Superbowling

An assortment of Super Bowl tidbits: Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story. Infinitus writes "The NFL's legal firm has a PDF up that outlines the NFL's intellectual property rights to words like 'Super Bowl' and 'NFL'. Including a neat little chart that tells you what you can and can't say..." VeggiePossum23 writes "Panthers Upset Patriots, 29 to 21... at least in the Sony Sponsored '989 Sports Game Before the Game' played on NFL Gameday 2004 on the PS2 Console. This annual event, held Wednesday night in Houston, has a perfect 8-year track record of picking the winner of the Super Bowl. Carolina Panthers Wide Receiver Steve Smith controlled the Panthers, winning an upset victory against New England Patriots' Wide Out Troy Brown, also controlling his own team." lordbyron writes "CBS is doing a SuperBowl of commercials that will include a vote for the best commercial in history. You can watch the top 10 now and make sure that you vote at 9pm on Sunday 1/31. It includes some classics like the Apple commercial and the exploding mosquitos from Tabasco."Wing Bowl.--->

No, it does matter

[Misinformed]

Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story..

It wasn't mentined (in the articles) that these threats demanded they buy a /. subscription, or else they would be posted to the front page!

Football IP?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

intellectual property rights to words like 'Super Bowl' and 'NFL'.

Funny, I never thought I'd see "intellectual", "SuperBowl" and "NFL" in the same sentence ...

2 teams of 11

[Anonymous Coward]

Kick a ball around for 2* 45 minute sessions. That ball is called a football (the ball has a structure similar to C-64 in terms of pentagons and hexagons). The game of 'football' is played all around the world.

pregame

[Wiggin]

i remember when the pregame show was just an hour before the game started. then it grew to two. and soon it had reached six. that was starting to seem a little excessive. but this year, i think the pregame show started on wednesday. when is enough, enough?

Re:Being English, I have to ask...

[The I Shing]

American Football is big, big business in the USA. It represents what Americans love best, which is war. It has nearly all the elements of a war, fought during a time frame of about four hours, with sixty minutes of actual game time. It has offense, defense, gaining ground, losing ground, battle after battle, strategies, tactics, hierarchical command structures, casualties, statistics, a winner, and a loser.

The Superbowl represents the pinnacle of all this, the wheat having been separated from the chaff throughout the regular season and post-season.

It's a chance for American Football aficianados to gather over pizza, chicken wings, potato chips, shrimp cocktail, and copious beer, and cheer on one team or the other.

For the fans in the home city of a Superbowl contender, there is a level of excitement that would probably embarrass a British person to death. Scottish people, on the other hand, would quite understand.

That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

Back home, only infants and coma patients play rugby. Everyone else straps on crotchless chain-mail covered with huge (6 -> 12 inches) spikes to play. The 'ball' is a sack of dynamite that explodes every 5 minutes. When that happens, they toss in more players and a new sack. It is actually legal to pick up expired body parts and either A) use them as weapons or B) impale them upon your spikes for reasons of intimidation. The ref is a three-eyed black-masked executioner with an uzi. Instead of buying soda at the concession stands, you buy acid.

At least...

[Bagels]

At least their legal team seems to realize how ridiculous some of this IP stuff is. From the chart of dos and don'ts mentioned in the post:

- You *can* make fun of the fact that you cannot say the phrase "Super Bowl" (e.g. by beeping it out).

Script Kiddie Hitmen

[farnerup]

Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money

I visualize Joe Pesci sitting in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant, hacking in VBScript.

Heres a summary

[t_allardyce]

from the PDF:

The first rule of Super Bowl: You do not talk about 'Super Bowl'

The second rule of Super Bowl: YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT SUPER BOWL

The third rule of Super Bowl: The words: Super Bowl, Super Sunday, NFL, AFC and NFC are all trade marks of the National Football League. If you utter or taint them we WILL kick your fucking head in! OK?

Yup...

[Cyno01]

The super bowl is definitly a national holiday, no mail, banks are closed...

threatened with denial of service attacks

[stephanruby]

Supposedly sports gambling sites are being threatened with denial of service attacks if they don't pay protection money - also a Reuters story.

Finally, a viable business model for Slashdot.

Re:Being English, I have to ask...

[zulux]

It represents what Americans love best, which is war.

Oh come on...

As an American, I demand you get it right.

War is way down on the list:

10) Replacing small towns with Wal*Mart's
9) Killing Babies
8) War
7) Traveling to Europe while wearing sneakers.
6) Starving little children.
5) Pissing off liberals
4) Driving SUV's
3) Eating MEAT MEAT MEAT
2) Living in huge, but cheap, houses.
1) Being right.

Re:Don't forget the ad CBS is refusing to air.

[op00to]

Yeah, thank god the ads about terrorism and drugs will still air. I was deathly afraid I wouldn't recieve my share of unbalanced propaganda!

Trademarks!

[payndz]

Super Bowl! Super Sunday! NFL! AFC! NFC! Buccaneers! Bucs!

Well, I said all these things without permission from the National Football League (oops, there's another one). Come on then, lawyers! Come after me for using these trademarked words without permission!

This is legal bullshit taken to the extreme. So if there's a Black Sunday scenario tomorrow, the news networks aren't allowed to say "There was a terrorist attack at the Super Bowl" but have to say "There was a terrorist attack at the Big Game in Houston"? Madness.

Super Bowl! Super Bowl! Super Bowl!

what words?

[fermion]

The Super Bowl is happening on Super Sunday. The National Football League(NFL), American Football Conference(AFC) and National Football Conference (NFC) will hold this contrived event to determine who is the best Football team in the world. Of course the rest of the world in not invited.

In this contest, between Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots, extremely wealthy men will forgo their normal environment and put on many pounds of gear to play whimped down version of Rugby. The winner of the game will be the champion.

Of course, this is entertainment so the true relevance is the demographic that it delivers to the advertisers. In this sense, the Super Bowl will once again fulfill it's primary mission.

One also suspects that many Americans, for the first time, will know the existence and location of Carolina.

Questionable Industries welcomes all Super Bowl guests to Houston. We will be scalping tickets on the corner of Fannin and Holly Hall. We will also be offering certified disease free hookers along Holly Hall and Murworth, conveniently grouped by age. The 18 year olds will be in the Excalades, the 19-21 year olds will be in the Explorers, and 21-25 will be in the Durangos. Hookers over this age will be conveniently located in their normal environment of the Holly Hall apartments. The males will be in the blue cars and females in the pink cars. Please do not be racist and expect certain ethnic types. We are a class operation!

A limited number of 12-18 year olds will be available in the customized vans. Younger hookers are available with 24 hours request, as they must be brought in from Mexico.

What the heck

[Heem]

What the heck is this Superb Owl I keep hearing about. Whats so great about it? Does it know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop?