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Heh. The last place I worked (here) bought our office (we were a smaller company at first) and, within 6 months, had laid off 50% of the staff. Obviously, things went to shit from that point on. They fired just about everyone else the day after the Christmas party in '01, and I held out until the end of January. (I was making about 30% more at a better job within 2 weeks.)

I was happy to discover they've since gone chapter 11, and their stock (DVINQ) has been delisted from NASDAQ, and is now trading at $0.021. They couldn't even pay the 2003 NASDAQ listing fee! I might buy them up after I clean my couch.

Isn't karma a beautiful thing?

- A.P.

As others have commented, Felten doesn't say a lot or add much value to the debate that I can see.

On the other hand, just yesterday I stumbled across a couple of [PDF] white papers by Andrew Frank and others at divine.com which are really rather good.

The first of these is a couple of years old, the second is a 2002 follow-up, and I'm kind of surprised I've seen no reference to them before now.

Although written from the perspective of a consultant pitching to the content provider industry, these tell it like it is: either the industry "gets it" and develops a compelling digital delivery proposition, or any and all of their DRM efforts will merely accelerate Darwinian processes in the P2P and filesharing fields that make their loss of control over distribution inevitable.

As others have commented, Felten doesn't say a lot or add much value to the debate that I can see.

On the other hand, just yesterday I stumbled across a couple of [PDF] white papers by Andrew Frank and others at divine.com which are really rather good.

The first of these is a couple of years old, the second is a 2002 follow-up, and I'm kind of surprised I've seen no reference to them before now.

Although written from the perspective of a consultant pitching to the content provider industry, these tell it like it is: either the industry "gets it" and develops a compelling digital delivery proposition, or any and all of their DRM efforts will merely accelerate Darwinian processes in the P2P and filesharing fields that make their loss of control over distribution inevitable.

Oh, you mean divine's patent that they acquired with the purchase of Open Market? It must be tough for them, having been featured so many times on Fucked Company...

divine's press releases page is proud to announce that they're the "Named Fastest Growing Company on Network World 200". Their divine in the news page mentions none of this either. They are hiring I wonder if all of those jobs start at $60,000.01?

divine's press releases page is proud to announce that they're the "Named Fastest Growing Company on Network World 200". Their divine in the news page mentions none of this either. They are hiring I wonder if all of those jobs start at $60,000.01?

divine's press releases page is proud to announce that they're the "Named Fastest Growing Company on Network World 200". Their divine in the news page mentions none of this either. They are hiring I wonder if all of those jobs start at $60,000.01?

A month and a week ago, I was laid off from here. I've been at my new job now for three weeks; I've had a little bit of time to get my bearings and I can already see striking differences.

At my old job, management (not my boss, but management) was abysmal. We were constantly being handed something that needed to be done yesterday, being told to get it done ASAP and drop everything else we were doing to come up with a solution given inadequate resources. We were always short on machines, manpower, time, budget, and respect. In the midst of the latest Hot Project, management would walk in and tell us there was something else we should be doing instead, and why the hell weren't we doing that?

At my new job, there are a few levels of management. I'm only really directly affected by the level directly above me. This is similar to my old job, but with one important difference: so far, my boss has sheltered us from most of the crap raining down from above (the raining of crap is to be expected anywhere, really.)

We actually have money to get our tasks done. We have the time to get them done in (more or less). We also aren't reassigned all over the fucking place because management fucked something up.

I like it so far. Plus I got free money from my old job, w00t!

- A.P.

It's different in that yahoo didn't just get bought out by divine.com I suppose.