Seriously. If Nintendo decides that it wants to improve upon its current device in a manner that will not change Peter Smith's current DSi in any way that isn't psychological, I have a hard time seeing a problem. I have a friend who still uses the original DS. Playing with his DS convinced me to go out and buy my own which, by that time, was a DS lite and I don't plan on buying another one unless I break this one. Trumping all that, it's a bit silly to get huffy about something that's only speculation anyways.

I had to get both hepatitis and tuberculosis vaccinations back when I was working as a caretaker for developmentally disabled people back in Illinois. I have no idea whether that was a company or a state regulation, but I know it was mandatory as part of the job.

1. Guy writes an article about a product.
2. Guy gets feedback, some of it far less than civil, stating that he was being irresponsible in his product recommendations.
3. Guy, rather than dismissing the issue as no doubt many would, actually does some research and writes a follow up.

I hardly think that this qualifies as "just about the most ignorant, one-sided article" on this topic, at least among those that you've read. This guy isn't a government agency or an academic group tasked with doing research into public safety concerns so it isn't his job to launch a comprehensive study into the issue.

I get that there seem to be some credible concerns, but you aren't going to win anyone over by making hyperbolic claims about anyone that fails to agree with you. Posting "ignorant, one-sided" insult laden posts on Slashdot isn't exactly helping your cause.

Mmmmmm! The sensorily highly acceptable taste can't be beat but the kid in me finds that the microbiologically safe product knocks me off my feet!

Well, at least we can look forward to the fact that Dr. Brush's Magic Tonsil Tonic is likely to contain either an opiate or cocaine if not both!

A few years ago I worked at Office Depot for about a month while I was looking for other work. I was hired on as a stocker, though they'd occasionally have me cover the computer department when we were short staffed. At our store, management set a quota for each employee for how many service plans we were supposed to sell each week with a required Saturday morning training session for any employee who did not reach their quota where we would do crap like train on these scripts and brainstorm incentive plans on how to motivate us to sell more.

I went to one of these stupid meetings and all I could say for myself is that since I worked as a stocker in office supplies, I didn't even sell anything that I could in theory have pushed a service plan on, even if I didn't think they were crap. They responded that I was mistaken because batteries were in my department and they qualified. WTF? How the hell are you supposed to sell a service plan on a pack of AA batteries? I quit before the next Saturday as I'd found another job, though I probably would have given them notice if it weren't for the crappy work environment.

A number of the founders, Thomas Jefferson included, initially thought that patents were wrong and perhaps even unconstitutional but later came to see that allowing patents to be issued in limited circumstances was beneficial for the development of ideas. However, these patents needed to be restrictive enough so as to prevent the creation of monopolies and also to allow other inventors access, after a reasonable time, to those methods so that they could then continue the process of invention.

It is hard to see how allowing a a company to exist solely to acquire and then license the use of said patents. To do so circumvents the intention of patents by taking what would happen after the expiration of the patent, allowing other inventors to take a crack at the invention and improve upon it, and instead turns it into an odd sort of tightly controlled rental agreement.

Not sure why it cut the link out. It's http://www.saxoninnovations.com/. I probably used an = instead of the :

They don't even have an actual website. If you go to , all you'll find is an under construction message. Pretty much all you can find about them online is related to suing people. I miss the good ole days of the 1790's when Thomas Jefferson would deny a patent if the inventor couldn't demonstrate a working product.

I'm not an economist so I'll be right out there and say that my eyes glaze over a bit when I'm trying to dig through all of the info on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website about their methodology. Basically, they conduct a survey of 60,000 workers and poll them on their employment status. They then break that info up into six measures which they label as U1-U6.

The current chart that shows the breakdown can be found here: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

"Chronically Unemployed" is the wrong term and that's my mistake. The actual term the government uses is "discouraged workers."

The 7.2 figure is the Bureau of Labor Statistics U3 number. There are also a U4, U5, and U6 which are increasingly larger. The U6 figure includes "total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers." And that rate is currently at 13.5 percent.

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

Yeah...I recall a commentator on NPR the other day saying that there are around 3.3 unemployed workers (general, not IT specific) for every job open right now and that was before the 7.2% unemployment figure was released today. Also, the government does not include the "chronically unemployed" or "underemployed" in their figures.

It can be quite disturbing when suddenly there is bright light in your peripheral vision. If you think the cell phones are bad, though, there was a stupid woman at the theatre a bit ago that had to be asked to stop trying to read her program with an obnoxious green LED flashlight.