For basic workstation stuff it's fine.

It's also pretty heavily used for development and test of server deploys. A lot of DevOps types are trying to use VirtualBox to build disposable test clusters for their applications, and has been the default and one of the best supported engines for vagrant.

Unfortunately, a lot of app footprints are starting to rely on deploying other "appliance VMs" in your VM (yo dawg), and VirtualBox is still straggling behind the others on implementing some form of nested VM capability. https://www.virtualbox.org/tic... So it's kinda getting to a point of having a large and growing number of server apps that you won't be able to use VirtualBox to set up a local development and test environment for things that involve, say, using a Stackato PAAS, or a FEO appliance, or an Apigee API gateway appliance, etc. to pick a bunch of essential pieces from recent memory. At least not without a lot of work to host those VMs directly on VirtualBox and not looking or working at all like they would when they hit production.

Have you ever tried to use WiFi in a crowded apartment building? Do you want the same experience with cellphones? It works for WiFi and Bluetooth only because their ranges are so short that you usually don't get much interference. That solution obviously won't work for cell phones. Nobody wants to have to find the nearest cell tower and drive over to it to use their phone.

There is a famine going on right now in North Korea.

I read a claim that there has not been a famine in 400 years that was not politically created. This sound crazy when you first hear it, but when you start diving into the specifics it is scary.

" What is more, as costs for wind and solar power have plummeted over the past decade, and the new report points out that for a given amount of land, solar panels are at least 50 times more efficient than bio fuels at capturing the energy of sunlight in a useful form."

1. Wind and Solar do not complete with bio fuels. You can not run a truck, ship, or airliner on electricity effectively because of battery technology.. Even cars are limited today by cost. Now if you are talking about bio fuels to run generators then maybe, but for transportation not at all.

It is kind of like that big huge lie that people like to tell about wind and solar reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

One could argue that the Government didn't create the monopolies here, physics did. There's only so much spectrum and it doesn't work if multiple people are trying to use the same frequencies at the same time in the same area.

Unless you can find the political will to separate highly regulated tower operators and the phone carriers (so airtime would be a utility and there would be competition with the carriers), then it's always going to be like this. It could be worse, at least there is some competition in the wireless space. It's not wireline broadband.

Ugh, I've done similar things and was horrible at it, but my wife is a genius at education and a PHd and would say you need to establish good classroom management. This has little to do with the actual educational content, but about all about delivery and the way you carry yourself in a Command & Control role. Unfortunately, this is not something that's taught, but the very basics of it go something like:

1. Make every student feel like you love them and want them to do well. So no playing "favorites" or slipping into antagonistic relationships, particularly with the class clowns and gang leaders who would undermine your authority and turn the rest of their peers against you.

2. Establish yourself as the authority with a clear set of behavior rules immediately. Ideally, you get the students to enforce the rules themselves. But if you just "make them up" as you go along by pointing out improper behavior as it occurs. they're going to be continually feeling out and pushing the boundaries.

Sounds exciting though, best of luck!

All the 'Libre' crowd rants about the source code of the software, but somehow gives a pass about the hardware not being open ...

You haven't been watching very closely.

*I* have been ranting on slashdot about AMT for years. Look it up.

You don't help Alibaba by pointing out what they already know. I'm certainly not going to defend the Electronic Bay of Thieves' business pratices, but Alibaba has built their business on telling you that you are dealing with crooks. They go to great lengths to warn you that the people they hook you up with are not trustworthy and that they will hold your money in escrow for you, while warning you never to deal with the seller directly. Then, when you get cheated, they always side with the seller.

Don't try to kid us that they didn't know crooked things like fraud merchandise is going on. Only in the case of Alibaba it is as likely to be counterfeit SD memory cards or chips as it is to be designer fashions.

Next you know the young whipper-snappers will take "variables" and call them "dynamic constants"

In Bluetooth (especially Bluetoothe Low Energy (BLE)) they already reanamed them. They call one a "characteristic" (when you include the metadata describing it) or a "characteristic value" (when you mean just the the current value of the variable itself).

Is Microsoft preparing a Plan B for when they finally give up on Windows Mobile?

Videotron (in Quebec) will give you a discount if you bring your own modem.

The issue as I'm sure you know isn't "opened", but rather "opened within a certain length of time." Obviously given unlimited time you can get into anything, and you probably can get into an ATM a lot faster than a decent safe. But once you have the explosion routine down pat, you can probably be away with the ATM money in *seconds*. In terms of practicality and low risk, that's hard to beat.