Never mind that Clinton obstructed justice. Never mind that Clinton molested at least two women against their will and raped another. Never mind that Clinton lied under oath.
I don't mind that he lied under oath about his sexual liasons. If he had lied under oath about something related to his job as President, then I would give a damn. It's not like we are talking about him trading arms for hostages and then pardoning all of his cronies that were involved.
As to your other right-wing, Rush Limbaugh inspired accusations, I suggest that you reexamine the record of the multi-million dollar Ken Starr mud-slinging fiasco. The result of that was a lot different than what you are claiming.
who dragged Bob Packwood and Clarence Thomas through the mud?
Clarence Thomas should have been dragged through the mud. He is the stupidest Supreme Court justice to serve in our lifetimes. His behavior around women is very germane to whether he is fit to judge on such "women's" issues as sexual harassment, abortion, etc. Whether Clinton slept around has nothing to do with his fitness for duty as President.
And FYI, the modern era of dragging public officials through the mud can be traced back to the Democrats doing it to Nixon.
How can you compare Nixon, who abused the power of the Presidency to subvert the very process of democracy, to Clinton, who, according to a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation, did nothing worse than have an affair and lie about it? "Dragging through the mud" means finding out embarassing personal items and making them public, not exposing the most blatent series of criminal operations and cover-ups ever orchestrated by a U.S. President.
Get your facts before looking like an ass and pointing fingers.
It's you that doesn't have command of the facts, you that now looks like an ass, and you that can kiss my ass.
Don't blame me. I'm a Libertarian
Good. I was afraid that your vote would actually count.
By the way, I am an American and I believe that someone is innocent until proven guilty. If you want to accuse a person of something, either (1)make it something that he was found guilty of in court of law or (2) make it an allegation based on personal knowledge, not the hearsay, unproven claims by third parties.
This is absolutely deserved. The Republicans were were the ones that raised hell about Gore making fund raising calls from his office (like he was supposed to go to a 7/11 to do it). They were the ones that sought to embarass Clinton by first holding a hearing about an ancient money-losing land deal and then twisting it into an inquiry about his extramarital affairs. The Republicans have been at the forefront of dragging public figures' private lives into the spotlight, so let them reap what they sow.
If Bush wants to send secret e-mail love letters to the big-wigs at the NRA, the tobacco lobby, and the Christian Coalition, he can do it from a privately-owned computer in the home that he pays for.
Nowhere in the constitution nor in the Bill of Rights does it say that you have the right to never be irritated.
If it did, that last posting of yours would have resulted in you being brought up on federal charges.
Have you ever seen anything in the Constitution that guarantees spammers the right to advertise to me at my expense? Who the **** do you think pays for spam? Every ISP and company that runs a mail server. They pay for the bandwidth to receive spam, the bandwidth that is stolen by spammers that send it, the storage costs to retain it on their mail servers, and the administrative costs associated with handling complaints about it.
ISPs pass the costs of spam on to their users and the cost is in the millions of dollars. Businesses deal with it in their bottom line. And when the costs hurt them (like the company mentioned in this article) people get smaller raises, other people lose jobs, and others are not hired. All so that some bunch of scumballs can send their e-mail ads at no real cost to themselves.
Oh, and I probably have a much more sophisticated, active spam filtering system than you do. It gets well over 95% of the spam without preventing legitimate e-mail from getting through. But it still annoys the f*** out of me that I am paying higher ISP fees so that some bunch of low-life losers can try to spam me.
Rambus makes 77% of its revenue by lawsuits and extorting money from companies as "license fees" for technologies that they did not invent. "Evil" seems like a pretty characterization of Rambus to me.
If we are in fact a civilized society, why are we so hell-bent on abandoning our children to the adult world as soon as possible?
Why are you so hell-bent on abandoning your children in the library?
And it's not "our children." I don't have any children because I do not like children. If I do not want to raise children of my own, I certainly do not want to be burdened by yours. It's bad enough that my tax dollars are spent educating your children. Now you want to cripple the computer in the public library so that you can use the library as a daycare center.
If you want your children protected from adult topics in the library, have them use the school library rather than the public library. Or -- brace yourself -- go with them to the library and supervise them. The fact that you chose to have children should not mean that adults are denied access to information on breast cancer, AIDS, testicular cancer, vasectomies, birth control, gay rights, and countless other topics that mention "dirty words."
Mere animals can manage to care for their children until they are ready to be adults.
Yes, and they fuck in front of their "children", too. I don't see the average dog campaigning against their puppies seeing sex.
Why can't we? We blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life - the first amendment - and sacrifice everything else.
No, you want to blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life (children) and sacrifice everything else -- including the ability of adults to do meaningful research on a myriad of subjects at the local library.
They will be adults soon enough; then they will be able to make adult choices.
Except in the library, where your filtering software will prevent them from exercising their right to view what they, as adults, choose to see.
Re:I know it's cool to be retro and all but..
on
The History of Pong
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· Score: 3
and I dont understand the facination with them.
The journey is as important as where we are. It's fascinating to reflect on the birth of the computer and video game industry, to reflect on the tremendous progress, and to get some perspective. When geeks are complaining about getting "only" 50fps on Quake III, articles like this are a good reality check.
The largest problem with the CDA is that it protects ISPs beyond reason. While I will agree that an ISP should not be held accountable if a subscriber uses their service to publish illegal, indecent images, the CDA goes much further than that. Under the CDA, if I report kiddie porn to an ISP that is unwittingly hosting it, they are not even required to remove it. They could leave it up there for a decade and be protected by the CDA. The ISP is note required to take any action.
An ISP should be given 24 hours of protection by the CDA. If the material remains there more than 24 hours after it is reported, the ISP should lose their protected status. Think about how you would feel if you found lewd pictures of a child from your family, reported it, and the pictures remained online for all to see for days, weeks, or months.
The ones that I find particularly offensive are the fake error messages. While obvious to you and me, they actually confuse older people who are struggling to keep their heads above water when using a computer. A friend's mother has, on more than one occasion, pressed the button in a fake error banner ad thinking that it was a legitimate error message. The resulting *crap* confused the hell out of her and resulted in a bewildered call to her son.
The people placing those ads need to be slapped with a class action lawsuit from nerds everywhere that have had to help elderly, confused relatives who fell for this ploy.
If Microsoft was using their EULA to protect company proprietary information and trade secrets, that would be fine -- and legally binding. But EULA prohibitions against publication of test results on commercial software are a violation of free speech rights and I do not believe that it would hold up in court. It's not in the interest of the consumer, the free market, or open competition.
If such clauses were legally binding, every software publisher in the world would use them to exercise editorial control over reviews and comparisons that were unfavorable to their products. There would be no negative reviews of software and comparisons would disappear. The reason that this did not go to court is that Microsoft knows that they don't have a leg to stand on.
The software industry is in a precarious position. On the one hand, they are attempting to get UCITA passed, which would make shrink-wrap licenses binding. On the other, if it becomes apparent that they are putting unfair and overly restrictive clauses in their licenses, UCITA would be doomed and the validity of software licenses in general could be threatened in a court battle. Or, they could realize their worst nightmare: the courts could decide software was a product. Then the no-warranty, it-may-not-work, it-might-not-do-what-we-claimed crap would be worthless. Software vendors would be under the same standards as vendors of any product and would be forced to recall products and correct flaws rather than sell you updates.
A far-fetched hypothesis, but not totally out of the question:
1. Napster implements a filtering system that blocks the exact names given to them by the RIAA.
2. Ten minutes later, some kid renames all of his Metallica tracks to Meta11ica.
3. The RIAA goes to court saying that Napster is not complying.
4. Napster claims that the people doing this are violating the DMCA by circumventing copyright protection mechanisms and shifts the blame to the people trading the songs.
Would it stand up? I don't know. I would have never imagined that anyone providing a service on the Internet would be held liable for content that they don't produce, store on their servers, or even have pass through their network. But it has happened.
This is exactly what I predicted would happen. What I wonder is whether the RIAA will be able to pressure ISPs not to route traffice from that island...
2. They control the licensing of the logo, technology, etc.
3. Philips manufactures and sells CD recorders that use the music CD/R media.
It would be in Philips interest to see that the CD logo, name, etc. did not appear on technology that was purposely made incompatible with the CD standard -- especially if it rendered their CD recorders useless. Maybe I'll give their U.S. office a call...
To just push this out the door when prudence demands a few more weeks is just an attempt to boost stock value...too bad
This is all too common in the U.S. Our corporate mentality is driven by stock traders who buy on Monday and sell on Wednesday. Companies are hesitant to build much-needed manufacturing plants because the expense will hurt the bottom line on a quarterly report and their stock will tank. Large companies lay off thousands of people at a time because it boosts their stock price -- to hell with the human suffering of those employees and their families. Rather than being able to position their companies to be leaders in the next decade, CEOs are forced to scramble around on a quarterly basis to keep short-term profits up -- or risk losing their jobs.
This is the reason that we need short-term capital gains taxes that are so high as to be punitive. All stock shares should be non-voting until they have been held for a minimum of five years. We need to get back to a stock market where people invest in companies for the long haul (5 years or more) because they believe that the company has a future.
A non-compete agreement is a modification to an existing employment contract
Not if you don't have a contract
If you are working there, you have a contract, whether it is a formal, written document or a meeting of the minds at the time that you accepted employment. The lack of a written document does not mean that the employer can, at will, force you to sign contractually binding documents under threat of termination.
Again, IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), but wrongful indicates that something was wrong or unfair while not necessarily being illegal. It is a civil matter. For instance, it is not necessarily illegal to terminate someone because you don't like their appearance, but if their appearance is unrelated to their job, it would be a wrongful termination.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the examples that I gave are illegal. There is very little protection for employees in the U.S. and there will be even less under a Republican-controlled federal government.
From the point of view of contract law, "sign or be fired" is an offer of valuable consideration (continued employment) in exchange for valuable consideration to the other party (non-competition with them). For duress to exist, the threatened action must be *unlawful* (and the threat is called extortion). Since termination is perfectly lawful -- in lieu of preexisting contract to the contrary -- there is no case for duress.
In fact, by arguing how badly you need continued employment, and how badly you would be hurt by losing it, you are strengthening the employer's case for its value, and thus for the enforceability of the contract.
I'll be blunt: You don't know what you are talking about.
See this URL which contains a summary of a business law textbook:
http://lawschool.lexis.com/emanuel/contracts/
From the above reference:
The defense of duress is available if [a] party can show that he was unfairly coerced into entering into the contract, or into modifying it. Duress consists of "any wrongful act or threat which overcomes the free will of a party."
Note that it is "wrongful act or threat". There is no requirement that the threatened action be "unlawful." Have you ever heard of "wrongful termination"? That would be a good description of what happens when you are fired for not agreeing to sign a non-compete agreement for your existing employer.
Modification: This general rule means that if parties to an existing contract agree to modify the contract for the sole benefit for one of them, the modification will usually be unenforceable at common law, for lack of consideration.
A non-compete agreement is a modification to an existing employment contract that benefits only one party and there has been no consideration given.
By your standards, an employer could offer you a job and then, after you had quit your previous job and moved across the country, present any document that he wanted and force you to sign it under threat of being fired. Agree to a pay cut or be fired. Sign this agreement to bathe my dog every week or be fired. Sign this agreement to work 80 hours per week or be fired. The employer has to act in good faith. He cannot reduce the value of the compensation unilaterally -- which an ex-post-facto non-compete clause does.
By the way, you are talking about people's livelihoods in this thread, so don't make up bull***t.
The real problem is why chip manufacturers are selling mislabeled chips to begin with. In any other industry, that'd be considered fraud.
Okay, let's compare it to the auto industry. Are you aware that many cars are speed-governed by their ECU (Engine Control Unit) computers? Do you know that tires have speed ratings and many can go faster than rated without flying apart? Gasoline is sold by "minimum" octane rating (it may be higher). Towing capacity, load capacity, and even radio wattage may all be greater than stated. Are all of these examples of "fraud" as you define it?
Companies should be required to test their chips rigorously and explicitly label them correctly as to their performance capabilities. That's the least the law can require.
Why should the cost of all chips be driven through the roof by forcing manufacturers to "rigorously" test each and every one to determine the absolute maximum speed capability? If a manufacturer knows the every chip off of the line can do 600mhz, why shouldn't the manufacturer just label some of them 600mhz and sell them at a low price? The reason that you can get cheap 700mhz CPUs is that someone else is willing to subsidize the cost by paying extra for 1.1ghz CPUs -- which have a higher reject rate and require more testing.
Overclocking, when done conservatively, is perfectly reasonable. Examples are where a manufacturer uses the same die and just jumpers the multiplier to determine the clock speed. A good example of this is the Duron 600, which is the same chip as the Duron 800.
An example of a risky overclock is one where the PCI bus and, hence, all of the peripherals are running past their intended speeds. This can lead to IDE hard drive corruption (seen it happen), instability, etc.
Basically, my rule of thumb is that I never overclock if it will cost me more money. Nothing looks as stupid as some dweeb who has invested $300 to get a Celeron to run at 1ghz -- when you can now buy 1ghz Thunderbirds for less than $200.
Does anyone else find it even mildly disturbing that people find such high drama in the petty little business adventures of rich people
I find it more disturbing that there are people out there with little intellectual curiousity about the development of a piece of technology that has revolutionized the world.
The Internet and the personal computer are the greatest threat to totatlitarian, oppressive governments. They are a much better tool for overthrowing dictatorial governments than do a bunch of bearded guys in fatigues wielding AK47s in the jungle.
Besides, this is not a book about rich guys. It's a book about computer hobbyists, geeks, and the shaping of an industry. That they later became rich is just an aside.
It was my understanding that a contract could be deemed invalid if signed under duress. When someone says "sign this or be fired", that sounds like duress to me. Both parties must enter into a contract of their own free will.
In order for a contract to be binding, both parties must give something of value (known as "consideration"). That's why you often see "in consideration of the sum of one dollar" when someone wants to attach legal strings to a gift. In the example above, the employer was not offering anything of value. Saying "I will kill your dog if you do not sign this" does not qualify as consideration and that is analogous to the situation described above where the employee was threatened with termination.
That being said, I am not a lawyer and have very little training in business law. Should you find yourself faced with a situation like the one described above, seek the advice of legal counsel licensed to practice law in your locality.
Quick, someone trademark Mars Online, MOL, and Marslink.net.
Only one problem: NO ONE LIVES THERE!!!!
on
The Dot in .mars
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· Score: 2
This sounds like something being pushed by the DSL providers -- who only seem capable of providing broadband where it isn't needed.
Seriously though, the data rate of 1Mbps is pretty pathetic. I have a cable modem that is faster than that. I am writing communications firmware for a satellite that will be relaying data back to Earth at over 20 times that speed via X-band. If we want broadband, let's really get it rather than settling for something that will be saturated shortly after deployment.
What we need is birth control...
on
The Dot in .mars
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· Score: 1
I heard some frightening numbers on population growth and the answer isn't more space, it's less breeding. India's population alone is growing by 300,000+ per week. Instead of paying Catholics under a "faith-based initiative" program, we should be arresting their missionaries as international terrorists for preaching against the use of birth control in third world countries.
Releasing an 8 minute video created from a computer game does count as a movie. Any judge in the world will tell you that.
What about the made for TV movie "El Diablo" released in 1990 (starring Anthony Edwards and Louis Gossett Jr.)? How can Blizzard Entertainment claim that they own a trademark to the use of the name "Diablo" in a film title when that was released years before their video game?
Slashdot Mirror
I don't mind that he lied under oath about his sexual liasons. If he had lied under oath about something related to his job as President, then I would give a damn. It's not like we are talking about him trading arms for hostages and then pardoning all of his cronies that were involved.
As to your other right-wing, Rush Limbaugh inspired accusations, I suggest that you reexamine the record of the multi-million dollar Ken Starr mud-slinging fiasco. The result of that was a lot different than what you are claiming.
who dragged Bob Packwood and Clarence Thomas through the mud?
Clarence Thomas should have been dragged through the mud. He is the stupidest Supreme Court justice to serve in our lifetimes. His behavior around women is very germane to whether he is fit to judge on such "women's" issues as sexual harassment, abortion, etc. Whether Clinton slept around has nothing to do with his fitness for duty as President.
And FYI, the modern era of dragging public officials through the mud can be traced back to the Democrats doing it to Nixon.
How can you compare Nixon, who abused the power of the Presidency to subvert the very process of democracy, to Clinton, who, according to a multi-year, multi-million dollar investigation, did nothing worse than have an affair and lie about it? "Dragging through the mud" means finding out embarassing personal items and making them public, not exposing the most blatent series of criminal operations and cover-ups ever orchestrated by a U.S. President.
Get your facts before looking like an ass and pointing fingers.
It's you that doesn't have command of the facts, you that now looks like an ass, and you that can kiss my ass.
Don't blame me. I'm a Libertarian
Good. I was afraid that your vote would actually count.
By the way, I am an American and I believe that someone is innocent until proven guilty. If you want to accuse a person of something, either (1)make it something that he was found guilty of in court of law or (2) make it an allegation based on personal knowledge, not the hearsay, unproven claims by third parties.
If Bush wants to send secret e-mail love letters to the big-wigs at the NRA, the tobacco lobby, and the Christian Coalition, he can do it from a privately-owned computer in the home that he pays for.
If it did, that last posting of yours would have resulted in you being brought up on federal charges.
Have you ever seen anything in the Constitution that guarantees spammers the right to advertise to me at my expense? Who the **** do you think pays for spam? Every ISP and company that runs a mail server. They pay for the bandwidth to receive spam, the bandwidth that is stolen by spammers that send it, the storage costs to retain it on their mail servers, and the administrative costs associated with handling complaints about it.
ISPs pass the costs of spam on to their users and the cost is in the millions of dollars. Businesses deal with it in their bottom line. And when the costs hurt them (like the company mentioned in this article) people get smaller raises, other people lose jobs, and others are not hired. All so that some bunch of scumballs can send their e-mail ads at no real cost to themselves.
Oh, and I probably have a much more sophisticated, active spam filtering system than you do. It gets well over 95% of the spam without preventing legitimate e-mail from getting through. But it still annoys the f*** out of me that I am paying higher ISP fees so that some bunch of low-life losers can try to spam me.
Rambus makes 77% of its revenue by lawsuits and extorting money from companies as "license fees" for technologies that they did not invent. "Evil" seems like a pretty characterization of Rambus to me.
That is what you are supposed to do to smart kids, isn't it?
Why are you so hell-bent on abandoning your children in the library?
And it's not "our children." I don't have any children because I do not like children. If I do not want to raise children of my own, I certainly do not want to be burdened by yours. It's bad enough that my tax dollars are spent educating your children. Now you want to cripple the computer in the public library so that you can use the library as a daycare center.
If you want your children protected from adult topics in the library, have them use the school library rather than the public library. Or -- brace yourself -- go with them to the library and supervise them. The fact that you chose to have children should not mean that adults are denied access to information on breast cancer, AIDS, testicular cancer, vasectomies, birth control, gay rights, and countless other topics that mention "dirty words."
Mere animals can manage to care for their children until they are ready to be adults.
Yes, and they fuck in front of their "children", too. I don't see the average dog campaigning against their puppies seeing sex.
Why can't we? We blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life - the first amendment - and sacrifice everything else.
No, you want to blindly focus on one tiny aspect of life (children) and sacrifice everything else -- including the ability of adults to do meaningful research on a myriad of subjects at the local library.
They will be adults soon enough; then they will be able to make adult choices.
Except in the library, where your filtering software will prevent them from exercising their right to view what they, as adults, choose to see.
The journey is as important as where we are. It's fascinating to reflect on the birth of the computer and video game industry, to reflect on the tremendous progress, and to get some perspective. When geeks are complaining about getting "only" 50fps on Quake III, articles like this are a good reality check.
An ISP should be given 24 hours of protection by the CDA. If the material remains there more than 24 hours after it is reported, the ISP should lose their protected status. Think about how you would feel if you found lewd pictures of a child from your family, reported it, and the pictures remained online for all to see for days, weeks, or months.
The people placing those ads need to be slapped with a class action lawsuit from nerds everywhere that have had to help elderly, confused relatives who fell for this ploy.
If such clauses were legally binding, every software publisher in the world would use them to exercise editorial control over reviews and comparisons that were unfavorable to their products. There would be no negative reviews of software and comparisons would disappear. The reason that this did not go to court is that Microsoft knows that they don't have a leg to stand on.
The software industry is in a precarious position. On the one hand, they are attempting to get UCITA passed, which would make shrink-wrap licenses binding. On the other, if it becomes apparent that they are putting unfair and overly restrictive clauses in their licenses, UCITA would be doomed and the validity of software licenses in general could be threatened in a court battle. Or, they could realize their worst nightmare: the courts could decide software was a product. Then the no-warranty, it-may-not-work, it-might-not-do-what-we-claimed crap would be worthless. Software vendors would be under the same standards as vendors of any product and would be forced to recall products and correct flaws rather than sell you updates.
1. Napster implements a filtering system that blocks the exact names given to them by the RIAA.
2. Ten minutes later, some kid renames all of his Metallica tracks to Meta11ica.
3. The RIAA goes to court saying that Napster is not complying.
4. Napster claims that the people doing this are violating the DMCA by circumventing copyright protection mechanisms and shifts the blame to the people trading the songs.
Would it stand up? I don't know. I would have never imagined that anyone providing a service on the Internet would be held liable for content that they don't produce, store on their servers, or even have pass through their network. But it has happened.
This is exactly what I predicted would happen. What I wonder is whether the RIAA will be able to pressure ISPs not to route traffice from that island...
2. They control the licensing of the logo, technology, etc.
3. Philips manufactures and sells CD recorders that use the music CD/R media.
It would be in Philips interest to see that the CD logo, name, etc. did not appear on technology that was purposely made incompatible with the CD standard -- especially if it rendered their CD recorders useless. Maybe I'll give their U.S. office a call...
This is all too common in the U.S. Our corporate mentality is driven by stock traders who buy on Monday and sell on Wednesday. Companies are hesitant to build much-needed manufacturing plants because the expense will hurt the bottom line on a quarterly report and their stock will tank. Large companies lay off thousands of people at a time because it boosts their stock price -- to hell with the human suffering of those employees and their families. Rather than being able to position their companies to be leaders in the next decade, CEOs are forced to scramble around on a quarterly basis to keep short-term profits up -- or risk losing their jobs.
This is the reason that we need short-term capital gains taxes that are so high as to be punitive. All stock shares should be non-voting until they have been held for a minimum of five years. We need to get back to a stock market where people invest in companies for the long haul (5 years or more) because they believe that the company has a future.
Not if you don't have a contract
If you are working there, you have a contract, whether it is a formal, written document or a meeting of the minds at the time that you accepted employment. The lack of a written document does not mean that the employer can, at will, force you to sign contractually binding documents under threat of termination.
To the best of my knowledge, none of the examples that I gave are illegal. There is very little protection for employees in the U.S. and there will be even less under a Republican-controlled federal government.
In fact, by arguing how badly you need continued employment, and how badly you would be hurt by losing it, you are strengthening the employer's case for its value, and thus for the enforceability of the contract.
I'll be blunt: You don't know what you are talking about.
See this URL which contains a summary of a business law textbook:
http://lawschool.lexis.com/emanuel/contracts/
From the above reference:
The defense of duress is available if [a] party can show that he was unfairly coerced into entering into the contract, or into modifying it. Duress consists of "any wrongful act or threat which overcomes the free will of a party."
Note that it is "wrongful act or threat". There is no requirement that the threatened action be "unlawful." Have you ever heard of "wrongful termination"? That would be a good description of what happens when you are fired for not agreeing to sign a non-compete agreement for your existing employer.
Modification: This general rule means that if parties to an existing contract agree to modify the contract for the sole benefit for one of them, the modification will usually be unenforceable at common law, for lack of consideration.
A non-compete agreement is a modification to an existing employment contract that benefits only one party and there has been no consideration given.
By your standards, an employer could offer you a job and then, after you had quit your previous job and moved across the country, present any document that he wanted and force you to sign it under threat of being fired. Agree to a pay cut or be fired. Sign this agreement to bathe my dog every week or be fired. Sign this agreement to work 80 hours per week or be fired. The employer has to act in good faith. He cannot reduce the value of the compensation unilaterally -- which an ex-post-facto non-compete clause does.
By the way, you are talking about people's livelihoods in this thread, so don't make up bull***t.
Okay, let's compare it to the auto industry. Are you aware that many cars are speed-governed by their ECU (Engine Control Unit) computers? Do you know that tires have speed ratings and many can go faster than rated without flying apart? Gasoline is sold by "minimum" octane rating (it may be higher). Towing capacity, load capacity, and even radio wattage may all be greater than stated. Are all of these examples of "fraud" as you define it?
Companies should be required to test their chips rigorously and explicitly label them correctly as to their performance capabilities. That's the least the law can require.
Why should the cost of all chips be driven through the roof by forcing manufacturers to "rigorously" test each and every one to determine the absolute maximum speed capability? If a manufacturer knows the every chip off of the line can do 600mhz, why shouldn't the manufacturer just label some of them 600mhz and sell them at a low price? The reason that you can get cheap 700mhz CPUs is that someone else is willing to subsidize the cost by paying extra for 1.1ghz CPUs -- which have a higher reject rate and require more testing.
An example of a risky overclock is one where the PCI bus and, hence, all of the peripherals are running past their intended speeds. This can lead to IDE hard drive corruption (seen it happen), instability, etc.
Basically, my rule of thumb is that I never overclock if it will cost me more money. Nothing looks as stupid as some dweeb who has invested $300 to get a Celeron to run at 1ghz -- when you can now buy 1ghz Thunderbirds for less than $200.
I find it more disturbing that there are people out there with little intellectual curiousity about the development of a piece of technology that has revolutionized the world.
The Internet and the personal computer are the greatest threat to totatlitarian, oppressive governments. They are a much better tool for overthrowing dictatorial governments than do a bunch of bearded guys in fatigues wielding AK47s in the jungle.
Besides, this is not a book about rich guys. It's a book about computer hobbyists, geeks, and the shaping of an industry. That they later became rich is just an aside.
In order for a contract to be binding, both parties must give something of value (known as "consideration"). That's why you often see "in consideration of the sum of one dollar" when someone wants to attach legal strings to a gift. In the example above, the employer was not offering anything of value. Saying "I will kill your dog if you do not sign this" does not qualify as consideration and that is analogous to the situation described above where the employee was threatened with termination.
That being said, I am not a lawyer and have very little training in business law. Should you find yourself faced with a situation like the one described above, seek the advice of legal counsel licensed to practice law in your locality.
Quick, someone trademark Mars Online, MOL, and Marslink.net.
Seriously though, the data rate of 1Mbps is pretty pathetic. I have a cable modem that is faster than that. I am writing communications firmware for a satellite that will be relaying data back to Earth at over 20 times that speed via X-band. If we want broadband, let's really get it rather than settling for something that will be saturated shortly after deployment.
What about the made for TV movie "El Diablo" released in 1990 (starring Anthony Edwards and Louis Gossett Jr.)? How can Blizzard Entertainment claim that they own a trademark to the use of the name "Diablo" in a film title when that was released years before their video game?