The original idea isn't bad. Corporations are supposed to exist to shield investors in a company from liability created by its officers. In other words, if I give you money to create car batteries and you make batteries that explode and kill people. You should be liable for the damages but I shouldn't.
The liability of an investor being limited to their investment. Even if the company winds up with debts greater than assets an investor has only lost however much they have invested in that company. The idea being to encourage people to put money into companies.
We have, unfortunately, accepted a much broader idea of what this liability shield is all about.
Even if someone is both an investor and an officer the limited liability should only be applicable to their investor role. Having either the corporate entity or its officers should in any way be shielded from the consequences of their own actions. In the car battery example it might even be the case that the investors should be able to sue the executives of such a company, even after the corporation has ceased to exist.
Had you read the Plusnet link in the summary, you'd see, at least for that ISP, ACS:Law requested and received court orders requiring the delivery of customer information. It's not likely that they took different action with Sky Broadband.
If this was the case then Sky's refusal to co-operate press release dosn't make much sense. If you don't want to follow a court order you take the matter up with the courts not whoever got a court to issue it...
If you entrust a person's personal details to a third party and that third party leaks it, you're responsible. The third party is too, but you gave them the info in the first place when you didn't have permission to do so.
Even if the third party dosn't leak the data then you've still most likely broken the law by passing the data to them.
It seems Sky are very quick to trumpet in a press release how wonderful they are now that they've decided not to continue handing over thousands of customer details to a company with woefully inadequate security procedures (for now).
Were they actually complying with the law in handing over the data in the first place? This is the kind of question the ICO needs to be asking of Sky (and other ISPs).
However personally I'd be more impressed if they'd verified that the details would be handled securely before handing them over and getting them leaked in the first place.
If they were to do this they should be charging that company a suitable fee. Probably also requiring a suitable court order.
So the blackmailer accidentally exposes the blackmail, and Sky is upset not because they've been working with a blackmailer but because the blackmail got out early.
Hopefully the Information Commisioner's Office will next turn their attention to Sky and any other ISPs who have worked with this bunch of shysters.
Rebellious youths with try whatever is available. Making marijuana acceptable means more who abstain now will try - with attendant consequences.
The evidence from countries such as Portugal is that relaxing prohibition actually tends to reduce usage. It isn't exactly "rebellious" to take a legal drug:)
I know folks who are big on heroin etc now. They all stated they would never go past pot, but in truth it was the 'gateway' for them.
IIRC the most common actual "gateway drug" is tobacco. Any "progression" from pot having more to do with the economics of the drugs market than anything else.
The reason drugs are prohibited is because they destroy people physically and mentally.Check the medical research on the subject ('research' I said - not the 'opinion' of some doctors)
Which drugs are legal and which are illegal has little to do with "harm". Also even for a dangerous drug, such as alcohol, the effects of prohibition are likely to be worst than the drug itself. Especially when you factor in that black market drugs tend to be highly contaminated.
What about temporary access? How much of a pain in the ass is it going to be to get someone temporarily added to your account, and then removed, later? After all, previously, all you'd really have to do is pick up a spare card, then cut it up after and inform the bank it was destroyed. Now, you need to go down to the bank along with the other person, get them scanned, and then after, get them taken off the account, and make sure they STAYED off the account.
This might improve security. If it prevents a corrupt bank employee being able to create a card attached to your account. Withdraw your money then destroy the records of the additional card ever having existed.
Mind you "Micky Mouse" is a trademarked character of Disney. Not "Mouse". And Disney wouldn't bother wasting money to try to claim that common word. Even-though they could try to get money from all the computer companies because of their peripheral devices. The word is commonly used to describe a household pest or reptile food (Rodent). Likewise a comic book company failed to obtain a claim on the word "Omega" because it is a letter of an alphabet, a universal symbol, and commonly used.
On the other hand Paramount was at one point claiming trademarks on lots of things to do with Star Trek. Including character and ship names.
Helpful hint: the mere use of an acronym does not make your straightforward application of ancient concepts "new" nor "non-obvious."
But it may fool a patent office into thinking it is. Which is probably the intention in the first place. Especially if the people employed by that patent office are not fully competent to evaluate the claims in the application.
This reminds me of a study I read about a year ago, The author pointed out that most reefs were dying, obviously because of global warming.
Typically to the "warmists" everything is due to "(anthropic) global warming"/"climate change"/"(catastropic) climate distruption"/whatever they are calling it this week.
The only ones that are still healthy are the ones where the large predators (sharks, groupers, etc) are still present to control the smaller fish that eat the coral. But the conclusion was that removing the large predators wasn't the problem,
Something which probably was down to human activity. Even simple overfishing, since there's more meat on big fish than little fish.
it is obviously global warming. Obvious to that scientist anyway.
Such a person shouldn't be called a "scientist". Since they are failing to follow any sort of scientific method in reaching their conclusion. Indeed their conclusion just dosn't fit the data. Some reefs dying and some being healthy is inconsistent with global anything.
It's foreign commercial licenses that have been banned, you know, for overfishing the fishing grounds, and giving back a minimal profit. And because they're a poor small country with a huge EEC mostly comprised of ocean, illegal fishing is widespread, meaning chinese and japanese fishing companies are getting fish without paying them anything at all.
All they may be doing is throwing away the money they were otherwise getting by selling fishing permits. Those companies who were fishing illegally are unlikely to stop and some of these who were fishing legally may start to fish illegally. Without a navy to patrol the waters there is nothing to stop them...
OR, maybe, just maybe, the people who go into the music business could do the same as a plumber or programmer or damn near any job apart from "creative industry" and SAVE UP for their kids if they die an untimely death.
Even in the music and other "creative" industries plenty of people are likely to be paid as a "regular job".
10 years. If someone hasn't made 90% of the money from that copyright then they're crap or they have no customers.
Or they have actually made that 90%. Just that it's 90% of rather less than they though it was:)
Probably to ensure that known violent football hooligans do not get tickets? I seem to recall reading some time ago that some of these violent hooligans were flat out banned from traveling to, let alone attending football games because their primary intent is to get drunk and brawl with rivals.
I'm sure some of these thugs are perfectly sober when they get up to their violence. Also it's for the police to keep them traveling.
Keeping that sort of personal data for that long without any proper use for it shows either a heavy degree of incompetence or a desire to use it for their own promotions and that they are sour that "rogue" employees beat them to selling the information.
It's more likely the former probably in terms of "We never thought about getting rid of the data we collected". Along with "We never considered making sure we only collected the minimum data we actually needed or the maximum period of time each datum needed to be stored".
All too often with such "leakages" most of the data shouldn't have been there to leak.
Looks like they are trying to use the "trade secrets" protection part.
The obvious problem with suing over trade secrets is that you need to be careful that the process dosn't result in publishing the secrets involved. IIRC there have been cases where "secrets" have wound up matters of public record through being submitted as evidence in court cases.
I think we have a definition problem here. "Right to Work State" generally means "right (of employers) to harass and fire anyone who tries to organize a union or otherwise make conditions better for themselves and other workers". Like most right-wing business-supported terms, it means the opposite of what it says, so as to con the workers into supporting policies that go against their interests.
Such double speak is hardly exclusive to "right-wing" political positions.
Since clauses (including, but not limited to, non-compete clauses) in contracts that prohibit or restrain anyone from engaging in any legal trade or profession in California are categorically void as contrary to public policy, that was a pretty silly thing for an employer in California to have him sign, and would be an even sillier thing for them to expect a California court to enforce.
IME it's actually fairly common for "contracts" to contain clauses which are questionable, unenforcable, (even completly null and void). Anyway a company managing to enforce such a claim might well mean they had to continue to treat the person in question as an employee:)
I personally am not big on AGW simply because too many of the scientists we have seen for it have a serious "we don't have to show data to riff raff" attitude, and to me that is the opposite of science. Scientists, those that I consider "real" scientists anyway, like Einstein, were happy to show you their work. Hell I'm sure Hawking would probably bury you alive in data if asked.
IIRC Darwin was well aware that his theory of evolution was incomplete and indicated in his published works where he though further research was needed.
That to me is what made science great, in that it doesn't require faith or belief in an individual or individuals.
Or for that matter organisations.
A true scientist, and I hate to use a FLOSS analogy but that is all I can think of ATM, wants you to find the "bugs" because they are concerned with finding the answers not pushing an agenda one way or another.
Sometimes an "outsider" can easily find bugs that have been overlooked. It also appears daft not to run computer models past computer experts, statistics past statistics experts and in attempting to work out what conditions existed in the past to not ask historians & archaeologists.
Come across as anti-scientists?
WTF for, because they dont agree with fuzzy conclusions, based on faulty computer models.
Or because the dont agree with the tampered data?
Even in some cases fictional data. It's also important to understand the limitations of whatever data is being used. Otherwise you have a classic GIGO issue. An obvious problem with much of the land temperature readings is that they originate from cities and airports.
What is anti-science about ASKING FOR THE RESEARCH AND NOT THE RESULTS.
Knowing the methodology is important as is knowing what data has been discarded and what "adjustments" have been applied.
When you're talking about changing the basis for the global economy, it is needed.
Especially when it is unclear if these changes would actually do anything about the alleged "problem" in the first place. Even some AGW advocates oppose the whole "carbon trading" idea.
Slashdot Mirror
The original idea isn't bad. Corporations are supposed to exist to shield investors in a company from liability created by its officers. In other words, if I give you money to create car batteries and you make batteries that explode and kill people. You should be liable for the damages but I shouldn't.
The liability of an investor being limited to their investment. Even if the company winds up with debts greater than assets an investor has only lost however much they have invested in that company. The idea being to encourage people to put money into companies.
We have, unfortunately, accepted a much broader idea of what this liability shield is all about.
Even if someone is both an investor and an officer the limited liability should only be applicable to their investor role. Having either the corporate entity or its officers should in any way be shielded from the consequences of their own actions.
In the car battery example it might even be the case that the investors should be able to sue the executives of such a company, even after the corporation has ceased to exist.
Had you read the Plusnet link in the summary, you'd see, at least for that ISP, ACS:Law requested and received court orders requiring the delivery of customer information. It's not likely that they took different action with Sky Broadband.
If this was the case then Sky's refusal to co-operate press release dosn't make much sense. If you don't want to follow a court order you take the matter up with the courts not whoever got a court to issue it...
If you entrust a person's personal details to a third party and that third party leaks it, you're responsible. The third party is too, but you gave them the info in the first place when you didn't have permission to do so.
Even if the third party dosn't leak the data then you've still most likely broken the law by passing the data to them.
It seems Sky are very quick to trumpet in a press release how wonderful they are now that they've decided not to continue handing over thousands of customer details to a company with woefully inadequate security procedures (for now).
Were they actually complying with the law in handing over the data in the first place? This is the kind of question the ICO needs to be asking of Sky (and other ISPs).
However personally I'd be more impressed if they'd verified that the details would be handled securely before handing them over and getting them leaked in the first place.
If they were to do this they should be charging that company a suitable fee. Probably also requiring a suitable court order.
I thought it was some weird perl module.
No doubt someone will now write a perl module which accuses random ISP customers of copyright infringement.
So the blackmailer accidentally exposes the blackmail, and Sky is upset not because they've been working with a blackmailer but because the blackmail got out early.
Hopefully the Information Commisioner's Office will next turn their attention to Sky and any other ISPs who have worked with this bunch of shysters.
Rebellious youths with try whatever is available. Making marijuana acceptable means more who abstain now will try - with attendant consequences.
:)
I know folks who are big on heroin etc now. They all stated they would never go past pot, but in truth it was the 'gateway' for them.
The evidence from countries such as Portugal is that relaxing prohibition actually tends to reduce usage. It isn't exactly "rebellious" to take a legal drug
IIRC the most common actual "gateway drug" is tobacco. Any "progression" from pot having more to do with the economics of the drugs market than anything else.
The reason drugs are prohibited is because they destroy people physically and mentally.Check the medical research on the subject ('research' I said - not the 'opinion' of some doctors)
Which drugs are legal and which are illegal has little to do with "harm". Also even for a dangerous drug, such as alcohol, the effects of prohibition are likely to be worst than the drug itself. Especially when you factor in that black market drugs tend to be highly contaminated.
What about temporary access? How much of a pain in the ass is it going to be to get someone temporarily added to your account, and then removed, later? After all, previously, all you'd really have to do is pick up a spare card, then cut it up after and inform the bank it was destroyed. Now, you need to go down to the bank along with the other person, get them scanned, and then after, get them taken off the account, and make sure they STAYED off the account.
This might improve security. If it prevents a corrupt bank employee being able to create a card attached to your account. Withdraw your money then destroy the records of the additional card ever having existed.
Mind you "Micky Mouse" is a trademarked character of Disney. Not "Mouse". And Disney wouldn't bother wasting money to try to claim that common word. Even-though they could try to get money from all the computer companies because of their peripheral devices. The word is commonly used to describe a household pest or reptile food (Rodent). Likewise a comic book company failed to obtain a claim on the word "Omega" because it is a letter of an alphabet, a universal symbol, and commonly used.
On the other hand Paramount was at one point claiming trademarks on lots of things to do with Star Trek. Including character and ship names.
Background checks are reasonable for extremely sensitive positions that require top secret security clearance, for example spies.
How much evidence is there that such checks are effective though? Especially if they include such things as polygraphs...
Helpful hint: the mere use of an acronym does not make your straightforward application of ancient concepts "new" nor "non-obvious."
But it may fool a patent office into thinking it is. Which is probably the intention in the first place. Especially if the people employed by that patent office are not fully competent to evaluate the claims in the application.
This reminds me of a study I read about a year ago, The author pointed out that most reefs were dying, obviously because of global warming.
Typically to the "warmists" everything is due to "(anthropic) global warming"/"climate change"/"(catastropic) climate distruption"/whatever they are calling it this week.
The only ones that are still healthy are the ones where the large predators (sharks, groupers, etc) are still present to control the smaller fish that eat the coral. But the conclusion was that removing the large predators wasn't the problem,
Something which probably was down to human activity. Even simple overfishing, since there's more meat on big fish than little fish.
it is obviously global warming. Obvious to that scientist anyway.
Such a person shouldn't be called a "scientist". Since they are failing to follow any sort of scientific method in reaching their conclusion. Indeed their conclusion just dosn't fit the data. Some reefs dying and some being healthy is inconsistent with global anything.
It's foreign commercial licenses that have been banned, you know, for overfishing the fishing grounds, and giving back a minimal profit. And because they're a poor small country with a huge EEC mostly comprised of ocean, illegal fishing is widespread, meaning chinese and japanese fishing companies are getting fish without paying them anything at all.
All they may be doing is throwing away the money they were otherwise getting by selling fishing permits. Those companies who were fishing illegally are unlikely to stop and some of these who were fishing legally may start to fish illegally. Without a navy to patrol the waters there is nothing to stop them...
They're not forbidding all fishing, just large foreign commercial operations.
Presumably these large foreign fishing companies will be commenting "You and who's navy?"
OR, maybe, just maybe, the people who go into the music business could do the same as a plumber or programmer or damn near any job apart from "creative industry" and SAVE UP for their kids if they die an untimely death.
:)
Even in the music and other "creative" industries plenty of people are likely to be paid as a "regular job".
10 years. If someone hasn't made 90% of the money from that copyright then they're crap or they have no customers.
Or they have actually made that 90%. Just that it's 90% of rather less than they though it was
Probably to ensure that known violent football hooligans do not get tickets? I seem to recall reading some time ago that some of these violent hooligans were flat out banned from traveling to, let alone attending football games because their primary intent is to get drunk and brawl with rivals.
I'm sure some of these thugs are perfectly sober when they get up to their violence. Also it's for the police to keep them traveling.
Keeping that sort of personal data for that long without any proper use for it shows either a heavy degree of incompetence or a desire to use it for their own promotions and that they are sour that "rogue" employees beat them to selling the information.
It's more likely the former probably in terms of "We never thought about getting rid of the data we collected". Along with "We never considered making sure we only collected the minimum data we actually needed or the maximum period of time each datum needed to be stored".
All too often with such "leakages" most of the data shouldn't have been there to leak.
The (USA) media (and probably USA justice system too) will blame almost entirely on BP. ... yeah, you got it.
The UK media, OTOH, will
Amoco?
Looks like they are trying to use the "trade secrets" protection part.
The obvious problem with suing over trade secrets is that you need to be careful that the process dosn't result in publishing the secrets involved. IIRC there have been cases where "secrets" have wound up matters of public record through being submitted as evidence in court cases.
I think we have a definition problem here. "Right to Work State" generally means "right (of employers) to harass and fire anyone who tries to organize a union or otherwise make conditions better for themselves and other workers". Like most right-wing business-supported terms, it means the opposite of what it says, so as to con the workers into supporting policies that go against their interests.
Such double speak is hardly exclusive to "right-wing" political positions.
Since clauses (including, but not limited to, non-compete clauses) in contracts that prohibit or restrain anyone from engaging in any legal trade or profession in California are categorically void as contrary to public policy, that was a pretty silly thing for an employer in California to have him sign, and would be an even sillier thing for them to expect a California court to enforce.
:)
IME it's actually fairly common for "contracts" to contain clauses which are questionable, unenforcable, (even completly null and void).
Anyway a company managing to enforce such a claim might well mean they had to continue to treat the person in question as an employee
I personally am not big on AGW simply because too many of the scientists we have seen for it have a serious "we don't have to show data to riff raff" attitude, and to me that is the opposite of science. Scientists, those that I consider "real" scientists anyway, like Einstein, were happy to show you their work. Hell I'm sure Hawking would probably bury you alive in data if asked.
IIRC Darwin was well aware that his theory of evolution was incomplete and indicated in his published works where he though further research was needed.
That to me is what made science great, in that it doesn't require faith or belief in an individual or individuals.
Or for that matter organisations.
A true scientist, and I hate to use a FLOSS analogy but that is all I can think of ATM, wants you to find the "bugs" because they are concerned with finding the answers not pushing an agenda one way or another.
Sometimes an "outsider" can easily find bugs that have been overlooked. It also appears daft not to run computer models past computer experts, statistics past statistics experts and in attempting to work out what conditions existed in the past to not ask historians & archaeologists.
Come across as anti-scientists?
WTF for, because they dont agree with fuzzy conclusions, based on faulty computer models. Or because the dont agree with the tampered data?
Even in some cases fictional data.
It's also important to understand the limitations of whatever data is being used. Otherwise you have a classic GIGO issue. An obvious problem with much of the land temperature readings is that they originate from cities and airports.
What is anti-science about ASKING FOR THE RESEARCH AND NOT THE RESULTS.
Knowing the methodology is important as is knowing what data has been discarded and what "adjustments" have been applied.
When you're talking about changing the basis for the global economy, it is needed.
Especially when it is unclear if these changes would actually do anything about the alleged "problem" in the first place.
Even some AGW advocates oppose the whole "carbon trading" idea.