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Comment Alcohol withdrawal can be fatal. (Score 1) 162

Alcohol withdrawal can be fatal for alcoholics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

If you can make a robot able to understand the moral implications of it's actions then you won't need to program it with rules like this. If you can't then regard the robot as a tool and regulate its use appropriately. Children are not allowed drivers licenses. Why would a responsible person allow a child to use a robot that could be fatal to the child?

Comment The desktop market is shrinking (Score 1) 393

The desktop market is shrinking. Market share != user share. By market, I mean the amount of money that's spent on desktops.
There's the trend to use mobile devices (iOS and Android) over desktops for many functions. It's not necessarily that people are getting rid of their desktops, but they are relying on them less and it's no longer seen as essential to have the latest and greatest on the desktop because the emphasis is now on phones.

Even Microsoft will giving free upgrades to Windows 10 for home users of windows 7 and 8. Formerly desktop OS upgrades were a lucrative source of income. I suspect that it's worth more to them to sacrifice the dwindling income from selling upgrades in order to be able to drop support for the older versions sooner.

Commercial distributions focus on the server as that's what most of their customers are playing them for. Also, server support is somewhat simpler than desktop support as there are fewer varieties of enterprise server hardware than desktop hardware and it changes less often. The typical scenario is that rookie user buys a new notebook and tries to install Linux, eventually giving up in disgust as there's no driver support for a key piece of hardware. The hardware support will probably come in six months, but it's too late by then for the rookie. Old hands know this and carefully research what they buy to ensure that the drivers are available.

There's never been much of a Linux desktop market. Home users rarely pay for Linux support and business users generally choose Linux or BSD for specialized fields or as a cheaper alternative to Windows/Mac for limited function locked down desktops.

Comment Re:How about mandatory felony sentences instead? (Score 1) 420

In parts of Australia, interlock devices are now mandatory for first offenders if they are over 0.07 or under 26 years of age (or if you are guilty of refusing a breath test).

The interlock devices record the number of failed attempts. These are reported to the magistrate when you apply to have the device removed and the magistrate can extend the period you have to use the interlock device.

Comment Re:OK. I'm throroughly confused (Score 1) 149

Broadly speeking a VM is a virtual environment that runs a separate kernel.
Containers are like a chroot jails in that they provide virtualization of the user environment for processes that execute under the parent kernel. Containers generally provide more sophisticated control over system resources (CPU, RAM, network i/o) than a simple chroot jail.
This wikipedia article provides a comparison of different types of container: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Comment Re:This is only (Score 1) 257

AWS uses Xen. They can afford to support it in house. Other cloud providers use Xen. At my work, we have nearly moved all our systems off Xen to VMware; thank god.
I can't recommend it for enterprise usage. It might be better if there was a decent company supporting it, but SUSE and Citrix don't cut it. Performance-wise Xen is good. Lack of stability and features kill the deal.

p.s. as noted, the bug in question is not Xen related.

Comment Re:what? (Score 4, Informative) 138

Google didn't steal. NASA didn't sell the fuel
NASA is a government agency and doesn't have to pay taxes and levies that the private sector does.
The fuel was supplied by DLA-Energy (Defense Logistics Agency), not NASA. The fuel was purchased by H211, a company owned by the top Google people.
DLA-Energy can sell the fuel, but they should collect the tax when they do.
There was confusion because H211 was flying some missions on behalf of NASA, for which they were entitled to tax free fuel.
[The inspector general] 'Martin attributed the discount to a “misunderstanding” between personnel at the airfield and the fuel supplier “rather than intentional misconduct. DLA-Energy misunderstood that H211 was drawing fuel for both private and NASA-related missions.'

Balanced article about the situation:
http://www.businessweek.com/ar...

Comment Re:American car companies... (Score 1) 426

The faulty ignition switch, meant airbag would not function. It sounds like you never were in a accident that needed to trigger the airbag. Some people were and they died. How do you feel about driving around in a car where the airbags wouldn't work because the ignition switch was faulty?

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