Sorry, but this dude looks like he works out 2 hours a day, and I think I heard him grunt when he picked it up. If the 5" thick body didn't already discredit that term (note: the original IBM Portable was NOT A LAPTOP).

You'd probably get bruises on your thighs if you put this on your lap, if you didn't get 2nd degree burns before that...

I don't disagree that coal has had more effect than nuclear on the environment, but your "fact" is completely wrong. Kind of sad, since if you had just kept to the facts it would have been a decent point.

And yes, the top 3 Google results (as per your suggestion) say you are wrong. Feel free to find a citation that contradicts your suggestion, though.

Meh. I'm sure there were many cases of species altering the ecology. It wasn't worldwide and (semi-)permanent until MUCH later. We didn't name an Epoch just because a particularly large population of predatory mammals reduced the population of prey in a region (which happens all the time).

Except it's not really using a *dead* language, it's using a popular academic language that was chosen back when people still LEARNED AND READ LATIN (and really, one with a structure that lends itself particularly well to the purpose).

Your current perspective on it is about as useful as someone 150 years from now saying "why they hell did we standardize one the metric system when we could have used plenty of other systems of measure?"

In the terms of "Epochs" it's total wankery (or in American English, mental masturbation ;)

It may even make sense to consider "the atomic age" as a new Epoch at some point in the distant future, but placing that date on it is pure politics, not science.

Wow, seriously?

You can define words to whatever you want them to be. PEOPLE MADE THEM ALL UP. DUH.

If you want to define a "pizza" as a giant cosmic object that can not be comprehended by humans, go ahead, but the rest of us will continue to think of it as a tasty flatbread covered with tomato sauce and cheese.

Though for you "thinking" seems to be more accurately defined as "mental masturbation"...

That's moronic. "Thinking", like all *words created by humans*, has a reasonably clear definition in many contexts that doesn't include electrons or evolutionary processes.

Bad analogy. Logical fallacy -5. Next time, try to think, don't try to swim.

"Out-thinks"? Basically it evolved not to produce a protein for part of the day because that resulted in better survival rates from more nutrients. Cool, but why call it thinking, even with quotes when we are big boys and girls and can understand evolutionary processes. Does Slashdot really have to resort to Buzzfeed fringy-worthy headlines these days?

I'd say the Russian sanctions are overwhelmingly correct. Putin has an 80% approval rating, which means the Russian people agree with what he did. In that case, they are going to need to accept the consequences of a recession in 2015. If Russia doesn't want to play nice with the rest of the world politically why should the rest of the world play nice with them economically?

In the case of NK, though, these sanctions are just for show. NK doesn't have a global economy to damage, and certainly doesn't have major trade relations with the US and EU. China will prop them up as they always have...

I'm not convinced that NK was directly responsible in this, either (if they FBI as they claim have strong unreleased evidence, release it!)

But if you actually RTFA (or RTF government document) this is not going to hurt "the people". The people in North Korea have no Internet access or money to invest in foreign banks.

In theory they are just targeting financial transactions of North Korean agencies and senior officials. In practice, come on, how many of them have significant financial transactions in the US, anyway? It's just more posturing in a 60 year long posturing battle between the US and NK that is so silly it makes Zoolander look like a serious documentary on male modeling.

And very targeted and embarrassing release of insider emails and documents doesn't really fit the North Korea theory very well. I mean, their *official spokesperson* released a statement (sic): "The U.S., a big country, started disturbing the Internet operation of major media of the DPRK, not knowing shame like children playing a tag." Just don't think they are going to be concerned that much with internal Hollywood politics when they can't even manage to translate one sentence into proper English.

Also, apparently the whole GoP reference and Interview theater threats only came up 3 weeks into the hack; one popular opinion is it was misdirection to muddy the investigation (if so, it sure worked!) And you'd think they'd lead with that if that was their original intent...

But anyway, at this point neither argument is very convincing. There just isn't any (public) hard evidence either way. Some claim the FBI has "proof they aren't showing" - if they want people to believe them, they might want to release that. The US government hasn't really built a very trusting relationship with its citizen these days...

Since it's defined in many national laws as "intentionally causing damages to a computer system". And it's going to be hard to argue it wasn't intentional after they bragged about it so much on Twitter already...

You need to read what I said a bit better. Of course they can be assigned to the original company who funded the work (i.e. the employer of the inventor(s).

If a company completely *buys* another company, in effect it is now that company. But that would SIGNIFICANTLY cut down on patent trolls (the whole point of this) as it would make it a much more expensive, complex, and risky undertaking. For example. Google did buy Motorola, keep most of the patent rights, and sell of the rest - but it cost them MANY billions of dollars to do that (and luckily Google was just doing it defensively, though of course they could assert them).

Why is it impossible to avoid? As part of not being able to sell/permanently assign the patents to that 3rd party company (i.e. the troll), it follows that only the original owner can actually sue for infringement. Again, the idea was trying to prevent patent trolls, not patents.

And OBVIOUSLY it was all just a suggestion. No off the cuff 2 paragraph statement is going to solve patent trolling. But making it harder for the trolls to acquire them is definitely something to consider.

Who said they can't license the patent? Of course they can license it, they just can't sell/transfer it outright, and none of the licensees can directly sue other companies for violating it. If anything that does protect the original inventor (or the original company it was assigned to).