California currently gets 20% of its electricity needs from renewable energy (solar, geothermal, wind, hydro). We expect (legislative mandate) to get 33% by 2020. You can replace gigawatts of nuclear with renewable energy. California is doing it now.
You don't have to choose between coal and nuclear. Since they are both bad, you should choose renewable (solar and wind). These are both viable alternatives whose cost (even without considering the environmental impact) is becoming competitive with coal and nuclear.
Also interesting speculation that Samsung could keep its new ultra high resolution display screens away from Apple for a period of time to keep them behind the curve.
I agree. My Kindle (WiFi only, no cell data) goes literally for months before needing a charge. I just don't worry about it. This is just a stupid testosterone fueled marketing war about something that is just not a factor for anyone.
There are lots of phones which can hold 2 SIMs. You won't find them at the telecom carrier stores but they are readily available at most third party stores (and, of course, online).
I bought one of these for travel. Works great. You can have either (or both) SIM card(s) active so you can make and receive calls on both lines.
I don't worry about Dropbox being secure since the KeePass file is secure by AES and SHA-256. Someone could try to guess my password but that would be their only chance of breaking into the file. KeePass even has protection against dictionary attacks which means that at best can only try one or two entries per second. So I could just use "Hello" as my password and it would be nearly impossible to decrypt. However, I do have a very strong password.
This gives me local storage on each of my machines plus cloud synchronization. Also runs on everything I use: Mac, Linux, Android.
This is my favorite feature of my Nexus One. Just a few taps and it turns into a WiFi hotspot. This one feature has saved me hundreds of dollars on hotel rip-off WiFi prices. Nice also in the car to have WiFi for your passengers.
This is a feature of 2.2 (and above) unless your evil phone carrier disables it. (T-Mobile is happy with me using it.)
Are you referring to the Nov 2004 Fallujah offensive? What about the 75,000 who have died since then (iraqbodycount.org)? Or the additional 15,000 civilians who have died (disclosed in Wikileaks)?
I work in Africa a lot and Windows viruses are everywhere. I always end up with at least one on my memory stick used to pass around documents.
Since I run Linux, I don't worry about these on my machine and I usually check the memory stick when I get it back and delete the virus files to prevent passing them on. However, it did happen at least once (that I know) where I didn't check the memory stick and another Windows machine did pop up a virus warning.
I guess it is my responsibility to clean up Windows viruses but I'm not sure. I'm beginning to think that people who run Windows should take responsibility for their own computer health (the easiest way is to just don't run Windows).
I know this is a bit technical lawyerese talk so you may not understand it but the bit you quoted states that the government cannot compel a private party which holds existing IP rights to relinquish these rights to the government. This is a different situation from that where the government is contracting for the creation of new IP.
A lot of nit-picking here today so I'll have to take these objections one at a time.
The handy reference chart that I linked to states that the default and usual contract clause (FAR 52.227-14 or DFARS 252.227-7014) is for the government to reserve copyright for works created at public expense. This has been my experience. In my original post I also stated that many government contractors get around this by "contributing" some of their own funding or IP to the contract and thus establish an exception to the rules. Your employer is taking advantage of this exception and this is common.
It is not possible to copyright a work of the US Government (employees), hence this is in the "public domain" (or more technically "noncopyright").
Open source has no fixed precise definition but "public domain" software could certainly be considered "open source" (but not visa verso).
Software paid for by the government is supposed to be free in the public domain. However, there are two problems with the way this rule is implemented.
A surprising number of researchers work around this restriction and keep the software proprietary (or at least secret) by contracting the software out and purchasing outside services.
Even when the software is public domain, there is no uniform requirement to make is openly available. Often you have to write to the principle investigator and after delay and obfuscation you may get some undocumented compiled code but no source or incomplete source.
The government should adopt an open source software policy which stated that software created by the government must be put in a public repository (along with documentation) and this should be verified and enforced.
This would help build a government open source ecosystem where researchers can build on the ideas of other researchers.
I just bought a car with a USB port. Works great. You can plug in an iPad/pod/phone etc and play your music. You can also plug in a generic USB memory stick (or any device that looks like a USB memory stick) and it will play your music, playlists, play by type of music, etc. Also has a round jack for stereo input.
I have an Android smartphone and discovered that I didn't use the actual phone very much and most of my data use was on WiFi....
So I switched to a T-Mobile prepaid account. I get 10 cents a minute phone calls (I only use about 15 minutes a month = $1.50) and if I want to use 3G data, I can buy a "Day Pass" for unlimited data for 24 hours for $1.49. I only use this on the days I am traveling which is only a few days a month.
So far I am on track to spend less than $10 a month.
I use the phone a lot for data but this is usually WiFi connected so it's "free".
If you follow the links and read the articles about the Android (I know, I'm a geek for actually reading the article and following the links), you will find that the Android is a cache of the most recent 50 or 200 locations which are overwritten with new information as you move around. The Apple phone, on the other hand, seems to keep all of the location information since the update to iOS 4.
Since this is a cache for the Android, it looks like it could be used to retrieve recent locations for current location based services.
The cost is for different lights, emission control, etc. to conform to national standards. It has nothing to do with the metric system.
I was faced with the same problem when I wanted to import my Audi A4 from the US to Switzerland.... it wasn't worth it to change all the lights, bumpers, emissions, etc. to a different standard. It wasn't a problem with the bolts which were all metric, it was a problem with the national rules. Even getting a French Audi registered in Switzerland would have the same costs.
I believe that most of the auto industry has converted to the metric system. At least all of the cars I have bought in the past 15 years (whether "American" or "European") have had metric bolts, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Which part of "the cost of solar cells has dropped 21 percent this year" didn't you understand?
California currently gets 20% of its electricity needs from renewable energy (solar, geothermal, wind, hydro). We expect (legislative mandate) to get 33% by 2020. You can replace gigawatts of nuclear with renewable energy. California is doing it now.
You don't have to choose between coal and nuclear. Since they are both bad, you should choose renewable (solar and wind). These are both viable alternatives whose cost (even without considering the environmental impact) is becoming competitive with coal and nuclear.
http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/samsung-believes-iphone-5-could-be-nexus-s-copy/12060.html
Also interesting speculation that Samsung could keep its new ultra high resolution display screens away from Apple for a period of time to keep them behind the curve.
These are interesting times...
I agree. My Kindle (WiFi only, no cell data) goes literally for months before needing a charge. I just don't worry about it. This is just a stupid testosterone fueled marketing war about something that is just not a factor for anyone.
Denmark (and Sweden and others) have successfully banned antibiotics in farm animals with a good result on human health. http://www.colby.edu/biology/BI402B/Casewell%20et%20al%202003.pdf
I bought one of these for travel. Works great. You can have either (or both) SIM card(s) active so you can make and receive calls on both lines.
This gives me local storage on each of my machines plus cloud synchronization. Also runs on everything I use: Mac, Linux, Android.
I use Keepass with a shared Dropbox file so I don't have to rely on cloud vendor security.
I've tried it but pain to get working. Wifi is easy.
This is a feature of 2.2 (and above) unless your evil phone carrier disables it. (T-Mobile is happy with me using it.)
Are you referring to the Nov 2004 Fallujah offensive? What about the 75,000 who have died since then (iraqbodycount.org)? Or the additional 15,000 civilians who have died (disclosed in Wikileaks)?
Can we stop killing people now?
I work in Africa a lot and Windows viruses are everywhere. I always end up with at least one on my memory stick used to pass around documents.
Since I run Linux, I don't worry about these on my machine and I usually check the memory stick when I get it back and delete the virus files to prevent passing them on. However, it did happen at least once (that I know) where I didn't check the memory stick and another Windows machine did pop up a virus warning.
I guess it is my responsibility to clean up Windows viruses but I'm not sure. I'm beginning to think that people who run Windows should take responsibility for their own computer health (the easiest way is to just don't run Windows).
I know this is a bit technical lawyerese talk so you may not understand it but the bit you quoted states that the government cannot compel a private party which holds existing IP rights to relinquish these rights to the government. This is a different situation from that where the government is contracting for the creation of new IP.
The actual laws are referred to in the article. They are the government contracting regulations (FAR and DFAR) which are referenced in the article.
The handy reference chart that I linked to states that the default and usual contract clause (FAR 52.227-14 or DFARS 252.227-7014) is for the government to reserve copyright for works created at public expense. This has been my experience. In my original post I also stated that many government contractors get around this by "contributing" some of their own funding or IP to the contract and thus establish an exception to the rules. Your employer is taking advantage of this exception and this is common.
It is not possible to copyright a work of the US Government (employees), hence this is in the "public domain" (or more technically "noncopyright").
Open source has no fixed precise definition but "public domain" software could certainly be considered "open source" (but not visa verso).
https://journal.thedacs.com/stn_view.php?stn_id=56&article_id=180
A surprising number of researchers work around this restriction and keep the software proprietary (or at least secret) by contracting the software out and purchasing outside services.
Even when the software is public domain, there is no uniform requirement to make is openly available. Often you have to write to the principle investigator and after delay and obfuscation you may get some undocumented compiled code but no source or incomplete source.
The government should adopt an open source software policy which stated that software created by the government must be put in a public repository (along with documentation) and this should be verified and enforced.
This would help build a government open source ecosystem where researchers can build on the ideas of other researchers.
But does it run on Linux???
I just bought a car with a USB port. Works great. You can plug in an iPad/pod/phone etc and play your music. You can also plug in a generic USB memory stick (or any device that looks like a USB memory stick) and it will play your music, playlists, play by type of music, etc. Also has a round jack for stereo input.
I have an Android smartphone and discovered that I didn't use the actual phone very much and most of my data use was on WiFi.... So I switched to a T-Mobile prepaid account. I get 10 cents a minute phone calls (I only use about 15 minutes a month = $1.50) and if I want to use 3G data, I can buy a "Day Pass" for unlimited data for 24 hours for $1.49. I only use this on the days I am traveling which is only a few days a month. So far I am on track to spend less than $10 a month. I use the phone a lot for data but this is usually WiFi connected so it's "free".
Since this is a cache for the Android, it looks like it could be used to retrieve recent locations for current location based services.
I was faced with the same problem when I wanted to import my Audi A4 from the US to Switzerland.... it wasn't worth it to change all the lights, bumpers, emissions, etc. to a different standard. It wasn't a problem with the bolts which were all metric, it was a problem with the national rules. Even getting a French Audi registered in Switzerland would have the same costs.
I believe that most of the auto industry has converted to the metric system. At least all of the cars I have bought in the past 15 years (whether "American" or "European") have had metric bolts, etc.