It says that SF held the project hostage, they demanded that payment right then and there and My Pillow tried to cut them a check but they refused. Apparently their corporate card had less than $125k limit and the employee was happy to make a couple thousand dollars or so in rewards.

If it is true that SF missed the deadlines twice and yet charged also twice the original estimate, I can't see how they could be suing for "damages"...

If you saw some random episodes, then there was really not much chance to like it. That is one of the reasons the show did not pick up more viewers during its run (along with the fact that its schedule was not consistent of course).
The series is pretty self-referential as it goes on, so some of the best jokes cannot be appreciated. Also, its strength is that there is a design, things don't just happen at random. For example a certain Korean character sort of stops appearing on some episode and is not mentioned for quite a while. Many episodes later you find out the reason.
Also, the characters are so extreme that for the first few episodes you can't easily "feel" them (or for them) which sort of kills it. I started watching the show because a friend of mine (Seinfeld fan) told me it was great. For the first couple of episodes I was really unimpressed and it was mostly for the aforementioned reason. But I watched another, then another and got hooked. I now yell at my friend when he tries to compare the best American comedy series (Arrested Development) with stuff like Seinfeld.
But of course it is a comedy and humor is highly subjective. And I am also very subjective when I tell you that if you don't like it (after watching at least the first 3-4 episodes) you are probably a humorless idiot. Or you might need to see an analrapist.

This was in 2005, a year before the first AMD-V CPU.

In our algorithms lab there were programs that would gain more than 2x when compiled for 64 bit.
A more "real-world" example is when I started in 2005 at my current company. The engineers had 6-month old P4s @ 3.2 or 3.4GHz, running 32bit linux. For a project they used VisualStudio on VMWare and it took over a minute to compile the project. The company allowed engineers to choose their hardware, so I built an Athlon 64 @ 2.2 or 2.4GHz and I had it run 64bit SuSE. I remember the shock and awe from the first time I tried to compile the project under VMWare - a little more than 10 secs - the engineer next to me had his jaw drop. Of course most of the engineers immediately requested to switch to 64bit machines. I am not sure why it made such a difference in that application - perhaps the 16 general purpose registers come in really handy in this scenario? Of course it didn't help that the P4 was slower in everything (funny how at the time very few reviews really clarified this), but not order of magnitude slower...

It's not even that. I bet the numbers called were all premium-rate telephone numbers and that is how the hijacker makes his money. By calling them you will give them more of your money.

You remember the joke...

Bush and Powell were sitting in a bar. A guy walked in and asked the barman, "Isn't that Bush and Powell?"

The barman said, "Yep, that's them."

So the guy walked over and said, "Hello. What are you guys doing?"

Bush said, "We're planning World War III."

The guy asked, "Really? What's going to happen?"

Bush said, "Well, we're going to kill 10 million Iraqis and one bicycle repairman."

The guy exclaimed, "Why are you gonna kill a bicycle repairman?!"

Bush turned to Powell and said, "See, I told you no one would worry about the 10 million Iraqis!"

Ehm, remember that the "Americans" you refer to are descendants of people from all over the world who came to the US to make a life for themselves. Your solution is the opposite of what is required. Instead of trying to exclude talented foreigners so that they won't compete with "Americans", why don't you instead give the good ones an incentive to stay? E.g. give them a visa that does not make their spouse ineligible for work. Set up an easier process for those who have MS/PhD from good US universities - you provided them the best education in the world (for many disciplines), why not try to hang on to them?
My company was looking for a software engineer in NY. Trust me, there are no US software engineers left unemployed that are worth anything - actually even incompetent ones were usually not without a job.

Yes, please, can we go back to Assange and how Ecuador offered him asylum?

Call me ignorant. but can someone explain why we have more than a post per week either about or mentioning Wayland for the last couple of months? Is it really that interesting for the average /. user to hear about every feature added to Wayland or every project/company whatever that supports or does not support Wayland in some way? Or is it just one of those strange obsessions of the /. editors?
I understand it is an important project, supposed to be the successor to X11 etc so it has more interest to geeks than, say, bitcoins, but is it really that interesting?

I don't see how plugged-in laptop batteries dieing has anything to do with a memory effect. Lithium-Ion batteries when stored lose capacity depending on how much they are charged and how high the temperature is. At the relatively high temperatures of a laptop and kept at near 100% charge they can lose as much as 40% capacity per year. This is a known fact and has nothing to do with what is called memory-effect. The summary talks about a specific (and not widely used as I understand it) kind of Lithium battery which has a memory effect (in addition I assume to the effect I described that kills Li-Ion batteries).
If you want to make sure your Li-Ion batteries won't go bad, when you don't use charge (or discharge) them to 40% capacity and put them far from heat.

I'm not sure why you would say this. It is true that you could not have a power network with ONLY solar power without any sort of energy storage, however the big advantage of solar power is that the production is high when it is required - i.e. during the day. So power companies can take advantage of that and increase their output during peak hours using solar PV energy.

When solar was more expensive than nuclear there was a reason you would go for nuclear, but now solar has an advantage in most latitudes. Yes, it requires a large area for production, but it can just go over existing structures etc.

Offtopic but: why complain about the Chinese subsidies that make non-Chinese panels uncompetitive? Just BUY those cheap Chinese panels and have cheap power!

Ok, I have no idea how that "white" before "US/H1-b" got there.

The H1-b program is supposed to attract highly skilled workers. Instead it is used for lowering the cost of workers or for outsourcing firms to train some of their foreign workers to, well, improve their outsourcing offerings.
It is rather simple to improve it.
First of all, allow their dependents to work. A good highly skilled professional that won't have a hard time finding a job in the country of his choosing won't elect to go to a country where he has to go through all these hoops and end up a 2nd class citizen with a spouse that is not allowed to work unless they go through the same lengthy (you apply on the April window to get a visa on October) and expensive process.
Secondly, limit the apps per company based on something like white US/H1-b worker ratio they already have. I don't know if this has changed recently, but I remember up to a few years ago some big outsourcing companies were snagging all the positions.
Thirdly, prioritize the applications based on qualifications. Accept first the ones who have a graduate degree from an accredited US university, followed by the ones with a US undergrad degree. The US is far ahead in education in many fields. Try to get foreigners who take advantage of it to stay.

Dammit slashdot, I can tell it's an annoying April fool's when I reminisce about the good old days with the ponies...