Unless all employees are in the class and assumed to increase their salaries 10% during the time frame; the resulting lawsuit/settlement has little to no chance of being more expensive then if all the companies had been competing for talent as it will be extremely difficult to prove financial damages. I am very disappointed in the DOJ settling this one with little more then a "don't do it again" as they may have been the only way to stop this cold going forward.

"It's not a "health" choice, it's a lifestyle choice."

Your ignorance is deafening. Sorry, but the pill is not just a "life-style" choice. Please educate yourself.

My wife has poly-cystic ovaries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycystic_ovary_syndrome), a pre-cancerous condition. One of the fun things about PCOS is you don't menstruate. So my wife will literally go months without a menstrual cycle but when she does, oh boy. She is constantly cramping, imagine someone grabbing your insides and constantly squeezing. Then when a menstrual cycle starts it does so with even more incredible cramping that she can hardly get out of bed in the morning or even get through the day. Pain meds are the order of the day. Next up comes an extremely heavy and clotty flow that will continue for about 4 weeks that makes her tired and light headed most of the day. If she isn't on birth control she gets to look forward to that 2-3 times a year for a month at a time. In our lives there is no such thing as "lifestyle" choice just pain or no pain.

For those who were in mixed Apple / PC environments at the time (I was working on a college campus); the fact that you could still get Office was a major reason that folks got to keep their Macs and would start trading up to the their iMacs and G3 towers in the next two years. While Jobs gets all the credit for bringing the company back from the brink (and rightfully so) you have to remember where his reputation was at the time, ie weird dude that got kicked out earlier. For better or worse, MS blessing upon Apple made it ok to actually purchase Macs because their would always be a copy of Office to be had from Microsoft.

All the articles coming out about start-ups, being your own boss, writing your own iOS app and making money....sure smells like 1999 - 2000 to this Slashdot old-timer.

+2 for the Bruce Campbell reference!

I was sophomore in college when I found Slashdot, it was 1998. I had P2-266 with 128MB of RAM and 8GB hard drive and a dorm room T-1 connection that I saturated nightly because nobody had a computer hooked up to the Internet yet. I don't even remember how I got to Slashdot, but I know that it has been with me ever since. I don't comment as frequently as I once did, but I do come to the site everyday. In essence, Slashdot and the posting I have done here over the past 12 years is a record of how I have grown and changed as person. From starting out as MIS major (don't snicker Comp Sci guy - I can still run rings around your SQL code), to my first job at Enron, to going back to grad school to get my MBA (yea, a geek in suit's clothing) and finally to my current position - Slashdot has been there. Rob, thank you for what you have done, you gave us all a voice.

HT

That just brought a tear to my eye...

Freshman in college when announced...now married 7 years with a kid.

My UID is from late 2007 to early 2008

Fast question:
Its 1993, would you rather have US Dollars or Chinese Yuan for the next 20 years? If you said Yuan, then you owe me money. In October 2003, the Chinese devalued their currency by 50% versus the USD.
http://www.oanda.com/currency/historical-rates/
Currency Cross is USD (Currency I have) to CNY (Currencies I want)

In that time, the US had fueled the rise of China because of long-term currency manipulation of the Yuan by China. This has fueled Chinese manufacturing boom but completely screwed Chinese consumers by artificially reducing their buying power. So the Chinese now sit on a a huge chunk of US debt because the best way to continue the yuan's manipulation is buying Treasuries and selling yuan which helps China compete. That 50% has moved to 14% even though China's market grow rate has been multiple of the the US over that time almost 20 years ago.

The Chinese can't stop buying debt without putting themselves at significant risk. Of course, if the US goes down as you say - that would loot the Chinese Treasury. The Chinese have tried to diversify out of US debt see all base metals and other commodities, but every time they have increased that commodity pricing exponentially. USD debt is still the largest and most liquid market there is. You can go buy 3 - 4 billion in debt and not make a hiccup. Do that in Gold, Copper, Aluminum, Silver and you can move that market by 10% and cost you amazing amounts.

So we continue this charade. The Chinese talk about wanting to diversify from USD (they can't because they need the currency advantage still and doing so impacts their own). And the US continues to talk about the Chinese manipulating its currency but we don't care because they have to buy our debt.

Of course now all the near-sourcing that was going to Canada has dried up. I know of personally three companies that scaled back or completely abandoned Canadian projects to move US jobs to Southern Ontario and Calgary because of the exchange rate appreciation. Who knows maybe those jobs that moved to Canada will come back over the border. Now multiply that by 1000x when the Chinese can no longer artificially depress the yuan and you get an idea of what will happen to them. Of course this is why the Chinese can't stop buying US Treasuries.

Yea but you are also choking back $500 a month in property tax too (I lived in Texas). So unless you purchased your 2700 sqft house for 150K - which even for DFW is a stretch unless you live beyond Frisco or in Midlothian - your actual costs are closer to 1800 a month.