That would be interesting if true, but the truth is "most" government contracts don't actually go to the lowest bidder. Especially in software, cyber, cloud, and data science. A cost/value tradeoff is determined using a wighted score combining the bid, the proposed technical & management solution, and the bidders' past-performance. Then, there is typically a downselection to the top 3, then more information and final bids are collected, and then the winner is selected by choosing the contractor with the highest combined score. What you're thinking of is called an LPTA aquisition and while they were popular for a few years in the late 2000s, that trend has largely reversed. Which is good for anything other than commodotized services and products.

Interestingly, when overlaid with other open imagery, such as cloud coverage, the locations of the webcams can be determined & when stitched with all the pictures and video people post from phones, some of that tracking/locating is being done. I had the opportunity to discuss it in depth with Dr Pless a few years back when we were both presenting at a conference. Cool stuff he's got going on. http://www.cs.wustl.edu/~pless...

The 4 star was on the distro and replied all saying that any further replies would result in the person and their supervisor having to explain themselves to him tge next week. Was dead quiet after that & gave the mail server admins time to fix the underlying issue.

When I wad in Dublin (and surrounding areas) for St Patrick's day, or in Munich for Oktoberfest, or any of the other cultural centers for a holiday && they had the same types of shenannigans as the US going on ... were they mocking us mocking them? That could get confusing. In truth, immigration in the US change both cultures. Sometimes it is fast, sometimes it happens slowly. In the great American experiment that's part of the point. Where do you think the melting pot analogy comes from? It's an exchange and mix of many traditions and ideals adopted in varying degrees, by varying subcultures, across a great land mass. Only because of the ease of travel, and modern communication systems are we so keenly aware of it happening. Why do you think that, unlike many other nations, we don't have a language requirement for immigrants to become citizens? We swear alligence to the US, and not to our individual state of residence, etc. etc. The very roots of our nation are built on controlled change in such a way that there is a single US identity made up of a mix of continuously evolving cultures. We are not a nation of conformists, and static cultural norms. We are a nation of rebels, of radicals, and freedoms thad drive us towards constant progess, and of change. Sometimes the change is good. Sometimes not. We will find a way to solve the problems caused in either direction, to strike balance, and then to move on again. I'd suggest that people that don't like change are living in the wrong country.

Yes and No. By taking it off the books, they've said that it is no longer their rule to enforce & since state resources are not necessarily obligated to enforce federal restrictions ... they will not be. That frees states up to make other rules like licensing, but doesn't mean they have usurped federal powers & rule. IF the Feds wanted to make it a priority, they could start rounding up all of the dispensery owners, try them in Federal court, and imprison them. They could probably do the same with any number of elected officials too. TLDR: States' rights to self legislate do not supercede federal law.

For starters, I can't run Docker without toolbox, which doesn't actually work universally (virtualbox and my system don't get along) and I can't install SQL Server 2016. So, that dev machine is either going to have to upgrade to Windows 10 or Server 2012. Win 10 makes more sense to get bash.

If you have that kind of time, I'd welcome a fact checker for all of my posts on /., FB, my personal blog, LinkedIn, etc. Would save me some embarrasement and help me improve my positions and arguments. I don't post much, so it'd be easy & would be good for my persuasive debate skills. Call it a "peer review" :) Now that I think about it, a "post for review" premium option for social platforms (or plugin to other CMS platforms) that sends the content to mechanical turk (or some other service) for review in a normal 3 step publishing workfkow would be awesome. Set up my preferances on what type of errors I want checked, use hLDA and sentiment analysis to provide the reviewer(s) insight and context to my typical answers on a topic to provide insight. Quickly get back an editorial copy. Submit knowing that professional and personal posts are consistent and accurate across all platforms. I could go for that.

But they will monitor it for you with your consent? Interesting. I'd pay an extra couple bucks a month for a nicely packaged traffic report (as long as I could manage/delete/etc. some of the capture rules). Sure, I could set up my own proxy, or port mirror to a Splunk box, but that could actually be a service a lot of people would buy into out of sheer convenience. Even moreso if it was tied to their IDS for hueristic analysis of both outbound and inbound traffic.

In either case they frequently continue because people won't move. I don't mean "a little further away from X", I mean load what you can into your car and a cheapo trailer & head somewhere else in this great land of ours. For example, many cities in TX, TN, AL, and GA all very low costs of living & great employment outlooks. /csb: I was a systems tech. (Novell CNA, NT 3.5.1 & 4 MCSE, basic switches/network infrastructure type) working at a small B2B services co. when the dot com bubble burst. Their business dried up & I found myself with 30 days notice, and a real chance of becoming homeless. Being in AK severely limited my options, so I applied for ANY job that (1) I was qualified for (2) was with a stable company while I finished adding some certs to help (CCNA & CCDA IIRC). Ended up with a phone interview for a job in TX. I got an offer letter in the mail a few days later and was in the car driving through CN a month later. That experience made me realize that the willingness to move somewhere you can be successful is often just as important as anything else you've done (e.g. education, training, saving $, etc.) //Most people never leave a 100 mi radius of where they were born. That's a real contributing factor to this trend. ///Still getting burned by a tenant that won't pay rent in my last house from this last move. Planning for 2 mortgages made it possible. ////Not saying everyone can make the move, but am saying anyone in a similar situation should seriously consider it without the baggage of their ties to an area that may be "home".

I actually used to work with the guy after he co-sponsored one of the first joint public/private working groups with USTRANSCOM, the FBI (and other 3 letter agencies), contractors, and some leading cybersecurity firms. Lots of tabletop exercises, briefings, etc., and the cool stuff was all classified of course, but he definately knows his way around the subject at a national level very well.

... and that's already the rule. Almost all software developed under contract for the Fderal Gov't, civilian agencies ,or the DoD have an "unlimited use rights" clause incorperated. Providing a copy of the source for static analysis is also part of the approval process. It seems that what they're trying to do is make the sharing easier or to revive the multiple failures of intra-agency forge sites as a real common platform (think data.gov) http://www.disa.mil/about/lega...

Stop listening to whatever conspiracy news source you have. The Supreme Court cleared this up in 1941 (Gorin v United States). Intent to benefit a foreign power is, in fact, a requirement under that statute. You can read a really simple summay here: http://warontherocks.com/2016/...

Way to pick a 10 year old OS. Current NIST and US-CERT advisories have everyone on a pretty even playing field. Unless we're going to have our office personnel running secure BSD, OS comparison is pointless without discussing overall governance.

Law of diminishing returns. There are a few good journal papers looking at the optimum investments into IS from game theoric and other modeled approaches In short: at some point the economic investment of continued improvement is offset by the likelihood of that vulnerability being exploited. At that point if the risk is still above an acceptable level your only real option is transference.

Just start at the OGC and OSGeo websites. There are tons of applications. Personally, I think one of the best is actually a NASA project "WorldWind" http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/features.html

For Flash/Flex/Air based apps, there is a port of the OpenLayers project called OpenScales http://openscales.org/