Personally, I am still trying to figure out what real problem it solves.
I see systemd as the perfect compliment to Linux cgroups. It makes managing containers a lot better than how say docker does things. But if you like docker or systemd, I think we can all agree that the way containers are done now, versus sysvinit + chroot methods, is vastly better. However, if sticking with the old sysv stuff helps anyone sleep, then go for it. However, I remember doing the whole httpd inside a chroot and remember the headache it caused if one of your boxes out of a 100 was hung up and trying to hunt it down... systemd or docker make managing thousands of systems a whole lot easier.
I'm going to start where a lot of people don't usually start. The actual people who maintain X11. They hate the code base, they just simply don't want to deal with the tangled mess that it is. Seriously go look at a dependency graph of just the xserver or a slightly higher level view of the state of things. Point, no one wants to maintain this mess. Anyone feeling frisky in doing so is strongly encouraged to do so, but the majority of developers who have worked on this in the heyday have long since left the building. The sheer pool size of people working on X is low and fresh blood in the development pool is best described as anemic. Fewer developers working on one project and more on another project pretty much seals the deal on the direction. Arguments of X being better falls on non-existent ears. You want to talk to an X developer? Head over to Wayland, that's where you'll find a lot of them.
Next in line is that X is ineffective at one of the things that it's suppose to do, draw stuff on your screen. (Not even going to touch multi-monitor, sleep, touch input, etc all which have had extensive hacking to get it working and thus resulting in patches of code with serious bus factor one issues.) X11 lacks pretty much everything we take for granted in a modern GUI. Want anti-alias text? Well X11 doesn't do that. Want the concept of an alpha-channel? Not present in X11. Quite literally, X11 does nothing in the way of anything that say KDE, GNOME, Unity, Cinnamon, or whoever wants. Instead, your chosen toolkit is using a library that builds in memory the bits that need to be drawn and if your xserver supports RENDER, your toolkit just gives a stream of bits over to X11 via that method, and X just forwards it on to either the card or to a compositor, which by the way X11 doesn't have a concept of, hence the reason you need one external to the xserver. At some point someone said, if every toolkit is just building bits by themselves and then having X forward it on, why not just cut out the middle man? Why have this extra layer that we keep having to build ad-hoc extensions for? (RENDER, XDamage, RANDR, XFixes **yes literally an extension to fix stuff but mostlly to turn a lot of old X11 stuff off.) All of these wonderful extensions are in reality short circuiting old cruft in a code-ugly fashion. Add in new complexities being added to video cards, functionality that's difficult to eventually get working, and yeah everyone is ready to put the old girl out to pasture. X11's lack of so many things is a roadblock to tapping your card's fully ability, which is why most of the time we're happily ignorant of all of the by-passing of huge parts of the core of an xserver, with the prolific set of extensions that come automatically built into your distro. (which is why a lot of folks never notice and just think that this is the way X was built, but nothing further from the truth could be said. Try building an xserver from source.)
Now let me move on to your points
Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't.
If you are using X11 over ssh, you aren't using X11's network transparency. What you are doing is streaming pixels across ssh, but you aren't using anything remotely looking like core X11 protocol. On the remote side, Cario, Qt, Mutter, or someone is drawing pixels and then that gets wrapped into a generic X11 package and sent to you to open up and then have your computer decide what to do with the newly received pixels. There's no commands like "Window A is currently at location x,y. It has a button at rx, ry relative to the top-left corner of the parent widget, blah blah blah." Nope, it's just "here's pixel one, here's pixel two, here's pixel three..." There's no distinction in X between a button in an application running on a remote server and a picture
shouldn't mean they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.
Irrational argument #14 Value is at times a subjective thing, what you don't see value in to you, can hold immense value to someone else. Especially considering the point being talked about, that for a lot of people there's just nothing to gain from the information. People can do cost/benefit analysis and what not to justify/quantify those things, but ultimately it just boils down to what sounds better in the end. I digress though because its value isn't something I'd like to talk about. Their argument that we should cut it because it is a waste in spending is seriously short sighted when compared to the billions that are spent elsewhere, be them of value or not. The argument that it is useless is subjective, but the argument that this saves us money is dumb. So yeah, given the scale, $70k is meaningless, trying to argue it isn't is just silly.
An official said it would save $70,000 through 2020 and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months.
If they want to say, "It was a wasteful program because it gave so little back to the public" by all means, they should just go with that. The end. No further explanation required. But adding the argument that we need to nickle and dime our budget of several trillions of dollars, that's like NYC planners doing zoning surveys based on ant hill locations. I get that it wasn't their lead argument, but someone just adding in that it saves money is really silly. So parent has a point, why even bring up the savings? They're totally meaningless. You don't like the program, then just cut it and move on. There's no need for them to resort to silly dollar figures to justify their position. It just looks silly even bringing it up. The whole security thing they talked about is enough and is subjective enough to be the main point of debate. Trying to state cost savings in their argument or in this thread is nonsensical. So before any more of us (myself included) make a mountain out of a mole hill, let's look past the $70k before we get too tightly wound up about that figure, just saying.
So is Ubuntu Linux effectively a dead project/distribution at this point?
Wow, hyperbole much? There's a lot of very profitable things with Ubuntu Linux and now they're going to focus on them. That your favorite part of "things Canonical" is being paired back doesn't mean the whole is dead.
A shakeup of this magnitude can't be good for the project's health.
This really makes me worry about the health of the Linux ecosystem as a whole.
Um, Linux is doing quite fine really. I think you're thinking Linux Desktop = All of Linux, which is an incorrect statement.
Between the PulseAudio, GNOME 3, Wayland, and systemd disasters, we Linux users have seen so much turmoil these past several years.
Okay at some point everyone is just going to have to move past this dead horse, it's turned into a jelly like substance from all the beating. All of these projects have evolved from the infantile stage they were once in, maybe some of the critics should too?
If the Ubuntu project falters, the Linux ecosystem will be getting even less diverse.
Even now there are fewer and fewer differences between Fedora and Debian.
The problem isn't that the ecosystem is less diverse, it's that your definition of the ecosystem is highly limited. If we limit all of Linux to just those two distros and their derivatives, then yeah, there's not much separating them, but news flash, there wasn't much separating them before.
Even the package management is almost identical now, with the main difference being whether we type "dnf" or "apt"!
(facepalm) Yes on the surface they look similar, so quick question do you scream this when talking about tools like sed, tar, diff? The whole point is to offer somewhat similar commands to make the life of admins a whole lot easier. However, if you look inside of dnf or apt you'll see that they operate differently on how they build internal databases, how they manage memory, etc. (since Slashdot loves car references) just because all cars have a gas and brake pedal doesn't mean all cars have the same engine.
This lack of diversity has resulted in stagnation.
A lot of people think diversity = innovation and that's not an exactly true statement. I think it should be obvious why that is. Additionally, if anything Linux in a broad sense is far from stagnant. Again, I think your statement comes from a limit of perspective to just the surface of a Linux Desktop. Even in Linux Desktop world a lot is going on under the hood. Not every release needs to include 50000 bells and whistles.
I really want Linux to succeed, but all of these developments leave me feeling very uneasy.
No. You want Linux Desktop to become the dominate choice and the fact is that's not happening, ever. People "computer" differently now a days and there are blends of "Linux" so to say that already address that space. RedHat or Ubuntu or whoever, might move into the workstation or they might not. But the home PC market is having a rough enough time trying to convince people to be in the "home PC market". Few if any are worrying about "home Windows market" versus "home Linux market" because they're just trying to address the core tenet here of actually getting PCs sold. So stop worrying about something that's not going to happen and be happy about the dozens of other ways that Linux has dominated in several different markets outside the PC.
"it'll mean closed-source graphics drivers will have to support 2 display servers, and they may not want to do that"
Okay. That's sort of true, but one of the big things was that Canonical from word start seemed hostile to the Wayland community. Now that's not saying a lot because as we all know a lot of communities in the FOSS world are pretty hostile by nature. So I'm not saying that justifies the hate that went down, but it play a big role.
Here's a link from the Ask Ubuntu site and the first comment under the accepted answer pretty much sums up the frustration that a lot of folks had.
This still doesn't answer what advantages mir offers, it just answers why Wayland was not chozen
Canonical blows at PR, if they were trying actively trying to woo people to their argument, they were doing an incredibly bad jobs at it. Now I get, they're developers and they don't need to be disturbed with BS like, "Hey! Why you doing this thing Canonical? Why you no just use Wayland?" etc. However, Canonical could have easily stepped in and really done some outreach to help people get behind their brand, which they sort of did; I know Jono Bacon did a whole lot of outreach and he was pretty damn amazing at it. I personally don't think Ubuntu was the same when he left but that's seriously just me, I think. However, the point was that Canonical constantly wasn't always forthcoming about their plans and it really got heated as the infamous "Not Invented Here" argument really took them like a California wildfire. NIH basically took everything that they were working on and twisted it into a conspiracy theory of how this was all a splintering of pure bred Linux (for whatever that means).
You take that crazy NIH mentality and add it a touch of salt from people thinking that Canonical was "M$" in disguise, or they were some young upstarts (ha! I made myself laugh with upstart) that didn't understand the philosophy of Unix, there were a few more crazy notions out there but I think those two covered a lot but I digress. You take all that fervor and combine it with Canonical's lack of touching base and at times actively retreating from addressing this and it basically was a fire no one was putting out.
Now I'll say that initially Canonical did try to stick the olive branch out there, but they got a first degree burn and basically said never again (ish, but mostly just never really said anything outside their circle so it was mostly a "well we're just not going to talk to them anymore"), only later to see themselves on the spit over some coals. I don't think Canonical did anything wrong per se but FOSS seems to be a different world of thinking of software purity. That purity comes in about a billion different flavors but they range from RMS grade "open source or nothing" to RedHat grade "we are the community work with us or become an outsider." I think Canonical just simply pissed off enough of those groups to finally reach a tipping point where it became mainstream to piss on Ubuntu.
I will say this, the different communities in the FOSS world are highly ideological and that's helped them to a point, but we are reaching the top of the curve where that helps and moving into the part where it begins to start hurting. At some point these multitude of little tribes and what not are just going to have to let go of the notion of "pure bred" Linux and realize the world is changing. Things like Wayland, systemd, GNOME3, and so on are things that exist and be it that they conform to what that group thinks is good or not, they'll just have to accept the world the way it is or get busy on the alternative. However, a lot of folks seem to be content with either purify with fire or apathetically stating, "get thicker ski
In anything, we're going to find everything not to do before we find what we should do. IoT is no different. Not everything is made to be IoT but damn if we won't trying it till it's a dead horse.
That language? The language that explicitly excludes redacted personal information covered by other statutory requirements from the public disclosure requirements? The PII that is required to be removed by this section of the law:
If you think part b means nondisclosure then you lack an understand of what nondiscretionary actually means legally.
Nondiscretionary relates to budgets not information.
(C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.
However, while you state section C in paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 moves on to state.
(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.
Again, while the language in (1)(C) feels like it would provide privacy, that's wholly dependent on the guidance that's given as stated in (2). But more so, PL 95-155 indicates in (6)(b) that
Grants made by the Aministrator under this section shall be subject to the following limitations:
Those limitation in the original law are just three but amended by PL 96-569 and made bound to Congressional approval via discretionary assignment as such. That is made clear in section three of the original law.
Appropriations made pursuant to the authority provided in section 2 of this Act shall remain available for obligation for expenditure, or for the obligation and expenditure, for such period or periods as may be specified in the Acts making such appropriations.
That means guidance for the enforcement of HR 1430 (1)(C) as indicated by (2) in HR 1430 is pursuant to the rules outlined in 42 USC 4363 as given in PL 95-155, which ultimately is Congressional consent to what that guidance would be. That obviously cannot run afoul of 42USC 1320 or 45CFR Part 162 but Congress may mandate disclosure as indicate by PL 114-38 under Title 26 when pursuant to discretionary matters of Federal employee.
In short Congress has the right to unveil anyone or anything that has tax payer dollars attached to it. They also have the right to change the guidance granted to the EPA under the limitations of section six of the original law under this bill. That means scientist will need to lawyer up to ensure that they are in full compliance of the law as outlined by subsection 1395 under the same title.
Doctor's make it look easy because an industry had to grow up around this law to ensure that compliance could be met. Scientist taking medical information would thus need the same requirements but since they're researching and not having the person actually come to them, it get a lot stickier. It would actually be easier if people who felt they had topics covered by Section 4 of 4363 related illness went to researchers as then the burden could easily fall under 1378 part d and like I said, who knows, the path might get smoothed over if such things start becoming normal. But that is not how it is done today and it seems that tying the entire process to budgetary procedures in the House is a sham way of saying, we can delay you if we don't like what you are doing.
All of that affects peer review. Yes, research should be peer reviewed, no one is saying is shouldn't. What I am saying is that researcher are less likely to publish if they feel that doing so will get their asses sued into oblivion. The law so makes that a reality in section (2) by means of section 3 in the original law. Congress can easily tie anything granted under section 4 to discretionary requirements. HR 1430 further
HR1430 amends 42 USC 4363 sec 6b paragraph two adds the following.
(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.
By all means you can look up 42USC 1320 and 45CFR Part 162 to see some of the process that would be required by paragraph two here. This would also seem to give the administrators some ability to setup a rule making process so lone as it ran parallel to established law.
Also, just FYI, there's a thing called Google, you should try it.
The problem isn't scrutiny. The EPA also has to deal with medical issues that arise from environmental issues. The problem is there's currently a law that restricts medical information being handed out in a manner that agrees with the language of this proposal. Simply put, it would be impossible for the EPA to make rules on certain issues without running afoul of confidentiality laws, but that's really simplifying the process that they are outlining. There's ways to get it all to mesh well but those methods can take several years of legal paperwork which basically means that scientist will need to get lawyers at the ready should they decided to publish anything that *might* be peer reviewed.
This isn't a law hoping to add more scrutiny, this is a law to make scientific research take longer than a two term president before it even hits the peer review stage. The idea is that if science starts looking like it might hurt an industry, on the next presidential cycle, the opposing party can get someone in that will defund the whole thing, thus delaying it another four to eight years. It's entire purpose is to lengthen the process to outlandish time frames, that Congress in all of it's slow to react to anything, will have time to mount a political opposition to.
So yeah, taking a two year research project and extending it to something to the tune of twenty years isn't something I'd be so receptive to. However, it is worth pointing out, that the constant defunding of science in the US will just ultimately push scientist to find funds elsewhere. There is no shortage of nations willing to pay top dollar for people who can innovate. The US isn't anywhere near the tipping point, but we're not going in a direction that really encourages researchers to learn here and more importantly *stay* here. A lot of folks in science could not care less about politics and would greatly like it for Congress to bind it to being political. Basically tying research to Presidential schedules runs counter to that whole idea.
But who knows, maybe the whole legal process will become streamlines with zero butt-hurt changes from Congress along the way and lawyers and scientist will be in good company and all of the road blocks that I mentioned will never come to pass, who knows!?
So often people say this kind of crap about water and the **ENTIRE** point is water that is usable! It takes energy to make random source of water into water that we would call "drinking" water or water we would give to cattle, etc. Water doesn't just magically revert back into "usable" water once it is consumed. Granted that right now the major pusher for recycling water is the sun energy via evaporation. However, then we're at the whims of where the water falls and when. So we either have to get better at using the water when it randomly hits the ground (large collection pits and storage systems), or we need to get vastly better at moving water that's already hit the ground (national pipe work for moving water all over the US), or some combination of both.
Same problem can be said for wind power, we're just hoping that the wind is randomly blowing in some section of the planet we have mills in, but the plus side of that is the energy we generate from the random spots wind can be easily moved around on power lines. There isn't an easy moving around for water at the current moment. So while yes the absolute amount of water on the planet hasn't changed, the amount of energy it will take to get it back to the form it came from is high, but we don't notice it since we mostly rely on the free energy from the sun to take care of it and hope all of the plus and negatives just wash out in the end. At the rate aquifers are being drained versus the rate at which they can be refilled by nature, were in serious negative territory. Nature just doesn't move as fast as industry can produce. The reason we still stay afloat is because nature had a few million years on us to build those reserves.
Well, in case of meat production — or indeed any other Earth-bound activity — no water is lost. Zero. Nada. So, what is the quoted statement supposed to mean?
We are never going to run out of water in an absolute sense, that's just stupid. But we will run out of economically viable water, that's the entire point. When water becomes too expensive to actually buy/refine/return back into a usable form/whatever, it won't matter how much absolute volume of water is on this planet, you will have no access to it unless you have enough money for it. The same is true for crude oil. This planet will never have zero mL of oil on it, ever. Thinking otherwise is ignoring how absolutely massive the amount of crude oil on this planet is. However, we are quickly running low on economically viable crude oil. At some point, oil will become so expensive that the majority of people will choose another option or they'll be up a shit creek without a paddle. The entire point of anything is to try and get ahead of the curve so you don't find yourself on that creek.
Yes, parent said all of this already in their comment, but I feel that if it isn't S-P-E-L-L-E-D out, that some folks might not get it. We're past the point in which nature can resupply water sources as fast as we use them. We either need to resupply those sources or we need to get better at using the sources, because not doing either of those is slowly going to increase the price of everything that depends on it and for water that's a lot of things.
Wait isn't the process for sodium and chloride separation by electrolysis expensive by itself, and hence the reason we mostly use the Solvay process? Additionally, the Solvay process creates by-products that have no current use. Actually I think that's the reason Onondaga Lake is a superfund site today because they just kept dumping the by-product in the lake.
Do we have a clean, cheap way to separate sodium and chloride? Because I'm not coming up with one in my mind, but it's been forever since I studied chemistry.
I'm just astounded at the number of folks on Slashdot pointing out "these things have been long time in the works, Trump played no part in this!" That's some USA Today level commenting. Yes, we all know, anything good and the President-elect takes credit, anything bad and the President-elect places blame on the current President. This play is about as old as all get out.
If anyone is on here stating the obvious thinking they somehow are revealing the lie, well my assumption is that the Slashdot users are a little more intelligent to not fall for the "look at what I did" game. If there's anything to note about this, is that it is starting to look like the majority of jobs that Trump aims to "bring back" to the USA are going to be low waged, we're missing one piece in the automation process, jobs that aren't going to on large scales do much for the economy. In order for Trump to make good on the infrastructure changes that he's aiming for and the tax cuts that he's aiming for, he's banking on 4% GDP growth (Note - From rightest leaning website I could find carrying it.) for every year he's in office. You can head over here to see what's been the going rate of change. You'll see lots of ups and downs that average over a year's span don't come out to 4%, ever.
If the old Trumpster fire thinks he's going to get to his goal with repeating over and over the 8000 of jobs that are being indicated here, he's dead wrong. They're jobs, yes. However they do not pay enough, to move the needle much. Even if this was repeated every day dude was in office. Just to note, that Carrier deal that Trump thumps, I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt and call it 1000, we'd need roughly five of those per day for every day he's in office for the next four years to reach the GDP growth he's aiming for, if we strictly keep it to trying to grow the economy.
If we're talking traditional farming, then yes, you are correct. However, I feel the idea is to not just stick to traditional farming. I can see specifically engineered plants growing much better in a climate controlled warehouse environments than out in the pastures. The plants might be more engineered to use gray water from the city, be better at using the specific spectrum of light being used in the warehouse, can better use the higher level of CO2 in the city than a regular plant, etc... I will say that everything about this though is still in the baby steps stage. I'm doubtful we will see any meaningful results of urban/vertical/whatever farming until several decades from now.
But if we just look at it right now, there's nothing incorrect about your statement, and there's always the possibility that this happy marriage of GMO and industrial farming is just pipe dreaming, but that's the risk in anything that is relatively new. So maybe I'm just a hopeless idealist but I think it's early in the game to just completely dismiss what's going on here.
Trump won the GOP nod for a variety of reasons, but chief among them was his non-traditional and pretty much contempt for the entire process. He came off as the personification of Howard Beale, which after eight years is exactly what many Tea party splinters in the GOP wanted. They didn't want rationality, calm cool collective approach to upending the last eight years of the Democratic dictatorship. They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take anymore. Fast forward, once Trump got the GOP nod, the second phase was just to come off as less evil than Hillary Clinton.
For all the vile that came from Trump during the campaign, the continual hammering that kept coming in on Clinton, pretty much sealed the deal. Quick aside, yes that's what it means to be a weak FBI leader, if you get scared that withholding information till after an election might look bad, that makes you weak. Policy is policy and while I'm a big Snowden supporter, you still follow policy if the worse case is PR. Break it all you like though if you're in a moral dilemma. Director Comey's fear that there would be some backlash if he withheld that they found new emails on former Rep Weiner's system is one that directors need to be above. No matter what guy did, someone was going to come out angry, so best bet *would have been* to work on fact finding and reveal when the *facts* were actually there. As opposed to the chicken shit stirring the pot that he actually did. That's my two cents, end quick tangent. A lot of folks were convinced that even if this lady didn't indeed make millions doing favors for warlords, and her husband didn't vigorously and regularly rape children, she's still *the system* and for no logical reason what-so-ever or very weak reasons we shouldn't like *the system* because everything that isn't *the system* (the anti-system) can't be worse than *the system*. And that's where we're at right now. There's still a lot of folks who think, "The anti-system isn't going to be great, but at least it isn't going to be as bad as the system." It literally came down to the public trying to choose the lesser of two evils, and the public at large is not exactly the most ideal way a nation would want to choose that.
Now I don't credit Trump with the wherewithal to actively play the public. His Presidency is built on a combination of an incredibly angry population and sheer dumb luck that all his non-policy kept his nose slightly above Killary. Trump never hit on points or policy that anyone in the rust belt could latch onto, but people there knew the situation was bad, they were angry, and focusing on NAFTA gave them something to channel that into. A part of me thinks that Trump knows he didn't make it into the office on a concrete quality. That he got by simply because a lot of people disliked Hillary more. I think that upsets him and sends him into his Twitter frenzies. Either way, we're going to find out if the anti-system is indeed a better way or not now. At the moment, it looks like a hot mess. Who knows, the entire process might be like clay and the next four years serves to slowly shape up a new GOP with a populace tint, or it could be about as productive as running into a brick wall over and over again. I'm certainly interested to find out, but I'll still hold a lot of skepticism. As much as we hate politics, it's still a thing that requires a bit of knowledge to do right just like many other professions. So this ragtag group of folks lead by a guy who has zero experience at this, sounds like one of those wonderful underdog stories, but the cynic in me just feels like there is going to be a lot of "fake it till you make it" going on.
Your comment really hits on a lot of this. People are angry, people feel the government is incredibly ineffective, and they're tired of the crap that's been going on. So they're willing to take a huge gamble with some serious stakes. Nothing that we can't come back from, but definitely something that not done right is going to sting. Trump became the alternative because of his Jerry Springer like approach to getting mad and channeling other people's anger. Trump became the President because he was the alternative.
Yeap, I've been hearing "ooohh noooo!!!" On many other boards, pretty much because everyone keeps missing that the original UI will still be there and is the default. You literally have to opt-in for one of the new UIs. Distros will be setting which one of the UIs is the default option out the gate, lacking that, the current UI will be the default for the foreseeable future, unless there's some massive push to change it otherwise. However, I think it is disappointing that people are missing what I felt was the arguably more cooler thing. The UI is getting a port to Glade. There being only four UIs to offer isn't a hard limit, so (and this is the idealistic person in me talking here, not the realistic person who knows everyone will call it dumb) potential we could start seeing even more UIs being offered by the community. The path to do so has become, arguably, easier now.
Perhaps this trend explains the mediocrity of today's products.
I don't think it covers all of it, but it plays a role in it.
Companies have moved past seeing IT as some magical resource and see it about the same way most first world nations look at a toilet. Unless it's really shitty, everyone just expects it to be everywhere they go and function good enough to get the job done. There a few out there that understand that it's something that plays a role in life three to five time a day and that when shit is serious, you're really going to enjoy having a top of the line as opposed to a "just good enough" model.
Well the Constitution vests the entire power of the Executive into the President and Vice-President, and they two alone run it.
Now of course, not even the people who founded the US thought two people could run the entire country, which is where Article 2 Section 2 comes into play. However, there is a stipulation. The President, if he or she wants to "delegate" a part of their executive power, they must do so with consent of Congress. The President just can't say, "Oh this person is going to be responsible for X, Y, and Z." Congress has to approve that handing of power over to someone.
Now I'm going to skip a whole lot of other stuff in the Executive branch like commissions and groups and "defer" actions and what-not. But those exist as well and have other rules and are established via a whole slew of different means. They all play vital roles in the grand scheme of things and you should remember that me skipping all of that, makes this a gross simplification. I know hate to simplify, but it's a lot and I'll just have to take the hits I'm sure I'll get like "Oh you forgot!". So just going to apologize for such a bastard version ahead of time here.
So anyway, these departments, the President gets to say when he needs one and Congress whips up a law establishing the official transfer of that specific power to such and such department (at least that's the extremely simplified version of that). Each department has a senior officer who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, that's the Cabinet member (there also a whole lot of other ones within each department that have to get confirmed, I'm skipping them but they exist as well). That guy or gal gets to call the shots in the department on how that department is to carry out their function. The people the senior staff hires are Federal employees and do not require confirmation. Federal employees can be fired by the senior staff. However, Congress has passed laws about Federal employees and set up rules for when they can and cannot be fired.
Without getting too detailed, it boils down to you can only fire a Federal employee for "good reason". Now some would cite unions elbowing their grubby noses into the mix for that, some would cite holy whistleblowers and how they saved us for that, the real story is that it's a mix of all of the above really and makes for great history classes. Now what is "good reason" in some cases is pretty clear, you can't fire someone for exposing theft or corruption, in a lot of other cases it's less clear and requires a judge to step in, cue the Judicial branch. What Trump wants to do is remove some protections that Congress has given Federal employees. Now no one knows which specific rules Trump will target but it was made clear that he wants to "open up" the firing process to be a bit more liberal than it currently is. And based on the flavor of Congress/President mix that you have, those rules have changed a lot. Typically when Congress and the President are the same flavor you get the most changing in rules.
What I think is interesting (some might say horrifying) is the proposal to fire people whose ideology doesn't match with the current administration. Now Trump hasn't said that exactly, but handing out questionnaires like the one talked about isn't building a lot of confidence. Typically, a department wants to rely on their staff to make informed decisions (which in theory is why some higher up employees in the Federal government but not the senior staff can go tell the President to get bent [key words here "in theory"]), have those bubble up to the senior staff, and then have the senior staff pass those on to either rule making or the Presidential consideration. If someone is in the department who doesn't agree with the majority ideology, typically their ideas just don't get "bubbled" upwards. Firing people because their ideology doesn't match up is just setting a department up for revolving door syndrome. Additionally, not having good professionals in your department
He can't fire an entire department without violating Civil Service laws that protects workers from politics.
You are absolutely right and if everyone thinks back to the RNC convention, Trump was not shy in stating that he's gunning to reform those rights and that he'll be placing them into his reduction of government spending and waste program. Now I don't think it's likely for Congress to grant the President this new power he'll all but for sure be seeking, but with the way Trump is playing politics, who the hell knows? They very well just might just do it, I mean we're giving him the nuclear launch codes, what's being able to remove dissent from the ranks in comparison? I mean, he might as well go the whole nine yards and get the 22nd amendment repealed as well, just for shits and giggles.
But yeah in all seriousness, Trump has had a few words on Federal employee protections. I'm skeptical he'll get it, but I'm not saying the chances are zero in this climate.
Good point and brings up one of the rally cries Trump has made during the campaign. Reform of Federal employee rights. He's not been shy one bit about it either. He intends to remove the protections many of the civil servants enjoy under his soon to be purposed "Reduction on Government Waste and Spending" program. So yeah, they are protected like you said, but Trump is literally gunning to remove that very thing and fire anyone who isn't an ass kisser. So great point you bring up but already addressed. This proposal from Trump to Congress is all but a forgone conclusion. The bigger question will be if Congress will give the President this new power. Who knows, but if anything is for sure, it's that there will be massive amount of spin from every direction when it finally hits committee.
That's a mapping issue and you've hit on a weak spot with self driving cars. However, that spot is only weak initially. Once lawmakers realize that they can pass laws that force metadata to be made to maps or hell create standard maps for each state that the car has to accept, lawmakers will jump on it like flies on shit. We need to create a "no pickup" tag, we need to create a "5 MPH between 6am and 8am" tag, we need a "no taxis in this area between 3am and 5am" tag, and you can only imagine how "creative" lawmakers might eventually get.
So yeah, if the problem you speak of makes you ill, just wait till you see what the cure is.
People who actually believe it are in the minority and are simpletons or mentally ill.
Yeah the problem with that, is even if that value is 1% or even 0.1%. That's a lot flipping people who suddenly have a reason to open fire on unsuspecting folks. That's not to say that they weren't already unhinged, it's just, why the heck do some feel the need to toss matches into lakes of gasoline? The lake of gasoline is bad enough as is, and yes most matches just get extinguished because they never hit a vapor before hitting the liquid. Still though, why rock the boat for the simple reason of f'ing with everyone? Where's the fun in it? I obviously will never understand 4chan.
Once you reach a certain threshold of users, common carrier rules should apply.
That sounds like an issue of having clear rules. By all means might I redirect you to the US Congress website? I'm pretty sure that if the people who said they're tired of rules with the clarity of mud actually did something about that issue we might start getting lawmakers that actually thought out legislation rather than the typical knee jerk. But both the issue of people doing something about it and intelligent lawmakers are just wishful thinking.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I am still trying to figure out what real problem it solves.
I see systemd as the perfect compliment to Linux cgroups. It makes managing containers a lot better than how say docker does things. But if you like docker or systemd, I think we can all agree that the way containers are done now, versus sysvinit + chroot methods, is vastly better. However, if sticking with the old sysv stuff helps anyone sleep, then go for it. However, I remember doing the whole httpd inside a chroot and remember the headache it caused if one of your boxes out of a 100 was hung up and trying to hunt it down... systemd or docker make managing thousands of systems a whole lot easier.
I'm going to start where a lot of people don't usually start. The actual people who maintain X11. They hate the code base, they just simply don't want to deal with the tangled mess that it is. Seriously go look at a dependency graph of just the xserver or a slightly higher level view of the state of things. Point, no one wants to maintain this mess. Anyone feeling frisky in doing so is strongly encouraged to do so, but the majority of developers who have worked on this in the heyday have long since left the building. The sheer pool size of people working on X is low and fresh blood in the development pool is best described as anemic. Fewer developers working on one project and more on another project pretty much seals the deal on the direction. Arguments of X being better falls on non-existent ears. You want to talk to an X developer? Head over to Wayland, that's where you'll find a lot of them.
Next in line is that X is ineffective at one of the things that it's suppose to do, draw stuff on your screen. (Not even going to touch multi-monitor, sleep, touch input, etc all which have had extensive hacking to get it working and thus resulting in patches of code with serious bus factor one issues.) X11 lacks pretty much everything we take for granted in a modern GUI. Want anti-alias text? Well X11 doesn't do that. Want the concept of an alpha-channel? Not present in X11. Quite literally, X11 does nothing in the way of anything that say KDE, GNOME, Unity, Cinnamon, or whoever wants. Instead, your chosen toolkit is using a library that builds in memory the bits that need to be drawn and if your xserver supports RENDER, your toolkit just gives a stream of bits over to X11 via that method, and X just forwards it on to either the card or to a compositor, which by the way X11 doesn't have a concept of, hence the reason you need one external to the xserver. At some point someone said, if every toolkit is just building bits by themselves and then having X forward it on, why not just cut out the middle man? Why have this extra layer that we keep having to build ad-hoc extensions for? (RENDER, XDamage, RANDR, XFixes **yes literally an extension to fix stuff but mostlly to turn a lot of old X11 stuff off.) All of these wonderful extensions are in reality short circuiting old cruft in a code-ugly fashion. Add in new complexities being added to video cards, functionality that's difficult to eventually get working, and yeah everyone is ready to put the old girl out to pasture. X11's lack of so many things is a roadblock to tapping your card's fully ability, which is why most of the time we're happily ignorant of all of the by-passing of huge parts of the core of an xserver, with the prolific set of extensions that come automatically built into your distro. (which is why a lot of folks never notice and just think that this is the way X was built, but nothing further from the truth could be said. Try building an xserver from source.)
Now let me move on to your points
Network transparency. X11 has it. Wayland doesn't.
If you are using X11 over ssh, you aren't using X11's network transparency. What you are doing is streaming pixels across ssh, but you aren't using anything remotely looking like core X11 protocol. On the remote side, Cario, Qt, Mutter, or someone is drawing pixels and then that gets wrapped into a generic X11 package and sent to you to open up and then have your computer decide what to do with the newly received pixels. There's no commands like "Window A is currently at location x,y. It has a button at rx, ry relative to the top-left corner of the parent widget, blah blah blah." Nope, it's just "here's pixel one, here's pixel two, here's pixel three..." There's no distinction in X between a button in an application running on a remote server and a picture
shouldn't mean they can ignore wasteful spending on a small scale.
Irrational argument #14 Value is at times a subjective thing, what you don't see value in to you, can hold immense value to someone else. Especially considering the point being talked about, that for a lot of people there's just nothing to gain from the information. People can do cost/benefit analysis and what not to justify/quantify those things, but ultimately it just boils down to what sounds better in the end. I digress though because its value isn't something I'd like to talk about. Their argument that we should cut it because it is a waste in spending is seriously short sighted when compared to the billions that are spent elsewhere, be them of value or not. The argument that it is useless is subjective, but the argument that this saves us money is dumb. So yeah, given the scale, $70k is meaningless, trying to argue it isn't is just silly.
An official said it would save $70,000 through 2020 and that the removed disclosures, salaries and appointments would be integrated into WhiteHouse.gov in the coming months.
If they want to say, "It was a wasteful program because it gave so little back to the public" by all means, they should just go with that. The end. No further explanation required. But adding the argument that we need to nickle and dime our budget of several trillions of dollars, that's like NYC planners doing zoning surveys based on ant hill locations. I get that it wasn't their lead argument, but someone just adding in that it saves money is really silly. So parent has a point, why even bring up the savings? They're totally meaningless. You don't like the program, then just cut it and move on. There's no need for them to resort to silly dollar figures to justify their position. It just looks silly even bringing it up. The whole security thing they talked about is enough and is subjective enough to be the main point of debate. Trying to state cost savings in their argument or in this thread is nonsensical. So before any more of us (myself included) make a mountain out of a mole hill, let's look past the $70k before we get too tightly wound up about that figure, just saying.
Still nothing but respect for you all.
So is Ubuntu Linux effectively a dead project/distribution at this point?
Wow, hyperbole much? There's a lot of very profitable things with Ubuntu Linux and now they're going to focus on them. That your favorite part of "things Canonical" is being paired back doesn't mean the whole is dead.
A shakeup of this magnitude can't be good for the project's health.
This really makes me worry about the health of the Linux ecosystem as a whole.
Um, Linux is doing quite fine really. I think you're thinking Linux Desktop = All of Linux, which is an incorrect statement.
Between the PulseAudio, GNOME 3, Wayland, and systemd disasters, we Linux users have seen so much turmoil these past several years.
Okay at some point everyone is just going to have to move past this dead horse, it's turned into a jelly like substance from all the beating. All of these projects have evolved from the infantile stage they were once in, maybe some of the critics should too?
If the Ubuntu project falters, the Linux ecosystem will be getting even less diverse.
Even now there are fewer and fewer differences between Fedora and Debian.
The problem isn't that the ecosystem is less diverse, it's that your definition of the ecosystem is highly limited. If we limit all of Linux to just those two distros and their derivatives, then yeah, there's not much separating them, but news flash, there wasn't much separating them before.
Even the package management is almost identical now, with the main difference being whether we type "dnf" or "apt"!
(facepalm) Yes on the surface they look similar, so quick question do you scream this when talking about tools like sed, tar, diff? The whole point is to offer somewhat similar commands to make the life of admins a whole lot easier. However, if you look inside of dnf or apt you'll see that they operate differently on how they build internal databases, how they manage memory, etc. (since Slashdot loves car references) just because all cars have a gas and brake pedal doesn't mean all cars have the same engine.
This lack of diversity has resulted in stagnation.
A lot of people think diversity = innovation and that's not an exactly true statement. I think it should be obvious why that is. Additionally, if anything Linux in a broad sense is far from stagnant. Again, I think your statement comes from a limit of perspective to just the surface of a Linux Desktop. Even in Linux Desktop world a lot is going on under the hood. Not every release needs to include 50000 bells and whistles.
I really want Linux to succeed, but all of these developments leave me feeling very uneasy.
No. You want Linux Desktop to become the dominate choice and the fact is that's not happening, ever. People "computer" differently now a days and there are blends of "Linux" so to say that already address that space. RedHat or Ubuntu or whoever, might move into the workstation or they might not. But the home PC market is having a rough enough time trying to convince people to be in the "home PC market". Few if any are worrying about "home Windows market" versus "home Linux market" because they're just trying to address the core tenet here of actually getting PCs sold. So stop worrying about something that's not going to happen and be happy about the dozens of other ways that Linux has dominated in several different markets outside the PC.
"it'll mean closed-source graphics drivers will have to support 2 display servers, and they may not want to do that"
Okay. That's sort of true, but one of the big things was that Canonical from word start seemed hostile to the Wayland community. Now that's not saying a lot because as we all know a lot of communities in the FOSS world are pretty hostile by nature. So I'm not saying that justifies the hate that went down, but it play a big role.
Here's a link from the Ask Ubuntu site and the first comment under the accepted answer pretty much sums up the frustration that a lot of folks had.
This still doesn't answer what advantages mir offers, it just answers why Wayland was not chozen
Canonical blows at PR, if they were trying actively trying to woo people to their argument, they were doing an incredibly bad jobs at it. Now I get, they're developers and they don't need to be disturbed with BS like, "Hey! Why you doing this thing Canonical? Why you no just use Wayland?" etc. However, Canonical could have easily stepped in and really done some outreach to help people get behind their brand, which they sort of did; I know Jono Bacon did a whole lot of outreach and he was pretty damn amazing at it. I personally don't think Ubuntu was the same when he left but that's seriously just me, I think. However, the point was that Canonical constantly wasn't always forthcoming about their plans and it really got heated as the infamous "Not Invented Here" argument really took them like a California wildfire. NIH basically took everything that they were working on and twisted it into a conspiracy theory of how this was all a splintering of pure bred Linux (for whatever that means).
You take that crazy NIH mentality and add it a touch of salt from people thinking that Canonical was "M$" in disguise, or they were some young upstarts (ha! I made myself laugh with upstart) that didn't understand the philosophy of Unix, there were a few more crazy notions out there but I think those two covered a lot but I digress. You take all that fervor and combine it with Canonical's lack of touching base and at times actively retreating from addressing this and it basically was a fire no one was putting out.
Now I'll say that initially Canonical did try to stick the olive branch out there, but they got a first degree burn and basically said never again (ish, but mostly just never really said anything outside their circle so it was mostly a "well we're just not going to talk to them anymore"), only later to see themselves on the spit over some coals. I don't think Canonical did anything wrong per se but FOSS seems to be a different world of thinking of software purity. That purity comes in about a billion different flavors but they range from RMS grade "open source or nothing" to RedHat grade "we are the community work with us or become an outsider." I think Canonical just simply pissed off enough of those groups to finally reach a tipping point where it became mainstream to piss on Ubuntu.
I will say this, the different communities in the FOSS world are highly ideological and that's helped them to a point, but we are reaching the top of the curve where that helps and moving into the part where it begins to start hurting. At some point these multitude of little tribes and what not are just going to have to let go of the notion of "pure bred" Linux and realize the world is changing. Things like Wayland, systemd, GNOME3, and so on are things that exist and be it that they conform to what that group thinks is good or not, they'll just have to accept the world the way it is or get busy on the alternative. However, a lot of folks seem to be content with either purify with fire or apathetically stating, "get thicker ski
Why are we going down the road?
In anything, we're going to find everything not to do before we find what we should do. IoT is no different. Not everything is made to be IoT but damn if we won't trying it till it's a dead horse.
That language? The language that explicitly excludes redacted personal information covered by other statutory requirements from the public disclosure requirements? The PII that is required to be removed by this section of the law:
If you think part b means nondisclosure then you lack an understand of what nondiscretionary actually means legally.
Nondiscretionary relates to budgets not information.
(C) publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results, except that any personally identifiable information, trade secrets, or commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential, shall be redacted prior to public availability.
However, while you state section C in paragraph 1. Paragraph 2 moves on to state.
(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.
Again, while the language in (1)(C) feels like it would provide privacy, that's wholly dependent on the guidance that's given as stated in (2). But more so, PL 95-155 indicates in (6)(b) that
Grants made by the Aministrator under this section shall be subject to the following limitations:
Those limitation in the original law are just three but amended by PL 96-569 and made bound to Congressional approval via discretionary assignment as such. That is made clear in section three of the original law.
Appropriations made pursuant to the authority provided in section 2 of this Act shall remain available for obligation for expenditure, or for the obligation and expenditure, for such period or periods as may be specified in the Acts making such appropriations.
That means guidance for the enforcement of HR 1430 (1)(C) as indicated by (2) in HR 1430 is pursuant to the rules outlined in 42 USC 4363 as given in PL 95-155, which ultimately is Congressional consent to what that guidance would be. That obviously cannot run afoul of 42USC 1320 or 45CFR Part 162 but Congress may mandate disclosure as indicate by PL 114-38 under Title 26 when pursuant to discretionary matters of Federal employee.
In short Congress has the right to unveil anyone or anything that has tax payer dollars attached to it. They also have the right to change the guidance granted to the EPA under the limitations of section six of the original law under this bill. That means scientist will need to lawyer up to ensure that they are in full compliance of the law as outlined by subsection 1395 under the same title.
Doctor's make it look easy because an industry had to grow up around this law to ensure that compliance could be met. Scientist taking medical information would thus need the same requirements but since they're researching and not having the person actually come to them, it get a lot stickier. It would actually be easier if people who felt they had topics covered by Section 4 of 4363 related illness went to researchers as then the burden could easily fall under 1378 part d and like I said, who knows, the path might get smoothed over if such things start becoming normal. But that is not how it is done today and it seems that tying the entire process to budgetary procedures in the House is a sham way of saying, we can delay you if we don't like what you are doing.
All of that affects peer review. Yes, research should be peer reviewed, no one is saying is shouldn't. What I am saying is that researcher are less likely to publish if they feel that doing so will get their asses sued into oblivion. The law so makes that a reality in section (2) by means of section 3 in the original law. Congress can easily tie anything granted under section 4 to discretionary requirements. HR 1430 further
Anything the EPA can view, we can view.
That's incorrect. That's incorrect for every department in the executive.
HR1430 amends 42 USC 4363 sec 6b paragraph two adds the following.
(2) The redacted information described in paragraph (1)(C) shall be disclosed to a person only after such person signs a written confidentiality agreement with the Administrator, subject to guidance to be developed by the Administrator.
By all means you can look up 42USC 1320 and 45CFR Part 162 to see some of the process that would be required by paragraph two here. This would also seem to give the administrators some ability to setup a rule making process so lone as it ran parallel to established law.
Also, just FYI, there's a thing called Google, you should try it.
The problem isn't scrutiny. The EPA also has to deal with medical issues that arise from environmental issues. The problem is there's currently a law that restricts medical information being handed out in a manner that agrees with the language of this proposal. Simply put, it would be impossible for the EPA to make rules on certain issues without running afoul of confidentiality laws, but that's really simplifying the process that they are outlining. There's ways to get it all to mesh well but those methods can take several years of legal paperwork which basically means that scientist will need to get lawyers at the ready should they decided to publish anything that *might* be peer reviewed.
This isn't a law hoping to add more scrutiny, this is a law to make scientific research take longer than a two term president before it even hits the peer review stage. The idea is that if science starts looking like it might hurt an industry, on the next presidential cycle, the opposing party can get someone in that will defund the whole thing, thus delaying it another four to eight years. It's entire purpose is to lengthen the process to outlandish time frames, that Congress in all of it's slow to react to anything, will have time to mount a political opposition to.
So yeah, taking a two year research project and extending it to something to the tune of twenty years isn't something I'd be so receptive to. However, it is worth pointing out, that the constant defunding of science in the US will just ultimately push scientist to find funds elsewhere. There is no shortage of nations willing to pay top dollar for people who can innovate. The US isn't anywhere near the tipping point, but we're not going in a direction that really encourages researchers to learn here and more importantly *stay* here. A lot of folks in science could not care less about politics and would greatly like it for Congress to bind it to being political. Basically tying research to Presidential schedules runs counter to that whole idea.
But who knows, maybe the whole legal process will become streamlines with zero butt-hurt changes from Congress along the way and lawyers and scientist will be in good company and all of the road blocks that I mentioned will never come to pass, who knows!?
PARENT MUST BE VOTED HIGHER!!
So often people say this kind of crap about water and the **ENTIRE** point is water that is usable! It takes energy to make random source of water into water that we would call "drinking" water or water we would give to cattle, etc. Water doesn't just magically revert back into "usable" water once it is consumed. Granted that right now the major pusher for recycling water is the sun energy via evaporation. However, then we're at the whims of where the water falls and when. So we either have to get better at using the water when it randomly hits the ground (large collection pits and storage systems), or we need to get vastly better at moving water that's already hit the ground (national pipe work for moving water all over the US), or some combination of both.
Same problem can be said for wind power, we're just hoping that the wind is randomly blowing in some section of the planet we have mills in, but the plus side of that is the energy we generate from the random spots wind can be easily moved around on power lines. There isn't an easy moving around for water at the current moment. So while yes the absolute amount of water on the planet hasn't changed, the amount of energy it will take to get it back to the form it came from is high, but we don't notice it since we mostly rely on the free energy from the sun to take care of it and hope all of the plus and negatives just wash out in the end. At the rate aquifers are being drained versus the rate at which they can be refilled by nature, were in serious negative territory. Nature just doesn't move as fast as industry can produce. The reason we still stay afloat is because nature had a few million years on us to build those reserves.
Well, in case of meat production — or indeed any other Earth-bound activity — no water is lost. Zero. Nada. So, what is the quoted statement supposed to mean?
We are never going to run out of water in an absolute sense, that's just stupid. But we will run out of economically viable water, that's the entire point. When water becomes too expensive to actually buy/refine/return back into a usable form/whatever, it won't matter how much absolute volume of water is on this planet, you will have no access to it unless you have enough money for it. The same is true for crude oil. This planet will never have zero mL of oil on it, ever. Thinking otherwise is ignoring how absolutely massive the amount of crude oil on this planet is. However, we are quickly running low on economically viable crude oil. At some point, oil will become so expensive that the majority of people will choose another option or they'll be up a shit creek without a paddle. The entire point of anything is to try and get ahead of the curve so you don't find yourself on that creek.
Yes, parent said all of this already in their comment, but I feel that if it isn't S-P-E-L-L-E-D out, that some folks might not get it. We're past the point in which nature can resupply water sources as fast as we use them. We either need to resupply those sources or we need to get better at using the sources, because not doing either of those is slowly going to increase the price of everything that depends on it and for water that's a lot of things.
Wait isn't the process for sodium and chloride separation by electrolysis expensive by itself, and hence the reason we mostly use the Solvay process? Additionally, the Solvay process creates by-products that have no current use. Actually I think that's the reason Onondaga Lake is a superfund site today because they just kept dumping the by-product in the lake.
Do we have a clean, cheap way to separate sodium and chloride? Because I'm not coming up with one in my mind, but it's been forever since I studied chemistry.
I'm just astounded at the number of folks on Slashdot pointing out "these things have been long time in the works, Trump played no part in this!" That's some USA Today level commenting. Yes, we all know, anything good and the President-elect takes credit, anything bad and the President-elect places blame on the current President. This play is about as old as all get out.
If anyone is on here stating the obvious thinking they somehow are revealing the lie, well my assumption is that the Slashdot users are a little more intelligent to not fall for the "look at what I did" game. If there's anything to note about this, is that it is starting to look like the majority of jobs that Trump aims to "bring back" to the USA are going to be low waged, we're missing one piece in the automation process, jobs that aren't going to on large scales do much for the economy. In order for Trump to make good on the infrastructure changes that he's aiming for and the tax cuts that he's aiming for, he's banking on 4% GDP growth (Note - From rightest leaning website I could find carrying it.) for every year he's in office. You can head over here to see what's been the going rate of change. You'll see lots of ups and downs that average over a year's span don't come out to 4%, ever.
If the old Trumpster fire thinks he's going to get to his goal with repeating over and over the 8000 of jobs that are being indicated here, he's dead wrong. They're jobs, yes. However they do not pay enough, to move the needle much. Even if this was repeated every day dude was in office. Just to note, that Carrier deal that Trump thumps, I'll just give him the benefit of the doubt and call it 1000, we'd need roughly five of those per day for every day he's in office for the next four years to reach the GDP growth he's aiming for, if we strictly keep it to trying to grow the economy.
Cities are a terrible place to try to grow food.
If we're talking traditional farming, then yes, you are correct. However, I feel the idea is to not just stick to traditional farming. I can see specifically engineered plants growing much better in a climate controlled warehouse environments than out in the pastures. The plants might be more engineered to use gray water from the city, be better at using the specific spectrum of light being used in the warehouse, can better use the higher level of CO2 in the city than a regular plant, etc... I will say that everything about this though is still in the baby steps stage. I'm doubtful we will see any meaningful results of urban/vertical/whatever farming until several decades from now.
But if we just look at it right now, there's nothing incorrect about your statement, and there's always the possibility that this happy marriage of GMO and industrial farming is just pipe dreaming, but that's the risk in anything that is relatively new. So maybe I'm just a hopeless idealist but I think it's early in the game to just completely dismiss what's going on here.
So much this.
Trump won the GOP nod for a variety of reasons, but chief among them was his non-traditional and pretty much contempt for the entire process. He came off as the personification of Howard Beale, which after eight years is exactly what many Tea party splinters in the GOP wanted. They didn't want rationality, calm cool collective approach to upending the last eight years of the Democratic dictatorship. They were mad as hell and they weren't going to take anymore. Fast forward, once Trump got the GOP nod, the second phase was just to come off as less evil than Hillary Clinton.
For all the vile that came from Trump during the campaign, the continual hammering that kept coming in on Clinton, pretty much sealed the deal. Quick aside, yes that's what it means to be a weak FBI leader, if you get scared that withholding information till after an election might look bad, that makes you weak. Policy is policy and while I'm a big Snowden supporter, you still follow policy if the worse case is PR. Break it all you like though if you're in a moral dilemma. Director Comey's fear that there would be some backlash if he withheld that they found new emails on former Rep Weiner's system is one that directors need to be above. No matter what guy did, someone was going to come out angry, so best bet *would have been* to work on fact finding and reveal when the *facts* were actually there. As opposed to the chicken shit stirring the pot that he actually did. That's my two cents, end quick tangent. A lot of folks were convinced that even if this lady didn't indeed make millions doing favors for warlords, and her husband didn't vigorously and regularly rape children, she's still *the system* and for no logical reason what-so-ever or very weak reasons we shouldn't like *the system* because everything that isn't *the system* (the anti-system) can't be worse than *the system*. And that's where we're at right now. There's still a lot of folks who think, "The anti-system isn't going to be great, but at least it isn't going to be as bad as the system." It literally came down to the public trying to choose the lesser of two evils, and the public at large is not exactly the most ideal way a nation would want to choose that.
Now I don't credit Trump with the wherewithal to actively play the public. His Presidency is built on a combination of an incredibly angry population and sheer dumb luck that all his non-policy kept his nose slightly above Killary. Trump never hit on points or policy that anyone in the rust belt could latch onto, but people there knew the situation was bad, they were angry, and focusing on NAFTA gave them something to channel that into. A part of me thinks that Trump knows he didn't make it into the office on a concrete quality. That he got by simply because a lot of people disliked Hillary more. I think that upsets him and sends him into his Twitter frenzies. Either way, we're going to find out if the anti-system is indeed a better way or not now. At the moment, it looks like a hot mess. Who knows, the entire process might be like clay and the next four years serves to slowly shape up a new GOP with a populace tint, or it could be about as productive as running into a brick wall over and over again. I'm certainly interested to find out, but I'll still hold a lot of skepticism. As much as we hate politics, it's still a thing that requires a bit of knowledge to do right just like many other professions. So this ragtag group of folks lead by a guy who has zero experience at this, sounds like one of those wonderful underdog stories, but the cynic in me just feels like there is going to be a lot of "fake it till you make it" going on.
Your comment really hits on a lot of this. People are angry, people feel the government is incredibly ineffective, and they're tired of the crap that's been going on. So they're willing to take a huge gamble with some serious stakes. Nothing that we can't come back from, but definitely something that not done right is going to sting. Trump became the alternative because of his Jerry Springer like approach to getting mad and channeling other people's anger. Trump became the President because he was the alternative.
Yeap, I've been hearing "ooohh noooo!!!" On many other boards, pretty much because everyone keeps missing that the original UI will still be there and is the default. You literally have to opt-in for one of the new UIs. Distros will be setting which one of the UIs is the default option out the gate, lacking that, the current UI will be the default for the foreseeable future, unless there's some massive push to change it otherwise. However, I think it is disappointing that people are missing what I felt was the arguably more cooler thing. The UI is getting a port to Glade. There being only four UIs to offer isn't a hard limit, so (and this is the idealistic person in me talking here, not the realistic person who knows everyone will call it dumb) potential we could start seeing even more UIs being offered by the community. The path to do so has become, arguably, easier now.
Perhaps this trend explains the mediocrity of today's products.
I don't think it covers all of it, but it plays a role in it.
Companies have moved past seeing IT as some magical resource and see it about the same way most first world nations look at a toilet. Unless it's really shitty, everyone just expects it to be everywhere they go and function good enough to get the job done. There a few out there that understand that it's something that plays a role in life three to five time a day and that when shit is serious, you're really going to enjoy having a top of the line as opposed to a "just good enough" model.
Humans suck. Don't be naive.
Humans tend to over simplify complex topics (insert sith/absolutes parallel). Don't be so cynical though.
Well the Constitution vests the entire power of the Executive into the President and Vice-President, and they two alone run it.
Now of course, not even the people who founded the US thought two people could run the entire country, which is where Article 2 Section 2 comes into play. However, there is a stipulation. The President, if he or she wants to "delegate" a part of their executive power, they must do so with consent of Congress. The President just can't say, "Oh this person is going to be responsible for X, Y, and Z." Congress has to approve that handing of power over to someone.
Now I'm going to skip a whole lot of other stuff in the Executive branch like commissions and groups and "defer" actions and what-not. But those exist as well and have other rules and are established via a whole slew of different means. They all play vital roles in the grand scheme of things and you should remember that me skipping all of that, makes this a gross simplification. I know hate to simplify, but it's a lot and I'll just have to take the hits I'm sure I'll get like "Oh you forgot!". So just going to apologize for such a bastard version ahead of time here.
So anyway, these departments, the President gets to say when he needs one and Congress whips up a law establishing the official transfer of that specific power to such and such department (at least that's the extremely simplified version of that). Each department has a senior officer who is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, that's the Cabinet member (there also a whole lot of other ones within each department that have to get confirmed, I'm skipping them but they exist as well). That guy or gal gets to call the shots in the department on how that department is to carry out their function. The people the senior staff hires are Federal employees and do not require confirmation. Federal employees can be fired by the senior staff. However, Congress has passed laws about Federal employees and set up rules for when they can and cannot be fired.
Without getting too detailed, it boils down to you can only fire a Federal employee for "good reason". Now some would cite unions elbowing their grubby noses into the mix for that, some would cite holy whistleblowers and how they saved us for that, the real story is that it's a mix of all of the above really and makes for great history classes. Now what is "good reason" in some cases is pretty clear, you can't fire someone for exposing theft or corruption, in a lot of other cases it's less clear and requires a judge to step in, cue the Judicial branch. What Trump wants to do is remove some protections that Congress has given Federal employees. Now no one knows which specific rules Trump will target but it was made clear that he wants to "open up" the firing process to be a bit more liberal than it currently is. And based on the flavor of Congress/President mix that you have, those rules have changed a lot. Typically when Congress and the President are the same flavor you get the most changing in rules.
What I think is interesting (some might say horrifying) is the proposal to fire people whose ideology doesn't match with the current administration. Now Trump hasn't said that exactly, but handing out questionnaires like the one talked about isn't building a lot of confidence. Typically, a department wants to rely on their staff to make informed decisions (which in theory is why some higher up employees in the Federal government but not the senior staff can go tell the President to get bent [key words here "in theory"]), have those bubble up to the senior staff, and then have the senior staff pass those on to either rule making or the Presidential consideration. If someone is in the department who doesn't agree with the majority ideology, typically their ideas just don't get "bubbled" upwards. Firing people because their ideology doesn't match up is just setting a department up for revolving door syndrome. Additionally, not having good professionals in your department
He can't fire an entire department without violating Civil Service laws that protects workers from politics.
You are absolutely right and if everyone thinks back to the RNC convention, Trump was not shy in stating that he's gunning to reform those rights and that he'll be placing them into his reduction of government spending and waste program. Now I don't think it's likely for Congress to grant the President this new power he'll all but for sure be seeking, but with the way Trump is playing politics, who the hell knows? They very well just might just do it, I mean we're giving him the nuclear launch codes, what's being able to remove dissent from the ranks in comparison? I mean, he might as well go the whole nine yards and get the 22nd amendment repealed as well, just for shits and giggles.
But yeah in all seriousness, Trump has had a few words on Federal employee protections. I'm skeptical he'll get it, but I'm not saying the chances are zero in this climate.
Good point and brings up one of the rally cries Trump has made during the campaign. Reform of Federal employee rights. He's not been shy one bit about it either. He intends to remove the protections many of the civil servants enjoy under his soon to be purposed "Reduction on Government Waste and Spending" program. So yeah, they are protected like you said, but Trump is literally gunning to remove that very thing and fire anyone who isn't an ass kisser. So great point you bring up but already addressed. This proposal from Trump to Congress is all but a forgone conclusion. The bigger question will be if Congress will give the President this new power. Who knows, but if anything is for sure, it's that there will be massive amount of spin from every direction when it finally hits committee.
That's a mapping issue and you've hit on a weak spot with self driving cars. However, that spot is only weak initially. Once lawmakers realize that they can pass laws that force metadata to be made to maps or hell create standard maps for each state that the car has to accept, lawmakers will jump on it like flies on shit. We need to create a "no pickup" tag, we need to create a "5 MPH between 6am and 8am" tag, we need a "no taxis in this area between 3am and 5am" tag, and you can only imagine how "creative" lawmakers might eventually get.
So yeah, if the problem you speak of makes you ill, just wait till you see what the cure is.
Ah I fondly remember that Onion article
People who actually believe it are in the minority and are simpletons or mentally ill.
Yeah the problem with that, is even if that value is 1% or even 0.1%. That's a lot flipping people who suddenly have a reason to open fire on unsuspecting folks. That's not to say that they weren't already unhinged, it's just, why the heck do some feel the need to toss matches into lakes of gasoline? The lake of gasoline is bad enough as is, and yes most matches just get extinguished because they never hit a vapor before hitting the liquid. Still though, why rock the boat for the simple reason of f'ing with everyone? Where's the fun in it? I obviously will never understand 4chan.
Once you reach a certain threshold of users, common carrier rules should apply.
That sounds like an issue of having clear rules. By all means might I redirect you to the US Congress website? I'm pretty sure that if the people who said they're tired of rules with the clarity of mud actually did something about that issue we might start getting lawmakers that actually thought out legislation rather than the typical knee jerk. But both the issue of people doing something about it and intelligent lawmakers are just wishful thinking.