In Germany (part of the EU) the ruling is like this: An employer has to tell the employee (ideally based in the contract) if company e-mail and equipment is for business use only. This has to be true for all employees.
If an employer does not provide that Information ruling states that the employer has to accept that e-mail and equipment is used for personal matters. The only question here is how much - as in if the employee manages to fullfill his 8 hours of work per day and lets say adds 1 hour personal use.
The tricky part is this: If the employer allows private usage of e-mail/equipment he becomes a de-facto service provider and has to yield to the law of privacy of correspondence - which means he is not allowed the secretly access equipment or read the e-mail, even if business related
If the employer rules that e-mail and equipment is for business only (s)he can legally read e-mails and access equipment without the employees knowledge.
An additional tricky part is if an employer decides later to cut down on it the employees could claim a right of custom and practice which means it could take months or years before all machines, e-mails and such are clean of private usage. only then the employer would be able to legally access the e-mail or equipment.
Last, but not least, the European Court in question was the Euorpean Court of Human Rights, not the court dealing with the European Union. The participating countries have promised to yield to the rulings in their own private matters, but the ruling limited application as the Court is not part of any justice or executive system in any country of the european union (and more). So it is a court without teeth.
Rereading the question, OP works at a company servicing a SAAS for developers to share code and being paid for it; so far so good. OP works on the backend software for this platform, very well as well. He wants to sell his Code and Ideas, this is fair. But why has he have to do this in company time? In the question this reads as an imperative? Why can't he do it in his free time like everybody else, using the very same platform he has so much insight in?
Would the code he wants to sell be pertinent to the SAAS platform itself? That might be a bad Idea from the company's point of view for sure. Or can't he produce non-trivial code one could find on Github or somewhere else in his spare time, because of lack of time or energy or of other reasons like having a life? Well that would mean that he'd work on his own projects on company time, something again any company would find a bad idea for sure as well.
OP's situation is definitely not one of a contractor who writes software or modules from scratch or based on an unique skill-set which is licensed out, and he is NOT producing a product or software in itself, but amends to a (presumably) pre-existing (as in existing at the company before he was hired) software in form of (sic) add-ins presumably ordered by the companies' customers in the first place. I cannot see a company entering a contractual situation with anyone on these premises unless there would be a BIG benefit for said company.
Don't get me wrong, OP might be a gifted, hardworking, very creative Individual, which could be a BIG benefit for the company to keep and give free reign. But then again as a Company I would argue to advance OP inside its structure, giving a fancy job title, higher payment and so on, as this would benefit the company much more than to allow OP to make money independently from the companies software.
My advise to OP, if (s)he sees him/herself to be a rather free spirit is to break free from corporate shackles and try to stand on their own feet, and create great software, of which one might be the next big thing, get bought by a bigger company and help yourself to those nifty shares!
Otherwise find good use with those good ties to upper management and advance yourself inside the company, working towards the better payday and create some great software, of which one might be the next big thing, go IPO, and help yourself to those nifty shares!
It cannot be "saved" or "salvaged" or "restored to former glory" simply because the original 3 Movies live in our childhood memories as these amazing experiences and fantasies and colourful images. No one can create a movie which will compare or surpass your childhood memory.
Even with the argument that the original 3 Movies are still good if one watches them again now, you will just remember or re-live your own personal childhood memory.
Are the 3 Original Movies better than the 3 newer ones? according to my 5 year old son yes - but then again for him it is Darth Vader that sells it. Besides Darth Vader it is Yoda for him in the 3 new movies he loves. Will he think the original 6 movies are by magnitudes better than Part 15 - 18? I am betting everything that he will feel that way. I am still looking forward to watch every single one of them together with him, because we love the Star Wars, each for his own reasons.
I learned to program before I learned english. I didn't know exactly what 'print' 'goto' 'rem(ark)' and so on meant, but I knew what it did from experience and examples. The same is true for operating systems. I didn't know exactly what 'file' 'view' 'copy' 'paste' meant, but I knew what it'll do. Until today I never put a 'localized' version of an operating system on my computers, and I always shudder and startle when I have to use one in my mother-tongue. When it comes to computer, english is the mode and language I work in. I am German btw I know quite a few CS Master-graduates from Universities here who are very good their programing languages, but their english sucks.
From my experience age in terms of learning a language only matters in one point:
As an adult you have a much much higher expectation of what you want to convey in another language than a child.
Example: After 1 year learning of another language, its fine for a child to say 'me want lollipop' while for an adult usually nothing less than 'My good man, can I have that lollipop please, and don't give me the tourist-price, I know how this works' would be acceptable.
The benefit Kids have is that they're not inhibited to actually use the language, to play with it, even if it is wrong. But THAT single thing is the secret of learning a language - using it!
Adults are far to set up on getting it right, so they don't talk at all in the first place.
I studied Japanese, and the first time in Japan I was shy and taken back.. guess what, I didn't get anything from the trip language-wise. Second time in Japan I dropped all of that, and - o wonder - people talked to me and in just 3 weeks my abilities in reading and understanding the language doubled from what I brought there.
For what to study - If there is a region of interest, lets say europe or (south)east-asia, I would say any of the languages spoken there is fine. In Europe I would tend towards German or French - either one combined with english will make it easier to learn the other partner later. If Spain or Italy is the target - Italian. It is apparently easier for someone speaking Italian to pick up Spanish or Portuguese. In East-asia I would pick japanese again. Japanese is a well traveled language, it evolved through several other languages. With an understanding in Japanese it is easier to pick up Korean later (or vice versa - they hate to admit it, but it is almost the same). Japanese is a better basis for learning Chinese than the other way around (my opinion). And the basic principles how Japanese works grammatically can be found again in other Asian languages.
For why to study: if you plan to go to Europe, any other language than English will give you bonus points on your resume. It shows that you're willing to invest time to accommodate and to learn. Same is true in Asia from what I saw.
.. but I believe that the limitations of basic taught you and me how to program and to improvise to deliver a solution.
Lets face it, the 'modern' languages are far from perfect, and you have to BE creative to provide solutions.. languages like Basic taught you that creativity, don't deny it.
AFAIK the sale of nazi memorabilia it is not exactly illegal (at least in Germany) but highly regulated. The buyer has to prove to the seller that he has only academic interest in the item.
Yahoo banned the sale because a group in france appealed to the french goverment, and ebay is aware that it can't yield to the regulations in Europe, especially in Germany, one of ebay's biggest markets after the USA.
Enter - hit the default button. Closes all those annoying "OK" dialogs. That is the most single stupid tip you want to teach anybody when it comes to phishing and malware. 'Just hit enter when it asks you "cancel" or "ok"'
-shaking head-
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare.. in their time they were pretty 'pop-culture' themselves, it is our time who made them classics. The big difference between music, books and movies to games is the medium. The Music will be played from sheets in a hundred years, the books can be read in a hundred years, and celluloid and videos are simple enough to have compatible players and projectors.
But (computer) games need a very specific structure, the exact machine they've been build for (or an emulator of that machine, which is not optimal). That might be a big problem in the future and is today already. All the 'classics' in computer-gaming we have today are there because their idea survived, because the gameplay was simple enough (Tetris, Pacman, etc - who can claim to have actually played _the_ original Tetris, or _the_ original Pacman.. we played clones, which is fair enough as we don't hear Beethoven play the piano as well, we hear somebody else play Beethoven on the piano)
But I would put most Music produced today (Britney Spears and Co) and published on CD's in a similar category.. As this music is not freely available its survival to become a 'classic' is questionable as it relies on technology which might be doomed to be forgotten in the times to come. (Now this became another discussion about the risks of DMCA, sue me)
On a side note, when word reached the top of the management chain about the tools we've developed, they tried to make us stop using it because it threatened the potential sale of a "management" tool that they were trying to sell to the customer. That happened only once to you? I was working at and for HP for about 10 years, and I would dare to say something like that happened about every 1.5 years..
Before I became a freelancer I worked for a software company and had downtimes from time to time.
I often used this time to find and work of subjects which interested me personally and professionally, and I would often find myself coding and implementing random ideas.
I can say that in my case about 1/3 of those downtime-projects evolved later into a means for my company to make money or to make my life there much easier (== faster and better work) or would keep me my guru-status;) Another 1/3 of these 'projects' would pose a good library of do's and don'ts and are general viability studies..
the last 1/3 might have been/. , webcomics and NWS things (I always take care that my monitor faces a corner).
When I was involved in the hiring process I was recommending against people who don't have downtimes (too slow, or too hung up on what they know rather than developing themselves) as in my book a good developer has downtime he can and will use to develop him or herself - to have more downtime in the end.
Actually, no. Privacy in Europe is deteriorating as well, especially in Germany and France over the last 2 years. It is just not as fast as in other countries because there are stronger oppositions and not everybody is as ready to jump into the 'Terror-thread' boat, mainly because we've been living with terror-threads for almost 40 years now.
But the changes to privacy-law's done alone in the past year in Germany is an outrage. And did you know that the police can track _any_ vehicle on highways and most larger cities automatically now? It is just not officially used..
Soon the Federal agencies will have access to internet and phone logs without the provider knowing or interfering.. now thats nice..
So no, not all is well in the state of Denmark and its countries around it...
I am pretty sure Columbus had his license from the King or Queen of Portugal, and his clearance papers for his fleet in Lisbon from the Lisbon harbour master.
Of course Windows customers expect a perfect product. Same as Apple customers. Or [insert your distro here] Linux customers. He never claimed that they managed to deliver a perfect product.. Do Apple or [insert your distro here] Linux customers get perfect Products? I hardly think so..
welcome to Apollo Computers Version 2
but who cares...
The games are important, not the console...
on
No X Box for Xmas?
·
· Score: 1
I think something like this has been stated before, but to rephrase it:
It's not imortant what a console is able to do, when it comes out or who build it.
As long as there are games for the console which are worth buying the console I'll go for it (the console will be outdated 12 months after me doing so anyway..)
I bought a PS when there where enough good games available
I would have bought a DC now if Sony wouldn't have pulled it back because there are enough good games now
I will buy a PS2 when there are enough good games available
I will buy a X-Box when there are enough good games avaiable.
What I don't give a damn about is: what are in the damn console or what will be in the next damn console.. as long as the games are worth buying that thing...
Sorry, I can't agree with you here. 1.) Ultima is not 'christian' because it uses 'christian'-like symbols. Ultima is christian in that sense that it promotes something like the crusades in the middle ages (slaughter everybody who doesn't agree with you, and bow before your king who is always right.)
FF OTH (at least 7) promotes something like: think, decide and act for yourself, and don't blindly the ones which're deciding for you.
The virtues, morality and ethics you described are btw present in most religions all over the world.
2.) Japanese games usually have (IMHO) a better, more budistic, philosophy. Yes, they are sometimes more violent than 'Western' games, and they often don't have that 'happy end' you maybe have whished, but thats more honest than many other games or movies. which leads me to point
3.) don't underestimate children! IMHO children from any age should learn to handle diffrent philosphical ideas to train them to be open-minded, what makes them even more capable to find their place in life, not only in society...
Slashdot Mirror
In Germany (part of the EU) the ruling is like this:
An employer has to tell the employee (ideally based in the contract) if company e-mail and equipment is for business use only. This has to be true for all employees.
If an employer does not provide that Information ruling states that the employer has to accept that e-mail and equipment is used for personal matters. The only question here is how much - as in if the employee manages to fullfill his 8 hours of work per day and lets say adds 1 hour personal use.
The tricky part is this:
If the employer allows private usage of e-mail/equipment he becomes a de-facto service provider and has to yield to the law of privacy of correspondence - which means he is not allowed the secretly access equipment or read the e-mail, even if business related
If the employer rules that e-mail and equipment is for business only (s)he can legally read e-mails and access equipment without the employees knowledge.
An additional tricky part is if an employer decides later to cut down on it the employees could claim a right of custom and practice which means it could take months or years before all machines, e-mails and such are clean of private usage. only then the employer would be able to legally access the e-mail or equipment.
Last, but not least, the European Court in question was the Euorpean Court of Human Rights, not the court dealing with the European Union. The participating countries have promised to yield to the rulings in their own private matters, but the ruling limited application as the Court is not part of any justice or executive system in any country of the european union (and more). So it is a court without teeth.
Rereading the question, OP works at a company servicing a SAAS for developers to share code and being paid for it; so far so good. OP works on the backend software for this platform, very well as well.
He wants to sell his Code and Ideas, this is fair. But why has he have to do this in company time? In the question this reads as an imperative? Why can't he do it in his free time like everybody else, using the very same platform he has so much insight in?
Would the code he wants to sell be pertinent to the SAAS platform itself? That might be a bad Idea from the company's point of view for sure.
Or can't he produce non-trivial code one could find on Github or somewhere else in his spare time, because of lack of time or energy or of other reasons like having a life? Well that would mean that he'd work on his own projects on company time, something again any company would find a bad idea for sure as well.
OP's situation is definitely not one of a contractor who writes software or modules from scratch or based on an unique skill-set which is licensed out, and he is NOT producing a product or software in itself, but amends to a (presumably) pre-existing (as in existing at the company before he was hired) software in form of (sic) add-ins presumably ordered by the companies' customers in the first place.
I cannot see a company entering a contractual situation with anyone on these premises unless there would be a BIG benefit for said company.
Don't get me wrong, OP might be a gifted, hardworking, very creative Individual, which could be a BIG benefit for the company to keep and give free reign. But then again as a Company I would argue to advance OP inside its structure, giving a fancy job title, higher payment and so on, as this would benefit the company much more than to allow OP to make money independently from the companies software.
My advise to OP, if (s)he sees him/herself to be a rather free spirit is to break free from corporate shackles and try to stand on their own feet, and create great software, of which one might be the next big thing, get bought by a bigger company and help yourself to those nifty shares!
Otherwise find good use with those good ties to upper management and advance yourself inside the company, working towards the better payday and create some great software, of which one might be the next big thing, go IPO, and help yourself to those nifty shares!
its your choice
It cannot be "saved" or "salvaged" or "restored to former glory" simply because the original 3 Movies live in our childhood memories as these amazing experiences and fantasies and colourful images. No one can create a movie which will compare or surpass your childhood memory.
Even with the argument that the original 3 Movies are still good if one watches them again now, you will just remember or re-live your own personal childhood memory.
Are the 3 Original Movies better than the 3 newer ones? according to my 5 year old son yes - but then again for him it is Darth Vader that sells it. Besides Darth Vader it is Yoda for him in the 3 new movies he loves. Will he think the original 6 movies are by magnitudes better than Part 15 - 18? I am betting everything that he will feel that way.
I am still looking forward to watch every single one of them together with him, because we love the Star Wars, each for his own reasons.
By the way, I own nexus one, and with the right firmware (latest cyanogenmod with UV kernel), it's a great phone.
And this sentence illustrates perfectly the biggest issue with the android platform.
I want to live in the Europe parent and grand-parent live in...
I learned to program before I learned english. I didn't know exactly what 'print' 'goto' 'rem(ark)' and so on meant, but I knew what it did from experience and examples.
The same is true for operating systems. I didn't know exactly what 'file' 'view' 'copy' 'paste' meant, but I knew what it'll do.
Until today I never put a 'localized' version of an operating system on my computers, and I always shudder and startle when I have to use one in my mother-tongue.
When it comes to computer, english is the mode and language I work in.
I am German btw
I know quite a few CS Master-graduates from Universities here who are very good their programing languages, but their english sucks.
From my experience age in terms of learning a language only matters in one point:
As an adult you have a much much higher expectation of what you want to convey in another language than a child.
Example:
After 1 year learning of another language, its fine for a child to say 'me want lollipop' while for an adult usually nothing less than 'My good man, can I have that lollipop please, and don't give me the tourist-price, I know how this works' would be acceptable.
The benefit Kids have is that they're not inhibited to actually use the language, to play with it, even if it is wrong. But THAT single thing is the secret of learning a language - using it!
Adults are far to set up on getting it right, so they don't talk at all in the first place.
I studied Japanese, and the first time in Japan I was shy and taken back.. guess what, I didn't get anything from the trip language-wise. Second time in Japan I dropped all of that, and - o wonder - people talked to me and in just 3 weeks my abilities in reading and understanding the language doubled from what I brought there.
For what to study - If there is a region of interest, lets say europe or (south)east-asia, I would say any of the languages spoken there is fine. In Europe I would tend towards German or French - either one combined with english will make it easier to learn the other partner later. If Spain or Italy is the target - Italian. It is apparently easier for someone speaking Italian to pick up Spanish or Portuguese. In East-asia I would pick japanese again. Japanese is a well traveled language, it evolved through several other languages. With an understanding in Japanese it is easier to pick up Korean later (or vice versa - they hate to admit it, but it is almost the same). Japanese is a better basis for learning Chinese than the other way around (my opinion). And the basic principles how Japanese works grammatically can be found again in other Asian languages.
For why to study: if you plan to go to Europe, any other language than English will give you bonus points on your resume. It shows that you're willing to invest time to accommodate and to learn. Same is true in Asia from what I saw.
.. but I believe that the limitations of basic taught you and me how to program and to improvise to deliver a solution.
Lets face it, the 'modern' languages are far from perfect, and you have to BE creative to provide solutions.. languages like Basic taught you that creativity, don't deny it.
First lesson in Business master school:
You must never say that your business is doing well and you must never say that you have any profits.
If you are forced to disclose your profits, lie.
And no, that is not a joke, that WAS the first line in my Masters classes..
AFAIK the sale of nazi memorabilia it is not exactly illegal (at least in Germany) but highly regulated. The buyer has to prove to the seller that he has only academic interest in the item.
Yahoo banned the sale because a group in france appealed to the french goverment, and ebay is aware that it can't yield to the regulations in Europe, especially in Germany, one of ebay's biggest markets after the USA.
Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Shakespeare.. in their time they were pretty 'pop-culture' themselves, it is our time who made them classics. The big difference between music, books and movies to games is the medium. The Music will be played from sheets in a hundred years, the books can be read in a hundred years, and celluloid and videos are simple enough to have compatible players and projectors.
But (computer) games need a very specific structure, the exact machine they've been build for (or an emulator of that machine, which is not optimal). That might be a big problem in the future and is today already. All the 'classics' in computer-gaming we have today are there because their idea survived, because the gameplay was simple enough (Tetris, Pacman, etc - who can claim to have actually played _the_ original Tetris, or _the_ original Pacman.. we played clones, which is fair enough as we don't hear Beethoven play the piano as well, we hear somebody else play Beethoven on the piano)
But I would put most Music produced today (Britney Spears and Co) and published on CD's in a similar category.. As this music is not freely available its survival to become a 'classic' is questionable as it relies on technology which might be doomed to be forgotten in the times to come.
(Now this became another discussion about the risks of DMCA, sue me)
Before I became a freelancer I worked for a software company and had downtimes from time to time.
;)
/. , webcomics and NWS things (I always take care that my monitor faces a corner).
I often used this time to find and work of subjects which interested me personally and professionally, and I would often find myself coding and implementing random ideas.
I can say that in my case about 1/3 of those downtime-projects evolved later into a means for my company to make money or to make my life there much easier (== faster and better work) or would keep me my guru-status
Another 1/3 of these 'projects' would pose a good library of do's and don'ts and are general viability studies..
the last 1/3 might have been
When I was involved in the hiring process I was recommending against people who don't have downtimes (too slow, or too hung up on what they know rather than developing themselves) as in my book a good developer has downtime he can and will use to develop him or herself - to have more downtime in the end.
Spam will be spam, it doesn't matter if the spam will remotly be of any interest for me or not. If I didn't ask for the offer, it is spam.
If the spam is targeted to my needs it will just get harder for filters to filter them out, as they match my 'usual' profile.
Actually, no. Privacy in Europe is deteriorating as well, especially in Germany and France over the last 2 years. It is just not as fast as in other countries because there are stronger oppositions and not everybody is as ready to jump into the 'Terror-thread' boat, mainly because we've been living with terror-threads for almost 40 years now.
But the changes to privacy-law's done alone in the past year in Germany is an outrage. And did you know that the police can track _any_ vehicle on highways and most larger cities automatically now? It is just not officially used..
Soon the Federal agencies will have access to internet and phone logs without the provider knowing or interfering.. now thats nice..
So no, not all is well in the state of Denmark and its countries around it...
I am pretty sure Columbus had his license from the King or Queen of Portugal, and his clearance papers for his fleet in Lisbon from the Lisbon harbour master.
Your statistics are correct.
Visit the Holocaust Museum in Hiroshima, and then tell if your statistics still matter
Why Hilarious?
Of course Windows customers expect a perfect product. Same as Apple customers. Or [insert your distro here] Linux customers. He never claimed that they managed to deliver a perfect product.. Do Apple or [insert your distro here] Linux customers get perfect Products? I hardly think so..
Still we demand those kind of products.
welcome to Apollo Computers Version 2
but who cares...
I think something like this has been stated before, but to rephrase it:
It's not imortant what a console is able to do, when it comes out or who build it.
As long as there are games for the console which are worth buying the console I'll go for it (the console will be outdated 12 months after me doing so anyway..)
I bought a PS when there where enough good games available
I would have bought a DC now if Sony wouldn't have pulled it back because there are enough good games now
I will buy a PS2 when there are enough good games available
I will buy a X-Box when there are enough good games avaiable.
What I don't give a damn about is: what are in the damn console or what will be in the next damn console.. as long as the games are worth buying that thing...
who cares about zend? you can use php perfectly without zendcache or compiler. if you want to cache have a look at apc, works perfect and is free...
Sorry, I can't agree with you here.
1.) Ultima is not 'christian' because it uses 'christian'-like symbols. Ultima is christian in that sense that it promotes something like the crusades in the middle ages (slaughter everybody who doesn't agree with you, and bow before your king who is always right.)
FF OTH (at least 7) promotes something like: think, decide and act for yourself, and don't blindly the ones which're deciding for you.
The virtues, morality and ethics you described are btw present in most religions all over the world.
2.) Japanese games usually have (IMHO) a better, more budistic, philosophy. Yes, they are sometimes
more violent than 'Western' games, and they often don't have that 'happy end' you maybe have whished, but thats more honest than many other games or movies.
which leads me to point
3.) don't underestimate children! IMHO children from any age should learn to handle diffrent philosphical ideas to train them to be open-minded, what makes them even more capable to find their place in life, not only in society...