This sounds more like a cop-out for Toyota's design practices than anything. If it's not reliable enough for the road, then don't sell it! (safety laws and all).

What's so wrong with simple and effective that good design philosophy gets thrown out in favor of industry buzzwords?

I was referring to the 24+ hour flight.

I should have clarified, thank you.

This craft is also capable of bombing missions, according to the Military Channel's own documentaries on experimental craft. It DOES have a bomb bay and missile mounts.
The same documentary also said that this craft is capable of completely autonomous aircraft carrier landings, and can even do so in the dark. (a milestone feat in itself, due many factors)
It's also capable of 24+ hour flight, which is awesome for scouting missions waiting for a mobile target, and is capable of mid-air refueling. (this is a living pilot no-no, and potentially keeps the craft up as long as it needs to be).

Eventually, this will be flying more than our own pilots will be, due to the fact that pilots cannot be mass-produced. Eventually, we WILL be putting arms on them, even if only because there might not be a good enough alternative.

Also, rumors about similar tanks are in the works... that are so overengineered that they tried to break it and couldn't (experimental model).

RH didn't give any go ahead, it was the PackageKit upstream that did it without any communication.

Also:
NO documentation about this 'feature'.
Terrible configuration system.
Also, the entire mailing list had to do their own homework about this policy.

Reading the thread itself:

the configuration is difficult to change and not in a traditional location, and even then, most opt for a dirty 'patch' designed to turn PK authentication into a blacklist, instead of getting it to work right.

Uninstalling PK is also a no-go, since it breaks packages.

A regular RH user can:

crash the system by filling up / (root installation of packages, so no 5% wall)
install packages with known security holes
install packages that are automatically enabled (PulseAudio defaults on, as do a few others, and I recall a PulseAudio security hole being exploited recently)
install packages from only enabled repositories (the main one in specific is default)

All in all, this is making RH a lot less secure by default than it should be. I'll shy away from RH this time around, tyvm.

As an alternative to Office, use OpenOffice.

However, it _must_ be pointed out: you'd be making a lot of changes. Some people (especially management) see that as rocking the boat when it's 'going along just fine'.

The best thing to do (from my point of view): Educate your boss, keep a diary of what you're trying to do to be ethical, and do your best to get out of a sticky situation before it gets worse.

Once you're out, of course, you can drop the bomb.

It's not unreasonable to ask for a way to recoup your development/porting costs.

It's also not unreasonable to try to abide by the wishes of the development team.

I'm guessing that the original development team already have stable jobs -- do you? is your freelancing consistent? I'd venture "not completely"
I'm also guessing that this individual developer feels that the only business model for Linux is to make free software, and screw any bottom-line business model.

This specific developer in question sounds like he got burnt by focusing on the development of xpilot at the sacrifice of his finances. While I admire his support of the community to such lengths, it's not fair to think that everyone should make the same mistakes he made.

You can do a multitude of things. The single BIGGEST thing you can do for this project is bring this back into the public eye, which you're doing now. A microtransaction of a few dollars isn't going to break anyone's bank (compare free Linux to commercial UNIX, and it's a very clear distinction). I feel that you're on the right track myself.

DO keep the source code available though. You're looking at this as under a VENDOR paradigm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCARADb9asE

There's how many Evil Scientists bent on destroying the world around?

Most people just want money; money that keeps coming.

Augmented humanity vs unaugmented humanity will be a big question of the future.

The way I see it, I'd go along the lines of nonsurgical augmentation (my personal transcriber for the book I'm writing? sure!). It's the sanest balance in my opinion. I can still go outside, hike the mountain, and escape from the Matrix.

I'm a big believer in balanced lifestyle, and whether this means including machines in the decision-making process or saying that I need my space away from them, it's a practical and meaningful way to live.

When a machine can meditate side-by-side with me, I'll consider them a suitable part of all aspects of humanity.

Simulating a brain is not equal to machine intelligence.

It takes a lot more effort to simulate something that's represented in hardware.
It takes a lot less effort to actually do something on the bare iron.

There's various routes to machine intelligence. One such route is say.. fractal representation of a machine's knowledge of what's around it and what it can do with it.

This is a very different route from doing a neural network representation, that tends to require high-performance massively parallel computing.

Of course, with the given rate of things as Moore's Law stands, it may indeed take until 2020, but that doesn't mean that current methods don't already work (take a look at the Japanese robotics contests sometime).

Putting limits on the growth of a technology for the sake of social paranoia only goes so far... someone will ALWAYS break the "rules", and at that point, the cat is out of the bag.

Furthermore, some AI scientists enjoy having the 'god complex', the idea that you're the keystone in the next stage of humanity.

That being said, the social disruptions are what we make it. Were there social disruptions when the automobile was introduced? Yes. the household computer? yes. video games? yes.

We have to take responsibility to set the stage for a good social transition. Yes, bad things will happen, but we can focus on the good things too, or things will quickly blow out of proportion. (and yes, I realize that's really not likely, but I can do my part)

They do, and they'll continue to push those boundaries.

Tell me, do you think they like losing money on undeliverable products?

My guess is that most wind farm manufacturing will go to the sea-side, shipped by sea, and delivered by practical routes from the sea.

Their can bee only won!

This is indeed a logistical problem, and not an inherent problem. It's also not a problem with weight.

Wind turbines and wind towers for those turbines are very different. Towers are large and bulky, built to be structurally sound. Interstate laws require that only so much weight can be put on any given set of wheels. Heavy, illegally-running trucks (liquid haulers, etc) can easily get much heavier, on fewer wheels. The weight problem is already managed, and oversize trucks are routinely checked, where other trucks aren't as much.

If smaller roads that happen to carry large amounts of truck traffic are getting torn up, then it's not surprising, given that trucks are trucks. This Texas road in specific is notorious for being undermaintained, and the Highway Department can whine, but they know they need to do something.

I seriously doubt that this remark about 'a big gouge in Route 1' was because of weight, but rather because of size. Perhaps it clipped an overpass. Perhaps (god forbid) it actually slid off the truck. Accidents are remembered, but gradual wear and tear on a road isn't an 'accident' that happens all at once.

Putting a truck laden with a section of tower can clog up a heavy construction area for hours. Can you plan around that? Yes, but only so much. Incidents will happen, and I distinctly remember one of these trucks knocking down all the cones in a construction area, because it was either the cones or the signs.

This is 'routine' logistical work for any oversize hauler. If someone's screwing up, fingers are easy to point. It may be the driver, or it may be that construction crew that was lazy with their cones, but it's manageable, up to a point. If you can't get it through no matter which route you take, it's too big to transport.

For states back east, it's messier still because the roads are smaller (you can't fit one of these around most of those corners) and the clearances are sized to match.

Eventually, wind tower construction companies are going to have to mobilize. Contract for several years here, and several years there, and it makes more sense to actually relocate the manufacturing facility for large products to save costs.