Easy - they just decide they are above the rules, file the paperwork and fee, and hope the USPTO is dumb enough to grant the trademark.
In 2007 they filed a trademark application for the name "Princess Aurora". If you are uncultured you may think there's nothing wrong with trademarking Sleeping Beauty's name, but if you know ballet at all then you know Tchaikovsky gave that name to the lead role in his Sleeping Beauty ballet back in the 19th century. If the USPTO is stupid or corrupt enough to award that trademark, then no ballet troupe or school in the United States will ever be able to perform Sleeping Beauty without paying Disney for their permission. Never mind that they took the public domain character from Tchaikovsky's work, or that most of the music in their 1959 animated movie was composed by Tchaikovsky, since Princess Aurora was a character in their movie they think they have total right to that name!
When I lived in an area prone to a lot of lightning storms, I got into the habit of putting my backups into anti static bags, then into a cardboard lined steel ammo can with a desiccant pack.
Steel ammo cans can be purchased at any surplus store and many outdoor/hunting stores. They will protect from lightning as well as electromagnetic pulse. They come with a rubber gasket making them waterproof, but they are not fireproof - if your house burns down around the ammo can, the heat will destroy your drives.
So, if you are really paranoid, get a fireproof safe big enough to store the ammo can...
In my second year of high school I built my own 8 element Yagi antenna and used it to contact MIR.
Contact was shortly after sunset, all I had to do was point my antenna at the right dot of light moving across the sky and move the antenna to track. When the space station entered Earth's shadow I just did my best to continue earlier movement.
The radio was something I had built myself from a kit in the summer before my freshman year at high school.
Doing something new or unique for your project is praiseworthy; something people have done for decades with mostly off the shelf parts, not so much.
Earlier this year I renewed my passport book and also requested a passport card. The book has a shielded cover so it can't be read when closed, and the card came with a foil envelope that effectively shields the RFID chip from being read. I wonder if the NY and WA licenses come with something similar.
Remember Pearl Harbor? Guys manning a RADAR facility observed the inbound Japanese and called it in. Some pencilneck decided to ignore the report.
In WW2 both sides were using radar to detect inbound bombers. Radar was also used to search for ships and submarines.
The real issue is that aircraft played a relatively insignificant role during World War 1. By the second war aviation technology had advanced to where aircraft could easily destroy enemy surface resources.
Of course, I still want to build my own Jenny. But I will put a modern engine on the front...
I am a PP ASEL and AMEL with IFR. I was looking at getting an ATP because I was under the mistaken impression that certificate was required for a Citation type rating.
I don't own my own plane, but I am in a club that owns a Warrior and 182. I put about 150-170 hours per year on the 182. The club is considering selling the 182 and buying a Diamond or Cirrus. If they do I just might make an offer on the Skylane.
The only drawback to being in the club is that people get upset if you take the plane for more than a week. Living in Washington state I have made a few runs to the LA area, but as long as I am using a club airplane I will not be flying myself to the Bahamas.
What happens? Exactly the same thing that would happen if they wiped cookies and flash before selling their computer. I expect that most Slashdotters wipe their drives before giving away or selling a computer, but most people just delete and think the data is gone.
I am not concerned with the possibility of having my data stolen when I am at immigration, because that is generally in a secure part of the terminal and I do not think the odds are very high of people setting up to steal data at that location.
But what about airport check-in? If you are traveling internationally, you will have to show that you have a passport at the check-in counter. That is not inside a secure area and anybody could carry a skimmer inside a backpack or briefcase and attempt to steal the data.
I know people who have made phone calls in airports using a calling card, who later discovered a lot of unauthorized calls to Mexico on their bill. Stealing data from passports would be even easier in an international terminal.
I am much more bothered by this attitude of "oh well, doesn't matter how many we kill", though, than with the incident itself.
I don't know what else you expect from the people who kill a lot of whales each year, take a quick look at stomach contents, and call the process scientific research.
The next time you are on an airline flight, think of this: The first time each of the pilots stepped into the cockpit of the type of jet you are in, they had already completed training for that type of aircraft in simulators.
As long as a pilot has jet experience, their type rating training for other jets will be entirely done in simulators. And most of us agree that the real thing is easier to fly than a simulator.
That being said, a large amount of experience in real world flying is still invaluable. It is true that on most airline flights the autopilot handles more than 90% of the flying, but pilots still need the experience learning weather and the atmosphere. Here in the US a pilot is required to have 1,500 hours of flight time before becoming eligible for their air transport pilot certificate, and I think that number is appropriate.
Why do we need to define the phrase now? You can refer to dictionaries that existed at the time the Bill of Rights was authored, and you can review how the phrase was used in other contemporary writings. Through the 18th and much of the 19th centuries the phrase "well regulated" was used to mean properly functioning.
And how about the definition of Militia? That term was defined in the Militia Act of 1792, and federal law currently defines the unorganized militia.
I have tried several active noise reduction headsets for use in single engine piston aircraft, and tried the winners in noisier seats on commercial jets and in data centers.
My biggest lesson relevant to this discussion is the ANR headsets are most effective at low frequencies and relatively ineffective at high frequencies. And my experience with server farms is that the noise is mostly high frequency.
The three most significant heatsets I have tried were the Bose Aviation X (excellent but overpriced), the Bose QuietComfort 2 (works well for adults, best fit for children, not the best ANR), and the Lightspeed QFR-XC (the generic branded versions are cheap - 1/4 the price of a Bose X - excellent passive headsets, and quiet at the low end with ANR turned on). The Lightspeed headset also has an adapter for cellphones or music players.
In data centers I get some funny looks when wearing a Lightspeed headset, but for me it is the best choice since I sometimes have to be on the phone while at the server.
You can sue anybody for anything. If you can get a name and address, you can sue somebody who sits at the next table in a restaurant for ruining your meal with their rancid farts. You can sue me for sunning in my front yard and making the neighborhood ugly.
But in order to win you need three things - a legal principle, evidence of some kind of loss, and a preponderance of evidence to support your claims.
A fellow pilot at my local airport is a judge in town who handles a lot of small claim cases. He has had cases where a person was sued for treating the plaintiff unfairly, not being friendly enough, and plenty of other stupid reasons. If you file a lawsuit without a real basis, not only will you show yourself to be an idiot but you run the risk of a countersuit for misuse of process.
If you are sued and do not bother to show up for the trial, you should be amazed if you don't find yourself owing a large sum of money. This is not the first time I have heard of a plaintiff suing in a jurisdiction chosen to prevent the defendant from showing up.
It is entirely possible that the plaintiff has an ethics problem and her treatment of the defendant would make the allegations of crook and fraud accurate. But the defendant did not provide any evidence to justify her allegations so the court had to find for the plaintiff.
If you are ever sued for any reason, do whatever you can to defend yourself. If you cannot hire an attorney, look for one to take your case pro bono. Alternatively do research on your own and try to defend yourself. Do not be foolish enough to be quoted in the paper saying, "I don't feel like I can express my opinions. Only one side of the story was told in court. Nobody heard my side."
For $200,000 you can get a nice used Cirrus SR-22 or a nice Piper Seneca. Either would have much more utility for me than a personal jet pack, and will probably be much cheaper to insure.
Probably cannot seee & avoid, but the FAA has made it clear there will be no TFRs, the aircraft will not fly in controlled airspace, they will need airworthiness certificates, and the cops will need a certificate of authorization for the flights.
I have already emailed the LA FSDO to ask if the airworthiness certificate and CoA were issued before the test flight.
If you think it is not interesting, just try chatting with an astronaut onboard the ISS.
People have been saying ham radio is outdated since the 1950s when long distance became available to almost everybody. Yet the number of licensed amateurs in the US continually increased to a peak in 2003. And I would be very surprised if there is not more growth in the future.
Merging computers and radio, I enjoy writing my own PSK-31 software.
People say CW is outdated and useless. I have been in areas with severe thunderstorms where the static crashes made everything but CW unusable.
And it sounds like many of the people replying to this list are incredibly short sighted. After a minor earthquake telephones, cell and landline, are useless as everybody is trying to ask everybody they know "Did you feel it?" When power goes out I do not have enough battery backup to operate my computer and cable modem for one hour, but I could operate my radio for days.
VoIP is much more reliable than 20 or 40 meter communications, but in a disaster ham radio is far more reliable than internet or phone. And it has been very easy for me to find somebody out of the disaster area to pass a message to relatives about my situation.
Windows does not prevent you from downloading any media software you want and using it.
Am I the only person who remembers accusations that Microsoft released a patch to Windows that caused Real Player to malfunction? There is a shining example of Microsoft making an effort to stop Windows from allowing users to download any media software they want and use it.
Here is another reason why people steer away from computer science - with a couple of years experience, finding a job is easy. But for the new graduate, finding a job can be very difficult. When freshmen hear stories about Seniors finding hundreds of jobs advertised as "Entry Level - must have 2+ years paid software development experience" it turns them off.
And when there is no shortage of job listings like that, no shortage of companies claiming they cannot find anybody "qualified" and demanding more foreigners, and at the same time a significant number of new grads are being turned down, attracting new students to the field will be difficult.
Things are starting to change, but people will not be attracted into the field until things are desperate enough that everybody graduing with a CS degree has a job in a month or two.
It is not hard to reverse engineer a proprietary format - several word processors can save in competitor's formats. So this is a symbolic gesture, but it will be good in the future when Microsoft and others copyright their file formats to try and extort money from OpenOffice.Org and others.
Laptops are great in lecture - when things get slow my notebook gave me the opportunity to email, IM, surf, or play games. And my professors all thought I was just taking great notes! Without the distraction I would have paid more attention and done better on the tests.
Having a computer with my own copy of needed software (Visual Studio and Dr. Scheme) allowed me to complete assignments at my convenience instead of working around lab availability, but a much cheaper dekstop system at home would have provided the same benefit.
Sure it was helpful to have everything loaded in my notebook when I wanted to go to the professor's office for extra help. But it was just as easy to bring a floppy or a memory key to the office.
And I am somebody who had owned a computer for more than a decade before going to college; I was frustrated and amazed by students who did not know how to bring up a directory from a command prompt, or who did not even know how to turn the thing on. Requiring the luddites of the school population to have notebooks is a recipe for disaster.
That place must be real fun in a fire
The schools use an amazing door lock technology that prevents people outside from opening the doors but allows people inside to open the doors without unlocking.
Since you have never heard of such a thing, may I suggest going to see a movie. When the movie is over, leave throug the exits at the front of the theater instead of walking out the back with everybody else. Once you have exited and the door shuts, try opening it again. You will be amazed to find a door so easily opened from the inside cannot be opened from the outside!
What will people think of next?
I guess this will make children attending the school totally safe - especially the ones standing around THE BUS STOP!
From reading the article, it seems this system is only for parents who come into the school in the middle of the day. And looking at the school district website I find so many classes at the schools that it would be impractical to have every parent picking up a kid at the end of the day to park and go inside to get their children even if they only have 15 children per classroom.
I have never heard of, and searching could not find, any cases where somebody walked into a school pretending to be a parent in order to kidnap a child.
Putting all of this together, it is apparent that the "security" system is primarily in place to control the parents and to restrict them from participating in the education of their children.
Want to make the school safe from outsiders coming in? The schools where I live have a very low tech way of doing things - once school starts all outside doors are locked except the door to the school office. If you need or want to come to school you just come through the office, where you will be challenged if the office staff does not know you.
It won't happen. From the moment something is established in a stable orbit, forces start working to degrade the orbit. Although we think of the space as what is outside the atmosphere, space starts at 100km and there is measurable atmosphere to at least 600 km. In a distant orbit, such as geosynchronous satellites or the moon, there is very little force to degrade an orbit. But in the orbits most satellites use there is enough interaction with the atmosphere to slow the satellite and degrade the orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy - they just decide they are above the rules, file the paperwork and fee, and hope the USPTO is dumb enough to grant the trademark. In 2007 they filed a trademark application for the name "Princess Aurora". If you are uncultured you may think there's nothing wrong with trademarking Sleeping Beauty's name, but if you know ballet at all then you know Tchaikovsky gave that name to the lead role in his Sleeping Beauty ballet back in the 19th century. If the USPTO is stupid or corrupt enough to award that trademark, then no ballet troupe or school in the United States will ever be able to perform Sleeping Beauty without paying Disney for their permission. Never mind that they took the public domain character from Tchaikovsky's work, or that most of the music in their 1959 animated movie was composed by Tchaikovsky, since Princess Aurora was a character in their movie they think they have total right to that name!
Steel ammo cans can be purchased at any surplus store and many outdoor/hunting stores. They will protect from lightning as well as electromagnetic pulse. They come with a rubber gasket making them waterproof, but they are not fireproof - if your house burns down around the ammo can, the heat will destroy your drives.
So, if you are really paranoid, get a fireproof safe big enough to store the ammo can...
The radio was something I had built myself from a kit in the summer before my freshman year at high school.
Doing something new or unique for your project is praiseworthy; something people have done for decades with mostly off the shelf parts, not so much.
Earlier this year I renewed my passport book and also requested a passport card. The book has a shielded cover so it can't be read when closed, and the card came with a foil envelope that effectively shields the RFID chip from being read. I wonder if the NY and WA licenses come with something similar.
Remember Pearl Harbor? Guys manning a RADAR facility observed the inbound Japanese and called it in. Some pencilneck decided to ignore the report.
In WW2 both sides were using radar to detect inbound bombers. Radar was also used to search for ships and submarines.
The real issue is that aircraft played a relatively insignificant role during World War 1. By the second war aviation technology had advanced to where aircraft could easily destroy enemy surface resources.
Of course, I still want to build my own Jenny. But I will put a modern engine on the front...
I am a PP ASEL and AMEL with IFR. I was looking at getting an ATP because I was under the mistaken impression that certificate was required for a Citation type rating.
I don't own my own plane, but I am in a club that owns a Warrior and 182. I put about 150-170 hours per year on the 182. The club is considering selling the 182 and buying a Diamond or Cirrus. If they do I just might make an offer on the Skylane.
The only drawback to being in the club is that people get upset if you take the plane for more than a week. Living in Washington state I have made a few runs to the LA area, but as long as I am using a club airplane I will not be flying myself to the Bahamas.
What are you in the market for?
Look at FAR 61.1(b)(3)(vi)(B). If working towards an ATP (admittedly, these pilots probably were not) all you have to do is go 50+ nm and turn around.
Anal? Yes, but not as bad as the guys at your local FSDO...
What happens? Exactly the same thing that would happen if they wiped cookies and flash before selling their computer. I expect that most Slashdotters wipe their drives before giving away or selling a computer, but most people just delete and think the data is gone.
I am not concerned with the possibility of having my data stolen when I am at immigration, because that is generally in a secure part of the terminal and I do not think the odds are very high of people setting up to steal data at that location.
But what about airport check-in? If you are traveling internationally, you will have to show that you have a passport at the check-in counter. That is not inside a secure area and anybody could carry a skimmer inside a backpack or briefcase and attempt to steal the data.
I know people who have made phone calls in airports using a calling card, who later discovered a lot of unauthorized calls to Mexico on their bill. Stealing data from passports would be even easier in an international terminal.
I don't know what else you expect from the people who kill a lot of whales each year, take a quick look at stomach contents, and call the process scientific research.
The next time you are on an airline flight, think of this: The first time each of the pilots stepped into the cockpit of the type of jet you are in, they had already completed training for that type of aircraft in simulators.
As long as a pilot has jet experience, their type rating training for other jets will be entirely done in simulators. And most of us agree that the real thing is easier to fly than a simulator.
That being said, a large amount of experience in real world flying is still invaluable. It is true that on most airline flights the autopilot handles more than 90% of the flying, but pilots still need the experience learning weather and the atmosphere. Here in the US a pilot is required to have 1,500 hours of flight time before becoming eligible for their air transport pilot certificate, and I think that number is appropriate.
Why do we need to define the phrase now? You can refer to dictionaries that existed at the time the Bill of Rights was authored, and you can review how the phrase was used in other contemporary writings. Through the 18th and much of the 19th centuries the phrase "well regulated" was used to mean properly functioning.
And how about the definition of Militia? That term was defined in the Militia Act of 1792, and federal law currently defines the unorganized militia.
I have tried several active noise reduction headsets for use in single engine piston aircraft, and tried the winners in noisier seats on commercial jets and in data centers.
My biggest lesson relevant to this discussion is the ANR headsets are most effective at low frequencies and relatively ineffective at high frequencies. And my experience with server farms is that the noise is mostly high frequency.
The three most significant heatsets I have tried were the Bose Aviation X (excellent but overpriced), the Bose QuietComfort 2 (works well for adults, best fit for children, not the best ANR), and the Lightspeed QFR-XC (the generic branded versions are cheap - 1/4 the price of a Bose X - excellent passive headsets, and quiet at the low end with ANR turned on). The Lightspeed headset also has an adapter for cellphones or music players.
In data centers I get some funny looks when wearing a Lightspeed headset, but for me it is the best choice since I sometimes have to be on the phone while at the server.
You can sue anybody for anything. If you can get a name and address, you can sue somebody who sits at the next table in a restaurant for ruining your meal with their rancid farts. You can sue me for sunning in my front yard and making the neighborhood ugly.
But in order to win you need three things - a legal principle, evidence of some kind of loss, and a preponderance of evidence to support your claims.
A fellow pilot at my local airport is a judge in town who handles a lot of small claim cases. He has had cases where a person was sued for treating the plaintiff unfairly, not being friendly enough, and plenty of other stupid reasons. If you file a lawsuit without a real basis, not only will you show yourself to be an idiot but you run the risk of a countersuit for misuse of process.
If you are sued and do not bother to show up for the trial, you should be amazed if you don't find yourself owing a large sum of money. This is not the first time I have heard of a plaintiff suing in a jurisdiction chosen to prevent the defendant from showing up. It is entirely possible that the plaintiff has an ethics problem and her treatment of the defendant would make the allegations of crook and fraud accurate. But the defendant did not provide any evidence to justify her allegations so the court had to find for the plaintiff. If you are ever sued for any reason, do whatever you can to defend yourself. If you cannot hire an attorney, look for one to take your case pro bono. Alternatively do research on your own and try to defend yourself. Do not be foolish enough to be quoted in the paper saying, "I don't feel like I can express my opinions. Only one side of the story was told in court. Nobody heard my side."
For $200,000 you can get a nice used Cirrus SR-22 or a nice Piper Seneca. Either would have much more utility for me than a personal jet pack, and will probably be much cheaper to insure.
Probably cannot seee & avoid, but the FAA has made it clear there will be no TFRs, the aircraft will not fly in controlled airspace, they will need airworthiness certificates, and the cops will need a certificate of authorization for the flights. I have already emailed the LA FSDO to ask if the airworthiness certificate and CoA were issued before the test flight.
If you think it is not interesting, just try chatting with an astronaut onboard the ISS. People have been saying ham radio is outdated since the 1950s when long distance became available to almost everybody. Yet the number of licensed amateurs in the US continually increased to a peak in 2003. And I would be very surprised if there is not more growth in the future. Merging computers and radio, I enjoy writing my own PSK-31 software. People say CW is outdated and useless. I have been in areas with severe thunderstorms where the static crashes made everything but CW unusable. And it sounds like many of the people replying to this list are incredibly short sighted. After a minor earthquake telephones, cell and landline, are useless as everybody is trying to ask everybody they know "Did you feel it?" When power goes out I do not have enough battery backup to operate my computer and cable modem for one hour, but I could operate my radio for days. VoIP is much more reliable than 20 or 40 meter communications, but in a disaster ham radio is far more reliable than internet or phone. And it has been very easy for me to find somebody out of the disaster area to pass a message to relatives about my situation.
Am I the only person who remembers accusations that Microsoft released a patch to Windows that caused Real Player to malfunction? There is a shining example of Microsoft making an effort to stop Windows from allowing users to download any media software they want and use it.
Here is another reason why people steer away from computer science - with a couple of years experience, finding a job is easy. But for the new graduate, finding a job can be very difficult. When freshmen hear stories about Seniors finding hundreds of jobs advertised as "Entry Level - must have 2+ years paid software development experience" it turns them off. And when there is no shortage of job listings like that, no shortage of companies claiming they cannot find anybody "qualified" and demanding more foreigners, and at the same time a significant number of new grads are being turned down, attracting new students to the field will be difficult. Things are starting to change, but people will not be attracted into the field until things are desperate enough that everybody graduing with a CS degree has a job in a month or two.
It is not hard to reverse engineer a proprietary format - several word processors can save in competitor's formats. So this is a symbolic gesture, but it will be good in the future when Microsoft and others copyright their file formats to try and extort money from OpenOffice.Org and others.
Laptops are great in lecture - when things get slow my notebook gave me the opportunity to email, IM, surf, or play games. And my professors all thought I was just taking great notes! Without the distraction I would have paid more attention and done better on the tests. Having a computer with my own copy of needed software (Visual Studio and Dr. Scheme) allowed me to complete assignments at my convenience instead of working around lab availability, but a much cheaper dekstop system at home would have provided the same benefit. Sure it was helpful to have everything loaded in my notebook when I wanted to go to the professor's office for extra help. But it was just as easy to bring a floppy or a memory key to the office. And I am somebody who had owned a computer for more than a decade before going to college; I was frustrated and amazed by students who did not know how to bring up a directory from a command prompt, or who did not even know how to turn the thing on. Requiring the luddites of the school population to have notebooks is a recipe for disaster.
That place must be real fun in a fire The schools use an amazing door lock technology that prevents people outside from opening the doors but allows people inside to open the doors without unlocking. Since you have never heard of such a thing, may I suggest going to see a movie. When the movie is over, leave throug the exits at the front of the theater instead of walking out the back with everybody else. Once you have exited and the door shuts, try opening it again. You will be amazed to find a door so easily opened from the inside cannot be opened from the outside! What will people think of next?
I guess this will make children attending the school totally safe - especially the ones standing around THE BUS STOP! From reading the article, it seems this system is only for parents who come into the school in the middle of the day. And looking at the school district website I find so many classes at the schools that it would be impractical to have every parent picking up a kid at the end of the day to park and go inside to get their children even if they only have 15 children per classroom. I have never heard of, and searching could not find, any cases where somebody walked into a school pretending to be a parent in order to kidnap a child. Putting all of this together, it is apparent that the "security" system is primarily in place to control the parents and to restrict them from participating in the education of their children. Want to make the school safe from outsiders coming in? The schools where I live have a very low tech way of doing things - once school starts all outside doors are locked except the door to the school office. If you need or want to come to school you just come through the office, where you will be challenged if the office staff does not know you.
It won't happen. From the moment something is established in a stable orbit, forces start working to degrade the orbit. Although we think of the space as what is outside the atmosphere, space starts at 100km and there is measurable atmosphere to at least 600 km. In a distant orbit, such as geosynchronous satellites or the moon, there is very little force to degrade an orbit. But in the orbits most satellites use there is enough interaction with the atmosphere to slow the satellite and degrade the orbit.