Comment Re:Walt's Not a Nice Guy (Score 1) 288
Re: the three partners...I think Walt was with the girl, and then the other guy and the girl hooked up and that's why Walt bailed.
Comment Re:Interesting tidbits (Score 1) 87
Actually I think their claimed 'prototypical inventor' was just involved in patent litigation, not specifically involved in litigation with intellectual ventures.
Comment UN-natural (Score 1) 28
There is nothing natural about interacting with flying robots...
Submission + - Dangerous Prototypes: Open Source Hardware Seeding (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: "Dangerous Prototypes is a two-year old organization with the stated mission of producing "one new open source project every month." In its nearly two years in existence, DP has created about 30 projects, such as the Flash Destroyer. All are being sold by another interesting company, Seeed Studio. Seeed is a contract manufacturing/sales channel for hire. It helps hardware designers get their ideas manufactured in China and sold worldwide. If you have a completed project, Seeed has a service called Propagate for manufacturing small quantities (100+) of open source hardware."
Comment linux has keyboard mousing by default (Score 3, Interesting) 364
In soviet linux the keyboard is the mouse:
Comment Re:Sure thing (Score 3, Insightful) 183
...of the asteroids that we know about...
Comment Behavior modification (Score 1) 619
If you do anything to correct the situation, you are reinforcing the bad behavior, and it will continue to happen with greater frequency.
You actually get punished more for trying to do the right thing.
You should just delete them, mark as spam, etc.
From a behavior stand point you would want to avoid reinforcing the behavior, and possibly also identify a way to punish the behavior -- one could do the wrong thing and publish them online, which might be a punishment (while probably technically legal, this behavior could increase the frequency with which you interact with lawyers).
In my case, someone has the same name modulo middle name, and his gmail is one character more than mine, so I get a few of their emails a month, at first I tried to respond to the sender, or forward them along, but it just kept happening so I now I delete them or mark them as spam.
Submission + - Dark Side of Android (motorola.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The dark side of android is that carriers/manufacturers can abandon phones/users/customers without having to release the source or host/assist customer upgrade efforts. This issue is very prominently typified by the Motorola I1 debacle.
In late spring of 2010 Motorola released an Android 1.5 IDEN push-to-talk phone, and the masses obviously wanted and expected an Android update as apps for the 1.5 were already dwindiing. Then in Feb 2011 it was announced that the i1 would remain version 1.5 forever. This PR nightmare is evident on the official Motorola support forums with a thread that topped out at 682 posts before being locked by the admins. The thread had morphed into a place to vent frustrations with Motorola/Boost and to discuss options for custom firmware for the abandoned phone.
In late spring of 2010 Motorola released an Android 1.5 IDEN push-to-talk phone, and the masses obviously wanted and expected an Android update as apps for the 1.5 were already dwindiing. Then in Feb 2011 it was announced that the i1 would remain version 1.5 forever. This PR nightmare is evident on the official Motorola support forums with a thread that topped out at 682 posts before being locked by the admins. The thread had morphed into a place to vent frustrations with Motorola/Boost and to discuss options for custom firmware for the abandoned phone.
Comment Think of the patents! (Score 1) 213
A patent dies everytime you mentaly masterbate on slashdot. Oh the horror.
Leak Shows US Lead Opponent of ACTA Transparency 164
An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the debate over ACTA transparency, the secret copyright
treaty, many countries have taken public positions that they support
release of the actual text, but that other countries do not.
Since full transparency requires consensus of all the ACTA partners,
the text simply can't be released until everyone is in agreement.
A new leak
from the Netherlands fingers who the chief opponents of transparency
are: the United States, South Korea, Singapore, and Denmark lead the
way, with Belgium, Germany, and Portugal not far behind as problem
countries."
Comment Re:I guess the only question is... (Score 2, Insightful) 350
I think most if not all hospitals have this tech.
The station(s) go offline, and service personel come and fix it... parts of the network going offline is not an unusual event. Unlike the 19th century tech, these packet (plastic canister) routed pneumatic tube systems lack humans at the core of packet routing.
From a volunteer's point of view at a non-Stanford hospital, the IT integration was less than stellar. Maybe Stanford has done some work in that area, or maybe this is just astroturfing by a pneumatic tube company.
Simulation of Close Asteroid Fly-By 148
c0mpliant writes "NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory have released a simulation of the path of an asteroid, named Apophis, that will come very close to Earth in 2029 — the closest predicted approach since humans have monitored for such heavenly bodies. The asteroid caused a bit of a scare when astronomers first announced that it would enter Earth's neighborhood some time in the future. However, since that announcement in 2004, more recent calculations have put the odds of collision at 1 in 250,000."
Submission + - Financial Fix cost is $206K per person-on-plane (mi2g.com)
Richard0Thomas writes: The cost to fix the financial systems problem is going to be $206k per
person-on-planet based on the USD 1.405 Quadrillion world wide derivatives
bubble
Mi2g. This does not include fixing the inherent core flaws in the worlds
monetary / financial systems. What most don't realize is that the monetary
system is nothing more than an accounting system. Money is not printed except
for convenience, money exists only as an accounting entry. We pay trillions for
the use of the accounting system which any group here could set up and run
charging only 100 million yearly and still make a hefty profit. The complex
sounding financial jargon is simply to obfuscate what is actually going on.
On http://coinage.me they have put it very
simply for everyone to understand.
- Derivatives = Bets
- Credit Default Swaps = Insurance on bets
- Hedge Funds = Borrowing of money to gamble with (unregulated and secret also used to manipulate markets)
- Taxpayer Bailout = Taxpayers covering the gambling losses for gamblers?
- Reality = Insurance (e.g. AIG) cannot cover failed bets which amount to: USD 206k per person-on-planet. The number it is based on has grown from USD 1.144 Quadrillion last year to USD 1.405 Quadrillion, ie, +22% worldwide. The GDP of the entire world is only USD 50 trillion.
A few accounting entries is all it takes to fix this problem, literally
erasing the bogus value much to the dismay of a few but not the many. An entirely new system is required to eliminate
the core flaws and a global currency will not work properly for the common
economic system participant because of the disparity between the economies of
various countries. What has been suggested is localized regional value exchange
systems that would interface with other regional systems in a totally
transparent and "natural" market manner.
I will leave you with this thought, if you went to a bank and asked to borrow
money to go to the casino what do you think they would tell you? The banks did
not need to ask anyone. They should have asked the US citizens because they are the ones backing the banks with a portion of their future labor potential. Sure the odds would usually be better than a casino, but
in review of some of the financial instruments the actual odds were worse than
the casino.
Submission + - Wrongly detained man dies of spinal cancer
Forestry writes: "BoingBoing.net sums up the article which appeared in NY Times:
A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk..."
A Hong Kong computer programmer who had legally resided in the US for 15 years (since he was 17) and fathered two American children went for his final green card interview and was locked up, detained until he died of cancer that the DHS refused to treat him for. He had overstayed a visa (the DHS sent a key notice to the wrong address), and this prompted the DHS to lock him away and demand that he waive all right to immigration appeal and be immediately deported. In detention, his complaints of excruciating back pain were treated as fakery, and he was dragged around in shackles after he lost the ability to walk..."
Submission + - Government Wants All Your Credit Card Transactions
Littlewink writes: Hidden in Senator Christopher Dodd's 630-page Senate housing legislation is a a sweeping provision that would affect the privacy of all Americans who use credit/debit cards and the operations of most American businesses. The provision requires the nation's payment systems to track, aggregate, and report information most electronic transactions to the federal government. This includes Internet transactions with eBay. Amazon, and Google.
