And then the call center people get hired back when customers loudly complain about the IVR system not doing what they need. Call me a cynic, but I just don't see something like this working for anything but the most basic info, like providing someone their account balance. This can be done by existing phone menu systems. I for one would rather push buttons than talk to a computer. I see this as another trend, like outsourcing call centers to India, which will work for some things but not most.
So nobody wants to listen to you drone on for 2 hours about how you know so much more than them? Why am I not surprised. If you want people to take you seriously, you had better have some constructive, practical ideas. Better yet, form your own company, treat developers the way you think they should be treated, and see how it works out. If it turns out to be a success story, write a book about it. It will sell, I guarantee you. If it fails but you learn a lot of valuable lessons along the way, write a book anyway. You'll have some interesting insights to provide to people. What won't get you anywhere is bitching about a problem that you made no attempt to solve and insisting people use your suggestions even though you have no experience in the area. Once you see things from the owner's side, you'll have a lot more insight to offer.
On that note, if you were a movie theater employee making minimum wage, how would you enfore this law? Would you find someone with a camcorder and say "Excuse me sir, I'm going to need you to wait over here for the cops to arrive"? Maybe if you have a death wish. Of course the cops could be called without the camcorder user being aware of it, but what if he isn't noticed until the movie is almost over? If the theaters can't employ a security force capable of detaining someone, and they won't because it would cost too much, the only reasonable conclusion is that the MPAA will lobby the government to put FBI agents in certain theaters for enforcement purposes. And what a great use of OUR money that would be.
I realize this could have a deterrent value, but it's still a bit extreme. I bet nobody would ever speed on the highway again if the punishment were permanent loss of driver's license and car confiscation, but not too many people think this would be a good idea.
This is simply not a good use of taxpayer's money. If someone distributes copies of a film they recorded in a theater, the existing penalties are harsh enough, and the FBI will already get involved in prosecution. When precedent has been set that any corporate group can buy a law that prohibits anything that might decrease their profits, the rights of the people will definitely suffer, even if this particular law doesn't really violate an individual's rights. Best Buy doesn't like people coming into their stores and writing down prices of items. They can prohibit this if they like, but I'd hate to think they might be able to buy a law that allows them to have people prosecuted for doing this.
Or worse: The fat sweaty guy next to you cuts a huge fart. Everyone moves to the other side, but it still reeks, and there's still a few hundred thousand miles left to go.
Another side effect from this automated computer monitoring and maintenance is that nontechnical students will get used to the idea of having their computer completely taken care of by the network and when they graduate or move off campus, they will have no idea that their commercial internet connection won't automatically do these things. They will then learn the hard way why their computer has been getting gradually slower until they can't use the internet at all.
If the college is requiring monitoring software to protect all PCs on a network and the owner of the machine pays for this service, it could create some liability issues for the college. If someone were to hack the auto updating system and push out some harmful software which damaged students' data and/or machine, people would blame the university for not preventing it and demand compensation. Depending on state laws, they might not even be able to insert some sort of legally valid disclaimer in their policy. In addition, if the network were hacked to create a massive spamming/DDOS system using all of those PCs on the university's high bandwidth internet connection, they would instantly be added to every blacklist in the world and would have a very hard time using email after that.
I think that's only for companies that you have done business with. Most of the telemarketing calls I used to get were from long distance companies, and then they all died down after the law went into effect. As I recall, at the beginning of the year the FCC fined either AT&T or Sprint for do not call violations.
I don't think honest charities use telemarketing, because the success rate is too low for them to afford it. The only ones that can afford to use this unsuccessful form of solicitation are the barely legal charities that give only about 20% of donations to the actual cause they claim to represent. This is why I hang up on all telemarketers, "charity" or not.
Cry me a river. I think its great that the law makes things very difficult for telemarketers. Now we can kill off the few that remain. This is an industry that caused its own death due to relentless abuse of the public. Had they made a good faith effort to not call people who requested to not be called, these regulations would not have been necessary.
Although IANAL, I don't see how these settlements against small companies would have any bearing on an actual case. An actual win in court would set legal precedence, but usually the early victories are out of court settlements, which seldom admit guilt. They typically say "I will pay you X amount of dollars to settle this claim". The company could use this to intimidate others into settling, but it is my understanding that such claims have no value in court since they do not pertain to actual case law or legal decisions, and are merely agreements between 2 or more parties.
It sounds like your company does have a legitimate case for a patent and/or copyright infringement suit, although direct copying of proprietary code is illegal with or without patents. One thing companies have always done to establish prior use of an idea is to publish it in a trade journal. That might be kind of hard to do with online calendaring software, but scientific discoveries are commonly published for the purpose of laying claim to an idea, thereby preventing the type of suit you described. IBM is known for doing this.
As a side note, your story is very interesting and I would have modded you up if you were not a GNAA troll.
Hey, it might actually work if you give it a creative name and description, such as "transferring, via a series of binary codes, hyroglyphically(sp?) represented character sets for the purpose of information propagation". Slip that one past the examiners and you have just patented everything having to do with computers, and the world is yours. Either that or the resulting outrage causes a complete overthrow of the patent system.
It would only be fitting for Best Buy to use Real Player for this service. 2 companies that don't give a crap about their customers would go together very well. Best Buy is already known for teaming up with less reputable business partners, such as Household Bank for the Best Buy credit card. As a general rule, I avoid Best Buy and everything they own/operate. They have shown many times that they hold the customer in very low regard, so I will always shop somewhere else now, even if I have to pay a little more.
If the RIAA wants to really make some cash, they can just start cracking down on businesses that don't have a music license. I'd bet that 90% of the time when you hear music playing in a waiting room or office, they didn't pay for a license. And if this was enforced to an extreme, people just might demand a change to the ridiculous laws that define this as a public performance. Especially in areas where you need a license to play a radio station, which already has a public performance license.
Please don't do this! Dear god, its annoying. I know it seems like a good idea that might even be helpful to people, but its always annoyed the crap out of me. I guess its the whole captive audience thing. The one thing worse than advertisements on hold are those damn commercials played in grocery stores now. At Chicago area Jewel stores, they have replaced the boring music for super annoying high volume food product commercials. It makes going to the store more miserable than it used to be, and I bet its costing them sales since people seem to be more in a hurry to get out of there.
I don't see how playing music on hold is any different than playing it in your waiting room. I know entertainment establishments have to have a license to play music from the major labels, but I don't think this applies to any and every business.
Are you for real? If you were the guy's manager and you had evidence that he was selling company data, convincing enough evidence to get him arrested, you would keep him on the payroll until he was convicted? Yes, the guy is entitled to a fair trial before being punished by the legal system, but as many other posters have pointed out, a company can fire someone for almost any reason they want. And when there's clear evidence of misconduct, an employee doesn't have a chance with a wrongful dismissal suit, even in a non right to work state.
Why anyone would be using a Hotmail account at this point is beyond me. With their crappy 3MB space limits and the assload of spam you get (even with filters on). I bet Yahoo got a lot of new people signing up in the last week. Using a hotmail account for anything other than a throwaway spam account is just dumb.
I hope your laptop was not running Windows, if so, the security procedures you and your organization follows are pointless. Not to mention easily defeated with a knoppix boot disk.
And then I can kick his ass out. Which is a large part of what this law allows users to do. Any company that claims some sort of first amendment rights to have their software stay on a user's computer after they've tried to remove it has a very fucked up interpretation of the constitution. Most spyware products are like viruses anyway (difficult to remove, can regenerate themselves). Can you think of any reason whatsoever why a law cannot constitutionally be passed to prohibit parasitic programs that make themselves as difficult as possible to install?
Slashdot Mirror
And then the call center people get hired back when customers loudly complain about the IVR system not doing what they need. Call me a cynic, but I just don't see something like this working for anything but the most basic info, like providing someone their account balance. This can be done by existing phone menu systems. I for one would rather push buttons than talk to a computer. I see this as another trend, like outsourcing call centers to India, which will work for some things but not most.
So nobody wants to listen to you drone on for 2 hours about how you know so much more than them? Why am I not surprised. If you want people to take you seriously, you had better have some constructive, practical ideas. Better yet, form your own company, treat developers the way you think they should be treated, and see how it works out. If it turns out to be a success story, write a book about it. It will sell, I guarantee you. If it fails but you learn a lot of valuable lessons along the way, write a book anyway. You'll have some interesting insights to provide to people. What won't get you anywhere is bitching about a problem that you made no attempt to solve and insisting people use your suggestions even though you have no experience in the area. Once you see things from the owner's side, you'll have a lot more insight to offer.
On that note, if you were a movie theater employee making minimum wage, how would you enfore this law? Would you find someone with a camcorder and say "Excuse me sir, I'm going to need you to wait over here for the cops to arrive"? Maybe if you have a death wish. Of course the cops could be called without the camcorder user being aware of it, but what if he isn't noticed until the movie is almost over? If the theaters can't employ a security force capable of detaining someone, and they won't because it would cost too much, the only reasonable conclusion is that the MPAA will lobby the government to put FBI agents in certain theaters for enforcement purposes. And what a great use of OUR money that would be.
I realize this could have a deterrent value, but it's still a bit extreme. I bet nobody would ever speed on the highway again if the punishment were permanent loss of driver's license and car confiscation, but not too many people think this would be a good idea.
This is simply not a good use of taxpayer's money. If someone distributes copies of a film they recorded in a theater, the existing penalties are harsh enough, and the FBI will already get involved in prosecution. When precedent has been set that any corporate group can buy a law that prohibits anything that might decrease their profits, the rights of the people will definitely suffer, even if this particular law doesn't really violate an individual's rights. Best Buy doesn't like people coming into their stores and writing down prices of items. They can prohibit this if they like, but I'd hate to think they might be able to buy a law that allows them to have people prosecuted for doing this.
Or worse: The fat sweaty guy next to you cuts a huge fart. Everyone moves to the other side, but it still reeks, and there's still a few hundred thousand miles left to go.
Another side effect from this automated computer monitoring and maintenance is that nontechnical students will get used to the idea of having their computer completely taken care of by the network and when they graduate or move off campus, they will have no idea that their commercial internet connection won't automatically do these things. They will then learn the hard way why their computer has been getting gradually slower until they can't use the internet at all.
If the college is requiring monitoring software to protect all PCs on a network and the owner of the machine pays for this service, it could create some liability issues for the college. If someone were to hack the auto updating system and push out some harmful software which damaged students' data and/or machine, people would blame the university for not preventing it and demand compensation. Depending on state laws, they might not even be able to insert some sort of legally valid disclaimer in their policy. In addition, if the network were hacked to create a massive spamming/DDOS system using all of those PCs on the university's high bandwidth internet connection, they would instantly be added to every blacklist in the world and would have a very hard time using email after that.
Just like the ACLU.
Do you have a clue as to how email works? Didn't think so, or you would never suggest something so retarded as a do not email list.
I think that's only for companies that you have done business with. Most of the telemarketing calls I used to get were from long distance companies, and then they all died down after the law went into effect. As I recall, at the beginning of the year the FCC fined either AT&T or Sprint for do not call violations.
I don't think honest charities use telemarketing, because the success rate is too low for them to afford it. The only ones that can afford to use this unsuccessful form of solicitation are the barely legal charities that give only about 20% of donations to the actual cause they claim to represent. This is why I hang up on all telemarketers, "charity" or not.
Cry me a river. I think its great that the law makes things very difficult for telemarketers. Now we can kill off the few that remain. This is an industry that caused its own death due to relentless abuse of the public. Had they made a good faith effort to not call people who requested to not be called, these regulations would not have been necessary.
Although IANAL, I don't see how these settlements against small companies would have any bearing on an actual case. An actual win in court would set legal precedence, but usually the early victories are out of court settlements, which seldom admit guilt. They typically say "I will pay you X amount of dollars to settle this claim". The company could use this to intimidate others into settling, but it is my understanding that such claims have no value in court since they do not pertain to actual case law or legal decisions, and are merely agreements between 2 or more parties.
It sounds like your company does have a legitimate case for a patent and/or copyright infringement suit, although direct copying of proprietary code is illegal with or without patents. One thing companies have always done to establish prior use of an idea is to publish it in a trade journal. That might be kind of hard to do with online calendaring software, but scientific discoveries are commonly published for the purpose of laying claim to an idea, thereby preventing the type of suit you described. IBM is known for doing this.
As a side note, your story is very interesting and I would have modded you up if you were not a GNAA troll.
Hey, it might actually work if you give it a creative name and description, such as "transferring, via a series of binary codes, hyroglyphically(sp?) represented character sets for the purpose of information propagation". Slip that one past the examiners and you have just patented everything having to do with computers, and the world is yours. Either that or the resulting outrage causes a complete overthrow of the patent system.
It would only be fitting for Best Buy to use Real Player for this service. 2 companies that don't give a crap about their customers would go together very well. Best Buy is already known for teaming up with less reputable business partners, such as Household Bank for the Best Buy credit card. As a general rule, I avoid Best Buy and everything they own/operate. They have shown many times that they hold the customer in very low regard, so I will always shop somewhere else now, even if I have to pay a little more.
If SCO finds out about this they'll start demanding $699 per wash. Hey, it's no less reasonable than their other demands.
In other news, most of the enlarged free storage offered on hotmail will be used to store free enlargement offers.
If the RIAA wants to really make some cash, they can just start cracking down on businesses that don't have a music license. I'd bet that 90% of the time when you hear music playing in a waiting room or office, they didn't pay for a license. And if this was enforced to an extreme, people just might demand a change to the ridiculous laws that define this as a public performance. Especially in areas where you need a license to play a radio station, which already has a public performance license.
Please don't do this! Dear god, its annoying. I know it seems like a good idea that might even be helpful to people, but its always annoyed the crap out of me. I guess its the whole captive audience thing. The one thing worse than advertisements on hold are those damn commercials played in grocery stores now. At Chicago area Jewel stores, they have replaced the boring music for super annoying high volume food product commercials. It makes going to the store more miserable than it used to be, and I bet its costing them sales since people seem to be more in a hurry to get out of there.
I don't see how playing music on hold is any different than playing it in your waiting room. I know entertainment establishments have to have a license to play music from the major labels, but I don't think this applies to any and every business.
Are you for real? If you were the guy's manager and you had evidence that he was selling company data, convincing enough evidence to get him arrested, you would keep him on the payroll until he was convicted? Yes, the guy is entitled to a fair trial before being punished by the legal system, but as many other posters have pointed out, a company can fire someone for almost any reason they want. And when there's clear evidence of misconduct, an employee doesn't have a chance with a wrongful dismissal suit, even in a non right to work state.
Why anyone would be using a Hotmail account at this point is beyond me. With their crappy 3MB space limits and the assload of spam you get (even with filters on). I bet Yahoo got a lot of new people signing up in the last week. Using a hotmail account for anything other than a throwaway spam account is just dumb.
I hope your laptop was not running Windows, if so, the security procedures you and your organization follows are pointless. Not to mention easily defeated with a knoppix boot disk.
And then I can kick his ass out. Which is a large part of what this law allows users to do. Any company that claims some sort of first amendment rights to have their software stay on a user's computer after they've tried to remove it has a very fucked up interpretation of the constitution. Most spyware products are like viruses anyway (difficult to remove, can regenerate themselves). Can you think of any reason whatsoever why a law cannot constitutionally be passed to prohibit parasitic programs that make themselves as difficult as possible to install?