Sending to your MP is good. Forget the ministers listed on the web site, since the Liberals around Cretien aren't about to start listening now. Just look at the $2M gun registry that will end up costing taxpayers 500 times that amount.
Back benchers are being heard now, so there is a good chance things can be changed if enough people take issue with the levy.
Snow season is here, and if we're lucky as a nation, perhaps Mr. Cretien will decide to take a walk in it.
(For our American friends, Trudeau, a former Prime Minister, took what has become a famous "walk in the snow" during which he decided to retire.)
Your top employees are valued assets. Smart companies protect their assets. They don't go around releasing their product secrets to make things easy from the competition and neither do they make it easy for the competition to draw away their top performers.
As has been said many times, there is nothing holding the employees themselves back. Expecting the company to favour individual careers by helping staff get recruited away over the company's own needs is foolish.
Career advancement is personal work. If you want fame and fortune, slave away at your own startup for peanuts, or become an actor (and still slave away for peanuts).
Actually there is nothing preventing you from signing away your rights to anything. Courts don't protect people from making bad deals. The basic assumption is that everyone entering into a contract is reasonable to ensure they are aware of what they are getting into. Of course there are exceptions (there are classes of people unable to enter into a contract and be held to it - minors, intoxicated people), and parties writing the contracts have an obligation to ensure that all points are brought to the attention of the other party. Generally though, courts will allow a contract made in good faith to stand, even if it is a bad deal for one party.
Non-competes are a special case though. Typically, as others have mentioned, the employer is bargaining from a position of power, whereas the employee is not. The employer can simply not hire those unwilling to play by their rules. This is taken into account when contract disputes are brought forward.
The other interesting bit that is that courts have tended to view things like individual non-competes as an obstruction to trade in general. It is not so much the individual not being able to earn a living in the career of their choice as it is the restriction in the flow of people resources in the economy if everyone is restricted from competing. The economy as a whole would quickly suffer if the most important resource could not move around easily. The fact that courts have taken this view means that what is considered reasonable in a non-compete clause is much more restrictive than in other forms of contracts.
Non-competes typically only stand if one sells a business and agrees not to directly compete within a specific area and timeframe. Unreasonable restrictions will be struck down.
As someone else pointed out, individual non-competes are much more about the threat of legal action than the ability to actually enforce them.
There are a few problems with the arguement as I see it:
Stories of Novell's demise have been floating around for years, and yet they are still here.
If MS loses it means MS finds a new way to continue doing business. The suit will not shut down the firm in any stretch of the imagination, and Active directory, and Win2K will still be products to compete with.
MS losing their suit does not mean Linux takes over the market. Linux has a long way to go before making Netware irrelevant. Netware offers managebility that Linux is still a fair ways from having. Add to that the file management and performance of Netware, and you can see how it has stood the test of time.
With the exception of NDS? NDS is the product from Novell right now. It is being integrated into a more and more products, and is still one of the best directory services out there. The fact that Novell has re-aligned itself to expand the use of NDS shows some foresight exists at the firm.
I think one of the reasons we've heard so little from Novell through this whole issue is that Novell doesn't see itself as being a direct competitor of MS so much any more. They've integrated the MS products into NDS, and continue to do the same with other products. If anything, they'll simply migrate the NDS tools and extend the directory to support whatever OSes happend to gain support. MS winning or losing has little to do with it.
The plan was less an attempt to scare the USSR than a blast to show the folks at home that the USAF had the power to nuke the moon and that the US was not so far behind in the space race. Both sides already had nukes and were performing test detonations to remind each other. While much of the Cold War was serious military business involving preparations for an expected war, a fair amount of the sideline action could have been settled simply by leaders on both sides had dropped their drawers and pulled out rulers.
"Pissing match" is an excellent description of what was going on. The space race had little to do with political ideaology, and was really a mater of national pride. The idea that nations would be willing to nuke places they knew little about just to show they could is what makes this a sad commentary.
Re:You might be able to use the DMCA, anyway...
on
Thus Spake Stallman
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· Score: 1
I think (IANAL) that you could very probably enforce the DMCA against anybody who tried to bypass (say) a makefile hack that e-mailed any modified source to the FSF whenever it was compiled.
To do so would put a restriction on users of FSF software, making the software not completely free. While there are probably lots of ways to "protect" GPL'd software, they all would violate the underlying principles of the FSF and the GPL.
I don't really consider one dollar to be much of a payoff, do you?
The $1.00 probably wasn't even paid. It isn't a payoff, but necessary in order to enfoce the agreement. In Canada, there must be something given in exchange in order for the agreement to be valid. The sum of one dollar is common, and is seen on all sorts of agreements, for example on stock option agreements (in consideration of $1.00, the corporation grants...).
A friend of mine is off touring New Zealand with one of these units in his pack. Battery life is about 10 hours, or about half of the flight there. The unit fires up the hard drive to load a song in memory and then shuts the drive down. Shutting down the hard drive will also improve the drop survival, since the parked drive will withstand much more than a spinning drive. I still wouldn't want to drop test the unit too often!
The idea of a central "pooled fund" as put forward by some posters is interesting, but faces the problems of regulation, setting up a holding firm, etc. Instead, if individuals were to purchase single shares (or more), and sign over proxy voting rights to a central voice on a particular issue (be it the an organization like the EFF, or a single person) the same result could be had. The proxy has the benefit of people being able to chose on each issue where they wish to be heard, and opt out of issues they don't agree with. At the same time, the onus is no longer on one central organization to represent views at all meetings, instead a different voice for each issue/meeting/company could be heard simply by giving them voting rights. As someone else mentioned, it is highly unlikely that the proxy size alone will be large enough to make major changes. The goal should be to get the message heard at shareholder meetings and sway shareholder opinion and draw media attention to the issues. There are obviously a variety of technical legal rules on how a hack like this would work, and can't be done overnight. It is something to consider, and is a interesting new view on how an unorganized community can organize itself to deal with certain issues. When facing business, or goverment, or an other organization, being organized in an approach is the only way to go.
I too have an I7000 that I've been very happy with. I popped in a Xircom Realport 10/100/56K modem card to replace the Winmodem. The 15" screen on the I7000 may be overkill, but sure is nice for staring at for long periods!
As desktop replacements, these notebooks come pretty close, and at 10+ lbs they can feel like you're lugging around your desktop on your shoulder. I recently purchased a Willow Design Darwin backpack to carry the I7000 and assorted accessories around in, and found that 10lbs on your back is a lot easier to carry.
The idea of a restricted distributiion club in fact, it does violate the underlying principles of the GPL, which is that you may not distribute modified GPL software with any restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL. Free software does not equal $0.00 in the copyleft sense, nor is the GPL simply about providing source code with binaries. Copyleft is about protecting every user's right to have the freedom to copy and modify the program as they see wish, providing they agree to distribute the program with the same rights they had. This is more explicitly stated in the preamble to the GPL: "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights." Based on this idea, even a club could not ask members to agree to limit distribution and would have little recourse against someone violating that agreement. The same would apply to a corporation seeking to limit the release of software based on GPL'd code through similar agreements with the public. One exception could be whether a corporation could restrict distribution for internal use only, based on who owns work performed, and therefore owns the right to make the decision to distribute or not, although that is a whole other can of worms better left for other subthreads on this topic. I think it would be difficult (in North America, at least, perhaps other can pass on info about their regions) to circumvent this agreement, short of secretly distributing code based on the GPL and completely ignoring the licence. As the Corel beta issue pointed out, any attempt to modify the GPL agreement and restrict downstream user's rights is a direct violation of the agreement.
What is the overall structure of Andover as an organization, and how does/. fit into it? Andover is obviously a corporation, but was/.? Is/. now to be a divisional entity operating freely under the Andover umbrella or will Andover be looking to consolidate all of its web site assets into a single recognizable brand? What have you gained from Andover that you have found to be helpful (e.g., are management or people with other skills helping out with hidden operations of/.)? What else can you share about your experiences with the change in ownership? Has it been smooth? Lastly, what were the driving factors that made you decide to join Andover?
Dilbert stereotypes aside, the management in most organizations recognizes that they're paying IT salaries for a reason, and usually defer to the technical people (or the manager of the technical department) to make the technical decisions, within certain (usually financial) parameters. In my experience, stories of management not listening are usually about an individual not being heard (or feeling that they weren't), not necessarily the technical staff as a whole. Convincing management to head in a certain technical direction is usually not too difficult if their needs (e.g., costs, people resources needed to implement, etc) are addressed during the pitch. Non technical people don't get the same thrill from technology as/.'ers might, so you may need to sell ideas using a different approach. You're right about Compaq selling to the suits - they've already figured out how to tailor their sales pitch to their audience. Technical people having difficulty in getting new ideas across could stand to learn from them.
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Sending to your MP is good. Forget the ministers listed on the web site, since the Liberals around Cretien aren't about to start listening now. Just look at the $2M gun registry that will end up costing taxpayers 500 times that amount.
Back benchers are being heard now, so there is a good chance things can be changed if enough people take issue with the levy.
Snow season is here, and if we're lucky as a nation, perhaps Mr. Cretien will decide to take a walk in it.
(For our American friends, Trudeau, a former Prime Minister, took what has become a famous "walk in the snow" during which he decided to retire.)
Your top employees are valued assets. Smart companies protect their assets. They don't go around releasing their product secrets to make things easy from the competition and neither do they make it easy for the competition to draw away their top performers. As has been said many times, there is nothing holding the employees themselves back. Expecting the company to favour individual careers by helping staff get recruited away over the company's own needs is foolish. Career advancement is personal work. If you want fame and fortune, slave away at your own startup for peanuts, or become an actor (and still slave away for peanuts).
Non-competes typically only stand if one sells a business and agrees not to directly compete within a specific area and timeframe. Unreasonable restrictions will be struck down.
As someone else pointed out, individual non-competes are much more about the threat of legal action than the ability to actually enforce them.I think one of the reasons we've heard so little from Novell through this whole issue is that Novell doesn't see itself as being a direct competitor of MS so much any more. They've integrated the MS products into NDS, and continue to do the same with other products. If anything, they'll simply migrate the NDS tools and extend the directory to support whatever OSes happend to gain support. MS winning or losing has little to do with it.
"Pissing match" is an excellent description of what was going on. The space race had little to do with political ideaology, and was really a mater of national pride. The idea that nations would be willing to nuke places they knew little about just to show they could is what makes this a sad commentary.
I think (IANAL) that you could very probably enforce the DMCA against anybody who tried to bypass (say) a makefile hack that e-mailed any modified source to the FSF whenever it was compiled.
To do so would put a restriction on users of FSF software, making the software not completely free. While there are probably lots of ways to "protect" GPL'd software, they all would violate the underlying principles of the FSF and the GPL.
I don't really consider one dollar to be much of a payoff, do you?
The $1.00 probably wasn't even paid. It isn't a payoff, but necessary in order to enfoce the agreement. In Canada, there must be something given in exchange in order for the agreement to be valid. The sum of one dollar is common, and is seen on all sorts of agreements, for example on stock option agreements (in consideration of $1.00, the corporation grants...).
All the UK cares about is if the statement is damaging. This really muzzles their papers. Canada is the same as the UK
The truth is an absolute defense in Canada too.
A friend of mine is off touring New Zealand with one of these units in his pack. Battery life is about 10 hours, or about half of the flight there. The unit fires up the hard drive to load a song in memory and then shuts the drive down. Shutting down the hard drive will also improve the drop survival, since the parked drive will withstand much more than a spinning drive. I still wouldn't want to drop test the unit too often!
The idea of a central "pooled fund" as put forward by some posters is interesting, but faces the problems of regulation, setting up a holding firm, etc. Instead, if individuals were to purchase single shares (or more), and sign over proxy voting rights to a central voice on a particular issue (be it the an organization like the EFF, or a single person) the same result could be had. The proxy has the benefit of people being able to chose on each issue where they wish to be heard, and opt out of issues they don't agree with. At the same time, the onus is no longer on one central organization to represent views at all meetings, instead a different voice for each issue/meeting/company could be heard simply by giving them voting rights. As someone else mentioned, it is highly unlikely that the proxy size alone will be large enough to make major changes. The goal should be to get the message heard at shareholder meetings and sway shareholder opinion and draw media attention to the issues. There are obviously a variety of technical legal rules on how a hack like this would work, and can't be done overnight. It is something to consider, and is a interesting new view on how an unorganized community can organize itself to deal with certain issues. When facing business, or goverment, or an other organization, being organized in an approach is the only way to go.
I too have an I7000 that I've been very happy with. I popped in a Xircom Realport 10/100/56K modem card to replace the Winmodem. The 15" screen on the I7000 may be overkill, but sure is nice for staring at for long periods!
As desktop replacements, these notebooks come pretty close, and at 10+ lbs they can feel like you're lugging around your desktop on your shoulder. I recently purchased a Willow Design Darwin backpack to carry the I7000 and assorted accessories around in, and found that 10lbs on your back is a lot easier to carry.
The idea of a restricted distributiion club in fact, it does violate the underlying principles of the GPL, which is that you may not distribute modified GPL software with any restrictions on the rights granted by the GPL. Free software does not equal $0.00 in the copyleft sense, nor is the GPL simply about providing source code with binaries. Copyleft is about protecting every user's right to have the freedom to copy and modify the program as they see wish, providing they agree to distribute the program with the same rights they had. This is more explicitly stated in the preamble to the GPL: "To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights." Based on this idea, even a club could not ask members to agree to limit distribution and would have little recourse against someone violating that agreement. The same would apply to a corporation seeking to limit the release of software based on GPL'd code through similar agreements with the public. One exception could be whether a corporation could restrict distribution for internal use only, based on who owns work performed, and therefore owns the right to make the decision to distribute or not, although that is a whole other can of worms better left for other subthreads on this topic. I think it would be difficult (in North America, at least, perhaps other can pass on info about their regions) to circumvent this agreement, short of secretly distributing code based on the GPL and completely ignoring the licence. As the Corel beta issue pointed out, any attempt to modify the GPL agreement and restrict downstream user's rights is a direct violation of the agreement.
What is the overall structure of Andover as an organization, and how does /. fit into it? Andover is obviously a corporation, but was /.? Is /. now to be a divisional entity operating freely under the Andover umbrella or will Andover be looking to consolidate all of its web site assets into a single recognizable brand? What have you gained from Andover that you have found to be helpful (e.g., are management or people with other skills helping out with hidden operations of /.)? What else can you share about your experiences with the change in ownership? Has it been smooth? Lastly, what were the driving factors that made you decide to join Andover?
Dilbert stereotypes aside, the management in most organizations recognizes that they're paying IT salaries for a reason, and usually defer to the technical people (or the manager of the technical department) to make the technical decisions, within certain (usually financial) parameters. In my experience, stories of management not listening are usually about an individual not being heard (or feeling that they weren't), not necessarily the technical staff as a whole. Convincing management to head in a certain technical direction is usually not too difficult if their needs (e.g., costs, people resources needed to implement, etc) are addressed during the pitch. Non technical people don't get the same thrill from technology as /.'ers might, so you may need to sell ideas using a different approach. You're right about Compaq selling to the suits - they've already figured out how to tailor their sales pitch to their audience. Technical people having difficulty in getting new ideas across could stand to learn from them.