There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. -- Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Might not survive a court review, however the poor soul who was brought to court where the review would occur would not have a fun or easy time. Not to mention the cost of defending oneself until he could get off.
I would suggest that if Bram Cohen is considering any future travel to the EU that he do so now, just in case this legislation gets passed.
Why? Because he would probably be target #1 for all of the rampant piracy that occurs via bittorrent, all despite his original intentions for the protocol/system.
Often the person who invents something is not as important as who can make it into a working product, at least in the business world.
The Wright brothers invented the airplane, but were not able to turn it into a successful business venture, leaving plenty of room for others to come in and dominate the market.
Take cars for example, Henry Ford certainly did not invent the automobile, he just created a better way of doing it, along the way creating an empire based on his early work that has enabled his company to go further than he or anyone else at the time could have predicted.
Sure, Microsoft may not have invented many of those products you mentioned, but they certainly have taken each and turned them into major players in ways that their original inventors were not able to.
I tend to work on code in Visual Studio 6 at least once a month that still works just fine here, ~10 years after its release.
But even when it comes to VS2003, last time I checked C# and.NET for example were based on EMCA standards, standards which have been implemented for use under Linux, MacOS and others, all making it possible for you to build an application in VS2003 and have it run on other systems.
A couple of years ago was the last one. Rather than just compare the stock price, be sure to look at the total number of outstanding shares for each and their corresponding total Market capitalization.
Quoting from:
Google Market Cap. 83.11 Bil Tot. Shares Out. 277.8 Mil
Microsoft Market Cap. 287.1 Bil Tot. Shares Out. 10.71 Bil
So from that we end up with Microsoft being worth about ~3.4 as much as Google.
With a little more math we predict that if Google had as many outstanding shares as Microsoft, each share would be worth only ~$7.76 a piece. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that many predict a Google crash due to the apparent overvaluation of their stock.
Not exactly, it is a business model, the patenting of which is quite popular and at times lucrative. Pretty much sounds like UUDI + payment which would technically be considered a new and novel idea dare I say it.
On it's way out? Do tell, where are you getting this from as in my experience.NET is one of the greatest things since sliced bread when it comes to coding windows or web based applications.
... ASP.NET only requires the.NET framework on the server side, for the actual generation of the pages. Remember, ASP.NET is not unlike PHP, Perl (when server side) and old school ASP, all dynamically generate pages on the server that are fed back to the client, and if a designer so wishes, they can tailor their pages to specific browsers and features.
Don't get me wrong though, ASP.NET generated pages do tend to work better IE as there are a number of added features that it can take advantage of (scripting, authentication, etc), however ASP.NET is designed to generate pages that are compatible with any modern browser, Firefox included. If you had issues getting your pages to work under browsers other than IE than you were running into issues created by the builder of the web page/application, not ASP.NET.
The only time you really require.NET on the client is if you are hosting a.NET control in a web page similar to ActiveX.
What are you going to do when the next worm comes along that exploits a flaw that MS fixed in XP but not 2000?
By that time I expect that he and others will have upgraded to something else given that 2k has only left primary support and is now into the realm of extended support. meaning? no new features, however new security patches will still be provided for the next 4 or so years.
Do tell, are you a lawyer or judge with extensive experience in contract law?
If the answer to the above is no, then frankly I do not want to hear what you have to say as existing case law contradicts what you have said.
Any contract that puts an unreasonable restraints on an individuals ability to get a new job would be likely to be thrown out. Microsoft, like many companies has been doing these contracts for quite a bit of time and has enough lawyers to make sure that they are not leaving gaping holes in them that defecting employees could easily fit through.
As I've said in my previous posts, please, do some research on this topic and you will see just how wrong you are.
I suggest you do some research on the topic. You will find that there is a fair amount of existing case law on this topic. Regardless of if you like or agree with this case, it will most likely succeed as MSFT and others have been enforcing non-compete clauses for quite a long time with a great deal of success.
One thing is worth noting, no where is MSFT or anyone else forcing this person to be jobless. He agreed to these terms at the start of his employment, if he had disagreed with them he shouldn't have signed the contract and taken the job. Furthermore, nothing is stopping him from working at all, he is simply barred from working certain jobs at certain companies within certain industries.
Again, please do us all a favor and do some research into what this is about.
If you want to talk about such actions... I suggest you look up Alienation of Affection. It's only still useable in a few states (South Dakota being one of them (where I live)) and has to be one of the coolest and yet most ridiculous concepts still on the books.
In short, it is based on the concept that a wife is property of her husband, and if another man should 'steal' the wife from the husband and cause her to wish to be with him, leading to the end of the existing marriage, the (former) husband has legal standing to sue the other man for taking his wife.
Brilliant eh?
In most states where this concept exists (or more often existed), it has been thrown out by judges hearing such cases in recent years, so it's existence is quite endangered.
Why do I mention this? Simple, the example you made as a joke believe it or not has some legal standing.
Non-compete clauses are quite common in many higher end tech jobs and have been upheld for the most part provided the terms of agreement are not unreasonable. A lifetime agreement not to work for the competition would quickly get thrown out, however a year or two long within a specific sector or industry would be just fine expect where prohibited by law... California IIRC expressly forbids non-compete clauses, however I could be wrong as it's been a while since I looked into it.
Part of business is a group providing goods and services to customers, and if they are unable to provide those goods and services customers want today, then they are likely to go to other companies who can provide what they want.
At the end of the day, it is all about making money by providing what it is the customer wants, which is why the iTunes and (new) Napsters of the world are doing so well compared to these new ones that do not have the blessing of the RIAA.
You can talk about ideals and being DRM free all you want, but the fact is that the vast majority of customers are willing to accept such minor restrictions to be able to have the convenience of purchasing and downloading music from their favorite big name artists at home, something they cannot do with most of the alternative services.
Fine, you have that problem and are in the minority, meaning that you issuing such a warning is rather stupid... not unlike I as a Windows user issuing a warning that a particular file is a gziped tarbal.
Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low. And as some have pointed out, just because a verdict is overturned does not mean that someone did not commit the act that they were accused of.
For an example of this, see the recent Washington (State) Supreme Court Ruling where they effectively created a legal meaning for innocent whereby a person who was convicted of a crime and later had that verdict thrown out must prove their innocence in order to be able to sue their lawyer for malpractice.
Going to Google and asking them to remove all *.torrent files is just moronic. When different copyright holders get peeved about links, they go to the holder of them with a list and request that they be removed, not that all links containing.torrent as the responsibility to catalog offending links is not on the side of the holder of them, but on that of the complainer..torrent files like.mp3 files are not inherently illegal. Yes, many use them for many illegal things, however blanket banning/delisting does not solve the issue and causes much more harm than good, which is why lists are compiled and removed.
Just think, when copyright holders send out C&D's, they don't say "You've been sharing a bunch of our files" they say "You've been sharing XXX, YYY, and ZZZ", they are specific so that their threat has credibility and legal weight.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote my favorite book:
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. -- Ayn Rand in Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Might not survive a court review, however the poor soul who was brought to court where the review would occur would not have a fun or easy time. Not to mention the cost of defending oneself until he could get off.
I would suggest that if Bram Cohen is considering any future travel to the EU that he do so now, just in case this legislation gets passed.
Why? Because he would probably be target #1 for all of the rampant piracy that occurs via bittorrent, all despite his original intentions for the protocol/system.
Often the person who invents something is not as important as who can make it into a working product, at least in the business world.
The Wright brothers invented the airplane, but were not able to turn it into a successful business venture, leaving plenty of room for others to come in and dominate the market.
Take cars for example, Henry Ford certainly did not invent the automobile, he just created a better way of doing it, along the way creating an empire based on his early work that has enabled his company to go further than he or anyone else at the time could have predicted.
Sure, Microsoft may not have invented many of those products you mentioned, but they certainly have taken each and turned them into major players in ways that their original inventors were not able to.
I tend to work on code in Visual Studio 6 at least once a month that still works just fine here, ~10 years after its release.
.NET for example were based on EMCA standards, standards which have been implemented for use under Linux, MacOS and others, all making it possible for you to build an application in VS2003 and have it run on other systems.
But even when it comes to VS2003, last time I checked C# and
A couple of years ago was the last one. Rather than just compare the stock price, be sure to look at the total number of outstanding shares for each and their corresponding total Market capitalization.
Quoting from:
Google
Market Cap. 83.11 Bil
Tot. Shares Out. 277.8 Mil
Microsoft
Market Cap. 287.1 Bil
Tot. Shares Out. 10.71 Bil
So from that we end up with Microsoft being worth about ~3.4 as much as Google.
With a little more math we predict that if Google had as many outstanding shares as Microsoft, each share would be worth only ~$7.76 a piece. Of course, this is ignoring the fact that many predict a Google crash due to the apparent overvaluation of their stock.
I'm quite close on my blog at 80% when you combine XP and 2003.
See stats here.
Not exactly, it is a business model, the patenting of which is quite popular and at times lucrative. Pretty much sounds like UUDI + payment which would technically be considered a new and novel idea dare I say it.
On it's way out? Do tell, where are you getting this from as in my experience .NET is one of the greatest things since sliced bread when it comes to coding windows or web based applications.
... ASP.NET only requires the .NET framework on the server side, for the actual generation of the pages. Remember, ASP.NET is not unlike PHP, Perl (when server side) and old school ASP, all dynamically generate pages on the server that are fed back to the client, and if a designer so wishes, they can tailor their pages to specific browsers and features.
.NET on the client is if you are hosting a .NET control in a web page similar to ActiveX.
Don't get me wrong though, ASP.NET generated pages do tend to work better IE as there are a number of added features that it can take advantage of (scripting, authentication, etc), however ASP.NET is designed to generate pages that are compatible with any modern browser, Firefox included. If you had issues getting your pages to work under browsers other than IE than you were running into issues created by the builder of the web page/application, not ASP.NET.
The only time you really require
Do you really still want to be running Windows in 2006?
Yes.
I agree with much of your logic reguarding the communities of each OS and reminds me of an old quote, something to the effect of :
"BSD is for those who love Unix. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft."
What are you going to do when the next worm comes along that exploits a flaw that MS fixed in XP but not 2000?
By that time I expect that he and others will have upgraded to something else given that 2k has only left primary support and is now into the realm of extended support. meaning? no new features, however new security patches will still be provided for the next 4 or so years.
I mock you both! I'm at 25% and still going strong at 35.7k/s!
i would say any contract...
Do tell, are you a lawyer or judge with extensive experience in contract law?
If the answer to the above is no, then frankly I do not want to hear what you have to say as existing case law contradicts what you have said.
Any contract that puts an unreasonable restraints on an individuals ability to get a new job would be likely to be thrown out. Microsoft, like many companies has been doing these contracts for quite a bit of time and has enough lawyers to make sure that they are not leaving gaping holes in them that defecting employees could easily fit through.
As I've said in my previous posts, please, do some research on this topic and you will see just how wrong you are.
I suggest you do some research on the topic. You will find that there is a fair amount of existing case law on this topic. Regardless of if you like or agree with this case, it will most likely succeed as MSFT and others have been enforcing non-compete clauses for quite a long time with a great deal of success.
One thing is worth noting, no where is MSFT or anyone else forcing this person to be jobless. He agreed to these terms at the start of his employment, if he had disagreed with them he shouldn't have signed the contract and taken the job. Furthermore, nothing is stopping him from working at all, he is simply barred from working certain jobs at certain companies within certain industries.
Again, please do us all a favor and do some research into what this is about.
If you want to talk about such actions... I suggest you look up Alienation of Affection. It's only still useable in a few states (South Dakota being one of them (where I live)) and has to be one of the coolest and yet most ridiculous concepts still on the books.
In short, it is based on the concept that a wife is property of her husband, and if another man should 'steal' the wife from the husband and cause her to wish to be with him, leading to the end of the existing marriage, the (former) husband has legal standing to sue the other man for taking his wife.
Brilliant eh?
In most states where this concept exists (or more often existed), it has been thrown out by judges hearing such cases in recent years, so it's existence is quite endangered.
Why do I mention this? Simple, the example you made as a joke believe it or not has some legal standing.
Non-compete clauses are quite common in many higher end tech jobs and have been upheld for the most part provided the terms of agreement are not unreasonable. A lifetime agreement not to work for the competition would quickly get thrown out, however a year or two long within a specific sector or industry would be just fine expect where prohibited by law... California IIRC expressly forbids non-compete clauses, however I could be wrong as it's been a while since I looked into it.
Before badmouthing MS R&D... perhaps you should look into a bit of what they do: http://research.microsoft.com/.
I think you miss understand business.
Part of business is a group providing goods and services to customers, and if they are unable to provide those goods and services customers want today, then they are likely to go to other companies who can provide what they want.
At the end of the day, it is all about making money by providing what it is the customer wants, which is why the iTunes and (new) Napsters of the world are doing so well compared to these new ones that do not have the blessing of the RIAA.
You can talk about ideals and being DRM free all you want, but the fact is that the vast majority of customers are willing to accept such minor restrictions to be able to have the convenience of purchasing and downloading music from their favorite big name artists at home, something they cannot do with most of the alternative services.
"It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Fine, you have that problem and are in the minority, meaning that you issuing such a warning is rather stupid... not unlike I as a Windows user issuing a warning that a particular file is a gziped tarbal.
Good idea! I'll just go to the first page that Google returns and... "The page cannot be displayed"... oh damn.
Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low. And as some have pointed out, just because a verdict is overturned does not mean that someone did not commit the act that they were accused of.
For an example of this, see the recent Washington (State) Supreme Court Ruling where they effectively created a legal meaning for innocent whereby a person who was convicted of a crime and later had that verdict thrown out must prove their innocence in order to be able to sue their lawyer for malpractice.
Going to Google and asking them to remove all *.torrent files is just moronic. When different copyright holders get peeved about links, they go to the holder of them with a list and request that they be removed, not that all links containing .torrent as the responsibility to catalog offending links is not on the side of the holder of them, but on that of the complainer. .torrent files like .mp3 files are not inherently illegal. Yes, many use them for many illegal things, however blanket banning/delisting does not solve the issue and causes much more harm than good, which is why lists are compiled and removed.
Just think, when copyright holders send out C&D's, they don't say "You've been sharing a bunch of our files" they say "You've been sharing XXX, YYY, and ZZZ", they are specific so that their threat has credibility and legal weight.