"But don't come to me to tell that bug free complex games are *impossible*. That's bullshit."

Certainly not - you're absolutely correct.

But are you prepared to pay what it would cost to buy a game comparable to today's triple-A titles that has gone through the engineering and process necessary to ensure that it's bug-free?

Yes. Done at the server. By an admin who answers to a manager who answers to someone who answers to someone who answers to the Mayor. Are you telling me that Menino doesn't know what's going on? "Hmm, those hundreds of emails from yesterday are gone ... I wonder what could have happened."

You know what else is open source? Knives. Used to stab people to death. And many people find that a good thing. Surely it must be.

It's not like knives don't have many other uses. I mean, I can use them to cook, put them on a motor and cut the lawn, open boxes.....the possibilities are endless!

My number comes from the book The Three Trillion Dollar War 2008 by Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes, both of whom are American economists not dependent on government funding for their research.

    The point is there is a finite supply of money. Money spent on the war is money that not available to manufacture fuel-efficient vehicles. And since the money has already been spent on the war, there will be no development of American fuel-efficient vehicles on the scale needed to sustain American prosperity at 20th-century levels.

  Talk is cheap.

According to TFA (and I have also read this in the Boston newspapers many times over the years) Menino simply does not use email. So in his case there's nothing to save or delete.

I should say that in itself that doesn't mean he's hiding something. He is, after all, almost seventy. My dad doesn't use email either.

It doesn't show a weakness in the process, it shows that computation power isn't infinite. Redoing all the calculations without the benefit of PCA requires use of a large cluster for a long time. This was done (in point 5) and shows that any PCA errors were negligible. Scientists aren't evil monsters engaged in a massive conspiracy. Really. We're ordinary people, just like you.

Anyone? How about a non sequitur then? No? Fruitcake?

You know what else is open source? Knives. Used to stab people to death. And many people find that a good thing. Surely it must be.

Also... Nowhere in the text does it say that "the software is built from open source". No. They say:

From what I gather - someone in the "chain of reporting", whether it is the BBC reporter or people at Ford has no clue what the term "open source" actually means (which no part of a clearly still partially classified F-22 Raptor isn't), and is probably confusing it with the term "public domain" - which radar technology is.

Come on. What is next?
A submission of a cake recipe cause it is open source? Look... you can add your own ingredients and develop it further.
How about an open source walk?
You know... as opposed to those covered by government grants and thereby being partially owned by the government.

Advanced rocket designs and navigation, etc just have too much military dual use potential to them to just wing it out public domain..unfortunately. Otherwise I agree with you, proly quite a bit of wheel reinventing going on now that really doesn't have to be. I think *most* government funded research should be open sourced, especially anything pertaining to medicine, but not that.

It's not like they're out to rape us or keep us from accessing needed health care or anything bad. They're our friends, just like the nice fellows in the black helicopters.

I fail to see why it's relevant that an individual end user had only 18 emails when he receives hundreds daily. I would love to have this individual in my organization, less chance of corrupt Outlook .pst files and less to backup from the workstation. Retention policies should have nothing whatsoever to do with what recipients retain in their local mail stores. Retention, compliance, and backup policies are enforced at the server.

Last I checked, that's not how one would go about defining a monopoly.

I worked for an insurance company, and they are out to make money. Where I worked, the rates were regulated by the state, and the company wasn't allowed to discriminate in pricing due to numerous things, such as credit scores (a lower credit score was highly correlated with more accidents). They got around this by advertising in areas with better credit scores, and direct mailing only to those with high credit scores.

My point is that insurance companies will do what they can to save money. Even if you're a safe driver, if there is something else they believe has a high correlation with accidents, such as where you park your car or the areas in which you drive, they may come up with an excuse to cancel (or not renew) your policy.

In addition, they will most likely be reviewing the video of people who do have accidents but got through their net the first time to find other indicators of people likely to get in an accident, and they would (in my opinion) be willing to jump at any correlation if it had a chance to cut their costs - please don't give them the ammunition.

You mean mandated by law for all drivers, right? Always remember that companies pushing unpopular products have never been above using lobbyists, laws, and lawsuits to force us to use products that we would never choose to use willingly (i.e. macrovision).

I was actually pleasantly surprised as well (even if I find the choice of connection inappropriate and crude)...

That second question about formats is quite interesting as well.

The LMC/"poor" are politically illiterate and are too busy surviving to attend rallies.