In other news, Microsoft may:
  * add image processing [to Skype]
  * add remote document scanning [to Skype]
  * add virtual machine technology [to Skype]
  * add clustering capabilities for seriously big high definition video technology [to Skype]

I'm quite sure Microsoft has patents on all the above, but none are alarming enough to mention. This article is FUD. Absolutely no link has been drawn between the Skype product and this patent, except that Skype does voice transmissions and this patent is for a system that intercepts them.

Also, I believe Skype uses a peer-to-peer method for communicating between nodes, which would make it hard to apply this patent to Skype anyway. The peer-to-peer nature of Skype is why the last big outage took quite a while to resolve. They couldn't just "reboot their servers"; updated software had been deployed to the nodes (ie. you) and was malfunctioning.

And that's only if you pay in cash. If you pay with debit or credit, you will be charged the exact amount accurate to 1c.

I can't give a precise medical reason as I'm not a medic, but can describe my experience.

I would regularly get pain in my wrist due to misaligned bones/joints. The problem is that a regular mouse requires the wrist to bend 10-20 degrees in towards the computer, and that would cause the small wrist bones to misalign. It takes a $50-$70 physio visit to get these bones reset, so I needed a permanent solution. I tried a $70 medical wrist brace to keep my wrist perfectly straight, and that definitely helped but can be frustrating to use and would place additional strain on my shoulder/elbow joints.

When used correctly, the Evoluent mouse keeps my wrist almost perfectly straight and doesn't place any additional strain on other joints. The pain disappeared within 2-3 weeks.

That said, the Evoluent mouse is not perfect by any means. The scroll-wheel is starting to die on mine. I need to have my chair at just the right height, else I get the same problems as in a regular mouse. And my fellow developers struggle to use the mouse because of the sideways grip. There is also precisely *one* way to use the mouse (ie. you need to be right in front of the computer, my mouse cannot be used by left-handers, etc).

Anyway, I'd swear by the mouse. If only because it keeps my wrist straight without needing a brace.

As a software developer, the biggest risk you'll have is just wearing your hands/arms/wrists out. The "best" device of any kind should be the one which minimises the amount of strain.

For the mouse, the first thing is to avoid it as much as possible. Learn your keyboard shortcuts. Reaching for the mouse on a regular basis will only strain things. Placing 20 buttons on the mice will only encourage you to use it, when in reality your hands should be staying put on the keyboard.

The second thing is to get a mouse that places the minimum strain on your arms. I use an Evoluent Vertical Mouse, but I imagine you can find similar (and less extreme?) mice around. I spent a few hundred dollars on physio due to wrist pain, and it didn't go away. I spent $80 on the mouse and the pain evaporated in two weeks. That was the "best" hardware investment I ever made.

So how is corporate welfare for small innovative companies any different than corporate welfare for big traditional companies? If Tesla motors suddenly was handed the "manufacturing infrastructure" of "Ford, Chrysler, and GM", they would, in order to be able to manage it, need to incorporate the management structure of Ford, Chrysler and GM too. Which would mean that the plan failed.

Why don't you say the same thing about Muslims and Buddhists? Afraid they might blow you up or sit on you? :-/

Another good reason would be that most religious people he/she knows personally, are christians. While all religions are silly, the fact that well-educated people who grew up in a secular western society still prefer self-delusion to truth, is more puzzling than that somebody less fortunate choose so. After all, humans have had religion since early prehistoric times, and unless you get some proper education, it's unlikely that you'd stop right now.

Maybe if you stopped your stupid stereotyping of religions and actually looked into any of them, you'd be surprised. But you won't do that

Most atheists know more about religion than most religious people. Which is why most people who don't give it much thought end up as religious. I am atheist because I've studied various religions, and have discovered that they are all bullshit!

I bet you'd never expect that from a Christian, would you

I still haven't heard of a church that wants married couples to avoid sex. I don't get it, do you believe christians shouldn't have kids either?

I've got a crap load of skepticism, and I for one, don't find anything scientific that satisfactorily explains how all this got here. I'm not saying that any particular religion has a better explanation, either, because there are serious holes in a lot of those, too.

I don't have a satisfactory explanation either. That doesn't mean I will accept a claim that it was all created by some supernatural being(s). As a matter of fact, I don't understand the financial crisis either, but I certainly don't blame God for it.

But you really need to start thinking for yourself, rather than mudslinging.

I'm sure the grandparent poster is capable of thinking for himself. He is even telling exactly why religions is not thinking for oneself. This is not mudslinging, and there's no reason to stop doing it.

While you make a good point, there's another reason to blame the victim here. The nigerian scam is basically asking you to participate in a money laundering scheme, for your own personal profit. Had it not been a scam, it would have been illegal. The "victims" deserve what they get, and in my opinion should be prosecuted for attempted money laundering as well.

Because "man" means "man", not "biped", "bird", "kangaroo", or "dinosaur". You could just as well question why people assume the standard meaning of any other word or phrase in the bible. Why not interpret "created" as "having sex with for the first time", and "God" as "Lola"?

That way "On the sixth day God created man" could be interpreted as "On the sixth day Lola had sex with kangaroos for the first time".

In my experience, "non-cooperative" is simply used to describe "a person who doesn't want to be found". It is a technical term used to distinguish "search and rescue" scenarios (where the subject of the search is cooperative and will be lighting flares and such) from "search and destroy" or "search and intercept" scenarios. Different search patterns would be used in the different scenarios.

It probably does NOT mean "hunting down a person who didn't answer a (police|military) officer's question". It is simply a technical term used in the research community to distinguish robotic search scenarios.

That conspiracy theory, while entertaining, is just totally untrue.

The Hula team decided not to go forward with the project because the project wasn't working. It had been nearly two years since we launched Hula and during that time a lot of other people entered the space (Zimbra, Google Calendar, etc) and implemented many of the innovative things that we had planned to do with Hula. This took some of the wind out of our sails, and we had some execution problems too; I don't know if you've noticed, but the project has essentially gone two years without a release, and if you've ever done any significant software development before, you know that's not a sign of a healthy project.

Now, there is some great work in Hula and we sincerely hope that some of it will be useful to the community. The AJAX-based dragonfly web interface for mail and calendar is gorgeous and open source and could be turned into a nice replacement for SquirrelMail or the other web mail/calendar interfaces. The Hula store and the former NetMail agent code are also both open source and other companies are using them now as well.

The guys who worked on this stuff (Jacob Berkman, Peter Teichman, Dave Camp, Cyrus Dolph, Rodney Price, and others) are extremely bright guys, did fabulous work, and really enjoyed the project -- but unfortunately it's one of those things that didn't work out the way everyone hoped. So it goes.

Novell customers of NetMail and GroupWise and other products can rest assured that they are unaffected and will be supported and carried forward -- I'm sure Novell will have things to say about that, so stay tuned.