rethink(ip)

Is TiVo illegal in Japan?

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at July 21, 2005 12:23 AM

From the rethink(ip) deja vu files...

Via PVR blog: Link to a Cnet article: Skipping TV ads illegal in Japan?

Back to my post of yesterday..."What if TiVo is responding to Grokster? Perhaps they are working on distancing themselves from encouraging users to skip commercials. Isn't skipping a commercial the creation of a derivative work? Don't want to be inducing that, now do we????"

Like I said...doing the opposite doesn't make sense. Perhaps TiVo is performing a little "preventative maintenance."

TiVo pulls a Costanza

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at July 20, 2005 12:24 AM

"My name is George. I'm unemployed and live with my parents."

In one episode of Seinfeld, George had an epiphany...by doing the exact opposite of what he would normally do, his luck would turn around.

I'm afraid a little rethinking has made TiVo pull a Costanza.

FACT: 90% of all DVR (digital video recorders) users skip commercials. Yahoo News story.

That article goes on to point out that "[t]he trends are even more foreboding among the 18 to 34-year-old demographic most coveted by marketers, with 97 percent saying they skip ads all or almost all of the time."

Wow...I'd think that TiVo would run with that fact. Maybe come out with new functionality that helps users skip commercials more efficiently.

SO...what'd they do? The exact opposite.

Earlier this week, TiVo announced plans to display a "symbol" on screen to users when said users are skipping commercials to entice them to watch commercials.

Personally, I don't think it is a good move.

OK...let me digress into a crazy rant. What if TiVo is responding to Grokster? Perhaps they are working on distancing themselves from encouraging users to skip commercials. Isn't skipping a commercial the creation of a derivative work? Don't want to be inducing that, now do we????

Something tells me that at least one of my RTIP compadres has a different take...[to be continued?????]

Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at July 8, 2005 11:14 AM

I have a three-and-a-half year-old son.  All the parents reading this post now immediately understand the title.

Why Daddy?  Why?  Why?  Why?

After ever explanation…he fires it right back at you.  Why?  The subject doesn’t matter — here’s a brief list of topics from yesterday:  rocks, spiders, time, book titles, colors, weather, distance, pool chemicals, bathroom etiquette, money, and (my favorite) the rules of baseball.

Most of the time, I enjoy his cross-examinations.  Sometimes I’ll have a little fun with it and give him way too much information — “…because light exhibits properties of both a wave and a particle….”  My wife usually rolls her eyes when I do this.  I just wait for the inevitable next question — why?  “It’s one of the great mysteries of quantum mechanics, son.”

Why?

I admit that it can get frustrating, though.  He’ll rip off a string of why’s that seems to have no end.  Just when you think you’ve taken his line of questioning down as far as it can go, he’ll pause and think, pause some more, and then fire another one at you.

Why?

I fight the urge to give the response you hear from so many parents — “because I said so.”  Sometimes it can’t be helped, but every time I do it, I immediately wish I hadn’t.  I don’t want to do anything to disrupt his natural curiosity about the world.

I was inspired to write this post last night when I overheard another adult talking about her little inquisitor.  “I can’t wait until she’s out of this phase,” she said to her friend after her daughter asked a single ‘why.’

A single why?  How hard is that?

If it is a phase, I hope to extend it as long as possible.  But my ultimate goal is to make sure that my son never stops asking that simple question.  And I hope to do the same with his 6–month old brother when the time is right.  I want to raise them to be rethinkers, no matter the field they choose.

Adults who continually ask why — the rethinkers of our world — have produced some incredible answers.  Q:  Why do you have to use an open surgery technique for a certain treatment?  A:  Turns out you don’t.  Q:  Why did the island of Krakatoa all but disappear on August 27, 1883?  A:  Plate tectonics (both of these why’s led to the creation of entire new fields of study, by the way).

Play the game.  Have fun with it.  Resist the “because I said so” answer as best you can (I don’t think it can be completely avoided…).  Teach.  Peel the onion.  Help them explore (and do some exploring yourself).

You’ll help mold another rethinker if you do.  And that’s good for all of us.

The mother never answered her daughter’s single why, by the way.  In disgust, I rolled my eyes and muttered to my wife “she never answered the question.”

My son overheard and asked, “Why?”

I have no friggin’ clue.

 

Milking it

Posted by Stephen M. Nipper at July 5, 2005 12:51 AM

I recently received a phone call from an examining attorney for one of the trademark applications one of my clients had filed. Typically, getting a phone call from an examining attorney (trademark) or examiner (patent) is a good sign. They don't call (usually) to give you bad news, but to take care of matters which can be resolved via a phone call. In example, an examiner might call you to say "all of the claims are allowable, but there is a typo in claim 2, do you mind if I enter an examiner's amendment fixing it?" The alternative is that the examining attorney/examiner will have to send you a formal office action, thereby requiring a formal response ($$).

Back to the phone call. After discussing the trivial change needed to obtain allowance, I thanked the examining attorney for the call, noting that I appreciated it because it saved my client money (because he didn't have to pay me to prepare a formal Response to enter a trivial change). The examining attorney was flabbergasted...as if she'd never heard of such a thing before.

She lamented that she was sick and tired of attorneys who would be mad if she called asking for permission to enter an examining attorney's amendment, attorneys demanding a formal office action (rather than dealing with simple procedural matters over the phone.) She then relayed a story...a story of an attorney who once called her to read (really slow) aloud the Response he had mailed a couple of days earlier. The same Response that she had sitting on her desk in front of her (well...eventually she'd have it in front of her). "I know how to read," she said.

Why do some attorneys do this?

Minimum billable hour requirements. Aren't they dandy?

Image source.