It's this ultra-left wing logic that "if it saves one life then it's worth itUmmm, no. I think it's more like "continuous 24/7/365 news media will sensationalize (err, report) any insignificant statistic as long is is remotely connected to FUD. It drives up ratings, and increases consumption."
It is true though, liberals are more likely to try to protect the public at large, although there is a cost-benefit analysis- and not everything is championed. Learn some more "awful" liberal protections at http://tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_ middle-.html
Not sure why you're unhappy about this bill passing. While I haven't read the entire bill for fun provisions, it does such dastardly things as make taping movies in theatres punishible by up to 3 years in jail. It also increases penalties on insiders who leak works before release date, and also on hackers who do the same. I cannot imagine what complaints people would have with these provisions. They sound kind of fair to me.
Under a measure approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, song swappers could go to jail for up to three years if they shared more than 1,000 copyrighted works.
Glad to see that this part was left out of the final bill, as I'm a little uncomfortable for busting people for just making files available to download- and people not actually downloading. It's kind of like someone who makes lots of books they've purchased available to friends to borrow.
I'm a little worried that this might actually pop back in for the final version of the bill. The bills that passed the House and Senate are different, so negociators will smooth out differences. Sometimes nasty provisions like this can make it in, and everyone can say that they didn't vote for that provision.
1) It cheats. It uses a booster rocket to get 90% of its velocity.
Yes, it does. Right now, the trick is to see if a working scramjet can work. Normal jets suck in air and use that to increase the amount of combustion. Kind of like blowing on a fire. So technically it's cheating as well. There is a limitation to the velocity of air coming in. To have big fires (jets, rocket engines), you need to add more oxygen. Rockets carry their own oxygen, which can get heavy.
The scramjet gets around this, and burns at amazingly high wind speeds. Now, since they're only testing the really high velocity thing, they use a rocket to get it up to that speed. In the future, I suspect they'll make scramjets that can function on their own from takeoff.
Remember Chuck Yeager and the X-1 breaking the sound barrier? He cheated too! (carried up by a B-29 bomber)
Just don't think it would make a good James Bond movie. "Ah yes Mister Bond I see you managed to find my secret water pump!".
So I guess you missed the James Bond movie A View to a Kill. In that movie, the evil Zorin wants to cause an earthquake that will destroy Silicon Valley. His method? Pumping massive amount of salt water into the faults, then blowing up part of the fault. So the plant in TFA wasn't blowing up faults, but their salt water did grease the faultlines- just like the movie in 1985 suggested.
See Mom, I learned a lot from re-watching all those James Bond movies...!
"business method patents," which disproportionally rewards large business.
Where is your source for this sweeping generalization? I work for an IP law firm, and have drafted several business method patents. We actually have more small (10 and below) businesses doing business method patents than larger companies.
What was the motivation for allowing business method patents?
Answer: like any other type of patent, the motivation is to protect the invention and allow the inventor to take advantage of having discovered this business method.
I've written several business method patents involving methods of providing life insurance. When the client first came to us, it was tough to figure out what they had discovered. The did find a unique way to fund life insurance, and wanted to make sure they were the only ones who could provide this service. As they had spent several years developing this method, I see no reason why they should not be able to protect their invention.
One thing I was shocked to learn while drafting the patent application- there are many patents involving insurance funding (our client was unique). There were even some that got through in Europe (which will allow a business method to be included if attached to something that is patentable).
While part of me thinks it might retard competition, I do have to say that companies invest time & money into developing these methods- and want rewards.
I am getting very different results on MSN search.
It's possible they're still testing their search results. In the past when I've been doing search engine positioning, I asked a friend to enter a term, and click on my result in Google (it was #4 or 5 for me here in San Diego). He was in NY, and when he did the same search, he got different results, with several different entries (my entry was not there). So, I guess you really can't figure out what's going on. It's also possible that MSN might have cookies
My name (Owen Smigelski) is kind of unique, and it's been posted online since 1994. I like comparing the different search engines to see where they find my name, and how importance they place on each result. My name is out there enough that it takes up the first 10+ search results, and does not get manipulated by competing search engine positioning.
IMHO Google provides more relevant search results. The results that Google provides are actually under my personal control, and can be modified by me. Google gives more power to smaller sites. Yahoo and MSN seem to put more emphasis on larger 3rd party sites and sites that have not been updated recently. I personally think my personal website at smigelski.org should be #1, however Yahoo and MSN disagree with me here.
Here are the first 10 search results for my name:
Google
1- My personal website (smigelski.org)
2- My resume from my personal website
3- My profile for a marketing website for my law firm
4- My name from an article about trademarks for this site
5- My profile from my law firm's website
6- My name on a yellow pages site for San Diego attorneys
7- A posting I made about http://sheilashaw.com/
8- A/. posting I made about taste/smell patents
9- My profile on a law questions forum
10- More about http://sheilashaw.com/ (I advise Sheila Shaw's company, she's a kidney transplant patient w/ a good "suriving death several times yet living a full life" story)
Yahoo
1- My profile from a Martindale Hubble crummy site for my firm (free with being listed)
2- Lawyers.com listing (Martindale Hubble)
3- Marketing site for law firm (#3 in Google)
4- My profile on my law firm's site (#5 in Google)
5- My website from law school, when I was running for secretary of the student government. This page has not been updated since 2000.
6- My personal website (#1 in Google)
7- My resume from my personal website (#2 in Google)
8- My profile from stumbleupon.com
9- My trademark law blog at www.smiglaw.com
10- My trademark law blog at aliased URL trademarks.smiglaw.com
MSN
1- My profile from a Martindale Hubble crummy site for my firm (free with being li (# 1 on Yahoo)
2- My profile on my law firm's site (#5 in Google, #4 in Yahoo)
3- My personal website (#1 in Google, #6 in Yahoo)
4- My law school website (#5 in Yahoo)
5- My online photo album from my personal website
6- My profile from stumbleupon.com (#8 in Yahoo)
7- The sponsor form from my law school website when I ran a marathon to raise money for the Leukemia society
8- The PDF version of the sponsor form
9- My trademark law blog at www.smiglaw.com (#9 in Yahoo)
10- My trademark law blog at aliased URL trademarks.smiglaw.com (#10 in Yahoo)
I'd suggest going into law. IT people come and go, but people will always need lawyers.
Really strange you made this comment. In 1998 I quit my helpdesk job (about to be promoted to project manager), turned down an IT job w/ MTV, and headed West to go to law school. Let's just say the stories of everyone landing high paying lawyer jobs is significantly overblown, especially in this jobless recovery.
In a down economy, people stop using, and stop paying for, their attorneys. It's a purely service industry, and we do not provide any products ourselves. At least in IT people work on things people could conceivably need every day (e.g. their computer or network). I know a bunch of people who are currently "under employed" as attorneys (myself included), which sucks having spent around $100,000 to earn my law degree.
I'm an attorney in San Diego, and often attend tech related networking events. I've noticed that over the past 2-3 years, the number of people at these events who identify themselves as "web designers" has been increasing.
I'm not sure if they're getting work, but it seems that a lot of them are former programmers, PC techs, startup employees, graphic designers, teachers, construction workers, sanitation workers, pimps, etc. I keep wondering why so many people are leaving other careers to go to "web design."
They ["devils"] slap down rock-bottom price quotes from Web sites and demand that Best Buy make good on its lowest-price pledge.
Again, it's just a matter of the customers of Best Buy getting smarter. I've been to tons of other tech stores that promise to beat any price- except web prices. Best Buy is just getting smarter itself. I didn't discuss this earlier for the sake of brevity.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't buy anything from them, but hear me out. Best Buy is a for-profit company (pubicly traded), and legally a corporation's loyalty (at least in theory) is ultimately to the shareholders (Enron et al made a mockery of this). This duty means that the corporation has to increase the value to shareholders, either through dividends, profits, increase share price, etc. I'm not saying I agree with it, but that's the idea. So, Best Buy has some "devil" customers, and they're losing money off of these devils. From TFA:
The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts.
Kudos to the people who figured this out, but clearly it is costing Best Buy money. These are customers that should be weeded out. It's Best Buy's fault for allowing this scenario to happen.
Once someone discovers something that is "too good to be true" like the returning scenario, many people start doing it, and the company catches on. Since they're losing money, they stop it.
The other things in TFA, like profiling customers and selling them what their profile dictates is just common sales practice. Sure they might be forcing people to get things they might not want/need, but then again, when was the last time a sales person tried to sell you something you don't need (car options, clothes, dinner specials, etc). It's the nature of capitalism to increase the profits.
People who use the Bible to justify hatred of gays infuriate me to no end- yourself included. You claim to be religious, but you do not even know what the Bible says. Let an agnostic Unitarian Universalist correct you.
Leviticus 18:22 states: "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination." OK. Word of God, eh? We should then follow EVERYTHING in Leviticus. No sense being selective. Leviticus 25:44-46 tells us that we can take slaves (gentiles only). Leviticus 19:20-22 also states that sex with an engaged slave is punished by an animal sacrifice at temple. Chapters 1-7 of Leviticus tell us the collection of laws relating to sacrifices, offerings, and the like.
As for the "sex only for reproduction" thing, I guess you're referring to Genesis 38:7-10, and the story of Onan spilling his seed. So I guess all the things in Genesis are true, including the world being created in 6 days, the Tower of Babel, Methuselah lived to the age of 969, and Noah to 950.
My point is, if you hold so close and dear that one specific passage is enough to base views/hatred/laws/etc, you need to give enough weight to all the other passages. Why are you allowed to choose some passages over others? The rest of us think you're just goofy for giving so much weight to something that is really just a good collection of stories designed to teach a moral code to uneducated people thousands of years ago.
We'd have what we really need: an independent group that has oversight of the few things the Internet relies upon- DNS, domain registration, etc. I'm not even talking WWW compliance and the like. This group would have representatives from the different regions of the world, and include education, corporate, and government entities. It would not be under control of any one entity.
That said, this whole scenario is about as likely as Kerry actually winning Ohio and becoming president. The US will never cede control of DARPA's "baby" in the interest of "national security" and "national pride." Look at all the problems with trying to divest control from the US government- Verisign/Net Sol and ICANN come to mind. A UN body might work, but I don't see that happening.
I had the same feeling watching trailers for Sky Captain, I was always distracted by the look of the film.
I too was bothered a bit how Sky Captain looked in the trailers, but I can assure you that the full screen movie version looked amazing- like nothing I had ever seen before (in a good way). I totally enjoyed the look/feel of Sky Captain.
It'll be interesting to see if this translates to DVD/video well.
The next time a roller coaster breaks, they'll want to blame Roller Coaster Tycon. The next time city hall goes bankrupt, they'll blame SimCity. The next time a street race occurs, they'll blame Need for Speed 2.
Hmmm, hasn't this kind of behavior happened pre-video games? It's convenient for the media to blame a scapegoat (video games, France, crack babies, etc) than to actually have an informed factual discussion of the underlying issues.
I know the next time an orange hopping creature with a horn nose gets eaten by a snake, I'm blaming Qbert.
I also live in California, and I disagree with you completely. I'm glad that your little county cannot control the outcome of my larger population county. Votes on state offices and propositions are by percentage of the popular vote, not by number of counties won. Population centers like SF, LA, OC, and SD do indeed determine whether things pass.
As a counter argument to your "Prop 72 sux" arguments- what is wrong with mandating that companies should provide health care to their workers? And contrary to the shills in the media, it is for private health care- and not a government run system. Lots of companies like Wal Mart do not provide health care to their full time workers, and it costs the California public money to pay for their hospital care. There was an exemption for 93% of restaurants, so it wasn't going to kill any industries. With increasing health care costs, stagnant wages, millions more uninsured, who is supposed to pay?
Hormel doesn't want to loose their trademark for SPAM as Beyer lost theirs for aspirin and heroin.
For the longest time, I thought that was the case- Bayer didn't enforce their trademark rights. I seem to recall a professor in law school telling us that.
Imagine my suprise when I read that Bayer lost the trademark for "aspirin" and "heroin" to the victors of WWI as part of the Versailles Treaty in 1919. Call it war reparations.
Only a vague reference from Bayer. Turns out once the US government sold the mark to Sterling Drug, they were unable to protect against the generic use and lost the mark. Other resources tell the same story, so I'm not sure what to believe now. The web or my professor...?
The bottom line is that Hormel is doing this to protect their trademark. Trademark rights can be lost if the trademark holder does not enforce their trademark. This includes defending against trademark infringement (similar marks), and it also includes protecting against trademark dilution. Dilution is when a famous trademark loses its distinctive nature. This problem occurs when a name becomes so ubiquitous that people use it for things other than the products/services the mark is associated with.
One way to show evidence that a company protected against dilution is to advertise the trademark nature. I've seen the "Xerox has two R's" ads (the second R being the registered trademark circle R symbol), reminders from Kleenex that people use "Kleenex brand facial tissue," etc. Google is starting to run into this problem, with people using the verb "to google." Google has been defending against this.
Hormel doesn't care if "unsolicited email" is called "spam," they just need to make sure that people also know that it's a lunchmeat (allegedly).
Cause if you try to vote on the 4th you are probably trying to commit fraud?
I guess you haven't heard of early voting? There are several states that have been voting for a few weeks (including Floriday). The Registrar of Voters here in San Diego has been letting people vote at their main office since Saturday (I went by today, and it was a ZOO of traffic). Then there are absentee ballots (my wife mailed her's today), which have to usually be postmarked on or before election day.
I read an article awhile back about how infants are wired to distinguish something like 30 or so different/unique sounds. Not all languages use those sounds, so if you grow up not hearing a particular sound, your brain turns off its reception-ability for that sound. You can indeed learn it later on, but it's harder to pick it up, and to pronounce it correctly.
Native speakers of languages that have the most number of unique sounds, like Dutch (close to 30), find it easier to learn other languages- their brains are already wired to hear and say the sounds of the new language. Other languages, such as French, have a lower number of unique sounds (something like 23). Thus for the French, it is tougher make the new sounds of another language. English is somewhere like 25, and German around 27.
Ever notice why often the French sound like they're speaking French even when speaking another language? Ever notice how the Dutch sometimes seem to not have an accent when speaking another language? Thus babies who grow up in multi-lingual houses are already set to hear/say more sounds than other local kids.
We can go on about who designed what and where- I know that Dems and Repubs are doing everything to tweak ballots/standards/rules to their candidate. The problem I have is with someone being in charge of everything voting in a state, and also being in charge of getting that candidate to win the same state. At least give us an air of impartiality.
I am a registered Green, and I'd like to see more access for third parties. I think we need to clean up the Constitution so that we're all guaranteed one vote, with equal access to that vote (that right is not there now.) We need federal standards for all elections, and all states/localities must conform to those standards. Yes, this will require more civil servants, but I'd be willing to pay to ensure that our elections are fair and open. They really have never been like that.
Slashdot Mirror
It is true though, liberals are more likely to try to protect the public at large, although there is a cost-benefit analysis- and not everything is championed. Learn some more "awful" liberal protections at http://tvnewslies.org/html/day_in_the_life_of_joe_ middle-.html
Not sure why you're unhappy about this bill passing. While I haven't read the entire bill for fun provisions, it does such dastardly things as make taping movies in theatres punishible by up to 3 years in jail. It also increases penalties on insiders who leak works before release date, and also on hackers who do the same. I cannot imagine what complaints people would have with these provisions. They sound kind of fair to me.
Glad to see that this part was left out of the final bill, as I'm a little uncomfortable for busting people for just making files available to download- and people not actually downloading. It's kind of like someone who makes lots of books they've purchased available to friends to borrow.
I'm a little worried that this might actually pop back in for the final version of the bill. The bills that passed the House and Senate are different, so negociators will smooth out differences. Sometimes nasty provisions like this can make it in, and everyone can say that they didn't vote for that provision.
Yes, it does. Right now, the trick is to see if a working scramjet can work. Normal jets suck in air and use that to increase the amount of combustion. Kind of like blowing on a fire. So technically it's cheating as well. There is a limitation to the velocity of air coming in. To have big fires (jets, rocket engines), you need to add more oxygen. Rockets carry their own oxygen, which can get heavy.
The scramjet gets around this, and burns at amazingly high wind speeds. Now, since they're only testing the really high velocity thing, they use a rocket to get it up to that speed. In the future, I suspect they'll make scramjets that can function on their own from takeoff.
Remember Chuck Yeager and the X-1 breaking the sound barrier? He cheated too! (carried up by a B-29 bomber)
So I guess you missed the James Bond movie A View to a Kill. In that movie, the evil Zorin wants to cause an earthquake that will destroy Silicon Valley. His method? Pumping massive amount of salt water into the faults, then blowing up part of the fault. So the plant in TFA wasn't blowing up faults, but their salt water did grease the faultlines- just like the movie in 1985 suggested.
See Mom, I learned a lot from re-watching all those James Bond movies...!
Where is your source for this sweeping generalization? I work for an IP law firm, and have drafted several business method patents. We actually have more small (10 and below) businesses doing business method patents than larger companies.
Answer: like any other type of patent, the motivation is to protect the invention and allow the inventor to take advantage of having discovered this business method.
I've written several business method patents involving methods of providing life insurance. When the client first came to us, it was tough to figure out what they had discovered. The did find a unique way to fund life insurance, and wanted to make sure they were the only ones who could provide this service. As they had spent several years developing this method, I see no reason why they should not be able to protect their invention.
One thing I was shocked to learn while drafting the patent application- there are many patents involving insurance funding (our client was unique). There were even some that got through in Europe (which will allow a business method to be included if attached to something that is patentable).
While part of me thinks it might retard competition, I do have to say that companies invest time & money into developing these methods- and want rewards.
It's possible they're still testing their search results. In the past when I've been doing search engine positioning, I asked a friend to enter a term, and click on my result in Google (it was #4 or 5 for me here in San Diego). He was in NY, and when he did the same search, he got different results, with several different entries (my entry was not there). So, I guess you really can't figure out what's going on. It's also possible that MSN might have cookies
IMHO Google provides more relevant search results. The results that Google provides are actually under my personal control, and can be modified by me. Google gives more power to smaller sites. Yahoo and MSN seem to put more emphasis on larger 3rd party sites and sites that have not been updated recently. I personally think my personal website at smigelski.org should be #1, however Yahoo and MSN disagree with me here.
Here are the first 10 search results for my name:
Google /. posting I made about taste/smell patents
1- My personal website (smigelski.org)
2- My resume from my personal website
3- My profile for a marketing website for my law firm
4- My name from an article about trademarks for this site
5- My profile from my law firm's website
6- My name on a yellow pages site for San Diego attorneys
7- A posting I made about http://sheilashaw.com/
8- A
9- My profile on a law questions forum
10- More about http://sheilashaw.com/ (I advise Sheila Shaw's company, she's a kidney transplant patient w/ a good "suriving death several times yet living a full life" story)
Yahoo
1- My profile from a Martindale Hubble crummy site for my firm (free with being listed)
2- Lawyers.com listing (Martindale Hubble)
3- Marketing site for law firm (#3 in Google)
4- My profile on my law firm's site (#5 in Google)
5- My website from law school, when I was running for secretary of the student government. This page has not been updated since 2000.
6- My personal website (#1 in Google)
7- My resume from my personal website (#2 in Google)
8- My profile from stumbleupon.com
9- My trademark law blog at www.smiglaw.com
10- My trademark law blog at aliased URL trademarks.smiglaw.com
MSN
1- My profile from a Martindale Hubble crummy site for my firm (free with being li (# 1 on Yahoo)
2- My profile on my law firm's site (#5 in Google, #4 in Yahoo)
3- My personal website (#1 in Google, #6 in Yahoo)
4- My law school website (#5 in Yahoo)
5- My online photo album from my personal website
6- My profile from stumbleupon.com (#8 in Yahoo)
7- The sponsor form from my law school website when I ran a marathon to raise money for the Leukemia society
8- The PDF version of the sponsor form
9- My trademark law blog at www.smiglaw.com (#9 in Yahoo)
10- My trademark law blog at aliased URL trademarks.smiglaw.com (#10 in Yahoo)
Really strange you made this comment. In 1998 I quit my helpdesk job (about to be promoted to project manager), turned down an IT job w/ MTV, and headed West to go to law school. Let's just say the stories of everyone landing high paying lawyer jobs is significantly overblown, especially in this jobless recovery.
In a down economy, people stop using, and stop paying for, their attorneys. It's a purely service industry, and we do not provide any products ourselves. At least in IT people work on things people could conceivably need every day (e.g. their computer or network). I know a bunch of people who are currently "under employed" as attorneys (myself included), which sucks having spent around $100,000 to earn my law degree.
I'm not sure if they're getting work, but it seems that a lot of them are former programmers, PC techs, startup employees, graphic designers, teachers, construction workers, sanitation workers, pimps, etc. I keep wondering why so many people are leaving other careers to go to "web design."
Again, it's just a matter of the customers of Best Buy getting smarter. I've been to tons of other tech stores that promise to beat any price- except web prices. Best Buy is just getting smarter itself. I didn't discuss this earlier for the sake of brevity.
The devils are its worst customers. They buy products, apply for rebates, return the purchases, then buy them back at returned-merchandise discounts.
Kudos to the people who figured this out, but clearly it is costing Best Buy money. These are customers that should be weeded out. It's Best Buy's fault for allowing this scenario to happen.
Once someone discovers something that is "too good to be true" like the returning scenario, many people start doing it, and the company catches on. Since they're losing money, they stop it.
The other things in TFA, like profiling customers and selling them what their profile dictates is just common sales practice. Sure they might be forcing people to get things they might not want/need, but then again, when was the last time a sales person tried to sell you something you don't need (car options, clothes, dinner specials, etc). It's the nature of capitalism to increase the profits.
People who use the Bible to justify hatred of gays infuriate me to no end- yourself included. You claim to be religious, but you do not even know what the Bible says. Let an agnostic Unitarian Universalist correct you.
Leviticus 18:22 states: "You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a woman, it is an abomination." OK. Word of God, eh? We should then follow EVERYTHING in Leviticus. No sense being selective. Leviticus 25:44-46 tells us that we can take slaves (gentiles only). Leviticus 19:20-22 also states that sex with an engaged slave is punished by an animal sacrifice at temple. Chapters 1-7 of Leviticus tell us the collection of laws relating to sacrifices, offerings, and the like.
As for the "sex only for reproduction" thing, I guess you're referring to Genesis 38:7-10, and the story of Onan spilling his seed. So I guess all the things in Genesis are true, including the world being created in 6 days, the Tower of Babel, Methuselah lived to the age of 969, and Noah to 950.
My point is, if you hold so close and dear that one specific passage is enough to base views/hatred/laws/etc, you need to give enough weight to all the other passages. Why are you allowed to choose some passages over others? The rest of us think you're just goofy for giving so much weight to something that is really just a good collection of stories designed to teach a moral code to uneducated people thousands of years ago.
That said, this whole scenario is about as likely as Kerry actually winning Ohio and becoming president. The US will never cede control of DARPA's "baby" in the interest of "national security" and "national pride." Look at all the problems with trying to divest control from the US government- Verisign/Net Sol and ICANN come to mind. A UN body might work, but I don't see that happening.
I too was bothered a bit how Sky Captain looked in the trailers, but I can assure you that the full screen movie version looked amazing- like nothing I had ever seen before (in a good way). I totally enjoyed the look/feel of Sky Captain.
It'll be interesting to see if this translates to DVD/video well.
Hmmm, hasn't this kind of behavior happened pre-video games? It's convenient for the media to blame a scapegoat (video games, France, crack babies, etc) than to actually have an informed factual discussion of the underlying issues.
I know the next time an orange hopping creature with a horn nose gets eaten by a snake, I'm blaming Qbert.
As a counter argument to your "Prop 72 sux" arguments- what is wrong with mandating that companies should provide health care to their workers? And contrary to the shills in the media, it is for private health care- and not a government run system. Lots of companies like Wal Mart do not provide health care to their full time workers, and it costs the California public money to pay for their hospital care. There was an exemption for 93% of restaurants, so it wasn't going to kill any industries. With increasing health care costs, stagnant wages, millions more uninsured, who is supposed to pay?
Should've diversified your portfolio to hedge the election results. Other options you should've considered:
HJ Heinz Co (HNZ)
Skechers USA Inc (SKX) (makes flip-flops)
For the longest time, I thought that was the case- Bayer didn't enforce their trademark rights. I seem to recall a professor in law school telling us that.
Imagine my suprise when I read that Bayer lost the trademark for "aspirin" and "heroin" to the victors of WWI as part of the Versailles Treaty in 1919. Call it war reparations.
Only a vague reference from Bayer. Turns out once the US government sold the mark to Sterling Drug, they were unable to protect against the generic use and lost the mark. Other resources tell the same story, so I'm not sure what to believe now. The web or my professor...?
One way to show evidence that a company protected against dilution is to advertise the trademark nature. I've seen the "Xerox has two R's" ads (the second R being the registered trademark circle R symbol), reminders from Kleenex that people use "Kleenex brand facial tissue," etc. Google is starting to run into this problem, with people using the verb "to google." Google has been defending against this.
Hormel doesn't care if "unsolicited email" is called "spam," they just need to make sure that people also know that it's a lunchmeat (allegedly).
Crap, how'd I misread the calendar so bad? I've got to stop looking at paper ones on the wall, and using only online calendars...
I guess you haven't heard of early voting? There are several states that have been voting for a few weeks (including Floriday). The Registrar of Voters here in San Diego has been letting people vote at their main office since Saturday (I went by today, and it was a ZOO of traffic). Then there are absentee ballots (my wife mailed her's today), which have to usually be postmarked on or before election day.
Native speakers of languages that have the most number of unique sounds, like Dutch (close to 30), find it easier to learn other languages- their brains are already wired to hear and say the sounds of the new language. Other languages, such as French, have a lower number of unique sounds (something like 23). Thus for the French, it is tougher make the new sounds of another language. English is somewhere like 25, and German around 27.
Ever notice why often the French sound like they're speaking French even when speaking another language? Ever notice how the Dutch sometimes seem to not have an accent when speaking another language? Thus babies who grow up in multi-lingual houses are already set to hear/say more sounds than other local kids.
I am a registered Green, and I'd like to see more access for third parties. I think we need to clean up the Constitution so that we're all guaranteed one vote, with equal access to that vote (that right is not there now.) We need federal standards for all elections, and all states/localities must conform to those standards. Yes, this will require more civil servants, but I'd be willing to pay to ensure that our elections are fair and open. They really have never been like that.