You can't assume that this company is American. Slashdot has readers across the world. I am writing from Australia. In Australia, you can't just call up a guy to start seizing property because you think someone owes you money. We don't know the full story of this issue submitted by an anonymous coward.
In fact, in some countries, I bet they can get into serious trouble for trying to seize other people's goods.
Both statements could be accurate. ie, that their programmers are merely average, and that they hire only 2 per cent of applicants. It may indicate that they recruit badly, or that they attract people who are generally below par.
Having a degree does not make a good programmer necessarily. I say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In this case, MS programmers eat alot but produce very little - a sure sign they have worms.
For those who don't know about court suppression orders, they are essentially orders from a judge or magistrate that someone cannot publish information about a court case. Suppression orders are designed to stop jurors being influenced by media articles.
As a journalist I was hit by one of these little babies recently when I couldn't report on a sensational court case in South Australia for our Ezine, even though I work in Victoria. The suppression order related only to works published in South Australia. Really unfair I thought, considering media published the incident across the world, and anyone with an internet enabled computer could access their stories, including jurors in South Australia. But because I live in Australia, I would have been in contempt of court and could have gone to gaol indefinitely.
Defammation is a different issue though. If someone in an internet chat room called me a paedophile, and that stopped me getting a job, I think I would be pissed off. Any defence that they published the article from the USA, and didn't really intend any malice with the untrue allegations would not wash.
There is also a problem with cultural variants that need to be respected. Calling someone a Christian would not be defamatory in Australia, even if they were a Muslim, but if I call someone a Christian in a chat room, who is locked up by the Taliban, and they faced the death penalty, I can understand the argument that cross-border sensitivities must be respected. For those interested, the last example is not just made up. When two Australians were locked up by the Taliban, and were accused of being Christian missionaries, media companies voluntarily omitted information from the group's website that they were a Christian organisation spreading the Good News.
It is all a bit of a joke really. It is the easiest thing in the world to plug a CD player into the back of your computer and record the files as.WAV, and then just convert them to MP3 or.OGG. The only way to stop the files being cracked is to make then unlistenable in a standard CD player. The solution? Accept that they will be copied and let bands make their money from live gigs. Remember when bans used to play live...?
Would it not just be easier to spread a heap of viruses encoded onto the most popular MP3z. Maybe a virus that attacks Gnnutella software. The more they would be traded, the more Gnutella would be killed. It would sure be easier than them trying to sue Gnutella out of existence. As it is, most of the Napster clones are crap anyway.
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You can't assume that this company is American. Slashdot has readers across the world. I am writing from Australia. In Australia, you can't just call up a guy to start seizing property because you think someone owes you money. We don't know the full story of this issue submitted by an anonymous coward.
In fact, in some countries, I bet they can get into serious trouble for trying to seize other people's goods.
Both statements could be accurate. ie, that their programmers are merely average, and that they hire only 2 per cent of applicants. It may indicate that they recruit badly, or that they attract people who are generally below par.
Having a degree does not make a good programmer necessarily. I say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. In this case, MS programmers eat alot but produce very little - a sure sign they have worms.
As a journalist I was hit by one of these little babies recently when I couldn't report on a sensational court case in South Australia for our Ezine, even though I work in Victoria. The suppression order related only to works published in South Australia. Really unfair I thought, considering media published the incident across the world, and anyone with an internet enabled computer could access their stories, including jurors in South Australia. But because I live in Australia, I would have been in contempt of court and could have gone to gaol indefinitely.
Defammation is a different issue though. If someone in an internet chat room called me a paedophile, and that stopped me getting a job, I think I would be pissed off. Any defence that they published the article from the USA, and didn't really intend any malice with the untrue allegations would not wash.
There is also a problem with cultural variants that need to be respected. Calling someone a Christian would not be defamatory in Australia, even if they were a Muslim, but if I call someone a Christian in a chat room, who is locked up by the Taliban, and they faced the death penalty, I can understand the argument that cross-border sensitivities must be respected.
For those interested, the last example is not just made up. When two Australians were locked up by the Taliban, and were accused of being Christian missionaries, media companies voluntarily omitted information from the group's website that they were a Christian organisation spreading the Good News.
It is all a bit of a joke really. It is the easiest thing in the world to plug a CD player into the back of your computer and record the files as .WAV, and then just convert them to MP3 or .OGG. The only way to stop the files being cracked is to make then unlistenable in a standard CD player. The solution? Accept that they will be copied and let bands make their money from live gigs. Remember when bans used to play live...?
Would it not just be easier to spread a heap of viruses encoded onto the most popular MP3z. Maybe a virus that attacks Gnnutella software. The more they would be traded, the more Gnutella would be killed. It would sure be easier than them trying to sue Gnutella out of existence. As it is, most of the Napster clones are crap anyway.