Uh, no. It's not illegal to say anything negative. There's this thing called the First Amendment. It does, however, open you up to civil lawsuits for slander and 98% of employers have decided they just don't want to take the risk of an expensive lawsuit.
Disproportionate statutory damages is the only reasonable defense; as others have pointed out, the RIAA gains ridiculous leverage because merely leaving a song upon eMule subjects you to thousands of dollars in phantom damages. Even if you ARE innocent, the risk/reward ratio allows the record mafia to shake you down simply because no one can risk the damages from losing.
Of course, the other obvious approach is to have Congress rewrite the statute to properly differentiate between a bootlegging operation with thousands of dollars in profit with counterfeit DVDs and some poor schmuck trying to get a few Mp3s.
I'd counter with the right to protect your business. Non-competes arise out of a number of valid reasons. They can be used to protect trade secrets. They can be used to protect customer relationships. Both of these cost a lot of money to create and maintain and there has to be some method of keeping your direct competitors from poaching them by bribing your employees.
That said, the law usually finds a balance and will usually strike down a non-compete that is too broad -- or in other words, defines "competitor" so expansively that it's impossible to find another job the utilizes your actual skills (rather than your former employer's trade secrets or customer relationships.)
6. Fire bloated middle management (and bloated middle managers)
And most shareholders hardly count as "consumers", although I suppose you're right, there might be less consumption of luxury cars and second homes. Somehow I think that's a reduction in consumption we can live with.
Hmmm, I'm not a corporation and I and the many other volunteers I worked with did (IMHO) a lot to get him into power. I think you're confusing Obama with our last president....
Microsoft gets the benefit of a legal system (backed with armed force) that protects its so-called intellectual property, among other things. Seriously, in an anarchy don't you think lots and LOTS of people would beat up Bill Gates, break his glasses, and steal his (billions in) lunch money?
So it's not my firefox/windows/router/isp dns cache being poisoned and directing me to a government controlled evil Google clone?
The other possibility was the evil overlords were stopping me from to figuring out how to mount my pirated copy of F.E.A.R. (Yeah, someone lost disk 5/5 of the legitimate copy.)
I don't consider refinancing a house (and I presume you have excellent credit and some actual equity) the same as finding financing for purchasing a struggling business. Circuit City is liquidating in large part because it could not find financing on any terms. Also look at Etoys and any number of recent collapses. One venture capital firm making one investment doesn't mean there's significant credit available out there.
And as I said, I have personal knowledge of the layoffs at Sun, and they are part of a pattern that began long before the current economic crisis because they have nothing to sell. In the quarter ending in September, Sun lost $1.677 BILLION on revenues of just under half that. That is simply unsustainable.
If they have technology that I haven't heard of because they aren't selling it, I'd say that's pretty good evidence it's not worth anything. And we have several Sun workstations where I work, and a couple of servers -- sitting unplugged on the shelf because Linux is cheaper, easier to maintain, and has more software that we actually use available.
Fortunately the winner of this debate will be pretty obvious in a year or two. If I'm so blind, it's view shared by Wall Street that's now valuing Sun at $3.61 a share, down from a 52 week high of $18.
And yes, I think the economy is far worse than your rosy claims.
I find that somewhat unlikely. I have family members who work at Sun (various layoffs are being announced today) and I get no sense that Sun has anything of value. Also, there's just no financing (unless you're a bank using taxpayer bailout money) for acquisitions of that type.
A company whose sliding revenues continued to based primarily on overpriced Solaris workstations and servers that no one is buying is somehow going to magically "recover" by giving away Java or MySQL?
There isn't enough time in eternity for that to happen. What will happen is that Sun will declare bankruptcy in the next year, liquidate everything related to Sparcs/Solaris/etc. and its MySQL and Java "businesses" spun off into something that will take years to reach Red Hat size.
How is it again that getting free software negatively affects "local" economic growth? If I live in a dirt poor country how is my economic growth helped by sending my money off to Microsoft?
Actually, it would seem that pirating software is a much better incentive for local growth -- instead of spending my hard currency on a bunch of easily replicated bits, I can use that currency for something tangible that builds my business, like a machine -- in a more efficient way using my super-duper Excel spreadsheet analysis.
Are there specifics? I have no doubt that it's difficult or impossible to sell non-governmental assets because (a) nobody understands them and therefore can't value them, and (b) any asset tied in any way to U.S. home prices or U.S. corporate success has no obvious bottom. What I don't believe is that I can buy 5 year treasury bonds (or the equivalent) that pay 10% or more.
On the other hand, I can totally understand why the Treasury would want to allow easy swaps from long to short term debt, just not at those prices.
So . . . you have safe government bond that would return something in the neighborhood of 12% interest over five years if purchased for $50.
I'll take as many of those $100 treasury bills that mature in 2014 for $50 as you can offer.
In other words, this is totally ridiculous. And given the amount of my money that AIG has already gone through, I'd have to say those assets are probably overvalued at 20 cents on the dollar.
Firefox 3 will still give an error message if the certificate is not from a trusted authority. Believe me, I've been working with this issue for the last week and Firefox 3 has adopted a much stricter approach ala IE 7. It's probably a good thing, just creates more hoops when you're developing on test machines, etc.
IE 7 on Vista and Firefox 3 on Windows will only accept certs using RSA encryption from trusted authorities. The process for adding a trusted root authority in either browser is not particularly user friendly. So if you want anyone but geeks to actually use your site with modern browsers, you really have to get your cert signed by one of the default trusted root authorities.
150 channels, billions of internet pages, consoles, text messages, MMOs. Gone are the days when there was nothing to watch at 11:00 but the local news, leaving sex and reading (both good for sleep) as one's final options for the night. TFA mentions shift work, which seems rather off the mark, as much "shift work" went overseas to China with our industrial base.
Our sleep deprivation, I would hazard to guess, is mostly voluntary (or semi-voluntary.) And overall it's not such a bad thing -- our time is short, and who can blame us for resenting the hours lost to sleep?
(And it's 5:00 a.m. and I really wish I could sleep. Stupid new Wii and its evil bowling . . ..)
They don't have to win. Remember that approximately 90% of lawsuits are settled before going to trial. Remember too that lawsuits are hideously expensive to defend (at least the way that white-shoe law firms litigate them) so it's often cheaper to buy off the patent trolls than to go all the way to a court decision (and then risk losing your entire business, even if the risk is tiny.)
A lot of this could be solved by adopting the "loser pays the winner's attorneys' fees" approach in many European countries (that has other problems but in cases like this it would sure be nice to see.)
Until then, low-life parasites like these will continue to piss me off.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, no. It's not illegal to say anything negative. There's this thing called the First Amendment. It does, however, open you up to civil lawsuits for slander and 98% of employers have decided they just don't want to take the risk of an expensive lawsuit.
Please god no. That is all.
Disproportionate statutory damages is the only reasonable defense; as others have pointed out, the RIAA gains ridiculous leverage because merely leaving a song upon eMule subjects you to thousands of dollars in phantom damages. Even if you ARE innocent, the risk/reward ratio allows the record mafia to shake you down simply because no one can risk the damages from losing.
Of course, the other obvious approach is to have Congress rewrite the statute to properly differentiate between a bootlegging operation with thousands of dollars in profit with counterfeit DVDs and some poor schmuck trying to get a few Mp3s.
I'd counter with the right to protect your business. Non-competes arise out of a number of valid reasons. They can be used to protect trade secrets. They can be used to protect customer relationships. Both of these cost a lot of money to create and maintain and there has to be some method of keeping your direct competitors from poaching them by bribing your employees.
That said, the law usually finds a balance and will usually strike down a non-compete that is too broad -- or in other words, defines "competitor" so expansively that it's impossible to find another job the utilizes your actual skills (rather than your former employer's trade secrets or customer relationships.)
Um, you forgot a couple of other possibilities:
5. Cut obscene executive pay, bonuses, and perks.
6. Fire bloated middle management (and bloated middle managers)
And most shareholders hardly count as "consumers", although I suppose you're right, there might be less consumption of luxury cars and second homes. Somehow I think that's a reduction in consumption we can live with.
Hmmm, I'm not a corporation and I and the many other volunteers I worked with did (IMHO) a lot to get him into power. I think you're confusing Obama with our last president....
Microsoft gets the benefit of a legal system (backed with armed force) that protects its so-called intellectual property, among other things. Seriously, in an anarchy don't you think lots and LOTS of people would beat up Bill Gates, break his glasses, and steal his (billions in) lunch money?
No kidding. IBM is still keeping PICK operating systems (U2?) on life support.
So it's not my firefox/windows/router/isp dns cache being poisoned and directing me to a government controlled evil Google clone?
The other possibility was the evil overlords were stopping me from to figuring out how to mount my pirated copy of F.E.A.R. (Yeah, someone lost disk 5/5 of the legitimate copy.)
Blizzard tends to do this (although it's significantly longer than a month.) There are a lot of things to like about Blizzard.
I don't consider refinancing a house (and I presume you have excellent credit and some actual equity) the same as finding financing for purchasing a struggling business. Circuit City is liquidating in large part because it could not find financing on any terms. Also look at Etoys and any number of recent collapses. One venture capital firm making one investment doesn't mean there's significant credit available out there.
And as I said, I have personal knowledge of the layoffs at Sun, and they are part of a pattern that began long before the current economic crisis because they have nothing to sell. In the quarter ending in September, Sun lost $1.677 BILLION on revenues of just under half that. That is simply unsustainable.
If they have technology that I haven't heard of because they aren't selling it, I'd say that's pretty good evidence it's not worth anything. And we have several Sun workstations where I work, and a couple of servers -- sitting unplugged on the shelf because Linux is cheaper, easier to maintain, and has more software that we actually use available.
Fortunately the winner of this debate will be pretty obvious in a year or two. If I'm so blind, it's view shared by Wall Street that's now valuing Sun at $3.61 a share, down from a 52 week high of $18.
And yes, I think the economy is far worse than your rosy claims.
I find that somewhat unlikely. I have family members who work at Sun (various layoffs are being announced today) and I get no sense that Sun has anything of value. Also, there's just no financing (unless you're a bank using taxpayer bailout money) for acquisitions of that type.
There isn't enough time in eternity for that to happen. What will happen is that Sun will declare bankruptcy in the next year, liquidate everything related to Sparcs/Solaris/etc. and its MySQL and Java "businesses" spun off into something that will take years to reach Red Hat size.
How is it again that getting free software negatively affects "local" economic growth? If I live in a dirt poor country how is my economic growth helped by sending my money off to Microsoft?
Actually, it would seem that pirating software is a much better incentive for local growth -- instead of spending my hard currency on a bunch of easily replicated bits, I can use that currency for something tangible that builds my business, like a machine -- in a more efficient way using my super-duper Excel spreadsheet analysis.
Are there specifics? I have no doubt that it's difficult or impossible to sell non-governmental assets because (a) nobody understands them and therefore can't value them, and (b) any asset tied in any way to U.S. home prices or U.S. corporate success has no obvious bottom. What I don't believe is that I can buy 5 year treasury bonds (or the equivalent) that pay 10% or more.
On the other hand, I can totally understand why the Treasury would want to allow easy swaps from long to short term debt, just not at those prices.
So . . . you have safe government bond that would return something in the neighborhood of 12% interest over five years if purchased for $50. I'll take as many of those $100 treasury bills that mature in 2014 for $50 as you can offer. In other words, this is totally ridiculous. And given the amount of my money that AIG has already gone through, I'd have to say those assets are probably overvalued at 20 cents on the dollar.
Firefox 3 will still give an error message if the certificate is not from a trusted authority. Believe me, I've been working with this issue for the last week and Firefox 3 has adopted a much stricter approach ala IE 7. It's probably a good thing, just creates more hoops when you're developing on test machines, etc.
IE 7 on Vista and Firefox 3 on Windows will only accept certs using RSA encryption from trusted authorities. The process for adding a trusted root authority in either browser is not particularly user friendly. So if you want anyone but geeks to actually use your site with modern browsers, you really have to get your cert signed by one of the default trusted root authorities.
It is too true . . . that's the project I start tomorrow . . . But it's iSeries now . . . I think . . .
150 channels, billions of internet pages, consoles, text messages, MMOs. Gone are the days when there was nothing to watch at 11:00 but the local news, leaving sex and reading (both good for sleep) as one's final options for the night. TFA mentions shift work, which seems rather off the mark, as much "shift work" went overseas to China with our industrial base.
.)
Our sleep deprivation, I would hazard to guess, is mostly voluntary (or semi-voluntary.) And overall it's not such a bad thing -- our time is short, and who can blame us for resenting the hours lost to sleep?
(And it's 5:00 a.m. and I really wish I could sleep. Stupid new Wii and its evil bowling . . .
They don't have to win. Remember that approximately 90% of lawsuits are settled before going to trial. Remember too that lawsuits are hideously expensive to defend (at least the way that white-shoe law firms litigate them) so it's often cheaper to buy off the patent trolls than to go all the way to a court decision (and then risk losing your entire business, even if the risk is tiny.) A lot of this could be solved by adopting the "loser pays the winner's attorneys' fees" approach in many European countries (that has other problems but in cases like this it would sure be nice to see.) Until then, low-life parasites like these will continue to piss me off.
Many courts are going to online, 24 hour filing.
Until the RIAA comes after you for ripping your CDs to MP3s. That's still a technical copyright infringement.