DocJWD - Slashdot User

Touchpad Patent Holder Tsera Sues Just About Everyone 168

Posted by timothy on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @05:15PM from the how-about-a-first-known-infringement-filing-deadline-link dept.

eldavojohn writes "Okay, well, maybe not everyone but more than twenty companies (including Apple, Qualcomm, Motorola and Microsoft) are being sued for a generic patent that reads: 'Apparatus and methods for controlling a portable electronic device, such as an MP3 player; portable radio, voice recorder, or portable CD player are disclosed. A touchpad is mounted on the housing of the device, and a user enters commands by tracing patterns with his finger on a surface of the touchpad. No immediate visual feedback is provided as a command pattern is traced, and the user does not need to view the device to enter commands.' Sounds like their may be a few companies using that technology. The suit was filed on July 15th in the favoritest place ever to file patent claim lawsuits: Texas Eastern District Court. It's a pretty classic patent troll; they've been holding this patent since 2003 and they just noticed now that everyone and his dog are using touchpads to control portable electronic devices."

DoE Considers Artificial Trees To Remove CO2 418

Posted by timothy on Tuesday June 23, 2009 @10:49AM from the putting-the-artifice-in-artificial dept.

eldavojohn writes "CNN is running an article on a new angle of attack to reducing greenhouse gases. After meeting with the US Department of Energy on the concept, the researchers revealed the details that each 'tree' (really a small building structure in the concept design) would cost about as much as a Toyota and remove 1 ton of CO2 from the air per day. Don't worry, they're accounting for the energy the 'tree' uses to operate: 'By the time we make liquid C02 we have spent approximately 50 kilojoules [of electricity] per mole of C02. Compare that to the average power plant in the US, which produces one mole of C02 with every 230 kilojoules of electricity. In other words, if we simply plugged our device in to the power grid to satisfy its energy needs, for every roughly 1,000 kilograms [of carbon dioxide] we collected we would re-emit 200, so 800 we can chalk up as having been successful.' Each unit would remove 20 automobiles' worth of CO2 from the air and cost about as much as a Toyota... so the plan might be a five percent surcharge on automobiles to fund these synthetic tree farms."

Comment It's what you want to do (Score 1) 616

by DocJWD on Tuesday November 11, 2008 @01:37PM (#25722949) Attached to: Beating the College Bubble

What you need for a college/university depends a lot on what your goals are.

Back 20 years ago when I was looking for schools for EE, one of the researchers I was working with told me flat out that if I planned to go to graduate school (which I did), then nobody would care where you did undergraduate so long as it was good enough to get you into the grad school you want.

Similar for doctors, lawyers, etc. If the lawyer graduated from Harvard Law you never hear that they went to Podunk U for undergrad.

On the other hand, if you are doing a business-type degree (and not continuing for MBA), then the contacts from your undergraduate degree are vital so you need to make sure the school you choose provides good contacts. Likewise for a variety of other fields, especially those that don't usually involve higher degrees. Not to say that you can't get a wonderful education from lesser-known schools, but you will need to work that much harder to generate the contacts you will need in order to advance in your career (assuming that is what you want to do in life).

But if you aren't sure what you want to do, or aren't sure whether you are ready for the rigor of academic life, the community college is a good place to start to sort things out at a cheaper rate while building a decent foundation. At that point it really isn't worth going thousands of dollars in debt "finding yourself."

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