going to slow the expansion and development of the web and other internet services to a crawl. No-one other than the big boys can do anything on the web without having to worry about someone popping up and saying, "Ah, hold it right there, I own the whole concept of what it is you're trying to do," and even the large corporations are being stung by this trend.
Oh, and BTW, according to youmaybenext.com, PanIP has been sending threatening notices to more small businesses, despite (or because of) the fact that their (his) e-commerce patent is currently being re-examined.
It's the Eric Cartman business model... we've built this really great thing and YOU CAN'T USE IT!
People will be clamoring to try and get access to this thing only because they're being told they can't have it.
What a great country!
A lot of fonts render the asterisk as a five-pointed star, which resembles the one Wal*Mart uses in their logo. Everyone's just being consistent with the actual logo, I guess.
Vendors' manufacturing costs will go up, but Wal*Mart will insist that the prices stay the same or even drop, meaning that manufacturers will do what they always do when they deal with Wal*Mart... they'll stick it to the workers.
I refuse to even set foot in a Wal*Mart. That company is beyond the pale when it comes to irresponsible and callous behavior.
IANAHR (holy roller), but if the 'anti-christ' were to emerge in this century, I bet he'd be a Walton.
Now, watch, Wal*Mart will sue me.
It shut itself down after receiving a patent infringement notice from PanIP.
PanIP interprets its recently-acquired patent on "Method for digging a hole in the ground and recording and sending data about whatever's there to somewhere else" as applying to the Mars Rover, along with fifty other automated digging machines.
Sixteen targeted automated digging machines, however, are fighting back. "We're going to get together, dig a really big whole, and bury them in it," said the leader of the Hole Digging Machine Legal Defense Group.
I've seen the following passage attributed to Heinlein, and quoted in various blogs and pages, and I thought it fit perfectly here:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such a profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statute or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
Appropriate, I think, as it sounds like SCO is trying to get the government to mandate profitability for SCO.
Marvin the Paranoid Android said it best, "It's the people you meet at this job that really get you down."
To me, the worst working conditions are the ones that put one in contact with the worst kinds of people, whether they be annoying, dangerous, or just frightfully stupid.
Like sales directors who delete files and then blame me for not instructing them to not do that, or that call up customers and tell them that their order didn't arrive on time because I screwed up filling out the FedEx forms (when it was in fact because he gave me the wrong address), or that want to use a PowerBook without ever having to learn anything about operating it.
I used to work in a camera store, and an elderly woman came in and wanted to return the Kodak camera kit that she got for Christmas. She said it didn't work at all, and she was just absolutely disgusted. I noticed that the two AA batteries that came included with the kit were still in their shrinkwrap and hadn't been removed from their little cubbyhole in the styrofoam packing.
"Did you put the batteries in at all?" I asked, wonderingly.
"What? You mean it takes BATTERIES?" she yelped.
"The camera has a flash and an film auto-advance motor, of course it takes batteries," I explained calmly.
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! A camera that takes batteries, it's absurd!" And she was serious.
Yes, to me it's not working conditions that suck, it's people that suck.
That unit doesn't use a scroll wheel, though. It has buttons in a circular design, a feature that the reviewer you mention didn't seem to like very much.
I imagine that Apple will consider that device a knock-off of the iPod and file suit. If the device stays in Korea, then perhaps there won't be a problem, but I can't picture Apple letting that thing show up on store shelves in the USA without a fight.
I'd like to see the Vaporware Awards split up into some major categories like "Games," "Software," and "Hardware," or something like that.
I don't eagerly await shipment of new games, being an old fuddyduddy with not a lot of free time, and I'd like to see some actual productivity and imaging products get on that list, in addition to all the games and wrist gadgets.
What about that digital film that was supposed to come along? Whatever happened to that? I've got an old, sturdy 1970s Canon AE-1 Program that's just dying to come out of semi-retirement and use those extra-sharp FD lenses to make digital photos.
I'm looking for the word 'pillory,' and hoping to see mention of the guillotine.
Failing that, I'd like to see something about sharing a cell with Bubba-Lonely-Heart.
As Obi-Wan might say, you can't win, but there are alternatives to downloading.
Your local public library has CDs that you can borrow, usually for a week or so, absolutely free.
Some of the more sophisticated libraries allow you to search and request titles online, so that a CD that's at a library twenty miles away, or currently checked out by someone else, will be sent to your nearest library as soon as it is available. Some libraries will send an email to let you know that your titles have arrived.
Library CDs are often pretty beat up, and many are missing the original booklets or jewel cases, but they will still play in a good player. You can even do your library a favor and use some of that CD repair glop on them so future borrowers can enjoy them as well (assuming that stuff actually works).
Now, I don't advocate that anyone go to their library's website, request a lot of titles that they want online, go pick them up, take them to their office with several networked PCs on a Saturday afternoon, rip the CDs to AAC, burn them onto a couple of blank CD-RWs, take them home, pop them into iTunes, and then transfer them all to an iPod. I couldn't support that. Especially since it's free.
Now that I've let that cat out of the bag, we can expect to see the RIAA confiscating CDs from public libraries across the country, as well as obtaining Patriot Act subpoenas demanding to know the names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of every library patron who has ever borrowed a CD. Since librarians have about as much political clout as homeless people (actually a little less), Congress and the media will look the other way.
Or am I being exceptionally paranoid?
You know what would really be awful?
If videogames became such a hassle and so expensive that people stopped buying them and started spending time with their families and engaging in physical activity.
The horror.
This pointless sarcasm was brought to you by the Committee that Offers to be Flamed Over and Over (COGFOO).
But seriously, I'm an older man, now, and when I think back on my fondest memories, they don't really include any of the time I spent playing videogames. I remember my joy at learning how to make my own photographs from scratch in a real, actual smelly darkroom, and I fondly remember going to outdoor music festivals and playing the guitar and singing around a campfire in the middle of the night, but for some reason I don't well recall how I felt about getting to the end of MYST, or Marathon, or StarCraft, or finally defeating Shang Tsung on the first SNES version of Mortal Kombat.
Videogames are lots of fun, but believe an old man when he tells you that you are not building a lifetime of happy memories by playing them, even when you're doing it with your friends. I don't want to bore anyone with my theories as to why, but they would include the repetition of it, and the lack of physical engagement. I propose that for every hour spent playing videogames, one spends two hours doing something else. Sleeping and working don't count.
He doesn't look to me like he's out of shape. He's got a decent set of pecs on him, and there's definition in his calf muscles. That man does exercise, by the looks of him. I bet he runs and lifts weights.
That reminds me of the segment on Conan outside of the opening of Attack of the Clones where Triumph the Insult Comic Dog goes up to a young woman he finds and exclaims, "Incredible, among all the nerds I've found an actual girl here... you can choose from all kinds of guys who have no idea how to please you!"
They're just like the geeks in the USA, except that their non-existant girlfriends have fewer rights.
Oh, man, for $700 you can go to a place like Sears and get a nice little corner workout center, or, even better, you can join a friggin' gym.
Your whole body needs a whole-body workout. Working out your upper arms and your wrists just exercises your upper arms and your wrists. Don't count on that to reduce your pants size anytime soon.
If this idea is going to succeed, what they need to do is build the videogame into the exercise machine, not the other way around.
I'm picturing it... like a wall-sized screen that has orcs coming at you and you have to defeat them by lifting a 120-lb weight in three 12-rep sets. After the first wave is complete, you have to win a Nascar race by running on a treadmill for twenty minutes, followed by destroying the One Ring by enduring two gruelling sets of inverted crunches.
The gym that installs that system will have a loyal membership of fit and healthy nerds as its reward.
That's a good point, and I'm sure the lawyers for both sides already argued back and forth the same points we would argue, and I'm just going by a sort of gut feeling.
The thing that bothers me is that Netscape wasn't just using "playboy" and "playmate" as keywords... they were selling them to their advertisers. They were making money off of the brand name recognition of those two words, and I'm pretty sure that trademark law disallows that.
The second judge in this case didn't side with Playboy, he or she (can't find the judge's name) just said that Playboy can pursue the lawsuit. Perhaps a jury will find in favor of AOL, or perhaps the parties will settle.
When I first read about this case way back when, I thought, "Oh, geez, Playboy's being ridiculous," but then I thought about it some more and I have to agree that the websites in question were violating Playboy's trademark, in my non-lawyer, non-judge, never-went-to-law-school layman's opinion.
I mean, the words ford and mustang are in the dictionary, too, but wouldn't it violate Ford Motor Company's trademark if those words in a search triggered a banner ad for the Pontiac Grand Am? What about the words chevy and corvette, which are also in the dictionary? How many people think of the words ford, mustang, chevy,and corvette in relation to cars? I bet it's about as many people as would think of the word playboy in relation to a men's magazine.
I disagree with the post, and I think that the first judge in the case got it wrong, not right. I don't think he or she really understood just how the words were being used. The words playboy and playmate were being used to promote a competing product, which, AFAIK, is a violation of trademark law. But maybe another appeals court will feel differently.
Wasn't there a scene in The Simpsons where Lionel Hutts doesn't have any evidence for his lawsuit and he asks the person he's suing if he can help?
Was it the one where he sued over Itchy & Scratchy?
He stammers out something like "Well, um, we don't have a copy of it... we were kind of hoping that you did."
Yes, you're right, and having been raised in the Christian Science church, I am inclined to agree all the more that The Matrix is biblically inspired.
Bill Gates as Pontious Pilate?
IANAHR (HR=holy roller), but in the Gospel, Pontious Pilate was willing to let Jesus go his way, and it was the fickle mob that insisted that Jesus be crucified. Pilate just went along with the crowd to keep order.
I'd say that Bill Gates is more like Caesar in this comparison, distant and probably uninterested. Darl McBride would be Caiaphas, an agent actively seeking the destruction of Jesus and his movement.
Now, who would be Herod? Shall we recast the entire Gospel with people from the Linux movement and its detractors? What fun!
Automatically filing patents and lawuits is the job of the robot lawyer.
Automatically standing around and hindering the robot scientist's work by asking for progress reports every fifteen minutes is the job of the robot project manager.
Automatically asking "What exactly is it you do, again?" is the job of the robot girl at the robot bar where the robot scientist hangs out after work.
"From Adobe's standpoint, all we're concerned about really is that it doesn't have a performance impact on customers, that it's stable and doesn't cause crashes and that it's not going to produce false positives -- that it's going to tell someone that a picture of someone's grandmother is a $20 bill," Connor said.
That's good, because there's nothing like having a top-of-the-line imaging program tell you that your grandmother looks like Andrew Jackson. Yikes!
This just in...
Beer importers in 1921 found not to be complying with the Volstead Act.
Back then, government agents would raid warehouses and smash barrels with axes (we all remember those scenes from The Untouchables). How about doing the same with spammers? Send agents to their homes and offices to smash up their computers. What fun!