Actually that doesn't really matter either. MS did win the case, just not in English speaking countries where Windows is a word. In Germany, for example, Microsoft won the case. This means Lindows couldn't use the term Lindows in Germany. This would fragment their brand (having to call it different things in different countries) and result in having to produce two different logos, different sets of images etc, so it made more sense for Lindows to change their name to a name they could use everywhere; Linspire.
And for music, Apple Corps (think 'The Beatles') holds (or held) the trademark, leading to those famous Apple v Apple cases (eg, when the now 'Apple Inc' started iTunes)
Not sure but I do know our libel laws here are in desperate need of overhaul, and many are campaigning for this. We have one of (if not, the) highest libel costs in the whole of Europe, making us a very attractive place for libel tourism, as often is the case whether you're guilty or not doesn't matter, merely defending the court action can be enough to bankrupt you, especially if it's against somebody who has the money to throw at it. I know that can be true in many areas of law, but such is the cost of defending libel cases here in the UK, that the effect is far more exaggerated.
It does also express a certain level of success though, for your brandname to become a verb (like 'google' or 'hoover') shows a high level of market penetration (hehe) to the extent where your product has become somewhat ubiquitous, this normally means you must've sold a large volume of your product.
Windows is only a 'generic term' (or "word") in English (or close approximations of) speaking countries, which is why MS won the Windows/Lindows case in, for example, Germany.
"but they brought the term into the context of computing equipment, and they rightly control its use in that context"
But only if they stayed out of the music business, because of the existence of Apple Records. When Apple launched iTunes, this broke that conditional use of Apple, and Apple Records I believe reinvoked their trademark dispute. I didn't pay any attention to know which way it went though, I guess they must've reached a settlement or maybe Jobs painted 'Gizmodo' on the doors of Apple Records during the night and had the police kick 'em in.
I don't think that's really how it works. Facebook aren't saying they own "book", despite what the sensationalist title says. They're saying that teachbook are calling themselves teachbook because of facebook, which sounds pretty plausable really. Would 'textbook' be called 'textbook' without 'facebook'? Yes, because 'textbook' is a word. Would 'teachbook' be called 'teachbook' without 'facebook'? Maybe not, they might've gone with 'teachspace' or 'myteach', this is what the courts have to decide. Whatever they do decide, it cannot be shown that Facebook haven't defended their trademark, so they get to keep their trademark rights.
Facebook aren't right or wrong, they're just following their legal obligation to protect their trademark, which means first establishing whether teachbook infringes, which requires this action. If you have a problem with people having to go through these steps to establish whether a name infringes on their trademark, or whether not protecting your trademark is grounds for losing your trademark rights, I think it's the law you have a problem with. Ignorantly take it out on facebook all you want, that won't change or mean anything.
Neither do you, really. Facebook have to defend their trademark to keep it. If they "lose" this case, they haven't actually lost the case; what has been shown is that 'teachbook' doesn't infringe the trademark, therefore, nobody can use the fact that 'teachbook' exists as a defence against their new trademark infringing name. If facebook don't go after it, and it is later shown that teachbook does infringe, but facebook didn't go after them, then facebook loses trademark rights.
This isn't really facebook's 'fault' here, this is just a consequence of how the law works. Facebook loses their trademark if they don't establish whether teachbook infringes or not, and stop it's use if it is found to be.
Still I do find myself wondering whether they would be calling their site 'teachbook' if 'facebook' didn't exist. They'd probably be calling it 'teachspace' instead. It does sound a little copycatty to me, but this is for the courts to decide.
That was kinda my point, 'tho in reality I don't tend to do that... you learn quite fast after you accidentally shut down a remote server thinking you were rebooting your local firewall! Custom and highly different prompts helps here though.
One thing that does from time to time happen though is the mistake-paste, where the contents of the clipboard weren't as expected (for example, while clicking to select the ssh console, maybe accidentally selected a few characters which replace the clipboard). This can mean that *anything* can happen.
Either way, you do have to apply changes to the live system at some point, and I've seen problems come up here before, like permissions not being changed correctly, live system log file overwritten by a development system log file, killing any chance of debugging anything that needed that log etc - although once I pointed out that this was going on, the update proceedure could be corrected so it no longer happened, but it does demonstrate that the more actions you have to take, the larger the mistake-surface-area is. You just hope that the intersect of mistake-surface with the live system is smaller, even if the overall mistake-surface is larger.
Eugh yeah I hate that. So what I try to do is code in such a way that if a bug should occur, the whole thing stops working, that way there's no point in my/not/ fixing it on the production server! I'm a freakin genius! No of course I'm joking, but a recent project has hit some problems where I've been able to explain and the client has actually been able to understand the challenges of trying to reproduce an intermittent undiagnosed problem without touching the production code (ie, is just not worth the time trying to do) and lets me fiddle with the code. Usually tho it's enough for me to be able to add logging code where it's needed and there's no end-user-visible effects. There've also been problems that have languished, but as soon as I've had the go-ahead to try resolve it on the live system and resolved it quickly and without interruption, so they're getting more okay with letting me do it that way. Sometimes I'll just fix a problem and not tell them, to avoid all the hassle. At the end of the day, I know better than them (which is why they come to me) and sometimes you do just have to make a judgement call. BUT, it's not a massive project with many developers, and in those conditions obviously you need to retain more order.
Also, if you close your eyes, the sun doesn't stop shining! "ah, but is it still bright if you can't see it?" *palm->forehead* it's almost like there's this thing called "look" that comes out of your eyes and touches things! So different people will emit a different red "look"! Hahaha. I describe these kinds of people as having "lots of imagination"
A perfect example of what you're trying to demonstrate comes in the form of the first reply to your post *lol* but the cause of that (slightly different to the one you point out) seems to be more from the subjective-reality pseudo science, where a tree falling in a forest with nobody around doesn't make a sound (yep, it's true, vibrations check for a listener before they begin to propagate!). It's possibly a watered down version of geocentrism - the idea that we are the commanders of the universe, and it exists to serve us. From there, you only have to notice that different people perceive things in different ways before that model becomes the full blown idea of the subjective-reality (an oxymoron).
The problem with these kinds of people (in my experience) is that they will often take any evidence that suggests otherwise as a personal attack against their very selves. Then I get attacked for simply pointing things out, as if I'm the one making reality up!
I think there's perhaps a "PC gone mad!" element to it as well, where because we're meant to "respect everybody's beliefs", it's like it's being taught that "everybody's beliefs are valid", when that's simply not true. It's like logic is being sacrificed for politeness because it's easier than teaching people "you can tell somebody they're wrong without calling them a dick". A lesson many slashdotters could afford to learn I think! Somebody once said to me that I should stop challenging peoples beliefs. I replied "you should always establish somebody's preference for ignorance before condemning them to it".
I love the fact that he's had to close comments off his own page hahahaha I scrolled down to see what comments there were after reading the first sentence or two, saw it was closed, thought "I can guess why", looked above it and saw the reasoning as to why it was closed... oh how right I was. I think this guy's the type of person who thinks that *everything* is a matter of opinion; that there's no such thing as 'facts', judging from his comment that "some people can't handle another persons opinion"... he thinks it's actually a matter of opinion!!
And now he's slashdotted *lol* if only we could slashdot fox news huh.
By that token, Christians are Jews. There's still a big enough difference between someone who believes in everything up until the birth of jesus, someone who believes that bit as well, and someone who on top of that believes in the return of jesus in america.... enough of a difference that it's more helpful to name them seperately.
Problem is, if you know you might need to do something with some code you're writing, you have to write access to that ability in, even if you don't write the ability until you need it... otherwise you close doors that mean you have to rewrite it all again anyway. Or so I thought anyway, I've discovered another way: don't write the code. Now, instead, I have code that writes the code for me, and writes the code that uses that code, so I have one place to change the code and all the places that use the code, instead of having to do them all by hand. This way I can skimp on the original code. And it codes far less sloppy than I, it checks for errors where I'm too lazy too, inner sections of code knows the context of what outer sections of the code want from it,... oh crap, I'm doing it again aren't I? *lol*
Absolutely (or at least mostly)... I replied on his blog saying something similar, suggesting he's misunderstood what 'reverse engineer' means. Copying the program is not reverse engineering, and no serious AI'ist would try to completely bottom-up the whole brain, not if they want to still have time to actually do anything with that understanding, because massive chunks of what the brain does is not a requirement of intelligence (see especially the hypothalymus). Much of intelligence is merely an artifact that has come about through the interactions of complex building blocks; the interactions are important, most of the complexity of the building blocks... not so much the case. Understanding the role of the pituitary in synchronising our brains with the outer world (or not as the case may be if you're more like me) would be important. Is re-encoding the expression of my favouritely named 'CLOCK' gene (Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput - it's like they got to CLOC and thought... but what can the K be?) necessary to achieve that? Not in the slightest. Understanding the CLOCK process is important for understanding how humans work (copy), not what that work achieves (reverse engineer). Selecting the most optimal level of abstraction to work in between the 'how' and 'what' is paramount to achieving a result in a timely fasion, which is why I don't tackle such a task... I'm always throwing code away because I went down a rabbit hole and came out with highly powerful building blocks almost as complex as the original problem:-/
Plus I believe the dude in this article has misunderstood what 'reverse engineer' means. Understanding the 'brain program' and replaying it is not reverse engineering, that's just copying the code.
That's rubbish. You don't need to know how something doesn't work to know it doesn't. You just try it and see whether there are results. If you see results, then you can start trying to understand how the results come about. As for acupuncture, there is a measurable effect from using it with people, and it's the same as the measurable effect you get from using any placebo with people, which means the bit that's working is not the acupuncture itself, the bit that's producing an effect is the belief in it, because some people apparently need to believe in silly things to reach a positive enough state where their body's natural ability to heal is activated. It's pretty simple stuff, shouldn't be difficult to understand at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually that doesn't really matter either. MS did win the case, just not in English speaking countries where Windows is a word. In Germany, for example, Microsoft won the case. This means Lindows couldn't use the term Lindows in Germany. This would fragment their brand (having to call it different things in different countries) and result in having to produce two different logos, different sets of images etc, so it made more sense for Lindows to change their name to a name they could use everywhere; Linspire.
And for music, Apple Corps (think 'The Beatles') holds (or held) the trademark, leading to those famous Apple v Apple cases (eg, when the now 'Apple Inc' started iTunes)
Not that generic... maybe in parts of America, but Facebook already has a population far greater than the population of America.
Yes that's right, there is a world outside of America, it has people in it, and a series of tubes connecting them.
"I for one blah blah microsoft blah blah patent trolling blah blah lawyers blah blah in soviet russia"
*yawn*
You read nothing but slashdot, don't you?
or Apple have "iphone" used in place of "Locked down third rate phone with nice PDA functionality(tm)"
Fixed that for you ;-)
They're not similar products to Facebook, so no trademark infringement.
Not sure but I do know our libel laws here are in desperate need of overhaul, and many are campaigning for this. We have one of (if not, the) highest libel costs in the whole of Europe, making us a very attractive place for libel tourism, as often is the case whether you're guilty or not doesn't matter, merely defending the court action can be enough to bankrupt you, especially if it's against somebody who has the money to throw at it. I know that can be true in many areas of law, but such is the cost of defending libel cases here in the UK, that the effect is far more exaggerated.
"(IANAL, and I'm sure I'm overlooking some finer points, but that's the idea)"
Like how Apple are pissed at people saying IANAL, because they had spent $billions on their iAnal product which they could no longer trademark.
It does also express a certain level of success though, for your brandname to become a verb (like 'google' or 'hoover') shows a high level of market penetration (hehe) to the extent where your product has become somewhat ubiquitous, this normally means you must've sold a large volume of your product.
Windows is only a 'generic term' (or "word") in English (or close approximations of) speaking countries, which is why MS won the Windows/Lindows case in, for example, Germany.
"but they brought the term into the context of computing equipment, and they rightly control its use in that context"
But only if they stayed out of the music business, because of the existence of Apple Records. When Apple launched iTunes, this broke that conditional use of Apple, and Apple Records I believe reinvoked their trademark dispute. I didn't pay any attention to know which way it went though, I guess they must've reached a settlement or maybe Jobs painted 'Gizmodo' on the doors of Apple Records during the night and had the police kick 'em in.
"If I was teachbook"
they would be doomed.
I don't think that's really how it works. Facebook aren't saying they own "book", despite what the sensationalist title says. They're saying that teachbook are calling themselves teachbook because of facebook, which sounds pretty plausable really. Would 'textbook' be called 'textbook' without 'facebook'? Yes, because 'textbook' is a word. Would 'teachbook' be called 'teachbook' without 'facebook'? Maybe not, they might've gone with 'teachspace' or 'myteach', this is what the courts have to decide. Whatever they do decide, it cannot be shown that Facebook haven't defended their trademark, so they get to keep their trademark rights.
Facebook aren't right or wrong, they're just following their legal obligation to protect their trademark, which means first establishing whether teachbook infringes, which requires this action. If you have a problem with people having to go through these steps to establish whether a name infringes on their trademark, or whether not protecting your trademark is grounds for losing your trademark rights, I think it's the law you have a problem with. Ignorantly take it out on facebook all you want, that won't change or mean anything.
"Facebook doesn't have a leg to stand on"
Neither do you, really. Facebook have to defend their trademark to keep it. If they "lose" this case, they haven't actually lost the case; what has been shown is that 'teachbook' doesn't infringe the trademark, therefore, nobody can use the fact that 'teachbook' exists as a defence against their new trademark infringing name. If facebook don't go after it, and it is later shown that teachbook does infringe, but facebook didn't go after them, then facebook loses trademark rights.
This isn't really facebook's 'fault' here, this is just a consequence of how the law works. Facebook loses their trademark if they don't establish whether teachbook infringes or not, and stop it's use if it is found to be.
Still I do find myself wondering whether they would be calling their site 'teachbook' if 'facebook' didn't exist. They'd probably be calling it 'teachspace' instead. It does sound a little copycatty to me, but this is for the courts to decide.
That was kinda my point, 'tho in reality I don't tend to do that... you learn quite fast after you accidentally shut down a remote server thinking you were rebooting your local firewall! Custom and highly different prompts helps here though.
One thing that does from time to time happen though is the mistake-paste, where the contents of the clipboard weren't as expected (for example, while clicking to select the ssh console, maybe accidentally selected a few characters which replace the clipboard). This can mean that *anything* can happen.
Either way, you do have to apply changes to the live system at some point, and I've seen problems come up here before, like permissions not being changed correctly, live system log file overwritten by a development system log file, killing any chance of debugging anything that needed that log etc - although once I pointed out that this was going on, the update proceedure could be corrected so it no longer happened, but it does demonstrate that the more actions you have to take, the larger the mistake-surface-area is. You just hope that the intersect of mistake-surface with the live system is smaller, even if the overall mistake-surface is larger.
Eugh yeah I hate that. So what I try to do is code in such a way that if a bug should occur, the whole thing stops working, that way there's no point in my /not/ fixing it on the production server! I'm a freakin genius! No of course I'm joking, but a recent project has hit some problems where I've been able to explain and the client has actually been able to understand the challenges of trying to reproduce an intermittent undiagnosed problem without touching the production code (ie, is just not worth the time trying to do) and lets me fiddle with the code. Usually tho it's enough for me to be able to add logging code where it's needed and there's no end-user-visible effects. There've also been problems that have languished, but as soon as I've had the go-ahead to try resolve it on the live system and resolved it quickly and without interruption, so they're getting more okay with letting me do it that way. Sometimes I'll just fix a problem and not tell them, to avoid all the hassle. At the end of the day, I know better than them (which is why they come to me) and sometimes you do just have to make a judgement call. BUT, it's not a massive project with many developers, and in those conditions obviously you need to retain more order.
rm -rf /^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hoops wrong window
Also, if you close your eyes, the sun doesn't stop shining! "ah, but is it still bright if you can't see it?" *palm->forehead* it's almost like there's this thing called "look" that comes out of your eyes and touches things! So different people will emit a different red "look"! Hahaha. I describe these kinds of people as having "lots of imagination"
A perfect example of what you're trying to demonstrate comes in the form of the first reply to your post *lol* but the cause of that (slightly different to the one you point out) seems to be more from the subjective-reality pseudo science, where a tree falling in a forest with nobody around doesn't make a sound (yep, it's true, vibrations check for a listener before they begin to propagate!). It's possibly a watered down version of geocentrism - the idea that we are the commanders of the universe, and it exists to serve us. From there, you only have to notice that different people perceive things in different ways before that model becomes the full blown idea of the subjective-reality (an oxymoron).
The problem with these kinds of people (in my experience) is that they will often take any evidence that suggests otherwise as a personal attack against their very selves. Then I get attacked for simply pointing things out, as if I'm the one making reality up!
I think there's perhaps a "PC gone mad!" element to it as well, where because we're meant to "respect everybody's beliefs", it's like it's being taught that "everybody's beliefs are valid", when that's simply not true. It's like logic is being sacrificed for politeness because it's easier than teaching people "you can tell somebody they're wrong without calling them a dick". A lesson many slashdotters could afford to learn I think! Somebody once said to me that I should stop challenging peoples beliefs. I replied "you should always establish somebody's preference for ignorance before condemning them to it".
I love the fact that he's had to close comments off his own page hahahaha I scrolled down to see what comments there were after reading the first sentence or two, saw it was closed, thought "I can guess why", looked above it and saw the reasoning as to why it was closed... oh how right I was. I think this guy's the type of person who thinks that *everything* is a matter of opinion; that there's no such thing as 'facts', judging from his comment that "some people can't handle another persons opinion"... he thinks it's actually a matter of opinion!!
And now he's slashdotted *lol* if only we could slashdot fox news huh.
By that token, Christians are Jews. There's still a big enough difference between someone who believes in everything up until the birth of jesus, someone who believes that bit as well, and someone who on top of that believes in the return of jesus in america.... enough of a difference that it's more helpful to name them seperately.
There's nothing obscure about how a lock works. I think you misunderstand what the word 'obscure' means.
Problem is, if you know you might need to do something with some code you're writing, you have to write access to that ability in, even if you don't write the ability until you need it... otherwise you close doors that mean you have to rewrite it all again anyway. Or so I thought anyway, I've discovered another way: don't write the code. Now, instead, I have code that writes the code for me, and writes the code that uses that code, so I have one place to change the code and all the places that use the code, instead of having to do them all by hand. This way I can skimp on the original code. And it codes far less sloppy than I, it checks for errors where I'm too lazy too, inner sections of code knows the context of what outer sections of the code want from it, ... oh crap, I'm doing it again aren't I? *lol*
Absolutely (or at least mostly) ... I replied on his blog saying something similar, suggesting he's misunderstood what 'reverse engineer' means. Copying the program is not reverse engineering, and no serious AI'ist would try to completely bottom-up the whole brain, not if they want to still have time to actually do anything with that understanding, because massive chunks of what the brain does is not a requirement of intelligence (see especially the hypothalymus). Much of intelligence is merely an artifact that has come about through the interactions of complex building blocks; the interactions are important, most of the complexity of the building blocks... not so much the case. Understanding the role of the pituitary in synchronising our brains with the outer world (or not as the case may be if you're more like me) would be important. Is re-encoding the expression of my favouritely named 'CLOCK' gene (Circadian Locomotor Output Cycles Kaput - it's like they got to CLOC and thought... but what can the K be?) necessary to achieve that? Not in the slightest. Understanding the CLOCK process is important for understanding how humans work (copy), not what that work achieves (reverse engineer). Selecting the most optimal level of abstraction to work in between the 'how' and 'what' is paramount to achieving a result in a timely fasion, which is why I don't tackle such a task... I'm always throwing code away because I went down a rabbit hole and came out with highly powerful building blocks almost as complex as the original problem :-/
Plus I believe the dude in this article has misunderstood what 'reverse engineer' means. Understanding the 'brain program' and replaying it is not reverse engineering, that's just copying the code.
That's rubbish. You don't need to know how something doesn't work to know it doesn't. You just try it and see whether there are results. If you see results, then you can start trying to understand how the results come about. As for acupuncture, there is a measurable effect from using it with people, and it's the same as the measurable effect you get from using any placebo with people, which means the bit that's working is not the acupuncture itself, the bit that's producing an effect is the belief in it, because some people apparently need to believe in silly things to reach a positive enough state where their body's natural ability to heal is activated. It's pretty simple stuff, shouldn't be difficult to understand at all.