It depends on how much you think the average person is constrained by inherent morality vs law. As I commented on another post downthread, the Australian gun crime stats were essentially the same before and after gun control was introduced. That implies that the reason people don't shoot each other up isn't because they're afraid of the law.
Pretty much all murders fall into one of two categories: they're either crimes of passion, or part of some wider criminal enterprise. Neither case is going to be deterred by the law, one because they're already violating it, and the other because the action isn't rational to begin with.
Check the stats - our level of gun crime was about the same before and after the weapons ban. We have low gun violence, but it's not due to regulation.
Google have a perfect right not to open their APIs publicly. After all, does Slashdot have a public API?
From what I understand, Google wrote the YouTube apps for both Android and Apple, and they use their own knowledge of their platform to do so. There's a public JSON API for YouTube that's available to all. If MS wants a decent YouTube app on their platform, maybe they should pay Google to develop one, or bolster their audience to the point we're it's actually desirable for Google to do so.
Or, you know, put their money where their mouth is, and publish public APIs for all their proprietary crap.
I had such a contract shoved in front of me from a company in Atlanta. Crazy shit
No, you didn't. The contract you describe is far more crazy than what is described in the article. A clause saying "When you leave, you can't hire anyone else who worked under you for 6 months" is a long way from a 2-year non-compete.
The line where, prior to you thinking "I'm going to work for HP", Billy Bob, your ex co-worker, calls you up and says "Hey, aztracker1, wanna come work for me over here at GM?"
And even in that case, it's Billy Bob who's getting it in the neck, not you.
Indentured servitude? This isn't non-competes we're talking about - it's a limitation on the ability of an ex-employee to poach current employees. If the clause is as the GP described, there's no restriction on any employees regarding their work - they can go and leave, and work for whoever they want, and not get any penalty whatsoever. If the person who hired them was in violation of this clause, then the shit falls on them.
I live in Australia. We have laws outlawing semi-automatic weapons. A couple of years back, someone was trying to sell some illegally-obtained shoulder-fired missiles. So yeah, like locks, laws are only there to deter honest people.
what was GM to do hire new to GM people and not the people who have been on site under the old outsource? People who know the site and how stuff works?
Yep. That's part of the price to pay when it comes from doing a big transition like this, and something that the people managing the transition should have accounted for when it came to calculating time frames and costs.
this just part of why outsourcing sucks and some of the pit falls others are people being bounced site to site / client to client some times with out your control / input.
Not having full control over who makes it on site.
Totally agree. But the fault for that lies with GM, who were the ones who chose to out-source then in-source, not with HP.
Ahh, the summary was less clear. I've seen plenty of contracts like that, and am under one currently. Really, I consider that a fairly reasonable clause (assuming it has a sane time-limit). I don't know if it's been tested in court in the US, but my gut feel is that the employees are screwed. When you sign a contract, you really need to read it, and live with the consequences if you break it.
That said, all the signs show that HP is pretty desperate, quite possibly as screwed as the employees it's suing, and even if it wins these cases, it's not likely to make a difference.
Ok, I've come to the conclusion that you are not simply misled, but are infact, terminally ineducable. I truly hope you survive whatever brain injury resulted in your sad condition.
No, it's "you can't leave without notice", and it generally works both ways (although I don't know what HPs contracts are like, specifically).
It's the trade-off between "at will" and contract employment. "At Will" employees can leave without notice, but can also be fired the same way. In general, workers with a contract cannot be fired without notice (or wages in lieu of notice), but must also give notice before they leave.
Wanting to be able to resign without notice, but also requiring your employer to give you notice before getting rid of you, is wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
Aliyun is Acer's fork, in that it was the fork Acer was using in this context, which is a perfectly valid grammatical construct. You fail at reading comprehension
there is no one standard
Yes, in this context, there is one standard: OHA supports one standard, which is Android. The fact that other standards exist is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, as we are simply discussing OHA. You fail at reading comprehension
i said tell me something other than Android or you're a spastic because everybody knows Android is not a standard (except you evidently)
Yeah. Me and the OHA - those spastics.
The OHA is committed to developing it and Acer is committed to and continues to support it, that doesn't change if they ship Aliyun devices
Sorry, were you the one accusing me of naivety? Producing an incompatible variant is exactly the opposite of supporting the original.
same as Ubuntu Phone, Google can't shut it down
Exactly. You were wrong. Google cannot and has not "actively prevented" anyone from forking Android.
they can prevent any major manufacturer from shipping devices with Aliyun by threatening to lock them out of the OHA.
Uh, yeah - that's the entire purpose of the OHA: to make Android (the official Android) a commercial success. If you act against the purpose of an organisation - any organisation - you're going to get booted out of it. If you want the perks, you need to follow the rules.
are you really that naive? you really truly think that a non-OHA member can compete against an OHA member when the non-OHA member doesn't get access to the OS code until the OHA member is shipping their product? come on now, you cant be that stupid.
Note that word "required"? Yeah, I used it for a reason. It doesn't mean "useful", or "helpful", or "advantageous" it means essential. You are not required to be an OHA member to be an Android OEM. You fail at reading comprehension
You gain an advantage if you are a member (the ability to develop for new versions of Android in advance) in exchange for a limitation (restricting yourselves from using non-compatible forks). This is pretty much the basis of any contract - something for something.
What you seem to be arguing, is that because Google doesn't allow everyone, everywhere the ability to view their in-development codebase without requiring a consideration for the privilege, they're being anti-competitive. The consideration Google are asking for is not undermining their product by distributing incompatible derivatives of it.
You can argue that's unfair if you like, but given that most of the rest of the industry won't give you access to their sourcecode no matter what consideration you offer them, you're only going to be making a fool of yourself - although, given your arguments in the rest of this thread, that doesn't seem to be a particular concern of yours.
correct. creating open standards for mobile devices is certainly not the same thing as creating a handset standard.
So you're saying the Open Handset Alliance isn't concerned with making a handset standard. Uh-huh. And that there's a significant difference between a "handset" and "mobile device" such that nit-picking about which term is used constitutes a valid argument.
Seriously you have no clue what you're on about, Acer didn't fork anything, Aliyun was built by Alibaba, not Acer
I never said Acer built it - I said Acer was using it.
and also there is no standard
So, first you say the OHA is creating a standard for mobile devices, and now you say there is no standard. Can you at least stay consistent for the duration of a single post?
if there is a standard then tell me what it is and if you say "Android" then we all know you're a complete spastic.
Wow, great argument. "Tell me I'm right or you're a spastic". Android is the open platform that OHA is committed to developing. As such, it is OHA's standard, and the standard that Acer, as a member of the OHA, was committed to supporting. linky
they use open source to create an incompatible fork of linux and then actively prevent anybody else from doing the same to Android
If Google were stomping all over these forks, then how did Aliyuh even get to the point where Acer was considering? Surely evil, nasty Google would have shut it down.
threatening OEMs to stop them from supporting competing incompatible Android forks.
Er, they haven't. They've "threatened" to kick someone out of the OHA who violated the principles of the OHA. If you sign a contract agreeing to make the official Android platform a commercial success, and then go and support in incompatible version, you're violating your contract. Such a contract is in no way required to be an Android OEM.
you're the one desperately defending google's unethical behavior, i'm just pointing it out, the only one shilling here is you. google and microsoft are as evil as eachother but shills like you ignorantly lap up the koolaid.
no it is about developing open standards for mobile devices, not a handset standard.
Right. Huge distinction there.
what standard were they "forking"? Android is not a standard, official or otherwise nor is the OHA trying to make it one so if you think they are forking a standard then you must know what it is, or are you just making that up to try and justify shilling for google
OHA is defining a standard. Android implements the standard. Aliyun, Acer's Android fork, did not implement the standard. They were forking an implementation of the standard into a non-standard compliant variant. Here's the quote from Google:
All members of the Open Handset Alliance have committed to building one Android platform and to not ship non-compatible Android devices. This does not however, keep OHA members from participating in competing ecosystems.
You really are a retarded shill, it's about anti-competitive behavior and bullying OEMs into not supporting competitors, that is what Microsoft was doing and that is what Google is now doing.
Saying "OMG Google is doing what Microsoft were!" is moronic FUD - you're just trying to make Google look bad by associating them with MS' past actions. Microsoft made deals with OEMs such that they couldn't use competing OSes. Google's deal is that if they're members of the OHA and they're using Android they must use a version that is natively compatible with the official version - they're perfectly OK to use compatible forks, or a total different mobile OS.
If you can't tell the difference between those two agreements you're either entirely incapable of rational thought, or you've been bought and paid for.
The OHA is all about trying to build a handset standard. So yeah, forking the standard instead of working to incorporate the feature you want into the standard is basically against the whole principle of the organisation.
Also, I'm having a hard time seeing Microsoft battling to control all those forks of it's proprietary software.
Acer didn't sign a contract saying they'd only use official Android - the contract was saying that if they used Android, they'd only use the official version, as can be easily inferred from the GP's post if you're not an anal-retentive shill.
It's entirely irrelevant to anything Microsoft may or may not have done, as Windows isn't Open Source, and thus the official version is the only version, and it's impossible for them to have pulled similar shit.
How about -1 Trite. Is it that hard to believe that government can and does provide useful services, especially those that have such a long time horizon and capital investment that the market will not provide them?
What, like weather satellites? Isn't this article about how the government is failing to provide such useful services?
The government does provide useful services. They're still outweighed by unnecessary services, pork barrel project, and rewarding campaign contributors by at least 10:1
I do wonder what would have happened if Sony had held back the PS3 for 6-9 months, to work out some of the oddities in the hardware, let the launch price fall, get a stronger launch-lineup and maybe get proper back-compatibility into the hardware as a standard across the world.
Possibly, something entirely unrelated to the console market - HD-DVD may have become the de facto standard for high-def media. Upgrading their console platform was only one reason Sony launched the PS3 - the other was to get a player for their proprietary high-def format in the lounge room of as many consumers as possible. Remember, at launch, the PS3 was the most cost-effective BluRay player on the market, due to console subsidies.
Legislation and law are created by politicians (who, it's true, are often trained in the law) rather than practising lawyers. The fact that one needs access to a solicitor to get legal work done is, in my opinion, a failing of the system and not a feature - it means that the richer you are, the lower the barrier of entry to legal access, which creates a divide between the ability of rich and poor to access law, which should be a universal leveller. The fact that we need a trained legalist to act as a proxy between us and the law shows the truth of what James Madison said:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.
You are probably under the rule of more laws than you can possibly read in your lifetime. The laws are often so complex and couched in jargon that they are incomprehensible to most lay people. And the common law system means that the law is in a constant state of flux, as precedent is continually set all over the country.
Have no lawyers, and with that no proper access to law and legislation for anyone (companies and individuals alike) and yes, the world as we know it will collapse. Wonder how such a world looks like? Try looking at Somalia, for example.
Somalia isn't an example of a country without lawyers; it's a country without legislators with sufficient power to enforce the laws they enact.
I hate his software as much as the next Slashdot geek, and think he's nutty as a fruitcake, but he's hardly a publicity whore. Publicity whores don't vanish into south America for decades on end. Your comment reminds me of all the attacks on Julian Assange - it seems anyone who gets media attention for anything other than being a politician or a celebrity gets accused of publicity whoring.
Slashdot Mirror
Just their motions
It depends on how much you think the average person is constrained by inherent morality vs law. As I commented on another post downthread, the Australian gun crime stats were essentially the same before and after gun control was introduced. That implies that the reason people don't shoot each other up isn't because they're afraid of the law.
Pretty much all murders fall into one of two categories: they're either crimes of passion, or part of some wider criminal enterprise. Neither case is going to be deterred by the law, one because they're already violating it, and the other because the action isn't rational to begin with.
Check the stats - our level of gun crime was about the same before and after the weapons ban. We have low gun violence, but it's not due to regulation.
Google have a perfect right not to open their APIs publicly. After all, does Slashdot have a public API?
From what I understand, Google wrote the YouTube apps for both Android and Apple, and they use their own knowledge of their platform to do so. There's a public JSON API for YouTube that's available to all. If MS wants a decent YouTube app on their platform, maybe they should pay Google to develop one, or bolster their audience to the point we're it's actually desirable for Google to do so.
Or, you know, put their money where their mouth is, and publish public APIs for all their proprietary crap.
And for gunowners, its a list of houses containing untraceable weapons ripe for the taking. It really aids nobody but the criminals.
Did you read the post you were replying to?
What they're doing is calling POTUS's bluff.
I had such a contract shoved in front of me from a company in Atlanta. Crazy shit
No, you didn't. The contract you describe is far more crazy than what is described in the article. A clause saying "When you leave, you can't hire anyone else who worked under you for 6 months" is a long way from a 2-year non-compete.
The line where, prior to you thinking "I'm going to work for HP", Billy Bob, your ex co-worker, calls you up and says "Hey, aztracker1, wanna come work for me over here at GM?"
And even in that case, it's Billy Bob who's getting it in the neck, not you.
Indentured servitude? This isn't non-competes we're talking about - it's a limitation on the ability of an ex-employee to poach current employees. If the clause is as the GP described, there's no restriction on any employees regarding their work - they can go and leave, and work for whoever they want, and not get any penalty whatsoever. If the person who hired them was in violation of this clause, then the shit falls on them.
I live in Australia. We have laws outlawing semi-automatic weapons. A couple of years back, someone was trying to sell some illegally-obtained shoulder-fired missiles. So yeah, like locks, laws are only there to deter honest people.
what was GM to do hire new to GM people and not the people who have been on site under the old outsource? People who know the site and how stuff works?
Yep. That's part of the price to pay when it comes from doing a big transition like this, and something that the people managing the transition should have accounted for when it came to calculating time frames and costs.
this just part of why outsourcing sucks and some of the pit falls others are people being bounced site to site / client to client some times with out your control / input.
Not having full control over who makes it on site.
Totally agree. But the fault for that lies with GM, who were the ones who chose to out-source then in-source, not with HP.
Ahh, the summary was less clear. I've seen plenty of contracts like that, and am under one currently. Really, I consider that a fairly reasonable clause (assuming it has a sane time-limit). I don't know if it's been tested in court in the US, but my gut feel is that the employees are screwed. When you sign a contract, you really need to read it, and live with the consequences if you break it.
That said, all the signs show that HP is pretty desperate, quite possibly as screwed as the employees it's suing, and even if it wins these cases, it's not likely to make a difference.
Ok, I've come to the conclusion that you are not simply misled, but are infact, terminally ineducable. I truly hope you survive whatever brain injury resulted in your sad condition.
No, it's "you can't leave without notice", and it generally works both ways (although I don't know what HPs contracts are like, specifically).
It's the trade-off between "at will" and contract employment. "At Will" employees can leave without notice, but can also be fired the same way. In general, workers with a contract cannot be fired without notice (or wages in lieu of notice), but must also give notice before they leave.
Wanting to be able to resign without notice, but also requiring your employer to give you notice before getting rid of you, is wanting to have your cake and eat it too.
Aliyun is Alibaba's Android fork, not Acer's.
Aliyun is Acer's fork, in that it was the fork Acer was using in this context, which is a perfectly valid grammatical construct. You fail at reading comprehension
there is no one standard
Yes, in this context, there is one standard: OHA supports one standard, which is Android. The fact that other standards exist is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, as we are simply discussing OHA. You fail at reading comprehension
i said tell me something other than Android or you're a spastic because everybody knows Android is not a standard (except you evidently)
Yeah. Me and the OHA - those spastics.
The OHA is committed to developing it and Acer is committed to and continues to support it, that doesn't change if they ship Aliyun devices
Sorry, were you the one accusing me of naivety? Producing an incompatible variant is exactly the opposite of supporting the original.
same as Ubuntu Phone, Google can't shut it down
Exactly. You were wrong. Google cannot and has not "actively prevented" anyone from forking Android.
they can prevent any major manufacturer from shipping devices with Aliyun by threatening to lock them out of the OHA.
Uh, yeah - that's the entire purpose of the OHA: to make Android (the official Android) a commercial success. If you act against the purpose of an organisation - any organisation - you're going to get booted out of it. If you want the perks, you need to follow the rules.
are you really that naive? you really truly think that a non-OHA member can compete against an OHA member when the non-OHA member doesn't get access to the OS code until the OHA member is shipping their product? come on now, you cant be that stupid.
Note that word "required"? Yeah, I used it for a reason. It doesn't mean "useful", or "helpful", or "advantageous" it means essential. You are not required to be an OHA member to be an Android OEM. You fail at reading comprehension
You gain an advantage if you are a member (the ability to develop for new versions of Android in advance) in exchange for a limitation (restricting yourselves from using non-compatible forks). This is pretty much the basis of any contract - something for something.
What you seem to be arguing, is that because Google doesn't allow everyone, everywhere the ability to view their in-development codebase without requiring a consideration for the privilege, they're being anti-competitive. The consideration Google are asking for is not undermining their product by distributing incompatible derivatives of it.
You can argue that's unfair if you like, but given that most of the rest of the industry won't give you access to their sourcecode no matter what consideration you offer them, you're only going to be making a fool of yourself - although, given your arguments in the rest of this thread, that doesn't seem to be a particular concern of yours.
correct. creating open standards for mobile devices is certainly not the same thing as creating a handset standard.
So you're saying the Open Handset Alliance isn't concerned with making a handset standard. Uh-huh. And that there's a significant difference between a "handset" and "mobile device" such that nit-picking about which term is used constitutes a valid argument.
Seriously you have no clue what you're on about, Acer didn't fork anything, Aliyun was built by Alibaba, not Acer
I never said Acer built it - I said Acer was using it.
and also there is no standard
So, first you say the OHA is creating a standard for mobile devices, and now you say there is no standard. Can you at least stay consistent for the duration of a single post?
if there is a standard then tell me what it is and if you say "Android" then we all know you're a complete spastic.
Wow, great argument. "Tell me I'm right or you're a spastic". Android is the open platform that OHA is committed to developing. As such, it is OHA's standard, and the standard that Acer, as a member of the OHA, was committed to supporting. linky
they use open source to create an incompatible fork of linux and then actively prevent anybody else from doing the same to Android
If Google were stomping all over these forks, then how did Aliyuh even get to the point where Acer was considering? Surely evil, nasty Google would have shut it down.
threatening OEMs to stop them from supporting competing incompatible Android forks.
Er, they haven't. They've "threatened" to kick someone out of the OHA who violated the principles of the OHA. If you sign a contract agreeing to make the official Android platform a commercial success, and then go and support in incompatible version, you're violating your contract. Such a contract is in no way required to be an Android OEM.
you're the one desperately defending google's unethical behavior, i'm just pointing it out, the only one shilling here is you. google and microsoft are as evil as eachother but shills like you ignorantly lap up the koolaid.
Blah blah, unsupported accusations, insults, poor grammar. Yeah, think I'm done here.
no it is about developing open standards for mobile devices, not a handset standard.
Right. Huge distinction there.
what standard were they "forking"? Android is not a standard, official or otherwise nor is the OHA trying to make it one so if you think they are forking a standard then you must know what it is, or are you just making that up to try and justify shilling for google
OHA is defining a standard. Android implements the standard. Aliyun, Acer's Android fork, did not implement the standard. They were forking an implementation of the standard into a non-standard compliant variant. Here's the quote from Google:
All members of the Open Handset Alliance have committed to building one Android platform and to not ship non-compatible Android devices. This does not however, keep OHA members from participating in competing ecosystems.
You really are a retarded shill, it's about anti-competitive behavior and bullying OEMs into not supporting competitors, that is what Microsoft was doing and that is what Google is now doing.
Saying "OMG Google is doing what Microsoft were!" is moronic FUD - you're just trying to make Google look bad by associating them with MS' past actions. Microsoft made deals with OEMs such that they couldn't use competing OSes. Google's deal is that if they're members of the OHA and they're using Android they must use a version that is natively compatible with the official version - they're perfectly OK to use compatible forks, or a total different mobile OS.
If you can't tell the difference between those two agreements you're either entirely incapable of rational thought, or you've been bought and paid for.
The OHA is all about trying to build a handset standard. So yeah, forking the standard instead of working to incorporate the feature you want into the standard is basically against the whole principle of the organisation.
Also, I'm having a hard time seeing Microsoft battling to control all those forks of it's proprietary software.
Acer didn't sign a contract saying they'd only use official Android - the contract was saying that if they used Android, they'd only use the official version, as can be easily inferred from the GP's post if you're not an anal-retentive shill.
It's entirely irrelevant to anything Microsoft may or may not have done, as Windows isn't Open Source, and thus the official version is the only version, and it's impossible for them to have pulled similar shit.
I'm sure there's plenty of older ones in Canberra
So manufacturing a new shiny widget that makes money might be a step in the right direction, no?
How about -1 Trite. Is it that hard to believe that government can and does provide useful services, especially those that have such a long time horizon and capital investment that the market will not provide them?
What, like weather satellites? Isn't this article about how the government is failing to provide such useful services?
The government does provide useful services. They're still outweighed by unnecessary services, pork barrel project, and rewarding campaign contributors by at least 10:1
I do wonder what would have happened if Sony had held back the PS3 for 6-9 months, to work out some of the oddities in the hardware, let the launch price fall, get a stronger launch-lineup and maybe get proper back-compatibility into the hardware as a standard across the world.
Possibly, something entirely unrelated to the console market - HD-DVD may have become the de facto standard for high-def media. Upgrading their console platform was only one reason Sony launched the PS3 - the other was to get a player for their proprietary high-def format in the lounge room of as many consumers as possible. Remember, at launch, the PS3 was the most cost-effective BluRay player on the market, due to console subsidies.
Legislation and law are created by politicians (who, it's true, are often trained in the law) rather than practising lawyers. The fact that one needs access to a solicitor to get legal work done is, in my opinion, a failing of the system and not a feature - it means that the richer you are, the lower the barrier of entry to legal access, which creates a divide between the ability of rich and poor to access law, which should be a universal leveller. The fact that we need a trained legalist to act as a proxy between us and the law shows the truth of what James Madison said:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.
You are probably under the rule of more laws than you can possibly read in your lifetime. The laws are often so complex and couched in jargon that they are incomprehensible to most lay people. And the common law system means that the law is in a constant state of flux, as precedent is continually set all over the country.
Have no lawyers, and with that no proper access to law and legislation for anyone (companies and individuals alike) and yes, the world as we know it will collapse. Wonder how such a world looks like? Try looking at Somalia, for example.
Somalia isn't an example of a country without lawyers; it's a country without legislators with sufficient power to enforce the laws they enact.
I hate his software as much as the next Slashdot geek, and think he's nutty as a fruitcake, but he's hardly a publicity whore. Publicity whores don't vanish into south America for decades on end. Your comment reminds me of all the attacks on Julian Assange - it seems anyone who gets media attention for anything other than being a politician or a celebrity gets accused of publicity whoring.