Even if they expanded into lounges and alehouses, they won't get a general trademark on 'Blu'. It's a widely used word, and many hotel (with lounges) use Blu as part of their name.
Of course they aren't going to sue those business, which long predate their own existence.
The inventor sold the patent. Part of the sale agreement was a payment when the invention was used. It was the equivalent of a patent royalty, but it was not exactly that since they transferred the patent.
Disney/Marvel waits until the patent expires, and starts selling a toy with the feature. They ignore the terms of the sale contract and don't make the additional payment. When taken to court their defense is that the invention is now public domain and they are free to use it.
Disney wants this to be a patent case. The inventors want this to be a simple contract case.
My diamond desires are prosaic. I want a diamond frying pan (excellent thermal conductivity and scratch resistance) and diamond coated windshields (scratch resistance and clarity).
I haven't gotten cable programming for many years, but a decade ago the Weather Channel was starting to degrade. It was already showing at least 5 minutes of advertising for each ten minute reporting cycle. When it starting showing 'features' that displaced the 30 seconds of actual weather data per cycle, I gave up on it.
Since then I've seen it only while traveling, and quickly switched away after figuring out that it has gotten worse.
On the other hand I've been using the Weather Underground since it was a telnet service at UMich. It's always been good to great. I was annoyed when they changed to their new format with bad icons, slow loading and less information. But I eventually got used to it and they improved the worst parts. Plus their creation of a hobbyist weather reporting community is a game-changer. (Now if they would just provide reliability/calibration data for those stations, especially the ones that report a negligible wind speed during a howling storm.)
It's meaningless as a precedent, but the ruling does have value.
It can establish a demostrated pattern and likelihood of abuse -- foreign entities filing DMCA requests, implicitly submitting themselves to the jurisdiction of the court, but refusing to accept the responsibility associated with using the court's power.
With a few examples, Wordpress can start to require a confirmation of requests -- making the sender explicitly acknowledge that their request puts them under the jurisdiction of the district court. That doesn't conform with the law as written, but the district court is unlikely to consider it problematic given the proven history.
The theaters have quite a bit of history to back them up.
Look at how football was destroyed once it was shown on TV. Ticket prices went to zero (approximately, the average for a 'cheap seat' is only $84), and the parking lots could only charge $1 (approximate, actual cost is $75 in Dallas).
The same with other sports. The miniscule broadcast revenue left the team owners destitute. Pretty much only the parents of the players show up at games.
There was a comment above about Investor-State Dispute Settlement, with the expectation that it would be considered off-topic.
It's not. This is exactly on point.
The companies pushing for ISDS are thinking of situations such as Venezuela's nationalization of the oil fields. But this is the same situation.
Well, not exactly. Venezuela had a much more defensible process. A clear law was passed years in advance that the production facilities would revert to government control at the oil field lease termination. The courts supported the clear wording of the law. The law wasn't especially just or wise, but the legal process was followed without twisting the law into a pretzel.
The cards sold do have the full 4GB of memory. Due to an odd structure of the crossbar, only 3.5GB of that gets full bandwidth. The driver software uses the odd 0.5GB for structures that aren't accessed as frequently.
This isn't usually a performance issue, although once you know about the structure you can construct scenarios where you can demonstrate a slowdown.
There is a second, mostly separate issue where a description of the internal hardware used the wrong numbers. The marketing material apparently used the 'pre-fuse' counts, which assumed that the chip has no flaws. Real-life chips have flaws. The bad units are disabled, 'fused' out. If too many don't work, the chip is thrown out. If all work, they sell the chip in a premium.
Both of these issues are taken into account in the published performance figures and benchmarks. To use the ubiquitous automotive analogy, this is like marketing material claiming a 2.5 liter engine when when the actual size is 2.45L. As long as the 0-100KMH time and other performance metrics are accurate, a driver will never know. Only the guys that are going to modify the engine internals are ever going to see it.
(BTW, most '2.5L' engines are really 2.4xL engines. An actual 2.5L engine pays a higher tax rate in some countries, so the design stays safely under that breakpoint.)
As usual, expect the class action lawyers to settle for a few million in their pockets and $2 coupons for end users that take 20 minutes to register. The benchmarks are accurate, and the mistaken unit counts were in ancillary marketing material not on the box or main ads, so there is only the thinnest legal case. The real impact is likely to be reputation and PR.
If they intended to take over your machine, they wouldn't have taken this approach. They would do what virus makers do -- exploit the hole, and then harden security so that they retain control of the machine.
Instead they were sociopaths. They solely cared about the advertising money, not the negative effects of their actions.
It's not that they didn't understand the vulnerabilities they were creating. The implementation indicates they fully understood the architecture of certificate based authentication, and where they would need to insert the man-in-the-middle attack to substitute advertisements.
Normal people don't think this way. Even if you hate someone enough to murder them, normal people don't bring down a plane full of people or poison a whole town. Or create a public panic so that they can profit from shorting a drug company stock. Sociopaths can't see the difference, they don't empathize with the innocent victims or see the systemic damage. They don't care about the results beyond their own benefit.
The statement is exactly the one you would see if control of the situation was moved from marketing ("we are certain there is no risk") to legal ("we didn't know anything").
Did they simply miss the implications of snooping-based advertising? Especially one that can insert their only advertisements? That doesn't seem credible.
I think I didn't explain the problem with medallions well enough.
A city can refund the original medallion fee, but that won't solve the problem. In most cities with the system, a 'medallion' is the transferable right to run a cab. The city originally issued it at a nominal fee. But the market value of a medallion is now up to a quarter million dollars.
That quarter million dollars is money already taken out of the system. It's the prospect profit to be made by the medallion, so it's money taken out of future of taxis.
It's now in the pocket of some guy, long since retired, that bought up a bunch of medallions early on. The medallion has likely been through a few owners since, mostly cab companies that figured out how to extract the maximum value from them.
In my experience, many Uber/Lyft drivers are actually former taxi drivers. They figured out where the money was going. They didn't own medallions, and were employees of a company or owner that used most of the revenue to pay back the investment in the medallion.
The saddest stories are of guys that saved 20 years to buy their own medallion. They still spend long days in a cab with an employee or two that runs it the rest of the time. They were counting on a medallion as their retirement, and are watching their plans and investment fall apart.
Do legacy cab companies understand how their complains ring hollow, or are come across as entirely self-serving?
One of the major underlying problems is taxicab medallions, a licensing system which is common in U.S. cities. They are nominally a way to certify taxicabs, but they quickly turned into a way to create artificial scarcity. As such, they are the catchpoint for all profit in the taxi system.
In other words, any likelihood of eventual profit (discounted future excess value) increases the value of the medallion. Anyone buying a medallion can't expect to make a real profit. They can only make money by working extra long hours themselves, being exceptionally good at managing others, or the medallion becoming worth even more.
People should be asking why a taxicab medallion, originally issued for a nominal fee, should be worth a quarter million dollars.
I feel sorry for the small-time operator that went deeply into debt to buy a medallion. They bought into a scarcity, thinking it would be their retirement asset. That scarcity is about to disappear, and the medallion become worth much less. But they are blaming the wrong people. They didn't invest in a means of production or greater efficiency. They simply funded the retirement of the previous medallion holder.
It's a big country. There are lots of profitable regions that need better service and would pay for it. The only investment is blocking a potential competitor, not increasing the customer base by investing in un-served and under-served regions.
Be careful that you don't mistake an inspirational story for historical truth.
Even when men have dropped their weapons to pick up a flag, it doesn't mean quite what is claimed -- that the flag was so important that it mustn't touch the ground.
Flags were an important signaling device in battle. Before radio, the best way to communicate was often with flags. A flag flying over an island fort let the city know that it was still defended. A fallen flag would trigger an evacuation or surrender.
But... only four people died in the Ft. McHenry battle that inspired the Star Spangled banner. That could hardly count as a pile of corpses.
To paraphrase Lily Tomlin on SNL: "We don't care. We don't have to. We are the cable company."
Comcast is my only usable internet access option. It took me five hours on the phone to establish service at a house that had service a month before. There were multiple times where I was forwarded four times. Each time I had to re-verify my customer information and was pitched 'Triple Play' (even though my ordered internet-only service didn't yet work!), before they told me they couldn't help.
This had to have cost Comcast lots of money. But despite spending that money, they ended up with yet another negative impression.
Here is a quick hint to improve the customer experience and cut labor costs: instead of having service reps constantly pitch added services, limit it two times per customer issue. Once at the beginning and once at the end, when all outstanding problems have been fixed. Yes, that might involve tracking customer problems as unresolved. But shouldn't you being doing that anyway?
The Marriage Problem is merely an interesting way to describe a mathematical optimization problem. Many of the comments miss this, instead focusing on the irregular details of the human element.
Describing it as a Secretary Problem, reduces the emotional appeal of arguing details, but doesn't eliminate all of the distractions.
On distractions...
I prefer to celebrate Half Price Chocolate Day.
Another fun activity is identifying Mistress Day. It's usually the day before Valentines Day, but varies. When Valentines Day falls on Sunday, Mistress Day is Friday.
On the post: Blu Cigarettes Sues Blu Ale House Over Blu Logo
Of course they aren't going to sue those business, which long predate their own existence.
On the post: Dangerously Underpowered NSA Begging Legislators For Permission To Go To Cyberwar
That's like saying you need an offensive capability against lightening strikes. What are you going to do, shoot at the clouds?
On the post: BART, The Train Service, Goes After Brewery Over BART, The Beer
Hopefully the right thing will happen without more being spent on lawyers.
On the post: Portland Police Bravely Defend Public From Homeless Woman Looking To Charge Her Cell Phone
I can see the police telling them to move on, but they deserve the ridicule for actually running them in for this.
On the post: Stop The Presses: Disney Tells Court About The Importance Of The Public Domain
The inventor sold the patent. Part of the sale agreement was a payment when the invention was used. It was the equivalent of a patent royalty, but it was not exactly that since they transferred the patent.
Disney/Marvel waits until the patent expires, and starts selling a toy with the feature. They ignore the terms of the sale contract and don't make the additional payment. When taken to court their defense is that the invention is now public domain and they are free to use it.
Disney wants this to be a patent case. The inventors want this to be a simple contract case.
On the post: DailyDirt: The Strongest Natural Materials
On the post: Verizon Latest To Balk At Weather Channel Rate Hikes For 'Weather Coverage' That's 70% Fluff And Nonsense
A long time coming
Since then I've seen it only while traveling, and quickly switched away after figuring out that it has gotten worse.
On the other hand I've been using the Weather Underground since it was a telnet service at UMich. It's always been good to great. I was annoyed when they changed to their new format with bad icons, slow loading and less information. But I eventually got used to it and they improved the worst parts. Plus their creation of a hobbyist weather reporting community is a game-changer. (Now if they would just provide reliability/calibration data for those stations, especially the ones that report a negligible wind speed during a howling storm.)
On the post: Wordpress Wins Case Against DMCA Abuser... Who Ignored The Proceedings
It can establish a demostrated pattern and likelihood of abuse -- foreign entities filing DMCA requests, implicitly submitting themselves to the jurisdiction of the court, but refusing to accept the responsibility associated with using the court's power.
With a few examples, Wordpress can start to require a confirmation of requests -- making the sender explicitly acknowledge that their request puts them under the jurisdiction of the district court. That doesn't conform with the law as written, but the district court is unlikely to consider it problematic given the proven history.
On the post: Theater Chains Pout, Boycott Netflix's New Movie To Protect Antiquated Release Windows
Look at how football was destroyed once it was shown on TV. Ticket prices went to zero (approximately, the average for a 'cheap seat' is only $84), and the parking lots could only charge $1 (approximate, actual cost is $75 in Dallas).
The same with other sports. The miniscule broadcast revenue left the team owners destitute. Pretty much only the parents of the players show up at games.
On the post: Comcast Blocks HBO Go From Working On Playstation 4, Won't Coherently Explain Why
On the post: US Court Rules That Kim Dotcom Is A 'Fugitive' And Thus DOJ Can Take His Money
It's not. This is exactly on point.
The companies pushing for ISDS are thinking of situations such as Venezuela's nationalization of the oil fields. But this is the same situation.
Well, not exactly. Venezuela had a much more defensible process. A clear law was passed years in advance that the production facilities would revert to government control at the oil field lease termination. The courts supported the clear wording of the law. The law wasn't especially just or wise, but the legal process was followed without twisting the law into a pretzel.
On the post: Nvidia Actually Listens To Its Customers, Will Again Let Them Use The Expensive Hardware They Own As They See Fit
The cards sold do have the full 4GB of memory. Due to an odd structure of the crossbar, only 3.5GB of that gets full bandwidth. The driver software uses the odd 0.5GB for structures that aren't accessed as frequently.
This isn't usually a performance issue, although once you know about the structure you can construct scenarios where you can demonstrate a slowdown.
There is a second, mostly separate issue where a description of the internal hardware used the wrong numbers. The marketing material apparently used the 'pre-fuse' counts, which assumed that the chip has no flaws. Real-life chips have flaws. The bad units are disabled, 'fused' out. If too many don't work, the chip is thrown out. If all work, they sell the chip in a premium.
Both of these issues are taken into account in the published performance figures and benchmarks. To use the ubiquitous automotive analogy, this is like marketing material claiming a 2.5 liter engine when when the actual size is 2.45L. As long as the 0-100KMH time and other performance metrics are accurate, a driver will never know. Only the guys that are going to modify the engine internals are ever going to see it.
(BTW, most '2.5L' engines are really 2.4xL engines. An actual 2.5L engine pays a higher tax rate in some countries, so the design stays safely under that breakpoint.)
As usual, expect the class action lawyers to settle for a few million in their pockets and $2 coupons for end users that take 20 minutes to register. The benchmarks are accurate, and the mistaken unit counts were in ancillary marketing material not on the box or main ads, so there is only the thinnest legal case. The real impact is likely to be reputation and PR.
On the post: Thought Komodia/Superfish Bug Was Really, Really Bad? It's Much, Much Worse!
If they intended to take over your machine, they wouldn't have taken this approach. They would do what virus makers do -- exploit the hole, and then harden security so that they retain control of the machine.
Instead they were sociopaths. They solely cared about the advertising money, not the negative effects of their actions.
It's not that they didn't understand the vulnerabilities they were creating. The implementation indicates they fully understood the architecture of certificate based authentication, and where they would need to insert the man-in-the-middle attack to substitute advertisements.
Normal people don't think this way. Even if you hate someone enough to murder them, normal people don't bring down a plane full of people or poison a whole town. Or create a public panic so that they can profit from shorting a drug company stock. Sociopaths can't see the difference, they don't empathize with the innocent victims or see the systemic damage. They don't care about the results beyond their own benefit.
On the post: A Bit Late, But Lenovo CTO Admits The Company Screwed Up
Did they simply miss the implications of snooping-based advertising? Especially one that can insert their only advertisements? That doesn't seem credible.
On the post: Cabs Strike In Chicago Against Uber; Uber Drivers Presumably Report Uptick In Business
A city can refund the original medallion fee, but that won't solve the problem. In most cities with the system, a 'medallion' is the transferable right to run a cab. The city originally issued it at a nominal fee. But the market value of a medallion is now up to a quarter million dollars.
That quarter million dollars is money already taken out of the system. It's the prospect profit to be made by the medallion, so it's money taken out of future of taxis.
It's now in the pocket of some guy, long since retired, that bought up a bunch of medallions early on. The medallion has likely been through a few owners since, mostly cab companies that figured out how to extract the maximum value from them.
In my experience, many Uber/Lyft drivers are actually former taxi drivers. They figured out where the money was going. They didn't own medallions, and were employees of a company or owner that used most of the revenue to pay back the investment in the medallion.
The saddest stories are of guys that saved 20 years to buy their own medallion. They still spend long days in a cab with an employee or two that runs it the rest of the time. They were counting on a medallion as their retirement, and are watching their plans and investment fall apart.
On the post: Cabs Strike In Chicago Against Uber; Uber Drivers Presumably Report Uptick In Business
One of the major underlying problems is taxicab medallions, a licensing system which is common in U.S. cities. They are nominally a way to certify taxicabs, but they quickly turned into a way to create artificial scarcity. As such, they are the catchpoint for all profit in the taxi system.
In other words, any likelihood of eventual profit (discounted future excess value) increases the value of the medallion. Anyone buying a medallion can't expect to make a real profit. They can only make money by working extra long hours themselves, being exceptionally good at managing others, or the medallion becoming worth even more.
People should be asking why a taxicab medallion, originally issued for a nominal fee, should be worth a quarter million dollars.
I feel sorry for the small-time operator that went deeply into debt to buy a medallion. They bought into a scarcity, thinking it would be their retirement asset. That scarcity is about to disappear, and the medallion become worth much less. But they are blaming the wrong people. They didn't invest in a means of production or greater efficiency. They simply funded the retirement of the previous medallion holder.
On the post: AT&T Says It Will Match Google Fiber's Speed & Pricing, But Only If You Allow AT&T To Spy On You
It's a big country. There are lots of profitable regions that need better service and would pay for it. The only investment is blocking a potential competitor, not increasing the customer base by investing in un-served and under-served regions.
On the post: School Principal Contacts FBI After Student Throws American Flag Out A Window
Even when men have dropped their weapons to pick up a flag, it doesn't mean quite what is claimed -- that the flag was so important that it mustn't touch the ground.
Flags were an important signaling device in battle. Before radio, the best way to communicate was often with flags. A flag flying over an island fort let the city know that it was still defended. A fallen flag would trigger an evacuation or surrender.
But... only four people died in the Ft. McHenry battle that inspired the Star Spangled banner. That could hardly count as a pile of corpses.
On the post: Comcast's Former Twitter Chief Says Dismal Support Won't Get Fixed Until Comcast Stops Being A Cheapskate
Comcast is my only usable internet access option. It took me five hours on the phone to establish service at a house that had service a month before. There were multiple times where I was forwarded four times. Each time I had to re-verify my customer information and was pitched 'Triple Play' (even though my ordered internet-only service didn't yet work!), before they told me they couldn't help.
This had to have cost Comcast lots of money. But despite spending that money, they ended up with yet another negative impression.
Here is a quick hint to improve the customer experience and cut labor costs: instead of having service reps constantly pitch added services, limit it two times per customer issue. Once at the beginning and once at the end, when all outstanding problems have been fixed. Yes, that might involve tracking customer problems as unresolved. But shouldn't you being doing that anyway?
On the post: DailyDirt: Celebrating Valentine's Day... Or Not
Describing it as a Secretary Problem, reduces the emotional appeal of arguing details, but doesn't eliminate all of the distractions.
On distractions...
I prefer to celebrate Half Price Chocolate Day.
Another fun activity is identifying Mistress Day. It's usually the day before Valentines Day, but varies. When Valentines Day falls on Sunday, Mistress Day is Friday.
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