You just did it again. You said "sign up for". That speaks for itself.
While welcoming me to 2005 sounds kinda cute, it doesn't really get around the fact that crap like this just doesn't hold up in court. They can't turn a well understood process like paying for a subscription into a tightly-binding contract just because they may want to. It just wouldn't fly.
That's bullshit. You send in some money for a subscription, you get the magazines you paid for. The subscription "agreement", can say whatever it wants to. It can request my firstborn, if it likes. They can go fuck themselves if I choose not to pay them for more magazines.
Like most subscriptions, I doubt anything was even signed. It's a simple cash transaction for magazines. Anything else wouldn't hold up in court.
As most others have pointed out, it's just a stupid strong-arm move by Wired. I can't say that I'm sad to see such pricks destroy themselves.
Ummm... take it back? The most conservative of the Supremes were the ones who voted AGAINST the municipality. Maybe you didn't read the article?
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."
She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Software and other content developers trying to protect themselves from pirates is hardly Feudal serfdom.
It's more possible than ever to collect movies, music, and software (that you never paid for) than ever before. Expect corporations to overreact to that theft as much as possible and for equity imbalances to result.
If you were as vocal about protecting the rights of content producers as you are about protecting the rights of "the people", maybe there would be more balance in the situation.
Those of us in the middle are willing to pay for what we use and ask to be paid for what we create. As usual, you warring factions at the extremes make it difficult for the more reasonable people to just live their lives in peace. Nice job.
Randal Schwartz of Perl fame learned the hard way that doing something illegal to show the problems with a computer system still gets you into trouble.
Withholding paychecks is serious business. The only way to stop paying someone is to give him immediate notice that he is no longer employed, then you can stop paying him from that point. Withholding a salaried employee's already-accrued pay is really difficult to do.
One call to your local labor board for withheld paychecks sets your former employer up for some intense serious ass fucking. You could probably get them in trouble just because they threatened it.
(Note to flamers: I eat meat myself, but I still think that acceptance of killing animals for meat is based more on necessity and tradition than on any sort of robust ethics)
I don't understand the ethical dilemma of eating meat. We have a "social contract" with people to work together for mutual benefit. Under that umbrella of cooperation, we include even those human beings who lack the mental capacity to agree to such a thing - just to be on the safe side. To this point, we've had no reason to believe that any animals take part in this social contract, so they really do lie outside the scope of ethical consideration.
Since you might have a lot of things in mind, from where does your non-robust ethics of meat-eating thought stem?
What an excellent concept. How about if your hunting and downloading of meat could somehow be augmented by the hunting and downloading of meat by other Internet hunters... we could call it MeatTorrent!
So, Apple should just start selling their iPods without hard drives. Sell the hard drives separately. Since bare hard drives don't have a tax, there ya go...
We've been reading about holographic storage systems that are due out any time now for the last 15 years... gives us a call when (at very least) a respected review organization has gotten its hands on a prototype. Then at least we can have a wee bit of validation.
Until then, blow your stock/VC-pumping hype out of your asses.
And Steve Jobs current "official" salary?
Wrong argument.
Sorry, it was the right argument. Steve Jobs was compensated hundreds of millions of dollars in that deal where he got the GulfStream years ago. I haven't been following his compensation lately, but I'd be willing to bet my salary against his any day.
It depends on what you mean by "demand". If you mean that they demand it by saying, "No thank you, I'll take another better paying/lower work/whatever job." than I agree with you, they have every right to do that and I'd encourage them to do so.
If by "demand", you're asking for legal remedy to what is really just a fair negotiation between employers and employees, then I do in fact say they have no right to "demand a higher standard of living".
Regarding the rest of you comments, it's pretty easy for us to armchair quarterback and say what companies can do and still be successful. The fact that the video game business has so many frequent casualties would seem to indicate that being successful there isn't so easy. Given the many data points I have in that regard, I'm just not inclined to start decreeing that government should step in and start making it even harder for them to compete.
Welcome to life. Most corporations/governments/unions/organizations don't deliver what they promise. The problem is that they're all composed of people, most of whom don't deliver what they promise.
Circling back to the topic at hand: Here we have a situation where many/.ers seem to be saying that these programmers should feel like they were promised more and that EA should be held accountable (legally in many posts) for not delivering on those promises.
I contend that no such promises were made by EA and that as a society, we're better off allowing EA and its workers to have free and open relationships whereby they negotiate with each other for wages, hours worked, vacation, etc.
As long as no extreme monopolies are present, market forces will rectify any inequities in the employer-employee relationships far better than the ham-fisted approach of government.
How is it an uneven battle? Is someone forcing these programmers to work at a video game company?
Are there no other jobs out there?
The guys are making $60k (plus bonuses plus stock options?) just out of college. And this is such an unfair situation because they're being asked to work their asses off to keep jobs that many other people would probably take for less money?
It would be uneven if we lived in a society where the employers colluded with one another in a monopolistic fashion... which this isn't the case. It would be uneven if people in this society didn't have easy mobility within the US and out of it, for that matter... not the case here. It would be uneven if we lived in a society that wasn't perfectly open to programmers starting their own companies at the drop of a hat... not the case here.
Exactly where is the huge inequity in this situation again?
Since I've turned down a job in the video game industry, moved around the country to join companies that properly enticed me, worked my ass off when I felt I needed to, and started a couple of my own companies -- I can personally say that I have every bit as much power as employers do. Different power, certainly, but equitable in its own fashion.
Notice that this is "expat" housing. They're foreigners in the country. Most of the expats I knew there worked for various governments. You can hardly call this typical Indian housing.
I've been to the squalor-esque homes of some of these people with the "silver spoons". Even the families with money and servants and all that live in relative slums by western standards.
So call bullshit all you want, but you go and work there for 6 months like I did and really get to know the people and it will change your perspective (and probably your life).
I only buy games after they've been out for a while, so I rarely pay more that $15 for them. On top of the low price, buying games after they've been out a while means that you also get the longer-term reviews that are more honest and have broken past the game's release hype. Additionally, there are always plenty of walkthroughs available online in case you get stuck.:)
No one is "forcing" you to buy $50 games. They're GAMES for Christ's sake... it's not like we're talking about emergency medical treatment.
Some CEOs are more than worth the money. Apple was headed into the dirt until Jobs returned to fix things. He saved the jobs of thousands of people and provided products that have given millions more happiness or at least some semblance of satisfaction.
A CEO is the general of his organization. At a large company, his decisions can have billion dollar consequences and directly affect the livelihood tens of thousands of employees. At that scale, $10million to ensure that it will happen is a small price to pay.
What about the ones who run their companies into the ground?
They should be fired. Company boards that make those decisions deserve to lose their companies.
Or the ones who screw the shareholders?
If they did so breaking the law, they should get jail time.
Or the ones who like to dump toxic waste in vacant lots in the night?
That's illegal, so they should pay fines and go to jail. Why keep constructing these veritable straw men?
Slashdot Mirror
You just did it again. You said "sign up for". That speaks for itself.
While welcoming me to 2005 sounds kinda cute, it doesn't really get around the fact that crap like this just doesn't hold up in court. They can't turn a well understood process like paying for a subscription into a tightly-binding contract just because they may want to. It just wouldn't fly.
That's bullshit. You send in some money for a subscription, you get the magazines you paid for. The subscription "agreement", can say whatever it wants to. It can request my firstborn, if it likes. They can go fuck themselves if I choose not to pay them for more magazines.
Like most subscriptions, I doubt anything was even signed. It's a simple cash transaction for magazines. Anything else wouldn't hold up in court.
As most others have pointed out, it's just a stupid strong-arm move by Wired. I can't say that I'm sad to see such pricks destroy themselves.
Ummm... take it back? The most conservative of the Supremes were the ones who voted AGAINST the municipality. Maybe you didn't read the article?
"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Is that the fault you find in this? That some people are idealistic and would like to live in a world without assholes?
Yeah, how dare they.
... is that the airport screeners keep their hands above the little table, in plain sight.
I have a penis
Objection: Hearsay.
So you're saying National Semiconductor is a government-run operation? How about National Bank, or Nationals (the grocery store)?
Lighten up, Francis.
Software and other content developers trying to protect themselves from pirates is hardly Feudal serfdom.
It's more possible than ever to collect movies, music, and software (that you never paid for) than ever before. Expect corporations to overreact to that theft as much as possible and for equity imbalances to result.
If you were as vocal about protecting the rights of content producers as you are about protecting the rights of "the people", maybe there would be more balance in the situation.
Those of us in the middle are willing to pay for what we use and ask to be paid for what we create. As usual, you warring factions at the extremes make it difficult for the more reasonable people to just live their lives in peace. Nice job.
Randal Schwartz of Perl fame learned the hard way that doing something illegal to show the problems with a computer system still gets you into trouble.
How about Janeway?
/em runs ducking and covering.
Withholding paychecks is serious business. The only way to stop paying someone is to give him immediate notice that he is no longer employed, then you can stop paying him from that point. Withholding a salaried employee's already-accrued pay is really difficult to do.
One call to your local labor board for withheld paychecks sets your former employer up for some intense serious ass fucking. You could probably get them in trouble just because they threatened it.
(Note to flamers: I eat meat myself, but I still think that acceptance of killing animals for meat is based more on necessity and tradition than on any sort of robust ethics)
I don't understand the ethical dilemma of eating meat. We have a "social contract" with people to work together for mutual benefit. Under that umbrella of cooperation, we include even those human beings who lack the mental capacity to agree to such a thing - just to be on the safe side. To this point, we've had no reason to believe that any animals take part in this social contract, so they really do lie outside the scope of ethical consideration.
Since you might have a lot of things in mind, from where does your non-robust ethics of meat-eating thought stem?
What an excellent concept. How about if your hunting and downloading of meat could somehow be augmented by the hunting and downloading of meat by other Internet hunters... we could call it MeatTorrent!
Why don't they send Spirit over to give it a little push?
Jeez!
So, Apple should just start selling their iPods without hard drives. Sell the hard drives separately. Since bare hard drives don't have a tax, there ya go...
We've been reading about holographic storage systems that are due out any time now for the last 15 years... gives us a call when (at very least) a respected review organization has gotten its hands on a prototype. Then at least we can have a wee bit of validation.
Until then, blow your stock/VC-pumping hype out of your asses.
Not to sound like an economist or, worse, a republican,
That wasn't so hard, now was it?
Now, repeat after me:
"Sean Hannity rocks!"
"Get your hands off my hard-earned tax dollars, commie!"
"James Carville is an incarnation of Satan"
For further reading: Pudge's Journal
And Steve Jobs current "official" salary? Wrong argument.
Sorry, it was the right argument. Steve Jobs was compensated hundreds of millions of dollars in that deal where he got the GulfStream years ago. I haven't been following his compensation lately, but I'd be willing to bet my salary against his any day.
It depends on what you mean by "demand". If you mean that they demand it by saying, "No thank you, I'll take another better paying/lower work/whatever job." than I agree with you, they have every right to do that and I'd encourage them to do so.
If by "demand", you're asking for legal remedy to what is really just a fair negotiation between employers and employees, then I do in fact say they have no right to "demand a higher standard of living".
Regarding the rest of you comments, it's pretty easy for us to armchair quarterback and say what companies can do and still be successful. The fact that the video game business has so many frequent casualties would seem to indicate that being successful there isn't so easy. Given the many data points I have in that regard, I'm just not inclined to start decreeing that government should step in and start making it even harder for them to compete.
Welcome to life. Most corporations/governments/unions/organizations don't deliver what they promise. The problem is that they're all composed of people, most of whom don't deliver what they promise.
/.ers seem to be saying that these programmers should feel like they were promised more and that EA should be held accountable (legally in many posts) for not delivering on those promises.
Circling back to the topic at hand: Here we have a situation where many
I contend that no such promises were made by EA and that as a society, we're better off allowing EA and its workers to have free and open relationships whereby they negotiate with each other for wages, hours worked, vacation, etc.
As long as no extreme monopolies are present, market forces will rectify any inequities in the employer-employee relationships far better than the ham-fisted approach of government.
How is it an uneven battle? Is someone forcing these programmers to work at a video game company?
Are there no other jobs out there?
The guys are making $60k (plus bonuses plus stock options?) just out of college. And this is such an unfair situation because they're being asked to work their asses off to keep jobs that many other people would probably take for less money?
It would be uneven if we lived in a society where the employers colluded with one another in a monopolistic fashion... which this isn't the case. It would be uneven if people in this society didn't have easy mobility within the US and out of it, for that matter... not the case here. It would be uneven if we lived in a society that wasn't perfectly open to programmers starting their own companies at the drop of a hat... not the case here.
Exactly where is the huge inequity in this situation again?
Since I've turned down a job in the video game industry, moved around the country to join companies that properly enticed me, worked my ass off when I felt I needed to, and started a couple of my own companies -- I can personally say that I have every bit as much power as employers do. Different power, certainly, but equitable in its own fashion.
Notice that this is "expat" housing. They're foreigners in the country. Most of the expats I knew there worked for various governments. You can hardly call this typical Indian housing.
I've been to the squalor-esque homes of some of these people with the "silver spoons". Even the families with money and servants and all that live in relative slums by western standards.
So call bullshit all you want, but you go and work there for 6 months like I did and really get to know the people and it will change your perspective (and probably your life).
I only buy games after they've been out for a while, so I rarely pay more that $15 for them. On top of the low price, buying games after they've been out a while means that you also get the longer-term reviews that are more honest and have broken past the game's release hype. Additionally, there are always plenty of walkthroughs available online in case you get stuck. :)
No one is "forcing" you to buy $50 games. They're GAMES for Christ's sake... it's not like we're talking about emergency medical treatment.
Ahh, an advocate for paying CEO's $10M a year.
Some CEOs are more than worth the money. Apple was headed into the dirt until Jobs returned to fix things. He saved the jobs of thousands of people and provided products that have given millions more happiness or at least some semblance of satisfaction.
A CEO is the general of his organization. At a large company, his decisions can have billion dollar consequences and directly affect the livelihood tens of thousands of employees. At that scale, $10million to ensure that it will happen is a small price to pay.
What about the ones who run their companies into the ground?
They should be fired. Company boards that make those decisions deserve to lose their companies.
Or the ones who screw the shareholders?
If they did so breaking the law, they should get jail time.
Or the ones who like to dump toxic waste in vacant lots in the night?
That's illegal, so they should pay fines and go to jail. Why keep constructing these veritable straw men?