This agreement negatively affects employees because they are not made aware of opportunities for 20% pay raises or other benefits from a large group of major companies.
In what way does this agreement stop an employee from looking at the job opportunities of another company?
This artificially keeps wages and benefits low for people in the colluding companies.
No it doesn't.
The very common scenario would be: someone is quite happy working at Google developing AJAX and is not actively looking to switch jobs but does have their resume on job boards. Yahoo wants to find an AJAX expert and is willing to pay 50% more for the expertise to catch up with Google quickly.
This doesn't make sense. If you weren't looking for a new job why would you post a resume to a job board?
Yahoo is unable to contact this expert.
Through the agreement they themselves set up. If they had really wanted to contact the person then they shouldn't have made this deal.
This pretty clearly hurts the employee.
Not necessarily. I'd consider working at Yahoo! to probably be a much worse job than working at Google so I'd say it clearly doesn't hurt the employee.
Yes, the employee could troll the job boards, but why do you want to force the employee to do the work when head hunters are paid to find them?
In what way is the employee unable to get the services of a head hunter themselves?
I bet you're a Republican.
I bet you're an idiot. I wouldn't vote for a Republican in a million years.
MLNN, if you think about it, a non-compete is a good idea, IF you happen to be in a sensitive position.
You think it's a good idea that people can't work after they leave a job just because they've gained a lot of knowledge? Seriously?
If you worked for Google for a number of years and had an intimate knowledge of how their searching algorithm worked, would the brass really want you going to Yahoo with that knowledge being current? It would reduce Google's effectiveness as a company, and what's more, that's their proprietary data, which you might then pass on to another company.
Trade secrets have been protected for years. If the employee divulged them not only would they be in deep shit but if Yahoo! used them then they would also be in deep shit as well.
What you are saying is that gaming companies are just developing for the platform that holds 88% o the market.
Exactly. They are developing for a platform that will actually be profitable not a fringe OS that will provide them with no real appreciable gain in profits.
What I am suggesting is that there is a strong possibility that MS is doing more than just making a good platform to design games, they could be colluding with video card developers or game producers to keep it that way so that no other platform could get games,
And yet you have no evidence of this. And it's even more amusing in light of the fact of the current state of the proprietary nVIDIA and ATI drivers for Linux.
which in turn reinforces their monopoly on the OS.
It may to some degree, but gaming is hardly even a major reason they hold their huge market share.
How do you know that MS doesn't offer an unfair advantage to developing on the directX?
Because they have no need to do so?
Are you a developer?
Yes, I am and I know plenty of people who do game development. They don't develop for Windows due to some huge conspiracy. It's because the platform is easier to develop for and it's one in which they will actually make money.
As for consoles, can you really not see that MS is trying to use its monopoly on desktops and PC games to leverage itself into the console market? Really?
Yes, I can't since the two markets are completely unrelated in any way. Exactly in what way is a console game maker going to care or be swayed by Microsoft's desktop OS market share?
As for the Mac, don't be ridiculous, the Mac might get some of the more popular titles, but I argue that it's nowhere near the percentage of people using macs at home, AND they get them late if they do get them.
Ah, but you were trying to claim that there was some grand scheme to prevent games being made for anything but Windows but it must not work very well if Mac games are still being made and ported.
Would be funny to see your comment join the ranks of famous quotes like "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." and "640kb should be enough for everybody" a few years later,
A few years later? That's pretty funny in and of itself. You are telling me that an OS that has barely reached 1% of the smartphone OS market is going to dethrone Symbian and Windows in only a few years? I almost spit up my drink laughing so hard. Yep, I'm sure that day will happen at the same point when Microsoft open sources Windows.
You guys are either exaggerating or bending the truth.
Or maybe, just maybe, just because you don't experience a bug that it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Secondly, you do realize there are more than just the singular versions of Chromium and Firefox that you use, and as such they may have differing behaviors, or that others may be using completely different browsers altogether, right? But no, it clearly must be people making stuff up.
This reminds of back when the Linux kernel devs would claim their were no response issues desktop Linux because when run on servers with vastly more processors and power that there were no issues.
No, I got your point completely. It was just wrong.
Let me re-iterate: based on my experience with their past behavior (browsers), it is not outside the realm of possibility that MS is doing something to entice game developers and/or video card makers to solely develop for directX.
Why would they need to do anything at all? Any game company that wants to make money is already going to know to develop for the platform that holds 90% of the desktop market. Your second point doesn't make any sense since all video cards support OpenGL and have for a decade and more.
It could very well be that directX is a better platform to design games for, and that's why most gaming companies use it, but my thought was that *gasp* maybe MS is reenforcing it's monopoly on desktops through anti-competitive behavior.
DirectX is easier to develop for which is why even id Software, a long time developer on OpenGL, started doing DirectX development. Or are you going to claim that Carmack was bought out by Microsoft?
I bet you'd never expect MS to try something like that, or that they might try and use their desktop monopoly to build games for the xbox 360.
This doesn't even make sense. What does their desktop monopoly have to do with making games for the 360?
No it's about reducing the amount of employees they will actively try to take away from the select few they are colluding with. Not preventing employees from applying at the other companies.
If I'm employed by Google and seeking a job at Apple, that agreement is interfering with my negotiations.
No it's not. That's not what this agreement is about. Nothing in this agreement is about stopping an employee from applying for a job at one of the other companies. The agreement is about the companies not trying to actively recruit away employees of the companies they are colluding with.
How is what these companies doing any different than the non compete / anti-head hunting clauses the major oil companies have been using for over four decades to limit employee loss to competitors?
Because they aren't even remotely analogous? This agreement is saying that they will still recruit away talent from other competitors, just not the select few that they are colluding with.
I was just responding with the same level of evidence that you had: none. The many companies who use their patents to protect themselves from having their ideas stolen would beg to differ that patents don't nurture their business.
Because that's not *anti-trust* behaviour. That's monopoly, and different.
Good luck trying to get that through the head of most Slashdotters. They are so misinformed about such topics that it's almost as laughable as when they repeat the erroneous, and contrary to established case law, claims that EULAs are nonenforceable in the US.
Non-compete restrictions in employment contracts are common in software development work and are another flavor of this issue. What these companies have done is more insidious because they aren't asking employees to agree to being locked out of major portions of the job market for their skills.
Except non-competes are illegal in California which all 4 of the listed companies are based in. Nice try though.
The result of this is that you often can't work in the industry for years after leaving your job. To insist that employees have experience when they are hired and then prevent them from using it when they leave seems wrong.
That's great and all but non-compete clauses aren't what this probe is about.
Oh I don't know [arstechnica.com] He has been doing favors for all his supporters, Like those car Dealerships whom supported him somehow manage to stay open.
Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
But if you want to keep Diluting yourself into "hope and change" then don't mind me, go right ahead.
Except I never voted for Obama and have disagreed with almost everything he's done. Doesn't mean I won't still correct people who are spreading nonsense.
Except that Google and Yahoo! will still attempt to recruit away people from other companies they don't have a pact with and as such this appears to be shady collusive behavior.
but I'm really sick to death of how video games for PCs are usually only available for Windows.
Can you really blame them for only wanting to develop for a platform that will actually be profitable? Yes, it does suck that there is a dearth of Linux games, but that's just the way it is. If Linux got a bigger marketshare then you might see more attention, but game companies aren't going to develop for every fringe desktop OS when it isn't going to make them anything but a negligible amount of money.
Obviously I have no proof of infringing behavior, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that MS is engaging in some anti-competitive practices in this area to shut out competing platforms from the PC gaming market.
Or *gasp* maybe it has to do with the fact that it's completely not worth their time and money to make games for an OS that constitutes less than 1% of all desktops. Considering the fact that Macs get games would clearly show that your claim is wrong since Apple is one of Microsoft's most fierce competitors.
Seriously neither Google nor Yahoo! are anything close to a monopoly.
Nothing in this article was talking about any of the four listed companies being a monopoly. This was about collusive behavior to not recruit away talent from each other.
By forming a pact that keeps an employee at company A from getting a job at any other company in the cartel, doesn't that run afoul of federal fair labor laws?
Where in here did it say they were preventing someone from getting a job at one of the other companies? This is about the companies themselves not actively trying to recruit away current employees of the other companies.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure devs will figure out a way to run 3rd party codecs on Win7 and future Windows.
There are already ways to do so.
BTW, ts TFA just FUD or a guy promoting his own agenda??
It's someone playing the "Micrsoft is persecuting me!!!" game to get sympathy from the "Micro$oft" crowd.
This agreement negatively affects employees because they are not made aware of opportunities for 20% pay raises or other benefits from a large group of major companies.
In what way does this agreement stop an employee from looking at the job opportunities of another company?
This artificially keeps wages and benefits low for people in the colluding companies.
No it doesn't.
The very common scenario would be: someone is quite happy working at Google developing AJAX and is not actively looking to switch jobs but does have their resume on job boards. Yahoo wants to find an AJAX expert and is willing to pay 50% more for the expertise to catch up with Google quickly.
This doesn't make sense. If you weren't looking for a new job why would you post a resume to a job board?
Yahoo is unable to contact this expert.
Through the agreement they themselves set up. If they had really wanted to contact the person then they shouldn't have made this deal.
This pretty clearly hurts the employee.
Not necessarily. I'd consider working at Yahoo! to probably be a much worse job than working at Google so I'd say it clearly doesn't hurt the employee.
Yes, the employee could troll the job boards, but why do you want to force the employee to do the work when head hunters are paid to find them?
In what way is the employee unable to get the services of a head hunter themselves?
I bet you're a Republican.
I bet you're an idiot. I wouldn't vote for a Republican in a million years.
MLNN, if you think about it, a non-compete is a good idea, IF you happen to be in a sensitive position.
You think it's a good idea that people can't work after they leave a job just because they've gained a lot of knowledge? Seriously?
If you worked for Google for a number of years and had an intimate knowledge of how their searching algorithm worked, would the brass really want you going to Yahoo with that knowledge being current? It would reduce Google's effectiveness as a company, and what's more, that's their proprietary data, which you might then pass on to another company.
Trade secrets have been protected for years. If the employee divulged them not only would they be in deep shit but if Yahoo! used them then they would also be in deep shit as well.
What you are saying is that gaming companies are just developing for the platform that holds 88% o the market.
Exactly. They are developing for a platform that will actually be profitable not a fringe OS that will provide them with no real appreciable gain in profits.
What I am suggesting is that there is a strong possibility that MS is doing more than just making a good platform to design games, they could be colluding with video card developers or game producers to keep it that way so that no other platform could get games,
And yet you have no evidence of this. And it's even more amusing in light of the fact of the current state of the proprietary nVIDIA and ATI drivers for Linux.
which in turn reinforces their monopoly on the OS.
It may to some degree, but gaming is hardly even a major reason they hold their huge market share.
How do you know that MS doesn't offer an unfair advantage to developing on the directX?
Because they have no need to do so?
Are you a developer?
Yes, I am and I know plenty of people who do game development. They don't develop for Windows due to some huge conspiracy. It's because the platform is easier to develop for and it's one in which they will actually make money.
As for consoles, can you really not see that MS is trying to use its monopoly on desktops and PC games to leverage itself into the console market? Really?
Yes, I can't since the two markets are completely unrelated in any way. Exactly in what way is a console game maker going to care or be swayed by Microsoft's desktop OS market share?
As for the Mac, don't be ridiculous, the Mac might get some of the more popular titles, but I argue that it's nowhere near the percentage of people using macs at home, AND they get them late if they do get them.
Ah, but you were trying to claim that there was some grand scheme to prevent games being made for anything but Windows but it must not work very well if Mac games are still being made and ported.
Would be funny to see your comment join the ranks of famous quotes like "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." and "640kb should be enough for everybody" a few years later,
A few years later? That's pretty funny in and of itself. You are telling me that an OS that has barely reached 1% of the smartphone OS market is going to dethrone Symbian and Windows in only a few years? I almost spit up my drink laughing so hard. Yep, I'm sure that day will happen at the same point when Microsoft open sources Windows.
Mozilla brings in about as much revenue as Opera does so they probably could do so if they wanted.
You guys are either exaggerating or bending the truth.
Or maybe, just maybe, just because you don't experience a bug that it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Secondly, you do realize there are more than just the singular versions of Chromium and Firefox that you use, and as such they may have differing behaviors, or that others may be using completely different browsers altogether, right? But no, it clearly must be people making stuff up.
This reminds of back when the Linux kernel devs would claim their were no response issues desktop Linux because when run on servers with vastly more processors and power that there were no issues.
Is this your first time reading a BadAnalogyGuy post? I'd post saying "whoosh" but I think that would be pointing out the obvious.
Right now, Android is more a rival for symbian than for Windows.
And it's just about as much of a threat to Symbian as it is to Windows: not at all.
You're pretty much completely missing my point.
No, I got your point completely. It was just wrong.
Let me re-iterate: based on my experience with their past behavior (browsers), it is not outside the realm of possibility that MS is doing something to entice game developers and/or video card makers to solely develop for directX.
Why would they need to do anything at all? Any game company that wants to make money is already going to know to develop for the platform that holds 90% of the desktop market. Your second point doesn't make any sense since all video cards support OpenGL and have for a decade and more.
It could very well be that directX is a better platform to design games for, and that's why most gaming companies use it, but my thought was that *gasp* maybe MS is reenforcing it's monopoly on desktops through anti-competitive behavior.
DirectX is easier to develop for which is why even id Software, a long time developer on OpenGL, started doing DirectX development. Or are you going to claim that Carmack was bought out by Microsoft?
I bet you'd never expect MS to try something like that, or that they might try and use their desktop monopoly to build games for the xbox 360.
This doesn't even make sense. What does their desktop monopoly have to do with making games for the 360?
Is Operea the version of Opera with diarrhea?
No it's about reducing the amount of employees they will actively try to take away from the select few they are colluding with. Not preventing employees from applying at the other companies.
If I'm employed by Google and seeking a job at Apple, that agreement is interfering with my negotiations.
No it's not. That's not what this agreement is about. Nothing in this agreement is about stopping an employee from applying for a job at one of the other companies. The agreement is about the companies not trying to actively recruit away employees of the companies they are colluding with.
How is what these companies doing any different than the non compete / anti-head hunting clauses the major oil companies have been using for over four decades to limit employee loss to competitors?
Because they aren't even remotely analogous? This agreement is saying that they will still recruit away talent from other competitors, just not the select few that they are colluding with.
I was just responding with the same level of evidence that you had: none. The many companies who use their patents to protect themselves from having their ideas stolen would beg to differ that patents don't nurture their business.
Because that's not *anti-trust* behaviour. That's monopoly, and different.
Good luck trying to get that through the head of most Slashdotters. They are so misinformed about such topics that it's almost as laughable as when they repeat the erroneous, and contrary to established case law, claims that EULAs are nonenforceable in the US.
Especially if you have anything of merit because they will just recruit away all your talent while having an agreement not to do so to each other.
Non-compete restrictions in employment contracts are common in software development work and are another flavor of this issue. What these companies have done is more insidious because they aren't asking employees to agree to being locked out of major portions of the job market for their skills.
Except non-competes are illegal in California which all 4 of the listed companies are based in. Nice try though.
The result of this is that you often can't work in the industry for years after leaving your job. To insist that employees have experience when they are hired and then prevent them from using it when they leave seems wrong.
That's great and all but non-compete clauses aren't what this probe is about.
Oh I don't know [arstechnica.com] He has been doing favors for all his supporters, Like those car Dealerships whom supported him somehow manage to stay open.
Nice red herring, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that teh whole uproar over Sotomayor was based on a single ruling out of all of her years in the federal judiciary. One ruling hardly justifies being called "pro-RIAA".
But if you want to keep Diluting yourself into "hope and change" then don't mind me, go right ahead.
Except I never voted for Obama and have disagreed with almost everything he's done. Doesn't mean I won't still correct people who are spreading nonsense.
Except that Google and Yahoo! will still attempt to recruit away people from other companies they don't have a pact with and as such this appears to be shady collusive behavior.
but I'm really sick to death of how video games for PCs are usually only available for Windows.
Can you really blame them for only wanting to develop for a platform that will actually be profitable? Yes, it does suck that there is a dearth of Linux games, but that's just the way it is. If Linux got a bigger marketshare then you might see more attention, but game companies aren't going to develop for every fringe desktop OS when it isn't going to make them anything but a negligible amount of money.
Obviously I have no proof of infringing behavior, but I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that MS is engaging in some anti-competitive practices in this area to shut out competing platforms from the PC gaming market.
Or *gasp* maybe it has to do with the fact that it's completely not worth their time and money to make games for an OS that constitutes less than 1% of all desktops. Considering the fact that Macs get games would clearly show that your claim is wrong since Apple is one of Microsoft's most fierce competitors.
Would you have voted for BHO if you knew he was going to make a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court who is pro-RIAA
Wow, way to blow completely out of proportion that article that was posted yesterday that was about a singular ruling that she made like a decade ago.
and that under BHO's administration we'd see Google, Apple come under major Antitrust scrutiny (but not Microsoft)? What are your thoughts?
Who says they aren't going after Microsoft in this probe? The four listed companies weren't an exhaustive list of everyone being probed.
Seriously neither Google nor Yahoo! are anything close to a monopoly.
Nothing in this article was talking about any of the four listed companies being a monopoly. This was about collusive behavior to not recruit away talent from each other.
By forming a pact that keeps an employee at company A from getting a job at any other company in the cartel, doesn't that run afoul of federal fair labor laws?
Where in here did it say they were preventing someone from getting a job at one of the other companies? This is about the companies themselves not actively trying to recruit away current employees of the other companies.
100 years ago patents nurtured the industries.
And they still are.