In A "World Without Walls" or Fences...
- Shane Coyle
- 2008-09-27 22:44:50 UTC
- Modified: 2008-09-27 23:02:02 UTC
Oh, you know the rest.
I'll admit, I found the fact that Bill Gates was using his rather
famous (in Geek culture, anyhow) mug shot in the first of those ill-fated Seinfeld ads for Microsoft to be uproarious - even if the commercials were so-so. The fact that he'd embrace the image that has so often been used to poke a bit of fun at him, I found that to be pretty humorous and 'big' of him and Microsoft.
More humorous, to me, was the revelation that Microsoft's latest set of advertisements for Windows would be mimicking the popular "I'm a Mac" campaign from Apple and using the slogan "Life Without Walls" after all of those sayings that were so popular some years ago. Of course, these ads are just awful - to the point where I want those Seinfeld ads to continue.
Well, there may be another aspect to this other than Microsoft showing it's sense of humor, and that is trying to
possibly undermine the supposed pending trademark of a competing Operating System company, G.ho.st.
An unusual Israeli-Palestinian joint venture start-up, which makes a cloud-based Web operating system letting users access their desktops from any computer with an Internet connection, is alleging a trademark violation by Microsoft in its new $300 million advertising campaign.
G.ho.st, which stands for “Global Hosted Operating System,” is claiming it has a pending trademark registration for the tagline “no walls.”
For it's part, Microsoft claims that they are aware of no such trademarks, and dismiss the claim as "without merit". Of course, we all know that Microsoft has a dubious history with trademark suits involving competitors, ala Lindows/Linspire, so it'll be interesting to see how far they take this one before either backing down or making a large payment.
Comments
glosoli
2008-09-28 10:05:30
Shane Coyle
2008-09-28 14:28:30
Peyote Pekka
2008-09-29 16:00:52
The GPLv2 itself is the single most widely used license -- ever. GPLv3 is rolling in to take its place.
Most of the GNU tools have become so dominant that the GNU version provide the expected behavior.
Some of the concepts presented by the FSF and GNU seemed laughable at the time, it was of course mostly documenting the way things were done. But now, the need seems self-evident. That's some foresight with hair on it! (pun intended)
Roy Schestowitz
2008-09-30 14:58:02
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll do that soon.