I saw this and was absolutely certain CNET’s software had accidentally re-posted an old news article about Gnutella.

A day after developers at America Online’s Nullsoft unit
quietly release file-sharing software,
AOL pulls the link to the product from the subsidiary’s Web site.

As it turns out, Nullsoft did it again, with an encrypted collaboration program called Waste.

Anyone want to take bets on whether its brief posting will be enough for third-party developers to pick it up and run with it?

Every once in a while, something that I see every day will just strike me differently. For instance, this bit from the sign printed on the window outside the lobby where I work:

NO SOLICITORS
In Case of Emergency Call…

It’s the law: all employers in California have to provide work comp coverage for all their employees. Even Wolfram & Hart.

Normal law firms probably don’t have much of a premium. Evil law firms, however, might see a big increase. For this reason, I think they’re probably self-insured. That, and they can keep all medical treatment and administration entirely in-house (especially given that their “house” has locations on several worlds and lots of unofficial ties in this one), along with as much defense litigation as possible. I’d imagine they don’t incur many penalties either, since it’s likely they can turn back time to avoid late payments. And if an employee wants to argue that anything they’ve gotten is less than they deserve, I’d imagine the second phase of their employment isn’t long in starting.

Sample injured worker: Lindsey. Definitely injured on the job, so the injury is fully compensable. According to the California permanent disability rating guidelines, loss of the dominant hand between wrist and elbow, inclusive, where a prosthesis is possible, has a standard PD rating of 60%, meaning 60% of the jobs available wouldn’t hire you with that disability. When you adjust for age (assuming he’s just shy of 30) and occupation, both of which lower the rating, it ends up at 53%. This is, of course, not counting in psychiatric effects, which would probably raise the rating. So, if he settled his claim, which W&H would probably “encourage” him to do, he’d be entitled to at least $49,342.50 in compensation. And they’d have been in something of a bind later if he did settle, since he’d have ended up with minimal PD and they couldn’t legally recoup their money.

Way too much time on my (evil) hands.