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Comment Re:example.com does exist (Score 1) 286

I'm always trying (with limited success) to get people at work to use RFC-compliant dummy addresses when testing inputs to Web forms where an e-mail address must be supplied. Some "marketing types" absolutely insist on using "test@test.com" all the time, even though that's not one of the compliant dummy addresses. Personally, I always use addresses in the .example dummy TLD when I want nonfunctional test addresses.

Comment Gamer's Edge (Score 1) 2

I worked for Softdisk back when they were publishing a diskmagazine in the early 1990s named Gamer's Edge, featuring games authored by co-workers of mine who went on to be pretty notable (including John Carmack and John Romero). I seem to recall somebody was threatening to sue the company over the name by claiming ownership of the word "Edge", which seemed rather crackpotted. It must have been the same guy as in this case. It reminds me of Leo Stoller, who claimed to own various words including "Stealth" until bankruptcy caused him to be stripped of whatever alleged rights he might have had.

Portables (Games)

Submission + - Trademark History in the Age of Wikipedia? (toucharcade.com) 2

The_Pey writes: "Recently, an application was pulled from the Apple App Store because of its name. The game in question, Edge, reportedly infringes on the the trademark rights of Tim Langdell to the name Edge. The unfortunate aspect to this whole affair is that Tim is broadly enforcing rights to the name, whether or not he has actually created a game entitled Edge. Much of the history of the trademark ownership is being reported in Tim's wikipedia entry by a user "cheridavis" who bears a lot of similarity namewise to Tim's wife, Cheri Davis Langdell.

Interestingly, Tim was also the source of the reason the game Soul Edge changed its name to what we now know as Soul Caliber.

Can a person really own the trademark for the name of a game, using a four letter word broadly applied across several industries without the owner actually having published a title in the industry?"

The Internet

Submission + - Both Wikipedia and Citizendium under CC-by-sa? (citizendium.org)

Raindance writes: "Citizendium, after more than a year of license ambiguity, has announced its content will be freely available under CC-by-sa. This comes a few weeks after Wikipedia announced the fairly likely possibility of relicensing all homegrown GFDL content under CC-by-sa (as made possible by the new Creative Commons compatibility framework). Good things are happening in the realm of free content."
Businesses

Submission + - Wikipedia COO was Convicted Felon

Arthur Dent '99 writes: According to this AP story, Carolyn Bothwell Doran was COO for the Wikimedia Foundation for six months before it was discovered that she was a convicted felon with charges of theft, drunk driving, and shooting her boyfriend in the chest. Of interest to me is her apparent connection to the CIA; her father was a CIA official, and her late husband was a former CIA officer who drowned on their honeymoon in 1999 (providing plenty of good fodder for conspiracy theorists). The Wikimedia Foundation is now performing background checks on its officers.

Feed The Register: Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah's Traverse Mountain (theregister.com)

SlimVirgin, naked short selling, and the end of Web 2.0

Exclusive "We aren't democratic." That's how Wikipedia founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales described his famously-collaborative online encyclopedia in a recent puff piece from The New York Times Magazine. "The core community appreciates when someone is knowledgeable," he said, "and thinks some people are idiots and shouldn't be writing."


Privacy

Submission + - Wikipedia "private" Checkuser usage

wikinerdiest writes: "Wikipedians are again struggling with back channel invasions of Users' privacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#.22Private.22_Checkuser_use . This time it is the frequent(admitted) use by many administrators of backchannel (IRC,email) methods to request and obtain Checkuser information without the User checked being made aware of it. This process completely circumvents their official process at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CHECKUSER which seems to be little more than a facade for public consumption. While the official process makes note of the right of Users to complain of privacy breaches, the "private checkuser request" process makes that right mute since the User may not be even made aware Checkuser was used."
The Courts

Submission + - Indian businessman charged for joke on his network

myvirtualid writes: "Indian businessman Anil Ambani has apparently been charged under Indian laws against insulting a religion or faith because a joke has been circulating on his (66% stake) mobile network, Reliance Communications.

According to the BBC article, a "local Sikh leader had filed a complaint against Mr Ambani after his mobile telephone network allegedly circulated a joke about Sikhs".

There is no indication that Ambani played any role in creating, editing, reading, writing, forwarding, emailing, texting, smsing, or otherwise contributing to the spread of the alleged joke."
Social Networks

Secret Mailing List Rocks Wikipedia 531

privatemusings writes "Wikipedians are up in arms at the revelations that respected administrators have been discussing blocking and banning editors on a secret mailing list. The tensions have spilled over throughout the 'encyclopedia anyone can edit' and news agencies are sniffing around. The Register has this fantastic writeup — read it here first." The article says that some Wikipedians believe Jimbo Wales has lost face by supporting the in-crowd of administrators and rebuking the whistle blower who leaked the existence of the secret mailing list.

Feed The Register: Secret mailing list rocks Wikipedia (theregister.com)

High School Musical 3

On the surface, all is well in Wikiland. Just last week, a headline from The San Francisco Chronicle told the world that "Wikipedia's Future Is Still Looking Up," as the paper happily announced that founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales plans to expand his operation with a high-profile move to the city by the bay.


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