The real question is the agreement legally binding. Laws very state to state, and as my lawyer pointed out what is enforceable today may not be tomorrow since courts decide these types of cases a lot. They can always sue but if they have little chance of winning and / or there is very little money at stake may simply let it ride.

If it were me and a client wanted to hire me as an employee and not a contractor, I'd let the client know I need to discuss this with the agency due to my employment contract and then reach out to the agency. That way I'd be completely up front with everyone and have the client watching out for my back as well. Chances are the agency doesn't want to upset a client and may already have contractual agreements to deal with such a circumstance. Quite frankly, every place that I've worked it's never been an issue hiring contractors as employees; the agency wants to keep good relationships and having an ex-employee, who left under good terms, at the client is a plus as well.

is the internet is slowly splitting into anonymous and identifiable user connections. The security aspects aside, anon connections makes it much more difficult to track and collect user data for sale or to promote a site's products. As a result, I think we'll see more and more efforts to block anon connection as the real cost is in the lost revenue, not the amounts lost to criminal activities. If the losses due to theft and fraud become to large the banks will figure it out; right now my guess the cost of solving the problem is great rattan the losses so there is no strong incentive to fix it.

The EU is very much a group of independent countries that have agreed to work together on many issues but have not been willing to give up sovereignty to the point where an EU law has supremacy over local laws. A a result, EU rules tend to be a lowest common denominator with individual countries adding on their own requirements. That's not unexpected since the EU is not a country like say the US where there is a federal system that has sway over the individual states, district and territories that make up the US; where there is agreement the EU works well and but individual countries still have the real power in the union and there still is a very distinct nationalism at play in the political and economic dynamics. That's not necessarily better or worse than other models but just a reflection of how the EU came into being.

I disagree. Back to your OP where you asked for evidence they are "scared;" which I took in the common business usage of " seriously worried a business model is about to be Schumpetered" than the "OMG I just pissed my pants in the haunted house..." Having spent a significant time in the electric utility industry I can say electric utility are very protective of their turf and afraid of technologies that risk them losing customers, i.e. load. They want, via regulation or legislation, to either co-opt competitors so they can control them or limit their access to their customers. Solar and battery technology has the potential to seriously change their load profiles and result in a lot of expensive investments generating a much smaller return than expected. Even worse, it can result in them having to pay a lot of customers for power rather than simply selling them it. When it's a handful of people they basically ignore it, but when the technology has the potential to turn a significant percentage of their non-industrial customers into independent power producers, yes, they are scared. They may not be pissing into their collective pants but they are hearing the words of a dead Austrian economist and he is scaring them.

Given many are trying to limit what they have to reimburse for non-utility generation by homeowners and businesses, establishing access and other mandatory fees to compensate for lost generation and or transmission revenue; I'd say they are certainly con corned, if not scared, and trying to get ahead dog the issue by getting laws and regulations in place before solar / storage becomes a major competitor. Once it is more common it'll be harder to shift costs to consumers.

While they may have been live mules the MULE was a also a mechanical device. Could have been a museum piece or maybe an M-Gator?

Cab drivers in Vegas are supposed to use the shortest route to airport but will us the longer route to get extra bucks. If you call them on it they will cut the fare to the proper one rather than risk a confrontation and potentially losing their license (1). All I've had to do is when given the fare ask "Why did you use the longer route instead dog the proper one?" and I get an "Damn" look and the driver charges me properly. Conversely, if a driver uses the proper route I give a tip that covers the difference plus and thank him for doing so.

Note 1: This was told to me by a LV cabbie

A disease that is mutating to bece less deadly unlike the cases you describe.

Hey, Kim was named the sexiest man alive recently so maybe they have something to be proud of waving...

depends on the parasite's life cycle. If they can only live within the host then become symbiotic, or at least not causing illness and death, is beneficial. If they only need the host for one part of their life cycle, such as wasps that use insects as a source of food of rhetoric larva; then killing the host is not a problem.

Except in this case, slow replication means the host never gets sick enough to die; they merely live with an infection and may exhibit no symptoms of the disease. They remain contagious but the disease no longer progresses to full blown AIDs.

What the article says is the virus, as it adapts to a strong immune system weakens it's ability to replicate; thus slowing down the onset of the disease in the host. If another person is infected by this weaker virus, the new infection results in an even weaker virus as it tries to adapt to the host. In essence, each successive infection results in a virus less able to replicate and thus result in a slower and slower onset of AIDs. Over time, the virus may lose it's ability to replicate fast enough to cause AIDs and merely be another infection for the body to deal with.

Perhaps, but you are mixing the ease o fuse of a piece of technology with the ability to use the underlying technology. It does no good to be able to open a spreadsheet more easily if you have no idea how to use the spreadsheet beyond the basics; and my experiences with school systems is they give the teachers technology and expect them to use it without teaching them how to use it. As result, they spend hours struggling with the technology and sometimes simply discard it because it is too much of a hassle to use.