What? This sounds like something that would happen here in America. Somehow, its all the seismologists' fault. What? What kind of a whiney, victimized brain does it take to come up with a reason to charge someone with manslaughter in this case. Earthquakes are not easily predicted and certainly not accurately. The statements from the Seismologists should be listened to but with understanding that they are likely off (at least to some extent). Somehow, these cases should be thrown right out the door and not one penny should go to the "victim" families. As for the charges, the judge in this case should drop them and dismiss everyone and throw this case right out the door. Of course, I am sure the lawyers are licking their chops at the chance to make a fast buck off the "victims" like scavengers picking dead bones in the desert somewhere. As usual. Apparently, Itlalians and Italian politicians and lawyers are just as dumb and greedy as they sometimes are in America.

I agree with this. Google, in particular, with Chrome OS has potential. M$ has been way too slow to do anything reasonable with the mobile market in phones and tablets. Intel has a similar issue with resisting the trend toward ARM based CPU's which atom is not as suitable for in those applications.

155% in the government sector? I agree with that. And mostly its wasted taxpayer money on a machine that in some cases winds up being used more for windows unless its in a department that does graphics, audio, or video work. Aside from those few examples the government agencies would have been wiser to buy dells with win 7 in an AD domain.

In this case, the machines that were doing their job well for many years should have been left alone. A migration or what not should not be done just because its "cool" or because the CTO likes the idea. There has to be legitimate reasons that are quantifiable in terms of benefit, cost, reliability, usability, etc. If the old linux boxen were performing their functions well without interference with other systems then they should have been left alone. Use what works best for the given situation. Not just a religious M$ or fanatic Apple rampage that determines what happens. That is nonsense.

And there is usually a legitimate reason why Group Policies are implemented to keep people from doing whatever they want with the computer. For one thing, it is their computer to use for work and not their personal computer to do with any way they please. This is done to prevent nonsense garbage from being installing on machines and maintain a reasonable level of security in a network environment to begin with. Furthermore, Macs (even with 3rd party solutions) do not fully integrate with AD successfully the way they should. Apple needs to fix this if they want to play the enterprise game. And don't expect M$ to hold Apple's hands on this either. Apple will have to figure it out on their own.

Fortunately, I am currently working in an IT dept where we are in the midst of a massive AD migration project from Novell/Windows to Win server/Windows 7 with Active Directory. Now, part of this migration is all of the macs at this university. What can I say? We use Likewise for AD integration and its a pain in the rear. It does not work like it should. Printers that worked before with macs do not work right with Likewise in AD. Keychain problems out the butt slow down the migration and give all kinds of problems. Regardless of whatever 3rd party AD solution you use with a mac it just does not integrate fully like it should with AD. Win 7 works great with Active Directory. Even some of the Win XP migrations to AD have gone well. There are a few departments that legitimately need macs. The rest are all just for the fluff, status, and fanciness of a pretty little machine on the desk. They are good machines for the home, student, and specific types of business needs (video, audio, graphics, etc). They are, in general, not a good choice for an enterprise setting at all. As for those of you who want control over your own linux and mac machine, etc that are not in Active Directory? I think that's great actually. Just don't expect access to printers or shared filespace or anything else on the network other than internet access. And don't call the help desk whining because you can't access printers and department filespace.

Mostly the right wing extremists exist in a paranoia whipped froth of nonsense. Actually, their methods against those they hate is little different than the dreamed up excuses and reasons for the final solution that the nazis used. All fantasies to justify what one wants to be fact when all it winds up being is a bunch of nonsense to terrorize people. Duplicity is not a new "art". It has been practiced for a very long time.

hahaha. Yes, very good april fool's day jokes. Merging OpenSUSE and Debian? LOL the first thing that caused me to see that as odd is the fact that they have different packaging systems. RPM and DEB. :P Among other things.

This is BS. Seriously. M$ is trying to go back to its 90's era dishonest business practices. Sounds like Steve Ballmer needs his behind kicked up between his shoulders. I don't blame M$ for wanting to catch people using illegal software. Not at all. However, why should I have to be sued for my supplier's BS and especially in another country. The problem these days is that we can all oppose this but it wouldn't make any difference to M$ and maybe not even in the federal government because so many officials are in bed with corporations. LOL M$ needs their behind whipped good for this one. I'd like to see M$ try to sue someone for this and win. It will waste time in the courts and waste taxpayer money on frivolous and egregious lawsuits due to companies having to protect themselves. And of course, small companies can't afford to pack the court room with an army of top notch attornies like M$ can.

THIS IS a good idea. Excellent idea really. It would require stations that could change the battery out jack spratt and on the dime. People aren't going to wait more than about 2 minutes to swap the battery. It can be done. However, you'd have to have one or a very few standard size batteries. One size for small and medium size cars and one for trucks and larger cars. It could be done though. Interesting idea. Obviously you would pay a charge for the replacement battery. The cost of electricity to charge the battery would be part of the price as well as the cost of labor to keep up with them all the time not to mention buying the batteries. There would have to be a national battery exchange program as it is unlikely that only one company or service station system across the country would handle them. The people handling these batteries would have to be licensed and certified for such. You don't want just any DA rolling batteries around. And you want to make sure they know how to connect the batteries correctly and not drop them, etc. One DOWN side I see with this is that it would not likely be a self service installation! You would almost be going back to the model of the full service station to have an attendant "fill up" with a recharged battery. Each station would have the business of keeping up with them. Testing, replacing, inventory, ordering, moving, transporting, distributing, warehousing, etc all of which are pretty well understood. For that matter the stations would be in a good position to deal with the recycling of worn out batteries so that they don't wind up in the bottom of a landfill one day. I could see a business in this. Just don't expect the oil industry to jump right on board! :) There is one fact about this though. It is still not as cheap or as convenient as filling up your own gas tank and jumping back in the car. If they could find a way to do that then maybe. But I don't trust people to be honest with self service battery replacement. Not to plug it in right and to deal with moving batteries, damaged batteries, defective batteries, etc. People that pay a full price for a battery but then the station didn't know it was defective and an argument ensues at the next station over a refund and yet the battery didn't come from the same company that owned the station that installed it last time. Talk about a SERVICE nightmare. Some way would have to be created to deal with his problem. We live in a sea of DA's. :)

Well, this is interesting. On the workstations level it might be true that they are "quieter" but somewhere the AC is being converted to DC. Seriously, that would require a huge power supply of some kind and there will always be some inefficiency in that conversion process. So really, I don't buy that it is more efficient as a whole load on the power system. Seriously, unless they have a power supply with rectifiers that are VERY efficient (over 90% or more) then I don't see how this is an advantage. I have heard people ask me why we aren't using DC for everything. And they are people that don't know anything about electricity. Such as the fact that AC was chosen because it can be transmitted across great distances at high voltage levels with far lower losses than DC. More secure? What moron thought this up? It is a electric current. One is not more "secure" than the other. :)

9 sentences? If it was a page long I could see it. Then again all the other posts in here that have "paragraphs" don't even have 3 sentences minimum to form a proper paragraph. What the h are you talking about? If it was a book I wrote I'd understand. Go hide under a rock or something. Besides, you posted as anonymous coward which says something already. :)

The answer is NO, definitely not. 220V would not be good for rapid charging. But why do you need to recharge at home that fast in the first place? Now, out at rapid charging stations where you can stop and recharge in a few minutes they will likely have 440V circuits that can deliver that kind of current. If you have a 200 mile battery you will probably be able to recharge at home in 4 hours (on 220V) anyway which should be enough after you get home from work to charge up for the next day. If you are at a place where you need a quick charge then stop at the quick charge station. Adding the kind of infrastructure it would take to have 440V circuits in every house plus substations and distribution network for every house to handle that much power for rapid charging is unreasonable except for at targeted locations that have quick charge stations. Even then I like the idea of the other poster of using fly wheel storage systems (where a flywheel spins on magnetic bearings) for quick charge stations. A station could have have several of the flywheel systems that are running at all times (large ones). So that as people charge quickly it slows down the flywheels a bit but then when no one is charging (maybe over night or middle of the day etc) then the flywheels speed up again and are ready for more quick charging at the station. Also it would allow for even higher voltages and currents than a 440V infrastructure can provide and make it less expensive to provide a power connection to a station.

I put science in quotes because the people that oppose fact based science simply invent science from their own religious or spiritual or anecdotal point of view. I mean I have other beliefs myself. But when it comes to Science for the purpose of implementation we need to base it on science fact. It is scary and disturbing that this movement against real science is taking hold. Especially, it is scary coming from the religious right and the teabagger/republicon crowd. These loons in the right wing will set us back centuries in science if they get their way. A bunch of nutcases. Thanks again (NOT) for voting republicon. You get what you vote for and so this is what we get from the right wing freaks. As for left wing, I honestly don't see this as much. Most "liberal nuts", as they are named by ring wingnuts, are usually attached to at least some basis of science fact when talking about the environment, technology, or even policies for energy, etc from the Government. The one exception that IS notable has to do with Nuclear energy. They are usually not educated on the new generation of nuclear technology that is much cleaner and safer than older reactor designs (IE newer Molten Salt, Breeder Reactors, etc). Anyway, there is at least some consideration among them for science fact. Where as the "intelligent design" and other delusional nutcases don't base anything in collected scientific discoveries.

As with some of the other posts I would be concerned about raising the eyebrows of the local intelligence agencies by encrypting a connection. In some countries (Iran for instance) i would think this would almost automatically trigger a police officer at your door for questioning or a visit to a local police station for interrogation. They would want to know what secrets you are hiding from them. I also imagine that leaving things unencrypted is undesirable as well. Personally, using "normal" channels is a mistake. Too bad there are not some affordable yet covert communications channels that have little to do with traditional phone networks or internet. Or at least something that transmits at different frequencies in small bursts that just look like background interference etc (I know CDMA works on this but that doesn't help in foreign countries and it is still in a domain that the authorities monitor from the CO, backbone, etc). I am sure the CIA has something like this. But it is about time that we had alternative paths that are covert and very difficult to even detect. In which case, it would not even have to be a really high speed connection for something like sending an email now and then or the occasional document or file. Even then, there is still risk with something like that being suspect by the local intelligence agencies if it is a device they know that you have and they become curious about something that is not simply a "normal" cell phone or small computing device. It seems best to just live with their local laws and try not to counteract them because otherwise there is a high risk of winding up in a very bad prison or similar situation and maybe no way for your own country to get you out of trouble.