I fly US Airways regularly. Last flight out was late taking off for no apparent reason. Our luggage did not make the connection in their own Hub. Neither did anybody else's. It took over an hour for the luggage clerk to process the long line. I counted over 500 keystrokes required per person. Staff didn't care at either airport. They would not put out luggage on the next plane in (another airlines, and they would have to pay a fee to that airline) so it was over a day to get out luggage. Two days, or three, unless we came back to the airport to pick it up. On the way home to SFO, it took over an hour for them to get out luggage onto the carousel. They had the nerve, over the PA system, to blame the passengers for having, "too much luggage," for the delay.

Consumer Reports rated US Airways at the bottom of customer satisfaction.

Planes fly. Southwest regularly makes last second changes, including flag stops (unscheduled) and re-using planes for "second runs."

There was LOTS that US Airways could have done. First, they could have flown the planes if they wanted too. They planes had already been scheduled, so there were no questions of maintenance or fuel, or flight plans. Second, they could reimburse passengers for the delays. Third, they could have rescheduled some passenger.

Then, of course, as said, there is simply no excuse for the IT to be down for that long, if at all. They had no (working) backup systems, either computers, paper, or people. That is the very definition of incompetent.

I work in IT. As a guy said in my last meeting, “Anybody who designs in RAID 5 should be shot.” Duh.

The fact is that the airlines management is incompetent. This is not an opinion. Simply too many facts. The board should completely clean house. When the questions comes up in the next board meeting of, “What to do?” the answer is, “Duh.”

I am 95% sure these meters have all been hacked. I saw a demo in first person. (It might have been faked, I suppose.)

So, the bad guys drive around to find out who is on vacation?

All of patent law deals with interpretations, most of which are involve varying degrees of subtly.

The Federal Circuit Court has provided a great deal of well-written guidance. This particularly applies to what is and is not patentable.

The issue of what is and is not patentable is not black and white, such as, “mathematical formulas are not patentable,” or “software is patentable.”

A process that creates something useful and tangible is patentable, whether or not that process involves a calculation. What is not patentable is a “pure” formula that is not tied to something tangible. Data structures are tricky. The newer rules (yes, lots of mistakes were made in the past) are that generalized data structures, such as a table or a linked list, do not count as “tangible.” However, if those data structures are used (critically) to perform useful work, such as to refine steel or to serve up ads on websites, then the ENTIRE process is patentable. Subject, of course to all the other restrictions, such as non-obviousness.

These rules are not really new. They are the same rules that apply to mechanical inventions. For example, you cannot patent a “law of nature,” even it is something complex and nobody else knew about it. You can, however, patent a new device that takes advantage of this law of nature. For example, you cannot patent super-conductivity, but you can patent a useful device that uses super-conductivity.

Even mechanical inventions could be reduced to equations. CAD systems and hardware description languages are such examples. However, these “mathematical” representations have no bearing on the patentability.

Thus, the “deaf ears” referred to are those practitioners in the field who are following well-established law.

You don’t have to like current patent law. Many people don’t. European rules, for example, are different that ours. Note that not liking is distinct from not understanding.

- Registered Patent Agent

AND !

With all that left over lye, you can open a few clogged drains!

True, but my guess is that (1) this is far too much trouble for them; and (2) they were a "clump" with common interests long before they decided to attack postings they don't like. You are suggesting that people leave their own church before promoting the church's views?

I have two algorithms, and I suggest that they are more valuable if used together, and indeed, if all three including your algorithm are used together.

(1) Identify "clumps" of users by who their friends are and by their viewing habits. Facebook has an app that will create a "distance graph," using a published algorithm. It is established that groups of users tend to "clump" and the clumps can be identified algorithmically. For example, for a given user, are there more connections back to the clump than there are to outside the clump? Another way to determine such a clump is by counting the number of loops back to the user. (A friends B friends C friends A.) Traditional correlation can be used to match viewing habits. This is probably improved by including a time factor in the each correlation term. For example, if two users watch the same video within 24 hours of each other this correlation term has more weight than if they were watched a week apart.

Now that you have identified a clump -- which you do not make public -- determine what fraction of the abuse reports come from one or a small number of clumps. That is very suspicious. Also apply an "complaint" factor to the clump as a whole. Clumps with high complaint factors (complain frequently) have their complaints de-weighted appropriately. Rather than "on-off" determinations (e.g. "banned"), use variable weightings.

In this way groups of like-minded users who try to push a specific agenda through abuse complaints would find their activities less and less effective. The more aggressive the clump, the less effective. And, the more the clump acts like a clump, the less effective.

(2) Use Wikipedia style "locking." There are a sequence of locks, from mild to extreme. Mild locks require complaining users to be in good standing and be a user for while for the complaint to count. Medium locks require a more detailed look, say, by your set of random reviewers. Extreme locks means that the item in question has been formally reviewed and the issue is closed. In addition, complaints filed against a locked ("valid") item hurt the credibility score of the complainer.

I hope this helps.

I highly recommend that everyone use Russell and Lumpy as characters in their own videos, and upload them to YouTube. Could become a movement, y' know.

I mean no offense, but as a student of history, aren't FUD and Microsoft synonymous?

These drives are intended for embedded application like copy machines and medical equipment. That equipment now has major security holes once it is disposed of. NOT intended for PCs or data center use. HOWEVER, for secure laptops -- they are ideal. If the laptop gets stolen, now, it is trivial to circumvent OS-enforced security and get to the data. In an environment were data backup is handled by the corporate system, if the laptop fails or is lost or the user forgets his password, you ABSOLUTELY want the data in that machine gone forever. Legitimate users of the data will get it, through the proper channels, from corporate backup.

More like kicking an old, weak, sick, blind-in-one-eye, arthritic dog...

... Even if was the very same dog neighbor that terrorized you as a kid, killed your pet cat, barked all night, and pooped in your front yard every day.

Is Samsung now a NORTH Korean company?

So, as I understand it, a programmer was sentenced to 97 years in prison for stealing the algorithm that Goldman Sachs used to steal money from other people.

The single most critical element of any market, including a stock market, is that it is, “fair.” That means, the same price and the same terms for everybody. In fact, these are the same words used by the NY stock exchange and NASDAQ.

But how is using super computers for millisecond arbitrage “equal terms for everybody?”

How do you think that hundreds of top employees at Goldman can take home over $1 million a year in compensation? With overtime?

Oh, my God, could they possibly pick a more inept, sloppy and non-technological organization in the western world than the USPS. Not only are they the largest polluter on record (little mail trucks get 4 mpg) but they are the number one contributor to tree-cutting and filling land-fills.

The most sophisticate piece of equipment in the main post office near me is the time-clock.

Maybe the term “junk mail,” which the USPS calls, “standard mail,” because that is their performance standard, will be expanded to include “junk data,” which no no doubt will be renamed “standard data,” in their honor.

I hereby accept all parties for a bet that (1) any process they use for data collection will badly executed and (2) they will be so badly hacked that “post office root kits” will appear in grammar school science fairs.

Microsoft repeatedly changed agreements with developers. At one point, they required developers to pay thousands of dollars for a two-year membership, and then less than a year later simply discontinued that program and replaced it with a similar program that required new payment.

Microsoft sold Microsoft Money, claiming that it could import Quicken data. In fact, the box was empty but they promised a download in less than 60 days, which was repeatedly delayed. By then, it was too late to legally return the empty box to the retailer. And, finally, it did not import Quicken data. The entire product was a fraud.

Microsoft sold versions of Office, at the same time, which were different. We needed to standardize, and complained to Microsoft. We were told that “the version in each box was the version we purchased,” and that “version control was not part of the product.” In fact, Microsoft has admitted that they have no idea what versions they produce or ship and are not able to replicate builds.

Microsoft has an effective monopoly on Word. As a result they have terminated development work to fix bugs, and Word has many of the same bugs it had 15 years ago (such as tables not formatting across page boundaries).

Microsoft simply overpowered the Justice Department in their monopoly probe, paying about 100 times as much in legal expenses as the Justice Department could afford.

Europe has not been as scared to reign in Microsoft’s illegal competitive practices as the US. As a result, Microsoft is the most fined company in the world. Yet, the delay every time and consistently pay more fines for refusing to comply with ruling.

Microsoft charged PC vendors for a copy of their OS for every machine they built, even if the machine shipped did not include the OS. This requirement was built into their contract, and PC vendors could not negotiate.

Microsoft made retailers eat the entire cost of product returns, unlike every other software company. Retailers could not survive if they didn’t carry Microsoft software, but most retailers’ broke even or lost money because of the onerous return policy.

Microsoft required Intel to write all of the BIOS and low-level CPU code and give it to Microsoft for free. Microsoft then sold it. One year Intel objected and Microsoft refused to support Intel’s latest processor, causing sales to go close to zero. Intel had to immediately capitulate to the blackmail.

Microsoft consistently and purposefully damages the Macintosh user interface in their products so the GUI experience is not superior on a Mac compared to a PC.

IMHO, Microsoft should be awarded the LEAST ethical company of the last century.