50841801
submission
farrellj writes:
Dovden Investments, labelled as a Patent Troll by many, got more than they bargained for when they went after Ottawa developer Larry Dunkelman. Mr. Dunkelman wrote BusBuddy, an app that takes GPS and scheduling data from OC Transpo, the local city bus service, and predicts when the bus you are waiting for will actually arrive. But when Dovden came along and asked for $10,000, as a "licensing" fee, Dunkelman got angry, and decided to fight. He hired an ace intellectual property and started chipping away at the company's claims...very successfully! And it went so good that Dovden has discontinued the suit, probably for fear of having a precedent established against them, and are now being chased by Dunkelman and his lawyer for legal costs. But Dovden has worse problems...the Canadian Urban Transit Association, representing transit agencies national wide, has filed suit to have Dovden's patents declared invalid!
34411497
submission
farrellj writes:
College professor Dr. Brendan Myers is crowdfunding the creation of a free textbook on critical thinking for the class he teaches. He is not impressed with the cost of college textbooks.
“Two years ago, a few students in my class told me they didn’t buy the textbook for my critical thinking class,” said Brendan Myers, a philosophy professor at Gatineau’s Heritage College CEGEP, “because they had to choose between the book and eating that month.”
His Kickstarter campaign has been remarkably successful so far, who would have thought such a text would be so popular! There is a huge potential for this type of initiative in creating free text books by crowdfunding their initial production. The academic textbook market is a closed one, and attempts like this and others discussed here on Slashdot can dramatically reduce the high cost of college texts.
9085944
submission
farrellj writes:
According to reports from the south coast of the island of Newfoundland, it looks like missiles were fired from the vicinity of French islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon which are just 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) off the Canadian coast. This would not be the first time this has happened. Two years ago, France tested missiles off the coast of Canada without getting permission from Canada before hand. This could be another case of that. The Prime Minister's Office is claiming that they were just model rockets by lauched by amateur rocketry enthusiasts. I may not be one, but I knew some, and I am sure that minus 15 degree Celsius with windy conditions are *not* suitable launching conditions for even the most hardy amateur rocketry fans!
6249549
submission
farrellj writes:
As mentioned before here on Slashdot, the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has been looking to replace it's Windows/.Net based trading system for a while now. What wasn't expected was that not only would they turn to Linux to replace it, but would actually *buy* a company and bring development in-house, rather than outsourcing! The company that the LSE has bought is a Sri Lankan developer MillenniumIT, which has developed a trading system based upon Linux and Solaris. Among the many benefits of the new system that comes from using Linux is an order of magnitude increase in trading speed from 2.7 milliseconds using Windows/.Net to 0.4 milliseconds using Linux-based system. Enjoy all of the details from the Fine Article here.
3163443
submission
farrellj writes:
Since last night, I have not be able to connect to Palm's website, http://palm.com/ from Canada since around 11 pm Eastern last night (Jan 22). Am I the only person with this problem? I've tried both through my home system (Teksavvy DSL) and the system at work, which is backboned into the US, and neither will bring up http://palm.com/ I've tried both Firefox and IE. Does Palm.com hate me, or is this a more general problem.
