There's just no pleasing some people. If Microsoft prevails in a court case, you whine that they never get punished. If Microsoft loses, you whine about the other cases where they prevailed.
Oh, and I haven't "bought" any Microsoft product since 1998.
No, you're wrong. If the melody is recognizable, the copyright owner has a pretty good case against you. (And if it isn't, then it's not a very good ringtone.)
Creating a ringtone that tries to sound like a pre-existing piece of music is clearly not making a completely new work. It's making an arrangement of someone else's art, and the originator of that art deserves compensation.
I think the ringtone craze is kind of cool... back in the days before CD-quality audio I used to be amazed by the chiptunes that talented game musicians could coax out of the meager little 4-voice FM synthesis chips on the old 8-bit consoles and computers. Just like the Gameboy Advance has kept the 2D scroller alive while the high-end consoles are all doing 3D, I see these programmable ringers as keeping the old chiptune music alive in a way.
I agree that active click area for form widgets should be greater rather than smaller, but I disagree with your reasoning as to why button labels should also be clickable.
The text of a radio button is not the widget. The button itself is the widget. It is not a mere status indicator. The text itself has nothing to indicate that it is an active control -- unlike hypertext links, which are usually a different color, or text entry boxes where the cursor changes form and input behavior changes when the control gains focus.
Like I said though, the labels SHOULD be clickable, because it makes the form easier to use, and that's what's important.
No. "Use a different browser" is not a legitimate solution to web design flaws, because users aren't going to change their browser preference except in extreme circumstances.
The remaining options are "don't use code that is not handled properly by popular browsers" and "try to convince the popular browser authors to correct the behavior of their product." Nielsen is advocating the first, with a nod to the second.
The buyer of the $40 DVD box set is not doing it to punish Sony Music. He is doing it to reward Sony Home Video for value-adding the product. Hopefully Sony Music will get the hint and start adding value to their releases as well. Everybody wins.
Universal, in an astounding display of audacity, is planning on leaving the BTTF's last two films mis-framed until February.
Exactly how are they supposed to fix the problems BEFORE February?
It takes time to re-master and press a large run of corrected discs. Settle down.
Re:No reason to celebrate...
on
Euro DMCA Fails
·
· Score: 2
I'm having trouble relating to your analogy. Not that many people move from North America to Europe or vice versa during their lifetimes, and of those that do I'd imagine only a tiny minority actually bring along their autos.
Also, each country has its own rules about what makes a motor vehicle road-worthy, so even without artificial region locking it's possible that a car that is legal to drive in European countries would not be legal in the US, or vice versa. You don't have to sign a license agreeing that the car is only guaranteed to be street legal in the country you're in -- it's implicit in the law.
The site IS the map. If you need a separate 'site map' page to figure out where the information you're looking for can be found, then the organization of the site is not very good and should be reconsidered.
A well-designed and well-organized site only needs ONE method of navigation and it should be consistent throughout the site.
See, the points is the Web was NEVER designed to provide a 'consistent visual apperance across Browsers'. The problem was that bad designers were (and still are) applying print design principles to new media -- and Flash was the tool that enabled them to continue their misguided behavior.
And even now, nearly ZERO browsers are FULLY CSS 2.0 compliant. Many that are still in wide use don't even support CSS 1.0 reliably.
Flash does have valid uses -- highly interactive tools using lots of client-side processing come to mind -- but the reason why many geeks don't like Flash is because bad designers use it in ways that are not justifiable and don't make sense.
Outlook has a feature something like this... Instead of querying a central Exchange server to get updated calendar info, changes to calendars are encapsulated in an email which is sent out to everyone else in your workgroup and their copies of Outlook process the data and update their calendars.
Of course, actually getting it to WORK that way is a different beast altogether... the implementation is flaky and poorly documented and overall seems like it was thrown in as an afterthought.
I always had the understanding that IDE and SCSI hard drives are physically identical except for the controller electronics on each. Is this not the case?
No. The point of the Bill of Rights is that CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW abridging those rights.
Your employer can impose a gag order preventing you from exercising your speech as it relates to your work. That's not unconstitutional.
It's also been well established that Freedom of Speech is not protected equally across the board, but varies based on the type of speech. Political protest enjoys greater protection than commercial speech, for example. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater is not protected at all, nor is slander.
If Constitutional rights were as simple as you suggest, the Supreme Court would be a lot less busy, wouldn't they? It's a complex issue which often merits vigorous debate.
Have you been through Beverly Hills lately? The McMansions are ALL like that these days -- crammed up side to side like townhouses, with their BMWs parked out in the street because there's no room in the garage.
If there's someone suspicious lurking in front of your home, you call the police. Period. Anything else amounts to vigilante justice, and makes you a criminal.
So what if you were from some family named Ford and you could trace that name back to the days when Jesus had not yet been perforated? Could you not have a car dealer called ford motors just because there already was one?
No. You couldn't.
And for the same reason, Mr. Nissan may not run a self-named business that promotes automobile sales.
IANAL either, but my understanding is that when a company is found guilty of monopolistic business practices, the remedies must specifically address those practices. Until Microsoft is found guilty of abusing its market status in the realm of application software, the government has no authority to tell MS how to run its Office division.
I don't trust the business world to police itself enough to propose a true laissez-faire system, but neither do I think it's a good idea to give government unlimited power to meddle in business affairs.
Besides which, there's nothing illegal about having a closed document format, even if it's encapsulated within an open structure like XML.
Re:Build your own computer....
on
Build Your Own Mac
·
· Score: 3, Funny
That's why I build MY computers using good old-fashioned vacuum tubes instead. No pesky transistors to lose!
DRM is NOT necessary. There was no such thing as ANALOG rights management, and there's no impetus other than corporate lust for control behind DIGITAL rights management features.
The MPEG formats are the closest thing we have to an open and widespread media format -- less restrictive than Windows Media, RealNetworks, or the Sorenson parts of QuickTime, and far more popular than open-source efforts like OGG.
I agree there should be a unified media format, and for highly compressible streaming media MPEG4 seems to be the best choice.
Slashdot Mirror
There's just no pleasing some people. If Microsoft prevails in a court case, you whine that they never get punished. If Microsoft loses, you whine about the other cases where they prevailed.
Oh, and I haven't "bought" any Microsoft product since 1998.
No, you're wrong. If the melody is recognizable, the copyright owner has a pretty good case against you. (And if it isn't, then it's not a very good ringtone.)
Creating a ringtone that tries to sound like a pre-existing piece of music is clearly not making a completely new work. It's making an arrangement of someone else's art, and the originator of that art deserves compensation.
MIDI only requires a license from the songwriter, and those are cheap.
Not only cheap, but compulsory. [pdf]
I think the ringtone craze is kind of cool... back in the days before CD-quality audio I used to be amazed by the chiptunes that talented game musicians could coax out of the meager little 4-voice FM synthesis chips on the old 8-bit consoles and computers. Just like the Gameboy Advance has kept the 2D scroller alive while the high-end consoles are all doing 3D, I see these programmable ringers as keeping the old chiptune music alive in a way.
I agree that active click area for form widgets should be greater rather than smaller, but I disagree with your reasoning as to why button labels should also be clickable.
The text of a radio button is not the widget. The button itself is the widget. It is not a mere status indicator. The text itself has nothing to indicate that it is an active control -- unlike hypertext links, which are usually a different color, or text entry boxes where the cursor changes form and input behavior changes when the control gains focus.
Like I said though, the labels SHOULD be clickable, because it makes the form easier to use, and that's what's important.
No. "Use a different browser" is not a legitimate solution to web design flaws, because users aren't going to change their browser preference except in extreme circumstances.
The remaining options are "don't use code that is not handled properly by popular browsers" and "try to convince the popular browser authors to correct the behavior of their product." Nielsen is advocating the first, with a nod to the second.
"Inktomi? What's that???"
5 years from now people will be saying "Yahoo!? What's that???"
What's your point?
The buyer of the $40 DVD box set is not doing it to punish Sony Music. He is doing it to reward Sony Home Video for value-adding the product. Hopefully Sony Music will get the hint and start adding value to their releases as well. Everybody wins.
Universal, in an astounding display of audacity, is planning on leaving the BTTF's last two films mis-framed until February.
Exactly how are they supposed to fix the problems BEFORE February?
It takes time to re-master and press a large run of corrected discs. Settle down.
I'm having trouble relating to your analogy. Not that many people move from North America to Europe or vice versa during their lifetimes, and of those that do I'd imagine only a tiny minority actually bring along their autos.
Also, each country has its own rules about what makes a motor vehicle road-worthy, so even without artificial region locking it's possible that a car that is legal to drive in European countries would not be legal in the US, or vice versa. You don't have to sign a license agreeing that the car is only guaranteed to be street legal in the country you're in -- it's implicit in the law.
(BTWIANAL)
solution: some browsers allow you to change the userAgent.
That's hardly a solution. It's an ugly workaround.
Well-designed sites don't exclude any browsers. They just deliver the code and it's up to the client to try and figure out how to render it.
The site IS the map. If you need a separate 'site map' page to figure out where the information you're looking for can be found, then the organization of the site is not very good and should be reconsidered.
A well-designed and well-organized site only needs ONE method of navigation and it should be consistent throughout the site.
See, the points is the Web was NEVER designed to provide a 'consistent visual apperance across Browsers'. The problem was that bad designers were (and still are) applying print design principles to new media -- and Flash was the tool that enabled them to continue their misguided behavior.
And even now, nearly ZERO browsers are FULLY CSS 2.0 compliant. Many that are still in wide use don't even support CSS 1.0 reliably.
Flash does have valid uses -- highly interactive tools using lots of client-side processing come to mind -- but the reason why many geeks don't like Flash is because bad designers use it in ways that are not justifiable and don't make sense.
Outlook has a feature something like this... Instead of querying a central Exchange server to get updated calendar info, changes to calendars are encapsulated in an email which is sent out to everyone else in your workgroup and their copies of Outlook process the data and update their calendars.
Of course, actually getting it to WORK that way is a different beast altogether... the implementation is flaky and poorly documented and overall seems like it was thrown in as an afterthought.
Less dependable?
I always had the understanding that IDE and SCSI hard drives are physically identical except for the controller electronics on each. Is this not the case?
No. The point of the Bill of Rights is that CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW abridging those rights.
Your employer can impose a gag order preventing you from exercising your speech as it relates to your work. That's not unconstitutional.
It's also been well established that Freedom of Speech is not protected equally across the board, but varies based on the type of speech. Political protest enjoys greater protection than commercial speech, for example. Yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater is not protected at all, nor is slander.
If Constitutional rights were as simple as you suggest, the Supreme Court would be a lot less busy, wouldn't they? It's a complex issue which often merits vigorous debate.
13) ???
14) Profit!!!
Trying to assert centralized authority over a system that by its very nature strives to be decentralized!
There's no way that this CAN'T work!
Have you been through Beverly Hills lately? The McMansions are ALL like that these days -- crammed up side to side like townhouses, with their BMWs parked out in the street because there's no room in the garage.
Settle down there, kid.
If there's someone suspicious lurking in front of your home, you call the police. Period. Anything else amounts to vigilante justice, and makes you a criminal.
So what if you were from some family named Ford and you could trace that name back to the days when Jesus had not yet been perforated? Could you not have a car dealer called ford motors just because there already was one?
No. You couldn't.
And for the same reason, Mr. Nissan may not run a self-named business that promotes automobile sales.
Pretty simple isn't it?
YANAL, STFU.
IANAL either, but my understanding is that when a company is found guilty of monopolistic business practices, the remedies must specifically address those practices. Until Microsoft is found guilty of abusing its market status in the realm of application software, the government has no authority to tell MS how to run its Office division.
I don't trust the business world to police itself enough to propose a true laissez-faire system, but neither do I think it's a good idea to give government unlimited power to meddle in business affairs.
Besides which, there's nothing illegal about having a closed document format, even if it's encapsulated within an open structure like XML.
That's why I build MY computers using good old-fashioned vacuum tubes instead. No pesky transistors to lose!
Your DVD player is in a fixed location in your house.
Your home PC is in a fixed location in your house.
I can't imagine why, other than the geekiness factor, wireless data transmission would be needed to have the DVD player and the PC communicate.
I'd run 100BaseT between the two devices and get better data throughput for less money.
I thought this was going to be a story about an employee who took too many lavatory breaks.
DRM is NOT necessary. There was no such thing as ANALOG rights management, and there's no impetus other than corporate lust for control behind DIGITAL rights management features.
The MPEG formats are the closest thing we have to an open and widespread media format -- less restrictive than Windows Media, RealNetworks, or the Sorenson parts of QuickTime, and far more popular than open-source efforts like OGG.
I agree there should be a unified media format, and for highly compressible streaming media MPEG4 seems to be the best choice.