More, the states are backing up employers far more than they did in past decades. I think it was Michigan that just became a "right to work" state. The employer need prove nothing - the employer rules, and you obey.
"Work at Will" and "Right to Work" are two different things. What you are describing is a Work at Will, not Right to Work. Michigan has been a Work at Will state for a long long time. But they do recognize the Public Policy and Implied Contract exceptions. If your firing would be in violation of an Official Public Policy, or break an Implied Contract with your employer, they can't fire you.
But you are correct, 43 of the 50 States are "Work at Will" States, and the employer has a lot of leeway to fire you for anything, if there isn't a contract in place. Right to Work makes it more likely that you won't have a contract to protect you.
My company doesn't do a lot of DOD work, but enough of what we do has a NOFORN or higher classification that we have banned all cell phones with integrated cameras from the building.
Even the company president and the sales manager leave their iPhones in their car.
We haven't tried the "destroy the camera" exception.
Our letter had the same patent numbers included in the Bluewave case. So I just assumed after getting their Asses handed to them once, they changed their name to try and fog up the landscape on how to beat them.
Our company got one of these about 6 weeks ago. We kept it, but after some research, we decided to ignore it, for now.
Project Paperless was losing a really big case, that might have got their patent rejected, when they filed to dismiss their lawsuit against someone last year. The defendent got one of the major Copier companies included as another defendent. Project Paperless dismissed the case and ran away and hid. Now they are back.
Our plans to do the same thing if they continue to come after us. Have HP and Microsoft included as defendents, because we are using the software and equipment as designed by both companies.
When I worked for a previous employer, I came up with an idea that was eventually patented. My name is on the inventory, the company was assigned the rights of use.
All patents are like that. The company is never the inventor.
I watched this week as Kodak sold their patent portfolio to a known patent troll. I wondered how we could stop this. Maybe a simple change in US Law.....
Rights could still be assigned to employers, but employers would not have the right to resell those assigned rights. If the company went bankrupt, all those assigned rights would roll back to the original inventor. Anyone else who wanted those rights would have to negotiate with the original inventor. If a Company was purchased by another Company, those assigned rights wouldn't transfer, The new company would have to renegotiate with the original inventory.
This would make it much more difficult/expensive to accumulate portfolios of patents, if they were not the company employing the true inventors.
Sometimes Grid Tie systems are designed that way for the protection of the utility workers, and emergency responders.
If you have a fire in your home/building, firefighters can be at risk for electrocution if they can't easily isolate the solar panels. Grid-tie was designed to automatically isolate the panels when the utility power was cut for this reason.
The other problem with the Disabled Treaty is it is modeled on the American's with Disabilities Act.
While the ADA has done a lot of good for disabled people in our country, I don't see any value to signing a Treaty which would essentially duplicate it. It would unnecessarily complicate the discussion about accessibility and what is required and what isn't.
We had a problem with this in Idaho in the 2008 time fraim
They discovered that the digital gas pumps were crooked. The inspectors used to check them at 5 gallons and 10 gallons and they were always right on.
Someone noticed that the gallons didn't always appear to be measuring at a consistent speed. So they started doing additional testing. The pumps were rigged so that if you bought any amount that wasn't exactly 5 or 10 gallons, you were going to be overcharged. The change was variable, the closer you got to those exact numbers, the closer to exact you total was going to be, but if you dispensed somewhere in the middle, you would pay extra. If you dispensed 7.5 gallons, the pump would charge you for 8 gallons. And over 10 gallons was always going to read high.
Most of the pumps in the State were accurate and honest, but there were several stations rigged like this. The Bureau of Weights and Measures had to switch to a system where the check the pumps over a range of values for accuracy not just specific targets.
I worked for Micro in the early 90's. I loaded up a 386 with 256MB of RAM. We made expansion slots that fit into the ISA slots. I filled every ISA slot with a fully loaded expansion card.
When the PC booted, I had the AutoExec.BAT create a Huge RAM drive, then copy the contents of the Windows directory to the RAM drive and launch Windows from the RAM drive. When we shutdown, we ran a batch file that copied the RAM drive back to the Hard drive.
It was the fastest Windows 3.1 system in the company.
First time I ran a computer with a Flash Drive on it, it felt like that old system.
I worked for Micro in the early 90's. I loaded up a 386 with 256MB of RAM. We made expansion slots that fit into the ISA slots. I filled every ISA slot with a fully loaded expansion card.
When the PC booted, I had the AutoExec.BAT create a Huge RAM drive, then copy the contents of the Windows directory to the RAM drive and launch Windows from the RAM drive. When we shutdown, we ran a batch file that copied the RAM drive back to the Hard drive.
It was the fastest Windows 3.1 system in the company.
First time I ran a computer with a Flash Drive on it, it felt like that old system.
Honestly, because it is convenient, I have custody of my son, but I am limited by court order, how far away I can live from my ex-wife, so she can still visit him. 3 more years to high school graduation, and then I am free of that restriction. I live in a pretty rural area, not many good IT jobs in this area.
Plus it is an ESOP company, when I do leave, I will take about $75,000 in cash with me for my ownership share.
My boss eliminated sick days in 2009. The process of getting sick days was completely asinine before then even. If you worked your full scheduled shifts for a month, you earned 4 hours of sick time. If you left early one day, or had a Dr Appt, anything that caused you not get all of your hours in the month in, you didn't "earn" any sick time that month
Tying sick time to attendance was always a jerk move. He started at this company for minimum wage out of high school and 25 years later is President. He tries to make everyone act like he envisions himself moving up through the ranks...
Wildland Firefighting has a lot of need to get equipment into remote areas, with poor or non-existent roads. Be pretty nice to be able to drop all the vehicles and equipment necessary for a Type 1 Incident Command Team in one flight into a remote area, instead of multiple truck loads.
One advantage this would have is modern weather forecasting. The Graf Zeppelin did not have enough warning of bad weather ahead, and therefore couldn't reroute in time to avoid it.
I work in a manufacturing environment, we manufacture CNC machined parts.
Because of "National Security" regulations, we are not allowed to have Cell Phones in the Building. Photography and Video Cameras are not allowed without management authorization. Kind of a pain in the butt. If we want to video tape a process, to analyze it for improvement, we have to make sure that certain parts and documents are not on screen.
We also are not allowed to hire non-US Citizens. No Green Cards or H-1B visas allowed, so I guess my job is safe.
I was at a training session last week by a wireless network vendor. One of the people in the class was a programmer from MetaGeek, who happens to work on Wireless Packet Capture Analysis software.
He did a 5 minute capture of the activity in the conference and then showed the results. Consistently, the iOS devices in the room were reserving significantly larger amounts of time on the Access Point, and then using a fraction of the time. This would reduce the amount of bandwidth available for other devices. iOS wasn't the only device doing that, but it was more extreme in the behavior.
If you had an access point, that under heavy loads that could ignore that type of behavior, not allowing devices to reserve time, it would improve throughput for everyone.
Heck, who needs a warrant or a court order to gain access to security tapes. The reality is, in the case of the bank robbery, most businesses in the area will freely grant access to their Security Tapes if the Police ask nicely.
First time I was called to Jury Duty was when I was 22. A Deputy showed up at my Parent's home with a Warrant for my arrest on failure to appear for jury duty.
My parents told him that he would be unlikely to find me since I was in the Navy on a ship somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. About a week later, we got our first shipment of mail in about 30 day. Inside was my Summons. I dutifully filled out that I was unavailable and sent it back. About 2 months later, I heard from my parents about the warrant.
I guess the Judge dismissed it, because I haven't ever heard anything about it since, and have passed a couple Security Clearance background checks.
In Idaho it isn't. We get time off for Jury Duty, but it is without pay.
We had 2 critical members of our company who got picked up for a murder trial 3 years ago. Trial took 3 months. They would both come in around 6 am to work a couple hours before court, then more hours in evening just to keep their heads above water.
Developer doesn't have any stores in California. The California resident has to seek them out.
The law could require Apple or Google to delist any app that doesn't accommodate their laws, but a developer in Kazakhstan or Nevada has no presence in California.
My sister is a teacher and she complains about the lack of teacher input
My response was "When was the last time a group of teachers proposed an overhaul of the education system". What I meant by that was I hear a lot of complaining from teachers about how things are, but the only suggestions I usually see revolve around "pay use more" and "smaller class sizes". Both of which add up to more money.
Idaho has a Constitutional Requirement to balance their budget every year. Because of a lawsuit by school districts a few years ago demanding more funding by the State, resulting in a Court ruling, the State Government is responsible for the majority of school funding now. That was the main reason for the switch from Property Tax at the local level to Sales Tax at the State level as the primary funding mechanism.
Because of the economic slowdown, there just isn't anymore money at the State Level to pay the teacher's what they want. Every other State Agency, including welfare and medicaid, had their budgets slashed dramatically before Education was cut $1. Because of the changing in funding, unless a local school district can get a levy passed, they don't have any flexibility in how they pay teacher's either. They just don't have the budget they used to have. They rely heavily on the State money.
What I saw was a bunch of people trying to brainstorm how can we improve education with less money than we used to have. They also took a big swing at Union Busting with this law. Removal of Evergreen Clauses, removal of tenure, limiting negotiations to pay and benefits only (working conditions off limits), allowing reductions in pay/benefits all are directly aimed at the Unions. Some of the districts in the State have got themselves wrapped in all sorts of provisions in the Union contract that have them spending way more money per pupil than other districts.
I have my doubts about the "laptop" per kid, because I am familiar with the smaller districts. At best, they have a teacher who is a part time system administrator. They aren't trained professionals. There is no desktop support. Their wireless networks are pretty rudimentary. All of a sudden we are going to dump 500 mobile users, onto them. It is overload. I did see the announcement that HP got the contract, and it includes installation of Enterprise class wireless networks in the schools that need them. It also includes 3% extra laptops per school and 4 year warranties on the laptops. It is possible, using students, to setup an exchange program to manage the repair process. I am a little more comfortable about it now, but I think that our local schools haven't made the paradigm shift necessary to really take full advantage of the capabilities. Small example, the teachers I know, have no intention of allowing students to submit assignments via email. The school was even considering requiring the laptops be left at school every night because it was "too risky to let kids take them home, they will break them".
I carpool with one of my local school board members, and another one is a close friend. They are both going to vote yes on 1 and 2, and no on 3 (the laptop for every kid plan)
On Wednesday, in Idaho, voters are going to the polls to decide whether or not to repeal State laws changing how education works in Idaho.
Some of the requirements of the new laws 1. Merit Pay for Teachers 2. Parental input into hiring/firing of teachers 3. Elimination of Tenure 4. High School students required to complete two on-line courses in order to graduate 5. Laptop Computer for each high school student 6. More dual credit classes for high school students, so they can complete more of their general education college requirements while still in Idaho
National Education Association has dumped millions into the No campaign so far.
has had it's meaning stretched against all meaning before. Could we stretch it a little more to prosecute companies who ignore the DNT flag?
Up until now, the Internet has basically been run by the people who have the websites. If you visit their website, you are going to get anything they want to give you. If they wanted to be fussy, they might have a TOS that says something like "by visiting this website, you agree to allow us to track you".
There has never been a way for the consumer of the information to tell the website what they were authorized to transmit to the consumers machine. Now there is, Do Not Track. It can interpreted to mean the website is authorized to do anything it wants except, track the user. If the website tracks the user, after receiving a DNT flag, they have accessed the Consumer's PC beyond their authorization.
Each individual violation is very small damages, but in aggregate, when they ignore the flag on millions of visits, it could potentially be big fines/damages. Perfect territory for a Class Action Lawsuit or an adventurous DA trying to make a name for himself. They even open themselves up for this type of lawsuit by publicly announcing they will ignore the flag.
This is a battle for power. The consumer is trying to grab a little power and privacy back from the websites with DNT. The major advertisers are freaking out about even this minor shift in the balance of power.
Slashdot Mirror
More, the states are backing up employers far more than they did in past decades. I think it was Michigan that just became a "right to work" state. The employer need prove nothing - the employer rules, and you obey.
"Work at Will" and "Right to Work" are two different things. What you are describing is a Work at Will, not Right to Work. Michigan has been a Work at Will state for a long long time. But they do recognize the Public Policy and Implied Contract exceptions. If your firing would be in violation of an Official Public Policy, or break an Implied Contract with your employer, they can't fire you.
But you are correct, 43 of the 50 States are "Work at Will" States, and the employer has a lot of leeway to fire you for anything, if there isn't a contract in place. Right to Work makes it more likely that you won't have a contract to protect you.
My company doesn't do a lot of DOD work, but enough of what we do has a NOFORN or higher classification that we have banned all cell phones with integrated cameras from the building.
Even the company president and the sales manager leave their iPhones in their car.
We haven't tried the "destroy the camera" exception.
Our letter had the same patent numbers included in the Bluewave case. So I just assumed after getting their Asses handed to them once, they changed their name to try and fog up the landscape on how to beat them.
Our company got one of these about 6 weeks ago. We kept it, but after some research, we decided to ignore it, for now.
Project Paperless was losing a really big case, that might have got their patent rejected, when they filed to dismiss their lawsuit against someone last year. The defendent got one of the major Copier companies included as another defendent. Project Paperless dismissed the case and ran away and hid. Now they are back.
Our plans to do the same thing if they continue to come after us. Have HP and Microsoft included as defendents, because we are using the software and equipment as designed by both companies.
When I worked for a previous employer, I came up with an idea that was eventually patented. My name is on the inventory, the company was assigned the rights of use.
All patents are like that. The company is never the inventor.
I watched this week as Kodak sold their patent portfolio to a known patent troll. I wondered how we could stop this. Maybe a simple change in US Law.....
Rights could still be assigned to employers, but employers would not have the right to resell those assigned rights. If the company went bankrupt, all those assigned rights would roll back to the original inventor. Anyone else who wanted those rights would have to negotiate with the original inventor. If a Company was purchased by another Company, those assigned rights wouldn't transfer, The new company would have to renegotiate with the original inventory.
This would make it much more difficult/expensive to accumulate portfolios of patents, if they were not the company employing the true inventors.
Sometimes Grid Tie systems are designed that way for the protection of the utility workers, and emergency responders.
If you have a fire in your home/building, firefighters can be at risk for electrocution if they can't easily isolate the solar panels. Grid-tie was designed to automatically isolate the panels when the utility power was cut for this reason.
The other problem with the Disabled Treaty is it is modeled on the American's with Disabilities Act.
While the ADA has done a lot of good for disabled people in our country, I don't see any value to signing a Treaty which would essentially duplicate it. It would unnecessarily complicate the discussion about accessibility and what is required and what isn't.
We had a problem with this in Idaho in the 2008 time fraim
They discovered that the digital gas pumps were crooked. The inspectors used to check them at 5 gallons and 10 gallons and they were always right on.
Someone noticed that the gallons didn't always appear to be measuring at a consistent speed. So they started doing additional testing. The pumps were rigged so that if you bought any amount that wasn't exactly 5 or 10 gallons, you were going to be overcharged. The change was variable, the closer you got to those exact numbers, the closer to exact you total was going to be, but if you dispensed somewhere in the middle, you would pay extra. If you dispensed 7.5 gallons, the pump would charge you for 8 gallons. And over 10 gallons was always going to read high.
Most of the pumps in the State were accurate and honest, but there were several stations rigged like this. The Bureau of Weights and Measures had to switch to a system where the check the pumps over a range of values for accuracy not just specific targets.
I worked for Micro in the early 90's. I loaded up a 386 with 256MB of RAM. We made expansion slots that fit into the ISA slots. I filled every ISA slot with a fully loaded expansion card.
When the PC booted, I had the AutoExec.BAT create a Huge RAM drive, then copy the contents of the Windows directory to the RAM drive and launch Windows from the RAM drive. When we shutdown, we ran a batch file that copied the RAM drive back to the Hard drive.
It was the fastest Windows 3.1 system in the company.
First time I ran a computer with a Flash Drive on it, it felt like that old system.
That should be Micron, not Micro, sorry
I worked for Micro in the early 90's. I loaded up a 386 with 256MB of RAM. We made expansion slots that fit into the ISA slots. I filled every ISA slot with a fully loaded expansion card.
When the PC booted, I had the AutoExec.BAT create a Huge RAM drive, then copy the contents of the Windows directory to the RAM drive and launch Windows from the RAM drive. When we shutdown, we ran a batch file that copied the RAM drive back to the Hard drive.
It was the fastest Windows 3.1 system in the company.
First time I ran a computer with a Flash Drive on it, it felt like that old system.
Honestly, because it is convenient, I have custody of my son, but I am limited by court order, how far away I can live from my ex-wife, so she can still visit him. 3 more years to high school graduation, and then I am free of that restriction. I live in a pretty rural area, not many good IT jobs in this area.
Plus it is an ESOP company, when I do leave, I will take about $75,000 in cash with me for my ownership share.
My boss eliminated sick days in 2009. The process of getting sick days was completely asinine before then even. If you worked your full scheduled shifts for a month, you earned 4 hours of sick time. If you left early one day, or had a Dr Appt, anything that caused you not get all of your hours in the month in, you didn't "earn" any sick time that month
Tying sick time to attendance was always a jerk move. He started at this company for minimum wage out of high school and 25 years later is President. He tries to make everyone act like he envisions himself moving up through the ranks...
Similar to my idea,
Wildland Firefighting has a lot of need to get equipment into remote areas, with poor or non-existent roads. Be pretty nice to be able to drop all the vehicles and equipment necessary for a Type 1 Incident Command Team in one flight into a remote area, instead of multiple truck loads.
One advantage this would have is modern weather forecasting. The Graf Zeppelin did not have enough warning of bad weather ahead, and therefore couldn't reroute in time to avoid it.
I work in a manufacturing environment, we manufacture CNC machined parts.
Because of "National Security" regulations, we are not allowed to have Cell Phones in the Building. Photography and Video Cameras are not allowed without management authorization. Kind of a pain in the butt. If we want to video tape a process, to analyze it for improvement, we have to make sure that certain parts and documents are not on screen.
We also are not allowed to hire non-US Citizens. No Green Cards or H-1B visas allowed, so I guess my job is safe.
I was at a training session last week by a wireless network vendor. One of the people in the class was a programmer from MetaGeek, who happens to work on Wireless Packet Capture Analysis software.
He did a 5 minute capture of the activity in the conference and then showed the results. Consistently, the iOS devices in the room were reserving significantly larger amounts of time on the Access Point, and then using a fraction of the time. This would reduce the amount of bandwidth available for other devices. iOS wasn't the only device doing that, but it was more extreme in the behavior.
If you had an access point, that under heavy loads that could ignore that type of behavior, not allowing devices to reserve time, it would improve throughput for everyone.
Heck, who needs a warrant or a court order to gain access to security tapes. The reality is, in the case of the bank robbery, most businesses in the area will freely grant access to their Security Tapes if the Police ask nicely.
First time I was called to Jury Duty was when I was 22. A Deputy showed up at my Parent's home with a Warrant for my arrest on failure to appear for jury duty.
My parents told him that he would be unlikely to find me since I was in the Navy on a ship somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean. About a week later, we got our first shipment of mail in about 30 day. Inside was my Summons. I dutifully filled out that I was unavailable and sent it back. About 2 months later, I heard from my parents about the warrant.
I guess the Judge dismissed it, because I haven't ever heard anything about it since, and have passed a couple Security Clearance background checks.
In Idaho it isn't. We get time off for Jury Duty, but it is without pay.
We had 2 critical members of our company who got picked up for a murder trial 3 years ago. Trial took 3 months. They would both come in around 6 am to work a couple hours before court, then more hours in evening just to keep their heads above water.
Developer doesn't have any stores in California. The California resident has to seek them out.
The law could require Apple or Google to delist any app that doesn't accommodate their laws, but a developer in Kazakhstan or Nevada has no presence in California.
So attach a statement to your app description in the Apple Store "Not Legal for Sale in California".
My sister is a teacher and she complains about the lack of teacher input
My response was "When was the last time a group of teachers proposed an overhaul of the education system". What I meant by that was I hear a lot of complaining from teachers about how things are, but the only suggestions I usually see revolve around "pay use more" and "smaller class sizes". Both of which add up to more money.
Idaho has a Constitutional Requirement to balance their budget every year. Because of a lawsuit by school districts a few years ago demanding more funding by the State, resulting in a Court ruling, the State Government is responsible for the majority of school funding now. That was the main reason for the switch from Property Tax at the local level to Sales Tax at the State level as the primary funding mechanism.
Because of the economic slowdown, there just isn't anymore money at the State Level to pay the teacher's what they want. Every other State Agency, including welfare and medicaid, had their budgets slashed dramatically before Education was cut $1. Because of the changing in funding, unless a local school district can get a levy passed, they don't have any flexibility in how they pay teacher's either. They just don't have the budget they used to have. They rely heavily on the State money.
What I saw was a bunch of people trying to brainstorm how can we improve education with less money than we used to have. They also took a big swing at Union Busting with this law. Removal of Evergreen Clauses, removal of tenure, limiting negotiations to pay and benefits only (working conditions off limits), allowing reductions in pay/benefits all are directly aimed at the Unions. Some of the districts in the State have got themselves wrapped in all sorts of provisions in the Union contract that have them spending way more money per pupil than other districts.
I have my doubts about the "laptop" per kid, because I am familiar with the smaller districts. At best, they have a teacher who is a part time system administrator. They aren't trained professionals. There is no desktop support. Their wireless networks are pretty rudimentary. All of a sudden we are going to dump 500 mobile users, onto them. It is overload. I did see the announcement that HP got the contract, and it includes installation of Enterprise class wireless networks in the schools that need them. It also includes 3% extra laptops per school and 4 year warranties on the laptops. It is possible, using students, to setup an exchange program to manage the repair process. I am a little more comfortable about it now, but I think that our local schools haven't made the paradigm shift necessary to really take full advantage of the capabilities. Small example, the teachers I know, have no intention of allowing students to submit assignments via email. The school was even considering requiring the laptops be left at school every night because it was "too risky to let kids take them home, they will break them".
I carpool with one of my local school board members, and another one is a close friend. They are both going to vote yes on 1 and 2, and no on 3 (the laptop for every kid plan)
On Wednesday, in Idaho, voters are going to the polls to decide whether or not to repeal State laws changing how education works in Idaho.
Some of the requirements of the new laws
1. Merit Pay for Teachers
2. Parental input into hiring/firing of teachers
3. Elimination of Tenure
4. High School students required to complete two on-line courses in order to graduate
5. Laptop Computer for each high school student
6. More dual credit classes for high school students, so they can complete more of their general education college requirements while still in Idaho
National Education Association has dumped millions into the No campaign so far.
has had it's meaning stretched against all meaning before. Could we stretch it a little more to prosecute companies who ignore the DNT flag?
Up until now, the Internet has basically been run by the people who have the websites. If you visit their website, you are going to get anything they want to give you. If they wanted to be fussy, they might have a TOS that says something like "by visiting this website, you agree to allow us to track you".
There has never been a way for the consumer of the information to tell the website what they were authorized to transmit to the consumers machine. Now there is, Do Not Track. It can interpreted to mean the website is authorized to do anything it wants except, track the user. If the website tracks the user, after receiving a DNT flag, they have accessed the Consumer's PC beyond their authorization.
Each individual violation is very small damages, but in aggregate, when they ignore the flag on millions of visits, it could potentially be big fines/damages. Perfect territory for a Class Action Lawsuit or an adventurous DA trying to make a name for himself. They even open themselves up for this type of lawsuit by publicly announcing they will ignore the flag.
This is a battle for power. The consumer is trying to grab a little power and privacy back from the websites with DNT. The major advertisers are freaking out about even this minor shift in the balance of power.
Most IP law has fair use exceptions for educational use.
You can't copy a whole textbook, but using excerpts from a variety of sources throughout your course is legal.