The only real problem with re-licensing is if you are playing fast and loose with 3rd party components that are used in the creation of the said application. For that there isn't an easy solution, as any 3rd party components or libraries that use the GPL (not the LGPL) pretty much "force" the entire application to become GPL and also in turn force legally the exclusion of all other components of other licenses. That is a significant problem.
The situation here with MonoDevelop is precisely the sort of situation with incompatable 3rd party plug-in licenses, where some of the libraries "automatically" included in a base-level application (aka "Hello World") were also GPL'd libraries that included this viral license issue. Essentially, the only license you could use for any application created on MonoDevelop was the GPL. With the LGPL as the gold standard now, what this implies is that developers who use the base-line MonoDevelop environment can now deploy application under any license that they choose, including a completely custom license that they have drafted on their own (with hopefully the input from an intelligent lawyer familiar with writing such a license).
The lack of legal precedence? Actually, there is some legal precedence with GPL'd code in the judicial system, and other similar licensing disputes with 3rd party software that depending on "no legal precedent" as an excuse doesn't hold water. The GPL is also pretty clear in terms of the legal requirements, unlike most licenses like the Microsoft developer's EULA for their software development tools. At least the GPL was designed to be understood by mere mortals.
Can you link a Microsoft or a proprietary IBM software library into your GPL'd application? Perhaps, but it isn't the technologically ignorant judge you have to worry about here. It is the lawyers for Microsoft or IBM that you would have to worry about instead, and wondering if the application you have written using that library might be the target of attack. Let's say you create this uber cool video game that brings in millions of dollars to you and your buddies, but through the kindness of your heart you have made this awesome game with a GPL'd license for distribution (yes, you can still sell GPL'd software for money). It turns out that the Microsoft library that somebody on you team decided to include has a "no-free software" exclusion term, and Microsoft in turn decides to get a legal injunction to shut down distribution of this software because of the distribution of their library, a crucial software component of this game, is included. You as the developer would be powerless to stop Microsoft, especially as you would lack the money to fight these lawyers on their "home turf". IBM would be just as bad or even worse, as there is a reason why the IBM intellectual property team has been called "The Nazgul".
Linking GPL'd software to a non-GPL'd application? That depends on your personal ethics and how far the group of usually volunteers are willing to take to protecting their GPL'd code. I'm glad that now MonoDevelop gives you the moral comfort that you don't have to make the decision to tell other software developers to "take a hike" and ignore licensing issues like this.
Information technology workers in particular are explicitly singled out as having special circumstances that are above and beyond typical salaried employees, and if you happen to fit into that particular category of employee (which is explicitly what was mentioned with this original post), there are specific regulation that *require* overtime pay.
You might want to look at the "Computer Employee Exception" where the regulations gets much, much more muddled.... and the "minimum wage" that you need to look at is $27.63 per hour. If you get paid less than this rate on a per hour basis, you can demand retroactive pay for all overtime hours for which you were not compensated.... and those must be paid at time-and-a-half as an hourly employee. Sure, if you are being paid $30 per hour equivalent or more, the overtime regulations don't apply here.... and you are being well compensated as per the presumption that getting paid at that level may have more onerous requirements.
BTW, you might actually be owed some serious back wages. I don't know your circumstances and working conditions, but my experience is that most employers of IT workers generally know little about the labor laws as it applies to their workers.
As for what constitutes being "at your workstation"... I'm suggesting that 60 year old legislation defining a workstation is inadequate in an era of telecommuting and mobile communications devices. When some of those laws were written, a "walkie-talkie" was something that weighed 100 lbs. and you were lucky to be able to send a message maybe about a 1/2 mile and only worked half of the time. All it would take is a judicial precedent that would suggest that somebody with a company cell phone is "at a workstation" to get some changes made real fast on that issue. My point is that this is something that is very murky and I wouldn't make a business decision as a supervisor based on the concept that a cell phone isn't a workstation... or at the very least put in some compensation rules to make it clear that a corporate policy exists for overtime pay when "on call".
You also might want to check state employment regulations.... which tend to be substantially more detailed and explicit on compensation as well above and beyond DOL regulations. Typically this is a state area of regulation... with places like California having some particularly tough labor laws in terms of what an employer can and can't get away with.
I'm really sick of all the idiots carping about copyright as a replacement for patents. They are similar but perform very differently. Copyright protects the exact expression of source code and binary whereas patents protect the higher level idea that is used to create the code.
Suppose you invented a new type of sort called slashSort() and used it in a program to make it very fast. Copyright is useless here since you don't release the source code. A competitor could employ a hacker to reverse engineer your code to find the location of slashSort(), then feed it some inputs to determine the steps performed by your algorithm. After that it's simply a matter of converting those steps into source code and releasing it in a competing product. Your profits dive by half as consumers now have more choices.
So without patents, your competitor gets to eat your lunch while you do all the hard work.
I would agree that copyright doesn't quite cover the kinds of protection that patents would. It really is a different beast entirely, and in some ways offers better kinds of protection.
BTW, a competitor who simply reverse-engineers the algorithm is still engaged in copyright infringement if all they do is take the de-compiled software and then use the machine-generated algorithm as-is in competing software. Heck, if somebody can get sued successfully for copyright infringement for copying 10 notes in a row for a song, copying 10 bytes in a row could harbor similar kinds of copyright infringement. A whole algorithm (especially something novel and original) certainly would pass that test.
If they somehow "tweak" the algorithm and make it function different or perhaps even improve the algorithm.... in theory that would fall under a separate patentable product and even patent protection wouldn't necessarily apply.... however it may still be considered copyright infringement. Also, copyright protection lasts for 75 years + the life of the author. Regardless of if you think that is a legitimate term for copyright protection (I think it is absurdly long) that is an incredible amount of time. Grace Hooper's software for the ENIAC would still be under copyright protection even now with that rule.
I would like to ask you, since you are so defensive of software patents.... have you personally filed for a software patent, received the software patent grant, and received royalties for your "inventions" in software development? My own experience with patent attorneys is rather jaded and something I would rather not repeat if possible. My experience with filing for copyright with the Library of Congress, on the other hand, is much more friendly and something I would recommend to folks who want copyright protection on a higher level than simply sticking a copyright notice on your software or written word.
So, how do you resolve the societal costs associated to two (or more) inventors that make simultaneous discoveries to the same process or invention?
I can name several cases where this, in fact, has been the case and that the patent was simply awarded to the first one that got to the patent office. In some situations, I've seen the patent awarded to an individual simply because they got to the USPTO in Washington an hour or so earlier in the day.... and decided to hand-deliver the application rather than rely upon the mail system to get the application submitted.
If a patent is earned, then all of the genuine inventors ought to be rewarded. Instead, only one inventor is actually granted that monopoly... based on political connections and the whims of very arbitrary clerks at a government agency.
The problem I see with this is to define who, exactly, is getting plundered here and who is getting exploited.
For myself and based upon my lifetime of experience, I have known many individuals who have filed patents and sought patent protection on a great many things. Heck, I've even worked for companies who have filed patents on work that was done while I was an employee (nothing personal, but some co-workers).
In not one case, not even these companies I worked for, was patent protection anything other than something purely defensive to keep some asshole from suing their behind and seeking damages for patent infringement. They ***NEVER*** sought damages or frankly even earned a single dollar from patent royalties, both individuals and corporate entities that I directly worked for and was involved with the patenting process.
If anything, I saw how a prior patent kept a patent troll away by using a previous patent as establishing prior art. That was a good thing.... I guess.
Far, far too often patent attorneys are simply a part of a huge scam that seeks to extract money from otherwise hard working engineers and designers with the faint dream that somehow they might get rich off of their "invention". Compared to the amount of money that gets dumped into the USPTO and their farm of scammers associated with them to patent all of these crazy ideas, the amount actually paid in the form of invention royalties is relatively minor.
In terms of an overall economic impact, abolishing patents would only cause a few thousand lawyers to suddenly be unemployed and have to obtain meaningful work elsewhere in society. That seems like an overall positive thing for me as well, as we could use some more people who actually make things rather than suck up on the labor of others. Is seeking a reduction in the number of lawyers in America something to be considered socialist? If so, I guess that I am one.
That stretches the imagination quite a bit to say somebody wanting smaller government and fewer taxes is a socialist.
I thought one of the points of patent law was to create a library of knowledge. The idea is that if an inventor has to keep the invention secret or obscured in order to make money on it, the knowledge could be lost. Patents give temporary protection to the inventor (or their supreme corporate overlord).
If mathematics were patentable, then eventually the knowledge is available to all and the mathematician (or their supreme corporate overlord) gets rights for some certain period of time.
This doesn't seem to be that much of a problem, or does it?
If the point of patent law is to create a library of knowledge, then for software patents it is an epic fail. A proper library of knowledge might be gleaned from the ACM journals or from other publications that deal with software development theories, but the USPTO is not, nor has it ever been a depository of knowledge of computational sciences.
More specifically, a software developer can create in one day dozens of different algorithms and even have them implemented.
More to the point, the largest problem that the USPTO faces is dealing with prior art and the fact that such prior art is not contained within the repository of the library of previously filed software patents. It is unfortunate that a large number of the software patent that have been filed and even accepted by the USPTO have precedence in books like The Art of Computer Programming
For myself, if something I patented could be found in that book series, I would be supremely embarrassed... yet I've found stuff that has been patented which is in those books... and the patent was filed well after the publication of that volume. Nothing against Kunth either, as he is acting here more as a historian and for me does a much better job of establishing a proper library of knowledge about this particular subject than can ever possibly be done by an organization like the USPTO.
The regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock" however. In fact, for employers who allow employees to "work from home", they may be facing an additional problem of even being able to define what "on the clock" actually means and may be liable for additional wages.
Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work". Even if the employees are simply making small-talk and engaging in gossip, if they are at or near a work station that is considered to be "on the clock" and counts towards compensation. It is the responsibility of the supervisor to see that those employees are not at the work stations when they are "off the clock", not the individual employee.
The same could also be said about being "on-call", and the definition of a "work station" could certainly involve simply having a cell phone on their person. I don't know the legal precedence on this, but there may be some rational for insisting on some sort of compensation simply for having the cell phone on your person and may even be treated as a work station. Certainly if you are "called into work", the minute you step in the door of your employer you are then back "on the clock", and possibly the minute you step into a vehicle to travel to the employer in the case of being "on call" might be counted.
As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried". Even being a "contractor" may not necessarily exempt a company from paying the overtime wages as well, regardless of what any contract might say on the matter. Statutory law trumps contract law in every case, as you can't sign a contract that violates statute or previous legal precedence (in the case of common law courts like America).
There is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep). Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.
How you spend those 8 hours is up to you as an employee, but that is still a basic labor law requirement. If you don't actually get any work done while you are "on call", you are correct... there is no other real legislation or general requirement. But the technology for keeping in touch with employees and the definition of a "workstation" is broad enough that it is at best a gray area that as an employer you might want to be extra careful with. As an employee... it is an extra burden to be "on call", and it is important that you let your employer know that too.
The reason jobs are moving to India and to other countries has nothing to do with labor laws such as this, but rather because of a deliberate de-industrialization policy on the part of several legislators and diplomats within the USA (and Europe) who have changed the political climate explicitly to make it easier to move these jobs to other countries.
If a company is based in the USA and they outsource jobs like this to India or elsewhere, they are simply shooting themselves in the foot and ultimately going to destroy their company. There is a legitimate reason for labor laws like these that regulate hours, wages, and overtime restrictions. Companies that abuse their employees do so at their own peril.
Still, I wish it wasn't so darn easy for companies to relocate jobs and use threats like this because of current trade regulations and treaties that give away nearly everything that has taken American society over three centuries to create.
There is nothing stopping you from doing this, but I'd have to say: Making up a whole gaming system is hardly trivial or easy to accomplish, particularly trying to balance out all of the aspects of the game so that it is just complicated to keep smart people interested, letting folks of...er... lesser intellect to also enjoy the game in some aspect, and to keep the "arms race" under control so you don't have to introduce god-like creatures just to provide a minor challenge.
In the process of coming up with a game system like this, if it is good enough, it would also be worth a fair amount of money. So tell me.... how is somebody who comes up with this system going to be compensated for their effort and time for designing such a system? If you have put enough effort and have tested the gaming system enough that it is pretty well balanced that it can compete with the major role playing game systems, the siren call of commercial profits is hard to resist.
BTW, even if you could come up with a system like this that is fairly well balanced, the next trick is to somehow get the mindshare of the gaming public interested in the game enough to start creating other content for that gaming system. That isn't trivial either.
This said, if you are still not discouraged at this prospect and really want to create a collaboratively designed game based on the model of a GNU project, you can head over to Wikia and set up a wiki based on this concept or go to one of several other wiki hosting services including perhaps the Free Software Foundation and seeing if you might get support from them to help with hosting the servers.
I've seen other attempts to get something like this to work out. I had a friend of mine actually go through the effort on the commercial side and even got the basic rulebook published. While he did enjoy some minor commercial success, it was not a trivial thing to even go from published material and try to get the mindshare of enough players to be able to devote the full time effort it takes to get the game improving from that point on.
Seriously though, if you get past these obstacles and get even the fundamentals of a gaming system together that would work with open source principles and have something you think is worth the effort.... let me know! I might contribute to the effort as well.
Fire fighters have very specific regulations for what their hours can be like, and a separate section in American labor laws. They are one of the few occupations that are allowed to work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period, but at the same time they are required to have 48 hours off after that 24 hour period except under explicit "emergency" conditions that are defined by law. Anybody comparing how firefighters are treated to an IT service tech is likely to find themselves seeing that it is the IT tech that is getting the raw end of the deal and that the analogy is not going to be accurate at all.
Soldiers also have very specific regulations on what they can and can't be expected to do, of course soldiers operate under the UCMJ and not standard civilian labor laws, so that is something a bit different. And if you are in the military you are guaranteed (usually) 30 days off each year as a benefit and a whole bunch of other benefits explicitly due to your military service. The pay isn't good, but it is all part of the package. Interestingly, the DOD has increasingly hired civilian contractors in part because the labor laws as they apply to enlisted personnel are complicated enough that they don't want a private to flip hamburgers or clean toilets (except perhaps as a part of a punishment). It is cheaper and easier to simply hire a civilian to do those kind of mundane jobs... and the civilians tend to stick around a bit longer than the typical rotation for enlisted folks. Soldiers and other military personnel also know full well that they will be called upon to make some significant sacrifices for their job... which is explicitly why people are willing to join up with the service in the first place.
Police and law enforcement officers? Yeah, they work ungodly shifts and are often expected to be on call..... but I don't know of any salaried police officers. Perhaps the "brass" at police departments might be salaried (if it is a large major metro department or if you are the "chief"), but it is common to see cities complain about how their police budget is gone due to a significant amount of overtime that has to be paid. While pay for being a police officer isn't the greatest, they do get paid fairly well and have other "fringe" benefits.
I just don't see comparing any of these experiences to being an IT guy who is salaried but gets dumped on by all comers and no respect, and no extra money for being essentially a peon to clean up somebody else's mess, and to do that all all hours of the day without any extra compensation. If you are a well paid geek and you signed up for the job knowing that would be the nature of the job, that is another story.... but it doesn't sound like that was the case in this situation. There are also specific labor laws regarding information technology workers for overtime that also must be followed... regardless of if the person is a contractor or normal employee.
There still are minimum wage laws, and in the case of Information Technology workers, you still have to be paid for over time explicitly by law unless you are making over a minimum threshold (of about $70k per year) as set by the US DOL. If you can document that you are not making minimum wage (a very real possibility as I did being a stupid college student back in the day working for some private companies) you can simply demand at least minimum wage and time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. That is the law in the good ol' USA at a minimum.
If you have a guy that is earning $100k per year and then complaining about being on-call 24/7/365, I have quite a bit less sympathy for them. If he is only making $25k per year and not getting paid overtime, then I'm quite a bit more sympathetic... and the law is sympathetic too!
If you were a former employee and now a "contractor", the labor laws are even less sympathetic to abusive labor practices, and may even be entitled to retroactive benefits, pensions, and pay if it can be proven that you are still an employee in spite of a legal fiction that the former employee is now a contractor. Of course that requires engaging in a lawsuit and pulling out all of the stops from a legal perspective, but if the choice is to relent and do something you are simply not comfortable doing or be fired, I think the choice of going after that former employer and current client through the judicial system seems a whole lot more attractive.
It may be possible that even if you are technically a contractor that you may be considered an employee under Department of Labor and Internal Revenue codes. In order to be considered a genuinely independent contractor, there must be a clearly demonstrated ability for the contractor to be able to take on additional clients (no non-compete agreements), that the work for the client is generally part-time (full time work for a single client may indicate genuine employement), and if you are required to be on-site as opposed to working from home. There isn't a hard litmus test here, but the more it sounds like you are an employee, the more likely that you can file a grievance and demand protection under general employment law as an employee rather than as a contractor.
These rules for determining the status of an employee as an employee have been written explicitly because some companies (a significant number in information technology companies) who hire contractors rather than explicit employees to get work accomplished due to supposed benefits from hiring contractors.
As a contractor, you get more benefits if you work through a contractor service company that has multiple employees and manages the collections of payment for their employees. At the same time, if you are working for one of these contractor service companies (for example, Kelly Services and other temp agencies, but there are others just for programmers) you are also not going to have an abusive relationship with a client that decides to demand ungodly hours from you. If you are a good and hard-working employee that does your job and have provided legitimate professional services... you'll get re-assigned to some other client that will take better care of you. This isn't necessarily a union, but a collective group of programmers and other similar IT professionals can make a huge difference in terms of your working conditions and not be screwed over by companies wanting to take advantage of a temporary glut in the market.
Single employee contractors (or "independent contractors") are the ones most likely to be screwed over by an abusive client, and labor judges (those judges and arbitrators who deal with enforcement of labor laws) tend to be much more sympathetic to a suggestion that they might in fact be an employee and should be paid for overtime or professional services.
Actually, yes I have. You might want to see the Programmer's Guild and other information technology labor movements before you start dissing such attitudes. There are programmers who feel that enough is enough and that they ought to be given a little bit of respect.
Are "unions" or "guilds" common in the IT industry? No. But they do exist, and there can be some benefits that come from joining them.
There are also specific DOT labor laws that these companies are usually violating when it comes to both pay and interpretation of on-call status as well. Not only that, but even the status of being a contract employee is not even enough to be exempted from overtime laws as they apply to programmers. In fact, labor laws for programmers are pretty darn strict and I still may have a case to go after former employers for some abuses that have happened in the past.
Stealing virtual items in a MMORPG is not a crime, and at most a violation of the terms of service.
Stealing identities by way of online passwords is not a virtual crime, it's a very normal, plain computer crime.
That is, of course, why real-world police are making the real-world arrest of a real-world person that is going to a real-world prison.
This is a crime that is being prosecuted for tampering with somebody else's computer systems without authorization, and having committed fraud (another real-world crime) to obtain the usernames and passwords to gain access to these accounts.
The funny thing is that Jagex has experimented with fingerprint scanners and has suggested ideas for players to get some sort of physical device (a "dongle" or other such item) that would make a more "secure" connection... and to benefit players with some in-game features like increased bank space and other such stuff if those players buy those security features.
I don't know about the homicides that may or may not happen if players get incredibly jealous about another player, but that is something completely different.
There are dozens of ways to transfer money between accounts if that is your goal. The Bounty Hunter game was one of the most effective, and there have been problems with the Party Room and other places where even with the "balanced trade" you can still transfer huge amounts of money.
There have also been malicious folks who log into an account and then clean out the bank (dumping it into the party room or elsewhere, or simply leaving it "on the floor" in the bank) and then log out. That would be akin to the above post where you would have a rental truck that would be returned.... with the tires, seats, engine, and everything but the chassis removed. This is done just to be malicious, not for any personal gain. The bank PINs help, but they don't solve all of the problems and can be defeated as well via screen captures (there are some good OCR recognition programs with some Runescape hacking software) and keeping track of mouse movements.
The dark side to Runescape is indeed rather ugly and scary after a fashion, and some very black, black hat hackers that have joined into the fun. This guy that was arrested by the UK authorities was small fish compared to the really dangerous guys.
It is pretty close to the same thing. What happened was that this guy who was arrested made a Phishing website that looked and behaved just like the real thing, and required the "user" to enter the username and password in order to enter. Enough individuals entered to "correct" information that they were able to use those username/password combinations to "hack" into the real user accounts on the official Jagex servers.
This is no different than somebody setting up a website that looks very similar to the yahoo servers and doing essentially the same thing, or for those phishing websites that ask for credit card information. This is a real-world crime that happened here, and did not involve anything that was done in-game (other than the contents of those user accounts were cleaned out or used for nefarious purposes). Items of real value were taken and transferred via this "hack".
What does make this different is that bonafide security measures were compromised, and the law is pretty clear that it doesn't even matter what was taken or how the information was used after it was obtained: this idiot of a guy simply broke the law. If he wasn't into the game so much, he likely would have gone after bank accounts and credit card information.
I don't know where this fits into the current "climate-gate" issue and the raw data, but here is a story I was told by the state climatologist for the State of Utah:
He was reviewing climate data and digitizing historical records for temperature and rainfall data for the State of Utah when he look up some climate models based on some of the data that he, himself, sent in. He noticed that some of the data was being modified and "fixed up" with some algorithms.
Some of this is legitimate, as the data was recorded by volunteers that on occasion made some pretty huge mistakes. For example, if the high temperature in July was recorded as 19 degrees (F) and the nearby stations were recorded in the 90's and upper 80's, it seems likely that the number was inverted when it was recorded. Particularly when the daytime high is lower than the nighttime low. Numbers input in this manner were reviewed, including automated equipment when something was seen to perhaps malfunction and give a similar kind of error.
Here is the real "criminal" offense that happened: The data "scrubbing" algorithm fixed up the raw data set and then simply replaced the numbers for the "raw" data being used. Yes, the original "raw" data set was simply discarded and never to be seen again. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bias in the numbers being modified so earlier temperatures were kept somewhat cooler and the more recent numbers were made a little bit warmer. Certainly the algorithm used for this scrubbing was kept separate from even the climate model software.
Since this climatologist still had the original paper documents (not digitized), he reviewed some of the data points on some arbitrary day that he selected, and noted what data points were changed and what were kept. Out of about 30 data points for the State of Utah that were modified, he agreed that about 3 of them should have been changed.
Seeing this, he asked for the original "raw" data set on a much larger sample to run his own scrubbing algorithm, and was simply told that such a data set simply didn't exist. Upon pressing the issue, it turns out that all of the raw numbers for the USA and the U.S. Weather Bureau that had been digitized (about 30 years worth at the time) had been scrubbed like this with all of the original data set removed and discarded. The raw physical paper copies of the weather data were still available, but who would bother with trying to re-enter data that supposedly already was in digital form just to correct some data errors?
More to the point, the climate models are working off of bad data to begin with, so there is little more to really trust what those models are predicting when they are predicting based off of an already biased dataset.
This was more than a decade ago when I first heard about this issue... I think the issue has only become worse since then, and very little to try and fix the problem as well.
Very well said. I, for one, think there is even a legitimate "conservative" viewpoint that can be made that encourages proper concern over the environment and can even suggest that some oil drilling ought not to happen, among other environmental concerns that are often raised.
One of the huge problems with "AGW" is that it has taken on the air of a radical "left" or "liberal" cause and the proponents have hitched the wagon of this "scientific theory" to a whole bunch of other political causes that does legitimate concern over the status of the global environment a huge dis-service. The hysteria coupled with the notion that we must act immediately or all is doomed is something even more ludicrous. It took us millenia to get to this point in human society... taking a decade or more to fix the problems seems at least somewhat reasonable in terms of a fix.
Furthermore, very little is being acknowledged about what is being done right, and often those radical environmentalists engage in actions that thwart legitimate efforts to help protect the environment that are at least a good start in the right direction.
This is much, much easier said than done. Wikipedia is far more than just the content, and it would take a significant problem in the community to make a difference of this nature.
The Spanish Wikipedia community did get to the point that a majority of the Spanish language editors left and formed their own alternate wiki, with their own funding sources and infrastructure. Because of the fact that the Spanish Wikipedia was never really deleted, the two communities have essentially co-existed and shared content with each other.
This is also one of the few "successful" forks I've seen for a project like Wikipedia. I was also encouraged to do something similar with the Wikibooks project when editors were not happy with some Wikimedia foundation policies getting shoved down the throat of the Wikibooks users. Knowing the problems with forking, I encouraged the editors to stay put and fight the policies from within. In retrospect, I'm still not sure I made the correct decision there, but it did keep the community mostly in tact.
The only way you are going to see a major shift is if the Wikimedia Foundation no longer can financially support and sustain Wikipedia servers and infrastructure. There is quite a bit of fluff to the Wikimedia's budget that can be trimmed before that becomes a significant issue and possibility.
Coming up with an alternative to the Wikimedia Foundation is the real trick, and something that I don't think could be developed nearly so easily as simply ripping a copy of the latest Wikipedia content dump. If you can create a legitimate alternative non-profit foundation to compete with the WMF, that would be a chance to make a huge difference. The question then is.... why? If you have the bucks to create such a legal structure, why are you wasting resources in this manner?
I don't know why this reply is labeled redundant except to show a bias against stating a legitimate concerns and problems with Wikipedia. It sounds like there is a broken mod system here on/. as well. Not that this is also stating the obvious.
Being bold and adding a correction was exactly the point of Wikipedia in the first place. The admin/moderator/irate protectionist user is the one who should have posted the objection on the talk page and "Assume Good Faith" on the part of users who may be new editors to the article or especially to Wikipedia. Minor edits, in particular, should be encouraged and cherished.
Far too often it seems like changes on wiki projects take on a sense of committee and don't actually get anything done. Writing by committee tends to be the worst possible kind, so having somebody be bold and improve the language of an article with a specific voice (not necessarily a specific POV.... I'm talking the tone of the language in the article) can be an improvement.
I do object to off-topic content being added to article I monitor, but it has to be rather substantial (> a paragraph) and clearly going off on a tangent that may be better made as a separate article.
Of course I tend to be an inclusionist at heart and consider the words that somebody has written in good faith to be valuable resources.not to be discarded for light reasons.
There are a couple of problems with the Wikipedia admins, above and beyond the other issues raised here.
Admins are very insular and are not really willing to let newcomers into their ranks... raising the bar of who is acceptable to become an admin to even higher restrictions. In spite of having a comparatively old/ancient account and thousands of edits, knowledge of Wikipedia policies, and participation in discussions, it seems unlikely that I would ever even be considered for administration on that project even if I asked. This is a far, far cry from the "no big deal" as originally suggested for administration of the project.
Admins are also lothesome to criticize each other or undo actions of another admin. Admittedly wheel warring is a bad thing and can cause all sorts of other problems (wheel warring is like an edit war, but with the admin tools to lock the page, ban users, and other similar actions). Still, even if a full edit war is not happening, there is a strong tendency to stay off another admin's turf.
Not all admins are bad, and I've corresponded with some that seem to be having a level head. Still, it seems like the bad is driving out the good, which is the larger problem here. The arbitration board is supposedly set up to police and act as meta-admins, but it seems to be increasingly ineffective at culling out the troublesome admins in spite of some fairly good successes.
Wikilawyering is also rampant with seemingly the editor with the best knowledge of Wikipedia policies seemingly winning the argument and prevailing with their POV. That is not the purpose of those policies, but it does seem to be the effect, and either being or having as a close friend somebody with admin privileges seems to give you an edge.
Laffer said that reducing taxes stimulates the economy as long as government reduces spending to match inflows. The California legislature was too stupid to realize that and they were too beholden to the special interests that always have their hands out for government money.
You don't necessarily have to reduce spending by the same amount as you reduce taxes. Yes, it is the politics of the tax cuts/spending that is the issue here, but the point on reducing taxes is that the economists (including Laffer) are suggesting that taxation may be overdone. If the citizens are overtaxed and that the current tax rates are actually discouraging economic activity, reducing taxes can actually result in an increase in overall revenue into that government.
Obviously it can be overdone to the point that tax cuts do start cutting revenue, but for most governmental bodies in America (and much of the rest of the world for that matter too), that is usually not the case. Tax policy is far more often used as a tool for social engineering.... encouraging one kind of economic activity over another.... often favoring one particular organization over another (aka giving specific tax breaks to specific companies or non-profit groups). For that kind of political influence via the tax codes, the taxes have to be oppressive and burdensome to the citizens being taxed.
California is suffering from a whole bunch of problems simultaneously. There is a "brain drain" in California where the youth, the energetic entrepreneurs willing to take risks, and those who make a difference are simply packing up and leaving. Those left behind still have problems that need to be addressed and an increasingly smaller tax base to work with.
Tuition hikes in California are only going to encourage this trend to continue. As a statistical point of reference, California has such a significant loss of population due to out-migration from the state that they will likely lose at least two congressmen from their delegation to Washington, D.C. in the 2010 federal decennial census. That is going to have profound political implications both within the state and on a national level. Many of those leaving are taking their money with them, and leaving because of the taxation and political climate in the state.
That said, I disagree that this is bad policy. University students are (on average) priveleged, pay little rent/property tax, and use a lot of services. Waive the tax for scholarship students (or make the University pay it.) For poor students borrowing hundreds of $K to attend Carnegie Mellon - your bad decisions cannot drive policy.
Most educational institutions are tax supported, and by far and away it can be proven beyond doubt that a university in a town can make or break the town economically. University research, social networks (including fraternities, clubs, and even with graduating classes themselves), spin-off businesses, and even access to world-class talent to help work with municipal issues that come up from time to time.
My point is that those cities who think a university is a financial burden ought to consider what their city would be like without any institutions of higher learning. Discounting trolls who claim the city is simply going to devolve into ignorance (citizens can go elsewhere for college-level education and then return.... assuming of course that the kids going away to another town will return), the economic benefit to a city is so huge for having a university in the town that municipal (not state) funding of the university might even make some sense.
Few university students that I have met are so privileged as is implied here. Yes, there are some students who come from very wealthy families and flaunt their cash, but by far and away most students are struggling at or below almost any reasonable poverty guideline (most would qualify for Food Stamps and other social welfare programs), live in sub-standard high density housing, and tend to be engaged in activities that would not necessarily be a huge burden on a city in the first place (aka mostly using mass-transit and on a per-capita basis have a low carbon/energy footprint). Adding in volunteer work by students on the behalf of the community, and economic benefits in the form of internship, low-wage service jobs performed by students (aka staff in restaurants and other service-related businesses, and a ready pool of educated, intelligent employees willing to work for sub-par wages), it is obvious that most college students are effectively taxed anyway. Again, on a per-capita basis if you factor in off-campus housing, I would dare suggest that taxable income generated by a city in terms of property taxes collected for a similar group of people in the same economic/age group is very likely to be higher from college students than from non-college students. So from a pure fiscal standpoint it makes even less sense to impose an additional tax on students based on this rationale as well.
Ultimately a tax is a sign that the students aren't welcome in the community. This will ultimately be reflected in how the students will treat the community (rather harshly, I would suppose), and it would also be something that competing universities would gladly mention if they are trying to recruit students into their school (our town welcomes the students.... unlike Philadelphia who taxes them and wants them to leave).
Just the attitude alone is cause for concern, and would be room to recommend to a board of regents at any school in a city with this attitude to simply stop all capital improvements for its campus and reject any increase in the student population at that school as well. This should include state schools as well.
If you can trademark a Coca-Cola lounge chair or baseball cap, I'm fairly certain that the Chinese emperor mentioned here would qualify as the first international user of the name "Go". Heck, I've seen Paramount Studios trademark the use of Spock and Kirk for things that have nothing to do with the famous television program.... and go after fan websites who use these terms without permission for trademark infringement.
Don't forget the famous lawsuit between the Beatles and Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak over the use of the trademark "Apple"
Still, Google could have selected a term that was derived from the game of Go instead, but Atari is already taken.
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The only real problem with re-licensing is if you are playing fast and loose with 3rd party components that are used in the creation of the said application. For that there isn't an easy solution, as any 3rd party components or libraries that use the GPL (not the LGPL) pretty much "force" the entire application to become GPL and also in turn force legally the exclusion of all other components of other licenses. That is a significant problem.
The situation here with MonoDevelop is precisely the sort of situation with incompatable 3rd party plug-in licenses, where some of the libraries "automatically" included in a base-level application (aka "Hello World") were also GPL'd libraries that included this viral license issue. Essentially, the only license you could use for any application created on MonoDevelop was the GPL. With the LGPL as the gold standard now, what this implies is that developers who use the base-line MonoDevelop environment can now deploy application under any license that they choose, including a completely custom license that they have drafted on their own (with hopefully the input from an intelligent lawyer familiar with writing such a license).
The lack of legal precedence? Actually, there is some legal precedence with GPL'd code in the judicial system, and other similar licensing disputes with 3rd party software that depending on "no legal precedent" as an excuse doesn't hold water. The GPL is also pretty clear in terms of the legal requirements, unlike most licenses like the Microsoft developer's EULA for their software development tools. At least the GPL was designed to be understood by mere mortals.
Can you link a Microsoft or a proprietary IBM software library into your GPL'd application? Perhaps, but it isn't the technologically ignorant judge you have to worry about here. It is the lawyers for Microsoft or IBM that you would have to worry about instead, and wondering if the application you have written using that library might be the target of attack. Let's say you create this uber cool video game that brings in millions of dollars to you and your buddies, but through the kindness of your heart you have made this awesome game with a GPL'd license for distribution (yes, you can still sell GPL'd software for money). It turns out that the Microsoft library that somebody on you team decided to include has a "no-free software" exclusion term, and Microsoft in turn decides to get a legal injunction to shut down distribution of this software because of the distribution of their library, a crucial software component of this game, is included. You as the developer would be powerless to stop Microsoft, especially as you would lack the money to fight these lawyers on their "home turf". IBM would be just as bad or even worse, as there is a reason why the IBM intellectual property team has been called "The Nazgul".
Linking GPL'd software to a non-GPL'd application? That depends on your personal ethics and how far the group of usually volunteers are willing to take to protecting their GPL'd code. I'm glad that now MonoDevelop gives you the moral comfort that you don't have to make the decision to tell other software developers to "take a hike" and ignore licensing issues like this.
Information technology workers in particular are explicitly singled out as having special circumstances that are above and beyond typical salaried employees, and if you happen to fit into that particular category of employee (which is explicitly what was mentioned with this original post), there are specific regulation that *require* overtime pay.
You might want to look at the "Computer Employee Exception" where the regulations gets much, much more muddled.... and the "minimum wage" that you need to look at is $27.63 per hour. If you get paid less than this rate on a per hour basis, you can demand retroactive pay for all overtime hours for which you were not compensated.... and those must be paid at time-and-a-half as an hourly employee. Sure, if you are being paid $30 per hour equivalent or more, the overtime regulations don't apply here.... and you are being well compensated as per the presumption that getting paid at that level may have more onerous requirements.
BTW, you might actually be owed some serious back wages. I don't know your circumstances and working conditions, but my experience is that most employers of IT workers generally know little about the labor laws as it applies to their workers.
As for what constitutes being "at your workstation"... I'm suggesting that 60 year old legislation defining a workstation is inadequate in an era of telecommuting and mobile communications devices. When some of those laws were written, a "walkie-talkie" was something that weighed 100 lbs. and you were lucky to be able to send a message maybe about a 1/2 mile and only worked half of the time. All it would take is a judicial precedent that would suggest that somebody with a company cell phone is "at a workstation" to get some changes made real fast on that issue. My point is that this is something that is very murky and I wouldn't make a business decision as a supervisor based on the concept that a cell phone isn't a workstation... or at the very least put in some compensation rules to make it clear that a corporate policy exists for overtime pay when "on call".
You also might want to check state employment regulations.... which tend to be substantially more detailed and explicit on compensation as well above and beyond DOL regulations. Typically this is a state area of regulation... with places like California having some particularly tough labor laws in terms of what an employer can and can't get away with.
I'm really sick of all the idiots carping about copyright as a replacement for patents. They are similar but perform very differently. Copyright protects the exact expression of source code and binary whereas patents protect the higher level idea that is used to create the code.
Suppose you invented a new type of sort called slashSort() and used it in a program to make it very fast. Copyright is useless here since you don't release the source code. A competitor could employ a hacker to reverse engineer your code to find the location of slashSort(), then feed it some inputs to determine the steps performed by your algorithm. After that it's simply a matter of converting those steps into source code and releasing it in a competing product. Your profits dive by half as consumers now have more choices.
So without patents, your competitor gets to eat your lunch while you do all the hard work.
I would agree that copyright doesn't quite cover the kinds of protection that patents would. It really is a different beast entirely, and in some ways offers better kinds of protection.
BTW, a competitor who simply reverse-engineers the algorithm is still engaged in copyright infringement if all they do is take the de-compiled software and then use the machine-generated algorithm as-is in competing software. Heck, if somebody can get sued successfully for copyright infringement for copying 10 notes in a row for a song, copying 10 bytes in a row could harbor similar kinds of copyright infringement. A whole algorithm (especially something novel and original) certainly would pass that test.
If they somehow "tweak" the algorithm and make it function different or perhaps even improve the algorithm.... in theory that would fall under a separate patentable product and even patent protection wouldn't necessarily apply.... however it may still be considered copyright infringement. Also, copyright protection lasts for 75 years + the life of the author. Regardless of if you think that is a legitimate term for copyright protection (I think it is absurdly long) that is an incredible amount of time. Grace Hooper's software for the ENIAC would still be under copyright protection even now with that rule.
I would like to ask you, since you are so defensive of software patents.... have you personally filed for a software patent, received the software patent grant, and received royalties for your "inventions" in software development? My own experience with patent attorneys is rather jaded and something I would rather not repeat if possible. My experience with filing for copyright with the Library of Congress, on the other hand, is much more friendly and something I would recommend to folks who want copyright protection on a higher level than simply sticking a copyright notice on your software or written word.
So, how do you resolve the societal costs associated to two (or more) inventors that make simultaneous discoveries to the same process or invention?
I can name several cases where this, in fact, has been the case and that the patent was simply awarded to the first one that got to the patent office. In some situations, I've seen the patent awarded to an individual simply because they got to the USPTO in Washington an hour or so earlier in the day.... and decided to hand-deliver the application rather than rely upon the mail system to get the application submitted.
If a patent is earned, then all of the genuine inventors ought to be rewarded. Instead, only one inventor is actually granted that monopoly... based on political connections and the whims of very arbitrary clerks at a government agency.
The problem I see with this is to define who, exactly, is getting plundered here and who is getting exploited.
For myself and based upon my lifetime of experience, I have known many individuals who have filed patents and sought patent protection on a great many things. Heck, I've even worked for companies who have filed patents on work that was done while I was an employee (nothing personal, but some co-workers).
In not one case, not even these companies I worked for, was patent protection anything other than something purely defensive to keep some asshole from suing their behind and seeking damages for patent infringement. They ***NEVER*** sought damages or frankly even earned a single dollar from patent royalties, both individuals and corporate entities that I directly worked for and was involved with the patenting process.
If anything, I saw how a prior patent kept a patent troll away by using a previous patent as establishing prior art. That was a good thing.... I guess.
Far, far too often patent attorneys are simply a part of a huge scam that seeks to extract money from otherwise hard working engineers and designers with the faint dream that somehow they might get rich off of their "invention". Compared to the amount of money that gets dumped into the USPTO and their farm of scammers associated with them to patent all of these crazy ideas, the amount actually paid in the form of invention royalties is relatively minor.
In terms of an overall economic impact, abolishing patents would only cause a few thousand lawyers to suddenly be unemployed and have to obtain meaningful work elsewhere in society. That seems like an overall positive thing for me as well, as we could use some more people who actually make things rather than suck up on the labor of others. Is seeking a reduction in the number of lawyers in America something to be considered socialist? If so, I guess that I am one.
That stretches the imagination quite a bit to say somebody wanting smaller government and fewer taxes is a socialist.
I thought one of the points of patent law was to create a library of knowledge. The idea is that if an inventor has to keep the invention secret or obscured in order to make money on it, the knowledge could be lost. Patents give temporary protection to the inventor (or their supreme corporate overlord).
If mathematics were patentable, then eventually the knowledge is available to all and the mathematician (or their supreme corporate overlord) gets rights for some certain period of time.
This doesn't seem to be that much of a problem, or does it?
If the point of patent law is to create a library of knowledge, then for software patents it is an epic fail. A proper library of knowledge might be gleaned from the ACM journals or from other publications that deal with software development theories, but the USPTO is not, nor has it ever been a depository of knowledge of computational sciences.
More specifically, a software developer can create in one day dozens of different algorithms and even have them implemented.
More to the point, the largest problem that the USPTO faces is dealing with prior art and the fact that such prior art is not contained within the repository of the library of previously filed software patents. It is unfortunate that a large number of the software patent that have been filed and even accepted by the USPTO have precedence in books like The Art of Computer Programming
For myself, if something I patented could be found in that book series, I would be supremely embarrassed... yet I've found stuff that has been patented which is in those books... and the patent was filed well after the publication of that volume. Nothing against Kunth either, as he is acting here more as a historian and for me does a much better job of establishing a proper library of knowledge about this particular subject than can ever possibly be done by an organization like the USPTO.
The regulations are pretty explicit about what is considered "time on the clock" however. In fact, for employers who allow employees to "work from home", they may be facing an additional problem of even being able to define what "on the clock" actually means and may be liable for additional wages.
Typically in a work environment, an employer is required to pay employees for every hour that they are "at the work site" and "capable of performing work". Even if the employees are simply making small-talk and engaging in gossip, if they are at or near a work station that is considered to be "on the clock" and counts towards compensation. It is the responsibility of the supervisor to see that those employees are not at the work stations when they are "off the clock", not the individual employee.
The same could also be said about being "on-call", and the definition of a "work station" could certainly involve simply having a cell phone on their person. I don't know the legal precedence on this, but there may be some rational for insisting on some sort of compensation simply for having the cell phone on your person and may even be treated as a work station. Certainly if you are "called into work", the minute you step in the door of your employer you are then back "on the clock", and possibly the minute you step into a vehicle to travel to the employer in the case of being "on call" might be counted.
As I said, especially for IT workers, overtime pay is required by law if you work over 40 hours per week.... even if you are "salaried". Even being a "contractor" may not necessarily exempt a company from paying the overtime wages as well, regardless of what any contract might say on the matter. Statutory law trumps contract law in every case, as you can't sign a contract that violates statute or previous legal precedence (in the case of common law courts like America).
There is also the additional regulation that no employee can work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period of time. In addition, you must have at least 8 hours of continuous time off (presumably for sleep). Any sort of "on call" interruption that wakes you up at say midnight and causes you to work in until 4 A.M. will force the employer to accept that you may not report back to work until noon... to give those 8 hours of continuous break. It is also the responsibility of the supervisor to enforce this requirement and not the employee. If an employee shows up in violation of this law, it is the employer who can get cited and not the employee.
How you spend those 8 hours is up to you as an employee, but that is still a basic labor law requirement. If you don't actually get any work done while you are "on call", you are correct... there is no other real legislation or general requirement. But the technology for keeping in touch with employees and the definition of a "workstation" is broad enough that it is at best a gray area that as an employer you might want to be extra careful with. As an employee... it is an extra burden to be "on call", and it is important that you let your employer know that too.
The reason jobs are moving to India and to other countries has nothing to do with labor laws such as this, but rather because of a deliberate de-industrialization policy on the part of several legislators and diplomats within the USA (and Europe) who have changed the political climate explicitly to make it easier to move these jobs to other countries.
If a company is based in the USA and they outsource jobs like this to India or elsewhere, they are simply shooting themselves in the foot and ultimately going to destroy their company. There is a legitimate reason for labor laws like these that regulate hours, wages, and overtime restrictions. Companies that abuse their employees do so at their own peril.
Still, I wish it wasn't so darn easy for companies to relocate jobs and use threats like this because of current trade regulations and treaties that give away nearly everything that has taken American society over three centuries to create.
There is nothing stopping you from doing this, but I'd have to say: Making up a whole gaming system is hardly trivial or easy to accomplish, particularly trying to balance out all of the aspects of the game so that it is just complicated to keep smart people interested, letting folks of...er... lesser intellect to also enjoy the game in some aspect, and to keep the "arms race" under control so you don't have to introduce god-like creatures just to provide a minor challenge.
In the process of coming up with a game system like this, if it is good enough, it would also be worth a fair amount of money. So tell me.... how is somebody who comes up with this system going to be compensated for their effort and time for designing such a system? If you have put enough effort and have tested the gaming system enough that it is pretty well balanced that it can compete with the major role playing game systems, the siren call of commercial profits is hard to resist.
BTW, even if you could come up with a system like this that is fairly well balanced, the next trick is to somehow get the mindshare of the gaming public interested in the game enough to start creating other content for that gaming system. That isn't trivial either.
This said, if you are still not discouraged at this prospect and really want to create a collaboratively designed game based on the model of a GNU project, you can head over to Wikia and set up a wiki based on this concept or go to one of several other wiki hosting services including perhaps the Free Software Foundation and seeing if you might get support from them to help with hosting the servers.
I've seen other attempts to get something like this to work out. I had a friend of mine actually go through the effort on the commercial side and even got the basic rulebook published. While he did enjoy some minor commercial success, it was not a trivial thing to even go from published material and try to get the mindshare of enough players to be able to devote the full time effort it takes to get the game improving from that point on.
Seriously though, if you get past these obstacles and get even the fundamentals of a gaming system together that would work with open source principles and have something you think is worth the effort.... let me know! I might contribute to the effort as well.
Fire fighters have very specific regulations for what their hours can be like, and a separate section in American labor laws. They are one of the few occupations that are allowed to work more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period, but at the same time they are required to have 48 hours off after that 24 hour period except under explicit "emergency" conditions that are defined by law. Anybody comparing how firefighters are treated to an IT service tech is likely to find themselves seeing that it is the IT tech that is getting the raw end of the deal and that the analogy is not going to be accurate at all.
Soldiers also have very specific regulations on what they can and can't be expected to do, of course soldiers operate under the UCMJ and not standard civilian labor laws, so that is something a bit different. And if you are in the military you are guaranteed (usually) 30 days off each year as a benefit and a whole bunch of other benefits explicitly due to your military service. The pay isn't good, but it is all part of the package. Interestingly, the DOD has increasingly hired civilian contractors in part because the labor laws as they apply to enlisted personnel are complicated enough that they don't want a private to flip hamburgers or clean toilets (except perhaps as a part of a punishment). It is cheaper and easier to simply hire a civilian to do those kind of mundane jobs... and the civilians tend to stick around a bit longer than the typical rotation for enlisted folks. Soldiers and other military personnel also know full well that they will be called upon to make some significant sacrifices for their job... which is explicitly why people are willing to join up with the service in the first place.
Police and law enforcement officers? Yeah, they work ungodly shifts and are often expected to be on call..... but I don't know of any salaried police officers. Perhaps the "brass" at police departments might be salaried (if it is a large major metro department or if you are the "chief"), but it is common to see cities complain about how their police budget is gone due to a significant amount of overtime that has to be paid. While pay for being a police officer isn't the greatest, they do get paid fairly well and have other "fringe" benefits.
I just don't see comparing any of these experiences to being an IT guy who is salaried but gets dumped on by all comers and no respect, and no extra money for being essentially a peon to clean up somebody else's mess, and to do that all all hours of the day without any extra compensation. If you are a well paid geek and you signed up for the job knowing that would be the nature of the job, that is another story.... but it doesn't sound like that was the case in this situation. There are also specific labor laws regarding information technology workers for overtime that also must be followed... regardless of if the person is a contractor or normal employee.
There still are minimum wage laws, and in the case of Information Technology workers, you still have to be paid for over time explicitly by law unless you are making over a minimum threshold (of about $70k per year) as set by the US DOL. If you can document that you are not making minimum wage (a very real possibility as I did being a stupid college student back in the day working for some private companies) you can simply demand at least minimum wage and time-and-a-half for over 40 hours. That is the law in the good ol' USA at a minimum.
If you have a guy that is earning $100k per year and then complaining about being on-call 24/7/365, I have quite a bit less sympathy for them. If he is only making $25k per year and not getting paid overtime, then I'm quite a bit more sympathetic... and the law is sympathetic too!
If you were a former employee and now a "contractor", the labor laws are even less sympathetic to abusive labor practices, and may even be entitled to retroactive benefits, pensions, and pay if it can be proven that you are still an employee in spite of a legal fiction that the former employee is now a contractor. Of course that requires engaging in a lawsuit and pulling out all of the stops from a legal perspective, but if the choice is to relent and do something you are simply not comfortable doing or be fired, I think the choice of going after that former employer and current client through the judicial system seems a whole lot more attractive.
It may be possible that even if you are technically a contractor that you may be considered an employee under Department of Labor and Internal Revenue codes. In order to be considered a genuinely independent contractor, there must be a clearly demonstrated ability for the contractor to be able to take on additional clients (no non-compete agreements), that the work for the client is generally part-time (full time work for a single client may indicate genuine employement), and if you are required to be on-site as opposed to working from home. There isn't a hard litmus test here, but the more it sounds like you are an employee, the more likely that you can file a grievance and demand protection under general employment law as an employee rather than as a contractor.
These rules for determining the status of an employee as an employee have been written explicitly because some companies (a significant number in information technology companies) who hire contractors rather than explicit employees to get work accomplished due to supposed benefits from hiring contractors.
As a contractor, you get more benefits if you work through a contractor service company that has multiple employees and manages the collections of payment for their employees. At the same time, if you are working for one of these contractor service companies (for example, Kelly Services and other temp agencies, but there are others just for programmers) you are also not going to have an abusive relationship with a client that decides to demand ungodly hours from you. If you are a good and hard-working employee that does your job and have provided legitimate professional services... you'll get re-assigned to some other client that will take better care of you. This isn't necessarily a union, but a collective group of programmers and other similar IT professionals can make a huge difference in terms of your working conditions and not be screwed over by companies wanting to take advantage of a temporary glut in the market.
Single employee contractors (or "independent contractors") are the ones most likely to be screwed over by an abusive client, and labor judges (those judges and arbitrators who deal with enforcement of labor laws) tend to be much more sympathetic to a suggestion that they might in fact be an employee and should be paid for overtime or professional services.
Actually, yes I have. You might want to see the Programmer's Guild and other information technology labor movements before you start dissing such attitudes. There are programmers who feel that enough is enough and that they ought to be given a little bit of respect.
Are "unions" or "guilds" common in the IT industry? No. But they do exist, and there can be some benefits that come from joining them.
There are also specific DOT labor laws that these companies are usually violating when it comes to both pay and interpretation of on-call status as well. Not only that, but even the status of being a contract employee is not even enough to be exempted from overtime laws as they apply to programmers. In fact, labor laws for programmers are pretty darn strict and I still may have a case to go after former employers for some abuses that have happened in the past.
Stealing virtual items in a MMORPG is not a crime, and at most a violation of the terms of service.
Stealing identities by way of online passwords is not a virtual crime, it's a very normal, plain computer crime.
That is, of course, why real-world police are making the real-world arrest of a real-world person that is going to a real-world prison.
This is a crime that is being prosecuted for tampering with somebody else's computer systems without authorization, and having committed fraud (another real-world crime) to obtain the usernames and passwords to gain access to these accounts.
The funny thing is that Jagex has experimented with fingerprint scanners and has suggested ideas for players to get some sort of physical device (a "dongle" or other such item) that would make a more "secure" connection... and to benefit players with some in-game features like increased bank space and other such stuff if those players buy those security features.
I don't know about the homicides that may or may not happen if players get incredibly jealous about another player, but that is something completely different.
There are dozens of ways to transfer money between accounts if that is your goal. The Bounty Hunter game was one of the most effective, and there have been problems with the Party Room and other places where even with the "balanced trade" you can still transfer huge amounts of money.
There have also been malicious folks who log into an account and then clean out the bank (dumping it into the party room or elsewhere, or simply leaving it "on the floor" in the bank) and then log out. That would be akin to the above post where you would have a rental truck that would be returned.... with the tires, seats, engine, and everything but the chassis removed. This is done just to be malicious, not for any personal gain. The bank PINs help, but they don't solve all of the problems and can be defeated as well via screen captures (there are some good OCR recognition programs with some Runescape hacking software) and keeping track of mouse movements.
The dark side to Runescape is indeed rather ugly and scary after a fashion, and some very black, black hat hackers that have joined into the fun. This guy that was arrested by the UK authorities was small fish compared to the really dangerous guys.
It is pretty close to the same thing. What happened was that this guy who was arrested made a Phishing website that looked and behaved just like the real thing, and required the "user" to enter the username and password in order to enter. Enough individuals entered to "correct" information that they were able to use those username/password combinations to "hack" into the real user accounts on the official Jagex servers.
This is no different than somebody setting up a website that looks very similar to the yahoo servers and doing essentially the same thing, or for those phishing websites that ask for credit card information. This is a real-world crime that happened here, and did not involve anything that was done in-game (other than the contents of those user accounts were cleaned out or used for nefarious purposes). Items of real value were taken and transferred via this "hack".
What does make this different is that bonafide security measures were compromised, and the law is pretty clear that it doesn't even matter what was taken or how the information was used after it was obtained: this idiot of a guy simply broke the law. If he wasn't into the game so much, he likely would have gone after bank accounts and credit card information.
I don't know where this fits into the current "climate-gate" issue and the raw data, but here is a story I was told by the state climatologist for the State of Utah:
He was reviewing climate data and digitizing historical records for temperature and rainfall data for the State of Utah when he look up some climate models based on some of the data that he, himself, sent in. He noticed that some of the data was being modified and "fixed up" with some algorithms.
Some of this is legitimate, as the data was recorded by volunteers that on occasion made some pretty huge mistakes. For example, if the high temperature in July was recorded as 19 degrees (F) and the nearby stations were recorded in the 90's and upper 80's, it seems likely that the number was inverted when it was recorded. Particularly when the daytime high is lower than the nighttime low. Numbers input in this manner were reviewed, including automated equipment when something was seen to perhaps malfunction and give a similar kind of error.
Here is the real "criminal" offense that happened: The data "scrubbing" algorithm fixed up the raw data set and then simply replaced the numbers for the "raw" data being used. Yes, the original "raw" data set was simply discarded and never to be seen again. Furthermore, there seemed to be a bias in the numbers being modified so earlier temperatures were kept somewhat cooler and the more recent numbers were made a little bit warmer. Certainly the algorithm used for this scrubbing was kept separate from even the climate model software.
Since this climatologist still had the original paper documents (not digitized), he reviewed some of the data points on some arbitrary day that he selected, and noted what data points were changed and what were kept. Out of about 30 data points for the State of Utah that were modified, he agreed that about 3 of them should have been changed.
Seeing this, he asked for the original "raw" data set on a much larger sample to run his own scrubbing algorithm, and was simply told that such a data set simply didn't exist. Upon pressing the issue, it turns out that all of the raw numbers for the USA and the U.S. Weather Bureau that had been digitized (about 30 years worth at the time) had been scrubbed like this with all of the original data set removed and discarded. The raw physical paper copies of the weather data were still available, but who would bother with trying to re-enter data that supposedly already was in digital form just to correct some data errors?
More to the point, the climate models are working off of bad data to begin with, so there is little more to really trust what those models are predicting when they are predicting based off of an already biased dataset.
This was more than a decade ago when I first heard about this issue... I think the issue has only become worse since then, and very little to try and fix the problem as well.
Very well said. I, for one, think there is even a legitimate "conservative" viewpoint that can be made that encourages proper concern over the environment and can even suggest that some oil drilling ought not to happen, among other environmental concerns that are often raised.
One of the huge problems with "AGW" is that it has taken on the air of a radical "left" or "liberal" cause and the proponents have hitched the wagon of this "scientific theory" to a whole bunch of other political causes that does legitimate concern over the status of the global environment a huge dis-service. The hysteria coupled with the notion that we must act immediately or all is doomed is something even more ludicrous. It took us millenia to get to this point in human society... taking a decade or more to fix the problems seems at least somewhat reasonable in terms of a fix.
Furthermore, very little is being acknowledged about what is being done right, and often those radical environmentalists engage in actions that thwart legitimate efforts to help protect the environment that are at least a good start in the right direction.
This is much, much easier said than done. Wikipedia is far more than just the content, and it would take a significant problem in the community to make a difference of this nature.
The Spanish Wikipedia community did get to the point that a majority of the Spanish language editors left and formed their own alternate wiki, with their own funding sources and infrastructure. Because of the fact that the Spanish Wikipedia was never really deleted, the two communities have essentially co-existed and shared content with each other.
This is also one of the few "successful" forks I've seen for a project like Wikipedia. I was also encouraged to do something similar with the Wikibooks project when editors were not happy with some Wikimedia foundation policies getting shoved down the throat of the Wikibooks users. Knowing the problems with forking, I encouraged the editors to stay put and fight the policies from within. In retrospect, I'm still not sure I made the correct decision there, but it did keep the community mostly in tact.
The only way you are going to see a major shift is if the Wikimedia Foundation no longer can financially support and sustain Wikipedia servers and infrastructure. There is quite a bit of fluff to the Wikimedia's budget that can be trimmed before that becomes a significant issue and possibility.
Coming up with an alternative to the Wikimedia Foundation is the real trick, and something that I don't think could be developed nearly so easily as simply ripping a copy of the latest Wikipedia content dump. If you can create a legitimate alternative non-profit foundation to compete with the WMF, that would be a chance to make a huge difference. The question then is.... why? If you have the bucks to create such a legal structure, why are you wasting resources in this manner?
I don't know why this reply is labeled redundant except to show a bias against stating a legitimate concerns and problems with Wikipedia. It sounds like there is a broken mod system here on /. as well. Not that this is also stating the obvious.
Being bold and adding a correction was exactly the point of Wikipedia in the first place. The admin/moderator/irate protectionist user is the one who should have posted the objection on the talk page and "Assume Good Faith" on the part of users who may be new editors to the article or especially to Wikipedia. Minor edits, in particular, should be encouraged and cherished.
Far too often it seems like changes on wiki projects take on a sense of committee and don't actually get anything done. Writing by committee tends to be the worst possible kind, so having somebody be bold and improve the language of an article with a specific voice (not necessarily a specific POV.... I'm talking the tone of the language in the article) can be an improvement.
I do object to off-topic content being added to article I monitor, but it has to be rather substantial (> a paragraph) and clearly going off on a tangent that may be better made as a separate article.
Of course I tend to be an inclusionist at heart and consider the words that somebody has written in good faith to be valuable resources.not to be discarded for light reasons.
There are a couple of problems with the Wikipedia admins, above and beyond the other issues raised here.
Admins are very insular and are not really willing to let newcomers into their ranks... raising the bar of who is acceptable to become an admin to even higher restrictions. In spite of having a comparatively old/ancient account and thousands of edits, knowledge of Wikipedia policies, and participation in discussions, it seems unlikely that I would ever even be considered for administration on that project even if I asked. This is a far, far cry from the "no big deal" as originally suggested for administration of the project.
Admins are also lothesome to criticize each other or undo actions of another admin. Admittedly wheel warring is a bad thing and can cause all sorts of other problems (wheel warring is like an edit war, but with the admin tools to lock the page, ban users, and other similar actions). Still, even if a full edit war is not happening, there is a strong tendency to stay off another admin's turf.
Not all admins are bad, and I've corresponded with some that seem to be having a level head. Still, it seems like the bad is driving out the good, which is the larger problem here. The arbitration board is supposedly set up to police and act as meta-admins, but it seems to be increasingly ineffective at culling out the troublesome admins in spite of some fairly good successes.
Wikilawyering is also rampant with seemingly the editor with the best knowledge of Wikipedia policies seemingly winning the argument and prevailing with their POV. That is not the purpose of those policies, but it does seem to be the effect, and either being or having as a close friend somebody with admin privileges seems to give you an edge.
Laffer said that reducing taxes stimulates the economy as long as government reduces spending to match inflows. The California legislature was too stupid to realize that and they were too beholden to the special interests that always have their hands out for government money.
You don't necessarily have to reduce spending by the same amount as you reduce taxes. Yes, it is the politics of the tax cuts/spending that is the issue here, but the point on reducing taxes is that the economists (including Laffer) are suggesting that taxation may be overdone. If the citizens are overtaxed and that the current tax rates are actually discouraging economic activity, reducing taxes can actually result in an increase in overall revenue into that government.
Obviously it can be overdone to the point that tax cuts do start cutting revenue, but for most governmental bodies in America (and much of the rest of the world for that matter too), that is usually not the case. Tax policy is far more often used as a tool for social engineering.... encouraging one kind of economic activity over another.... often favoring one particular organization over another (aka giving specific tax breaks to specific companies or non-profit groups). For that kind of political influence via the tax codes, the taxes have to be oppressive and burdensome to the citizens being taxed.
California is suffering from a whole bunch of problems simultaneously. There is a "brain drain" in California where the youth, the energetic entrepreneurs willing to take risks, and those who make a difference are simply packing up and leaving. Those left behind still have problems that need to be addressed and an increasingly smaller tax base to work with.
Tuition hikes in California are only going to encourage this trend to continue. As a statistical point of reference, California has such a significant loss of population due to out-migration from the state that they will likely lose at least two congressmen from their delegation to Washington, D.C. in the 2010 federal decennial census. That is going to have profound political implications both within the state and on a national level. Many of those leaving are taking their money with them, and leaving because of the taxation and political climate in the state.
That said, I disagree that this is bad policy. University students are (on average) priveleged, pay little rent/property tax, and use a lot of services. Waive the tax for scholarship students (or make the University pay it.) For poor students borrowing hundreds of $K to attend Carnegie Mellon - your bad decisions cannot drive policy.
Most educational institutions are tax supported, and by far and away it can be proven beyond doubt that a university in a town can make or break the town economically. University research, social networks (including fraternities, clubs, and even with graduating classes themselves), spin-off businesses, and even access to world-class talent to help work with municipal issues that come up from time to time.
My point is that those cities who think a university is a financial burden ought to consider what their city would be like without any institutions of higher learning. Discounting trolls who claim the city is simply going to devolve into ignorance (citizens can go elsewhere for college-level education and then return.... assuming of course that the kids going away to another town will return), the economic benefit to a city is so huge for having a university in the town that municipal (not state) funding of the university might even make some sense.
Few university students that I have met are so privileged as is implied here. Yes, there are some students who come from very wealthy families and flaunt their cash, but by far and away most students are struggling at or below almost any reasonable poverty guideline (most would qualify for Food Stamps and other social welfare programs), live in sub-standard high density housing, and tend to be engaged in activities that would not necessarily be a huge burden on a city in the first place (aka mostly using mass-transit and on a per-capita basis have a low carbon/energy footprint). Adding in volunteer work by students on the behalf of the community, and economic benefits in the form of internship, low-wage service jobs performed by students (aka staff in restaurants and other service-related businesses, and a ready pool of educated, intelligent employees willing to work for sub-par wages), it is obvious that most college students are effectively taxed anyway. Again, on a per-capita basis if you factor in off-campus housing, I would dare suggest that taxable income generated by a city in terms of property taxes collected for a similar group of people in the same economic/age group is very likely to be higher from college students than from non-college students. So from a pure fiscal standpoint it makes even less sense to impose an additional tax on students based on this rationale as well.
Ultimately a tax is a sign that the students aren't welcome in the community. This will ultimately be reflected in how the students will treat the community (rather harshly, I would suppose), and it would also be something that competing universities would gladly mention if they are trying to recruit students into their school (our town welcomes the students.... unlike Philadelphia who taxes them and wants them to leave).
Just the attitude alone is cause for concern, and would be room to recommend to a board of regents at any school in a city with this attitude to simply stop all capital improvements for its campus and reject any increase in the student population at that school as well. This should include state schools as well.
If you can trademark a Coca-Cola lounge chair or baseball cap, I'm fairly certain that the Chinese emperor mentioned here would qualify as the first international user of the name "Go". Heck, I've seen Paramount Studios trademark the use of Spock and Kirk for things that have nothing to do with the famous television program.... and go after fan websites who use these terms without permission for trademark infringement.
Don't forget the famous lawsuit between the Beatles and Steve Jobs/Steve Wozniak over the use of the trademark "Apple"
Still, Google could have selected a term that was derived from the game of Go instead, but Atari is already taken.