Short of the consumer taking something apart and/or modifying it, safe design takes into account user mistakes, routine mishandling and forseeable events like the ones you mention. You design things to be fail-safe. Fail safe doesn't mean it never fails, it means it fails in a safe manner. You design things so that they either can't be used incorrectly (in the casual sense) or if they ARE, they just don't work.
This is an interesting point... regard the F-P story, we also saw some issues that were wildly overblwon in the media, but the execs shrugged it off, they said that that's standard operationg procedure with the CPSC - on purpose. The theory is that if the problem is overblown, people are more likely to hear about it and pursue the fix or recall for their individual unit. If it's NOT overblown in the media, then the one person for whom it could mean a real problem may never hear about it.
I used to work for Fisher-Price. I got a call from a woman whose child choked on something, she was an EMT so the child was fine, but it was clearly hazardous.
Given that ONE report, Fisher-Price notified the CPSC, proposed a solution and a way of publicizing it, and within ONE WEEK there were news releases, posters being sent to pediatrician's offices, ads in parenting magazines, etc. This was not something mandated by the CPSC, but rather something F-P proposed to the CPSC and the CPSC said "Ok, sounds like a plan - go for it."
In contrast, a less reputable children's products manufacturer had to be SUED by the CPSC and forced into a recall after their product had KILLED children. But even in that case, there was no cover-up and attempt to squelch those facts.
Now granted - children's products are different and safety is more of a concern - but even given the less stringent attitude towards adults products, I'd say BUSTING into fucking FLAMES is enough to move past that realm of nonchalance into starting to give a shit.
(Also, F-P's practices changed after the Mattel take-over, and I came close to being a whistle-blower about another safety issue, but that's another story.)
Bottom line is, an ethical company would have dealt with this publicly and openly, issued a recall for the effected production runs, and taken the 10-20 million dollar hit, knowing it was worth it in the long run for good will and also knowing that it was a relative pittance compared to their massive profit margins and the BILLIONS of dollars Apple has socked away.
A less ethical company would have been forced to act.
An UNETHICAL company would cover it up. Apple is an unethical company.
While the GP was just joking, you CAN burn stuff to media with extra error correction of a sort. Burn it as rar files, with a certain percentage of the space devoted to par files. Redundant blocks that way - so if, say, 5% of the files are unreadable, you can reconstruct them. I suppose you could do the same thing across a series of discs, to be able to replace a bad disc.
The exact same judgements made that you mention in the photo can be necessary copying a DVD.
But it's crazy to assert that anything that can in some obscure way be deemed "creative" is now private property. And I say this as a music composer too.
Whats really strange is the way the copyright cartel wants to have it both ways... if a work is copyrighted, you can't use a tiny clip in your own work (despite "fair use") even though that tiny clip in no way damages their sales of the original - see sampling. a half-second "bleep" from a copyrighted tune is considered their property that you can't sample and use in an entirely new way.
But if the work is public domain, you copy the ENTIRE FUCKING THING, and suddenly you own copyright over it.
The whole intent and process has been to take things that were public domain and turn them into private property - the exact opposite of the original intent of copyright law.
It's as if we're allowing private interests to claim ownership of national parks... of oceans...
and in a strange twist of fate, the movie Star Wars has become public domain despite the Corporate Revenue Protection Act of 2100 which made every last bowel movement copyrighted until infinity. Some sort of mixup... but it's public domain.
In another strange twist of fate, every existing copy of the film has become unusable... the films have long since rotted away, the holographic cubes were all victims of light-rot or something... so the film Star Wars is lost to the world.
Until I find a DVD in a garage sale, it miraculously seems to have survived the disc-eating microbes, and through my arcane knowledge of ancient DVD ripping tools, I am able to successfully extract a copy, correcting for dropouts, making it all nice and clean and watchable.
Do I now hold the copyright to Star Wars? Am I an instant bajillionaire?
In the UK I am, I guess.
Back to the present. As a collector, I own many out-of-copyright books and other materials, some of them the only ones known. I can take great effort to reproduce them... do I own the copyright on them?
Only in a totally insane corporate kleptocratic world. The very intent behind copyright in the first place was that such things WOULD be public domain, and that COPIES of them would be public domain, and would be recopied and recopied.
Laws like this turn the original intent of copyright on its head.
I have learned to use DVD copying tools for the best possible output of my copies. Setting bit rates, choosing codecs, adjusting the codec settings, then painstakingly converting the subtitles from.sub to.srt, which is a manual process... etc. etc. Do I get copyright now?
Seinfeld put a lot of work into making his cam copies of movies in that one episode... does he get copyright? OK, lets say the DVD in question, the movie in question was public domain... do I and he NOW deserve copyright?
You have to admit there is a need for this kind of product though.
If youre a person who networks through these sites, or say you have a band or whatever, it could be a full-time job to deal with keeping your various profiles current, etc.
There are some attempts to integrate parts of things, like ping.fm for example... but if you could have ONE online presence that you were able to take wherever you wanted to, be it facebook, myspace, twitter, or whatever next week's flavor is - it would be a huge service to people. It would also allow easier migration... if Facebook is starting to look old compared to ThisWeeksThing.com, then that new upstart would have an easier time getting going. Good for the evolution of the web, in a sense.
Which of course is why the established players will never allow it.
well I was in the hospital for weeks after getting hit by a truck.. shattered pelvis, skull fracture, internal injuries... honestly though it was memorable it was no where's near the most painful thing I experienced.
lemme tell ya, I wasn't the same for a few weeks. She grabbed my dick in one hand, tried to pull the tube and when it wouldn't come, she wrapped the tube around her wrist and pulled harder.
They do something wrong with the magnetic field for a second, lose track of it, it gets carried to your brain and you stroke.
Not realistic? Well, when you've had a catheter yanked out of you without having had the balloon deflated first like I once did because the nurse fucked up, you'll learn to expect these things. A golf-ball sized object pulled through your urethra tends to leave a memory.
Its reality. Companies are "damaged" about as much by the fact that they don't make money off sales of used games as I am "damaged" by the fact that people aren't paying me royalties for every time they take a shit and thus inadvertently destroy the resale market for MY shit.
I have a business plan, after all, that depends on the world paying me for my shit.
In short, when you have the delusional belief that you are owed money for something that nobody else in the world has ever been owed money for nor has anyone ever THOUGHT of being owed money for because its fucking insane, you're going to find your delusions "damaged."
Barcalounger doesn't get a cut of used chair sales. Del Monte doesn't get a cut of used fruit sales.
You want a cut? Do what Amazon did - they make money off new books, and then facilitate sales of used books and take a cut. (and of used games too.)
Game makes want a cut of sales of used games? Fine. Create a marketplace for sales of used games - make it more compelling to use than existing ones, and take a cut. If not, fuck off.
Slashdot Mirror
Short of the consumer taking something apart and/or modifying it, safe design takes into account user mistakes, routine mishandling and forseeable events like the ones you mention. You design things to be fail-safe. Fail safe doesn't mean it never fails, it means it fails in a safe manner. You design things so that they either can't be used incorrectly (in the casual sense) or if they ARE, they just don't work.
This is an interesting point... regard the F-P story, we also saw some issues that were wildly overblwon in the media, but the execs shrugged it off, they said that that's standard operationg procedure with the CPSC - on purpose. The theory is that if the problem is overblown, people are more likely to hear about it and pursue the fix or recall for their individual unit. If it's NOT overblown in the media, then the one person for whom it could mean a real problem may never hear about it.
Just curious... what catastrophic failure rate is the margin between a cover-up being ethical and a cover-up being unethical?
I used to work for Fisher-Price. I got a call from a woman whose child choked on something, she was an EMT so the child was fine, but it was clearly hazardous.
Given that ONE report, Fisher-Price notified the CPSC, proposed a solution and a way of publicizing it, and within ONE WEEK there were news releases, posters being sent to pediatrician's offices, ads in parenting magazines, etc. This was not something mandated by the CPSC, but rather something F-P proposed to the CPSC and the CPSC said "Ok, sounds like a plan - go for it."
In contrast, a less reputable children's products manufacturer had to be SUED by the CPSC and forced into a recall after their product had KILLED children. But even in that case, there was no cover-up and attempt to squelch those facts.
Now granted - children's products are different and safety is more of a concern - but even given the less stringent attitude towards adults products, I'd say BUSTING into fucking FLAMES is enough to move past that realm of nonchalance into starting to give a shit.
(Also, F-P's practices changed after the Mattel take-over, and I came close to being a whistle-blower about another safety issue, but that's another story.)
Bottom line is, an ethical company would have dealt with this publicly and openly, issued a recall for the effected production runs, and taken the 10-20 million dollar hit, knowing it was worth it in the long run for good will and also knowing that it was a relative pittance compared to their massive profit margins and the BILLIONS of dollars Apple has socked away.
A less ethical company would have been forced to act.
An UNETHICAL company would cover it up.
Apple is an unethical company.
While the GP was just joking, you CAN burn stuff to media with extra error correction of a sort. Burn it as rar files, with a certain percentage of the space devoted to par files. Redundant blocks that way - so if, say, 5% of the files are unreadable, you can reconstruct them. I suppose you could do the same thing across a series of discs, to be able to replace a bad disc.
You clearly know nothing about the history and original intent of copyright law.
I think I've heard of people being arrested and charged with fraud for cashing checks that were obviously in error.
Exactly! Everyone should know that credit card debt is unsecured! Your heirs don't have any obligation to pay off your credit card bills!
I'd say copyright legislation is less like adapting your business model to reality than it is trying to force reality to adapt to your business model.
one is something that can blow your brains out, the other is a weapon.
OK, I know that's really stupid, but I'm tired.
In my years as an antique dealer I often photographed works of art.
Cleaning up messy DVD rips generally takes more work.
The exact same judgements made that you mention in the photo can be necessary copying a DVD.
But it's crazy to assert that anything that can in some obscure way be deemed "creative" is now private property. And I say this as a music composer too.
Whats really strange is the way the copyright cartel wants to have it both ways... if a work is copyrighted, you can't use a tiny clip in your own work (despite "fair use") even though that tiny clip in no way damages their sales of the original - see sampling. a half-second "bleep" from a copyrighted tune is considered their property that you can't sample and use in an entirely new way.
But if the work is public domain, you copy the ENTIRE FUCKING THING, and suddenly you own copyright over it.
The whole intent and process has been to take things that were public domain and turn them into private property - the exact opposite of the original intent of copyright law.
It's as if we're allowing private interests to claim ownership of national parks... of oceans...
Insane.
and in a strange twist of fate, the movie Star Wars has become public domain despite the Corporate Revenue Protection Act of 2100 which made every last bowel movement copyrighted until infinity. Some sort of mixup... but it's public domain.
In another strange twist of fate, every existing copy of the film has become unusable... the films have long since rotted away, the holographic cubes were all victims of light-rot or something... so the film Star Wars is lost to the world.
Until I find a DVD in a garage sale, it miraculously seems to have survived the disc-eating microbes, and through my arcane knowledge of ancient DVD ripping tools, I am able to successfully extract a copy, correcting for dropouts, making it all nice and clean and watchable.
Do I now hold the copyright to Star Wars? Am I an instant bajillionaire?
In the UK I am, I guess.
Back to the present. As a collector, I own many out-of-copyright books and other materials, some of them the only ones known. I can take great effort to reproduce them... do I own the copyright on them?
Only in a totally insane corporate kleptocratic world. The very intent behind copyright in the first place was that such things WOULD be public domain, and that COPIES of them would be public domain, and would be recopied and recopied.
Laws like this turn the original intent of copyright on its head.
I have learned to use DVD copying tools for the best possible output of my copies. Setting bit rates, choosing codecs, adjusting the codec settings, then painstakingly converting the subtitles from .sub to .srt, which is a manual process... etc. etc. Do I get copyright now?
Seinfeld put a lot of work into making his cam copies of movies in that one episode... does he get copyright? OK, lets say the DVD in question, the movie in question was public domain... do I and he NOW deserve copyright?
It's fucking insane if we do.
You have to admit there is a need for this kind of product though.
If youre a person who networks through these sites, or say you have a band or whatever, it could be a full-time job to deal with keeping your various profiles current, etc.
There are some attempts to integrate parts of things, like ping.fm for example... but if you could have ONE online presence that you were able to take wherever you wanted to, be it facebook, myspace, twitter, or whatever next week's flavor is - it would be a huge service to people. It would also allow easier migration... if Facebook is starting to look old compared to ThisWeeksThing.com, then that new upstart would have an easier time getting going. Good for the evolution of the web, in a sense.
Which of course is why the established players will never allow it.
hey I'm just having fun here.
So ok, lets say it goes into a lung instead.
I'd say its a tie between learning to walk again and withdrawal from demerol.
The barium enema wasn't much fun either though.
well I was in the hospital for weeks after getting hit by a truck.. shattered pelvis, skull fracture, internal injuries... honestly though it was memorable it was no where's near the most painful thing I experienced.
lemme tell ya, I wasn't the same for a few weeks. She grabbed my dick in one hand, tried to pull the tube and when it wouldn't come, she wrapped the tube around her wrist and pulled harder.
They do something wrong with the magnetic field for a second, lose track of it, it gets carried to your brain and you stroke.
Not realistic? Well, when you've had a catheter yanked out of you without having had the balloon deflated first like I once did because the nurse fucked up, you'll learn to expect these things. A golf-ball sized object pulled through your urethra tends to leave a memory.
Star Trek: The Movie: The Video Game: The Movie
It will be worse than that. It will be "this vaccine is part of the gay agenda to indoctrinate and recruit our children!"
And since titles can't be copyrighted, they actually could USE the title "Asteroids" without paying anyone anything.
If they were indeed a "highly sought after" movie rights, that only underscores how incredibly stupid hollywood is.
Its reality. Companies are "damaged" about as much by the fact that they don't make money off sales of used games as I am "damaged" by the fact that people aren't paying me royalties for every time they take a shit and thus inadvertently destroy the resale market for MY shit.
I have a business plan, after all, that depends on the world paying me for my shit.
In short, when you have the delusional belief that you are owed money for something that nobody else in the world has ever been owed money for nor has anyone ever THOUGHT of being owed money for because its fucking insane, you're going to find your delusions "damaged."
Barcalounger doesn't get a cut of used chair sales. Del Monte doesn't get a cut of used fruit sales.
You want a cut? Do what Amazon did - they make money off new books, and then facilitate sales of used books and take a cut. (and of used games too.)
Game makes want a cut of sales of used games? Fine. Create a marketplace for sales of used games - make it more compelling to use than existing ones, and take a cut. If not, fuck off.
I should add that Canadian five cent pieces HAVE been made mostly of nickel... and thus were attracted to magnets. Canadia has large nickel deposits.