dtouchet - Slashdot User

Troll Patents Lists In Databases, Sues Everyone 305

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 22, 2008 @04:01PM from the you-wish dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Florida patent troll called Channel Intelligence is suing everyone from Lemonade to Remember the Milk for infringing on patent 6,917,941, which covers storing a wishlist in a database. Amazon and eBay are absent from the list of targets, even though they very likely store users' wishlists in a database. With any luck, perhaps one of the defendants will get to use that precedent PJ found the other day from In re Lintner, which said, '[c]laims which are broad enough to read on obvious subject matter are unpatentable even though they also read on non-obvious subject matter.'"

GM, Utilities Partner To Advance Plug-In Hybrids 582

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 22, 2008 @03:05PM from the quart-of-oil-and-ten-kilowatts-please dept.

chareverie writes "General Motors is forming a team with utility companies nationwide to create a charging infrastructure for electric cars. Their goal is to improve the design of charging stations — making them weatherproof and child-proof, for example — in locations such as public garages, meters, and parking lots. They're also working on ways to avoid overwhelming the utilities during peak hours. Their goal is to have these improved charging stations implemented by 2010, when the Chevy Volt is introduced. Everyone recognizes however that a national car-charging infrastructure would be far from complete at that time."

Scientists Solve Riddle of Toxic Algae Blooms 237

Posted by timothy on Tuesday July 22, 2008 @12:10PM from the bet-that-lake's-no-longer-pristine dept.

An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from the Victoria Times Colonist: "After a remarkable 37-year experiment, University of Alberta scientist David Schindler and his colleagues have finally nailed down the chemical triggers for a problem that plagues thousands of freshwater and coastal ecosystems around the world." Punchline: "Phosphorus."

Comment Re:I did it too, on a smaller scale (Score 3, Interesting) 1082

by dtouchet on Tuesday July 15, 2008 @11:46AM (#24197243) Attached to: Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System

I have a similar story from back in the early 80's, and I still laugh about it. I was a network admin for a very-small (4 PC) business. I also did other work for them. Short story is one day I left because they owed me overtime and refused to pay. I wrote down all the passwords on a piece of paper before I left. What can I say, I'm a boy scout. On top of this, I was making nothing (about $6/hour).

Two days later, their lawyer calls me. I knew him because my boss was suing his sons for copyright infringement and he was around a lot. Long story, gold-digger new wife half his age involved.

Lawyer: We need you to come back and show us how to use the passwords.
Me: Sure, that'll be $25/hr.
Lawyer: Well, that sounds fair, let me get back to you.

A couple days later, same lawyer.

Lawyer: We need you to come and fix the system you intentionally broke before you left. We'll pay you the $6/hr you were making when you worked for us.
Me: Broke? Nah, you just don't have anyone else that knows about PC's and the boss is too stingy to hire someone. Let me guess the quote was high?
Lawyer: Yes. But you really need to help them out.
Me: Sure, if they pay me the back-overtime plus $50/hour. Also, the boss can't be there. I'll show anyone he wants how to login to the network and database.
Lawyer: Let me get back to you.

A couple days later, you guessed it.

Lawyer: If you don't arrive at the office in 2 days we're filing suit against you.
Me: Go ahead. Oh, and by the way, the price is $250/hr now, about what you make right?

The office manager had the hots for me, so I was getting the inside scoop during the whole incident. They also never lost the paper but really didn't know how to login to Novell and the database. I found out they hired a 'consultant' that charged them $150/hr to reset the passwords. It's funny that he worked 40 hours to reset 3 passwords, 1 Novell, 1 PC, and 1 database, when they were written down in front of him. It's a shame when they just owed me $4000 in overtime, they instead paid some con-man $6000 to do 10 minutes of work. Oh, and the problem with the overtime is that they said it was a verbal agreement (with the gold-digger wife) and the boss never agreed to pay me overtime. The only good thing to come out of here is that I learned to require a signed piece of paper if you want me to do something.

Oh, and the lawsuit...well, my cousin (a lawyer) sent a nicely worded letter to the lawyer and the lawsuit never happened. Come to think of it, the lawyer made out quite nicely too with that incident.

Although, as an ethical IT guy, I would never purposely harm a computer system or network. I just think about what would happen if someone left me in that pickle and how I would feel about cleaning up the mess.

-D

Submission + - Brains hard wired for math

Submitted by

mcgrew (sm62704)

on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @01:58PM

mcgrew (sm62704) writes: "New Scientist is reporting that "non-human primates really can understand the meaning of numerals."

The small study of two rhesus monkeys reveals that cells in their brains respond selectively to specific number values — regardless of whether the amount is represented by dots on a screen or an Arabic numeral.

For example, a given brain cell in the monkey will respond to the number three, but not the number one. The results suggest that individual cells in human brains might also have a fine-tuned preference for specific numerical values.
The report itself is online at PLoS Biology, Semantic Associations between Signs and Numerical Categories in the Prefrontal Cortex."

Submission + - One-third of employees violate company IT policies (net-security.org)

Submitted by BaCa on Wednesday October 31, 2007 @01:42PM

BaCa writes: A national survey of U.S. white-collar workers commissioned by the nonprofit, independent organization ISACA has found that more than one-third (35%) of employees have violated their company's IT policies at least once and that nearly one-sixth (15%) of employees have used peer-to-peer file sharing at least once at their place of business, opening the door to security breaches and placing sensitive business and personal information at risk.

Submission + - What NASA won't tell you about air safety. 6

Submitted by rabble on Monday October 22, 2007 @09:07AM

rabble writes: According to a report out of Washington, DC's WTOP, NASA wants to avoid telling you about how unsafe you are when you fly. According to the article, when an $8.5M safety study of about 24,000 pilots indicated an alarming number of near collisions and runway incidents, NASA refused to release the results. The article quotes one congressman as saying "There is a faint odor about it all." A friend of mine who is a general aviation pilot responded to the article by saying "It's scary but no surprise to those of us who fly."

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