Err... yes. Just FEMA, the CIA, and nearly every other major department. Bush's loyalty test brought us the Katrina aftermath fiasco, and mass resignations at the CIA. He even tried to appoint his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court. As they say, "sh-t flows down-hill." When the man in charge is a complete moron, the entire government suffers.
Sorry, you were probably making a joke. A lot of us on this forum don't get sarcasm as easily as we should.
Minus the profanity, I would agree. NASA performed amazing feats in the '60s and early '70s, but since it's had a government-backed monopoly. I don't fault NASA - they've gotten a raw deal from congress - but more privatization may be the way to go. You wont see men on Mars for $10B, but you wont see it at all from NASA. There's no way - zero chance - that NASA will receive the consistent funding to make it happen. They also wont let the government fund non-NASA efforts, and being a slave to congress for near-pointless chest beating like sending men to Mars when everyone knows congress will renege in the end... it's gotta suck to be NASA.
I'm always amazed at how stupid city councils can be. I live in Chapel Hill, and ours is out-there. Our downtown is suffering from stiff competition from South Point and other new shopping locations. Many stores are closed up, and our downtown may suffer a long slow decay. So what do we do? Our city council's actions over the last 8 years:
- Bring a homeless shelter 1 block from the center of town - Build benches along the main street, one block from the homeless shelter - Increase parking rates, and make sure to provide no 2-hour free or validated parking
Brilliant... just brilliant. Here's a story about our mayor. Our hospital is accessed by a congested two-lane road from the south, and ambulances get stuck just like all the rest. UNC wants to widen the road, and there's plenty of legit reasons why many people oppose the plan. Why does our mayor oppose it? He is opposed to all additional road surface. His compromise plan? Allow the road to be widened, but then remove the pavement from a 4-lane road north of town to offset the total paved area.
The city council actually passed this plan. When the city called the DOT and asked for the road to be narrowed, the poor guy over there had no idea what to do. There's no road narrowing department at the DOT. Top level people at the DOT were consulted, and it is now standard at DOT to ignore any silly Chapel Hill requests!
"Wrongful dismissal case?" If you're fired because of your race, sex, or a few other things, then sure. Otherwise, generally a boss can fire an employee "at will", for reasons like "I don't like you."
I think several posters are forgetting what counts in business - integrity. The right thing for this guy to do is tell his boss his concerns, and perhaps highlight the poor light that the USPTO has lately taken on software patents. If his boss persists, he should either relent and file the patent, or consider a new job. That way, at least he keeps his integrity. Lying to his boss, or purposely undermining the patent would damage his integrity.
Googling "billrocks.org site:slashdot.org" returns 139 hits. I only let through white-listed e-mail. It does slow down my e-mail retrieval, though. I daily get more spam than anyone I ever heard of. I have one theory for why it's slowed down. I have to use dnsmadeeasy.com to get past AT&T's mail port blocking. Maybe they started grey-listing. The stuff coming through looks like it's spam from real sights, not spam-bots.
My home e-mail, bill@billrocks.org, is also getting far less spam now for a couple weeks. It's posted all over the net, so I find that really strange. Maybe they realized I don't need a penal enlargement and don't want to meet women (I'm married)?
I think this is becoming less true over time - local machines are becoming more cost effective. For $259, I can get a Dell 350N dual-core processor. The freaking warranty use to cost more than that. More and more of the total cost is in the I/O systems - the Dell 350N is advertised with a $200 flat-panel monitor, and if you add a printer, it the actual computer becomes a minority of the cost.
Here's my scary "Dumb Idea of the Day" In short, should I start an open-source license plate recognition project on sourceforge? It would likely encourage millions of home-based traffic snoopers world-wide... kinda scary
Yep, me too. I had a friend with a copy on his machine, and he'd let me have access. The problem was he didn't have the whole thing, and the guy he fed off of didn't either. The highly specific geek groups I was into in college (in the 80s) weren't accessible ever again to me.
I read the patent, and it does not patent tree views. Claim 1 patents adding objects visible in a file viewer, just like files, by registering such objects with the registry. Sounds fairly worthless to me, but Microsoft patents pretty much anything. Claim 3, which does mention tree views, is dependent on claim 1. In no way are simple tree views covered by this patent.
"Ubuntu" is a very unfortunate name. It helps promote the distro with the hacker community (as did the soft-porn desktop art), but it's a disaster for business applications. I've promoted Ubuntu for business use over Red Hat now for years (I got really tired of Red Hat putting out unstable Fedora releases and charging for stable but backwards Enterprise crap). The #1 problem I always run into when I say "Try Ubuntu" is the natural question:
"Ubuntu? What does that mean?"
Imagine the look on a business guy's face when I explain the name means "'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'". I explain that I went to Berkeley, and then everything makes sense to the business guy.
Agreed. And, it never will be. Mark Shuttleworth is way off base this time. Apple specializes in what's possible when a single company controls every aspect of your computer, from hardware design to the GUI. Linux specializes in what's possible when hackers around the world make cool stuff. I'm waaaay in the Linux camp, but Ubuntu will never replace Apple.
All that really matters is that Linux is awesome and getting better every day. We, the few Linux hackers, have it really good. Why should we care that Joe Sixpack will continue to watch his porn and play his video games on Windows until the end of time?
I totally agree with your statement, but not your sig! I figure if I'm willing to pay $36K for a Volt, I'll splurge and pay the $200 for a 220V outlet in my garage:-)
Totally off topic, but since it's in your sig, I'll spout my theory of the day about Obama. It's a close race, but Obama fans are far more enthusiastic. They read more Obama articles and watch more Obama news. That means news organizations make more money talking about Obama. Given how America is full of media drones, Obama will win simply because of his enhanced media coverage.
Agreed. The article is about charging stations, but the Volt and competitors will charge just fine on 220V in your garage overnight. Given the number of cars GM is talking about - up to hundreds of thousands, no grid upgrades are needed, especially since charging will likely be mostly at night.
I am a fan of the coming plug-in hybrids, since new battery technology can help them be cost-effective while reducing CO2 emissions and foreign oil imports. However, in the near-term, switching to natural gas cars like T. Boone Pickens wants, seems to make a lot of sense.
I'm all for this new era of ultra-cheap PCs with small flash memory, but for $50 less, I can get a gOS PC. Also, barring users from accessing the Linux running on the hardware just pisses me off. I read the article on EETimes about this new PC, but I didn't see the value proposition.
I have one friend who has gotten out of two speeding tickets now by presenting his GPS data as evidence. There seem to be some towns that push their cops a bit too hard to bring in ticket revenue.
True, so true. However, I only use Ubuntu at home (even my kids use it). My only illegal software is the DVD player hack that let's me watch the DVDs I legally purchased. It kills me that I have to break the law or buy a M$ product.
Wow... what great security. I just certified myself to be "Lord God" at cacert.org. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this suppose to add some level of trust?
You guessed right! I stayed with a family near Dusseldorf. Another poster was also right... the Germans were quite happy to listen to my German so long as I would listen to their English. I never got use to it:-)
Ha ha! That's funny. When I'm old, and my body is good for nothing, just rip out my brain, and wire it into a robot. Family get-togethers might be a bit weird... maybe I could get some cool upgrades?
Slashdot Mirror
Err... yes. Just FEMA, the CIA, and nearly every other major department. Bush's loyalty test brought us the Katrina aftermath fiasco, and mass resignations at the CIA. He even tried to appoint his personal lawyer to the Supreme Court. As they say, "sh-t flows down-hill." When the man in charge is a complete moron, the entire government suffers.
Sorry, you were probably making a joke. A lot of us on this forum don't get sarcasm as easily as we should.
So do my kids! Anyway, if you're in the military there, I wish you the best of luck, and thanks for your service!
From the article:
LOL!!! Bush and "fiscally responsible". I just can't get over it. How does the guy use the term with a straight face?
Minus the profanity, I would agree. NASA performed amazing feats in the '60s and early '70s, but since it's had a government-backed monopoly. I don't fault NASA - they've gotten a raw deal from congress - but more privatization may be the way to go. You wont see men on Mars for $10B, but you wont see it at all from NASA. There's no way - zero chance - that NASA will receive the consistent funding to make it happen. They also wont let the government fund non-NASA efforts, and being a slave to congress for near-pointless chest beating like sending men to Mars when everyone knows congress will renege in the end... it's gotta suck to be NASA.
I'm always amazed at how stupid city councils can be. I live in Chapel Hill, and ours is out-there. Our downtown is suffering from stiff competition from South Point and other new shopping locations. Many stores are closed up, and our downtown may suffer a long slow decay. So what do we do? Our city council's actions over the last 8 years:
- Bring a homeless shelter 1 block from the center of town
- Build benches along the main street, one block from the homeless shelter
- Increase parking rates, and make sure to provide no 2-hour free or validated parking
Brilliant... just brilliant. Here's a story about our mayor. Our hospital is accessed by a congested two-lane road from the south, and ambulances get stuck just like all the rest. UNC wants to widen the road, and there's plenty of legit reasons why many people oppose the plan. Why does our mayor oppose it? He is opposed to all additional road surface. His compromise plan? Allow the road to be widened, but then remove the pavement from a 4-lane road north of town to offset the total paved area.
The city council actually passed this plan. When the city called the DOT and asked for the road to be narrowed, the poor guy over there had no idea what to do. There's no road narrowing department at the DOT. Top level people at the DOT were consulted, and it is now standard at DOT to ignore any silly Chapel Hill requests!
"Wrongful dismissal case?" If you're fired because of your race, sex, or a few other things, then sure. Otherwise, generally a boss can fire an employee "at will", for reasons like "I don't like you."
I think several posters are forgetting what counts in business - integrity. The right thing for this guy to do is tell his boss his concerns, and perhaps highlight the poor light that the USPTO has lately taken on software patents. If his boss persists, he should either relent and file the patent, or consider a new job. That way, at least he keeps his integrity. Lying to his boss, or purposely undermining the patent would damage his integrity.
Googling "billrocks.org site:slashdot.org" returns 139 hits. I only let through white-listed e-mail. It does slow down my e-mail retrieval, though. I daily get more spam than anyone I ever heard of. I have one theory for why it's slowed down. I have to use dnsmadeeasy.com to get past AT&T's mail port blocking. Maybe they started grey-listing. The stuff coming through looks like it's spam from real sights, not spam-bots.
Yeah... I know, pretty vain. I got it shortly after Bill Clinton was no longer president. The site sucks, but I post to my dumb ideas sometimes.
My home e-mail, bill@billrocks.org, is also getting far less spam now for a couple weeks. It's posted all over the net, so I find that really strange. Maybe they realized I don't need a penal enlargement and don't want to meet women (I'm married)?
I think this is becoming less true over time - local machines are becoming more cost effective. For $259, I can get a Dell 350N dual-core processor. The freaking warranty use to cost more than that. More and more of the total cost is in the I/O systems - the Dell 350N is advertised with a $200 flat-panel monitor, and if you add a printer, it the actual computer becomes a minority of the cost.
Here's my scary "Dumb Idea of the Day" In short, should I start an open-source license plate recognition project on sourceforge? It would likely encourage millions of home-based traffic snoopers world-wide... kinda scary
Yep, me too. I had a friend with a copy on his machine, and he'd let me have access. The problem was he didn't have the whole thing, and the guy he fed off of didn't either. The highly specific geek groups I was into in college (in the 80s) weren't accessible ever again to me.
Thank God for the Internet. Slashdot's nice, too.
"Whenever you do a thing, act as if all the world were watching."
I read the patent, and it does not patent tree views. Claim 1 patents adding objects visible in a file viewer, just like files, by registering such objects with the registry. Sounds fairly worthless to me, but Microsoft patents pretty much anything. Claim 3, which does mention tree views, is dependent on claim 1. In no way are simple tree views covered by this patent.
"Ubuntu" is a very unfortunate name. It helps promote the distro with the hacker community (as did the soft-porn desktop art), but it's a disaster for business applications. I've promoted Ubuntu for business use over Red Hat now for years (I got really tired of Red Hat putting out unstable Fedora releases and charging for stable but backwards Enterprise crap). The #1 problem I always run into when I say "Try Ubuntu" is the natural question:
"Ubuntu? What does that mean?"
Imagine the look on a business guy's face when I explain the name means "'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'". I explain that I went to Berkeley, and then everything makes sense to the business guy.
Agreed. And, it never will be. Mark Shuttleworth is way off base this time. Apple specializes in what's possible when a single company controls every aspect of your computer, from hardware design to the GUI. Linux specializes in what's possible when hackers around the world make cool stuff. I'm waaaay in the Linux camp, but Ubuntu will never replace Apple.
All that really matters is that Linux is awesome and getting better every day. We, the few Linux hackers, have it really good. Why should we care that Joe Sixpack will continue to watch his porn and play his video games on Windows until the end of time?
I totally agree with your statement, but not your sig! I figure if I'm willing to pay $36K for a Volt, I'll splurge and pay the $200 for a 220V outlet in my garage :-)
Totally off topic, but since it's in your sig, I'll spout my theory of the day about Obama. It's a close race, but Obama fans are far more enthusiastic. They read more Obama articles and watch more Obama news. That means news organizations make more money talking about Obama. Given how America is full of media drones, Obama will win simply because of his enhanced media coverage.
Agreed. The article is about charging stations, but the Volt and competitors will charge just fine on 220V in your garage overnight. Given the number of cars GM is talking about - up to hundreds of thousands, no grid upgrades are needed, especially since charging will likely be mostly at night.
I am a fan of the coming plug-in hybrids, since new battery technology can help them be cost-effective while reducing CO2 emissions and foreign oil imports. However, in the near-term, switching to natural gas cars like T. Boone Pickens wants, seems to make a lot of sense.
I'm all for this new era of ultra-cheap PCs with small flash memory, but for $50 less, I can get a gOS PC. Also, barring users from accessing the Linux running on the hardware just pisses me off. I read the article on EETimes about this new PC, but I didn't see the value proposition.
I have one friend who has gotten out of two speeding tickets now by presenting his GPS data as evidence. There seem to be some towns that push their cops a bit too hard to bring in ticket revenue.
True, so true. However, I only use Ubuntu at home (even my kids use it). My only illegal software is the DVD player hack that let's me watch the DVDs I legally purchased. It kills me that I have to break the law or buy a M$ product.
Wow... what great security. I just certified myself to be "Lord God" at cacert.org. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this suppose to add some level of trust?
Nansolar
BrightSource Energy
Lots more where those came from. Welcome to the revolution.
You guessed right! I stayed with a family near Dusseldorf. Another poster was also right... the Germans were quite happy to listen to my German so long as I would listen to their English. I never got use to it :-)
Ha ha! That's funny. When I'm old, and my body is good for nothing, just rip out my brain, and wire it into a robot. Family get-togethers might be a bit weird... maybe I could get some cool upgrades?