That is my first concern. If they eat wood, its bad news... really bad news. If they eat other bugs, I am gonna leave them alone.

If they like termites, where can I get some?

Your second paragraph nailed it.

We have so many laws on the books already, most unenforced, that everyone breaks on a daily basis as a routine part of life.

So you want to make life hard for someone? Just snoop on them and demand the law concerning some trivial thing be enforced. Did you do some home maintenance sans licensed contractor? Having a backyard barbeque? Having a few neighbors over? Are you harboring a stray cat? Did you trap a possom that was messing up your garden and getting to your veggies first? Have a sibling over longer than some HOA spec? Maybe you had a smoke outside - you never know, there may be some law about it.

I for one fear the police state we are evolving to, mostly because our law, like our tax code, is demeaning to a lot of us for the benefit of a few.

Its not like we think our Government wants to spy on us because they think we intend them harm.

I think its more down the line of : You just fixed your patio cover. Did you have a permit to do that (fee)? Did you have it inspected by the city inspector ( another fee ). We need to re-do your property tax!

And gee whiz, what if someone is hanging their wash in the back yard on a clothes line instead of using a dryer!

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Willard?

Sounds like the same conundrum Microsoft was in regarding Mike Rowe, except this time there is not only exact name spellings involved but also a bit of acrimony.

Thanks for the advice, Jane.

You were absolutely right... this one was a "3 in 1", which addressed everything. I have no problem with non-disclosure. It was mostly the total ownership of any IP come up with coupled with my attempts to build up "sweat equity" by agreeing to work for low rates that got me. I will work for low wages ( or if any ) just for the exposure to people who may need my services. If I can make the company I am with highly profitable, and they will share, why would I want to leave? But if their idea of loyalty is legal documents, they have obviously never owned a cat. I can tell you he will not care what you signed, even if you did it with a 24 karat gold pen, the cat's not gonna hang around if he's unhappy there.

Then I find out I can not go to work for someone else who may want me? I mean if I am to be made so aware that I am there "at-will", then it goes both ways. I feel that document is one of the best destructors of a sense of loyalty I have ever seen.

I told him I would sign the thing as long as I put one more subject in.... that everything agreed to took place unilaterally, that is the names of the parties could be swapped and the contract would read the same. That led to a lot of vitriol.

As far as I am concerned, this paper has destroyed my illusion that I was working to build a company, rather I now I feel I am a plumber called in to fix the toilet.

And can I be "understanding" and work for less than going wage so money can be freed up to hire my replacement.

He tells me he is looking for someone else for what used to be my desk. Someone who is more of a "manager". I am relegated to a workbench. I cannot do my research there. No place for my books or files. Now, I access the internet mostly at McDonalds. I could be working on lithium battery chargers for him, power converters, inductive tap switchers, refrigeration systems, and here I am whining about some lopsided loyalty document on a laptop in a fast food joint.... while businessmen go to the government saying people aren't available.

There comes a point where its no longer work... its prostitution.

And I feel I am just being used. I felt small companies would be immune to this kind of stuff, as it is so destructive to morale. Having to sign a document acknowledging how "at will" I am and how everything I have tried to build up with them is lost. I wonder why they call it a "loyalty pledge", to me it was only an acknowledgement of how replaceable I am and how futile it would be to try to build anything here.

I honestly do not know what to make of this. I have just done my state and federal tax. I owed the feds nothing. I owed the state $57. I do contract engineering work in things like analog and microprocessor control.

I have been working with one small company trying to build it up. I have been working there for six months now, and have been paid a little over $2000. Just yesterday the owner gave me an agreement (NDA) he wanted me to sign, which transferred any and all IP I come with to the company along with a commitment from me I will not work for any of his customers or competitors for 24 months after termination.

I refused to sign the damned thing.

It read like a prenup, making sure no alimony can be claimed, yet commitment not to take another partner for two years assured through legal means..

My sentiments are that any obligation to him cease along with any obligation he has to pay me if this is indeed the case of a true "at will" legal environment. If he wants my continued obeyance of something after termination, it is my belief he should also be obligated to reimburse me for the opportunity cost I forfeited to obey his wish.


I realize my Congress is not there to help me, even though they are there in full if I should succeed in making a taxable income. They will shut down Napster if a business claims they are violating copyright, They will shut down online pharmacies if they go around regional pricing algorithms set by the drug companies, but they will also hold lawful offshore tax havens. The wonders of a lobbied congress.

I do not know what to do, but from all I see, it is pointless to try to do anything at this stage of the game. I have a few more years to go before I am on full social security. I feel foolish trying to invest my savings on trying to maintain employability by agreeing to every pre-nup out there, agreeing to give the businessman all of any IP I come up with, and gracefully accept "at will" termination when I have given all I have.

Another board I frequent, using the Drupal blogging software, is currently being overwhelmed with spam.

Our beloved webmaster is experimenting with Mollum spam retarding software .

This software does have its faults, as it is hindering the posting of links by some of our most informative posters. A blogsite's "good folk" need to be whitelisted so they can post links unhindered. More often than not, the most informative content of a post is a link.

Anyone else having a blogsite overrun with crap might want to look into this. I do not think its the ultimate solution, but its a start.

My observation is the people who work for the TSA are from a class of people that have been picked on their whole lives.

Our government has empowered these folks to give someone else hell for a while if they want to.

I am all for holding the credit reporting agencies liable for reporting *correct* data.

If I have something, say - a car, and unknown to me, my brake system was in error, and as a result someone else suffered a loss, am I liable? I would say I am. Criminally liable? I would not think so, but still I feel I am responsible for the loss to the other party.

If I knew the brake system was in error, yet I continued to drive the car, should I then be criminally responsible for my damages to others? I would think so, not much different from my driving with cognitive error from drugs or alcohol.

My own feeling is if anyone is reporting on my reputation, I have a right to get a verbatim copy of whatever they are reporting to anyone else. I feel I should have a right to challenge any item on that report, and they should have to either prove it or remove it. Immediately. If this report is changed as result of the challenge, retractions should be issued to anyone receiving the challenged data.

RIAA lobbied Congress for hefty fines for violating their copyrights be issued personally; I would like to see the responsible person for issuing erroneous credit report also take personal responsibility for its accuracy. That would insure a registered letter sent to the company regarding a defamation issue is taken seriously, just as the RIAA has lobbied to make their copyright violation letter be taken seriously.

To me, an individual's career is a helluva lot more serious than a copied song, but does our Congress think so? This is the kind of things voters should see when the red, white, and blue bunting is out is which Congressmen will go to bat for them, and which ones simply cozy up to the lobbyist.

And how do you TAX something that you do not and can not control?

I used to go through 500MB easily in one surfing session before NoScript. Webmasters using modern tools think nothing of sending you whatever you will accept, such as a ten megabyte video streaming file to open up and play on the side as an ad for cars or some movie trailer...

Once people begin being charged for this, they are apt to adopt technologies which block ads, and webmasters-paid by the ad transmitted-will do all in their power to send anything only after they have confirmed the ad streams are transferring. Many business sites have already adopted such technology, and they will be very expensive to visit.

I would almost like to see NoScript start flashing a dollar sign next to sites which need to be enabled. Then load the executive computers with NoScript so the executives who hired the webmaster will see what their customers are seeing. One of the biggest problems we have had on the internet is the executives are generally running on high-speed local networks using a monolithic browsing system and do not get a true "customer experience" when visiting their own site.

But it can also be argued that the CEO of large corporations time is too valuable to be wasted having a customer experience.

I wonder if the next big wave of lawsuits will be over people "stealing" content from the web because they adopted ad-refusal technologies.

I have already lived long enough to see lawsuits where unauthorized access to as little as a song invoked thousands of dollars in legal fees, while tax havens specifically crafted to avoid tax collections, operating in the Caribbean and Indonesian islands, continue to operate. This one-sided law is wearing heavily on my respect for law - its seeming more and more like organized muggery every day.

I would hate to have to build the pressure vessel that would hold a swimming pool full of water. That would be a good question for a pressure vessel engineer that designs reactor vessels for oil refineries. When I see how much CO2 I used to carbonate my bottle of soda pop, I extrapolated the ratio and that is the rough approximation of how much water 20 pounds of CO2 would carbonate.

I guess you could carbonate the pool by drawing a continuous stream of water, pressurizing it to 70-100 PSI, injecting CO2, slowly release the pressure, then release the water back into the pool. It would have to be a cold pool, though... warm water will not carbonate worth a hoot. ( as anyone who has left a carbonated beverage at room temperature can attest to ). Basically, you have just made a huge soda fountain.

Incidentally, CO2 is not the only gas that dissolves in cold water. Methane will too. Forms something called "Clathrates". Methane Hydrate crystals. Burning rocks. One can find these in deepwater cold areas and amongst permafrost. One of the fears of climatic scientists is that as the earth warms up, these clathrates will lose the methane back to a gas which will accelerate the greenhouse process. I understand the Japanese are already going for clathrate mining to fuel their industry.

It never hurts to know how to use commonly available everyday items for other purposes.

I highly envied MacGyver for his insight to use what he had.

Slashdot is one of my choice reads because a lot of you guys here post extremely insightful observations. Sometimes I have to read through a lot of chaff to get to the gems, but some of those gems are real winners.