Big bands like NIN probably don't need record labels at this point, assuming they are willing to do all that boring work (marketing, accounting, production, legal, etc.) along with writing the music (Reznor might be willing there, but I imagine most are not). But a garage band has a nearly 0% chance of getting a hit on the radio without help. Yes, there are occasional exceptions, thats why I said 'nearly'.
BTW, how do you think sucking up to the general RIAA hating/. population sounds like a troll? If anything that sounds like karma whoring.
Who the hell uses Gmail for corporate services? I remember a while ago someone came along here on/. and mentioned that he had started a company whose business model was to move businesses to use Gmail instead of their corporate email. He went away when we pointed out that was a direct violation of Google's terms of use.
That being said, being in Beta is not a license to screw up whenever you feel like it, especially when your service is in perpetual Beta like these. You still have customers who don't want to lose their data. Personal email may not be as important as corporate email, but a customer who loses their pictures of their grandsons is not going to be happy when Google has an oopsie.
They aren't just being charged more money, they are having to buy the more expensive Business version which apparently includes safeguards for potential virtualization problems. Is it conclusive? No. But at least it isn't full of plot holes like your "Mac Tax" story.
Well considering the survey being discussed was on American girls, I think we can rest assured that they are mostly using AIM, I'm all for multiculturalism, but lets not ignore the limits of the data we are looking at. BTW, here is my theory on why AIM is less popular out of America, it is produced by America Online which is an America based company. It makes sense that they are strongest at home. MS has a much broader reach, since their operating system is running all over the planet.
So you are trying to say that MS is making their product harder to get for existing Mac users in an ultra-convoluted strategy to stop people from purchasing Macs in the first place by counting on them both to have the foresight to look this up in the first place (they don't exactly seem to be advertising this fact) and to not have the budget to add an extra $100 to their computer cost (when, ironically, Macs are not known to be especially cheap)? No offense, but I think I'll have to go with Occum's Razor and just believe its probably due to security issues.
Researchers that survey only the adult population still find that a greater percentage of males go online. MORI Research, for example, reported that as of March-April 2006, 73% of adult females and 79% of adult males went online. The Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that as of February-April 2006, 71% of adult females went online, vs. 74% of adult males.
You obviously don't know any teenage/pre-teen girls who have suddenly found out how easy it is to spread gossip using things like AIM, myspace, blogs, YouTube, fansites, etc. I have a sixteen year old sister who the net all the time. The Internet is becoming an increasingly social place, meaning its no longer all geeks downloading blueprints of the Enterprise.
Why would they penalize users for running on Macs anyways? If they are using Windows, they are using Microsoft's product. MS doesn't sell hardware, so how would it matter to them what Windows is running on?
Its one thing when they run the light with their lights on (assuming they are not abusing their siren, and I imagine they would get in trouble for that), its another when they just don't obey the law. I was once nearly hit by a cop trying to floor it through a yellow light. He then pulled me over and tried to get me to admit he had right of way. I refused and eventually he gave up, though the more I think about it, I should have gotten his badge number to report him.
Well Facebook is the big one these days. In fact there the restriction to require.edu email addresses is probably one of its biggest features. I believe services like PayPal also often make such restrictions (though often they will let you change your email address after registration).
By the way, WTF is up with the comment moderation today? Yes most of the moderation so far was overnight so maybe its screwed, but how is the parent post flamebait? Normally on/. its the ones who question the prevailing wisdom on global warming who get instantly modded down (which I know from personal experience)...
"What most of the 'global warming' controversy is centers on "are humans contributing?""
Depends on who you are talking to. Climatologists will certainly agree with that statement, as that is exactly what they have been researching. But that is not the discussion that is taking place in politics and in the media (and on a typical day, here on/.). There, a statement from climatologists that they are 90% certain that humans have a role in climate change suddenly becomes "Climatologists are certain man is the cause of global warming", and that anyone who disputes that are (as one former vice president put it) the same as Holocaust deniers.
Yes, scientists (including respected global warming researchers) have recently been disputing some of the more wild claims of scientist-wannabe politicians. Unfortunately for too long they have let the debate go on like this in Washington and in Hollywood, and now most of the public considers the debate whether or not humans are the sole source of climate change.
I'm not disputing that the solar activity has a significant effect on global temperature (it is our primary heat source after all), but how far back can this data go? How long have we been recording sunspot activity on the sun? I imagine we would have a lot more data on the carbon levels since that can be inferred from ice samples (though, one could argue that is precisely why we need more research on the subject on sunspots and global climate).
"In any case, I'm not sure how requiring the use of a valid email address is going to help. Anyone who wants to make a threatening or otherwise comment will just use dodgeit or a similar service to do so - you could ban them, I suppose, but good luck to you finding them all. And even if you do manage to, trolls will just create hotmail.com addresses; sure, you could ban hotmail as well (although you'd probably already be hurting some legitimate contributors that way), but then, trolls would use simply move to other free services. Do you need an alternate email address to sign up for Google Mail, Yahoo or so? I'm not sure, but even if you do, a troll could just use a hotmail.com address (or, for that matter, a dodgeit address or so) to create a GMail address, for instance. Ultimately, requiring valid email addresses (and I'm assuming you actually mean working ones, not just well-formed addresses, as some sites do) will not hurt trolls; it will make their job more difficult, but anybody who's already wasting his life on something as idiotic, useless and unproductive as trolling likely won't care much."
No, but what you could do is ban all email addresses that are not personally identifiable. Then only allow.edu email accounts, corporate email accounts, and those that are given to you when you register with your ISP. I've seen plenty of services that already require that (or if you give a.hotmail address, they then require you to also supply some sort of credit card information so they can verify who you are).
I remember about a year ago there was a story here about a bet between a group of climatologists and a group of astronomers over whether in the future (I don't remember what time-frame they were talking about, it was probably something like 30 years) temperatures would be higher (which the climatologists bet on, thinking global warming would be the biggest factor) or lower (which the astronomers bet on, thinking the sun would be the biggest factor).
Of course when that came out, everyone here was calling the astronomers global warming deniers and accusing them of being in the pockets of oil companies.
"too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion."
From the post you first responded to:
Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself.
I don't know how much clearer I can make this. I am discussing the SPIRIT of the law, not the law itself. I'll leave that to the lawyers (who, since gaim eventually went along with the name change, probably agree with AOL). I have repeated that statement in virtually every post I've made. If you are too much of an idiot to read the posts you are responding to in the first place, well I really don't have any more time to waste on you.
"Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product."
Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most/. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most/. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.
"AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..
The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?
And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter. I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...
And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.
Yes, you can certainly argue that they didn't mean it as a reference to aim, but common sense dictates that they did (especially since the old product name was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger). Yes, common sense is not always legally admissible, which (for the hundredth time) is why I am not arguing whether or not they were legally guilty.
"
Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?"
Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical/. reader.
"Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible."
Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim, in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact, or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?
"This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)"
I see one reference, from the gaim developers (not the most unbiased source, btw) who are in denial that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger. And looking back through my old emails (most of which have been lost), I see references to aim back in '02 (I see no references, outside of spam, to "AOL Instant Messenger"). Back then gaim was at version.57. That was well before gaim got popular. And I'm certain it was called that back to and almost certainly before '00 when I started using it. Yes, the official name was AOL Instant Messenger, but guess what! If you take the first letter of each word in that lengthy title (no one wants to say all three words, especially when you are typing), you get AIM! Thats called an acronym. They have been around for some time, and were not just recently invented by the gaim developers.
"And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them."
Absolutely not. Trademarks don't go away just because your friends are all idiots who don't know that AIM refers to a proprietary system (for the record, I know no one who does that). They only go away if the company who owns the trademark stops enforcing it. Clearly AOL has not stopped enforcing theirs, as evidenced by this story. They don't have to sue each and every person who doesn't know the difference between different instant messaging tools.
"
At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all."
First of all, I have stated multiple times that I'm not talking about the legal basis of this, so the official date when the trademark office approves it is irrelevant. Second, when did gaim get their trademark? Oh wait, they never did! So AOL was still first.
Damn you to hell for making me write three posts defending AOL. All because elementary schools stopped teaching kids what acronyms are...
Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law. Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent. I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).
And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.
"If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks."
First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.
Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive. Now yes, in the case of Lindows vs Microsoft, MS got in trouble because the term "Windows" had also been used to describe GUI prior to the MS operating system and were forced to buy the trademark back instead of suing (which is why if you were smart enough to continue reading beyond that little section you quoted, you would have read "if not the law itself"). And again, the wisdom of MS choosing that particular name in the first place is an entirely separate debate. But that doesn't change the motivation behind the name 'Lindows'.
Well considering the name GAIM was a clear reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, this can't be that surprising. I mean if someone called their product or company GIBM or GMS (or hey, Lindows), you have to expect the other company to at least complain if not actually sue. Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself. And besides, Gaim has gotten away scott-free with using the AOL protocol while other instant messaging clients like Trillian have been sued or blocked.
Well, now that they have this whole thing settled, maybe they can get rid of that memory leak that I've been dealing with lately...
BTW, why the hell were you giving AOL your money in the first place?
Well, the CNet article does mention iPods by name, as does the Detroit Free Press article. So while they do also use the more generic terms "digital music player" and "MP3 player", it does seem that at least someone over that has begun leaning towards the Apple device.
BTW, correct me if I am wrong (I don't own an iPod, I went for the cheaper and more technologically advanced iAudio x5), but iPods can't record audio, can they? Since one of the supposed benefits I keep on hearing about is that they can record lectures, wouldn't the iPod be a very bad choice? Wouldn't they be better off purchasing cheaper (though outdated) $20 cassette recorders?
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Big bands like NIN probably don't need record labels at this point, assuming they are willing to do all that boring work (marketing, accounting, production, legal, etc.) along with writing the music (Reznor might be willing there, but I imagine most are not). But a garage band has a nearly 0% chance of getting a hit on the radio without help. Yes, there are occasional exceptions, thats why I said 'nearly'.
BTW, how do you think sucking up to the general RIAA hating /. population sounds like a troll? If anything that sounds like karma whoring.
Who the hell uses Gmail for corporate services? I remember a while ago someone came along here on /. and mentioned that he had started a company whose business model was to move businesses to use Gmail instead of their corporate email. He went away when we pointed out that was a direct violation of Google's terms of use.
That being said, being in Beta is not a license to screw up whenever you feel like it, especially when your service is in perpetual Beta like these. You still have customers who don't want to lose their data. Personal email may not be as important as corporate email, but a customer who loses their pictures of their grandsons is not going to be happy when Google has an oopsie.
No, I'm reading TFA (though in a place like /., I suppose that might sound like "making stuff up"). If you want details, contact MS.
They aren't just being charged more money, they are having to buy the more expensive Business version which apparently includes safeguards for potential virtualization problems. Is it conclusive? No. But at least it isn't full of plot holes like your "Mac Tax" story.
Well considering the survey being discussed was on American girls, I think we can rest assured that they are mostly using AIM, I'm all for multiculturalism, but lets not ignore the limits of the data we are looking at. BTW, here is my theory on why AIM is less popular out of America, it is produced by America Online which is an America based company. It makes sense that they are strongest at home. MS has a much broader reach, since their operating system is running all over the planet.
So you are trying to say that MS is making their product harder to get for existing Mac users in an ultra-convoluted strategy to stop people from purchasing Macs in the first place by counting on them both to have the foresight to look this up in the first place (they don't exactly seem to be advertising this fact) and to not have the budget to add an extra $100 to their computer cost (when, ironically, Macs are not known to be especially cheap)? No offense, but I think I'll have to go with Occum's Razor and just believe its probably due to security issues.
You obviously don't know any teenage/pre-teen girls who have suddenly found out how easy it is to spread gossip using things like AIM, myspace, blogs, YouTube, fansites, etc. I have a sixteen year old sister who the net all the time. The Internet is becoming an increasingly social place, meaning its no longer all geeks downloading blueprints of the Enterprise.
Except they would realize that quicker if they had to pay a lot more for it.
Why would they penalize users for running on Macs anyways? If they are using Windows, they are using Microsoft's product. MS doesn't sell hardware, so how would it matter to them what Windows is running on?
Its one thing when they run the light with their lights on (assuming they are not abusing their siren, and I imagine they would get in trouble for that), its another when they just don't obey the law. I was once nearly hit by a cop trying to floor it through a yellow light. He then pulled me over and tried to get me to admit he had right of way. I refused and eventually he gave up, though the more I think about it, I should have gotten his badge number to report him.
Well Facebook is the big one these days. In fact there the restriction to require .edu email addresses is probably one of its biggest features. I believe services like PayPal also often make such restrictions (though often they will let you change your email address after registration).
By the way, WTF is up with the comment moderation today? Yes most of the moderation so far was overnight so maybe its screwed, but how is the parent post flamebait? Normally on /. its the ones who question the prevailing wisdom on global warming who get instantly modded down (which I know from personal experience)...
"What most of the 'global warming' controversy is centers on "are humans contributing?""
Depends on who you are talking to. Climatologists will certainly agree with that statement, as that is exactly what they have been researching. But that is not the discussion that is taking place in politics and in the media (and on a typical day, here on /.). There, a statement from climatologists that they are 90% certain that humans have a role in climate change suddenly becomes "Climatologists are certain man is the cause of global warming", and that anyone who disputes that are (as one former vice president put it) the same as Holocaust deniers.
Yes, scientists (including respected global warming researchers) have recently been disputing some of the more wild claims of scientist-wannabe politicians. Unfortunately for too long they have let the debate go on like this in Washington and in Hollywood, and now most of the public considers the debate whether or not humans are the sole source of climate change.
I'm not disputing that the solar activity has a significant effect on global temperature (it is our primary heat source after all), but how far back can this data go? How long have we been recording sunspot activity on the sun? I imagine we would have a lot more data on the carbon levels since that can be inferred from ice samples (though, one could argue that is precisely why we need more research on the subject on sunspots and global climate).
"In any case, I'm not sure how requiring the use of a valid email address is going to help. Anyone who wants to make a threatening or otherwise comment will just use dodgeit or a similar service to do so - you could ban them, I suppose, but good luck to you finding them all. And even if you do manage to, trolls will just create hotmail.com addresses; sure, you could ban hotmail as well (although you'd probably already be hurting some legitimate contributors that way), but then, trolls would use simply move to other free services. Do you need an alternate email address to sign up for Google Mail, Yahoo or so? I'm not sure, but even if you do, a troll could just use a hotmail.com address (or, for that matter, a dodgeit address or so) to create a GMail address, for instance. Ultimately, requiring valid email addresses (and I'm assuming you actually mean working ones, not just well-formed addresses, as some sites do) will not hurt trolls; it will make their job more difficult, but anybody who's already wasting his life on something as idiotic, useless and unproductive as trolling likely won't care much."
No, but what you could do is ban all email addresses that are not personally identifiable. Then only allow .edu email accounts, corporate email accounts, and those that are given to you when you register with your ISP. I've seen plenty of services that already require that (or if you give a .hotmail address, they then require you to also supply some sort of credit card information so they can verify who you are).
I remember about a year ago there was a story here about a bet between a group of climatologists and a group of astronomers over whether in the future (I don't remember what time-frame they were talking about, it was probably something like 30 years) temperatures would be higher (which the climatologists bet on, thinking global warming would be the biggest factor) or lower (which the astronomers bet on, thinking the sun would be the biggest factor).
Of course when that came out, everyone here was calling the astronomers global warming deniers and accusing them of being in the pockets of oil companies.
"too fucking bad that this is a discussion about the legal side of it. If you didn't want to discuss that then stay out of the discussion."
From the post you first responded to:
I don't know how much clearer I can make this. I am discussing the SPIRIT of the law, not the law itself. I'll leave that to the lawyers (who, since gaim eventually went along with the name change, probably agree with AOL). I have repeated that statement in virtually every post I've made. If you are too much of an idiot to read the posts you are responding to in the first place, well I really don't have any more time to waste on you.
"Uh, what does that have to do with anything? Technical understanding of how a messenger works is irrelevant for being confused by the name of a product."
Stop being dense. I don't mean most Internet users lack the technical information of most /. readers, I mean most Internet users lack the familiarity with Internet technologies that most /. readers have. To them, two programs with similar sounding names could very well be confused.
"AOL Instant Messenger predates GAIM, usage of the acronym AIM and the trademark on it do NOT predate GAIM. Read this carefully a few times maybe..
The usage of the acronym damn well does date back to before gaim. Or do you really think no one (in an age where LOL, WTF, RTFM, IANAL, etc. are all recognized as common words) figured out they could shorten a three word eight syllable and nineteen letter product name to three letters until the gaim people did it?
And for the hundredth fucking time, I DON'T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE TRADEMARK DATE! I am not talking about their legal basis for a lawsuit, which is where that date would matter. I am looking at it from a common sense point of view. Unfortunately common sense is apparently lacking in certain people these days...
And even if we were talking about the trademark registration date, GAIM WAS NEVER REGISTERED! So AOL would still have come first. So please stop bringing it up, it is irrelevant to what I am discussing and wouldn't help gaim anyways.
Yes, you can certainly argue that they didn't mean it as a reference to aim, but common sense dictates that they did (especially since the old product name was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger). Yes, common sense is not always legally admissible, which (for the hundredth time) is why I am not arguing whether or not they were legally guilty.
" Does he acronym GAIM cause any confusion for customers of AOL Intant Messenger?"
Quite possibly. Most Internet users are not as tech savvy are your typical /. reader.
"Since GAIM is not at all similar to AOL, and AOL did not use, let alone trademark AIM when GAIM already existed, there is no confusion possible."
Again, that is completely false. I don't know how many times I can say this. AOL Instant Messenger is an AOL product that predated gaim, in fact the original name of gaim was GTK + AOL Instant Messenger. Are you denying that fact, or do you still not understand that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger (which must be hard considering how many times I've written it while making the first letters bold)?
"This discussion contains tens of references to information disputing that AIM came before GAIM (as a name for the service, or as an acronym for that name. Please come up with something better then your own memory (and for that matter, my own memory also disagrees with your statement, but thats not a good argument for the same reason as why your memory isn't a good argument)"
I see one reference, from the gaim developers (not the most unbiased source, btw) who are in denial that AIM is an acronym for AOL Instant Messenger. And looking back through my old emails (most of which have been lost), I see references to aim back in '02 (I see no references, outside of spam, to "AOL Instant Messenger"). Back then gaim was at version .57. That was well before gaim got popular. And I'm certain it was called that back to and almost certainly before '00 when I started using it. Yes, the official name was AOL Instant Messenger, but guess what! If you take the first letter of each word in that lengthy title (no one wants to say all three words, especially when you are typing), you get AIM! Thats called an acronym. They have been around for some time, and were not just recently invented by the gaim developers.
"And where I live, AIM is often used as a generic word to denote any kind of instant messenger (nowadays MSN is used even more for this), amd as a result a trademark would fail for reasons of the word having become a generic word, this completely seperate from the issue of if they could enforce such a trademark against someone using a similar name before them."
Absolutely not. Trademarks don't go away just because your friends are all idiots who don't know that AIM refers to a proprietary system (for the record, I know no one who does that). They only go away if the company who owns the trademark stops enforcing it. Clearly AOL has not stopped enforcing theirs, as evidenced by this story. They don't have to sue each and every person who doesn't know the difference between different instant messaging tools.
" At any rate, what they sent to the trademark office and when is THE important part here. It is the only thing that determines if they have a trademark at all."
First of all, I have stated multiple times that I'm not talking about the legal basis of this, so the official date when the trademark office approves it is irrelevant. Second, when did gaim get their trademark? Oh wait, they never did! So AOL was still first.
Damn you to hell for making me write three posts defending AOL. All because elementary schools stopped teaching kids what acronyms are...
Again, GAIM was clearly a reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, even if the acronym had not yet caught on for the AOL application. So it clearly violated the spirit of trademark law. Their product name contained a reference to the acronym of an existing competing product, which trademark law is designed to prevent. I am fully aware that the legal world is a different world, so its certainly possible AOL didn't have legal grounding for a lawsuit (IANAL, so I'm not going into that discussion). But the product AOL Instant Messanger predated GAIM, and they named their product to reference the acronym of the of their competition. And for the record, AOL's product was known as AIM well before GAIM was a viable alternative. I remember since I actually used them both back then (AIM on Windows, GAIM on Linux).
And no, legal nitpicking over what exactly was sent to the trademark office aside, AOL Instant Messenger was not renamed to AIM, AIM is just an abbreviation. Look up the word acronym in a dictionary for more information.
"If you start using a name that is already being used, then YOU are the one causing possible confusion for customers so you are also the one going against the spirit of trademarks."
First of all, the acronym AIM wasn't that widely used prior to the AOL Instant Messanger.
Second, most product names out there comes out of words or names that were in use before the product came out. Whether or not that move is a wise one is a completely different debate. But if you then come around with a competing product and intentionally name is something similar to the existing product for the purpose of making your product appear as just a version of the existing one (as the makers of Lindows did), then that violates the spirit of the trademark law designed to ensure products can be made distinctive. Now yes, in the case of Lindows vs Microsoft, MS got in trouble because the term "Windows" had also been used to describe GUI prior to the MS operating system and were forced to buy the trademark back instead of suing (which is why if you were smart enough to continue reading beyond that little section you quoted, you would have read "if not the law itself"). And again, the wisdom of MS choosing that particular name in the first place is an entirely separate debate. But that doesn't change the motivation behind the name 'Lindows'.
Well considering the name GAIM was a clear reference to the AOL Instant Messanger, this can't be that surprising. I mean if someone called their product or company GIBM or GMS (or hey, Lindows), you have to expect the other company to at least complain if not actually sue. Regardless of the legal nitpicking of who came up with what first, this is a clear violation of the spirit of trademark law if not the law itself. And besides, Gaim has gotten away scott-free with using the AOL protocol while other instant messaging clients like Trillian have been sued or blocked.
Well, now that they have this whole thing settled, maybe they can get rid of that memory leak that I've been dealing with lately...
BTW, why the hell were you giving AOL your money in the first place?
Well, the CNet article does mention iPods by name, as does the Detroit Free Press article. So while they do also use the more generic terms "digital music player" and "MP3 player", it does seem that at least someone over that has begun leaning towards the Apple device.
BTW, correct me if I am wrong (I don't own an iPod, I went for the cheaper and more technologically advanced iAudio x5), but iPods can't record audio, can they? Since one of the supposed benefits I keep on hearing about is that they can record lectures, wouldn't the iPod be a very bad choice? Wouldn't they be better off purchasing cheaper (though outdated) $20 cassette recorders?