5m accuracy is not good enough to differentiate some of these streets I'm talking about... Some of these streets are separated from each other by less than a meter. Like I said, some of these are separated by simple curbs... That's what, 12cm? And if it's separated by a small patch of grass, that means the median is rougly 1m (width of a sidewalk)
But I've had these problems on multiple different GPS units made by different companies, which is why I brought this up, as I don't think it's unique to one specific model. Besides, I doubt the tracking equipment will be made using high-end components, as it would most likely get outsourced to the cheapest bidder.
That argument won't work if you are trying to prove I have a discrepancy... Have you ever been in a tunnel that has forks and intersections inside the tunnel?
But more to my point... This tunnel I'm referring to, resides on a small ancient mountain range that is heavily forrested, and also resides under a bridge. (ie, there is no GPS signal at the entrance of the tunnel). However, you can take the back roads, to drive over/around the big hill, rather than take the tunnel to go through it... Many actually do this, because of traffic reasons, as the tunnel often is congested. If the GPS merely calculated distance traveled based on last known GPS coordinates, I could take a detour through the forested back roads, and start/end at the same location as if I took the tunnel, yet my odometer reading will be off by several miles. Depending on the route I take, it can be off by tens of miles.
Further, you'll find that car GPS systems typically will NOT accumulate miles driven based merely on last known coordinates as you suggested, but will actually extrapolate miles driven based on calculated velocity over change in time. Thus if the calculated velocity is 0, the extrapolated miles driven will also be 0, until it can successfully recalculate velocity.
they can automatically charge tolls and even issue speeding tickets.
Not using GPS they can't... (At least not reliably by itself) My GPS constantly gets confused on the freeway near my house, because there is a freeway-bypass that parallels the freeway. (It's actually the "old' freeway). In many places it is separated from the main freeway with nothing more than a concrete barrier... However, the speed limit on this bypass is 35, the speed limit of the main freeway is 65. If the GPS thinks you are on the bypass it will think you are speeding...
Likewise, there are many subdivisions built on arterial bypasses that are very similar. Side street parallels main street, with usually a simple curb that separates the street, sometimes small strip of grass/trees... If GPS thinks you are on the side-street, it will think speed limit is 25 instead of 45.
Not really. They have to prove the discrepancy. There is a long tunnel I drive through to work every day... And whenever I'm in downtown, my GPS never has a signal. Plus the back roads near my house is heavily forested, so no signal there either. And what if you were towing your car while it was in neutral? Power would be off so GPS wouldn't be powered, but the odometer could still be ticking, as it is usually connected to the transmission output shaft, which is still turning if you are pushing your car while in neutral.
- fining for speeding;)
- fining for running red lights
- fining for failing to stop
GPS will not be able to do any of things passively. For example, my GPS units constantly gets confused when I drive the freeway near my house, becuase there is a side street that parallels the freeway, and in some sections, is only separated from the freeway with a simple concrete barrer. If the GPS thinks you are on the side-street when you are on the freeway, it will think the speed limit is 35 instead of 65. I know of several residential areas that are built on loops that branch off an arterial street, and run parallel and reconnect at the end of the subdivision. This street is often separated from the main street with a simple curb. If GPS thinks you are on the loop that runs parallel it will think the speed limit is 25 instead of 45.
Likewise, there are several intersections in our metro area, where there is a protected lane that bypasses the signals, as it's separated with fixed cones. If the GPS doesn't know you are in the protected lane, it will think you are running a red light.
isn't set up to take 50 states' differing tax rates and does not have the accounting muscle to pay 50 different state taxes each quarter
It's actually much worse than that... Counties, cities, etc can charge different tax rates... For example the sales tax in Los Angeles is not the same as the Sales Tax in San Francisco is not the same as the sales tax in Anaheim, etc. Further, some municipalities have exemptions on items. For example, in Oregon, even tho there is no state sales tax, the cities in southern oregon, (IIRC, can't remember if it got repealed or shot down) charges a sales tax on snack items. Further other municipalities even have "free tax" day, where certain days of the year, taxes are lifted, etc...
So you're saying if I write (for example) an applicaiton to use only a single thread, and use blocking calls for all my I/O operations, I can expect huge performance benefits from migrating to better hardware? You can put in an 8 core system, it won't help your single threaded application if it's using blocking I/O calls.
If the car is doing the speed limit, why would you have a good legal reason to be overtaking it?
There are many reasons. It could be a rock truck spewing rocks everywhere. It could be an old jalopy spewing black smoke. Perhaps you notice the guy might be drunk/drowsy and is veering in/out of their lane, etc.
Closing the butterfly ala cruise control is the safest but most expensive, unreliable and mechanical way of doing it.
Can't even do this with some engines... The 3.7 liter V6 engine in the Infinti G37, Nissan 370Z, as well as the TwinTurbo variant in the GTR, do not have throttle valves anymore, as this engine employs variable valve lift to adjust air-flow.
a) if you need to exceed the speed limit to overtake, then you don't need to overtake
So if you are behind a triple-trailer that is going 5-10 under the limit, you want to try to pass the triple-trailer while only going 5mph faster? Good luck with that...
This is why in places like WA, it is explicitly LEGAL to exceed the speed limit when passing on two lane roads. I for one like to minimize the amount of time I'm on the left side of the center line, cuz you never know who might poke out and make a right without looking both ways.
In places like the State of Washington, it is actually LEGAL to exceed the speed limit when passing somebody on a two lane road. It explicitly says so in the statutes..
"It actually talks to the computer which manages the engine, and it tells that computer to limit the available fuel to the engine so that it will not exceed a certain speed, whatever speed limit you're in," Dr Jobe said.
That's a bad thing. It should be limiting spark, not fuel. Limiting fuel can cause a lean condition which can cause engine damage.
They offered a discount if customers promised not to use competitor's products.
Actually, from what I understand this isn't directly the case. This verbiage was not in the contract. The EU Commissioner believes that the end-result was that. That's very different.
Intel basically is saying the EU is thinking 1+1=3, because customers that received a rebate may have refrained from buying from AMD, but the contract clause didn't explicitly state this as a requirement. Just because the customer only bought from Intel doesn't mean the rebate was paid BECAUSE they only bought from Intel.
Elsewhere in this thread I made an example to illustrate something similar. Where Bob looked at Kathy's financials to see how many products she sold in the past year, so for the next year Bob offers a rebate if she buys X number of chips (where X = 80% of what she sold the previous year). Kathy determines this rebate will make the chip $2 cheaper than Jim's chips, so she buys enough chips to get the rebate, but doesn't buy any chips from Jim, becuase she doesn't know if she can sell that many products, so she holds off until later in the year, and buys a much smaller amount from Jim.
To an outsider this may look suspicious. Kathy buys all chips for this year from Bob and non from Jim, and later gets a rebate from Bob in the mail....
Not quite.. It's irrelevant if the discount is provided up front or not. The rationale for providing one over the other is for the books. A volume discount reflects transaction price. A rebate maintains the original transaction price, but the rebate can be listed as a separate "expense".
But anyways, from Intel's perspective, they still feel like they did no wrong... How about this twist:
Bob and Jim both make chips.
It costs bob $10 to make a chip, but it costs Jim $14 to make a chip.
Kathy makes a doodad using one of the chips. Kathy posts on her website that she sold 100 doodads in 2008.
Bob tells Kathy he'll sell her chips for $20. Bob tells Kathy that as a bonus if she buys > 50 chips she'll get a $250 rebate by mail. Bob tells Kathy that if she buys > 80 chips, she'll get an additional rebate of $470.
Meanwhile later that day, Jim talks to Kathy and says his firm price is $15 per chip...
That night kathy crunches some numbers, and determines that if she buys 90 chips from Bob, she'll get a total rebate of $720. She figures out that if she subtracts that amount from the $1800 it would cost her to buy the 90 chips, she ends up only paying $12 per chip, which is cheaper than Jim. She talks to her sales team, and they are confident they can sell between 90-100 doodads this next year, so she decides that she'll buy 90 chips from Bob, but will hold off on buying any more chips until halfway through the year to see how sales go...
So the next year, she only sells doodads that use Bob's chips and none that use Jim's chips, until August when she determines she's running low on chips, and decides to buy 10 chips from Jim for $15 each, since she doesn't qualify for a volume rebate from Bob.
At the end of the year, Jim goes to his friend Frank, who is a police officer, and says that Bob used his market dominance on Kathy to give her a rebate if she didn't buy any chips from Jim.
Frank looks at Kathy's purchase orders and notices that Kathy bought only from Bob and none from Jim back in January. He also finds records from Bob's ISP indicating that he looked at Kathy's sales reports for the previous year.
Jim tells franks that he crunched the numbers as said that if he wanted to sell 90 chips to Kathy for the price that Bob did including his rebates, Jim would lose money on each and every chip sold.
Frank determined that since Bob knew that Kathy only sold 100 doodads in 2008, that the rebate offer if she buys > 80 doodads was done on purpose to prevent her from buying chips from Jim because Jim would not be able to match that price, and consequently arrests Bob and throws him in jail for anti-trust...
Point being: Intel's contention is that they never agreed that a term of their rebate was for the receiver to not sell AMD products... Using this above example, it can be quite easy to see how a third party might mis-interpret what happened as being exactly that...
he scientific problem I had the most issue with was the "super-nova" that destroyed Romulus, enveloping it. Was it in the same solar system? If so, then Spock would destroy the Nova by turning the Romulan Sun into a black hole!? Or, was it in a different system? If so, then the Nova was so huge that the mass of the star could expand over distances of light years and envelop a planet in a different star system!? It made no sense at all.
My thoughts exactly. I argued with a guy on this on another board. Nero was so ticked at Spock becuase he allowed their planet to get destroyed... But even if he black-holed their sun in time to save romulus, their precious romulus would still be without a sun. Which means, they would've had to evacuate romulus... Well, then they should've started much sooner... No point in waiting for their sun to be destroyed before they start evacuating...
But then some argued the star was in another system... Well, when a star goes super nova, the shock wave of ejected matter only travels at 1/10th the speed of light. Which means if the nearest star outside our solar-system went super-nova, it would take 40+ years for the shock wave to reach us.... Based on that, I think the star that went nova was actually the romulus star, not a neighboring one. They clearly depicted the sun expanding and engulfing romulus. I doubt they would depict a star growing to the size such that it engulfs neigboring star systems, that's rediculous.
ever since my wife's fiasco with non-competes, we make sure to not sign them to avoid the hassles. My wife has since moved on to another company, and they did not flinch when she declined to sign the non-compete. (They didn't even ask her to sign the non-compete until like a week or two after she started)
A part of me wonders if someone did sign it, and if a company states that signing it is a requirement for continued employment, if that's considered signing an agreement under duress?
A better analogy would be if you bought a new car from a dealer, and the dealer tells you that they don't have enough money to buy your trade-in, but tell you that you are not allowed to sell your old car to anybody else for one year.
If a company has a legitimate cause of action against a former employee transferring proprietary info, then let them make the case and be subject to a penalty if they lose.
Do not confuse a non-disclosure agreement with a non-compete agreement:)
That being said, if you elect to keep some engineers on staff, you are admitting that those engineers have higher value to you, than the ones you let go...
When you let them go, the services they provide to another company is worth less to you than those that you kept employed. It is not the employees fault that you don't have the money to pay them, that is your problem. That essentially what was ruled. Employee has a right to work, you cannot deny them that right.
I know people hate car analogies, but that attitude is like saying, "I can't afford to buy this Vette, so therefore NOBODY will be able to buy it"
If you don't want "secrets" to leave the company, that's what non-disclosures are for.
My wife went through a law suit a few years ago for this... The Non-compete was eventually deemed unenforceable.
Basically what they determined, is that the basis of a non-compete, is that the employee would be bringing something of value (which was obtained from the first employer) to a second employer, putting the first employer at a disadvantage...
However, since my wife was laid off, it was determined that by laying her off, the first employer essentially deemed that she was no longer of any value to the company... Therefore, since her status was classified as not having any value to first employer, her employment by second employer does not place the first company at a disadvantage, because they already deemed her services as being not valuable to them.
So basically that means, if you leave on your own accord, it may be enforceable.. But if you are fired or laid off, you cannot be held to a non-compete (In the state of Washington anyways), because by terminating your employment against your will, the company is admitting that you no longer possess anything of value to the company.
I'm not talking about Windows DRM. I was talking about the streaming technology itself. I was able to stream netflix to my laptop using the internet from my phone's 3G connection, with nary a hiccup.
Both of us have experience with youtube not even being able to cut it with a fat-pipe on the desktop, especially their HD stuff. I'm just saying, that I would NOT pay for that type of experience. DRM issues aside, Netflix streaming itself is FAAAAR ahead of youtube, both SD and HD. I'm just saying for youtube to start charging money, they need to vastly improve the streaming quality.
Netflix streaming works perfectly fine on my computer. However, when you have a hiccup on your internet connection, netflix will transrate to a lower bitrate, so you can continue streaming...
On youtube, when the same thing happens, the stream just aborts, and you have to start all over again. I don't know how many times on youtube, the content is rendered faster than it can stream, such that the video output is terrible.
It costs bob $10 to make a chip, but it costs Jim $14 to make a chip.
Kathy makes a doodad using one of the chips.
Kathy posts on her website that she sold 100 doodads in 2008.
Bob tells Kathy he'll sell her chips for $20.
Bob tells Kathy that as a bonus if she buys > 50 chips she'll get a $250 rebate.
Bob tells Kathy that if she buys > 80 chips, she'll get an additional rebate of $470.
Meanwhile later that day, Jim talks to Kathy and says his firm price is $15 per chip...
That night kathy crunches some numbers, and determines that if she buys 90 chips from Bob, she'll get a total rebate of $720. She figures out that if she subtracts that amount from the $1800 it would cost her to buy the 90 chips, she ends up only paying $12 per chip, which is cheaper than Jim. She talks to her sales team, and they are confident they can sell between 90-100 doodads this next year, so she decides that she'll buy 90 chips from Bob, but will hold off on buying any more chips until halfway through the year to see how sales go...
So the next year, she only sells doodads that use Bob's chips and none that use Jim's chips, until August when she determines she's running low on chips, and decides to buy 10 chips from Jim for $15 each, since she doesn't qualify for a volume rebate from Bob.
At the end of the year, Jim goes to his friend Frank, who is a police officer, and says that Bob used his market dominance on Kathy to give her a rebate if she didn't buy any chips from Jim.
Frank looks at Kathy's purchase orders and notices that Kathy bought only from Bob and none from Jim back in January. He also finds records from Bob's ISP indicating that he looked at Kathy's sales reports for the previous year.
Jim tells franks that he crunched the numbers as said that if he wanted to sell 90 chips to Kathy for the price that Bob did including his rebates, Jim would lose money on each and every chip sold.
Frank determined that since Bob knew that Kathy only sold 100 doodads in 2008, that the rebate offer if she buys > 80 doodads was done on purpose to prevent her from buying chips from Jim because Jim would not be able to match that price, and consequently arrests Bob and throws him in jail for anti-trust...
Certainly Microsoft products are more expensive in the EU than the US, even after exchange rates are taken into account. It's EU customers / victims are subsidizing it's US customers / victims.
Uh, no... It's called VAT. Unlike the US, in other parts of the world VAT is collected directly from the manufacturer, and reflected in the price of the product.
This is why in places like Japan, you hear about Toyota/Honda/Nissan getting rebates when they export cars. It's because they are getting refunded the VAT that was collected on those cars, since VAT is not applicable outside of Japan.
In the US, sales tax is applied at time of sale and collected from the purchaser. VAT does not not work this way... THIS is why the prices in VAT countries is higher than the US.
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5m accuracy is not good enough to differentiate some of these streets I'm talking about... Some of these streets are separated from each other by less than a meter. Like I said, some of these are separated by simple curbs... That's what, 12cm? And if it's separated by a small patch of grass, that means the median is rougly 1m (width of a sidewalk)
But I've had these problems on multiple different GPS units made by different companies, which is why I brought this up, as I don't think it's unique to one specific model. Besides, I doubt the tracking equipment will be made using high-end components, as it would most likely get outsourced to the cheapest bidder.
That argument won't work if you are trying to prove I have a discrepancy... Have you ever been in a tunnel that has forks and intersections inside the tunnel?
But more to my point... This tunnel I'm referring to, resides on a small ancient mountain range that is heavily forrested, and also resides under a bridge. (ie, there is no GPS signal at the entrance of the tunnel). However, you can take the back roads, to drive over/around the big hill, rather than take the tunnel to go through it... Many actually do this, because of traffic reasons, as the tunnel often is congested. If the GPS merely calculated distance traveled based on last known GPS coordinates, I could take a detour through the forested back roads, and start/end at the same location as if I took the tunnel, yet my odometer reading will be off by several miles. Depending on the route I take, it can be off by tens of miles.
Further, you'll find that car GPS systems typically will NOT accumulate miles driven based merely on last known coordinates as you suggested, but will actually extrapolate miles driven based on calculated velocity over change in time. Thus if the calculated velocity is 0, the extrapolated miles driven will also be 0, until it can successfully recalculate velocity.
they can automatically charge tolls and even issue speeding tickets.
Not using GPS they can't... (At least not reliably by itself) My GPS constantly gets confused on the freeway near my house, because there is a freeway-bypass that parallels the freeway. (It's actually the "old' freeway). In many places it is separated from the main freeway with nothing more than a concrete barrier... However, the speed limit on this bypass is 35, the speed limit of the main freeway is 65. If the GPS thinks you are on the bypass it will think you are speeding...
Likewise, there are many subdivisions built on arterial bypasses that are very similar. Side street parallels main street, with usually a simple curb that separates the street, sometimes small strip of grass/trees... If GPS thinks you are on the side-street, it will think speed limit is 25 instead of 45.
Not really. They have to prove the discrepancy. There is a long tunnel I drive through to work every day... And whenever I'm in downtown, my GPS never has a signal. Plus the back roads near my house is heavily forested, so no signal there either. And what if you were towing your car while it was in neutral? Power would be off so GPS wouldn't be powered, but the odometer could still be ticking, as it is usually connected to the transmission output shaft, which is still turning if you are pushing your car while in neutral.
- fining for speeding ;)
- fining for running red lights
- fining for failing to stop
GPS will not be able to do any of things passively. For example, my GPS units constantly gets confused when I drive the freeway near my house, becuase there is a side street that parallels the freeway, and in some sections, is only separated from the freeway with a simple concrete barrer. If the GPS thinks you are on the side-street when you are on the freeway, it will think the speed limit is 35 instead of 65. I know of several residential areas that are built on loops that branch off an arterial street, and run parallel and reconnect at the end of the subdivision. This street is often separated from the main street with a simple curb. If GPS thinks you are on the loop that runs parallel it will think the speed limit is 25 instead of 45.
Likewise, there are several intersections in our metro area, where there is a protected lane that bypasses the signals, as it's separated with fixed cones. If the GPS doesn't know you are in the protected lane, it will think you are running a red light.
I guess you never drive on toll roads, or long private driveways. For example, the private loop on our campus at work is a couple miles long.
isn't set up to take 50 states' differing tax rates and does not have the accounting muscle to pay 50 different state taxes each quarter
It's actually much worse than that... Counties, cities, etc can charge different tax rates... For example the sales tax in Los Angeles is not the same as the Sales Tax in San Francisco is not the same as the sales tax in Anaheim, etc. Further, some municipalities have exemptions on items. For example, in Oregon, even tho there is no state sales tax, the cities in southern oregon, (IIRC, can't remember if it got repealed or shot down) charges a sales tax on snack items. Further other municipalities even have "free tax" day, where certain days of the year, taxes are lifted, etc...
So you're saying if I write (for example) an applicaiton to use only a single thread, and use blocking calls for all my I/O operations, I can expect huge performance benefits from migrating to better hardware? You can put in an 8 core system, it won't help your single threaded application if it's using blocking I/O calls.
If the car is doing the speed limit, why would you have a good legal reason to be overtaking it?
There are many reasons. It could be a rock truck spewing rocks everywhere. It could be an old jalopy spewing black smoke. Perhaps you notice the guy might be drunk/drowsy and is veering in/out of their lane, etc.
Closing the butterfly ala cruise control is the safest but most expensive, unreliable and mechanical way of doing it.
Can't even do this with some engines... The 3.7 liter V6 engine in the Infinti G37, Nissan 370Z, as well as the TwinTurbo variant in the GTR, do not have throttle valves anymore, as this engine employs variable valve lift to adjust air-flow.
a) if you need to exceed the speed limit to overtake, then you don't need to overtake
So if you are behind a triple-trailer that is going 5-10 under the limit, you want to try to pass the triple-trailer while only going 5mph faster? Good luck with that...
This is why in places like WA, it is explicitly LEGAL to exceed the speed limit when passing on two lane roads. I for one like to minimize the amount of time I'm on the left side of the center line, cuz you never know who might poke out and make a right without looking both ways.
In places like the State of Washington, it is actually LEGAL to exceed the speed limit when passing somebody on a two lane road. It explicitly says so in the statutes..
"It actually talks to the computer which manages the engine, and it tells that computer to limit the available fuel to the engine so that it will not exceed a certain speed, whatever speed limit you're in," Dr Jobe said.
That's a bad thing. It should be limiting spark, not fuel. Limiting fuel can cause a lean condition which can cause engine damage.
They offered a discount if customers promised not to use competitor's products.
Actually, from what I understand this isn't directly the case. This verbiage was not in the contract. The EU Commissioner believes that the end-result was that. That's very different.
Intel basically is saying the EU is thinking 1+1=3, because customers that received a rebate may have refrained from buying from AMD, but the contract clause didn't explicitly state this as a requirement. Just because the customer only bought from Intel doesn't mean the rebate was paid BECAUSE they only bought from Intel.
Elsewhere in this thread I made an example to illustrate something similar. Where Bob looked at Kathy's financials to see how many products she sold in the past year, so for the next year Bob offers a rebate if she buys X number of chips (where X = 80% of what she sold the previous year). Kathy determines this rebate will make the chip $2 cheaper than Jim's chips, so she buys enough chips to get the rebate, but doesn't buy any chips from Jim, becuase she doesn't know if she can sell that many products, so she holds off until later in the year, and buys a much smaller amount from Jim.
To an outsider this may look suspicious. Kathy buys all chips for this year from Bob and non from Jim, and later gets a rebate from Bob in the mail....
Not quite.. It's irrelevant if the discount is provided up front or not. The rationale for providing one over the other is for the books. A volume discount reflects transaction price. A rebate maintains the original transaction price, but the rebate can be listed as a separate "expense".
But anyways, from Intel's perspective, they still feel like they did no wrong... How about this twist:
Bob and Jim both make chips.
It costs bob $10 to make a chip, but it costs Jim $14 to make a chip.
Kathy makes a doodad using one of the chips. Kathy posts on her website that she sold 100 doodads in 2008.
Bob tells Kathy he'll sell her chips for $20. Bob tells Kathy that as a bonus if she buys > 50 chips she'll get a $250 rebate by mail. Bob tells Kathy that if she buys > 80 chips, she'll get an additional rebate of $470.
Meanwhile later that day, Jim talks to Kathy and says his firm price is $15 per chip...
That night kathy crunches some numbers, and determines that if she buys 90 chips from Bob, she'll get a total rebate of $720. She figures out that if she subtracts that amount from the $1800 it would cost her to buy the 90 chips, she ends up only paying $12 per chip, which is cheaper than Jim. She talks to her sales team, and they are confident they can sell between 90-100 doodads this next year, so she decides that she'll buy 90 chips from Bob, but will hold off on buying any more chips until halfway through the year to see how sales go...
So the next year, she only sells doodads that use Bob's chips and none that use Jim's chips, until August when she determines she's running low on chips, and decides to buy 10 chips from Jim for $15 each, since she doesn't qualify for a volume rebate from Bob.
At the end of the year, Jim goes to his friend Frank, who is a police officer, and says that Bob used his market dominance on Kathy to give her a rebate if she didn't buy any chips from Jim.
Frank looks at Kathy's purchase orders and notices that Kathy bought only from Bob and none from Jim back in January. He also finds records from Bob's ISP indicating that he looked at Kathy's sales reports for the previous year.
Jim tells franks that he crunched the numbers as said that if he wanted to sell 90 chips to Kathy for the price that Bob did including his rebates, Jim would lose money on each and every chip sold.
Frank determined that since Bob knew that Kathy only sold 100 doodads in 2008, that the rebate offer if she buys > 80 doodads was done on purpose to prevent her from buying chips from Jim because Jim would not be able to match that price, and consequently arrests Bob and throws him in jail for anti-trust...
Point being: Intel's contention is that they never agreed that a term of their rebate was for the receiver to not sell AMD products... Using this above example, it can be quite easy to see how a third party might mis-interpret what happened as being exactly that...
he scientific problem I had the most issue with was the "super-nova" that destroyed Romulus, enveloping it. Was it in the same solar system? If so, then Spock would destroy the Nova by turning the Romulan Sun into a black hole!? Or, was it in a different system? If so, then the Nova was so huge that the mass of the star could expand over distances of light years and envelop a planet in a different star system!? It made no sense at all.
My thoughts exactly. I argued with a guy on this on another board. Nero was so ticked at Spock becuase he allowed their planet to get destroyed... But even if he black-holed their sun in time to save romulus, their precious romulus would still be without a sun. Which means, they would've had to evacuate romulus... Well, then they should've started much sooner... No point in waiting for their sun to be destroyed before they start evacuating...
But then some argued the star was in another system... Well, when a star goes super nova, the shock wave of ejected matter only travels at 1/10th the speed of light. Which means if the nearest star outside our solar-system went super-nova, it would take 40+ years for the shock wave to reach us.... Based on that, I think the star that went nova was actually the romulus star, not a neighboring one. They clearly depicted the sun expanding and engulfing romulus. I doubt they would depict a star growing to the size such that it engulfs neigboring star systems, that's rediculous.
ever since my wife's fiasco with non-competes, we make sure to not sign them to avoid the hassles. My wife has since moved on to another company, and they did not flinch when she declined to sign the non-compete. (They didn't even ask her to sign the non-compete until like a week or two after she started)
A part of me wonders if someone did sign it, and if a company states that signing it is a requirement for continued employment, if that's considered signing an agreement under duress?
A better analogy would be if you bought a new car from a dealer, and the dealer tells you that they don't have enough money to buy your trade-in, but tell you that you are not allowed to sell your old car to anybody else for one year.
If a company has a legitimate cause of action against a former employee transferring proprietary info, then let them make the case and be subject to a penalty if they lose. Do not confuse a non-disclosure agreement with a non-compete agreement :)
That being said, if you elect to keep some engineers on staff, you are admitting that those engineers have higher value to you, than the ones you let go...
When you let them go, the services they provide to another company is worth less to you than those that you kept employed. It is not the employees fault that you don't have the money to pay them, that is your problem. That essentially what was ruled. Employee has a right to work, you cannot deny them that right.
I know people hate car analogies, but that attitude is like saying, "I can't afford to buy this Vette, so therefore NOBODY will be able to buy it"
If you don't want "secrets" to leave the company, that's what non-disclosures are for.
My wife went through a law suit a few years ago for this... The Non-compete was eventually deemed unenforceable.
Basically what they determined, is that the basis of a non-compete, is that the employee would be bringing something of value (which was obtained from the first employer) to a second employer, putting the first employer at a disadvantage...
However, since my wife was laid off, it was determined that by laying her off, the first employer essentially deemed that she was no longer of any value to the company... Therefore, since her status was classified as not having any value to first employer, her employment by second employer does not place the first company at a disadvantage, because they already deemed her services as being not valuable to them.
So basically that means, if you leave on your own accord, it may be enforceable.. But if you are fired or laid off, you cannot be held to a non-compete (In the state of Washington anyways), because by terminating your employment against your will, the company is admitting that you no longer possess anything of value to the company.
I'm not talking about Windows DRM. I was talking about the streaming technology itself. I was able to stream netflix to my laptop using the internet from my phone's 3G connection, with nary a hiccup.
Both of us have experience with youtube not even being able to cut it with a fat-pipe on the desktop, especially their HD stuff. I'm just saying, that I would NOT pay for that type of experience. DRM issues aside, Netflix streaming itself is FAAAAR ahead of youtube, both SD and HD. I'm just saying for youtube to start charging money, they need to vastly improve the streaming quality.
Netflix streaming works perfectly fine on my computer. However, when you have a hiccup on your internet connection, netflix will transrate to a lower bitrate, so you can continue streaming... On youtube, when the same thing happens, the stream just aborts, and you have to start all over again. I don't know how many times on youtube, the content is rendered faster than it can stream, such that the video output is terrible.
Bob and Jim both make chips.
It costs bob $10 to make a chip, but it costs Jim $14 to make a chip.
Kathy makes a doodad using one of the chips. Kathy posts on her website that she sold 100 doodads in 2008.
Bob tells Kathy he'll sell her chips for $20. Bob tells Kathy that as a bonus if she buys > 50 chips she'll get a $250 rebate. Bob tells Kathy that if she buys > 80 chips, she'll get an additional rebate of $470.
Meanwhile later that day, Jim talks to Kathy and says his firm price is $15 per chip...
That night kathy crunches some numbers, and determines that if she buys 90 chips from Bob, she'll get a total rebate of $720. She figures out that if she subtracts that amount from the $1800 it would cost her to buy the 90 chips, she ends up only paying $12 per chip, which is cheaper than Jim. She talks to her sales team, and they are confident they can sell between 90-100 doodads this next year, so she decides that she'll buy 90 chips from Bob, but will hold off on buying any more chips until halfway through the year to see how sales go...
So the next year, she only sells doodads that use Bob's chips and none that use Jim's chips, until August when she determines she's running low on chips, and decides to buy 10 chips from Jim for $15 each, since she doesn't qualify for a volume rebate from Bob.
At the end of the year, Jim goes to his friend Frank, who is a police officer, and says that Bob used his market dominance on Kathy to give her a rebate if she didn't buy any chips from Jim.
Frank looks at Kathy's purchase orders and notices that Kathy bought only from Bob and none from Jim back in January. He also finds records from Bob's ISP indicating that he looked at Kathy's sales reports for the previous year.
Jim tells franks that he crunched the numbers as said that if he wanted to sell 90 chips to Kathy for the price that Bob did including his rebates, Jim would lose money on each and every chip sold.
Frank determined that since Bob knew that Kathy only sold 100 doodads in 2008, that the rebate offer if she buys > 80 doodads was done on purpose to prevent her from buying chips from Jim because Jim would not be able to match that price, and consequently arrests Bob and throws him in jail for anti-trust...
Certainly Microsoft products are more expensive in the EU than the US, even after exchange rates are taken into account. It's EU customers / victims are subsidizing it's US customers / victims.
Uh, no... It's called VAT. Unlike the US, in other parts of the world VAT is collected directly from the manufacturer, and reflected in the price of the product. This is why in places like Japan, you hear about Toyota/Honda/Nissan getting rebates when they export cars. It's because they are getting refunded the VAT that was collected on those cars, since VAT is not applicable outside of Japan. In the US, sales tax is applied at time of sale and collected from the purchaser. VAT does not not work this way... THIS is why the prices in VAT countries is higher than the US.
Companies like TI, Intel, AMD, and IBM make some chips in-house but also farm out the work to chip foundries.
Intel produces more chips in house than it outsources to foundries.