Somehow, I always knew it was a good idea to refuse installing any other PDF reader on my Mac...

You got to praise German engineering...

I hear this "it will bankrupt our country/economy" argument over and over again, and I still don't understand it. It is not like anybody suggests to stop producing goods or to stop generating energy etc. (ok, some more radical people might, but who cares about them?). It's essentially about investing into the future by changing the way we produce and the way we create energy. So, there is need for innovation. We will need to develop new methods and technologies, which may create new jobs and then can again be sold to others, creating new markets, etc. Sounds like a reasonable thing to do to me in light of the economic life-cycle, independent of climate change. Unless you believe that your country is incapable of taking this step. But then there's different problems than only climate change as well...

And no, I don't believe everyone will win here; and yes, this is the case anyway in today's economic system.

...in letting climate change disappear I have a few more resolutions to propose.

I especially like this paragraph from the article:

It's a great example of the "invoke fear and terror in our ignorant population by using unrelated, unfounded, known to be false statements" approach. It's quite popular in the fine country of the US (especially in this one party I'm not going to mention).

And in the end it's not surprising that Utah passes a resolution like this. If you've ever driven through the state you'd noticed that it already looks like climate change has already happened.

I would expect to find that Mythbusters has already tested this.

Well, quite frankly, having been raised in the society under inspection here, I never felt like I am missing out one of my human rights.

And I don't really see why I should. My parents had every right to tell me whatever they wanted to; they could even openly object to whatever I learned in school. Not that there's ever been a need to do so (they sometimes objected to the methods used, though; quite openly, in fact).

It is one of those rights which need to be balanced between your personal rights and the rights/benefits/needs of society. It is a bit like freedom of speech vs. insulting or constraining others. The US tends to be more in favor of the personal rights here, Germany tends to be more in favor of society as a whole. Different cultures, I guess.

Well, the times where there's been part of Germany you couldn't leave if you wanted to are gone for nearly 11 years now. Nobody has to live in Germany. If you can find another place to live and be happy about it, you're more than welcome to leave. Of course, this other place needs to want you around too. In case you missed this, most of the place has been a democratic state for more than 60 years now. We do have freedom of speech, travel and choice of place to live.

This won't happen. Why should it? You have to send your kid to school if you live in Germany. If you're a German living outside of Germany, you have to comply with whatever regulations there are where you live. It's not like if you live in Australia you have to send your kid back to Germany to get it into school.

We do not keep our citizens from living in some country just because we don't like how things are run there. That's one of the many niceties being German, you know.

Well, in fact it is not. It is one of those areas where you have to judge personal freedom against societal needs or desires. Like deciding whether it is ok to carry weapons in public or whether traffic is on the left or right side of the road. Different societies have different views on these issues.

There are good reasons to make education an issue of public control. There might also good reasons to allow home-schooling. Germany as a state / society has decided that it rather wants public control over where, what and when children learn. Other states like the US may handle this differently. As pointed out earlier, you don't have to send your kid to public school in Germany, there are private ones following different educational theories. You can even try to get your own school (not easy, but possible). But a child has to be in school somewhere, meaning be with other children and being exposed to ideas, material, subjects that have been agreed upon as being those that are relevant.

So, it is one of those personal rights you have to give up being a member of society. Makes sense to any German I ever talked to (I'm one myself).

Yes I do! Strongly even.

Ecologically, socially and cognitively it makes perfect sense to act, interact, behave and simply be in your peer group, that is other children. Granted certain "influence from above" is needed, aka teachers and especially parents telling kids what (not) to do. But humans are just brilliant in adaptation and learning from observation; so much easier to acquire social skills through practicing them then just being told what to do. And so much more chances to be able to get along later on when you learned how to deal with different situations early on.

Yes, there's a potential for bullying in school. Yes, public schools--in Germany for sure, and possibly anywhere else except for Finland maybe--do have their deficits, but I don't want to imagine what happens to society if every kid was schooled at home...

Why do we keep getting these facebook stories? I felt like there's general agreement on /. that a) using facebook isn't the most clever career move and b) that the world is full of morons who don't understand that things you post on the Internet might actually be read by somebody.

Well, it hasn't hit local media exactly this week. The linked article is from 11-10. Here's another one from last week http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09315/1012444-53.stm, just to cite the other big paper of the city. And it's been discussed even way before that...

Anyway, it's a fairly strange idea. Paying for "the privilege to get an education in the city" may just make you decide it is a privilege you don't need. And seeing the vast amount of students running around town, people not taking this privilege would be a severe cut into city's finances...

I don't believe this is true. While market share certainly plays a major role in the MS IE thingy, this is a different situation.

As pointed out a billion times already in this post and others on /. Apple is primarily a hardware vendor. They happen to have a pretty cool OS for their systems, but they are selling hardware. In fact, you are even able to install other OS on their hardware, since they are using Intel processors. So, in fact they have even decoupled their software from their hardware, allowing others into their hardware. There is no obligation on any level for them to also get their software into anybody else's hardware.

Now, MS as we all know is a software vendor (they might sell the occasional mouse, but well...). They have tightly combined software with software. Apple happens to prevent (accidentally or on purpose) their software to run on other hardware they do not support.

And just for the record: if they've done this on purpose, I'd prefer they'd better not, but it's their business after all...

First of all, this is a research project, so it is supposed to have a couple of open questions left.

And of course vehicles in the road train will have different speed and maneuver capabilities in principle. A general idea of having a road train is that every vehicle involved adapts to every other in the train. The professional driver in the lead determines speed (and will have to make sure that every vehicle can keep up). This will safe fuel, but might also increase road safety as there are less differences in individual speeds etc.

In theory you could have the cars leave the train automatically near their exits (with some previous alarm sounds etc.), but this would require that these cars can sense whether neighboring lanes are safe to enter.

Interesting questions abound here! Where do I join?