Doesn't matter if Huawei has a backdoor in it, since the front door is wide open. FX has given a couple talks about it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-K1YpJp07s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUC_FduwWxU. The long and the short of it is tons of security holes, pretty amateur coding mistakes, no vulnerability tracking, etc.

That right there should be reason enough not to buy them. Never mind government ties, evil backdoors, etc, these things are just not secure and well designed. They are classic "You get what you pay for."

In terms of big stuff Juniper and Cisco are the kings. When you look at enterprise networks, they comprise the most by far. Well, neither of them use Linux. Juniper uses FreeBSD as the basis for JUNOS. Cisco's IOS, that most of their devices still run, it really is their own operating system. It is slightly POSIX-based, I suppose, but not really related to anything else. IOS XR is based on QNX a real-time operating system. That accounts for most of the high-end and even more midrange network gear out there. Dell is another big supplier and there's no Linux they are as of yet. Their power connect devices use VxWorks as the fundamental OS underneath. Their force 10 devices use net BSD as the fundamental OS.

At the consumer level it varies, the little routers that you buy in your house when varying OSes. Linux is not uncommon, but VxWorks is also quite popular.

Very few network devices actually run Linux currently. There are a few, both consumer and enterprise, but they are not all that common. When you look at the big boys most of the underlying operating systems are either BSD or VxWorks. Juniper is BSD, Dell is VxWorks for power connect and BSD for force 10, Cisco is QNX for their new high-end stuff, and so on. Linux is in there and is growing, but is not a huge player at this time. Most routers and switches run something else. This is particularly true given Cisco's dominance and their use of IOS.

That aside, the underlying kernel really isn't very interesting in terms of a networking device. Most of the actual work is being done by various ASICs and network processors such as IBM's Power NP. The OS is just used to load basic things, and tie it altogether. So just because a given switch runs Linux doesn't mean that anything it does would be useful on a larger scale. We achieve the speed we do in routing and switching to hardware acceleration, not by simply having everything running software on a general-purpose machine.

Why?
Putting restrictions would really go against the free software ideal. This software is Free for everyone except for the people I don't like, kid of excluded everyone.
You will be better off with a commercial license that says it is free for use for the groups that I do like. You see this often for software that give the license for free for Home, Educational and Not-for-Profit.

Well it really depends,
The problem is when the government starts moving a bit too fast and starts pushing out a bunch of regulations that makes things difficult. Yes it hurts the small businesses more, but still it hinders the large businesses too.
For example in Health Care,
For Federal Meaningful Use, we need to be sure we Record Race, Ethnicity, Language. Where Race and Ethnicity is rather general.
For NY State regulation we need to record information in far more detail, and often these details don't fit well with the general ones from the federal.
So we end up having to ask the patient twice to fill out this information, that has very little to do with actual heal care, but more so the politicians can understand the demographics of their area so they can alter their stances to get reelected.

The Republican party is actually very slit up.
You have the evangelicals, these are the Anti-Science People, their religion tells them that science is wrong, and they should follow only what the bible says. these guys swinged republican, to stand against the abortion issue, then they got more power, now they are the Anti-Science wing to the Republican Party.
You have the big Business men, These guys may know a good deal about Science and Technology, However they have earned a lot of money and they just don't want to waste it away on frivolous spending, and constantly changing regulations.
Now the Tea Party, is the middle ground of the two, they don't have any issues with Science, and want what the Big Business Men want (even though it may not be in their best interests) But they see how effective the evangelicals were with their no hold back attitude so they adopted it. It isn't the lack of Science Skills is their issue but stubbornness to realize that there are a lot of details to maintain. In many ways the Tea Party is like Physics Majors XKCD.
You can be good at science and still be very stupid.

Now the Democrats can jump on a lot of anti-science band wagon stuff too.
Such as Hyper Environmentalism. Where people condemn new technology and not consider that its tradeoffs overall is better.
Then you got the Foodies, Where they want all natural everything even if there is no evidences to their views.
Heck I remember when they found some findings that GMO Foods doesn't have any heal effects, all these guys jumped up an arms and just won't believe the data, making excuses, attacking the scientists motives etc...
However being the Colleges and Universities will tend to be supported by Government aid, Scientist will be more naturally gravitated towards the Democrat party.
For most of them, it isn't as much about the party being better then the republicans but the fact they pay the bills.

Slashdot needs to stop with the hero worship. Any time there is a person who does something people on Slashdot deem good and beneficial, it seems they go in to full on hero-worship mode, where said person can do NO WRONG, and whatever they say must be true and so on. We saw it with Hans Reiser. Tons of people whining and bitching about him being arrested and then convicted of murder. How he was set up, how the government was laying, etc, etc. Of course then he confessed and led police to the body.

Look guys, everyone, including heroes, are human, and can have flaws. You can view Snowden as a hero for what we did. However that does not mean he is above reproach, it does not mean that he never lies, it does not mean that he can do no wrong. People can do both right and wrong, even good people.

For example, here's another possibility (not saying it is the truth, or even that likely): Snowden brought classified documents to Russia. That is why they chose to give him asylum and put him under state protection. After all, this is a nation with a pretty poor human rights and transparency record, not a shining bastion of freedom. So he gave them these to buy his way in. However the Russians don't want the US to know that, and Snowden doesn't want to tarnish his reputation admitting he sold out, so he makes these claims.

The parent is very valid is saying that Snowden's statements shouldn't have any relevance to the validity of the claims that he gave data to the Russians. The reason is that a person's claims generally aren't useful. If you are innocent of what you are accused of, you of course say you didn't do it since you in fact didn't. However if you are guilty of what you are accused of, you also very often say you didn't do it since you don't want to be saddled with that.

I mean look at athletes and steroids: How many of the athletes busted doping straight up came out and immediately said "Yep, I doped, I probably shouldn't have but everyone else was doing it, what choice did I have?" and how many said "No, I never doped, these accusations are false, etc, etc."

You can't take Snowden's denial as evidence for or against anything. It is what it is. People need to stop acting as though the guy is above reproach, as though he can do no wrong. That he did something heroic does not mean he doesn't have flaws and couldn't do something else non-heroic.

That and you don't often get PHD's, published papers, and prestige for trying to duplicating and test a published findings.

In part, this is because Intel has a compiler for it. On commodity hardware (as in desktop, laptop), you will generally get the best performance running an Intel CPU and using an Intel compiler. That means C/C++ or FORTRAN, as they are the only languages for which Intel makes compilers. C++ is easy to see, since so much is written in it but why would they make a FORTRAN compiler? Because as you say, serious science research uses it.

When you want fast numerical computation on a desktop, FORTRAN is a good choice. We have a few researchers here who use it, and they all use the Intel Fortran Compiler because they want fast computation, but they don't have the money to buy bigass systems for every grad student. What they get out of the IFC and a regular Intel desktop chip is pretty impressive.

Compilers matter, and Intel makes some damn good ones. So if your research calls for lots of performance on little budget, that can influence language choices. Heck same thing on supercomputers. That is not my area of expertise, but it isn't as though all compilers for a given supercomptuer will be equally good. If I were to bet, I'd say the FORTRAN compilers are some of the better ones.

Nearly every Cell phone manufacture sells a power cable for their phone, so most people don't bother buying extra ones. Most of these phones become obsolete before the need a new cable. Usually those extra accessories will try to take advantage of a unique feature in the phone, so even if the cable fits it doesn't mean the software will work with it.
Sure it would be nice if they all fit and worked together... However is this such a big deal worth governments making decisions on this... I don't think so.

The EU Law on this is just one of their Lets just find a way to stick it to the Americans law, because they had a fit that Apple took over Nokia lead.

If Apple's issue really was that micro USB was too fragile, well they could have introduced a new, standard, connector to fix that. Design a "mobile USB" standard, that is durable, orients either way, integrates pins for HDMI, etc. Get it all nice n' designed and tested, then hand the design over to the USB Group, royalty free (like all USB standards). Particularly if it was going to be part of new Apple phones I don't imagine that there'd be a lot of resistance to adoption.

The EU's mandate doesn't come from a love of micro-USB, but rather the need for a standard, whatever that is. Micro-USB is the best we've got and the most prevalent, so that is what they are going for. If there was a better one out there, particularly if you could show how increased durability could lead to longer life and less waste, I think it'd have a good chance of being the standard.

However Apple has no interest in that at all. Their new connector wasn't made because micro-USB is so bad, it was made because Apple desires to be the only place you buy Apple accessories.

Also those for whom the vaccination does not work. It turns out that vaccinations are NOT 100% effective. In some people, the vaccination will not provide immunity for whatever reason. Well, there's not really any good way to test this. It's not like we can go in infect people with potentially deadly diseases, just to see if they in fact are immune to those diseases. However, when a large percentage of the population has been vaccinated, the herd immunity acts such that basically nobody gets it since the disease can't find hosts to spread from.

However as the term "herd immunity" implies, it requires a large part of the "herd" to be vaccinated. When too few people are vaccinated, diseases can find enough vectors to spread.

As you note, this isn't just an individual issue this affect society as a whole. There are people who cannot be vaccinated, for various reasons, and there are people who will choose to be vaccinated but the vaccination won't work for, and they don't know. As such is important for as many people as possible to be vaccinated against disease to make sure that it does not spread.

Hell I'm 33 and I don't want shots now. I don't know that anybody actually likes getting shots, it's just that when we get older most of us at least understand that it's worth the trade-off.

It's fairly ridiculous to list what the kids want in this article. Kids are not good at making long-term decisions, because they don't really have a long frame of reference, nor fully developed logical reasoning skills. To me, this seems like someone attempting to give weight to the anti-vaccination argument. "Oh the children don't want it, we should think about what they want." No, we shouldn't. They don't want to shot because getting a shot is not a fun thing to do at best, and slightly painful at worst. They are not capable of understanding the consequences that could happen of not getting the shot. As such their opinion on the matter really isn't very relevant.

That might be what happens in some cases, but probably not that many. In some cases, it can be due to a bad experience with a needle. That's part of the reason why I still hate needles to this day. When I was a teenager, I had plantar warts. Regular treatments failed to remove or control them, so I had to get them removed by electrolysis. The doctor that did it was "not very skilled" to put it mildly. Having the Novocain putting my feet was the sole most painful thing I've ever had happen. I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs it hurt so much. This is part of the reason why I don't like needles even now. I've never had another experience like that, in fact all my more recent experiences with needles have been incredibly non-painful. However, that still sticks with me and I still hate needles and have to look away.

In other cases it's a simple phobia, something that doesn't really have a logical reason but you're afraid of it anyway. It probably starts with the fact that having something poked into your skin is normally not a good thing, so you have a natural aversion to it. From that you can develop a full-blown phobia. It isn't based on anything logical, it isn't based on anything that happened to you, that's what a phobia is an irrational fear. You even know it's irrational, but that doesn't make you any less afraid of it. It's like other phobias such as fear of spiders, public speaking, that sort of thing.

I'm not saying it's useful to lie to kids about the fact that getting a shot might hurt a little, but I don't think that's where it comes from at least not in most cases.