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Unless you have any special contractual obligations, no notice is necessary in an "at-will" employment state like California. That goes both ways - both employees and employers are allowed to terminate employment without notice (except in certain situations like a mass layoff which might have some legal requirements to give notice, severance pay, etc. It's possible that if the employer generally gives severance pay, they may be obligated to give you severance pay if they terminate you, but you might have to take them to court to get it.

That said, I've never worked at an employer that didn't give at least 2 weeks of severance pay and/or notice even when they escorted the employee to the door on the day of the termination. This was true even for employees let go due to performance reasons... I haven't been involved with a termination involving misconduct so it's possible that those fired with-cause have been let go without any severance. Sometimes severance pay was longer than 2 weeks, based on how long the employee was employed at the company. At one startup where I worked that closed suddenly after running out of cash, the CEO paid 2 weeks of severance and up to 3 months of health insurance premiums out of his own pocket to all 30 employees.

As an employee, I've never given less than 2 weeks of notice as a courtesy. (and have always offered transitional consulting services after departing the company to help with bringing the new employee up to speed). I don't like to burn bridges because you never know when you're going to run into a former employer or coworker again. Screwing them over by leaving without giving any notice is not going to earn you any points if you end up interviewing with them at some future company.

At one company I worked at, we had someone start working for us and after 2 weeks he stopped showing up at work. He didn't respond to phone calls, and eventually, HR finally tracked him down through the Emergency Contact he listed on his HR forms - we all thought he'd been in some kind of accident or something. It turns out that he had just decided not to work there anymore and didn't see the need to tell anyone. His manager found out through a contact at the guy's former employer that the guy had never left his job at that employer and had taken 2 weeks of vacation to come to our company and check it out, he didn't like working at our company, so decided to go back to his former employer after his "vacation". The manager from our company told the manager at the other company, when they found out what happened, they fired him. Thanks to it being a relatively close-knit industry with a lot of people knowing each other, the guy was not able to find another job in the same industry and last we heard he had left the country.

So, the moral of the story is - don't screw over your employer because you don't know who your boss knows and when you might come across him again.

I agree with everyone who has said some version of "hire a consultant" to evaluate the situation.

Since you were "asked by a medium-sized business to help them come to grips with why their IT group is ineffective" - I'm assuming that you are the consultant they hired

Think of your job as proving "I.T. malpractice" - with the specific role of proving "I.T. negligence." The manager was negligent if they weren't "reasonably skillful and careful" - which you can prove by taking those "countless projects that are overly complex, don't function as needed, and are incredibly expensive" and explaining what a "skilled and careful" professional would have attempted (i.e. the simple, cost effective, solution)

calling the manager "incompetent" isn't much better than saying that they are "stupid" (both of which may be true - but are hard to objectively prove).

the company might want to keep the manager around for some reason (*cough* nepotism *cough*) so the preferred solution might mean getting the manager "trained up" (.. and I'm guessing that they don't want to fire the manager - or they would have done that by now...)

of course ymmv, ianal, and all those other acronyms - here is a place to start for the theory

I am so glad I don't like in New York anymore, we don't have that big gapping loophole in ours:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/home-sellers-colorado-your-disclosure-obligations.html

I guess the $500 can be seen as a red flag when purchasing, If was a buyer in NY I would ask for the disclosure, not the $500. The $500 seems like its to cover the BUYER's inspection expense, but if the buyer backs out after the inspection, the seller won't be crediting them the $500, which makes me thing this law was written by morons who don't know anything about mortgage liabilities.

dog bites an intruder in all 50 states

Wow, that dog and his owner must get around, not to mention having the most horrible luck.

Still, google for "state law dog bit intruder"

Washington - Dog owners in Washington are responsible for keeping their dogs in an enclosed area. If someone enters the enclosed area during a burglary or while committing some other crime, they could be responsible for any dog attack that takes place on the property. (I blame the wishy-washy wording on it being a lawyer advice website.).
Generic for many states - In most states, dog owners aren't liable to trespassers who are injured by a dog. But the rules are convoluted and vary significantly from state to state.
Same basic rules, different site - Common law holds a person who owns what he knows to be a 'dangerous dog' liable regardless of a person's status, but most common law states are 'reluctant' to find liability on behalf of a trespasser/criminal.

You must not have been searching very effectively if you spent "2 hours" searching, I found these sights in less time than it took to compose this post.

I don't know what a non-competition agreement is, but I've signed more than one non-compete agreement. It's the name of the agreement because of the non-compete clause, a term used in contract law. It's not supposed to grammatically correct. If I signed an "ain't nobody got time for that" agreement, it would still be called an "ain't nobody got time for that agreement" despite the poor grammatical form.

Nolo Press
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia
( I just put their FAQs page up to show they're helpful: you might want to look at their Products page, instead )

You want to put a brick in the face of abuse?
get "Patent Pending in 24 Hours" and a few others of theirs.

( they were updated after a re-writing of the patent laws recently, 2010 or 2011 or something )

Yes you still require the funds to fight patent-infringement,
but because it is possible to win so thoroughly in willful infringement cases,
you may have a very big stick.

Patent searches? they got a book on that.
Patent drawings done right? ditto.
the whole shamozzle? one on that, too.

Helpless is for those who give up.

The determined can, and often enough to make a difference, do win.

Cheers.

ps, a few years ago I read it cost $1 000 to go from Patent Pending to Patent Application Filed
( and patent actually going to be considered...
IBM and others file Patent Pending and then don't pay the fee,
just to prevent inventions from being patented, to keep them free for themselves & others...
but you had, iirc, a full year to go from first filing to paid & final filing...
anyways, helplessness is an adopted/conditioned posture, not some Universe-decreed condition...
you want to give up, do, but if the case is really clear,
you may find a lawyer who will work on percentage-of-winnings,
instead of up-front-fees,
if you can't afford to prosecute an abuse of your invention right off...
sometimes that does happen, ttbomk...
cheers. )

Pardon me, perhaps you are not aware of District of Columbia v. Heller where the Supreme Court found the 2nd Amendment is expressly ABOUT personal ownership of firearms. So how about you STFU until you learn something about the issue, rather than a knee-jerk response...

Heller says otherwise. Perhaps YOU need to learn more about your rights than what the President wishes to spoon-feed you...

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state#New_York , this is a list of _all_ legal pistol owners in those counties. So, if you believe that owning a pistol is a right, under the 2nd amendment (the Supreme Court thinks so: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/right-own-gun-under-heller-30295.html), the paper outed _every_ law abiding pistol owner. If you think this was OK, why not open the DMV database, so people can look up your home address from your license plate (note: that's not allowed to the public in California).

I think you are confusing the perspective of ACLU lawyers with the perspective of military veterans.

Members of the military being confused as to exactly what they're fighting for? That's a shocker.

According to the Supreme Court military veterans are not defending fighting words.

"Fighting Words
Inflammatory words that are either injurious by themselves or might cause the hearer to immediately retaliate or breach the peace. Use of such words is not necessarily protected "free speech" under the First Amendment ..."
http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/fighting-words-term.html

As for the combat veterans I have known they seem perfectly fine with the notion that some speech will get you a kick in the ass or a punch in the face from your fellow citizen.

As long as they're perfectly fine with spending the day in jail and having an assault conviction on their record.

"... If the hearer is prosecuted for assault, claiming fighting words may establish mitigating circumstances."
http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/fighting-words-term.html

More likely charged with disorderly conduct.

Plus unlikely to find a jury to convict a combat veteran of assault on WBC member at a funeral for a simple kick in the ass or punch in the face.

Also, you realize that combat veterans have demonstrated the ability to do what is right, to protect others, rather than what is in their personal best interest?

I think you are confusing the perspective of ACLU lawyers with the perspective of military veterans.

Members of the military being confused as to exactly what they're fighting for? That's a shocker.

According to the Supreme Court military veterans are not defending fighting words.

"Fighting Words
Inflammatory words that are either injurious by themselves or might cause the hearer to immediately retaliate or breach the peace. Use of such words is not necessarily protected "free speech" under the First Amendment ..."
http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/fighting-words-term.html

As for the combat veterans I have known they seem perfectly fine with the notion that some speech will get you a kick in the ass or a punch in the face from your fellow citizen.

As long as they're perfectly fine with spending the day in jail and having an assault conviction on their record.

"... If the hearer is prosecuted for assault, claiming fighting words may establish mitigating circumstances."
http://www.nolo.com/dictionary/fighting-words-term.html

More likely charged with disorderly conduct.

Plus unlikely to find a jury to convict a combat veteran of assault on WBC member at a funeral for a simple kick in the ass or punch in the face.

Also, you realize that combat veterans have demonstrated the ability to do what is right, to protect others, rather than what is in their personal best interest?

IANAL, so take this with the usual sodium supplement.

I notice that your video contains no copyright notice of any kind, As I understand it, this doesn't actually give away your ownership, but it does make it a lot of difference enforcementwise.You might want to do a little reading so you can better protect your work in the future.

It's also worth remembering that Youtube is very much about repurposing other people's content.. You can fight this with legal boilerplate and takedown notices, but really you're going against the spirit of the place.

if im going the speed limit, i have no obligation to let you pass

Also, you are wrong. What you are doing is quite likely illegal, you just haven't been caught yet:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-ticket-book/chapter7-6.html

Apple has a trade dress patent. There are around 10 individual characteristics that make up the image of an iPhone. This includes rounded corners, grid of icons that can be swiped, lower set of icons that are static, edge to edge glass, black or white with chrome borders, etc.

Trade dress is NOT supposed to apply to functional aspects of the product. See this article and this one for more details. Rounding the rectangular corners of a phone or tablet is functional as much as it is aesthetic; consumers generally don't like to be poked with sharp corners, which can easily happen when a square-edged device is placed inside a pocket. Likewise, the "grid of icons that can be swiped" is almost entirely functional, since it was designed as the easiest way to allow a selection from a large number of graphical elements on a small touchscreen. Same with having a lower set of static indicators. Adding all these together basically says that Apple has a trade dress patent on making a smartphone or tablet that is easy and convenient to use. But you aren't supposed to be able to get a trade dress patent on any such thing, only on purely aesthetic elements.

Other than the fact that its not statutory rape if the father was also under the age of consent.

This may be true in some places, but it's not true everywhere. In some states, both minors can be prosecuted. In others, just the boy.

Example source: http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/rape-statutory-rape-32638.html

Stipulated. You get what you pay for

:)

The US government does not have full immunity and you can sue it since 1948, see the The Federal Tort Claims Act. The site's best bet is to see if the RIAA provided false or inaccurate information and sue them directly, ie say for liable. http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/suing-government-negligence-FTCA-29705.html

I thought educational use was exempt from copyright restrictions.

You thought wrong.

Educational uses are certainly one of the things that often falls under fair use but there's limits. For example, a teacher can probably legally copy an article to discuss it in class, but you can't photocopy an entire book legally.

If the use is educational, that can make the case for the use being fair use stronger -- but it's only part of the equation.

Indeed, the limits in small claims court seem to be in the range of $2,500 to $25,000 (depending on the state). Then again, the RIAA has been awarded roughly this amount as the per-song damages in cases they bring against individuals ... that makes it feel about right in my mind.

So, it's not enough to bankrupt UMG by any means, but it's still just and appropriate, given the actions they would take if the tables were turned.

So, email is private...But communications that you target towards a specific person are presumptively private.

In lay speak: it's as private as a post card. Courts have found that employers are generally free to read employee email messages, as long as there's a valid business purpose for doing so.

• some email systems automatically copy all messages that pass through them
• some create backup copies of new messages as they arrive, and
• some employers that use "keylogger" software might even have copies of draft email messages that you never sent -- and we all know how bad these can be.

A quick Google Search shows that it varies greatly from state to state. Mine it's all the way up to 10k, of course, my state's so corrupt it doesn't matter anyway, the judge'll get bought for $500...

Yes, you are required to pay them overtime, unless they fall within a very specific set of exemptions. See here under the section titled "Which Employees Are Entitled to Overtime". It's very possible that OP wasn't exempt and his employer didn't want to pay him overtime. How is it you are so certain he's exempt?

I must conclude that either:

a) you know this and are deliberately ignoring it because your employees are exempt (but you can't assume OP was)
or
b) you don't know it, but those wiser than yourself have already carefully verified that your employees are exempt
or
c) you don't know it, nobody has checked or didn't check carefully enough, and you're one lawsuit away from bad things.

Furthermore, OP said that his contract specified 40 hours per week. Contractors simply don't do free work that isn't covered by their contract. If the contract says 40 hours per week, you get 40 hours per week from them. If you want more than that you'll have to re-negotiate the contract. Asking for free work that isn't covered by the contract is a Very Bad Idea for all parties involved (you and the contractor both).

Effectively there are two parts to a marriage: the religious / social part which people can argue about and debate within the context of their own personal beliefs and the financial part which requires the government to at least recognize that the people are filing their taxes jointly.

You're leaving out a LOT of benefits/rights that married people get:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/mar_bene.htm

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/marriage-rights-benefits-30190.html

I am not a lawyer, so this isn't legal advice, just my experience. I have sued a number of times (and won) in small claims court, including in Santa Clara County -- where Mountain View is located as it happens. I know of someone in Florida who files small claims spam cases in California and flies in for the hearing. Nolo Press has a great book dedicated to small claims court in California Incidentally, in California lawyers aren't allowed to represent clients in small claims cases, although they are allowed for the re-trial if the defendant appeals a loss. As far as collections goes, handily enough VeriSign is also in Santa Clara County. So rather than chase down a spammer in some far off state to collect, you can just threaten to go down the road and seize a non-paying defendant's business property i.e. their .com domain name if they don't pay.

As the Nolo Press book explains, you can file two $7500 small claims lawsuits a year and an unlimited number of $2500 suits. California law awards $1000 per illegal spam. Santa Clara county even has specific rules for filing two or more small claims cases at the same time. So for example I filed simultaneously two lawsuits both against the defendants for 8 spam each per lawsuit. The two cases were heard at the same time and ultimately I collected $16000 plus interest. (In the course of the cases I also raised $40,000 for Second Harvest and the Darfur Stove Project charities...)

Is this not so in the US?

Yes.

You're wrong, except in Minnesota:

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-30198.html

---linuxrocks123

The very definition of "license" is to allow someone to violate a general law.

For example, a license to drive.
A license to hunt.
And now, a license to speed.

License: n. "1) Permission to do something otherwise prohibited under law -- for example, a license to practice law or drive a car."

Depends on local rules. In California, you can still technically change your name without any intervention from the court (as long as you're not doing so for fraudulent reasons), but post-911, many agencies (e.g. Social Security) will no longer take your word for it, so you really need a paper from the court. Nevertheless, this article doesn't mention any requirement to provide a reason. "Because I want to" has always been a valid reason for changing your name in Cali, and seems to still be so, even if the procedure is a bit more complicated than it used to be. (My aunt and mother both changed their name under the old rules, in the seventies and nineties respectively. First name in my aunt's case --she hated it; last in my mother's case--she hated him.)

Note that this may be a rare case of a beneficial side effect of having the motion picture industry be one of the state's most powerful lobbying groups. :)

Even if a class action suit is filed and they are found guilty or w/e ill receive a coupon in the mail for something i didnt want and have to pay real money to get anyways. Thanks alot Sony. I dont use my Linux on my PS3 whole lot, but i didnt give up 10 GB of precious HDD space for nothing.

Small claims court is a great thing, and will quite often let you recover the full value of damages rather than getting a coupon or some similar crap from a class-action suit. File for the full value of the thing, claiming that whether you accept the update or don't, irreparable damage will be done to functions you purchased the system to perform. Quite often, they won't even bother to show up and will just quietly pay off what you win. I'd strongly encourage you to look into the small-claims rules in your jurisdiction, and you can also find some basic information here.

Read this. Your research is faulty.
http://www.metrocorpcounsel.com/current.php?artType=view&artMonth=July&artYear=2009&EntryNo=8329
and this
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29584.html

I've scoured the web for free/open source legal templates for hiring contractors, issuing W-2s, keeping shareholder minute meetings, etc, but haven't been able to find any decent sources.

Little do you know, you are looking for the "Nolo" series of books at your local library, you know, the library, the place where homeless people go for internet access... Your local library, unless its total ghetto, probably has the entire nolo series available to read and/or borrow.

Nolo has a website with a lot of marketing, yet also some information, at:

http://www.nolo.com/

Your best strategy is to skim thru, maybe even check out, the books that look interesting at the library, then purchase the most recent version from nolo for daily use.

I think, based on your description, you want their book "Legal Forms for Starting & Running a Small Business"

I have absolutely no connection to Nolo other than reading their educational books at the library when I was a kid, convinced me that the profession of lawyer-ing or whatever was not quite as interesting as it appeared on TV.

And to split hairs, homosexuals currently have the right to marry. A homosexual man can marry any woman who sees fit agree, and a homosexual woman can marry any man who sees fit to agree. As a heterosexual man, I do not have the right to marry any man. Seems pretty clear and equally applied. Man marries Woman.

That isn't what is meant by homosexuals having the rights to marry, and you know it.

From my point of view, the state/government should get out of the "marriage" business all together

The government is the only entity that can define and enforce the laws. And since one gets a great many legal benefits from being married, the government should be involved.

It should be a religious state.

To many religions espouse to many contradictory claims on who has the right to do what to whom (and when) to make this feasible.

Just have civil contracts to define "partners" rights.

And who is going to enforce these "partners" rights? These rights will depend on the laws of the land, and that means the government.

Cash vs. Accrual Accounting : http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29513.html

Cash accounting is the one that makes sense. You mark it down when you get it.

Short version of accrual accounting: you mark it down when you are told you will get it. If you are told you will be paid and then you aren't, you write it off as a loss. Under cash accounting, you wouldn't ever have written that transaction down.

I suppose in theory, MS or WB could inflate those numbers up to be huge, but it wouldn't have any effect, as your taxable income ends up at the same amount. A tax expert can probably explain the minor nuances. I hate accounting.

Let me help you with that definition

Obviously, the word doesn't mean what you think it means.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29493.html

( I'm a customer of theirs, not an "affiliate" :)

http://www.nolo.com/products/patent-law/index.html

http://www.nolo.com/products/representing-yourself/index.html

cheers.

( consider the Legal Research book, as well as the patent stuff )

Their books are excellent & informative, and they give one the ability to KNOW what the landscape is, instead of just blundering ignorantly.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29493.html

( I'm a customer of theirs, not an "affiliate" :)

http://www.nolo.com/products/patent-law/index.html

http://www.nolo.com/products/representing-yourself/index.html

cheers.

( consider the Legal Research book, as well as the patent stuff )

Their books are excellent & informative, and they give one the ability to KNOW what the landscape is, instead of just blundering ignorantly.

http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/article-29493.html

( I'm a customer of theirs, not an "affiliate" :)

http://www.nolo.com/products/patent-law/index.html

http://www.nolo.com/products/representing-yourself/index.html

cheers.

( consider the Legal Research book, as well as the patent stuff )

Their books are excellent & informative, and they give one the ability to KNOW what the landscape is, instead of just blundering ignorantly.

BUY THIS BOOK. It's written by a patent attorney for problems like yours. You can get it from http://www.nolo.com/ It cannot not give you all the answers. But, you will have a better understanding if you do need to talk to a patent attorney. The author does mention that a patent lawsuit costs 1-3 million dollars.

The author of the product doesn't have to abide by the license

You bet your ass a licensor has to obey the license. Beyond that, it's also possible to draft a license so the licensor cannot use the copyrighted work.http://www.nolo.com/definition.cfm/Term/3B79CA9C-5199-46E7-BAF2BCF991701681/alpha/E/

Go here and read up on it. It's free!

Greetings all, First off, this is my first post to /. so please bear with me. Also, IANAL; your mileage may vary! When I researched some ideas I had at a patent depository library, I was depressingly amazed by how many clever ideas I had, that others had already had (sometimes long before), and this was primarily US prior art. There are lots of clever, industrious folks in other countries, too. For the past ~30 years, the US patent office has been underfunded, and in consequence, the USPTO often doesn't do a good job of searching for prior art (they are under pressure to process a patent in something like 8 hours, AFAIK.) In consequence, the USPTO often grants patents for ideas that aren't novel at all. So, publication would not guarantee that a troll could not read your publication, and then try to patent it (as a previous commenter suggested.) I admire your desire to put your ideas out there, and I humbly suggest the following: Get ahold of the book _Patent it Yourself_ by David Pressman, published by Nolo press: http://www.nolo.com/product.cfm/objectID/139AEDE9-69A0-4810-A7A87D2AD5422664/310/ Since one of your goals is to prevent others from patenting, then the "publication" that would really count is to convey your ideas to the patent office (in whatever country/ies) you want to prevent patenting. As a previous poster points out, even if your patent application is unsuccessful, it will be in those patent offices' databases, with an established date. I haven't followed the recent patent law changes, but I suspect that (in the US, at least) a provisional patent application might serve your purposes, and would be easier/cheaper. HTH, Larry

Good solo-inventor NDAs are available here and also here.

Nolo also has lots of other good stuff for solo inventors, like Patent it Yourself.

Good luck.

IANAL, and you should get one.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, and I'll probably get modded down for this. But seriously, if your enterprise is going to go anywhere, you need competent legal representation from the get go. If you don't have a lawyer on staff or as a partner, you should hunt around and find a decent lawyer who is willing to partner with you for a minority equity stake. Find a reasonably guy who's able to see the long-term potential of your company and is willing to invest the time that it takes to ensure a strong legal foundation, and you won't regret your equity loss even one day. (I'd say that in a startup with 2-4 partners, a %10 stake is probably about right, YMMV)

Slashdot is littered with condescending posts about business majors who thought that what programmers do is just simple and who tried to do it themselves, and did a total WTF stupid in the process. Things like trying to write enterprise, thousand-user software in FileMaker Pro. Or secure a website with javascript-based access control. Or passed passwords via telnet over the plain-Jane Internet. Or any of a thousand other obvious stupids that only somebody completely clueless about technology might think is a good idea.

And when it comes to anything legal, you are just as dumb, just as clueless, and just as likely to do a serious WTF that leaves your fledgling company high-and-dry, or worse, in deep liability doo-doo. Lawyers go to school and learn the meanings of all kinds of "almost-English" words like "good faith" and "collateral estoppel" that mean almost nothing to you or I, but have real implications when brought up in court or on contracts.

You are an expert in your field, you expect (and deserve) to get paid well for your time. Lawyers are in the same boat, in a different industry.

At the very least, see sites like Legal Zoom or Nolo Press and have some reasonably decent quality documents to start with. That is, until you can get some reasonable legal representation.

The bottom line: if you don't get legal representation, you are going to be legally representing yourself. And you'll probably muck it up just as bad as the idiot who thought that writing a high-quality 3D FPS game in Perl was a good idea.

I think the general idea is that lawyers cost quite a lot of money per hour, while /. is completely free.

There are ways to get legal advice without spending a lot of money. Like visiting web sites and reading books authored by people with actual legal training.

Whatever the cost, the kind of legal advice you get on Slashdot can easily cost you more than you could possibly save on legal fees. The problem here is that too many Slashdotters just don't understand the law as well as they think they do. So they deliver bad advice based on a misunderstanding of the law with a sense of authority that's very dangerous.

Nor does it help that many Slashdotters have a strong libertarian bent and a strong sense of outrage over perceived social wrongs. Too often, their understanding of the law is motivated by a desire to further these principles, rather than any real understanding of how the law actually works in practice.

I'm getting borred of this thread so if you see me stop responding, you know why.

What does that have to do with the use of the term "climate change" vs. "global warming"? Nobody ever titled themselves "global warming".

It means exactly as I said, they didn't call it Climate change until after global warming deniers gained traction.

Uh, no, that doesn't have anything to do with how the IPCC was created.

it got hijacked and turned into a political organization.

The IPCC was always intended to be a political organization. That's what the "Intergovernmental" is for. It's also a scientific organization. That's what the "Climate Change" is for.

Whatever, that's how it happened, it's a political organization and it's 80%of the ammo supporting Global warming despite a lot of the scientist objecting to how it portrayed their work.

That continues to be a libelous and wrong claim, and one that you repeatedly avoid supporting with facts.

Perhaps you need to look up the definition of libel. You keep using that word and I don't think you know what it means.

Which in turn, does not negate the utility of an emission cap.

Lol... I didn't say a word about an emissions cap. We both were talking about the artificial increase of energy prices hurting the economy. If you can get an emissions cap that doesn't do that, more power to you, I will agree to it. So far, you can't and inflating energy prices is what happens which ruins the economies. Look at Europe's economy, they had to bank all their wealth on the US because of their energy inflation which hurt their economy. When the US got hit, they went down in flames too.

Again, what matters is not the absolute amount of CO2 vs. the absolute amount of water vapor. What matters is the CHANGE in CO2 vs. the change in other radiative forcing agents.

Lol.. The change in the amount of Co2 and water effect the absolute amounts. The entire premise is that the absolute amounts are causing heat to build up and therefore damage to the environment that you have arbitrarily decided needs to stay the same as you know it.

More made-up numbers. 80 or 90 percent of what, measured by what?

The absolute amount compared to other gases in the atmosphere is irrelevant to how hard or easy it is to reduce the emissions rate of any particular gas.

Measured by the publicized prophecies of the al mighty science community and reported in the press.

Again, this is wrong. It's not relevant whether CO2 is a small or large fraction of the total atmosphere. What is relevant is how hard or easy it is to alter CO2 emissions relative to the fraction by which we've increased CO2 concentrations.

Actually, no. It is very relevant. Especially when you have reports like this. I noticed it didn't get much main stream media coverage.

Feel free to justify this with actual numbers.

I don't think I need to. Other entire countries are revolting on the idea and some blamed the global recession on it.

So can any model.

Well, it appears that the models are so flawed that they can show the exact same warming trends as being blamed on Co2 without even raising Co2 levels.

Didn't we discuss the sun and water vapor a w

Nolo Press is a good resource for legal information. If you plan on freelancing for a while, you should consider incorporating to provide liability protection. Also, get business insurance, a good accountant and a lawyer.

Good luck!

It's not only +1 Informative, +1 Insightful, but also +1 Interesting.

Also, compared to a lawyer, it is +1 Useful and +1 Cheap, not to mention +1 Fits In A Backpack.

At the very least, buy this book and read it. Get legal advice because laws are different in different states and your contracts and situation varies from case to case. Paying $1,000 for a lawyer now is nothing compared to what your legal bills will be if you have to defend yourself in court - even if you win. And getting your lawyer to negotiate is always an option. Speaking directly to the company on such issues is not advisable. Have a lawyer do it and do everything upfront. Just because you signed a contract doesn't mean you can't do it or are bound to the agreement. A lot of contracts are "boiler" plate and are not enforceable. For example non-competes hardly ever stick (especially for contractors) but non-solicitation does hold up. In many cases only specific sections of the document are enforceable and if you are a contractor you have many claim and ownership rights in the legal system that an employee does not have. Basically as the creator you own the software you have made and you must grant that ownership to the company in an agreement. As an employee, you pretty much own nothing unless it is on your own time and some will debate that as well but it is much easier for the court to rule against an employee vs. a contractor. Your lawyer can use a crummy contract (and most are in my experience) to your advantage to come to an agreement with your client so that you can proceed without the fear of legal action. Or you can at least be well informed before you roll the dice. http://www.nolo.com/product.cfm/ObjectID/2C02C865-21E7-497C-9DDDBA058175FFA1/310/266/

I expect we will get Open Source Law, and so-called lawyers will no longer be able to charge excessively for basic legal advice in simple cases.

This currently exists, in a basic form, in California at least. From what I can tell, this press was founded by attorneys who wanted to provide people exactly the service you're describing. They also detail where your situation diverges from a 'simple case' and that you should consult an attorney in those cases.

Considering how much FUD there is about the liability of providing legal advice outside of the attorney-billfold-client arrangement, it's pleasantly surprising how far these books will get you on your own. Sadly, since it's based in California, the books can be California-specific depending on the topic covered. But it's a great starting point for what 'Open Source Law' could be.

And along those lines, I have to suspect that anything which becomes available to do-it-yourselfers ends up providing finer granularity to the market. Where previously you had a single choice -- to buy product and service from vendors that provide a specific skillset -- you now can choose to buy the parts and do the work yourself, do some of the prep work yourself and let a professional do the rest, or ask a professional to do the whole thing. Following the broken window idea, if someone doesn't spend money to buy software, they may spend money out of that 'budget' for add-ons or improvements to that software that meet their specific needs. Giving the informed consumer more real choice is a good thing for a free market.

I think there there may be enough people in the former category to make it worthwhile for existing plumbers to extend their skills to offer more sophisticated services, and that there are enough people in the latter category to make it worthwhile to continue to provide your existing services. But expecting the market to go entirely in one direction or the other is a bad bet.

IANAL....

From Nolo, slander is spoken defamation, while libel is written (or broadcast) defamation.