In a way, it's worse than that, I think... Microsoft owns FASA itself, which is the owner of not just the Mechwarrior games but the entire Battletech franchise (including the tabletop RPG game), plus Shadowrun and possibly other RPGs.
Well, it would depend on the employee agreement, but generally, the employee agreement would lay claim to anything that's developed on company time with company resources, but only that. The trick is in demonstrating that a given body of work was done on your own.
In the hypothetical example you give, it would usually not be legal for the company to claim the software as its own; and in practice, since CGI development is so radically different from window manager or device driver development, you'd have a decent chance of hanging onto it.
However, if the distinction is less blindingly obvious, and/or if the employer has a large legal budget, what's legal in theory may differ from what's legal in practice. In short, if you're concerned about who owns your code, try to work for a small company.
And as for your last point, if the programmer refused to turn over the code, then the company would (if they really wanted it) sue; and if they won, the court would order the programmer to turn it over. I leave the penalty for noncompliance in that case to the imagination of others.
Probably the person who invented it was working for Compaq. The Employee Agreements that you usually sign when working for a big company give any idea you have on company time to the company, and furthermore put the burden of proof on you to prove an idea was developed on your time.
Generally, if you get some killer idea and want it for yourself or for the GNU community, you more or less have to quit.
Or don't go to work for a company with such an agreement in the first place.
I beg to differ. Laptops can also be handy if you'll be away from home for any length of time, have a national ISP (or at least don't move out of your ISP's area of coverage), and can't live without your Internet fix.:) In particular, if your job requires you to live in a temporary apartment for a while, a laptop may be the way you stay wired.
Just one thing: if you travel by plane with a laptop, be very careful how you transport it... if you carry it in a laptop case onto a plane, the risk of it being stolen is quite high, and if you pack it in your checked luggage, you run a risk of the screen being cracked, and that is expensive and not usually covered under the manufacturer's warranty. (I learned the latter lesson the hard way -- I was fortunate enough to have purchased a separate warranty from CompUSA for the screen, but the thing's taking forever to fix.)
One way you might try transport the laptop is to put it in a hard-sided briefcase and stuff clothes around it, then put the briefcase in another suitcase. Alternatively (since briefcases are hard to fit in other suitcases), you could try carrying the briefcase on the plane; it might not scream "steal me!" quite as loud as an actual laptop case.
The reason you can't tape a movie in a movie theater is that the movie theater won't let you (and that the theater couldn't get movies to show if they did). However, you can tape network or cable broadcast shows for your own use.
Nevertheless, the original poster's analogy is suspect.
Now that's a domain that we can all agree has value. At least, VA Research thought so.:)
Mind you, they also are doing a reasonably good job so far (IMHO) at respecting what the Linux Community (tm) feels should be on a linux.com website. At least, I haven't heard anyone saying "linux.com sucks!" yet -- from Slashdotters, that's high praise indeed.:)
But only those domains, the ones that are a reasonably straightforward word or phrase followed by.com (or less often.net or.org) are so important that they're valuable in and of themselves. Even suckmypole.com (which is presumably aimed at someone hoping to start yet another porn site) is a rather low probability for a random type-in. As many posters have pointed out, amazon.com didn't have any reasonable chance of relying on type-ins; instead they built a brand.
Alternatively, if there's a CD with a few songs you like, send money to the artist directly for each MP3 you store. And don't redistribute them indiscriminately.
I thought Restaurant was funny too. The basic problem seems to be that the Douglas Adams books incorporating stories from his radio play series worked well; and then he tried writing a whole book from scratch, which didn't work. Or else he ran out of really funny ideas.
Meanwhile, I started with Men At Arms and found it hilarious; likewise Hogfather, Maskerade, and Interesting Times. Since I haven't read any of the earlier Rincewind or City Guards books, I can't comment on whether or not he's going downhill, except only to note that if he is, he must've started on Cori Celesti.
But MS's ability to do this rests on the revenue earned from their successful (in the marketplace) technologies of Windows and Office. If Linux should become a viable player on the non-geek's desktop, the foundation of that strategy would be eroded.
Actually, I interpreted that as meaning that the knee-jerk NT zealots he encountered at MS are similar to the AC's here that are knee-jerk Linux zealots.
That certainly tallies with my experience of people generally -- people close their minds to different extents (we all close our minds somewhat, or are you open to the idea that apples might fall up if you let go of them?), and some people become very closed-minded indeed. For any position X there are going to be a certain proportion of people who are die-hard X bigots and are completely unable to wrap their mind around !X -- and X bigots respond to arguments in favor of !X in ways that don't differ much as X varies (e.g. !X SUX! X R00LZ!!!1!1!).
You know, there are usually enough cinemas near each other in a region, with the same films, to compete with each other on ticket prices.
So why are ticket prices so high? And of course the refreshment prices, and the pre-movie ads...
Could it be that all those multi-million-dollar price tags on the films themselves are being passed on to the theaters? That maybe the profit margins in the theater business aren't as high as all that?
Of course, I've never worked in the theater business, so I wouldn't know. But with movie viewership on a slide everywhere, I don't see why the theater operators wouldn't let some of the profits go back into the business so that it doesn't die altogether.
Hey, it's a logical step from the one to the other. If Dr. Evil takes over the coffee supply of the Seattle area, all the coffee-dependent technology shops here, M$ included, will be under his heel.:-)
Frankly, I don't really give a damn what Katz's motivations are. This message needs to get out to the greater culture, and if Katz can do that, and as long as he doesn't say anything egregiously incorrect or absurd or self-defeating in the process, more power to him.
Slashdot Mirror
Pointy Haired Boss, from the Boss character in Dilbert.
Alas, I fear that Mechwarrior III for Linux isn't in the cards. As far as I know, Microsoft owns FASA.
In a way, it's worse than that, I think... Microsoft owns FASA itself, which is the owner of not just the Mechwarrior games but the entire Battletech franchise (including the tabletop RPG game), plus Shadowrun and possibly other RPGs.
First of all, I Am Not A Lawyer. That said:
Well, it would depend on the employee agreement, but generally, the employee agreement would lay claim to anything that's developed on company time with company resources, but only that. The trick is in demonstrating that a given body of work was done on your own.
In the hypothetical example you give, it would usually not be legal for the company to claim the software as its own; and in practice, since CGI development is so radically different from window manager or device driver development, you'd have a decent chance of hanging onto it.
However, if the distinction is less blindingly obvious, and/or if the employer has a large legal budget, what's legal in theory may differ from what's legal in practice. In short, if you're concerned about who owns your code, try to work for a small company.
And as for your last point, if the programmer refused to turn over the code, then the company would (if they really wanted it) sue; and if they won, the court would order the programmer to turn it over. I leave the penalty for noncompliance in that case to the imagination of others.
Probably the person who invented it was working for Compaq. The Employee Agreements that you usually sign when working for a big company give any idea you have on company time to the company, and furthermore put the burden of proof on you to prove an idea was developed on your time.
Generally, if you get some killer idea and want it for yourself or for the GNU community, you more or less have to quit.
Or don't go to work for a company with such an agreement in the first place.
I beg to differ. Laptops can also be handy if you'll be away from home for any length of time, have a national ISP (or at least don't move out of your ISP's area of coverage), and can't live without your Internet fix. :) In particular, if your job requires you to live in a temporary apartment for a while, a laptop may be the way you stay wired.
Just one thing: if you travel by plane with a laptop, be very careful how you transport it... if you carry it in a laptop case onto a plane, the risk of it being stolen is quite high, and if you pack it in your checked luggage, you run a risk of the screen being cracked, and that is expensive and not usually covered under the manufacturer's warranty. (I learned the latter lesson the hard way -- I was fortunate enough to have purchased a separate warranty from CompUSA for the screen, but the thing's taking forever to fix.)
One way you might try transport the laptop is to put it in a hard-sided briefcase and stuff clothes around it, then put the briefcase in another suitcase. Alternatively (since briefcases are hard to fit in other suitcases), you could try carrying the briefcase on the plane; it might not scream "steal me!" quite as loud as an actual laptop case.
The reason you can't tape a movie in a movie theater is that the movie theater won't let you (and that the theater couldn't get movies to show if they did). However, you can tape network or cable broadcast shows for your own use.
Nevertheless, the original poster's analogy is suspect.
Now that's a domain that we can all agree has value. At least, VA Research thought so. :)
:)
Mind you, they also are doing a reasonably good job so far (IMHO) at respecting what the Linux Community (tm) feels should be on a linux.com website. At least, I haven't heard anyone saying "linux.com sucks!" yet -- from Slashdotters, that's high praise indeed.
But only those domains, the ones that are a reasonably straightforward word or phrase followed by .com (or less often .net or .org) are so important that they're valuable in and of themselves. Even suckmypole.com (which is presumably aimed at someone hoping to start yet another porn site) is a rather low probability for a random type-in. As many posters have pointed out, amazon.com didn't have any reasonable chance of relying on type-ins; instead they built a brand.
You're not an AC. Would it hurt you to go to your user preferences page and turn off the Jon Katz slashbox?
Alternatively, if there's a CD with a few songs you like, send money to the artist directly for each MP3 you store. And don't redistribute them indiscriminately.
That's what I'd do.
I thought Restaurant was funny too. The basic problem seems to be that the Douglas Adams books incorporating stories from his radio play series worked well; and then he tried writing a whole book from scratch, which didn't work. Or else he ran out of really funny ideas.
Meanwhile, I started with Men At Arms and found it hilarious; likewise Hogfather, Maskerade, and Interesting Times. Since I haven't read any of the earlier Rincewind or City Guards books, I can't comment on whether or not he's going downhill, except only to note that if he is, he must've started on Cori Celesti.
You refuse to identify yourself or the company you claim to discuss, and you expect us to believe you.
Go back under your bridge.
This is absolutely a troll. Did anyone actually visit the site -- Atipa Linux Solutions?
Actually, it could be sarcasm -- saying "Yeah, sure, we're going to change our entire strategy based on this one benchmark... NOT."
Because moderators are sensitive to complaints that they're biased in favor of Linux, and are trying to be a little more evenhanded?
But MS's ability to do this rests on the revenue earned from their successful (in the marketplace) technologies of Windows and Office. If Linux should become a viable player on the non-geek's desktop, the foundation of that strategy would be eroded.
Actually, I interpreted that as meaning that the knee-jerk NT zealots he encountered at MS are similar to the AC's here that are knee-jerk Linux zealots.
That certainly tallies with my experience of people generally -- people close their minds to different extents (we all close our minds somewhat, or are you open to the idea that apples might fall up if you let go of them?), and some people become very closed-minded indeed. For any position X there are going to be a certain proportion of people who are die-hard X bigots and are completely unable to wrap their mind around !X -- and X bigots respond to arguments in favor of !X in ways that don't differ much as X varies (e.g. !X SUX! X R00LZ!!!1!1!).
Oddly enough, no. FreeBSD/Apache on the front end, Solaris on the back end.
I use a software program called "Semprini."
(gets taken away by the police)
You know, there are usually enough cinemas near each other in a region, with the same films, to compete with each other on ticket prices.
So why are ticket prices so high? And of course the refreshment prices, and the pre-movie ads...
Could it be that all those multi-million-dollar price tags on the films themselves are being passed on to the theaters? That maybe the profit margins in the theater business aren't as high as all that?
Of course, I've never worked in the theater business, so I wouldn't know. But with movie viewership on a slide everywhere, I don't see why the theater operators wouldn't let some of the profits go back into the business so that it doesn't die altogether.
Hey, it's a logical step from the one to the other. If Dr. Evil takes over the coffee supply of the Seattle area, all the coffee-dependent technology shops here, M$ included, will be under his heel. :-)
I'll second that, simply for the sake of advocating Evangelion. :-)
Frankly, I don't really give a damn what Katz's motivations are. This message needs to get out to the greater culture, and if Katz can do that, and as long as he doesn't say anything egregiously incorrect or absurd or self-defeating in the process, more power to him.
Indeed, pipe bombs can be made anywhere. So why do those tragedies seem to be confined to the US only?
There's something wrong with our society that guns have nothing to do with. Unless we can fix that, gun control won't help a bit.