I have not been happy with almost anything this group has done in the past 7 years. This just has the same slimy feel that so many other activities of the FCC. At this point I would be surprised to find out that some was manipulated to favor someone particular group. The surprise would be that the people who did manipulate the situation did not do a better job of destroying the evidence. However the stench of corruption will still linger.
What happens when the FCC allows bandwidth providers like Verizon to start filtering the content that crosses their networks? Where will we turn when the Internet in the US is censored by corporate interests (like Murdoch) instead of allowing the free exchange of ideas? Then where the public go for news and information? The further consolidation of how and where information is gather, disseminated and filtered will have a massive negative impact for all Americans. There is but one law that stands the test of time, the law of unintended consequences. It could have been worse, some on the FCC panel wanted to go much further, but this is still a bad move.
I have just turned down an offer from my current employer to relocate from the Northeast to the Deep South. Part of the reason was the problems a co-worker had relocating recently. The manager made an offer, then HR decided that it was not standard and would not honor the relocation package. The problem was the manager failed to inform HR. If the manager is willing to pay out of their budget, a lot of time HR will not care. First step is to contact the person who made you the offer and see if they can resolve the issue. While that is going on, start looking at your options if the recruiter can't get the HR folks to change.
THINK: My suggestion to you is that you think through all of your options, use a spreadsheet to keep track of the costs associated with each option.
EVALUATE: Try to get three options, not just take/don't take. Next decide what is important to you, e.g.
is what the work at the new place more important than money?
Will you be closer or further from family, and does that matter?
etc.
Assign a weight to each of these criteria, for example a weight of 1 is very important and a weight of 3 is not important. On a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet make a grid with the options across the top and each criteria down the side. For each criteria pick the best, second best and worst option. Once done use, the weights to come up with a numerical score for each option. The best option will have the lowest score (best option of a criteria will be a 1, and with a weight of 1 it will score a 1. The worst will end up with a score of 9). This should be done in a couple of hours, since you have a short time frame.
DECIDE: The above method will force you to think about the issue in a structured way. It will also give you a numeric answer as to which you think is the best solution. Think some more about it and decide if that is really what you want to do. Your heart may disagree with the evaluation, or the evaluation will confirm your previous feelings. In the end the evaluation is just a tool to help with the decision making. Reflect on the evaluation and then decide.
ACT: Once you have decided on an option act upon it. Call the hiring and let them know your decision, and your current employer if you have already given notice and need to ask for your position back. Above all, don't be mean to anyone, you never know if you are going to see them and need their help in the future. Don't email angry!
Above all be true to yourself, you can always get another job. Good Luck.
The last several positions I have had all demanded one of these. When I worked at Lexis-Nexis, I started the job without signing the agreement, then began a slow discussion of why I was a special case that should exempt from their boiler plate agreement. Before the discussion ended my entire department was laid off, so I never finished that exercise, but I did stall them for several months.
My current employer also gave me four lines to list projects that should be exempted. I told them that I had in place over 40 Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) currently in place (which I did) and that some of them prevented me from talking about the NDA (which a couple did). I sat with the internal legal person and told them that I could not sign the agreement because of existing legally binding agreements and since I did not think that they would want me to break my agreement with them I knew that they would respect my existing agreements.
In the end we changed a few lines that stated in effect that none of my GPL work would ever be theirs, I had legally binding reasons for not discussing other work I had done, and that any work done on my own equipment was exempt from their ownership. I also agreed not to write any GPL code that overlapped our business, but some how that did not end up in the final draft.
In short, tell them that you have contributed to projects that you do not own and cannot give them ownership of, that you have legal agreements with others that prevents you from giving them ownership of other works. If that fails, don't sign it and see how long it takes before they demand it.
First check out http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html for a well written discussion on why an orgainization should use OSS.
Talk about expanding services without raising taxes or floating bonds. When they ask how you will improve things without spending money, talk about how when it comes time for the next round of upgrades you can save money by not paying $835 per user for MS Office, Windows and an Exchange seat, but $80 for all users.
Explain how commodity hardware (maybe even an old machine) can be used with Linux or *BSD and Apache to improve communication between the government and the people.
Talk about replacing, gradually and in a measured way, the computers at school with less expensive and better performing systems.
Then inform them that IBM, COMPAQ and DELL will help put this all together. Mentioning those three instead of Red Hat has a much better public recognition factor, that helps legitimize your effort.
Make the OSS part of a concerted well rounded plan on improving things by taking a new approach to how government is done, cheaper, smarter, less expensive.
Nevada is a state that I could deal with. Instead of haing a 55MPH speed limit Nevada turned down federal highway money. Prostitution is legal and regulated. Guns are OK. Gambling is OK. I don't know of any oppressive porn or booze laws. Anyplace that dispenses with regulations like those is good by me. That means they will be less likely to give me crap about what I want to do. Plus they have great outdoor stuff to do.
I just wish they had good paying (NYC, SF good paying) high tech jobs in the Reno - Carson City - Lake Tahoe part of the state. I'd pack the wife and kids and move there in a heart beat. BTW, I am married, over 35, have 2 kids and don't give a rats ass about religion (save the Church of Emacs).
A great way to get them started is with web programming. Start with XHTML so they can get the structure and see results immediately. Then start adding CGI using Perl. Lots of good resources for CGI programming in Perl, and they can show off their programming skills to their friends. Another great motivator.
I wrote between 15k and 20k Lines of Code last year as a sys admin and on a part time basis for fun. I spent most of the year on a project doing network design, that did not require any coding. LOC is a poor way of determining productivity (unless you work in Redmond). How do you count a perl one liner that works great vs a buggy 50 line program in any language?
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Will Pastafarians get beer for their Friday night religious observances?
I have not been happy with almost anything this group has done in the past 7 years. This just has the same slimy feel that so many other activities of the FCC. At this point I would be surprised to find out that some was manipulated to favor someone particular group. The surprise would be that the people who did manipulate the situation did not do a better job of destroying the evidence. However the stench of corruption will still linger.
What happens when the FCC allows bandwidth providers like Verizon to start filtering the content that crosses their networks? Where will we turn when the Internet in the US is censored by corporate interests (like Murdoch) instead of allowing the free exchange of ideas? Then where the public go for news and information? The further consolidation of how and where information is gather, disseminated and filtered will have a massive negative impact for all Americans. There is but one law that stands the test of time, the law of unintended consequences. It could have been worse, some on the FCC panel wanted to go much further, but this is still a bad move.
I have just turned down an offer from my current employer to relocate from the Northeast to the Deep South. Part of the reason was the problems a co-worker had relocating recently. The manager made an offer, then HR decided that it was not standard and would not honor the relocation package. The problem was the manager failed to inform HR. If the manager is willing to pay out of their budget, a lot of time HR will not care. First step is to contact the person who made you the offer and see if they can resolve the issue. While that is going on, start looking at your options if the recruiter can't get the HR folks to change.
THINK: My suggestion to you is that you think through all of your options, use a spreadsheet to keep track of the costs associated with each option.
EVALUATE: Try to get three options, not just take/don't take. Next decide what is important to you, e.g.
- is what the work at the new place more important than money?
- Will you be closer or further from family, and does that matter?
- etc.
Assign a weight to each of these criteria, for example a weight of 1 is very important and a weight of 3 is not important. On a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet make a grid with the options across the top and each criteria down the side. For each criteria pick the best, second best and worst option. Once done use, the weights to come up with a numerical score for each option. The best option will have the lowest score (best option of a criteria will be a 1, and with a weight of 1 it will score a 1. The worst will end up with a score of 9). This should be done in a couple of hours, since you have a short time frame.DECIDE: The above method will force you to think about the issue in a structured way. It will also give you a numeric answer as to which you think is the best solution. Think some more about it and decide if that is really what you want to do. Your heart may disagree with the evaluation, or the evaluation will confirm your previous feelings. In the end the evaluation is just a tool to help with the decision making. Reflect on the evaluation and then decide.
ACT: Once you have decided on an option act upon it. Call the hiring and let them know your decision, and your current employer if you have already given notice and need to ask for your position back. Above all, don't be mean to anyone, you never know if you are going to see them and need their help in the future. Don't email angry!
Above all be true to yourself, you can always get another job. Good Luck.
The last several positions I have had all demanded one of these. When I worked at Lexis-Nexis, I started the job without signing the agreement, then began a slow discussion of why I was a special case that should exempt from their boiler plate agreement. Before the discussion ended my entire department was laid off, so I never finished that exercise, but I did stall them for several months.
My current employer also gave me four lines to list projects that should be exempted. I told them that I had in place over 40 Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) currently in place (which I did) and that some of them prevented me from talking about the NDA (which a couple did). I sat with the internal legal person and told them that I could not sign the agreement because of existing legally binding agreements and since I did not think that they would want me to break my agreement with them I knew that they would respect my existing agreements.
In the end we changed a few lines that stated in effect that none of my GPL work would ever be theirs, I had legally binding reasons for not discussing other work I had done, and that any work done on my own equipment was exempt from their ownership. I also agreed not to write any GPL code that overlapped our business, but some how that did not end up in the final draft.
In short, tell them that you have contributed to projects that you do not own and cannot give them ownership of, that you have legal agreements with others that prevents you from giving them ownership of other works. If that fails, don't sign it and see how long it takes before they demand it.
Good luck
First check out http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html for a well written discussion on why an orgainization should use OSS.
Talk about expanding services without raising taxes or floating bonds. When they ask how you will improve things without spending money, talk about how when it comes time for the next round of upgrades you can save money by not paying $835 per user for MS Office, Windows and an Exchange seat, but $80 for all users.
Explain how commodity hardware (maybe even an old machine) can be used with Linux or *BSD and Apache to improve communication between the government and the people.
Talk about replacing, gradually and in a measured way, the computers at school with less expensive and better performing systems.
Then inform them that IBM, COMPAQ and DELL will help put this all together. Mentioning those three instead of Red Hat has a much better public recognition factor, that helps legitimize your effort.
Make the OSS part of a concerted well rounded plan on improving things by taking a new approach to how government is done, cheaper, smarter, less expensive.
Good Luck,
Nevada is a state that I could deal with. Instead of haing a 55MPH speed limit Nevada turned down federal highway money. Prostitution is legal and regulated. Guns are OK. Gambling is OK. I don't know of any oppressive porn or booze laws. Anyplace that dispenses with regulations like those is good by me. That means they will be less likely to give me crap about what I want to do. Plus they have great outdoor stuff to do.
I just wish they had good paying (NYC, SF good paying) high tech jobs in the Reno - Carson City - Lake Tahoe part of the state. I'd pack the wife and kids and move there in a heart beat. BTW, I am married, over 35, have 2 kids and don't give a rats ass about religion (save the Church of Emacs).
What about the WebDAV that has been development? see the IETF page or the webdav site, and let's not forget the Apache webdav module mod_dav.
Plus there is RFC 2518 for it -
http://andrew2.andrew.cmu.edu/rfc/rfc2518.html
While there may not be a 100% fit, there could be enough to invalidate this patent.
A great way to get them started is with web programming. Start with XHTML so they can get the structure and see results immediately. Then start adding CGI using Perl. Lots of good resources for CGI programming in Perl, and they can show off their programming skills to their friends. Another great motivator.
I wrote between 15k and 20k Lines of Code last year as a sys admin and on a part time basis for fun. I spent most of the year on a project doing network design, that did not require any coding. LOC is a poor way of determining productivity (unless you work in Redmond). How do you count a perl one liner that works great vs a buggy 50 line program in any language?