I can see what you are getting at, but I would assume that a solar panel would be almost as efficient as having a whole lot of energy diffused over a large area.
I would guess that this is intended to provide the incentive for someone to start producing such cameras within the EU. A tax intended to slant the playing field in such a manner that any potential EU camera producer has an immediate advantage when selling within the EU. That is not such a terrible thing I guess, however If I were in charge of a camera producing country outside of the EU, the first thing I would do the moment an EU company started producing cameras is to apply the same tariffs in the other direction, of course by that point the EU would have a camera producer so I guess that would mean the tax was a success.
What I would like to know is what actually constitutes building such a product, after all it is made up of many many parts, do you just need a plant that puts together bits from all over the world, or do you actually need to produce, some/all of those parts within the EU too?
Presumably its potentially bad news if you are an oil producing country and want to still be selling oil to the states in 50 years time (at whatever ridiculous rate). Its also potentially bad news if you currently produce ethanol from corn and want to continue to supply it in the future.
Although I agree with you its good news from, an economic, geopolitical and environmental point of view at least.
Erm, I think you just made my point for me, I said that replication on its own is no substitute for other backup methodologies, like snapshots and long term backups... Only a combination, based on a risk assesment is going to be any use, any of these technologies on their own present their own problems.
On the AV front, my previous scepticism stands, how can you be sure that whatever application you use to scan your machine is doing its job correctly if you don't know that they system being scanned is clean? What is to say that the infection isn't hiding from known AV scanning methodologies? something that would not be possible if the infection is detected at the point of entry.
The only way you are going to be sure that you machine does not have an infection is to boot from a separate device (live CD etc..) with current scanning engine and definitions, to do that you need to take your machine off-line, acceptable for a home machine but not the way I would want to do it.
n = number of programmers; n >= 1 f = feature creep a = arbitrariness of deadline tn = the time spent by each programmer indexed by n T = t1 + t2 +.. + tn T/n = of course, average time spent C = cruftiness K = constant coefficient
C = (K(T/n)f(n-1))a = ((KTf)(KT/n))a
I though feature creep was important in calcuating cruftiness (nice feature request though..:) ), although maybe I should have looked at a way of averaging additions and removal of features somehow (the removal of a feature tends to increase cruftiness in complex applications and eases it in simple ones (IMHO)) and I need to define arbitrariness somehow.
By the way - posted at 4am local time and I think I have screwed something up so maybe we should factor in when the code is written too (OSS projects that are contributed to by hackers at 4am may be more crufty than those worked on by programmers during working hours... Oh and the language has a bit of a bearing too.
You idea of using your hourly snapshots in lieu of anti virus may not be the smartest idea. In the event of an infection, how would you know which snapshots are virus free? It is quite possible that without any AV software that it would be some time, possibly a matter of weeks, certainly more than a few hours, between infection and you noticing that your machine has an infection, at that point you will spend a hell of a long time restoring snapshots, and the end result would be data-loss in any event, especially if you find that your documents have been either damaged or infected. Even if you scan your machine periodically you are going to see problems, and may miss an infection, after all if your machine is already infected how can you trust whatever it is you are using for your periodic scans to be correct?
Your statement and implied confidence is similar to that of those system administrators who use live fail-over in lieu of periodic backups for (for example) database servers. It is a fine solution for hardware or some software issues, but its useless if your live fail-overs have been replicating corrupt data for an unknown amount of time.
The extra effort of maintaining AV software on your machine (or the effort and infrastructure required to backup a database server in my example) is justifiable because with BOTH systems in place the chances of data loss and outages are reduced significantly when compared to using neither OR one or the other.
Pay $300 (or $500 for the iPhone) and still sign a contract for 2 years at $50/Month, or
Get the phone for no money and sign a contract for 2 years at $50/month. or
Buy your own phone, and get on a service plan that is discounted (or in my case last time round - has more minutes and sms's etc..) and not be tied into a carrier for 2 years.
Although once again I must say thats Europe - although I assume that is what you can do in the US once your contract is up and the phone becomes yours(?)
Hmm, that would probably do two things, 1) ruin the US economy totally 2) force US companies overseas (and their tax revenue and employment oversea The problem with capitalism on a global scale, and globalisation in general is that to earn 10x more than someone in a 3rd world country you are soon going to have to be able to DO 10x more, if you cant, then global corps are going to use the cheaper guys? why not if you cant compete that's not their fault. Don't worry too much though, give it 20-30 years and it will start to even out, and you may still have a bit of a head start if you have a decent education. What will be interesting that whilst the current distinction between rich countries and poor ones is made on the basis of how many of the population live in poverty, in the future I would assume it will have to be made in a different manner.
(Saying that, it might never happen, al that is needed is for a few countries to get isolationist again, but then you lose the benefits (cheap consumer goods, foreign markets to sell to) too.)
A fireguard prevents things / kids / pets from falling into a fire (think fireplace), it is placed in front of the fire to perform this action. A chocolate one, whilst it can fulfil 2/3 requirements of a fireguard ( 1) be ridiculous ornate 2) be an of brown colour after many years of use) has difficulty with the last requirement, arguably the most important requirement. It shouldn't melt when placed in front of a fire.
Thereby being as much use as a chocolate fireguard, is much the same as being as much use as a chocolate teapot, (or a more modern derivative) as much use as a screen-door on a submarine. i.e. its not useful.
evolution does not make perfect designs I tend to agree, however, evolution is a process that is ongoing, not something that has happened, there is no reason to suggest that if it is possible for a perfect design to exist for a given environment (and that environment does not change) that evolution would not achieve it. The problem is that 1) evolution is ongoing and 2) environments change leading to 3) the criteria for natural selection is altered both by changes introduced in other evolving organisms and changes in the environment. So I guess for a simple enough system you should be able to get to a perfect design, but its not likely within a complex system.
If evolution made perfect designs then how could foreign species out compete native ones Foreign species by definition would have to be introduced into the environment in which the native species evolved, this would change the environment (even if only by the foreign species presence, not taking into account its other impacts) and thus the native species would no longer be perfectly adapted,
A test for this would be to establish two separate but identical environments, and allow some sort of organism to evolve in one of them (how you do that and keep the two environments the same I don't know..) once the organism is suitably evolved, introduce a foreign organism not native to the other environment, you can then compare how the native and foreign organisms do in identical but separate environments, I would suggest that the native species would do better until the foreign species became sufficiently adapted to the environment. Putting them in together doesn't prove anything other than that in this particular instance the native species has not evolved a method of dealing with a foreign species that it has never been exposed to. Needless to say that the time scales involved in carrying out a test like this would be large even for a simple system.
you'd have to answer every nutjob (and potential competitor trying to shoot you down) with time on their hands or an axe to grind No as described, there would be six months for information to be passed to the patent office, and after that six month period the patent office would be able to make a decision based on evidence from interested parties, any nutjobs with an axe to grind would have to find a valid reason for the patent not to be granted, which if they did, would invalidate the patent application.
As for it being like a planning application, I guess it is a little; a planning application where there are a strict set of guidelines and factual information available for decision making. That is opposed to what I understand of the planning process where anyone with any objection gets a voice, and that objection has merit simply for having been made. In the case of a patent application it would hardly be appropriate to deny an application because someone didn't like it, or because it prevented them from doing something they wanted to do, it would be appropriate if someone pointed out that they were using the idea being patented 10 years earlier, and that it was something common to the industry in which it applied.
I'm not sure where that process would impinge upon the protection the patent would grant once in place.
What I am saying is that you have the idea, you file for a patent, your patent becomes public, interested parties can then object to the patent on the usual grounds. If the patent passes muster then you have all the protection your patent provides. If a competitor has taken your patent application and produced a product with the idea you patented, well then they are in the same position as if they had violated your patent under the current system.
As a bonus you can state that since your competitor used an idea you were publicly seeking a patent for, and since no prior art was identified during the patent application process (otherwise the patent would have been denied) and since your competitor had the opportunity to provide prior art (and indeed challenge the patent) they can have absolutly no claim that what they have done is legitimate (after all if they had developed the same idea they would presumably be either patenting it themselves or producing sufficient 'art' for any future patent claim to fall over on the grounds of originality). It would strengthen those patents that are granted.
On the flip side if you had applied for to patent an idea that did not meet the requirements for a patent to be issued or if prior art existed, your competitors could challenge the application from the outset, rather than having to attempt to bust a patent that has been granted for the wrong reasons.
It gets rid of the period where, for a bad patent, a patent exists and must be challenged, and a threat of expensive litigation exists to those using that patented idea.
In my view it is not incompatible with what you describe above, but in fact ensures that patents really do provide an incentive to innovate (by protecting your R&D investment) while not stifling legitimate R&D through illegitimate (but perfectly legal) legal action against those that use patented ideas that have no right being patented.
A simple solution would be to require all patents to be made public in full for a period (say 6 months) prior to acceptance, this would allow any interested parties to object to them *before* they are enforceable. Obviously there are a lot of patents applied for on an annual basis, - so to simplify this it may be possible to have patents categorised into areas in which they apply, with penalties for having a patent that does not in fact cover all the areas claimed, but also making clear that if an area is not included in the patent it is not applicable in that area. I cant see anyone who actually innovates and patents new ideas to have a problem with this as it should work quite well, moreover it would be in large companies interests to challenge patents that affect them, thereby helping everyone.
(IANAL so I have no idea if all or any of this is already the case)
When we start seeing governments step in to force small businesses to change their names and give up domain names that they legitimately acquired and use, because a larger company feels it would be better if they could use the name and domain, then we will have a problem.
There are enough abuses already in the patent and trademark areas without adding a rule that states simply that the bigger your company the more rights you have.
There was recently a case in the UK where The Tan Hill Inn, which is apparently the "highest pub in England", was told by KFC to remove references to "family feast" from its Christmas menu. I mean, apart from the fact that it is ludicrous that anyone could claim ownership of the term "family feast", it is unlikely that you are going to confuse a meal that apparently includes Guinness and stilton pate, roast turkey and Christmas pudding with a cardboard box of fried chicken, chips, coleslaw, potatoes, gravy and a 1.25-litre bottle of some soft drink. I would also assume that if you are sat in a (probably) few century old building, with a Bar and a sign saying "Tan Hill In" over the door, it is unlikely that the moment you open the menu and see family feast you are going to think that you are in a KFC and get all confused.
However by your reckoning I assume KFC should be permitted to force this pub not to use this generic term, after all KFC is an international brand, it benefits far more people to have KFC use the term rather than some pub in the UK, not to mention the fact that clearly no one else will have used the term "family feast" before KFC started using it...
The system for trademarks is (if not abused) fairly sound in most places; If you use it first its yours, if someone else uses a term you have trademarked but are in a different business areas (and there us unlikely to be confusion) then that's OK and you cant trademark something too generic. If that is all enforced properly then problems should not occur. In this case Gmail was being used by a German fellow before Google got into the game, he is using it legitimately, the two services are similar enough that there could be confusion and Google clearly didn't check to see if the trademark was in use before it started using it or was aware that it was in use and didn't care, either way that's Google's problem.
Lastly the people in this thread saying that Google are being evil by pursuing this case are wrong, and they are wrong for the reason that you already mentioned, Google are trying to be consistent internationally, that is good for their users, they offered to buy the domain and were denied. It made good business sense for them to attempt to acquire the domain through legal means and if they had it would have been beneficial to people in Germany who want to use their services (whether it is more or less beneficial than the other is obviously debatable). They haven't left this individual out of pocket (and if they had then the law would have had to say he was in the wrong - so fair enough.)
(Sorry for the ramble, I think it makes sense...:) )
That is pretty much the only way healthcare can work in a capitalist economy, after all (and as a poster above said) you don't chose to become ill, and therefore don't really have any choice in whether or not to buy treatment. The providers know that they have a captive audience and can almost charge whatever they want, after all a large proportion of healthcare is paid for by insurance companies, who in turn are taking premiums from companies who provide healthcare for their employee's. So for normal healthcare, i.e. emergency care and treatment for illness and injury I would go with a socialised system.
Preventative medicine is in the public interest, without it you would see more epidemics, more disease in the population and as a result a less productive population, and quite possibly a smaller one. So the country as a whole benefits from public healthcare projects such as vaccination (and public education campaigns as well I guess.). Realistically you can't force people to have vaccines and then make them pay for it (unless you also mandate a price) because providers will simply charge massively over the odds for the treatments, after all they have a guaranteed customer base.
Moving on to elective healthcare, this is where the private sector could be not only profitable but also efficient and reduce the burden on any national healthcare system, it does depend largely on the definition of elective. I would include all cosmetic surgery as elective except where it is re-constructive work, say post trauma, but I am unsure about things like vision corrections where the benefit is only minor. It would mean that the private health providers could compete on cost, and quality and customers would have a real freedom of choice, not only between providers, but also the choice not to have treatment at all.
That statement is almost true, the problem would occur *if* someone else has produced code (which belongs to them) and has decided to distribute it under some specific terms and Apple violated those terms. It would be like me taking OSX from an intelMac and distributing it on a whitebox PC. I would be doing something that I am not allowed to do under the license, and copyright law also prevents me from doing.
What people seem to miss is that the GPL rants some rights that you do not have under copyright law, if you don't like the terms of the GPL then you are effectively stuck with the rights granted under copyright law, which would prevent you from modifying and distributing a product.
As for this specific case - I am sure that Apple were aware the GPL V3 was coming and took steps to prevent it being an issue, that's what risk analysts are for...
1. KDE
2. Gnome Not to be funny but for the arbitrary term 'Desktops' I can find rather a lot more - even sticking to the fairly mainstream -
XCFE Enlightenment Fluxbox AfterStep XPDE - Nasty Enlightenment WindowMaker.. and there are many, many more, derivatives and forks aimed at niche users, or built for speed, or for pure mouse or pure keyboard intereaction, Or for use on PDA's and Phones....
The beauty of this is that they will all run on pretty much any flavour of Linux, be it a Debian derivative like Ubuntu or Kubuntu or a Red Hat derivative like CentOS and PCLinuxOS(?) or even Gentoo and (God forbid) LFS. They will look the same on each of those, they will act the same.... Linux Provides a vast amount of choice, what the distributions do is package that into something useful and manageable. So for there to be diversity there almost has to be fragmentation. If it wasn't for this Diversity, My router would still be running proprietary code, My PDA would be running PocketPC and my desktop, well my desktop would probably be running Debian or Caledera, and then I wouldn't be able to do half the stuff that makes that kit useful.
Linux Gives you choice and variety, Windows gives you a fixed product (more or less) and (some) consistency. The problem (For Microsoft) is that with linux, you can choose to be consistent, its not like someone from the FSF is going to turn up and tell you that there isn't enough diversity in the software you are running and make you hand your computers over to them...
So yeah. Scientific testing confirms the theory!
1) In science, for a theory to be accepted, the result must be replicated independently elsewhere. 2) You can never prove a theory, you can only support it. In support of his hypothesis, I also threw an egg, it didn't fly. Therefore I find that the theory that eggs don't fly (under the conditions that they were tested... Oh and before they are hatched and turn into birds...) is sound.
They'd make no money from your viewing their blog, but in writing a blog entry that is, for all intents and purposes, an advertising piece, does mean that advertising (which you clearly don't want to see) was smuggled past your anti-advertising measures.
Of course this is pretty much the same for every technology site out there, the only difference between them is the amount of transparency on what is advertising and what is comment.
Slashdot Mirror
Solar Panel?
I can see what you are getting at, but I would assume that a solar panel would be almost as efficient as having a whole lot of energy diffused over a large area.
I would guess that this is intended to provide the incentive for someone to start producing such cameras within the EU. A tax intended to slant the playing field in such a manner that any potential EU camera producer has an immediate advantage when selling within the EU. That is not such a terrible thing I guess, however If I were in charge of a camera producing country outside of the EU, the first thing I would do the moment an EU company started producing cameras is to apply the same tariffs in the other direction, of course by that point the EU would have a camera producer so I guess that would mean the tax was a success.
What I would like to know is what actually constitutes building such a product, after all it is made up of many many parts, do you just need a plant that puts together bits from all over the world, or do you actually need to produce, some/all of those parts within the EU too?
If true, doesn't that just prove (at least in relation to software and process patents) that:
1) The patent system is broken
2) The patent system prevents innovation (OK so in this case its unwanted innovation)
?
Presumably its potentially bad news if you are an oil producing country and want to still be selling oil to the states in 50 years time (at whatever ridiculous rate). Its also potentially bad news if you currently produce ethanol from corn and want to continue to supply it in the future.
Although I agree with you its good news from, an economic, geopolitical and environmental point of view at least.
Erm, I think you just made my point for me, I said that replication on its own is no substitute for other backup methodologies, like snapshots and long term backups... Only a combination, based on a risk assesment is going to be any use, any of these technologies on their own present their own problems.
On the AV front, my previous scepticism stands, how can you be sure that whatever application you use to scan your machine is doing its job correctly if you don't know that they system being scanned is clean? What is to say that the infection isn't hiding from known AV scanning methodologies? something that would not be possible if the infection is detected at the point of entry.
The only way you are going to be sure that you machine does not have an infection is to boot from a separate device (live CD etc..) with current scanning engine and definitions, to do that you need to take your machine off-line, acceptable for a home machine but not the way I would want to do it.
Does this help?
.. + tn
:) ), although maybe I should have looked at a way of averaging additions and removal of features somehow (the removal of a feature tends to increase cruftiness in complex applications and eases it in simple ones (IMHO)) and I need to define arbitrariness somehow.
n = number of programmers; n >= 1
f = feature creep
a = arbitrariness of deadline
tn = the time spent by each programmer indexed by n
T = t1 + t2 +
T/n = of course, average time spent
C = cruftiness
K = constant coefficient
C = (K(T/n)f(n-1))a = ((KTf)(KT/n))a
I though feature creep was important in calcuating cruftiness (nice feature request though..
By the way - posted at 4am local time and I think I have screwed something up so maybe we should factor in when the code is written too (OSS projects that are contributed to by hackers at 4am may be more crufty than those worked on by programmers during working hours... Oh and the language has a bit of a bearing too.
You idea of using your hourly snapshots in lieu of anti virus may not be the smartest idea. In the event of an infection, how would you know which snapshots are virus free? It is quite possible that without any AV software that it would be some time, possibly a matter of weeks, certainly more than a few hours, between infection and you noticing that your machine has an infection, at that point you will spend a hell of a long time restoring snapshots, and the end result would be data-loss in any event, especially if you find that your documents have been either damaged or infected. Even if you scan your machine periodically you are going to see problems, and may miss an infection, after all if your machine is already infected how can you trust whatever it is you are using for your periodic scans to be correct?
Your statement and implied confidence is similar to that of those system administrators who use live fail-over in lieu of periodic backups for (for example) database servers. It is a fine solution for hardware or some software issues, but its useless if your live fail-overs have been replicating corrupt data for an unknown amount of time.
The extra effort of maintaining AV software on your machine (or the effort and infrastructure required to backup a database server in my example) is justifiable because with BOTH systems in place the chances of data loss and outages are reduced significantly when compared to using neither OR one or the other.
Buy your own phone, and get on a service plan that is discounted (or in my case last time round - has more minutes and sms's etc..) and not be tied into a carrier for 2 years.
Although once again I must say thats Europe - although I assume that is what you can do in the US once your contract is up and the phone becomes yours(?)
Hmm, that would probably do two things, 1) ruin the US economy totally 2) force US companies overseas (and their tax revenue and employment oversea The problem with capitalism on a global scale, and globalisation in general is that to earn 10x more than someone in a 3rd world country you are soon going to have to be able to DO 10x more, if you cant, then global corps are going to use the cheaper guys? why not if you cant compete that's not their fault. Don't worry too much though, give it 20-30 years and it will start to even out, and you may still have a bit of a head start if you have a decent education. What will be interesting that whilst the current distinction between rich countries and poor ones is made on the basis of how many of the population live in poverty, in the future I would assume it will have to be made in a different manner.
(Saying that, it might never happen, al that is needed is for a few countries to get isolationist again, but then you lose the benefits (cheap consumer goods, foreign markets to sell to) too.)
it contains reusable parts??
A fireguard prevents things / kids / pets from falling into a fire (think fireplace), it is placed in front of the fire to perform this action. A chocolate one, whilst it can fulfil 2/3 requirements of a fireguard ( 1) be ridiculous ornate 2) be an of brown colour after many years of use) has difficulty with the last requirement, arguably the most important requirement. It shouldn't melt when placed in front of a fire.
Thereby being as much use as a chocolate fireguard, is much the same as being as much use as a chocolate teapot, (or a more modern derivative) as much use as a screen-door on a submarine. i.e. its not useful.
A test for this would be to establish two separate but identical environments, and allow some sort of organism to evolve in one of them (how you do that and keep the two environments the same I don't know..) once the organism is suitably evolved, introduce a foreign organism not native to the other environment, you can then compare how the native and foreign organisms do in identical but separate environments, I would suggest that the native species would do better until the foreign species became sufficiently adapted to the environment. Putting them in together doesn't prove anything other than that in this particular instance the native species has not evolved a method of dealing with a foreign species that it has never been exposed to. Needless to say that the time scales involved in carrying out a test like this would be large even for a simple system.
As for it being like a planning application, I guess it is a little; a planning application where there are a strict set of guidelines and factual information available for decision making. That is opposed to what I understand of the planning process where anyone with any objection gets a voice, and that objection has merit simply for having been made. In the case of a patent application it would hardly be appropriate to deny an application because someone didn't like it, or because it prevented them from doing something they wanted to do, it would be appropriate if someone pointed out that they were using the idea being patented 10 years earlier, and that it was something common to the industry in which it applied.
I'm not sure where that process would impinge upon the protection the patent would grant once in place.
What I am saying is that you have the idea, you file for a patent, your patent becomes public, interested parties can then object to the patent on the usual grounds. If the patent passes muster then you have all the protection your patent provides. If a competitor has taken your patent application and produced a product with the idea you patented, well then they are in the same position as if they had violated your patent under the current system.
As a bonus you can state that since your competitor used an idea you were publicly seeking a patent for, and since no prior art was identified during the patent application process (otherwise the patent would have been denied) and since your competitor had the opportunity to provide prior art (and indeed challenge the patent) they can have absolutly no claim that what they have done is legitimate (after all if they had developed the same idea they would presumably be either patenting it themselves or producing sufficient 'art' for any future patent claim to fall over on the grounds of originality). It would strengthen those patents that are granted.
On the flip side if you had applied for to patent an idea that did not meet the requirements for a patent to be issued or if prior art existed, your competitors could challenge the application from the outset, rather than having to attempt to bust a patent that has been granted for the wrong reasons.
It gets rid of the period where, for a bad patent, a patent exists and must be challenged, and a threat of expensive litigation exists to those using that patented idea.
In my view it is not incompatible with what you describe above, but in fact ensures that patents really do provide an incentive to innovate (by protecting your R&D investment) while not stifling legitimate R&D through illegitimate (but perfectly legal) legal action against those that use patented ideas that have no right being patented.
A simple solution would be to require all patents to be made public in full for a period (say 6 months) prior to acceptance, this would allow any interested parties to object to them *before* they are enforceable. Obviously there are a lot of patents applied for on an annual basis, - so to simplify this it may be possible to have patents categorised into areas in which they apply, with penalties for having a patent that does not in fact cover all the areas claimed, but also making clear that if an area is not included in the patent it is not applicable in that area. I cant see anyone who actually innovates and patents new ideas to have a problem with this as it should work quite well, moreover it would be in large companies interests to challenge patents that affect them, thereby helping everyone.
(IANAL so I have no idea if all or any of this is already the case)
When we start seeing governments step in to force small businesses to change their names and give up domain names that they legitimately acquired and use, because a larger company feels it would be better if they could use the name and domain, then we will have a problem.
:) )
There are enough abuses already in the patent and trademark areas without adding a rule that states simply that the bigger your company the more rights you have.
There was recently a case in the UK where The Tan Hill Inn, which is apparently the "highest pub in England", was told by KFC to remove references to "family feast" from its Christmas menu. I mean, apart from the fact that it is ludicrous that anyone could claim ownership of the term "family feast", it is unlikely that you are going to confuse a meal that apparently includes Guinness and stilton pate, roast turkey and Christmas pudding with a cardboard box of fried chicken, chips, coleslaw, potatoes, gravy and a 1.25-litre bottle of some soft drink. I would also assume that if you are sat in a (probably) few century old building, with a Bar and a sign saying "Tan Hill In" over the door, it is unlikely that the moment you open the menu and see family feast you are going to think that you are in a KFC and get all confused.
However by your reckoning I assume KFC should be permitted to force this pub not to use this generic term, after all KFC is an international brand, it benefits far more people to have KFC use the term rather than some pub in the UK, not to mention the fact that clearly no one else will have used the term "family feast" before KFC started using it...
The system for trademarks is (if not abused) fairly sound in most places; If you use it first its yours, if someone else uses a term you have trademarked but are in a different business areas (and there us unlikely to be confusion) then that's OK and you cant trademark something too generic. If that is all enforced properly then problems should not occur. In this case Gmail was being used by a German fellow before Google got into the game, he is using it legitimately, the two services are similar enough that there could be confusion and Google clearly didn't check to see if the trademark was in use before it started using it or was aware that it was in use and didn't care, either way that's Google's problem.
Lastly the people in this thread saying that Google are being evil by pursuing this case are wrong, and they are wrong for the reason that you already mentioned, Google are trying to be consistent internationally, that is good for their users, they offered to buy the domain and were denied. It made good business sense for them to attempt to acquire the domain through legal means and if they had it would have been beneficial to people in Germany who want to use their services (whether it is more or less beneficial than the other is obviously debatable). They haven't left this individual out of pocket (and if they had then the law would have had to say he was in the wrong - so fair enough.)
(Sorry for the ramble, I think it makes sense...
In my defence it was silly o'clock in the morning.
That is pretty much the only way healthcare can work in a capitalist economy, after all (and as a poster above said) you don't chose to become ill, and therefore don't really have any choice in whether or not to buy treatment. The providers know that they have a captive audience and can almost charge whatever they want, after all a large proportion of healthcare is paid for by insurance companies, who in turn are taking premiums from companies who provide healthcare for their employee's. So for normal healthcare, i.e. emergency care and treatment for illness and injury I would go with a socialised system.
Preventative medicine is in the public interest, without it you would see more epidemics, more disease in the population and as a result a less productive population, and quite possibly a smaller one. So the country as a whole benefits from public healthcare projects such as vaccination (and public education campaigns as well I guess.). Realistically you can't force people to have vaccines and then make them pay for it (unless you also mandate a price) because providers will simply charge massively over the odds for the treatments, after all they have a guaranteed customer base.
Moving on to elective healthcare, this is where the private sector could be not only profitable but also efficient and reduce the burden on any national healthcare system, it does depend largely on the definition of elective. I would include all cosmetic surgery as elective except where it is re-constructive work, say post trauma, but I am unsure about things like vision corrections where the benefit is only minor. It would mean that the private health providers could compete on cost, and quality and customers would have a real freedom of choice, not only between providers, but also the choice not to have treatment at all.
That statement is almost true, the problem would occur *if* someone else has produced code (which belongs to them) and has decided to distribute it under some specific terms and Apple violated those terms. It would be like me taking OSX from an intelMac and distributing it on a whitebox PC. I would be doing something that I am not allowed to do under the license, and copyright law also prevents me from doing.
What people seem to miss is that the GPL rants some rights that you do not have under copyright law, if you don't like the terms of the GPL then you are effectively stuck with the rights granted under copyright law, which would prevent you from modifying and distributing a product.
As for this specific case - I am sure that Apple were aware the GPL V3 was coming and took steps to prevent it being an issue, that's what risk analysts are for...
1. KDE
2. Gnome Not to be funny but for the arbitrary term 'Desktops' I can find rather a lot more - even sticking to the fairly mainstream -
XCFE
Enlightenment
Fluxbox
AfterStep
XPDE - Nasty
Enlightenment
WindowMaker
The beauty of this is that they will all run on pretty much any flavour of Linux, be it a Debian derivative like Ubuntu or Kubuntu or a Red Hat derivative like CentOS and PCLinuxOS(?) or even Gentoo and (God forbid) LFS. They will look the same on each of those, they will act the same.... Linux Provides a vast amount of choice, what the distributions do is package that into something useful and manageable. So for there to be diversity there almost has to be fragmentation. If it wasn't for this Diversity, My router would still be running proprietary code, My PDA would be running PocketPC and my desktop, well my desktop would probably be running Debian or Caledera, and then I wouldn't be able to do half the stuff that makes that kit useful.
Linux Gives you choice and variety, Windows gives you a fixed product (more or less) and (some) consistency. The problem (For Microsoft) is that with linux, you can choose to be consistent, its not like someone from the FSF is going to turn up and tell you that there isn't enough diversity in the software you are running and make you hand your computers over to them...
So yeah. Scientific testing confirms the theory! 1) In science, for a theory to be accepted, the result must be replicated independently elsewhere.
2) You can never prove a theory, you can only support it. In support of his hypothesis, I also threw an egg, it didn't fly. Therefore I find that the theory that eggs don't fly (under the conditions that they were tested... Oh and before they are hatched and turn into birds...) is sound.
Sounds like a bad place to drop your PDA, phone or credit cards...
Bravo Sir. Bravo.
They'd make no money from your viewing their blog, but in writing a blog entry that is, for all intents and purposes, an advertising piece, does mean that advertising (which you clearly don't want to see) was smuggled past your anti-advertising measures.
Of course this is pretty much the same for every technology site out there, the only difference between them is the amount of transparency on what is advertising and what is comment.