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From an article in today’s edition of The Register:

According to Dell’s lawyers – old hands at this sort of thing – the owner of Dellwebsites is committing “an act of parasitism” and “creating a risk of confusion” between himself and the online PC vendor Dell. It wants the domain signed over to it, at the owner’s cost.

The theory runs that as soon as someone sees or hears of www.dellwebsites.com, they immediately think “oh that lovely company that sells cheap but well-built PCs has got into web design”. They are then overwhelmed with revulsion when they find out it’s nothing to do with Dell the PC maker.

Yes, incredible as it may seem, the name “Dell” did exist before 1984. You may think this was obvious since the company is named after founder Michael Dell. If nothing else, his parents would have used the name before him. Does Michael not realise that other families may also the same surname? He probably does, but tough businessman that he is, he’s not afraid to screw over his own kin.

In this case that is one Paul Dell. Paul lives in Spain and, incredibly, makes websites for a living. Paul thought the Internet domain dellwebsites.com was therefore a pretty good description of what he was up to online (apparently, dell.com had already gone).

But while Mr. Dell (Paul, that is) was pleased with his purchase back in April 2001, it now appears that he was trying to rip off Mr. Dell (Michael) and his enormous US company. Quite what the enormous impact Paul’s website has had on the PC giant is hard to gauge.

For the first half of this year, Dell’s revenue actually went up 20 per cent to $23 billion. No mention of Paul Dell’s web design business has appeared in its financial results as having a negative impact on these sales.

Nonetheless, it’s not just about the money, it’s about the principle, isn’t it? Which perhaps makes it hard to understand why it was that Dell backed down the last time it tried to take dellwebsites.com off Paul Dell. Yes, Paul Dell has been through this charade once before, in April 2002. Dell was still adamant that it rightly owned the domain, but when Paul Dell make it clear that he wasn’t prepared to cave in to pressure, the company walked away.

Why didn’t it take him to a domain arbitrator or a law court, you ask? Most likely because it didn’t stand a chance of winning the case. And so jump forward two-and-a-half years and we’re here again. What has changed?

Not much it seems: “You continue to use the denomination DELL WEB SITES as trade mark, company name, trade name or shop sign to designate your activities,” roar Dell’s lawyers. Er, yes.

“Alike you continue to use the denomination DELL WEB SITES as domain name and within the copyright notices to which the Site links.” Well, that’s because that’s where I run my business, haven’t we been here before?

“Finally, you modified the copyright notice to ‘Copyright 2004, Paul Dell, Dell Web Sites’ in order to include your first name.” That’s it! They’ve got Paul Dell bang to right because – get this – he included his first name as a copyright notice on his own website.

This would be funny were it not so worrying for the individuals and small businesses that find themselves at the end of such unwarranted demands by powerful legal firms and international businesses.

In a press conference today, Bush said:

“In the long term, our children and grandchildren will benefit from a free Iraq.”

I don’t know about benefit, but with his request for an additional $80 billion to support the war efforts, it’s a good bet my children and grandchildren will be paying for it!

A long time ago, Steve gave me a subwoofer for some reason (probably because it was broken or something, or maybe because he bought a better one). I dug it out of the closet the other day and jacked it into the stereo receiver that’s hooked to my computer(s). Now I can listen to my tunes while I work, and get the throbbing beat from the sub. Sweet!

I haven’t yet cranked the trance stuff (streamed from internet radio of course) and gone upstairs to see if it rattles the floor or anything…

I’m working on my taxes for 2004, and as usual I’m asked the big question:

Do you want to contribute $3 to the Presidential Election Campaign Fund? This will not change your taxes in any way.

Every year I wonder what this is all about… it doesn’t change my taxes, which means I’m not making a direct contribution. Where does the money come from, then? If I choose “yes” will the IRS treat my tax return differently?

All that aside, we saw in this last presidential campaign that both candidates spent something on the order of a quarter billion dollars– so I don’t think I should be sending another three bucks. Sheesh.

The FBI, showing once again how gracious, caring, and humanitarian they can be, decided to release Mei Xia Dong, a Chinese woman who’s been in custody for over two months as a terror suspect. Under Patriot Act provisions, of course, she was not entitled to a lawyer, a hearing, or even a description of the charges. I guess she just sat in the slammer wondering what the heck was wrong, and when (if ever) she’d be released.

Apparently the original tip that put the FBI on her trail described a 21-year-old Chinese man named Dong. How they could flub that up is beyond me, but I can’t say it gives me any confidence in our crack terrorist-tracking teams…

FedEx just came by with my new Mac Mini.

This thing is sweet. It’s very small– about the size of a thick CD carrying case– and packs a lot of whallop. Now I’ve got to plug everything together and see if OS X lives up to its hype…

In his inaugural speech today, Bush commented:

“America will not impose our own system of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way.”

What a crock. I wonder if he even proofs what his speechwriters throw at him, because it’s so patently absurd in the face of what he’s orchestrating in Iraq. The mission over there seems to always have been about setting up an American-style democracy… despite the fact that the people there have no experience with it.

In the end, I’m not sure they even want a democracy. No, they don’t want a religious dictatorship either, but to say that America won’t tromp around forcing others to be like us while doing precisely that is insulting.

In classic form, Lily and I are trading e-mail at midnight as we finalize the name for the fabled Fourth Company. Naming a company seems to be almost, but not quite, as difficult as naming a child.

In any case, after weeks of agonizing thought and a lot of back-and-forth on what we liked, we finally decided on (drumroll, please) Zing Studios. It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’s got spunk– pretty much like the two of us.

Thus begins the journey. And tomorrow I’ll be filling out reams of paperwork for the IRS and everyone else. Whee!

Steve sent me a link to an article that discusses the possibility of the existence of aliens, and posits that they must have visited earth at some time, because if we assume they exist, it’s almost certain they would have stumbled across us by now. Although I have a ton of work to do this morning, I couldn’t resist commenting. Here’s my reply:

The existence, or lack thereof, of aliens basically comes down to a matter of belief. We can’t prove one way or another, and there are only two ways to truly answer the question:

1) Meet an alien race.

2) Scour the entire stinkin’ universe and find nothing.

Since #2 is unlikely or impossible, that leaves #1. We either find the aliens, or spend eternity looking for them. We can’t prove they don’t exist, just as we can’t prove God doesn’t exist.

Anyway, Fermi’s Paradox as described in the article doesn’t hold water with me. Just because there are aliens (which I firmly believe) doesn’t mean they must have encountered us by now. The galaxy is bloody huge, and is only one of maybe trillions. Even with “dispersion models” one cannot assume that an alien civilization would have expanded to our little corner.

The dispersion model assumes, for one, that aliens would expand. I think this is a false assumption: they might– but they might not. Perhaps at a certain level of technology, all civilizations end up constructing Dyson spheres and sort of keeping to themselves. Perhaps they reach some higher transcendant state and end up encasing themselves in vast computer networks, lost in their own thoughts. Whatever. There are many scenarios where a civilization would *not* expand, even though they might be continuing to advance.

Moreover, I think theories that aliens have visited (or are visiting) earth are completely bunk. Again, I see two possibilities, both based on the assumption that an alien race capable of interstellar flight is far, far more advanced than we are:

1) They’re malevolent, in which case they’d turn our planet into rubble before we even knew what hit us.

2) They’re benevolent, in which case they’d introduce themselves and share technology or at least ideas.

There’s no way, in my mind, that an advanced civilization would do goofy things like draw crop circles or kidnap hillbillies for medical experiments. It’s just ludicrous.

So all in all, I’m convinced there are aliens out there, and I’m also convinced we simply haven’t found them yet (or they us). We need to keep looking, though, because the discovery of another civilization would radically alter our world-view… for the better, I hope. It would have profound impacts on everything from politics to religion to science.

On a related topic, I imagine that finding life (however you define it) on Mars or Titan or Europa would also be profound, though not quite as earth-shattering since it would likely not be “intelligent”.

Anyway, that’s my treatise. Back to the grind.

I’m back from my jaunt to California, where Lily and I had a great time planning everything for The Fourth Company (name yet to be determined). Some highlights:

On my flight out of Denver, I sat next to a woman who had a big Vitamin Cottage bag, paisley pants, a hookah filled with dry herbs, and a book titled “Analyze Your Dreams”. After takeoff, she sat in the lotus position for the bulk of the flight. Yep, definitely from Boulder!

Friday night we spent a couple of hours hashing out ideas for names, and came up with some pretty hilarious ones. No, we weren’t drunk, but a casual observer at the bar and grill we were at might have thought so. Several times, as we thought of a goofy name (and its associated tag line), I was laughing so hard I was crying.

On Saturday we decided to hang out at the public library, since we basically needed a place to sit for eight hours and lay out plans for the business. We scored big, because that was the day the library was having its annual book sale. Making the executive decision to abandon work temporarily, we loaded up on books (two bucks for a grocery bag full). Now I’ve got about forty new books for a total of four bucks. Sweet.

We were told by our friend Christine that we must be hanging out together too much, because both of us use the word “awesome” a lot. Apparently it went out of vogue in 1984 or so, although I didn’t get that memo and will continue to use it liberally. Also, Lily observed that she finds herself saying “no worries” quite a bit, which she most definitely picked up from me.

All in all, it was a good time (though tiring!) and we made a lot of progress. Soon we’ll launch The Fourth Company and get on the road to fame and riches.