Non-competes are basically unenforceable in California
Thats my understanding as well, which is why A123 sued in Massachusetts, and Apple tried (unsuccessfully) to move the case to California. According to Wikipedia the current applicable MA law states “A covenant not to compete is enforceable only if it is necessary to protect a legitimate business interest, reasonably limited in time and space, and consonant with the public interest”. The most recent test case I could find is IBM v. Papermaster (2009) involving (perhaps not coincidentally) Apple poaching. The court backed IBM and granted an injunction against Papermaster, citing and expanding "inevitable disclosure". Papermaster & Apple settled before trial, just like they did with A123.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and so on have all settled these cases in the last 10 years or so, so nothing has gone to trial so no case law has been established, but IBM v. Papermaster lays the groundwork for more enforcement of non-competes in some cases. IANAL but it seems the anecdotal assumption that "non-competes are basically unenforceable in xxx" may not be as absolute as we engineers assume it is.
Well, the suit claimed that Apple hired Mujeeb Ijaz (in charge of R&D), who in turn enticed his key scientists and engineers to follow him. A123 claims that:
- Ijaz has a non-compete clause in his contract,
- The other employees have a non-compete also
- Ijaz has a non-solicitation clause in his contract
- Apple knew about the clauses and enticed them to break them
- All the employees shared A123 proprietary knowledge and trade secrets with Apple
- Apple orchestrated all this to obtain trade secrets illicitly
- Ijaz attempted to solicit A123 partners on Apple's behalf
Yeah yeah, 'A123 claims' doesnt make it true. And, non-compete clauses may or may not be enforceable, though this type of situation may be one of the rare cases where it is. Still, if Ijaz had a contract to not solicit his former employees, thats enforceable, as is violating confidentiality, as is enticing people to break the law, as is conspiring to do so. I'd say it was far from a slam-dunk dismissal and there was enough risk that they settled. While A123 may have not had the resources to fight a protracted legal battle, their Chinese buyer apparently did.
According to other articles, it will cost them an average of $19k for 30 employees, so $570k. And not well publicized is he is going to spread it over 3 years. So $200k year one, $400k year 2, and so on. The $930k pay cut is immediate. The company is completely owned by the two brothers, and makes $2M in profits per year, which presumably they reinvest or take out in bonuses. The absolute WORST way to get money out of your own company is salary. I would be shocked if the tax advantages of changing disbursement methods dont outweigh the $190k first year costs, while raising profitability on paper, and making you the darling of the media and the White House (they're cozy with Obama already). If their goal was to sell the company, this would be a pretty good way to pump up the profit margin and P/E ratio before cashing out, and a little media blitz helps too.
Good for them! Gaming the system to make a buck and help their employees at the same time. But this is not sheer altruism at work.
Nice. My first thought too. But in practice wouldnt they go from burning wood to solar? And I would think the limiting factor would not be energy but easy access to minerals.
It wont stop until we start arresting the CIO's for being complicit in the breaches. My 10-year-old kids get it - "it may not be your fault but its your responsibility" - so why do overpaid do-nothing executives get a free pass when they utterly fail at their job?
On Nexus 5 (2x) and Nexus 10 tab. I let Google push Lollipop onto the tablet and have regretted it every day. Its buggy (all sound is disabled if you connect the charger unless you reboot), laggy, slow, and they deleted their decent email client and force you to us their crappy gmail client to access non-gmail accounts. Gadgets dont sync up properly anymore. I wont upgrade the Nexus 5's, probably ever, and they pop up reminders every 30 seconds to install 5.01 and 5.02 and cant be disabled. Im a HUGE fanboi but Google needs to add an update setting "I dont want your shitty release until you get your act together". Its their FLAGSHIP devices for chrisake, there is NO EXCUSE.
There is a HUGE difference between blinking one LED, and running a light show with 1000's of LED's over a wireless link., or any link for that matter. I could do it with an Arduino, or a PIC, or a Raspberry, a Beowulf Cluster or anything else. And build the banks of addressable power relays, work out the wireless protocols, the addressing discovery system, macro language for syncing it with music, and... whatever. A lot of work. Not even in the same time zone as flashing an LED using Arduino GPIO. Trivial as that is, or as capable as Arduino is, its hardly the 'off-the-shelf' answer TFA was clearly looking for. There may be an Arduino-based answer, but neither the GP or the blinker tutorial was it. The GP's -1 off-topic was clearly deserved.
I think it sounds like a good idea, and I'd be your first customer. Then again, I thought Aereo was a good idea too, and on solid legal ground as well. I'm dumbfounded the courts shut them down, but given that they did it seems pretty clear they will shut down whatever derivative or similar business model you come up with, on whatever technicality they can get to stick. It would seem that legality or common sense or "public benefit" doesnt play as much as a role as we would like to imagine.
... and then doing some challenge/response authentication
Power management. Ever tried to make a decent transceiver that runs for 3-5 years on a 2016 coin cell? Burst transmitters are easy enough, but receivers eat power. And everything else you assume is pretty much wrong too. Its not a static password, and its not possible to clone a key based on the signal it gives off. Now, you can do a man-in-the-middle replay attack with a jammer, maybe, and if you have the master key you can clone a key from two sequential transmissions, but thats different. And its been suggested that you can recover the master key from a side channel attack, but I havent heard that its been practically demonstrated outside the lab (yes Ive seen the papers but havent seen any evidence that master keys are in the wild at this time (someone correct me if Im wrong)). The biggest security 'flaw' seems to be the case where drivers press the remote 'lock' button 3 or 4 times because they like the sound of the horn.
"Incompetent" and "crappy" are pretty strong statements for something you know so little about. There is always room for improvements in a technology, but key fobs need to cost pennies to make, occupy a few square centimeters of PCB space, work reliably with cheap circuit components and few PCB design restrictions, transmit long ranges with truly awful power budgets, use an open standard (not dependent on obfuscation), and it does need a back door for a corrupt and idiot-based dealer network to override when people lose their keys. If you can come up with something better (and by that I mean actually design AND build something that can be mass produced) you will be fabulously wealthy. So get to work, read the KEELOQ spec, and profit.
Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I typically partition the drive into two logical drives. The inner partitions with awful performance are where my media goes (movies, music, photos). The performance falloff is non-linear. Also, performance degradation over time is worse for the inner tracks, so inner tracks are where you put data that is more or less static, or at least written sequentially.
Ive been designing in FTDI devices for years. They work first try, they're cheap, the drivers are excellent, support is good. If I need a USB interface device, I only buy FTDI-based adapters because, well, all the same reasons. Plus they're faster than anything else Ive tested (a serial port at 1mbps can be iffy - only a few do it reliably and they all have FTDI bridges).
Given all that, why should FTDI support knock-off crap? I dont want the crap on my systems, in my board designs, and the faster I know about it the better. Hell yeah, brick it baby, and let the retailer sort out the counterfeiting mess in their supply chain.
And while we're at it, same for SD Cards. "If they work I dont care", seriously? Another place where counterfeiting is rampant, the knock-offs cant hit speed and reliability targets, if they work at all. Last bulk buy I made at Staples was 70% counterfeit and wasnt close to hitting published specs. And sure the store manager took them back, but Staples Corporate couldnt care less that their supply chain was contaminated. SanDisk and FTDI are *NOT* the scumbags here, its the consumers that dont give a rats ass as long as they save 3 cents, the retailers that make 3 cents extra, and the wholesalers that make 2 cents extra. You, sir, are the scumbag thats the problem.
The problem [is] that the energy output is less than the energy inputs.
Which is just economics, easily solved. Just use a massive wind and solar farm, paid for with government subsidies, to run initiation and containment. Take your 30% energy yield, sell it on the spot market as "green energy" at an inflated price (with more subsidies). Use the paper losses to eliminate taxes on your oil refinery. What am I missing? Oh yeah; 'Step 4 - Profit?'
Slashdot Mirror
Non-competes are basically unenforceable in California
Thats my understanding as well, which is why A123 sued in Massachusetts, and Apple tried (unsuccessfully) to move the case to California. According to Wikipedia the current applicable MA law states “A covenant not to compete is enforceable only if it is necessary to protect a legitimate business interest, reasonably limited in time and space, and consonant with the public interest”. The most recent test case I could find is IBM v. Papermaster (2009) involving (perhaps not coincidentally) Apple poaching. The court backed IBM and granted an injunction against Papermaster, citing and expanding "inevitable disclosure". Papermaster & Apple settled before trial, just like they did with A123.
Google, Microsoft, Apple and so on have all settled these cases in the last 10 years or so, so nothing has gone to trial so no case law has been established, but IBM v. Papermaster lays the groundwork for more enforcement of non-competes in some cases. IANAL but it seems the anecdotal assumption that "non-competes are basically unenforceable in xxx" may not be as absolute as we engineers assume it is.
Well, the suit claimed that Apple hired Mujeeb Ijaz (in charge of R&D), who in turn enticed his key scientists and engineers to follow him. A123 claims that:
- Ijaz has a non-compete clause in his contract,
- The other employees have a non-compete also
- Ijaz has a non-solicitation clause in his contract
- Apple knew about the clauses and enticed them to break them
- All the employees shared A123 proprietary knowledge and trade secrets with Apple
- Apple orchestrated all this to obtain trade secrets illicitly
- Ijaz attempted to solicit A123 partners on Apple's behalf
Yeah yeah, 'A123 claims' doesnt make it true. And, non-compete clauses may or may not be enforceable, though this type of situation may be one of the rare cases where it is. Still, if Ijaz had a contract to not solicit his former employees, thats enforceable, as is violating confidentiality, as is enticing people to break the law, as is conspiring to do so. I'd say it was far from a slam-dunk dismissal and there was enough risk that they settled. While A123 may have not had the resources to fight a protracted legal battle, their Chinese buyer apparently did.
Did we learn nothing from the "War on Drugs"?
We sure did! We learned that drugs are freely available, as long as the right people profit from them!
According to other articles, it will cost them an average of $19k for 30 employees, so $570k. And not well publicized is he is going to spread it over 3 years. So $200k year one, $400k year 2, and so on. The $930k pay cut is immediate. The company is completely owned by the two brothers, and makes $2M in profits per year, which presumably they reinvest or take out in bonuses. The absolute WORST way to get money out of your own company is salary. I would be shocked if the tax advantages of changing disbursement methods dont outweigh the $190k first year costs, while raising profitability on paper, and making you the darling of the media and the White House (they're cozy with Obama already). If their goal was to sell the company, this would be a pretty good way to pump up the profit margin and P/E ratio before cashing out, and a little media blitz helps too.
Good for them! Gaming the system to make a buck and help their employees at the same time. But this is not sheer altruism at work.
Nice. My first thought too. But in practice wouldnt they go from burning wood to solar? And I would think the limiting factor would not be energy but easy access to minerals.
It was called the Apple Pippin
FTFL List price $599, units sold 42,000. Wow, thats a train wreck by any standard!
Overall, it's a bad idea anyway.
But but but... I'll get so many new Friend requests from Nigeria! Finally, I'll be *popular*!!!
I get 4.7 trillion olympic swimming pools
FTA - enough to cover 17% of the earth, to a depth of 450 feet. (scribble scribble scribble carry the one, 2500 m3 per pool...)
It wont stop until we start arresting the CIO's for being complicit in the breaches. My 10-year-old kids get it - "it may not be your fault but its your responsibility" - so why do overpaid do-nothing executives get a free pass when they utterly fail at their job?
On Nexus 5 (2x) and Nexus 10 tab. I let Google push Lollipop onto the tablet and have regretted it every day. Its buggy (all sound is disabled if you connect the charger unless you reboot), laggy, slow, and they deleted their decent email client and force you to us their crappy gmail client to access non-gmail accounts. Gadgets dont sync up properly anymore. I wont upgrade the Nexus 5's, probably ever, and they pop up reminders every 30 seconds to install 5.01 and 5.02 and cant be disabled. Im a HUGE fanboi but Google needs to add an update setting "I dont want your shitty release until you get your act together". Its their FLAGSHIP devices for chrisake, there is NO EXCUSE.
Sure, like most consumers know what an "Operating System" is...
earth:/$ chroot /media/venus
There is a HUGE difference between blinking one LED, and running a light show with 1000's of LED's over a wireless link., or any link for that matter. I could do it with an Arduino, or a PIC, or a Raspberry, a Beowulf Cluster or anything else. And build the banks of addressable power relays, work out the wireless protocols, the addressing discovery system, macro language for syncing it with music, and ... whatever. A lot of work. Not even in the same time zone as flashing an LED using Arduino GPIO. Trivial as that is, or as capable as Arduino is, its hardly the 'off-the-shelf' answer TFA was clearly looking for. There may be an Arduino-based answer, but neither the GP or the blinker tutorial was it. The GP's -1 off-topic was clearly deserved.
I think it sounds like a good idea, and I'd be your first customer. Then again, I thought Aereo was a good idea too, and on solid legal ground as well. I'm dumbfounded the courts shut them down, but given that they did it seems pretty clear they will shut down whatever derivative or similar business model you come up with, on whatever technicality they can get to stick. It would seem that legality or common sense or "public benefit" doesnt play as much as a role as we would like to imagine.
This is obviously some use of the term "off-the-shelf" that I wasnt previously aware of...
I thought that Santa is just a quantum wave function
Thats true! Santa only exists if you dont look. If you do look, he wont be there, and somewhere a cat in a box dies.
He started Slashdot. He wrote:
I dont like Beta cant you tell?
The clowns at Dice can go to Hell!
I do not like it in a post
I will not read it from your host
I do not read it from the tubes
No one likes it! ('cept the n00bs)
When MyCleanPc's over done
It leaves more room for Haselton
Dont talk of Hitler, please just stop it
As Godwin said "Hey! Step 4 - Profit!"
I do not care for Beowulf, see?
In Soviet Russia they cluster ME!
Reading TFA's unthinkable
And karma whores post things unlinkable
Until you mod me +5 Troll
This 'global warming' wont get old
Lets talk of Darwin and of God
(If you're game, you insensitive clod)
So mode them down, it makes them stronger
The flames will only get much longer
I wont reply and I wont bore you
But if I do say FTFY
- D. Seuss, (Nuked from orbit 'just to be sure' - 1998)
Obviously the Republitards are going to side with big cable
Must you make this partisan? Comcast bought *everybody* off. http://www.nationalreview.com/...
... and then doing some challenge/response authentication
Power management. Ever tried to make a decent transceiver that runs for 3-5 years on a 2016 coin cell? Burst transmitters are easy enough, but receivers eat power. And everything else you assume is pretty much wrong too. Its not a static password, and its not possible to clone a key based on the signal it gives off. Now, you can do a man-in-the-middle replay attack with a jammer, maybe, and if you have the master key you can clone a key from two sequential transmissions, but thats different. And its been suggested that you can recover the master key from a side channel attack, but I havent heard that its been practically demonstrated outside the lab (yes Ive seen the papers but havent seen any evidence that master keys are in the wild at this time (someone correct me if Im wrong)). The biggest security 'flaw' seems to be the case where drivers press the remote 'lock' button 3 or 4 times because they like the sound of the horn.
"Incompetent" and "crappy" are pretty strong statements for something you know so little about. There is always room for improvements in a technology, but key fobs need to cost pennies to make, occupy a few square centimeters of PCB space, work reliably with cheap circuit components and few PCB design restrictions, transmit long ranges with truly awful power budgets, use an open standard (not dependent on obfuscation), and it does need a back door for a corrupt and idiot-based dealer network to override when people lose their keys. If you can come up with something better (and by that I mean actually design AND build something that can be mass produced) you will be fabulously wealthy. So get to work, read the KEELOQ spec, and profit.
Best job I ever had.
Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I typically partition the drive into two logical drives. The inner partitions with awful performance are where my media goes (movies, music, photos). The performance falloff is non-linear. Also, performance degradation over time is worse for the inner tracks, so inner tracks are where you put data that is more or less static, or at least written sequentially.
Yeah, right, its the victims fault.
Ive been designing in FTDI devices for years. They work first try, they're cheap, the drivers are excellent, support is good. If I need a USB interface device, I only buy FTDI-based adapters because, well, all the same reasons. Plus they're faster than anything else Ive tested (a serial port at 1mbps can be iffy - only a few do it reliably and they all have FTDI bridges).
Given all that, why should FTDI support knock-off crap? I dont want the crap on my systems, in my board designs, and the faster I know about it the better. Hell yeah, brick it baby, and let the retailer sort out the counterfeiting mess in their supply chain.
And while we're at it, same for SD Cards. "If they work I dont care", seriously? Another place where counterfeiting is rampant, the knock-offs cant hit speed and reliability targets, if they work at all. Last bulk buy I made at Staples was 70% counterfeit and wasnt close to hitting published specs. And sure the store manager took them back, but Staples Corporate couldnt care less that their supply chain was contaminated. SanDisk and FTDI are *NOT* the scumbags here, its the consumers that dont give a rats ass as long as they save 3 cents, the retailers that make 3 cents extra, and the wholesalers that make 2 cents extra. You, sir, are the scumbag thats the problem.
The problem [is] that the energy output is less than the energy inputs.
Which is just economics, easily solved. Just use a massive wind and solar farm, paid for with government subsidies, to run initiation and containment. Take your 30% energy yield, sell it on the spot market as "green energy" at an inflated price (with more subsidies). Use the paper losses to eliminate taxes on your oil refinery. What am I missing? Oh yeah; 'Step 4 - Profit?'
Related: Microsoft now maintains Linux games.
That remains to be seen, actually...