"a non-compete will screw you before you even get off the ground"
Maybe but the "short answer" also applies to non-compete's.
The submitter has indicated that he signed a non-compete clause but knows they are difficult to enforce in his state. IANAL but here in Australia non-compete clauses are SOP despite the fact they are considered a restriction of trade under common law and are totally unenforceable. The only people who pay any attention to them are the ignorant and the agents (same thing in many cases). Agents respect non-competes because the employer is their customer and they don't want to piss off potential/actual customers by encouraging contractors/employees to "break their contract".
AFAIK the US also inherited English common law but now has ~50 different forks.
Speaking of revenue, the statement "By 2013, music industry revenues will be 37% down from their 1999 levels" means jack shit because it says nothing about profit. Of course revenue will drop significantly if you don't have to make, package, distribute and find retail shelf space for millions of individual physical items around the globe.
Personal anecdote of physical vs electronic: During the 90's I was the technical lead on a large project with 8000 remote mobile users, and when I say remote I mean Australia wide coverage - GSM, DATATAC, sattelite phones, radio link exchanges, and the like. To upgrade the software for all 8000 users by CD was costing ~$2M/yr (mainly in down time for the user to get the CD and install the upgrade). It took 4 programmers including myself ten minutes of thought and 6 months of work to build an automated upgrade system that did not require any action by (or delay to) the user.
The board of directors were so impressed with the $$$ signs that they wrote a long and flattering letter of appreciation to each of us, but they were a telco at the "bleeding edge", I imagine a record label would have taken us to the basement car park and shot us.
It's only a problem because you consider a Neanderthal to be a "mere animal" rather than a human. That seems a particulary unethical stance to me considering what we already know about them, OTOH perhaps you are just ignorant of that knowledge.
"Neanderthals had art, and they had burial rituals and also tools. Who says they are dumb? It could've been that Sapiens just wiped them out through aggression."
They also wore skins and took care of frail relatives. From what I have read it seems to me "aggression" is the most plausible answer. A significant behavioural difference was that Sapiens occupied the high ground, most predatory mammals have the same preference and (regardless of species) take a dim view of other competing predators inhabiting their territory.
"So yes, sport is far more important than nerds in Australia."
Oh for sure, although I call myself an Aussie I am not technically an Aussie citizen, I am British. I gained permenent residency status by default when my parents came over as "two-bob" immigrants in 1964, there is no practical difference in my case since I was enrolled to vote before the law changed in the 80's. A few years ago I wanted to go overseas for the first time and obtained a British Passport rather than being naturalized, after paying well over $500K in income tax over the last 35yrs I consider Howard's pop-quiz an insult and will not apply for citizenship while it remains.
OTOH today's rules are light years ahead of the white Australia policy that was in force when my parents immigrated.
"Does anyone have any links or data that could link this case to US government, RIAA, MPAA, or any of their legal teams?"
US government: The lawsuit is a test case of provisions in the AU-US Free Trade Agreement, the FTA had chunks of the millenium act inserted into it, fortunately pharmacuticals were exempt from the FTA.
*AA's: Same studios, different shop front.
Legal team: Lead by the same bloke who extracted $100M from Kazza.
The mandatory filtering thing is a dead horse since the legislation won't pass the senate and everyone knows it, however the iiNet thing is a real threat.
I know and admire your work, I consider it a badge of honour you choose me as a "friend" a while back and I apologise if I made you sound like a crusader. I was looking for an example of someone more effective than vigalantes and had just finished reading some of your posts.
Slightly offtopic but you don't happen to have a clone down here in Australia? - The *AA's are going after a small ISP called iiNet in Perth, they hope to test provisions in the recent AU-US free trade agreement that (they claim) makes ISP caching equivalent to copying (I knew the FTA would bite us on the bum).
The AA's have brought in the same counsel that nutered Kazza, APC has an href="http://apcmag.com/why_iinet_will_probably_lose_the_piracy_lawsuit.htm">interesting article in which they debunk iiNet's 3 main arguments as common misconceptions of the law and predict iiNet will lose.
"In other words, we now force the good drivers to subsidize the mistakes of the bad drivers."
That's one way to look at it, however the alternative to subsidising the clean up for all driving mistakes is to add bankruptcy to physical injury for those "good drivers" who are the random victims of the "bad drivers".
"Step #1 [soap box] doesn't work because most people don't understand the problem yet."
It doesn't work because you're using slashdot as the soapbox, compared to say NYCL to whom slashdot is but part of his soapbox. Besides, everyone knows that you can't just skip to step #4, if that were true the car companies wouldn't need to sell cars they could just skip to "4. Profit!"....oh, wait...
Sigh - go back and look at where I quoted the "main complaint" from your original link. As for the bile you have been throwing my way, I'm bored with it.
Ok, so "spyware" is a type of "malware", so define "malware"? - Can you see where I am going? - What is the magic algorithim that determines if an application is "malware"?
"...if we can hit the business of selling spyware (probably requiring the cooperation of the international banking system, as well as the governments of china and russia) it would totally cripple large-scale internet crime as we know it. It's a pipe dream, of course. But one can always dream."
I don't want to rob you of your dreams (or take away your pipe:), but the road to software hell is paved with legal definitions of the term "spyware".
I suspect even Fielding realises that it's going nowhere but by selling KRuddy his senate vote he can return to his constituents and say "I extracted $X million from the government to fight child porn. I'm the only candidate who is thinking of the children, so vote for me again and this time we will finish the job".
Fielding will be dealt with in the same way as Hanson - exposed, ridiculed and then ignored.
Your links main claim against Gould is that "Gould is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory". The one book I read of Gould's stated the same concepts I read in Dawkin's "Climbing Mt. Improbable" and was IMHO informative. If everything else he did before and after that was crap, it still doesn't change my recommendation of that particular book.
"Is this some homage to Gould"
Hardly, I don't even recall the name of the book - it was about PE and used baseball stats to generalise it to "competition", ie: PE applies to more than just evolutionary biology, it's a generalised mathematical model that describes competition in all it's forms.
"ignoring what the other side writes"
I don't dispute the facts just the relevance.
"troll"
Nah, we've just reached the point where we are taking past each other.
"Because as an Australian the only time I hear about internet filtering is here at slashdot."
I second that, and most of those who have heard of it, will have also heard it all before. Our government has been planning to filter the net on and off since it 's conception. The reason for this is that with proportional voting we often have an independent that can hold the balance of power in either house on a split vote. In this case the senator in question is called Fielding from the "family first" party. KRuddy is buying Fielding's vote to pass funding for bigger fish throgh the senate by throwing money at a system he knows will never be implemented, Howard did the same thing by kissing up to Hanson and the "one nation" party.
It's a quirk of the system that keeps morons busy and occasionally creates the wonderfully democratic irony of people who promote censorship demanding to be heard in parliment. The whole thing is nothing more than a "Yes minister" epsiode that has been repeated so often it's no longer funny.
"I am a bit shocked that you don't find it disgusting when ideologists lie to make their opinions more popular among the general public."
I do when they present it as science and deliberately mislead but I do not think Gould has done this deliberately, his "wrong" ideas were not accepted by the mainstream and I personally learnt something from his "right" ideas.
"(non-marxist) biologists"
Again, politics has nothing to do with it. I read one book of his and highly recommend it as an introduction to the maths behind PE and the notion that opportunity drives evolution at different speeds. His other books may sit alongside Mao's little red book but that is irrelevant to the subject I originally posted.
Dawkins' Atheisim is as unscientific as the FSM, no matter how hard he tries he cannot demonstrate that god does not exist - basic rule of logic that you can't prove a negative.
As I said you have ignored Gould because of his politics on a different matter, you may think this is different to ignoring Dawkins' similar ideas because of his religion but the behaviour and logic are the same. It simply demonstrates that in your mind marxisim is less belivable than atheisim.
"James Hansen is a global warming alarmist...[snip]...This is simply another proof that the mainstream media...[snip]...simply parrot agendas that fit their own opinion."
Slashdot Mirror
"a non-compete will screw you before you even get off the ground"
Maybe but the "short answer" also applies to non-compete's.
The submitter has indicated that he signed a non-compete clause but knows they are difficult to enforce in his state. IANAL but here in Australia non-compete clauses are SOP despite the fact they are considered a restriction of trade under common law and are totally unenforceable. The only people who pay any attention to them are the ignorant and the agents (same thing in many cases). Agents respect non-competes because the employer is their customer and they don't want to piss off potential/actual customers by encouraging contractors/employees to "break their contract".
AFAIK the US also inherited English common law but now has ~50 different forks.
On the bright side, I have yet another anecdote about the preview button.
Speaking of revenue, the statement "By 2013, music industry revenues
will be 37% down from their 1999 levels" means jack shit because it says nothing about profit. Of course revenue will drop significantly if you don't have to make, package, distribute and find retail shelf space for millions of individual physical items around the globe.
Personal anecdote of physical vs electronic: During the 90's I was the technical lead on a large project with 8000 remote mobile users, and when I say remote I mean Australia wide coverage - GSM, DATATAC, sattelite phones, radio link exchanges, and the like. To upgrade the software for all 8000 users by CD was costing ~$2M/yr (mainly in down time for the user to get the CD and install the upgrade). It took 4 programmers including myself ten minutes of thought and 6 months of work to build an automated upgrade system that did not require any action by (or delay to) the user.
The board of directors were so impressed with the $$$ signs that they wrote a long and flattering letter of appreciation to each of us, but they were a telco at the "bleeding edge", I imagine a record label would have taken us to the basement car park and shot us.
"Click on the "comments" tab and it's back the way it was
Except where has the "last X out of Y comments" header gone?
Where are my Freaks, Fans and Foes?
I don't understand the motivation. The feedback on the "idle" layout was an overwhelming "it sucks", why extend the suckiness to the rest of the site?
It's only a problem because you consider a Neanderthal to be a "mere animal" rather than a human. That seems a particulary unethical stance to me considering what we already know about them, OTOH perhaps you are just ignorant of that knowledge.
"Neanderthals had art, and they had burial rituals and also tools. Who says they are dumb? It could've been that Sapiens just wiped them out through aggression."
They also wore skins and took care of frail relatives. From what I have read it seems to me "aggression" is the most plausible answer. A significant behavioural difference was that Sapiens occupied the high ground, most predatory mammals have the same preference and (regardless of species) take a dim view of other competing predators inhabiting their territory.
"So yes, sport is far more important than nerds in Australia."
Oh for sure, although I call myself an Aussie I am not technically an Aussie citizen, I am British. I gained permenent residency status by default when my parents came over as "two-bob" immigrants in 1964, there is no practical difference in my case since I was enrolled to vote before the law changed in the 80's. A few years ago I wanted to go overseas for the first time and obtained a British Passport rather than being naturalized, after paying well over $500K in income tax over the last 35yrs I consider Howard's pop-quiz an insult and will not apply for citizenship while it remains.
OTOH today's rules are light years ahead of the white Australia policy that was in force when my parents immigrated.
"Does anyone have any links or data that could link this case to US government, RIAA, MPAA, or any of their legal teams?"
US government: The lawsuit is a test case of provisions in the AU-US Free Trade Agreement, the FTA had chunks of the millenium act inserted into it, fortunately pharmacuticals were exempt from the FTA.
*AA's: Same studios, different shop front.
Legal team: Lead by the same bloke who extracted $100M from Kazza.
The mandatory filtering thing is a dead horse since the legislation won't pass the senate and everyone knows it, however the iiNet thing is a real threat.
The EFA is not affiliated with the EFF but it does much the same thing and the two often collaborate.
"Having immigrants answer a question about Don Bradman on their citizenship test is far more important."
That question is an urban legend, it doesn't exist and it never has. Having said that, the rest of your post deserves a +5 informative.
APC article
I know and admire your work, I consider it a badge of honour you choose me as a "friend" a while back and I apologise if I made you sound like a crusader. I was looking for an example of someone more effective than vigalantes and had just finished reading some of your posts.
Slightly offtopic but you don't happen to have a clone down here in Australia? - The *AA's are going after a small ISP called iiNet in Perth, they hope to test provisions in the recent AU-US free trade agreement that (they claim) makes ISP caching equivalent to copying (I knew the FTA would bite us on the bum).
The AA's have brought in the same counsel that nutered Kazza, APC has an href="http://apcmag.com/why_iinet_will_probably_lose_the_piracy_lawsuit.htm">interesting article in which they debunk iiNet's 3 main arguments as common misconceptions of the law and predict iiNet will lose.
"In other words, we now force the good drivers to subsidize the mistakes of the bad drivers."
That's one way to look at it, however the alternative to subsidising the clean up for all driving mistakes is to add bankruptcy to physical injury for those "good drivers" who are the random victims of the "bad drivers".
"Step #1 [soap box] doesn't work because most people don't understand the problem yet."
It doesn't work because you're using slashdot as the soapbox, compared to say NYCL to whom slashdot is but part of his soapbox. Besides, everyone knows that you can't just skip to step #4, if that were true the car companies wouldn't need to sell cars they could just skip to "4. Profit!"....oh, wait...
"Send the most useless third of the population first"
And shut down slashdot? - Never!!!
Sigh - go back and look at where I quoted the "main complaint" from your original link. As for the bile you have been throwing my way, I'm bored with it.
It means Alaska shares a border with Canada, now listen to grandpa while he tells you about the onion on his belt.
Ok, so "spyware" is a type of "malware", so define "malware"? - Can you see where I am going? - What is the magic algorithim that determines if an application is "malware"?
"...if we can hit the business of selling spyware (probably requiring the cooperation of the international banking system, as well as the governments of china and russia) it would totally cripple large-scale internet crime as we know it. It's a pipe dream, of course. But one can always dream."
:), but the road to software hell is paved with legal definitions of the term "spyware".
I don't want to rob you of your dreams (or take away your pipe
I suspect even Fielding realises that it's going nowhere but by selling KRuddy his senate vote he can return to his constituents and say "I extracted $X million from the government to fight child porn. I'm the only candidate who is thinking of the children, so vote for me again and this time we will finish the job".
Fielding will be dealt with in the same way as Hanson - exposed, ridiculed and then ignored.
Your links main claim against Gould is that "Gould is giving non-biologists a largely false picture of the state of evolutionary theory". The one book I read of Gould's stated the same concepts I read in Dawkin's "Climbing Mt. Improbable" and was IMHO informative. If everything else he did before and after that was crap, it still doesn't change my recommendation of that particular book.
"Is this some homage to Gould"
Hardly, I don't even recall the name of the book - it was about PE and used baseball stats to generalise it to "competition", ie: PE applies to more than just evolutionary biology, it's a generalised mathematical model that describes competition in all it's forms.
"ignoring what the other side writes"
I don't dispute the facts just the relevance.
"troll"
Nah, we've just reached the point where we are taking past each other.
"Because as an Australian the only time I hear about internet filtering is here at slashdot."
I second that, and most of those who have heard of it, will have also heard it all before. Our government has been planning to filter the net on and off since it 's conception. The reason for this is that with proportional voting we often have an independent that can hold the balance of power in either house on a split vote. In this case the senator in question is called Fielding from the "family first" party. KRuddy is buying Fielding's vote to pass funding for bigger fish throgh the senate by throwing money at a system he knows will never be implemented, Howard did the same thing by kissing up to Hanson and the "one nation" party.
It's a quirk of the system that keeps morons busy and occasionally creates the wonderfully democratic irony of people who promote censorship demanding to be heard in parliment. The whole thing is nothing more than a "Yes minister" epsiode that has been repeated so often it's no longer funny.
"I am a bit shocked that you don't find it disgusting when ideologists lie to make their opinions more popular among the general public."
I do when they present it as science and deliberately mislead but I do not think Gould has done this deliberately, his "wrong" ideas were not accepted by the mainstream and I personally learnt something from his "right" ideas.
"(non-marxist) biologists"
Again, politics has nothing to do with it. I read one book of his and highly recommend it as an introduction to the maths behind PE and the notion that opportunity drives evolution at different speeds. His other books may sit alongside Mao's little red book but that is irrelevant to the subject I originally posted.
Dawkins' Atheisim is as unscientific as the FSM, no matter how hard he tries he cannot demonstrate that god does not exist - basic rule of logic that you can't prove a negative.
As I said you have ignored Gould because of his politics on a different matter, you may think this is different to ignoring Dawkins' similar ideas because of his religion but the behaviour and logic are the same. It simply demonstrates that in your mind marxisim is less belivable than atheisim.
"James Hansen is a global warming alarmist...[snip]...This is simply another proof that the mainstream media...[snip]...simply parrot agendas that fit their own opinion."
Pot meets kettle.