One of the more disgusting parts is that the takedown notice doesn't carry any kind of penalty, while the counter-notice requires the accused to claim "under penalty of perjury" that they do, in fact, have the right to do that.
Actually, there are two things: a DMCA notice must be adequate to describe what items are claimed to be infringing, and it also requires a statement under penalty of perjury that the person making the request for takedown is either the copyright holder or the authorized agent of same. There is also a provision for damages for false takedown requests. Whether you actually can get damages is another thing. Now, concievably if the ISP wants to get money from someone for having to perform a takedown, and bills the customer, then if the customer files a counter-notice, bills the copyright holder and sues for damages since it is now claimed to be a false notice.
With the 1978 complete rewrite of the copyright law, and especially the Berne Convention Accession in the 1980s, it's arguable that as far as copyright is concerned, Congress has decided to completely preempt the field of copyright with respect to everything except pre-February 15, 1972 sound recordings (which aren't federally copyrighted anyway) and thus no state has authority to require or permit anything with respect to copyright (except to set rules on the copying of uncopyrightable sound recordings), and this law is in all probability unconstitutional. (The place to go to regulate copyrighted works or their use or misuse is Congress.)
This seems to be on the same level as attempts by local organizations to regulate use of WiFi, such as universities prohibiting students from running their own wireless routers, or airports trying to prohibit lessees from running their own WiFi, only to have the FCC publicly announce that neither homeowners associations, nor municipalities, nor special districts, nor state governments have any authority to regulate the use of spectrum and only the FCC has any authority to regulate what spectrum may be used and to set the terms and conditions for its use.
Don't worry. Soon it'll be known as Disney's Tarzana of Anaheim.
First, Tarzana was actually founded by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a result of him creating the Tarzan stories. Second, Tarzana is located in Los Angeles County, Anaheim is located in Orange County; and Third, they're about 40 kilometers (20 miles) apart, with several cities and unincorporated areas between them.
Even more strangely, a company that bills you for services that you never received or requested can still hit your credit ratings for failure to make payments on those bills. That can and sometimes does negatively impact your credit scores, regardless of any "comment" that you can put onto your credit report denoting fraud. If anything, noting that the billing was fraud makes you look even worse to creditors.
In which case it's either libel or trade libel. Further, you could go into court in your local jurisdiction and sue the credit reporting company (after demanding proof of the validity and it not being proved; and merely restating the debt is not "proof"), or the creditor for libel, and a demand for removal of the bad item. Not enough people fight to stop this, so it goes on.
So if it is a trademark notice, then the site operator is already be in a whole lot of legal trouble already. I agree with you that the 3rd party uploaders may have put the site in this situation.
No, this is not the case here. In order for there to be some sort of violation of Toyota's rights as far as trademark is concerned, the vehicles would have to be someone else's (like Datsun or Saturn or Ford) and marked as GM. Merely showing the vehicle images is not trademark infringement, or every time you showed anything in a photograph you'd be liable. There must be tarnishment or other disparagement of the trademark or something that is likely to reduce its value as a trademark or confuse origin of the goods shown. Mere photography of a trademarked article - unless one of the things the company does is sell photographs and even then there's an issue because of 1st Amendment issues - is not going to raise trademark issues. I still think that there's some problems with this whole issue.
" When site owner Harry Maugans requested clarification on exactly which wallpapers were copyrighted by Toyota, he was told that for them to cite specifics (in order to file proper DMCA Takedown Notices), they would invoice Desktop Nexus for their labor.""
And then he invoices Toyota for complying with each and everyone of them to the tune of the same dollar amount their bill is. Two can play this game.
No, he invoices them for twice the cost, since he has to spend the time to remove the images, and since they've already established that identifying images is valuable work!
For all you know, they've carefully reviewed a random sample of images and identified several that are problematic. Why should it be Toyota's responsibility to identify all of the bad content for you?
Because, if it's a DMCA notice - and as you point out, it's not clear exactly what it is - the DMCA requires specific and adequate notice of exactly what is infringing. Merely saying "remove every Toyota image" is not specific; unless the image says "Toyota" on it, how am I to know which vehicles are Toyota, and which are Nissan, Datsun or Saturn?
Let me also add the article is one of the worst ever: on one hand it claims that Toyota has made "one of the most wildly arrogant demands in DMCA history," then later realizes "these demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice." Oh, you mean it's a simple cease-and-desist letter? What a headline: "Toyota Sends Letter!" Idiots.
Agreed, either it's a DMCA notice, or it's not. It may be a badly written or defective DMCA notice, if it mentions the DMCA then it can be considered one. If it doesn't then it's probably a cease-and-desist notice, which is a different matter. Which again, under copyright law only a proper DMCA notice is valid to require takedown. Otherwise, failing to make a proper DMCA takedown request, there's no grounds for liability by the website absent a failure to honor a proper DMCA notice.
The article mentioned how someone bullying someone else by causing their phone to ring "all hours of the day and night."
We have laws in the U.S., at least, that make it illegal to harass someone without a legitimate purpose of communication, by either excessively calling them or otherwise disturbing them for the purpose of making them upset. If they have this, then the victim of someone being called at all hours already has legal protections to stop this sort of thing if it's occurring, and no new laws are needed. If they don't, then perhaps this is what should have been done.
In fact, I like the way they're written here. If you call me, and use foul language to insult me, I can have you arrested for harassing me. On the other hand, if you call me, and irritate me so badly that I curse you out and insult you with the most degrading and harshest profanity I can think of, you can't do anything to me. Which makes sense: I didn't call you, you called me; if you disturb me, then you have to put up with my response to you. If you hadn't called me and bugged me, you would never have gotten the insult in the first place.
These are just attempts to grease the skids for more draconian restrictions on the Internet, using the boiling frog analogy. You can't drop a frog in boiling water, he'll jump out, but gradually increase the temperature and he'll sit there and allow himself to be boiled to death, or so the analogy goes. Make a huge grab for people's rights and they will squawk; nibble away in little pieces and they'll never notice until they're all gone, and by then it's too late, unless the "canary in the coal mine" starts screaming Chicken Little style at the beginning and refuses to allow even the first bite. (Talk about mixed metaphors!)
Most people bend the wrist inward; that's wrong, you should bend the wrist so it is pushed outward.
It's been so long since I've done the report, that I think I wrote it backward in the example above, most people bend their wrist forward which pushes the vein inside and makes the suicide attempt less likely to be effective, you're supposed to bend your hand so the hand leans down so the wrist is bent inward, allowing better access to the veins to be cut.
I mean, I wouldn't want someone trying to commit suicide to use the original example wrong, have it fail to work and then sue me for giving them bad advice!:)
If the same behavior - one kid bullying another or saying unkind things - was occurring in a non-electronic medium, we usually would consider it the sort of thing where it's a matter for the kids to settle among themselves, or at most, by the kid's parent talking to the bully or the parent, which then usually stopped it. But now, we're going to add the ISP, school authorities, police and courts into the mix and create a tempest in a teapot.
The most someone can do electronically is say things; they can't strike you, or hurt you, or do anything to you unless you accept their comments about you as valid. Kids have had nasty cliques against other kids for dozens of centuries. We need to allow kids to learn to toughen up a bit, if we coddle them too much, they won't get through the real world, and when something comes along that mummy and daddy can't protect them against, they're going to be in a lot worse trouble.
You want to do something against physical threats, fine. You want to do something against extortion ("give me your lunch money or else"), that's something that should be taken care of. But if you're going to treat mere communication of meanness or cruelty as more serious than mere taunts in the absence of an actual threat of violence, then what you're effectively doing is treating words the same as actions. A dangerous path that ends up usually producing stupid overreactions, as a number of incidents here on Slashdot have been reported, where some kid is given an assignment to write a story or some report, but does so in an edgy or unconventional way, is considered a criminal or terrorist and is treated that way for doing nothing more than doing his classwork as he was asked to do it.
I remember one I did. We were asked to give a report in class on how to do something. Well, having read once how too many people cut their wrists the wrong way, I decided to be edgy and unconventional, and write a report on the correct way of how to commit suicide by slitting your wrists. When I stood up to read it, the kids in the class thought it was great, and the teacher even pointed out I drew in examples of how to correctly position the wrist so you cut the vein properly. (Most people bend the wrist inward; that's wrong, you should bend the wrist so it is pushed outward.) And that's all that happened (other than I think I got an A for being thorough). The teacher understood it was simply a student doing a report he knew would be different in order to have fun in class, not some "cry for help" of a depressed kid who was planning to kill himself.
Today, if some kid had done the same thing, I suspect that instead of taking it as the joke it was, he probably would have been called to the principal's office and maybe gotten detention for it, or possibly have to go see a shrink before being allowed to go back to school.
The meter gauges look identical to the ones in the U.S., so if it's read the same way, all you need is a program to analyze a piece of a photograph for presence or absence of an image.
In the U.S., the rule is 'read down', if a needle is between two numbers you count it as being as the lower of the two. If it's on the number line then you count it as that.
The example picture shown is read as 375,064.4; I originally wasn't sure whether the segment I read as 5 (because the needle was very close to but I wasn't sure if it was on the line) was on or just before the 5, except the number 'below' it was between the 9 and the 0; since it was past 9 and back to zero, that means it was no longer 4 so it had to be 5; at that close if it was still 4 the number below it should have been at least an 8 or more likely a 9.
In fact, (at least in this area) the tariff schedules for most utilities require meters be replaced (at no cost to the customer), about every 30 years or so, because as they get older they tend to favor the customer more by reading 'slow'. Especially gas meters, they're more mechanical than electric ones, but the use of a photograph works the same for both types of meters too.
You need something to take a 'snapshot' of the meter. By positioning the camera, you can fix it so that it takes the same image. Since you know where the dials are, you fix it so that you isolate the portion of the dial which is normally blank except for the needle indicating the reading for that segment (100,000 hours, 1,000 hours, etc.) Where the area is other than blank, that's the number, so that the area between 3 and 4 is the '3' value for that digit. Each segment only has one of the 10 possible values as something other than blank because it only has one needle. If you get something else you've got a contamination problem, e.g. something got in the way or the camera moved.
So once you have the particular segments, and the slices of each segment representing each digit, then you can check each slice to see which is other than a blank image. Set that value, then you can go on to the next digit. It ain't hard to have something analyze an image to determine if it's empty or not, you just have to select what part of each image is a digit segment and which is a slice of that segment representing the number from 0 to 9. It's basically one or more bounding boxes representing a curve-shaped rectangle for each slice. Then once you know what each segment is, you multiply the segment's value by its multiplier, e.g. 100,000 for the 100,000 hour segment, etc.
Then you just check what the value is, and take a snapshot, say, 4 times every day or however often you want to check usage. More often than probably every 6 hours won't tell you much as you're unlikely to use more than about 8 KW in a 6-hour period based on the average home, at least in the U.S. at an average of 960KWH per month, and U.K. usage probably isn't much different or might be less.
If you're interested in average hourly usage, you take a snapshot each hour; if you want peaks, try every 15 minutes. Otherwise once every six hours or once a day or however often you want an idea of how much you use and how fast. Processing time for the image shouldn't be more than 10 seconds at most.
Going back as far as the 1970s, it's been found, over and over, through studies, that the vast majority of women do not, I repeat, do not orgasm as a result of vaginal intercourse. Best results I've heard are only 30% of women can orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone, and some quote results as low as 10-15%. Women need clitoral stimulation in at least 70% of cases either through cunnilingus or through fingering to be able to achieve orgasm. I don't know who did this survey, but either they've selected a large number of women who don't fit the profile, or there is some aspect of female sexuality that is different there.
Further, women need foreplay if for no other reason than to allow them to be receptive to intercourse (as in allowing the vagina to relax) and to lubricate properly. Don't know where these people got their results, but I suspect there's something not quite right about them. Or perhaps if intercourse goes on this long it might be entirely different.
Look up how to change your hosts file, or add one if you don't have a hosts file; there's one in Windows as well as Linux.
Get one that has plenty of links to ad serving sires so that your web browser drops all of the advertising providers such as banner ads
Get Apache (for windows if you're running it) or some other web server, even one that just does dummy responses, and have it running locally
Install the webserver so it simply returns an empty file for every request, which will have the added benefit it will speed up your web surfing
Make sure all of the web sites in the host file for ad delvery sites and other unnecessary locations point to 127.0.0.1 and that is also listed as localhost.
By doing this, you redirect all those requests for web bugs, banner ads and advertisements, off the network and locally to your computer, which returns nothing, thus making your page load faster, reduces the amount of traffic you send onto the net (both in request traffic and in response traffic) AND gets rid of all sorts of ads. I have a host file on my computer. A lot of ads never even show up because they get redirected to the local computer, which isn't even running a webserver (I may change that) so they immediately timeout and don't generate any ad space.
No, you have it wrong. The rule has been in effect for 100 years. A purchase of a music CD is not a license because no license has negotiated. A purchase of a CD, Book, or other copy where a physical delivery has been made, is a sale, an unconditional transfer of ownership.
There would have to be proof a license had been agreed to; a license merely printed on a package sold at retail has been declared to not be a license and not enforceable. You own the copy of the disk purchased at retail and no alleged "license" changes that from a sale to a license. I think the courts have even ruled if you purchased a multi-pack of several separate computer programs, you could break up the individual pieces and sell them separately.
You do not have a "non-transferrable license to listen to the music," you own that copy of the music and may use it in any fashion subject to the restrictions imposed by copyright law; if you only had a license they could restrict how you listened to it (no listening on a boom box or in a car because others could hear it, etc.), put usage limits (you can only listen once per day, could only listen a maximum 100 times before you have to buy another copy, etc.), and could prohibit you from reselling your copy, or even restrict the price you could charge.
The 1908 case of Bobbs- Merrill Co. v. Straus 210 U.S. 339, 28 S. Ct. 722 settled this; once sold, the copyright owner forever loses all control over that copy, and anyone who bought it owns it, and has the right to dispose of that copy - including through resale - either for no price (gift) or for any price they choose, without further payment to or permission of the copyright holder. Bobbs Merrill tried to claim by a license printed in its books that you couldn't resell them at a discount. Supreme Court said you can't change what is clearly a sale into a license just by claiming it to be a license, and once sold, you no longer own it.
For tax purposes your labor is worth exactly zero and thus your work to produce the book is worth exactly zero and that's how much you can legally deduct. Yeah, the laws are rigged against you but that's how the game is played. Any actual out-of-pocket expenses - cash you spend or credit on your cards - are deductible, however. But you either have to be donating the cost to a charity or taking it as a business loss by declaring it a side business.
I'm presuming you want something legally defensible if the IRS audits you. If you don't care about whether it will withstand an audit and expect your chance of audit is low, you can try it but if you get caught, if your tax goes up there will be interest and if the difference is big enough, penalties. If it can look like a simple misreading of the tax laws then that's all you might have to worry about. If the IRS thinks it was intentional tax evasion then it gets very sticky. So we probably want a better solution if one is available.
So the short answer is no, you can't deduct your labor, but, if it can be determined the book has some sort of value then you might be able to donate that to a charity; some authors have donated their personal papers and gotten estimates of their value, and could donate that and deduct that, legitimately.
But that's not where the story ends, which is why tax accountants and lawyers make big bucks. I don't know if either of the following is legal, it was just right off the top of my head, but, then again, I'm not a lawyer nor a tax accountant. So you'd have to ask one and if these aren't fully legal as is, you might still be able to use the ideas from one or both of them or some variant. Or an attorney might know a legal way to do it.
Incorporate, have your corporation "pay' you with a promissory note for the value of your services, have it own the book, and when it can't pay you, take a loss for the value of the note. Possibly do the same thing as I suggest in the item below, have it purchase some things you would normally spend your own money on, then deduct the money loaned to the corporation as a loss when it is closed. As I point out below, if you even have to file an 1120 (Corporate income tax return) it's only going to show income and expenses, it is not going to explain what specifically the expenses were for. Depending on how it's done it might or might not work. If it's too nakedly obvious it will look suspicious and might not fly.
Set up a member-managed LLC, have it own the book, and charge it for the cost of the book. LLCs can be treated as pass-through entities, losses it incurs are charged to you, income it receives is treated as if you made it, so it's possible that the losses on the book, since it's not your labor, are deductible to you. If you loan the LLC funds and then have it purchase things with that money that you would normally spend personally, arguably then the costs it spends can be passed through to you as losses, and since you don't get any profits, there's no offsetting profits to account for. The IRS is not going to know what the LLC spent money on as it doesn't file a return, you do. Might even be reasonable if it "fails" in its first year as many businesses do, then you won't even have to pay the renewal fees!
Again, I don't know if either of these will withstand scrutiny either, but a good tax accountant or tax lawyer might be able to figure a scheme that does work.
If you learn how things work it isn't that hard to do them. I have a corporation which I'm not using right now, it only costs $25 a year to renew its charter, so I do, and every year I file state and federal returns showing income and expenses as zero. Since it doesn't get paid anything and basically spends no money except for what I have it do, it requires very little trouble. Since I don't need the deductions right now, I don't use all of the rules that are allowed, but if I do I have the tools to do so.
You could set up your own non-profit corporation (will
I think I can make a comment here as a more-or-less unbiased/disinterested observer as I have never owned any Macintosh and my only experience in the last ten years was occasional use of the one my sister had until she got disgusted with its continued inability to print and switched to Windows. So I have no involvement with Macs and I think therefore I am impartial on the issue.
I have two computers (that I regularly use), an HP Pavilion A305W which is something like 4 or 5 years old, running XP, and it's what I'm typing this on now.
My other computer - which for some reason is not working right now; I'm having a problem getting the power switch to work - is an HP Pavilion s3220n, 64-bit dual core. This computer cost me $400 a few months ago for a refurbished model, made a year ago if the BIOS date means anything, and which was I didn't like it but it runs Vista. When it works, it works great.
The 3220 includes a firewire adapter, or at least it looks like it, it has a logo which looks like a weird "Y" and a label "1394" which I would figure is for firewire (and no, the 1394 in my username has nothing to do with that!) So if my computer, which is low end, has a firewire connector, clearly the issue is not over the cost of including it, which, if I understand correctly, is about $2 at the manufacturer level.
Sometimes it can be stupid, historical precedent. I have a flatbed scanner, it retailed for under $80, I think, and came with the USB cable it used. Wouldn't have been a problem, the computer store sells - at retail - 6' USB cables for as little as $1 or $2. I have seen high-end $400 multifunction machines - fax, print, scan - which because they are considered printers, do not include the same USB cable that costs $2. Simply because years and years back, scanners included the cable - often because it was non-standard - and printers did not include the cable (because a printer cable was expensive at $10 for a printer that cost about $100).
Historical precedent creates weird results where higher-end expensive devices exclude a cheap, critical part you absolutely have to have, while low-end cheap devices include the very same part. It doesn't make any sense, but it's the way things have been done.
If this is the sort of thing that upsets a number of otherwise very loyal Apple customers, it was probably done by someone in the Accounting Department who got the idea that, not only does it save them $2, it forces a number of their customers to upgrade to more expensive computers than they would have bought if they decided otherwise and left the part in.
I'm listening to the comments and it seems clear that most of the uses people are claiming they can't do are slightly more "power user" style use than that of the "ordinary" user. And so, those people, Apple wants to push that, if they want to continue to use those features, to upgrade to a more expensive model of their computers. Since removing something that is of use by some higher-end users either forces them to get by with a less tolerable solution (USB) or upgrade to a more-expensive model of Apple's hardware. The first just pisses off someone who wants the extra functionality but feels (and rightfully so) that it's ridiculous for Apple to cut a feature to save $2; the second just grumbles about the "Apple Tax" that they have to pay to get the feature set they want.
So Apple is going to tick off some people who might decide, when they do upgrade, will switch to Windows-based computers which are generally always cheaper than Macs for the same functionality. Or the others who are now less enthusiastic of Apple but because of lock-in or other factors they can't switch.
Don't flame me if there is no lock-in with Apple, there are only two reasons for paying the higher price for Apple equipment (and if Apple wasn't more expensive there'd be no argument here): (1) people want the shiny, the chrome and the "fit and finish" of Apple; (2) Apple has some sort of "lock in", a proprietary advantage wi
I worked at a place where we were developing an application for our only customer, effectively it was the equivalent of an in-house application.
Each major compile and test build incremented the build number, because we had to be able to compare the source tree against what was released as, over time, the users would be getting regularly updated packages to correct bugs and potentially add features. So the version number never changed, but the build number did. The splash screen would show the build number so when a user called in because of a problem, we could tell which package they had, depending on whether they had, say, build 803 or build 1631. (When you do rebuilds 3-4 times a day, in a year or two the numbers can really climb.)
Let's see, I've done some video of my own, using a web cam that cost me $12. (Granted, it was only 15fps, but for extreme low cost it would fit the bill and my 30fps camera set me back a whopping $175.) Now, there's some cost for an Internet connection and maybe the TV they're providing is an expensive $3,000 flat screen, but as I see it, the reason you use teleconferencing is to save money, not to spend more than it costs to go there in person.
This is like, oh, 1980s pricing when telecommunications links were extremely expensive and companies would be willing to spend money on new toys and people didn't know what the real cost of an international video connection was. Most people in business see enough video over the Internet to realize that the cost to deliver even high-quality video is not extreme. Thus they're going to realize these prices are way too high and they're not buying it.
Of course! I'm forgetting! This is the rack rate, the advertised rate a hotel claims to charge if you walk up to the desk and ask for a room that day, you get reamed up the anus for the maximum possible rate. Expect the rate claimed to be severely discounted, even for very short advance notice. No one will use it otherwise. Might work at $100 an hour or $400 a day but I seriously don't think it's going to work at $400 an hour.
Let's see, and my numbers may be wrong but let me make an estimate. I can ignore salaries because you're paying them the same whether their butt is sitting in a chair in, say, DC or in Hong Kong. Since I know some of these prices I can give an example.
Say you have to send four people to a meeting in Seoul. (I know it doesn't list there as a place but I'm presuming one will be there eventually if they want it to be successful.) KAL from DC or New York to Seoul, South Korea is around $800 each way per person. Hotel probably adds the same per day for the team. (One room for male members, one room for female ones.) Add another $400 for per diem. So for a seven-day meeting to negotiate a contract, it's going to cost $6400, plus $5600 for the rooms, plus another $5600 for feeding them, etc. That's $17,500. Add in $2200 each for their salaries plus G&A for the 4 days they're sitting on a plane not working (plane trip each way plus some time before and after to recover from jet lag), add another $2,000 for bribes and unexpected expenses (yes, I know technically bribes are illegal, but in some places you have no choice or you can't get business done at all) and it totals $27,600 for the trip and your people even got to visit South Korea during off-hours.
Now, you're sticking them in front of a video room for 6 hours a day, that's $4,800 each day (presumably you have to pay the other side's conference room cost, the use of telepresence is for your convenience, not theirs, it wouldn't cost them anything to have the meeting in person at their offices), and in a week, that's $33,600 and your people ain't even gotten a free junket out of it so there's no appreciation for the company (and no friendly competition among your people to get that juicy trip at company expense.) And some of these travel expenses might be negotiable. Plus, if you aren't in a city where their video conference rooms are, you have an expense to go there, reducing any alleged "savings" over the cost of travel.
Besides, if video conferencing was so much better, people'd be using their own computers and doing it over the Internet for a cost equivalent probably to the first one hour Cisco wants to charge. I don't know about you, but I think you can do a fairly decent videoconference over a 764K internet connection, and that's what Verizon is offering me for $19.95 a month, and their commercial DSL is 3mbps for $42.95 a month.
Let me tell you, I did a so-so videoconference with a friend, using a web cam, oh, about, ten, twelve years ago, me in Arlington, Virginia, 4 miles from Washington D.C., friend was in Colorado, audio was so so and video was
Top flight developers producing quality code don't need large QA departments. They've already written well-designed, bug-resistent code, unit tests, integration tests, and performance tests, all in the course of producing something that works (the first time).
If you have to pay a phalanx of QA engineers to find bugs post-facto ("just as important as our development department"), you're doing it wrong. The bugs shouldn't have been there to begin with.
If you really believe this, please tell me what company you work for, I want to short their stock for when the company's poor quality and shlock coded applications cause it to go bankrupt!
(Only partially kidding)
And you spelled "bug resistant" worng.:) (Yes, I know that's 'wrong' but one of the rules of the Internet is that spelling flames must invariably have a mistake in them!)
Is Microsoft going to implement MUMPS, s database-driven programming language which was renamed to M to avoid using the trademark from Mass General Hospital from which MUMPS was originated, or in the alternative is this yet another case of Microsoft co-opting a name that was already in use by someone else and figuring, if they can't get away with it, they can buy their way (or maybe not even have to buy, as has been noted in this thread) out of it, like when they used the name "Internet Explorer" for their web browser, only to end up having to buy the name from a company that was previously using it for another purpose?
If there is no penalty for errors in government databases, there will be no incentive to clean them. The evidence should be thrown out, and if it happens again, it should always be thrown out. This will mean that unless the government has absolutely clean data in their databases their evidence will be suppressed as a result. The police will have no choice but to ensure their databases are regularly cleaned of error. They essentially have no civil liability (sovereign immunity) for their errors now, if I'm not mistaken, if they are not forced to fix errors or suffer the consequences for their failure to do so, they will not do so.
Cops screamed bloody murder saying police would be destroyed by Miranda, and other cases whose names shine as beacons protecting us from the darkness of oppression (Gideon, Escobedo, Mapp, Seibert) and others, as bright-line standards. And you know what? Police adapted. They became professional. They did their jobs better when they were forced to behave within constitutional limits. I have a quote from a book I'm writing:
The law presumes to protect an Accused against the excessive zealousness of the State in its attempts to prosecute them, and it grants them broad rights in protection against that zealousness... These are not roadblocks designed to frustrate the police from the apprehension and punishment of wrongdoers, they are walls designed to stop the police from misconduct and scandalous behavior. We have erected these walls over thousands of years because history has showed us, over and over and over, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum, that the police will, without them, will themselves continue on the path toward criminality and lawlessness. — Judge Edward 4 in Paul Robinson's Instrument of God
I have thought of a few extra things since I posted my previous comment so this is an additional caution advising you not to do so
Even if the non-compete clause ("NC") is held to be invalid, do you really want to go through a fight on the issue if it comes down to it? It's entirely possible the NC provision might be enforced despite what some posters here say.
See my earlier remark quoting Joel Spolsky. His comment is do not accept an NC unless the employer is willing to continue to pay your salary until you find a job that's acceptable to them.
Unless NCs are completely illegal in your state, it most likely will be upheld, even if the reason you're not working for them is because they went out of business. I've heard of people discovering that after some companies cratered in the dot com bubble, their NCs were still enforced by the receiver of their former employer.
I didn't know then what I know now, and I agreed to one where I worked before, but it was extremely limited: it prohibited working for another software company developing the exact same type of application (software dealing with management of non-profit organizations) and was for one year. I do not think I would agree to a non-compete clause today. I'd have to really be hurting and really need a job really bad before I would.
They're not going to be paying you enough to make it worth while. You are far too valuable to sell yourself that cheaply.
Joel Spolsky, who writes the Joel on Software blog, says that don't agree to sign certain types of NDA or a non-compete contract. You're not some hot-shot sports player or CEO making several million dollars a year. How much are they paying you? In my opinion, If it's less than high six or low 7 figures a year, they aren't paying you enough to agree to a non-compete contract. Here's a piece from Joel's article:
You can win on this one. Highly skilled technical employees are in too much demand, and it's too easy to get a job. You don't have to accept this clause in your contract. If the employer absolutely, positively insists that you promise not to go work for a competitor when you leave your job, you can tell them: "fine. You don't want me to work for a year after I leave, that's fine, but if I'm going to be 'on the beach', I want you to keep paying me my salary for one year after I leave, until I can legally get a job that you approve of."
I remember when a business associate of my sister brought her two kids, age 6 and 7 I think, and their basic vocabulary consisted almost exclusively of "Why?"
They loved me because I was the only person of all the adults who was willing to answer all their questions. (Adults I know would sometimes complain that I talk too much; kids love to be told things, they're basically knowledge sponges.) And they wore me out because every time they asked a question, I'd have to think about it, and then they'd have another question. And I'd have to think about the answer.
At one point I apologized to my sister for all the times I had been asking her questions or talking too much, now having discovered what it means when someone just wants more and more attention.
Well I beat them once, although I wasn't trying to. I was driving somewhere and we were approaching a large baseball field which was lit by huge lights. So they asked me why they lit the field. Well, I got an idea; as it turned out, there was a church parking lot near there that wasn't in use, so it was fairly dark. So I pulled into the parking lot, stopped, killed the headlights, and asked them if they could see out of the car. They agreed that they couldn't. I said "This is why they have all those lights." Then I turned the headlights back on, put it back in gear and drove home. They remained basically quiet for the rest of the trip. I wasn't trying to scare them or anything, but it was at that point that I came to the realization is that telling kids answers is not necessarily the best way to answer their questions, but a real demonstration as to why something is done is probably far better.
Pretend that you've been in prison for 2 years. That's far less embarrassing.
Even better, tell them you were convicted of manslaughter when you went on an interview and the guy decided not to hire you, so in a fit of rage you killed him!:)
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One of the more disgusting parts is that the takedown notice doesn't carry any kind of penalty, while the counter-notice requires the accused to claim "under penalty of perjury" that they do, in fact, have the right to do that.
Actually, there are two things: a DMCA notice must be adequate to describe what items are claimed to be infringing, and it also requires a statement under penalty of perjury that the person making the request for takedown is either the copyright holder or the authorized agent of same. There is also a provision for damages for false takedown requests. Whether you actually can get damages is another thing. Now, concievably if the ISP wants to get money from someone for having to perform a takedown, and bills the customer, then if the customer files a counter-notice, bills the copyright holder and sues for damages since it is now claimed to be a false notice.
With the 1978 complete rewrite of the copyright law, and especially the Berne Convention Accession in the 1980s, it's arguable that as far as copyright is concerned, Congress has decided to completely preempt the field of copyright with respect to everything except pre-February 15, 1972 sound recordings (which aren't federally copyrighted anyway) and thus no state has authority to require or permit anything with respect to copyright (except to set rules on the copying of uncopyrightable sound recordings), and this law is in all probability unconstitutional. (The place to go to regulate copyrighted works or their use or misuse is Congress.)
This seems to be on the same level as attempts by local organizations to regulate use of WiFi, such as universities prohibiting students from running their own wireless routers, or airports trying to prohibit lessees from running their own WiFi, only to have the FCC publicly announce that neither homeowners associations, nor municipalities, nor special districts, nor state governments have any authority to regulate the use of spectrum and only the FCC has any authority to regulate what spectrum may be used and to set the terms and conditions for its use.
Don't worry. Soon it'll be known as Disney's Tarzana of Anaheim.
First, Tarzana was actually founded by Edgar Rice Burroughs as a result of him creating the Tarzan stories. Second, Tarzana is located in Los Angeles County, Anaheim is located in Orange County; and Third, they're about 40 kilometers (20 miles) apart, with several cities and unincorporated areas between them.
Even more strangely, a company that bills you for services that you never received or requested can still hit your credit ratings for failure to make payments on those bills. That can and sometimes does negatively impact your credit scores, regardless of any "comment" that you can put onto your credit report denoting fraud. If anything, noting that the billing was fraud makes you look even worse to creditors.
In which case it's either libel or trade libel. Further, you could go into court in your local jurisdiction and sue the credit reporting company (after demanding proof of the validity and it not being proved; and merely restating the debt is not "proof"), or the creditor for libel, and a demand for removal of the bad item. Not enough people fight to stop this, so it goes on.
So if it is a trademark notice, then the site operator is already be in a whole lot of legal trouble already. I agree with you that the 3rd party uploaders may have put the site in this situation.
No, this is not the case here. In order for there to be some sort of violation of Toyota's rights as far as trademark is concerned, the vehicles would have to be someone else's (like Datsun or Saturn or Ford) and marked as GM. Merely showing the vehicle images is not trademark infringement, or every time you showed anything in a photograph you'd be liable. There must be tarnishment or other disparagement of the trademark or something that is likely to reduce its value as a trademark or confuse origin of the goods shown. Mere photography of a trademarked article - unless one of the things the company does is sell photographs and even then there's an issue because of 1st Amendment issues - is not going to raise trademark issues. I still think that there's some problems with this whole issue.
" When site owner Harry Maugans requested clarification on exactly which wallpapers were copyrighted by Toyota, he was told that for them to cite specifics (in order to file proper DMCA Takedown Notices), they would invoice Desktop Nexus for their labor.""
And then he invoices Toyota for complying with each and everyone of them to the tune of the same dollar amount their bill is. Two can play this game.
No, he invoices them for twice the cost, since he has to spend the time to remove the images, and since they've already established that identifying images is valuable work!
For all you know, they've carefully reviewed a random sample of images and identified several that are problematic. Why should it be Toyota's responsibility to identify all of the bad content for you?
Because, if it's a DMCA notice - and as you point out, it's not clear exactly what it is - the DMCA requires specific and adequate notice of exactly what is infringing. Merely saying "remove every Toyota image" is not specific; unless the image says "Toyota" on it, how am I to know which vehicles are Toyota, and which are Nissan, Datsun or Saturn?
Let me also add the article is one of the worst ever: on one hand it claims that Toyota has made "one of the most wildly arrogant demands in DMCA history," then later realizes "these demands have not been sent in the form of a DMCA notice." Oh, you mean it's a simple cease-and-desist letter? What a headline: "Toyota Sends Letter!" Idiots.
Agreed, either it's a DMCA notice, or it's not. It may be a badly written or defective DMCA notice, if it mentions the DMCA then it can be considered one. If it doesn't then it's probably a cease-and-desist notice, which is a different matter. Which again, under copyright law only a proper DMCA notice is valid to require takedown. Otherwise, failing to make a proper DMCA takedown request, there's no grounds for liability by the website absent a failure to honor a proper DMCA notice.
The article mentioned how someone bullying someone else by causing their phone to ring "all hours of the day and night."
We have laws in the U.S., at least, that make it illegal to harass someone without a legitimate purpose of communication, by either excessively calling them or otherwise disturbing them for the purpose of making them upset. If they have this, then the victim of someone being called at all hours already has legal protections to stop this sort of thing if it's occurring, and no new laws are needed. If they don't, then perhaps this is what should have been done.
In fact, I like the way they're written here. If you call me, and use foul language to insult me, I can have you arrested for harassing me. On the other hand, if you call me, and irritate me so badly that I curse you out and insult you with the most degrading and harshest profanity I can think of, you can't do anything to me. Which makes sense: I didn't call you, you called me; if you disturb me, then you have to put up with my response to you. If you hadn't called me and bugged me, you would never have gotten the insult in the first place.
These are just attempts to grease the skids for more draconian restrictions on the Internet, using the boiling frog analogy. You can't drop a frog in boiling water, he'll jump out, but gradually increase the temperature and he'll sit there and allow himself to be boiled to death, or so the analogy goes. Make a huge grab for people's rights and they will squawk; nibble away in little pieces and they'll never notice until they're all gone, and by then it's too late, unless the "canary in the coal mine" starts screaming Chicken Little style at the beginning and refuses to allow even the first bite. (Talk about mixed metaphors!)
Most people bend the wrist inward; that's wrong, you should bend the wrist so it is pushed outward.
It's been so long since I've done the report, that I think I wrote it backward in the example above, most people bend their wrist forward which pushes the vein inside and makes the suicide attempt less likely to be effective, you're supposed to bend your hand so the hand leans down so the wrist is bent inward, allowing better access to the veins to be cut.
I mean, I wouldn't want someone trying to commit suicide to use the original example wrong, have it fail to work and then sue me for giving them bad advice! :)
If the same behavior - one kid bullying another or saying unkind things - was occurring in a non-electronic medium, we usually would consider it the sort of thing where it's a matter for the kids to settle among themselves, or at most, by the kid's parent talking to the bully or the parent, which then usually stopped it. But now, we're going to add the ISP, school authorities, police and courts into the mix and create a tempest in a teapot.
The most someone can do electronically is say things; they can't strike you, or hurt you, or do anything to you unless you accept their comments about you as valid. Kids have had nasty cliques against other kids for dozens of centuries. We need to allow kids to learn to toughen up a bit, if we coddle them too much, they won't get through the real world, and when something comes along that mummy and daddy can't protect them against, they're going to be in a lot worse trouble.
You want to do something against physical threats, fine. You want to do something against extortion ("give me your lunch money or else"), that's something that should be taken care of. But if you're going to treat mere communication of meanness or cruelty as more serious than mere taunts in the absence of an actual threat of violence, then what you're effectively doing is treating words the same as actions. A dangerous path that ends up usually producing stupid overreactions, as a number of incidents here on Slashdot have been reported, where some kid is given an assignment to write a story or some report, but does so in an edgy or unconventional way, is considered a criminal or terrorist and is treated that way for doing nothing more than doing his classwork as he was asked to do it.
I remember one I did. We were asked to give a report in class on how to do something. Well, having read once how too many people cut their wrists the wrong way, I decided to be edgy and unconventional, and write a report on the correct way of how to commit suicide by slitting your wrists. When I stood up to read it, the kids in the class thought it was great, and the teacher even pointed out I drew in examples of how to correctly position the wrist so you cut the vein properly. (Most people bend the wrist inward; that's wrong, you should bend the wrist so it is pushed outward.) And that's all that happened (other than I think I got an A for being thorough). The teacher understood it was simply a student doing a report he knew would be different in order to have fun in class, not some "cry for help" of a depressed kid who was planning to kill himself.
Today, if some kid had done the same thing, I suspect that instead of taking it as the joke it was, he probably would have been called to the principal's office and maybe gotten detention for it, or possibly have to go see a shrink before being allowed to go back to school.
The meter gauges look identical to the ones in the U.S., so if it's read the same way, all you need is a program to analyze a piece of a photograph for presence or absence of an image.
In the U.S., the rule is 'read down', if a needle is between two numbers you count it as being as the lower of the two. If it's on the number line then you count it as that.
The example picture shown is read as 375,064.4; I originally wasn't sure whether the segment I read as 5 (because the needle was very close to but I wasn't sure if it was on the line) was on or just before the 5, except the number 'below' it was between the 9 and the 0; since it was past 9 and back to zero, that means it was no longer 4 so it had to be 5; at that close if it was still 4 the number below it should have been at least an 8 or more likely a 9.
In fact, (at least in this area) the tariff schedules for most utilities require meters be replaced (at no cost to the customer), about every 30 years or so, because as they get older they tend to favor the customer more by reading 'slow'. Especially gas meters, they're more mechanical than electric ones, but the use of a photograph works the same for both types of meters too.
You need something to take a 'snapshot' of the meter. By positioning the camera, you can fix it so that it takes the same image. Since you know where the dials are, you fix it so that you isolate the portion of the dial which is normally blank except for the needle indicating the reading for that segment (100,000 hours, 1,000 hours, etc.) Where the area is other than blank, that's the number, so that the area between 3 and 4 is the '3' value for that digit. Each segment only has one of the 10 possible values as something other than blank because it only has one needle. If you get something else you've got a contamination problem, e.g. something got in the way or the camera moved.
So once you have the particular segments, and the slices of each segment representing each digit, then you can check each slice to see which is other than a blank image. Set that value, then you can go on to the next digit. It ain't hard to have something analyze an image to determine if it's empty or not, you just have to select what part of each image is a digit segment and which is a slice of that segment representing the number from 0 to 9. It's basically one or more bounding boxes representing a curve-shaped rectangle for each slice. Then once you know what each segment is, you multiply the segment's value by its multiplier, e.g. 100,000 for the 100,000 hour segment, etc.
Then you just check what the value is, and take a snapshot, say, 4 times every day or however often you want to check usage. More often than probably every 6 hours won't tell you much as you're unlikely to use more than about 8 KW in a 6-hour period based on the average home, at least in the U.S. at an average of 960KWH per month, and U.K. usage probably isn't much different or might be less.
If you're interested in average hourly usage, you take a snapshot each hour; if you want peaks, try every 15 minutes. Otherwise once every six hours or once a day or however often you want an idea of how much you use and how fast. Processing time for the image shouldn't be more than 10 seconds at most.
---- Paul Robinson <paul@paul-robinson.us> My Blog
Going back as far as the 1970s, it's been found, over and over, through studies, that the vast majority of women do not, I repeat, do not orgasm as a result of vaginal intercourse. Best results I've heard are only 30% of women can orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone, and some quote results as low as 10-15%. Women need clitoral stimulation in at least 70% of cases either through cunnilingus or through fingering to be able to achieve orgasm. I don't know who did this survey, but either they've selected a large number of women who don't fit the profile, or there is some aspect of female sexuality that is different there.
Further, women need foreplay if for no other reason than to allow them to be receptive to intercourse (as in allowing the vagina to relax) and to lubricate properly. Don't know where these people got their results, but I suspect there's something not quite right about them. Or perhaps if intercourse goes on this long it might be entirely different.
By doing this, you redirect all those requests for web bugs, banner ads and advertisements, off the network and locally to your computer, which returns nothing, thus making your page load faster, reduces the amount of traffic you send onto the net (both in request traffic and in response traffic) AND gets rid of all sorts of ads. I have a host file on my computer. A lot of ads never even show up because they get redirected to the local computer, which isn't even running a webserver (I may change that) so they immediately timeout and don't generate any ad space.
No, you have it wrong. The rule has been in effect for 100 years. A purchase of a music CD is not a license because no license has negotiated. A purchase of a CD, Book, or other copy where a physical delivery has been made, is a sale, an unconditional transfer of ownership.
There would have to be proof a license had been agreed to; a license merely printed on a package sold at retail has been declared to not be a license and not enforceable. You own the copy of the disk purchased at retail and no alleged "license" changes that from a sale to a license. I think the courts have even ruled if you purchased a multi-pack of several separate computer programs, you could break up the individual pieces and sell them separately.
You do not have a "non-transferrable license to listen to the music," you own that copy of the music and may use it in any fashion subject to the restrictions imposed by copyright law; if you only had a license they could restrict how you listened to it (no listening on a boom box or in a car because others could hear it, etc.), put usage limits (you can only listen once per day, could only listen a maximum 100 times before you have to buy another copy, etc.), and could prohibit you from reselling your copy, or even restrict the price you could charge.
The 1908 case of Bobbs- Merrill Co. v. Straus 210 U.S. 339, 28 S. Ct. 722 settled this; once sold, the copyright owner forever loses all control over that copy, and anyone who bought it owns it, and has the right to dispose of that copy - including through resale - either for no price (gift) or for any price they choose, without further payment to or permission of the copyright holder. Bobbs Merrill tried to claim by a license printed in its books that you couldn't resell them at a discount. Supreme Court said you can't change what is clearly a sale into a license just by claiming it to be a license, and once sold, you no longer own it.
For tax purposes your labor is worth exactly zero and thus your work to produce the book is worth exactly zero and that's how much you can legally deduct. Yeah, the laws are rigged against you but that's how the game is played. Any actual out-of-pocket expenses - cash you spend or credit on your cards - are deductible, however. But you either have to be donating the cost to a charity or taking it as a business loss by declaring it a side business.
I'm presuming you want something legally defensible if the IRS audits you. If you don't care about whether it will withstand an audit and expect your chance of audit is low, you can try it but if you get caught, if your tax goes up there will be interest and if the difference is big enough, penalties. If it can look like a simple misreading of the tax laws then that's all you might have to worry about. If the IRS thinks it was intentional tax evasion then it gets very sticky. So we probably want a better solution if one is available.
So the short answer is no, you can't deduct your labor, but, if it can be determined the book has some sort of value then you might be able to donate that to a charity; some authors have donated their personal papers and gotten estimates of their value, and could donate that and deduct that, legitimately.
But that's not where the story ends, which is why tax accountants and lawyers make big bucks. I don't know if either of the following is legal, it was just right off the top of my head, but, then again, I'm not a lawyer nor a tax accountant. So you'd have to ask one and if these aren't fully legal as is, you might still be able to use the ideas from one or both of them or some variant. Or an attorney might know a legal way to do it.
Again, I don't know if either of these will withstand scrutiny either, but a good tax accountant or tax lawyer might be able to figure a scheme that does work.
If you learn how things work it isn't that hard to do them. I have a corporation which I'm not using right now, it only costs $25 a year to renew its charter, so I do, and every year I file state and federal returns showing income and expenses as zero. Since it doesn't get paid anything and basically spends no money except for what I have it do, it requires very little trouble. Since I don't need the deductions right now, I don't use all of the rules that are allowed, but if I do I have the tools to do so.
You could set up your own non-profit corporation (will
I think I can make a comment here as a more-or-less unbiased/disinterested observer as I have never owned any Macintosh and my only experience in the last ten years was occasional use of the one my sister had until she got disgusted with its continued inability to print and switched to Windows. So I have no involvement with Macs and I think therefore I am impartial on the issue.
I have two computers (that I regularly use), an HP Pavilion A305W which is something like 4 or 5 years old, running XP, and it's what I'm typing this on now.
My other computer - which for some reason is not working right now; I'm having a problem getting the power switch to work - is an HP Pavilion s3220n, 64-bit dual core. This computer cost me $400 a few months ago for a refurbished model, made a year ago if the BIOS date means anything, and which was I didn't like it but it runs Vista. When it works, it works great.
The 3220 includes a firewire adapter, or at least it looks like it, it has a logo which looks like a weird "Y" and a label "1394" which I would figure is for firewire (and no, the 1394 in my username has nothing to do with that!) So if my computer, which is low end, has a firewire connector, clearly the issue is not over the cost of including it, which, if I understand correctly, is about $2 at the manufacturer level.
Sometimes it can be stupid, historical precedent. I have a flatbed scanner, it retailed for under $80, I think, and came with the USB cable it used. Wouldn't have been a problem, the computer store sells - at retail - 6' USB cables for as little as $1 or $2. I have seen high-end $400 multifunction machines - fax, print, scan - which because they are considered printers, do not include the same USB cable that costs $2. Simply because years and years back, scanners included the cable - often because it was non-standard - and printers did not include the cable (because a printer cable was expensive at $10 for a printer that cost about $100).
Historical precedent creates weird results where higher-end expensive devices exclude a cheap, critical part you absolutely have to have, while low-end cheap devices include the very same part. It doesn't make any sense, but it's the way things have been done.
If this is the sort of thing that upsets a number of otherwise very loyal Apple customers, it was probably done by someone in the Accounting Department who got the idea that, not only does it save them $2, it forces a number of their customers to upgrade to more expensive computers than they would have bought if they decided otherwise and left the part in.
I'm listening to the comments and it seems clear that most of the uses people are claiming they can't do are slightly more "power user" style use than that of the "ordinary" user. And so, those people, Apple wants to push that, if they want to continue to use those features, to upgrade to a more expensive model of their computers. Since removing something that is of use by some higher-end users either forces them to get by with a less tolerable solution (USB) or upgrade to a more-expensive model of Apple's hardware. The first just pisses off someone who wants the extra functionality but feels (and rightfully so) that it's ridiculous for Apple to cut a feature to save $2; the second just grumbles about the "Apple Tax" that they have to pay to get the feature set they want.
So Apple is going to tick off some people who might decide, when they do upgrade, will switch to Windows-based computers which are generally always cheaper than Macs for the same functionality. Or the others who are now less enthusiastic of Apple but because of lock-in or other factors they can't switch.
Don't flame me if there is no lock-in with Apple, there are only two reasons for paying the higher price for Apple equipment (and if Apple wasn't more expensive there'd be no argument here): (1) people want the shiny, the chrome and the "fit and finish" of Apple; (2) Apple has some sort of "lock in", a proprietary advantage wi
I worked at a place where we were developing an application for our only customer, effectively it was the equivalent of an in-house application.
Each major compile and test build incremented the build number, because we had to be able to compare the source tree against what was released as, over time, the users would be getting regularly updated packages to correct bugs and potentially add features. So the version number never changed, but the build number did. The splash screen would show the build number so when a user called in because of a problem, we could tell which package they had, depending on whether they had, say, build 803 or build 1631. (When you do rebuilds 3-4 times a day, in a year or two the numbers can really climb.)
Let's see, I've done some video of my own, using a web cam that cost me $12. (Granted, it was only 15fps, but for extreme low cost it would fit the bill and my 30fps camera set me back a whopping $175.) Now, there's some cost for an Internet connection and maybe the TV they're providing is an expensive $3,000 flat screen, but as I see it, the reason you use teleconferencing is to save money, not to spend more than it costs to go there in person.
This is like, oh, 1980s pricing when telecommunications links were extremely expensive and companies would be willing to spend money on new toys and people didn't know what the real cost of an international video connection was. Most people in business see enough video over the Internet to realize that the cost to deliver even high-quality video is not extreme. Thus they're going to realize these prices are way too high and they're not buying it.
Of course! I'm forgetting! This is the rack rate, the advertised rate a hotel claims to charge if you walk up to the desk and ask for a room that day, you get reamed up the anus for the maximum possible rate. Expect the rate claimed to be severely discounted, even for very short advance notice. No one will use it otherwise. Might work at $100 an hour or $400 a day but I seriously don't think it's going to work at $400 an hour.
Let's see, and my numbers may be wrong but let me make an estimate. I can ignore salaries because you're paying them the same whether their butt is sitting in a chair in, say, DC or in Hong Kong. Since I know some of these prices I can give an example.
Say you have to send four people to a meeting in Seoul. (I know it doesn't list there as a place but I'm presuming one will be there eventually if they want it to be successful.) KAL from DC or New York to Seoul, South Korea is around $800 each way per person. Hotel probably adds the same per day for the team. (One room for male members, one room for female ones.) Add another $400 for per diem. So for a seven-day meeting to negotiate a contract, it's going to cost $6400, plus $5600 for the rooms, plus another $5600 for feeding them, etc. That's $17,500. Add in $2200 each for their salaries plus G&A for the 4 days they're sitting on a plane not working (plane trip each way plus some time before and after to recover from jet lag), add another $2,000 for bribes and unexpected expenses (yes, I know technically bribes are illegal, but in some places you have no choice or you can't get business done at all) and it totals $27,600 for the trip and your people even got to visit South Korea during off-hours.
Now, you're sticking them in front of a video room for 6 hours a day, that's $4,800 each day (presumably you have to pay the other side's conference room cost, the use of telepresence is for your convenience, not theirs, it wouldn't cost them anything to have the meeting in person at their offices), and in a week, that's $33,600 and your people ain't even gotten a free junket out of it so there's no appreciation for the company (and no friendly competition among your people to get that juicy trip at company expense.) And some of these travel expenses might be negotiable. Plus, if you aren't in a city where their video conference rooms are, you have an expense to go there, reducing any alleged "savings" over the cost of travel.
Besides, if video conferencing was so much better, people'd be using their own computers and doing it over the Internet for a cost equivalent probably to the first one hour Cisco wants to charge. I don't know about you, but I think you can do a fairly decent videoconference over a 764K internet connection, and that's what Verizon is offering me for $19.95 a month, and their commercial DSL is 3mbps for $42.95 a month.
Let me tell you, I did a so-so videoconference with a friend, using a web cam, oh, about, ten, twelve years ago, me in Arlington, Virginia, 4 miles from Washington D.C., friend was in Colorado, audio was so so and video was
Top flight developers producing quality code don't need large QA departments. They've already written well-designed, bug-resistent code, unit tests, integration tests, and performance tests, all in the course of producing something that works (the first time).
If you have to pay a phalanx of QA engineers to find bugs post-facto ("just as important as our development department"), you're doing it wrong. The bugs shouldn't have been there to begin with.
If you really believe this, please tell me what company you work for, I want to short their stock for when the company's poor quality and shlock coded applications cause it to go bankrupt! :) (Yes, I know that's 'wrong' but one of the rules of the Internet is that spelling flames must invariably have a mistake in them!)
(Only partially kidding)
And you spelled "bug resistant" worng.
Is Microsoft going to implement MUMPS, s database-driven programming language which was renamed to M to avoid using the trademark from Mass General Hospital from which MUMPS was originated, or in the alternative is this yet another case of Microsoft co-opting a name that was already in use by someone else and figuring, if they can't get away with it, they can buy their way (or maybe not even have to buy, as has been noted in this thread) out of it, like when they used the name "Internet Explorer" for their web browser, only to end up having to buy the name from a company that was previously using it for another purpose?
I suspect the latter.
If there is no penalty for errors in government databases, there will be no incentive to clean them. The evidence should be thrown out, and if it happens again, it should always be thrown out. This will mean that unless the government has absolutely clean data in their databases their evidence will be suppressed as a result. The police will have no choice but to ensure their databases are regularly cleaned of error. They essentially have no civil liability (sovereign immunity) for their errors now, if I'm not mistaken, if they are not forced to fix errors or suffer the consequences for their failure to do so, they will not do so.
Cops screamed bloody murder saying police would be destroyed by Miranda , and other cases whose names shine as beacons protecting us from the darkness of oppression ( Gideon, Escobedo, Mapp, Seibert ) and others, as bright-line standards. And you know what? Police adapted. They became professional. They did their jobs better when they were forced to behave within constitutional limits. I have a quote from a book I'm writing:
— Judge Edward 4 in Paul Robinson's Instrument of God
I have thought of a few extra things since I posted my previous comment so this is an additional caution advising you not to do so
Even if the non-compete clause ("NC") is held to be invalid, do you really want to go through a fight on the issue if it comes down to it? It's entirely possible the NC provision might be enforced despite what some posters here say.
See my earlier remark quoting Joel Spolsky. His comment is do not accept an NC unless the employer is willing to continue to pay your salary until you find a job that's acceptable to them.
Unless NCs are completely illegal in your state, it most likely will be upheld, even if the reason you're not working for them is because they went out of business. I've heard of people discovering that after some companies cratered in the dot com bubble, their NCs were still enforced by the receiver of their former employer.
I didn't know then what I know now, and I agreed to one where I worked before, but it was extremely limited: it prohibited working for another software company developing the exact same type of application (software dealing with management of non-profit organizations) and was for one year. I do not think I would agree to a non-compete clause today. I'd have to really be hurting and really need a job really bad before I would.
They're not going to be paying you enough to make it worth while. You are far too valuable to sell yourself that cheaply.
How much are they paying you? In my opinion, If it's less than high six or low 7 figures a year, they aren't paying you enough to agree to a non-compete contract. Here's a piece from Joel's article:
I remember when a business associate of my sister brought her two kids, age 6 and 7 I think, and their basic vocabulary consisted almost exclusively of "Why?"
They loved me because I was the only person of all the adults who was willing to answer all their questions. (Adults I know would sometimes complain that I talk too much; kids love to be told things, they're basically knowledge sponges.) And they wore me out because every time they asked a question, I'd have to think about it, and then they'd have another question. And I'd have to think about the answer.
At one point I apologized to my sister for all the times I had been asking her questions or talking too much, now having discovered what it means when someone just wants more and more attention.
Well I beat them once, although I wasn't trying to. I was driving somewhere and we were approaching a large baseball field which was lit by huge lights. So they asked me why they lit the field. Well, I got an idea; as it turned out, there was a church parking lot near there that wasn't in use, so it was fairly dark. So I pulled into the parking lot, stopped, killed the headlights, and asked them if they could see out of the car. They agreed that they couldn't. I said "This is why they have all those lights." Then I turned the headlights back on, put it back in gear and drove home. They remained basically quiet for the rest of the trip. I wasn't trying to scare them or anything, but it was at that point that I came to the realization is that telling kids answers is not necessarily the best way to answer their questions, but a real demonstration as to why something is done is probably far better.
Pretend that you've been in prison for 2 years. That's far less embarrassing.
Even better, tell them you were convicted of manslaughter when you went on an interview and the guy decided not to hire you, so in a fit of rage you killed him! :)