There is a feature of OSS that is often touted and that is that you get to enjoy the progress of software development "for free". That is when someone solves a problem you get to benefit. As a developer I see this all the time and it's incredibly true. As a developer I love working with Open SDKs since I can make small changes and our powers combined results in improved results.

The problem is with someone like Munich it's Munich's IT department trying to create software on Linux which solves the problems a municipality faces vs. THE REST OF THE WORLD. Sure some die hard linux gurus will volunteer their time to improve OpenOffice with only slight gain to themselves. But would I ever bother contributing to OpenOffice? No. I imagine that over the last decade what Munich has found is that a competitive marketplace of multiple software developers has created a pretty nice rich ecosystem of software that's improving and updating while their linux stack has been largely dependent on their internal team to push forward.

All of our in-house development we try to open source--we would love another company to improve our internal tools. We've even gotten one of our internal tools pushed into an off the shelf product in exchange for free licenses. But even studios far larger than us have started giving up on in-house development because it's just not economical to pay in-house developers to try and replicate consumer software.

The trouble is trademark. If you use the trademark of the software you recompiled then you are violating trademark law and using the official branch's trademark for personal gain.

The Store is awesome. When I boot up a new computer, I go to my download history, click re-install and my computer is back to the way it was. I don't have to go to a dozen websites to find each of the apps I use regularly.*

The choice is between Google search and a store, I prefer the store. At least the download button is actually a download button not a "Pop up 10 ads" button like on a lot of download sites.

*I still do since not everything is in the store, but the apps that I do use from the store are way easier to re-install.

I use it quite a bit. I like the metro Skype better, since I want it more full screen. I like it for email and chat too since I can have metro snapped to the side with desktop full screen. I also use a metro calculator for similar reasons.

If you borrow money from a potential enemy one of two things will happen. Either you'll just ignore the debt you owe them and not give a shit about them lending to you in the future or they'll be very averse to attacking one of their debtors and knowing that you'll wipe your obligations to them at the first signs of hostilities.

^ I'm going to save everyone the trouble of clicking that and just let you know ahead of time that it's SPAM.

Not at all. I actually click on Facebook ads. I can't think of any other ads I've ever clicked on. Whatever juju they got going works for me apparently. And I say that as a Google AdWords buyer. Some things work great as Facebook ads but not what I sell. Sometimes knowing your visitors to a T doesn't help you. I could definitely use Facebook's demographic information to find precisely the sort of decision maker who would buy my product but when you're on facebook you aren't looking to make a business purchase you're looking for personal connection and are thinking about yourself.

Less overhead than 7? Give me a break. The driver model is so much more efficient for Windows 7/8 that using another 500MB of RAM is meaningless. Unless you're a impoverished third world child an extra 500MB of RAM won't break the bank at about $5.

Windows XP is not "Efficient" it's just obsolete. Most of the increased memory usage and "overhead" in 7/8 is just intelligent memory management and pre-caching. It's not wasteful, it's smart. What's really wasteful is having 16GB of RAM just sitting there unused sucking up electricity not giving you any benefit.

They could probably cut half of the company in the form of middle management without anyone who does real work affected. Supposedly that's their plan. Who knows though after the middle managers' necks are on the line who gets offered up as the sacrificial lamb.

During World War II Japan unleashed swarms of explosive laden balloons. The hope was that the balloons would flow into the US and cause a big of damage here and there. If you were to believe the lack of coverage in the US news we were completely unaware of any such threat and clearly the balloons were simply floating elsewhere or falling short. In reality they were in fact reaching the US and occasionally causing a little mayhem here and there--but a concerted propaganda operation kept it out of the news to not alert the Japanese to the limited success of their program. There is undoubtedly an advantage for the Israelis to over estimate the effectiveness of their system in the press if it means Hamas' only weapon is useless.

I live in Washington and we've always had a high minimum wage. In fact it's currently tied to cost of living/inflation. Our job growth has been excellent prior to our latest min wage increase and I don't see any reason why our next wage increases won't continue to be associated with a long term quality job market.

There is a lot of doom and gloom towards Seattle, WA's new $15 min wage proposal. But if Washington has proven anything over the last few decades it's that when you ignore the doomsayers about economic progress your state still prospers and the sky doesn't fall. Maybe Washington has lost out on some jobs, but you know what if Washington is an example of what happens when you raise the minimum wage then I'm more than happy with the result. Alabama can keep their "increasing change in growth", the fact still remains that while Washington's latest growth might be slowing, it's still higher.

I don't know about the other 12 states, but you can draw conclusions about Washington over the long term because our Min wage has been higher for the long term. And over the long term we've prospered.

Yeah, I feel like guessing though is a total crap-shoot. I see people recommending being a doctor or radiologist even though IBM is leading the AI charge *in* healthcare so I would think being a doctor is a bad idea.

The problem with trying to guess whether we need Electricians or Plumbers more than Lawyers or Doctors is the fact that we're about 2-3 major earth changing technological revolutions. It would be a bit like someone in 1850 speculating on what the best UI would be for a MMORPG. We already see that computers are generally very good at things we're very bad at (say long division in your head) while being very bad at things that we find effortless (vision). So things that we find hard (connecting random symptoms to an illness) will most likely be very easy to a computer we just don't know yet what's going to be hard. The only thing we can know for sure is that we'll need to be flexible and whatever we choose to learn it'll undoubtedly be temporary.

My advice would be to do the exact opposite of trade school. Think for a minute about the psychology of the coming technological revolution. Who is it going to hurt first and hurt the most? Probably people who are replaceable. Who has benefited the most so far and will continue to benefit the most? Investors. I would say that there is going to be a long lag between society accepting a world of extreme unemployment and the reality of the labor market. We already see this. People who are unemployed are viewed as moochers and takers. People who have money and have lots of capital are viewed as morally superior.

I would say, assume all jobs are going away. Money and power will be more valuable than ever. Get a degree in finance. Earn a shit ton of money and do everything in your power to at least be able to retire before the labor market collapses.

Yes, but per your very own article the only reason IIIc isn't used is because taxiing blind is impossible. There is only one situation that a plane would land IIIc without a windshield and that's if its cameras failed. If all of its cameras failed then it's an emergency landing situation anyway and they could clear a runway and tow the aircraft into the terminal like they often do with an emergency landing due to mechanical failure.

In every other situation you would have at least visual and probably FLIR video.

Only because of taxiing. You would only perform an ILS IIIc (blind) landing if all of your cameras somehow simultaneously failed.

It's worse than that. The problem with these kids is that they are just smart enough to do something but too stupid to realize that their idea doesn't work. They either grow up to be fly by night scammy venture capitalists or else that pot head kid in highschool "Dude, I just came up with this great idea, why don't we just power cars with rare earth magnets! They would go forever without gasoline!"

Generally these kids come up with bad ideas that even a smart 16 year old could see the flaws in. The truly brilliant kids looked at the problem looked at possible drawbacks or obstacles and concluded "Hmm, no nevermind, that wouldn't work." meanwhile the somewhat smart but ultimately too dumb to see the ultimate failure of their idea power through on the local news before they finish the R&D.