...since it's tough to do business with real companies when you're not willing to protect their trade secrets. However, he's talking about doing business with people who have an *idea* for a business and little more. This is a very dangerous situation for an NDA, and he's right to avoid them in this sort of circumstance. An NDA creates an obligation as well as evidence of a relationship, and presumably disclosure of information. In one scenario, their 'idea' is half-baked but broad, which if taken literally would potentially restrict one's right to work simply by having signed the NDA. Worse, it could give them evidence if they should ever choose to sue.
At my company, we recently had a discussion with our lawyers in which the outcome was that we sign fewer NDAs - *especially* with smaller companies or startups that want to talk about their ideas. We've also begun avoiding NDAs in general in which the coverage is too broad. In general, it's a good idea to avoid legal obligations, and evidence of IP exchange, unless there's a good reason to initiate it.
Note I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, void in all 50 states, territories, and foreign nations.
Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.
It's the difference between theory and practice. In theory, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want because the internet is so huge. But it does little good if it turns into a ghost town because Apple and Facebook have convinced users to trade freedom for shiny.
Also, the other day I tried to sign up for a second Google+ account but it didn't like the names I was choosing because it didn't consider them "real" names. Seems a bit rich to be accusing others of limiting freedom.
Can't argue there - I've used (and enjoyed) most of Google's services, but I can't figure out what they're trying to do with Plus other than shoot themselves in the foot.
Turns out there was a drug bust in a nearby apartment and they wanted an excuse to search my vehicle. I was sit on a curb with my hands on my head while they searched my car. They couldn't find anything so I was let go without even a ticket.
Um, since when is simple speeding probable cause for a full search of a vehicle?
If they don't ticket you there's nothing to fight so they get away with a blatant breech of the law.
It is even if they do, unless there is something noticeable to justify a search. My guess is they 'asked' you if they could search the vehicle, you were afraid, and you said something that amounted to 'yes'. Should that happen to me, I'll tell them to get a warrant. I'm guessing that if they ask to search the vehicle, they don't have cause and they know it.
And that the officer totally missed the difference in position between a car that sails through an intersection as opposed to one that both decelerates to a full stop and accelerates fully up to speed over a period of about 3 seconds,
I wondered if someone would bring that up. The angular velocity profiles might look similar during the non-obstructed portions, but their integral will not. Could be that a clever prof just used physics to confuse the crap out of a layperson and get out of a "California stop" (ie, a little flash of red tail light, and proceed on your way) ?
People never do anything until someone gets hurt. Despite people predicting these sort of dangers, no one could actually get the government to step in and enforce communication standards until someone died from it. I'm sure there are similar examples throughout history, when cars first came to be on the road for example. Or various accidents at factories around the world.
First, it's easy to play Monday morning QB and second-guess every missed opportunity as if anyone would have seen such things coming. Absent a crystal ball, most examples of this phenomenon are from people who didn't understand the risks or didn't see the risk factors, not from people who chose to ignore them. Minus the factories part, and that's not laziness either, but cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis in an era before OSHA.
It's an interesting bit of human nature, people are lazy, and if they can avoid doing something they usually will.
And they should. We could spend the entire GDP solving potential or theoretical problems. Best to solve the ones that have demonstrated harm.
Well, as long as gas prices stay static during that same period...which I sure as shit wouldn't put any money on.
Of course, to be fair, I don't know that I'd bank on rock-solid electricity prices, either. Ten years ago, during California's rolling blackouts, selling an electric car might have been a difficult proposition. Even now, there are areas of the country where the electricity price is more volatile than gasoline prices, in general.
Of course, I suppose one would have the option (with the Volt) of simply not plugging it in and running off the gasoline engine, but that's a lot of added cost to get a 37mpg (gasoline) car.
In general though, I am glad to see people buying the Volt again, as the fears surrounding it seem to be a "fear the new thing" phenonemon. After all, if you really want to get scared about cars, remember that the average vehicle is sitting on 10-20 gallons of extremely flammable hydrocarbons.
Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
The message is "Look, over here! No, over here! Hah, made you miss! You suck! That's right, slither away with your tail between your legs! Hahahaha, you don't have legs! Loser!"
It's just that at normal speed instead of squirrel speed, you can't hear the trash talk that accompanies the flagging.
So if a person wants to sell the domain name afterward, it proves nothing, and alters nothing. What a person does with there own property is completely up to them.
Except in this case they seem to have acquired it through fraud. I'm not seeing the connection with the BT example, in which the transaction is above board and more a matter of seller's remorse.
Or pay the hostage fee to whoever took the domain name which will probably be in the thousands of dollars.
If there's a way to pay them, wouldn't there be a way to sue them? They do seem to have falsified documents, presumably committed wire fraud, and ultimately must have stolen something of value. Are these scoundrels all outside jurisdictions where they can be touched?
...or generally stupid, but where are the traditional April Fools' stories? Is this the dark side of the serious, corporate slashdot? Did we all grow up and I missed the boat?
Regulation and taxes have been increasing for a 100+ years and the economy has boomed exponentially.
Correlation, causation, yada. There are enough confounding variables there that if you try to use that example to PROVE that regulations cause growth, I will be forced to mock you.
Granted, most of the boom in the 2000's was due to UNREGULATED BANKERS
Don't blame the weasel for being a weasel. The boom in the 2000s was due to holding interest rates at a level that can be charitably described as stupid. Kind of like we are now.
Aside from that, whether it be an ugly truth or otherwise, the OP is pretty much right: regulations do place a cost on businesses. Making it a pain in the ass to hire people and fire people, and placing overhead on the costs of employing them, causes a drag on employment. That's not to say the tradeoff isn't worth it - we want good jobs, not crappy jobs - but pretending that tradeoff doesn't exist, because we don't like it, doesn't make it go away. It's government's job to ensure the tradeoff is a favorable one.
If the street sign is visible. In many areas, street signs can be very difficult to spot, especially when you're trying to actually drive. This is generally true in areas with frequent and complicated intersections, like dense urban areas. It's usually safer to pay a little attention to the nav so you know where you're going rather than constantly searching for a postage-stamp sized street sign that's probably somewhere behind a light pole.
Most of the comments like yours come from people who have lived in areas with very regular and well-marked streets who assume that other areas are also like that. Not true everywhere.
Remember the "bad old days" of $SOME_CRAPPY_THING_THAT_OLD_PEOPLE_THINKS_MAKE_THEM_HARDCORE ?
Fixed that. Some things are just better than other things. Nav systems are one such thing. Further, the best nav systems display the upcoming turn from either the driver's POV or a close-in top-down with forward displayed up. This is helpful when a glance can give indication of where exactly the turn is. This is invaluable particularly with irregular or dense intersetions, where a verbal "turn right in a quarter mile" could yield 20 options.
I hate driver distraction as much as the next guy, but when one glance down for a quarter second can actually make the driver safer, we'll cope.
So go be a grumpy old guy about something else, like how Metamucil takes like shit.
...I was sick as hell as a kid, and grew up to develop an autoimmune issue. I always assumed that the illnesses I went through as a kid gave me a ninja immune system. This would kind of imply the opposite. Most research I've seen suggests that being sick when young does in fact build the immune system.
If they lose, basically all they have is a free loan for the amount of the Applecare contracts that they have to refund? No fine or anything? I'm surprised more people aren't trying to get away with it.
Modified that a bit there. Indeed, the worst case scenario is that you get to take people's money and effectively get an interest-free loan if you have to give it back. Assuming that a lot of people don't apply for the refund, there's that too. Best case scenario is you get away with it if you don't get sued.
Interesting. If my knowledge of patents serves, you never put the real "secret sauce" in the disclosure. I'd bet Google does exactly what you mentioned - keep the 'Coke formula' kind of stuff off the books.
That's one way to look at it. However, if Google changes its algorithm rapidly enough, then they can price most of the bottom feeders out of that market. For instance, how much am I willing to pay to be able to game the system for a week when all I'm optimizing is a parked domain, aggregator, or other crap site? If I have to spend full price every week, the value isn't there.
To me that's the major benefit, that it will increase cost the most for those who truly are gaming the system (eg, domain parkers) as opposed to those who legitimately are in the top handful of sites for a given search result. From a consumer's standpoint, if it cleans up the first page, that's enough - I don't care as much about which legit companies spend a lot to keep jockeying for position.
And as long as it returns the search for the word 'Santorum' to where it belongs, I'm good. Speaking of scumbags using SEO to alter results for evil...
I'm sort of afraid to buy remastered versions of old classic rock albums, because I'm worried they will actually sound worse [youtube.com] than the originals!
They do. I used to use the oscillosope plugin for winamp, and you could directly see the effect of range compression. I think I did a comparison of new vs old versions of the same song, and it wasn't pleasant. For sure, the old, unmastered albums (like Dark Side of the Moon) had interesting structure even visually on the scope. I compared it to a modern album and it looked completely tortured on the scope.
The worst I ever heard was a green day greatest hits album (I know, I know, blank CD), which was so distorted that even as a non-audiophile, I couldn't even listen to it.
I also do a fair amount of work travel, and detest the scanners, but I still find the baggage screening process to dominate the time required in line. Remember, this occurs in parallel with the baggage getting screened. Chances are that, while you're getting screened, the guy behind you is fumbling with his belt and the genius scanning the bags is reversing the conveyor belt to find the shampoo that someone had left in their bag.
I've never found a backup of people trying to get through the people scanner, it's always waiting to shove your crap on the conveyor. I don't think they should be doing mm-wave pr0n at all, but I don't think a quick second scan slows the overall process down at all.
Slashdot Mirror
One person did this, and it seems he was caught both times. Wouldn't that mean that the original practices were working?
I don't know. How would we know if somebody did it and wasn't caught?
Two billion dollars for a photo sharing social network with no business model /facepalm.
Where's Marty McFly and how the hell did he bring us all back to 1998?
Yeah, I'm sure Ellison's company didn't do any due diligence at all regarding Java rights and ownership before buying Sun. Suuuuuure.
...since it's tough to do business with real companies when you're not willing to protect their trade secrets. However, he's talking about doing business with people who have an *idea* for a business and little more. This is a very dangerous situation for an NDA, and he's right to avoid them in this sort of circumstance. An NDA creates an obligation as well as evidence of a relationship, and presumably disclosure of information. In one scenario, their 'idea' is half-baked but broad, which if taken literally would potentially restrict one's right to work simply by having signed the NDA. Worse, it could give them evidence if they should ever choose to sue.
At my company, we recently had a discussion with our lawyers in which the outcome was that we sign fewer NDAs - *especially* with smaller companies or startups that want to talk about their ideas. We've also begun avoiding NDAs in general in which the coverage is too broad. In general, it's a good idea to avoid legal obligations, and evidence of IP exchange, unless there's a good reason to initiate it.
Note I'm not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice, void in all 50 states, territories, and foreign nations.
Seriously, how are Facebook and Apple threatening the freedom of the internet? Sure, I'm restricted if I'm using Facebook or Apple technologies, but there are literally thousands of places I can post and do whatever I want. The internet is a very big place.
It's the difference between theory and practice. In theory, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want because the internet is so huge. But it does little good if it turns into a ghost town because Apple and Facebook have convinced users to trade freedom for shiny.
Also, the other day I tried to sign up for a second Google+ account but it didn't like the names I was choosing because it didn't consider them "real" names. Seems a bit rich to be accusing others of limiting freedom.
Can't argue there - I've used (and enjoyed) most of Google's services, but I can't figure out what they're trying to do with Plus other than shoot themselves in the foot.
Next time I need you to correct me or assess my intelligence, I'll ask. Fuck off.
Turns out there was a drug bust in a nearby apartment and they wanted an excuse to search my vehicle. I was sit on a curb with my hands on my head while they searched my car. They couldn't find anything so I was let go without even a ticket.
Um, since when is simple speeding probable cause for a full search of a vehicle?
If they don't ticket you there's nothing to fight so they get away with a blatant breech of the law.
It is even if they do, unless there is something noticeable to justify a search. My guess is they 'asked' you if they could search the vehicle, you were afraid, and you said something that amounted to 'yes'. Should that happen to me, I'll tell them to get a warrant. I'm guessing that if they ask to search the vehicle, they don't have cause and they know it.
And that the officer totally missed the difference in position between a car that sails through an intersection as opposed to one that both decelerates to a full stop and accelerates fully up to speed over a period of about 3 seconds,
I wondered if someone would bring that up. The angular velocity profiles might look similar during the non-obstructed portions, but their integral will not. Could be that a clever prof just used physics to confuse the crap out of a layperson and get out of a "California stop" (ie, a little flash of red tail light, and proceed on your way) ?
People never do anything until someone gets hurt. Despite people predicting these sort of dangers, no one could actually get the government to step in and enforce communication standards until someone died from it. I'm sure there are similar examples throughout history, when cars first came to be on the road for example. Or various accidents at factories around the world.
First, it's easy to play Monday morning QB and second-guess every missed opportunity as if anyone would have seen such things coming. Absent a crystal ball, most examples of this phenomenon are from people who didn't understand the risks or didn't see the risk factors, not from people who chose to ignore them. Minus the factories part, and that's not laziness either, but cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis in an era before OSHA.
It's an interesting bit of human nature, people are lazy, and if they can avoid doing something they usually will.
And they should. We could spend the entire GDP solving potential or theoretical problems. Best to solve the ones that have demonstrated harm.
Well, as long as gas prices stay static during that same period...which I sure as shit wouldn't put any money on.
Of course, to be fair, I don't know that I'd bank on rock-solid electricity prices, either. Ten years ago, during California's rolling blackouts, selling an electric car might have been a difficult proposition. Even now, there are areas of the country where the electricity price is more volatile than gasoline prices, in general.
Of course, I suppose one would have the option (with the Volt) of simply not plugging it in and running off the gasoline engine, but that's a lot of added cost to get a 37mpg (gasoline) car.
In general though, I am glad to see people buying the Volt again, as the fears surrounding it seem to be a "fear the new thing" phenonemon. After all, if you really want to get scared about cars, remember that the average vehicle is sitting on 10-20 gallons of extremely flammable hydrocarbons.
Its not sending a messages. Its presenting a decoy target.
The message is "Look, over here! No, over here! Hah, made you miss! You suck! That's right, slither away with your tail between your legs! Hahahaha, you don't have legs! Loser!"
It's just that at normal speed instead of squirrel speed, you can't hear the trash talk that accompanies the flagging.
So if a person wants to sell the domain name afterward, it proves nothing, and alters nothing. What a person does with there own property is completely up to them.
Except in this case they seem to have acquired it through fraud. I'm not seeing the connection with the BT example, in which the transaction is above board and more a matter of seller's remorse.
Well, it's both, right? The cops can't use the photos if they're in an album on your bookshelf. Or if they're displayed privately.
Or pay the hostage fee to whoever took the domain name which will probably be in the thousands of dollars.
If there's a way to pay them, wouldn't there be a way to sue them? They do seem to have falsified documents, presumably committed wire fraud, and ultimately must have stolen something of value. Are these scoundrels all outside jurisdictions where they can be touched?
...or generally stupid, but where are the traditional April Fools' stories? Is this the dark side of the serious, corporate slashdot? Did we all grow up and I missed the boat?
Regulation and taxes have been increasing for a 100+ years and the economy has boomed exponentially.
Correlation, causation, yada. There are enough confounding variables there that if you try to use that example to PROVE that regulations cause growth, I will be forced to mock you.
Granted, most of the boom in the 2000's was due to UNREGULATED BANKERS
Don't blame the weasel for being a weasel. The boom in the 2000s was due to holding interest rates at a level that can be charitably described as stupid. Kind of like we are now.
Aside from that, whether it be an ugly truth or otherwise, the OP is pretty much right: regulations do place a cost on businesses. Making it a pain in the ass to hire people and fire people, and placing overhead on the costs of employing them, causes a drag on employment. That's not to say the tradeoff isn't worth it - we want good jobs, not crappy jobs - but pretending that tradeoff doesn't exist, because we don't like it, doesn't make it go away. It's government's job to ensure the tradeoff is a favorable one.
If the street sign is visible. In many areas, street signs can be very difficult to spot, especially when you're trying to actually drive. This is generally true in areas with frequent and complicated intersections, like dense urban areas. It's usually safer to pay a little attention to the nav so you know where you're going rather than constantly searching for a postage-stamp sized street sign that's probably somewhere behind a light pole.
Most of the comments like yours come from people who have lived in areas with very regular and well-marked streets who assume that other areas are also like that. Not true everywhere.
Remember the "bad old days" of $SOME_CRAPPY_THING_THAT_OLD_PEOPLE_THINKS_MAKE_THEM_HARDCORE ?
Fixed that. Some things are just better than other things. Nav systems are one such thing. Further, the best nav systems display the upcoming turn from either the driver's POV or a close-in top-down with forward displayed up. This is helpful when a glance can give indication of where exactly the turn is. This is invaluable particularly with irregular or dense intersetions, where a verbal "turn right in a quarter mile" could yield 20 options.
I hate driver distraction as much as the next guy, but when one glance down for a quarter second can actually make the driver safer, we'll cope.
So go be a grumpy old guy about something else, like how Metamucil takes like shit.
...I was sick as hell as a kid, and grew up to develop an autoimmune issue. I always assumed that the illnesses I went through as a kid gave me a ninja immune system. This would kind of imply the opposite. Most research I've seen suggests that being sick when young does in fact build the immune system.
Allow me to educate you on the concept of "float" sometime. There's a guy in Omaha who made a little money that way.
If they lose, basically all they have is a free loan for the amount of the Applecare contracts that they have to refund? No fine or anything? I'm surprised more people aren't trying to get away with it.
Modified that a bit there. Indeed, the worst case scenario is that you get to take people's money and effectively get an interest-free loan if you have to give it back. Assuming that a lot of people don't apply for the refund, there's that too. Best case scenario is you get away with it if you don't get sued.
So yeah, where's the deterrent?
Interesting. If my knowledge of patents serves, you never put the real "secret sauce" in the disclosure. I'd bet Google does exactly what you mentioned - keep the 'Coke formula' kind of stuff off the books.
That's one way to look at it. However, if Google changes its algorithm rapidly enough, then they can price most of the bottom feeders out of that market. For instance, how much am I willing to pay to be able to game the system for a week when all I'm optimizing is a parked domain, aggregator, or other crap site? If I have to spend full price every week, the value isn't there.
To me that's the major benefit, that it will increase cost the most for those who truly are gaming the system (eg, domain parkers) as opposed to those who legitimately are in the top handful of sites for a given search result. From a consumer's standpoint, if it cleans up the first page, that's enough - I don't care as much about which legit companies spend a lot to keep jockeying for position.
And as long as it returns the search for the word 'Santorum' to where it belongs, I'm good. Speaking of scumbags using SEO to alter results for evil...
I'm sort of afraid to buy remastered versions of old classic rock albums, because I'm worried they will actually sound worse [youtube.com] than the originals!
They do. I used to use the oscillosope plugin for winamp, and you could directly see the effect of range compression. I think I did a comparison of new vs old versions of the same song, and it wasn't pleasant. For sure, the old, unmastered albums (like Dark Side of the Moon) had interesting structure even visually on the scope. I compared it to a modern album and it looked completely tortured on the scope.
The worst I ever heard was a green day greatest hits album (I know, I know, blank CD), which was so distorted that even as a non-audiophile, I couldn't even listen to it.
I also do a fair amount of work travel, and detest the scanners, but I still find the baggage screening process to dominate the time required in line. Remember, this occurs in parallel with the baggage getting screened. Chances are that, while you're getting screened, the guy behind you is fumbling with his belt and the genius scanning the bags is reversing the conveyor belt to find the shampoo that someone had left in their bag.
I've never found a backup of people trying to get through the people scanner, it's always waiting to shove your crap on the conveyor. I don't think they should be doing mm-wave pr0n at all, but I don't think a quick second scan slows the overall process down at all.