When my engineers are low on actual tasks, I encourage them to learn. Go read up on some new technology, play around with that game engine, read some technology magazines or books, etc. That increased knowledge is incredibly useful to the company in the long run, it makes for happier employees, and they are even more marketable. Sounds counterproductive, but I prefer more marketable employees because it means not only do I have a strong team, but now the company is far more appealing to other marketable employees when I have an opening.

Be careful, Darinbob, the troll is working! It's disguised as a red herring, too!

No, it's flamebait. It mentions no less than four additional points not relevant to this discussion simply in an attempt to troll Americans. Take out those four other points and I would agree it's a valid criticism, or perhaps include other points that ARE relevant/related.

This is an excellent reply. Mod parent up further.

It's not harmless stringing them along like that. What you're really doing is giving them invaluable experience and training in responding to people who might simply be on the cusp of getting taken.

That's true, but there's a difference between an open source support contract and the way in which Oracle does a support contract.

Typo on the average male weight. It's 193. But, what really scares me is that I could get raped by a linebacker.

You should reword that so it's not in past tense. I don't know what rock you live under, but women are still constantly denigrated at work, politics, school, and elsewhere. The glass ceiling still exists and is real.

Well, it's not like this is really news yet. Let's see if we can dig up what's really happening at Congress. Is a representative actively sanctioning this behavior? If so, then that's news.

Here's a couple of books on the subject. The second one helps answer your question specifically, and in great detail.

It's pure opinion of what's a joke petition and what isn't. If you say the death star is a joke petition and there's no frivolous determination of such petitions, then either the administration can arbitrarily choose or perhaps just treat them all as jokes. I think the response to the Tesla petition is fine. The administration should do nothing on this, not because I don't care but looking at it from their perspective, it's not worth it. It's a hugely problematic, very inflammatory discussion to talk about taking away state rights in favor of federal rights. The white house should pick their battles on that and this is certainly not one of them. So, while Tesla may be less of a joke petition than the Death Star, it's still a joke petition.

This is some cool shit. The carbon buckyballs spurred development and interest in carbon nanotubes and some other nano-material stuff. I hope this provides some more funding and interest.

AdBlock? NoScript?

She sleeps through everything else, she can sleep through me reading a book.

It was a lot of zeroes so if I missed an order of magnitude, my apologies. I'm not gonna double check again, though, because I think mil or bil doesn't matter. :)