jprobitaille

I've only ever had one TSA agent realize that I didn't have a cartridge razor in my dopp and confiscate my blades. Since that happened (but before I became an enormous beardo), I've brought only the bare minimum blades needed for my trips packed edge on to the x-ray scanner and left the butterfly in my shave kit but opened to show it was empty.

I imagine a safer and less obstreperous way might be to just buy an injector razor for when you travel.

Oh man, I can confirm this. I had to take a course of SSRI's last year and my gut-mind was so relaxed and happy on them that I completely lost the sensation of hunger. It was . . . odd. I had to set timers to remember to eat.

The MPEP

It's a rite of passage for some recreational riders. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Century_ride

The Australian Innovation Patent isn't really a patent. When an application is filed a formalities check is completed, but no prior art search is conducted. Also, the inventor and assignee of an AIP can't litigate. If one wanted to, the Australian Patent Office would need to examine and issue an allowance as a standard patent.

From the perspective of the US patent system, the AIP is more like a provisional patent application than anything else.

http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/get-the-right-ip/patents/types...

Welcome to DC!

Sign up for CaBi - if for no other reason than it helps prevent you arriving at your destination looking like a sweathog from the walk from the metro.

Is this satire? I think it's satire.

http://www.tineye.com/search/50f79f0ea3bb24bbe2217c14e27e7b7...

Aimed at fighting Big Brother, or preventing others from implementing the method?

What I'd be very interested in knowing is how many people have decided to get print subscriptions because of the paywall.

Doesn't it seem like the digital offerings are priced so that readers who want to become subscribers will choose a comparatively cheap print subscription and get the digital access as well? The least expensive paper delivery option (Sunday only) is less expensive than the digital all access that gets thrown in for 'free' when you sub to the print.

Don't misunderstand, the Times is my paper - has been for 15 years now, but I'm deeply dissappointed that rather than find a way to embrace digital, they're using it to prop up their print rate card.

improv

I did wonder if the meant Hobson's choice.

Ohh... and just now do I get the joke.

If you log into Public Pair (http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair) and look at the prosecution history (tab labeled "Image File Wrapper") you will see that the examiner denied this application, and that the application was abandoned by the applicant in Oct of 2007. The system seemed to work quite well in this case.

The problem that I can see with this document is that there's no clear indication of when this document was first made available to the public.

I get that the lectures were published in '02, but what's at issue is when this particular page was published. As far as I can tell, the only thing that dates this document particularly is the lastBuildDate in '06.

I'm not sure that the indep claim covers the way podcasts are delivered nowadays. Claim 1 seems to require a single channel which both provides notification of new content and from which new content is downloaded. But, an RSS feed for a podcast just provides a URL pointing to the content. No one really downloads anything from an RSS feed.

My guess is that if this patent reads on any technology in use now, it's probably something more like dvrs or on demand TV.

Caveat: I haven't read the specification, so it's possible that there's a special definition that I'm missing.

Have any of your designer friends ever seen an issue of Army Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Man)? That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the page.

Anyhow, It looks like a really cool idea. Count on me to toss in some chum soon.

J

I have the same problem! How do you deal with it? Whenever I'm exposed to a new thing I want to learn, I ask if it's something I can and will apply relatively immediately, or something I'd learn only to incorporate it into my 'zombie plan' (or any other unlikely contingency). If it's for the far off future, I stick a pin in it and come back if the urge becomes more than a whim.

Also, I try to limit the time I spend ingesting info (discounting recreation) to about 20% of the time I spend creating.

That's a really neat idea. Even just a Flesch-Kincaid score (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid_Readability_Test) of the dupes responses might be interesting.

On a related note, I bet that the rate of dupage may say something about community quality as well

Well, one of the most interesting things about puzzlers is that a significant (but perhaps still small) proportion of them like making puzzles as well as solving them.

If this were a problem I was working on, I'd try to support that behavior. Make it easy for people to transition from solvers to makers of puzzles. Then feed and nurture the community of fans by allowing solvers to rate and discuss and find similar puzzles.

Books(In this order, if you know no Ruby): 1. Agile Web Development w Rails 2nd ed. It's available as a pdf direct from the Pragmatic Programmers

-. Skip the Pickaxe book for now, the 1st edition is online at http://www.rubycentral.com/book/

2. Black's Ruby for Rails (Manning). Read this not long after AWDwR. It provides much insight into the Ruby behind the Rails.

3 (tie). Either Orsini's Rails Cookbook (O'Reilly) (the testing chapter is particularly useful if it's new to you)

3 (tie). Fowler's Rails Recipes (Pragmatic Programmers). Both books are very good. If anything, 'Recipes' gets you movign faster, but you'll probably learn more from the Cookbook.

opt. Ajax on Rails by Raymond (O'Reilly). An in Depth Reference to Prototype, Scriptaculus and rjs. Useful since there is no really good reference on these for the noob.

opt. The Ruby Way by Fulton (Addison Wesley) An 'inside out' Ruby reference. Instead of going through classes and methods on by one, this book is organized by things one can do, with the classes and methods introduced in context. Not so much every day useful- but if you don't have access to a real liver rubyist, it's a good way to see how one might approach a problem.

opt. The Pickaxe 2nd ed (dead tree format). Some folks just like to step away from the computer, and still think about computers.

Other than books: The google groups for rails: rubyonrails-talk (general discussion. A great list btw good questions get answered very well usually. No attitude at all.)

rubyonrails-core (the core contributors and rails internals)

rubyonrails-spinoffs (mostly the ajaxy stuff)

rubyonrails-security (created after an incident last year to spread urgent messages about rails vunerabilities, announcements only)

The api docs:

either at api.rubyonrails.org (rails)

or caboo.se (another rails doc project)

www.ruby-doc.org/core (Ruby core)

www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib (Ruby standard library)

Hope this helps,

J.