I remember that feature, from long ago... but it doesn't often help much anymore, so I wouldn't be surprised it it's not in the config anymore.
All sites with significant traffic nowadays are at least partly dynamically generated, and sites very often load dynamic content (like the HTML of a page) from one server and the static content (like the images) from another... and of course there are different ways to handle that, but it often means that images load from a different subdomain or domain entirely, and switching on this feature just means you won't see any images.
Slashdot, as the obvious example, loads images from a separate subdomain: images.slashdot.org. The NY Times, for my connection at the moment, loads most images *including* ads from graphics8.nytimes.com, but financial charts are from chart.bigcharts.com.
Once you have a few experiences where you suddenly realize you've been missing the content you needed (or had assumed a site was broken) because of disabled non-originating-server images, you'd shut it off anyway.
Tangent: I've been using ad blocking for a long time now, and I've noticed that more and more, the ads are being served from the same servers as the rest of the images -- be it different from the main content server, or not -- so the simplistic approach of just blocking all images from X domain doesn't work nearly as well anymore.
My current advice is to get FlashBlock (cuts out the annoying stuff, and you can still run the thing if you want), block the domains from the *obvious* ad servers like doubleclick, and you're mostly covered with minimal risk of blocking desired content.
Amanda Dennison of Alberta, Canada, firewalked 220 feet in '05. Someone named Scott Bell walked 328 feet last year. Your experience was more along the lines of the thousands of middle managers who experience the "magic" of firewalking as part of motivational seminars every year.
You have to do your research before you decide you have superseded the laws of physics. Or, at least before you start telling other people about it....
NoOoO! Poopy-heads!!1! I asked my mom, and she said that Rogers didn't change the content of the Web page one bit. It merely put a banner at the top. Juno and other services have been doing this for years (a technique called "framing") and it's never been considered to be copyright infringement; it's not in this case either. And it's sure less obtrusive than a pop-up! I didn't change your content one bit -- I merely added a small bit at the top.
"Less obtrusive than a pop-up" isn't much of an argument either. It's also less intrusive than a salesperson knocking at your door, but that doesn't mean it's okay.
Yes, I'm exaggerating, but the general populace's grasp on technology is already a tenuous thing. Once they understand that they can type in a website address, and the browser will show them content from that website they're already ahead of the game. What will they assume when the ISP is sneaking in extra content?
More importantly, the websites themselves put a hell of a lot of work into layout on the screen, even returning different content depending on the resolution, pixels available, and/or device the user has (notice that "framing" and custom browsers that show ads in the margins simply shrink the page size, so the page display will adjust just as if the window were simply smaller. Ninjaed extra content DOES NOT). Advertisers often pay different amounts for ads that are "beyond the fold", where the user will have to scroll to see it. Some websites are designed to fit entirely above the fold, and navigation is designed based on that. Some websites are flash-only, some pop a new window and resize it based on their content size... There's a $#!#load of money and time that's gone into developing this stuff, and if ISPs suddenly start inserting their own content, it's all shot to hell.
I'm not sure of how copyright laws, etc. apply, but I imagine Rogers will soon know *all* laws that can possibly apply if they proceed.
But I'm saying that well written code does not need clarification. When it's well written there's nothing more that can be said in any other language that hasn't already been said directly in the code. I'll admit there are border cases where it's almost impossible to write code that is abundantly clear Have you never been brought on to maintain a large codebase that you didn't write? Even if it's *beautifully* elegant and refactored to a sparkling shine of perfection, you're still going to be lost in large sections of it for a while. There's going to be project-specific terminology decided by the developers in variable & class naming that you'll have to learn, and you simply cannot always glance at a single shard of an enormous project and comprehend where it fits into the whole. Ideally, you're going to have a whole lot of relatively independently functioning little parts, right?
Suppose you have an exception raised in a given class. You know the line number, and you open the class... if it's involved in serving a purpose that's low-level enough, it's going to take you a far more time to figure out what it's for, how it's used, and what role it plays in the project as a whole if you don't have, say, 3 simple lines of plain English in the header comment.
Personally I don't write too many comments in my "normal" code. I write progressively more as the code gets more complicated -- some features are simply too complex to even fit the implementation in my head all at once, so I write a shorthand walk-through of the implementation before I start. When I'm done, sometimes the code has actually boiled down enough that I can chuck that (sometimes I'm not so lucky).
You have to comment implementations that "look wrong" or are counter-intuitive, possibly because of client demands ("the last software package did it that way, so our other systems are designed to correct for it..."). What, are you naming methods calculateScaleWronglyPerClientRequest()?
It can be wise to flag methods (or classes) that will *appear* unused to refactoring analysis, because they're loaded & accessed dynamically.
It's not about somehow brain-washing everyone watching/playing extremely violent video or games, or even influencing *most* people to do anything violent. Anecdotal evidence is pretty useless when you're talking about something that won't significantly mess up the majority of people.
No one sensible would argue that a video game *by itself* will turn a kid into a sociopathic mass murderer. But it's not hard to understand how watching a lot of real or realistic violence, and/or playing a game that simulates violence realistically, will affect you.
At a bare minimum it will attenuate the automatic revulsion we have for violence. For most people, this won't result in violent behavior. For other people who are already stewing with impotent rage, frustration, etc., it might make a significant difference.
We don't know how much of a difference it makes yet -- agreed. This study is just a beginning, a pointer to brain reactions with suggestions for further research. And there's also the *huge* discussion of what to actually do about it; rushing in with laws to stop anything "bad" doesn't always work out as planned.
I mean, hell, I thought most people knew that wikipedia, while indeed a nice place to start looking up topics, is hardly an authoritative source to be trusted as the gospel truth?!?! I've been startled to learn, though Slashdot comments, that even The Gospel possibly can not be trusted as the gospel truth!
Then again, based on a careful weighing of YouTube comments, perhaps I can rely on it after all.
At first glance, my mind read that "CONGRESS WAS GOING TO COMBAT THE INTERNET"... You know, I'm still getting that on third and fourth glances. Because that's exactly what it says.
Just keep simplifying the sentence until you get the basic form:
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it.
The bill says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it.
The bill says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat the internet.
The bill says that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat the internet.
BTW, that nun sounds ridiculous. She was basically giving you a shitty sentence and telling you to just figure it out. I hope this wasn't a model of how YOU were supposed to write.
Why not just add a comma?
We have bicycles for boys, with adjustable seats.
Or you might just place the modifier correctly in the first place (closest to the thing it's modifying):
We have bicycles with adjustable seats for boys.
Not so clearly, and it's not legal even if that *was* the poster's intention.
First, was the poster copying their *own* code into the forum post? Or was it out of an open source project, or out of his paid corporate work? You don't know. They could have very easily been posting from an OSS project they were currently working on.
Second, if you don't specifically give license details, the legal license is "none". This is how the law works, regardless of how logical or illogical it is, and you can get just as screwed even if the law seems illogical to either person involved. If I post code here on Slashdot (somehow getting it past the lameness filters...) in reply to a question you specifically asked... you *still* have to ask for licensing details before you can use it. Look at the bottom of this page - they clarify it there.
Correct, there is no *sales* tax on services in CA. But you do have to declare it as income come tax time. About 3% - 4% (iirc). (Still better than the fed rate of 25%-30% when you are self employed.) Sure, but that's not what the article is about. Income tax is the same for computer services and any other services -- you pay it federal, and probably in your state (unless they're one of the handful that don't have income tax, like Florida).
I live in France, but I'm still earning in dollars.
Thanks to the rising oil prices and still-falling dollar nowadays, it costs me about USD 6.70/gallon for *diesel*, which is still cheaper than regular gas (that's be heading past $8/gallon).
I'm very glad to have a small car (gets about 50 mpg) and I don't have to drive anywhere most days.
The attitude of the media can matter a lot. Such a person may well be "punished by the public" if they are portrayed as a guilty person who escaped justice. As opposed to an innocent person who experienced the terrible ordeal of being falsely (even maliciously) accused of some horrible crime. Completely agreed -- the point is, though, you can't tell how it's going to break (except if the unjustly-accused happens to *look* like a violent killer.. well, it's not going to break in his favor), and it's not how we want our society's laws enforced if we have a choice.
Public opinion & exposure is a powerful thing, but also not very discriminating. We need freedom of the press, some level of freedom of information, etc. so that it can act as a check against the official legal system when it goes awry -- but as long as that's doing its job, we really don't want to *replace* it with just public opinion. There's a very good reason why we have police, judges, juries, jails, etc. and not just mobs with nooses.
Not often. Proving libel is not easy in the first place (it requires "actual malice", and either full knowledge that the information is false, or reckless disregard for its truth -- so even a completely half-assed attempt to verify something gets you off, even if proper research would prove it wrong). You can also report rumors, identifying them as such -- and you're clear (yup, the rumor is out there!) but a large percentage of the public won't properly filter it out. "Opinion" articles are completely free from libel risk.
You can also "show" almost anything by simply leaving out details that don't support the point you're trying to make. After all, a newspaper article is just one person talking, not a trial where there's a defense who can fill in the essential details that you left out.
It's not an "either/or" situation. We aren't choosing between complete transparency vs. no transparency whatsoever.
The goal is a fair and structured hearing, and punishment or acquittal based on the laws, decided by a jury & judge as impartial as possible.
With no transparency, the police can ignore the laws, and you might never see a jury at all.
With complete transparency, any "interesting" crime will be first judged by the public, based on third and fourth-hand information with no legal repercussions for errors (it's not *perjury* when the local rag prints gossip and rumors that are dead wrong), and the jury will be tainted by exposure to this mess, and the accused will be punished by the public even if acquitted by the legal system.
Think the public has no real power to exact punishment? You don't even need vigilante gunmen, though that can happen. No laws need be broken, though they might be. But "the public" includes your boss (soon-to-be former boss?), your neighbors (and their kids), the checkout person at the grocery store, your mailman, the guys at the bar, the technician from the phone company, the plumber, the teenagers at the mall, the pizza delivery guy, everyone. If your face is all over the web, if your home address and home phone are all over the web... well, first of all, they'll be all over the web for the rest of your life, because this stuff doesn't go away. Secondly, most people won't even say anything (they'll just stare after you as you leave), but you come into contact with hundreds of people... some of them will probably do something. Some people will actively seek you out to punish you, because vigilante justice is awfully tempting... I'll bet that's already happening with this family.
With the "power of the internet", now they don't just need to worry about getting snubbed by the people on their street. They have to worry what percentage of the, say, 2 million people who've seen their address and phone number will actively contact them. 0.01 percent? Mom, there's 200 people at the door. They want to talk to you and dad. Are my numbers too low?
So yeah, we need a balance.
This story is horrible and sad, and I want everyone to read it and realize that the online world is real, and in some ways it's more dangerous than the offline world. You can do things you'd never be cruel enough to do to someone's face, and cruelty has real consequences.
When it comes to default search in Firefox, you can't really say google is the default as changing that is simply a matter of[...] That's what "default" means, though -- what the setting is *before* you change it to your preference. It would be annoying if your settings went back to defaults every time you restarted the browser. There are lots of users who simply don't bother to change the default value -- that's why it's valuable to Google.
So while it would be sensible for M$ to pay Firefox for default listing, they will not, simply because their management style reflects childish immaturity and tantrums Well, no. First, MS didn't get where they are by throwing tantrums and making childish decisions, that's just the occasional side effect of too much power (and, uh, they're already the default search engine on another popular browser). They aren't paying Firefox for the default listing perhaps because the default listing is not up for auction -- Mozilla has to consider how their users would react, not just a temporary higher cash flow. If they found a better deal but it got them a ton of bad press and lost their core userbase, that's a pretty obvious lose.
I had another thought -- release some of these into the wild to breed with normal-fearful mice, to make them more "lunchable" for predators, as a natural method of rodent control. Might be particularly useful in areas where you can't use poison bait. Nope -- the changed gene drastically reduces the fitness of carriers, so they'd get cleared out of the gene pool pretty quickly. That's natural selection for ya.... You'd be slightly ahead (since the altered mouse could have bred with a female that *otherwise* would have found a non-altered mate), but not enough to make any difference.
Seriously, ask a lawyer, not slashdot. I get pretty tired of this response (with no other useful information!) to questions from people who are asking Slashdot for people's experience in a situation that lots of us have encountered.
The "ask a lawyer" comment is covered already in the "Ask Slashdot" section description (linked from the submission page):
Regarding Legal Advice: When seeking advice on topics that touch on legal aspects, please remember that you should always be prepared to consult professional legal representation. It doesn't hurt to Ask Slashdot for pointers, and suggestions to save you some time, but Ask Slashdot should not be used in place of professional legal representation. Yes, if the questioner's livelihood is riding on the outcome, or he/she will probably have to lay down the cash to get a legal opinion, BUT by the time they've read through the slashdotter responses they'll have a much better idea of what to ask the lawyer, how much legal advice might cost, what KIND of lawyer to find, what they're risking, what non-work activities could be in danger if they sign... they'll have probably seen a dozen stories about good and bad results to just signing the thing vs. asking for a change, and they'll see advice about how to approach a manager, company lawyer, etc. to argue for a change.
That's valuable, and you'll NEVER get all that (plus you'll lose a lot of money) by just plunking down a few hundred bucks every time you have a question that seems vaguely related to legal issues.
Personally, I am not working under any NCA whatsoever anymore, and I've worked with management & the company lawyer to change the agreement in an earlier job; it wasn't really a big deal (though I doubt I could have pulled it off when I was fresh out of school...). And I'm certainly not going to pay a lawyer to get the information, but I'm curious to see what other people's experience has been, and if the trend towards more ridiculous NCAs continues.
And I wouldn't even think of signing it. Well, some people *should* think of signing it. They just need to understand the trade-offs. When I got my first development job after graduation, I signed an NCA. I was still kind of amazed they'd hired me in the first place, didn't feel I had any leverage to fight it, and I had no significant personal projects to protect anyway. It was fine. Later on, when I had some real skills and leverage (and personal projects to protect) then I stopped agreeing to those clauses.
I also know a lot of people who do development work purely "as a job" -- there's no risk of them building some wonderful thing in their off-hours because they don't even look at code when they're off the clock. It's a different situation for them as well.
the MAFIAA [...] the Mouse [...] the SpiderTwat [...] the MAFIAA [...] the iPhony [...]. I actually think I understood your point, but you really aren't helping things with these silly misspellings.
The "Mouse"? The "SpiderTwat"? Lost me there completely. I have no idea what those are supposed to be.
Surely it's possible to express your disrespect in some more coherent way.
Are you sure that's not a password reminder email? A post above has a much higher UID than mine, and joined in late 98 -- plus I'm pretty sure more than 2K users had signed up by Sept '98.
Dunno. I'm certainly pretty fuzzy on when I signed up... I know I was *reading* it all summer '98, but that's all I can point to.
Ah, right; I mixed up the dates... I couldn't have registered in '97, because it wasn't up yet. So, sometime in '98, though I have no idea when. Maybe others can fill in the details.
Slashdot Mirror
I remember that feature, from long ago... but it doesn't often help much anymore, so I wouldn't be surprised it it's not in the config anymore.
All sites with significant traffic nowadays are at least partly dynamically generated, and sites very often load dynamic content (like the HTML of a page) from one server and the static content (like the images) from another... and of course there are different ways to handle that, but it often means that images load from a different subdomain or domain entirely, and switching on this feature just means you won't see any images.
Slashdot, as the obvious example, loads images from a separate subdomain: images.slashdot.org.
The NY Times, for my connection at the moment, loads most images *including* ads from graphics8.nytimes.com, but financial charts are from chart.bigcharts.com.
Once you have a few experiences where you suddenly realize you've been missing the content you needed (or had assumed a site was broken) because of disabled non-originating-server images, you'd shut it off anyway.
Tangent: I've been using ad blocking for a long time now, and I've noticed that more and more, the ads are being served from the same servers as the rest of the images -- be it different from the main content server, or not -- so the simplistic approach of just blocking all images from X domain doesn't work nearly as well anymore.
My current advice is to get FlashBlock (cuts out the annoying stuff, and you can still run the thing if you want), block the domains from the *obvious* ad servers like doubleclick, and you're mostly covered with minimal risk of blocking desired content.
Amanda Dennison of Alberta, Canada, firewalked 220 feet in '05. Someone named Scott Bell walked 328 feet last year. Your experience was more along the lines of the thousands of middle managers who experience the "magic" of firewalking as part of motivational seminars every year.
You have to do your research before you decide you have superseded the laws of physics. Or, at least before you start telling other people about it....
"Less obtrusive than a pop-up" isn't much of an argument either. It's also less intrusive than a salesperson knocking at your door, but that doesn't mean it's okay.
Yes, I'm exaggerating, but the general populace's grasp on technology is already a tenuous thing. Once they understand that they can type in a website address, and the browser will show them content from that website they're already ahead of the game. What will they assume when the ISP is sneaking in extra content?
More importantly, the websites themselves put a hell of a lot of work into layout on the screen, even returning different content depending on the resolution, pixels available, and/or device the user has (notice that "framing" and custom browsers that show ads in the margins simply shrink the page size, so the page display will adjust just as if the window were simply smaller. Ninjaed extra content DOES NOT). Advertisers often pay different amounts for ads that are "beyond the fold", where the user will have to scroll to see it. Some websites are designed to fit entirely above the fold, and navigation is designed based on that. Some websites are flash-only, some pop a new window and resize it based on their content size... There's a $#!#load of money and time that's gone into developing this stuff, and if ISPs suddenly start inserting their own content, it's all shot to hell.
I'm not sure of how copyright laws, etc. apply, but I imagine Rogers will soon know *all* laws that can possibly apply if they proceed.
Suppose you have an exception raised in a given class. You know the line number, and you open the class... if it's involved in serving a purpose that's low-level enough, it's going to take you a far more time to figure out what it's for, how it's used, and what role it plays in the project as a whole if you don't have, say, 3 simple lines of plain English in the header comment.
Personally I don't write too many comments in my "normal" code. I write progressively more as the code gets more complicated -- some features are simply too complex to even fit the implementation in my head all at once, so I write a shorthand walk-through of the implementation before I start. When I'm done, sometimes the code has actually boiled down enough that I can chuck that (sometimes I'm not so lucky).
You have to comment implementations that "look wrong" or are counter-intuitive, possibly because of client demands ("the last software package did it that way, so our other systems are designed to correct for it..."). What, are you naming methods calculateScaleWronglyPerClientRequest()?
It can be wise to flag methods (or classes) that will *appear* unused to refactoring analysis, because they're loaded & accessed dynamically.
I could go on.
... never gonna give! never gonna give! ...
Gotta say, though -- in terms of common internet tricks, that is *way* way less painful than the ones that Slashdotters seem to favor.
God no, I'm not linking.
Score +1 YouTube.
It's not about somehow brain-washing everyone watching/playing extremely violent video or games, or even influencing *most* people to do anything violent. Anecdotal evidence is pretty useless when you're talking about something that won't significantly mess up the majority of people.
No one sensible would argue that a video game *by itself* will turn a kid into a sociopathic mass murderer. But it's not hard to understand how watching a lot of real or realistic violence, and/or playing a game that simulates violence realistically, will affect you.
At a bare minimum it will attenuate the automatic revulsion we have for violence. For most people, this won't result in violent behavior. For other people who are already stewing with impotent rage, frustration, etc., it might make a significant difference.
We don't know how much of a difference it makes yet -- agreed. This study is just a beginning, a pointer to brain reactions with suggestions for further research. And there's also the *huge* discussion of what to actually do about it; rushing in with laws to stop anything "bad" doesn't always work out as planned.
(heh.. I illustrated a point with a webcomic)
Then again, based on a careful weighing of YouTube comments, perhaps I can rely on it after all.
Just keep simplifying the sentence until you get the basic form:
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill (H.R. 1955) last month, by a vote of 404 to 6, that says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it.
The bill says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat it.
The bill says the Internet is a terrorist tool and that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat the internet.
The bill says that Congress needs to develop and implement methods to combat the internet.
BTW, that nun sounds ridiculous. She was basically giving you a shitty sentence and telling you to just figure it out. I hope this wasn't a model of how YOU were supposed to write.
Why not just add a comma?
We have bicycles for boys, with adjustable seats.
Or you might just place the modifier correctly in the first place (closest to the thing it's modifying):
We have bicycles with adjustable seats for boys.
Come on, sister. Look up "misplaced modifier".
Not so clearly, and it's not legal even if that *was* the poster's intention.
First, was the poster copying their *own* code into the forum post? Or was it out of an open source project, or out of his paid corporate work? You don't know. They could have very easily been posting from an OSS project they were currently working on.
Second, if you don't specifically give license details, the legal license is "none". This is how the law works, regardless of how logical or illogical it is, and you can get just as screwed even if the law seems illogical to either person involved. If I post code here on Slashdot (somehow getting it past the lameness filters...) in reply to a question you specifically asked... you *still* have to ask for licensing details before you can use it. Look at the bottom of this page - they clarify it there.
It's called the "straw man" fallacy.
I live in France, but I'm still earning in dollars.
Thanks to the rising oil prices and still-falling dollar nowadays, it costs me about USD 6.70/gallon for *diesel*, which is still cheaper than regular gas (that's be heading past $8/gallon).
I'm very glad to have a small car (gets about 50 mpg) and I don't have to drive anywhere most days.
Yes, I work from home.
Public opinion & exposure is a powerful thing, but also not very discriminating. We need freedom of the press, some level of freedom of information, etc. so that it can act as a check against the official legal system when it goes awry -- but as long as that's doing its job, we really don't want to *replace* it with just public opinion. There's a very good reason why we have police, judges, juries, jails, etc. and not just mobs with nooses.
Not often. Proving libel is not easy in the first place (it requires "actual malice", and either full knowledge that the information is false, or reckless disregard for its truth -- so even a completely half-assed attempt to verify something gets you off, even if proper research would prove it wrong). You can also report rumors, identifying them as such -- and you're clear (yup, the rumor is out there!) but a large percentage of the public won't properly filter it out. "Opinion" articles are completely free from libel risk.
You can also "show" almost anything by simply leaving out details that don't support the point you're trying to make. After all, a newspaper article is just one person talking, not a trial where there's a defense who can fill in the essential details that you left out.
It's not an "either/or" situation. We aren't choosing between complete transparency vs. no transparency whatsoever.
The goal is a fair and structured hearing, and punishment or acquittal based on the laws, decided by a jury & judge as impartial as possible.
With no transparency, the police can ignore the laws, and you might never see a jury at all.
With complete transparency, any "interesting" crime will be first judged by the public, based on third and fourth-hand information with no legal repercussions for errors (it's not *perjury* when the local rag prints gossip and rumors that are dead wrong), and the jury will be tainted by exposure to this mess, and the accused will be punished by the public even if acquitted by the legal system.
Think the public has no real power to exact punishment? You don't even need vigilante gunmen, though that can happen. No laws need be broken, though they might be. But "the public" includes your boss (soon-to-be former boss?), your neighbors (and their kids), the checkout person at the grocery store, your mailman, the guys at the bar, the technician from the phone company, the plumber, the teenagers at the mall, the pizza delivery guy, everyone. If your face is all over the web, if your home address and home phone are all over the web... well, first of all, they'll be all over the web for the rest of your life, because this stuff doesn't go away. Secondly, most people won't even say anything (they'll just stare after you as you leave), but you come into contact with hundreds of people... some of them will probably do something. Some people will actively seek you out to punish you, because vigilante justice is awfully tempting... I'll bet that's already happening with this family.
With the "power of the internet", now they don't just need to worry about getting snubbed by the people on their street. They have to worry what percentage of the, say, 2 million people who've seen their address and phone number will actively contact them. 0.01 percent? Mom, there's 200 people at the door. They want to talk to you and dad. Are my numbers too low?
So yeah, we need a balance.
This story is horrible and sad, and I want everyone to read it and realize that the online world is real, and in some ways it's more dangerous than the offline world. You can do things you'd never be cruel enough to do to someone's face, and cruelty has real consequences.
But I don't want to know where this family lives.
The "ask a lawyer" comment is covered already in the "Ask Slashdot" section description (linked from the submission page): Regarding Legal Advice: When seeking advice on topics that touch on legal aspects, please remember that you should always be prepared to consult professional legal representation. It doesn't hurt to Ask Slashdot for pointers, and suggestions to save you some time, but Ask Slashdot should not be used in place of professional legal representation. Yes, if the questioner's livelihood is riding on the outcome, or he/she will probably have to lay down the cash to get a legal opinion, BUT by the time they've read through the slashdotter responses they'll have a much better idea of what to ask the lawyer, how much legal advice might cost, what KIND of lawyer to find, what they're risking, what non-work activities could be in danger if they sign... they'll have probably seen a dozen stories about good and bad results to just signing the thing vs. asking for a change, and they'll see advice about how to approach a manager, company lawyer, etc. to argue for a change.
That's valuable, and you'll NEVER get all that (plus you'll lose a lot of money) by just plunking down a few hundred bucks every time you have a question that seems vaguely related to legal issues.
Personally, I am not working under any NCA whatsoever anymore, and I've worked with management & the company lawyer to change the agreement in an earlier job; it wasn't really a big deal (though I doubt I could have pulled it off when I was fresh out of school...). And I'm certainly not going to pay a lawyer to get the information, but I'm curious to see what other people's experience has been, and if the trend towards more ridiculous NCAs continues. And I wouldn't even think of signing it. Well, some people *should* think of signing it. They just need to understand the trade-offs. When I got my first development job after graduation, I signed an NCA. I was still kind of amazed they'd hired me in the first place, didn't feel I had any leverage to fight it, and I had no significant personal projects to protect anyway. It was fine. Later on, when I had some real skills and leverage (and personal projects to protect) then I stopped agreeing to those clauses.
I also know a lot of people who do development work purely "as a job" -- there's no risk of them building some wonderful thing in their off-hours because they don't even look at code when they're off the clock. It's a different situation for them as well.
The "Mouse"? The "SpiderTwat"? Lost me there completely. I have no idea what those are supposed to be.
Surely it's possible to express your disrespect in some more coherent way.
Are you sure that's not a password reminder email? A post above has a much higher UID than mine, and joined in late 98 -- plus I'm pretty sure more than 2K users had signed up by Sept '98.
Dunno. I'm certainly pretty fuzzy on when I signed up... I know I was *reading* it all summer '98, but that's all I can point to.
Ah, right; I mixed up the dates... I couldn't have registered in '97, because it wasn't up yet.
So, sometime in '98, though I have no idea when. Maybe others can fill in the details.
Here's the first link the wayback machine has to Slashdot itself, at the start of 1997.
/. was already pretty damned close to what it is today, visually at least.
You should check some of the other versions as well... later on that year,
I personally signed up sometime around either the summer of '97 or '98, I think... possibly '98, or my UID would be lower?
Right, and you kind of figure it would have to be flexible... because you sure as hell aren't going to have AIR bubbles leaking in from outside.