It's a function of education to keep kids alive, not to mention focused.

No... it's not at all. The function of education is to educate kids.

Their parents have a responsibility to see that their kids are fed and their health requirements are met.

The school should simply eliminate all the POS crap and require parents to pay.

Failure to pay will the a disciplinary infraction against the parent; the student may be suspended, and child protective services may be contacted.

There is no right to care for a child, if you are not capable of doing so.

What if the cafeteria worker is having a bad day and decides to point at the wrong kid, draining money from the wrong account to punish the bad kid's parents?

I like what my school did like 22 years ago. The "POS" is at the entrance to the Cafeteria.... Going into the Cafeteria, the students lined up in a specific order. She knows who is supposed to be next, you just tell lunch lady your last name and 4 digit code, and you get checked off as present.

You get a standard lunch. The only extras you can buy are a second milk, or a dessert bar, which you can't buy until about 20 minutes after lunch started, and in order to get one of those, you pay cash.

I think once they have found minerals, they will set up a permanent operation there. When they take off; it will be to bring one shipment back to where they could market it, however: people and assets would remain in the area, and it would be controlled, and it would likely be continuing to mine until the next wave of freight carriers come by to pick up the next shipment.

But I personally don't see any issues with this. Whoever gets the stuff out should own it.

As long as that stuff doesn't come from my tracts of land on the Moon, Mars, etc, claimed through the Lunar embassy.

And if they do extract resource from unauthorized mines on my land, then I would be entitled to the value of 100% of the raw resources extracted.

Are you seriously trying to claim Office 2013 in Windows 8 is radically different? And that its not that much different than Linux

Yes. Windows 8's new user interface "boot to metro", "push apps first and foremost," and "deprecate the desktop" is a radical departure from Windows XP / Windows 7. The metro is the new UI experience, and there is no sidestepping it.

It has caused extremely poor adoption of Windows 8 as users are sticking with Windows XP and 7 instead. Even XP users who acknowledge the need to upgrade are moving to 7, not Windows 8.

Also, KDE's UI much more closely resembles Windows XP / 7's UI than Windows 8 does.

You might have a point about file format compatibility with regards to LibreOffice vs MS Office. However...... Ms Office is becoming more rarely used.

At that point, the file format incompatibility with Office's non-standard format becomes moot.

Thats a good idea, make hail illegal. Can they do the same with straightline winds and tornados too?

Restricting who can accept a street hail and requiring licensing is how the taxis protect their business. "Private transport companies", where you call for a ride in advance, are in a different category of business.

and then suddenly the car will see something it can't handle and... stop in the middle of the highway

The issues were in city driving, and they are situations Google knows the car can't handle, so they agreed in advance with the state that a human would pilot the vehicle through these obstacles.

Highway driving tends to be "easier" in terms of fewer obstacles --- but yeah, if there's an unmapped stoplight or road construction site, the vehicle might have difficulties ----- it turns out, that in such areas, usually a lower speed limit is posted and normal highway speeds are not advisable or legal.

Anyone who exchanges one thing of value for another can be considered a customer.

No... exchanging one thing of value for another is called being a trading partner; customer/producer means something more specific, and Google/users' relationship is not customer/vendor.

In this case, the user of the service is a supplier of eyeballs, and the only service Google is selling is ad impressions; which are targeted against users utilizing the free service, and Google doesn't need any contract to print ads in the free service.

Nothing of value is actually being exchanged, and there essentially is no contract --- just some policy terms from Google.

Google can shut off a user's access to the free service, anytime they want with zero recourse.

The relationship is not like a customer/producer relationship. In such relationships, the customer actually provides consideration to receive a service and has a RIGHT to receive the service they paid for.

In this case, what Google gets is intangible.

A DMV committee then met and approved the country’s first self-driving vehicle testing license. On 4 May 2012, the Prius was issued special gold-on-red autonomous license plates, number AU-001. However, Google seems to have done little with its historic license plate. Most of the company’s testing has since been focused on California, and when its Nevada license expired in May 2013, Google failed to renew it for at least eight months.

If the driver is the autopilot, then the engineer taking control should cause the autopilot to automatically fail.

Apparently it was agreed upon before the test:

In communication with the Nevada DMV before the test, Google said its policy was to prohibit autonomous operation at railroad crossings that lack signals and for human drivers to take over. It also noted: “[Roundabouts are] particularly challenging, where many drivers don’t know the proper rules in the first place.” In an e-mail to colleagues at the DMV, Breslow wrote, “We can’t fail an applicant for not being able to navigate a traffic circle if they say that there [sic] vehicle can’t yet do it.”

If you have to be at full driver attentiveness at all times, what the heck is the point? A self-driving car should let you take a nap, read a book, or otherwise tune out from the road.

I don't think you have to be at full attentiveness at all times, but you won't be able to take a nap either. On the other hand, you would be safely able to study a paper map a bit.

So the car sounds an alarm and stops due to this obstacle it doesn't know how to handle, and you then need to pick up the wheel, look around, and navigate the situation safely.... if you're sleeping or stuck in a book, you will be stopped in the middle of the road and inconveniencing other drivers.

If LaneAssist is a useful feature, then this should still be a useful luxury feature as well..... just not as useful as a fully independent self-driving car would be.

Likely tangible safety improvements will still be a good reason for this feature.

Yes, your basic VFR landing - something every student pilot has to do - can give the willies the most seasoned jetliner pilot simply because the skill has rotted away.

I would suggest an annual recertification requirement for commercial pilots with a minimum of 100 hours flying with no automation.

Just because they don't know where to look, doesn't mean it's not there.

Probably, there are a great many genetic factors that could play a direct or indirect role in intelligence, either for the better or for the worse.

Also... let's not discount things such as eating habits, and nurture --- discipline, motivational factors, inspiration, culture, etc.

And the fact that it might be genetic, but 50,000 people might each have totally different genes contributing to their higher intelligence.

It's a X1, not a X20 flare. I do not think we really have much to worry about.

I'm surprised Slashdot is even covering anything less than an X5.