Laid-off techies invoke old law – Tech News – CNET.com: [The WARN Act] requires companies with more than 100 workers to give employees at least 60 days notice of a plant closing or mass layoffs. A plant closing is defined as the shutdown of a single site in which 50 or more employees lose their jobs. Mass layoffs occur when a company lets go 500 workers over 30 days, or 33 percent of the work force, if that means at least 50 people.
Minnesota looks into switch of Qwest DSL users The state Commerce Department is investigating whether tens of thousands of Minnesotans have been treated fairly in the switch of Qwest high-speed Internet access customers to Microsoft’s MSN online service.
I would not be too surprised if something like this happens during the transfer of services from SBC Prodigy to Yahoo!
FCC News Release: FCC PROPOSES $6 MILLION FINE AGAINST SBC COMMUNICATIONS, INC. In approving the license transfers, the Commission required SBC to offer the shared transport unbundled network element in the former Ameritech states on terms at least as favorable as those offered to telecommunications carriers in Texas as of August 27, 1999. In today’s Notice, the Commission found that SBC appears to have violated this condition in each of the five former Ameritech states by attempting to restrict the use of shared transport by carriers providing intraLATA toll service. The $6 million fine proposed by the Commission is the statutory maximum for the five apparent violations (one in each of the former Ameritech states).
We’ve been sued.
BT, Prodigy U.S. hyperlink patent trial date set: BT owns what it calls the Hidden Page patent, which was filed in the U.S. in 1976, granted in 1989 and isn’t due to expire until 2006, giving the company the intellectual property rights to hyperlink technology. Hyperlinks connect text, images, and other data on the Internet in such a way as to allow a user to click on a highlighted object on a Web page in order to bring up an associated item contained elsewhere on the Web.
As far as I can tell, this patent applies just as well to symbolic links in the UNIX filesystem, Mac OS aliases, Windows shortcuts, anything written in Hypercard, anything with a GUI, menu-driven programs (smit, for example), an index, a b-tree, a detour sign, a table of contents in a printed book — or even a Socratic dialogue, which reveals the argument through questions.
To patent this is absurd.
Joel on Software – December 15, 2001: Lazy programmers who didn’t read about how users don’t read anything.
Compare with WebSiteNOW!.
Group sues Pacific Bell over Net service – CNET.com “‘In fact, most consumers had not authorized or consented for Prodigy to bill them for such services,’ the lawsuit alleges, asking the judge to order SBC to cease the practice and refund consumer money.”
It remains possible that the status quo ante bellum will continue after the migrations. But perhaps Chicken Little was right.
Yeee-haaww!, or as they say “Yahoo!”
Get your TiVo while it’s hot. Those crazy TV networks are getting confused about fair use again.
Microsoft the Microsoft with the Microsoft
In 1996, I taught a class for Associated Press on using Windows 95. Some class members thought that Microsoft was the Internet. There was no distinction between Windows 95, Internet Explorer, MSN, and the other websites. It was all Microsoft.
“How can I access the Microsoft?”
This just solidifies that. Go Microsoft yourself.
Despite everything, some folks just don’t understand hyperlinks. You would think that the e-mail announcing this article would have contained the URL.
But I can see why it didn’t. The headline linking the story is not the same as the headline on the story. The article is not mentioned in the links for the print version, or for the section in which it appeared in the print version, though if I had the print version in front of me I may have jumped directly to the “Tech” section. And a search for terms known to be in the article didn’t find anything recent.