And seriously, is this news-worthy? If /. wants to publish EVERY bad patent application, it's going to get crowded here pretty quick. There's a lot of chaff out there.

Most of said chaff, though, is not supported by legal teams bigger than many mid-size companies backed by assets of almost $30 billion.

This may become a bigger thing. I plan to stay tuned.

The 1986-1999 instant replay was very limited - coaches couldn't challenge, and no formal system was in place. "Instant replay" as most people think of it didn't start until 1999, within the scope of the question.

Granted, there have been few other major changes in recent years, yes, but that seems more of an anomaly than anything else, compared to the rate of rule changes football's history. I'm fairly confident that more major changes will occur before too long, while the only way I could see baseball changing all its rules is if they started to play on the moon in 30 years.

Um...video replay?

Not to mention the several smaller changes like when receivers are inbounds vs. out of bounds, intentional grounding, the many changes to unsportsmanlike calls, etc. etc.

Because I get paid from 9-5, no matter when I actually show up. However, we have been told several times by our superiors that not being ready to take calls at 9 is unacceptable. Our compliance to schedule is measured as well, and not taking calls at 9 = out of compliance = anything from loss of bonuses to disciplinarian action.

I work in a helpdesk/call centre environment for a bank.

Booting my computer only takes 2-4 minutes, but that's only the beginning. Before I take a single call, I have to have Outlook open, three browsers, and a minimum of six other programs running. Then I need to go over all of our newest releases, since bank policy and procedures seem to change every 30 seconds.

So all told, that's 10-15 minutes. The evening much less so - only about 2-3 minutes to get everything shut down - but that's still at least 15 minutes a day that I'm not getting paid for. That adds up to be over four digits per year that my company shafts me out of.

I suddenly have an urge to go on an office-supply-appropriation spree.