And seriously, is this news-worthy? If/. wants to publish EVERY bad patent application, it's going to get crowded here pretty quick. There's a lot of chaff out there.
Most of said chaff, though, is not supported by legal teams bigger than many mid-size companies backed by assets of almost $30 billion.
This may become a bigger thing. I plan to stay tuned.
Because I get paid from 9-5, no matter when I actually show up. However, we have been told several times by our superiors that not being ready to take calls at 9 is unacceptable. Our compliance to schedule is measured as well, and not taking calls at 9 = out of compliance = anything from loss of bonuses to disciplinarian action.
I work in a helpdesk/call centre environment for a bank.
Booting my computer only takes 2-4 minutes, but that's only the beginning. Before I take a single call, I have to have Outlook open, three browsers, and a minimum of six other programs running. Then I need to go over all of our newest releases, since bank policy and procedures seem to change every 30 seconds.
So all told, that's 10-15 minutes. The evening much less so - only about 2-3 minutes to get everything shut down - but that's still at least 15 minutes a day that I'm not getting paid for. That adds up to be over four digits per year that my company shafts me out of.
I suddenly have an urge to go on an office-supply-appropriation spree.
It's funny to me how venomous all of these comments are, especially after the phrase "I only watched the first 6 seconds of it." Surely you must understand these people don't play guitar hero controllers all of the time; it's experimental. Obviously in your eyes the experiment failed. Enough said.
Buh?
They're performing a concert for the public. It's experimental, yes. It's original, yes. Many people will hate it, yes. But that's NO EXCUSE for not having practiced enough where they didn't play the piece properly. I counted at least five times (over the course of six minutes) where the performers fell out of sync with each other, not in a "post-modern atonal experimental" kind of way, but in a "I-have-no-fucking-clue-how-we're-supposed-to-be-playing-this-section" kind of way.
There are lots of valid reasons to justify this piece being performed, but there are no valid reasons to justify not playing it properly. If the classical guitarist and violinist can't hack it, then find people with less (but not no) classical training and more Guitar Hero training.
Now, now. This isn't quite/b/ levels of bad. I could see this being featured on BoingBoing. I'd actually probably find it mildly interesting if it were embedded on BB, instead of front-paged on/.
I'm assuming, then, you didn't look at any of the KittenAuth pages.
KittenAuth shows you 9 pictures, and asks you to point out the three kittens. There are 9C3 combinations possible, which comes to 84; therefore, a 1/84 (=approx. 1.19%) chance you get it right by random guesses. If it put up 15 photos and asked you to choose the three kittens, the odds would drop to 1/455; at 20 pictures (which is probably close to the upper limit of what is reasonable) and asking you to choose the four kittens (ditto), your odds of getting it right randomly would be 1 in 4845. Not super-excellent, but at least a starting point that works better than a cracked CAPTCHA.
And that's what basically happened here (except the catalyst for change was information that could be used against THEM instead of against YOU). According to TFA, when the Department of Corrections was first told about this, they took the sites down for "routine maintenance". When the sites came back up, the SQL query was STILL in the URL. The only difference? They changed "social_security_number" to "Social_security_number", apparently thinking that was all the protection that sex offenders required.
Their tune changed quickly, however, when the author of TFA pointed out that not only was the sex offenders' information available, but so too was the information of the EMPLOYEES. Site got shut down pretty f#&^in' fast after that.
I think the GP meant "America's involvement in WWII", which was only about 3.5 years. But there's no way that America pulls out of Iraq before January 2009 (which is virtually impossible anyway, no matter who wins the election), so it'll be at least 5.75 years before the war ends. Invasion of Poland to collapse of Germany was 5.67 years.
125 staff members at SLAC have been let go this year (so far), and 200 projected layoffs at Fermilab by the end of the summer. Wired has the fuller scoop.
That's over 12 years, so about $10 billion a year. That was to the moon. I get the odd feeling that a project of this magnitude will cost more - maybe 10 times as much for something of comparable size? If you're exceedingly lucky? So that's 100 billion dollars a year.
Over 5 years of manned flights, 11 Apollo spaceships made it into orbit and back again. That's about 2 per year. So let's assume the same rate of return with this plan. Oil is $100 a barrel right now, so how much oil would the two ships per year have to carry to break even, running off these assumptions?
Answer = 500 million barrels each. Depending on the type of hydrocarbon, 6 to 9 barrels make a ton. At 8 barrels a ton, that would be 62.5 million TONS to break even. Per flight. Even if we assume the same cost as Apollo, which is completely impossible, that would be 6.25 million tons per flight needed to break even.
As a comparison, Apollo 17 brought home 22 kilograms (about 50 pounds) of lunar material.
So yeah, I think we know who to take seriously here.
Very true about the worse morning. I'm happy to acknowledge your happy marriage. Hope you're fine with the fact that even in my single days, I knew enough about food to never have to stoop to microwave burritos. (Though Jolt was an occasional guilty pleasure.)
Just to respond to point #2, FTA:
...a grocery cart-mounted console that helps shoppers find products in the store, then scan and pay for their items without waiting in the checkout line.
Great idea, yeah, except for the following catches:
1. I hate the constant barrage of spamvertising in my life as it is. This only makes it worse, which is a bad thing.
2. Somehow, I doubt that this system will work as advertised re: self-checkout, and we're going to have a lot more security alarms being set off because the system didn't scan something properly. I hate being perceived as/treated like a criminal because of system error.
3, and most important. How much do you really believe the following quote? But Ferris said neither Microsoft nor any advertisers will have access to the personal information consumers provide when they join the supermarket's loyalty card program.
Somehow, I find that ever so slightly hard to believe.
Finally, here's my memory tip for you: WRITE A DAMNED LIST. Or take your cell phone with you so you can call your wife/fiancée/girlfriend to find out what you're forgetting. Or wait, are you incapable of a functional relationship, and in no position to cast stones about other people's lives?
Slashdot Mirror
And seriously, is this news-worthy? If /. wants to publish EVERY bad patent application, it's going to get crowded here pretty quick. There's a lot of chaff out there.
Most of said chaff, though, is not supported by legal teams bigger than many mid-size companies backed by assets of almost $30 billion.
This may become a bigger thing. I plan to stay tuned.
So why don't you punch in beforehand?
Because I get paid from 9-5, no matter when I actually show up. However, we have been told several times by our superiors that not being ready to take calls at 9 is unacceptable. Our compliance to schedule is measured as well, and not taking calls at 9 = out of compliance = anything from loss of bonuses to disciplinarian action.
I work in a helpdesk/call centre environment for a bank.
Booting my computer only takes 2-4 minutes, but that's only the beginning. Before I take a single call, I have to have Outlook open, three browsers, and a minimum of six other programs running. Then I need to go over all of our newest releases, since bank policy and procedures seem to change every 30 seconds.
So all told, that's 10-15 minutes. The evening much less so - only about 2-3 minutes to get everything shut down - but that's still at least 15 minutes a day that I'm not getting paid for. That adds up to be over four digits per year that my company shafts me out of.
I suddenly have an urge to go on an office-supply-appropriation spree.
It doesn't seem to have caught on anywhere outside the Discworld, really.
1) Public disclosure of your SSN is a violation, making your contract null and void.
2) The CEO of the company appears in ads touting just how good his product is...by PUBLICLY DISCLOSING HIS SSN.
Does no one else see a problem with this? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
*blink*
Fail.
Buh?
They're performing a concert for the public. It's experimental, yes. It's original, yes. Many people will hate it, yes. But that's NO EXCUSE for not having practiced enough where they didn't play the piece properly. I counted at least five times (over the course of six minutes) where the performers fell out of sync with each other, not in a "post-modern atonal experimental" kind of way, but in a "I-have-no-fucking-clue-how-we're-supposed-to-be-playing-this-section" kind of way.
There are lots of valid reasons to justify this piece being performed, but there are no valid reasons to justify not playing it properly. If the classical guitarist and violinist can't hack it, then find people with less (but not no) classical training and more Guitar Hero training.
Now, now. This isn't quite /b/ levels of bad. I could see this being featured on BoingBoing. I'd actually probably find it mildly interesting if it were embedded on BB, instead of front-paged on /.
I'm holding out for More Cowbell Hero, myself.
U.S. Top Selling Computer Hardware for January 2007
Scroll down to the MP3 section. SanDisk only has 8.9%, but Zune is at 3.2% and the iPod is at 72.7%.
Congratulations, Slashdot, on your great accomplishment! Almost 11 years online before completely jumping the shark!
KittenAuth shows you 9 pictures, and asks you to point out the three kittens. There are 9C3 combinations possible, which comes to 84; therefore, a 1/84 (=approx. 1.19%) chance you get it right by random guesses. If it put up 15 photos and asked you to choose the three kittens, the odds would drop to 1/455; at 20 pictures (which is probably close to the upper limit of what is reasonable) and asking you to choose the four kittens (ditto), your odds of getting it right randomly would be 1 in 4845. Not super-excellent, but at least a starting point that works better than a cracked CAPTCHA.
My man-crush for Kurt Denke currently knows no bounds. I will gladly have his love-children if he so asks, biology be damned!
Their tune changed quickly, however, when the author of TFA pointed out that not only was the sex offenders' information available, but so too was the information of the EMPLOYEES. Site got shut down pretty f#&^in' fast after that.
For which the passengers of Iran Air Flight 655 are eternally grateful.
I think the GP meant "America's involvement in WWII", which was only about 3.5 years. But there's no way that America pulls out of Iraq before January 2009 (which is virtually impossible anyway, no matter who wins the election), so it'll be at least 5.75 years before the war ends. Invasion of Poland to collapse of Germany was 5.67 years.
I'm more thinking the tag should be "spitorswallow".
125 staff members at SLAC have been let go this year (so far), and 200 projected layoffs at Fermilab by the end of the summer. Wired has the fuller scoop.
A journey to outer space in a bottle rocket would definitely be eek-worthy, yes. I'd eke out a few eeks myself.
The cost of the Apollo program was about $135 billion in today's dollars.
Here's a reference.
That's over 12 years, so about $10 billion a year. That was to the moon. I get the odd feeling that a project of this magnitude will cost more - maybe 10 times as much for something of comparable size? If you're exceedingly lucky? So that's 100 billion dollars a year.
Over 5 years of manned flights, 11 Apollo spaceships made it into orbit and back again. That's about 2 per year. So let's assume the same rate of return with this plan. Oil is $100 a barrel right now, so how much oil would the two ships per year have to carry to break even, running off these assumptions?
Answer = 500 million barrels each. Depending on the type of hydrocarbon, 6 to 9 barrels make a ton. At 8 barrels a ton, that would be 62.5 million TONS to break even. Per flight. Even if we assume the same cost as Apollo, which is completely impossible, that would be 6.25 million tons per flight needed to break even.
As a comparison, Apollo 17 brought home 22 kilograms (about 50 pounds) of lunar material.
So yeah, I think we know who to take seriously here.
Hey now, be fair...what's the point of bungee jumping if you can't have "Thunderstruck" or similar playing on the way down?
Jumping without a chord would be no fun at all.
Just to respond to point #2, FTA:
No way I see that going well.
1. I hate the constant barrage of spamvertising in my life as it is. This only makes it worse, which is a bad thing.
2. Somehow, I doubt that this system will work as advertised re: self-checkout, and we're going to have a lot more security alarms being set off because the system didn't scan something properly. I hate being perceived as/treated like a criminal because of system error.
3, and most important. How much do you really believe the following quote?
But Ferris said neither Microsoft nor any advertisers will have access to the personal information consumers provide when they join the supermarket's loyalty card program.
Somehow, I find that ever so slightly hard to believe.
Finally, here's my memory tip for you: WRITE A DAMNED LIST. Or take your cell phone with you so you can call your wife/fiancée/girlfriend to find out what you're forgetting. Or wait, are you incapable of a functional relationship, and in no position to cast stones about other people's lives?
And here was me thinking he had switched to jazz guitar.
Yes it is, and a religion that suddenly makes a lot more sense than the current ones, too.