David Raynes

I appear to have reached the next level of software developer-dom. When I got home from dinner tonight, I checked my email for the first time since this morning and I had my very first cease and desist letter waiting for me. I feel so special to know that one of the largest companies in the world is threatened by a plugin that I wrote almost a year and a half ago (Jan '03 specifically) for the express purpose of driving sites like LazyWeb, that I released totally for free, and that nobody actually uses any more (that I am aware of at least).

Here is the main body of the letter that I received as a PDF.

Dear Mr. Raynes:

3M Company (“3M") has for many years used the registered trademark Post-It® to identify and distinguish the source of various paper, stationery, and adhesive products, as well as certain software products. The Post-It® trademark has become well-known and famous throughout the world, and through its efforts 3M has established tremendous value and goodwill associated with the trademark. In order to protect the significant goodwill associated with the Post-It® trademark, we must prevent the use of trademarks, terms or names by others that would be likely to cause confusion as to the source of products or services, or cause possible confusion as to the sponsorship, affiliation, or endorsement by or with 3M, or that would dilute the distinctive quality of the Post-It® trademark.

In view of 3M's long prior use and registration of the remote post® trademark, we believe that your use of “Post-It - Release 2” in connection with your software product and available on your website, and your use of “Post-It” in the metatags associated with your website, is likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception to customers or potential customers, in violation of federal and state law. We also believe that such use dilutes the distinctive quality of the Post-It® trademark in violation of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act and state law.

Accordingly, we must demand that you and/or your company cease and desist any use of “Post-It” and any other marks, names, or terminology confusingly similar to the remote post® trademark, including any visual or text references, metatags, domain names, or use within any source code or other code of your internet website. By countersigning and promptly returning a copy of this letter, you confirm that you and your company are promptly discontinuing any uses described above, and that you and your company will not use any marks, names, or terminology that is confusingly similar to the Post-It® mark, or that would lessen or diminish its value, in the future.

You may indicate your agreement to these terms by signing this letter below and returning it to me by MAY 11, 2005. Upon our receipt of this signed letter, 3M will consider this unfortunate matter closed. If we do not hear from you by MAY 11, 2005, 3M will be forced to consider pursuing any and all available legal and equitable remedies.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

There is a special place in hell for spammers, and even then, there is a special place in that special place for the jerk who keeps sending me trackback spam with links to "baby names." That's just damned cruel.

Normally, I cryptographically sign all my outgoing emails with GnuPG. Unfortunately, Outlook Express does not handle those signature attachments all too well. It has even gone so far as to mark those attachments as unsafe (as relayed to me in a recent email).

So, I have come up with the following additions to my mutt config file to handle this situation:

message-hook ~A "set pgp_autosign"
message-hook "~h 'X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express'" "set nopgp_autosign"

Unfortunately, to make sure this is used, I need to be reading the message when I reply to it, instead of just hitting the reply key in the header list.

True, I could tell mutt to use the old-style cryptographic signatures (with pgp_create_traditional), but I feel like I am trying to make a point here. :)

Well, the move has gone relatively smoothly, with a couple exceptions. It would appear that the motherboard in my main machine went kaput, so I snagged a new one and finally got a chance to install it last night. In addition to that, my server machine was under a massive load once I got it back online this past weekend. And now that I've gotten my main machine back up I found out why: it would appear that somebody has been doing some serious spamming on AOL, using forged email from the rayners.org domain. I got somewhere in the neighborhood of 35,000 rejected emails coming back at me in the span of about three days. No wonder my server machine was running out of memory.

So, now that I've gotten that worked out somewhat, I can try and get back to responding to emails I've gotten over the last week or so (between the move, work, and school, I've been a little busy). So, I apologize if I haven't gotten back to you yet, but I am trying. It just may take me a few more days (seems IMAP doesn't want to delete or copy 35,000 (or even 15,000) messages at once, so it is going to take me a little while to clean things up).

Just when you throught comment spam could not get any worse, I get this posted to my site today a couple times with some minor variations (and with a link that I will not be repeating):

here is a free tip:
if you don't know what you are talking about don't post online.
I'm sorry I don't buy this, but this is how I feel.

What the hell is this crap? Blatant advertising is one thing. Semi-blantant advertising while masquerading as a jerk is even worse.

While on my way to get lunch today, I was listening to the Marc Steiner show on WYPR . He had a representative of Sinclair Broadcasting on, if memory serves me right (I have not been able to verify it exactly who it was just yet), and they and a couple others were discussing the recent changes to the FCC rules on media ownership. During the discussion, this representative referred to their news program as their "news product."

News Product?

Is that how television news is viewed today? Just another half hour or hour long slot of programming to get ratings and attract advertisers? Are they staffed with a team of journalists or are they just cast members? Am I the only one that finds this appalling?

Television (or print, or whatever other media type comes up) news is not a product. If anything, it should be considered a service. The Constitution guarantees Freedom of the Press. Not Freedom of the Real World or Survivor. Objective (and subjective, for that matter) reporting from a multitude of sources (not just the two or three media companies that will own almost everything in a few years) is absolutely essential to maintain an informed populace, which is a key component to an effective democracy.

I don't normally get too political here, but this remark had me practically jumping out of my seat. I'm sure you can understand why.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

• All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.
• All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.
• All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy. All work and no play makes Dave a dull boy.

It's been a long week. Can you tell? :)

Am I the only person who finds it weird that the cheapest and the most expensive gas stations in Ellicott City (that I am aware of, at least) are right across the street from each other? On the northwest corner of the intersection, you have the Sunoco, with regular gas for $1.689. On the southeast corner, there's the Exxon with regular gas for $1.789. All the other gas stations along my route to work are about $1.749. How is it that the two extremes are almost at the end of 40 (before it turns into I-70) and right across the street from each other? I just don't get it.

If you can't tell already, I'm in an odd mood today. :)

Teaser I just heard for the local news broadcast: "Did the heat shield fail on the shuttle? Find out tonight."

No, I'm guessing somebody cut their brake line, that would be why it burned up on re-entry.

(Note for those who can't tell: I'm being sarcastic)

Is it me or does every single movie involving even a few moments of action in the entire film use music from Gladiator in their commercials?

Not that I'm exactly complaining. I love the music from that movie. But, for goodness sakes, there are other tracks out there.

I heard about this on Life Akimbo.

The RIAA is lobbying for vendors of CD-RW drives to conduct background checks and require a 3 day waiting period before the drive can be sold.

WTF?! Why, every week, do I have this sudden urge to go out and buy up all of the computer and electronic equipment I can afford? Because in a couple years it could all be outlawed. First they try and make it legal to hack into the machines of people suspected of pirating music, now this!

<sarcasm>Innocent until proven guily? What a load of crap!</sarcasm>

I have been saying for years that our society was headed for some kind of corporatocracy; something like the background fluff for that wondeful wargame, Warzone. That does not mean that I like this direction we appear to be going in, just that I am solely making a prediction.

Update: For those of you who do not already know, I am king of the idiots. I wrote this wonderful little piece after working about 40-some odd hours of overtime over the last week on a project for which I have little love. My fuse was a little short, and I did not take the time to actually read the article referenced at Life Akimbo. Turns out it was a bit of a joke. I suppose the joke is on me this time. :)

Live and learn.

Soda has returned to the vending machine down the hall! Everyone rejoice!

I can't believe it. It is now Monday, and still the soda machine is empty. This is ridiculous.

You'd think that a building with as many engineers as are contained in this one would be able to keep a soda vending machine stocked. But, when I went over there this afternoon, the only available option was Lipton Brisk. At least yesterday Coke was there too, but now that's gone the way of Pepsi and Mtn. Dew.