You were on a roll, until you just said this crazy thing: " Keep it up and this new generation that seems to have little interest in cars, preferring to bike everywhere"

I dunno about you. But, "in general", I have a tendency to believe a single PhD candidate over 5 MBAs. The more MBAs there are, even less I believe that group.

Curses slashdot. You made me look like a tool by pre-processing my message! I meant to write "Does [jamming] == [sitting duck mode]"? Now it just says "Does [blank] == [blank]".. No more angle brackets! :-@

While we are on topic, what would prevent an enemy missile from having an onboard jamming unit to jam the control signals coming from a remote pilot to the plane? Does == ? Or are these planes equipped with a Borg shield adaption (i.e. rotate frequency) mechanism that makes jamming very difficult?

Whenever you hear stories like this, it's easy for people to call out for the elimination of all patents (just need to take a cursory look at the comments above). However, while the patent system needs reform, we still need patents. In many industries, companies would a lot of resources into R&D to come up with new inventions. If you let everyone random person/company come afterwards, reverse engineer the end-product, the company that invested all that R&D money will be at a complete loss. This situation is somewhat similar to the "legacy costs" of the big 3 auto manufacturers. They incurred all those labor costs (e.g. pensions, etc.) which is not an issue for the new companies, and as such are at a significant disadvantage in the market place. Similarly, if a company spends a lot of R&D money, but have to compete with other companies that DON'T have the R&D costs, but make the same product (due to no patents), the initial company will go belly up very quickly. Of course, this doesn't mean that all patents are good. MOST patents that I've seen are very obvious and get granted only b/c the patent examiner doesn't have enough time to really fight it out. The point system in the USPTO is a farce - when it comes to filtering out crappy inventions. While I completely agree that we need reform, calling for the all out elimination of the patent system is not any less foolish than continuing with the system we have now.

Cold War 2 is in full swing! Who is going to win this round?

Does this law prevent a "computer product" patent "comprising" a recordable medium containing instructions that when executed by a computer processor perform the steps of: a) [do some obvious stuff] b) [do some more obvious stuff] c) [do some more stuff people didn't both writing down on paper b/c it was so damn obvious to anyone in the field] Just wondering... (PS: for those who don't know patent lingo, the preamble in my first sentence is how patent agents in some countries get around "computer program" exceptions... I kid you not)

Pick up a math or problem solving book and go through it! Seriously. I wasted so much time in my 20s playing Quake 3 and Starcraft, it isn't even funny. I was pretty good at it and quitting wasn't easy. What I would give to have that time back to actually do something productive.

I remember reading about this topic days ago. If it was on slashdot, then it's a duplicate. If it was somewhere else, then this is not really "news".

I am curious what would have happened if Infosys said "Ok Brenda. You are clearly qualified. We pay 50K/year for this position. Do you want it?". She says no and declines job and they go and hire the Bangladeshi. What are the legal ramifications at this point? Essentially, can the "US worker" demand as much money as he/she want (up to a worker set industrial average that ignores global competition in the current market) and say you MUST pay me this - not what you want to pay?

While we are on the topic of drone pilots versus actual fighter pilots, in a skirmish, how difficult would it be for the other side to completely jam all frequencies that are used to carry control information from the drone pilots in home base to the drone itself? Is jamming such a huge frequency range unmanageable? If so, is there a way to "fast detect" active frequency ranges and jam those specific ranges? Do the drones "rotate" their frequencies (much like star trek shield harmonics) to make it difficult to jam? And if so, can the jamming be effectively adoptable?

has been handpicked!! Wonder what he's getting under the table for his "selfless sacrifice"?

Someone teach this man (professor) the difference between causality and correlation.. He's not a artsie guy, he's a scientis... Wait... "assistant professor of psychiatry"..... Ok.. I understand.

Slow boot up times?? Not in my house!