Salon.com > Jeff Nachtigal

We own what you think

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 19:30:00 +0000

In July, the Texas Court of Appeals turned down software programmer Evan Brown's appeal for a jury trial to decide who owned an idea in his head: Brown, or his former employer. The decision was a victory for business and a blow to the little guy, as well as an affirmation of standard employment-contract law. It's also a cautionary tale for creative-minded information technology workers.

Seven years ago Brown told his employer, DSC Communications Corp., that he had figured out a system to translate data from old mainframe computer programs into modern computer languages, an innovation that would enable businesses to run their old software on much faster computers. Brown says he had been wrestling with the problem since 1975 and finally, while on vacation in 1996, he figured out the final 20 percent of the puzzle.

His original hope was to make a deal with DSC allowing him to continue working on his idea while still staying employed. But negotiations soon broke down, and within a year, DSC sued Brown, stating that his idea was the property of the company because he had signed an employment agreement giving the company ownership of any "inventions" he conceived or developed during his employment, with the exception of ideas that Brown had explicitly disclosed at the time of original employment. Brown, who ended up working for DSC for 10 years, said he had come up with the idea entirely on his own time and refused to give up the design.

What’s that hissing sound?

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 19:30:00 +0000

Oil prices hit an all-time high Monday, topping out at $44.97 a barrel. There are a bundle of immediate reasons -- sabotage and war in Iraq, the showdown between the Yukos Oil Co. and the Kremlin in Russia, political instability in Venezuela -- but there are also fundamental long-term forces pushing prices ever upward. Demand, particularly in countries such as India and China, is growing fast, but the supply is finite.

Still, among consumers in the United States, there appears to be little panic. The coming "oil peak" -- that moment when worldwide production of oil reaches its high point -- is in the news, but Detroit keeps turning out SUVs, freeways are perpetually jammed, and prices at the pump -- so far -- have not inspired many of us to cut back.

Our devil-may-care attitude about energy is fueled in large part by an economic principle of "substitutability," in which we depend on new sources of energy to take the place of the old. But when the oil spigots finally run dry -- whether in a few years or a few decades -- the next hydrocarbon on the list (and possibly the last, depending on how you count coal) will be natural gas. But if we blow through natural gas in the same reckless manner as we have oil, we're in for a serious shock, argues Julian Darley in his new book, "High Noon for Natural Gas."

They’re lumberjacks and they’re not OK

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:30:00 +0000

In the Hayfork Watershed Research and Training Center a wall is devoted to monitoring the socioeconomic health of the town's 1,800 residents. The numbers are not pretty: 80 percent of the town's kids use the free breakfast and lunch programs at school; 24 percent of the community is unemployed; rising numbers of families are requesting food stamps. The soup kitchen and free showers aren't quantifiable, but everyone knows where to find them.

For generations logging was the economic engine of Hayfork, Calif., but the days of pulling big trees out of the forest are gone. Regular paychecks are few and far between, and people hang on by stringing together odd jobs and piecemeal work. Many members of the younger generation have moved to urban areas to find work. The biggest emerging industry in Hayfork is signaled by a surge in the number of methamphetamine labs. Every year for the past decade the economic news has grown worse: fewer signs for meaningful, long-term work; more kids in poverty.

Does online love come only in shades of red and blue?

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:30:00 +0000

For Chris, a striking blue-eyed graduate student from San Francisco, the right politics, that is, her kind of politics, is a key qualifier for a potential date.

"They don't have to be exactly the same, but politics are an important part of my life and I want to be able to talk to people who I am very close to about them," says Chris, 35. She describes herself as playful and progressive and lists "changing the world" as one of the five items she couldn't live without on her profile on Act for Love, a "cause oriented" and politically progressive dating site.

Chris has tried it both ways. But dates set up online with guys who had very different politics made her realize that she wasn't likely to connect with a person unless he shared her political direction. Match.com and Yahoo.com gave her plenty of options, but the people she found there didn't have nearly enough in common with her. Still searching, she finds herself wishing Act for Love were better known and had more members so she'd have more similarly politically minded options for her next date.