Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation by the agency’s watchdog.
The report released Wednesday determined that the full scale of fraud is probably double those numbers. Investigators said they interpreted the data they gathered conservatively, often giving employees the benefit of the doubt for the time they reportedly worked.
If someone else has any bright ideas how to mitigate evil behavior incoming from ISPs (because they will take full advantage of this, believe you me), I'm all ears.
If you can shrink this amazing technology down to about the size and cost of a microwave oven, and provide high data rates with low latency, I'd say the problem is solved. A breakthrough like that would permanently eliminate the ability of corporations and governments alike to interfere with Internet communication.
I had the same reaction. For a moment there I was regretting having thrown out my old 486... the one with the VESA Local Bus IDE hard disk controller and video card. Oh, and the two ISA slots. One had a 16-bit ATI TV tuner card stuck in it, and the other an esoteric 8-bit controller card for that Mars 105 black & white hand-held scanner I bought from a DAK catalog back in '89.
BTW, for those of you outside the US, the above video link won't work.
I have a friend in Canada who, at least in the recent past with some alternate PBS shows, has been able to view video directly from the PBS site. So... Canadians may at least want to give that link a try. (And I'd be interested to hear if it does end up working for anyone there.)
My initial reaction is to agree with you, but an optimist's response would probably be something like, "Is that a reason to not even try?"
And as soon as I start to think that way, I consider just -- as you suggest -- managing to get cities assembled into their own intranets (not even necessarily connected with one another). Would that not be some type of victory?
And who's to say that, if that were to happen, some corporation or conglomeration of non-profits wouldn't come along and donate "dark fibre/fiber" to connect some of those cities with each other for the good of human-kind?
Or that after setting up city intranets, someone discovers a way to send data using pulsed streams of neutrinos, and that that technology is found to be economically viable enough that it can be used for connecting at least the largest of those city intranets?
Who can predict the future? And seriously... is there a reason to not even try?
"How would you describe the management in the air marshal service?" CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian asked a current air marshal.
"Sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-disabled vet group, grossly incompetent," said the marshal, whose identity was concealed. "That's the general consensus among air marshals."
Nearly two dozen current or former marshals have told CBS News the agency is dominated by an "old boys club" of white, male supervisors -- mainly ex-secret service agents who, they allege, routinely discriminate, intimidate and retaliate against employees who question their actions or authority.
"This behavior has just spread like a cancer and it's out of control," the marshal said.
Well... it sounds like you called it right: ridiculous.
If it's any consolation I don't think it's just Slashdot. A general-topic discussion site I heard about here on Slashdot years and years ago is plastic.com. It used to be a truly excellent place for really thought-provoking discussions. I think things have slowed down simply due to dwindling participation. Maybe that's at the core of the changes you see in Slashdot -- the prime contributors are finding they've got less and less "free" time to contribute to online discussion forums?
I'm disappointed it's a negative reaction that actually prompted me to log in for the first time in a over a year, but this story is crazy. The whole idea is crazy. Not because of technological limitations, but because we don't have a prayer of paying for it.
"America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years."
I want to believe NASA could pull this off -- and by 2025 -- but I think it's tragically unrealistic from a financial perspective.
Your post reminds me a little of the "Postal Experiments" that I remember reading about amongst some comments here on Slashdot nearly 10 years ago:
We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting.
It's tough to say what my personal favorite was, but I think the helium-filled balloon at least deserves special mention.:-)
Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from... in case you hadn't noticed... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down?:-)
Then they were bought by Best Buy. I learned about it right here on Slashdot. It took me a while but I dropped them by the end of that year. And yes, my decision to drop them was based 100% on who their new owner was.
In my area, Speakeasy had always just been a reseller of Covad's services. So, I went with Covad instead and cut out the middle-man. It's been about a year now and I have no complaints. The only thing I had trouble with was technician incompetence during the installation. I had a similar experience during the installation of my original Speakeasy service (which, as I said, was always just re-sold Covad service, so it came as no surprise to me).
Just like it was with Speakeasy though, once the installation stupidity had been bulldozed through, everything has been fine with Covad.
I will do everything I can to avoid supporting the Best Buy corporation. Hence no more money of mine will go to Speakeasy. They are absolutely not the company they used to be.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a Best Buy employee would post here with praise for their Speakeasy brand. That's what you are, anonymous coward... a Best Buy employee. Are you wearing one of their shirts when you pick up the phone and answer, "Speakeasy"?
Is anyone else frustrated to see analog RGB/VGA as the video output method for an external display? Isn't this supposed to be a cutting-edge laptop? It's 2008. It should have DVI (or even the easily converted to/from HDMI). Are there really that many people left who have access only to a dinosaur CRT or an oddball LCD that allows only for an analog signal?
And while I'm at it, I'd be interested to hear other people's perception of the oversized backspace key (yeah, I know, this is at the bottom of the list of considerations for purchasing a new laptop, but I've got lots of free time to kill today). I've always preferred keyboards with a large "L-shaped" Enter key, and a standard size backspace key (so that the \| key is right at the top row, between the =+ key and the backspace). I've never really understood why some people like to shrink the size of a heavily used key (Enter) to make room for a key that is rarely used (backspace).
I'm the same way. One of the things that gives me pause is when a publication states that something is "hotter than the surface of the sun."
I always ask myself a question whenever I read or hear that line: what surface? Where the heck do you define the "surface" in the case of a star?
I assume that somewhere at the sun's core you've got some type of phenomenally wacky material, and from there on out you're just looking at an energized soupy plasma that just gets progressively less and less dense. Even if you get to some point where somebody decides the pressure suddenly becomes worthy of "surface" status, it's still not going to be anything like a surface in the minds of most normal humans. The "surface" is roiling, boiling, and exploding with astronomical energies non-stop. That seems to me like trying to describe an exploding can of aerosol cheese as a cohesive solid, and I dare say we all know from experience how ridiculous that would be.
To me, referring to the surface of the sun seems akin to invoking the question, "what's the length of the coastline of England?" My answer would be, "on what scale?" But I seem to be the only one who feels that way, so perhaps I'm just in the dark over something. Has someone figured out some cool relationship between the gravitational ability of the sun to hold on to its own matter compared with the average energy of a certain layer of plasma or something? I don't know. I never hear it talked about. All I ever hear is that simple phrase, "the surface of the sun," used in article after article... like it's so damn obvious and how much of a moron I must be to stumble over it every time.
Sometimes I suspect that someone, somewhere, with god-like precision simply declared one day, "no, this distance outward from the core represents the surface, and fuck you if you doubt me".
Before he ran for president the first time, all I really knew about Ralph Nader was that he appeared on Sesame Street once long ago.
During his run for president (both in 2000 and 2004), I learned a little more about him here on Slashdot. 90% of what I read here was negative.
I was deceived -- the reality was that 90% of the comments I read here on Slashdot were just gross oversimplifications and instances of senseless finger-pointing.
What changed my point of view? Just one thing: an Independent Lens documentary, "An Unreasonable Man".
After watching that documentary, I still don't know if Ralph Nader would have made (or would make) a good president. Instead, what I do know is that I'm sorry I took most of the Slashdot comments back in 2000 and 2004 as a good source of information. Ralph Nader has been unfairly dragged through the mud by many, and by some has been blamed for everything they care to believe went wrong with American leadership over the last 8 years. From some of the comments I'm reading here, it seems there's still a lot of unfair hostility aimed at him.
If you have the opportunity to watch that documentary, do so. It might create a more complete picture of the man for you, as it did for me.
I understand that they wanted to get to the "I love you"'s with Beth and Rob but, really, you expect all 3 of them to survive a helicopter FREE FALL from hundreds of feet?
No, I wouldn't expect them to survive a free fall. But clearly there was no free fall. From the Wikipedia entry for autorotation:
"In helicopters, autorotation of the main rotor allows a controlled descent to an emergency landing in case of powerplant failure. Proper design of the helicopter is necessary to assure that autorotation can be usefully employed, and skilled changes to the collective and cyclic pitch are necessary during the maneuver to manage the energy of the rotor and the airspeed of the craft. Autorotation depends on the maintenance of air velocity through the rotor, and during an emergency autorotation maneuver, this airspeed is provided by the helicopter's descent."
Side note: the first time I'd heard of autorotation in helicopters was right here on Slashdot, perhaps as many as 8 or 9 years ago. It was in a discussion about a personal-size helicopter that had just been announced, and someone with some real knowledge of helicopters dismissed it as unsafe, because it only had a ballistic parachute as a safety-backup -- it had no capability for autorotation.
Re:I thought it was pretty good. Some umor...
on
Cloverfield Discussion
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The silence at your particular theater at that specific scene also happened at the one I was at.
That's as much a testament to this story's power as anything.
I think that's true to an extent, but I also think it has to do with the fact that we've had a few major disasters in the USA within the last 10 years. First 9/11, and then New Orleans. Consequently I think most reasonably mature people above a certain age have had plenty of time to have contemplated what it would be like to lose someone during a disaster.
Of course the whole movie was set in New York. And shortly after the monster first appears, there's a scene in the street that looked similar to how things looked in NYC when the first WTC tower collapsed. I think this movie meshed very, very well with the fears of our times. Not about aliens of course -- the alien was necessary because they didn't want to make it strictly like some type of plausible disaster rehash. Without an alien the story would have been too limiting, and the plot too obvious. No, they had a winning formula here. It was very well done.
A friend suggested they sounded like some kind of demonic Daffy Duck. To me they sounded like really, really angry chickens -- courtesy an evil sort of clucking sound.
Anyway, it was interesting we both independently came up with a poultry comparison. And now you've suggested a gobbling noise, that's making me assume you mean a gobbling noise like a turkey...
That's the best technical explanation I've read that actually matches and explains the real-world observations that anyone with an attention to detail will notice should they run software like SETI@home or Folding@home. Thanks for taking the time to post that!
It's because of the power consumption issue that I stopped running things like this year-round, 24 hours a day. Instead what I started doing about 4 years ago was only run software like this (in my case Folding@home) during the winter. That way the waste heat is not waste heat. It actually contributes to the heating I need in my apartment.
Even running Folding@home for 4 or 5 months a year gives me a geeky sense of satisfaction over having contributed something to an interesting scientific project -- and the timing means that it comes without any guilt over the potential environmental impact. Sure, I know a ground-source heat pump would be a more efficient method of generating that heat, but given the circumstances the difference falls far below the level required for me to care about it.
Now if only there were CPUs out there that absorbed heat, I could run Folding@home during the summer months too...
Slashdot Mirror
Are you trying to make a sick joke?
...
Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation by the agency’s watchdog.
The report released Wednesday determined that the full scale of fraud is probably double those numbers. Investigators said they interpreted the data they gathered conservatively, often giving employees the benefit of the doubt for the time they reportedly worked.
Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds
If someone else has any bright ideas how to mitigate evil behavior incoming from ISPs (because they will take full advantage of this, believe you me), I'm all ears.
If you can shrink this amazing technology down to about the size and cost of a microwave oven, and provide high data rates with low latency, I'd say the problem is solved. A breakthrough like that would permanently eliminate the ability of corporations and governments alike to interfere with Internet communication.
I had the same reaction. For a moment there I was regretting having thrown out my old 486 ... the one with the VESA Local Bus IDE hard disk controller and video card. Oh, and the two ISA slots. One had a 16-bit ATI TV tuner card stuck in it, and the other an esoteric 8-bit controller card for that Mars 105 black & white hand-held scanner I bought from a DAK catalog back in '89.
BTW, for those of you outside the US, the above video link won't work.
... Canadians may at least want to give that link a try. (And I'd be interested to hear if it does end up working for anyone there.)
I have a friend in Canada who, at least in the recent past with some alternate PBS shows, has been able to view video directly from the PBS site. So
Jesse Ventura agrees with you.
Arrrr! The Honeycomb hideout!
Am I the only one that hears this eighties commercial in their head every time the word "Honeycomb" is used for a product?
You might have a point, but maybe in this case we don't want those type of people on the network anyway? Honestly it's just a thought.
I can't help but be reminded of the current Internet before it became popular with the masses. Remember the influx of clueless AOL users?
I don't see how that can work at all.
... is there a reason to not even try?
My initial reaction is to agree with you, but an optimist's response would probably be something like, "Is that a reason to not even try?"
And as soon as I start to think that way, I consider just -- as you suggest -- managing to get cities assembled into their own intranets (not even necessarily connected with one another). Would that not be some type of victory?
And who's to say that, if that were to happen, some corporation or conglomeration of non-profits wouldn't come along and donate "dark fibre/fiber" to connect some of those cities with each other for the good of human-kind?
Or that after setting up city intranets, someone discovers a way to send data using pulsed streams of neutrinos, and that that technology is found to be economically viable enough that it can be used for connecting at least the largest of those city intranets?
Who can predict the future? And seriously
Ridiculous?
... it sounds like you called it right: ridiculous.
Air marshal leaves plane after dropping bullets
Passenger Finds Loaded Ammunition Clip on Southwest Flight
US air marshal leaves gun in airport restroom
Air Marshal Causes International Incident
Air Marshal Accused of Rape at Gunpoint
Marshals Fight Battle in Air and on Ground
From that last article:
"How would you describe the management in the air marshal service?" CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian asked a current air marshal.
"Sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-disabled vet group, grossly incompetent," said the marshal, whose identity was concealed. "That's the general consensus among air marshals."
Nearly two dozen current or former marshals have told CBS News the agency is dominated by an "old boys club" of white, male supervisors -- mainly ex-secret service agents who, they allege, routinely discriminate, intimidate and retaliate against employees who question their actions or authority.
"This behavior has just spread like a cancer and it's out of control," the marshal said.
Well
This Bloomberg video on the Chinese neodymium monopoly starts off as bleak as your post, but the last 45 seconds show that US industry shouldn't be counted out just yet. There is hope. Want to help? I suppose you could buy Molycorp stock.
If it's any consolation I don't think it's just Slashdot. A general-topic discussion site I heard about here on Slashdot years and years ago is plastic.com. It used to be a truly excellent place for really thought-provoking discussions. I think things have slowed down simply due to dwindling participation. Maybe that's at the core of the changes you see in Slashdot -- the prime contributors are finding they've got less and less "free" time to contribute to online discussion forums?
If you're trying to make me feel better:
:-(
1) Thank you.
2) It's not working.
I'm disappointed it's a negative reaction that actually prompted me to log in for the first time in a over a year, but this story is crazy. The whole idea is crazy. Not because of technological limitations, but because we don't have a prayer of paying for it.
A few days ago, copponex wrote:
"America is basically like a 7-11 that's about to go under. The shelves are barely stocked, the sign has been broken for months, and nobody really gives a shit because they've been watching the boss raid the cash drawer for years."
I want to believe NASA could pull this off -- and by 2025 -- but I think it's tragically unrealistic from a financial perspective.
Your post reminds me a little of the "Postal Experiments" that I remember reading about amongst some comments here on Slashdot nearly 10 years ago:
:-)
We sent a variety of unpackaged items to U.S. destinations, appropriately stamped for weight and size, as well as a few items packaged as noted. We sent items that loosely fit into the following general categories: valuable, sentimental, unwieldy, pointless, potentially suspicious, and disgusting.
It's tough to say what my personal favorite was, but I think the helium-filled balloon at least deserves special mention.
When I'm using an earwig...
What is this? The Wrath of Khan?
> why did the phone guys make theirs upside-down?
... in case you hadn't noticed ... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down? :-)
Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from
I was a Speakeasy customer for about 3 years.
... a Best Buy employee. Are you wearing one of their shirts when you pick up the phone and answer, "Speakeasy"?
Then they were bought by Best Buy. I learned about it right here on Slashdot. It took me a while but I dropped them by the end of that year. And yes, my decision to drop them was based 100% on who their new owner was.
In my area, Speakeasy had always just been a reseller of Covad's services. So, I went with Covad instead and cut out the middle-man. It's been about a year now and I have no complaints. The only thing I had trouble with was technician incompetence during the installation. I had a similar experience during the installation of my original Speakeasy service (which, as I said, was always just re-sold Covad service, so it came as no surprise to me).
Just like it was with Speakeasy though, once the installation stupidity had been bulldozed through, everything has been fine with Covad.
I will do everything I can to avoid supporting the Best Buy corporation. Hence no more money of mine will go to Speakeasy. They are absolutely not the company they used to be.
It doesn't surprise me at all that a Best Buy employee would post here with praise for their Speakeasy brand. That's what you are, anonymous coward
Exactly! That's why at the company I work for we don't indent with spaces or tabs. We indent with Wingdings.
Is anyone else frustrated to see analog RGB/VGA as the video output method for an external display? Isn't this supposed to be a cutting-edge laptop? It's 2008. It should have DVI (or even the easily converted to/from HDMI). Are there really that many people left who have access only to a dinosaur CRT or an oddball LCD that allows only for an analog signal?
And while I'm at it, I'd be interested to hear other people's perception of the oversized backspace key (yeah, I know, this is at the bottom of the list of considerations for purchasing a new laptop, but I've got lots of free time to kill today). I've always preferred keyboards with a large "L-shaped" Enter key, and a standard size backspace key (so that the \| key is right at the top row, between the =+ key and the backspace). I've never really understood why some people like to shrink the size of a heavily used key (Enter) to make room for a key that is rarely used (backspace).
I'm the same way. One of the things that gives me pause is when a publication states that something is "hotter than the surface of the sun."
... like it's so damn obvious and how much of a moron I must be to stumble over it every time.
I always ask myself a question whenever I read or hear that line: what surface? Where the heck do you define the "surface" in the case of a star?
I assume that somewhere at the sun's core you've got some type of phenomenally wacky material, and from there on out you're just looking at an energized soupy plasma that just gets progressively less and less dense. Even if you get to some point where somebody decides the pressure suddenly becomes worthy of "surface" status, it's still not going to be anything like a surface in the minds of most normal humans. The "surface" is roiling, boiling, and exploding with astronomical energies non-stop. That seems to me like trying to describe an exploding can of aerosol cheese as a cohesive solid, and I dare say we all know from experience how ridiculous that would be.
To me, referring to the surface of the sun seems akin to invoking the question, "what's the length of the coastline of England?" My answer would be, "on what scale?" But I seem to be the only one who feels that way, so perhaps I'm just in the dark over something. Has someone figured out some cool relationship between the gravitational ability of the sun to hold on to its own matter compared with the average energy of a certain layer of plasma or something? I don't know. I never hear it talked about. All I ever hear is that simple phrase, "the surface of the sun," used in article after article
Sometimes I suspect that someone, somewhere, with god-like precision simply declared one day, "no, this distance outward from the core represents the surface, and fuck you if you doubt me".
*shrug*
Before he ran for president the first time, all I really knew about Ralph Nader was that he appeared on Sesame Street once long ago.
During his run for president (both in 2000 and 2004), I learned a little more about him here on Slashdot. 90% of what I read here was negative.
I was deceived -- the reality was that 90% of the comments I read here on Slashdot were just gross oversimplifications and instances of senseless finger-pointing.
What changed my point of view? Just one thing: an Independent Lens documentary, "An Unreasonable Man".
After watching that documentary, I still don't know if Ralph Nader would have made (or would make) a good president. Instead, what I do know is that I'm sorry I took most of the Slashdot comments back in 2000 and 2004 as a good source of information. Ralph Nader has been unfairly dragged through the mud by many, and by some has been blamed for everything they care to believe went wrong with American leadership over the last 8 years. From some of the comments I'm reading here, it seems there's still a lot of unfair hostility aimed at him.
If you have the opportunity to watch that documentary, do so. It might create a more complete picture of the man for you, as it did for me.
I understand that they wanted to get to the "I love you"'s with Beth and Rob but, really, you expect all 3 of them to survive a helicopter FREE FALL from hundreds of feet?
No, I wouldn't expect them to survive a free fall. But clearly there was no free fall. From the Wikipedia entry for autorotation:
"In helicopters, autorotation of the main rotor allows a controlled descent to an emergency landing in case of powerplant failure. Proper design of the helicopter is necessary to assure that autorotation can be usefully employed, and skilled changes to the collective and cyclic pitch are necessary during the maneuver to manage the energy of the rotor and the airspeed of the craft. Autorotation depends on the maintenance of air velocity through the rotor, and during an emergency autorotation maneuver, this airspeed is provided by the helicopter's descent."
Side note: the first time I'd heard of autorotation in helicopters was right here on Slashdot, perhaps as many as 8 or 9 years ago. It was in a discussion about a personal-size helicopter that had just been announced, and someone with some real knowledge of helicopters dismissed it as unsafe, because it only had a ballistic parachute as a safety-backup -- it had no capability for autorotation.
The silence at your particular theater at that specific scene also happened at the one I was at.
That's as much a testament to this story's power as anything.
I think that's true to an extent, but I also think it has to do with the fact that we've had a few major disasters in the USA within the last 10 years. First 9/11, and then New Orleans. Consequently I think most reasonably mature people above a certain age have had plenty of time to have contemplated what it would be like to lose someone during a disaster.
Of course the whole movie was set in New York. And shortly after the monster first appears, there's a scene in the street that looked similar to how things looked in NYC when the first WTC tower collapsed. I think this movie meshed very, very well with the fears of our times. Not about aliens of course -- the alien was necessary because they didn't want to make it strictly like some type of plausible disaster rehash. Without an alien the story would have been too limiting, and the plot too obvious. No, they had a winning formula here. It was very well done.
A friend suggested they sounded like some kind of demonic Daffy Duck. To me they sounded like really, really angry chickens -- courtesy an evil sort of clucking sound.
Anyway, it was interesting we both independently came up with a poultry comparison. And now you've suggested a gobbling noise, that's making me assume you mean a gobbling noise like a turkey...
That's the best technical explanation I've read that actually matches and explains the real-world observations that anyone with an attention to detail will notice should they run software like SETI@home or Folding@home. Thanks for taking the time to post that!
It's because of the power consumption issue that I stopped running things like this year-round, 24 hours a day. Instead what I started doing about 4 years ago was only run software like this (in my case Folding@home) during the winter. That way the waste heat is not waste heat. It actually contributes to the heating I need in my apartment.
Even running Folding@home for 4 or 5 months a year gives me a geeky sense of satisfaction over having contributed something to an interesting scientific project -- and the timing means that it comes without any guilt over the potential environmental impact. Sure, I know a ground-source heat pump would be a more efficient method of generating that heat, but given the circumstances the difference falls far below the level required for me to care about it.
Now if only there were CPUs out there that absorbed heat, I could run Folding@home during the summer months too...