iPhone is a registered tracemark of Cisco. Check the TESS system at the USPTO, the registration is 2293011.
I am aware of that. Cisco might have lost the right to use it because they trademarked it way back and haven't used it. It appears there are some (sane) laws in place that makes it harder to just trademark a lot of names for the purpose of suing whoever tries to use them. This is what I've heard, do not in any way take it as gospel;-)
Just because Cisco loses the trademark doesn't mean that Apple gets to have it. The best that Apple could hope for is the term becomes generic. Well... does apple want to call their new cell phone by a generic name that they couldn't trademark themselves?
If Cisco loses the trademark, what's to stop Apple from using it? And wouldn't the best Apple could hope for in this case be that Cisco has actually lost the right to the trademark, so they don't have any case? There's no chance that iPhone will become generic for a few years anyway, so that's not much to hope for. As a sidenote, what will Apple do in Norway, where a company called iPhone has the right to the name?;-)
To summarize (since you don't like reading the long post): Don't insult people. Windows is good; mostly because lots of people use it. Linux is good because it has excellent driver support built-in and lots of useful applications out of the box.
I don't intend to offend people. It's a simple fact that I observe during my support calls that people can't be bothered to investigate things like this on their own. Things should "just work". I sometimes use windows because things "just work" when I can't be bothered to debug a problem on linux. It's lazyness, not incompetence.
I get a call from a Windows user. The following must be done: read a "pst" file and extract emails. User: lawyer, *not* LUSER. Certainly has a reasonable attention span. Local IT help: useless (and this isn't forensic, thank the deity). Of course I bill for the phone conversation (she did). Indeed, I have a timer on my desk for these types of issues.
Typical kind of operational Window issue. Why does the law firm use Windows? Because their clients do. That is the network effect. The problems that ensue? Hey, I don't mind. Microsoft likes lock-in; doesn't matter to me -- I make money from it. No need to call the lawyer a LUSER -- what the fuck is a ".pst" file anyway?
Quite a few *users* have a decent attention span and might even attempt to solve problems themselves. Lusers don't. Now, did the lawfirm actually choose between windows and any other operating system? Or did they just buy a bunch of PC's from Dell? Buying a PC from (eg.) Dell gives you a Windows PC that people can expect to work with other PC's without much/any effort.
I guess that with so many users, Windows is "easy to support", but there are motherboards which REQUIRE OEM XP installations. Go figure, I happen to have one. Load XP from CD, the CD disappars on first boot. XP cannot then load the "motherboard driver" which is needed to enable networking or CD. Figure that. Is your contention that an average user can slipstream the needed drivers into XP? Without access to a running XP? Just wondering. Exercise: compare and contrast to setting up a Linux MythTV box.
I've had several problems installing Windows XP on "blank" boxes. Eg. getting S-ATA to work so that XP actually boots after being installed. Either requires slipstreaming or loading a driver off a floppy during installation. A google with the motherboard name and windows xp usually has the problem in the first few hits. Anyway, users don't usually install windows. It comes preinstalled. If they need to reinstall, they usually also have a "recovery-cd" with all the drivers necessary included. I'll pick up on the MythTV thing. I've built myself a Linux MythTV box using a VIA Epia M10000 board. Installing Ubuntu was a no-brainer, since I've done it dozens of times before. Getting all the hardware to work proved a task that took several days. Linux does *not* have "excellent" driver support. Eg. my Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 requires downloading a driver, compiling and making sure it'll be loaded on boot. My Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 requires an IVTV-driver. Same procedure. Now, getting my wireless stick to work (of course without network access to the box, since wireless obviously doesn't work yet). Get driver from zd1211.ath.cx, compile, install. Wow. Now I've gotten my two tuners working, and even have internet. To get mpeg acceleration working, I need to find a driver provided by VIA on a *forum* (viaarena), download, compile, install. Getting the LCD-display in the case working was "easier", just download lcdproc and compile/install. The remote control proved harder. A lot harder. After some investigation, I found the driver, downloaded, compiled, installed. It didn't work! After a lot of googling, I could get the remote control to work. Partly. It didn't work in MythTV. That required another obscure config-file, that I had to make myself. Phew. After spending a couple of days
I have absolutely no problems using the CLI myself. I administer several linux servers and run linux on my desktop and laptop. I don't run any rpm-based distro though. The point is that currently, it's far too advanced to get "normal" stuff working compared to Windows or OSX.
However, the end user (who is NOT a J. Random Luser, and generally has greater than 25 second attention span) should use a distribution with local support (someone around who can help) if they are not computer savy. This is one of the "network effects" and is CERTAINLY the case with Windows adoption
The J. Random Lusers I regularly support hardly have that long attention span. Saying that the End User should use a distribution with local support is fair enough. Except that an OS shouldn't really need this. Why do I hear that Linux is ready for the desktop already, when it's obviously far inferior compared to the two major commercial offerings? What "network effect" are you talking about? Do you mean that windows is so common because your local geek said you should install it? That's complete BS if I ever heard it. Windows comes preinstalled on PC's (with a very, very few honest exceptions). Windows is default. Most people doesn't care as long as they can use it.
WTF is that? What does -ivh do? Where'd you get that URL?
Now real question - was it that hard? If you find it hard (you don't need to understand it, just copy and paste the lines) I find you retarded. Sorry. It was not harder than getting Windows to play DVDs or some obscure codecs.
Oh really? My windows plays DVD's. An app came with my PC that does that. Fucking moron. The fact that you know exactly what to do to get these codecs doesn't mean that J. Random Luser does. Infact, it's quite unlikely that he will figure it out during his 25 second attention span.
Get over it. Linux sucks when it comes to usability when compared even to windows. There should be *ABSOLUTELY* no need for a user to open a terminal window and type obscure commands to do simple stuff like that.
I keep on thanking god (whoever that is...) a lot on slashdot. Mainly for not living in the Unites States of A. This braindead piece of legislation won't have the slightest effect on any podcasts I care about. How, pray tell, is this going to be enforced? The internet is still international. Requiring DRM for podcasts in the USA does what exactly? Force americans to put their podcasts on servers outside the USA? Damn, that's freaking scary.
Really? According to my trusty calculator here, 2"x4" is 50.8mmx101.6mm. Anyway, ask a carpenter about "totom-fir", and I'd be surprised if you ended up with anything but exactly that. Maybe I'll just drive by Støren and check, it's not exactly far;-)
Should 2x4's be 50x100's? They're called two-by-fours. Or "totom-fire (twoinch-four)" in Norwegian. Even if we're using metric to measure anything else when building a house, 2x4's are still called the same.
Are you kidding? Business? You are aware that musicians create art? They don't do this "business" thing. Create the art, and the money should appear. If not, it's the pirates fault.
I stand corrected! The Pentium Pro came in '95 and the Pentium II came in '97. Both use a P6 core. I guess I've just been around too long. It feels like they came a couple of years ago;-)
Ah, I'm happy I don't live in the US. Here in Norway, you don't have to buy the phone with a plan (although the phone gets subsidised with a plan). Nor do you have to pay for a "data" plan of any kind. You just pay for the data transferred. When this phone gets to Norway (Q4 2007 apparently), I'm gonna buy it unlocked and use it with my cheap-ass plan. Saves me a bucketload of money.
The talk time is 5 hours. The standby time is quite probably way more. My Sony Ericsson (non-smartphone) gets MAX 6 hours of talk time. Why is 5 hours so bad for a smartphone?
Xen requires a P6 or better at this time (available for ~5 years). They hope to add support to ARM and PPC at a later time. KVM, OTOH, depends on brand-spanking new CPUs with virtualization instructions. QEmu just requires some CPU-thingy.
Messages need to be fewer and clearer, not necessarily simpler. Adding more information in a dialogue is just fine, so long as it is properly constructed. Fewer, clearer, and with the option to show detailed information *IF* you are interested in this.
Maybe we need another label saying 'Clicking: Pointing your mouse at an object and depressing the left (or right, if you're left-handed) mouse button and then releasing it'.
Yeah, that's fine. Especially if you're left-handed and your PC hasn't been set up accordingly.
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I am aware of that. Cisco might have lost the right to use it because they trademarked it way back and haven't used it. It appears there are some (sane) laws in place that makes it harder to just trademark a lot of names for the purpose of suing whoever tries to use them. This is what I've heard, do not in any way take it as gospel
If Cisco loses the trademark, what's to stop Apple from using it? And wouldn't the best Apple could hope for in this case be that Cisco has actually lost the right to the trademark, so they don't have any case? There's no chance that iPhone will become generic for a few years anyway, so that's not much to hope for.
As a sidenote, what will Apple do in Norway, where a company called iPhone has the right to the name?
So? My rootkit detects attempts to md5sum my binaries, and makes sure the program returns the expected md5sum ;-)
Except that Cisco just might not have the right to the iPhone trademark after all... So, you suck at being a lawyer.
I don't intend to offend people. It's a simple fact that I observe during my support calls that people can't be bothered to investigate things like this on their own. Things should "just work". I sometimes use windows because things "just work" when I can't be bothered to debug a problem on linux. It's lazyness, not incompetence.
Quite a few *users* have a decent attention span and might even attempt to solve problems themselves. Lusers don't.
Now, did the lawfirm actually choose between windows and any other operating system? Or did they just buy a bunch of PC's from Dell? Buying a PC from (eg.) Dell gives you a Windows PC that people can expect to work with other PC's without much/any effort.
I've had several problems installing Windows XP on "blank" boxes. Eg. getting S-ATA to work so that XP actually boots after being installed. Either requires slipstreaming or loading a driver off a floppy during installation. A google with the motherboard name and windows xp usually has the problem in the first few hits. Anyway, users don't usually install windows. It comes preinstalled. If they need to reinstall, they usually also have a "recovery-cd" with all the drivers necessary included.
I'll pick up on the MythTV thing. I've built myself a Linux MythTV box using a VIA Epia M10000 board. Installing Ubuntu was a no-brainer, since I've done it dozens of times before. Getting all the hardware to work proved a task that took several days. Linux does *not* have "excellent" driver support. Eg. my Hauppauge WinTV PVR USB2 requires downloading a driver, compiling and making sure it'll be loaded on boot. My Hauppauge WinTV PVR 250 requires an IVTV-driver. Same procedure. Now, getting my wireless stick to work (of course without network access to the box, since wireless obviously doesn't work yet). Get driver from zd1211.ath.cx, compile, install. Wow. Now I've gotten my two tuners working, and even have internet. To get mpeg acceleration working, I need to find a driver provided by VIA on a *forum* (viaarena), download, compile, install. Getting the LCD-display in the case working was "easier", just download lcdproc and compile/install. The remote control proved harder. A lot harder. After some investigation, I found the driver, downloaded, compiled, installed. It didn't work! After a lot of googling, I could get the remote control to work. Partly. It didn't work in MythTV. That required another obscure config-file, that I had to make myself. Phew. After spending a couple of days
I have absolutely no problems using the CLI myself. I administer several linux servers and run linux on my desktop and laptop. I don't run any rpm-based distro though. The point is that currently, it's far too advanced to get "normal" stuff working compared to Windows or OSX.
The J. Random Lusers I regularly support hardly have that long attention span. Saying that the End User should use a distribution with local support is fair enough. Except that an OS shouldn't really need this. Why do I hear that Linux is ready for the desktop already, when it's obviously far inferior compared to the two major commercial offerings? What "network effect" are you talking about? Do you mean that windows is so common because your local geek said you should install it? That's complete BS if I ever heard it. Windows comes preinstalled on PC's (with a very, very few honest exceptions). Windows is default. Most people doesn't care as long as they can use it.
That ain't BS. How the FUCK is grandma going to know this?
WTF is that? What does -ivh do? Where'd you get that URL?
Oh really? My windows plays DVD's. An app came with my PC that does that. Fucking moron. The fact that you know exactly what to do to get these codecs doesn't mean that J. Random Luser does. Infact, it's quite unlikely that he will figure it out during his 25 second attention span.
Get over it. Linux sucks when it comes to usability when compared even to windows. There should be *ABSOLUTELY* no need for a user to open a terminal window and type obscure commands to do simple stuff like that.
I keep on thanking god (whoever that is...) a lot on slashdot. Mainly for not living in the Unites States of A.
This braindead piece of legislation won't have the slightest effect on any podcasts I care about.
How, pray tell, is this going to be enforced? The internet is still international. Requiring DRM for podcasts in the USA does what exactly? Force americans to put their podcasts on servers outside the USA? Damn, that's freaking scary.
Pah! That's nothing. You didn't put any limitations on linelength, so a perl one-liner can do pretty damn much ;-)
Really? According to my trusty calculator here, 2"x4" is 50.8mmx101.6mm. Anyway, ask a carpenter about "totom-fir", and I'd be surprised if you ended up with anything but exactly that. Maybe I'll just drive by Støren and check, it's not exactly far ;-)
Should 2x4's be 50x100's?
They're called two-by-fours. Or "totom-fire (twoinch-four)" in Norwegian. Even if we're using metric to measure anything else when building a house, 2x4's are still called the same.
Are you kidding? Business? You are aware that musicians create art? They don't do this "business" thing. Create the art, and the money should appear. If not, it's the pirates fault.
Bull. A friend of mine lives off of playing music live. Maybe your friends just plain suck?
Huh? That doesn't make sense. Copyright doesn't have any relation to whether or not the source is open or not.
OpenSource != FreeAsInBeer.
I stand corrected! The Pentium Pro came in '95 and the Pentium II came in '97. Both use a P6 core. I guess I've just been around too long. It feels like they came a couple of years ago ;-)
Ah, I'm happy I don't live in the US. Here in Norway, you don't have to buy the phone with a plan (although the phone gets subsidised with a plan). Nor do you have to pay for a "data" plan of any kind. You just pay for the data transferred. When this phone gets to Norway (Q4 2007 apparently), I'm gonna buy it unlocked and use it with my cheap-ass plan. Saves me a bucketload of money.
The talk time is 5 hours. The standby time is quite probably way more. My Sony Ericsson (non-smartphone) gets MAX 6 hours of talk time. Why is 5 hours so bad for a smartphone?
Why? Just print out cartridges an mass ;-)
Xen requires a P6 or better at this time (available for ~5 years). They hope to add support to ARM and PPC at a later time. KVM, OTOH, depends on brand-spanking new CPUs with virtualization instructions. QEmu just requires some CPU-thingy.
No, that'd avoid confusion with Sun's KVM: http://java.sun.com/products/cldc/wp/
I've seen a lot. Of those, a lot were caused by this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
You must be new^Wold here...
I'd say it's more like trying to get the water out of titanic by blowing holes in the bottom of the hull. The harder you try, the harder it gets.
Messages need to be fewer and clearer, not necessarily simpler. Adding more information in a dialogue is just fine, so long as it is properly constructed.
Fewer, clearer, and with the option to show detailed information *IF* you are interested in this.
"The probkem is not competency"
You are obviously a programmer.
Yeah, that's fine. Especially if you're left-handed and your PC hasn't been set up accordingly.