Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, but I have been to texas once.
Ok, 1) Read TFA, 2) don't know much about selling cars (hate BUYING them enough).
Is it possible for Tesla to franchise out a small Tesla dealership in these states? ie, play by the rules? Perhaps only to the barest letter of the "rules"?
Are they not allowed to set a "no haggle price" model with the dealership? I'm not sure why not, since The Saturn Car company did that. They either allow for a few points for the dealership in a "dealership price" in texas, or they take a few points hit when selling in this model in texas. or both. It would then give them access to those markets.
It really does seem like they're playing chicken, or "ok, if I can't play my way, I'm taking my marbles and going home".
Perhaps they hope to change the system. I would love to see that sort of thing happen.
Yes, but I'd like it to 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 120 or 240fps.
I imagine that technology adhering to this 2.0 standard will be obsolete by the time it hits the shelves. Maybe that's the plan. I'll hold out for 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 120/240fps, thank you.
RIM should package and sell their killer app: The integrated Email / Calender / Contacts system. IMO, it would change the face of productivity on android-based phones.
The BEST feature of my old BB was the seamless nature of accepting meeting (calender) requests via email, using contact information on the phone. This was just using my normal email provider, not a BES setup. Worked like a charm!
Then I added a BES email account, and that worked well also.
in Gmail (on the android), I can receive and accept calender requests from other gmail accounts, but not from MS outlook, BB, or iPhone. I've dug all around about this, I've read craploads of comments about the same thing, and I've not seen anyone solve this. At BEST, I only get "workaround" suggestions, but the fact remains that RIM did it best.
I've had my Samsung android phone for a year or two now, and despite trying a boatload of different (free and paid) email apps, I've never seen one that can manage calender requests, and integrations between contact info in email and the calender, like my old Blackberry.
There is precedent here as well, with the "blackeberry connect" suite that's been around for a while now, installable on the old Nokia 9300 / 9500 (running symbian OS). Did they ever make this for android?
Some great stories here! Never too young to start, or old to learn! Very cool:)
I started on in 1978 (I was 12-13) and my dad bought me a Sol-20 from a colleague of his. It was sold as either a kit computer or a completed system and I remember the dude from whom he bought it, so I think it really was bought as a kit rather than pre-assembled. It came with 8K of static ram, a tape recorder and a copy of their 5K integer (no strings) Basic. Do that math; that left 3K for program space.
Other than hello world programs, my dad also bought me a copy of Creative Computer's Book of 101 Basic Games. I found a few of the smaller games (many wouldn't fit into 3K), diligently typed them in from the book, and watched them fail (SN-ERROR AT LINE 10). Thus began my world of debugging and adaptation. I learned that this basic would not handle strings, data reads, or matrices (only arrays). But the debugging and modifications gave me the foundation to start writing my own work. Wrote a dice-rolling game, then a horse-racing game (horses ran according to their odds). My dad bought me another 8K S100 card a year later, and I could run the advanced basic on that.
In high school I sold the Sol-20 and bought an 8K Commodore Pet computer, which was handy since my high school had about six of them, and I could trade programs (Creative computing games!) with the other kids.
I bought a DEC LA-100 printer cover from a local surplus store in 1981 which had an acoustic coupler built into it. Got a wiring diagram and Steve Punter's modem program (I'm a Toronto boy like Steve, and he was at the TPUG meetings), and I was off to the telephonic races! I quickly became a junkie of the Toronto BBS scene.
First thing I did in 1983 when I got my IBM XT was to find BBS software (written in basic - sloooow), and re-write it so I had my own BBS software. Found the PC-BBS source (in basic), stripped out everything other than the parts that worked the modem, and wrote the rest from scratch. It was sluggish (interpreted Basic) and not ENTIRELY bug free;) Dropped messages here and there; we ended up calling our first BBS the Black Hole.
Re-wrote the entire thing in Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0 in 1984, and it motored! By then my friends and I were running 4-5 Vanguard BBSes in Toronto. This was when FIDONet had started batching mail between their systems, so we set out to design a multi- topology short/long haul mail routing system.
The Amazon Cloud Player may be a native app NOW, but I'm betting that Apple with remove it from the App store within a few days unless Amazon shutdown down the web music store.
And they can do that sort of thing, to protect their market share. This has nothing to do with "user experience"; it's all about Apple getting their money.
Empire Strikes Back was considered by many to be the best of the first three, due much to Irvin's abilities as a director. Shame that he's no longer with us to pick up the megaphone and bring some decency back to the franchise.
I'm a build and configuration manager (and a LONG long time software developer), and I completely agree.
If developers want to employ new (as in industry-wide, or new as in company-wide) technology, they are free to install, configure, test, and prove out the functionality and feasibility of the software on their own machine. But that should be the limit of their reach.
Any shared / integrated environment from QA on up to Pre-Prod and Prod, should be off-limits from a developers' sticky fingers. If there is an installation and / or configuration problem that arises with the application, AND a developer is needed for support, then they should absolutely be called in, but from a CONSULTATIVE role only. I.e., their fingers never touch a mouse or keyboard.
It's common (if not expected) for developers to build an intimate working relationship with the technology they're using. In the world of "familiarity breeds contempt", it means that a developer can overlook something that occurs "obvious" to them, but not to everyone else. How many times has a developer been "called in" to fix an installation problem, and the fix wasn't documented or proved out? (not to say that integrators are saints in this area, but they damn well SHOULD be). Or a developer has access to a test region, and just "hops onto the machine" to tweak a parameter that caused a test suite to fail?
QA (and QC Testers) need to count on the stability of a machine, it's known state. If a test is failing 100% of the time, it should keep failing. Or if it's passing 100% of the time, it should keep passing. Having the parameters of an integration machine change without the knowledge of the QA team (e.g. so that changes can be scheduled in, and updates to the testing suites can happen), then the validity of test runs is nullified, testing costs go through the roof, thus adding to the pressure to "skip the tests" and ship / deploy. Ick.
The instructions / script for installing a package on a machine should be EASILY understood by an installer who is skilled in the practice of software installation, and no more. (ie, not written for a senior engineer, not written for the janitor). Enough information to have it properly installed and configured, some basic troubleshooting, and a clear escalation path should issues not get resolved. Skip the 65 pages of configurable parameters if all the installer needs to alter are 12 parameters on the target machines. but don't skip ANY of those 12. If one is missed, find out why. If 10 extra are there, see which ones are needed for the different regions and skip the rest.
My personal line in the sand is the Developer integration area; that stays with the code monkeys. It's important to be able to test out package installs, and this is the type of machine upon which to do it (which is not to say there is a single DIT - have multiple, including one just to test out package installs if need be). QA regions and beyond are under tight control. I work in banks a lot, so Pre-prod and Prod are under a metaphorical armed guard.
Once the installation and config documentation is tested by the developers, the docs get thrown over the wall to the integration team (optimally, QA should be involved in a doc review to make sure that what's in the Doc is what is required, no more and no less). For a Waterfall / SDLC methodology, this documentation review and handover is one of the gating steps. For an Agile / Scrum / XP methology, this can be considered a single story, where the success condition of the task (story, etc) is working installation (works) and usable documentation (has been tested).
The key is not to go bat-crap crazy on it, but to ensure repeatability and workability. It would be GREAT if the install could be automated (or run unattended, or have little or no intermediate steps requiring human intervention) so as to reduce integration errors, but that is dependent on the requirements of those managing the QA regions and above.
"UnXis, Inc., a new company formed by Stephen Norris Capital Partners and MerchantBridge Group created to acquire all the operating assets and intellectual property rights of The SCO Group, Inc."
However, I like this line:
"Led by a team of visionary and accomplished technology and businesses executives"
Really? I can't really get that jacked up about surfing the web on my XBox. However, given that it's tied into my home stereo, why not ditch the silly Windows Media Player set up required now (tethered to a PC in the home) and run the entire app right on the XBox? the xbox can already see my music library; I would love to control it, maybe add some tracks, from WMP.
OR (and this wouldn't be bad), how about iTunes on the XBox? That would be kinda cool
Please turn off the default installation of the Yahoo Toolbar. I don't know why you have it checked on, but I am happy to decide for MYSELF what I Want to install on my machine.
Good idea. It would allow energy to be stored up from 'off peak', one would hope, to charge the car up when needed.
I'm just thinking out loud here; no complaints, just some observations. The risk here that I see would be that every house has this battery "tank" of potential energy. I wonder how safe that would be? Granted, 50-80 years ago the houses where I lived all had oil tanks outside, and I can't see them being all that safe either.
As for the gas stations, their current potential energy is stored in gas tanks underground. Still a risk there, but I imagine it's been mitigated by safety designs of some sort. And they would be less likely to be impact-related safety concerns. Do you imagine they'd have a flywheel above ground, or below? Would heat buildup / dissipation be a concern?
And someone else (a post below here, I think) made a good point; if you're at home with your car, odds are you're not in need of a quick charge, or a 440Volt power pull from every house. Leave 110/220v at home, and the 440 stuff at gas (energy?) stations.
I think that long term, the shorter lifespan will be in the mosquitos' favour, as strong genetic mutations will show up faster, since they're burning through generations much faster.
It could in fact have the opposite effect of what the producers hoped for, long term. Time will tell.
Why wouldn't they be allowed to take the Android source code and make their own OS out of it?
As a matter of fact they can collaborate with Google on this... If I'm not mistaken it's called a "Community" which consists of "Collaborators".
And you would trust China to Collaborate? I don't think I would. I could however, see Chinese engineers take the existing, available AndroidOS source, ad in some goodies, and notpublish the source changes.
Creative Computing Mag had a huge impact on my Software dev career as well. I started out with a hobby computer back in 1978 (SOL-20, and yes, I'm old:) ) having a limited functionality basic along with 3K of workspace. It really taught me how to search for and fix bugs (keying / entry bugs, platform inconsistency bugs, Language Version bugs, etc). I owe a lot to this process, in teaching me "ok, what will it take to make X work _here_"?
Recently, there was a dicussion with my cube-mates regarding the books that had the greatest impact of their development skills. The first book I pulled out was my K&R C book (2nd Ed or something), and then I brought in my copy of Creative Computing's Book of 101 Basic Computer Games (Microcomputer edition).
If this passes, I wonder how long it will take before the government mandates ID for ALL cash purchases? Y'know, just to ensure YOUR safety (only trying to help, and all)
As much as I'm a fan, t'wont help, according to TFA:
Botnets are starting to target and infect routers and DSL modems. Scary, and a possible trend. [...] it won’t matter if PCs are disinfected, swapped out, or replaced with iPads, the bad guys are still control because they own the network below
Disclaimer: University of Michigan Solar Car Team alum
Cool, someone who knows this stuff (I don't). So given the following numbers from TFA:
The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight.
and
The silicon wire arrays created by Atwater and his colleagues are able to convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons
and
High absorption plus good conversion makes for a high-quality solar cell
And if the current efficiency is around 40%, my two questions are:
What kind of absorbtion level (%) and conversion rate (%) is giving us 40% efficiency now?
What kind of conversion efficiency can we expect with and absorbtion level 85% and a converion rate of 90-100%?
In essence, I'm asking:
what did it take to get us where we are now re efficiency?
what do you expect this new stuff will get us re: efficiency?
I am an idealist at heart, so the idea of breakthrough efficiency levels in solar energy has my mind running a million "what if"s! I just can't imagine all that would be possible with that type of enery available to us.
Oh, but when it comes to a cop, they better be more than perfect.
Should they be perfect or "more than perfect"? No, but I would hope that they are better at demonstrating an adherence to the very law(s) that they strive to uphold, and better at putting practices and policies for that purpose.
The theory is that these are officers of the law. They represent The Law. Y'know, serve and protect, uphold the law... that sort of thing. In theory they should be held to, and hold themselves to, a higher standard of practice.
I imagine that there are very defined practices for storing or securing service revolvers while both on and off duty. Which is where they'd see that 74 percent, or 179 guns, were lost "because officers did not properly secure them". And also, why the DHS did not have "specific procedures and policies in place regarding firearms".
In this case, the DHS itself is not holding itself to a higher ideal. I can't imagine what policy would say that keeping your weapon in a lunch box constitutes good practice or "reasonable care".
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for letting me know that, Oracle.
By the way, how is Hudson doing for ya?
Right you are, and so to repeat my last line:
Perhaps they hope to change the system. I would love to see that sort of thing happen
Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, but I have been to texas once.
Ok, 1) Read TFA, 2) don't know much about selling cars (hate BUYING them enough).
Is it possible for Tesla to franchise out a small Tesla dealership in these states? ie, play by the rules? Perhaps only to the barest letter of the "rules"?
Are they not allowed to set a "no haggle price" model with the dealership? I'm not sure why not, since The Saturn Car company did that. They either allow for a few points for the dealership in a "dealership price" in texas, or they take a few points hit when selling in this model in texas. or both. It would then give them access to those markets.
It really does seem like they're playing chicken, or "ok, if I can't play my way, I'm taking my marbles and going home".
Perhaps they hope to change the system. I would love to see that sort of thing happen.
Yes, but I'd like it to 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 120 or 240fps.
I imagine that technology adhering to this 2.0 standard will be obsolete by the time it hits the shelves. Maybe that's the plan. I'll hold out for 3,840 x 2,160 resolution video at 120/240fps, thank you.
RIM should package and sell their killer app: The integrated Email / Calender / Contacts system. IMO, it would change the face of productivity on android-based phones.
The BEST feature of my old BB was the seamless nature of accepting meeting (calender) requests via email, using contact information on the phone. This was just using my normal email provider, not a BES setup. Worked like a charm!
Then I added a BES email account, and that worked well also.
in Gmail (on the android), I can receive and accept calender requests from other gmail accounts, but not from MS outlook, BB, or iPhone. I've dug all around about this, I've read craploads of comments about the same thing, and I've not seen anyone solve this. At BEST, I only get "workaround" suggestions, but the fact remains that RIM did it best.
I've had my Samsung android phone for a year or two now, and despite trying a boatload of different (free and paid) email apps, I've never seen one that can manage calender requests, and integrations between contact info in email and the calender, like my old Blackberry.
There is precedent here as well, with the "blackeberry connect" suite that's been around for a while now, installable on the old Nokia 9300 / 9500 (running symbian OS). Did they ever make this for android?
1978 - Processor Technology Sol-20
1979 - 8K Pet
1981 - 32K Pet
1983 - IBM XT
1989 - PC Clone
Some great stories here! Never too young to start, or old to learn! Very cool :)
I started on in 1978 (I was 12-13) and my dad bought me a Sol-20 from a colleague of his. It was sold as either a kit computer or a completed system and I remember the dude from whom he bought it, so I think it really was bought as a kit rather than pre-assembled. It came with 8K of static ram, a tape recorder and a copy of their 5K integer (no strings) Basic. Do that math; that left 3K for program space.
Other than hello world programs, my dad also bought me a copy of Creative Computer's Book of 101 Basic Games. I found a few of the smaller games (many wouldn't fit into 3K), diligently typed them in from the book, and watched them fail (SN-ERROR AT LINE 10). Thus began my world of debugging and adaptation. I learned that this basic would not handle strings, data reads, or matrices (only arrays). But the debugging and modifications gave me the foundation to start writing my own work. Wrote a dice-rolling game, then a horse-racing game (horses ran according to their odds). My dad bought me another 8K S100 card a year later, and I could run the advanced basic on that.
In high school I sold the Sol-20 and bought an 8K Commodore Pet computer, which was handy since my high school had about six of them, and I could trade programs (Creative computing games!) with the other kids.
I bought a DEC LA-100 printer cover from a local surplus store in 1981 which had an acoustic coupler built into it. Got a wiring diagram and Steve Punter's modem program (I'm a Toronto boy like Steve, and he was at the TPUG meetings), and I was off to the telephonic races! I quickly became a junkie of the Toronto BBS scene.
First thing I did in 1983 when I got my IBM XT was to find BBS software (written in basic - sloooow), and re-write it so I had my own BBS software. Found the PC-BBS source (in basic), stripped out everything other than the parts that worked the modem, and wrote the rest from scratch. It was sluggish (interpreted Basic) and not ENTIRELY bug free ;) Dropped messages here and there; we ended up calling our first BBS the Black Hole.
Re-wrote the entire thing in Borland Turbo Pascal 3.0 in 1984, and it motored! By then my friends and I were running 4-5 Vanguard BBSes in Toronto. This was when FIDONet had started batching mail between their systems, so we set out to design a multi- topology short/long haul mail routing system.
The rest as they say is history :)
That'll teach 'er!
The Amazon Cloud Player may be a native app NOW, but I'm betting that Apple with remove it from the App store within a few days unless Amazon shutdown down the web music store.
And they can do that sort of thing, to protect their market share. This has nothing to do with "user experience"; it's all about Apple getting their money.
Does the EU have weapon of mass destruction by any chance?
Yes, they have Greece :)
Empire Strikes Back was considered by many to be the best of the first three, due much to Irvin's abilities as a director. Shame that he's no longer with us to pick up the megaphone and bring some decency back to the franchise.
I'm a build and configuration manager (and a LONG long time software developer), and I completely agree.
If developers want to employ new (as in industry-wide, or new as in company-wide) technology, they are free to install, configure, test, and prove out the functionality and feasibility of the software on their own machine. But that should be the limit of their reach.
Any shared / integrated environment from QA on up to Pre-Prod and Prod, should be off-limits from a developers' sticky fingers. If there is an installation and / or configuration problem that arises with the application, AND a developer is needed for support, then they should absolutely be called in, but from a CONSULTATIVE role only. I.e., their fingers never touch a mouse or keyboard.
It's common (if not expected) for developers to build an intimate working relationship with the technology they're using. In the world of "familiarity breeds contempt", it means that a developer can overlook something that occurs "obvious" to them, but not to everyone else. How many times has a developer been "called in" to fix an installation problem, and the fix wasn't documented or proved out? (not to say that integrators are saints in this area, but they damn well SHOULD be). Or a developer has access to a test region, and just "hops onto the machine" to tweak a parameter that caused a test suite to fail?
QA (and QC Testers) need to count on the stability of a machine, it's known state. If a test is failing 100% of the time, it should keep failing. Or if it's passing 100% of the time, it should keep passing. Having the parameters of an integration machine change without the knowledge of the QA team (e.g. so that changes can be scheduled in, and updates to the testing suites can happen), then the validity of test runs is nullified, testing costs go through the roof, thus adding to the pressure to "skip the tests" and ship / deploy. Ick.
The instructions / script for installing a package on a machine should be EASILY understood by an installer who is skilled in the practice of software installation, and no more. (ie, not written for a senior engineer, not written for the janitor). Enough information to have it properly installed and configured, some basic troubleshooting, and a clear escalation path should issues not get resolved. Skip the 65 pages of configurable parameters if all the installer needs to alter are 12 parameters on the target machines. but don't skip ANY of those 12. If one is missed, find out why. If 10 extra are there, see which ones are needed for the different regions and skip the rest.
My personal line in the sand is the Developer integration area; that stays with the code monkeys. It's important to be able to test out package installs, and this is the type of machine upon which to do it (which is not to say there is a single DIT - have multiple, including one just to test out package installs if need be). QA regions and beyond are under tight control. I work in banks a lot, so Pre-prod and Prod are under a metaphorical armed guard.
Once the installation and config documentation is tested by the developers, the docs get thrown over the wall to the integration team (optimally, QA should be involved in a doc review to make sure that what's in the Doc is what is required, no more and no less). For a Waterfall / SDLC methodology, this documentation review and handover is one of the gating steps. For an Agile / Scrum / XP methology, this can be considered a single story, where the success condition of the task (story, etc) is working installation (works) and usable documentation (has been tested).
The key is not to go bat-crap crazy on it, but to ensure repeatability and workability. It would be GREAT if the install could be automated (or run unattended, or have little or no intermediate steps requiring human intervention) so as to reduce integration errors, but that is dependent on the requirements of those managing the QA regions and above.
From the "Company Profile" page:
"UnXis, Inc., a new company formed by Stephen Norris Capital Partners and MerchantBridge Group created to acquire all the operating assets and intellectual property rights of The SCO Group, Inc."
However, I like this line:
"Led by a team of visionary and accomplished technology and businesses executives"
*chuckle*
Really? I can't really get that jacked up about surfing the web on my XBox. However, given that it's tied into my home stereo, why not ditch the silly Windows Media Player set up required now (tethered to a PC in the home) and run the entire app right on the XBox? the xbox can already see my music library; I would love to control it, maybe add some tracks, from WMP.
OR (and this wouldn't be bad), how about iTunes on the XBox? That would be kinda cool
Dear Oracle,
Please turn off the default installation of the Yahoo Toolbar. I don't know why you have it checked on, but I am happy to decide for MYSELF what I Want to install on my machine.
Good idea. It would allow energy to be stored up from 'off peak', one would hope, to charge the car up when needed.
I'm just thinking out loud here; no complaints, just some observations. The risk here that I see would be that every house has this battery "tank" of potential energy. I wonder how safe that would be? Granted, 50-80 years ago the houses where I lived all had oil tanks outside, and I can't see them being all that safe either.
As for the gas stations, their current potential energy is stored in gas tanks underground. Still a risk there, but I imagine it's been mitigated by safety designs of some sort. And they would be less likely to be impact-related safety concerns. Do you imagine they'd have a flywheel above ground, or below? Would heat buildup / dissipation be a concern?
And someone else (a post below here, I think) made a good point; if you're at home with your car, odds are you're not in need of a quick charge, or a 440Volt power pull from every house. Leave 110/220v at home, and the 440 stuff at gas (energy?) stations.
I think that long term, the shorter lifespan will be in the mosquitos' favour, as strong genetic mutations will show up faster, since they're burning through generations much faster.
It could in fact have the opposite effect of what the producers hoped for, long term. Time will tell.
Either that, or he'll be on a complete tear to prove CERN wrong. I can feel a few Big Bang Theory episodes out of this!!
Great demo! Will Mr. Gilder consider publishing the plans for the solving machine and the application source? T'would be cool!
Lazaridis said it wont require new data plans, new security or anything new.
I wonder, since they're not changing their security, if they'll stick with a 64Meg application memory limit
Why wouldn't they be allowed to take the Android source code and make their own OS out of it?
As a matter of fact they can collaborate with Google on this... If I'm not mistaken it's called a "Community" which consists of "Collaborators".
And you would trust China to Collaborate? I don't think I would. I could however, see Chinese engineers take the existing, available AndroidOS source, ad in some goodies, and notpublish the source changes.
Creative Computing Mag had a huge impact on my Software dev career as well. I started out with a hobby computer back in 1978 (SOL-20, and yes, I'm old :) ) having a limited functionality basic along with 3K of workspace. It really taught me how to search for and fix bugs (keying / entry bugs, platform inconsistency bugs, Language Version bugs, etc). I owe a lot to this process, in teaching me "ok, what will it take to make X work _here_"?
Recently, there was a dicussion with my cube-mates regarding the books that had the greatest impact of their development skills. The first book I pulled out was my K&R C book (2nd Ed or something), and then I brought in my copy of Creative Computing's Book of 101 Basic Computer Games (Microcomputer edition).
If this passes, I wonder how long it will take before the government mandates ID for ALL cash purchases? Y'know, just to ensure YOUR safety (only trying to help, and all)
Disclaimer: University of Michigan Solar Car Team alum
Cool, someone who knows this stuff (I don't). So given the following numbers from TFA:
The silicon-wire arrays absorb up to 96 percent of incident sunlight at a single wavelength and 85 percent of total collectible sunlight.
and
The silicon wire arrays created by Atwater and his colleagues are able to convert between 90 and 100 percent of the photons they absorb into electrons
and
High absorption plus good conversion makes for a high-quality solar cell
And if the current efficiency is around 40%, my two questions are:
In essence, I'm asking:
I am an idealist at heart, so the idea of breakthrough efficiency levels in solar energy has my mind running a million "what if"s! I just can't imagine all that would be possible with that type of enery available to us.
Oh, but when it comes to a cop, they better be more than perfect.
Should they be perfect or "more than perfect"? No, but I would hope that they are better at demonstrating an adherence to the very law(s) that they strive to uphold, and better at putting practices and policies for that purpose.
The theory is that these are officers of the law. They represent The Law. Y'know, serve and protect, uphold the law ... that sort of thing. In theory they should be held to, and hold themselves to, a higher standard of practice.
I imagine that there are very defined practices for storing or securing service revolvers while both on and off duty. Which is where they'd see that 74 percent, or 179 guns, were lost "because officers did not properly secure them". And also, why the DHS did not have "specific procedures and policies in place regarding firearms".
In this case, the DHS itself is not holding itself to a higher ideal. I can't imagine what policy would say that keeping your weapon in a lunch box constitutes good practice or "reasonable care".
sigh ... I miss Judge Dredd.