Yahoo! wanted to drop it's workforce without a layoff. This was the cheapest and easiest way to do it. Plain and simple.

One solution to this is simple; do you feel buckeyballs (which is a very loose trademark considering the name has been around more than 20 years) is abusing the DMCA and being anticompetitive? If so, then go to http://zenmagnets.com/ and buy a small set of magnets (which are cool by the way). I did! Support the little guy and vote with the dollars you spend! Tell your friends on Facebook about the cool magnets you just bought and that they should buy some too! Let word of mouth get around. Let your actions be the PR and send the message to buckeyballs.

Hey slashdot, tell ThinkGeek to carry ZenMagnets and drop buckeyballs instead.

I remember severe issues with the SFF GX150 some years ago. If you ever had one fry and need a motherboard replacement, that is because the Power Supply's fan was reversed; instead of pulling hot air out, it forced hot air into the case. I informed Dell and more than 80% of the GX150's I had were like this. They never owned up to the problem and just kept going, replacing dozens of motherboards along the way. Idiots!

OK, I can see trademarking the NBC Chimes and the MGM Lion. These sounds are CONSISTENT and definitely identify the brand. It is the same audio through and through time and time again. The duck call is not the same sound time and again. The sound will be different based on who does it, how they hold the duck call, etc. Unless they have the sound on a speaker and pipe it out that way, this lawsuit should fail.

This is no different than Harley Davidson attempting to trademark the sound of their engines. It's an engine! No matter how good you are, the engines will just sound different from bike to bike. I should note that Harley Davidson ultimately failed in their bid to trademark the sound of their engines.

- How much spam reaches your inbox? Will the ISP apply their usage limits to your incoming mailbox as well? I guarantee you there is some bean counter who has already thought of this and is just grinning at the prospect!

  - How much do you get scanned? I'm sorry folks, but you are using a REAL IP to access the internet. And there is nothing to prevent ANYBODY from scanning that IP address. And I guarantee you that TW, ATT, Cox, whoever, is going to allow that packet through. Multiply by a few million and BLAM, you have a $20K bill!!!

  - How many advertisements do you see on an average web page? How many are now FLASH? Do I get to decide which advertisement makes it and which one doesn't? Why should I have to pay my hard earned cash to see advertisements? I've seen websites that were more adverts than content. So basically, more than 50% of the cash I had to use was wasted because the website uses heavy FLASH! How is that fair?

Those are the reasons that Usage Fees are bad. And let us not forget about the cable TV suggestion I heard recently; let me pick and choose my programming without having to pay for the bloody HGTV that I never watch, and then we can start talking about usage fees. Until then, shut it! It is either an "All you can eat Buffet" of the Cable Companies can dump the forced "Buffet of crap programming I don't want or would ever want!"

And while power and water are definitely utilities. The Internet is most definitely not a utility in the classic sense. It's a communications medium. You can get unlimited phone usage, you can get unlimited cell phone usage. And you basically get unlimited TV (the cable company doesn't hold you to 5 hours a week afterall); as it should be with the Internet.

Putting a limit is no different than Net Neutrality. You are effectively limiting the amount of news, entertainment, etc I can enjoy. How is it any different than saying I can't hit this website or that? You are now forcing me to prioritize the entertainment I wish to pursue.

Are you guys really admins?

Script what you would do manually. It's not that hard to determine your distro and thus which app to use to update. Determine how you manage manually and just start BASH'ing it out in a script to do the same thing remotely. SSH keys will be required. Then set up sudo on each system to allow you to run certain commands passwordless. Just be sure to use ssh -t when connecting so that sudo will work properly.

Really, this is admin 101. Any good admin should be able to script. If you can't, then start learning; Or you will only ever be a mediocre admin.

JJ Abrams needs to watch all of TOS before putting together a movie. The biggest problem I see so far is that The new Trek Trailer shows a young JTK driving a 1960's era car. Not a bad looking ride for being what, 300+ years old? But in season 2 of TOS (A piece of the action), Kirk barely got a car started and even worse probably destroyed the clutch trying to drive it.

No suggestion other than to forget about it. I would stick with an undergraduate book in Physical Chemistry (see Quantum Mechanics) or one in Physics (GA Tech had a good book coming out 10 years ago, so I can only assume it is still around...and I mean good).

Having both a math degree and a Master's in Quantum Chemistry, you will get too bogged down in the language of Chemistry (particles in one dimensional boxes and all of that funky stuff). Chemists make horrible mathematicians (which is why I'm in Computer Science now).

So stick with a good undergrad book and team up with a good physical chemistry student (or physics student) who has a good grasp of Schroedinger's equation. You can swap ideas and help each in turn.

BTW - It was Diffe-Q's that finally helped me make since of Wave Motion (ie Schroedinger's equation). And stay away from those damned laplace transforms and be a real mathematician!

Good Luck.

James

I wouldn't call it obvious. I would call it the result of a McCain Campaign that tried to control the press (think Palin and Couric) and refused to even deal with the press when they asked tough questions. If you snub the press, expect to be snubbed back. McCain made his own bed; now he can sleep in it.

I know CD's seem like a nice cheap but effective technology, but how cheap is your data? Think about it, you have an unknown chemical dye stuck between two plastic platters with a reflective surface. And how many times has Verbatim or some other vendor changed that dye on you? They always seem to be changing.

Regardless of the "reviews", A plain CD-R (or any other similar item) has never been good for long term storage (regardless of what the marketing department says). Now my music CD may last 100 years because it is not the same (or it shouldn't be) as a CD-R. That chemical dye has a finite lifespan and I would only give it a few years before it starts to degrade.

If your data is truly important, start looking at more stringent technologies that are used by financial firms, government, hospitals, etc. We're upgrading from an older DVD-RAM system and have started utilizing UDO2 Plasmon discs (60GB each) for long term (as well as ablative) storage for regulatory requirements. I'll put one of these up against a CD/DVD-R or Blue-Ray disc anyday. It's more expensive, but the data is irreplaceable, just as is my job.

However, Jabber servers can communicate amongst themselves, so it doesn't really matter.

Ha! If that box ran windows I would not date her! :)

we are we are we are we are we are the engineers!
we can we can we can we can code C# with our peers!
drink rum drink rum drink rum drink rum and come along with us!
for we change policies for the companies that allocate funds to us!

(next step: The Ridgid Tool replaced by The Flaccid Software as department mascot)