Modern patents are completely different than what people think patents are.

They are not necessarily clever inventions or designs anymore. They are just a way of laying stake to a field or method of doing things.

As an example, people think a better mouse trap would be what you'd file a patent for. No, actually, a company would file a patent for method of eliminating rodents. This would cover all forms of mouse traps that could ever be designed.

A few years ago, I thought I could learn how things are done by reading patents in a hardware/software field. All the patents were overly general, without any useful information and filled with language that only lawyers would use. On the other hand, I couldn't really design anything without "violating" patents because all the patents were so general that it could covered most general ideas that could be used. In fact, before I had read the patents I had some designs and those designs violated patents.

Well, it was really surprising that people who get STEM degrees don't go on to become musicians, actors and entertainers.

I thought the Brian May, Tom Scholz and Msai Oka was pretty common. Thanks to this study I now am more informed.

The whole STEM stars was a lie!

In order to give the deauth command, you have to be in the same network as the Chromecast.

So, you can't rick roll a chromecast unless you find a way to get into the network that has the chromecast.

I can see this being a problem in offices and other places where a large number of people connect to the same wifi hotspot but this is not a problem at home.

An easier way to rick roll would be to just pull out your youtube app and then start rick roll on the chromecast. This will stop whatever it is playing before and play the rick roll video.

Doesn't this first require that you can get into the chromecast's wireless network first?

If you can get on someone's wireless network, there is a lot of things you can do.

Can't this be easily solved by making the process of jumping to a different wireless router in the configuration mode more secure.

After the hacker leaves the range, then the chromecast will not connect to the original network. I don't know if the chormecast installation tool can reconnect to it and reconfigure the network it connects to.

All that counts is that Snowden has the balls and integrity that is so lacking in the "uber-hacker" department. You can't threaten Snowden, you can't bribe him. An uber-hacker, you can buy him out or scare him.

Anyways, you don't uber-hackers to develop security software. The encryption algorithms are university research level stuff and as long as you understand the basics of it, you're fine. The rest is just writing code around it that a decent programmer should be able to handle well.

I read the article and I can't tell if this is a real problem that is really affecting thousands of users and companies, or a fantasy that the author wrote up in 30 minutes after having a discussion with an old IBM engineer.

Sure, IBM has all these resource prioritization in mainframes because mainframes cost a lot of money. Nowadays, hardware is so cheap you don't have to do all that stuff.

If some young programmer undertook the challenge and created the framework, would anyone use it and test it? Will there be an actual need for something like this?

My point is that an insider information to what is really going on in the cutting edge usage of linux or just some smoke being blown around to an obligated write up.

They are asking a question that is heavily dependent on the number of children in the household.

I think the correlation here is electricity usage and children in the household.

Every minute spent training for a marathon is useless because we have cars. A $50 junker can beat the fastest marathon runner.

Why is learning about algorithms useful? For every algorithm you learn, there are at least a dozen implementation of the said algorithm.

I was reading some books published in the 2008 and 2009. NSA was viewed as the stalwart of the security aspect of the internet, valiantly contributing to security software and keeping things organized and secure in that front.

I think NSA should have done the opposite of what they did. Instead of spying, they should have created anti-spying tools and issued alerts on spying and privacy aspects of modern technology.

Even if they created spying technology, it should have been created to prevent such spying by putting those tools out in public and letting security researchers figure out methods to solve these security and privacy problems. US software would then be seen as solid and trustworthy, and the whole world would have no problem using US software knowing that it is constantly monitored for security and privacy.

Anything can happen in the future. We want phones now and cheap and they can make it now. If you care so much about the future and craft it so cautiously, even the smallest of changes in technological advancements will wreck all your future plans.

Technology moves so fast and China has always been one step behind, one version behind. Doesn't mean they will ever catch up unless they invest heavily in R&D and actually catch with the big boys. By the time they learn something, it has been improved on and moved on. Sure, they can catch the low margin markets in mature technology but never in high margin technology.

On the other hand, maybe they will catch up and make competing products. Are you really scared of a little competition? On the other hand, technology will move even faster with a larger consumer base and a larger number of companies making cutting edge products.

Scientific advances happened long before peer review and scientific advances are happening in spite of peer review.

Peer review is just a fancy concept invented to make it look like scientific publication is blind to "politics". It is quire the opposite. Scientists are asked to volunteer their time to review peer papers without pay or compensation. The hidden compensation is that they get to push their friends and colleague's work ahead of the pack and the favor is returned.

If you check journals and publications, you will find the same group of people publishing over and over again in the same set of journals and publications. If you read through them, you can tell they are churned out papers aimed at a publication rather than some scientific advancement.

The standard practice is to form a unspoken agreement between several reviewers that they will all favorably review each others papers.

Peter couldn't find his circle and created a self-circle.

We are so bad at predicting the future but we still do it over and over again. We are mostly wrong and we always forget how wrong we were

Here are some of the future wearable and apple stories on slashdot from the past:

• Is the Rise of Wearable Electronics Finally Here?
• Speculating On the Far Future of Cellphones
• Flexible Phones 'Out By 2013'
• Solar-Powered Augmented Reality Contact Lenses
• Wearable Computer With Lightweight HUD

We have said some pretty crazy things and we have been saying the age of wearable for almost five years.

Nah, man. Bill Gates dropped out and he's richer than this guy.

Drop out. You'll make more money.

Keep telling yourself that.

An 18 year old is not going to enjoy spending his entire day with fat middle-aged office drones. He would rather go to college, party, make friends and score with other 18 year old girls.

He can always go back to a programming job anytime he wants.