Here is an appropriate analogy- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy and walks out with a flat screen TV he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" the TV to someone else. This is theft.
Just because technology makes it easy to be a thief doesn't make theft ethical or legal.
Shame on those who lack the ability to create anything useful themselves and instead decide to steal from others. Shame indeed.
There would be AS MUCH dust on the Linux pre-loaded boxes in one store as there is on the Apple systems (and Jeff Goldblum's career) in the other store.
Your local PC clone guy likely doesn't have to answer to stock holders. Dell, etc. do so they have to find ways to placate the peasant rabble whilst keeping stock holders happy.
If they pre-loaded a bunch of them with Linux in a few months they'd be sitting in the far corner of the store collecting dust next to all the Apple stuff.
It seems a popular (wussy) defense used by already whacked-out teenagers who commit unspeakable acts.
Given this law could the states claim no responsibility in such defenses because, hey, we had a law, and then go back to sue the game companies on behalf of the victims?
The next phrases to be taught at Best Buy employee training: Oh, you're buying Doom 4? Great game, can I see some ID please?
2. If you know it could be rewritten better, it is your responsibility to do it.
Not when your boss tells you to work on something else INSTEAD of that. He'll tell you there are more important tasks to be done and to leave that alone for now.
3. No one uses references anymore.
If you work in Washington D.C. or Philadelphia PA they sure do. Especially if you do software contracting, have more than 3 years experience, and are looking to work with a company that doesn't know you.
4. No one wants your class libraries. No one. They want solutions.
Only at the end of your post do we really learn what you care about- open source. There are many ways to package what you can do- either full class libraries or as chunks of code you bring into new efforts. The decision as to which way to go depends upon the situation. But giving your code away constitutes a waste of your time.
There are many, many reasons to keep lawyers out of it but these are the ones that come to mind:
1. With all due respect, given where you are in your career you haven't the funds to pay some non-technical, blood-sucker $400/hr to fill your head with vague answers for months while running up a huge tab and in the end doing everything he can to get you to settle out of court. Sometimes lawyers are necessary- this isn't one of those times (please read on).
2. If you have only been spending time recently writing this code there cannot be that much of it. What I would do is write a separate document hilighting each class and method that has been written- create an interface specification document that includes a simple sentence on each class and each method and the signature (input/output parameters) for each. Don't rewrite the code yet, just create the skeleton document. Your goal here is NOT to steal proprietary information (and if this is a general web site there isn't going to be anything that's rocket science (no offense intended)). I would bet dollars to doughnuts if you went back and looked at some of that code today you could think of some great ways to re-write it to make it more re-usable.
In most production environments too much time is given to fixing code when an investment in design up front would have solved many many problems down the line. Once you have the aforementioned interface specification document take it home and write the BETTER code on your home machine, on your own time. This way you aren't using company time or property and since you haven't signed a contract with them they don't currently own the work you do on your own time.
As an aside, most large companies do make their empoloyees sign harshly crafted intellectual property aggreements that favor the employer. I ALWAYS read these carefully and add an addendum that clearly states I own what I create on my own time that has nothing to do with the company's line of business and I give specific examples of the product areas I'm currently researching.
3. By letting this thing go- giving the company the rights to this (small) specific code you are fostering good will with them in the long term. Almost no one works for the same company their whole life anymore. You will want good references from these guys when you leave them for the next big thing. After you have honed your skills for a couple of years you will come to see you are being paid 15% or more below what you could get if you moved on to another comapany-- it almost always works that way because companies figure it's too much of a pain for you to leave. You will have to decide if the environment fosters / supports your doing enough development work at home for you to pursue a dream of true independence or if you should leave for another company. Either way you'll want the good reference of some of the people you work with so don't burn the bridges by hiring a lawyer at this juncture. If you do it quickly becomes a you-versus-them environment and they won't likely consider you for advancement if they believe you aren't a team player.
4. The fact that you realized you bring something of value to the table is fantastic. Congrats on that. Now hone those skills and begin to build some reusable class libraries you will own and can license out to whoever wants to pay for it. If your next employer isn't interested in buying the use of your libraries, contract to them for an hourly rate and charge the hours it took you to develop that same code whenever it appears fitting to slip stream parts of it into their efforts. Along the way you will also learn the art of negotiation- ways of helping clients feel more comfortable that you and careful integration of parts of your code can help them better serve their customers.
5. Take with a grain of salt any writing that espouses open source. It might seem like a cheery, kum-bai-ya thing to do when you are in your early twenties. But when you're
A lot of folks here seem to think BT is primarily used for piracy. This sentiment can be found all over the internet.
If this is true, why not give the cash directly to the lawyers and eliminate the middle man (BT itself)?
Of course, if I were an attorney prosecuting piracy cases I'd toss in some cash just to help collect the list of people using it-- HTTP Request, meet HTTP Response;-)
On the side of the software box it says: System Requriements-
If a system doesn't meet the requriements the user has an old computer and needs to upgrade. World of Warcraft won't run on an 8088 machine and you wouldn't be happy with the CGA graphics version if one did exist anyway.
One of the many possible misuses of these broadcasts, given the many audio editing software tools out there today, would be the recording and editing of these broadcasts to make broadcasters appear to take positions (political, ethical, or other) that are the exact opposite of what they actually represent.
Listen to the Don and Mike radio show and sooner or later you will hear edited audio of Govenor Arnold S. of California espousing positions exactly opposite of his stated ones.
Like him or not, copyright of digital broadcasts could give originators of content the legal protection they need to limit others from profiting from or generally smearing their reputation.
With respect to not copying the music--- go buy the CD if it's that good. The owner of the product determines the license agreement.
In a perfect world they'd be running servers with free Linux and free bandwidth and no ads so everyone could P2P all day...
Dude, this isn't how the real world works. Folks really emotional about what Yahoo is doing could surely start their own portal conforming to their own standards of what is right and good.
However, after investing all their engery in it for some time they would realize, as Yahoo does, at the end of the day you still have to put food on the table.
We all have a choice if we find something we don't like-- navigate elsewhere right?
Help me with this.. is the general thought process at (any) Big Corp Inc. to determine whether or not it will be less expensive to pay a host of lawyers $900/hour to defeat (insert P2P company here) in court or less expensive to pay off the P2P company to shut down and stop file sharing?
This whole thing smells like extortion. Question is, how do they get away with it?
The only ones winning appear to be the lawyers.
Will there be distributed music in 10 years? If so, what will it look like?
It's about maintaining control over the distribution of music
You bet it is about maintaining control- of their product.
This is specifically about piracy. That is the reason they put these schemes into place. Some people have the wrong belief that they can rip a product and distribute it to others. This is called stealing. See P2P file sharing system (almost all of them).
You only speak for you when it comes to buying music. Anyone can see the dramatic decrease in music sales since P2P started happening. And it is not because the music sucks. If that were the case all this new music wouldn't be getting P2P'd.
Put yourself in Sony's place- if they know they won't sell that many Switchfoot CDs why should they pay Switchfoot anything in a recording contract?
Slashdot Mirror
Here is an appropriate analogy- let us say a looter goes into Best Buy and walks out with a flat screen TV he didn't pay for. Now he "gives" the TV to someone else. This is theft.
Just because technology makes it easy to be a thief doesn't make theft ethical or legal.
Shame on those who lack the ability to create anything useful themselves and instead decide to steal from others. Shame indeed.
Ok, two DIFFERENT stores.
There would be AS MUCH dust on the Linux pre-loaded boxes in one store as there is on the Apple systems (and Jeff Goldblum's career) in the other store.
Your local PC clone guy likely doesn't have to answer to stock holders. Dell, etc. do so they have to find ways to placate the peasant rabble whilst keeping stock holders happy.
It's a balancing act.
If they pre-loaded a bunch of them with Linux in a few months they'd be sitting in the far corner of the store collecting dust next to all the Apple stuff.
Is this the anti my-video-game-made-me-do-it law?
It seems a popular (wussy) defense used by already whacked-out teenagers who commit unspeakable acts.
Given this law could the states claim no responsibility in such defenses because, hey, we had a law, and then go back to sue the game companies on behalf of the victims?
The next phrases to be taught at Best Buy employee training: Oh, you're buying Doom 4? Great game, can I see some ID please?
2. If you know it could be rewritten better, it is your responsibility to do it.
Not when your boss tells you to work on something else INSTEAD of that. He'll tell you there are more important tasks to be done and to leave that alone for now.
3. No one uses references anymore.
If you work in Washington D.C. or Philadelphia PA they sure do. Especially if you do software contracting, have more than 3 years experience, and are looking to work with a company that doesn't know you.
4. No one wants your class libraries. No one. They want solutions.
Only at the end of your post do we really learn what you care about- open source. There are many ways to package what you can do- either full class libraries or as chunks of code you bring into new efforts. The decision as to which way to go depends upon the situation. But giving your code away constitutes a waste of your time.
First tip: don't hire a lawyer at all.
There are many, many reasons to keep lawyers out of it but these are the ones that come to mind:
1. With all due respect, given where you are in your career you haven't the funds to pay some non-technical, blood-sucker $400/hr to fill your head with vague answers for months while running up a huge tab and in the end doing everything he can to get you to settle out of court. Sometimes lawyers are necessary- this isn't one of those times (please read on).
2. If you have only been spending time recently writing this code there cannot be that much of it. What I would do is write a separate document hilighting each class and method that has been written- create an interface specification document that includes a simple sentence on each class and each method and the signature (input/output parameters) for each. Don't rewrite the code yet, just create the skeleton document. Your goal here is NOT to steal proprietary information (and if this is a general web site there isn't going to be anything that's rocket science (no offense intended)). I would bet dollars to doughnuts if you went back and looked at some of that code today you could think of some great ways to re-write it to make it more re-usable.
In most production environments too much time is given to fixing code when an investment in design up front would have solved many many problems down the line. Once you have the aforementioned interface specification document take it home and write the BETTER code on your home machine, on your own time. This way you aren't using company time or property and since you haven't signed a contract with them they don't currently own the work you do on your own time.
As an aside, most large companies do make their empoloyees sign harshly crafted intellectual property aggreements that favor the employer. I ALWAYS read these carefully and add an addendum that clearly states I own what I create on my own time that has nothing to do with the company's line of business and I give specific examples of the product areas I'm currently researching.
3. By letting this thing go- giving the company the rights to this (small) specific code you are fostering good will with them in the long term. Almost no one works for the same company their whole life anymore. You will want good references from these guys when you leave them for the next big thing. After you have honed your skills for a couple of years you will come to see you are being paid 15% or more below what you could get if you moved on to another comapany-- it almost always works that way because companies figure it's too much of a pain for you to leave. You will have to decide if the environment fosters / supports your doing enough development work at home for you to pursue a dream of true independence or if you should leave for another company. Either way you'll want the good reference of some of the people you work with so don't burn the bridges by hiring a lawyer at this juncture. If you do it quickly becomes a you-versus-them environment and they won't likely consider you for advancement if they believe you aren't a team player.
4. The fact that you realized you bring something of value to the table is fantastic. Congrats on that. Now hone those skills and begin to build some reusable class libraries you will own and can license out to whoever wants to pay for it. If your next employer isn't interested in buying the use of your libraries, contract to them for an hourly rate and charge the hours it took you to develop that same code whenever it appears fitting to slip stream parts of it into their efforts. Along the way you will also learn the art of negotiation- ways of helping clients feel more comfortable that you and careful integration of parts of your code can help them better serve their customers.
5. Take with a grain of salt any writing that espouses open source. It might seem like a cheery, kum-bai-ya thing to do when you are in your early twenties. But when you're
A lot of folks here seem to think BT is primarily used for piracy. This sentiment can be found all over the internet.
;-)
If this is true, why not give the cash directly to the lawyers and eliminate the middle man (BT itself)?
Of course, if I were an attorney prosecuting piracy cases I'd toss in some cash just to help collect the list of people using it-- HTTP Request, meet HTTP Response
The question is, which scares the Chinese government more? Democracy or porn?
And which will be more difficult to filter out?
When Microsoft buys it we'll call it Google.Net
Yes, windows is so complex with the point-and-click interface and all.
Maybe the employees need training.
I would much rather follow the King with millions of subjects thatn 3,000 Feudal Lords with empty kingdoms.
No subjects = no customers.
Long live King Bill.
I love Microsft because of their standards.
You too will be assimilated.
What's this us stuff? I love Microsoft :-)
You too will be assimilated.
On the side of the software box it says: System Requriements-
If a system doesn't meet the requriements the user has an old computer and needs to upgrade. World of Warcraft won't run on an 8088 machine and you wouldn't be happy with the CGA graphics version if one did exist anyway.
Would you rather have 1 tyrant (Bill Gates) 3,000 miles away or 3,000 tyrants (open sourcers) 1 mile away?
Your post won't run on my machine. Could you please recompile it for me?
This is exactly what you get when you have the open source, we don't need no stinking standards operating system.
If you are running a small company you don't have the time or other resources to support a hundred versions-- you go where the users are.
I can see Linuxers reading this article and spitting their coffee into their monitors (wooooot).
Great falme-bait for a Friday!
Not using his own (edited) voice in an attempt to make (stupid) people believe it is actually him speaking.
One of the many possible misuses of these broadcasts, given the many audio editing software tools out there today, would be the recording and editing of these broadcasts to make broadcasters appear to take positions (political, ethical, or other) that are the exact opposite of what they actually represent.
Listen to the Don and Mike radio show and sooner or later you will hear edited audio of Govenor Arnold S. of California espousing positions exactly opposite of his stated ones.
Like him or not, copyright of digital broadcasts could give originators of content the legal protection they need to limit others from profiting from or generally smearing their reputation.
With respect to not copying the music--- go buy the CD if it's that good. The owner of the product determines the license agreement.
I know what you mean/good points.
Sometime back I discussed with a Verizon marketing bunny (trying to sell me DSL) the idea that I wanted to buy a fixed IP address.
Her response was, "why would you want that? It's dangerous."
Anyhoo, life goes on.
In a perfect world they'd be running servers with free Linux and free bandwidth and no ads so everyone could P2P all day...
Dude, this isn't how the real world works. Folks really emotional about what Yahoo is doing could surely start their own portal conforming to their own standards of what is right and good.
However, after investing all their engery in it for some time they would realize, as Yahoo does, at the end of the day you still have to put food on the table.
We all have a choice if we find something we don't like-- navigate elsewhere right?
benefitting not the artists and the consumers, but the big recording companies who own the artists...
Nobody is forcing the artists to sign with the record companies. Like anyone else they can log on and upload their stuff to any P2P site.
The little secret is that no matter how hip / fly / cool / or off the chain an artist claims to be he still "wants his"- if you know what I mean.
The only price some of the consumers accept is "free"- and that's why they keep going to P2P sites.
Let the flame-war on me begin
Help me with this.. is the general thought process at (any) Big Corp Inc. to determine whether or not it will be less expensive to pay a host of lawyers $900/hour to defeat (insert P2P company here) in court or less expensive to pay off the P2P company to shut down and stop file sharing?
This whole thing smells like extortion. Question is, how do they get away with it?
The only ones winning appear to be the lawyers.
Will there be distributed music in 10 years? If so, what will it look like?
It's about maintaining control over the distribution of music
You bet it is about maintaining control- of their product.
This is specifically about piracy. That is the reason they put these schemes into place. Some people have the wrong belief that they can rip a product and distribute it to others. This is called stealing. See P2P file sharing system (almost all of them).
You only speak for you when it comes to buying music. Anyone can see the dramatic decrease in music sales since P2P started happening. And it is not because the music sucks. If that were the case all this new music wouldn't be getting P2P'd.
Put yourself in Sony's place- if they know they won't sell that many Switchfoot CDs why should they pay Switchfoot anything in a recording contract?
It's fiscially nonviable.