"Intel has little to gain by cutting its own margins in order to chase AMD down a hole(since lower margins are bad, and killing AMD would mean becoming antitrust scrutiny case..."
This. Look at the history of Intel and AMD, and it become absolutely apparent that Intel is aware of the danger of landing in the government's anti-trust sights. They have always left just enough room at the bottom end for AMD to barely survive. When AMD gets uppity (like in the Athlon days), Intel pulls out the stops for a couple of years and squashes AMD back into (near) irrelevance.
Interesting times ahead with mobile devices, where Intel is far from dominant. Who knows, Intel may finally decide to kill off AMD, so they can concentrate on new areas...
...any monetary awards will just nickle-and-dime the taxpayer
That is exactly the problem. In a case like this, the civil servants responsible should be personally liable for any judgement he wins. That means everyone: the arresting officer, the police detectives who carried out the investigation, everyone involved in the prosecutors office, *and* any and all judges involved in denying him bail and drawing out the court process.
As it is, all of these people can just shrug, say "everyone makes mistakes" or even "he deserved it", and go on to do it to the next person.
Of course, if you work in law enforcement, this is your daily work. Everyone lives in their personal bubble, and wants their daily work to be easier. However, in the big picture, spying on individuals is *supposed* to be hard.
Another point that people often forget: The government (or the FBI) is not some single entity. It is composed of individual people: some good, some evil, most just schmucks trying to get along. You cannot trust the government, simply because it contains some individuals who are not trustworthy. This is another reason that things like wiretaps should be difficult.
You imply that spending more would help. Let's have a look at the ranks of the states you mention, and add in their rank (by average score on the science exam):
DC $16408 - rank 51 (by a *huge* margin) New Jersey $16271 - rank 24 New York $18126 - rank 34 Alaska $15552 - rank 26 Vermont $15175 - rank 3
North Dakota and Montana, with the best results, both spend less than average amounts per pupil.
There are plenty of studies that show that throwing money at schools does not help. The single best thing you can do to improve most schools is to hire good teachers and fire bad ones. There is a strong *inverse* correlation between states with good education and states with strong teachers' unions. California is a prime example, as is New York (rank 34 on the list).
"If you don't intend to commit the first strike, there's no reason to build missile defenses."
What an utterly bizarre statement!
Put this in a more personal context. If you don't intend to assault anyone, there's no reason to learn self-defense. If someone assaults you, you'll just shoot the bastard. Do you see how many things are wrong with that statement?
Back to missile defenses:
- With anything less than an attack by hundreds of missiles, you may be able to nullify the attack without killing hundreds of millions of innocent citizens on the other side.
- If a rogue or terrorist group gains control of a few weapons, and launches, no sensible retaliation is even possible. Missile defenses would reduce or eliminate the threat.
- Finally (and this was always the insanity of MAD), an effective missile defense would substantially reduce the effect even of a massive attack. This raises the odds that a first strike by the enemy might prove ineffective. In a rational world (I know, I know), this ought to reduce the incentive to try for a preemptive strike in the first place.
In a nutshell: Defenses can only be seen as provocative by someone who is thinking of attacking. If Russia finds a missile defense provocative, one needs to take a hard look at what this says about their intentions.
First, since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, isn't the cold war over. Why is Russia still rattling sabres? As far as I can tell, they no longer have the ambition of conquering Europe.
Second, even back in cold-war days, the objections to missile defense were bizarre. MAD was exactly that: "mad". Governments agreeing to *not* defend their respective citizens: truly mad.
Finally, what the devil is the US doing, putting defenses into Europe? If missile defenses are necessary, Europe is perfectly capable of putting them in all by itself (I say this as a European). Stay home, America, stop spending money you don't have.
Do note that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a generally an anti-nuclear, scare-mongering publication. These are the people whose count-down to nuclear disaster has been just a few minutes before midnight for decades. Whatever they publish should be viewed with this in mind.
Scanning RFTA, in the end, it says basically nothing at all. They did no studies themselves, but just looked around at ones already done. The key points seem to be:
The same total exposure in the form of long-term exposure may be slightly (20%) more dangerous than the same dosage in a short, high-intensity form.
They desperately search for something to say about low-level, long-term exposure. They spend pages talking about the competing theories, from "Supralinear response" (really dangerous) to "Adaptive response" (a little radiation is healthy). In the end, they find no convincing evidence one way or the other, because the uncertainty bounds at such low levels include essentially all possibilities.
Based on this lack of evidence, they conclude that low levels of radiation are really dangerous, and that all Western populations are "primed for radiation-induced, delayed cancers from releases from nuclear reactors".
In the end, given the publication, the conclusion was obvious.
If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.
If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.
Sound like the patent trolls are funding lobbiests.
Employers asking for passwords is reprehensible - I expect 99.999% of/. will agree.
However, just what makes this a matter for the federal government? It's not an interstate transaction, as least not normally. It's not even directly commerce. This is just another pathetic attempt at attention-getting "feel-good" legislation.
Frankly, the employer ought to be able to ask any damn think they want in an interview. You, as the potential employee, have the right to a spine. If some protections are really necessary, this is entirely within the power of the individual States. The last thing we need is more federal overreach.
The US is currently pressuring various European countries to open their police databases to automated queries by US authorities. This kind of stuff is the reason that the smarter European countries are refusing. The US has no concept of privacy laws - once data is released to one agency, you can pretty much assume that they will share it willy nilly with other agencies. The data retention laws are incredibly lax. In the end, you have zero assurance what happens to personal data, once the government has it.
Privacy laws basically do not exist in the US. The European countries (like Germany) that have agreed to data-sharing are almost certainly violating EU law.
The conditions in China *are* basically good for the workers. I remember an interview with a Chinese worker in some factory that the Western media was trying to criticize. The worker put it very succinctly: The job he had was a heck of a lot better than the alternatives in his area.
These jobs may not be what you would expect in the West, but look where China (and other up-and-coming countries) were a couple of decades ago. They are making huge progress, both in working conditions and in their average standard of living. Stuff like this doesn't change overnight, or even in a few years - it is a generational thing.
Who knows, if China keeps improving at the current rate, in a couple of generations, they may well be chiding the West about our working conditions!
This may the the point of hate crime legislation, but it is wrong. There is no right to "not be offended". If I pick on your group - be it race, sexual orientation, hair color, or whatever - this may be an indication of my idiocy, and hopefully I will be ridiculed for it. However, it should not be criminal. Freedom of speech must include the right to be a jerk, else it isn't really freedom of speech.
Just like Rush Limbaugh, the marketplace will sort it out. He talked trash about someone - this was not criminal, but his sponsors are jumping ship. That's the way it ought to work.
"Hate crime" legislation is an abomination, and should be struck down as an offence against free speech.
Please note that the State uses a plea bargain as a way to avoid the effort of actually going to trial. Not saying this guy wasn't guilty, but the fact is that only a tiny fraction of criminal cases actually wind up in front of a jury. Why? Because the State says "take this deal or we throw the book - and the chair and the desk and the whole goddamn building - at you". It's not even remotely fair; it is a blatant attempt to intimidate people out of their right to a trial by jury. Of course, the juries are generally not aware of this, and are almost certainly unaware of the deal initially offered.
"Bias intimidation" is even more idiotic that "hate crime". What kind of idiots are we electing as legislators? Oh, right...
The art scene has become cultish, and actual talent has become secondary. I have had a couple of experiences in this area that really put me off the art scene. One I particularly recall, from many years ago: the Albuquerque Airport had just spent some enormous sum on a new picture, and the art critics were all impressed. Enough so that I went to see it. The picture turned out to consist of a small red dot in the center of a large yellow canvas. Hello? Aside from the fact that the colors matched the New Mexican flag, there was simply nothing there. A couple of minutes with a roller, 30 seconds with a brush. Perhaps the artist agonized about the precise size of the circle? Of course, you are supposed to feel inferior to the artsy, if you don't find deep meaning in such nonsense.
- Return control of school completely to local towns and neighborhoods. In particular, get the federal government out of local education.
- Vouchers. If parents in one neighborhood don't care about their kids education, or if the teachers are terrible, or if there are other problems, give parents the chance to move their kids elsewhere. Let the market work, even amongst public schools. Good school will get more kids and more money, bad schools will wither and die.
Many other posters have pointed out that good teachers are essential. I didn't list this, because if you return schools to local control, then each school can decide how to hire/fire teachers. The ones that do it well will have good teachers, the others will run out of students.
However, just for info, two points about teachers:
- Studies by the Gates' Foundation have shown that getting rid of the 10% worst teachers dramatically improves a school. This is true even if no other changes are made - i.e., the students just put into other teachers' classes.
- Beginning at the junior high school level, holding a degree in the subject being taught is vastly more important than holding a teaching degree. People who understand and love their subject are essential, and they can "learn to teach" by taking few classes as a minor.
I have to agree with the posters above. In the 1990s, after winning the "cold war", the US was triumphant and popular. Apparently this went to the heads of the politicians. While there was brief talk about scaling back military expenditures (since they were not necessary anymore), instead the US scaled up, and started looking for places to use that military. 9/11 was a huge boon to those who wanted to go this way, and they have taken full advantage of it. The US now spends nearly as much on its military as the entire rest of the world combined. Internationally, the US behaves like a schoolyard bully - a bully utterly convinced of his own righteousness.
What I find saddest about this whole situation: most people I know in the USA don't have the faintest inkling of this. "Look at all the good we do." "The Iraqis should be thankful we got rid of Hussein for them." Etc.. It's really unbelievable.
Too many parents think that their child is a special snowflake. They must protect their snowflake from having any negative experiences, like having another kid dislike them. Their special snowflake is not supposed to grow up, and not excepted to actually be able to cope with such traumatic thins as having some other kid actually disliking them.
Of course, it goes without saying that no one else's kid is as special a snowflake as your own - it's absolutely fine to traumatize other kids, in order to protect your own.
The next generation of Americans will have a huge challenge to overcome their upbringing...
The second post mentioned says "nobody want to learn to program" - meaning that people want to be able to program without going through all the tedious learning. Well, "duh". The same could be said for any difficult field, or indeed for learning to do anything well. I'd love to be able to play the piano like a master, but darn, there's all that practicing to be done.
Of course some kids want to learn to program, just like some want to become chemists or doctors. Of those who are interested, not all have the aptitude for it (logical thinking, etc.). Just like a fascination for bridges does not mean that you can be a good civil engineers.
For those who do have both aptitude and interest: It helps to have role models like "Uncle Jay". It also helps to have in-school or after-school classes that start out with simple, fun environments like Scratch. Any/.ers who want to support the next generation: see if you local school has such a program. And, of course, be "Uncle Jay" to your own family's progeny...
Many science museums have an exhibit that does much the same thing. You wear headphones that feed your speech back to you with a delay. What is unique about this device is the apparent ability to send the delayed sound in a focused beam over a substantial distance.
Any nerd who has tried one of the museum exhibits this has surely also learned to defeat it. It takes a bit of concentration, but in very few tries you can talk while ignoring what your are hearing. Perhaps not as fluently, but it is possible.
Nonetheless, this invention can be - and will be - misused to silence political speech.
One day is not realistic. Even if you are super-organized, and actually managed to touch on every single topic in that day, there's no way the new person will understand it all.
It's a slightly different context, but when I turned over a software system, I agreed to this: 40 hours consulting included, anytime over the next year. The first few hours were obviously used immediately. After that, questions came in less-and-less frequently. For me: I knew there was an end. For the people taking over the system: when unexpected issues came up, they knew they could count on help. In fact, they were so restrained about questions that I didn't mind answering a couple of questions after the year was up.
Long story, but I think the same idea would work for you. To keep things clear, write up an agreement and get the right people to sign it. However, as others have pointed out: wanting to be able to prove the other person to be lazy or incompetent is worrisome. You are all on the same team. Check your attitude - it's better to be colleagues than enemies.
The reason Switzerland is a good place for hosting is because the Swiss government has some idea of what due process is all about. Remember when Wikileaks moved to wikileaks.ch? No place is perfect, but the government here screws up a lot less than in many other countries...
Take note of this: "...the Secret Service still isn't talking, returning a bland and meaningless statement to press requests: 'We are aware of the incident and we're reviewing it internally to make sure all the proper procedures and protocols were followed.' "
When the company contacted the Secret Service, asking why their site was down, "the agent told me she is busy and she asked for my phone number, and told me they will get back to me within this week".
To date they still have no explanation and no court order concerning the take-down of their site. Even if there were a court order, there is zero reason not to contact the business and provide them a chance to cushion the effects for their legitimate customers. This sort of behavior is irresponsible. Clearly, court orders, due process and formal procedures are for wimps, not the elite *drum roll* Secret Service.
I hope JotForm can afford to file a court case over this. This sort of thing can do immense damage to a company's reputation, and someone in the Secret Service needs a slap upside the head.
In any case, as others have observed, any serious Internet company needs to avoid all TLDs controlled in the USA. Sure, register a.com address, but use it to forward to your real site, hosted under a different TLD - and make it clear to users that the non-.com TLD is the correct one.
Unrelated to the Internet, but nonetheless relevant: About 10 years ago I was with a small European company that was marketing a new ERP system to small companies. Our attorney told us flat-out: do not sell to anyone in the USA. The legal system is so screwed that it just isn't worth the risk - the laws are impossible, the customers sue at the drop of the hat, etc, etc. To underscore this, any sort of legal or liability insurance we looked at specifically excluded coverage for business transacted with US customers. It appears that things have only gotten worse...
The reason that process patents are bad: ideas are cheap.
Take any invention, and many people over time will have dreamed of something very like it. Actually working out all the fussy little details, in order to build something practical and workable - that can be difficult. The classic example is Thomas Edison and the incandescent light bulb. "Process: flip a switch, causing electricity to flow through a device that produces light". That's easy. Actually creating such a device is hard.
To take an example from an earlier post above: "Say, someone discovers a way to convert scrap metal to gold. That person should be allowed to have a patent on it". Sure, just as soon as they have the details worked out and proven: Here's a prototype machine that does the conversion. But when they have the details worked out to the point of building a working prototype, it's no longer a process patent, is it?
Slashdot Mirror
"Intel has little to gain by cutting its own margins in order to chase AMD down a hole(since lower margins are bad, and killing AMD would mean becoming antitrust scrutiny case..."
This. Look at the history of Intel and AMD, and it become absolutely apparent that Intel is aware of the danger of landing in the government's anti-trust sights. They have always left just enough room at the bottom end for AMD to barely survive. When AMD gets uppity (like in the Athlon days), Intel pulls out the stops for a couple of years and squashes AMD back into (near) irrelevance.
Interesting times ahead with mobile devices, where Intel is far from dominant. Who knows, Intel may finally decide to kill off AMD, so they can concentrate on new areas...
...any monetary awards will just nickle-and-dime the taxpayer
That is exactly the problem. In a case like this, the civil servants responsible should be personally liable for any judgement he wins. That means everyone: the arresting officer, the police detectives who carried out the investigation, everyone involved in the prosecutors office, *and* any and all judges involved in denying him bail and drawing out the court process.
As it is, all of these people can just shrug, say "everyone makes mistakes" or even "he deserved it", and go on to do it to the next person.
Personal liability.
Of course, if you work in law enforcement, this is your daily work. Everyone lives in their personal bubble, and wants their daily work to be easier. However, in the big picture, spying on individuals is *supposed* to be hard.
Another point that people often forget: The government (or the FBI) is not some single entity. It is composed of individual people: some good, some evil, most just schmucks trying to get along. You cannot trust the government, simply because it contains some individuals who are not trustworthy. This is another reason that things like wiretaps should be difficult.
You imply that spending more would help. Let's have a look at the ranks of the states you mention, and add in their rank (by average score on the science exam):
Alabama $8870 - rank 49
California $9657 - rank 47
Mississippi $8075 - rank 50
DC $16408 - rank 51 (by a *huge* margin)
New Jersey $16271 - rank 24
New York $18126 - rank 34
Alaska $15552 - rank 26
Vermont $15175 - rank 3
North Dakota and Montana, with the best results, both spend less than average amounts per pupil.
There are plenty of studies that show that throwing money at schools does not help. The single best thing you can do to improve most schools is to hire good teachers and fire bad ones. There is a strong *inverse* correlation between states with good education and states with strong teachers' unions. California is a prime example, as is New York (rank 34 on the list).
ARM = Anti-Radiation Missile. Should solve the problem.
"If you don't intend to commit the first strike, there's no reason to build missile defenses."
What an utterly bizarre statement!
Put this in a more personal context. If you don't intend to assault anyone, there's no reason to learn self-defense. If someone assaults you, you'll just shoot the bastard. Do you see how many things are wrong with that statement?
Back to missile defenses:
In a nutshell: Defenses can only be seen as provocative by someone who is thinking of attacking. If Russia finds a missile defense provocative, one needs to take a hard look at what this says about their intentions.
This is weird on so many levels.
So - what's really going on here?
Do note that the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" is a generally an anti-nuclear, scare-mongering publication. These are the people whose count-down to nuclear disaster has been just a few minutes before midnight for decades. Whatever they publish should be viewed with this in mind.
Scanning RFTA, in the end, it says basically nothing at all. They did no studies themselves, but just looked around at ones already done. The key points seem to be:
In the end, given the publication, the conclusion was obvious.
If you want to keep you sooper-seekrit advantage, it's called a "trade secret" and you don't patent it.
If your technology is so non-useful that someone can easily design around it and capture the market in 18 months, it is either useless, or so trivial that it shouldn't be patented in the first place.
Sound like the patent trolls are funding lobbiests.
Fine as far as it goes, but doesn't account for other important factors like seat space, quality of service, etc.
Employers asking for passwords is reprehensible - I expect 99.999% of /. will agree.
However, just what makes this a matter for the federal government? It's not an interstate transaction, as least not normally. It's not even directly commerce. This is just another pathetic attempt at attention-getting "feel-good" legislation.
Frankly, the employer ought to be able to ask any damn think they want in an interview. You, as the potential employee, have the right to a spine. If some protections are really necessary, this is entirely within the power of the individual States. The last thing we need is more federal overreach.
The US is currently pressuring various European countries to open their police databases to automated queries by US authorities. This kind of stuff is the reason that the smarter European countries are refusing. The US has no concept of privacy laws - once data is released to one agency, you can pretty much assume that they will share it willy nilly with other agencies. The data retention laws are incredibly lax. In the end, you have zero assurance what happens to personal data, once the government has it.
Privacy laws basically do not exist in the US. The European countries (like Germany) that have agreed to data-sharing are almost certainly violating EU law.
The conditions in China *are* basically good for the workers. I remember an interview with a Chinese worker in some factory that the Western media was trying to criticize. The worker put it very succinctly: The job he had was a heck of a lot better than the alternatives in his area.
These jobs may not be what you would expect in the West, but look where China (and other up-and-coming countries) were a couple of decades ago. They are making huge progress, both in working conditions and in their average standard of living. Stuff like this doesn't change overnight, or even in a few years - it is a generational thing.
Who knows, if China keeps improving at the current rate, in a couple of generations, they may well be chiding the West about our working conditions!
This may the the point of hate crime legislation, but it is wrong. There is no right to "not be offended". If I pick on your group - be it race, sexual orientation, hair color, or whatever - this may be an indication of my idiocy, and hopefully I will be ridiculed for it. However, it should not be criminal. Freedom of speech must include the right to be a jerk, else it isn't really freedom of speech.
Just like Rush Limbaugh, the marketplace will sort it out. He talked trash about someone - this was not criminal, but his sponsors are jumping ship. That's the way it ought to work.
"Hate crime" legislation is an abomination, and should be struck down as an offence against free speech.
Please note that the State uses a plea bargain as a way to avoid the effort of actually going to trial. Not saying this guy wasn't guilty, but the fact is that only a tiny fraction of criminal cases actually wind up in front of a jury. Why? Because the State says "take this deal or we throw the book - and the chair and the desk and the whole goddamn building - at you". It's not even remotely fair; it is a blatant attempt to intimidate people out of their right to a trial by jury. Of course, the juries are generally not aware of this, and are almost certainly unaware of the deal initially offered.
"Bias intimidation" is even more idiotic that "hate crime". What kind of idiots are we electing as legislators? Oh, right...
Can I mod you up to 6 super-insightful?
The art scene has become cultish, and actual talent has become secondary. I have had a couple of experiences in this area that really put me off the art scene. One I particularly recall, from many years ago: the Albuquerque Airport had just spent some enormous sum on a new picture, and the art critics were all impressed. Enough so that I went to see it. The picture turned out to consist of a small red dot in the center of a large yellow canvas. Hello? Aside from the fact that the colors matched the New Mexican flag, there was simply nothing there. A couple of minutes with a roller, 30 seconds with a brush. Perhaps the artist agonized about the precise size of the circle? Of course, you are supposed to feel inferior to the artsy, if you don't find deep meaning in such nonsense.
Two things will lead to a solution:
- Return control of school completely to local towns and neighborhoods. In particular, get the federal government out of local education.
- Vouchers. If parents in one neighborhood don't care about their kids education, or if the teachers are terrible, or if there are other problems, give parents the chance to move their kids elsewhere. Let the market work, even amongst public schools. Good school will get more kids and more money, bad schools will wither and die.
Many other posters have pointed out that good teachers are essential. I didn't list this, because if you return schools to local control, then each school can decide how to hire/fire teachers. The ones that do it well will have good teachers, the others will run out of students.
However, just for info, two points about teachers:
- Studies by the Gates' Foundation have shown that getting rid of the 10% worst teachers dramatically improves a school. This is true even if no other changes are made - i.e., the students just put into other teachers' classes.
- Beginning at the junior high school level, holding a degree in the subject being taught is vastly more important than holding a teaching degree. People who understand and love their subject are essential, and they can "learn to teach" by taking few classes as a minor.
I have to agree with the posters above. In the 1990s, after winning the "cold war", the US was triumphant and popular. Apparently this went to the heads of the politicians. While there was brief talk about scaling back military expenditures (since they were not necessary anymore), instead the US scaled up, and started looking for places to use that military. 9/11 was a huge boon to those who wanted to go this way, and they have taken full advantage of it. The US now spends nearly as much on its military as the entire rest of the world combined. Internationally, the US behaves like a schoolyard bully - a bully utterly convinced of his own righteousness.
What I find saddest about this whole situation: most people I know in the USA don't have the faintest inkling of this. "Look at all the good we do." "The Iraqis should be thankful we got rid of Hussein for them." Etc.. It's really unbelievable.
Too many parents think that their child is a special snowflake. They must protect their snowflake from having any negative experiences, like having another kid dislike them. Their special snowflake is not supposed to grow up, and not excepted to actually be able to cope with such traumatic thins as having some other kid actually disliking them.
Of course, it goes without saying that no one else's kid is as special a snowflake as your own - it's absolutely fine to traumatize other kids, in order to protect your own.
The next generation of Americans will have a huge challenge to overcome their upbringing...
The second post mentioned says "nobody want to learn to program" - meaning that people want to be able to program without going through all the tedious learning. Well, "duh". The same could be said for any difficult field, or indeed for learning to do anything well. I'd love to be able to play the piano like a master, but darn, there's all that practicing to be done.
Of course some kids want to learn to program, just like some want to become chemists or doctors. Of those who are interested, not all have the aptitude for it (logical thinking, etc.). Just like a fascination for bridges does not mean that you can be a good civil engineers.
For those who do have both aptitude and interest: It helps to have role models like "Uncle Jay". It also helps to have in-school or after-school classes that start out with simple, fun environments like Scratch. Any /.ers who want to support the next generation: see if you local school has such a program. And, of course, be "Uncle Jay" to your own family's progeny...
Many science museums have an exhibit that does much the same thing. You wear headphones that feed your speech back to you with a delay. What is unique about this device is the apparent ability to send the delayed sound in a focused beam over a substantial distance.
Any nerd who has tried one of the museum exhibits this has surely also learned to defeat it. It takes a bit of concentration, but in very few tries you can talk while ignoring what your are hearing. Perhaps not as fluently, but it is possible.
Nonetheless, this invention can be - and will be - misused to silence political speech.
One day is not realistic. Even if you are super-organized, and actually managed to touch on every single topic in that day, there's no way the new person will understand it all.
It's a slightly different context, but when I turned over a software system, I agreed to this: 40 hours consulting included, anytime over the next year. The first few hours were obviously used immediately. After that, questions came in less-and-less frequently. For me: I knew there was an end. For the people taking over the system: when unexpected issues came up, they knew they could count on help. In fact, they were so restrained about questions that I didn't mind answering a couple of questions after the year was up.
Long story, but I think the same idea would work for you. To keep things clear, write up an agreement and get the right people to sign it. However, as others have pointed out: wanting to be able to prove the other person to be lazy or incompetent is worrisome. You are all on the same team. Check your attitude - it's better to be colleagues than enemies.
The reason Switzerland is a good place for hosting is because the Swiss government has some idea of what due process is all about. Remember when Wikileaks moved to wikileaks.ch? No place is perfect, but the government here screws up a lot less than in many other countries...
Take note of this: "...the Secret Service still isn't talking, returning a bland and meaningless statement to press requests: 'We are aware of the incident and we're reviewing it internally to make sure all the proper procedures and protocols were followed.' "
When the company contacted the Secret Service, asking why their site was down, "the agent told me she is busy and she asked for my phone number, and told me they will get back to me within this week".
To date they still have no explanation and no court order concerning the take-down of their site. Even if there were a court order, there is zero reason not to contact the business and provide them a chance to cushion the effects for their legitimate customers. This sort of behavior is irresponsible. Clearly, court orders, due process and formal procedures are for wimps, not the elite *drum roll* Secret Service.
I hope JotForm can afford to file a court case over this. This sort of thing can do immense damage to a company's reputation, and someone in the Secret Service needs a slap upside the head.
In any case, as others have observed, any serious Internet company needs to avoid all TLDs controlled in the USA. Sure, register a .com address, but use it to forward to your real site, hosted under a different TLD - and make it clear to users that the non-.com TLD is the correct one.
Unrelated to the Internet, but nonetheless relevant: About 10 years ago I was with a small European company that was marketing a new ERP system to small companies. Our attorney told us flat-out: do not sell to anyone in the USA. The legal system is so screwed that it just isn't worth the risk - the laws are impossible, the customers sue at the drop of the hat, etc, etc. To underscore this, any sort of legal or liability insurance we looked at specifically excluded coverage for business transacted with US customers. It appears that things have only gotten worse...
The reason that process patents are bad: ideas are cheap.
Take any invention, and many people over time will have dreamed of something very like it. Actually working out all the fussy little details, in order to build something practical and workable - that can be difficult. The classic example is Thomas Edison and the incandescent light bulb. "Process: flip a switch, causing electricity to flow through a device that produces light". That's easy. Actually creating such a device is hard.
To take an example from an earlier post above: "Say, someone discovers a way to convert scrap metal to gold. That person should be allowed to have a patent on it". Sure, just as soon as they have the details worked out and proven: Here's a prototype machine that does the conversion. But when they have the details worked out to the point of building a working prototype, it's no longer a process patent, is it?