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Comment Re:Personally I'd rather you were honest with me (Score 1) 344

Problem is most people in HR are those pretty girls who do an hours worth of work a day between their manicures, phone calls and facebook browsing. I've seen it too many times for it to be anecdotal. They latch onto a few key phrases to get themselves by. Ask any citing 6 Sigma or 5S what those letters really mean? All that jargon and alphabet soup can be spewed out by any idiot, and usually is.

Microsoft

A Real Bill Gates Rant 293

lou ibmix XI submitted an email written by Bill Gates a few years ago and turned over to the feds as part of the government's antitrust case. Great quotes like 'Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?' and 'The lack of attention to usability represented by these experiences blows my mind.' We like to think of him as an abstract, but I think this is interesting stuff. Also, this might seem familiar. Oops.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - Reflectivity Reaches a New Low

sporkme writes: "A new nanocoating material developed by a team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has the lowest level of reflectivity ever seen, or not seen in this case. The amount of light reflected by the composite of silica nanorods and aluminum nitride is almost the same amount reflected by air. From the article:

Schubert and his coworkers have created a material with a refractive index of 1.05, which is extremely close to the refractive index of air and the lowest ever reported. Window glass, for comparison, has a refractive index of about 1.45.
. . .
Using a technique called oblique angle deposition, the researchers deposited silica nanorods at an angle of precisely 45 degrees on top of a thin film of aluminum nitride, which is a semiconducting material used in advanced light-emitting diodes (LEDs). From the side, the films look much like the cross section of a piece of lawn turf with the blades slightly flattened.
Suggested applications include increased efficiency in solar cells, more energy-efficient lighting and advances in quantum mechanics. No word yet on invisibility cloaks."
Software

Submission + - Software tweak could boost your car's gas mileage

coondoggie writes: "Think it's possible to improve your car's gas mileage just by downloading a new piece of software? Seems to be the case according to a Dutch scientist who this week said most modern cars could reduce fuel consumption by almost 3% by downloading software he and Ford worked to develop. John Kessels' software shuts on or off the car's alternator, which charges the car battery, when it is particularly inefficient for the engine to power it, thus improving the overall efficiency of the engine. A similar technique is used for hybrid cars. The software is not proprietary to Ford and can be used in any vehicle with an engine computer, which includes the vast majority of cars sold today, Kessel says. http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/1195 6"
Power

Submission + - Thorium the Key to Non-Prolfieration?

P3NIS_CLEAVER writes: Nuclear energy has been proposed as an alternative to coal power plants that generating carbon dioxide and emit mercury. As we are seeing now in Iran, the desire for nuclear energy has created a gray area that places peaceful civilian power generation at odds with nuclear non-proliferation. An article at Resource Investor claims that thorium reactors can be used to replace existing reactors without creating isotopes that may be used in nuclear weapons.
Music

Submission + - RIAA slams FAIR USE Act

Tyler Too writes: The RIAA has weighed in on the just-introduced FAIR USE Act, and to no one's surprise, they're not at all happy with it. 'The FAIR USE Act "would repeal the DMCA and legalize hacking," says the RIAA. "It would reverse the Supreme Court's decision in Grokster and allow electronics companies to induce others to break the law for their own profit."' Looks like the CEA's lobbyists and the RIAA's lobbyists will be battling it out on Capitol Hill.

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