Photoshop Express - Beware The EULA

EULA? What's a you-la? It's an End-User License Agreement and it contains all the things you agree to when you're installing software and click the "I Accept" button. Websites have the same thing but it's typically broken into two documents called "Terms of Use" and "Privacy Policy". Regardless of format, they serve the same purpose: grant as few rights to the end-user as possible without alienating them.

Why am I telling you this? Because Adobe got the "alienating" part backwards.

Yesterday Adobe released a web-based photo editor they've called Photoshop Express. Ignoring the fact that it resembles Photoshop as much as Notepad resembles Word, it's still a free 2 GB photo storage service and possibly a nice way to share your creations with others.

However, their EULA has a problem. There's one part of it that many are objecting to, and for good reason.

8. Use of Your Content.

a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Basically it means that although you retain ownership of your photos, you agree to grant Adobe a royalty-free license to reproduce your photos in any way they want. This is not good. Normally when a company needs photos they either hire an expensive photographer or pay top-dollar for stock photos which the original photographer gets paid for via royalties. However, if you take a stunning photograph and upload it into Photoshop Express, Adobe is legally able to use it for free for any purpose. You'll be giving away your creativity with no legal way to demand payment.

But why worry about this when other photo sharing sites like Flickr have been around for a lot longer? Because Flickr has an artist-friendly Agreement that leaves all rights in the hands of the photographer. If anyone wants to use your uploaded Flickr photos they are obligated to contact you for permission and you are allowed to request payment before granting permission. If they use your photos without permission you can sue them.

Adobe makes only creativity software so they know better than any company how business and art work together. Taking advantage of amateurs is abysmal. Until they change their agreement you should not use their service because it'll be likely those changes, if any, will not be retroactive.

Update, 2 days later - It seems Adobe didn't even read its own EULA and as a result of the backlash they'll be re-writing the section in question. Good for them, but it shouldn't have taken a barrage of negative press to effect such a change. My perception of them has now gone from evil to just stupid.

Mr. Fix-it's At It Again

One annoying fact of life is that given enough time, every device breaks down. Some things, however, usually take so long to break that we take their ability to function for granted. Major appliances fall into this category. Unfortunately, these days when one of them breaks people usually do one of two things, both of which are rather expensive: they call a repair guy or they throw it out and buy a new one.

But not me.

I'm old school, which is ironic given my career as a computer programmer. I grew up in a house where things were replaced only once they were broken beyond repair. I remember taking our cabinet TV to the repair shop more than once, until its rather expensive power supply died. Our dishwasher was older than me and still in use to this day. It'll be replaced soon but only because the bottom is rusting out. Our dryer was even older and is also still in use. Every five years or so my Dad has to take it apart to fix a break in the heater coil but it doesn't cost anything.

Needless to say I absorbed a lot of the do-it-yourself attitude and this past weekend I put it to use again. You may remember back in December when I fixed an awful sound in our washing machine. This time it was the dryer's turn. One day Lori turned it on and it didn't produce any heat.

On Friday I was out but Bill came over to visit and started taking it apart. He determined there was nothing wrong with the heater coil, which was unfortunate because that meant the problem was not as obvious as I had hoped.
When I returned home we searched the Internet for a wiring diagram and once it was found, grabbed our multimeters and started tracing. First we started at the obvious points like the heater sensors but when they tested in working order we followed the schematic. Starting at the main power we worked our way along until we found a resistor near the controls that was reading zero continuity.

Problem identified!

But the celebration was short-lived. It turns out the resistor had such high resistance that our multimeters read it as a continuity break but when we settled down and actually tested its resistance it was in the proper 5 kΩ range. The hunt continued.

Eventually we found a sensor that looked like its connector had melted to it. In fact, it was the sensor's internals leaking out. It read zero continuity and infinite resistance. Problem identified! This time it was for real. Luckily Whirlpool is very organized and not only do they have part numbers on everything as expected, they also have all those parts catalogued on their web site available for direct order as well as a list of local parts dealers. The part I needed was listed at $31.96 so I called Reliable Parts and they said they could get it by Tuesday for the same price plus tax.

Tuesday couldn't come fast enough. When there's a baby in the house laundry becomes very important.

When Tuesday finally rolled around Lori picked up the part and I installed it. Success! We had our dryer back in working order and it only cost us $35 and some elbow grease.

Now it's just a matter of time before the next major appliance stops working.

O.R.V.S.

I can say without hyperbole.

THIS IS THE GREATEST WEB BROWSER GAME EVAR!

100th post!!!

This is the 100th post since Too Many Nerds started up last August. So to celebrate, here is the coolest thing to hit pubs since germy pretzels. I don't drink beer, but this is still pretty sweet.

Nick's Kid

Say Frog

I'd Buy That For A Dollar

Beaurocratic Loophole

Check Out My Pics Yo!

Thanks Nick for posting the link to my pics off to the right of the screen... Just wanted to bring your attention to this matter. LOL

Chili

Deb's going to try her hand at making Chili next saturday and we'd like y'all to come over. It's not quite so 70s anymore.

Birthdays

Hey all. If you'll divert your attention to the right hand side of your screen you'll notice a new feature I've implemented. This is a calendar of birthdays. By default it will show any birthdays within a month of the time you view it (for example, today is march 7 so it will show anything up to April 7.) If you want to look forward, just click the link below it that says "look for more."

If there are any birthdays you want added, let me or Steve know and we'll add them to the calendar.

Getting there.

Since nobody has been to our place in months I thought you might want to see some new pics of the bathroom. Take a trip over to our condo blog HERE and you'll see some pics and info and such. DO IT!