lupineshadow: principle not principal
amok: no, principal also means "the first" or "the most important" or "the main point", so a principal point is the most important point.
edit - just to clarify: A prinicple is a fundation in a belif system, you belive this to be true because of these principles.
A principal has several meanings, it can either mean "the most important" point among several (as above). or it can mean a position something or someone can have, usually a key position.
You can have a principal principle.
Breja used it wrongly, he was talking about a principle. But without more context, the way EverNightX used the term, it could be correct. the phrase "
weather you should be able to tell others what they can and can't do with things they own" could be seen as either the most important point, but it can also be seen as the fundation of a belif system.
langauge and words!
Did someone call for a lexicographer? (Rhetorical question; all quotations citing the Concise Oxford 11th Ed.)
principal
n adjective
1 first in order of importance; main.
2 denoting an original sum of money invested or lent.
n noun
1 the most important or senior person in an organization or group. →the head of a school or college. →(in certain professions) a fully qualified practitioner.
2 a sum of money lent or invested, on which interest is paid.
3 a person for whom another acts as an agent or representative. →Law a person directly responsible for a crime.
4 a main rafter supporting purlins.
5 an organ stop sounding a set of pipes typically an octave above the diapason.
DERIVATIVES
principalship noun
ORIGIN
Middle English: via Old French from Latin principalis 'first, original', from princeps, princip- 'first, chief'.
USAGE
On the confusion of principal and principle, see usage at principle [quod vide, infra].
principle
n noun
1 a fundamental truth or proposition serving as the foundation for belief or action. →a rule or belief governing one's personal behaviour. →morally correct behaviour and attitudes: a man of principle.
2 a general scientific theorem or natural law.
3 a fundamental source or basis of something. →a fundamental quality or attribute.
4 Chemistry an active or characteristic constituent of a substance.
PHRASES
in principle in theory.
on principle because of one's adherence to a particular belief.
ORIGIN
Middle English: from Old French, from Latin principium 'source', principia (plural) 'foundations', from princeps, princip- 'first, chief'.
USAGE
Note that principle and principal do not have the same meaning. Principle is normally used as a noun meaning 'a fundamental basis of a system of thought or belief', as in this is one of the basic principles of democracy. Principal, on the other hand, is normally an adjective meaning 'main or most important', as in one of the country's principal cities. As a noun principal refers to the most senior or most important person in an organization: the deputy principal.
I'll see your pedantry and raise one glaring heterographic homophonic homonym:
weather is the phenomena of climate;
whether is the conjunction expressing choice (and
wether is the castrated ram).
→ Back on topic
UnashamedWeeb: […] Symbolically, this is ultimately about more regulations over video game companies. If a movement like this can't get off the ground, the video games industry is going to keep up with its anti-consumer behaviour because they know they can get away with it over a bunch of lazy and cynic pushovers.
and
This seems to be a febrile argument exploring the difference between the
administration of policy (the legal precedent of
stare decisis, which has been grandfathered into modern law from Roman times, and without which law would be very noisy — by which I refer to the phenomenon explained in Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, & CS Sunstein (HarperCollins, 2021),
Noise: a Flaw in Human Judgment) and the
policy of administration (whether an EULA can be legally binding when it is in breach of a fundamental principle — okay, a
principal principle).
Strijkbout: If they concoct a licence that goes against the laws of ownership they can explain it to the judge and they stepped in a potential minefield. Because w[h]ether you own a digital copy of a game or a car or a kitchen utensil doesn't make a difference because if a judge judges that Ubisoft is right they risk opening the floodgates of corporations taking away all your rights, car, kitchen utensil, etc. Which is unlikely and which is why Ubisoft's licence is illegal.
Like I said, unless it states it's a lease or rental, which it doesn't, they technically stand no ground.
That has to be
proven to the court; there is a clear distinction between tangible real world things and digital copies of intellectual property. Just sayin'.
AB2012: The problem is, if those behind the campaign read Ubisoft ToS, Steam's 'Subscriber' Agreement, etc, they actually openly admit they are selling game as services & subscriptions that can be closed on a whim, so there's no real "mis-selling" going on. I wish them well, but it ultimately sounds like a group of people who've spend the past couple of decades happily throwing money at triple / quadruple DRM protected games, ignoring all the risks out of convenience, and are only just noticing / caring about it now that they've lost some favourite content personally. The time to "pushback" against 'digital' games being sold as subscriptions was about 20 years ago. The rest is just being "late to the party" of figuring out why DRM & gating single-player content online is obviously bad for game preservation in general...
Time4Tea: I agree with your comments. This campaign seems to have good intentions, but it also seems misguided. They are essentially trying to outlaw the symptom, rather than the cause of the problem, which is online DRM being injected into video games in the first place.
The games were mortally wounded at the point when the online DRM was injected. It just took them 20 years to die.
I believe the idiom is "died of wounds (inflicted earlier)".
Oh, I also concur with your concurrences.