Except that in this case, the FCC is not coming up with any new laws. They are merely determining which previously established classification a particular industry should be placed under, something completely within their charter per the aforementioned act of congress.
The FCC was established by an act of congress (Communications Act of 1934), and therefore mandated by congress to do exactly what it does. And constitutionally the executive branch, of which the FCC is a part, is tasked with defining the implementation of law. The system is working exactly as designed.
As far as other ways to enact net neutrality, the only other constitutionally acceptable way of enacting any sort of regulations is for congress to do it directly. And there is so much partisan infighting that no regulations would ever get made and those that would would be so politically driven that they would be worthless and generally undone after two to four years anyway. Plus, even if congress was populated solely by reasonable and intelligent people who truly had the American public's best interest at heart, they simply wouldn't have time to debate and formalize every conceivable necessary regulation in every sector of public existence. So instead congress creates agencies which are (theoretically supposed to be) free of party affiliation to come up with the regulations themselves. Thus the FCC, FAA, FDA, etc.
Calling it "Mach" is correct in the sense that the kernel is still the Mach microkernel, which came from NeXTSTEP. It does not have a BSD kernel.
It's BSD in the sense that _much_ of its userland is BSD, but certainly not all.
It also has many things that BSD does not have, which were proprietary from {NeXT/Open}STEP. For instance, the "netinfo" subsystem, the "defaults" subsystem, the plist architecture, Objective-C, XCode (which, afaik, is a modernization of NeXTs InterfaceBuilder).
My understanding, which granted is mostly wikipedia based, is that it is too simplistic to just say that the kernel is Mach. XNU, the kernel used by OS X, iOS, and Darwin, isn't just Mach but rather a mishmash of Mach, the BSD kernel, and a bunch of custom code to implement all that other stuff you mentioned.
iOS is most definitely based on OS X. It started as a port of OS X, and it contains the same kernel and most of the same libraries such as core data and core animation.
Clean coal still releases lots of CO2, and you still have to do something with all of the heavy metals and sulfur compounds that are captured. It's good that they're not going into the air, but is going into a landfill that much better?
I'm not so sure about the assertion that alternative energy sources like wind and solar are considered more expensive than fossil fuels. I always thought that they were considered cheaper but not a serious contender to replace fossil fuel plants as the number of places on the planet that they are reliable enough for baseload generation are limited. And even though they don't contribute to air pollution, they aren't necessarily a magic bullet as they have other environmental impacts in more subversive ways (e.g. solar shades out large areas, which can have detrimental effects on the ecosystem that depends on the sun, especially in the desert where large solar installations are suggested, and wind turbines have a nasty habit of killing birds that try to roost on them). So arguing that wind is cheaper than coal seems to be a bit of a straw man argument.
Which is unfortunate, because even though renewables aren't perfect, coal is pretty bad environmentally and I think we do need to figure out a way to phase it out as soon as possible.
TFA mentions that is the reason for the lawsuit. Apple used their DRM specifically for vendor lock-in to shut out competition and unfairly raise prices.
That is RealNetworks' allegation as to the use and purpose of the DRM. Apple's rationale for using DRM on the other hand was an insistence from the record labels, according to Jobs' "thoughts on music" essay. The truth will come out in the court case, but I have a feeling that Apple's reason is probably more likely. They abandoned DRM shortly after that open letter at a time when the incentive for lock-in was probably stronger than ever, as they had just announced the original iPhone a month before the letter was published.
With that in mind, it really is silly to claim that any patching of a security flaw is done maliciously, just like how when Apple patches a bug that is exploited by a jailbreak, they are not doing it to 'get at' the jail breakers. They are simply patching a flaw and there is no rational reason for them to intentionally leave that flaw in place.
The GP argument was that Dream Chaser was rejected simply because it was a spaceplane like the shuttle, implying that the issues with the shuttle were due to it being a spaceplane. Yes, there were plenty of procedural issues that caused the mechanical issues to be a problem. If management had listened to the engineers about the limitations of the o-rings, it could have prevented the challenger disaster. Regardless, the point is that the shuttle had that particular point of failure, which Dream Chaser would not, and it has nothing to do with whether Dream Chaser is a spaceplane or not.
Maybe, probably not. All of the problems with the shuttle were not due to it being a spaceplane per se, but due to it being a sideways stack rather than a vertical one. Dream Chaser is designed instead to be on top of a rocket, either an Atlas V or Falcon 9.
Challenger failed because the failed o-ring between the segments of an SRB caused a jet of flame that impinged on the external tank. Falcon 9 doesn't use any SRBs. Atlas V doesn't use multi-segment shuttle style SRBs, and may not use SRBs at all for manned launches. Either way, that particular failure mode would be the fault of the booster and not the vehicle. In addition, by being on the top of the stack, if there is any sort of catastrophic failure of the booster, the vehicle is equipped with a launch escape system that was impossible on the shuttle.
The Columbia accident, as well as countless near-misses that could have resulted in a Columbia style accident, was due to debris detaching from the external tank and striking the orbiter. If the vehicle is on top of the stack, nothing that breaks off of the rocket can physically come into contact with the vehicle.
Therefore Dream Chaser isn't vulnerable to either of the causes of loss of a shuttle orbiter, and being a spaceplane has nothing to do with it.
How dare you use facts to refute the narrative on slashdot article making fun of an Apple product?
These lists of sci fi predictions coming true always seem to bend what it means to 'come true' because the fiction never seems to get it exactly right. They almost always seem to either over predict such as tractor beams and cloaking devices which we "technically" have today but only at the quantum level and not in a way that would be recognizable to the average sci fi fan, or under predict, such as Star Trek PADDs being single use one-object-per-task devices rather than the more useful general-purpose iPads that we actually got. I am having trouble thinking of any futuristic predictions that the author got exactly right.
It is probably a practical impossibility to reserve enough fuel on the Falcon 9 to do an RTB back to the cape, as staging occurs right around 2000 m/s and reversing direction from that sort of velocity is surely more dangerous, inefficient, and mechanically wearing than launching from Brownsville and letting the first stage follow its natural 2 km/s parabolic path over Florida instead.
The current version of the Falcon 9 absolutely has enough fuel to return the first stage back to the cape for LEO launches. That was the whole point of the v1.1 upgrade. They already do the direction reversal and flyback on all non GTO launches. The only reason they haven't done a pad landing yet is that they are still practicing landing over water just off shore before they are comfortable enough to actually land on the pad.
They might be able to get a higher payload to LEO with the current Falcon 9 by launching from Brownsville and landing in Florida, but that is definitely not a requirement to do landings. Plus, if they were to land in Florida, they would have to build a special landing pad on the gulf coast as landing at the cape would require flying over populated areas which I highly doubt the FAA would allow at this point.
Yep. If they were officially and permanently split, desktop linux would first stagnate, and then eventually cease to exist. For as good as linux is for desktop use, there just isn't enough interest to maintain it as a purely desktop system. Otherwise the oft predicted 'year of linux on the desktop' would have happened long ago. Because Linux is popular as a server OS, the community gets the benefits of just having to maintain a few modules on top of it to make it into a perfectly serviceable desktop OS.
Most people don't currently need symmetrical service, though I could see that changing soon if personal cloud computing and storage really took off. If people's entire library of documents, photos, etc. were in a dropbox type storage rather than on their own HD, people would start to notice how crappy normal upload speeds are.
There was one iOS version (4.something) that was vulnerable to drive by jailbreaking, though. If I remember, the only known exploit in the wild was a website for the purpose of intentionally jailbreaking that installed Cydia as well as a patch to close the vulnerability. Ironically, at the time the only way to properly secure your iPhone against the vulnerability was to let it be hacked by that website first.
I remember going to an Apple store and installing Cydia on all of the iPhones on display there via that website. Fun times.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
