Employees are paid a small sum so that the company can make a larger one- this is universally true of profitable enterprises.
This is justified by the idea that employees are given a small, but reliable, salary while the employer invests capital up front and takes on the risk of feast and famine in the marketplace.
Offensive? To the employee it certainly is when you look at the ratios between salary and what the company makes in profit per employee. It's even more offensive in the "New Bush Economy" where job stability at any salary level is increasingly hard to come by.
However, if you happen to be on the "employer" side of the coin (and, this includes those who do not actually "employ" a staff, but have sufficient means that they do not "need" to work), you're going to do everything in your power to ensure that you, and likely your heirs, don't end up on the "employee" side of the equation... ever.
So, if there's a chance that an employee is going to come up with something that's worth $100M per year for the next 15 years, do you give that, or even a seemingly insignificant 1% of that, to the employee, or do you hold it for yourself?
This is all justifiable in terms of risking investment capital, development costs, etc... at least to those with the capital.
This is a very lucrative program for those who participate ($7,000 per patent grant) - not participating simply means that the $7,000 will be going to other employees - if this company is anything like those I have experience with, there is a (stupid, arbitrary) fixed number of patents they will file each quarter.
At least by participating, you can attempt to craft patents of true value, instead of crap that looks good to the CEO.
I disagree that patents are a net drain on society - it's the lawyers that are the net drain. Patents in and of themselves are actually a good idea that has been perverted in the last 20 years to a self-perpetuating advocacy and litigation fest.
In the old days, warez exchangers would require a newbie to send something to them first before sharing anything - something about entrapment if the investigator would do something illegal to gain the marks' trust. The last paragraph of the article mentions that distribution to MediaSentry would constitute infringement - I wonder if P2P networks will be adopting the old "send me one first" mechanism in light of this?
As an employee of an OEM that does these installs all day long, I can say they really messed up.....
Yeah, but I bet you don't work for an asian vendor of cost competitive commodity goods. Sure there are procedures to prevent this, sure they don't cost much to implement, but the culture that enforces the kind of safeguards you mention does actually ingrain cost into the product along with quality.
It's much more cost effective to fire a couple of guys as an example and continue with business as usual, especially when the majority of your customer base doesn't really care.
It is possible that the (nameless, now jobless) employee actually ran a QC script that was simply fooled because it built its reference file list from the already "enhanced" ISO.
Not saying that he's not a dip---- for not knowing what's supposed to be there, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually executed a QC script given to him by some manager who got it from an employee they haven't seen in years....
Just because they don't have a steering crew doesn't mean that they won't have a gun crew....
Lose enough $1M ships and you'll start seeing Coasties sprout up all around the things. It also takes a pretty sophisticated pirate to capitalize on something like this, they won't be swimming out from the slums to steal parts.
Thought One - these clouds contain sea salt - I hope they aren't making any of them near farmlands....
Thought Two - if this really has a significant cooling effect, it should be possible to steer tropical storms - hopefully so they turn North before making landfall....
Thought Three - the geo-political ramifications will never end - if you are doing this kind of thing actively, you will be changing global rainfall patterns, and whoever is having a drought will be pissed, whether you caused it or not.
Bring it on, it's certainly cheap enough ($6B paid by 300M people is $20 each, about what the US has paid in recent fuel cost increases for 200 miles of driving), and shut if off if it sucks.
First: fill the chamber with dry Nitrogen gas to reduce the chance of corrosion.
Second: paint the steel with a good epoxy or other water resistant paint (research what's used on submarines / ships' hulls.)
Third: if one storage technology is good, two or three are better. I'd go for CD, DVD and Blu-Ray, followed by Compact Flash, SD Flash and USB thumb drive Flash. Yes, the different flash standards are redundant - but redundancy isn't a bad thing, and I'd make my copies on different media instead of three copies on a single type.
Fourth: As has been suggested above, I'd include a mini-notebook or other computer with ports to read the media - a blu-ray drive might be on the pricey side today, but I'm guessing it has the best longevity, and if you can afford it, it will be a kick for the capsule openers to see the "exotic cutting edge" tech that was phased out a decade ago. The mini-notebook should include a Gigabit ethernet and wireless 802.11n interface, I suspect those, and possibly USB, will be the only standards still in use in 25 years. Oh, and remove the battery. Not sure if there's a reason to store the battery in your capsule, it could be a big liability. If you feel you must store the battery, at least discharge it first, and consider giving it it's own welded steel compartment.
Fifth: keep an online backup. I've had a website for 10 years, and the photos on it are just as accessible today as they were 10 years ago. The cost over 25 years might be a little high, my host might charge around $3000 for 25 years of service, but your data will be "buried" with terabytes of other people's data, redundantly backed up, and periodically re-formatted to keep up with evolving tech.
Think back to 1983 - RS-232 was the interface du-jour, and you can still buy some new commodity machines with it. Ethernet was just getting started, competing with token ring, X-25 and all manner of other networks. There's no way to tell what will be available in 25 years, but if all goes well, it shouldn't be too hard to retrieve your photos. 50 years is probably another story....
I worked for a company that filed a lot of moronic patents, and they handed our $2000 bonuses (per patent) to anyone who would push the process to get a patent through.
Just because the patents are moronic doesn't mean the inventors are - what gets filed is at the whim of management, I'd hardly call the inventors morons just because they took the bonus money.
Even though I headed for the exits of that company as fast as was practical, I still ended up named inventor on about 5 patents within a year's time.
Sure, you can stand on principles, but I noticed at that place that principles had nothing to do with rewards, and the patent bonuses came in handy when paying most of my own relocation out of there...
In what twisted reality are you living? In my reality, the little guy needs income, to wit: a job, without which he will, in the space of something like 6 months to a year (or two if he's rare and has savings), lose his home, means of transportation, and most likely his spouse and children. Furthering your divergence from the earthly plane is the fact that barristers, advocates, abogados, and douche-bag ambulance chasers on my planet all expect to be paid. Unless you have such a slam-dunk obvious case that one of these pillars of society will take it on contingency (which is expressly forbidden by the courts in many situations: consult your local douche-bag for details), where does this money come from - oh yes, the next mortgage payment, and what does the wife think of that, paying $300 per hour on a gamble against $1800 per month for a roof? Oh, and how long do cases typically require to come to trial?
Meanwhile, on the other side, we have the employer, who likely either employs a legal department or, if they are relatively small, at least has one or more on retainer.
With these starting conditions, I'd say that the little guy doesn't have much edge at all. Of course, if the little guy does get to see the inside of the courtroom before he's homeless, he does have all kinds of sympathy on his side - and that comprises a bit of an edge. Add to this the fact that little guys (with any brains) would only pursue cases in which they are far onto the righteous side, and I bet the little guy has a better than average win record, in the courtroom.
Stampers are a nice idea, but use of one may in and of itself be grounds for dismissal under confidentiality agreements that employers commonly require the little guys to sign (transmission of confidential information, including internal communications, to a third party.)
Hat tip to the virtuous attorneys out there, all nineteen of you worldwide, keep fighting the good fight!
To the poster: consider polishing the resume' - this is sound advice at any time, but if you are having philosophical differences, it might be a good time to shop the market, get a realistic picture of your options, and then decide what to do based on that information. If there's nothing else out there for you, sit down, shut up, and file the patent - it's actually good for your resume no matter how you slice it, even if you eventually seek employment at an ideally minded firm, you can tell them that the reason you are leaving your current job is because they compelled you to file the patent and you didn't have any options at the time. If your options are strong, you can use that to leverage your current position - demand the patent not be filed, and a pay raise, and if they don't like it, exercise that option to move to a new job.
I suspect this all centers on delaying competition from co-launching similar products.
It's common in all industries, the element of uniqueness adds value, and often that value is the difference between go / no-go for development.
So, I imagine he can talk about his hobbies all he wants, as long as he doesn't mind killing any associated projects. It would be the same at any other (established, successful, ossified bureaucratic) company. He could try going to a small, inexperienced independent who would let him blab all he wants about things that aren't going to be available for 5 years, but I bet he's better off where he is.
If you like green grass growing beside your highway, nitrates are a good thing. Now, if the highway is a 10 lane bridge that drains directly into a shallow bay, then the nitrates might be a concern.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to attack you - though I must also admit that I didn't detect a coherent argument in your "cynical cynical cynical" post... Yes, the US is doing relatively well - especially when compared to, well, anywhere, 100 years ago.
My personal summary of the US court system is that the winners, in the vast majority of cases, are not truth, justice, or the righteous, it's the lawyers that win. Jurors have their time wasted, defendants are often harassed for no just reason, and plaintiffs with legitimate complaints face tremendous delays and cost - all of which profit the lawyers.
So, congratulations for choosing a lucrative field. I hope your idealism lasts beyond law school and you can actually do something to improve the system, instead of merely profiting from it.
Funny, I thought the whole "paper or plastic?" thing was started as a way to personally engage the customer and show them that the store caters to their wishes. Reducing this to an electronic system (besides being obvious) is also eliminating the primary (social) value of the practice.
The subject matter of patents isn't required (by the PTO) to be valuable, I wonder how many people got bonuses at IBM based on this patent being issued? It certainly is included in the annual tally of patents issued to big Blue.
If you're in a bad spot, an extra $5K per year isn't going to change jack, it's still a bad spot, and bad spots aren't likely to give you the perks or the cash, anyway.
What if your profit margin is $10k per year per employee? Then that $5k is going to half your profits.
Businesses with thin margins like that (WalMart, for instance) are usually not great career choices.
Also, I was speaking from the perspective of the employee - $14K per year in a graduate assistantship is a far better way to live than $19K per year as manager at McD's. Even if you might eventually make $24K per year as manager (that's a 26% increase, almost double what the TA is making!!!) your life is still going to suck. Even if you're stuck at $14K/year as a teaching assistant for a decade, the perks aren't bad, and you can have a decent quality of life. I managed to pay for my own 3 month European vacation while making only $14K/year, I didn't stay in the finest hotels or gamble in the casino, but it was a good time anyway.
Law student? You are becoming part of the problem. If there was a shortage of lawyers, we'd get by pretty well - hell, you'd probably have enough legitimate work that you wouldn't need to charge $450 per hour for the paying cases you do get.
On the other hand, when you have a shortage of doctors, you get the present state of health care in America...
The really cool thing about monetary debt is that it is all forgotten after a Nuclear holocaust.
If there is another way out of the present US debt load in the next 50 years, I haven't heard about it.
After the big media blitz, I imagine the laptop was found "somewhere," and it was a lot easier to explain if "somewhere" became the same locked office it was supposed to be in. I seem to recall some removable hard drives in the Los Alamos fiasco that also eventually "were discovered" in secure areas like behind a copy machine or something.
/cynical
realistic (what's the difference, anyway?)
Laptops and removable hard drives are inherently portable - if you really care about preserving the confidentiality of anything, it should be treated in an "eyes only" manner while on the portable media - when you're done, either encrypt or wipe. If the portable device leaves your sight for 15 minutes, you can assume that it has been copied. If it's not encrypted, it doesn't matter how many passwords are required, it can be copied in a very short time with a screwdriver and a mini-notebook, or any other contraption with a compatible drive controller.
Today's system of laws was created by lawyers, and guess who these laws benefit first? Well, to first benefit lawmakers directly would be too obvious, they at least go the route of pork barreling to benefit those who can then give back to them via campaign contributions and other mechanisms legal and otherwise. After that, the lawyers are usually well taken care of - any disputes benefit attorneys on both sides, at the expense of plaintiff and/or defendant. Nevermind that 99% of the population is now sufficiently educated to make rational argument infront of a judge, the interlocking laws, case law, rules of venue, predisposition of individual judges, etc. ensure that a lawyer experienced in the venue has overwhelming advantage over a normally educated layman in any case.
Were it not for this byzantine structure, lawyers might find themselves out of work, similarly to most typists, now that most people do their own typing, or blacksmiths now that most people don't use horses. Instead, law continues to be a vast and lucrative field - and will continue to be so as long as we continue to let lawyers make laws to benefit lawyers.
What you are hinting at would be legal anarchy at best, a tyranny of the wealthy at it's worst who could employ vast pools of lawyers to strip away every right and freedom you currently enjoy.
Sorry, I am missing the distinction between the above description and the current state of affairs in the U.S.? As far as I can see, there's nothing preventing that from happening now, other than the fact that the rich don't usually bother.
I think the real issue is that he is suing the USAF under the DMCA, which is not a provision of the DMCA. If he would have identified individual person(s) responsible, he should be allowed to sue them.
Personally, this smells of grandstanding to me, and that's most of what sovereign immunity is there to prevent - wrongful death suits against the armed forces, claims of civil damages against lawmakers who legislated you out of a living, etc.
I like the the first post's Petty reference... I take it to be a reference to the coming revolution when the legislature sufficiently pisses off the populace with elitist crap like this. Of course, DMCA is a far cry from "let them eat cake."
If this bothers you (time card accounting) you might want to look into smaller companies - I've had good luck with the smaller places, no 30 year career in a single place for me, but my first job ran 12 years before the new CEO crashed and burned the operation - I have lots of friends working for "big" places that have had less job security, more frequent layoffs, etc.
In the bigger company I worked for, it was largely up to your department director how the time card situation was handled. My boss was pretty cool about it all, as was most of design engineering. If you got near manufacturing, they were the opposite - more as you describe.
Strict time accounting isn't the worst thing in the world, but I do think it's a bit fantastical to believe that your employees are delivering value just because they're occupying a chair.
With fuel costs in the US doubling in the last 2 years, it's going to get even more interesting, since many jobs can be accomplished via telecommuting - people who drive 60+ miles a day in their SUV are burning $80 a week in gasoline, not to mention spending up to 2 hours a day on the road. Letting them work from home has very obvious benefits, if the corporation can learn to trust its worker bees.
Slashdot Mirror
Employees are paid a small sum so that the company can make a larger one- this is universally true of profitable enterprises.
This is justified by the idea that employees are given a small, but reliable, salary while the employer invests capital up front and takes on the risk of feast and famine in the marketplace.
Offensive? To the employee it certainly is when you look at the ratios between salary and what the company makes in profit per employee. It's even more offensive in the "New Bush Economy" where job stability at any salary level is increasingly hard to come by.
However, if you happen to be on the "employer" side of the coin (and, this includes those who do not actually "employ" a staff, but have sufficient means that they do not "need" to work), you're going to do everything in your power to ensure that you, and likely your heirs, don't end up on the "employee" side of the equation... ever.
So, if there's a chance that an employee is going to come up with something that's worth $100M per year for the next 15 years, do you give that, or even a seemingly insignificant 1% of that, to the employee, or do you hold it for yourself?
This is all justifiable in terms of risking investment capital, development costs, etc... at least to those with the capital.
This is a very lucrative program for those who participate ($7,000 per patent grant) - not participating simply means that the $7,000 will be going to other employees - if this company is anything like those I have experience with, there is a (stupid, arbitrary) fixed number of patents they will file each quarter.
At least by participating, you can attempt to craft patents of true value, instead of crap that looks good to the CEO.
I disagree that patents are a net drain on society - it's the lawyers that are the net drain. Patents in and of themselves are actually a good idea that has been perverted in the last 20 years to a self-perpetuating advocacy and litigation fest.
In the old days, warez exchangers would require a newbie to send something to them first before sharing anything - something about entrapment if the investigator would do something illegal to gain the marks' trust. The last paragraph of the article mentions that distribution to MediaSentry would constitute infringement - I wonder if P2P networks will be adopting the old "send me one first" mechanism in light of this?
If $1B is a small potato - give me 2.
As long as you NEVER want to sell ANYTHING through the Apple store EVER again, you can flaunt the NDA and probably get away with it.
As an employee of an OEM that does these installs all day long, I can say they really messed up.....
Yeah, but I bet you don't work for an asian vendor of cost competitive commodity goods. Sure there are procedures to prevent this, sure they don't cost much to implement, but the culture that enforces the kind of safeguards you mention does actually ingrain cost into the product along with quality.
It's much more cost effective to fire a couple of guys as an example and continue with business as usual, especially when the majority of your customer base doesn't really care.
It is possible that the (nameless, now jobless) employee actually ran a QC script that was simply fooled because it built its reference file list from the already "enhanced" ISO.
Not saying that he's not a dip---- for not knowing what's supposed to be there, but I wouldn't be surprised if he actually executed a QC script given to him by some manager who got it from an employee they haven't seen in years....
Just because they don't have a steering crew doesn't mean that they won't have a gun crew.... Lose enough $1M ships and you'll start seeing Coasties sprout up all around the things. It also takes a pretty sophisticated pirate to capitalize on something like this, they won't be swimming out from the slums to steal parts.
Bring it on, it's certainly cheap enough ($6B paid by 300M people is $20 each, about what the US has paid in recent fuel cost increases for 200 miles of driving), and shut if off if it sucks.
First: fill the chamber with dry Nitrogen gas to reduce the chance of corrosion.
Second: paint the steel with a good epoxy or other water resistant paint (research what's used on submarines / ships' hulls.)
Third: if one storage technology is good, two or three are better. I'd go for CD, DVD and Blu-Ray, followed by Compact Flash, SD Flash and USB thumb drive Flash. Yes, the different flash standards are redundant - but redundancy isn't a bad thing, and I'd make my copies on different media instead of three copies on a single type.
Fourth: As has been suggested above, I'd include a mini-notebook or other computer with ports to read the media - a blu-ray drive might be on the pricey side today, but I'm guessing it has the best longevity, and if you can afford it, it will be a kick for the capsule openers to see the "exotic cutting edge" tech that was phased out a decade ago. The mini-notebook should include a Gigabit ethernet and wireless 802.11n interface, I suspect those, and possibly USB, will be the only standards still in use in 25 years. Oh, and remove the battery. Not sure if there's a reason to store the battery in your capsule, it could be a big liability. If you feel you must store the battery, at least discharge it first, and consider giving it it's own welded steel compartment.
Fifth: keep an online backup. I've had a website for 10 years, and the photos on it are just as accessible today as they were 10 years ago. The cost over 25 years might be a little high, my host might charge around $3000 for 25 years of service, but your data will be "buried" with terabytes of other people's data, redundantly backed up, and periodically re-formatted to keep up with evolving tech.
Think back to 1983 - RS-232 was the interface du-jour, and you can still buy some new commodity machines with it. Ethernet was just getting started, competing with token ring, X-25 and all manner of other networks. There's no way to tell what will be available in 25 years, but if all goes well, it shouldn't be too hard to retrieve your photos. 50 years is probably another story....
I worked for a company that filed a lot of moronic patents, and they handed our $2000 bonuses (per patent) to anyone who would push the process to get a patent through.
Just because the patents are moronic doesn't mean the inventors are - what gets filed is at the whim of management, I'd hardly call the inventors morons just because they took the bonus money.
Even though I headed for the exits of that company as fast as was practical, I still ended up named inventor on about 5 patents within a year's time.
Sure, you can stand on principles, but I noticed at that place that principles had nothing to do with rewards, and the patent bonuses came in handy when paying most of my own relocation out of there...
Resistance is futile?
In general, little guy has the edge.
In what twisted reality are you living? In my reality, the little guy needs income, to wit: a job, without which he will, in the space of something like 6 months to a year (or two if he's rare and has savings), lose his home, means of transportation, and most likely his spouse and children. Furthering your divergence from the earthly plane is the fact that barristers, advocates, abogados, and douche-bag ambulance chasers on my planet all expect to be paid. Unless you have such a slam-dunk obvious case that one of these pillars of society will take it on contingency (which is expressly forbidden by the courts in many situations: consult your local douche-bag for details), where does this money come from - oh yes, the next mortgage payment, and what does the wife think of that, paying $300 per hour on a gamble against $1800 per month for a roof? Oh, and how long do cases typically require to come to trial?
Meanwhile, on the other side, we have the employer, who likely either employs a legal department or, if they are relatively small, at least has one or more on retainer.
With these starting conditions, I'd say that the little guy doesn't have much edge at all. Of course, if the little guy does get to see the inside of the courtroom before he's homeless, he does have all kinds of sympathy on his side - and that comprises a bit of an edge. Add to this the fact that little guys (with any brains) would only pursue cases in which they are far onto the righteous side, and I bet the little guy has a better than average win record, in the courtroom.
Stampers are a nice idea, but use of one may in and of itself be grounds for dismissal under confidentiality agreements that employers commonly require the little guys to sign (transmission of confidential information, including internal communications, to a third party.)
Hat tip to the virtuous attorneys out there, all nineteen of you worldwide, keep fighting the good fight!
To the poster: consider polishing the resume' - this is sound advice at any time, but if you are having philosophical differences, it might be a good time to shop the market, get a realistic picture of your options, and then decide what to do based on that information. If there's nothing else out there for you, sit down, shut up, and file the patent - it's actually good for your resume no matter how you slice it, even if you eventually seek employment at an ideally minded firm, you can tell them that the reason you are leaving your current job is because they compelled you to file the patent and you didn't have any options at the time. If your options are strong, you can use that to leverage your current position - demand the patent not be filed, and a pay raise, and if they don't like it, exercise that option to move to a new job.
I suspect this all centers on delaying competition from co-launching similar products.
It's common in all industries, the element of uniqueness adds value, and often that value is the difference between go / no-go for development.
So, I imagine he can talk about his hobbies all he wants, as long as he doesn't mind killing any associated projects. It would be the same at any other (established, successful, ossified bureaucratic) company. He could try going to a small, inexperienced independent who would let him blab all he wants about things that aren't going to be available for 5 years, but I bet he's better off where he is.
If you like green grass growing beside your highway, nitrates are a good thing. Now, if the highway is a 10 lane bridge that drains directly into a shallow bay, then the nitrates might be a concern.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to attack you - though I must also admit that I didn't detect a coherent argument in your "cynical cynical cynical" post... Yes, the US is doing relatively well - especially when compared to, well, anywhere, 100 years ago.
My personal summary of the US court system is that the winners, in the vast majority of cases, are not truth, justice, or the righteous, it's the lawyers that win. Jurors have their time wasted, defendants are often harassed for no just reason, and plaintiffs with legitimate complaints face tremendous delays and cost - all of which profit the lawyers.
So, congratulations for choosing a lucrative field. I hope your idealism lasts beyond law school and you can actually do something to improve the system, instead of merely profiting from it.
Funny, I thought the whole "paper or plastic?" thing was started as a way to personally engage the customer and show them that the store caters to their wishes. Reducing this to an electronic system (besides being obvious) is also eliminating the primary (social) value of the practice.
The subject matter of patents isn't required (by the PTO) to be valuable, I wonder how many people got bonuses at IBM based on this patent being issued? It certainly is included in the annual tally of patents issued to big Blue.
What if your profit margin is $10k per year per employee? Then that $5k is going to half your profits.
Businesses with thin margins like that (WalMart, for instance) are usually not great career choices.
Also, I was speaking from the perspective of the employee - $14K per year in a graduate assistantship is a far better way to live than $19K per year as manager at McD's. Even if you might eventually make $24K per year as manager (that's a 26% increase, almost double what the TA is making!!!) your life is still going to suck. Even if you're stuck at $14K/year as a teaching assistant for a decade, the perks aren't bad, and you can have a decent quality of life. I managed to pay for my own 3 month European vacation while making only $14K/year, I didn't stay in the finest hotels or gamble in the casino, but it was a good time anyway.
Law student? You are becoming part of the problem. If there was a shortage of lawyers, we'd get by pretty well - hell, you'd probably have enough legitimate work that you wouldn't need to charge $450 per hour for the paying cases you do get.
On the other hand, when you have a shortage of doctors, you get the present state of health care in America...
The really cool thing about monetary debt is that it is all forgotten after a Nuclear holocaust. If there is another way out of the present US debt load in the next 50 years, I haven't heard about it.
After the big media blitz, I imagine the laptop was found "somewhere," and it was a lot easier to explain if "somewhere" became the same locked office it was supposed to be in. I seem to recall some removable hard drives in the Los Alamos fiasco that also eventually "were discovered" in secure areas like behind a copy machine or something.
/cynical
realistic (what's the difference, anyway?)
Laptops and removable hard drives are inherently portable - if you really care about preserving the confidentiality of anything, it should be treated in an "eyes only" manner while on the portable media - when you're done, either encrypt or wipe. If the portable device leaves your sight for 15 minutes, you can assume that it has been copied. If it's not encrypted, it doesn't matter how many passwords are required, it can be copied in a very short time with a screwdriver and a mini-notebook, or any other contraption with a compatible drive controller.
/realistic
And, your point, exactly?
Today's system of laws was created by lawyers, and guess who these laws benefit first? Well, to first benefit lawmakers directly would be too obvious, they at least go the route of pork barreling to benefit those who can then give back to them via campaign contributions and other mechanisms legal and otherwise. After that, the lawyers are usually well taken care of - any disputes benefit attorneys on both sides, at the expense of plaintiff and/or defendant. Nevermind that 99% of the population is now sufficiently educated to make rational argument infront of a judge, the interlocking laws, case law, rules of venue, predisposition of individual judges, etc. ensure that a lawyer experienced in the venue has overwhelming advantage over a normally educated layman in any case.
Were it not for this byzantine structure, lawyers might find themselves out of work, similarly to most typists, now that most people do their own typing, or blacksmiths now that most people don't use horses. Instead, law continues to be a vast and lucrative field - and will continue to be so as long as we continue to let lawyers make laws to benefit lawyers.
What you are hinting at would be legal anarchy at best, a tyranny of the wealthy at it's worst who could employ vast pools of lawyers to strip away every right and freedom you currently enjoy.
Sorry, I am missing the distinction between the above description and the current state of affairs in the U.S.? As far as I can see, there's nothing preventing that from happening now, other than the fact that the rich don't usually bother.
I think the real issue is that he is suing the USAF under the DMCA, which is not a provision of the DMCA. If he would have identified individual person(s) responsible, he should be allowed to sue them.
Personally, this smells of grandstanding to me, and that's most of what sovereign immunity is there to prevent - wrongful death suits against the armed forces, claims of civil damages against lawmakers who legislated you out of a living, etc.
I like the the first post's Petty reference... I take it to be a reference to the coming revolution when the legislature sufficiently pisses off the populace with elitist crap like this. Of course, DMCA is a far cry from "let them eat cake."
If this bothers you (time card accounting) you might want to look into smaller companies - I've had good luck with the smaller places, no 30 year career in a single place for me, but my first job ran 12 years before the new CEO crashed and burned the operation - I have lots of friends working for "big" places that have had less job security, more frequent layoffs, etc.
In the bigger company I worked for, it was largely up to your department director how the time card situation was handled. My boss was pretty cool about it all, as was most of design engineering. If you got near manufacturing, they were the opposite - more as you describe.
Strict time accounting isn't the worst thing in the world, but I do think it's a bit fantastical to believe that your employees are delivering value just because they're occupying a chair.
With fuel costs in the US doubling in the last 2 years, it's going to get even more interesting, since many jobs can be accomplished via telecommuting - people who drive 60+ miles a day in their SUV are burning $80 a week in gasoline, not to mention spending up to 2 hours a day on the road. Letting them work from home has very obvious benefits, if the corporation can learn to trust its worker bees.