Their management is obviously intent on running a once proud company into the ground. One thing nobody seems to talk about is the state of SCO employee morale during all of this chicanery. It's one thing to lose your job to average, run-of-the mill dot-bomb management stupidity, but SCO used to "get it."
I hope that the criminal stupidity of SCO management doesn't result in out of work SCO employees, but I strongly suspect that sooner or later the pigeons will come to roost, and guess who will get shit on?
As enumerated here, there are plenty of ways to lose a trademark.
"Once a trademark is selected, it is important to use it properly. Failure to use a trademark properly can result in loss of the trademark. Ways to lose trademark rights generally fall into three categories. Abandonment occurs when one stops using the mark and has no intent to resume using it. A mark will be lost by actions or failures to take action, that cause the mark to lose its significance. Also, a mark can be lost by becoming *generic* if the public comes to think of a mark as the identity of a particular brand of a product. This is really a subset of actions or inaction causing a mark to lose its significance. For example, some people think that Kleenex brand of facial tissue, Xerox brand photocopy machines, and Band-Aid brand adhesive strips are in danger of falling into this category. "
I'm amazed at the tone of so many comments in this thread. Apple has the balls to go out and do something nobody else has been able to do with nearly as much success. Yet even as Apple adds more artists and focuses more attention on indie labels, people are predicting their demise.
This fits the classic pattern of Apple prophesy: "Sure, the Apple product is great, but we know that sooner or later Microsoft (or someone else) will come out with something that's 75% as good. So why bother with the Apple version? Besides, how could Apple possibly make money on this. Poor Apple, they're doomed!"
Every time Apple has tried something new, the prevailing sentiment has been, "that's wonderful, but it'll never keep Apple alive." Somehow they've managed to stay alive for quite a long time, and they've got a pretty loyal customer base. Maybe Apple management isn't so stupid after all.
Actually, according to Microsoft. This is a typical Microsoft tactic. Take something a competitor already has on on the market, and announce that you're soon going to be coming out with something better, cheaper, faster, yada yada.
But Microsoft's spiffy new DRM doesn't exist yet. We're all debating the merits of something that they might not even be able to bring to market. This reminds me of all the discussion prior to iTunes. Even though the broad strokes of the Apple Music Store were fairly well known, the devil is in the details. It wasn't until the product launched that anyone could really tell how useful it would be.
Microsoft's number one goal here is to thwart Apple's Windows version of the Music Store before it even launches. The best way for them to do that is to float various alternatives, watch the responses, and adjust accordingly.
While this is in keeping with their corporate character, it's also not the sort of approach that leads to a well-integrated user experience. The Apple Music Store was obviously built around making consumers happy, and it shows in all the little details. Microsoft is racing to catch up to Apple in this arena, and at this point the only way they can gain some momentum is by comparing vaporware to the Apple Music Store.
So you'll pay for songs you don't like...
on
PressPlay + Roxio?
·
· Score: 1
but you won't pay for one you do like?
Unlike some of you (and like many of you) I buy a limited amount of CD's, but only from artists that release albums that are (IMHO) mostly good. So if there are 10 songs on a CD and 8 are good, as far as I am concerned its a good CD. If 1/10 are good, then not only am I not going to buy the CD, but I sure as heck am not going to pay anyone for that one song, which was probably forced out by the record label.
I'm confused. If one song of ten on a CD is good, then why would you not pay for the song? If it is priced at one-tenth the price of a ten-CD album, you're actually paying less for that one song than if you purchased a $10 CD in order to listen to the eight songs you liked from that CD.
Plus, if the one song on the CD is good, what does it matter if the record label "forced out" the song. If it's good and you like it, it's worth listening to, right?
As for the manner in which songs are purchased, you don't actually wind up with umpteen $1 purchases. You can either use a shopping cart approach to buy in batches, or you can buy individual songs. Either way, Apple sends you receipts for all the songs you purchased in a given period of time (several hours). I've purchased from the store on several different occasions, and never found the billing process annoying.
I get the feeling you've never tried the Apple Music Store. In many ways, it's one of those things where the combination of many small things done well adds up to a far better end result.
A buck a song may be absurd to you, but I love not having to buy an entire album in order to get the three or four songs I really enjoy. Basically Apple is offering me more choice than the record labels, and I'm not ripping anyone off. It's cheaper for me, the labels make money, the artists get exposure, and I don't have to watch out for spyware or spend all kinds of time searching for the right songs on P2P networks.
As for your comments about the RIAA turning you into a thief, you're not alone in your belief, but the fact that it's "easier to fire up Kazaa" doesn't mean that you've got any moral supremacy over the RIAA.
It seems quaint, I know. But getting outside even for five minutes usually helps me more than a half an hour gaming, reading Slashdot, or doing any other cubicle-based activity.
This line was unintentionally funny to me: Many have no understanding of how or why the internet has developed.
Most people I encounter here in the United States have only a limited grasp of the history of even our own country. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but American society is so future-focused that we have only the most dim recollections of even recent history.
Zentec is dead on here. With all the bitching about moving IT jobs to India, now is not the time to be joking about this stuff. Seriously, the guys in India, Russia, et. al. are working their asses off for far less money than IT professionals make here. Do you think they are spending their time wondering how to goof off?
Maybe the person who modded Zentec as a troll is a high school or college kid laughing at how funny the story is, how clever you are, and how concerned all of us old fogies are about what's happening in IT.
But when real life jumps up and bites you in the ass, it's not so funny. I know a lot of people who are out of work right now and making very painful decisions about their future (i.e. - do I stay in IT or become a shoe salesman so I can keep up with mortgage payments).
There are also 7th graders who can spell and edit better than these guys. It's really embarrassing.
In spite of all these horrible shortcomings, we get all of the good things Slashdot provides for free. It's not perfect. They make mistakes.
Get over it. Anyone can be a sharpshooter, waiting for someone else to screw up. But it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to put something like Slashdot together. Cut the guys some slack, or create your own website and call it Gripeslash.
Judging by the look of the guy to her right, she's probably equally excited! I'm sure nothing turns on one of these "babes" like a conference hall full of drooling male geeks. Whatever they do as their "real" jobs, the Demon Babes sure are good at long-duration forced smiles.
Does anyone actually think that Hollywood is going to listen to a UK academic? Hollywood's ideas about academia come from "A Beautiful Mind" and "Old School". The Hollywood movie machine will keep on doing things the way they have, for better or for worse.
Can you actually imagine Spielberg, Lucas. Bruckheimer, et. al. formulating movies based on the results of a study created by a person who has zero financial interest in movie making, and who was studying British tastes?
Today's Slashdot Effect is going to be the relevancy high point for this study. Not to disparage the Ms. Clayton, or British tastes (I mean, they brought us Monty Python), but academia and reality only sometimes intersect.
"Still I don't think its very likely that owning Sun would interest them."
I agree wholeheartedly. What could Sun bring to the table that would fit in with Apple's strategy? I think Sun is going to have a tough time finding a buyer, if they really are up for sale.
This is interesting. In spite of the length of the article and its emphasis on how Poundstone disproved the notion that puzzle-lovers are inherently more intelligent, the highest modded comments on this page are discussions about the puzzles mentioned in the article.
Perhaps what that says is that it's not so much about intelligence as it is about commonality of interest. If you like puzzles, and you like them enough to be good at them, you'll fit in with the culture at Microsoft (or any other company that attempts to approach creativity in a one question equals one answer format).
Maybe Microsoft HR should be putting up banner ads on Slashdot.;-)
As always, a small group of users are being real asses about the whole thing.
This little dust-up makes me think of the clashes we're always reading about: Microsoft v. Oracle, HP v. Dell, and so on. Slashdot readers are continually ridiculing large corporations for their seemingly stupid behavior.
Yet here we have a perfect example of how even a small group of people can do stupid things. Corporations are just collections of people, with their own ideas, egos and goals.
The next time you want to shout at Google for becoming "The Man" just remember that getting even a small group of people to act with grace and common sense can be extremely difficult.
should be "LawyerMan". Armed with the Pen of Destruction and the Briefcase of Neverending Legal Briefs, he wages war in the shadowy world of corporate dealings.
And he never loses. Well, maybe he loses every so often to make things interesting, but he always wins on appeal;-)
Now, now. Let's not overreact people! This is actually a clever ploy by GW to kick-start the miniature games market. As we all know, tabletop gaming hasn't exactly been growing by leaps and bounds lately. Computer/console games have eaten into their market and cut profits.
So now GW is doing the right thing by making it more difficult for gamers to buy their products. This will grow the market by... uh... wait... by... uh....
Efficiency on the battlefield means one thing and one thing alone. How quickly can you get your enemy out of the fight? Deaths per bullet doesn't matter as long as you have an adequate supply of bullets. Your comparisons to bombs, traps, et. al. are unimportant because I explicitly was talking about bullet-launching weapons.
Deaths per energy expended is a novel creation, but you're way off there anyway. Sniper activities are primarily waiting and watching. A typical sniper team on an infiltration mission could spend as much as 24 to 48 hours just to get set up, then several hours before the shot is taken. Same thing with sniper ambushes. You wait and wait and wait, then get off a few shots and leave. Effective for certain purposes, but not overall the most efficient means of disposing of large numbers of enemy combatants.
Deaths per time spent training the user? Where'd you come up with that? Hand grenades vary widely in their use, depending on the terrain. While I'd agree that grenades are far more effective than machineguns in some situations, they're really only used at close range. Also, they're not really bullet-firing weapons, are they?
As for your comment about wounding versus killing, wounding the enemy removes a larger number of enemy soldiers than killing them does. Evacuation of wounded ties up other soldiers that would otherwise be in the fight. In a modern conflict, that's even more important, as the odds of a recovered combatant returning to the fight are minimized in a rapid conflict.
I agree with your statement about POWs before the machine gun era facing a high probability of extermination. I also agree that machine guns don't help you take POWs so much as guard them.
However your initial statement about the machine gun saving huge numbers still seems flawed to me, as it is offset by the huge effect it has had as a defensive and offensive (let's not forget the machineguns mounted on tanks, APCs, halftracks, aircraft - all very mobile) weapon of destruction.
Whether you agree with the rationale or not, HP has completely restructured their inkjet printer division because they felt their earlier printers were essentially over-engineered. This extended to the ink cartridges as well.
This article looks at it from HP management's point of view.
20,000 British soldiers died at the hands of German Maxim machineguns on the first day of the Battle of the Somme in WWI.
The trench warfare of WWI came about in large part because of the tremendous defensive power of the machinegun. Maneuver warfare, which might have shortened the war considerably, was impossible because no matter how much you "softened up" the enemy with artillery, machineguns would still be there to mow you down. The conditions in the trenches contributed to the death of at least twice as many soldiers as did enemy bullets.
If you don't consider the Gatling Gun to be a "true machinegun", then the surrender of 12,000 Union troops at Harper's Ferry during the American Civil War seems to invalidate the claim that generals couldn't accept surrender.
If you do consider the Gatling Gun to be a machinegun, then you could just go back a bit further, to 1805, when Napoleon's Grande Armee captured 30,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers at Austerlitz. No machine guns, Gatling Guns, or anything even close at the scene of that surrender, yet somehow it happened.
I could go on and on with examples, but the point is that soldiers did surrender before the advent of the machine gun. The machine gun IS a killing device. It kills more efficiently than any other form of bullet-launcher.
I don't consider machine guns to be evil, because I was often damned happy to have two M60s at my disposal as a platoon leader. But let's not pretend that machineguns have saved more lives than "penicillian".
Slashdot Mirror
I hope that the criminal stupidity of SCO management doesn't result in out of work SCO employees, but I strongly suspect that sooner or later the pigeons will come to roost, and guess who will get shit on?
"Once a trademark is selected, it is important to use it properly. Failure to use a trademark properly can result in loss of the trademark. Ways to lose trademark rights generally fall into three categories. Abandonment occurs when one stops using the mark and has no intent to resume using it. A mark will be lost by actions or failures to take action, that cause the mark to lose its significance. Also, a mark can be lost by becoming *generic* if the public comes to think of a mark as the identity of a particular brand of a product. This is really a subset of actions or inaction causing a mark to lose its significance. For example, some people think that Kleenex brand of facial tissue, Xerox brand photocopy machines, and Band-Aid brand adhesive strips are in danger of falling into this category. "
This fits the classic pattern of Apple prophesy: "Sure, the Apple product is great, but we know that sooner or later Microsoft (or someone else) will come out with something that's 75% as good. So why bother with the Apple version? Besides, how could Apple possibly make money on this. Poor Apple, they're doomed!"
Every time Apple has tried something new, the prevailing sentiment has been, "that's wonderful, but it'll never keep Apple alive." Somehow they've managed to stay alive for quite a long time, and they've got a pretty loyal customer base. Maybe Apple management isn't so stupid after all.
But Microsoft's spiffy new DRM doesn't exist yet. We're all debating the merits of something that they might not even be able to bring to market. This reminds me of all the discussion prior to iTunes. Even though the broad strokes of the Apple Music Store were fairly well known, the devil is in the details. It wasn't until the product launched that anyone could really tell how useful it would be.
Microsoft's number one goal here is to thwart Apple's Windows version of the Music Store before it even launches. The best way for them to do that is to float various alternatives, watch the responses, and adjust accordingly.
While this is in keeping with their corporate character, it's also not the sort of approach that leads to a well-integrated user experience. The Apple Music Store was obviously built around making consumers happy, and it shows in all the little details. Microsoft is racing to catch up to Apple in this arena, and at this point the only way they can gain some momentum is by comparing vaporware to the Apple Music Store.
Unlike some of you (and like many of you) I buy a limited amount of CD's, but only from artists that release albums that are (IMHO) mostly good. So if there are 10 songs on a CD and 8 are good, as far as I am concerned its a good CD. If 1/10 are good, then not only am I not going to buy the CD, but I sure as heck am not going to pay anyone for that one song, which was probably forced out by the record label.
I'm confused. If one song of ten on a CD is good, then why would you not pay for the song? If it is priced at one-tenth the price of a ten-CD album, you're actually paying less for that one song than if you purchased a $10 CD in order to listen to the eight songs you liked from that CD.
Plus, if the one song on the CD is good, what does it matter if the record label "forced out" the song. If it's good and you like it, it's worth listening to, right?
As for the manner in which songs are purchased, you don't actually wind up with umpteen $1 purchases. You can either use a shopping cart approach to buy in batches, or you can buy individual songs. Either way, Apple sends you receipts for all the songs you purchased in a given period of time (several hours). I've purchased from the store on several different occasions, and never found the billing process annoying.
I get the feeling you've never tried the Apple Music Store. In many ways, it's one of those things where the combination of many small things done well adds up to a far better end result.
A buck a song may be absurd to you, but I love not having to buy an entire album in order to get the three or four songs I really enjoy. Basically Apple is offering me more choice than the record labels, and I'm not ripping anyone off. It's cheaper for me, the labels make money, the artists get exposure, and I don't have to watch out for spyware or spend all kinds of time searching for the right songs on P2P networks.
As for your comments about the RIAA turning you into a thief, you're not alone in your belief, but the fact that it's "easier to fire up Kazaa" doesn't mean that you've got any moral supremacy over the RIAA.
Most people I encounter here in the United States have only a limited grasp of the history of even our own country. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but American society is so future-focused that we have only the most dim recollections of even recent history.
Maybe the person who modded Zentec as a troll is a high school or college kid laughing at how funny the story is, how clever you are, and how concerned all of us old fogies are about what's happening in IT.
But when real life jumps up and bites you in the ass, it's not so funny. I know a lot of people who are out of work right now and making very painful decisions about their future (i.e. - do I stay in IT or become a shoe salesman so I can keep up with mortgage payments).
There are also 7th graders who can spell and edit better than these guys. It's really embarrassing.
In spite of all these horrible shortcomings, we get all of the good things Slashdot provides for free. It's not perfect. They make mistakes.
Get over it. Anyone can be a sharpshooter, waiting for someone else to screw up. But it takes a lot of hard work and dedication to put something like Slashdot together. Cut the guys some slack, or create your own website and call it Gripeslash.
Can you actually imagine Spielberg, Lucas. Bruckheimer, et. al. formulating movies based on the results of a study created by a person who has zero financial interest in movie making, and who was studying British tastes?
Today's Slashdot Effect is going to be the relevancy high point for this study. Not to disparage the Ms. Clayton, or British tastes (I mean, they brought us Monty Python), but academia and reality only sometimes intersect.
I agree wholeheartedly. What could Sun bring to the table that would fit in with Apple's strategy? I think Sun is going to have a tough time finding a buyer, if they really are up for sale.
Now where did I put my wooden teeth... ?
Perhaps what that says is that it's not so much about intelligence as it is about commonality of interest. If you like puzzles, and you like them enough to be good at them, you'll fit in with the culture at Microsoft (or any other company that attempts to approach creativity in a one question equals one answer format).
Maybe Microsoft HR should be putting up banner ads on Slashdot. ;-)
This little dust-up makes me think of the clashes we're always reading about: Microsoft v. Oracle, HP v. Dell, and so on. Slashdot readers are continually ridiculing large corporations for their seemingly stupid behavior.
Yet here we have a perfect example of how even a small group of people can do stupid things. Corporations are just collections of people, with their own ideas, egos and goals.
The next time you want to shout at Google for becoming "The Man" just remember that getting even a small group of people to act with grace and common sense can be extremely difficult.
"Ah, remember when MSN Man foiled the BSDaemon. That sure was a great issue!"
Show me the reports and I'll believe this "leaps and bounds" nonsense.
And he never loses. Well, maybe he loses every so often to make things interesting, but he always wins on appeal ;-)
So now GW is doing the right thing by making it more difficult for gamers to buy their products. This will grow the market by... uh... wait... by... uh... .
I assume you mean "arguments."
Efficiency on the battlefield means one thing and one thing alone. How quickly can you get your enemy out of the fight? Deaths per bullet doesn't matter as long as you have an adequate supply of bullets. Your comparisons to bombs, traps, et. al. are unimportant because I explicitly was talking about bullet-launching weapons.
Deaths per energy expended is a novel creation, but you're way off there anyway. Sniper activities are primarily waiting and watching. A typical sniper team on an infiltration mission could spend as much as 24 to 48 hours just to get set up, then several hours before the shot is taken. Same thing with sniper ambushes. You wait and wait and wait, then get off a few shots and leave. Effective for certain purposes, but not overall the most efficient means of disposing of large numbers of enemy combatants.
Deaths per time spent training the user? Where'd you come up with that? Hand grenades vary widely in their use, depending on the terrain. While I'd agree that grenades are far more effective than machineguns in some situations, they're really only used at close range. Also, they're not really bullet-firing weapons, are they?
As for your comment about wounding versus killing, wounding the enemy removes a larger number of enemy soldiers than killing them does. Evacuation of wounded ties up other soldiers that would otherwise be in the fight. In a modern conflict, that's even more important, as the odds of a recovered combatant returning to the fight are minimized in a rapid conflict.
I agree with your statement about POWs before the machine gun era facing a high probability of extermination. I also agree that machine guns don't help you take POWs so much as guard them.
However your initial statement about the machine gun saving huge numbers still seems flawed to me, as it is offset by the huge effect it has had as a defensive and offensive (let's not forget the machineguns mounted on tanks, APCs, halftracks, aircraft - all very mobile) weapon of destruction.
This article looks at it from HP management's point of view.
The trench warfare of WWI came about in large part because of the tremendous defensive power of the machinegun. Maneuver warfare, which might have shortened the war considerably, was impossible because no matter how much you "softened up" the enemy with artillery, machineguns would still be there to mow you down. The conditions in the trenches contributed to the death of at least twice as many soldiers as did enemy bullets.
If you don't consider the Gatling Gun to be a "true machinegun", then the surrender of 12,000 Union troops at Harper's Ferry during the American Civil War seems to invalidate the claim that generals couldn't accept surrender.
If you do consider the Gatling Gun to be a machinegun, then you could just go back a bit further, to 1805, when Napoleon's Grande Armee captured 30,000 Prussian and Russian soldiers at Austerlitz. No machine guns, Gatling Guns, or anything even close at the scene of that surrender, yet somehow it happened.
I could go on and on with examples, but the point is that soldiers did surrender before the advent of the machine gun. The machine gun IS a killing device. It kills more efficiently than any other form of bullet-launcher.
I don't consider machine guns to be evil, because I was often damned happy to have two M60s at my disposal as a platoon leader. But let's not pretend that machineguns have saved more lives than "penicillian".