Slashback: Disputes, Clones, Audio 343
Needed: One referee. Quixotic1 writes "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
I bet there's money to be made if someone can come up with cheaper means of settling such disputes.
Store in the ammunition box. leonbrooks writes "Recently, images from a presentation by Microsoft Belgium were published on the web. The presentation made some startling (for Microsoft) concessions to Open Source, then set about FUDding the GPL into the ground. I whacked together a point-by-point answer to the anti-GPL FUD. Happy linking ..."
Tithe 10 percent. Luke Francl writes "Inspired by Lawrence Lessig's OSCON remarks, Lessig's Challenge is a way for people concerned by the attempts by the entertainment industry to close off the net to fight back. The challenge is to spend more on those who fight for the open network than you do on its enemies. Since it appeared on Slashdot last month, 10 people have joined me and we've raised over $2300 for good causes (organizations like the EFF, the ACLU, the FSF, along with free software/open source programmers and online artists). And that's just the ones I know about! Cory Doctorow wrote to tell me that many people were inspired by the challenge to join the EFF. ... Check out the list of suggested recipients."
Like obsidian, and coal, and dirt ... salimfadhley writes "Today BBC Radio 4 began serialising Phillip Pullman's popular "Dark Materials" trilogy. The beeb will be broadcasting one episode per week, with a RA stream of the latest episode that can be found on the promotional site. You can find "The Golden Compass" (called "Northern Lights" in Europe) on the website now. This stream will be replaced with episode 2 next Saturday.
The Dark Materials series was originally intended as children's fiction, however owing to excellent storytelling and a significantly darker theme than Harry Potter, has done rather well in U.S. and UK adult market.
The central premise of the series is that God is evil, a celestial impostor who pretends to have created the universe and who so intensely hates flesh and blood that he wants people to live a repressed, joyless existence. Unsurprisingly this theme has upset fundamentalist Christians."
Unfamiliar? Read the Slashdot review of the trilogy.
The clones I meet are mostly in pairs. PizzaFace writes "The Washington Post reports that the Raelian clone claim echoes a hoax of 25 years ago. And while we have better technology now for testing the claim quickly, there is still room for deception, and some people don't trust the science (and pseudoscience) reporter the Raelians appointed to test their claim."
Regarding the domain name (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regarding the domain name (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. As long as they aren't using the domain name with specific intent to dilute your trademark, you're pretty much SOL (or should be) with regard to getting the domain name from them. They got it first, so it's theirs.
Re:Regarding the domain name (Score:2)
Re:Regarding the domain name (Score:4, Insightful)
The "law" isn't some sort of perfect standard. It's more of a minimal safeguard when one or both parties in a dispute are negotiating in bad faith.
I'd rather see the company admit that it has no ethical claim to the domain name, and drop the issue.
Re:Regarding the domain name (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Regarding the domain name (Score:2)
This is all part of legal issues arising out of a multimillion-dollar damage claim in California from the owner of the Web site sex.com.
The ruling could lead to numerous lawsuits against domain registries, particularly the largest one, Network Solutions Inc., based in Mountain View. If the court decides a domain name (a website name) is property that can be converted, NSI, as the custodian of domain names, can be held responsible for allowing a wrongful transfer even if it wasn't at fault.
Cheaper solution (Score:4, Funny)
Least costly solution regarding the domain name (Score:3, Insightful)
Its not as if you are going to lose custom over it as you said you are a small business.
Microsoft Belgum mirror is still up. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Microsoft Belgum mirror is still up. (Score:2)
The more the entertainment industry fights this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The more the entertainment industry fights this (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, and since I never made this obvious... I not only don't mind the idea of alternate Meta's, I think it would be good to have several distinct/seperate Meta's in existence. So if you think you have what it takes, build your own!
Re:The more the entertainment industry fights this (Score:2)
Re:The more the entertainment industry fights this (Score:3, Interesting)
#1 We need wires, cables, fibers. Since these cost money, and even if they didn't, they're easy to trace, I propose another option. We use VPN tunnels. The flavor isn't so important, ipsec, ptpp, OpenVPN... even all of them together.
#2 Users don't want to be second class citizens. That means a static IP. That means no restrictions on what services they can offer, and none on the services they might want to use... they want to be true peers. The 10.x.x.x offers 16 million IPs, less some overhead. More than enough room for growth, especially if we start *real* planning for IPv6 migration(instead of paying lip service).
#3 Users want privacy, they want protection. This one was tough... and I can't honestly say I've solved it. But I've come damn close, and I continue to make progress. Since it is impossible to communicate with someone without knowing their identity, and thusly holding them vulnerable. In a routed enviroment though, this changes just *slightly*.
If you communicate with only 3 hosts directly, can you know the identity of other hosts? Well, you could force one of those 3 administrators (or the feds could, anyway) to reveal identities.
Unless, those 3 administrators were in foreign countries. And if they in turn, only knew the identities of 2 other individuals besides yourself? What if we trained all new "recruits" to never reveal the identity of their 3 partners, even to close buddies/family/lovers?
Encrypted packet tunnels, with endpoints outside of any single goverment's jurisdiction. Practical, if not perfect, anonymity.
Oh, and free domain names. A network where projects like bnetd wouldn't have any troubles. A way to weed out the AOLers, and all the riffraff. Email accounts where you wouldn't get any spam.
Guys, help me figure this out... it's worth doing.
Arbitration solution. (Score:5, Insightful)
> "A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute. There was a query last week about inexpensive alternatives to the $1000+ UDRP arbiters. The discussion ended up revolving around whether the author had a valid claim or not, but I'd still like to know -- are there inexpensive alternatives?"
Here's a cheap, effective solution: deal with it. The current owner has as much right to it as you do (or more, since ownership is 9/10 of the law).
Try
Re:Arbitration solution. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Arbitration solution. (Score:2, Insightful)
--me naked? [slashdot.org]
Re:Arbitration solution. (Score:2)
.INT is for treaty orgs. Use .ORG (Score:3, Informative)
If you want worldwide you should use .INT that is what it was set aside for.
The top-level domain for international organizations is .ORG. The .INT TLD [iana.org] is designed for international treaty organizations such as ISO, WTO, WIPO, etc.
There is no .com.us (Score:2)
COM refers to .com.us domains.
www.netscape.com.us could not be found. Please check the name and try again. [netscape.com.us]
vs.
Netscape Network [netscape.com]
blizzard job (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:blizzard job (Score:2, Insightful)
I dunno about that. Lots of people round here have misplaced hatred for Blizzard.
As for your off-topic moderation, I'm a little annoyed by that. I mean seriously, where are you supposed to post about something you just saw? I wonder if the guy who posted "oh shit! A plane just hit the WTC!" got modded down because he was in the "See, we told you guys MS was evil" article.
Oh well, I'll get modded down too. Yay.
Re:blizzard job (Score:2, Offtopic)
"See? We told you guys MS was evil."
Re:blizzard job (Score:2)
Re:blizzard job (Score:3, Funny)
As well as hundreds of thousands of the worst possible applicants?
"R0x0r!!! I installed Mandrake on my mom's old Dell! I'm perfect for the job!!!"
Re:blizzard job - OT (Score:2, Interesting)
a.) Probably half of the visitors here use ad blockers (or... subscribe).
b.) A decent portion of the other half are probably underage or don't have the experience asked for by the job requirements (they really aren't requiring *that* much).
c.) Everyone that's left likes working on BNETD too much or thinks Blizzard 'jumped the shark' or something like that... OR realizes that times are tough and quitting your already not terrible job to go work for a videogame company may not be the best decision you make this year.
But I dunno. It might be worth it to see what kind of wacky race they decide to include in Warcraft 4.
Relevant link [blizzard.com]
Re:blizzard job (Score:2)
So
Re:blizzard job (Score:2)
It is after all News for Nerds, not Linux News.
Raelians (Score:3, Funny)
That's the image they project, at least IMO. Never mind the crackpot spiel. They might as well sell tinfoil mind protectors.
Re:Raelians (Score:2, Funny)
Gnostic Heresey (Score:4, Interesting)
In the early days of Christianity, there were three major sects--the Christians, the Jews, and the Gnostics. The Jews were, well, jewish folk who lived as jews but thought that Jesus was the Messiah (sorta like "Jews for Jesus.") The Christians were the to-the-lions folks we all know and love, and the Gnostics--well, the gnostics are why the strong central church formed, and why the Inquisition was so harsh.
The Gnostic Heresy, as I understand it:
There was a God, and Jesus Christ was his living son--but God_the_Creator is not God-the-burning-bush-that-spoke-to-moses. Sometime after creation, a spirit called the Demiurge usurped control over creation, lied to the jews, and pretty much acted the way Christians might imagine "Satan" acting.
The Demiurge created flesh, and so flesh is flawed, and all of humanity is doomed to damnation, save for the accidental banishment from heaven of the goddess/archangel Sophia, who apparantly had no small part in Jesus Christ showing up and mascarading as a person for so many years.
The Gnosic Heresy, btw, was propagated by a series of "revelations" about the faith, sort of like the popular image of how a witch's coven is organized. It was stamped out rather freverently in the early days of Christianity, and hasn't been a going concern as a religion for a great many years.
Re: Gnostic Heresey (Score:2)
> The premise of the Dark Materials triology sounds a LOT like the root of the Gnostic Heresey
<quibble>Gnosticism [wikipedia.org] is only a "heresy" from the POV of competing sects</quibble>
Yes, the brief summary does sound like a gnostic take on things. The Wikipedia link gives more stories purportedly based on gnosticism, though I don't immediately see how Twelve Monkeys fits that mold.
> The Gnostic Heresy, as I understand it:
Yes, more or less, except that there was actually a great deal of diversity to the movement, and in fact some of it lay outside Christianity altogether. (FWIW, the Revelation attributed to St. John has been analyzed as a Jewish Gnostic tract.)
> The Gnosic Heresy, btw, was propagated by a series of "revelations" about the faith, sort of like the popular image of how a witch's coven is organized.
<quibble>You mean kind sort of like all religious sects get started -- saving only those that are outright hoaxes.</quibble>
But the important thing is that gnosis (Greek for "knowledge") was supposed to be a direct revelational knowledge of God.
Ultimately that's probably why the Gnostic tradition died out, because the core belief was not amenable to any imposition of orthodoxy that would have allowed it to fight back as an unfragmented sect when the increasingly orthodox Christianity-as-we-know it decided they needed to quash Gnosticism. (IIRC, Gnosticism was the motivation behind the calling of the Council that voted on which books would be in the Bible-as-we-know it.)
> It was stamped out rather freverently in the early days of Christianity, and hasn't been a going concern as a religion for a great many years.
As were most of the early forms of Christianity, including the "primitive Christianity" described in the New Testament.
Re:Gnostic Heresey (Score:2)
Let me toss a competing perspective your way.
Alternately, the gnostic groups treasured their secret knowledge so much that they didn't share it. Instead, like the Masons or Scientology or any number of other similar religions, they had carried out secret ceremonies and had secret teachings only for the properly initiated and 'worthy'. This was kind of cool, but ultimately, smart people didn't want to join a religion where divine revelation was always subject to change or control or new revelation by the people at the top who handed out divine knowledge piecemeal to the people of their choice.
In contrast, the folks in charge of what became known as Orthodoxy conducted meetings (councils) to come to agreement on what the standard accepted revelatory texts (and doctrines) were, and those texts were propagated, "open source style", to the curious (at least for a while; absent any competition, the Roman Catholics lapsed on that for quite a time.) Secret, hidden teachings were shunned by the 'orthodox' church and became the hallmark of people trying to add, remove or twist the teachings of the Old and New Testament canons.
It's probably true that the Orthodox attempted to destroy books they viewed as leading to the eternal damnation of others, (note also that the Gnostics chose to protect a lot of their secret wisdom by conveying it verbally, no book destruction necessary.) I'd also agree that it seems likely that the hierarchical structure of the church (e.g. bishops ruling over multiple churches) grew in importance as that structure proved valuable in stomping out Gnostic competitors who were more fragmented and lacked similar unity.
But it's not fair to say that only the Orthodox pursued "power structure"s while Gnostics abstained; each had their own. Orthodoxy's hierarchical power structure was its relationships within and among churches, while Gnostic's hierarchical power was based on its select distribution of knowledge.
The gnostics shot themselves in the foot their "we are holders of the 'gnosis', the secret knowledge... we can't tell you until you're 'enlightened'" approach. The open knowledge infrastructure won out. And since then that approach has proved useful for everything from science to, dare I say it?, open source.
--LP, who doesn't claim to be an expert on the Gnostics, but has at least read "The Gnostic Gospels"
"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:5, Insightful)
[from the link:] > Known in the OSS community as a "viral" licence.
As the author points out, and as others of us have stated repeatedly: the GPL isn't viral, it's recursive. I've got lots of non-GPL software on my home system, and none of it has ever "caught" the GPL.
The simple rule is: if A is GPL'd and B is derived from A, then B is GPL'd. The rule is "recursive" or "transitive", but not "viral". The OSS community would do itself a favor to quit calling it "viral". (Though in fact the term seems to be more common among complainers than among GPLers, despite what the quoted MS document says.)
Hint to Microsoft: if you don't want to GPL your software, don't derive it from GPL'd software. It's as simple as that -- at least for people who aren't being obtuse willfully.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's say that the FSF has an annurism, and releases a VB workalike, with common controls and librarys and whatnot, and releases the whole sheebang with the GPL.
Anyone using these common controls or libraries has to now use the GPL.
Now, lets move to something else. Lets say that the government takes Nvidia to court for monopolizing the temporal card market with the amazing 4D standard library, SLIDE, which everyone uses for 4D images. Now, let's say that the FSF weighs in on this case, and gets SLIDE GPL'd. All of a sudden, anyone wanting to use SLIDE has no choice but to use the GPL, or an effectively identical license.
The GPL's "viral" nature propagates through the only way "code flesh" is ever exchanged--through re-use of components. The FSF has set up a "free or nothing" proposition with the GPL--which understandibly makes MS rather unfriendly towards them.
Here's a thought for you: The Open Gaming License is based on the GPL, but it has one important difference: you need to keep the actual derivations open and licensed, but not the rest of the game that wasn't derived from the OGL'd game at all.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2, Informative)
Re: "Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Let's say that the FSF has an annurism, and releases a VB workalike, with common controls and librarys and whatnot, and releases the whole sheebang with the GPL. Anyone using these common controls or libraries has to now use the GPL.
(a) No one has any inherent right to use the FSF's code. If they do that and you don't like the license, use something else.
(b) In practice the libraries would more likely be placed under the LGPL, so that you could use the widgets in your owns software without GPLing it.
[snip similarly bogus example]
> The GPL's "viral" nature propagates through the only way "code flesh" is ever exchanged--through re-use of components.
No, it propagates through the re-use of GPL'd components in a certain manner. There are lots of LGPL'd components out there that you can reuse without having to GPL your own code. And if you want to use something in a way that would require you to GPL your own work: deal with it.
"Don't like, don't use." You don't have any inherent rights to it; you have exactly the rights spelled out in the license.
> Here's a thought for you: The Open Gaming License is based on the GPL, but it has one important difference: you need to keep the actual derivations open and licensed, but not the rest of the game that wasn't derived from the OGL'd game at all.
Good for them. Except that happens to be completely irrelevant to the point under discussion. The GPL isn't going to "infect" anything, and it isn't going to "make" anyone GPL their product. "Don't like, don't use."
Microsoft is just scared shitless because in about 4 years the immense body of GPL'd code has gone from "under the radar" to "being adopted as a Microsoft replacement in high profile situations". They rightly conclude that they can't stand another four years of the same trend, so they latch on to the term that best misrepresents the nature of the GPL for their purposes.
But if you think the GPL is "viral", you need to read the GPL for comprehension.
Re: "Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2, Informative)
In this case, the company should have noticed beforehand, and then fired and sued the developer and the manager(s) too for incompetence, conspiracy against the company, lying to superiors, and whatever else their lawyers can come up with.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2)
This is obtuse. (Score:2)
That would only be the case for binaries that have been linked to the GPL libraries. Binaries linked to the MS libraries would be governed by the terms and conditions attached to those.
The fact the source in question can be linked to either is irrelevant. The GPL is intended to prevent the distribution of closed binaries that need GPLed components to run. The GPL would only cover a binary from that code that is linked to the GPL library. It would not cover a binary linked to the MS library. However, If it was the other way around and the code in question was GPLed at the outset and linked to the MS library the resulting binary would probably be illegal to distribute. The license to the MS library is probably incompatible with the GPL.
The GPL has no legal ability to "capture" code that has not been licensed or derived from GPL licenced code in the first place. The FSF can NOT steal MS or anybody's else code by developing a workalike to proprietary vendor's library then using that to claim ownership of source that vendor licensed under his own terms. If your scenario is true, then why couldn't MS develop say a readline workalike; license it under the most draconian terms possible and then claim ownership of every shred of code that is linked to GPL readline 99.99 percent of the time? The answer is they can't. I don't doubt that MS is looking for ways to lawyer OSS out of existence but this isn't one of them.
It is the deliberate act of putting code through a linker that makes it a derivative work of the code being linked to. The GPL has no ability to miracle code in an MS vault through a linker running on a Linux system in Stallman's office. I seriously doubt vendors of proprietary development libraries and tools are gung ho to cut the ground from under their own feet.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:4, Insightful)
Neither of your suggestions work. "Recursive" would mean that the GPL is explained in terms of the GPL. It is not. Transitivity is a property of relations as in: "if a is related to b and b is related to c then a is related to c". Since the GPL is not a relation it cannot be transitive.
If you want to use a scientific analogy I suggest "dominant": If a program combines GPL'd code with other code, then the entire program is GPL'd.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:3, Interesting)
No; if I combine GPL code with (for example) Apache code, the result isn't GPL -- the result is undistributable.
I'd say that the most appropriate description of GPL is "deliberately incompatible".
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Recursive" would mean that the GPL is explained in terms of the GPL. It is not.
This explains SO much of the confusion surrounding this license
Re: "Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:4, Interesting)
> Neither of your suggestions work.
Sure they do.
> "Recursive" would mean that the GPL is explained in terms of the GPL.
"Recursive" has uses other than recursive definitions. In this case "recursive" describes the operation of the GPL. The base cases are software that is written from scratch but placed under the GPL anyway.
(OK, now that I think on it perhaps I should say "inductive" rather than "recursive", because the GPL, like induction, starts at some base case and goes on forever from there, whereas recursion starts at some arbitrary point and works toward a base case. nit = picked)
> Transitivity is a property of relations as in: "if a is related to b and b is related to c then a is related to c". Since the GPL is not a relation it cannot be transitive.
No, the GPL isn't a relation, but the transitive property is in fact a property of GPL'd code (barring license violations). Substitute "derived from" for your "related to" in your example, and you'll see why. (Notice that "derived from" is a relation.)
More to the point, "viral" is not a property of GPL'd code -- at least not by virtue of being GPL'd.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2)
Not "Viral", more like "Entropic" (Score:3, Informative)
single line of proprietary code, the result is GPL.
If you take ten million lines of proprietary code and
add a single line of GPL code, the result is still GPL.
Utilizing GPL code is thermodynamically irreversable,
just like utilizing fire. Sometimes it makes economic
sense to do so, sometimes not.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2)
I think that "hereditary" is probably closer to what you mean. If your code is descended from GPLed code, it too must be GPLed. That is, IMO, much closer to the actual situation. Of course that doesn't sound as bad, so if you're Microsoft (or a BSD license woofer, for that matter) you'll use viral to make it sound unpleasant.
Re:"Viral" GPL FUD. (Score:2)
Terms a) and b) are used in mathematics. Term c) does not exist in mathematics.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
It's like saying to someone's comment "an electron is not 'cool', it's negative".
Cloning again (Score:2, Informative)
Dark Materials (Score:2)
Re:Dark Materials (Score:3, Interesting)
If a story advocates that there is a powerfull being that is destroying peoples lives, thats good?
Here is an idea, treat them like fiction, and raise your daughter to think for herself.
Re:Dark Materials (Score:2)
If a story advocates that there is a powerfull being that is destroying peoples lives, thats good?
No, if a story is a thinly veiled retelling of christian mythology with the aim of recruiting children, it's bad. If a story advocates that there might be a God, that's a part of the story. As the Top Ten Reasons Beer Is Better Than Jesus list says, "it's illegal to push beer on children that are too young to think for themselves."
Here is an idea, treat them like fiction, and raise your daughter to think for herself.
Fiction with an axe to grind is the worst thing for kids to read. They're better off reading the Bible as the Bible, and childrens books that aren't about indoctrination.
Wrinkle In Time: shot by both sides... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, whatever Christianity there is in that book is of a more Unitarian-Universalist bent...not only Jesus is cited as a fighter against The Shadow, but Gandhi and Buddha too. Kindly old ladies who befriend Margaret and are identified as witches doesn't help matters either. And various alien creatures for good measure.
It was one of my favorite books in childhood. Space travel, mysticism, a big gross brain running a planet...cool stuff for someone whose parents wanted to cram Nancy Drew down her throat.
That book would make a great movie...I'd love to see one of the big Anime houses like Ghibli or Gainax or the people who did Escaflowne tackle it. Actually it wouldn't be a bad bit of material for Brad Bird (director of "Iron Giant") at Pixar. Imagine an animated Ixchel! That would be great!
Re:Dark Materials (Score:2)
So, Christian allegory is bad, Christian heresy is good?
(Both of whom are excellent writers, but I'm too old to be suckered into their self-destructive superstitions.)
This part is what has me confused, I think: if Lewis and L'Engle are superstitious, how is Pullman's heresy non-superstitious? It all seems very illogical to me.
L'Engle's allegory is veiled enough that I had never really associated her books with Christianity. I've bought three of her books for my kids recently. I'll have to go back and see if they look Christian to me now that I'm looking for it.
Re:Dark Materials (Score:2, Funny)
I'll admit Ray Harryhausen is a legend in the animation business, and Tom Baker (the best Doctor Who of all time) playing the villian was a huge bonus. And I don't so much mind these references to Black Magic, demons, incantation and the like. Not to mention belly dancing [fortunecity.com]...
But this Allah stuff? It wouldn't be prudent for them to grow up without a rabid xenophobic view of everyone else's beliefs.
With the resurgance of nationalism, I should be able to find something that shows Arabs as Godless heathen terrorists. Any American "action film" should do, unless they've been digitally editing stuff out, like in Back to the Future.
It's satire, for crying out loud!
Re:Dark Materials (Score:3, Informative)
The books draw on various religious beliefs to populate plot elements (including pseudo-Gnostic views, Christianity, and "secular" physics), but also draws on some pagan mythology, and a healthy dose of just good old made-up stuff.
There's a somewhat anti-Church theme in there as well, and definitely an anti-Authority theme.
It's a fun read. I'd recommend it. (I'd also recommend Chronicles of Narnia for the entertainment value, though. If your kids aren't exposed to it, they won't build up the antibodies)...
Re:Dark Materials (Score:3, Informative)
Definitely worth checking out, however get the UK editions if you can. The US edition (at least the one I have) is missing the quotations at the beginning of each chapter (Milton, that sort of thing). It's also been very badly translated into US English - spelling changes are fine, but when you get English characters in a parallel England giving "golden dollars" to each other it not only detracts from the scene he's painting but insults the intelligence of the reader. (The original text is "golden crowns"). There are a lot of examples of this kind of thing and once you've started to spot them they break the flow of the text horribly.
Re:Dark Materials (Score:4, Insightful)
Try reading what he said. He didn't say that he had forbidden his daughter from reading the books, just that he had declined to give them to her. Just as the daugher has a right to choose which books she wants to read, the father has a right (and obligation, IMO) to exercise his judgment about which books he wants to give her. My niece is about that age, and I support her right to read Mein Kampf if that's what she really wants to do. But when it came time to buy her a Christmas present, I decided that I had better things to spend my money on and bought her Cardcaptor Sakura instead.
Re:Dark Materials (Score:2)
Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure what frustrates me more: the fact that the media has been hyping the Raelians' claim of a human clone without any evidence whatsoever, or the fact that the media even seems to realize that they're being silly reporting this BUT DO IT ANYHOW! If the media had any self-respect, they would have learned from the previous hoax and not be covering this new Raelian claim so much. However, they seem perfectly content to give this UFO cult a world stage to prance around on. It's almost as though the media is a semi-willing participant in this (what I assume will be a) clone fraud. Oh sure, they claim they're just reporting "important news". But let's face it: it's really just a bunch of UFO nuts who have made an incredible claim without any evidence whatsoever. This is news? I think the media is just happy to cover this because they know they can milk this for awhile regardless of whether the story is true or not. So sad that our media is willing to whore themselves like this just to entertain the masses.
GMD
Re:Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:2)
Education has little to do with whether or not you get sucked into a cult. so if the right people where involved and spent the money, this could happen. I doubt it, but it is possible. Beside, how fun will it be when it's disproven and they get to run the following story:
"Poor media conclomorate suckered by greedy lying cult to report false story"
Re:They never will admit it. (Score:2)
Re:They never will admit it. (Score:2)
Re:Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want truth, facts and knowledge, you go to non-profit organizations, public broadcasting and "alternative" media. Don't watch Crossfire. Don't watch Connie Chung. Don't watch NBC, CBS or ABC. And for God's sake, don't even think about watching Fox News. Those are entertainment news programs.
I will say one thing, though. Print media still does a good job in my opinion, because they actually spend time researching their stories. Sitting down and reading through a whole newspaper, whether it's the New York Times, USA Today or the Wall Street Journal, can be a pretty good experience.
Re:Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:2)
(Well, reading a newspaper (indeed, following the news at all any more) is about as good of an experience as having open-heart surgery without anesthetic while being forced to read all -1 posts here on
Re:Media a semi-willing participant in clone fraud (Score:2)
If the story is true, you can only milk it once.
If the story is false, you can milk it twice: once to hype it up, and the second time to tear it down.
I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
The GPL has some serious issues. While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
At the beginning of 2002 I had a BOF at a conference and the topic was Open Source. It was well attended about 40 people, considering it was late at night. But we discussed the issue for a couple of hours. And the conclusion we came on is that Open Source is good for everybody, but the developer.
Open Source is good for the consultant, good for the book author of "professional" books, good for hardware manufacturers, etc. But licenses like the GPL are not good for the developers who actually write the code. Those people cannot get paid what they are due. This is what closed source did.
And we concluded that Open Source can continue so long as as investment is made into the Open Source. But when people cut corners they so easily say, "Ah let the other person take care of that". Basically Open Source promotes takers and not givers. The original Open Source die hards are givers. But the Open Sourcers today are takers. Look at Mandrake, for an example of the problems...
While I hate to admit it, an Open Source tax should be introduced. Without a base investment long term OSS will have issues.....
Ok I am optmistic and think it will work out....
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Banks will stop paying developers to make there changes?
yeah, if you want to make money writing the Linux kernel, your going to have a hard time.
You say look at mandrake, I say look at red hat. perhaps mandrake has other problems besides using OSS?
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
Doesn't Open Source *mean* that the developer is the consultant? I have no problems with Open Source. If someone wants a software solution, they buy a package, do it themselves, or pay someone else to do it. Paying someone else to do it is, by virtue, good for that someone else.
-BrentRe:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Which developer would that be?
The ones working for Redhat? The businesses which buy their support services.
The ones working for IBM? The businesses which buy linux-related hardware and services from IBM.
The developers working for all the other businesses which sell hardware or services which rely on linux? Again, the customers.
The ones who are working on some libre project just for fun? No-one pays them for that. Why should they be paid for having fun? Indeed, that might take the fun out of it.
Some people work on libre/open source because their employer (for his own selfish reasons) has made it their job to do so, some do it for their own selfish reasons (which might include altruism). There are roughly 5 billion people in the world. Finding a few thousand who have a compelling, personal or business reason to work on some libre software project shouldn't be impossible.
The only problem I see here is that someone who wants to be the next Bill Gates needs to choose some other license than the BSD or GPL.
No problem.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
You are a primal fool if you think they are *any* different from Moft. They are big corporations, and at the corporate level, THERE ARE NO MORALS... just like there is no ettiquette for hitting under the belt.
You are deluding yourself if you think Redhat is not pulling Moft'y FUD tactics out of good will and the GPL soul... it's because they have best interest in not doing so.
This reminds me of a similar problem that was the bitch-slap-trend of the time: AMD vs Evil Intel. Evil Intel was accused of making Evil Rambus, that was Evilly proprietary. Well guess what... AMD was a partner of Rambus too.
Everyone who thinks *ANY* corporation is out to do good is a fool.
Now, is GPL good/bad/hemeroid/cancer-cure? No Comment.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
My post was purely addressing the naiveness of believing in corporations.
Would you like some fava beans with your liver Clarice?
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2, Insightful)
I work for one of the top 4 software companies in the world(hint - it assimilates companies but isn't MS) in the licensing department. You mention that the GPL is good for everyone but the developer. I will mention the converse, that proprietary software licensing is only good for the developer.
I speak with clients daily that find a particular software program that they want & they purchase 20 licenses for it. We could release a version upgrade in near future, but for all the thousands they spent you are entitled to nothing. Oh and support?!?!? Try free web or tech support via email within 24hrs. Paid support is $200 to $400
Now tell me what protections, what rights, what freedoms, what leeways, does proprietary software offer to anyone but the developer?
The only thing it is good for is paying the bills. Since I am essentially the gatekeeper of all those who want this software we do the dirty jobs Sales doesn't want to do. All that they are good at is getting customers. As soon as I can get rid of some debt I am so out of here. I know noone deserves a great job but I wish I wasn't stuck at my own personal proprietary purgatory. I consider my article on the dangers of software licensing a pennance.
I gotta take a shower
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
That's interesting, because it seems to contradict the behavior of the people writing the code. There was, after all, and initial developer who decided to license the code under the GPL. He obviously thought that the GPL was good for him and what he was doing, or he would have chosen a different license. Then there were the other developers who contributed to the project, who obviously decided that the GPL was good, or they wouldn't have spent their time on it. If the GPL is really so terrible, then why are people writing GPLed code?
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Interesting)
> The GPL has some serious issues. While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
Why is that supposed to be a GPL issue? The GPL says nothing about who pays the producers.
> Basically Open Source promotes takers and not givers.
Then where are all those gigabytes of GPL'd code coming from?
> Without a base investment long term OSS will have issues.....
Then Microsoft seems to be unduly worried.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, just how much money does Microsoft have in the bank? That goes beyond rewarding developers and moves into being a leech.
"Ah let the other person take care of that".
Those are end users. Any company that can be counted in ant way at all wants its own problems solved in the way it wants. Not the way best for someone else or the problems someone else has. Neither open nor proprietary software is going to help them unless they decide to get their own problem solved somehow. What the open solution does is give the coders- er, consultants a better starting point. They can see farther by standing on the shoulders of those before them, you know?
A friend of mine writes for his company. He can't code worth a damn, but he can download lines of Perl. He puts together usable tools for his company. They don't sell the software, they use it. They have their own coder on staff. Not bad for a company with only eight or so people, having one guy writing for them. Sure, he's not a full time developer, but it's a small enough company that they all wear more than one hat- even the owner. You need to look at employment models for coders beyond the usual "write one app, sell it 10 million times" that Microsoft gave us. Except that they bought their first product, so I guess they don't even count as coders.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Due?
When I give a birthday gift to a friend, I do it because I like giving gifts and I am glad to celebrate his or her existence. I don't do it with the expectation that I am due something in return.
Ditto when I give away my professional stock-in-trade, software and advice. The GPL does not come with some sort of implicit invoice attached. Nothing is due me except following the license, although a little gratitude and recognition is nice, too. When I say free, I mean it.
The world doesn't owe anybody a living; once you accept that fact, your life will be much more pleasant.
Real-world test (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait, that test has been done. And what do we see? Lots of people are working on Linux and the GNU stuff, even though it is licensed under GPL! (Also, people are working on BSD. Several flavors of BSD, even.)
Look at all the progress GNOME and GNOME apps have made just in the past year. GPL-licensed software is not just surviving, it is thriving.
an Open Source tax should be introduced
Good grief! Who will decide how much this tax will be? Who will decide who gets paid? How much will the tax authority skim for their own purposes? What regulations will exist to regulate what projects may be funded and what projects may not be? What will happen when companies like Microsoft start lobbying the government?
If this happens, it will waste a huge amount of money, add a whole lot of red tape, and attract people interested in milking the system for money, as opposed to people who want to develop software. Bad, bad, bad idea.
steveha
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
The developer's employer. RedHat is one example of a profitable company that employs developers to write GPL'd code. However, most GPL developers do it in their free time because it's what they like to do, not because it's what they're paid to do.
And the conclusion we came on is that Open Source is good for everybody, but the developer.
What developer? The developer who choose to release his own code under the GPL? Or the developer who wants to use somebody else's code that was released under the GPL, but doesn't want to release his modifications under the GPL?
But licenses like the GPL are not good for the developers who actually write the code. Those people cannot get paid what they are due. This is what closed source did.
Nothing forces developers to release their own original code under the GPL. If getting paid for the software is a significant motivation, then perhaps they should choose something else, but don't try to tell the rest of us what to do, just because what works for us doesn't suit your needs.
But the Open Sourcers today are takers.
There are users, and there are developers. It used to be that almost all users were also developers; now many users are not. If you're a developer, and you don't like people using your code without contributing to it, maybe you shouldn't let them use your code at all. However, this is actually one of the nice things about the GPL: if you're a developer, and you don't like companies modifying your code and then selling their modifications without compensating you, the GPL will prevent that from happening, while a BSD license won't. Naturally, if you prefer to allow companies to do this, the GPL is not for you.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
In fact, most OSS developers avoid getting paid for it. Getting paid for it means you have to deal with credit cards, shipping money, cashing checks, and so forth. Personally, I get direct deposit from work and deal with cash that people hand to me; otherwise, it's more trouble than it's really worth. If you're getting money, you need the infrastructure to handle it, and that infrastructure costs money; if your software doesn't get popular, you'll actually *lose* money, and trying to make your software popular increases the potential costs.
Re:I am going to get slammed, BUT... (Score:2)
Register all trademarks in Turkmenistan (Score:5, Funny)
-- Terry
Interesting "news" (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it said that increasingly stories labelled as "news" are obviously editorialized descriptions of recent events. Take for a few quotes from the article about the Dark Materials triology:
and
How can this kind of stuff even pretend to be "news"? Is it just because the story is talking about Christians that it gets away with this kind of writing around here?
Re:Interesting "news" (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, you Christian infidels, vastly outnumbered, will soon be rounded up and turned into Soylent Green, just as soon as we finish taunting you. Or not.
Meanwhile, back in reality, you could recognize a few facts:
- News need not be free of viewpoint - A journalist friend of mine tells me that 'objective', viewpointless news was more or less a marketing invention of the US wire services, so that the could sell to a broader range of papers. The pusuit of 'objective' news yields mainly hidden biases and stupid writing, where 'balance' consists of quoting people on both sides of the issue. What news should be is honest and free of bias, not utterly without viewpoint.
- Other countries do it differently - In the US, the newspaper industry has collapsed into, for the most part, local monopolies obliged to be inoffensive. In London, the home of the article you mention, they have a variety of newspapers, each with its own political viewpoints. The Guardian is known to be pretty lefty [worldpress.org].
- Not everything printed in a newspaper is news - Columnists, reviewers, pundits and other sorts of experts are generally selected specifically for their opinions. This appears to be just such a piece.
Reading it, I don't see anything factually incorrect, even in the quotes you mention. The Christian far right has been openly gleeful about the election of the current Bush. They indeed see it as an opportunity to push their cultural, religion-driven agenda, and have not been exactly secret about it.Please note that not all Christians are of the Christian fundy right that the author is describing. I hear that some of them even secretly voted for Al Gore.
Re:Interesting "news" (Score:2)
It's funny that you should be lecturing me on journalistic integrity as you go on to tell me about "facts", most of which are your opinion. I'm going to guess that secretly you are a journalist.
But that's exactly what it is supposed to be. To "report" on event is to tell it from an unbiased and factual viewpoint. I'm not saying that it has to be "balanced" with both viewpoints, simply that it should be absent of inflamatory language, as this article clearly is not.
That's fine, I'm just saying that historically, the reporting of the "news" was supposed to be done in a factually and unbiased manner. See above.
But this was clearly labeled as such. If you want to say that something is an opinion piece or editorial, or simply a column, it should be labeled as such.
As for being "factually correct", it's interesting that this "journalist" can be so aware of the actual feelings of millions of Americans. How can the grouping of millions of Americans into one collective group that thinks and feels exactly the same way be considered "factually correct"?
A little Alanis please... (Score:5, Insightful)
How damnably ironic can Timothy be (without trying to be)? The whole point of the $1000 fee is that there's money to be made. You know how much money? Right about $1000, minus expenses. *sigh*
The reality is, the $1000 fee goes towards two main purposes, neither of which is profit. The first is to cover a relatively expensive process (yes, flame on, I know that you would arbitrate and manage claims for free). The second reason is to provide a barrier to entry. "Barrier to entry" sounds evil to most knee-jerk thinkers, but this one is a good barrier. Trust me, I would file claims against every company I didn't like in the world if the fee was only $1. I would have fun with the system. So would everyone else. The $1000 price tag makes me think a bit more before I challenge for a domain name that is "rightfully" mine.
Re:A little Alanis please... (Score:2)
free music (Score:2)
Inexpensive alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
All you have to do is: don't be hung up on your domain name being identical to your trademark name. Almost nobody's is.
If your trademark is non-descriptive (e.g. nothing about the name "Levi" indicates they sell jeans) then it might really collide with someone else somewhere else in this big world. At best, it might be ambiguous and vague. Maybe combine your trademark with something descriptive, and you could even end up with a better domain name than your vague trademark. (e.g. Which is a better domain name: levi.com or levijeans.com?)
Or if it absolutely must be the same, then use a different TLD. You probably don't have a TLD in your 20-year-old trademark (e.g. that company in Redmond is not named "Microsoft Dot Com") so you had little hope of getting an exact match on the whole string anyway. The original purposes for many of the TLDs are long forgotten and unenforced, so just pick any of 'em, whatever looks pretty. Whatever. You might be surprised at how many websites are not actually hosted in Tuvala.
If there's no dispute, then there's no expense. You can't get more inexpensive than that.
Co-operation - it's a piece of cake. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now Company B argues that they have a claim on www.widgets.com. Ok, now ICANN puts their foot down and states that a domain name is NOT a trademark, and offers to host www.widgets.com for both companies, with links to their main web pages, and possibly some descriptive text indicating what the different possibilities are. Company B's $1000 can go towards relocating company A's pages onto another server.
so www.mcdonalds.com could end up as:
_macdonalds_ the burger chain
_macdonalds_ the Scottish kilt maker
_macdonalds_ the cafe in Lower Aldershot.
Each pays a minimal hosting fee to ICANN (because they're not hosting a vast amount of stuff - just a stack of hyperlinks)) and hosts their pages off somewhere else. It's always struck me as daft that someone thinks up a perfectly good name for a website, then some company comes along and stamps all over them just because there's a name clash.
Re:Co-operation - it's a piece of cake. (Score:3, Interesting)
You're assuming that the only reason for having a domain name is just to use for a web page. That's just plain silly.
I work for what was a major national DSL ISP until a month ago. Their name used to be Telocity. Then they were bought out and renamed to DirecTV Broadband. Guess what domain names they currently use? telocity.com, telocity.net, tlct.net, directvdsl.com, directvinternet.com, directvbroadband.net, and a handful of others, each with a different purpose. Why didn't they simply stop using the first three? Because making sure nothing was using those domains anymore would cost a huge amount of time and money, and since they'd probably miss a few things here and there, a lot of things would break.
I don't really know how many things would break if they suddenly lost the tlct.net domain. I'm sure they could recover pretty quickly if they just made sure everything on the network was using their own DNS servers to resolve that domain. Sure, www.tlct.net is just a redirect that nobody uses, but there are plenty of other hostnames on that domain!
News my ass ... (Score:2, Offtopic)
I'm an athiest. Well, more honestly I suppose you could call me an "apathetic agnostic"; I don't know if there's a God, and I really can't be troubled to care. None the less, shite like this served up as if it were a news story makes me want to vomit.
If it were clearly marked as an editorial piece, then fine; flame on. This, however, was clearly listed under "News". Reprehensable.
are they infringing your trademark? (Score:5, Interesting)
A small company I work for has discovered that a domain name has been registered with their U.S.-trademarked (since 1980) name. Requests to the owner of the site (a U.S. citizen) have gone unanswered, so we're now moving on to filing an ICANN dispute.
People like you worry me. You didn't say they had any kind of a web site, only that they registered the domain.
I hope you meant that "they had a web site up that might confuse our customers" or "we have a famous mark and they are diluting it" or something like that. Not just that your trademark is stored on some hard drive at the domain registrar database and you really would like it for yourself.
I have a couple domains with short non-word names that I registered many years ago. For a while I had a stupid "hello, here are links to my friends' home page" kind of thing, but decided I would just use them for email, which I do.
And I occasionally wonder if some low-life that wants the name is going sue me (or even worst, arbitrate me) just because he wants the domain, and not because I'm actually affecting his business. In court that would be easy to win, but in arbitration I would probably lose.
Heck, that low-life might be YOU (though I doubt it since my contact info is up-to-date and I haven't seen any messages about them).
Please, register your domain in .biz or something for now and don't sue this guy unless he is actually *infringing on your trademark* or he bought the domain *in bad faith*. I don't know how generic the term in question is, but if it's something generic like "ProComputers.com", I doubt it's bad faith.
Another idea I had 18 months ago (Score:2)
The Laywers Destroyed The Clone Tests (Score:3, Interesting)
Pardon me for taking the side of the enemy, but the Florida lawyer who sued to have a state-appointted guardian watch the child completely destroyed [cnn.com] any chance of us seeing if the child was a real clone, much less seeing if the *second* alleged clone child (remember that one [cnn.com]?) in the Netherlands is real. If said lawyer does not take his argument to completion, and convinces the court to force CloneAid to identify the child and mother, there is no way in hell they will, as the bonds between child (even a clone) and mother are quite strong and not something to underestimate or toy with.
Granted, this was a predictable move, and gives the Raelians a perfectly good excuse not to have the child DNA tested unless the court forces them to. But we only saw that once in the media, and they'll be certain *never* to say that again </sarcasm>.
You *DO NOT* have a trademark on the name. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:FP (Score:2)