"Loser pays" *MUST* come with an attached reasonable max cap on how much one can expect to incur,
I agree, and most serious proposals have such provisions. The most common one is that you are not liable for more than you paid for your own legal fees. Though I think that there should be an amount above this that the judge can impose in sanctions to deal with people who file pro se, and hence spend virtually nothing.
It because "justice is free" that these people face this problem. All you have to do is slap down a filing fee, and you've purchased a lottery ticket where you get to name the prize amount in the lottery. By filing a complaint like this you really don't face any loss if you lose. It's pretty much all or nothing. What would eliminate this problem is tort reform, in particular a loser pays feature. So if a judge decides that the person suing is being malicious, etc, that he can make this person pay for it.
I think this would dry up a lot of the "lottery" style lawsuits, and allow the judges a lot more time to speed the remaining cases up. These lawsuits often take years to settle.
The Park service could have made some money off this whole thing. Just call Mark Burnett and let him hold the next edition of survivor on the island. Then just them eat the rats, and plus you can charge the contestants a campground fee.
The converse applies as well. Having too many companies can hurt you. I remember in the late 90's my old company had a satellite office in San Jose. I'd have some people I would work with out there who would leave after 6 monthes. You'd get comfortable with the people you were working with and then they would go across the street to another company. The California workers earned a lot more than I did(of course my salary here in Utah bought more) but because of the constant churning, it seemed that they always got less done. They were always training new people. By the time they got up to speed, it was time to jump jobs again. The insanity of it all used to frustrate me enormously.
I assume this has changed now with bubble having burst. But, I would likely never locate a company in Silicon Valley for this reason alone.
If you choose your location well, you shouldn't have any trouble finding adequate people.
I'm starting to work with EJB's, and I'm finding that a lot of the "code" has been put into xml files. So do I count the stuff in the xml files a code. Some of these files can get enormous and I think are often more difficult to get right than the actual code.
Also he left out another important resource that I use. I'll go out on the internet and books and download sample code that mostly does what I want. And just modify it. What level does that get me to?
If you look at it from the employer's point of view, you wouldn't want to issue a card that the employer is responsible for to just any employee. I could see where some people would be trying a lot to pull a fast one. "What do you mean I can't put the kids braces on the company card??".
Especially imagine what could happen around layoff time. You can imagine what sort of abuses would happen at a time like that.
I don't understand why people would keep working for their employer when they aren't getting paid. You are better off working as a janitor and getting a paycheck (that doesn't bounce), than working for supercool company. The odds of it ever working out and getting a big payoff at the end, (or for that matter just getting paid) are so small, that it just isn't worth it.
Inconsistant billing was pretty normal in the DSL arena. (Probably elsewhere as well) When I first signed up for DSL, I went monthes without being billed correctly. My service was so spotty that I was getting a lot of credit. I went several monthes without being billed at all. Then my provider got bought out. And I got charged for everything, even the credit I was supposed to given. Of course, they had laid off all the phone people to complain to about it. To make a long story short. My acount got sold to another company, who got bought out by yet another company. At that point I took them up on their offer to opt out of service. But you can probably guess the punchline of this story. In another 6 monthes, Company four puts a several hundred dollar charge on my credit card, insisting that I pay for service that wasn't provided. In the end, I had to dispute the charge through visa to get it reversed. In fact, almost every ISP that I have ever had accounts with have screwed up billing. The only exception was an ISP that I paid once a year with a check.
The lesson I learned is that billing can be so screwed up, that it doesn't necessary follow that the people in the billing department even know what direction is up.
In my opinion the major reason behind this is the tendency for large groups of people, all who believe that they need to put thier fingerprint on the project. Before long you have a lot of people making decisions, that really have no business even influencing the process. If the project is kept to a minimum number of needed people for each stage, I find that the projects are much more likely to be on time. The worst thing you can do for a design meeting is have more people than are needed. I find more than about four leads to a lot of wasted time.
I remember one project where I had to get a large group of people to agree to the design of the project and then when we would get it done(eventually), I would take it to management who would seem to make really abitrary changes merely to show that they had influenced the project. The really cool part was when one manager would totally contradict another.
I've come to the conclusion that patents are actually mostly a waste of time and energy, especially for smaller entities. Basically all a patent is a piece of paper that gives you the right to sue. I wonder sometimes if the economy would do better to not have patents. So much energy and money is spent in pursuing and fighting patents, without even getting into the greater absurdities that are software patents. These articles are some of best explanations I've seen for it.
I live in Utah too, but I'm glad I work in Provo and not Salt Lake. I live about 25 miles south of SLC, and I could here the blackhawks and air force jets going over my house several times during the opening ceremonies. I can only imagine what it is like in SLC. So far I haven't had any problem in Provo.
I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of all this that Utah ends up with a deficit from the Olympics. Especially if we could figure out all the hidden costs from the games.
Also based on the number of cops I've seen everywhere for the last few days and how pissed they seem(always having someone pulled over), I'm guessing that every donut shop in the state has been closed for the duration of the olympics.;-)
Do you have a family? I've got a wife and 2 1/3 children. I find that family life sucks when you can't spend time with the family.
Besides I enjoy my job, and it IS posible to enjoy your job and only work 8 hours a day. I love the guys who try and do thinking work while they are exhausted. And I come in the morning fresh and rested and show them thier problem in minutes. Besides of those 12+ hours a day that you work how many of them are truly effective. From your post, your work enviroment sounds more like a dorm than a business place.
Life is an exercise in moderation. To be honest with you, I'd rather play a game of tickle with my daughters at home than a game of pool at work
The key word here is potential. I think that you would almost waste more money in evaluating a lot of the trash that comes in. The most valuable thing they probably will get from it are the ideas that people come up with. Notice how they made it as open ended as they could.
So you are saying that our future is a shoving billions of more dollars down a rat hole that has eaten up so much for so little return.
Take an honest look at NASA. It has become a beaurocrats paradise. If you think that is our future, I hope you are wrong.
Nowadays NASA really doesn't do much of anything. More money would result in NASA pissing even more of our money away. It costs 500 million dollars per launch of the space shuttle.
If NASA didn't stand as a road block in the way of private space exploration, I believe we would have ways now of launching manned missions for much less.
We had a case of that at an old job I had. It turned out that the security guard was looking up the stuff at 3 AM. And didn't know how to clean out the browser cache etc. That's why I now have my desktops set to lock themselves after on minutes of inactivity. I don't have to worry about anyone screwing with my computer.
Every company has something to hide. If the only thing you are trying to do is prevent the massive fishing expeditions of some law firm convinced you've done some thing wrong. They just need every document you've created for the last ten years and they'll figure out what it is. Thus fufilling their civic duty, and incidentally earning enormous fees.
Re:One simple reason why it won't work:
on
The Euro
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· Score: 1
It certainly isn't a cure all. But, it will have a positive effect. For any import-export business it will remove one layer of red tape. It won't be a huge effect, but it will help.
Talk about a typical slashdot reaction. Merely because I challenged an assertion in your post, you assume that I disagreed with the entire post, and go of half-cocked. I didn't say anywhere in my post that I disagree with your post. However, it was such a ludicrous assertion that I couldn't let it stand unchallenged. I mean just think a minute about what you said.
Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie
And then tell me that you can't come up with at least a few reasons(good or not) that a company wouldn't lie to it's employees.
Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie,
That isn't true. Companies always tell the biggest lies internally. I can't count the number of times I've seen companies put out internal statements to thier employees that had lies, misrepresentations, and outright drug induced fantasies. A lot of corporate cultures have a strong bias to encourage lying both ways. (up and down)
Well since locale isp's are rapidly become a relic of the past, I'd say you really don't have much of a point. ISP's are rapidly nationalizing, "mom and pop" isp's are rapidly getting bought out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Loser pays" *MUST* come with an attached reasonable max cap on how much one can expect to incur,
I agree, and most serious proposals have such provisions. The most common one is that you are not liable for more than you paid for your own legal fees. Though I think that there should be an amount above this that the judge can impose in sanctions to deal with people who file pro se, and hence spend virtually nothing.
Justice MUST be free
It because "justice is free" that these people face this problem. All you have to do is slap down a filing fee, and you've purchased a lottery ticket where you get to name the prize amount in the lottery. By filing a complaint like this you really don't face any loss if you lose. It's pretty much all or nothing. What would eliminate this problem is tort reform, in particular a loser pays feature. So if a judge decides that the person suing is being malicious, etc, that he can make this person pay for it.
I think this would dry up a lot of the "lottery" style lawsuits, and allow the judges a lot more time to speed the remaining cases up. These lawsuits often take years to settle.
Someone should hack into slashdot and remove Apr. 1 from the computer, so we don't have to endure this next year.
The Park service could have made some money off this whole thing. Just call Mark Burnett and let him hold the next edition of survivor on the island. Then just them eat the rats, and plus you can charge the contestants a campground fee.
The converse applies as well. Having too many companies can hurt you. I remember in the late 90's my old company had a satellite office in San Jose. I'd have some people I would work with out there who would leave after 6 monthes. You'd get comfortable with the people you were working with and then they would go across the street to another company. The California workers earned a lot more than I did(of course my salary here in Utah bought more) but because of the constant churning, it seemed that they always got less done. They were always training new people. By the time they got up to speed, it was time to jump jobs again. The insanity of it all used to frustrate me enormously.
I assume this has changed now with bubble having burst. But, I would likely never locate a company in Silicon Valley for this reason alone.
If you choose your location well, you shouldn't have any trouble finding adequate people.
I'm starting to work with EJB's, and I'm finding that a lot of the "code" has been put into xml files. So do I count the stuff in the xml files a code. Some of these files can get enormous and I think are often more difficult to get right than the actual code.
Also he left out another important resource that I use. I'll go out on the internet and books and download sample code that mostly does what I want. And just modify it. What level does that get me to?
If you look at it from the employer's point of view, you wouldn't want to issue a card that the employer is responsible for to just any employee. I could see where some people would be trying a lot to pull a fast one. "What do you mean I can't put the kids braces on the company card??".
Especially imagine what could happen around layoff time. You can imagine what sort of abuses would happen at a time like that.
I don't understand why people would keep working for their employer when they aren't getting paid. You are better off working as a janitor and getting a paycheck (that doesn't bounce), than working for supercool company. The odds of it ever working out and getting a big payoff at the end, (or for that matter just getting paid) are so small, that it just isn't worth it.
Inconsistant billing was pretty normal in the DSL arena. (Probably elsewhere as well) When I first signed up for DSL, I went monthes without being billed correctly. My service was so spotty that I was getting a lot of credit. I went several monthes without being billed at all. Then my provider got bought out. And I got charged for everything, even the credit I was supposed to given. Of course, they had laid off all the phone people to complain to about it. To make a long story short. My acount got sold to another company, who got bought out by yet another company. At that point I took them up on their offer to opt out of service. But you can probably guess the punchline of this story. In another 6 monthes, Company four puts a several hundred dollar charge on my credit card, insisting that I pay for service that wasn't provided. In the end, I had to dispute the charge through visa to get it reversed. In fact, almost every ISP that I have ever had accounts with have screwed up billing. The only exception was an ISP that I paid once a year with a check.
The lesson I learned is that billing can be so screwed up, that it doesn't necessary follow that the people in the billing department even know what direction is up.
Wasn't the big scare 20-30 years ago, that we were going to be having a new Ice Age?
In my opinion the major reason behind this is the tendency for large groups of people, all who believe that they need to put thier fingerprint on the project. Before long you have a lot of people making decisions, that really have no business even influencing the process. If the project is kept to a minimum number of needed people for each stage, I find that the projects are much more likely to be on time. The worst thing you can do for a design meeting is have more people than are needed. I find more than about four leads to a lot of wasted time.
I remember one project where I had to get a large group of people to agree to the design of the project and then when we would get it done(eventually), I would take it to management who would seem to make really abitrary changes merely to show that they had influenced the project. The really cool part was when one manager would totally contradict another.
I've come to the conclusion that patents are actually mostly a waste of time and energy, especially for smaller entities. Basically all a patent is a piece of paper that gives you the right to sue. I wonder sometimes if the economy would do better to not have patents. So much energy and money is spent in pursuing and fighting patents, without even getting into the greater absurdities that are software patents. These articles are some of best explanations I've seen for it.
when to patent
case against patents
how to bust a patent
patent horror stories
I live in Utah too, but I'm glad I work in Provo and not Salt Lake. I live about 25 miles south of SLC, and I could here the blackhawks and air force jets going over my house several times during the opening ceremonies. I can only imagine what it is like in SLC. So far I haven't had any problem in Provo.
;-)
I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of all this that Utah ends up with a deficit from the Olympics. Especially if we could figure out all the hidden costs from the games.
Also based on the number of cops I've seen everywhere for the last few days and how pissed they seem(always having someone pulled over), I'm guessing that every donut shop in the state has been closed for the duration of the olympics.
Do you have a family? I've got a wife and 2 1/3 children. I find that family life sucks when you can't spend time with the family.
Besides I enjoy my job, and it IS posible to enjoy your job and only work 8 hours a day. I love the guys who try and do thinking work while they are exhausted. And I come in the morning fresh and rested and show them thier problem in minutes. Besides of those 12+ hours a day that you work how many of them are truly effective. From your post, your work enviroment sounds more like a dorm than a business place.
Life is an exercise in moderation. To be honest with you, I'd rather play a game of tickle with my daughters at home than a game of pool at work
The key word here is potential. I think that you would almost waste more money in evaluating a lot of the trash that comes in. The most valuable thing they probably will get from it are the ideas that people come up with. Notice how they made it as open ended as they could.
So you are saying that our future is a shoving billions of more dollars down a rat hole that has eaten up so much for so little return.
Take an honest look at NASA. It has become a beaurocrats paradise. If you think that is our future, I hope you are wrong.
Nowadays NASA really doesn't do much of anything. More money would result in NASA pissing even more of our money away. It costs 500 million dollars per launch of the space shuttle.
If NASA didn't stand as a road block in the way of private space exploration, I believe we would have ways now of launching manned missions for much less.
We had a case of that at an old job I had. It turned out that the security guard was looking up the stuff at 3 AM. And didn't know how to clean out the browser cache etc. That's why I now have my desktops set to lock themselves after on minutes of inactivity. I don't have to worry about anyone screwing with my computer.
Every company has something to hide. If the only thing you are trying to do is prevent the massive fishing expeditions of some law firm convinced you've done some thing wrong. They just need every document you've created for the last ten years and they'll figure out what it is. Thus fufilling their civic duty, and incidentally earning enormous fees.
It certainly isn't a cure all. But, it will have a positive effect. For any import-export business it will remove one layer of red tape. It won't be a huge effect, but it will help.
Actually treadmills (at least nice ones) have a large net deficit energy production.
Talk about a typical slashdot reaction. Merely because I challenged an assertion in your post, you assume that I disagreed with the entire post, and go of half-cocked. I didn't say anywhere in my post that I disagree with your post. However, it was such a ludicrous assertion that I couldn't let it stand unchallenged. I mean just think a minute about what you said.
Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie
And then tell me that you can't come up with at least a few reasons(good or not) that a company wouldn't lie to it's employees.
Since it's an internal memo, they'd have no reason to lie,
That isn't true. Companies always tell the biggest lies internally. I can't count the number of times I've seen companies put out internal statements to thier employees that had lies, misrepresentations, and outright drug induced fantasies. A lot of corporate cultures have a strong bias to encourage lying both ways. (up and down)
Creating an analogy between a mass murder and not being able to check your email is a bit of a stretch, don't you thing?
Well since locale isp's are rapidly become a relic of the past, I'd say you really don't have much of a point. ISP's are rapidly nationalizing, "mom and pop" isp's are rapidly getting bought out.
How much of app bloat today is due to static linking? I've seen a huge difference in app size when using dynamic linking.