That's a decent enough idea, as long as we allow that the mother document (eg. The Constitution for the Fed, the various Constitutions for the State governments) is allowed to persist indefinitely. With any luck we could even have a lifespan on the various amendments so that each new generation could reaffirm its approval of modifications to the mother document. No more being sold into slavery by our great-grandfathers whom we never had a chance to meet.
It passes a logic test, as well: one "lifetime" should be more than enough to pass those laws which are necessary for the proper governance of a kingdom. If the code of laws cannot be reduced to a set which can be renewed within each generation then it's a Darwinian sign that something is dreadfully wrong.
I don't know what was offtopic about the post, except that maybe I went so far as to point out obvious discrepecies in the almighty Googleplex. Nothing against QuantumG, but I wonder what they posted that made things so hated.
So what? I'll post it again.
While Google pushes to open up public records, they neglect to include the X-Originating-IP, or any information which would help e-mail recipients determine where e-mail came from, on e-mail from Gmail. All Gmail e-mail appears to originate from a 10. IP address from within the depths of Google.
I guess it's just a matter of which set of principles is best suited to cover their bu77s, and which set of principles is best suited to generate good press, and which set of principles is best suited to please shareholders, and which set of principles is best suited to serve their business interests. The only dissappointment is that, for the scientific technologist, none of these principles serves to preserve truth and accuracy. The pie is carefully portioned out for only one purpose.
Let me repeat that and see if I can get around the "we'll tell you how to say what you want to say" filter.
NO MORE LAWS!
As if we don't have enough of the useless things already. All they do is cause problems and criminalize the very things they were meant to protect.
NO MORE LAWS!
It's time to start equilibrating the government. The Federal Government (especially) has done nothing but expand, and expand, and expand, for 200 years. It's time for them to retract, and shrink, and be pruned back until they find their proper niche. The USA is beginning to resemble the USSR in everything but semantics.
While Google pushes to open up public records, they neglect to include the X-Originating-IP, or any information which would help e-mail recipients determine where e-mail came from, on e-mail from Gmail. All Gmail e-mail appears to originate from a 10. IP address from within the depths of Google.
I guess it's just a matter of which set of principles is best suited to cover their , and which set of principles is best suited to generate good press, and which set of principles is best suited to please shareholders, and which set of principles is best suited to serve their business interests. The only dissappointment is that, for the scientific technologist, none of these principles serves to preserve truth and accuracy. The pie is carefully portioned out for only one purpose.
Congratulations to mxhaard! Good job bringing that project up, online, and keeping it alive for so many years. The drivers, spcaview, and spcatools have been excellent quality since I began using them in '99/'00.
The system which you've described is called the ping-pong style of debate. It only gets worse when people begin drawing analogies or using metaphors, and then arguing those metaphors and analogies in the same ping-pong style by drawing more analogies and using new metaphors.
The ping-pong debate is not actually useful in resolving a topic. When one side _is_ actually trying to resolve the topic, and the other side is using the ping-pong debate style, then it's called a flamewar. Typically I see the people instigating or perpetuating the ping-pong style as the trolls. Quite often people (usually newbs) are caught up in a flamewar because they honestly think that the other side is trying to resolve the topic when, in reality, the other side is perpetuating a ping-pong debate.
I first introduced the ping-pong debate in my junior year of high school because, after three years of debate, I had reached my limit of tolerance for the same old arguments which were rehashed endlessly by aspiring legals carrying around attache cases, and dump trucks, full of debate briefs which were not meant to resolve the topic issue, but to rather perpetuate it's endless argument. After hearing the same tired old eye vs. eye for the third year in a row my head was pounding with a headache and I appealed to the judge to look beyond the technical merits of the ping-pong debate and to begin scoring based upon the professional aspects of how the speakers made their presentation.
We lost the debate round--but the judge did include comments which demonstrated an appreciation, even admiration, of the ping-pong debate which I had presented. Later that year I placed second, in my debate position, in a state tournament.
I took second because, even though my professionalism, insight, and analysis was higher than my competition, the team I was on still rarely won the evidence weighted debates.
Then you have Gmail, which doesn't bother to include an originating IP address for the e-mail which comes out of its depths. How is a discerning netizen supposed to properly investigate when the one piece of originating information is no longer included? Even spam which hops through several intermediate pwn'd machines can at least be tracked back to the closest pwned system by looking at the IP addresses.
The post office doesn't place a generic zip code stamp over return addresses--why does Gmail?
Real HR departments trash your reputation if you won't submit to their every demand. Don't look for a defamation, libel, or slander lawsuit though--it's all kept under the table and disguised in various color coded database fields.
The original assertion still stands: You've never had to face homelessness to stand up for your pretty rhetoric.
Normally the company will tell you,"You can't make any changes. That's the standard employee agreement. Everyone must sign it as is." If you don't want to sign it then you're free to be without a paycheck.
As an added bonus, if you express any notion of changing the contract and then you buckle, rest assured that your employment there will be hell. You will be run in circles until you're ready to pull your hair out then fired after enough instances of your resulting frustration can be documented as evidence of your psychological issues, your arrogance, your inability to function well within the team, or your complete inability to perform on the job.
If you're lucky then your HR reps may even put that little asterisk next to your name in the national HR databases which translates into,"Suspected of being a s3xual deviant, p3rvert, or possible ch1ld pr3dator."
If I were a corporate HR department, using national corporate HR databases, and some no-good two-bit just-graduated self-important POS new hire dared to think that they could make any changes to our obviously superior employment agreement...
Then I would enter them into the national corporate HR databases as a p3d0phile. If they don't want to be our slave then we'll see how they like living without a paycheck at all. Maybe we'll see how much they like eating their college degree while they're slaving away working at McDonald's or on some labor farm.
As a corporate HR officer we have a million ways to make their life miserable if they don't want to play by our rules.
It's a question of who has more legal representation. Sure, it's obvious that the federal government has been illegally wiretapping domestic phones for ten years or more, but they have the US Atty General to say,"No. Sorry. Everything we did was a-okay by me."
The average employee who needs a job at the level at which these sorts of agreements are handed out can't afford to hire a lawyer who would be willing to risk his professional reputation riding up against a corporate entity. The fact that it's a corporate entity alone ensures that they will have the legal support of any banks, investment brokerage houses, and insurance companies with which they do business.
In any case, even if the agreement is invalid, what reparations can the average employee hope to claim? These agreements are rarely used directly. They're used more as enforcement measures. A legal battle may curtail one or two specific points of the agreement itself but, within the workplace, the psychological atmosphere created by these agreements is far more pervasive, and damaging, than specific ownership of a few hundred lines of code.
Try telling a Vietnam POW that his imprisonment was illegal and he should've been paid for working in the rice patties. Well, no sh*t, but how is that going to make up for twenty years of being locked in a bamboo cage, in the hot sun, being fed rancid meat and constantly poked, prodded, and beaten by the prison guards?
If a company is confident enough to begin the employer-employee relationship with such a draconian employment contract then what could possibly lead you to think that they will accept any amendment of that document?
I tried amending the document with my first employer. The HR rep looked at me, laughed, and said,"Oh, that's our standard contract. You can't make any changes. Everyone has to sign it." This was, of course, on the first day of the job--after relocating and moving into the new apartment.
My personal addition is this: I agree with your statements and, rather than just stating them, I've followed through on them. I'm homeless because "The Man" doesn't like it when an employee demands proper share. In fact, "The Man" becomes downright vindictive--and not just on a three month or one job scale. "The Man" will work to ensure that your reputation is trashed and that you're carefully strung out (harassed, harangued, hounded, and frustrated) until you crack slowly in ways that will leave as big a trail of red ink as possible. "The Man" will go the extra mile to ensure that the employee who breaks free of the automaton training is forever banished from any professional career.
Legal documents are rarely, if ever, used the way they were originally advertised. Look to coverage of DMCA and Patriot enforcement for prime examples.
The contract that you describe is common practice in most professional industries. I've received the impression that this hasn't been the case in computer science until recently. It is only going to become worse. These documents are part of the "it's my way or the highway" approach that corporations use to strong-arm prospective employees--there's no secret that you need the paycheck to pay bills more than the company needs your particular expertise.
If your salary is acceptable to you, if the position at which you'll be entering the company, and if the perks and benefits of the corporate environment are acceptable to you then your contract will have little effect on your day to day operations. If you're just coming out of college with a load of debt, if your rent is looking like it's going to be about 1/3 of your take home salary, and if you have any desire to ascend ranks within the company or to pursue your own ideas for profit then that piece of paper will be a make-or-break deal for your career.
Primarily a contract such as the one you've described is used to keep incoming employees "in their place" by having a full litany of heavy handed positions which the company can point to and say that you've legally acquiesced to in the event there is ever a disagreement between you and a higher ranking official within the company. Also, should you just happen to stumble upon the Holy Grail of nuclear fusion which simultaneously solves all network security exploits, buffer overflows, cures cancer, and makes coffee in the morning on time... the company will own that as well. If you come into the company at the executive level you may have a chance of being a priveleged recipient of a spin-off but if you're coming in at the level of a new hire then expect to gain nothing from your brilliant design.
Personally, after my experience in corporate America, I will never sign another one of those "we own you, everything you do, and everything you could possibly think of" contracts again unless the guaranteed salary is so sweet that going to work will feel like another day at the library.
I had begun making a similar observation to myself towards the 2.4.20+ line and definitely when 2.6 came out. It correlated nicely with the media increase in Linux coverage, the size and comprehensive nature of desktop environs like KDE and Gnome, the size of Xorg/Xfree86, and the increasing popular emphasis on web applications and the tion of HTTP and file-sharing protocol network usage over nearly anything else (spam excepted). I've almost decided that the computer programming age, as an affordable hobby for the non-specialist, is nearing the end of its lifetime. In a few more years you'll have the option of working with entirely standardized/commoditized/completely controlled (corporate DRM style) equipment or, if that doesn't appeal to you, then you'll have to go off a polar deep end and spend absolute bricktons of time and money assembling a system using a soldering iron, a breadboard, and specialty chips ordered from remote clearinghouses in China or Russia.
The fact that I'm homeless is "proof" enough that I am unsuitable for gainful employment, a place to live, a professional career, and the same level of common courtesy that any other citizen receives.
Why should proof be needed to go after people who might be *gasp of shock and awe* sharing headphones or cassette tapes?
Congress has authority to regulate virtually all private economic activity. Shouldn't that assertion be preposterious enough to let any thinking citizen know that the judgement was wrong? Not that I would dare suggest that the government is just a puppet show designed to ensure profit for the rent seekers managing the banking system.
At some point the citizens of the United States need to accept that, by and large, 90% of their patriotism is being exploited for the profit of a select group of individuals who wouldn't risk a single hair on their heads if the tables were turned. We have to ask ourselves--is this really the government that we want to support with our tax dollars?
Facing reality, though, leads us to the greater question: what can we really do about it? Personally I suggest that everyone quit their jobs and tell the bankers to stuff it.
Another Federal level politician (judge) who has been miseducated as to the importance (scope) of his appointment. A proper interpretation of the Constitution would easily show that this is well outside the realm of federal legal jurisdiction.
Two hundred years of constant, relentless, plodding expansion of the authority of the federal government has skewed everyone's perception of what their proper jurisdiction is, though.
Can anyone answer why slavery wasn't covered by "interstate commerce"? Even after fighting a war Congress still went through the motions of passing a Constitutional Amendment to give themselves the power to regulate that. If a Constitutional Amendment was necessary for something as obvious as slavery--a business which trafficked in human life--then how is "interstate commerce" purported to be enough to micromanage nearly everything else which happens in our economy?
Chalk one more up for the communist (ie. a government which controls everything by using a choke hold on the economic financing) politicobankers.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a decent enough idea, as long as we allow that the mother document (eg. The Constitution for the Fed, the various Constitutions for the State governments) is allowed to persist indefinitely. With any luck we could even have a lifespan on the various amendments so that each new generation could reaffirm its approval of modifications to the mother document. No more being sold into slavery by our great-grandfathers whom we never had a chance to meet.
It passes a logic test, as well: one "lifetime" should be more than enough to pass those laws which are necessary for the proper governance of a kingdom. If the code of laws cannot be reduced to a set which can be renewed within each generation then it's a Darwinian sign that something is dreadfully wrong.
I don't know what was offtopic about the post, except that maybe I went so far as to point out obvious discrepecies in the almighty Googleplex. Nothing against QuantumG, but I wonder what they posted that made things so hated.
So what? I'll post it again.
While Google pushes to open up public records, they neglect to include the X-Originating-IP, or any information which would help e-mail recipients determine where e-mail came from, on e-mail from Gmail. All Gmail e-mail appears to originate from a 10. IP address from within the depths of Google.
I guess it's just a matter of which set of principles is best suited to cover their bu77s, and which set of principles is best suited to generate good press, and which set of principles is best suited to please shareholders, and which set of principles is best suited to serve their business interests. The only dissappointment is that, for the scientific technologist, none of these principles serves to preserve truth and accuracy. The pie is carefully portioned out for only one purpose.
PROFIT.
I'm not opposed to profit. I'm opposed to fraud.
Those who write the rules know the loopholes. The same applies to software exploits.
NO MORE LAWS!
Let me repeat that and see if I can get around the "we'll tell you how to say what you want to say" filter.
NO MORE LAWS!
As if we don't have enough of the useless things already. All they do is cause problems and criminalize the very things they were meant to protect.
NO MORE LAWS!
It's time to start equilibrating the government. The Federal Government (especially) has done nothing but expand, and expand, and expand, for 200 years. It's time for them to retract, and shrink, and be pruned back until they find their proper niche. The USA is beginning to resemble the USSR in everything but semantics.
NO MORE LAWS!
While Google pushes to open up public records, they neglect to include the X-Originating-IP, or any information which would help e-mail recipients determine where e-mail came from, on e-mail from Gmail. All Gmail e-mail appears to originate from a 10. IP address from within the depths of Google.
I guess it's just a matter of which set of principles is best suited to cover their , and which set of principles is best suited to generate good press, and which set of principles is best suited to please shareholders, and which set of principles is best suited to serve their business interests. The only dissappointment is that, for the scientific technologist, none of these principles serves to preserve truth and accuracy. The pie is carefully portioned out for only one purpose.
PROFIT.
I'm not opposed to profit. I'm opposed to fraud.
Congratulations to mxhaard! Good job bringing that project up, online, and keeping it alive for so many years. The drivers, spcaview, and spcatools have been excellent quality since I began using them in '99/'00.
The system which you've described is called the ping-pong style of debate. It only gets worse when people begin drawing analogies or using metaphors, and then arguing those metaphors and analogies in the same ping-pong style by drawing more analogies and using new metaphors.
The ping-pong debate is not actually useful in resolving a topic. When one side _is_ actually trying to resolve the topic, and the other side is using the ping-pong debate style, then it's called a flamewar. Typically I see the people instigating or perpetuating the ping-pong style as the trolls. Quite often people (usually newbs) are caught up in a flamewar because they honestly think that the other side is trying to resolve the topic when, in reality, the other side is perpetuating a ping-pong debate.
I first introduced the ping-pong debate in my junior year of high school because, after three years of debate, I had reached my limit of tolerance for the same old arguments which were rehashed endlessly by aspiring legals carrying around attache cases, and dump trucks, full of debate briefs which were not meant to resolve the topic issue, but to rather perpetuate it's endless argument. After hearing the same tired old eye vs. eye for the third year in a row my head was pounding with a headache and I appealed to the judge to look beyond the technical merits of the ping-pong debate and to begin scoring based upon the professional aspects of how the speakers made their presentation.
We lost the debate round--but the judge did include comments which demonstrated an appreciation, even admiration, of the ping-pong debate which I had presented. Later that year I placed second, in my debate position, in a state tournament.
I took second because, even though my professionalism, insight, and analysis was higher than my competition, the team I was on still rarely won the evidence weighted debates.
Then you have Gmail, which doesn't bother to include an originating IP address for the e-mail which comes out of its depths. How is a discerning netizen supposed to properly investigate when the one piece of originating information is no longer included? Even spam which hops through several intermediate pwn'd machines can at least be tracked back to the closest pwned system by looking at the IP addresses.
The post office doesn't place a generic zip code stamp over return addresses--why does Gmail?
Real HR departments trash your reputation if you won't submit to their every demand. Don't look for a defamation, libel, or slander lawsuit though--it's all kept under the table and disguised in various color coded database fields.
The original assertion still stands: You've never had to face homelessness to stand up for your pretty rhetoric.
Normally the company will tell you,"You can't make any changes. That's the standard employee agreement. Everyone must sign it as is." If you don't want to sign it then you're free to be without a paycheck.
As an added bonus, if you express any notion of changing the contract and then you buckle, rest assured that your employment there will be hell. You will be run in circles until you're ready to pull your hair out then fired after enough instances of your resulting frustration can be documented as evidence of your psychological issues, your arrogance, your inability to function well within the team, or your complete inability to perform on the job.
If you're lucky then your HR reps may even put that little asterisk next to your name in the national HR databases which translates into,"Suspected of being a s3xual deviant, p3rvert, or possible ch1ld pr3dator."
So how long ago was an account with a UID <500k created?
If I were a corporate HR department, using national corporate HR databases, and some no-good two-bit just-graduated self-important POS new hire dared to think that they could make any changes to our obviously superior employment agreement...
Then I would enter them into the national corporate HR databases as a p3d0phile. If they don't want to be our slave then we'll see how they like living without a paycheck at all. Maybe we'll see how much they like eating their college degree while they're slaving away working at McDonald's or on some labor farm.
As a corporate HR officer we have a million ways to make their life miserable if they don't want to play by our rules.
Who the heck do you think you are anyway?
You've never had to face the option of becoming homeless to stand up for your pretty rhetoric.
Try coming down from your mountain and then we'll see how tough you talk.
It's a question of who has more legal representation. Sure, it's obvious that the federal government has been illegally wiretapping domestic phones for ten years or more, but they have the US Atty General to say,"No. Sorry. Everything we did was a-okay by me."
The average employee who needs a job at the level at which these sorts of agreements are handed out can't afford to hire a lawyer who would be willing to risk his professional reputation riding up against a corporate entity. The fact that it's a corporate entity alone ensures that they will have the legal support of any banks, investment brokerage houses, and insurance companies with which they do business.
In any case, even if the agreement is invalid, what reparations can the average employee hope to claim? These agreements are rarely used directly. They're used more as enforcement measures. A legal battle may curtail one or two specific points of the agreement itself but, within the workplace, the psychological atmosphere created by these agreements is far more pervasive, and damaging, than specific ownership of a few hundred lines of code.
Try telling a Vietnam POW that his imprisonment was illegal and he should've been paid for working in the rice patties. Well, no sh*t, but how is that going to make up for twenty years of being locked in a bamboo cage, in the hot sun, being fed rancid meat and constantly poked, prodded, and beaten by the prison guards?
That's good... oh that's real good... if only that would actually work IRL.
If a company is confident enough to begin the employer-employee relationship with such a draconian employment contract then what could possibly lead you to think that they will accept any amendment of that document?
I tried amending the document with my first employer. The HR rep looked at me, laughed, and said,"Oh, that's our standard contract. You can't make any changes. Everyone has to sign it." This was, of course, on the first day of the job--after relocating and moving into the new apartment.
Extremely well put.
My personal addition is this: I agree with your statements and, rather than just stating them, I've followed through on them. I'm homeless because "The Man" doesn't like it when an employee demands proper share. In fact, "The Man" becomes downright vindictive--and not just on a three month or one job scale. "The Man" will work to ensure that your reputation is trashed and that you're carefully strung out (harassed, harangued, hounded, and frustrated) until you crack slowly in ways that will leave as big a trail of red ink as possible. "The Man" will go the extra mile to ensure that the employee who breaks free of the automaton training is forever banished from any professional career.
So, now that the idea is confirmed, now what?
Legal documents are rarely, if ever, used the way they were originally advertised. Look to coverage of DMCA and Patriot enforcement for prime examples.
The contract that you describe is common practice in most professional industries. I've received the impression that this hasn't been the case in computer science until recently. It is only going to become worse. These documents are part of the "it's my way or the highway" approach that corporations use to strong-arm prospective employees--there's no secret that you need the paycheck to pay bills more than the company needs your particular expertise.
If your salary is acceptable to you, if the position at which you'll be entering the company, and if the perks and benefits of the corporate environment are acceptable to you then your contract will have little effect on your day to day operations. If you're just coming out of college with a load of debt, if your rent is looking like it's going to be about 1/3 of your take home salary, and if you have any desire to ascend ranks within the company or to pursue your own ideas for profit then that piece of paper will be a make-or-break deal for your career.
Primarily a contract such as the one you've described is used to keep incoming employees "in their place" by having a full litany of heavy handed positions which the company can point to and say that you've legally acquiesced to in the event there is ever a disagreement between you and a higher ranking official within the company. Also, should you just happen to stumble upon the Holy Grail of nuclear fusion which simultaneously solves all network security exploits, buffer overflows, cures cancer, and makes coffee in the morning on time... the company will own that as well. If you come into the company at the executive level you may have a chance of being a priveleged recipient of a spin-off but if you're coming in at the level of a new hire then expect to gain nothing from your brilliant design.
Personally, after my experience in corporate America, I will never sign another one of those "we own you, everything you do, and everything you could possibly think of" contracts again unless the guaranteed salary is so sweet that going to work will feel like another day at the library.
Programming is more accessible the same way that vegetable gardens are accessible.
You're still going to buy the bulk of your groceries from one or two supermarkets and the landscape doesn't show any signs of changing any time soon.
But don't let me point out the obvious. Your leading remark "WTF are you talking about?" already tells me that you know everything .
I had begun making a similar observation to myself towards the 2.4.20+ line and definitely when 2.6 came out. It correlated nicely with the media increase in Linux coverage, the size and comprehensive nature of desktop environs like KDE and Gnome, the size of Xorg/Xfree86, and the increasing popular emphasis on web applications and the tion of HTTP and file-sharing protocol network usage over nearly anything else (spam excepted). I've almost decided that the computer programming age, as an affordable hobby for the non-specialist, is nearing the end of its lifetime. In a few more years you'll have the option of working with entirely standardized/commoditized/completely controlled (corporate DRM style) equipment or, if that doesn't appeal to you, then you'll have to go off a polar deep end and spend absolute bricktons of time and money assembling a system using a soldering iron, a breadboard, and specialty chips ordered from remote clearinghouses in China or Russia.
It sounds more like a confirmation of a "might makes right" policy than any real civil, moral, or political assertion.
The fact that I'm homeless is "proof" enough that I am unsuitable for gainful employment, a place to live, a professional career, and the same level of common courtesy that any other citizen receives.
Why should proof be needed to go after people who might be *gasp of shock and awe* sharing headphones or cassette tapes?
At some point the citizens of the United States need to accept that, by and large, 90% of their patriotism is being exploited for the profit of a select group of individuals who wouldn't risk a single hair on their heads if the tables were turned. We have to ask ourselves--is this really the government that we want to support with our tax dollars?
Facing reality, though, leads us to the greater question: what can we really do about it? Personally I suggest that everyone quit their jobs and tell the bankers to stuff it.
Another Federal level politician (judge) who has been miseducated as to the importance (scope) of his appointment. A proper interpretation of the Constitution would easily show that this is well outside the realm of federal legal jurisdiction.
Two hundred years of constant, relentless, plodding expansion of the authority of the federal government has skewed everyone's perception of what their proper jurisdiction is, though.
Can anyone answer why slavery wasn't covered by "interstate commerce"? Even after fighting a war Congress still went through the motions of passing a Constitutional Amendment to give themselves the power to regulate that. If a Constitutional Amendment was necessary for something as obvious as slavery--a business which trafficked in human life--then how is "interstate commerce" purported to be enough to micromanage nearly everything else which happens in our economy?
Chalk one more up for the communist (ie. a government which controls everything by using a choke hold on the economic financing) politicobankers.
Why would Google block the most obvious auditing tool for users to at least have some idea of where a click is taking them?
Why would Gmail make no effort to identify where a sent e-mail is received from (no X-Originating-IP or HTTP received from)?
Why would Google (probably) put a whole bunch of referential material, potentially at odds with common personal privacy policies, in web ad links?
Inquiring minds...