In the music industry already, artists have had stunning success with "name-your-price" sales
Hardly. The only artists who have made it anywhere with that scheme are the ones who were already successful after being promoted by the same ol' big label system. There's one music store I know of (the name escapes me) that charges more based upon popularity, but it's still a set price before you buy.
I am all for a financial incentive to produce art, I just don't think the producer should get to decide on the price.
That's all bass-ackwards. By the normal system of trade-- with the vendor able to ask and the customer able to decide, value is determined and valuable work is justly compensated. If value is set solely by the person paying, without any ability for the vendor to refuse, it's no longer a fair reflection of value or a fair compensation for valuable work.
It might be, it might not be. I imagine it would come down to the presentation of the book and whether it adequately disavowed itself of any affiliation with the creators of Harry Potter. Trademark protections do not limit talking about a protected name, as that would be a violation of free-speech rights. Trademark protections are there to limit falsification of endorsement or affiliation-- trading your goods under someone else's reputable name.
Of course, beyond the actual law, one must always take into account what kind of bluster the lawyers can put on for the court, and what gun-shy producers will or will not actually allow.
Well, if a firm thinks they can recover files after a one-round zeroing, they can replicate the challenge themselves, document the entire process to the proper degree, then try the actual challenge to see whether it works the same. If it isn't, it's merely a matter of producing the evidence of their own in-house success and questioning the discrepancy.
IIRC, the original acronym was LAMP-- Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP*, which is a completely usable setup as it is. Perl* (the extra "P") is often found in most _AMP packages, so-- especially when referring to an offering or package, as opposed to a requirement-- _AMPP is used.
* Or is that the other way around? Did the "LAMP" terminology arise with Perl or PHP?
I think CSS has been stretched a fair bit farther than it ever should have been. It's not a layout language-- primarily, it's a text style description language-- but in the absence of anything better, we just have to keep on trying to figure out how to wedge the float mechanism into giving a decent multi-column layout (unless you want to play pixel-perfect with absolute positioning).
That, and I'd have to say-- and I'm someone who works in CSS every day-- parts of the box model would probably qualify as "fundamentally fucked". I hate to say it, but the flawed IE box model, where fundamental dimension declarations (width/height) include margin/padding/borders, makes a whole lot more sense and involves a whole lot less manual math when you're trying to align disparate parts together.
The worst one I've seen so far is Nelnet: 6-10 characters, No special characters, Cannot contain two separated numbers (abc123 is ok, ab12cd34ef is rejected), Can't be your username, or contain "nelnet" or "password"
But I'm convinced of one thing; under no circumstances should a non-uniformed, non-citizen combatant get a civil court trial, especially if captured overseas.
The problem with this, though, is that the function of a trial is merely to try the defendant-- to determine whether they are guilty of a crime or offensive action. Under U.S. legal principle, to punish a person who has not been tried is to punish an innocent person.
The 6th Amendment and other principles of U.S. core law back the idea that only those who have been proven guilty, by a systemic, all-things-equal, and impartial trial. Even if the person is caught red-handed and the trial is merely a formality, the process should be followed and their guilt should be proven to the proper degree. Without the system in place, it allows for arbitrary decisions of "clearly guilty", and could allow innocent people with deceptive circumstances (frame-ups, bogus testimony, victim of circumstance) to be punished unjustly.
If these people are as guilty as they are made out to be, than a properly-functioning trial should likewise find them guilty. If a trial would not be able to find them guilty, than authorities have no right to absolutely claim their guilt.
Now, I can understand that on a battlefield there can be no time to make that snap decision, and some allowance can be made for snap self-defense decisions. However, once the "combatant" is subdued and in custody, they are no longer enough of a threat for snap judgement to apply.
It's the difference between "support" and "allow". Your car dealer has no business interfering with your decision to try and diesel-fuel your unleaded car, short of telling you you're a damn fool when you come back expecting free repairs. Likewise, Apple should have no business interfering with your decision to run MacOS on any hardware you want, short of telling you you're a damn fool when you come back expecting free support.
Personally, I found SCMRPG to be a decent attempt. It faltered a bit once the actual "massacre" started, but the lead-up provided both an instructive exploration and an interesting perspective ("first person", quite literally) into the Columbine killers. Although it might not have inspired sympathy, it did provide information and unique immersion that allowed the player to slow down and think about the event.
However, once the "massacre" actually started, the game got rather tedious and pointless-- a button-mashing kill-fest that dragged on far too long. In fact, I ended up dropping the game after the "massacre" dragged on for a while. My thoughts at the time were both respectful and disappointed-- I had some respect for the developer in that he opened (or at least shed light upon) this method of overtly using gaming as social reflection, but disappointed that the debut and, as such, the standard-bearer of this emerging genre ended up suffering from a falloff of playability and relevance, and, unfortunately, left many holes for its critics to decry it by.
Although I may be making quick judgement of the work, having not played it, this game (Invaders) seems to be a lukewarm rendition of a well-worn topic on the futility of particular types of war-- a topic better represented from Missile Command all the way through that Flash game--whose name escapes me-- where you try to keep people from turning to terrorists, but all you have are bombs. Anyhow, without an innovative, insightful angle into either gameplay or message, the crass subject matter has no redeeming reason to exist, and just ends up pulling the needle further toward the failure-side. CSMRPG had a fresh message and redeeming value, even if the execution was a bit flawed... this appears not to.
Actually, I've heard this discussion come up before-- generally, you want the login form SSL encrypted, as well, to verify the identity and integrity of the form. Otherwise, it leaves the possibility for phishing, poisoned DNS, or a man-in-the-middle attack that rewrites the form to submit to a malicious intermediary. (Granted, a person viewing the code could see that last one, but I know I certainly don't eagle-eye the action param on every form I submit before I hit "go".)
Luckily, endless loop was averted at the last moment by the clever application of two labels, each with an arrow pointing to the other, reading "That label also causes cancer".
AOL was nothin'. CompuServe would give you a five- or six-disk set (Mac was 6, PC was 5), and there was online ordering. Unfortunately, my parents cut me off of it once UPS started delivering shipping boxes full of free floppies.
I suspect you would still have the same apathetic response that HD disc media did (where "BluRay and HD-DVD fought it out, and SD-DVD won"), where the increase in quality isn't dramatic or important enough to warrant the move to a new media, new players, and (often) new DRM. The future is not in another 12cm disc media-- 12cm disc players for current formats are widely owned, a wide base of tools exists to work with the formats-- even CSSed DVD, and the quality is more than adequate for all but those who spend more time analyzing sound than listening to it.
I suppose multi-channel audio could be one exception, although that still would struggle to make it out of a niche. It's a matter of relatively few multichannel PCs and stereo systems versus an overwhelming base of stereo receivers, players, boom-boxes, and portables.
If anything, the evolution of media is going to focus on physical form factor, deliverability, and perhaps durability. Sound quality is a finished game-- the challenge is now convenience and usability.
Any service should ask you to re-enter a password any time you make any configuration change. Local cookie forgetfulness and the possibility of remote session-stealing, along with the relative infrequency of config changes, makes it almost a forehead-slapper.
The thing that separates man from the assholes, though, is the ability to reason. One would hope that before sniffing the air, growling, and breaking into a running charge at the photographer, you would attempt to further assess the situation, and confront the photographer on speaking terms. Everyone would voice their intents and objections, and civility and discretion-- or at worst, a grudging solution that stayed within the boundaries of the law and civil society-- would result.
Perhaps my choice of the word "legitimate" was incorrect.
My point is that packaging a consumer-targeted product along with a virtually non-negotiable contract that takes away buyer's rights normally implied in such sales (even in sales of copies of intellectual property) is-- not illegitimate, I suppose-- underhanded, a bit deceptive, and contrary to the common idea of trading. I'm giving my money to Apple, Apple is giving me a copy of the software, and what I do with it is my own business. If I just want to rip the background images from the install package and use them on my PC, that's my right. If I want to try to get TextEdit running on my Commodore 64, that's my right. I can, in the oft-cited tradition, wear the thing as a hat. Unless I'm copying and redistributing it, which is a commmon restriction under copyright, Apple should just stay out of my business. I should not be forced to sign away my rights to legitimately use something I purchased due to a string of asterisks in the fine print.
I mention witholding updates or extras, because this is reasonably above and beyond what I bought as a consumer. I have what's on the disc, and Apple has the full right to refuse to deal with me further if they don't want to. The same goes with technical restrictions. I still have what's fairly mine-- but if it doesn't actually work with what they say it won't work with, that's my problem.
The concept of "use" under "ownership" seems uniquely clouded with computer-based goods-- primarily because software vendors are in the unique position that they withhold an product's function without actually withholding the product. Therefore, you may have bought the product off the shelf (or the online store), but it's a brick until you agree to whatever the licensor puts into the contract. This would be ludicrous for everything from hammers to books but it's commonplace in the software industry, simply because a click-through license can hold the product hostage after it's been bought. (In some cases, there are return-policy backouts, but that has all the odor of the "We'll send you 200 CDs, just return them to us or you've bought them" sort of schemes.)
It will be so hard to make people understand that there are 2 different philosophies on Desktop OS. One is Microsoft and other is Apple. Pystar tries to do "Microsoft" to Apple. Apple wouldn't exist if their hardware/software combination magic didn't work.
Your OS philosophy doesn't mean bunk if it hinges upon restricting freedoms which cannot be restricted. The counterpoint is that-- philosophy or not-- Apple has no right to restrict people in what they do with the shiny disc that Apple sold them, fair and square. Now, this counterpoint may hold water or it may not, and that's what the ensuing legal case will determine.
Personally, I hope Apple loses this one. "Business models" like this based on artificial EULA restrictions just give content producers carte blanche to strip users' legitimate rights and impose restrictions far beyond the scope of copyright or reasonable sale, under the guise of a simple sale being acceptance of a full-fledged contract. I'm all for copyright and the ability for creators to control their creations, but if you are going to sell (or supposedly "sell") a product, you are entering into a transaction whereby you give up ownership of the destiny of that object in return for payment. EULAs that restrict use, first sale, arbitrage, and such rights are an attempt to "have your cake and eat it too"-- accepting payment for the product, but not actually handing it over.
If Apple wants to restrict the use of OSX to Apple computers, there are plenty of legitimate ways to do it-- the best of which would be to only offer upgrades and support for verified legitimate hardware, or to sell the hardware on the merits of the hardware itself, and make it that illegitimate machines have a lessened user experience by virtue of inferior hardware.
I'd assume the "IANAL" even if the poster writes "IAAL".
Right, because it's a four-letter acronym and not a dragging disclaimer about how they are a lawyer, but they're not your lawyer, to check with your lawyer before you believe anything they say...
Without the license server up, you'd likely have to crack or backdoor the DRM somehow, which would end up being a blanket solution applicable to a wide range of other WMAs. I doubt any respectable player the size and stature of Yahoo! would do such a thing, and they might even be DMCA-liable if they did.
That's a bit much-- they'd only lose it if the term became so widely used as to be a common descriptor-- like "Band-aid", "Xerox", or "Kleenex". Scrabble has few enough direct competitors, along with (I would assume) the copyright/patents on the unique elements of its game, so there's very little chance of getting the wide competition necessary to genericize the "Scrabble" name.
OTOH, they certainly have the right to defend it on trademark terms, although I would imagine there's more leverage with design patent or copyright over the actual game (although, again, I'm not sure what the extent or duration of Hasbro's Scrabble intellectual claims are).
So, why do the artists keep coming to the mega-labels? Why do they keep signing on the dotted lines? Either the artists are dumb, or they want access to the unique worldwide promotional resources that the labels have, and find it to be worth the price. I'm not sure which is the case, but I'd say in either case, the artists have only themselves to blame for the results of their negotiations. If they wanted, they could have gone small-label and sacrificed the bigger pie for the bigger piece.
(In U.S. law) there's no explicit threshold for something to be deemed fair use or not. It's all about the intent of the use. If the intent is to talk about the work (criticism, education, parody, and the like), and a snippet of the work is necessary as an example, then using that snippet can be defended as fair use. If the use is merely to reuse or pass along the valuable elements of the work, outside of the framework of further discussion (reproduction, sampling, performance), then permission is required.
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In the music industry already, artists have had stunning success with "name-your-price" sales
Hardly. The only artists who have made it anywhere with that scheme are the ones who were already successful after being promoted by the same ol' big label system. There's one music store I know of (the name escapes me) that charges more based upon popularity, but it's still a set price before you buy.
I am all for a financial incentive to produce art, I just don't think the producer should get to decide on the price.
That's all bass-ackwards. By the normal system of trade-- with the vendor able to ask and the customer able to decide, value is determined and valuable work is justly compensated. If value is set solely by the person paying, without any ability for the vendor to refuse, it's no longer a fair reflection of value or a fair compensation for valuable work.
It might be, it might not be. I imagine it would come down to the presentation of the book and whether it adequately disavowed itself of any affiliation with the creators of Harry Potter. Trademark protections do not limit talking about a protected name, as that would be a violation of free-speech rights. Trademark protections are there to limit falsification of endorsement or affiliation-- trading your goods under someone else's reputable name.
Of course, beyond the actual law, one must always take into account what kind of bluster the lawyers can put on for the court, and what gun-shy producers will or will not actually allow.
Well, if a firm thinks they can recover files after a one-round zeroing, they can replicate the challenge themselves, document the entire process to the proper degree, then try the actual challenge to see whether it works the same. If it isn't, it's merely a matter of producing the evidence of their own in-house success and questioning the discrepancy.
IIRC, the original acronym was LAMP-- Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP*, which is a completely usable setup as it is. Perl* (the extra "P") is often found in most _AMP packages, so-- especially when referring to an offering or package, as opposed to a requirement-- _AMPP is used.
* Or is that the other way around? Did the "LAMP" terminology arise with Perl or PHP?
I think CSS has been stretched a fair bit farther than it ever should have been. It's not a layout language-- primarily, it's a text style description language-- but in the absence of anything better, we just have to keep on trying to figure out how to wedge the float mechanism into giving a decent multi-column layout (unless you want to play pixel-perfect with absolute positioning).
That, and I'd have to say-- and I'm someone who works in CSS every day-- parts of the box model would probably qualify as "fundamentally fucked". I hate to say it, but the flawed IE box model, where fundamental dimension declarations (width/height) include margin/padding/borders, makes a whole lot more sense and involves a whole lot less manual math when you're trying to align disparate parts together.
The worst one I've seen so far is Nelnet:
6-10 characters,
No special characters,
Cannot contain two separated numbers (abc123 is ok, ab12cd34ef is rejected),
Can't be your username, or contain "nelnet" or "password"
But I'm convinced of one thing; under no circumstances should a non-uniformed, non-citizen combatant get a civil court trial, especially if captured overseas.
The problem with this, though, is that the function of a trial is merely to try the defendant-- to determine whether they are guilty of a crime or offensive action. Under U.S. legal principle, to punish a person who has not been tried is to punish an innocent person.
The 6th Amendment and other principles of U.S. core law back the idea that only those who have been proven guilty, by a systemic, all-things-equal, and impartial trial. Even if the person is caught red-handed and the trial is merely a formality, the process should be followed and their guilt should be proven to the proper degree. Without the system in place, it allows for arbitrary decisions of "clearly guilty", and could allow innocent people with deceptive circumstances (frame-ups, bogus testimony, victim of circumstance) to be punished unjustly.
If these people are as guilty as they are made out to be, than a properly-functioning trial should likewise find them guilty. If a trial would not be able to find them guilty, than authorities have no right to absolutely claim their guilt.
Now, I can understand that on a battlefield there can be no time to make that snap decision, and some allowance can be made for snap self-defense decisions. However, once the "combatant" is subdued and in custody, they are no longer enough of a threat for snap judgement to apply.
It's the difference between "support" and "allow". Your car dealer has no business interfering with your decision to try and diesel-fuel your unleaded car, short of telling you you're a damn fool when you come back expecting free repairs. Likewise, Apple should have no business interfering with your decision to run MacOS on any hardware you want, short of telling you you're a damn fool when you come back expecting free support.
Yeah, but there was a time even before that when "Wow! Lookit' that! It moves!" worked quite well as a pinnacle of quality.
Personally, I found SCMRPG to be a decent attempt. It faltered a bit once the actual "massacre" started, but the lead-up provided both an instructive exploration and an interesting perspective ("first person", quite literally) into the Columbine killers. Although it might not have inspired sympathy, it did provide information and unique immersion that allowed the player to slow down and think about the event.
However, once the "massacre" actually started, the game got rather tedious and pointless-- a button-mashing kill-fest that dragged on far too long. In fact, I ended up dropping the game after the "massacre" dragged on for a while. My thoughts at the time were both respectful and disappointed-- I had some respect for the developer in that he opened (or at least shed light upon) this method of overtly using gaming as social reflection, but disappointed that the debut and, as such, the standard-bearer of this emerging genre ended up suffering from a falloff of playability and relevance, and, unfortunately, left many holes for its critics to decry it by.
Although I may be making quick judgement of the work, having not played it, this game (Invaders) seems to be a lukewarm rendition of a well-worn topic on the futility of particular types of war-- a topic better represented from Missile Command all the way through that Flash game--whose name escapes me-- where you try to keep people from turning to terrorists, but all you have are bombs. Anyhow, without an innovative, insightful angle into either gameplay or message, the crass subject matter has no redeeming reason to exist, and just ends up pulling the needle further toward the failure-side. CSMRPG had a fresh message and redeeming value, even if the execution was a bit flawed... this appears not to.
You sound so sure. Why not? Past example does not necessarily negate future possibility.
Actually, I've heard this discussion come up before-- generally, you want the login form SSL encrypted, as well, to verify the identity and integrity of the form. Otherwise, it leaves the possibility for phishing, poisoned DNS, or a man-in-the-middle attack that rewrites the form to submit to a malicious intermediary. (Granted, a person viewing the code could see that last one, but I know I certainly don't eagle-eye the action param on every form I submit before I hit "go".)
Luckily, endless loop was averted at the last moment by the clever application of two labels, each with an arrow pointing to the other, reading "That label also causes cancer".
AOL was nothin'. CompuServe would give you a five- or six-disk set (Mac was 6, PC was 5), and there was online ordering. Unfortunately, my parents cut me off of it once UPS started delivering shipping boxes full of free floppies.
I suspect you would still have the same apathetic response that HD disc media did (where "BluRay and HD-DVD fought it out, and SD-DVD won"), where the increase in quality isn't dramatic or important enough to warrant the move to a new media, new players, and (often) new DRM. The future is not in another 12cm disc media-- 12cm disc players for current formats are widely owned, a wide base of tools exists to work with the formats-- even CSSed DVD, and the quality is more than adequate for all but those who spend more time analyzing sound than listening to it.
I suppose multi-channel audio could be one exception, although that still would struggle to make it out of a niche. It's a matter of relatively few multichannel PCs and stereo systems versus an overwhelming base of stereo receivers, players, boom-boxes, and portables.
If anything, the evolution of media is going to focus on physical form factor, deliverability, and perhaps durability. Sound quality is a finished game-- the challenge is now convenience and usability.
Any service should ask you to re-enter a password any time you make any configuration change. Local cookie forgetfulness and the possibility of remote session-stealing, along with the relative infrequency of config changes, makes it almost a forehead-slapper.
Does that allow you to refuse to leave after being asked?
The thing that separates man from the assholes, though, is the ability to reason. One would hope that before sniffing the air, growling, and breaking into a running charge at the photographer, you would attempt to further assess the situation, and confront the photographer on speaking terms. Everyone would voice their intents and objections, and civility and discretion-- or at worst, a grudging solution that stayed within the boundaries of the law and civil society-- would result.
That, or assault and its subsequent charges.
Perhaps my choice of the word "legitimate" was incorrect.
My point is that packaging a consumer-targeted product along with a virtually non-negotiable contract that takes away buyer's rights normally implied in such sales (even in sales of copies of intellectual property) is-- not illegitimate, I suppose-- underhanded, a bit deceptive, and contrary to the common idea of trading. I'm giving my money to Apple, Apple is giving me a copy of the software, and what I do with it is my own business. If I just want to rip the background images from the install package and use them on my PC, that's my right. If I want to try to get TextEdit running on my Commodore 64, that's my right. I can, in the oft-cited tradition, wear the thing as a hat. Unless I'm copying and redistributing it, which is a commmon restriction under copyright, Apple should just stay out of my business. I should not be forced to sign away my rights to legitimately use something I purchased due to a string of asterisks in the fine print.
I mention witholding updates or extras, because this is reasonably above and beyond what I bought as a consumer. I have what's on the disc, and Apple has the full right to refuse to deal with me further if they don't want to. The same goes with technical restrictions. I still have what's fairly mine-- but if it doesn't actually work with what they say it won't work with, that's my problem.
The concept of "use" under "ownership" seems uniquely clouded with computer-based goods-- primarily because software vendors are in the unique position that they withhold an product's function without actually withholding the product. Therefore, you may have bought the product off the shelf (or the online store), but it's a brick until you agree to whatever the licensor puts into the contract. This would be ludicrous for everything from hammers to books but it's commonplace in the software industry, simply because a click-through license can hold the product hostage after it's been bought. (In some cases, there are return-policy backouts, but that has all the odor of the "We'll send you 200 CDs, just return them to us or you've bought them" sort of schemes.)
It will be so hard to make people understand that there are 2 different philosophies on Desktop OS. One is Microsoft and other is Apple. Pystar tries to do "Microsoft" to Apple. Apple wouldn't exist if their hardware/software combination magic didn't work.
Your OS philosophy doesn't mean bunk if it hinges upon restricting freedoms which cannot be restricted. The counterpoint is that-- philosophy or not-- Apple has no right to restrict people in what they do with the shiny disc that Apple sold them, fair and square. Now, this counterpoint may hold water or it may not, and that's what the ensuing legal case will determine.
Personally, I hope Apple loses this one. "Business models" like this based on artificial EULA restrictions just give content producers carte blanche to strip users' legitimate rights and impose restrictions far beyond the scope of copyright or reasonable sale, under the guise of a simple sale being acceptance of a full-fledged contract. I'm all for copyright and the ability for creators to control their creations, but if you are going to sell (or supposedly "sell") a product, you are entering into a transaction whereby you give up ownership of the destiny of that object in return for payment. EULAs that restrict use, first sale, arbitrage, and such rights are an attempt to "have your cake and eat it too"-- accepting payment for the product, but not actually handing it over.
If Apple wants to restrict the use of OSX to Apple computers, there are plenty of legitimate ways to do it-- the best of which would be to only offer upgrades and support for verified legitimate hardware, or to sell the hardware on the merits of the hardware itself, and make it that illegitimate machines have a lessened user experience by virtue of inferior hardware.
I'd assume the "IANAL" even if the poster writes "IAAL".
Right, because it's a four-letter acronym and not a dragging disclaimer about how they are a lawyer, but they're not your lawyer, to check with your lawyer before you believe anything they say...
Without the license server up, you'd likely have to crack or backdoor the DRM somehow, which would end up being a blanket solution applicable to a wide range of other WMAs. I doubt any respectable player the size and stature of Yahoo! would do such a thing, and they might even be DMCA-liable if they did.
That's a bit much-- they'd only lose it if the term became so widely used as to be a common descriptor-- like "Band-aid", "Xerox", or "Kleenex". Scrabble has few enough direct competitors, along with (I would assume) the copyright/patents on the unique elements of its game, so there's very little chance of getting the wide competition necessary to genericize the "Scrabble" name.
OTOH, they certainly have the right to defend it on trademark terms, although I would imagine there's more leverage with design patent or copyright over the actual game (although, again, I'm not sure what the extent or duration of Hasbro's Scrabble intellectual claims are).
So, why do the artists keep coming to the mega-labels? Why do they keep signing on the dotted lines? Either the artists are dumb, or they want access to the unique worldwide promotional resources that the labels have, and find it to be worth the price. I'm not sure which is the case, but I'd say in either case, the artists have only themselves to blame for the results of their negotiations. If they wanted, they could have gone small-label and sacrificed the bigger pie for the bigger piece.
(In U.S. law) there's no explicit threshold for something to be deemed fair use or not. It's all about the intent of the use. If the intent is to talk about the work (criticism, education, parody, and the like), and a snippet of the work is necessary as an example, then using that snippet can be defended as fair use. If the use is merely to reuse or pass along the valuable elements of the work, outside of the framework of further discussion (reproduction, sampling, performance), then permission is required.