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Mini-Microsoft Shakes Things Up
Henry V .009 writes "BusinessWeek calls him Microsoft's Deep Throat. Although Steve Ballmer denies reading the blog, there are plenty at Microsoft who do. Mini-Microsoft says he wants to "slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." The user comment section of the site is the real gold: thousands of comments from Microsoft employees who tend to have a dim view about the company's recent evolution. And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."
Try the Google cache
Posted AC to avoid accusations of karma whoring..
No they fired him for posting campus photos which is explicitly against MS policy. The Macs were just a side note.
One would think that the author of the BusinessWeek article linked in the summary would've
1) seen the man's credentials
2) been able to spot a fake
when meeting the blogger in person.
Many Microsoft employees have never worked anywhere else. They were plucked out of college and have worked for MS ever since. So it would be reasonable to think that their view of corporate life would be a little bit skewed.
As for your signature, Windows can't use UNC paths as a path to be 'cd'd to. You can copy from a UNC path, but not 'cd' to it. To navigate a network drive, you need to "net use * (UNC)" it. It will give you a valid drive (like x:) to which you can cd to. Not the most painless approach, but it works, for some definitions of "works".
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Network associates, the makers of McAfee Viruscan, put a line in their EULA that essentially said you couldn't publish a review of the software without their permission. It didn't hold up in court because it violated the first amendment. Network Associates are not the government, and could not force anyone to give up their first amendment rights through contract. That provision was unenforceable, and many things in contracts are unenforceable. A lot of the crap in employment agreements is legalese nonsense that it would take a team of lawyers to interpret, and then they wouldn't all agree what it means. No one can give informed consent to something they do not understand. All they really understand is that if you don't sign, you don't have a job so enjoy living under a bridge when you lose your house! That is not far from holding a gun to your head, and saying, "sign this". An agreement under duress is no agreement at all.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
We don't have to wait for Woodward or Bernstein to die, or anything.
you had me at #!
You need to go back and do some fact checking. The Network Associates case was ruled such because the wording of their EULA was deceptive. Their case suggested that Network World Fusion broke the law by violating a clause of the EULA. Under scrutiny the clause proved to be untenable legally and the judge told NA to get lost. That however has nothing in the slightest to do with non-disclosure agreements.
Signing an NDA is binding. If you go and post confidential information to your blog or someone else's blog and the NDA you signed specifically prohibits that, your employer not only has grounds to fire you but also sue you. If your signature is on a document that says "I won't talk about x, y, and z" and then a blog posting or e-mail is presented showing you talked about x, y, or z the judge is likely to rule in your employers favor. If your NDA says you will cut off your right ear if you talk about x, y, or z that clause of the NDA will likely be found unenforceable and you'll be able to keep your ear.
This differs entirely from situations where talking about x, y, or z benefits the public interest. If product X was made out of dolphin skin by child slaves in San Diego there's a public interest in that information. If you were sued by your employer over releasing that information it probably wouldn't be difficult to show that your whistleblowing served the public interest. Whistleblowing is protected when there is a viable public interest in the disclosed information. Clauses in an NDA or any other contract which require you to break the law (manage slave lavorers in San Diego) are unenforceable. Your employment contract can't require you to be a heroin mule for instance.
What you don't seem to understand is the first amendment only applies to government. It does not extend to private organizations or property. The government can't tell you that you can't post specs on as yet unreleased product Y but a contract can. You don't have a right to any particular job, if an employment contract is required to work there and you're unwilling to sign it you're not going to have that job.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
The First Amendment applies in the first instance to the federal government ("Congress shall make no law...") and by virtue of the 14th Amendment, to the states. It does not apply to private parties. Its only relevance to private parties is that contracts contrary to public policy are not enforceable, and the First Amendment is one piece of evidence bearing on public policy regarding freedom of speech. In fairly extreme cases, you can expect a court to void a contract on public policy freedom of speech grounds, but it has to be something really extreme, such as an employment contract forbidding the employee to speak about topics having nothing whatever to do with the company. It is very clear that contractual restrictions on speech, such as NDAs, are considered valid by the courts.
In the Network Associates case, the Attorney General of New York (Eliot Spitzer, running for Governor), sued Network Associates for fraud and deception. He argued that the specific wording of the restriction on reviews could falsely lead the consumer to believe that the restriction was not imposed by Network Associates but by state or federal law. He also argued that because the clause was in some documents and not others (see the opinion if you want the details), it was not endorceable as a matter of contract law, and that for Network Associates to represent that it was constituted a deceptive practice. The court accepted these arguments. The First Amendment was not the basis for the ruling.
You can read Judge Shafer's opinion here.
If product X was made out of dolphin skin by child slaves in San Diego there's a public interest in that information.
Not to mention product Y, made out of child skin by dolphin slaves. And I won't even get into the details of product Z.
What you don't seem to understand is the first amendment only applies to government. It does not extend to private organizations or property. The government can't tell you that you can't post specs on as yet unreleased product Y but a contract can.
Actually, the government can tell you not to discuss anything they want, especially the specs on as yet unreleased products, and they don't need a contract to do it. And the punishment for disclosing the government's secrets can make a civil suit look trivial.
Not all speech is free of criminal prosecution either. Yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, inciting a riot, threatening someone's life, and all sorts of otherwise malicious speech is illegal as well. The most that can be said of free speech is that you're free to say whatever you want, just like I'm "free" to steal a car, but that doesn't mean you're not liable for the consequences of what you say.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Network Associates are not the government, and could not force anyone to give up their first amendment rights through contract.
You got this all wrong. It is the government who can't make you give up your free speech. Anyone else can, as long as you agreed to the contract.
In other words, if you signed an NDA, YOU gave up your rights. No use complaining about that.
Network Associates are not the government, and could not force anyone to give up their first amendment rights
Wow, you're so close but have got it dead wrong.
Network Associates is not the government, and therefore, the 1st amendment doesn't apply to them! The 1st amendment tells THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT they can't abridge those freedoms. This is because you can't escape the federal government if you want to live in America.
All they really understand is that if you don't sign, you don't have a job so enjoy living under a bridge when you lose your house! That is not far from holding a gun to your head, and saying, "sign this". An agreement under duress is no agreement at all.
Ummm, no, taking a voluntary job is not at all like having a gun held to your head. You can find another job.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.