My point is more that they need to have a supporting unlaying library instead of putting it in a higher level. Whether that is updating Windows Forms, or by adding a "Presentation" layer is of choice to them; but it would be better than putting it into Silverlight. To start, it would aid everyone else as well instead of just Silverlight.
it's a new way of rendering controls that could not be done atop System.Windows.Form. It is necessity, not bad design that Silverligth resorts to direct OS interaction - but that prevents the libraries from being easily portable.
That's why you extend System.Windows.Form first.
It's one thing if the project was completely independent - like KDE is with Xorg. It's another thing when you control both projects, like Microsoft does with Silverlight and.Net.
If the funtionality they needed was not available at the level they needed, then they should have updated the lower levels to provide it so that it was available. Then Mono would only have to add anything new at the lower levels, and Silverlight would be directly supported.
However, that is not what Microsoft wants. Microsoft wants Silverlight on.Net on Windows. How they support Mono and Moonlight is a direct reflection of that.
However, Silverlight's functionality is not a published standard; so Novell would have as much trouble keeping it up to date with Microsoft as they do Mono, and would end up not creating as much of it as Mono has of.Net. (There are still substantial portions of.Net that mono does not implement; and also a good chunk that is partially implemented.)
Which is why I really won't use Mono or Moonlight. Either they need to fully open the spec so others can implement 100% of it, or they need to provide direct support and native versions - both without licensing problems like we may have now.
Thomas Edison is also a good example they should have listed...of course, he blew up (literally!) a railroad box car round the age of 12 playing with his chemistry set. (Try to top that!) He later went on to create a number of different things, including making major contributions to the light bulb so that it would be useful for more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time.
(There are some that want to claim Edison didn't invent the light bulb - and he didn't. But he did make it usable - before him, a single light bulb would be burnt out after about 2 minutes, which is pretty useless.)
If you get to Paterson, NJ - you should check out the Edison Library & Museum near the Railroad Museum. (They also had some of the early submarines last I was there - but that was nearly 20 years ago.)
Of course there are a lot of other inventors of the same nature too, which is the point of TFA.
I don't get it, first you guys complain that Obama came out of nowhere and we don't know anything about him, but then you complain that the media is biased and spending more time on Obama than McCain. You're never happy are you?
Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit".
Unbiased coverage is not really all that hard - it just takes real journalistic work - researching facts, etc. - instead of stating opinions all over the place.
Sure, you can slant the information by what you cover, but a true journalist would not want their agenda in their work - they'd want their work to be representative of the provable facts. Sadly, that's not how today's media works. most of the press is no better than picking up a tabloid - on-line, TV, or print.
Daylight savings never had anything to do with farmers (popular myth). It was pushed through by department stores who wanted people out and about earlier so there were more chances to see a store and go 'hey, it's early, let's go shopping!'.
Farmers, on the other hand, get up when it's light out and stop working when there is no more light. Any farmer who clock-watches to decide when to do things will likly go under pretty quickly.
Stores and manufacturers pushed for it but couldn't get it through. The only reason it made it through was due to the WWI to increase production for the war effort, and kind of stuck ever since.
At the time, it made sense. Things didn't exactly run 24-7 like they do now.
I'm not sure how the sub-contractors stand per that rule - never had that discussion; but I wouldn't be surprised either way. Though it might depend on the kind of sub-contractor too - and whether or not they dealt directly with the DoD as well. (For example, I think Northrop Grumman as a sub-contractor to Boeing or Lockheed would still have had that requirement; while it might change for a non-defense-contractor supplier [e.g. Microsoft, Cisco]. However, I really have no idea, that's just my gut instinct.)
And yes - I've see that "money left over, must spend" attitude - it happened at every level of the company as the budget cycle neared the end. December was a nice month - big ticket items were easy to get management to buy some years; other years (when they had gone over) were not so easy.
Needless to say, I've left that environment (thankfully!), and don't think I'll be returning any time soon, if ever.
Mercenary's also receive hazard pay, which is quite lucrative - but its the employee that receives it. The company still only gets the strict 15% profit to my understanding.
Don't forget that in the U.S. all defense contractors are only legally allowed to have no more than 15% profit on what they sell to the government. That's law, not simply some company's policy.
ar 6... 2012... by which point its SD-quality graphics will start looking rather aged,
That depends on your audience. WiiFit is also driving a lot of the demand, and guess what? SD-quality graphics and Digital/HD graphics would make no difference - Digital/HD would be silly for the games with WiiFit.
Guess who the WiiFit is targeted? Not at the hard core gamers. Not at people who care about graphics.
Guess who the Wii (as a whole) is being targeted at? not at the hard core gamers. Not at people who care about graphics.
Guess what? SD quality graphics are just fine for having fun and playing 99.99999% of the games for the Wii.
Yes - I have one. Yes, I have WiiFit. And yes, I've met people buying the Wii solely for the WiiFit - even ignoring buying a second controller because all they wanted was WiiFit.
That's why Nintendo going to shatter Sony's PS2 record, or any other. And that's why it was so hard to predict that this would happen - b/c it was a gamble, and one that is winning Nintendo the entire market.
unlike E-meters, polygraphs are used in criminal investigations and employment decisions (namely, government security services) and police and prosecutors often try to get the results admitted in court as evidence.
Except that at least in the U.S, polygraphs are not allowed as evidence in court except for issues of government security where you waive that right when signing on the dotted line to get your clearance - i.e. a very very small number of cases (perhaps less than 100 per decade).
That doesn't mean you can't petition the court to allow it (you can), but you have a very very hard up-hill battle to fight to get it introduced as evidence. And prosecutors won't normally even consider it since it is primarily a defendant's only request the courts allow.
Why? B/c the results are so untrustworthy that there is no point in them.
That's why I use earplugs when going to concerts. They typically play it so loud that even with earplugs I can still hear it - only its then at a decent (i.e. normal) volume level and not killing my ears.
And, btw, this is also what is being advocated for all the musicians on stage that care about their hearing too, and more and more of them are wearing ear protections of some sort. It also enriches the music some - which would happen if you just turned down the volume too.
I know it was one of the groups doing mods to the Prius that discovered it. I believe it was one of a show on Discovery that covered the group and discussed it - but it was a couple years ago that that I would have seen that show.
If Toyota don't build an plug in hybrid, someone else will. Like it or not, electric cars are the future. The combustion engines are not going to go away any time soon, but as soon as EV's become mainstream (in the next 5 years I think), two car households will have one ICE and one EV.
One has to wonder what Toyota is thinking. The RAV4 EV which they discontinued and even tried to have destroyed was a perfectly fine vehicle, and many are still running today. I wish they would just re-introduce that vehicle, perhaps with modern batteries.
Funny thing is - they already do. Just not for the U.S. market. The Prius is a plug-in in the Asian markets; however, the EPA regulations and testing (since they couldn't get the MPG number to be consistent!) forced them to remove the capability for the U.S. market. Hopefully, the EPA will re-evaluate their position, else they'll be a thorn for everyone.
Want proof: check out the guys behind the PriusPlus and all the aftermarket reverse engineering that has gone on - some of them even restored the functionality!
software that meets certain standards (such as EAL4),
I have to agree with the others; especially since Red Hat's Enterprise Linux (RHEL) used by the US government is rated at the same level as Trusted Solaris, which is at the highest level achievable by COTS software. Not even Microsoft can claim that with any version of Windows (past or present). I think Novell's SuSE (SLES) is similarly rated - RHEL and SLES were going back and forth for a while with who had the higher rating.
Only to a limited sense. The US Government tends to contract many software solutions to the big defense contractors. Those contractors have already been using open source software as part of their solutions. All this does is reaffirm the option of allowing it as a component.
Software vendors will now need ways to differentiate their offerings to those who provide solutions to US Government agencies. I imagine we'll see more "partnerships" (not that they don't happen now) that will influence solutions. I can't count the number of projects I've worked on where as a developer you say "open source product A would work great" but the manager says "we're using commercial product B". Many trade studies we use internally often lack open source solutions too unfortunately.
Actually it does a bit more for them than that - it makes it easier and less risky for them to use it.
For software to be approved for use on US Government systems it has to be tested JITC, SPAWAR, and similar agencies (depending on the target system), and there are a lot of factors that are taken into consideration. Should it pass, this would make it a lot easier to get open source solutions through those agencies since there would now be a legal mandate to help push them. It would also reduce the risk a contractor takes of using some open source software or commercialized open source software in their stack (e.g. Qt) when they go to get certified.
And certification is a BIG thing. You either need to be certified or have the appropriate waivers to operate. If you don't/can't get them, then you're screwed. This should make it easier to get waivers, and should also make it easier to get certified.
So yes, there is open source use already; but this makes it easier for expanded use of open source or open source related products - especially when the contractors are developing something new to sell to the government.
this banal argument crops up in _every_ single/. article about cellphones.
and the answer is the same every single time. as icydog and countless others have replied, there are tons of cheap phones with minimal features.
the only reason camera phones are so visible and common is because they're popular with consumers. it's useful having a camera on your person at all times, and most people don't need a $3000 DSLR for their uses. with point and shoot cameras becoming smaller and cheaper, it's simply more convenient to incorporate this feature into a device that people carry with them most of the time, such as a cellphone.
if you work somewhere where camera-phones aren't allowed (like a court house) then just select a phone without a camera. how hard is that? certain handset makers, such as Nokia, even have models that have a no-camera option. this CNET article even compares 5 popular big brand phones that are camera-free (or have the option of being so). so stop complaining.
Actually - it can be quite hard to get a phone without a camera - at least in the U.S. I've tried; and complained to managers. It's one of the reasons I haven't upgraded my original phone to a newer on.
Oh, and the store (it's manager) I was at just said they didn't have any control over the phones the stocked - that was decided by the service provide.
Supposedly it was tied to supply+demand, but I think it really is more that the camera phones are more expensive, and make it easy for them to charge more money in the monthly bill - either for a data plan, or when people use something and then get the bill and realize that they had to pay for it...
So I think it's more about greed on behalf of the company's than it is actual desire by people to have such featured phones.
That's why my next phone won't be from the service provider, but from a 3rd party - so I can get the phone I want, with the features I want, and be able to use the entire phone.
There are a number of States in the U.S. that require recycling of normal goods (e.g. aluminum cans, etc.). Some of them truly do recycle the stuff; while a few others (e.g. Michigan) put up a facade about the recycling - you can get a recycling bin and pay another $4/billing period for it, and even have to be careful of what you put in it - just to take it and throw it in the landfill anyway.
So, either they are actually recycling it, or they are not. No two bits about it.
I'm not saying they shouldn't do their best to do it safely - they should - but if they are actually recycling it good. With the EPA regulations in the U.S. it makes some things darn near impossible to do, and this might be how those companies are handling it. Not saying its right, but it might also be the only solution available.
From what I understand, it all comes down to everyone believing that real-estate value wouldn't stop rising.
That's a pretty good summation for parts of the country (e.g. the Washington D.C. area, probably areas like California too). Essentially, in W.D.C, people said "Well, the gov't is here, and so jobs are guaranteed. So housing will always go up." The problem is when it goes beyond where the base market can buy.
There's also another issue though - there were a lot of banks, etc. that issued bad mortgages outright. For example - the high school graduate students that moved into my parent's neighborhood - no jobs, but they got a mortgage, and eventually ended up in foreclosure. Of course, the city of Columbus, OH had some issues too politically as they tried to "clean up" downtown by moving the "poor" out into new housing (helping to get the qualified for loans they shouldn't have had) elsewhere in the state - e.g. by my parents, and other places in the Greater Columbus, OH area. For them, the politics work out good - their constituents are happy, and those people are now "someone else's problem" (literally), so it is hard to hold them accountable (their district was improved while someone else's was deteriorated).
Another good example - my wife and I were looking at buying a house in 2006. In getting pre-qualified, we looked at Washington Mutual and several others. Because we did not have a large-enough down-payment available (we had closing costs) at that time, WaMu was going to give us a double loan so we didn't have to have PMI (mortgage insurance). The first loan would be the mortgage itself, and the second was to become the down payment. We didn't really like it; but they were going to let us do that. We ended up not buying that year, and have since moved and bought a house through BB&T, with a better loan - only one loan too.
All-in-all, it was not just one issue that caused the problem.
They may be there, but I believe they are disabled.
It was in the news a while back (couple years). You should be able to find information in the Washington Post. It was in the newspaper (Sunday paper I think) that I came across it - probably somewhere between 2004 and 2006.
And yes, I am aware the cameras are still there. They were part of the pilot program, which also ran in Richmond, VA. If the reports were right, they should be disabled.
...in some States it is illegal to have cameras for ticketing purposes (e.g. Virginia, which outlawed them with the shut-down of their test programs).
So...they might be able to use the general traffic cameras, but those would not likely be able to read enough detail to track anything, let alone the numerous cars visible on their picture at any given frame.
And don't forget - the ticketing cameras (e.g. speed limit & red-light runner cameras) only have a 1/3 accuracy rate to start with. (For every 3 attempts to ticket, 2 were thrown out.)
So I don't see how they are going to do very well...
Well, that's where the GPL trumps the BSD license....:)
Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD because it's not required. If they'd built OSX on top of Linux, it would be required, and Linux would have benefited. That's likely why Apple didn't use Linux. But HP cares less about locking down their shit, and more about moving boxes, so Linux would be a logical choice for them.
uh...not necessarily. Apple does release quite a bit of what they do to the underlying OS that is Mac OS X (e.g. Darwin, OpenDarwin - OS X minus the Apple Mac GUI). However, the GPL (and LGPL) does not necessarily require the contributions to be released back to the original author - e.g. if a manufacturer mods the Linux kernel, the do not necessarily have to make it available to Linus, et al. They do have to make it available to anyone they distribute the Linux Kernel to.
Really, the only difference between BSD-style licenses and GPL-style licenses is the requirement to release changes back to the users receiving the distributed binaries. And Apple's open source license (APL?) requires that modifications actually be contributed back to Apple as well (and possibly ownership...it's been a while since I've reviewed it...) so Apple actually has a better chance of providing everyone a change by a third party than Linux does...
Still...Linux is king, though Mac OS X might end up being queen. Windows will forever remain the joker, and DOS the executioner. UNIX will be the old guard - the most loyal of knights, and everyone else will be the new guard...ok, ok...enough with the analogies...
Seriously - point out just one proven macro evolution of any species into another that resulted in a non-sterile new species - and it must be something like a rat into a cat (cross kind) - or even a horse+donkey into a non-sterile mule.
That isn't how evolution works. You seem to be confusing 'evolution' with 'cross-breeding'.
I'm not referring to cross-breeding, just using it as an example of the level of change. Fact is, you can't find proof to support evolution working in that manner. The little changes don't add-up over time to create a new species - there's no evidence for it, just postulation.
If you want to show your "little changes add-up" postulation as evidence, then link a full change from start to end without a single gap.
However, you do it (no gaps allowed) it up to you. But the challenge is still there.
But there is zero evidence for macro evolution of any species.
So, 99% of DNA shared by Humans and Chimps doesn't qualify? Nor do adaptions of isolated species, such as the sea Iguanas on the Galapagos Islands (no other species of Iguana is known to be able to swim)?
No that doesn't. There has yet to be an actual proven link. And percentage-wise, it's more like 70% DNA shared by Humans and Chimps, about as much as we share with other creatures such as Dolphins. They've been finding DNA to be quite variable in a manner that would not really predict evolution so much as they would like.
What about hereditary traits in plant populations? This has been well-tested for many years now - ask any amateur gardener what happens if you cross-pollinate different varieties of squash, for example.
Actually, ask that same amateur gardener - or any professional botanist - and you'll find that that only works with plants of similar kind - i.e. they have to be similar enough to take. You can't take an olive branch and graft it only a grapevine or a petunia for instance. Sorry, but your analogy doesn't hold.
Please be realistic. You can believe in creationism as strongly as you like, and you are free to disbelieve evolution as strongly as you like, but to say that there is zero evidence for macro evolution is, to be blunt, crazy.
It is being realistic. Things may evolve within their own kind, but not across kinds; those that we do successfully get to mutate between kinds are always sterile and can't reproduce (e.g. horse+donkey=mule which is 100% sterile).
I don't believe in creationism, but I am certainly prepared to acknowledge that complex life could be seen as evidence for creationism.
Glad you're at least trying to be open-minded. (I don't know you well enough to say whether or not you actually are open-minded.)
This is evidence that, on closer examination, can be refuted (by the alternative explanation, that the mechanism of natural selection is capable of producing complex life out of simpler constituents over the course of many generations). But still, I wouldn't say that there is zero evidence for creationism. Just the same as I would not say that there is zero evidence that the moon is made of cheese. I mean, the moon looks like cheese, right? So in the absence of any other evidence then the moon/cheese hypothesis is reasonable. But to keep on believing that the moon is made of cheese after understanding something about how the moon formed compared with how cheese is made is living in a dream world.
The same can truly be said of Evolution. Yet, people keep trying to make it so by repeating it. Most people believe in Evolution because it's what they were taught early on before they could truly comprehend and refute it; and most who teach Evolution don't tell the pitfalls of it - where it doesn't work or what is not supported by science because either (a) they are too ignorant, or (b) they want it to be true and don't want to have to truly defend it and admit it is full of errors. If you are truly as open-minded as you seem to say, then please continue researching the pitfalls, the gaps, and everything else - because there are many, and the theory (by common definition) of Evolution just plain doesn't work on the large scale that Evolutionists want it to - and the gaps in the evidence for Evolution show it, such as the gaping holes in how one species morphed into another at any point in history.
Seriously - point out just one proven macro evolution of any species into another that resulted in a non-sterile new species - and it must be something like a rat into a cat (cross kind) - or even a horse+donkey into a non-sterile mule.
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My point is more that they need to have a supporting unlaying library instead of putting it in a higher level. Whether that is updating Windows Forms, or by adding a "Presentation" layer is of choice to them; but it would be better than putting it into Silverlight. To start, it would aid everyone else as well instead of just Silverlight.
That's why you extend System.Windows.Form first.
.Net.
.Net on Windows. How they support Mono and Moonlight is a direct reflection of that.
It's one thing if the project was completely independent - like KDE is with Xorg. It's another thing when you control both projects, like Microsoft does with Silverlight and
If the funtionality they needed was not available at the level they needed, then they should have updated the lower levels to provide it so that it was available. Then Mono would only have to add anything new at the lower levels, and Silverlight would be directly supported.
However, that is not what Microsoft wants. Microsoft wants Silverlight on
However, Silverlight's functionality is not a published standard; so Novell would have as much trouble keeping it up to date with Microsoft as they do Mono, and would end up not creating as much of it as Mono has of .Net. (There are still substantial portions of .Net that mono does not implement; and also a good chunk that is partially implemented.)
Which is why I really won't use Mono or Moonlight. Either they need to fully open the spec so others can implement 100% of it, or they need to provide direct support and native versions - both without licensing problems like we may have now.
Until then, I'll stay away from it.
Thomas Edison is also a good example they should have listed...of course, he blew up (literally!) a railroad box car round the age of 12 playing with his chemistry set. (Try to top that!) He later went on to create a number of different things, including making major contributions to the light bulb so that it would be useful for more than 1 or 2 minutes at a time.
(There are some that want to claim Edison didn't invent the light bulb - and he didn't. But he did make it usable - before him, a single light bulb would be burnt out after about 2 minutes, which is pretty useless.)
If you get to Paterson, NJ - you should check out the Edison Library & Museum near the Railroad Museum. (They also had some of the early submarines last I was there - but that was nearly 20 years ago.)
Of course there are a lot of other inventors of the same nature too, which is the point of TFA.
As others have said, their stocking policy was horrendous. So I stopped shopping there long ago. Glad to see it catching up with them!
I don't get it, first you guys complain that Obama came out of nowhere and we don't know anything about him, but then you complain that the media is biased and spending more time on Obama than McCain. You're never happy are you?
Well, they also completely missed the question (or rather dropped) the question of whether or not Obama is really even eligible to be president, or that one citizen tried to discover if he was through the courts and got thrown out for "having no standing to bring the lawsuit".
Unbiased coverage is not really all that hard - it just takes real journalistic work - researching facts, etc. - instead of stating opinions all over the place.
Sure, you can slant the information by what you cover, but a true journalist would not want their agenda in their work - they'd want their work to be representative of the provable facts. Sadly, that's not how today's media works. most of the press is no better than picking up a tabloid - on-line, TV, or print.
Daylight savings never had anything to do with farmers (popular myth). It was pushed through by department stores who wanted people out and about earlier so there were more chances to see a store and go 'hey, it's early, let's go shopping!'.
Farmers, on the other hand, get up when it's light out and stop working when there is no more light. Any farmer who clock-watches to decide when to do things will likly go under pretty quickly.
Stores and manufacturers pushed for it but couldn't get it through. The only reason it made it through was due to the WWI to increase production for the war effort, and kind of stuck ever since.
At the time, it made sense. Things didn't exactly run 24-7 like they do now.
Sadly that is quite true in many respects.
I'm not sure how the sub-contractors stand per that rule - never had that discussion; but I wouldn't be surprised either way. Though it might depend on the kind of sub-contractor too - and whether or not they dealt directly with the DoD as well. (For example, I think Northrop Grumman as a sub-contractor to Boeing or Lockheed would still have had that requirement; while it might change for a non-defense-contractor supplier [e.g. Microsoft, Cisco]. However, I really have no idea, that's just my gut instinct.)
And yes - I've see that "money left over, must spend" attitude - it happened at every level of the company as the budget cycle neared the end. December was a nice month - big ticket items were easy to get management to buy some years; other years (when they had gone over) were not so easy.
Needless to say, I've left that environment (thankfully!), and don't think I'll be returning any time soon, if ever.
Mercenary's also receive hazard pay, which is quite lucrative - but its the employee that receives it. The company still only gets the strict 15% profit to my understanding.
Don't forget that in the U.S. all defense contractors are only legally allowed to have no more than 15% profit on what they sell to the government. That's law, not simply some company's policy.
That depends on your audience. WiiFit is also driving a lot of the demand, and guess what? SD-quality graphics and Digital/HD graphics would make no difference - Digital/HD would be silly for the games with WiiFit.
Guess who the WiiFit is targeted? Not at the hard core gamers. Not at people who care about graphics.
Guess who the Wii (as a whole) is being targeted at? not at the hard core gamers. Not at people who care about graphics.
Guess what? SD quality graphics are just fine for having fun and playing 99.99999% of the games for the Wii.
Yes - I have one. Yes, I have WiiFit. And yes, I've met people buying the Wii solely for the WiiFit - even ignoring buying a second controller because all they wanted was WiiFit.
That's why Nintendo going to shatter Sony's PS2 record, or any other. And that's why it was so hard to predict that this would happen - b/c it was a gamble, and one that is winning Nintendo the entire market.
Except that at least in the U.S, polygraphs are not allowed as evidence in court except for issues of government security where you waive that right when signing on the dotted line to get your clearance - i.e. a very very small number of cases (perhaps less than 100 per decade).
That doesn't mean you can't petition the court to allow it (you can), but you have a very very hard up-hill battle to fight to get it introduced as evidence. And prosecutors won't normally even consider it since it is primarily a defendant's only request the courts allow.
Why? B/c the results are so untrustworthy that there is no point in them.
That's why I use earplugs when going to concerts. They typically play it so loud that even with earplugs I can still hear it - only its then at a decent (i.e. normal) volume level and not killing my ears.
And, btw, this is also what is being advocated for all the musicians on stage that care about their hearing too, and more and more of them are wearing ear protections of some sort. It also enriches the music some - which would happen if you just turned down the volume too.
I know it was one of the groups doing mods to the Prius that discovered it. I believe it was one of a show on Discovery that covered the group and discussed it - but it was a couple years ago that that I would have seen that show.
If Toyota don't build an plug in hybrid, someone else will. Like it or not, electric cars are the future. The combustion engines are not going to go away any time soon, but as soon as EV's become mainstream (in the next 5 years I think), two car households will have one ICE and one EV.
One has to wonder what Toyota is thinking. The RAV4 EV which they discontinued and even tried to have destroyed was a perfectly fine vehicle, and many are still running today. I wish they would just re-introduce that vehicle, perhaps with modern batteries.
Funny thing is - they already do. Just not for the U.S. market. The Prius is a plug-in in the Asian markets; however, the EPA regulations and testing (since they couldn't get the MPG number to be consistent!) forced them to remove the capability for the U.S. market. Hopefully, the EPA will re-evaluate their position, else they'll be a thorn for everyone.
Want proof: check out the guys behind the PriusPlus and all the aftermarket reverse engineering that has gone on - some of them even restored the functionality!
I have to agree with the others; especially since Red Hat's Enterprise Linux (RHEL) used by the US government is rated at the same level as Trusted Solaris, which is at the highest level achievable by COTS software. Not even Microsoft can claim that with any version of Windows (past or present). I think Novell's SuSE (SLES) is similarly rated - RHEL and SLES were going back and forth for a while with who had the higher rating.
Only to a limited sense. The US Government tends to contract many software solutions to the big defense contractors. Those contractors have already been using open source software as part of their solutions. All this does is reaffirm the option of allowing it as a component. Software vendors will now need ways to differentiate their offerings to those who provide solutions to US Government agencies. I imagine we'll see more "partnerships" (not that they don't happen now) that will influence solutions. I can't count the number of projects I've worked on where as a developer you say "open source product A would work great" but the manager says "we're using commercial product B". Many trade studies we use internally often lack open source solutions too unfortunately.
Actually it does a bit more for them than that - it makes it easier and less risky for them to use it.
For software to be approved for use on US Government systems it has to be tested JITC, SPAWAR, and similar agencies (depending on the target system), and there are a lot of factors that are taken into consideration. Should it pass, this would make it a lot easier to get open source solutions through those agencies since there would now be a legal mandate to help push them. It would also reduce the risk a contractor takes of using some open source software or commercialized open source software in their stack (e.g. Qt) when they go to get certified.
And certification is a BIG thing. You either need to be certified or have the appropriate waivers to operate. If you don't/can't get them, then you're screwed. This should make it easier to get waivers, and should also make it easier to get certified.
So yes, there is open source use already; but this makes it easier for expanded use of open source or open source related products - especially when the contractors are developing something new to sell to the government.
this banal argument crops up in _every_ single /. article about cellphones.
and the answer is the same every single time. as icydog and countless others have replied, there are tons of cheap phones with minimal features.
the only reason camera phones are so visible and common is because they're popular with consumers. it's useful having a camera on your person at all times, and most people don't need a $3000 DSLR for their uses. with point and shoot cameras becoming smaller and cheaper, it's simply more convenient to incorporate this feature into a device that people carry with them most of the time, such as a cellphone.
if you work somewhere where camera-phones aren't allowed (like a court house) then just select a phone without a camera. how hard is that? certain handset makers, such as Nokia, even have models that have a no-camera option. this CNET article even compares 5 popular big brand phones that are camera-free (or have the option of being so). so stop complaining.
Actually - it can be quite hard to get a phone without a camera - at least in the U.S. I've tried; and complained to managers. It's one of the reasons I haven't upgraded my original phone to a newer on.
Oh, and the store (it's manager) I was at just said they didn't have any control over the phones the stocked - that was decided by the service provide.
Supposedly it was tied to supply+demand, but I think it really is more that the camera phones are more expensive, and make it easy for them to charge more money in the monthly bill - either for a data plan, or when people use something and then get the bill and realize that they had to pay for it...
So I think it's more about greed on behalf of the company's than it is actual desire by people to have such featured phones.
That's why my next phone won't be from the service provider, but from a 3rd party - so I can get the phone I want, with the features I want, and be able to use the entire phone.
There are a number of States in the U.S. that require recycling of normal goods (e.g. aluminum cans, etc.). Some of them truly do recycle the stuff; while a few others (e.g. Michigan) put up a facade about the recycling - you can get a recycling bin and pay another $4/billing period for it, and even have to be careful of what you put in it - just to take it and throw it in the landfill anyway.
So, either they are actually recycling it, or they are not. No two bits about it.
I'm not saying they shouldn't do their best to do it safely - they should - but if they are actually recycling it good. With the EPA regulations in the U.S. it makes some things darn near impossible to do, and this might be how those companies are handling it. Not saying its right, but it might also be the only solution available.
From what I understand, it all comes down to everyone believing that real-estate value wouldn't stop rising.
That's a pretty good summation for parts of the country (e.g. the Washington D.C. area, probably areas like California too). Essentially, in W.D.C, people said "Well, the gov't is here, and so jobs are guaranteed. So housing will always go up." The problem is when it goes beyond where the base market can buy.
There's also another issue though - there were a lot of banks, etc. that issued bad mortgages outright. For example - the high school graduate students that moved into my parent's neighborhood - no jobs, but they got a mortgage, and eventually ended up in foreclosure. Of course, the city of Columbus, OH had some issues too politically as they tried to "clean up" downtown by moving the "poor" out into new housing (helping to get the qualified for loans they shouldn't have had) elsewhere in the state - e.g. by my parents, and other places in the Greater Columbus, OH area. For them, the politics work out good - their constituents are happy, and those people are now "someone else's problem" (literally), so it is hard to hold them accountable (their district was improved while someone else's was deteriorated).
Another good example - my wife and I were looking at buying a house in 2006. In getting pre-qualified, we looked at Washington Mutual and several others. Because we did not have a large-enough down-payment available (we had closing costs) at that time, WaMu was going to give us a double loan so we didn't have to have PMI (mortgage insurance). The first loan would be the mortgage itself, and the second was to become the down payment. We didn't really like it; but they were going to let us do that. We ended up not buying that year, and have since moved and bought a house through BB&T, with a better loan - only one loan too.
All-in-all, it was not just one issue that caused the problem.
They may be there, but I believe they are disabled.
It was in the news a while back (couple years). You should be able to find information in the Washington Post. It was in the newspaper (Sunday paper I think) that I came across it - probably somewhere between 2004 and 2006.
And yes, I am aware the cameras are still there. They were part of the pilot program, which also ran in Richmond, VA. If the reports were right, they should be disabled.
...in some States it is illegal to have cameras for ticketing purposes (e.g. Virginia, which outlawed them with the shut-down of their test programs).
So...they might be able to use the general traffic cameras, but those would not likely be able to read enough detail to track anything, let alone the numerous cars visible on their picture at any given frame.
And don't forget - the ticketing cameras (e.g. speed limit & red-light runner cameras) only have a 1/3 accuracy rate to start with. (For every 3 attempts to ticket, 2 were thrown out.)
So I don't see how they are going to do very well...
Well, that's where the GPL trumps the BSD license.... :)
Apple doesn't contribute code back to BSD because it's not required. If they'd built OSX on top of Linux, it would be required, and Linux would have benefited. That's likely why Apple didn't use Linux. But HP cares less about locking down their shit, and more about moving boxes, so Linux would be a logical choice for them.
uh...not necessarily. Apple does release quite a bit of what they do to the underlying OS that is Mac OS X (e.g. Darwin, OpenDarwin - OS X minus the Apple Mac GUI). However, the GPL (and LGPL) does not necessarily require the contributions to be released back to the original author - e.g. if a manufacturer mods the Linux kernel, the do not necessarily have to make it available to Linus, et al. They do have to make it available to anyone they distribute the Linux Kernel to.
Really, the only difference between BSD-style licenses and GPL-style licenses is the requirement to release changes back to the users receiving the distributed binaries. And Apple's open source license (APL?) requires that modifications actually be contributed back to Apple as well (and possibly ownership...it's been a while since I've reviewed it...) so Apple actually has a better chance of providing everyone a change by a third party than Linux does...
Still...Linux is king, though Mac OS X might end up being queen. Windows will forever remain the joker, and DOS the executioner. UNIX will be the old guard - the most loyal of knights, and everyone else will be the new guard...ok, ok...enough with the analogies...
I'm not referring to cross-breeding, just using it as an example of the level of change. Fact is, you can't find proof to support evolution working in that manner. The little changes don't add-up over time to create a new species - there's no evidence for it, just postulation.
If you want to show your "little changes add-up" postulation as evidence, then link a full change from start to end without a single gap.
However, you do it (no gaps allowed) it up to you. But the challenge is still there.
No that doesn't. There has yet to be an actual proven link. And percentage-wise, it's more like 70% DNA shared by Humans and Chimps, about as much as we share with other creatures such as Dolphins. They've been finding DNA to be quite variable in a manner that would not really predict evolution so much as they would like.
Actually, ask that same amateur gardener - or any professional botanist - and you'll find that that only works with plants of similar kind - i.e. they have to be similar enough to take. You can't take an olive branch and graft it only a grapevine or a petunia for instance. Sorry, but your analogy doesn't hold.
It is being realistic. Things may evolve within their own kind, but not across kinds; those that we do successfully get to mutate between kinds are always sterile and can't reproduce (e.g. horse+donkey=mule which is 100% sterile).
Glad you're at least trying to be open-minded. (I don't know you well enough to say whether or not you actually are open-minded.)
The same can truly be said of Evolution. Yet, people keep trying to make it so by repeating it. Most people believe in Evolution because it's what they were taught early on before they could truly comprehend and refute it; and most who teach Evolution don't tell the pitfalls of it - where it doesn't work or what is not supported by science because either (a) they are too ignorant, or (b) they want it to be true and don't want to have to truly defend it and admit it is full of errors. If you are truly as open-minded as you seem to say, then please continue researching the pitfalls, the gaps, and everything else - because there are many, and the theory (by common definition) of Evolution just plain doesn't work on the large scale that Evolutionists want it to - and the gaps in the evidence for Evolution show it, such as the gaping holes in how one species morphed into another at any point in history.
Seriously - point out just one proven macro evolution of any species into another that resulted in a non-sterile new species - and it must be something like a rat into a cat (cross kind) - or even a horse+donkey into a non-sterile mule.