office silliness

stella	so has hurricane Frances finished going thru florida? do you think the evacutation measure is still in effect?
stella	just that [vendor is] in Florida, and we haven't heard anything from them since they cancelled a conf call as they had to go board up their windows
waider	maybe they're now based in Louisiana
waider	or South Carolina1
waider	or the Gulf of Mexico

1. Yeah yeah. can you name two counties bordering Dublin without looking at a map?

protecting innovation, my ass

What I find interesting about the fan-wing plane story is that the guy paid £20,000 to file the first patents. I find it hard to reconcile that level of cost with the notion that the job of the patent office is to protect the inventor, never mind the usual patent office abuse that goes on with submarine patents and what not.