John3 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Star Wars Tatooine set used for housing

Submitted by

John3

on Wednesday December 13, 2006 @04:02PM

John3 writes: "Many movie sets are abandoned or dismantled after use, but people in Tunisia are using the old Star Wars Tatooine set for housing. Pretty amazing that these sets from the 1970's are still standing and being put to good use. If you go to visit the set you can even stay at the hotel which doubled as Luke's subterranean home (more photos)."

Submission + - Holiday and patent madness

Submitted by

John3

on Friday November 24, 2006 @03:36PM

John3 writes: "I own a hardware store and every Christmas season we get several customers who've managed to string their Christmas lights in the wrong direction and wound up with female power connector near the outlet. They're looking to purchase a double-male plug, and just for the sake of illustration we have a mock up which we show them and ask "Like this?". We explain the danger of using such a device and that unfortunately no such adapter exists. To my surprise I just discovered that a patent was granted for the Double male two-prong electrical connector apparatus in April of this year. I guess nobody at the patent office is required to check the safety or real world potential use and abuse of an idea before issuing a patent. Based on some Google searches it appears that no electrical device manufacturer has convinced their legal department to approve the marketing of this apparatus. IMHO, the people most likely to need such a device are exactly the people who would have no clue about the dangers it poses when used incorrectly. Anyone have any favorite patents that are more hazardous than useful?"

Submission + - Dailykos weathers the election day storm

Submitted by

John3

on Wednesday November 08, 2006 @06:56PM

John3 writes: "The tech folks that maintain the DailyKos political blog site faced a challenge on election day...how to handle two or three times the normal number of visitors to the busiest political blog site on the web. Today, a post-mortem technical discussion of their efforts is online along with a discussion on handling two million page visits and three million page views."

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