I have to sign in to both sites to get anything useful (at least I presume there is something useful behind those sign-in forms) and the blog site links to the other site so anyone want to provide the content behind those iron curtains for those who don't have a Windows Live account to sign in?
There is a difference between "strongly encouraged" and "required". Until it is required then it is not going to change much - the big hardware providers hold too much sway for Dell et al. to cancel multimillion (if not billion) dollar contracts because they won't provide the source code for a couple of piddly little drivers.
Then they should at least release binary versions of the drivers so that we at least have drivers for devices. Obviously most hardware is supported but there are still devices which do not have drivers. Binary drivers are better than no drivers at all (at least in my mind). They may not be perfect but at least my device is usable. An easier way to install drivers would be appreciated as well. Typing a command at the prompt is not my idea of user-friendly even though I'm capable of doing it. Not everyone knows what 'insmod' or 'modprobe' are for and they shouldn't have to know. Of course, with truly open source drivers users have to go through the extra hassle of *compiling* the driver prior to installation. What the hell are we thinking? If Microsoft or another vendor required that users compile their device driver prior to running through the simple install wizard there would be hell raised from all corners of the Earth.
Firstly, the type of organisation using retail management systems tend to be conservative and not bleeding edge because downtime costs money. They would not be playing with beta SP releases and would not be seeing problems.
Okay I'll give you that.
Secondly, Microsoft is not one monolithic entity, as many believe, but a group of different business units. The DRMS folk aren't going to drop their current activities to check whether a different business unit's updates work.
Okay I'll give you that.
Thirdly, so what! Why not ship it anyway with a release note saying "Don't use with DRMS!". SP2 broke some MS developer tools and that did not stop them shipping it. Some organisations had to wait months for updates before they could migrate to SP2.
MS should be doing their own internal QA on patches and especially service packs which would involve making sure the said updates do not adversely affect other components of the operating system and standard (the definition of standard is an exercise for Microsoft) applications, especially Microsoft's own applications. If they don't do this then what is their QA department doing?
Nope. Canada is our front yard, with well trimmed grass and a white picket fence; the back yard, where the septic tank and broken down cars are located is in the other direction./p.
So that would be Mexico....that explains....a lot.
Perhaps most importantly though, is the fact that Windows Vista's newly-implemented security limitations are artificial at best, easy to code around, and only there to give the impression of security. Any program that UAC blocks from starting up "for good security reasons" can be coded to work around these limitations with (relative) ease.
They got "around" UAC by creating a service that runs as a privileged account (default Windows services do the *exact* same thing already and so do many other 3rd party apps) with a UI which provides users the ability to communicate with that service. Exactly how is that getting around UAC? If you don't use a privileged service then you basically can't do anything that requires privileges so isn't this what the design is supposed to be to properly interact with UAC? Or am I missing something? Maybe these guys were just too used to coding up anything they wanted to get something working and now they have to do it more securely (and properly for that matter by splitting up their logic) and are just a little annoyed they had to spend some extra time doing it. Tons of other applications already do this so it is nothing new. Looks to me like they are doing exactly what they should be doing.
From what I'm able to determine - anecdotally, of course - the generations that most recently grew up sitting in front of the TV and talking on land-lines with their peers are indeed different than the ones that are spending the same (or, I'd guess, wildly more) hours sitting in front of MySpace and IMing their friends. But only in trivial ways. And worse, actually - at least people who sat through a 30-minute sitcome narrative actually had their brains involved in following a story arc, however silly it might have been. The ADHD-ness of how that same time is now being spent is dramatically visible, and might even worsen the sort of productivity that comes from being able to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time on any one thing.
Although I'm sure some people (Internet addicts as an example) lose productivity because they are glued to their computers all day, there are some people who it seems have been able to use the Internet as a better tool than TV. It may not be productive per se but the effects discussed here seem to show it does have some advantages for some people.
I don't think that stopping the practice of watching long hours of re-ran Seinfeld episodes, so that you can spend even more hours writing and following links to various discussions and trivia about Seinfeld episodes and looking for places to download bootlegs of the same is an indication that, finally, all of that brainpower is getting put back to productive use.
I actually don't think it necessarily should be something to worry about. As an example, I do watch re-runs of Seinfeld every weeknight. The side effect of this is that since I like the show it becomes entertainment to me and makes me laugh and in the end it makes me feel better. Who was it that said laughter is the best medicine? Sitcoms are supposed to be comedic and therefore be entertaining. Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive but it can make you feel better and therefore it can provide indirect productivity enhancements. Obviously those who do nothing but sit in front of the TV we may have to worry about but those people, I believe, are a minority.
I'm glad you brought up language. I was going to go the other way based on that, and say that original question implies the wrong assumptions to start with, because it ignores the important aspect of communicating discovery. Mathematics is a special language we use to describe those discoveries that can be expressed in numerals or metrics. Therefore I say mathematics is "discovered", just as science is "discovered", even though we also use special scientific jargon to describe some of those discoveries as well. Just because the method used to communicate a discovery is "invented", doesn't mean the discovery itself is also an invention.
The way I see it is that since language is only a concept within our minds and that the words within our language have arbitrary definitions (but those definitions have been standardized, which is why blue means r=0,b=255,g=0 and not something else) then it must be an invention by the human race. Those words do not exist somewhere for us to find and neither do the meanings. Humans in fact have invented multiple words to mean the same thing both within the same language and obviousy across languages. Why should mathematics be the same way? Mathematics and language were not provided to us somewhere in nature to discover. We had to create them. The concept of 'nothing' wasn't discovered but the way to represent it numerically (i.e. the number 0) and non-numerically (i.e. the word 'nothing') were invented by humans in order to represent that concept.
The problem to tackle if mathematics is invented is how is it that our mathematics ended up describing our universe. If someone else invented mathematics would their version also describe the universe or did we just get lucky with our version? If it is discovered then it would make sense it describes our universe very well. Then again, if you believe in evolution you must believe in luck and therefore believing mathematics is an invention, not a discovery. I think it is an invention but I don't think we're lucky that it works well.
mathematics is an abstract concept similar to language. In fact, mathematics should be considered just another language because of the symbols (numerals) used. We use various languages (English, Spanish, etc.) to describe our world in words. We use mathematics to describe the world around us but in a numerical manner. Obviously our world exists without mathematics but we can use various components of mathematics to describe the world and the universe. We have differing numbering systems as well. They all can be used to describe the world around us. An interesting question is if an alien race (which I don't believe in but this is hypothetical) created something similar to mathematics, would it be proper to say that they also invented something and if they did should it be considered mathematics? Or would it be more proper to say they discovered the same thing we did if their mathematics turned out to describe the universe the same way our mathematics does?
There, distracted yet? Now leave the man behind the curtain alone.
Why do you assume people are distracted? In many cases people are not even aware of what goes on in Washington, not because of being distracted but because what goes on isn't always in the news or, if it is, it isn't talked about much. Basically, lack of advertising hurts. The media will only report what they don't like when it comes to politics.
Nor does Evolutionary theory. Then again, ID doesn't propose anything that can be tested so there's no point trying to pawn it off as something which has any scientific merit.
That's the problem with evolutionary theory. It doesn't predict anything so why should we go on blind faith (and be preached in schools) to believe in it if it can't be tested? There is a double standard in place which requires blind faith in evidence interpreted to fit theory and is considered just fine and also considered real science for some reason. The other side of the double standard is the criticism applied to those who have blind faith that a Creator is responsible for the biological systems that exist today.
In fact, your comments show exactly why ID isn't science. During this whole discussion, not once have you or anyone supplied any evidence to support ID as being a scientific endeavor.
Is not part of the scientific method to create predictions and then later test them? If evolution can't be tested then why are you blaming ID as being non-scientific when it is difficult to even consider evolution as being science? Proving ID is science is neither here nor there as it isn't religion's responsibility to prove science right or wrong. Science is here to prove religion right (or wrong as some people believe) with respect to the claims that are made regarding biology, etc.
Instead, and this is what the fundies keep trying to do, is show supposed holes in Evolutionary theory and then claim, "See! See these holes? Therefore, ID must be included."
In theory, no pun intended, holes in 1 theory shouldn't be required to allow other theories to be introduced. It isn't a debate about whether ID should be included because it isn't scientific. It should be included just because it is a competing theory on the same topic. The classroom discussion would be organized by simply discussing all possible theories instead of being structured around only scientific theories. The fact there are holes in evolutionary theory just means the proponents of it are even more adamant to not let other competing theories (scientific-based or not) ever be discussed for fear the sheep would gain some brains.
I'll repeat what I said in someone's journal post: I will offer $1 million to anyone from the ID crowd who can submit any evidence to support ID as being scientific. The evidence cannot be based on the bible or any other religious text. The evidence must be submitted to three separate committees whose members have no relation to ID. If any one of those committees agrees that the evidence presented has merit, I will pay the prize.
When you hold evolutionary theory to the same ridicule maybe we'll talk. Evolutionary theory needs to be put under the microscope. It should not be taught as gospel without observing predicted outcomes. That's the scientific process. As I stated in my original post, as it stands now, people can put whatever movie frames they want in the missing spots of the fossil record and make claims it tells the story they want to be preached but that isn't scientific either but someone else could just as easily do the same thing and come up with another story. Which one to believe?
Since we seem to be having a reasonable discussion here I'll ask for a favor and give you an opportunity to raise my awareness. Can you describe what aspects of evolutionary theory make it scientific? A simple link to a site would suffice to save you the typing.
Right. Because the fossil record of both horses and humans do not show examples of intermediate changes from non-horses and non-humans to todays creatures.
You can fit your evidence to whatever theory you want as many people have already done. If you take a movie (which of course is just made up of 30fps still images) and delete enough frames (seconds or minutes worth) you can come up with lots of things that could fit back into those missing pieces and still make the final movie come out the same. In fact, directors do this for every motion picture because they film hours and hours of video but only ~2 hours worth make their way into the final cut. The movie came out the same though in many cases (except for some of those director's cuts with alternate endings).
So goes the fossil record. There are too many gaps that need filled in to come to the conclusion that evolution is responsible. A different set of pieces that do not support evolution could be inserted to produce an entirely different movie that still makes logical sense (i.e. still produces existing observations), specifically a movie that does not use a few dozen unusual frames to tell the entire 2 hour plot which is what evolution basically is. It reminds me of Al Gore only taking video of chunks of ice falling off glaciers into the water, which happens all the time anyway, but filming a 30 second spot of a few and saying it is representative of all glaciers catastrophically melting is an outright lie. When, if other glaciers were actually filmed for comparison, it could easily be seen that selective use of Nature is not representative of Nature as a whole although it can be for those with an agenda.
The real test is to use evolution to predict what comes next since change, based on the theory, is inevitable. It's easy to work backward and interpret data to fit theory. Let's try working forward before we assume evolution is 100% perfect. By the way, since ID does not predict future change to species there is nothing to test.
'By watching an 'unprecedented view' of a black hole in the process of expelling mass, they were able to confirm their theory, predicting where and when bursts of energy would be detected."
Note to all ID supporters, this is how real science works. Propose a theory which can be tested, then go about trying to disprove the theory.
Now if only evolution could make predictions and then if scientists could ever observe what was predicted then those against ID might actually have a case. Just as someone mentioned already about how climate change is just accepted, it seems evolution is too with many assumptions included to make the theory semi-work. The only reason scientists have to believe in those assumptions is because they have faith in them. I just have trouble determining why their faith is viewed as so right and faith for ID is viewed as so wrong. When biases are thrown out, faith is faith.
You design your application using Oracle as the database. $20,000 a server seems fine - until you realize that the whole design would be more elegant if you moved a bunch of logic into the database and replicated it a bunch of times (say... at each client site). But $20,000 * 100 sites isn't in the budget, so you're forced to scrap the best technical solution for legal reasons.
I assume your $20,000 value is the cost of the Oracle license. Although that value sounds about right based on the last I heard the real kicker that you ignored is that the license is per CPU. And of course you hardly can find any server now being sold with a single CPU so your $20,000 cost explodes easily especially when you include the 100 sites you mentioned. Last I heard, Oracle does not consider additional cores as CPUs so we're at least okay in that regard. They still ream you elsewhere (although it's nice that Oracle database is free for personal/test/development work).
Next thing you know, they'll be suing Apple because the Time Machine app makes copies of copyrighted music!
After that happens the key sequence Ctrl-C Ctrl-V will be illegal and then after Apple and Microsoft users are hit the Linux users finally get hit with 'cp' being illegal. Pretty soon editing the audio file in an audio editor and resaving it without changes (but changing the timestamps) will be illegal because the file was "modified".
A: "What capacity? 1 Tb is the typical size. Less than that and you risk your kid turning gay overnight. And die."
I'm sure you just had a typo so this isn't meant to be a flame but the "Tb" should be "TB"; we're talking hard drive storage capacity here not network bandwidth. It's strange, at work just this week, myself and another guy were talking about how hard drives use bytes and networks use bits. I wish we could standardize (not to mention we have the bastardized bibytes now too).
Interesting. I just paid $3.395/gal two days ago, and VA gas tax is 36.5c/gal including federal, state, and local taxes.
You are lucky. WV tacks on $0.495 cents per gallon in taxes. We are over the Appalachians so there is slightly more cost added in for distribution. Basically as you go west across the country the distribution costs add up of course. CA has the highest in the continental US but Hawaii has the highest gasoline costs when looking at all 50 states.
Gasoline futures are currently at $3.01 so $2.50/gallon is a bit off the mark. On top of the $3.01 price is added federal and state taxes and distribution fees as you mentioned. But profit markups are also added for producers and refiners. That's why the current national average (for regular grade) is about $3.51. Again, that's an average because regular grade in WV right now in my area is about $3.72 or so with premium around $3.95. WV has one of the highest gasoline taxes in the nation. I hope that similar taxes aren't applied to any new fuels that are put on the market but it wouldn't surprise me if they get taxed just as much.
The book I'm currently reading (A Thousand Barrels a Second by Peter Tertzakian) says that we can achieve only around ~40% efficiency with diesel and that is basically at the physical limit of the fuel too. So even if we came up with a better way to burn it it wouldn't matter because physically there is no where else to go. I don't see why they are even quoting $1/gallon (based on 100% efficiency) other than for sensationalism because 100% can't be achieved.
Also, while one piece of information accessable at a public website may be unclassified, the sum of the information that could be gained from that website's entire database could be classified. Often the only differenc between a classified document and an unclassified one is the number of details included.
Systems are classified based on the most sensitive data contained in the system. The sum of the information being one classification and individual pieces being another doesn't make any sense, at least to me. This doesn't prevent unclassified data from being stored on a classified network however when the data is removed it is scanned to make sure it can be removed to a network of lower classification level. Individual pieces can have different classifications but the system is still classified as a whole based on the most sensitive level of information. Maybe I'm talking semantics now but the "sum of the information" and "most sensitive information" are 2 different things in my opinion and can make a system get 2 different classification levels.
Regarding the funding look at how much pork there is in the budget already. You're telling me that they can't find the money or worse bury the cost in the price of something else? I'm not sure I believe that one...
High profile projects do get funded easier but the money still has to come from somewhere and it has to come at the right time. The U.S. government plans 1 year at a time (fiscal years begin in October) so funding as to be available and set aside prior to October of each year. If a contractor does the work the amount of funding has to be much greater because of the added charges to the government for the contractors' salaries and profit for the contract. How that money gets appropriated at the top level I'm not sure, whether it's in a bill or whatever. Over the last few years at work we've had instances where the funding wasn't necessarily available for a project that was bid out or in some cases the funding was delayed. Funding issues crop up everytime Congress can't approve a new fiscal budget and we have to run on continuing resolutions (meaning the same budget as the year before is used). The main intent for what the article is talking about is making it cheaper to run the government networks which ultimately means some of our tax money can go elsewhere. Since there isn't a anti-terrorist intent here as someone suggested, I don't think you will see this expand into the private sector for Big Brother purposes. I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm just saying I don't think you are going to see that happen.
I don't know of any other projects that are going on that are like what the article talks about besides the one I'm currently on but I'm sure after the one I'm on has been completed the government will have a better idea of just what is required to do another consolidation if they haven't already. If other projects have already been completed in other Departments it is news to me but it isn't a surprise since the Departments don't talk to each other much even when it is beneficial to share knowledge.
Since when was classified data allowed to be anywhere near an internet facing computer?
The times are changing my friend.
Are they abandoning the airgap policy or something?
Put simply, yes, it's a bit scary and myself and various coworkers (as contractors) have questioned the change in perspective but the government seems to be moving away from air gaps, at least in 1 agency that I know of which will go unnamed for privacy and security considerations. I think classified systems will be the last to be merged but already production and non-production systems are being merged. The idea, as TFA says, is to just put security monitoring devices and filters everywhere possible to keep the classified data safe. We're talking more levels of filters and access controls than have ever been used in the past.
After they do a project this large for their own network they'll have the experience necessary to do this across the board.
For one, it takes funding and time. That funding has to be approved. A contractor actually does the work. A contractor has to be willing to do the work for a non-government network. Maybe if the money is right this will happen, hard to say. But the gov't has to issue a request for proposal first and again, the costs have to be approved for upgrading someone else's infrastructure. Given the time I've seen it take to do one of these and the manpower involved, I don't think the gov't is interested in doing this elsewhere (i.e. outside its security boundary). At the top-level of the Internet backbones, there aren't that many egress and ingress points anyway so the gov't shouldn't have that many interfaces they would have to monitor at present and therefore there would be no need to do something like this on backbone networks.
Slashdot Mirror
I have to sign in to both sites to get anything useful (at least I presume there is something useful behind those sign-in forms) and the blog site links to the other site so anyone want to provide the content behind those iron curtains for those who don't have a Windows Live account to sign in?
Then they should at least release binary versions of the drivers so that we at least have drivers for devices. Obviously most hardware is supported but there are still devices which do not have drivers. Binary drivers are better than no drivers at all (at least in my mind). They may not be perfect but at least my device is usable. An easier way to install drivers would be appreciated as well. Typing a command at the prompt is not my idea of user-friendly even though I'm capable of doing it. Not everyone knows what 'insmod' or 'modprobe' are for and they shouldn't have to know. Of course, with truly open source drivers users have to go through the extra hassle of *compiling* the driver prior to installation. What the hell are we thinking? If Microsoft or another vendor required that users compile their device driver prior to running through the simple install wizard there would be hell raised from all corners of the Earth.
Firstly, the type of organisation using retail management systems tend to be conservative and not bleeding edge because downtime costs money. They would not be playing with beta SP releases and would not be seeing problems.
Okay I'll give you that.
Secondly, Microsoft is not one monolithic entity, as many believe, but a group of different business units. The DRMS folk aren't going to drop their current activities to check whether a different business unit's updates work.
Okay I'll give you that.
Thirdly, so what! Why not ship it anyway with a release note saying "Don't use with DRMS!". SP2 broke some MS developer tools and that did not stop them shipping it. Some organisations had to wait months for updates before they could migrate to SP2.
MS should be doing their own internal QA on patches and especially service packs which would involve making sure the said updates do not adversely affect other components of the operating system and standard (the definition of standard is an exercise for Microsoft) applications, especially Microsoft's own applications. If they don't do this then what is their QA department doing?
So that would be Mexico....that explains....a lot.
They got "around" UAC by creating a service that runs as a privileged account (default Windows services do the *exact* same thing already and so do many other 3rd party apps) with a UI which provides users the ability to communicate with that service. Exactly how is that getting around UAC? If you don't use a privileged service then you basically can't do anything that requires privileges so isn't this what the design is supposed to be to properly interact with UAC? Or am I missing something? Maybe these guys were just too used to coding up anything they wanted to get something working and now they have to do it more securely (and properly for that matter by splitting up their logic) and are just a little annoyed they had to spend some extra time doing it. Tons of other applications already do this so it is nothing new. Looks to me like they are doing exactly what they should be doing.
Although I'm sure some people (Internet addicts as an example) lose productivity because they are glued to their computers all day, there are some people who it seems have been able to use the Internet as a better tool than TV. It may not be productive per se but the effects discussed here seem to show it does have some advantages for some people.
I actually don't think it necessarily should be something to worry about. As an example, I do watch re-runs of Seinfeld every weeknight. The side effect of this is that since I like the show it becomes entertainment to me and makes me laugh and in the end it makes me feel better. Who was it that said laughter is the best medicine? Sitcoms are supposed to be comedic and therefore be entertaining. Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive but it can make you feel better and therefore it can provide indirect productivity enhancements. Obviously those who do nothing but sit in front of the TV we may have to worry about but those people, I believe, are a minority.
The way I see it is that since language is only a concept within our minds and that the words within our language have arbitrary definitions (but those definitions have been standardized, which is why blue means r=0,b=255,g=0 and not something else) then it must be an invention by the human race. Those words do not exist somewhere for us to find and neither do the meanings. Humans in fact have invented multiple words to mean the same thing both within the same language and obviousy across languages. Why should mathematics be the same way? Mathematics and language were not provided to us somewhere in nature to discover. We had to create them. The concept of 'nothing' wasn't discovered but the way to represent it numerically (i.e. the number 0) and non-numerically (i.e. the word 'nothing') were invented by humans in order to represent that concept.
The problem to tackle if mathematics is invented is how is it that our mathematics ended up describing our universe. If someone else invented mathematics would their version also describe the universe or did we just get lucky with our version? If it is discovered then it would make sense it describes our universe very well. Then again, if you believe in evolution you must believe in luck and therefore believing mathematics is an invention, not a discovery. I think it is an invention but I don't think we're lucky that it works well.
mathematics is an abstract concept similar to language. In fact, mathematics should be considered just another language because of the symbols (numerals) used. We use various languages (English, Spanish, etc.) to describe our world in words. We use mathematics to describe the world around us but in a numerical manner. Obviously our world exists without mathematics but we can use various components of mathematics to describe the world and the universe. We have differing numbering systems as well. They all can be used to describe the world around us. An interesting question is if an alien race (which I don't believe in but this is hypothetical) created something similar to mathematics, would it be proper to say that they also invented something and if they did should it be considered mathematics? Or would it be more proper to say they discovered the same thing we did if their mathematics turned out to describe the universe the same way our mathematics does?
9-11, Iraq, 9-11, Iraq, 9-11, terrorism
There, distracted yet? Now leave the man behind the curtain alone.
Why do you assume people are distracted? In many cases people are not even aware of what goes on in Washington, not because of being distracted but because what goes on isn't always in the news or, if it is, it isn't talked about much. Basically, lack of advertising hurts. The media will only report what they don't like when it comes to politics.
That's the problem with evolutionary theory. It doesn't predict anything so why should we go on blind faith (and be preached in schools) to believe in it if it can't be tested? There is a double standard in place which requires blind faith in evidence interpreted to fit theory and is considered just fine and also considered real science for some reason. The other side of the double standard is the criticism applied to those who have blind faith that a Creator is responsible for the biological systems that exist today.
In fact, your comments show exactly why ID isn't science. During this whole discussion, not once have you or anyone supplied any evidence to support ID as being a scientific endeavor.Is not part of the scientific method to create predictions and then later test them? If evolution can't be tested then why are you blaming ID as being non-scientific when it is difficult to even consider evolution as being science? Proving ID is science is neither here nor there as it isn't religion's responsibility to prove science right or wrong. Science is here to prove religion right (or wrong as some people believe) with respect to the claims that are made regarding biology, etc.
Instead, and this is what the fundies keep trying to do, is show supposed holes in Evolutionary theory and then claim, "See! See these holes? Therefore, ID must be included."In theory, no pun intended, holes in 1 theory shouldn't be required to allow other theories to be introduced. It isn't a debate about whether ID should be included because it isn't scientific. It should be included just because it is a competing theory on the same topic. The classroom discussion would be organized by simply discussing all possible theories instead of being structured around only scientific theories. The fact there are holes in evolutionary theory just means the proponents of it are even more adamant to not let other competing theories (scientific-based or not) ever be discussed for fear the sheep would gain some brains.
I'll repeat what I said in someone's journal post: I will offer $1 million to anyone from the ID crowd who can submit any evidence to support ID as being scientific. The evidence cannot be based on the bible or any other religious text. The evidence must be submitted to three separate committees whose members have no relation to ID. If any one of those committees agrees that the evidence presented has merit, I will pay the prize.When you hold evolutionary theory to the same ridicule maybe we'll talk. Evolutionary theory needs to be put under the microscope. It should not be taught as gospel without observing predicted outcomes. That's the scientific process. As I stated in my original post, as it stands now, people can put whatever movie frames they want in the missing spots of the fossil record and make claims it tells the story they want to be preached but that isn't scientific either but someone else could just as easily do the same thing and come up with another story. Which one to believe?
Since we seem to be having a reasonable discussion here I'll ask for a favor and give you an opportunity to raise my awareness. Can you describe what aspects of evolutionary theory make it scientific? A simple link to a site would suffice to save you the typing.
You can fit your evidence to whatever theory you want as many people have already done. If you take a movie (which of course is just made up of 30fps still images) and delete enough frames (seconds or minutes worth) you can come up with lots of things that could fit back into those missing pieces and still make the final movie come out the same. In fact, directors do this for every motion picture because they film hours and hours of video but only ~2 hours worth make their way into the final cut. The movie came out the same though in many cases (except for some of those director's cuts with alternate endings).
So goes the fossil record. There are too many gaps that need filled in to come to the conclusion that evolution is responsible. A different set of pieces that do not support evolution could be inserted to produce an entirely different movie that still makes logical sense (i.e. still produces existing observations), specifically a movie that does not use a few dozen unusual frames to tell the entire 2 hour plot which is what evolution basically is. It reminds me of Al Gore only taking video of chunks of ice falling off glaciers into the water, which happens all the time anyway, but filming a 30 second spot of a few and saying it is representative of all glaciers catastrophically melting is an outright lie. When, if other glaciers were actually filmed for comparison, it could easily be seen that selective use of Nature is not representative of Nature as a whole although it can be for those with an agenda.
The real test is to use evolution to predict what comes next since change, based on the theory, is inevitable. It's easy to work backward and interpret data to fit theory. Let's try working forward before we assume evolution is 100% perfect. By the way, since ID does not predict future change to species there is nothing to test.
Now if only evolution could make predictions and then if scientists could ever observe what was predicted then those against ID might actually have a case. Just as someone mentioned already about how climate change is just accepted, it seems evolution is too with many assumptions included to make the theory semi-work. The only reason scientists have to believe in those assumptions is because they have faith in them. I just have trouble determining why their faith is viewed as so right and faith for ID is viewed as so wrong. When biases are thrown out, faith is faith.
I assume your $20,000 value is the cost of the Oracle license. Although that value sounds about right based on the last I heard the real kicker that you ignored is that the license is per CPU. And of course you hardly can find any server now being sold with a single CPU so your $20,000 cost explodes easily especially when you include the 100 sites you mentioned. Last I heard, Oracle does not consider additional cores as CPUs so we're at least okay in that regard. They still ream you elsewhere (although it's nice that Oracle database is free for personal/test/development work).
The Taliban are already backward so I guess that makes those who wrote the Old Testament to be "forward" and therefore right on track.
Jobs seems to really like being in direct control of as many pieces of his products as he can. There, fixed that for you. It's a power trip for him.
After that happens the key sequence Ctrl-C Ctrl-V will be illegal and then after Apple and Microsoft users are hit the Linux users finally get hit with 'cp' being illegal. Pretty soon editing the audio file in an audio editor and resaving it without changes (but changing the timestamps) will be illegal because the file was "modified".
I'm sure you just had a typo so this isn't meant to be a flame but the "Tb" should be "TB"; we're talking hard drive storage capacity here not network bandwidth. It's strange, at work just this week, myself and another guy were talking about how hard drives use bytes and networks use bits. I wish we could standardize (not to mention we have the bastardized bibytes now too).
You are lucky. WV tacks on $0.495 cents per gallon in taxes. We are over the Appalachians so there is slightly more cost added in for distribution. Basically as you go west across the country the distribution costs add up of course. CA has the highest in the continental US but Hawaii has the highest gasoline costs when looking at all 50 states.
Gasoline futures are currently at $3.01 so $2.50/gallon is a bit off the mark. On top of the $3.01 price is added federal and state taxes and distribution fees as you mentioned. But profit markups are also added for producers and refiners. That's why the current national average (for regular grade) is about $3.51. Again, that's an average because regular grade in WV right now in my area is about $3.72 or so with premium around $3.95. WV has one of the highest gasoline taxes in the nation. I hope that similar taxes aren't applied to any new fuels that are put on the market but it wouldn't surprise me if they get taxed just as much.
The book I'm currently reading (A Thousand Barrels a Second by Peter Tertzakian) says that we can achieve only around ~40% efficiency with diesel and that is basically at the physical limit of the fuel too. So even if we came up with a better way to burn it it wouldn't matter because physically there is no where else to go. I don't see why they are even quoting $1/gallon (based on 100% efficiency) other than for sensationalism because 100% can't be achieved.
Systems are classified based on the most sensitive data contained in the system. The sum of the information being one classification and individual pieces being another doesn't make any sense, at least to me. This doesn't prevent unclassified data from being stored on a classified network however when the data is removed it is scanned to make sure it can be removed to a network of lower classification level. Individual pieces can have different classifications but the system is still classified as a whole based on the most sensitive level of information. Maybe I'm talking semantics now but the "sum of the information" and "most sensitive information" are 2 different things in my opinion and can make a system get 2 different classification levels.
High profile projects do get funded easier but the money still has to come from somewhere and it has to come at the right time. The U.S. government plans 1 year at a time (fiscal years begin in October) so funding as to be available and set aside prior to October of each year. If a contractor does the work the amount of funding has to be much greater because of the added charges to the government for the contractors' salaries and profit for the contract. How that money gets appropriated at the top level I'm not sure, whether it's in a bill or whatever. Over the last few years at work we've had instances where the funding wasn't necessarily available for a project that was bid out or in some cases the funding was delayed. Funding issues crop up everytime Congress can't approve a new fiscal budget and we have to run on continuing resolutions (meaning the same budget as the year before is used). The main intent for what the article is talking about is making it cheaper to run the government networks which ultimately means some of our tax money can go elsewhere. Since there isn't a anti-terrorist intent here as someone suggested, I don't think you will see this expand into the private sector for Big Brother purposes. I'm not saying it isn't possible. I'm just saying I don't think you are going to see that happen.
I don't know of any other projects that are going on that are like what the article talks about besides the one I'm currently on but I'm sure after the one I'm on has been completed the government will have a better idea of just what is required to do another consolidation if they haven't already. If other projects have already been completed in other Departments it is news to me but it isn't a surprise since the Departments don't talk to each other much even when it is beneficial to share knowledge.
The times are changing my friend.
Are they abandoning the airgap policy or something?Put simply, yes, it's a bit scary and myself and various coworkers (as contractors) have questioned the change in perspective but the government seems to be moving away from air gaps, at least in 1 agency that I know of which will go unnamed for privacy and security considerations. I think classified systems will be the last to be merged but already production and non-production systems are being merged. The idea, as TFA says, is to just put security monitoring devices and filters everywhere possible to keep the classified data safe. We're talking more levels of filters and access controls than have ever been used in the past.
For one, it takes funding and time. That funding has to be approved. A contractor actually does the work. A contractor has to be willing to do the work for a non-government network. Maybe if the money is right this will happen, hard to say. But the gov't has to issue a request for proposal first and again, the costs have to be approved for upgrading someone else's infrastructure. Given the time I've seen it take to do one of these and the manpower involved, I don't think the gov't is interested in doing this elsewhere (i.e. outside its security boundary). At the top-level of the Internet backbones, there aren't that many egress and ingress points anyway so the gov't shouldn't have that many interfaces they would have to monitor at present and therefore there would be no need to do something like this on backbone networks.