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User: raymorris

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  1. shoulder to shoulder? My homework on Russians Suspected of Uroburos Spy Malware · · Score: 1

    I could do my own homework on this since I don't know what you're talking about, but I probably won't, so I'll just ask.

    By "shoulder to shoulder" do you mean physically, that the two people were at the same event? That is, standing near each other in the same way that the executioner stands next to the condemned? The same way that Bush Jr. physically stood shoulder to shoulder with Obama?

  2. confederate flags? In Ukraine? on Russians Suspected of Uroburos Spy Malware · · Score: 1

    Sounds fishy. It SOUNDS like an American columnist came up with it out of his own head and forgot that Ukraine doesn't have southern democrats.

  3. Chestnuts don't kill you and humans screw up on The Mammoth Cometh: Revive & Restore Tackles De-Extinction · · Score: 1

    The difference between restoring chestnuts vs assorted prehistoric animals is that chestnuts don't kill you. A mammoth may very well kill you.

    Another argument is that we humans tend to mess up nature. Killer bees come to mind. We may think that what we're doing is okay, then it turns out that it was a really bad idea. Consider for example all of the invasive species we've brought from other continents. We should be very, very careful about messing around with mother nature. She can be a bad ass bitch.

  4. topic != claims on Inventor Has Waited 43 Years For Patent Approval · · Score: 2

    Just because that's the topic the patent is related to doesn't mean he's trying to patent the entire topic.

  5. you must not have a wife and kids on Google Funds San Francisco Bus Rides For Poor · · Score: 1

    Add a spouse and a couple of toddlers to your home office and see how it compares.
    You may find my book, Getting Laid for Nerds, helpful.

  6. I have not found any objectionable claim at my sch on Cisco Offers $300,000 Prize For Internet of Things Security Apps · · Score: 1

    For my school, I have not found any policy by which they attempt to claim copyright, or a copyright assignment form I would have signed.

    I also have not found any document in which they explicitly acknowledge that under law, copyright belongs to the (student) author.

  7. citation? 80% I checked didn't claim copyright on Cisco Offers $300,000 Prize For Internet of Things Security Apps · · Score: 2

    Thanks for mentioning that. I'll check my school's policy.

    I just looked at the policies for five universities. Four of the five explicitly acknowledged that students own their work. The fifth had a "copyright assignment" form that I didn't read, so that school may have tried to get copyright assigned for student works, or it may be like Yale, where SOME works be employees, done as part of their employment, is owned by the university.

  8. Windows 7 boxen need only 1 thing installed on Ask Slashdot: What Software Can You Not Live Without? · · Score: 1

    there is only one thing I install on a box that already has windows. Linux!

  9. me. I have to write the paper anyway. on Cisco Offers $300,000 Prize For Internet of Things Security Apps · · Score: 2

    I may submit a paper. I have to spend a couple of months writing the paper anyway, for school. I see no reason that I wouldn't send the already-written paper to Cisco and see if they send me back $70,000 and the recognition from the conference.

  10. solar panel company buys electricity? that's why. on Damming News From Washington State · · Score: 1

    > huge electricity consumers in the county. It's the world headquarters of a company that makes photovoltaic

    The company making solar panels buys huge amounts of electricity rather than using their own product? Why?

    > (under 3 cents/kWh for industrial customers)

    Oh, that's why. Using their own solar panels would cost them 35 / kWh, twelve times as much.

  11. could've been huge. hydro failure killed 200,000 on Damming News From Washington State · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm sure glad they caught it. China has a similar series of hydroelectric dams. A failure caused a domino effect and when the Banquai dam failed it killed 200,000 people. I know TFA says the failure of this one dam wouldn't kill that many people, but that assumes the sudden tidal-wave-like flood doesn't effect the downstream dams. A domino failure on the Columbia river would be a catastrophe.

  12. everlasting ignorance on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 1

    The only way you can remain forever ignorant is by choice, by refusing to learn. By choosing to argue your first guess as fact, you make the only choice whereby you can continue to be clueless.

    If you hold stocks in an account setup under 401k, the trustee is required by law to send you a proxy form. If you opened your mail and read it, you'd see the form. If you hold mutual funds, you can vote your shares.

    You may be too busy or to lazy to do so, or decide that it's not worth shattering your illusion that you already knew everything the day you were born, but you most certainly do have the option. I can understand if you refuse to do so because in so doing you'd be acknowledging that you do make choices, that it's not "the man" holding you down, but only your own decisions of passivity.

  13. half-bucket sort, runs in N time on Ask Slashdot: How Do You Sort? · · Score: 1

    For things like receipts, I use a half-bucket sort, which runs in N time.
    There are 12 piles, one for each month. Items from the first half of the year go on the bottom of the pile, items from the second half go on the top of the pile. That of course means that physically there are 12 stacks, but logically there are 24 buckets - early January, late January, early February, late February, etc.

    The next step is - nothing. For receipts, sorting into 24 buckets is close enough that I'll be able to find what I'm looking for later.

  14. you fill out the voting form the trustee sends you on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 1

    The trustee sends a proxy form to each 401k account holder. You fill that out to instruct them to vote your shares as you desire.

    That's actually EASIER than voting directly held shares. The trustee sends someone to the meeting for you, who announces "50,000 shares yes, 40,000 shares no" or whatever their account holders voted.

  15. Your mama. That's who most investors are. If your parents, or you, have a 401k, a 401b, an IRA, or any other savings for retirement, they are investors, and the most common kind.

    Sometimes, your mom might invest her savings in a mutual fund or other instrument. What that means is simply that she lets a professional pick exactly which stocks she's investing in. It's still her savings she's investing, there's just a bank or broker assisting her.

  16. hardware description language is software, /. says on Open Source Tech Providing Mobile Communications In Developing Nations · · Score: 1

    Did you forget that you're on Slashdot? On Slashdot, if it can be written, it's "software". Never mind that it's a written description of physical objects. Just last night, some here on Slashdot were arguing that machines made of gears and levers can be described in writing, which means machines made of gears and levers are software, which means ______, which means machines made of gears and levers aren't patentable.

    They never do quite fill in that blank space. Sometimes they say something about math, but they never mention wtf math has to do with anything.

  17. dollars are not the only ROI. Investors are humans on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Investor" is a subset of "human", so investors want the things that humans want. To "think as an investor" means to think as a human being. Dollars are not the only thing human investors want, so the ROI isn't measured only in dollars.

      I own the most of the stock in one company, which gives me control of the company. I don't work there, so I don't make the day-to-day decisions, but I could fire the people who make the day-to-day decisions, so they listen to me on the big stuff. I regularly make decisions as the primary investor which negative or neutral to profits. Some things are more important than money. I believe that money is a tool, a means to some end. Money is not an end itself. I, the greedy capitalist pig, make money so that I can use that money to be of service to people. If the company can be of great service to people and lose a little bit of money doing so, that's a great deal and we do it. The comparison, the alternative, is how much good we can do if we get the money as profit, give 30% to government, then spend the rest being of service.

  18. hydro good, geothermal good, wind good, solar crap on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 2

    I could point to a study citing dozens of solid sources, but the bottom line is this:

    Geothermal is great where it's available (California).
    Wind power is great, when the wind is blowing.
    Hydro is great, where it's available, but requires a 100 mile reservoir.
    Solar panels, which catch energy several l hours per day, are super expensive crap. As in it costs TEN TIMES as much as natural gas. A $1,500 / month home electric bill? No thanks.

    Geothermal, wind, and hydro can each provide 2%-5% of our power needs. The rest needs to be provided by either fossil fuels or nuclear. The co-founder of Greenpeace agrees that nuclear is the only feasible option, since he doesn't think fossil fuels are feasible long term.

    Looking at the safety record of each option, coal is the worst, hydrothermal is the second most dangerous. Nuclear is the safest (by far).

  19. Even if he's wrong, 97% shareholders agreed on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even if his policies are bad, 97.5% of stockholders voted to do it his way. The owners want to be green, so green it is.

  20. shareholders voted with Cook. Law says ... on Tim Cook: If You Don't Like Our Energy Policies, Don't Buy Apple Stock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The stockholders voted with Cook, saying that they, the owners of Apple, want their company to be environmentally responsible AND to acquiesce to government mandating how they do so. That puts him on solid legal ground, I believe.

    What would get Cook in trouble would be putting his OWN well-being ahead of stockholder interests. If Apple were paying TimCook Inc a billion dollars for green services, that would be a problem. Cook is carrying out the expressed wishes of the stockholders, and is not enriching himself at their expense.

  21. ranking web pages is not a phenomenon of nature on Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation Unite Against Software Patents · · Score: 1

    The applicable test is "the laws of nature, including the laws of mathematics". The phrase "you can't patent math" is fiction recently coined by anti-patent advocates, it is not law. Let me quote from your own link, since apparently you didn't read it before linking to it:

    > Whoevever discovers a hitherto unknown phenomenon of nature

    How you choose to rank web pages is not a phenomenon of nature to be discovered. Rather, it "requires a degree of human creativity". Your position may be attractive, but it simply is not the law. The law is that you can patent "human artifacts" and can't patent "laws of nature".

  22. both a misconception and irrelevant on Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation Unite Against Software Patents · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's a common misconception. The actual wording is that you can't patent the LAWS of nature, including the laws of mathematics. In other words, you can't patent gravity, you can patent a new type of elevator. You can't patent mass, you can patent a new type if scale. You can't patent "x + y = y + x". You can patent a new method for ranking relevant web pages in search results.

    Also, "the first programmers were ..." is about as relevant as "the first humans were ...". Even what you said about that is wrong, too. The FIRST programmers re-arranged wooden gears to make the machine operate differently. Are you wanting to argue that a specific arrangement of gears designed to perform a specific task can never be a patentable invention?

  23. why should "with a computer" matter at all? on Open Source Initiative, Free Software Foundation Unite Against Software Patents · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I believe that of you take an OLD idea and do it on a computer, doing it on a computer doesn't matter, it's still an old idea and not patentable.
    That implies that if you create a NEW idea, doing it on a computer still doesn't matter.

    If you decide that whether or not a computer is used affects patentability, it implies that adding "on a computer" could make something patentable just as easily as it could make something unpatentable. I believe that's a mistake. Old ideas shouldn't be patentable, while new inventions should be. Whether or not a computer is involved isn't really relevant.

     

  24. RUDE on Lawrence Lessig Wins Fair Use Case · · Score: 1

    wtf "WRONG". Rude.

    Anyway yeah 17 U.S. Code 107 says fair use "is not infringement".

  25. get help on Intel's New Desktop SSD Is an Overclocked Server Drive · · Score: 1

    Seek help for that.