Qapf - Slashdot User

Submission + - Bush Causes Cell Phone Ban

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 15, 2007 @08:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: When President George Bush visits Sydney, Australia for the APEC Summit in September, all cell phone calls within the radius of a football field will be banned. The president's motorcade will be shadowed by a helicopter equipped with signal-jamming equipment. Terrorists have used mobile phones to detonate remote-controlled bombs in Iraq and elsewhere in the world.

Japanese Government to Move to OSS 128

Posted by Zonk on Monday May 14, 2007 @04:31AM from the a-little-less-time-on-hold dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Linuxworld has up an article on the Japanese government's plan to reduce its reliance on a single IT vendor by moving to open source software. 'Oracle, NEC, IBM, HP, Hitachi and Dell are among 10 IT equipment and software vendors that are forming a consortium to develop and sell Linux-based servers and computers for the Japanese market. The move by the vendors to collaborate on Linux in Japan comes from a edict from the country's government to make Linux and open source a priority for all IT procurements, starting this July.' The government has said explicitly it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform."

Submission + - Handling Interviews after being a Fall Guy

Submitted by

bheer

on Monday May 14, 2007 @02:53AM

bheer writes: "Salon's Since You Asked column is carrying an interesting question right now — what do you say in interviews after getting fired as a fall guy at your last job? Cary Tennis, who writes the column, admits he may not be the best person for this sort of question. So I thought I'd ask Slashdotters what they thought about this. Software developers are sometimes able to get away blaming the business requirements/analysis process, but anyone with any experience in this business probably has had nightmares about being the fall guy and may even have a strategy or two up their sleeve. How would deal with being in such a crummy position?"

Submission + - Teachers Fake Gunman Attack

Submitted by Anti_Climax on Monday May 14, 2007 @01:59AM

Anti_Climax writes: Staff members of an elementary school staged a fictitious gun attack on students during a class trip, telling them it was not a drill as the children cried and hid under tables. You can see the full story on CNN. It'll be interesting to see what happens to these teachers after the charges brought against students in recent months.

Submission + - USPTO Examiner Rejects 1-Click Claims as 'Obvious'

Submitted by

theodp

on Monday May 14, 2007 @01:28AM

theodp writes: "Faced with a duly unimpressed USPTO examiner who rejected its new 1-Click patent claims as 'obvious' and 'old and well known', Amazon has taken the unusual step of requesting an Oral Appeal to plead its case. And in what might be interpreted by some as an old-fashioned stalling tactic, the e-tailer has also canceled and refiled its 1-Click claims in a continuation application. As it touted the novelty of 1-Click to Congress last spring, Amazon kept the examiner's rejection under its hat, insisting that 'still no [1-Click] prior art has surfaced' to a Judiciary Committee whose members included Rick Boucher (VA) and Howard Berman (CA), both recipients of campaign contributions from a PAC funded by 1-Click inventor Jeff Bezos, other Amazon execs, and their families."

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