Brand name in the upper left, model number next to it, description in upper right, gray-brown case tapers down with yellow sides. That is NOT basic mutimeter design. I built my first multimeter from a Radio Shack kit in the late-1970s. Don't tell me what they look like. This was designed to look like a Fluke 175 and they got caught.

Did you look at the photo? The color and the case taper? Looks a whole lot like a Fluke 77/175/179/187

Are you seriously claiming that they never saw a sample or a photo of what they were buying. They just sent off money randomly? Hard to believe they are that foolish.

So are you telling me Sparkfun is a NPO? They seem to be making a profit to me, they are a real company as far as I can tell. Please show me where they are not making money off of their sales, and if so, how do they stay in business?

Agreed, this is an attempt to copy Fluke's recent multimeter design.

It's not just yellow. It has the same color scheme, same display layout, similar fonts, same case taper as a real Fluke. Brand name in same location as is the model number and description. It was designed to look as much like a Fluke as possible.

If I saw the sparkfun multimeter sitting on a bench in my lab, I would think it was a Fluke until I got close.

Sparkfun knew this when they bought them. Their fault. If they did not know it was designed to imitate a Fluke, they are in the wrong business. "Other companies did it and did not get caught" does not make it right. They risked it anyway and lost. Complaining about the trademark is not the solution.

A lot of early personal computers have a similar story. Software is often written with breadboarded or nonexistent hardware.

What is unique about the idea of custom silicon LSI chips for a 1980's PC?

The original Atari 800 (a design later copied by Commodore for the VIC-20 and Commodore-64 computers) had three custom chips (ANTIC, CTIA, POKEY) which made up the majority of the machine's circuitry when designed in 1978. And the OS and other early programs were written without the benefits of that completed hardware.

Only two LSI parts were off the shelf; the 6502 CPU and the 6520 PIA. Atari later replaced the CTIA with the GTIA (delayed by design issues) and the 6502 with a custom "sally" variant that built in formerly external tristate allowing the ANTIC to shut off the CPU's access to RAM every-other clock cycle so the RAM could be accessed by the ANTIC graphics chip.

That design was in active production for over ten years.

Even the lowly 2600 was a basically a custom TIA chip that originally existed as discrete logic parts wirewrapped together.

I fail to see how this story is either unique or great. If anything, it seems average.

And the only reason for the entire Lunokhod project is that the Soviets failed to get a crew to the moon and blew up the second N1 rocket in 1969 after a loose bolt got sucked into a fuel pump.

The Soviets lost the space race and never did get a man on another planet. They sent that thing instead, attempting to save face.

Funny how the poster forgot things like "first space rendezvous" and "Winning the space race and PUTTING A MAN ON THE F*CKING MOON". He counts ten seconds of functioning lander as a victory, but the brass-ring of the space race does not even count in his mind.

The largest and most expensive Soviet space program was their attempt to copy NASA's space shuttle, which flew once and got crushed in 2002 when it's hanger collapsed.

Perhaps they believe in justice and the rule of law, rather than going out and settling thing themselves vigilante-style? Some people are funny that way.

Unless it's Assange doing the raping. Then it's all lies by ungrateful whores.

Exactly, if their leader and hero Assange does it, then it's not rape. After all, clearly those women are lying, or THEY DESERVED IT! He's Julian Assange for God's sake. They should be THRILLED that he was willing to date-rape them!

Watch this get modded down by 14-year-old script kiddies.

Oh yes, now I remember why I stopped reading Slashdot back in 2001. It's full of 14-year old boys...or at least adults that act like them.

"I have no idea what I'm taking about, and I was in too much of a rush to First-Post so I did not bother to read the article. But I made an anti-American remark, and I was snotty, therefore, I'm an instant Slashdot expert! Modded up to 'insightful'".

What sort of fools modded this up?

By the way, if you had bothered to read the article, the research is at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. In the UK. That's not in the US, that's across the Atlantic Ocean, way on the other side.

I think you underestimated your own laziness.

Yes, I also found it amusing that this the same site were people argue about non-profits and fair use.

Exactly! What we need is a giant database that can be compromised by one overworked medical resident who has no real concept of data security.

I know of two cases where residents had a shared database of passwords to various medical systems at multiple hospitals stored on insecure public "document" sites. In one case, they all had a common password, and different groups of students/residents used it year after year (not even ever changing the username or password). When the IT people found out and blew a large gasket, the medical people honestly did not see what the problem was.

Someone modded this up to "Insightful"? Really? Are you from Planet Quendor?

If you needed real government-issued photo ID to commit identity theft, then most of the criminals would be out of business

.

You mean Medicare, not Medicaid, which is for the very poor or terminally ill.

The big prize here would be any Children's SSN's. Those are valuable for identity fraud because children have clean credit histories, and it takes months-to-years for the parents to figure it out.

I suspect "Anonymous" may be at work here, they've attacked Utah government and police sites before. They seem to support free speech, unless it's free speech they don't like, then it should be destroyed. Ironically, not only did they attack the wrong police department (Salt Lake City, not West Valley City), but they took down the site that allows the public to talk to the police. But I guess as long as you destroy something and screw up people's lives, that's good news for them.