When I had an employer try to get me to sign a non-compete ( months after I stared working there), I said I would agree if he would agree not to hire my replacement when I left for the same period of time. If I can't replace my employer, he can't replace his employee. That ended that discussion. I left a few weeks later.

"controls the tools driver use, monitors their approval ratings and terminates their access to the system if their ratings fall..." So I'm a Slashdot employee now?

So you're saying ugliness should be deemed a disability too? Just because something is a factor discriminated against does not make it a disability. Being gay, female, old, young, Muslim, whatever is not a disability. It is a state of being.

If you don't want people to see you acting like a drunken idiot, wouldn't it be best to just not act like a drunken idiot? Seems easier than worrying about someone capturing it to video. He'll almost every phone out there can record video today. I've worked as a bouncer. I never understood the expectation that it was okay to act like an idiot because you were drunk. You are responsible for your actions - period. A bar is a public place. If you do something in a public place, the public will see you. Don't complain when a member of that public shares your asinine behaviour with the rest of the public who happened to be somewhere else and missed the originL performance.

Really? You find it strange that mainstream media is more interested in attacking the easy target (and let's face it, Assange really is easy to pick on) instead of the issues that have been raised? Investigating allegations of wrong doing requires a journalist; talking about a persons dress, commenting on his alleged actions and pointing out his obvious strange mannerisms or behaviour only takes a talking head. No shortage of those around but I fear real journalists may be in shorter supply.

If I'm looking at reading fiction, like a short story by Hemingway, how fast I can get through it isn't of interest to me. Speed of use becomes a factor if I am checking a reference manual, in which case full text searching is sure a lot easier than relying on an index or table of contents.

There are a lot of reasons I would consider an iPad, Kindle, or some other electronic reader (I use my iPod Touch to read books now) as an alternative to print and speed of completion isn't one of those considerations. I think this is really an oversimplified measure of "best", especially if one is trying to rate overall "usability" which this test proposes to assess.

At first, I was curious why it's even considered news worthy when Gates spends this kind of money on something.

A quick google search tells me that Bill Gates is worth over $50 billion, so $300,000 isn't even the merest fraction of what he's worth. This would be less than those people we've all met that toss away a penny because it's not worth having in their pocket. The Gates Foundation gives out over $1.5 billion a year but I don't recall seeing anything on ./ about that.

Then look at what it is he is doing with this pocket lint amount of cash - paying for RESEARCH into something. Did you read the article? He's not paying anyone to shoot salt water into the air, he's not even paying for research into shooting salt water into the air; he's paying for research into "converting salt water into tiny particles" and pumping that into the air. The navies of the world have been evaporating salt water to produce fresh water for decades (used to be my job). It should be noted that this isn't Gates' idea, it comes from a group of climate researching scientists who are concerned that governments are not going to do anything about global warming and greenhouse gases and don't think it is wise to sit around and wait.

I've certainly never considered myself a Bill Gates fanboi, but let's call this what it is, Gates bashing. Personally I despise a lot of the business practices I have seen reported about Microsoft in general, but I have to give credit where credit is due. Gates doesn't appear to be hiding out on a private island in the tropics enjoying his ill-gotten gains. He is considered one of the world's most generous philanthropists and in this case, appears to have done more research and put more energy and effort into considering global warming and what can be done about it than I would be prepared to believe most commenters in this forum have.

Ridicule the man for believing in pipe-dreams or buying snake oil if you feel the need, but I don't think you can vilify him for this one. You'll have to wait for the next version of MS Office for that.

I believe the real test is, would you keep doing the job if they stopped paying you? No? Then you're probably not doing it because you love it.

Last night I saw an ad for Vonage on the iPhone, advertising that you can use the Vonage VOIP service on your iPhone now. To have not only the app ready to go but the TV ad as well took some lead time I should think. Developers certainly knew this was coming.

If I am reading TFA correctly, this was putting a stop to a pilot program. Shouldn't the lack of text-to-speech simply be a finding of the pilot on the way to a final decision on whether to use it or not? And of course, the pilot is being sponsored by the maker of the product, who would hear the concerns and respond to make sure their product meets ALL of the requirements. My question is, after a successful pilot, would they be providing free Kindles to all students or does this become another expense for the already cash strapped student?

Aren't the costs of post secondary education more discriminatory to a poor student than the availability of a Kindle is to a blind student?

I'm also curious about other classroom "visual aids": Charts, graphs, pictures, the widget the prof holds up to show the students...How have these been handled since starting to make serious efforts to accommodate students that are handicapped...disabled...physically challenged, whatever the politically correct term is now.

In my opinion, we do a disservice to these individuals by no longer recognizing that they are overcoming a challenge that other students face and are able to compete on an equal footing in spite of it.

Are there any slashdot readers that are themselves blind or deaf or have some other challenge they have had to deal with in a classroom who could weigh in on the topic with first hand experience? I honestly have no real personal point of reference. Other than slowly failing eyesight and hearing due to age, which is more in the pain-in-the-ass category than anything else, I've never had to deal with something like this.

I have to admit that on some level, I agree with some comments here that this is like blinding all the rest of the students to make things even. I argued once with a wheelchair-bound friend that it was not discrimination that kept him from being a firefighter, it was his inability to go up and down ladders.

what you think it means.

Phishing attacks would presumably be trying to get some otherwise secured info from the victim. What would the victim of this attack provide in response to this email? Credit card info? Online banking credentials? Warcraft account info? sheesh. As someone above stated, the guy sent an email and it got through. No news there. This isn't phishing, it's spam. And not even good spam. I would bet more people would be trying to buy cheap viagra than join Bill's Linkedin.