Am I the only one terrified that if something happens to my one "dedicated device", I'm screwed? The reason I keep my encrypted passwords in the cloud is that the service provides have redundancy. I'm seriously fucked if I lose access to my data store. How could anyone possibly sleep in peace knowing that their entire lives revolve around the safekeeping of one fallible hardware device??

jythie speculated:

I suspect you're right.

That doesn't alter the fact that it's important to the future of the human race that the issue be addressed.

newcastlejon remonstrated:

Yes it is. One I read the year it was published.

But pigiron was trying to be funny. (I think he succeeded, btw.) That makes his post a QUIP. From Goggle's search page for the term:

MightyMartian sneered:

There ARE current international treaties banning ownership of an extraterrestrial body. They're foolish and outdated, and they need to be amended. Bigelow is attempting to persuade the US government to begin negotiating that process.

I think Bigelow is a swine - but he's right about what it will take to give private capital the incentive to invest the blood and treasure necessary to colonize and exploit extraterrestrial resources. We're getting ever closer to the day when companies like SpaceX will be capable of creating conglomerates that possess the technology and financial resources to do exactly that - but they won't commit them until they see the possibility of getting sufficient return on their investment to make the risk worth taking.

I'm all for government funding - NASA, the ESA, and so on - for space exploration efforts. But we can't COLONIZE the Moon without first modifying the existing Moon Treaty. Nor can we conduct commercial operations (such as ice mining) without amending it, because that 50-year-old treaty prohibits them.

Anybody - including people you despise - can have a good idea. Ideas should be considered on their own merits, rather than being dismissed out of hand, simply because you dislike their source.

pigiron quipped:

And Bob Bigelow is a slumlord.

I've lived in one of his bigger "residence hotels". It was a hellhole. Cop cars day and night, shootings and stabbings, bloodstains on the carpet.

I understand Bob Hsieh, co-founder of Zappos, has bought up a big chunk of Fremont Street, and is steadily redeveloping it into a pretty decent area - but, five years ago, downtown Vegas was a complete slum. And Bigelow helped create that slum.

BTW - I think he's probably right about private property rights being the key to giving private capital the incentive needed to invest in colonizing and economically exploiting Luna. That, however, does not change who he is.

Funny, I had the same reaction when I read it. He seemed like a salesman for Google or something.

Dear Prince Bernard, If you're talking about my bank account, you're barking up the wrong tree :)

Fair use cases are very fact specific. If you start monkeying with the facts, Judge Chin might not feel the same way about it.

I don't know but please hire me as your lawyer when you do.

Thatswhatappealscourtsarefor

Sesostris III noted:

And Apple Computer was forced to negotiate a settlement with Apple Corps Ltd in every suit the Beatles' company filed. (They were all related to iTunes, which is all about music - and the Beatles worldwide trademark was established in 1968, so Apple Computers' conflicting mark had no legal leg to stand on.)

Trademarks are, for the most part, geographically limited, and apply fairly narrowly to the product or service to which the mark applies. Thus the Saturn automobile company, the Sega Saturn console, and Saturn Internet Services ALL had trademarks on the name Saturn. None of them conflicted with each other, because each represented a different category of product (cars vs. game consoles) or service (an ISP). Very few trademarks are global. Apple Computer is, and so is Apple Corps Ltd. The conflict arose when Apple Computer decided to get into the music business - and ran into a trademark the Beatles had established more than thirty years earlier. So Steve Jobs changed the service's name to iTunes, paid Apple Corps an undisclosed (but clearly substantial) amount of money, and signed a quitclaim agreement to make it all go away. Once that happened, negotiations began between Apple Corps and Apple Computer to make the Beatles' music available on iTunes - which it now is.

In other news, Shuttleworth over-fucking-reached in a major way. The EFF has set him straight. Let's hope he stays that way.

Unless, y'know, he's gay.

krs440 stated:

The aside was directed at the peanut gallery - not at you. (Your user number indicated that you ought to be familiar with the /. habit of responding to postings without having first read the article to which they refer. It's practically an article of faith around here. The notion that the gallery would bother to read a link posted within a comment is still less likely. Your research citation made it pretty clear that you're the exception that proves the rule.),/p>

Again, they're not the same quote. "I love it!" and "I'm lovin' it! (tm McDonalds) are not the same statement. They may well MEAN the same thing, but they are not the same quote.

I'm not a particular partisan of Mr. Mellon. If you can find an earlier citation for his exact statement, I'll happily acknowledge it. I'm equally sanguine about accepting that the "ain't" variant came first. My concern is with /.'s fortune file being RIFE with shit like this. Mis-attribution and non-attribution are equally bad things. The editors take a lot of heat for maladroit editing, but nobody (except me, and now thee) seems to have noticed that the fortune cookie database is as full of crap as the articles - and then some. It bothers me more than somewhat, and I thought it was overdue that someone pointed it out.

As it happens, that someone turned out to be yours truly.