The Occupy events were held on public property where there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. They uploaded information about the events to public websites. They handed out materials to the general public. There was far too much media coverage. Why should they get ANY say in what's retained in a permanent record? They already made it themselves.
I can certainly see this working well on highways and other types of roads that are long, uninterrupted, and highly predictable. Especially if there's special lanes for them, like the HOV lanes but smarter. (Insert driver intelligence quips here.)
I don't know how well they would do on the residential streets with all the variables in place. Add on the need for any type of sensors or other fixed equipment and having them off the highway is in a far more distant future.
Would I want them driving in regular traffic? Not so much simply because of the mix of automation and humans. The autonomous cars simply can't cope with the number of variable reactions that humans provide. Not to mention the soon to be developed hobby of messing with the autonomous cars to see how they'll react. I can't believe it wouldn't happen. Then the blame would be on the car, not the idjit who decided to see what would happen if he slammed on his brakes in front of one when traffic is going 50mph.
There's a future in this. Eventually. And every advance is a good one, imo.
Just like power companies who ask for rate increases to cover infrastructure improvements/upgrades these are costs that should be paid out of existing revenue and shareholder dividends, not by pushing for more income.
Doing this isn't simple. Perhaps a combination of executive pay/asset seizure, rate freezes/reductions, and a moratorium on low-level staff reductions would accomplish it. It would never fly because then 'the government can't tell us how to run our business' but if you're hit with a government fine then maybe they should be able to do it. The bookkeeping and oversight would be huge but that's added onto the fine itself - the company has to pay for it. They would certainly feel the pinch when they no longer have sole control over their books.
I know, ain't going to happen any more than class action attorneys getting the same type of compensation as the plaintiffs (vouchers and coupons anyone?) but a person can dream.
I guess the government only gets to be overly intrusive when it's to private citizens.
IIRC the bulk of the tickets in my area were for people stopping beyond the posted line in an intersection, not for running a red light. No safety issue at all like they say the cameras are supposed to promote. Simply having wheels on the white line. Yeah, that's going to increase safety.
The other issue was making the yellow light time shorter so that there was an increase in red light violations. Not tipping the odds or anything there.
Making this a business makes it not just prone to abuse but guarantees abuse. It's all about the profit.
One last thought. The flash from these cameras is actually a safety issue at night. All of a sudden you're seeing this insanely bright light and your night vision is shot. So they're creating an entirely different safety problem using the equipment that's promoted as increasing safety.
Easy peasy. I didn't even bother to look at anything on the phone besides the provider info. Took it to the store, explained that I found it, and handed it over. They would have the 'best' way to get it back to the owner. Keeping it was never an option.
Since it could be identified I treated it like a wallet. It's not finders keepers.
It's not an industry problem that jacka** sellers and buyers exist. Magazines may change format/content after you subscribe, a book or movie you buy may suck. Just because you don't get what you expected doesn't mean the distribution method is to blame. It means you picked a bad seller! Beware who you do business with!
The flaw in this logic is that if I buy a physical product I get to keep exactly what I bought. With digital distribution the product itself is changed in ways I may not want. Remember Amazon pulling books that people had purchased? They couldn't do that to a physical book in my home. At least not nearly as easily.
I believe the flow of the article is more about how easy it is to make changes to digital products. That doesn't mean the game didn't suck at purchase - it easily could have and then you bought a product you didn't like. No different from a bad movie or book in physical form. Something that was free or fully functional at purchase and then crippled in an update is a different situation.
They'll be offline for a while. Not permanently unplayable. Consider it a long maintenance window.
Migrating huge databases takes time. Lots and lots of time. They're being smart and honest by saying they don't know how long it will take because, well, they don't know how long it will take.
Take a break, play some other games, and then when the server is up and running play those games again.
And for eldajovon who does this 'all the time for two-bit websites' it's a bit different when you're migrating terabytes and terabytes of data along with all the checks and balances that go with the migration process. You remind me of the people who would ask why the entire company didn't switch OS platforms 'because I did it at home and it was easy'. You just don't get it.
From what I've read the ambiguity comes from foreign-produced products. Anything produced in the US is pretty much protected by First-Sale Doctrine unless you sign or agree to an explicit licensing agreement. An example of explicit licensing is Rosetta Stone language software. It's an explicit license agreement, not a purchase and has been upheld in court as such. They've even removed library access since it's for individual use only. They're clear and up front about it.
If 38 Studios wanted to find a way to discourage people from buying their game they're doing it quite right and are unapologetic about it. They want money for content that they feel people will pay for and don't want people reselling their game. That's their choice and they can live with the consequences.
I do want to respond about all the 'developer' comments. The company is not the developer. The people slaving away to make the game are the developers. The company is the owner. They didn't develop the game, per se. They have staff that developed it. The company itself is nothing more than a way to bring it together and sell it. Please don't short change the skilled developers who made the game and lump them in with the company that is hiding their work from the public.
Whenever humanly possible I mark my items with a blacklight pen. I don't say that in the listing.
Then if someone wants to return it and get a refund, no problem. Once I receive it in the same condition I sent it AND I verify it with that mark I'll gladly refund.
Funny how people suddenly don't want their refund when they find out I've put some kind of identifier on it that they can't duplicate.
You've identified a problem situation and as an interesting personal project you've written software that would address the problem situation and actually improve on process. Nice! Note the lack of a sarcasm tag here. It's really a compliment.
Side note - maybe you think about work a little too much when you're not actually there and being paid.
On to your question - what should you do with said software?
My personal opinion is that if management had an interest in improving the process this would have already come up in discussion. Since it hasn't, based on your summary, then they don't feel it's a priority to them. Unless you've got executive backing any process improvement project is going to fail.
My first step would be to ask your manager if they are interested in improvement. That will give you the first decision point in the flow chart. No = done. Yes = proceed with caution.
If the answer is Yes then you get to feel out what has been discussed in the past, what products may have been considered, etc. along with where the discussion ended. At this point you're now a sales guy.
To summarize what would be a long, detailed post from here forward you would need to 'sell' your software, first as a concept and then as a product. Remember that maintenance, support, upgrades, implementation, etc. would all be on the table. Plus the problem of conflict of interest will come up. You're an employee but you're also a vendor if they buy it. How would work on the software (maintenance,support, etc.) be handled when you're on the clock for your job? What happens when you leave? Could you still provide the support if you're working for another employer?
In this case I would recommend letting it go. You've completed the exercise of writing the software as a personal challenge. Actually trying to bring it into your work environment would cause far more problems than it would solve. And if they do look at bringing in software at some point do NOT put yours in the hat. If you're on the evaluation team you can use it as a personal baseline for the other products but realize that what you've written isn't going to be implemented and move on.
My thought is to go a whole lot of steps past this.
Each and every bill brought up for a vote must be able to be COMPLETELY summarized on a single page, using 12 point type. Anything in the bill that isn't in the summary (snow-pea farmer special incentive) isn't legal.
That would make those omnibus bills impractical if not impossible since there's no way to put all the things they cover on a single page.
Lots more bills? Yep. But very concise ones that are easy to research and see who voted how.
This is something that confuses me. Why do the studios have such a hard-on for charging so much for streaming content? It's not like they're losing money since they don't get any extra money for movies on DVD after the initial sale. Charging $XX million per movie is just nuts.
I have the streaming only plan and it's frustrating as heck when I go through the new movie list and don't recognize any of them. Then I do searches and find almost no content that interests me whatsoever. The only thing they seem to be getting in quantity are TV series.
If they really want to be a leader in providing streaming content then they better get some actual content out there.
Unfortunately the studios have the upper hand here since Netflix NEEDS the content. That's never a good situation for negotiation.
An internet sales tax wouldn't be that difficult, if done correctly. By 'correctly' I mean 'the way I think it should be done'. Of course.
Flat 2% tax on all internet sales. Tax will be allocated to the destination state.
End of each fiscal year, total up the taxes for each state and cut a check.
Done.
States can opt-out of/opt-in to the sales tax yearly. So if they don't want the money the vendor doesn't add it onto the order.
Since the vendors have a shipping address on record it's not rocket surgery to do the queries that calculate the taxes due to each state. State, not locality.
Addendum - I believe most states allow the vendor to keep a percentage of the collected sales tax as their fee for collecting it in the first place. Same thing here. Given the low amount of the sales tax letting vendors keep 0.25% of the 2% is reasonable. That would easily offset the cost of running a couple of queries and submitting them to their accounting department.
Seems like a little common sense might make this work.
The article is missing some very necessary information but that's to be expected when it's every so slightly slanted to express their views on the situation. Then again, it's their reporting so they can write it however they want.
The state's position was that they had no reasonable way to verify what he was claiming was work and he already had a pattern of behaviour that they were investigating. Any obvious method of trying to verify future work would skew his patterns ("Hey. They caught on. I'll play by the rules until they back off.") so they would be unable to substantiate the complaint.
If he was being reimbursed for using his personal car then it becomes an extension of his job. They're paying for usage, they have the right to confirm it's being used correctly. It's like requiring a copy of a hotel bill with itemized charges to make sure you're not claiming raiding the mini bar and ordering porn when that's against company policy.
As long as they only introduced evidence that was relevant to the case and was related to the filed timesheets I really don't see a problem with this. To be completely clear they should have provably destroyed the data that wasn't directly related to the investigation. Heck, they may have and it just didn't make it into the blip of a story
The moral here is "Be honest" when you're in a situation where it's very possible for the company to need additional proof of you doing the work you're being paid to do. If he had been salaried and the company didn't care when the work was done then it wouldn't have been an issue since in spirit salaried employees get paid for working, not for specific hours worked.
I save my outrage for clear situations of abuse. This one seems to have a lot of justification behind it.
Wouldn't it be interesting if trademarks were expanded to include ALL of the TLD for that name? Sure the registration and renewal would be higher but it would be a lot easier if FooBar(tm) would own FooBar.??? when they get their trademark? Then no matter what new TLDs were added they would automatically own them and the problem would go away.
Limiting the cost to the combo of registering each one individually would be completely fair to small businesses. When a new TLD is added then the cost gets put onto the next renewal.
Problem solved. Oh wait - then there wouldn't be the opportunity to try to extort large sums of money by domain squatters, domain registrars or anyone else who wants to get their fingers into the companies wallets.
They may be out there, but the unfortunate part is that none of them initiate the conversations. I don't consider myself an unattractive person, but I've never had a woman wink/poke/etc. or initiate conversation. It's like they all just post their profile and hope someone picks them. I may as well go out to a bar with that sort of "dating". As usual, it's always up to the guy to start the conversation and the woman gets to weed out the candidates.
It's not like I don't start conversations. I've had many on these sites and sometimes we meet up, other times we call it before. It's mainly that I have to do all the legwork to get things rolling. For once, It would be nice to have someone else start the ball rolling.
Well, let's just start this by saying I'm female. Yep. A real female both on Slashdot and on OKCupid.
I read a fair number of profiles and don't really look at the pictures UNTIL I've read the profile and looked at how they've answered those bazillion questions OKCupid puts out there. If they've written journal entries I'll read those. I'm trying to get an idea of what type of person they're presenting themselves as. Then I'll look to see what their physical appearance is. Unusual? Probably.
I know the things that will immediately have me move to the next profile. I've seen them enough. The obvious spelling and grammar mistakes go without saying. Beliefs that are polar opposites of mine, expectations that aren't what I also want, and yes the arrogant SOB who writes a profile that seems to expect women to flock to him because he's Spaghetti's gift to the world.
I used to message guys until I got very tired of getting no response. Or the response immediately asked for sex. Seriously. I'll get those along with the initial contact. Immediately asking for sex. There's a ton of other sites for that guys.
I even geeked out in my profile and listed the games I play like Warhammer 40K and such, hoping to attract like minded guys who don't believe that women who game exist. Hasn't improved my response rate but then again I don't think guys are searching for those terms because, again, they don't think we're there.
To quit my rambling. I do look at the profiles and initially I'm more interested in them as a person than as a physical entity. I'm over 40, divorced twice and not looking for magic. I'm looking for someone who's interesting, who has similar interests and beliefs, and is willing to just see where things go. Not finding a lot of those on the site.
For years I was the poor schmuck who took on software licensing compliance for our company of around 10,000 computers. Since I know from sad experience you can never have enough paperwork to be proper butt-armor I put in a rather simple way of tracking our licenses.
Each and every paper license was identified with the purchasing department and the purchase order number. And every order was linked to a computer, which also had a purchase order number. So in essence everything we bought could be tracked back to the purchasing department and then if needed back to the vendor for copies of the actual invoice, etc.
It was horrible, time-consuming work. Especially since I was doing this in my "spare time" as it wasn't my primary job. Eventually they gave me someone to help with the drudge work. And finally they gave the whole thing to a manager no one could stand and no one would work for any more. They were so grateful for me setting up a turn-key process that they didn't even feel that they needed to mention it in the email to the division about the new manager. No, I'm not bitter.
And as a lighter note on ending I did send an initial contact from Microsoft's legal area running. They said we were underlicensed for Outlook and would require us to provide all kinds of information to prove we weren't. I politely answered that we used Lotus Notes; only two divisions used Outlook and we were migrating them; we actually did buy Outlook with every copy of Office; and we were probably overlicensed if anything and how we could get a refund for the extra licenses. Then I told them to come back when they could identify which of our 15 affiliates they believed to be out of compliance. Never heard from them again.
Was he hired or commissioned? Big difference. If he was an actual employee then yes, Lucas would own the rights to anything he created unless there was specific wording otherwise in his employment 'contract'.
Commissioned works are far more flexible and unless LUCAS said that he was buying the exclusive rights then the artist is quite probably the owner of the design and can do whatever they want with it. Lucas could have taken that design, turned it over to his people, had them modify it the required percentage to be a derivative work and THEN he would have owned that particular design. But he didn't.
Seems like the streaming to DVD ratio is grossly out of whack if they're pushing the streaming model as the preferred way to get content. Even though my price didn't increase since I'm on a streaming only plan I would hope they're going to use this new cash windfall to put a heck of a lot more of those DVD only movies out there for me to watch.
I can honestly see where the price increase for a DVD would be justified given the need to maintain an inventory of media, the depreciation due to abuse and loss, and packing and shipping costs. Sadly this is going to mean a loss of jobs as the volume of DVDs shipped goes down.
They're also competing against RedBox other cheap immediate DVD rentals. Would you rather put that new movie on your wait list and hope it shows up soon or walk to the closest RedBox and get it right away? Cable providers are also getting a clue and putting out on-demand movies a lot more quickly. Yes, they're more expensive but they're darn convenient.
I'll repeat my original statement. I want more streaming content. Start taking that catalog of movies and putting them up for me to watching using that streaming plan you're pushing as the primary delivery method.
When I had a very, very small business I had to collect sales tax. But I got to keep a percentage when I paid the state. So there was a built-in process for reimbursing me for my effort in collecting, reporting and paying the state.
So what's the problem? Amazon should be perfectly capable of changing their checkout to charge sales tax for the delivery location. It's not like other online retailers don't do it. And if other states work like mine they'll actually make a little more money out of the deal.
Here's the suggestion part. Since local sales tax is a rather complicated thing to track (different tax rates per city, thank you very much?) why not just charge a flat 2% across the board on ALL non-physical location sales. Mail order or internet, 2%. Then pay the states. I seem to remember some states actually not wanting an internet sales tax. Fine. The retailer gets to keep the money for those states. Simple.
And one more note. For those sales where you haven't paid state sales tax you're generally supposed to report it on your tax return and pay it then. Hardly anyone does but if you look there's a line for it.
You might only be driving 55 on a 50 mph zone, but a lot of people are driving much faster and statistics show it is fairly dangerous.
What about the people who are driving 45 and causing problems in that respect? Speeding isn't the only factor in dangerous driving. "Making a point" and driving 45 in the left lane of a 50mph highway is probably more dangerous than doing 55mph in that same lane.
Flow of traffic seems much more important to me than strict adherence to the posted speed limit. I grew up driving on the Illinois tollway and if you stuck to the speed limit you would be a dangerous impediment to general traffic, even in the right hand lane.
We had a fatal accident due to someone driving 35mph on a highway with posted minimum speed limits of 50pmh. How is that less dangerous than doing 55mph in that same area?
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The Occupy events were held on public property where there's no reasonable expectation of privacy. They uploaded information about the events to public websites. They handed out materials to the general public. There was far too much media coverage. Why should they get ANY say in what's retained in a permanent record? They already made it themselves.
I can certainly see this working well on highways and other types of roads that are long, uninterrupted, and highly predictable. Especially if there's special lanes for them, like the HOV lanes but smarter. (Insert driver intelligence quips here.)
I don't know how well they would do on the residential streets with all the variables in place. Add on the need for any type of sensors or other fixed equipment and having them off the highway is in a far more distant future.
Would I want them driving in regular traffic? Not so much simply because of the mix of automation and humans. The autonomous cars simply can't cope with the number of variable reactions that humans provide. Not to mention the soon to be developed hobby of messing with the autonomous cars to see how they'll react. I can't believe it wouldn't happen. Then the blame would be on the car, not the idjit who decided to see what would happen if he slammed on his brakes in front of one when traffic is going 50mph.
There's a future in this. Eventually. And every advance is a good one, imo.
Just like power companies who ask for rate increases to cover infrastructure improvements/upgrades these are costs that should be paid out of existing revenue and shareholder dividends, not by pushing for more income.
Doing this isn't simple. Perhaps a combination of executive pay/asset seizure, rate freezes/reductions, and a moratorium on low-level staff reductions would accomplish it. It would never fly because then 'the government can't tell us how to run our business' but if you're hit with a government fine then maybe they should be able to do it. The bookkeeping and oversight would be huge but that's added onto the fine itself - the company has to pay for it. They would certainly feel the pinch when they no longer have sole control over their books.
I know, ain't going to happen any more than class action attorneys getting the same type of compensation as the plaintiffs (vouchers and coupons anyone?) but a person can dream.
I guess the government only gets to be overly intrusive when it's to private citizens.
Thanks Mr. Johnson for giving us the entire month of March as the month we celebrate The New Pie!
Congrats to everyone who gets the reference.
IIRC the bulk of the tickets in my area were for people stopping beyond the posted line in an intersection, not for running a red light. No safety issue at all like they say the cameras are supposed to promote. Simply having wheels on the white line. Yeah, that's going to increase safety.
The other issue was making the yellow light time shorter so that there was an increase in red light violations. Not tipping the odds or anything there.
Making this a business makes it not just prone to abuse but guarantees abuse. It's all about the profit.
One last thought. The flash from these cameras is actually a safety issue at night. All of a sudden you're seeing this insanely bright light and your night vision is shot. So they're creating an entirely different safety problem using the equipment that's promoted as increasing safety.
Easy peasy. I didn't even bother to look at anything on the phone besides the provider info. Took it to the store, explained that I found it, and handed it over. They would have the 'best' way to get it back to the owner. Keeping it was never an option.
Since it could be identified I treated it like a wallet. It's not finders keepers.
The flaw in this logic is that if I buy a physical product I get to keep exactly what I bought. With digital distribution the product itself is changed in ways I may not want. Remember Amazon pulling books that people had purchased? They couldn't do that to a physical book in my home. At least not nearly as easily.
I believe the flow of the article is more about how easy it is to make changes to digital products. That doesn't mean the game didn't suck at purchase - it easily could have and then you bought a product you didn't like. No different from a bad movie or book in physical form. Something that was free or fully functional at purchase and then crippled in an update is a different situation.
Everyone shout it along with me - But wait! There's more!
They'll be offline for a while. Not permanently unplayable. Consider it a long maintenance window.
Migrating huge databases takes time. Lots and lots of time. They're being smart and honest by saying they don't know how long it will take because, well, they don't know how long it will take.
Take a break, play some other games, and then when the server is up and running play those games again.
And for eldajovon who does this 'all the time for two-bit websites' it's a bit different when you're migrating terabytes and terabytes of data along with all the checks and balances that go with the migration process. You remind me of the people who would ask why the entire company didn't switch OS platforms 'because I did it at home and it was easy'. You just don't get it.
From what I've read the ambiguity comes from foreign-produced products. Anything produced in the US is pretty much protected by First-Sale Doctrine unless you sign or agree to an explicit licensing agreement. An example of explicit licensing is Rosetta Stone language software. It's an explicit license agreement, not a purchase and has been upheld in court as such. They've even removed library access since it's for individual use only. They're clear and up front about it.
If 38 Studios wanted to find a way to discourage people from buying their game they're doing it quite right and are unapologetic about it. They want money for content that they feel people will pay for and don't want people reselling their game. That's their choice and they can live with the consequences.
I do want to respond about all the 'developer' comments. The company is not the developer. The people slaving away to make the game are the developers. The company is the owner. They didn't develop the game, per se. They have staff that developed it. The company itself is nothing more than a way to bring it together and sell it. Please don't short change the skilled developers who made the game and lump them in with the company that is hiding their work from the public.
Whenever humanly possible I mark my items with a blacklight pen. I don't say that in the listing.
Then if someone wants to return it and get a refund, no problem. Once I receive it in the same condition I sent it AND I verify it with that mark I'll gladly refund.
Funny how people suddenly don't want their refund when they find out I've put some kind of identifier on it that they can't duplicate.
You've identified a problem situation and as an interesting personal project you've written software that would address the problem situation and actually improve on process. Nice! Note the lack of a sarcasm tag here. It's really a compliment.
Side note - maybe you think about work a little too much when you're not actually there and being paid.
On to your question - what should you do with said software?
My personal opinion is that if management had an interest in improving the process this would have already come up in discussion. Since it hasn't, based on your summary, then they don't feel it's a priority to them. Unless you've got executive backing any process improvement project is going to fail.
My first step would be to ask your manager if they are interested in improvement. That will give you the first decision point in the flow chart. No = done. Yes = proceed with caution.
If the answer is Yes then you get to feel out what has been discussed in the past, what products may have been considered, etc. along with where the discussion ended. At this point you're now a sales guy.
To summarize what would be a long, detailed post from here forward you would need to 'sell' your software, first as a concept and then as a product. Remember that maintenance, support, upgrades, implementation, etc. would all be on the table. Plus the problem of conflict of interest will come up. You're an employee but you're also a vendor if they buy it. How would work on the software (maintenance,support, etc.) be handled when you're on the clock for your job? What happens when you leave? Could you still provide the support if you're working for another employer?
In this case I would recommend letting it go. You've completed the exercise of writing the software as a personal challenge. Actually trying to bring it into your work environment would cause far more problems than it would solve. And if they do look at bringing in software at some point do NOT put yours in the hat. If you're on the evaluation team you can use it as a personal baseline for the other products but realize that what you've written isn't going to be implemented and move on.
My thought is to go a whole lot of steps past this.
Each and every bill brought up for a vote must be able to be COMPLETELY summarized on a single page, using 12 point type. Anything in the bill that isn't in the summary (snow-pea farmer special incentive) isn't legal.
That would make those omnibus bills impractical if not impossible since there's no way to put all the things they cover on a single page.
Lots more bills? Yep. But very concise ones that are easy to research and see who voted how.
This is something that confuses me. Why do the studios have such a hard-on for charging so much for streaming content? It's not like they're losing money since they don't get any extra money for movies on DVD after the initial sale. Charging $XX million per movie is just nuts.
I have the streaming only plan and it's frustrating as heck when I go through the new movie list and don't recognize any of them. Then I do searches and find almost no content that interests me whatsoever. The only thing they seem to be getting in quantity are TV series.
If they really want to be a leader in providing streaming content then they better get some actual content out there.
Unfortunately the studios have the upper hand here since Netflix NEEDS the content. That's never a good situation for negotiation.
An internet sales tax wouldn't be that difficult, if done correctly. By 'correctly' I mean 'the way I think it should be done'. Of course.
Flat 2% tax on all internet sales. Tax will be allocated to the destination state.
End of each fiscal year, total up the taxes for each state and cut a check.
Done.
States can opt-out of/opt-in to the sales tax yearly. So if they don't want the money the vendor doesn't add it onto the order.
Since the vendors have a shipping address on record it's not rocket surgery to do the queries that calculate the taxes due to each state. State, not locality.
Addendum - I believe most states allow the vendor to keep a percentage of the collected sales tax as their fee for collecting it in the first place. Same thing here. Given the low amount of the sales tax letting vendors keep 0.25% of the 2% is reasonable. That would easily offset the cost of running a couple of queries and submitting them to their accounting department.
Seems like a little common sense might make this work.
The article is missing some very necessary information but that's to be expected when it's every so slightly slanted to express their views on the situation. Then again, it's their reporting so they can write it however they want.
The state's position was that they had no reasonable way to verify what he was claiming was work and he already had a pattern of behaviour that they were investigating. Any obvious method of trying to verify future work would skew his patterns ("Hey. They caught on. I'll play by the rules until they back off.") so they would be unable to substantiate the complaint.
If he was being reimbursed for using his personal car then it becomes an extension of his job. They're paying for usage, they have the right to confirm it's being used correctly. It's like requiring a copy of a hotel bill with itemized charges to make sure you're not claiming raiding the mini bar and ordering porn when that's against company policy.
As long as they only introduced evidence that was relevant to the case and was related to the filed timesheets I really don't see a problem with this. To be completely clear they should have provably destroyed the data that wasn't directly related to the investigation. Heck, they may have and it just didn't make it into the blip of a story
The moral here is "Be honest" when you're in a situation where it's very possible for the company to need additional proof of you doing the work you're being paid to do. If he had been salaried and the company didn't care when the work was done then it wouldn't have been an issue since in spirit salaried employees get paid for working, not for specific hours worked.
I save my outrage for clear situations of abuse. This one seems to have a lot of justification behind it.
Wouldn't it be interesting if trademarks were expanded to include ALL of the TLD for that name? Sure the registration and renewal would be higher but it would be a lot easier if FooBar(tm) would own FooBar.??? when they get their trademark? Then no matter what new TLDs were added they would automatically own them and the problem would go away.
Limiting the cost to the combo of registering each one individually would be completely fair to small businesses. When a new TLD is added then the cost gets put onto the next renewal.
Problem solved. Oh wait - then there wouldn't be the opportunity to try to extort large sums of money by domain squatters, domain registrars or anyone else who wants to get their fingers into the companies wallets.
They may be out there, but the unfortunate part is that none of them initiate the conversations. I don't consider myself an unattractive person, but I've never had a woman wink/poke/etc. or initiate conversation. It's like they all just post their profile and hope someone picks them. I may as well go out to a bar with that sort of "dating". As usual, it's always up to the guy to start the conversation and the woman gets to weed out the candidates.
It's not like I don't start conversations. I've had many on these sites and sometimes we meet up, other times we call it before. It's mainly that I have to do all the legwork to get things rolling. For once, It would be nice to have someone else start the ball rolling.
Well, let's just start this by saying I'm female. Yep. A real female both on Slashdot and on OKCupid.
I read a fair number of profiles and don't really look at the pictures UNTIL I've read the profile and looked at how they've answered those bazillion questions OKCupid puts out there. If they've written journal entries I'll read those. I'm trying to get an idea of what type of person they're presenting themselves as. Then I'll look to see what their physical appearance is. Unusual? Probably.
I know the things that will immediately have me move to the next profile. I've seen them enough. The obvious spelling and grammar mistakes go without saying. Beliefs that are polar opposites of mine, expectations that aren't what I also want, and yes the arrogant SOB who writes a profile that seems to expect women to flock to him because he's Spaghetti's gift to the world.
I used to message guys until I got very tired of getting no response. Or the response immediately asked for sex. Seriously. I'll get those along with the initial contact. Immediately asking for sex. There's a ton of other sites for that guys.
I even geeked out in my profile and listed the games I play like Warhammer 40K and such, hoping to attract like minded guys who don't believe that women who game exist. Hasn't improved my response rate but then again I don't think guys are searching for those terms because, again, they don't think we're there.
To quit my rambling. I do look at the profiles and initially I'm more interested in them as a person than as a physical entity. I'm over 40, divorced twice and not looking for magic. I'm looking for someone who's interesting, who has similar interests and beliefs, and is willing to just see where things go. Not finding a lot of those on the site.
Well played sir. Well played.
Now I must do something similar with my extra router.
For years I was the poor schmuck who took on software licensing compliance for our company of around 10,000 computers. Since I know from sad experience you can never have enough paperwork to be proper butt-armor I put in a rather simple way of tracking our licenses.
Each and every paper license was identified with the purchasing department and the purchase order number. And every order was linked to a computer, which also had a purchase order number. So in essence everything we bought could be tracked back to the purchasing department and then if needed back to the vendor for copies of the actual invoice, etc.
It was horrible, time-consuming work. Especially since I was doing this in my "spare time" as it wasn't my primary job. Eventually they gave me someone to help with the drudge work. And finally they gave the whole thing to a manager no one could stand and no one would work for any more. They were so grateful for me setting up a turn-key process that they didn't even feel that they needed to mention it in the email to the division about the new manager. No, I'm not bitter.
And as a lighter note on ending I did send an initial contact from Microsoft's legal area running. They said we were underlicensed for Outlook and would require us to provide all kinds of information to prove we weren't. I politely answered that we used Lotus Notes; only two divisions used Outlook and we were migrating them; we actually did buy Outlook with every copy of Office; and we were probably overlicensed if anything and how we could get a refund for the extra licenses. Then I told them to come back when they could identify which of our 15 affiliates they believed to be out of compliance. Never heard from them again.
Standard preface - IANAL
Was he hired or commissioned? Big difference. If he was an actual employee then yes, Lucas would own the rights to anything he created unless there was specific wording otherwise in his employment 'contract'.
Commissioned works are far more flexible and unless LUCAS said that he was buying the exclusive rights then the artist is quite probably the owner of the design and can do whatever they want with it. Lucas could have taken that design, turned it over to his people, had them modify it the required percentage to be a derivative work and THEN he would have owned that particular design. But he didn't.
Seems like the streaming to DVD ratio is grossly out of whack if they're pushing the streaming model as the preferred way to get content. Even though my price didn't increase since I'm on a streaming only plan I would hope they're going to use this new cash windfall to put a heck of a lot more of those DVD only movies out there for me to watch.
I can honestly see where the price increase for a DVD would be justified given the need to maintain an inventory of media, the depreciation due to abuse and loss, and packing and shipping costs. Sadly this is going to mean a loss of jobs as the volume of DVDs shipped goes down.
They're also competing against RedBox other cheap immediate DVD rentals. Would you rather put that new movie on your wait list and hope it shows up soon or walk to the closest RedBox and get it right away? Cable providers are also getting a clue and putting out on-demand movies a lot more quickly. Yes, they're more expensive but they're darn convenient.
I'll repeat my original statement. I want more streaming content. Start taking that catalog of movies and putting them up for me to watching using that streaming plan you're pushing as the primary delivery method.
When I had a very, very small business I had to collect sales tax. But I got to keep a percentage when I paid the state. So there was a built-in process for reimbursing me for my effort in collecting, reporting and paying the state.
So what's the problem? Amazon should be perfectly capable of changing their checkout to charge sales tax for the delivery location. It's not like other online retailers don't do it. And if other states work like mine they'll actually make a little more money out of the deal.
Here's the suggestion part. Since local sales tax is a rather complicated thing to track (different tax rates per city, thank you very much?) why not just charge a flat 2% across the board on ALL non-physical location sales. Mail order or internet, 2%. Then pay the states. I seem to remember some states actually not wanting an internet sales tax. Fine. The retailer gets to keep the money for those states. Simple.
And one more note. For those sales where you haven't paid state sales tax you're generally supposed to report it on your tax return and pay it then. Hardly anyone does but if you look there's a line for it.
Cool! You paint those yourself?
What about the people who are driving 45 and causing problems in that respect? Speeding isn't the only factor in dangerous driving. "Making a point" and driving 45 in the left lane of a 50mph highway is probably more dangerous than doing 55mph in that same lane.
Flow of traffic seems much more important to me than strict adherence to the posted speed limit. I grew up driving on the Illinois tollway and if you stuck to the speed limit you would be a dangerous impediment to general traffic, even in the right hand lane.
We had a fatal accident due to someone driving 35mph on a highway with posted minimum speed limits of 50pmh. How is that less dangerous than doing 55mph in that same area?