...in which case the stock price wouldn't go down, either. When it all boils down to it, a companies stock price is primarily the result of two things- how much money they are currently making, and their investors and potential investors faith in their ability to continue to make money.
Keeping that in mind, maybe I should expand on my previous statement. (At least in this particular case,) Microsoft is not making their decisions based on their shareholders' interests over their customers' interests. If the stock price were to go down due to the number of security holes, it would not be due directly to the security holes, but rather due to the fact that the security holes make windows harder to sell. On the other hand, if investors didn't expect the number of security flaws disclosed to affect the future sales of Windows, then Microsoft's stock price wouldn't go down because of them, either. Either way, the primary focus is on doing what they have to do to sell more product (or make more money per product), and the stock price and shareholder value are only derivatives of that, rather than, as so many people seem to think these days, the one and only decision making factor in a company's existence.
(I'll admit that what is in the customer's best interest does not necessarily align with what makes the company the most money, but in that sense publicly traded companies are no different than privately held companies.)
I doubt Microsoft, or many other publicly traded companies, really care more about their shareholders than their paying customers, seeing as the shareholder value is almost always directly related to the number of paying customers, and how much they pay. Doing anything that decreases either of the latter is sure to decrease the former as well.
In this case, the stock doesn't go down just because they had too many security holes, the stock goes down because too many security holes make their products harder to sell.
I'll start trusting any major game site the day I see one of them rate a game lower than six. Have you seen the video review this guy did? He didn't have a single good thing to say about the game,and it still got a 6 out of 10. I'm starting to think that for a game to be rated a 5 it would have to cause the game console to burst into flames the second it was inserted. For a 4, the resulting fire would have to burn down their entire office building.
He was (probably) the first person to document it and give it a name. In that sense, I suppose he "invented" JSON the same way that Jesse James Garrent (whom I had never heard of before or since he published that article) "invented" AJAX.
He was probably also the first person to publicly release a library that would "serialize" an already existing JavaScript object into a JSON string, and he maintains JSON.org, which is usually the first place that I go to look for a JSON Serializer/Deserializer for a new language (although I'll admit that I've often been less than impressed by the quality of the implementations that I've found there.)
As far as I am concerned, for all of their horrible faults, I'll be content with HTML 4/XHTML 1, CSS 2.1 (bonus points for CSS 3), and JavaScript 1.5, if Microsoft would ever hurry up and release a browser that supports all of them properly. Anything beyond that would be pure gravy. Honestly, I'd rather see that happen before we start a new push for HTML 5, or anything else.
Because otherwise Microsoft will just abandon their current half assed standards implementations for new half-assed standards implementations, and then the only improvement we'll have over the current state of things, is two different incompatible standards, neither of which is actually able to be fully used. Whoopty doo...
I'm sorry but the auther hasn't presented any compelling reason why this is a 'good idea'(tm)
Actually, he presented two compelling reasons, but apparently you weren't reading very closely.
First, it allows more flexibility in language implementation, because you don't have to make sure that any language that you want to run in the browser can call and be called by (and otherwise interact with) every other language that the browser already supports. This is already a source of limitations. For example, (if I remember correctly - it's been a while since I worked with this) there is not way to access the SAX API exposed by MSXML from within the browser, because it requires the calling language to have a concept of interfaces, which JavaScript doesn't have.
Second, you can't have any concept of a secure language in the browser if any insecure language can be running at the same time.
And why are you talking about JavaScript when you already said you don't want to support JavaScript?
He never said that he didn't want to support JavaScript. All he said was that he didn't want JavaScript to be able to be mixed together with other kinds of script in the page.
I also agree with him that the default CSS needs to be standardized, or at least some parts of it. I don't care if Apple uses their pretty buttons or not, but at least having list items behave the same from one browser to another would be nice. (And while I'm all for Apple having their pretty buttons by default, I still want a way to override every form element. That goes for you, too, radio buttons!)
I'm not so sure about the frames without knowing more about what he has in mind with modules, but I do know that my work depends heavily on frames to integrate our content with our clients pages, so I'm am a bit leery of this one.
I also don't get the reason for dropping the DOCTYPE. That just seems stupid to me. Still, all in all, I think he's hit a little closer to the mark of what I'd like to see in the future of HTML than what I know of HTML 5 so far, and unlike HTML 5, I think there is an off chance his ideas might be useful to me in the next ten years if people take him seriously.
The myth is in what that actually means. I am pretty sure that there are some people out there who think that just having a Linux CD in their office means they would have to release all of the software written in that office under the GPL, a perception that some commercial software companies have actively tried to create, even though it has no basis in reality.
...99% of clients who had also rated the same movies on IMDB (unless I greatly misunderstand their method)
I've you've only ever given your movie ratings to NetFlix, then they still have no way to correlate that with any other source. (And even then, all they've shown is that User #1234 in the Netflix List is the same person as RandomPseudonym582 on IMDB, which personally I don't find to be terribly interesting.)
CD's are expensive because after the recording studio pays 25 cents to manufacture the thing, and another 50 cents or so to the artist, they then have to pay a whole boatload of other people to distribute the CD's, stock the CD's, Lord only knows what else, and still have money left over to make a profit. There are probably a dozen different people who all have to get their grubby hands on your CD before it makes it to your door, and they all want their cut. Not only that, but many of those people introduce extra markups along the way to accommodate things like "breakage" and "loss prevention". When you buy a song from Apple, on the other hand, you've just eliminated all but one of those middle men. And yet you are paying more for your music. (and the recording studios have been complaining all along that it's not enough!) I have to wonder how much of that is due to the recording companies' greed, and how much of that is due to pressure from companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon. (Reminds me of one of my favorite Firefly quotes: "Half the galaxy is Middle Men, Wash. They don't take kindly to being cut out.")
The same is true here. You are correct that when you pay for a book, very little of what you pay is going towards the physical cost of the materials that go into the book. What you are paying for when you buy a real book, that you aren't paying for when you buy an ebook, are the various cost associated with shipping and distributing any physical item.
Anyway, if the device cost about $200, and the books were around $6 a piece, I would be interested, but I can't see paying much more for it. And for ${DEITY}'s sake, get some Apple lovin' on that thing. I have a hard time imagining they could have made it uglier if they tried... unless maybe they offered it in brown.
1) That doesn't meet the Army's requirements because it doesn't give them a way to review the updates before they are deployed, or control deployment (e.g. Windiws SUS)
2) That doesn't work for PC's that are not internet connected.
He wasn't arguing that it wouldn't be good for FireFox to have vendors pre-install it. That's pretty obvious. He was arguing the OP's claim that it would be a good brand differentiator for the vendors to preinstall Firefox. I think he has a point. Most users who know why they should be using Firefox know that they can download and install it for free in less than five minutes. So why would I, as a customer, make a choice of which vendor to purchase from based on a piece of free bundled software? It wouldn't at all, especially since most new PC's come so loaded with crapware that the first thing I do is blow them away and install the OS from scratch.
Admittedly this technique works better for follow up changes to the employment agreement (usually I've seen this happen after an acquisition or merger) than for an initial employment agreement. For an initial employment agreement, generally speaking (but not always) if they don't have an employee agreement on file, the "default" agreement is a little murky, so it would be a good idea to know what the employment laws are in your state before doing that. That said, these contracts rarely give you extra rights beyond what are yours by law, and usually try to restrict them wherever they can get away with it. I also don't do this for every employment contract I've been presented with, only ones that have what I consider to be onerous terms, which is maybe a little over half of the ones that I've been offered to sign.
Happened to a former coworker of mine, too. Our employer at the time was at least smart enough to ask him to sign the agreement before he told him he was being let go. Unfortunately for my friend, he was not quite so fast on his feet that day. He was pretty pissed afterwards. He called me after he left the office and asked if I would be willing to go into the boss' office and steal it for him. (I didn't. I figured if he didn't want to be bound by the terms of the agreement, he shouldn't have signed the thing in the first place.)
If I hadn't already made plans to leave for a new company, they would have started that day.
I'm not sure that any state laws regarding non-compete agreements would necessarily cover this. This is about invention assignment, which is a separate issue. Although it is a bit fuzzy, because the extension of the invention assignment beyond the end of your employment with them may or may not (legally) be considered a form of non-compete agreement. So before anyone gets too smug about living in a state which doesn't allow non compete agreements to be enforced, I would find out from a lawyer whether this is covered as well.
When I am given an employment contract to sign that I consider to have unreasonable terms, I usually bury it in the bottom of my inbox and forget about it. At all but two of the last dozen or so companies that I've worked for, that has been enough. Maybe they'll send around a receptionist who really couldn't care less to collect the outstanding signatures after two weeks, and that will be the extent of it.
Generally, the first two times that somebody comes looking for them, I'll apologize, tell them I've been really busy and haven't had time to look it over, and then run off to handle some emergency or attend some urgent meeting, real or contrived. The second time it happens, once the office rep has left, I'll pull it out, cross out the objectionable parts in ink, maybe make a few creative enhancements, and then make a photocopy. It is important that you keep a copy of the document, as signed, for yourself. I've heard stories of people who got screwed because the company only kept the page with the signature, and when asked to produce that person's employment agreement, they would print out a new copy and slap the page with the signature on the back, because "they are all the same anyway".
Once that's done, I'll move it to the top of my inbox, so that it's ready to go the next time the office drone comes around to pick it up. Once you've determined that they aren't going to just forget about it, the goal is to get it to them with as little suspicion as possible. If you've already established a reputation as somebody who is somewhat careless about paperwork that is not directly related to your work duties (something I tend to excel at) this should be pretty easy. The goal here is to get them to take your signed and modified contract and file it away without ever noticing your modifications. If it ever comes to dispute, they will claim that the contract was not valid because they never approved your modifications, and they would probably be right. However, since you never agreed to the contract that they asked you to sign, the terms of your employment are either covered by your previous contract (you kept a copy of that as well, didn't you?) or whatever your state recognizes as the standard employment agreement within the state.
In this particular case, two additions that I would make: 1) copy the language about "which relate to, or are useful in connection with, any aspect of the business" from the second paragraph into the first paragraph. 2) add a clause stating that I will continue to receive a paycheck for the duration of the agreement. After all, while I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be binding, I do want to make sure that my bases are covered if the company does notice and agree to my modifications, which has happened once.
Beyond that, if you think you can swing a raise or some extra benefits, as others have suggested, by asking what they are offering you to sign the new contract, by all means, do. But just remember that you don't want to raise enough notice that they are likely to look at your contract and hand it back to you telling you that it's non-negotiable.
I don't know as much as I probably should about Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, but I do know a bit about Mies van der Rowe, having both worked and attended school in buildings he designed. I don't know the specifics of the buildings you are talking about, but during the early part of his career he was doing things that nobody had ever done before. How many times have you tried to do something completely new and had it come out right on the first try? It's important to realize that he designed dozens (or hundreds?) of buildings that are still perfectly usable to this day, and revolutionized the entire field in the process.
Also, temperature control problems in at least some of his buildings could also be considered to be "user error". Many of his buildings were designed to take advantage of natural air patterns, convection, etc. to keep them comfortable, something that can't always be adequately replaced with central air/heat systems. One of his buildings that my wife (who is an Architect) attended classes in was notorious among the student body for being ridiculously cold in the winter and overly hot in the summer. But if you talked to former students you found out that it hadn't always been that way. There used to be a professor who would go around every day in the morning and after lunch and open and close windows and blinds, and the building was fairly pleasant. When that professor retired, nobody else ever bothered, and the building became much less pleasant to work in.
He was trying to get into the Primary election, not the General election. It would have had no effect whatsever on the General election, and at worst (best?) would only have effectively removed South Carolina from the process of choosing the Democratic presidential nominee.
Except that he wasn't trying to get on the national election ballot. He was trying to get on the ballot for the Democratic Primary in South Carolina. If he won, it would have meant absolutely nothing except that South Carolina's vote would be essentially ignored at the Democratic Convention, when they decide who is going to be the Democrats' presidential nominee.
The article I read stated it a little bit differently. As I understood it, the group that decides who gets to be on the ballot for the Democratic Primary in South Carolina decided he did not meet their criteria of being a "nationally viable" candidate, based primarily on the fact that he was only running in South Carolina.
It might not sound like a big deal, but as HD's get bigger so does seagates 'edge' over the competition.
Except for the fact that every other hard drive manufacturer does the exact same thing, and has been for at least the last ten years, so they're not really edging out anybody....
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse me, what?
...in which case the stock price wouldn't go down, either. When it all boils down to it, a companies stock price is primarily the result of two things- how much money they are currently making, and their investors and potential investors faith in their ability to continue to make money.
Keeping that in mind, maybe I should expand on my previous statement. (At least in this particular case,) Microsoft is not making their decisions based on their shareholders' interests over their customers' interests. If the stock price were to go down due to the number of security holes, it would not be due directly to the security holes, but rather due to the fact that the security holes make windows harder to sell. On the other hand, if investors didn't expect the number of security flaws disclosed to affect the future sales of Windows, then Microsoft's stock price wouldn't go down because of them, either. Either way, the primary focus is on doing what they have to do to sell more product (or make more money per product), and the stock price and shareholder value are only derivatives of that, rather than, as so many people seem to think these days, the one and only decision making factor in a company's existence.
(I'll admit that what is in the customer's best interest does not necessarily align with what makes the company the most money, but in that sense publicly traded companies are no different than privately held companies.)
I doubt Microsoft, or many other publicly traded companies, really care more about their shareholders than their paying customers, seeing as the shareholder value is almost always directly related to the number of paying customers, and how much they pay. Doing anything that decreases either of the latter is sure to decrease the former as well.
In this case, the stock doesn't go down just because they had too many security holes, the stock goes down because too many security holes make their products harder to sell.
Did you notice how well that argument worked for DSL proponents?
sco.com
Such a shame it had to come to this...
I'll start trusting any major game site the day I see one of them rate a game lower than six. Have you seen the video review this guy did? He didn't have a single good thing to say about the game,and it still got a 6 out of 10. I'm starting to think that for a game to be rated a 5 it would have to cause the game console to burst into flames the second it was inserted. For a 4, the resulting fire would have to burn down their entire office building.
He was (probably) the first person to document it and give it a name. In that sense, I suppose he "invented" JSON the same way that Jesse James Garrent (whom I had never heard of before or since he published that article) "invented" AJAX.
He was probably also the first person to publicly release a library that would "serialize" an already existing JavaScript object into a JSON string, and he maintains JSON.org, which is usually the first place that I go to look for a JSON Serializer/Deserializer for a new language (although I'll admit that I've often been less than impressed by the quality of the implementations that I've found there.)
You know what? I wouldn't even go that far.
/XHTML 1, CSS 2.1 (bonus points for CSS 3), and JavaScript 1.5, if Microsoft would ever hurry up and release a browser that supports all of them properly. Anything beyond that would be pure gravy. Honestly, I'd rather see that happen before we start a new push for HTML 5, or anything else.
As far as I am concerned, for all of their horrible faults, I'll be content with HTML 4
Because otherwise Microsoft will just abandon their current half assed standards implementations for new half-assed standards implementations, and then the only improvement we'll have over the current state of things, is two different incompatible standards, neither of which is actually able to be fully used. Whoopty doo...
Actually, he presented two compelling reasons, but apparently you weren't reading very closely.
First, it allows more flexibility in language implementation, because you don't have to make sure that any language that you want to run in the browser can call and be called by (and otherwise interact with) every other language that the browser already supports. This is already a source of limitations. For example, (if I remember correctly - it's been a while since I worked with this) there is not way to access the SAX API exposed by MSXML from within the browser, because it requires the calling language to have a concept of interfaces, which JavaScript doesn't have.
Second, you can't have any concept of a secure language in the browser if any insecure language can be running at the same time.
He never said that he didn't want to support JavaScript. All he said was that he didn't want JavaScript to be able to be mixed together with other kinds of script in the page.
I also agree with him that the default CSS needs to be standardized, or at least some parts of it. I don't care if Apple uses their pretty buttons or not, but at least having list items behave the same from one browser to another would be nice. (And while I'm all for Apple having their pretty buttons by default, I still want a way to override every form element. That goes for you, too, radio buttons!)
I'm not so sure about the frames without knowing more about what he has in mind with modules, but I do know that my work depends heavily on frames to integrate our content with our clients pages, so I'm am a bit leery of this one.
I also don't get the reason for dropping the DOCTYPE. That just seems stupid to me. Still, all in all, I think he's hit a little closer to the mark of what I'd like to see in the future of HTML than what I know of HTML 5 so far, and unlike HTML 5, I think there is an off chance his ideas might be useful to me in the next ten years if people take him seriously.
I swear I'm gonna kill the next person I hear complaining about violence in the media!
The myth is in what that actually means. I am pretty sure that there are some people out there who think that just having a Linux CD in their office means they would have to release all of the software written in that office under the GPL, a perception that some commercial software companies have actively tried to create, even though it has no basis in reality.
...99% of clients who had also rated the same movies on IMDB
(unless I greatly misunderstand their method)
I've you've only ever given your movie ratings to NetFlix, then they still have no way to correlate that with any other source. (And even then, all they've shown is that User #1234 in the Netflix List is the same person as RandomPseudonym582 on IMDB, which personally I don't find to be terribly interesting.)
CD's are expensive because after the recording studio pays 25 cents to manufacture the thing, and another 50 cents or so to the artist, they then have to pay a whole boatload of other people to distribute the CD's, stock the CD's, Lord only knows what else, and still have money left over to make a profit. There are probably a dozen different people who all have to get their grubby hands on your CD before it makes it to your door, and they all want their cut. Not only that, but many of those people introduce extra markups along the way to accommodate things like "breakage" and "loss prevention". When you buy a song from Apple, on the other hand, you've just eliminated all but one of those middle men. And yet you are paying more for your music. (and the recording studios have been complaining all along that it's not enough!) I have to wonder how much of that is due to the recording companies' greed, and how much of that is due to pressure from companies like Wal-Mart and Amazon. (Reminds me of one of my favorite Firefly quotes: "Half the galaxy is Middle Men, Wash. They don't take kindly to being cut out.")
The same is true here. You are correct that when you pay for a book, very little of what you pay is going towards the physical cost of the materials that go into the book. What you are paying for when you buy a real book, that you aren't paying for when you buy an ebook, are the various cost associated with shipping and distributing any physical item.
Anyway, if the device cost about $200, and the books were around $6 a piece, I would be interested, but I can't see paying much more for it. And for ${DEITY}'s sake, get some Apple lovin' on that thing. I have a hard time imagining they could have made it uglier if they tried... unless maybe they offered it in brown.
You totally missed the point.
1) That doesn't meet the Army's requirements because it doesn't give them a way to review the updates before they are deployed, or control deployment (e.g. Windiws SUS)
2) That doesn't work for PC's that are not internet connected.
He wasn't arguing that it wouldn't be good for FireFox to have vendors pre-install it. That's pretty obvious. He was arguing the OP's claim that it would be a good brand differentiator for the vendors to preinstall Firefox. I think he has a point. Most users who know why they should be using Firefox know that they can download and install it for free in less than five minutes. So why would I, as a customer, make a choice of which vendor to purchase from based on a piece of free bundled software? It wouldn't at all, especially since most new PC's come so loaded with crapware that the first thing I do is blow them away and install the OS from scratch.
Admittedly this technique works better for follow up changes to the employment agreement (usually I've seen this happen after an acquisition or merger) than for an initial employment agreement. For an initial employment agreement, generally speaking (but not always) if they don't have an employee agreement on file, the "default" agreement is a little murky, so it would be a good idea to know what the employment laws are in your state before doing that. That said, these contracts rarely give you extra rights beyond what are yours by law, and usually try to restrict them wherever they can get away with it. I also don't do this for every employment contract I've been presented with, only ones that have what I consider to be onerous terms, which is maybe a little over half of the ones that I've been offered to sign.
Happened to a former coworker of mine, too. Our employer at the time was at least smart enough to ask him to sign the agreement before he told him he was being let go. Unfortunately for my friend, he was not quite so fast on his feet that day. He was pretty pissed afterwards. He called me after he left the office and asked if I would be willing to go into the boss' office and steal it for him. (I didn't. I figured if he didn't want to be bound by the terms of the agreement, he shouldn't have signed the thing in the first place.)
If I hadn't already made plans to leave for a new company, they would have started that day.
I'm not sure that any state laws regarding non-compete agreements would necessarily cover this. This is about invention assignment, which is a separate issue. Although it is a bit fuzzy, because the extension of the invention assignment beyond the end of your employment with them may or may not (legally) be considered a form of non-compete agreement. So before anyone gets too smug about living in a state which doesn't allow non compete agreements to be enforced, I would find out from a lawyer whether this is covered as well.
When I am given an employment contract to sign that I consider to have unreasonable terms, I usually bury it in the bottom of my inbox and forget about it. At all but two of the last dozen or so companies that I've worked for, that has been enough. Maybe they'll send around a receptionist who really couldn't care less to collect the outstanding signatures after two weeks, and that will be the extent of it.
Generally, the first two times that somebody comes looking for them, I'll apologize, tell them I've been really busy and haven't had time to look it over, and then run off to handle some emergency or attend some urgent meeting, real or contrived. The second time it happens, once the office rep has left, I'll pull it out, cross out the objectionable parts in ink, maybe make a few creative enhancements, and then make a photocopy. It is important that you keep a copy of the document, as signed, for yourself. I've heard stories of people who got screwed because the company only kept the page with the signature, and when asked to produce that person's employment agreement, they would print out a new copy and slap the page with the signature on the back, because "they are all the same anyway".
Once that's done, I'll move it to the top of my inbox, so that it's ready to go the next time the office drone comes around to pick it up. Once you've determined that they aren't going to just forget about it, the goal is to get it to them with as little suspicion as possible. If you've already established a reputation as somebody who is somewhat careless about paperwork that is not directly related to your work duties (something I tend to excel at) this should be pretty easy. The goal here is to get them to take your signed and modified contract and file it away without ever noticing your modifications. If it ever comes to dispute, they will claim that the contract was not valid because they never approved your modifications, and they would probably be right. However, since you never agreed to the contract that they asked you to sign, the terms of your employment are either covered by your previous contract (you kept a copy of that as well, didn't you?) or whatever your state recognizes as the standard employment agreement within the state.
In this particular case, two additions that I would make:
1) copy the language about "which relate to, or are useful in connection with, any aspect of the business" from the second paragraph into the first paragraph.
2) add a clause stating that I will continue to receive a paycheck for the duration of the agreement.
After all, while I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be binding, I do want to make sure that my bases are covered if the company does notice and agree to my modifications, which has happened once.
Beyond that, if you think you can swing a raise or some extra benefits, as others have suggested, by asking what they are offering you to sign the new contract, by all means, do. But just remember that you don't want to raise enough notice that they are likely to look at your contract and hand it back to you telling you that it's non-negotiable.
That's why you should get an architect who is also an engineer.
I don't know as much as I probably should about Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings, but I do know a bit about Mies van der Rowe, having both worked and attended school in buildings he designed. I don't know the specifics of the buildings you are talking about, but during the early part of his career he was doing things that nobody had ever done before. How many times have you tried to do something completely new and had it come out right on the first try? It's important to realize that he designed dozens (or hundreds?) of buildings that are still perfectly usable to this day, and revolutionized the entire field in the process.
Also, temperature control problems in at least some of his buildings could also be considered to be "user error". Many of his buildings were designed to take advantage of natural air patterns, convection, etc. to keep them comfortable, something that can't always be adequately replaced with central air/heat systems. One of his buildings that my wife (who is an Architect) attended classes in was notorious among the student body for being ridiculously cold in the winter and overly hot in the summer. But if you talked to former students you found out that it hadn't always been that way. There used to be a professor who would go around every day in the morning and after lunch and open and close windows and blinds, and the building was fairly pleasant. When that professor retired, nobody else ever bothered, and the building became much less pleasant to work in.
He was trying to get into the Primary election, not the General election. It would have had no effect whatsever on the General election, and at worst (best?) would only have effectively removed South Carolina from the process of choosing the Democratic presidential nominee.
Except that he wasn't trying to get on the national election ballot. He was trying to get on the ballot for the Democratic Primary in South Carolina. If he won, it would have meant absolutely nothing except that South Carolina's vote would be essentially ignored at the Democratic Convention, when they decide who is going to be the Democrats' presidential nominee.
The article I read stated it a little bit differently. As I understood it, the group that decides who gets to be on the ballot for the Democratic Primary in South Carolina decided he did not meet their criteria of being a "nationally viable" candidate, based primarily on the fact that he was only running in South Carolina.
Except for the fact that every other hard drive manufacturer does the exact same thing, and has been for at least the last ten years, so they're not really edging out anybody....