There are a lot of Adobe apologists here, saying that Adobe HAS to do this or they might lose their trademark. Fine. Unlikely, but fine.
Do they have to be MEAN and THREATENING when they defend it?
I would feel a lot better about Adobe if they had started with, "We believe this name violates our trademark, we would appreciate your changing it," rather than, "you owe us 2500 Euros (~3k US), because you stole our name, possibly."
That's bullying, no getting around it.
Because they went the jerk route, they stifle development on a good open source product, needlessly make later versions of it unavailable for awhile, potentially intimidate open source developers in general, etc. Was this their intention-- who knows?
Maybe Adobe just hands over all responsibility to their lawyers, who would rather make threats than handle things in a civil manner. But it's still an unnecessary slap in the face.
While all your points are true, we all know deep down that America was not being punished for anything related to human rights. Don't tell me the US was ejected from the Human Rights Commission of human rights when Sudan was added. To imply otherwise is disingenuous or grotesquely stupid.
The US was ejected because of:
Anger over the fact that US partisan politics instigated by a probably senile Senator have resulted in a refusal by Congress to pay outstanding UN dues, exacerbated by the unspeakably arrogant beavior of tying the repayment of said dues to "good behavior" by the UN and its members
desire by the world community to register their displeasure at the United States' inadvertant election of a president with virtually no respect for international sensibilties, exemplified by the abandonment of Kyoto, refusal to sign ICC, and going forward with missle defense (all but ICC having nothing to do with human rights, but all reprehensible)
the "smile-when-I-see-you-and-shake-hands, but-under-the-table-abandon-you," somewhat cowardly betrayal of the US by its porported allies, largely for US' arrogant and insulting relations with them of late, and particularly by the current administration, epitomized by the appointment of an French ambassador who DOESN'T SPEAK FRENCH!!! (again, nothing to do with human rights)
Frankly, I'm glad this happened and it was a LONG time coming. In the post-Cold War world, the US has increasingly taken its allies for granted, and generally behaved like the US operates by a seperate set of rules than everybody else and leveraging its influence to make sure that it does. I hate it, and am embarrassed for the US. The US getting spanked for its behavior was the absolute minimum that we (the US) deserved for our behavior.
But to paint the UN Commision of Human Rights vote as remotely related to anything having to do with human rights is disingenuous, and, I might add, reminicent of the kind of patronizing, preachy lecturing the US so often recieves from its oh-so-educated western partners, the kind of easily dismissed, whiny BS that makes Americans roll their eyes, think "here they go again," and decide to ignore the world for another couple years.
Respect is earned, not given on request. If the world wants the US to treat it with the respect it deserves, it needs to act worthy of respect. That means hard choices and sacrifice, both of which the world and particularly the EU have dodged at every opportunity. The EU needs to coordinate AND FINANCE it's own bleeding military defense, not instigate a bunch of farm subsidies, tariffs, and trade barriers. They need to use their influence for risky, unpopular undertakings for the good of the world, like middle-east peace negoiations. They need to gain credibility by supporting the US on those rare occassions when the US is clearly right, like when a plane operating in international airspace is forced down by aggressive and illegal military manuvers and the offending country holds US nationals as hostages to get an undeserved apology. Most importantly, they need to stand up to the US and make the US pay a price for being a bad world citizen, not cast secret votes against the US on a powerless commission seat the US doesn't need, and then pretending it has anything to do with human rights.
Free Speech gives you the right to say what you believe, NOT to evade resposibility for what you say. You can't libel someone, or you can be sued. You can't incite a riot or violence, or you can get sued OR face criminal prosecution. That's why this was in the courts.
Will someone PLEASE set up a website with the names of the judges, their addresses, telephone numbers, license plates, etc., as see if they want to review their opinion?
p.s. Is it me, or has this court given up on the pretense of legal reasoning and essentially started voting straight down party lines?
Sorry about the offtopic post, but it's hard to be quiet when certain things are said sometimes...
In the battle for civil rights, it was the restrictors of freedom, both the state governments but most importantly the Klan, who had the guns. The 2nd Amendment doesn't "guarantee" anything. What guarantees your rights is a society that is willing to pay a heavy price to enforce them, and a legal system that doesn't look the other way when demogogues, overfunded lobbys, and corporate interests try to take them away.
As a web designer, I have pretty much given up trying to get even BASIC items to format properly across browsers. Now, I'm sure that the big websites can afford to check their code in all major versions of IE, Netscape, Opera, etc. in Windows 95/NT/2000/XP, Mac OS, BeOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS2, and god only knows what else (need I mention WebTV?). But I can't. I don't and never will have those kind of resources.
Currently, I'm really only designing for IE and Netscape, and I check my pages on every single OS I have at work, namely Windows. (And occasionally on a Mac when I can pry our graphics department from her PC.) I'm not trying to be a fascist and force people into choosing specific browsers and OS's to view my site, but I'll never have the resources to do more. Sure, it's lame. But it's reality for me, and it's reality for a lot of not-so-cutting-edge websites. And, for what it's worth, a lot of these cutting-edge websites are spending a lot of time tweaking for the dozens of browser combinations when they could be writing the content everyone here keeps saying is the only thing that matters.
I don't like this solution particularly, but the status quo stinks. I'll take this solution over what we deal with now.
Complain to Utilties Commission About RBOCs
on
DSL Woes
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· Score: 3
I've noticed A LOT of folks here complaining about the RBOCs-- Verizon, USWest, etc. Several folks have commented about how the FCC does nothing.
The FCC does not have enforcement authority for DSL! Call your state Utilities Commission!
I've had a NIGHTMARE install here in North Carolina and finally called the FCC, which is how I found out they had no authority. They referred me to the Utilties Commission. Within one day I had an apologetic Verizon representative on the phone, after getting stonewalled for weeks. She called all sorts of people, got me the names of various people responsible for my local CO and followed up with them. FWIW, I still don't have DSL-- the DSL lines in my area are oversold and EVERYONE is waiting for new lines-- including Verizon. But I got the very clear impression that Verizon took complaints to the Utilities Commission very seriously.
Re:What's this memory wall doohickey?
on
ST:TMP Fixer Upper
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· Score: 2
Oops. Copied the wrong link, then lost DNS, now they're shutting down the network so I can't recopy the link.
To get it yourself:
1) Do a search on Google with the words "Trek Memory Wall"
2) click on the "cache" link of any of the TrekWeb hits.
3) select the first link.
Sorry for the goof!
Re:What's this memory wall doohickey?
on
ST:TMP Fixer Upper
·
· Score: 2
Here is a script of it (with some still shots) from the TrekWeb site, in all it's "glory".
This appears to be a scene which replaced or extended the sequence where Spock blasts off in his suit to check out the deep interior of V'ger. The "memory wall" was a wall of crystalline structures which contained V'gers memory of certain events, and when touched, caused the person to experience those memories. I, for one, do not think I mourn its loss from the film.
Look, only a naive fungal creature from another galaxy would work for a spammer, telemarketer, or junk mailer and not expect to get people irritated. Sure, I understand they're just trying to make a living, which is their right, and I do respect that right.
Just like they should respect my right to act rudely when they raise my ISP rates by spamming me, when they inconvenience me and fill landfills by stuffing my mailbox with stuff I didn't ask for, and when they interrupt my dinner at home with sales pitches.
Picking an unethical employer is a choice just like any other, and these folks should be able to weigh the consequences of paying their bills versus the grief they'll get by supporting and industry that is an constant irritant to others. Responsibility is a key sign of growing up.
And finally, resistance is not futile. Yes, the returned mail probably irritates the guy in the mail room more than the CEO, but if enough people do it, the CEO will be irritated as well.
I haven't seen a portable DVD player yet that had a 4:3 screen ratio (i.e. television) like the Dulux-- all the ones I have seen are 16:9, like a movie screen.
I'm having a lot trouble sorting the paranoia from the reality here regarding RAID, Defragging, and Backups. I have seen the following questions answered and debated, but it'd be nice to have more knowlegable answers.
Specifically, with RAID5, for example, which could very likely want to spread CPRM data across a number of disks, will CPRM muck up this process? Will the new spec allow me to swap disks if one is defective and retain my data? What are realistic problems with various RAID implementations?
Regarding backups, will restoring CPRM data to replacement disks abort a restore, either in part or in total? Will it limit itself to blocking just the CPRM data restoration or could it block the whole process?
Lausanne, Switzerland-- In a move sure to attract attention from both national and international regulators, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) announced plans to merge its governing board with that of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The announced merger set off a field of protests from other organizations seeking to offend the largest user base possible, including the MPAA and
Microsoft. The RIAA announced plans to either block the merger or join it.
"This merger would create a virtual Internet monopoly in the rapidly growing field of organizations seeking to disgust their own audience" said Jane Regalia of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT). "This is an area we feel very
passionate about-- Microsoft will defend to its utmost the ability to inconvenience and annoy its customers."
"Oh yeah-- innovate, innovate, innovate," she added.
Prominant members of both ICANN and IOC were unimpressed with protests against
the Internet mega-merger.
"Look, we're not in the business of looking out for users of the Internet," said Jason Henkleson, Chairman of the ICANN At-large Members Dispowerment subcommittee. "I mean, if we were looking out for everyday Internet citizens, we'd be pretty inept, right?"
IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, speaking from his palatial half-mile yacht modeled after the more modest Queen Elizabeth II, said, "whatever."
"By the way, you can't print that on the Internet," he added.
Corporate generosity to politically well-connected institutions is, IMHO, certainly in Intel's best interest. They get a generous tax write-off, some good PR, people from a university renowned for technical excellence to say good things about them, etc.
Intel lost a lot of credibility with me when they delayed implementation of the Athlon about 6 months by applying pressure on chipset makers and mobo manufacturers. When Via became the first company to break ranks, it was rewarded with a spate of questionable lawsuits and an attempt by Intel to limit their export privileges to the United States. This is not the kind of behavior that I would describe as endearing.
No, Intel is not evil, and they have backed off substantially in the last year from their most objectionable practices (thank you, Department of Justice).
But it's gonna take more than a few computers sent to Massachusetts to make me like them.
Atually, they may not have to publish the information all over the place, but, upon request, they do have to hand it out if they have it.
The Freedom of Information Act allows you to request information from the government of any information it holds.
The government can refuse, but the limits on this are significant, and fairly explicit. The timeline for the government to give you the information is actually fairly short, so in reality, only very critical information is held back from a FOIA request.
Although the government might not publish the source code to its projects, obtaining it where the software is not of national security interest should be fairly easy-- supposing of course, that the source code actually exists.
The FOIA is a VERY useful, underutilized, and surprising act of congress which gives a mid-bogglingly powerful tool to citizens in the name of freedom.
I have another reason why MS is not thinking straight on this whole Rent-An-App idea. MS Office is, for better or worse, my primary office application suite. On my home system, I've used Word a fair amount. But in the last 3 years, I can count on two hands the number of times I've used Excel, Access, and PowerPoint combined. I NEVER use PowerPoint. Yet MS got money from me for it.
If they tried Pay-Per-View on me, they'd be WAY, WAY behind. Even further, because if I had to pay as I went, I'd use it even less. And most people use their apps even less than I do. Lots of people insist upon MS Office because that's the suite they have at work, but they hardly use it.
Sure, MS'd clean up on some power users out there. But MS doesn't make money off power users-- they make their money off Joe User-- and Joe User doesn't even use these apps when they're sitting on his computer. MS would be killing it's cash cow.
Slashdot Mirror
Do they have to be MEAN and THREATENING when they defend it?
I would feel a lot better about Adobe if they had started with, "We believe this name violates our trademark, we would appreciate your changing it," rather than, "you owe us 2500 Euros (~3k US), because you stole our name, possibly."
That's bullying, no getting around it.
Because they went the jerk route, they stifle development on a good open source product, needlessly make later versions of it unavailable for awhile, potentially intimidate open source developers in general, etc. Was this their intention-- who knows?
Maybe Adobe just hands over all responsibility to their lawyers, who would rather make threats than handle things in a civil manner. But it's still an unnecessary slap in the face.
While all your points are true, we all know deep down that America was not being punished for anything related to human rights. Don't tell me the US was ejected from the Human Rights Commission of human rights when Sudan was added. To imply otherwise is disingenuous or grotesquely stupid.
The US was ejected because of:
Frankly, I'm glad this happened and it was a LONG time coming. In the post-Cold War world, the US has increasingly taken its allies for granted, and generally behaved like the US operates by a seperate set of rules than everybody else and leveraging its influence to make sure that it does. I hate it, and am embarrassed for the US. The US getting spanked for its behavior was the absolute minimum that we (the US) deserved for our behavior.
But to paint the UN Commision of Human Rights vote as remotely related to anything having to do with human rights is disingenuous, and, I might add, reminicent of the kind of patronizing, preachy lecturing the US so often recieves from its oh-so-educated western partners, the kind of easily dismissed, whiny BS that makes Americans roll their eyes, think "here they go again," and decide to ignore the world for another couple years.
Respect is earned, not given on request. If the world wants the US to treat it with the respect it deserves, it needs to act worthy of respect. That means hard choices and sacrifice, both of which the world and particularly the EU have dodged at every opportunity. The EU needs to coordinate AND FINANCE it's own bleeding military defense, not instigate a bunch of farm subsidies, tariffs, and trade barriers. They need to use their influence for risky, unpopular undertakings for the good of the world, like middle-east peace negoiations. They need to gain credibility by supporting the US on those rare occassions when the US is clearly right, like when a plane operating in international airspace is forced down by aggressive and illegal military manuvers and the offending country holds US nationals as hostages to get an undeserved apology. Most importantly, they need to stand up to the US and make the US pay a price for being a bad world citizen, not cast secret votes against the US on a powerless commission seat the US doesn't need, and then pretending it has anything to do with human rights.
--FLAME OFF--
--alteran
Will someone PLEASE set up a website with the names of the judges, their addresses, telephone numbers, license plates, etc., as see if they want to review their opinion?
p.s. Is it me, or has this court given up on the pretense of legal reasoning and essentially started voting straight down party lines?
In the battle for civil rights, it was the restrictors of freedom, both the state governments but most importantly the Klan, who had the guns. The 2nd Amendment doesn't "guarantee" anything. What guarantees your rights is a society that is willing to pay a heavy price to enforce them, and a legal system that doesn't look the other way when demogogues, overfunded lobbys, and corporate interests try to take them away.
Currently, I'm really only designing for IE and Netscape, and I check my pages on every single OS I have at work, namely Windows. (And occasionally on a Mac when I can pry our graphics department from her PC.) I'm not trying to be a fascist and force people into choosing specific browsers and OS's to view my site, but I'll never have the resources to do more. Sure, it's lame. But it's reality for me, and it's reality for a lot of not-so-cutting-edge websites. And, for what it's worth, a lot of these cutting-edge websites are spending a lot of time tweaking for the dozens of browser combinations when they could be writing the content everyone here keeps saying is the only thing that matters.
I don't like this solution particularly, but the status quo stinks. I'll take this solution over what we deal with now.
The FCC does not have enforcement authority for DSL! Call your state Utilities Commission!
I've had a NIGHTMARE install here in North Carolina and finally called the FCC, which is how I found out they had no authority. They referred me to the Utilties Commission. Within one day I had an apologetic Verizon representative on the phone, after getting stonewalled for weeks. She called all sorts of people, got me the names of various people responsible for my local CO and followed up with them. FWIW, I still don't have DSL-- the DSL lines in my area are oversold and EVERYONE is waiting for new lines-- including Verizon. But I got the very clear impression that Verizon took complaints to the Utilities Commission very seriously.
To get it yourself:
1) Do a search on Google with the words "Trek Memory Wall"
2) click on the "cache" link of any of the TrekWeb hits.
3) select the first link.
Sorry for the goof!
This appears to be a scene which replaced or extended the sequence where Spock blasts off in his suit to check out the deep interior of V'ger. The "memory wall" was a wall of crystalline structures which contained V'gers memory of certain events, and when touched, caused the person to experience those memories. I, for one, do not think I mourn its loss from the film.
Look, only a naive fungal creature from another galaxy would work for a spammer, telemarketer, or junk mailer and not expect to get people irritated. Sure, I understand they're just trying to make a living, which is their right, and I do respect that right.
Just like they should respect my right to act rudely when they raise my ISP rates by spamming me, when they inconvenience me and fill landfills by stuffing my mailbox with stuff I didn't ask for, and when they interrupt my dinner at home with sales pitches.
Picking an unethical employer is a choice just like any other, and these folks should be able to weigh the consequences of paying their bills versus the grief they'll get by supporting and industry that is an constant irritant to others. Responsibility is a key sign of growing up.
And finally, resistance is not futile. Yes, the returned mail probably irritates the guy in the mail room more than the CEO, but if enough people do it, the CEO will be irritated as well.
Specifically, with RAID5, for example, which could very likely want to spread CPRM data across a number of disks, will CPRM muck up this process? Will the new spec allow me to swap disks if one is defective and retain my data? What are realistic problems with various RAID implementations?
Regarding backups, will restoring CPRM data to replacement disks abort a restore, either in part or in total? Will it limit itself to blocking just the CPRM data restoration or could it block the whole process?
Can I defrag a CPRM file?
Lausanne, Switzerland-- In a move sure to attract attention from both national and international regulators, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) announced plans to merge its governing board with that of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
The announced merger set off a field of protests from other organizations seeking to offend the largest user base possible, including the MPAA and Microsoft. The RIAA announced plans to either block the merger or join it.
"This merger would create a virtual Internet monopoly in the rapidly growing field of organizations seeking to disgust their own audience" said Jane Regalia of Microsoft Corporation (MSFT). "This is an area we feel very passionate about-- Microsoft will defend to its utmost the ability to inconvenience and annoy its customers."
"Oh yeah-- innovate, innovate, innovate," she added.
Prominant members of both ICANN and IOC were unimpressed with protests against the Internet mega-merger.
"Look, we're not in the business of looking out for users of the Internet," said Jason Henkleson, Chairman of the ICANN At-large Members Dispowerment subcommittee. "I mean, if we were looking out for everyday Internet citizens, we'd be pretty inept, right?"
IOC Chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch, speaking from his palatial half-mile yacht modeled after the more modest Queen Elizabeth II, said, "whatever."
"By the way, you can't print that on the Internet," he added.
Intel lost a lot of credibility with me when they delayed implementation of the Athlon about 6 months by applying pressure on chipset makers and mobo manufacturers. When Via became the first company to break ranks, it was rewarded with a spate of questionable lawsuits and an attempt by Intel to limit their export privileges to the United States. This is not the kind of behavior that I would describe as endearing.
No, Intel is not evil, and they have backed off substantially in the last year from their most objectionable practices (thank you, Department of Justice).
But it's gonna take more than a few computers sent to Massachusetts to make me like them.
The Freedom of Information Act allows you to request information from the government of any information it holds.
The government can refuse, but the limits on this are significant, and fairly explicit. The timeline for the government to give you the information is actually fairly short, so in reality, only very critical information is held back from a FOIA request.
Although the government might not publish the source code to its projects, obtaining it where the software is not of national security interest should be fairly easy-- supposing of course, that the source code actually exists.
The FOIA is a VERY useful, underutilized, and surprising act of congress which gives a mid-bogglingly powerful tool to citizens in the name of freedom.
I have another reason why MS is not thinking straight on this whole Rent-An-App idea. MS Office is, for better or worse, my primary office application suite. On my home system, I've used Word a fair amount. But in the last 3 years, I can count on two hands the number of times I've used Excel, Access, and PowerPoint combined. I NEVER use PowerPoint. Yet MS got money from me for it.
If they tried Pay-Per-View on me, they'd be WAY, WAY behind. Even further, because if I had to pay as I went, I'd use it even less. And most people use their apps even less than I do. Lots of people insist upon MS Office because that's the suite they have at work, but they hardly use it.
Sure, MS'd clean up on some power users out there. But MS doesn't make money off power users-- they make their money off Joe User-- and Joe User doesn't even use these apps when they're sitting on his computer. MS would be killing it's cash cow.
I just don't see it.