Did the offer any moral or ethics explanation? How did they justify this on a human level? That always interests me about this sort of decision, surely they had many meetings on the topic, what would those minutes look like?
Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
491–500 of 510 posts
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're arguing that it was meet and right for Cetus to claim ownership No, I'm claiming that it should not have been surprising that the agreement for someone who worked there included such claims. How I personally feel about it is irrelevant; it's a standard practice, and to be expected. What I am arguing with is your repeated use of terms like "visitor", to make it sound like the guy just popped in for lunch one da…
> What I am arguing with is your repeated use of terms like "visitor", to make it sound like the guy just popped in for lunch one day and they claimed all his work. ... the usual connotation of "visitor" is incredibly misleading here, and I wish you'd be more clear about it. "Visitor's Confidentiality Agreement" was the title of the NDA, for Pete's sake; that's what makes it sound as though the guy popped in for a me…
So he worked there, and commuted to work there, because of how he worked there.
And you brought this up in a thread about something not even close to the same situation, yet presented it as relevant. And doubled down despite being contradicted by your own sources. He worked there. He knew he worked there. He was not just popping in for half an hour that one time to have lunch with them. He worked there and they trained him on their techniques while he worked there. The fact that the word "visitor" was in there is not relevant and does not make it be the same situation that this thread was about. It is not the same situation. It is not a similar situation. It is not the same situation because -- have I mentioned this? -- he worked there.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
For others, just about every bio of Nikola Tesla describes how poorly he was treated by Edison. Interesting reading.
Electrocuting dogs, cats, horses, and even an elephant, says a lot more about you as a human being than the person you're trying to discredit by electrocuting dogs, cats, horses, and even an elephant. https://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/19/edison-publicly-torture... https://www.wired.com/2008/01/dayintech-0104/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocuting_an_Elephant NSFL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlPYikt_qvo
Edison was not responsible for Topsy's death. That is a myth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_(elephant)#Association_w...
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#494Earlier quoted context omitted.
The good news is that very few people are at the top. Most are in the middle, and it's entirely possible to be ethical and in a good middling position.
How can you justify your work in the middle as ethical, if it directly supports a rotten apple at the top? Your life's work turned into a support system for a beast, wonderful!
I suppose it depends how you view the system and the rotten apple.
A properly functioning complex system should be able to tolerate a few bad apples, limiting the harm that they can cause. If you work in such a system and there are bad apples, you can justify the ethics of your work if there are checks and balances that limit the leader's ability to harm.
The obvious analogy is the current U.S. political system. It's quite possible to see the United States as generally striving for a more fair society, and generally good, and yet to be disgusted by Trump's cruelty and inept. The only way to square those two competing ideas is to acknowledge that even though Trump is a miserable rotten apple, he doesn't really have all the power. As bad as he is, he won't last forever, and the principals of the U.S. will long survive him.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
The good news is that very few people are at the top. Most are in the middle, and it's entirely possible to be ethical and in a good middling position.
The psychopaths at the top are a lucky minority of a mass of psychopaths, most of which prosper a bit less at middle levels in organizations. Only low-functioning psychopaths are exposed and thrown out, and usually only by chance because of specific incidents.
No way. The psychopaths at the top of the top are a different breed, by an order of magnitude. It takes a different "type" of person to run for U.S. President than to run a large organization or company. Consider the president of GM, who worked her way up over 30 years from bottom to top and had to learn everything in between. Compare that to either Trump, who basically staged his election as reality TV episode that went wrong (he just wanted ratings, not to run the place). Also consider Obama, who was so smart, well spoken, and charismatic, probably only heard people telling him would be president from 18 onwards. Also Ted Cruz, who would happily accept a role of enforcement of the "US Moral Compass" as his pre-ordained right/duty.
My point is that there are plenty of folks at the top of their company that are not physcopaths, they inched their way up over decades of sweat and tears, and even if they aspired to lead on their way up, they knew they had to prove themselves in every aspect of the business first. CEOs of GM and Merck are decent examples. Then there are folks who believe they were chosen for the job before their birth. I'm scared of them.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do people carry out muggings? Because they gain from it. Morality and legality aren't just divergent - they're orthogonal . Just like one can perform moral and immoral actions in physical space, one can perform moral or immoral actions using the legal system. Despite the goal of the legal system being to punish immoral behavior, being able to actually formalize that is up against the limit of complexity - as soon…
Great comment. Is this a fundamental limit? The justice system itself pricing most people out of justice. A reasonable judge could make the the OP whole, and discourage attacks. But access to that judge is far, far too expensive. In the absence of a working justice system, are we helpless? Mostly, yes. But Google's reputation will take a big hit here, rightly so. Ideally, the individuals involved at Google would also…
>Ideally, the individuals involved at Google would also take a big reputation hit.
Ideally yes, in reality? the problem of a system that rewards trickery and deceit is that eventually the opposite (truth, honor, respect, etc) becomes worthless. You even have countries like mine that are so down this rabbit hole that being called a "good guy" is almost an insult because it just means you're simpleton who gets scammed.
Public reputation is only good in an environment where (public)reputation matters and in this situation the (private)reputation of that google employee within the corporation as a guy who makes money for the company matters more than if a limited portion of the public (us here) knows he outright steals things from other people through deceit. In general the average consumer couldn't care less about the actual individuals behind the products they are using or the controversies behind their creation. The vast, vast majority of computer users don't know that Xerox actually created the GUI and not Apple or Microsoft, and they don't care. So expecting them to provide justice in lieu of the system its a tall order to say the least.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#497Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are a Nice Guy (TM) but business is business it's actually not a bad thing that it's one of the few places you can actually be an asshole without feeling bad for it though
Business can be respectful, honorable and still successful, so that phrase is mostly a lame blanket excuse to not put in effort towards such goals. And, sorry, but it's hard to escape the indicative aspect of liking the oportunity to be "an asshole without feeling bad about it"...
Well the point is that its nice to see the world how you would like it to be instead of what it is. In practice some people are asshole, egoistical and take pleasure in it and i would argue life tend to reward that kind of behaviour (more money, more power and more girls). And they make fun of you.
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I am arguing with is your repeated use of terms like "visitor", to make it sound like the guy just popped in for lunch one day and they claimed all his work. ... the usual connotation of "visitor" is incredibly misleading here, and I wish you'd be more clear about it. "Visitor's Confidentiality Agreement" was the title of the NDA, for Pete's sake; that's what makes it sound as though the guy popped in for a me…
So he worked there, and commuted to work there, because of how he worked there. And you brought this up in a thread about something not even close to the same situation, yet presented it as relevant. And doubled down despite being contradicted by your own sources. He worked there. He knew he worked there. He was not just popping in for half an hour that one time to have lunch with them. He worked there and they train…
I turn over my king, sir ....
Re: Google Tried to Patent My Work After a Job Interview
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are just some of the reasons patents are fundamentally broken and the patent system as a whole should be scrapped. Another big issue is that, like most any law, enforcing it costs significant money, and that cost scales depending upon who your opponent is. The cost for a little guy to enforce a patent claim against google is vastly out of proportion to the cost of google to enforce a patent claim against a litt…
Not just patents, but all intellectual property. Copyright is arguably even more broken, lasting a century or more. It's ridiculous. My disdain for the DMCA is immeasurable, and the upcoming EU directive looks even worse. Not only are these systems broken in their implementation, but there is little evidence that even in their most pure form they accomplished their supposed intention.
Trademark regulations are fine. It's just patents and copyrights.