In order for a contract to be legal, there has to be "consideration" on both sides. That means, in order to enforce the non-compete agreement, they must have given you something to compensate you for this lost opportunity.
If they offered you something of worth for your trouble, and you both accepted and received that compensation, then it is likely legal and enforceable, unless it breaks some other law. If you received nothing, regardless of the "contract" it is not legal or enforceable.
I assert that there is no line, and that one cannot even say that some programmers "easily" fall on one side or the other.
For example, an elegant user interface, by the very definition, is a combination of art and human engineering. Elegant code can certainly be called "art", while sloppy code can be likened to those famous fingerpaintings made by apes.
This is another good argument that can be used to illustrate why Copyright laws are so much more appropriate to software than patents. Only "design" patents even remotely approach applicability to software, and those only thinly, if at all.
While I would not say that some of my own programming efforts constitute great art, I certainly consider others to be artistic. I have put a great deal of creative effort into them.
There is something implicit in what I wrote before but that I have not seen in any of the other comments yet. Everybody seems to keep forgetting this one long-held, common principle:
If a citizen sees (or is informed of) a crime taking place, even if it is their own place of business, it is not their legal obligation to halt it. That is a job for the police.
It might be reasonable to expect them to try to stop it, and you might wonder about their character if they do not. Even so, it is not legally required.
The courts and the police do not have the right to demand that others do their jobs for them. That is why we employ them ("employ" is the correct word). If they demand that we do their jobs for them, maybe we should expect them to do without pay!
Without more detail, it is difficult to tell whether the ISP actively contributed to the distribution of illegal material. The key phrase here is "actively contributed". But if we accept this storyat face value, there are some clear concerns.
It is no surprise that this happened in New York (their motto, "Regulate Everything!"). There is legal precedent for this type of case, but New York seems to be ignoring it. First, it has been upheld by the courts repeatedly and consistently that "common carriers" are not responsible for the content they carry. "Common carriers" include telephone companies and the like. For example, if someone defrauded you using the telephone, no court in its right mind would allow you to sue the telephone company for it, unless they were actually part of the scam. Again, carriers are not responsible for the content they carry.
Second, the courts have also well established by now that ISPs are effectively "common carriers". Legally, they are no different than telephone companies in the type of service they provide.
The unprecedented merger of a carrier with a content provider (AOL/Time Warner) has no effect on this general or legal concept. As long as the carrier is not actively involved in creating or supplying the content, the carrier is not legally responsible for it.
However, if the carrier either supplies or regulates the content, it is legally responsible for that content, as AOL found out in that famous suit over statements made in its moderated news groups.
We are left with only one conclusion, and it is the one that courts have repeatedly upheld (except, apparently in Weird-Liberal New York): if the ISP neither provided (created) or regulated the content, the ISP is not legally responsible for it. Any other result is a formula for chaos.
Can you imagine what would happen if telephone companies were held responsible for what people said, or U.S. mail and parcel delivery companies held responsible for the contents of theri packages? Can you say "absolute halt to commerce and free speech"? Sure. I knew you could.
I like the idea of a hand-held machine that automatically hooks itself into a miniature LAN. Here is an idea for it.
The Japanese have a little hand-held device that they also marketed here, I do not know if it was successful. But using signal strength or some such, it allows people with similar interests to home in on each other in a crowd! Good idea. But the gadget had a very limited vocabulary.
The basic idea is, it transmits a code (or codes) and other units alert their owners when similar codes come within range. This could be enhanced with a signal-strength meter. You could have a screen full: a list of codes on the left with a bar graph of signal strengths.
With something like the Cybiko, it could just be one more minor feature. All that is necessary is a standard code. You know, SWF seeks WHWM or some such... or something very different... Science Major looking for like-minded people... the basic idea being that a standard code allows it to be automatic.
What else can we think of? I am sure there are MANY uses for something like the Cybiko.
This is partly true. But age itself is probably just a symptom, not the cause!
People of my parent's age grew up in a time when
"seniority" was perceived to be an asset in itself. If you were a plasterer, the unions and their members would keep you at menial positions for menial wages until you had put in so many years at the job... regardless of how good you were! That is just one example. The philosophy was not unique to manual labor, it very much carried over into the office and professional workplace. It is, in effect, a form of protectionism, or elitism. Then after 5 or 10 years, you would finally see "So-and-so has paid his dues, now we can allow him into the sacred upper echelons".
Today, people are more willing to accept competence by itself as a measure of the employee, but acceptance of this idea has been slow and incomplete. There is still an awful lot of ageism and cronyism and yes, sexism out there. Though at least today I see sexism in the workplace going both ways.
This is unjust, of course. It unfairly punishes those who are more competent, either naturally or because of their diligence. It is also extremely inefficient, and hurts the economy.
Some of the replies I have seen here have a few things wrong, though. For example, the guy who has had experience since he was in his "teens", just a few years ago... does he also have education? Does he know how to build a Quicksort from scratch (and why he would want to), or does he just know how to put buttons on a form?
"Tomorrow's" computer professionals are not any more likely to be people in their teens and early twenties than yesterday's were. It is only today's folks who have that opportunity, having been born at a time when the computer industry had just been born and was blossoming.
Tomorrow's computer professionals are about as likely to be teenagers as tomorrow's truck drivers. That is, not very likely, because proportionally, tomorrow's teenagers will have as much experience working computers as they will have driving. That is, not much. Everybody else will have been exposed to it as much as they were, and older people will again have more education and experience!
So get it while you can. It may not be for as long as you think.
How do you see the market changing in light of the FCC now allowing carriers and content-providers (e.g., AOL and Time-Warner) to merge?
How does the FCC justify the fact that it did not oppose this merger, since it appears to be highly anti-competitive and against the public interest, and since prior to this it was very much against FCC policy?
POLICY FOR EMAIL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS
Company employees have access to electronic communications services, such as Email and the Internet. You are encouraged to use them for company business. You are asked to keep personal use to a reasonably low level.
It is not Company policy to regularly monitor communications. However, The Company provides them for business purposes at its own expense, and is the ultimate owner of all associated data. On occasion, The Company has legitimate business reasons to access Email information and other communications data in its archives, and The Company reserves the right to do so.
In other words, nobody here even remotely wants to routinely read your mail. All the same, keep in mind that Email and other communications at The Company are not necessarily private and might be seen by other parties.
Today, it is easy to access information that some people find extremely offensive, and so is not appropriate material for a business setting (certain Web sites for example). Intentional access of such inappropriate material on company time or company property is unacceptable and may be grounds for dismissal.
It appears to me that the "read aloud" provision was misunderstood. But even if it was not, there is a
very
simple solution. If you are offended by the "license" agreement, with this product or others, you do not have to put up with it. Just do not purchase or use the product!
I have stated that I will not purchase
any
more Microsoft products until they change their "licensing" policies, and barring some kind of emergency, I am going to make it stick!
Slashdot Mirror
If they offered you something of worth for your trouble, and you both accepted and received that compensation, then it is likely legal and enforceable, unless it breaks some other law. If you received nothing, regardless of the "contract" it is not legal or enforceable.
For example, an elegant user interface, by the very definition, is a combination of art and human engineering. Elegant code can certainly be called "art", while sloppy code can be likened to those famous fingerpaintings made by apes.
This is another good argument that can be used to illustrate why Copyright laws are so much more appropriate to software than patents. Only "design" patents even remotely approach applicability to software, and those only thinly, if at all.
While I would not say that some of my own programming efforts constitute great art, I certainly consider others to be artistic. I have put a great deal of creative effort into them.
It might be reasonable to expect them to try to stop it, and you might wonder about their character if they do not. Even so, it is not legally required.
The courts and the police do not have the right to demand that others do their jobs for them. That is why we employ them ("employ" is the correct word). If they demand that we do their jobs for them, maybe we should expect them to do without pay!
It is no surprise that this happened in New York (their motto, "Regulate Everything!"). There is legal precedent for this type of case, but New York seems to be ignoring it. First, it has been upheld by the courts repeatedly and consistently that "common carriers" are not responsible for the content they carry. "Common carriers" include telephone companies and the like. For example, if someone defrauded you using the telephone, no court in its right mind would allow you to sue the telephone company for it, unless they were actually part of the scam. Again, carriers are not responsible for the content they carry.
Second, the courts have also well established by now that ISPs are effectively "common carriers". Legally, they are no different than telephone companies in the type of service they provide.
The unprecedented merger of a carrier with a content provider (AOL/Time Warner) has no effect on this general or legal concept. As long as the carrier is not actively involved in creating or supplying the content, the carrier is not legally responsible for it.
However, if the carrier either supplies or regulates the content, it is legally responsible for that content, as AOL found out in that famous suit over statements made in its moderated news groups.
We are left with only one conclusion, and it is the one that courts have repeatedly upheld (except, apparently in Weird-Liberal New York): if the ISP neither provided (created) or regulated the content, the ISP is not legally responsible for it. Any other result is a formula for chaos.
Can you imagine what would happen if telephone companies were held responsible for what people said, or U.S. mail and parcel delivery companies held responsible for the contents of theri packages? Can you say "absolute halt to commerce and free speech"? Sure. I knew you could.
The Japanese have a little hand-held device that they also marketed here, I do not know if it was successful. But using signal strength or some such, it allows people with similar interests to home in on each other in a crowd! Good idea. But the gadget had a very limited vocabulary.
The basic idea is, it transmits a code (or codes) and other units alert their owners when similar codes come within range. This could be enhanced with a signal-strength meter. You could have a screen full: a list of codes on the left with a bar graph of signal strengths.
With something like the Cybiko, it could just be one more minor feature. All that is necessary is a standard code. You know, SWF seeks WHWM or some such... or something very different... Science Major looking for like-minded people... the basic idea being that a standard code allows it to be automatic.
What else can we think of? I am sure there are MANY uses for something like the Cybiko.
People of my parent's age grew up in a time when "seniority" was perceived to be an asset in itself. If you were a plasterer, the unions and their members would keep you at menial positions for menial wages until you had put in so many years at the job... regardless of how good you were! That is just one example. The philosophy was not unique to manual labor, it very much carried over into the office and professional workplace. It is, in effect, a form of protectionism, or elitism. Then after 5 or 10 years, you would finally see "So-and-so has paid his dues, now we can allow him into the sacred upper echelons".
Today, people are more willing to accept competence by itself as a measure of the employee, but acceptance of this idea has been slow and incomplete. There is still an awful lot of ageism and cronyism and yes, sexism out there. Though at least today I see sexism in the workplace going both ways.
This is unjust, of course. It unfairly punishes those who are more competent, either naturally or because of their diligence. It is also extremely inefficient, and hurts the economy.
Some of the replies I have seen here have a few things wrong, though. For example, the guy who has had experience since he was in his "teens", just a few years ago... does he also have education? Does he know how to build a Quicksort from scratch (and why he would want to), or does he just know how to put buttons on a form?
"Tomorrow's" computer professionals are not any more likely to be people in their teens and early twenties than yesterday's were. It is only today's folks who have that opportunity, having been born at a time when the computer industry had just been born and was blossoming.
Tomorrow's computer professionals are about as likely to be teenagers as tomorrow's truck drivers. That is, not very likely, because proportionally, tomorrow's teenagers will have as much experience working computers as they will have driving. That is, not much. Everybody else will have been exposed to it as much as they were, and older people will again have more education and experience!
So get it while you can. It may not be for as long as you think.
And the agnostic insomniacs among them lie awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.
Yes, yes, and yes.
How does the FCC justify the fact that it did not oppose this merger, since it appears to be highly anti-competitive and against the public interest, and since prior to this it was very much against FCC policy?
POLICY FOR EMAIL AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS Company employees have access to electronic communications services, such as Email and the Internet. You are encouraged to use them for company business. You are asked to keep personal use to a reasonably low level. It is not Company policy to regularly monitor communications. However, The Company provides them for business purposes at its own expense, and is the ultimate owner of all associated data. On occasion, The Company has legitimate business reasons to access Email information and other communications data in its archives, and The Company reserves the right to do so. In other words, nobody here even remotely wants to routinely read your mail. All the same, keep in mind that Email and other communications at The Company are not necessarily private and might be seen by other parties. Today, it is easy to access information that some people find extremely offensive, and so is not appropriate material for a business setting (certain Web sites for example). Intentional access of such inappropriate material on company time or company property is unacceptable and may be grounds for dismissal.
- very
simple solution. If you are offended by the "license" agreement, with this product or others, you do not have to put up with it. Just do not purchase or use the product! I have stated that I will not purchase- any
more Microsoft products until they change their "licensing" policies, and barring some kind of emergency, I am going to make it stick!