i was about to hit the same topic. the same fact surprised me as well when i was visiting japan.

' So is the law OK with it or can the new owners sue or whatever ?'

sue whom ? it's their own failure in the purchase process if they failed to set up sufficient benefits for the existing employees. suing one self is not that profitable.

I'm a software developer myself, professionally for about 10 years, a little more.
But when it comes down to a discussion of "bug free" programs, i totally disagree with the herd it seems.

You don't expect your doctor to make a bug while fixing you up. If they do, they are pretty screwed.
You don't expect your car maker to give you a buggy car (Toyota anyone ?). If they sell you a really bad car, they are really screwed.
You don't expect your mobile operator to give you a buggy phone.
You don't expect a cola bottle that has the drink but doesn't open properly, you don't want a cigarette lighter that burns your house down.
This list could pretty much continue forever...

Why do developers think that they are all sacred cows and not responsible for not planning & producing their product properly. There are about 10 more than bazillion good developers out there today. There's nothing holy about you if you optimize the code down to be 5% faster, but there is great holiness if you can provide algorithms that are way more bulletproof.

Why should anyone pay money for software that doesn't really do what it should ? I know that it's freaking expensive to write nearly perfect code, but as the expression goes "you get what you pay for". If you look at your "main enemy Microsoft", their windows is a burrito in the software world, it's a cheap deal, don't expect it to be a full blown lunch at a mighty restaurant.

If there are 3rd party items that make your product unstable, make sure the client understands it before he buys it (just like you tell people not to put their cat into the microwave ... , or not to use the microwave with the wrong electricity voltage line).

And as far as "independent developer" jam follows, do what the rest of the industry does.
1) work for someone else, until you have enough budget and a good idea
2) fork away your own company, and roll it.

Nobody really starts a car factory from zero and nobody builds a McJimmy's burger place into downtown from zero investment or out of the fun of an experiment. If you want to make money - it's a business, get on the train.

We are Borg^H^H^H^H Skype. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

Might just be that Verizon figured out that resistance to voip calls is futile, and they'd better be on the smiling bunch than the grumpy one. Thumbs up for the brave move, let's see how the mobile competition responds to this. AT&T, are you there ? If you are - tough luck ;-)

Do you really forget accidental child porn on your hdd for a year ? If you do "forget it there", you belong where law says you should be at. Every normal person would delete the file after opening it.

I think google should just opt-out from selling the devices to Optus if this really is the case. There is no way that G should let itself to be blackmailed this way, hopefully the aussie company will understand it before they just miss out the whole android ride.

The days where a mobile company could do whatever they want are over.

dude, wake up. really. the kill ratio of swine flu turned out to be no more serious than any regular flu. and the doctors aren't even sure that the current vaccine is effective against all the variations of the disease. blind trust into the word "vaccine" is misleading. especially if the illness isn't so severe.

malaria kills 1000 times more people per year than swineflu. why aren't you vaccinated against that one ? (and no, there is no iron garden that would defend you from getting it anywhere in the world (except alaska and siberia in winter time), just the chances are really low).

savage 2 did this idea a while ago :)

but actually it is fun, i don't think EA should miss out on multiple massive online ganking games.

indeed. nethack is the game. period.

Damn it feels so good to be thousands of miles away from the US.

However, i hope that you enrich your laws sometime soon with "patents can be ignored if their build-up is just plain stupid blackmail"

I second that :)

Most likely nobody gets fired for this. You can't just pick new gmail level developers and administrators up from the streets. But work collisions like this will always happen if you go past some size in the company. Google just has to improve it's procedures so it wouldn't happen at this scale again.

and link to the super evil company as well

http://www.rovedigital.com/

their homepage vs the homepage displayed in pdf files ... not really hidden well enough