Damn, I hate to keep posting on Slashdot about my SO who is a HR recruiter for a tech security firm, but I have to. Hiring managers, who at her company are actually technical people, don't give shit for position requirements. Usually, the recruiter knows a couple of buzz words about the position, salary range, and an education requirement. Since the recruiter hasn't spent time on the project (and the manager doesn't want to spend time selecting candidates), you get bad choices.

*Recruiter takes resume/notes from phone interview to manger*
Manager: This person doesn't have PHP development for X years.
Recruiter: They have Perl, Python, Java, whatever.
Manager: That's not what I asked for, quit wasting my time.

*Recruiter takes info from PHP developer to Manger*
Manager: This person doesn't have enough experience.
Recruiter: How much experience do you want?
Manager: More (typical response).
Recruiter: I will try to find someone that meets the salary constraints.

We give HR a hard time because they seem to bumble around all the time. However, they usually only deal with something for a few minutes. It's just not possible for them to be up to speed. If they were given better specifications, they would make better decisions. However, it all goes back to the manager who wouldn't speed 10 extra minutes creating a job description.

Actually, even though Nvidia does not support KMS their drivers do support running X as a normal user. Users of the ATI proprietary drivers are SOL.

Using KMS does not automatically remove the root requirement. For example, Ubuntu uses KMS drivers for many cards currently, but one of the big improvements for 10.10 will be to run X as a normal user with some drivers.

My point is that there are very few places where they would be enforced. They are a scare tactic, espcially for anyone that reads Slashdot. We aren't exactly the executive types where an ex-employer would bother with (expensive) legal scare-tactics.

Because all those ex-employees are just being retributive...

While maybe a few thieves steal just to harm their victims, the vast majority of thieves are selfish. It doesn't matter what management does (short of keeping the employee); dis-honest people will do dis-honest things to their own betterment.
Otherwise, they'd just throw a brick through the window or do some other vandalism, which would probably cost the company more than stealing office supplies and the like.

You cannot make a "copy" (in the legal sense) of trade secrets. Someone/group has the trade secrets or they don't. If they were obtained without the proper owner's consent (i.e. the corporation), then you have stolen them. Trade secrets are valuable precisely because they are secret. Disclosing the secrets actually deprives the owner of the benefit of having them.

Copyright infringement does not cause a direct harm to the owner. Lost revenue is an arguable consequence, but I won't get into that.
Stealing trade secrets causes immediate, lasting harm to the owner. It's the same way that stealing my car causing harm to me. Even though the mechanisms of "stealing" are different (making a copy vs. taking a physical item), the owner is deprived of something that had value to him.

My girlfriend is an HR recruiter, and we've spent some time talking about non-competes. In several states, they are specific laws that make them illegal to enforce. Employers can scare you with them, but they can't back them up. California is the most prominent state that does not honor non-competes. Furthermore, in most other states, non-competes are unenforcible.
Non-competes are a scare tactic that employers may use against former employees; however, the courts are smart enough to realize that people have to work somewhere, and they might as well be as productive as possible (i.e. work in their qualified field), so they give a lot of deference to people who are trying to work.