If there is a name conflict, then there is a trademark case, but otherwise, get over it.
Did you RTFA? Best Brains isn't asking them to change their format. They're asking them to stop using their name for it - specificially becuase it's a trademark issue. (The complaint is that the show "Mister Sinus Theatre 3000" is blatantly meant to cash in on the Best Brains trademark, but it's being attached to a show that Best Brains doesn't want their name attached to.)
It's not a case of "stop doing this thing thats a little similar to something we did". It's a case of "stop trying to use our name and thereby associate us with it."
And remember, with trademarks, the trademark owner has to be a bit of a over-reactive jerk about it or the trademark gets Frisbeed.
The article says that the Best Brains people aren't telling them they have to stop either, just that they can't use an obvious reference to their name (Mister Sinus Theater 3000). They can keep the similar format, they just are suing over the name because they don't want to be associated with the style of humor being used (it's a lot more risque than the stuff MST3K would have been willing to do.)
They are not, as you imply, being sued just for using the MST3k formula, but for using the name.
This is very different from the kinds of stuff that piss off slashdotters, where people assume control over all vaguely similar things that are even ever so slightly like the thing that they have IP over.
it's not hard to figure out what part of your limited inventory to use next.
It is when the game's text is lying to you about the picture of what's in the room. (Mine didn't tell me that the floor panel was a trapdoor in the floor that opened upward. It said it was NEAR the floor, which would mean it was in the wall. So I was trying to put things NEXT TO or IN FRONT OF it, instead of putting them on top of it, and that is where the puzzle stumped me until I read a hint book.
I actually did figure out "enjoy poetry" all on my own (it helped that the game came with a list of some known verbs in the instruction manual, and that "enjoy" was one of them (use it on random objects, the text is really funny).)
In the copy of the game I played way back when (Commodore 64), the text description of the events surrounding the Babelfish machine made it impossible to logically figure out how to solve the puzzle. The problem was that the panel out of which the floor cleaning robot emerged was described incorrectly as being "by" the floor, which makes you think it's on the wall, when it is actually "IN" the floor, like a trapdoor. This small difference made it impossible to put the satchel where it belonged. I understood that blocking the panel was a good idea, but the thing is, I kept trying to block the panel by putting things "in front of", or "next to" the panel when I was supposed to be putting them "on top of" the panel - all of this was because the description put the panel in the wall instead of in the floor. And the nature of the error messages coming back never help inform you as to the nature of the misunderstanding - that the problem was with the prepositional phrase, not the rest of the command.
So I eventually broke down and looked at a hint book. When I found out what the solution was, I got really mad. The game had stymied me due to what was a simple one-word error in one of the descritptions.
The really annoying thing I found about the game, though, came later on. On the Heart of Gold, there are a number of different tools with random sounding names. Any attempt to ask the game what the tools look like gave you no information whatsoever, instead just telling you that you don't know what they do. Therefore there is no way to tell what to do with them, and no way to form any visual picture as to what these objects actually are. But one of them was necessary to "remove the common sense portion of my brain", and there was no way at all to clue you in as to (1) that such a task was even possible, and (2) that one of the unknown random tools laying around is related to this task in some way.
That game was the funniest text adventure ever made, but it was also the least playable one ever made. It sucked as a game. It was great as a good read if you use the hint book.
If the object is to define common use english, then using the terminology of the courts is not the way to get there. Lawyers speak a lingo all their own that has only a vague connection with actual English.
No. I can complain about it now, when people mistakenly believe it is even possible to calculate those percentages you post. The whole point is that you don't even *know* where the line is. So you never know what percentage you are at.
The evils of MS are too important to be using stupid logic to water down rhetoric agaisnt them. The arguments agains them are stronger when they are better thought-out.
If the finished product *WAS* the source code, and not the executable, as is the case with open source software, then the people installing the machine would know that the source matches the executable.
I would prefer it if the phrase "make all" was part of the field installation process of these kinds of machines.
The setup of a machine, on-site, should consist of:
1 - Start with the standard, known OS distro, out of the box with no changes, that Diebold claimed their system was supposed to run on.
2 - Checksum the diebold source archive file - compare the number you get with the numbers on record that correspond to the various previously confirmed "right" versions of the software - it should be one of those numbers. (I'm allowing for multiple versions because there may be special versions for things like handicapped voters.)
3 - Unpack the Diebold source archive file. This is the first time any Diebold software is even touching the machine at all.
4 - make all
5 - Checksum the resulting binary, and check it like you did the source archive, against another pre-arranged card with the acceptable numbers on it.
6 - Run it and wait for voters to show up...
The above process could be scripted so that any poll worker could pull it off - the manual bits would be checking the number on the screen against the number on the cards in their hands. If it does not match, then do not use that machine.
But yes, the only *REAL* solution is a printed ballot to be used as a "receipt."
Also, I firmly believe the company making the user interface should have been different from the company making the tallying machine, thereby forcing them to have an open interface between them that could be scrutinized. Then the printed ballot could have a large "confirmation number" at the bottom (basically a checksum of the choices you made). When you go to look at the tallying machine, you can check your confirmation number on your receipt against the number that appears there on a display:
Thus the idea is that one company made a checksum of the votes as recorded at the user interface machine, putting that on your voting receipt, and a totally different company made a checksum of the vote (using the same checksum algorithm) after receiving the vote. They damn well better match or there's foul play.
Your suggestion is an excellent idea, but a fix similar to what you suggest that has all the same benefits can still be done on a Von Neumann machine - just make it so that the software program is burned in a chip instead of loaded from disk - that's how most allegedly "non-programmable" computers these days are made anyway.
Allow my to put on my tinfoil hat and ask, what the hell is corrupt about motor-voter?
And you're ignorant if you think that only Democrats do underhanded tactics like this. Allowing felons to vote might be illegal, but so was the Florida trick of listing people as felons who weren't, to keep them from being allowed to vote.
Yeah, but was it due to the software failing to count right or due to the robotic mechanism failing to 'pick up' all the bills and physically spit them out?
With an ATM, the company that actually stores the computer numbers that represent your bank account is your bank, NOT the company that made the ATM. The ATM just communicates with your bank, telling them about the withdrawl. Thus there is more than one company involved, and at the boundry between them where they communicate, a STRONG incentive not to screw it up and piss off your business partner on the other end of the communication. With a voting machine, that's not the case, and the entire record-keeping is done within the same company that made the end-user interface machines.
This is one of the many problems with the current scheme of electronic voting machines. The idea of electronic voting machines is not a bad idea. But the implementation of it MUST BE open to public scrutiny, just like the implementation of the current paper systems is open to public scrutiny.
I'm not an aviation expert, but I'd heard that lately aircraft manufacturers have started producing passenger aircraft that use 100% fly-by-wire with no physical linkage whatsoever between the controls in the cockpit and the aelerons, rudder, and elevator. Might an EMP attack be able to disrupt those electronics and thus effectively disconnect the controls?
I do agree, though, that it would be a really inefficient way to crash a plane even if it's possible. For the kind of difficulty you would have obtaining an effective EMP weapon, you could more cheaply make or buy several conventional surface-to-air missles.
Technically, a fact is not "a true statement". A fact is a statement that is either objectively true OR objectively false, but cannot be both. This is as opposed to an opinion, which is subjective and can thus be simultaneously true for one person and false for another.
You are acting as if "fact" is the opposite of "false". It's not. "Fact" is the opposite of "Opinion".
"The earth's moon is made from green cheese" is a fact. It happens to be a false fact, but it is still a fact instead of an opinion.
What in the blazes does it mean for something to finally be "secure"?? It's not as if it's actually an achievable goal, and it's not as if you'd have a way to detect when you'd achieved it even if it was achievable.
The 100% secure line is an asymptote. You can get fractionally closer to it, but never ever actually achieve it.
You're forgetting the powerful FUD factor. The misleading idea the public would get would not be "MS servers are unreliable". The idea they will get is "OSS servers are unreliable because people keep using them for spam, and that's why MS has to cut them off." It's not true, but it's the perception people would have because that's precisely what the MS software would be telling them.
In the alternate universe where OS purchases had no network effect on others, you're point would have made more sense - that people who make bad purchasing decisions reap what they sow, so screw 'em. But the problem is that, much like voting for a candidate for political office, when enough other people make a choice, I am affected by what they chose, regardless of whether or not I was one of the ones that made the same choice as them or not. The fact that others pick Windows means I have to deal with it too, like it or not.
Much like with politics - you *don't* get what *you* deserve - you get what the majority deserve. You might not be a member of that majority. Given that, yes, it is my business if someone is lying in an ad. (And no, this was not just a case of MS presenting something in a somewhat eggagerated good light - this was a case of outright lying. When something is only true under one specific context, and you say it without supplying that context, you are making the false statement that it is universally true.)
[replying to myself[ to ammend my comment] Or, a better way, I wish the I, the AUTHOR could decide how to present my own post, instead of having the VIEWER decide it. Granted, I could preface my sig with a "-- ", but then the people who do have it enabled will see the delimiter doubled.
They're things that don't exist unless you delve into the preferences to find them and change them. The default most users see have them turned off. I really wish that delimiter was mandatory, or at the least, turned on by default instead of turned off by default. When the slashdot markup defaults to showing the sig as if it was part of the typed-in comment, that, in my opinion, is hihgly misleading to the viewer.
all an open source email client needs to do is have a plug in interface for the BINARY add ons that will... ...that will make it stop being open source at that point.
Why do you think it requires such a high percentage? All it requires is that MS doesn't play nice and the others do - then you have the situation where using MS gets you access to e-mail with the whole world, (since they aren't going to cut MS out), and using open-source gets you access to a subset of the world. Even if the difference is only 20% or 30%, that's enough to matter.
Tailgating also means the practice of having a picnic at the back of your car, typically in a crowded parking lot with other people doing the same thing. It became common practice in sporting events where you have to show up very early, and then sit around and wait a long time doing nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is a name conflict, then there is a trademark case, but otherwise, get over it.
Did you RTFA? Best Brains isn't asking them to change their format. They're asking them to stop using their name for it - specificially becuase it's a trademark issue. (The complaint is that the show "Mister Sinus Theatre 3000" is blatantly meant to cash in on the Best Brains trademark, but it's being attached to a show that Best Brains doesn't want their name attached to.)
It's not a case of "stop doing this thing thats a little similar to something we did". It's a case of "stop trying to use our name and thereby associate us with it."
And remember, with trademarks, the trademark owner has to be a bit of a over-reactive jerk about it or the trademark gets Frisbeed.
The article says that the Best Brains people aren't telling them they have to stop either, just that they can't use an obvious reference to their name (Mister Sinus Theater 3000). They can keep the similar format, they just are suing over the name because they don't want to be associated with the style of humor being used (it's a lot more risque than the stuff MST3K would have been willing to do.)
They are not, as you imply, being sued just for using the MST3k formula, but for using the name.
This is very different from the kinds of stuff that piss off slashdotters, where people assume control over all vaguely similar things that are even ever so slightly like the thing that they have IP over.
it's not hard to figure out what part of your limited inventory to use next.
It is when the game's text is lying to you about the picture of what's in the room. (Mine didn't tell me that the floor panel was a trapdoor in the floor that opened upward. It said it was NEAR the floor, which would mean it was in the wall. So I was trying to put things NEXT TO or IN FRONT OF it, instead of putting them on top of it, and that is where the puzzle stumped me until I read a hint book.
I actually did figure out "enjoy poetry" all on my own (it helped that the game came with a list of some known verbs in the instruction manual, and that "enjoy" was one of them (use it on random objects, the text is really funny).)
In the copy of the game I played way back when (Commodore 64), the text description of the events surrounding the Babelfish machine made it impossible to logically figure out how to solve the puzzle. The problem was that the panel out of which the floor cleaning robot emerged was described incorrectly as being "by" the floor, which makes you think it's on the wall, when it is actually "IN" the floor, like a trapdoor. This small difference made it impossible to put the satchel where it belonged. I understood that blocking the panel was a good idea, but the thing is, I kept trying to block the panel by putting things "in front of", or "next to" the panel when I was supposed to be putting them "on top of" the panel - all of this was because the description put the panel in the wall instead of in the floor. And the nature of the error messages coming back never help inform you as to the nature of the misunderstanding - that the problem was with the prepositional phrase, not the rest of the command.
So I eventually broke down and looked at a hint book. When I found out what the solution was, I got really mad. The game had stymied me due to what was a simple one-word error in one of the descritptions.
The really annoying thing I found about the game, though, came later on. On the Heart of Gold, there are a number of different tools with random sounding names. Any attempt to ask the game what the tools look like gave you no information whatsoever, instead just telling you that you don't know what they do. Therefore there is no way to tell what to do with them, and no way to form any visual picture as to what these objects actually are. But one of them was necessary to "remove the common sense portion of my brain", and there was no way at all to clue you in as to (1) that such a task was even possible, and (2) that one of the unknown random tools laying around is related to this task in some way.
That game was the funniest text adventure ever made, but it was also the least playable one ever made. It sucked as a game. It was great as a good read if you use the hint book.
If the object is to define common use english, then using the terminology of the courts is not the way to get there. Lawyers speak a lingo all their own that has only a vague connection with actual English.
If a component is verified or proven, then it's 100% bullet-proof, or damn close.
By throwing in that caveat of "or damn close", you just shot down your own argument.
No. I can complain about it now, when people mistakenly believe it is even possible to calculate those percentages you post. The whole point is that you don't even *know* where the line is. So you never know what percentage you are at.
The evils of MS are too important to be using stupid logic to water down rhetoric agaisnt them. The arguments agains them are stronger when they are better thought-out.
From this link, definition 2c is:
Something believed to be true or real: a document laced with mistaken facts.
Step 1: Go here.
Step 2: Read definition 2c.
I would prefer it if the phrase "make all" was part of the field installation process of these kinds of machines.
The setup of a machine, on-site, should consist of:
1 - Start with the standard, known OS distro, out of the box with no changes, that Diebold claimed their system was supposed to run on.
2 - Checksum the diebold source archive file - compare the number you get with the numbers on record that correspond to the various previously confirmed "right" versions of the software - it should be one of those numbers. (I'm allowing for multiple versions because there may be special versions for things like handicapped voters.)
3 - Unpack the Diebold source archive file. This is the first time any Diebold software is even touching the machine at all.
4 - make all
5 - Checksum the resulting binary, and check it like you did the source archive, against another pre-arranged card with the acceptable numbers on it.
6 - Run it and wait for voters to show up...
The above process could be scripted so that any poll worker could pull it off - the manual bits would be checking the number on the screen against the number on the cards in their hands. If it does not match, then do not use that machine.
But yes, the only *REAL* solution is a printed ballot to be used as a "receipt."
Also, I firmly believe the company making the user interface should have been different from the company making the tallying machine, thereby forcing them to have an open interface between them that could be scrutinized. Then the printed ballot could have a large "confirmation number" at the bottom (basically a checksum of the choices you made). When you go to look at the tallying machine, you can check your confirmation number on your receipt against the number that appears there on a display:Thus the idea is that one company made a checksum of the votes as recorded at the user interface machine, putting that on your voting receipt, and a totally different company made a checksum of the vote (using the same checksum algorithm) after receiving the vote. They damn well better match or there's foul play.
Your suggestion is an excellent idea, but a fix similar to what you suggest that has all the same benefits can still be done on a Von Neumann machine - just make it so that the software program is burned in a chip instead of loaded from disk - that's how most allegedly "non-programmable" computers these days are made anyway.
Allow my to put on my tinfoil hat and ask, what the hell is corrupt about motor-voter?
And you're ignorant if you think that only Democrats do underhanded tactics like this. Allowing felons to vote might be illegal, but so was the Florida trick of listing people as felons who weren't, to keep them from being allowed to vote.
Yeah, but was it due to the software failing to count right or due to the robotic mechanism failing to 'pick up' all the bills and physically spit them out?
With an ATM, the company that actually stores the computer numbers that represent your bank account is your bank, NOT the company that made the ATM. The ATM just communicates with your bank, telling them about the withdrawl. Thus there is more than one company involved, and at the boundry between them where they communicate, a STRONG incentive not to screw it up and piss off your business partner on the other end of the communication. With a voting machine, that's not the case, and the entire record-keeping is done within the same company that made the end-user interface machines.
This is one of the many problems with the current scheme of electronic voting machines. The idea of electronic voting machines is not a bad idea. But the implementation of it MUST BE open to public scrutiny, just like the implementation of the current paper systems is open to public scrutiny.
I'm not an aviation expert, but I'd heard that lately aircraft manufacturers have started producing passenger aircraft that use 100% fly-by-wire with no physical linkage whatsoever between the controls in the cockpit and the aelerons, rudder, and elevator. Might an EMP attack be able to disrupt those electronics and thus effectively disconnect the controls?
I do agree, though, that it would be a really inefficient way to crash a plane even if it's possible. For the kind of difficulty you would have obtaining an effective EMP weapon, you could more cheaply make or buy several conventional surface-to-air missles.
Technically, a fact is not "a true statement". A fact is a statement that is either objectively true OR objectively false, but cannot be both. This is as opposed to an opinion, which is subjective and can thus be simultaneously true for one person and false for another.
You are acting as if "fact" is the opposite of "false". It's not. "Fact" is the opposite of "Opinion".
"The earth's moon is made from green cheese" is a fact. It happens to be a false fact, but it is still a fact instead of an opinion.
What in the blazes does it mean for something to finally be "secure"?? It's not as if it's actually an achievable goal, and it's not as if you'd have a way to detect when you'd achieved it even if it was achievable.
The 100% secure line is an asymptote. You can get fractionally closer to it, but never ever actually achieve it.
You're forgetting the powerful FUD factor. The misleading idea the public would get would not be "MS servers are unreliable". The idea they will get is "OSS servers are unreliable because people keep using them for spam, and that's why MS has to cut them off." It's not true, but it's the perception people would have because that's precisely what the MS software would be telling them.
In the alternate universe where OS purchases had no network effect on others, you're point would have made more sense - that people who make bad purchasing decisions reap what they sow, so screw 'em. But the problem is that, much like voting for a candidate for political office, when enough other people make a choice, I am affected by what they chose, regardless of whether or not I was one of the ones that made the same choice as them or not. The fact that others pick Windows means I have to deal with it too, like it or not.
Much like with politics - you *don't* get what *you* deserve - you get what the majority deserve. You might not be a member of that majority. Given that, yes, it is my business if someone is lying in an ad. (And no, this was not just a case of MS presenting something in a somewhat eggagerated good light - this was a case of outright lying. When something is only true under one specific context, and you say it without supplying that context, you are making the false statement that it is universally true.)
[replying to myself[ to ammend my comment] Or, a better way, I wish the I, the AUTHOR could decide how to present my own post, instead of having the VIEWER decide it. Granted, I could preface my sig with a "--
", but then the people who do have it enabled will see the delimiter doubled.
They're things that don't exist unless you delve into the preferences to find them and change them. The default most users see have them turned off. I really wish that delimiter was mandatory, or at the least, turned on by default instead of turned off by default. When the slashdot markup defaults to showing the sig as if it was part of the typed-in comment, that, in my opinion, is hihgly misleading to the viewer.
all an open source email client needs to do is have a plug in interface for the BINARY add ons that will
Why do you think it requires such a high percentage? All it requires is that MS doesn't play nice and the others do - then you have the situation where using MS gets you access to e-mail with the whole world, (since they aren't going to cut MS out), and using open-source gets you access to a subset of the world. Even if the difference is only 20% or 30%, that's enough to matter.
It is the same in this regard. I have no idea what the previous poster is talking about. Speeding tickets are not a civil offense.
Tailgating also means the practice of having a picnic at the back of your car, typically in a crowded parking lot with other people doing the same thing. It became common practice in sporting events where you have to show up very early, and then sit around and wait a long time doing nothing.