How common is it for large corporations to steal amateur photos like that?
See, Virgin aren’t stealing (and that’s leaving aside the distinction of physical and virtual property). They are very likely completely in the right! The photographer released the picture under the CC-BY (Creative Commons-Attribution) license, which makes it okay to use for any commercial endeavour. That comes with at least a moral implication that you have actually gotten the necessary release forms, too, since otherwise the whole license is pointless.
I just can’t believe they would USE it like that!
Well, that’s the idea behind the CC licenses, that you can just use CC-licensed things by following the terms of the license. And that’s why you use any of the CC-NC (Non-Commercial) versions if you do not want to allow commercial usage. Seems simple, right?
And if you don’t have all the rights to the work… then you don’t license it at all.
I kid, I kid. I have no intention of changing operating systems, at least until Linux finally is ready for the Deskop.
Plan 9 still is nice, though!
Much is foul in the state of computing today. Proprietary software is used throughout the industry as well as on the majority of personal computers. The promised Linux Desktop revolution, announced since years, has not happened so far, and people are beginning to doubt it ever will happen.
This madness must end.
No longer can we use proprietary software! Be it the proprietary operating system we use, or closed source drivers, protocols that are neither open nor standardized, or even embedded firmware in devices.
No longer must people get away with “I use Mac OS X because it’s userfriendly”, when large parts of their OS are completely closed and locking them in.
No longer can “Well, I use Windows XP, but it’s ok, I run Cygwin under it!” be tolerated, lest we all lose our GNU-given freedom.
No longer can we just watch the proliferation of patents, software or otherwise, spreading like a cancer and trying to smother our liberty.
We must stand up and fight! We must retake our freedom! We can not stand and watch as the walls grow closer, not wait until they suffocate us!
Today I’m doing the first step towards my personal free software freedom. And this freedom can not, it must not depend only on some license, or development model considerations. Licenses are manmade. The Tao of Operating Systems is bigger than that.
I’m switching to an Operating System that is pure in itself, whose radiant beauty enlightens the galaxy of computing. One which treats all resources equally, in its infinite wisdom. One which uses the only true encoding - UTF-8 - everywhere. One whose name is funny, and not some ego boosting thing (say what, Linus?).
UNIX may be dying. BSD may be dead. But from the ashes of sockets and ioctl rose the phoenix that is Plan 9.
Replacing a tried-and-true installation of Windows XP with an equally able setup of Plan 9 is easy. You just install Plan 9 — there is no need to bother with backups, partitioning, or selecting packages. After an installation procedure taking some twenty minutes, you reboot into a new, blissful existence. Plan 9 is the Tao, and the Tao is Plan 9.
I want to take this opportunity to ask everyone of you, my readers, to get yourself a Plan 9 installation/live CD. In the month of April, set yourself the task of converting at least five computers from a proprietary, egoistically named, or user-friendly Operating System to the salvation that is Plan 9. Do not try to reason with the unbelievers you encounter, for you will encounter them, and they shall not be swayed from the path of darkness. Only through force can you rescue them from this downward spiral, the lefthand path, the path of usable systems and working devices. By the sword you shall spread the righteousness and glory of the path of light. Plan 9 is the Tao, and the Tao is Plan 9.
Go forth, and spread it.
Remember: The open source zealot’s blood is the seed of Freedom’s tree. This is madness, you say? Madness? This is Plan 9!
Screenshots of my new Plan 9 system will follow as soon as I get my screenshot file working.
Recently, Snap Previews Anywhere (by Snap.com) have been proliferating wildly. Some people only experimented with them for a short time, then disabled them again; others are still using them.
I personally find them annoying as hell. They:
break the user flow, since they just pop up right in the middle and they can’t be anticipated (unlike e.g. intellitxt, where the huge green border is a good hint);
get in the way, if you accidentally hovered over a link and the bubble pops up over text you were reading;
block clicks, sometimes even on the very link they triggered on (this doesn’t happen consistenly, but often enough to be annoying);
don’t add value, or am I just not seeing how previews of the site behind a link somehow improve my browsing experience? (Of course, this is highly subjective.)
Luckily, you can disable Snap Previews Anywhere rather easily - if you know where to look. You can either click the question mark button and search through the FAQ, or just follow this link to disable Snap Previews Anywhere, anywhere. You must accept and keep cookies for that page to work.
Now, I don’t want to be only complaining. A very simple way of making Snap Previews behave would be to a) add a little marker to snappified links, maybe a smaller version of the bubble graphic; and b) only trigger when the user hovers over the marker, maybe even add a small delay. This way, it doesn’t disturb people who just coincidentally hover over a link, it’s visible, and still easily accessible.
[lang_de]
MasterCard rebranden. Von ihrem bekannten, zwei-farbige-verzahnte-Kreise-Logo zu einem neuen, das grundsätzlich sehr ähnlich ist, aber gerade unterschiedlich genug, um eine schlechte Idee zu sein.
![Neues und altes MasterCard-Logo][mastercard-rebranding]
Das neue Logo behält die zwei bewährten Kreise bei, rückt sie aber weiter auseinander und verkleinert sie. Die Verzahnung wird durch ein einfaches Überlappen mit Farbwechsel ersetzt, die Teile greifen also nicht mehr ineinander, sondern … invertieren sich? (Welche Message steckt hier bloß dahinter?) Als Zuckerguss auf dem Ganzen liegt dann ein dritter Kreis aus halbtransparenten Farbverläufen, so dass das Logo am Ende meiner Meinung nach eher nach einem Unfall beim Vektorzeichnen aussieht als nach einem passenden Image für eines der größten Kreditkartenunternehmen der Welt.
Zwei wichtige Punkte, die mir auf Anhieb einfallen:
Brand Awareness: Das MasterCard-Logo ist von überragender Bekanntheit. Zufällig ausgewählte Versuchspersonen konnten das Logo auf Anhieb fast immer recht genau wiedergeben. Sowas sollte man nicht leichtfertig aufs Spiel setzen.
Einfachheit: Das alte Logo benutzte drei Farben: Rot, gelb, und schwarz, konnte also mit nur zwei Schmuckfarben einfach wiedergegeben werden und skalierte auch gut “nach unten”, z.B. für zwei- oder einfarbigen Druck. Die Linien sind klar definiert und “easy on the eyes”.
Das neue Logo hingegen klotzt gleich mehrere Farbverläufe in die Mitte des Logos und wird wohl immer nach Rasterung und Offsetdruck verlangen. Es ist auch schwer, sich das neue Logo z.B. einfarbig auf Textilien vorzustellen.
Letzlich entgeht mir wohl der Sinn des Rebrandings. MasterCard sagt dazu:
[die drei Kreise] reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor
Ich schätze nur, dass es dem weit größeren Teil der Welt völlig Schnuppe ist, wie viele Geschäftsbereiche MasterCard hat - und dass der Teil, den es interessiert, es auch ohne das neue Logo wusste.
[/langde]
[langen]
MasterCard are rebranding. From their old, well-known, two-color interlocked circles logo to a new one which is basically the same, but just different enough to make the move stupid.
![New and old MasterCard logos][mastercard-rebranding]
The new logo keeps the two well-known circles, but moves them further apart and sizes them down. The interlocking is replaced by simply drawing the overlapping part in a different color, so the parts don’t intertwine anymore, instead they… invert? (What message are they trying to convey here?) The icing on top of it - literally - is a third circle filled with half transparent gradients, which results in the logo looking more like an accident in a vector graphics program than a fitting new image for one of the largest credit card issuers world wide.
Two important points that come to mind immediately:
Brand Awareness: The MasterCard logo is outstandingly well-known. Randomly selected persons could almost always reproduce the logo at first go. That’s not something one should risk lightly.
Simplicity: The old logo used three colors: Red, orange, and black, and could thus be reproduced using two spot colors. It also ‘scaled’ well to two color or even single color printing. The lines are well defined and easy on the eyes.
The new logo instead uses multiple gradients in the middle of the logo and will always require rasterization and offset printing. It’s hard to imagine the new logo on fabric, for example.
Maybe I’m just missing the whole point of the rebranding. MasterCard state:
[the three circles] reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor
I suppose, though, that the larger part of the population is completely uninterested to the number of business tiers of MasterCard - and that the part that is actually interested knew anyway.
[/lang_en]
MasterCard® is a registered trademark of MasterCard Worldwide.
