but letting the pigs sniff around where they don't belong is going to ruin everyone's life.
As much as I agree I have to start wondering...
While the Constitution guarantees you the right to free speech, secure in your person, etc. etc. etc.
Where does it say that you have the right NOT to be monitored? Amendment IV gives you the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, but since when is listening to a conversation at another table an unreasonable search?
There's always the argument about Amendements IX and X which are supposed to lock the government into aims specifically stated in the Constitution and reserve everything else for the states and individuals but (sadly) no politician has given a flying rabid badger's tail about Amendment IX or X in nearly 200 years.
If you happen to get a cable modem with an MTA (Multimedia Terminal Adapter) built-in (which would serve as your VoIP box), then your ISP will configure two streams for you, one for data, one for voice
My cable modem provider and my VoIP provider are two different entities. VoIP is segregated from other network transmissions by ports.
I'm pretty sure this legislation/article is referring to VoIP providers that give you a standard telephone number along with your VoIP service such that you can talk with all your non-tech buddies without having to kiss up to AT&T.
Then they'll lobby Congress to outlaw disk editors and undeleters, and require file system drivers to be digitally signed by the MPAA
With Trusted Computing BIOS on the not-so-far horizon, Microsoft making a mockery of monopoly abuse suits, and proprietary software vendors pushing through software patents which will point the dirty finger at open source software, you're not that far from the probable future.
While you are correct in your definition and explanation of Natural Law, I don't think that is what the original poster meant by "natural truths."
Let's take the Natural Law consideration of the transfer of a CD.
You and another person are walking along a road in the middle of nowhere. That person is carrying a CD which you want. You negotiate a price and he gives you the CD and you give him the money. He is not licensing the CD to you nor is he renting it to you. On a road in the middle of nowhere those concepts have no enforceable meaning. An object, and ownership, has been transferred.
In Natural Law he has no ability to stop you from taking that CD home, copying it, and giving it to your friend. He accepted all risk of your redistribution by carefully considering the selling price of the CD.
In terms of Natural Law, what is the DMCA but a group of stalking thugs?
If the product was formally sold then the DMCA (for media) and EULAs (for software) would have no leg to stand on. No one, except the media/software industry, rents a product which can be easily copied. Instead those products are adjusted so that the sale price is profitable. Instead, software is licensed, via the EULA, and media is licensed for use, defined in terms of the licensing agreement. Consumers no longer buy the product but instead purchase a right to use the license.
What is the difference between a product which is sold and a product which is rented? A product which is sold is the property of the owner and the owner has the right to do with it as they please. A product which is rented is still the property of the owner and the renter is bound by terms of a usage agreement. What, then, is the difference between a product which is licensed and a product which is rented? There is none. When a consumer rents a product they sign a contract accepting terms of use. When a consumer purchases a software/media license they accept a contract accepting terms of use.
Why the jargon difference, then?
The jargon difference is this: the breach of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the owner to retain legal counsel and compile a legal case. Consider the rights of landlords, automobile rental agencies, or your local hardware store renting out powertools. The breach of a license agreement has been manipulated to be a felony offense in which the financial burden of investigation has been passed onto the taxpaying public as a whole.
There is not a more blatant example of corporate political graft.
You buy something based on the terms of the seller. You agree to the terms when you buy it.
Stalking is illegal. The seller has no right to monitor your use after you leave their shop. The grocery store does not have terms of use on knives. The drugstore does not have terms of use on aspirin. The hardware store does not have terms of use on power-nailers. The sporting goods store does not have terms of use on baseball bats.
A sale with "terms of use" is a rental, not a sale. Auto agencies of "terms of use" on car rentals. Contractor stores have "terms of use" on equipment. Landlords have "terms of use" for property. It may be a rental with an unspecified time limit, but it is still a rental. Violation of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the renter to retain legal counsel and compile a case.
What is the difference between "licensing" and "renting", other than a legal manipulation by which the renter has passed the financial burden of legal counsel and making the case onto the taxpaying public?
If you measure success as,"I'm warm, breathing, and have a place to live" then yes, I've been successful. Aside from no longer dealing with an abusive manager I have not improved any of the other conditions which led to the gamut. In fact, the financial aspect has become hopelessly worse--to the point where I don't bother to think about it.
you then suggest he not encourage others to do it as well
The issue is with employee agreements. If a programmer works on writing decompilers for an unethical employer and takes a stand to leave, should that programmer not be able to write decompilers for his own profit? Under the current system of employee agreements the legal system will exact a VENGEANCE fee on anyone who tries to assert their right to be treated in a fair and civil manner, guaranteeing that they cannot personally profit from their own skills.
Can you legally tell a carpenter that he cannot work with wood? Can you tell a trucker they cannot drive? Can we tell a salesman that it is now illegal to sell a product? Why is it that the people who devote effort to refining a highly technical skill can be legally forced to remain in a state of unhappiness with an unfair employer?
I work in the scientific industry and one of my biggest peeves is that my employers always demand that I sign away my property rights to any patents that I procure while employed with them. The trolls say,"If you don't like it, then leave." But what good does it do me to leave if my employee agreement forbids me from using that knowledge for myself? Why should intelligent Americans be reduced to fast-food tellers if the industry is excessive in greed and opportunism?
You acknowledged that you can afford to decline work if the conditions are unfair. I know less than a dozen people who can do that and none of them are poor. I don't know anyone with a $50-$100k/year salary who can afford to challenge their boss because even a month without pay would leave them in debt they could never recover from.
You can preach about pride and standing up for yourself all you want but your haughty attitude, pretty words and pride won't buy bread when you live under the bridge.
Have fun playing the victim
No one is playing the victim.
Only a faceless troll criticizes a paralyzed man for being unable to climb a hill. Employee agreements cripple American workers by granting former employers power over their use of their own internal talents.
Legally speaking King George was right and we founded an entire nation by challenging that. I can never see why people have such great respect for laws which can be so easily manipulated when history has shown that we have a moral obligation to challenge laws which are in violation of natural truths. In the case of the DMCA, the natural truth is: "If you sell something to me it's mine and I can do with it as I please."
the way that people try to justify ripping copies of music / DVDs / software, all these "fair use" arguments
Once you sell something to me it's mine and I can do with it as I please. This concept of licensing data is a bogus construct. At best it could be "renting". A violation of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the renter to retain legal counsel. Data licensing is an underhanded legal maneuver to pass the burden of funding onto the taxpayers and turn the classification into a felony for hype purposes.
Give me a real difference between "licensing" and "renting". Think about what it means to "sell" something.
This is (allegedly) a government by, of, and for the people. If we refuse to stand up for ourselves, the courts cannot save us
But the courts can do us in.
What possible basis do you have for making that incorrect assumption? Nothing I said supports it
Your admonishment of "don't sign the contract". What leverage does an American worker have against an industry rife with abusive employment contracts? What leverage does an American worker have against abusive managers if the company owns every idea the employee had while working there? It does no one any good to walk away from a job if they can be sued in court for taking their expertise elsewhere.
But on this thread, you are acting in a manner indistinguishable from one
An idiot would advocate theft from the company. If Evan had taken some actual code from the company that would be theft.
I do not agree that employers should be able to regulate what you can do after you leave. If the employer wasn't fair, observant, or intelligent enough to ensure the happiness of the employee then they got exactly what they asked for.
If you ignored your wife for a year could you legally prevent her from dating your best friend? Could you create a prenuptial agreement by which you can prevent her from cooking your favorite dish for your best friend because she learned that skill while with you? The only reason why it sounds silly is because there is no natural or ethical reason why one entity should be able to regulate the actions of another after their relationship, be it marriage or employment, has been terminated.
Firstly, I already did. I do work for an ethical employer
This does not prove that ethical employers abound. Nor does it prove that people who quit their jobs to escape an abusive employer will be able to find an ethical employer.
Secondly, what risk?
If you're coming from an abusive employer, the risk is joblessness, homelessness, foodlessness. I get the strong impression that you have never experienced these.
Thirdly: "Cynicism is the most supine moral position
No one's being cynical. We have, in front of us, a REAL (not cynical) case where an employee was genuinely dissatisfied with his employer, left to market his own product, and was clipped by the enforcement of a contract which, while legal by letter, is an obvious political extension of corporate power. An employee SHOULD have the right to leave if they feel they are being treated unfairly and MIND/THOUGHT CONTROL is not part of the values of any patriotic American.
Quit sniping at me, and stand up for yourself. No one else is gonna do it. Get some pride
Unless you've actually had to go through the gamut then you have no room to talk.
The gamut?
Here's the video game description:
You are a human with no available financial resources and mounting debt. You are employed by a large and powerful multinational corporation. You make just enough money to pay your minimum debt balances every month but have not been able to save a dime in three years. Over the last year your manager has become increasingly abusive and pedantically critical of your work. You have no resources to start your own company. If you quit you will be hard pressed to find _ANY_ job as you work in an industry which relies nearly exclusively on references from the previous manager. If you do find a job you will most certainly not increase your salary.
The video game begins the day you handed in your notice of resignation. You have enough funds to hold out with rent and bills for three months. The economy is in a slump which means that all low level jobs (fast food, convenience store staffing, department store staffing, restaraunts) are already filled by humans who are willing to trade sex with the greasy managers in those industries for the privelege of having a job. You have no family or friends with available housing room. The game is written such that it will be at least eight months until an employer gives you an opportunity for an interview.
Good luck.
I've been there and made it back. I still sweat profusely in my sleep from anxiety.
I have no problem with the idea that your employer owns all your work products. If you were foolish enough to write a killer game or something on company time, they own it, too bad
At first glance I would agree but experience has taught me to think deeper. Should not the right to pack up, leave, and start your own business be retained as the last defense against an abusive employer? Isn't that what the/. trolls always come up with,"If you don't like it, leave."? How can we leave if the company owns every product of our labor?
The decision should've gone the other way so as to tell the corporations: your employees have every right to take the product of their labor elsewhere. Treat them fairly.
Many centuries ago employee agreements were not a problem. There was a natural feedback loop in the freedom of man to live indigenously. There were abundant natural resources which could be acquired through work and devotion.
Society has evolved long past that. There is almost no free land anywhere. There are almost no free resources. Even if there were there is no free transportation to get there from here. In today's world a person must prove their usefulness to a company in order to earn the commonly accepted form of currency which they trade for the basic necessities of life.
At the time of the industrial revolution there was little need for an employee agreement. The common shop workers weren't paid enough to have the opportunity to strike out on their own and set up a competing business. Shop managers were typically compensated fairly enough but still had little possibility of putting together the type of funding that it would take to make use of their knowledge to create a competing business. Those who were wealthy enough to be able to make use of their knowledge were also compensated well enough to keep them from having any desire to compete. In many cases this simple business approach still applies today.
Why, then, has there been an evolution of employee agreements. As industry has become more powerful politically it has grown less efficient. In some instances the business bloat was so great that an enterprising employee was able to use what they learned on the job, working within an oppressive and stagnant atmosphere, and set up a company built on a "better way". Enter the need for an employee agreement.
Still, though, there are still environments where the _goal_ is to create employees who can use what they've learned and strike out on their own. These are most commonly seen in skilled trades: the path from apprentice, to journeyman, to master craftsman. The very existence of skilled trades exemplifies that an industry can function, often fruitfully, without the need for employee agreements.
What then is the real need for an employee agreement? It is greed and preservations of social divisions. Many trolls will abuse posters with,"If you don't like it then leave and start your own business." In truth many people in society have. But what of those of us who cannot start our own business because we're not financially priveleged? For the most part we're ridiculed and dismissed. Now what of those of us who cannot start our own business because it would be a contractual violation of a former employee agreement? Certainly this hasn't stopped people from leaving a bad employer to start their own business. What the employee agreement does is ensure that anyone who does start their own business does so with the blessing of the established players in the field. It is a system of nepotism that preserves power in the hands of those who already hold it. Any real competitors would be sued out of existence by a former employer long before they could get any real business started.
Apparently Evan Brown tried to start his own business without the blessing of his employer. The real question here is: why wasn't the employer able to retain Mr. Brown? Could they not give him a raise or enough vacation to make him happy or is it that his management was composed of such intolerable selfishness that Mr. Brown did what any sane human would do?
Employee agreements are a company's way of taking away the last chip that we, as intellectual workers, have: the ability to pack up and leave if the system has become intolerable. Anyone who is a proponent of these agreements is A) naive, B) pampered, C) blind. If the court had sided with Mr. Brown it would have sent a clear message to corporations: treat your employees fairly.
For all anyone knows his boss was called in and asked about his computer usage, justified it and satisfied the powers that be. It's not like this Admin has any right to be kept in the loop.
Wow. Talk about advocating a recipe for a backstabbing, political, antiproductive, and harassing workplace.
I applaud you for landing on third base. You apparently have the luxury of being financially secure enough where you can afford to turn down job offers. The majority of US workers are standing at the plate. We can't negotiate for the pitcher to give us a straight fastball down the middle. These employee agreements are not negotiable unless you're willing to reject the job offer and face the consequences of spending another month sending out resumes, scheduling interviews, and waiting for hiring committees to have a good day.
Most Americans can't afford an extra week worth of debt, much less another month. Your self-smug stance is nauseating at best.
[sarcasm] Oooh, your clever words wound me. [/sarcasm] </immunity>
After all, it looks to me that I am in complete agreement with what you said here
Actually you're not in complete agreement. I was lamenting that the courts continue to back the corporations in their pursuit of legally whittling away any concept of right and true. Employment agreements, especially ones where companies presume to own the intellect of the employee, are another example of corporations whittling away at the concepts of right and true.
Your stance was to "not sign the employee agreement". Since college I have not once seriously interviewed with a company that did not have a gargantuan employee agreement. Unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to spend a potentially infinite amount of time turning down job offers these agreements are not negotiable. Currently I violate no less than two former employee agreements every day I walk through the door at work because I use, on a daily basis, skills and procedures that I learned while at other companies and, according to their agreements, they own all rights to my knowledge of those skills and I agreed not to use knowledge that I learned with them to benefit anyone else. These employee agreements are also very selectively enforced. I will probably never receive a call from an attorney wishing to sue me for violation of my former employee agreements. However, should I begin to make large sums of money on a product based upon skills that I learned at former employers, I wouldn't be surprised if I would need to retain legal counsel.
If carpenters had employee agreements and a novice had never used a circular saw prior to employer A, these sorts of agreements would make it a contractual violation to use a circular saw with employer B.
Why in particular do I say that you're a dumba__? It is because you are blindly in favor of giving all leverage to the corporation and essentially diminishing the value of a person to little more than a beast of burden. Corporations have been steadily taking control of their workers' lives through the use of legal contracts and we, as skilled employees, have no collective power to refuse because it has become an industry norm.
This is going to be over-the-top but it illustrates the point: if every employer who paid a living wage required you to work in the nude, does that make it right? Maybe you signed the contract (and what choice is it to be unemployed and homeless? "You want fries with that?") but at some point the courts need to start standing up for the INDIVIDUAL, and not for the corporation.
if I was an electrician in the employ of a factory, I think that they'd be hard pressed to claim ownership of the radio I built in my basement in my spare time
While $SIGNATURE AND $FASCIST_EMPLOYMENT_CONTRACT;
do
While $RICH_EMPLOYER AND $LEGAL_COUNSEL_TO_SPARE
do
rm -rf $EMPLOYEE_LIFE_SAVINGS;
done;
done;
Technically according to contract not only do my past employers (USA) own any skills that I learned while working for them, but I'm also obligated to keep them informed of where I go for 5 years after leaving. Legally speaking I cannot practice as a synthetic organic chemist because the bulk majority of my skills were learned underneath a monolithic employment agreement.
On the other hand, what other choice do I have? I spent $100k on an academic education so that I had the basis to learn those skills. I'm not going to take that investment and sell french fries just because corporations who can pay a living wage have a stranglehold on taxpayers like myself.
There are plenty of employers out there with reasonable IP agreements to be had
You want fries with that?
Frankly I think it's reasonable for a company to "own" my thoughts as related to the core business of that company, and any development activities that pertain to it
I disagree. From the time we take on any additional schooling and decide to specialize in a field, be it computers, health care, science, arts, literature, what-have-you, we have trained our brain to be honed in on the systems and problems in that industry. It is unfair for a company which deals in one particular area to claim IP of the entire industry.
However if my employer pays me for insurance database work and I'm writing a game in my spare time though, hell no, it's mine.
From your second statement... programming, writing code, is related to the core business.
And I won't sign on with any company that disagrees.
You want fries with that?
I just made it one long list, several existing and a dozen or two "someday" projects just in case.
You were blessed with a company that was willing to work with you. Many HR reps will give you the,"Are you fscking kidding me? Get serious. Quit clowning around" and will ask you to condense the list or they'll have to rescind the offer.
So it is possible that the Tg9949 mice had a much lower (or zero) incidence of misfolding in their MoPrP than the Tg196 mice (due to differences in their genomes or whatever).
This is the hitch that raises the red flag for me. The authors note that the Tg196 mice are susceptible. They then go on to use Tg9949 mice, which they give a technical description for based upon nonexpression of some other protein (0/0). But they _do_ say that the Tg9949 mice express PrP(P101L) at a level 16 times greater than some other mouse (Bavarian? Hungarian? Was it SHA? I left the article at work). It's in the same paragraph that describes the Tg9949 mice. Leftmost column, second or third paragraph on the page with the immunoblots.
Regardless. The peer review process has obviously failed us on this one as the researchers obfuscate the levels at which the Tg9949 mice express the misfolded MoPrP(P101L) in relation to other mouse strains.
Personally, I think this whole debate won't be entirely resolved until we have better techniques for observing the conformations of real proteins
X-ray crystallography is bringing us a long way, as is SAR-by-NMR. There's an obvious question involved with both, though,"How do we know that the tertiary/quaternary configuration observed experimentally are the same as the configurations in vivo when we know that pH, ion identity, solvent identity, and environment play just as much role in determination as the secondary structure of the amino acid chain?"
I was systematically shouldered aside and shouted down when I would ask that question at a major pharmaceutical company in Chicago.
What you're missing is that the Tg196 mice were NOT the control group. Both the experimental and controls were mice called "Tg9949", or just "Tg"
I tried to figure out why they bothered to include the statistics about the Tg196 mice if they weren't actually using them. You say that Tg9949 mice express HIGH levels of MoPrP(P101L). Did you miss the beginning of the introduction which stated that the P101L mutation is the critical mutation thought to be responsible for the formation of b-amyloid deposits? We're back to the same question: How did the control group manage to remain perfectly healthy when a group of mice, known to express the P101L mutated prion, become spontaneously sick at 550 days?
I'm not going to say that the researchers are fraudulent. They probably put lots of quality time and effort into their lab work. What's fraudulent is the subsequent hype on this experiement. Nature should take the heat for this as their byline claims that researchers show that a single protein is all that's necessary to initiate a prion disease. Nature forgot to add the caveat,"in a mouse model known to be susceptible to the prion."
Checking the supplementary data, they did mass spec on the extracts. IT came out pretty pure
Are you trying to kid me?:) The supplementary material states that the MW was determined by laser desorption and ESI. There is no purity determined. Back to my original point though there is no comparison with a MoPrP(88-230) negative E. coli extract. There's no proof that the ESI signature is really a MoPrP fingerprint or if every E. coli broth, extracted by their method, would look the same.
I'm not being aggressive. I'm nudging you with my elbow.
Personally, I think that the deposits are stil there, just far too small to be seen by gross histology
I agree. I've heard similar reports about the absence of deposits and feel that they're touted highly by people who are interested in tracking down PrP regardless of it being alpha-helical or beta-amyloid. It would be much easier to get a diagnostic kit on the market and PROFIT if they don't have to worry about the being specific for the insoluble PrPb form.
Last post for a while. I'm actually tending a silica gel column here in lab because my employer is too cheap to buy a Biotage Flash40i, a high-flow UV detector, and an autocollector for me. My product should be coming off soon.
Slashdot Mirror
but letting the pigs sniff around where they don't belong is going to ruin everyone's life.
As much as I agree I have to start wondering...
While the Constitution guarantees you the right to free speech, secure in your person, etc. etc. etc.
Where does it say that you have the right NOT to be monitored? Amendment IV gives you the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, but since when is listening to a conversation at another table an unreasonable search?
There's always the argument about Amendements IX and X which are supposed to lock the government into aims specifically stated in the Constitution and reserve everything else for the states and individuals but (sadly) no politician has given a flying rabid badger's tail about Amendment IX or X in nearly 200 years.
If you happen to get a cable modem with an MTA (Multimedia Terminal Adapter) built-in (which would serve as your VoIP box), then your ISP will configure two streams for you, one for data, one for voice
My cable modem provider and my VoIP provider are two different entities. VoIP is segregated from other network transmissions by ports.
I'm pretty sure this legislation/article is referring to VoIP providers that give you a standard telephone number along with your VoIP service such that you can talk with all your non-tech buddies without having to kiss up to AT&T.
Then they'll lobby Congress to outlaw disk editors and undeleters, and require file system drivers to be digitally signed by the MPAA
With Trusted Computing BIOS on the not-so-far horizon, Microsoft making a mockery of monopoly abuse suits, and proprietary software vendors pushing through software patents which will point the dirty finger at open source software, you're not that far from the probable future.
While you are correct in your definition and explanation of Natural Law, I don't think that is what the original poster meant by "natural truths."
Let's take the Natural Law consideration of the transfer of a CD.
You and another person are walking along a road in the middle of nowhere. That person is carrying a CD which you want. You negotiate a price and he gives you the CD and you give him the money. He is not licensing the CD to you nor is he renting it to you. On a road in the middle of nowhere those concepts have no enforceable meaning. An object, and ownership, has been transferred.
In Natural Law he has no ability to stop you from taking that CD home, copying it, and giving it to your friend. He accepted all risk of your redistribution by carefully considering the selling price of the CD.
In terms of Natural Law, what is the DMCA but a group of stalking thugs?
If the product was formally sold then the DMCA (for media) and EULAs (for software) would have no leg to stand on. No one, except the media/software industry, rents a product which can be easily copied. Instead those products are adjusted so that the sale price is profitable. Instead, software is licensed, via the EULA, and media is licensed for use, defined in terms of the licensing agreement. Consumers no longer buy the product but instead purchase a right to use the license.
What is the difference between a product which is sold and a product which is rented? A product which is sold is the property of the owner and the owner has the right to do with it as they please. A product which is rented is still the property of the owner and the renter is bound by terms of a usage agreement. What, then, is the difference between a product which is licensed and a product which is rented? There is none. When a consumer rents a product they sign a contract accepting terms of use. When a consumer purchases a software/media license they accept a contract accepting terms of use.
Why the jargon difference, then?
The jargon difference is this: the breach of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the owner to retain legal counsel and compile a legal case. Consider the rights of landlords, automobile rental agencies, or your local hardware store renting out powertools. The breach of a license agreement has been manipulated to be a felony offense in which the financial burden of investigation has been passed onto the taxpaying public as a whole.
There is not a more blatant example of corporate political graft.
You buy something based on the terms of the seller. You agree to the terms when you buy it.
Stalking is illegal. The seller has no right to monitor your use after you leave their shop. The grocery store does not have terms of use on knives. The drugstore does not have terms of use on aspirin. The hardware store does not have terms of use on power-nailers. The sporting goods store does not have terms of use on baseball bats.
A sale with "terms of use" is a rental, not a sale. Auto agencies of "terms of use" on car rentals. Contractor stores have "terms of use" on equipment. Landlords have "terms of use" for property. It may be a rental with an unspecified time limit, but it is still a rental. Violation of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the renter to retain legal counsel and compile a case.
What is the difference between "licensing" and "renting", other than a legal manipulation by which the renter has passed the financial burden of legal counsel and making the case onto the taxpaying public?
Having been successful at it
If you measure success as,"I'm warm, breathing, and have a place to live" then yes, I've been successful. Aside from no longer dealing with an abusive manager I have not improved any of the other conditions which led to the gamut. In fact, the financial aspect has become hopelessly worse--to the point where I don't bother to think about it.
you then suggest he not encourage others to do it as well
The issue is with employee agreements. If a programmer works on writing decompilers for an unethical employer and takes a stand to leave, should that programmer not be able to write decompilers for his own profit? Under the current system of employee agreements the legal system will exact a VENGEANCE fee on anyone who tries to assert their right to be treated in a fair and civil manner, guaranteeing that they cannot personally profit from their own skills.
Can you legally tell a carpenter that he cannot work with wood? Can you tell a trucker they cannot drive? Can we tell a salesman that it is now illegal to sell a product? Why is it that the people who devote effort to refining a highly technical skill can be legally forced to remain in a state of unhappiness with an unfair employer?
I work in the scientific industry and one of my biggest peeves is that my employers always demand that I sign away my property rights to any patents that I procure while employed with them. The trolls say,"If you don't like it, then leave." But what good does it do me to leave if my employee agreement forbids me from using that knowledge for myself? Why should intelligent Americans be reduced to fast-food tellers if the industry is excessive in greed and opportunism?
Great. How much do I make a year? Name the figure
You acknowledged that you can afford to decline work if the conditions are unfair. I know less than a dozen people who can do that and none of them are poor. I don't know anyone with a $50-$100k/year salary who can afford to challenge their boss because even a month without pay would leave them in debt they could never recover from.
You can preach about pride and standing up for yourself all you want but your haughty attitude, pretty words and pride won't buy bread when you live under the bridge.
Have fun playing the victim
No one is playing the victim.
Only a faceless troll criticizes a paralyzed man for being unable to climb a hill. Employee agreements cripple American workers by granting former employers power over their use of their own internal talents.
they ARE right, legally speaking
Legally speaking King George was right and we founded an entire nation by challenging that. I can never see why people have such great respect for laws which can be so easily manipulated when history has shown that we have a moral obligation to challenge laws which are in violation of natural truths. In the case of the DMCA, the natural truth is: "If you sell something to me it's mine and I can do with it as I please."
the way that people try to justify ripping copies of music / DVDs / software, all these "fair use" arguments
Once you sell something to me it's mine and I can do with it as I please. This concept of licensing data is a bogus construct. At best it could be "renting". A violation of a rental agreement is a civil matter which requires the renter to retain legal counsel. Data licensing is an underhanded legal maneuver to pass the burden of funding onto the taxpayers and turn the classification into a felony for hype purposes.
Give me a real difference between "licensing" and "renting". Think about what it means to "sell" something.
This is (allegedly) a government by, of, and for the people. If we refuse to stand up for ourselves, the courts cannot save us
But the courts can do us in.
What possible basis do you have for making that incorrect assumption? Nothing I said supports it
Your admonishment of "don't sign the contract". What leverage does an American worker have against an industry rife with abusive employment contracts? What leverage does an American worker have against abusive managers if the company owns every idea the employee had while working there? It does no one any good to walk away from a job if they can be sued in court for taking their expertise elsewhere.
But on this thread, you are acting in a manner indistinguishable from one
An idiot would advocate theft from the company. If Evan had taken some actual code from the company that would be theft.
I do not agree that employers should be able to regulate what you can do after you leave. If the employer wasn't fair, observant, or intelligent enough to ensure the happiness of the employee then they got exactly what they asked for.
If you ignored your wife for a year could you legally prevent her from dating your best friend? Could you create a prenuptial agreement by which you can prevent her from cooking your favorite dish for your best friend because she learned that skill while with you? The only reason why it sounds silly is because there is no natural or ethical reason why one entity should be able to regulate the actions of another after their relationship, be it marriage or employment, has been terminated.
By standard measures, I'm pretty poor at the moment
/.
That wouldn't be the Alan Greenspan or multinational CEO standard, would it?
I choose not to take on some work becuase of bad terms
You're not poor.
If you are going to whine
Oh goody. The troll card.
learn how to improve your negotiating position, or live with it
It's easy to improve your negotiating position: be a silver spoon fed troll on
Firstly, I already did. I do work for an ethical employer
This does not prove that ethical employers abound. Nor does it prove that people who quit their jobs to escape an abusive employer will be able to find an ethical employer.
Secondly, what risk?
If you're coming from an abusive employer, the risk is joblessness, homelessness, foodlessness. I get the strong impression that you have never experienced these.
Thirdly: "Cynicism is the most supine moral position
No one's being cynical. We have, in front of us, a REAL (not cynical) case where an employee was genuinely dissatisfied with his employer, left to market his own product, and was clipped by the enforcement of a contract which, while legal by letter, is an obvious political extension of corporate power. An employee SHOULD have the right to leave if they feel they are being treated unfairly and MIND/THOUGHT CONTROL is not part of the values of any patriotic American.
Quit sniping at me, and stand up for yourself. No one else is gonna do it. Get some pride
Unless you've actually had to go through the gamut then you have no room to talk.
The gamut?
Here's the video game description:
You are a human with no available financial resources and mounting debt. You are employed by a large and powerful multinational corporation. You make just enough money to pay your minimum debt balances every month but have not been able to save a dime in three years. Over the last year your manager has become increasingly abusive and pedantically critical of your work. You have no resources to start your own company. If you quit you will be hard pressed to find _ANY_ job as you work in an industry which relies nearly exclusively on references from the previous manager. If you do find a job you will most certainly not increase your salary.
The video game begins the day you handed in your notice of resignation. You have enough funds to hold out with rent and bills for three months. The economy is in a slump which means that all low level jobs (fast food, convenience store staffing, department store staffing, restaraunts) are already filled by humans who are willing to trade sex with the greasy managers in those industries for the privelege of having a job. You have no family or friends with available housing room. The game is written such that it will be at least eight months until an employer gives you an opportunity for an interview.
Good luck.
I've been there and made it back. I still sweat profusely in my sleep from anxiety.
I have no problem with the idea that your employer owns all your work products. If you were foolish enough to write a killer game or something on company time, they own it, too bad
/. trolls always come up with,"If you don't like it, leave."? How can we leave if the company owns every product of our labor?
At first glance I would agree but experience has taught me to think deeper. Should not the right to pack up, leave, and start your own business be retained as the last defense against an abusive employer? Isn't that what the
The decision should've gone the other way so as to tell the corporations: your employees have every right to take the product of their labor elsewhere. Treat them fairly.
Many centuries ago employee agreements were not a problem. There was a natural feedback loop in the freedom of man to live indigenously. There were abundant natural resources which could be acquired through work and devotion.
Society has evolved long past that. There is almost no free land anywhere. There are almost no free resources. Even if there were there is no free transportation to get there from here. In today's world a person must prove their usefulness to a company in order to earn the commonly accepted form of currency which they trade for the basic necessities of life.
At the time of the industrial revolution there was little need for an employee agreement. The common shop workers weren't paid enough to have the opportunity to strike out on their own and set up a competing business. Shop managers were typically compensated fairly enough but still had little possibility of putting together the type of funding that it would take to make use of their knowledge to create a competing business. Those who were wealthy enough to be able to make use of their knowledge were also compensated well enough to keep them from having any desire to compete. In many cases this simple business approach still applies today.
Why, then, has there been an evolution of employee agreements. As industry has become more powerful politically it has grown less efficient. In some instances the business bloat was so great that an enterprising employee was able to use what they learned on the job, working within an oppressive and stagnant atmosphere, and set up a company built on a "better way". Enter the need for an employee agreement.
Still, though, there are still environments where the _goal_ is to create employees who can use what they've learned and strike out on their own. These are most commonly seen in skilled trades: the path from apprentice, to journeyman, to master craftsman. The very existence of skilled trades exemplifies that an industry can function, often fruitfully, without the need for employee agreements.
What then is the real need for an employee agreement? It is greed and preservations of social divisions. Many trolls will abuse posters with,"If you don't like it then leave and start your own business." In truth many people in society have. But what of those of us who cannot start our own business because we're not financially priveleged? For the most part we're ridiculed and dismissed. Now what of those of us who cannot start our own business because it would be a contractual violation of a former employee agreement? Certainly this hasn't stopped people from leaving a bad employer to start their own business. What the employee agreement does is ensure that anyone who does start their own business does so with the blessing of the established players in the field. It is a system of nepotism that preserves power in the hands of those who already hold it. Any real competitors would be sued out of existence by a former employer long before they could get any real business started.
Apparently Evan Brown tried to start his own business without the blessing of his employer. The real question here is: why wasn't the employer able to retain Mr. Brown? Could they not give him a raise or enough vacation to make him happy or is it that his management was composed of such intolerable selfishness that Mr. Brown did what any sane human would do?
Employee agreements are a company's way of taking away the last chip that we, as intellectual workers, have: the ability to pack up and leave if the system has become intolerable. Anyone who is a proponent of these agreements is A) naive, B) pampered, C) blind. If the court had sided with Mr. Brown it would have sent a clear message to corporations: treat your employees fairly.
For all anyone knows his boss was called in and asked about his computer usage, justified it and satisfied the powers that be.
It's not like this Admin has any right to be kept in the loop.
Wow. Talk about advocating a recipe for a backstabbing, political, antiproductive, and harassing workplace.
I do negotiate my contracts
I applaud you for landing on third base. You apparently have the luxury of being financially secure enough where you can afford to turn down job offers. The majority of US workers are standing at the plate. We can't negotiate for the pitcher to give us a straight fastball down the middle. These employee agreements are not negotiable unless you're willing to reject the job offer and face the consequences of spending another month sending out resumes, scheduling interviews, and waiting for hiring committees to have a good day.
Most Americans can't afford an extra week worth of debt, much less another month. Your self-smug stance is nauseating at best.
[sarcasm] Oooh, your clever words wound me. [/sarcasm]
</immunity>
After all, it looks to me that I am in complete agreement with what you said here
Actually you're not in complete agreement. I was lamenting that the courts continue to back the corporations in their pursuit of legally whittling away any concept of right and true. Employment agreements, especially ones where companies presume to own the intellect of the employee, are another example of corporations whittling away at the concepts of right and true.
Your stance was to "not sign the employee agreement". Since college I have not once seriously interviewed with a company that did not have a gargantuan employee agreement. Unless you are independently wealthy and can afford to spend a potentially infinite amount of time turning down job offers these agreements are not negotiable. Currently I violate no less than two former employee agreements every day I walk through the door at work because I use, on a daily basis, skills and procedures that I learned while at other companies and, according to their agreements, they own all rights to my knowledge of those skills and I agreed not to use knowledge that I learned with them to benefit anyone else. These employee agreements are also very selectively enforced. I will probably never receive a call from an attorney wishing to sue me for violation of my former employee agreements. However, should I begin to make large sums of money on a product based upon skills that I learned at former employers, I wouldn't be surprised if I would need to retain legal counsel.
If carpenters had employee agreements and a novice had never used a circular saw prior to employer A, these sorts of agreements would make it a contractual violation to use a circular saw with employer B.
Why in particular do I say that you're a dumba__? It is because you are blindly in favor of giving all leverage to the corporation and essentially diminishing the value of a person to little more than a beast of burden. Corporations have been steadily taking control of their workers' lives through the use of legal contracts and we, as skilled employees, have no collective power to refuse because it has become an industry norm.
This is going to be over-the-top but it illustrates the point: if every employer who paid a living wage required you to work in the nude, does that make it right? Maybe you signed the contract (and what choice is it to be unemployed and homeless? "You want fries with that?") but at some point the courts need to start standing up for the INDIVIDUAL, and not for the corporation.
if I was an electrician in the employ of a factory, I think that they'd be hard pressed to claim ownership of the radio I built in my basement in my spare time
While $SIGNATURE AND $FASCIST_EMPLOYMENT_CONTRACT;
do
While $RICH_EMPLOYER AND $LEGAL_COUNSEL_TO_SPARE
do
rm -rf $EMPLOYEE_LIFE_SAVINGS;
done;
done;
Some UK companies
Not just the UK.
Technically according to contract not only do my past employers (USA) own any skills that I learned while working for them, but I'm also obligated to keep them informed of where I go for 5 years after leaving. Legally speaking I cannot practice as a synthetic organic chemist because the bulk majority of my skills were learned underneath a monolithic employment agreement.
On the other hand, what other choice do I have? I spent $100k on an academic education so that I had the basis to learn those skills. I'm not going to take that investment and sell french fries just because corporations who can pay a living wage have a stranglehold on taxpayers like myself.
There are plenty of employers out there with reasonable IP agreements to be had
You want fries with that?
Frankly I think it's reasonable for a company to "own" my thoughts as related to the core business of that company, and any development activities that pertain to it
I disagree. From the time we take on any additional schooling and decide to specialize in a field, be it computers, health care, science, arts, literature, what-have-you, we have trained our brain to be honed in on the systems and problems in that industry. It is unfair for a company which deals in one particular area to claim IP of the entire industry.
However if my employer pays me for insurance database work and I'm writing a game in my spare time though, hell no, it's mine.
From your second statement... programming, writing code, is related to the core business.
And I won't sign on with any company that disagrees.
You want fries with that?
I just made it one long list, several existing and a dozen or two "someday" projects just in case.
You were blessed with a company that was willing to work with you. Many HR reps will give you the,"Are you fscking kidding me? Get serious. Quit clowning around" and will ask you to condense the list or they'll have to rescind the offer.
I entirely agree. So don't sign the contract!!
However high and mighty you might be due to the fact that you're legally correct...
You're still a fucking dumbass.
So it is possible that the Tg9949 mice had a much lower (or zero) incidence of misfolding in their MoPrP than the Tg196 mice (due to differences in their genomes or whatever).
This is the hitch that raises the red flag for me. The authors note that the Tg196 mice are susceptible. They then go on to use Tg9949 mice, which they give a technical description for based upon nonexpression of some other protein (0/0). But they _do_ say that the Tg9949 mice express PrP(P101L) at a level 16 times greater than some other mouse (Bavarian? Hungarian? Was it SHA? I left the article at work). It's in the same paragraph that describes the Tg9949 mice. Leftmost column, second or third paragraph on the page with the immunoblots.
Regardless. The peer review process has obviously failed us on this one as the researchers obfuscate the levels at which the Tg9949 mice express the misfolded MoPrP(P101L) in relation to other mouse strains.
Personally, I think this whole debate won't be entirely resolved until we have better techniques for observing the conformations of real proteins
X-ray crystallography is bringing us a long way, as is SAR-by-NMR. There's an obvious question involved with both, though,"How do we know that the tertiary/quaternary configuration observed experimentally are the same as the configurations in vivo when we know that pH, ion identity, solvent identity, and environment play just as much role in determination as the secondary structure of the amino acid chain?"
I was systematically shouldered aside and shouted down when I would ask that question at a major pharmaceutical company in Chicago.
What you're missing is that the Tg196 mice were NOT the control group. Both the experimental and controls were mice called "Tg9949", or just "Tg"
I tried to figure out why they bothered to include the statistics about the Tg196 mice if they weren't actually using them. You say that Tg9949 mice express HIGH levels of MoPrP(P101L). Did you miss the beginning of the introduction which stated that the P101L mutation is the critical mutation thought to be responsible for the formation of b-amyloid deposits? We're back to the same question: How did the control group manage to remain perfectly healthy when a group of mice, known to express the P101L mutated prion, become spontaneously sick at 550 days?
I'm not going to say that the researchers are fraudulent. They probably put lots of quality time and effort into their lab work. What's fraudulent is the subsequent hype on this experiement. Nature should take the heat for this as their byline claims that researchers show that a single protein is all that's necessary to initiate a prion disease. Nature forgot to add the caveat,"in a mouse model known to be susceptible to the prion."
Checking the supplementary data, they did mass spec on the extracts. IT came out pretty pure
:) The supplementary material states that the MW was determined by laser desorption and ESI. There is no purity determined. Back to my original point though there is no comparison with a MoPrP(88-230) negative E. coli extract. There's no proof that the ESI signature is really a MoPrP fingerprint or if every E. coli broth, extracted by their method, would look the same.
Are you trying to kid me?
I'm not being aggressive. I'm nudging you with my elbow.
Personally, I think that the deposits are stil there, just far too small to be seen by gross histology
I agree. I've heard similar reports about the absence of deposits and feel that they're touted highly by people who are interested in tracking down PrP regardless of it being alpha-helical or beta-amyloid. It would be much easier to get a diagnostic kit on the market and PROFIT if they don't have to worry about the being specific for the insoluble PrPb form.
Last post for a while. I'm actually tending a silica gel column here in lab because my employer is too cheap to buy a Biotage Flash40i, a high-flow UV detector, and an autocollector for me. My product should be coming off soon.