Posts Tagged ‘ambiguity’

A software license agreement is either a manual or electronic memorandum of a contractual agreement between the producer of software and the end user, granting to the end user a software license to use the software legally. The user can be either a legal entity or an end user and sometimes the agreement is called the end user license agreement. This contract will clearly state all the parameters of the various permissions given to the end user. In case the software license agreement is between the software producer and a business or government undertaking some special clauses are included relevant to the agreement which are unique for the licensed software.

Very often, the agreement comes shrink wrapped with the product prior to installation of the software. If the user agrees to the terms and conditions, as stated in the agreement, he or she may continue with the installation and use of the software product or else he or she may refuse the product and thus not use the software. Mostly, users do not take the trouble of reading all the clauses of the software license agreement and just click on “Accept” and begin using the software anyway. This is because of the great depth of detail held within the license agreement. The enforceability of such agreements is open to debate, especially in the United States.

The copyright laws governing making backup copies of the purchased software allows the owner of the software to make copies for the intention of backup purposes only. However, there are various interpretations to this and a certain amount of ambiguity in this regard allows end users to make copies for purposes other than merely backing up their software.

The majority of the purchased software is liable to perform as per specifications but mostly the agreement disclaims any warranty and limits any damages to just the cost of the software. In addition, some agreements prohibit the use of any reverse engineering in order to protect their trade secrets.

In the world of computers, copyrighted software sold is of two types, namely open source/free software and closed source/proprietary software. It may be added that not all software is copyrighted. There is also one other type of software that is called “abandonware” software. This is a type of software that is not being sold or supported by its copyright holder. This means that though this software is still available in the market its support and development has ceased and that it is not actively being protected, represented or supported.

Using box wrapped software implies that once the wrapper has been opened the user is giving their assent to the software terms contained within. This type of agreement is termed as “click-wrap agreements”. The popularity of click-wrap agreements is increasing since it allows the user to read the terms and conditions prior to accepting them. It has also been found to be legally enforceable in the United States with courts generally upholding such contracts. A prime example of click-wrap agreements is Hotmail, the email program sold by MSN.

There is also a distinction between personal and commercial use of the software. Personal use implies that the software is being used in one’s personal capacity while commercial use implies that the software is being used to obtain commercial or monetary gain from use of the software.

Wade Anderson is a CPA and operates DigitalWorkTools.com

Click to view a Software License Agreement.

Author: Wade Anderson
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Digital Camera News

When formatting text within an Excel worksheet, you have the choice of working at the cell level or at the text level. If you wish to work at the cell level you simply highlight one or more cells and choose your format settings. Any formatting that you choose will then apply to all text within the cell or cells.

For example, if you wish to change the font size of your data in Microsoft Excel, you can of course use the drop-down menu next to the font name and choose one of the preset sizes. Another method of changing the size is to use the Grow Fond and Shrink Font buttons located on the right of the font size. These two buttons simply use the same preset sizes available on the preset size drop-down. Having activated the font size text box, you can also use the cursor keys on your keyboard to move through different sizes. Yet another method is to enter a particular size then press the enter key. When you do so, you are permitted to enter decimals, such as 10.5.

In a similar way, when you wish to choose a font, you can highlight the current name and begin to type the name of font you have in mind, for example Times new Roman. Once you have typed enough of the name to avoid ambiguity, the font name will be displayed and you simply press the Enter key.

Colour can be similarly be applied in two ways in your worksheets either as a background to the cell or to the text inside the cell. Because background colour applies to the cell it cannot be applied at the text level. With the creation of Themes in Excel 2007, Microsoft have made it very easy to come up with colour combinations which look good together.

If you wish to work at the text level, you need to be in Edit mode. You can access Edit mode in two ways: the first is to double-click on any cell; the second is to click once on the cell and then click anywhere in the formula bar. You can know when you’re in Edit mode by the presence of the Cancel and Enter buttons on the left of the formula bar.

When working in Edit mode, you are able to highlight individual characters and change their attributes. For example, if a cell were to contain the text “Google”, you could highlight each letter individually and change it to the colour used in the Google logo.

The facility of using different formatting within the same cell is very useful for headings. It is not quite so useful for the rest of the data in your worksheets since it slows down data entry and makes editing difficult.

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