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Comment Re:Pardon my ignorance but... (Score 1) 273

by joostje (#45200795) Attached to: USB Implementers Forum Won't Play Nice With Open Hardware
It looks like it's grummonds idea from this page; as linking directly to the comment seems to fail, here's the text of the comment:

Oh, and here’s an idle thought train – let’s take the negative rights idea a step further:-

1) identify a VID that is yet uncommitted (I presume there is a list). Choose a number that has some vague recognition value, say 0xF055 (FOSS), but don’t call it a VID, it’s just the name of an online community.

2) start (i.e. publicise) an online community to support development of USB Free Open Source Software. Membership is free for proven FOSS developers.

3) Members get a membership number, you gussed it from 1 to 65535. It’s not a PID it’s a membership number!

4) Doesn’t matter how large the USB-FOSS community is, the appearance of growing support should be enough that eventually no commercial vendor is going to want to be issued with VID 0xF055.
Music

How Amateurs Destroyed the Professional Music Business 617

Posted by Soulskill from the music-outlives-business dept.
David Gerard writes "Here in the future, musicians and record companies complain they can't make a living any more. The problem isn't piracy — it's competition. There is too much music and too many musicians, and the amateurs are often good enough for the public. This is healthy for culture, not so much for aesthetics, and terrible for musicians. There are bands who would have trouble playing a police siren in tune, who download a cracked copy of Cubase — you know how much musicians pirate their software, VSTs and sample packs, right? — and tap in every note. There are people like me who do this. A two-hundred-quid laptop with LMMS and I suddenly have better studio equipment than I could have hired for $100/hour thirty years ago. You can do better with a proper engineer in a proper studio, but you don’t have to. And whenever quality competes with convenience, convenience wins every time. You can protest that your music is a finely-prepared steak cooked by sheer genius, and be quite correct in this, and you have trouble paying for your kitchen, your restaurant, your cow."
The Almighty Buck

Ask Slashdot: When Is It OK To Not Give Notice? 892

Posted by timothy from the as-you-put-the-strychnine-in-the-guacamole dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Here in the U.S., 'being professional' means giving at least two week's notice when leaving a job. Is this an outmoded notion? We've all heard stories about (or perhaps experienced) a quick escort to the parking lot upon giving the normal notice, and I've never heard of a company giving a two-week notice to an employee that's being laid off or fired. A generation ago, providing a lengthy notice was required to get a glowing reference, but these days does a reference hold water any more? Once you're reached the point where you know it's time to leave, under what circumstances would you just up and walk out or give only a short notice?"
Security

Robotic Kiosk Stores Digital Copies of Physical Keys 192

Posted by Soulskill from the what-could-possibly-go-wrong dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Daily News reports that a startup company in Manhattan is putting robotic key copying machines in 7-Eleven stores. The machines can automatically create physical copies of common apartment and office keys. What's more interesting is that they allow users to save digital copies of their keys, which can later be created when the original is lost or the user is locked out of their home."
China

Giant Dinosaurs Were Fastest Growing Animals Ever 64

Posted by samzenpus from the eat-your-vegetables dept.
sciencehabit writes "Lufengosaurus, a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in China during the Jurassic period, were the biggest animals of their age, measuring 30 feet long. Now, fossilized embryos reveal that they were also the fastest growing animals on record — 'faster than anything we have ever seen,' according to one researcher. What's more, researchers have found traces of organic matter in their bones, which may belong to the oldest fossil proteins ever found."

Comment Influenza vaccination has been shown highly effect (Score 5, Informative) 851

by joostje (#42517099) Attached to: Indiana Nurses Fired After Refusing Flu Shots On Religious Grounds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_vaccine#Benefits_of_vaccination Influenza vaccination has been shown highly effective in health care workers (HCW), with minimal adverse effects. In a study of forty matched nursing homes, staff influenza vaccination rates were 69.9% in the vaccination arm versus 31.8% in the control arm. The vaccinated staff experienced a 42% reduction in sick leave from work (P=.03).[33] A review of eighteen studies likewise found a strong net benefit to health care workers

Comment gold standard for responsible mailing (Score 4, Informative) 345

by joostje (#42275959) Attached to: Hotmail & Yahoo Mail Using Secret Domain Blacklist
Yes, verified opt-in is one requirement. But if you don't want to be marked as sender of SPAM, you should also make it *very* simple to unsubscribe. I know I've subscribed to a few lists, and at first read the emails, then ignored them, and eventually thought "should unsubscribe". But if that unsubscribing is difficult, I'll just hit "spam" in gmail (or whatever). I don't see the emails and more, and the sender gets blocked as spammer.

Comment Re:Missing option (Score 1) 525

by joostje (#42018273) Attached to: My relationship to military service:

They were flying too low and based on maps that did not mention the new aerial tramway. They were court martialed in the U.S.A., acquitted, then trialed a second time and were sentenced to a short prison time.

The second time however they were sentenced for found guilty of obstruction of justice and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman for having destroyed a videotape recorded from the plane, so the parent is right in saying they were never sentenced for killing 20 people.

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