Nah that's so boring! What I want is my Linux desktop to act like MS Windows where I cannot move applications if the app is frozen, because the decorations are all client-side. And while we're at it let's emulate the feature of Windows where you can't move a parent window around when a modal dialog box is being displayed!
Yeah, then we'll finally have the year of the Linux Desktop!
I don't have much to say about the mobile browser; I don't really use a mobile browser all that much and Dolphin works fine for what I need.
But when I clicked on the links in the summary, much to my dismay, I find that the Firefox team is embarking on some grand plan to have a unified look and feel across all platforms. They call it Project Kilimanjaro or some such thing. And by that I mean eschewing any attempt to look like it belongs on a platform, and to go its own way, Google Chrome-style. Bad enough that Gnome thinks it is an operating system, but now Firefox? I just want a browser that fits with my desktop theme, and looks like a normal app. I don't need an "experience."
I don't get it. Maybe I'm too old. I'm totally happy with the way Firefox looks and works with my GTK theme extension that I've kept alive for the last few firefox versions (well I'm on 10ESR right now). And tabs on top never made sense to me. When a tab is up that doesn't have a url bar or a search box, how do do a search? With tabs on bottom, I just hit the search bar, type, hit alt-enter, and a new tab with my results shows up, no matter what my current tab looks like.
Anyway, it seems like we're regressing in terms of UI design. I guess years of research (not to mention that milions of people have learned things a certain way) doesn't mean much.
I think a lot of us would be interested in visiting north Korea if only to see for ourselves how things are in the world's most closed and secretive nation. Might help us appreciate the things we have even with our flawed and corrupt political systems.
I'm maybe a strange one but I think a visit to north Korea would be fascinating. Of course I'd also like to visit the dead zone around Chernobyl too. I suspect a lot of Slashdot readers would too.
I have a couple of internet-facing VPS servers that I use, and I do ssh into them on a regular basis. But after a weak password let someone in, I re-installed and switched to requiring ssh keys. I also turned on simple rate limiting for ssh (I keep mine on port 22) connection attempts. I still allow password ssh logins, but only for connections originating within my VPN.
I haven't had very many problems with brute force attacks since. I'm still vulnerable to any ssh key-handling vulnerabilities that may come along, but I feel more secure than I was before.
Well there is no doubt that Google doesn't care about the enterprise or the needs of users who want long-term stability. Does Google mark IE 10, the latest internet explorer as outdated?
But in fairness, the javacsript engine in Firefox ESR 10 is frozen, featuers-wise, and Google has moved on to rely on the capabilities of newer javascript engines and HTML5 rendering systems.
Actually there is a ton of software available in repos for RHEL. Almost as much as Fedora, actually. The main recommended third-party repo is EPEL, and if you can't find something in there you can dip into a widely-trusted third-party repo called rpmforge. Between those two I've not found very much lacking except the latest bleeding edge stuff like Gnome 3.
The last thing MS wants is to help iOS adoption. Balmer is fixated on his own answer, Windows 8 RT. There's no way he would undermine that with a deal like this. Plus he's also fixated on this office in the cloud bit. If you could run an nice slick interface to the cloud version of MS Office in Safari, I think that might be better for MS.
No it doesn't. Applications crash all the time in OS X, Windows, and Linux. No fanboi will claim otherwise unless he's really stupid. And that has nothing to do with Macs never crashing or Linux never crashing. In fact a system crash in MaOS *is* very rare. Certainly much rarer than it was in Windows XP, which was the dominant OS when MacOS came to be and the Mac fanbois got all excited over it. Now I think even the most diehard fanbois have to admit now that Windows is pretty darn stable.
Android, now that's another story, though in Android's case it's not the OS crashing either, it's the Android environment triggering a reboot when it freezes, which irritates me to no end. Why can't Android just restart the environment? Why does it have to reboot Linux kernel?
Mods are funny around here. I get modded down for saying the exact same thing as others who are modded up (that copyright law simply doesn't allow for the use of code without a license or an explicit relinquishing of rights). Look if you disagree with me, simply say so. I'm not off-topic, nor troll.
But the odd thing is that prepaid phones aren't subsidized. And there isn't any contract. So a sale is a sale, doesn't matter what the buyer does with the phones. If the cell companies are likely taking a small loss with these phones at the point of sale, but that should be a bad business decision consequence, not a matter to put customers in jail over.
Wow. I think I'm going to remember this new nonsensical phrase that the cell companies have come up with: pre-paid phone trafficking. Hilarious.
This article shows a lot of ignorance of how copyright law works. Whether or not you agree with copyright law is irrelevant. Code that is simply posted to github is not by default in the public domain. Copyright is granted implicitly.
It's not possible for code that is not licensed to be used in any way by proprietary or open source projects. That's just not how copyright law currently works. Unless you grant a user specific rights to use the code, copyright law currently does not allow someone else to legally use the code in any derivative way.
Having well-defined license such as the GPL keep source code free. They project all of us. A proliferation of unlicensed Git code is ultimately harmful for everyone in the entire industry because it muddies the waters and puts companies and open source projects in legal jeopardy. It also dilutes the ability of open source code to enforce it's openness with those who would abuse it. Saying "screw it just post code, crappy or not" also dilutes the quality of code that people perceive in open source projects.
Maybe this is where things are heading, but it's not good for anyone, and certainly not legal with our current laws. The only way this would work is if github forced a poster to state whether or not the code was in the public domain. If not and no license was declared, github should put up a big warning, say you cannot legally fork and use the code since the author claims exclusive copyrights.
Though the raspberry pi can do a lot of what the arduinio can with it's gpio pins, the arduino (well the AVR system) is more flexible. It can do PWM, ADC, interrupt-driven signalling very easily, and can do it at 5v if you wish which is often an easier voltage to work with than 3.3v that the Pi uses. Also the shields are nice to add things like motor controllers, etc.
But like another poster said, you can't exactly do AI or image processing algorithms on the arduino. But you probably can on the pi. And the pi has ethernet and a lot of horsepower. So why not combine the two? Check out the AlaMode, a shield for the raspberry pi that plugs in using its expansion port. The AlaMode has a complete Arduino Uno system onboard, and the pins on it are set up to make it work with any existing shield. You can load a firmware like firmata on the arduino portion, then use python or anything that speaks the protocol to drive the arduino from a program on the pi. Kind of a neat idea.
Or you could write your own program on the arduino and a simple serial control interface to drive it from the pi depending on your needs.
Arduino's environment uses essentially straight C++. There's nothing special about it; it all runs through g++. The Arduino system merely provides you a nice lightweight abstraction that you can use or not.
I recently developed a linear actuator controller using Arduino and when I was done I targeted the AtTiny84 processor, took the hex file and burned it with avrdude to the chip and it worked great (though I'm only using it at 1 MHz with no external clocking components. I built the binary from within Arduino's IDE even (added a plugin to target attiny). This is what makes Arduino so interesting. It's a straight forward jump into more complicated AVR programming, or to other smaller chips that don't have an arduino bootloader like the attiny.
I think your post illustrates the confusion over Arduino. 1. It's not a special language; it's simply C++ with a framework to abstract the chip a little and the result resembles processing, but it isn't processing. I've seen people develop little python libraries for Raspberry Pi that emulate this framework on the Pi. 2. The arduino bootloader is nice for rapid develop/load/test cycles, but isn't required. If you have the proper hardware definition files in Arduino you can target other chips like AtTiny (no bootloader at all), or the Teensy (proprietary bootloader). 3. You can port your Arduino programs directly to AVR if you wish complete with the arduino abstractions (framework). 4. Arduino is really about a community and a lot of libraries.
Just as an aside, I recently discovered the QP event framework for Arduino, straight AVR, Arm, Pi, or any number of other platforms. Gives you a complete event-driven paradigm for embedded devices complete with threads, timers, event sources, event sinks, etc. All in just under 3k. It's complicated stuff but looks to be very powerful I'm going to check it out.
I've been using Teensy lately. I can use the Arduino tools and most libraries. It's relatively cheap compared to Arduino at only about $20.
Obviously you can't use the same shields but electrically they are more or less compatible. The teensy can do things Arduino can't like be a usb keyboard, mouse, joystick, serial port, midi device, or x-plane instrument interface.
Also if you're going to do a lot of breadboard you could also look into the adafruit breadboard Arduino. Can't use shields bit it is easier to plug into a breadboard.
All in all they are all pretty cheap so buy a few!
Guess who pays for the rewards programs? That's right. It's the retailers. Credit card companies charge retailers more for the rewards program credit cards. You don't think Visa is actually giving you money do you?
I use a business credit card with some huge multinational companies charging up hundreds of thousands of dollars in business each year. I don't feel too bad about taking airmiles from them. But I do feel bad about taking rewards from little mom and pop retailers. Visa had them over a barrel. If they wanted business they have to accept credit cards. But if they want to accept credit cards they have to do it on Visa's terms (until now), which were higher fees for rewards cards, and Visa would not allow them to pass any of those charges on. It's quite a racket, actually.
To those posters who saying that unlocking a phone is breaking a promise to the carrier because of the subsidized phone, I think they forget what the contract is actually about. The contract is that I'll take service from this company for a period of time, for a specific rate, or else pay a fee for the termination of the contract. Whether or nor I fulfill the contract or buy out with the termination fee, the phone still gets paid for in its entirety. So it doesn't matter here: the phone really is yours and you can and should be able to unlock it. The only time a phone isn't paid for by you is if the carrier changes their terms of service and you exercise your right to leave the contract, but that's their loss for breaking the contract terms to begin with.
There is nothing financial here, nor is there anything about copyright. The SIM lock isn't encryption (an "Access Control" and it doesn't require a firmware modification. So I don't see how the DMCA applies at all, nor why the Library of Congress thinks they have any say in the matter.
Mate runs on F18 and presumably F19 as well. And the fork of Gnome fall-back is likely to have packages for Fedora as well. So the desktop itself shouldn't really play much into your decision whether or not to stay with Fedora, and some version of Fedora. Lots of other things definitely play into this unfolding story.
Seems like devs are chasing mythical "normal/beginner" computer users and in the process leaving those of us who are a bit savy and use Linux in the lurch. In the end, they will have no users at all. Everyone I know is pretty happy with Windows 7, or more likely, Apple.I honestly can't offer them much with Linux anymore, unless they are a programmer and want the sweet development tools Linux can host (Qt and cross-compiling!). But I digress.
For those of us fed up where with where distros are going these days, it's looking to me like Linux Mint is probably the place I'm going to end up. I want a system I can understand, manipulate and use. Crap like this installer, the new systemd stuff, I just don't need or want. Sadly it looks like Microsoft has little to fear as we're doing a good job of taking ourselves out of the game and market without them having to do much.
Given that the installer is so dangerous, I cannot recommend F18 to any non-expert. Who knows what it will do to your existing windows or linux installs. Maybe F18 should be considered VM only?
Ha well you can keep lisp then. Python I'm a white space ghetto? To funny.
I found Eric s Raymond's take on python very interesting. He started out with your attitude but very quickly changed his mind once he actually started using it. Look it up. It's worth a read.
I've used both lisp and python. There's no comparison. Python is easy nicer. But it has a lot of lisp like features that make it a real pleasure to use. I'd prefer python over JavaScript any day. I was very sad the epiphany browser abandoned python as s plugin language in favor of JavaScript which didn't even have decent gtk bindings at the time. Ah well.
All I see are links to other slashdot articles. Are we going for a new record here? First the ridiculous post about Microsoft welling their entertainment division, now this. And the same style of headline too, which of course is answered with, "No."
Mr Editor, can you at least post a link to some information, like maybe the site where this specification is detailed? Maybe the project web site itself?
I've seen several programs about children with severe allergies that cannot attend school with other kids. The telepresence robots allow them to virtually attend school, and participate in normal classes alongside their class mates. They can go to recess with their classmates, go to the cafeteria, and in general interact with the classroom, the teacher, and the other students in a way that they find to be pretty natural. Sure a webcam and screen would work, but being able to drive remotely and interact as kids do has proved to be very successful. The other kids interact with his avatar robot just as if he were really there. It's quite encouraging to for a child who otherwise would be extremely isolated.
Maybe these are edge cases, but they do prove how this sort of technology can work.
In one part of the complex, two seemingly identical structures are going up, but they are at slight angles to each other. That's gotta drive someone nuts if they are like me. That said I wonder what some of my projects look like from space... I they are lined up down here, but maybe from orbit they'd be obviously crooked.
Actually, from an economics pov, a trillion-dollar coin thing might actually work. Given that the last couple of rounds of quantitative easing had zero impact on inflation, and that we're in a liquidity trap, it's entirely possible that no inflation would result. The reasoning is that government spending is what causes inflation (in large part... fiscal policy), and since neither quantitative easing or seigniorage (the trillion dollar coin idea) changes that necessarily, inflation should hold steady. The money supply would only increase as congress spends it, which is about the same as now, in effect, since congress has been spending for years without paying the bill.
I expect a lot of flames now... Yes there are flaws in the plan, but I am interested in seeing this idea explored in depth (pro and con) by economics experts. The fact that so many people, particularly Republicans, call it absurd while continuing to merely kick the can down the road makes me think (perhaps out of spite) that maybe there's something in that proposal that can finally break this vicious cycle.
We can tell from other parts of the world that simply focusing on austerity makes things worse, not better. But continuing to simply raise the debt ceiling while risking people's retirement savings in government bonds, isn't good either. Except for the possibility of some inflation, and the question as to it's legality (since it would effectively break the Fed's power), PCS seems like quite a decent way out. Or else we should just admit that our grand experiment has failed and throw in the towel.
Slashdot Mirror
Nah that's so boring! What I want is my Linux desktop to act like MS Windows where I cannot move applications if the app is frozen, because the decorations are all client-side. And while we're at it let's emulate the feature of Windows where you can't move a parent window around when a modal dialog box is being displayed!
Yeah, then we'll finally have the year of the Linux Desktop!
Interesting claims. To what are you referring? WWII?
I don't have much to say about the mobile browser; I don't really use a mobile browser all that much and Dolphin works fine for what I need.
But when I clicked on the links in the summary, much to my dismay, I find that the Firefox team is embarking on some grand plan to have a unified look and feel across all platforms. They call it Project Kilimanjaro or some such thing. And by that I mean eschewing any attempt to look like it belongs on a platform, and to go its own way, Google Chrome-style. Bad enough that Gnome thinks it is an operating system, but now Firefox? I just want a browser that fits with my desktop theme, and looks like a normal app. I don't need an "experience."
I don't get it. Maybe I'm too old. I'm totally happy with the way Firefox looks and works with my GTK theme extension that I've kept alive for the last few firefox versions (well I'm on 10ESR right now). And tabs on top never made sense to me. When a tab is up that doesn't have a url bar or a search box, how do do a search? With tabs on bottom, I just hit the search bar, type, hit alt-enter, and a new tab with my results shows up, no matter what my current tab looks like.
Anyway, it seems like we're regressing in terms of UI design. I guess years of research (not to mention that milions of people have learned things a certain way) doesn't mean much.
I think a lot of us would be interested in visiting north Korea if only to see for ourselves how things are in the world's most closed and secretive nation. Might help us appreciate the things we have even with our flawed and corrupt political systems.
I'm maybe a strange one but I think a visit to north Korea would be fascinating. Of course I'd also like to visit the dead zone around Chernobyl too. I suspect a lot of Slashdot readers would too.
I have a couple of internet-facing VPS servers that I use, and I do ssh into them on a regular basis. But after a weak password let someone in, I re-installed and switched to requiring ssh keys. I also turned on simple rate limiting for ssh (I keep mine on port 22) connection attempts. I still allow password ssh logins, but only for connections originating within my VPN.
I haven't had very many problems with brute force attacks since. I'm still vulnerable to any ssh key-handling vulnerabilities that may come along, but I feel more secure than I was before.
Well there is no doubt that Google doesn't care about the enterprise or the needs of users who want long-term stability. Does Google mark IE 10, the latest internet explorer as outdated?
But in fairness, the javacsript engine in Firefox ESR 10 is frozen, featuers-wise, and Google has moved on to rely on the capabilities of newer javascript engines and HTML5 rendering systems.
Actually there is a ton of software available in repos for RHEL. Almost as much as Fedora, actually. The main recommended third-party repo is EPEL, and if you can't find something in there you can dip into a widely-trusted third-party repo called rpmforge. Between those two I've not found very much lacking except the latest bleeding edge stuff like Gnome 3.
The last thing MS wants is to help iOS adoption. Balmer is fixated on his own answer, Windows 8 RT. There's no way he would undermine that with a deal like this. Plus he's also fixated on this office in the cloud bit. If you could run an nice slick interface to the cloud version of MS Office in Safari, I think that might be better for MS.
No it doesn't. Applications crash all the time in OS X, Windows, and Linux. No fanboi will claim otherwise unless he's really stupid. And that has nothing to do with Macs never crashing or Linux never crashing. In fact a system crash in MaOS *is* very rare. Certainly much rarer than it was in Windows XP, which was the dominant OS when MacOS came to be and the Mac fanbois got all excited over it. Now I think even the most diehard fanbois have to admit now that Windows is pretty darn stable.
Android, now that's another story, though in Android's case it's not the OS crashing either, it's the Android environment triggering a reboot when it freezes, which irritates me to no end. Why can't Android just restart the environment? Why does it have to reboot Linux kernel?
Mods are funny around here. I get modded down for saying the exact same thing as others who are modded up (that copyright law simply doesn't allow for the use of code without a license or an explicit relinquishing of rights). Look if you disagree with me, simply say so. I'm not off-topic, nor troll.
But the odd thing is that prepaid phones aren't subsidized. And there isn't any contract. So a sale is a sale, doesn't matter what the buyer does with the phones. If the cell companies are likely taking a small loss with these phones at the point of sale, but that should be a bad business decision consequence, not a matter to put customers in jail over.
Wow. I think I'm going to remember this new nonsensical phrase that the cell companies have come up with: pre-paid phone trafficking. Hilarious.
This article shows a lot of ignorance of how copyright law works. Whether or not you agree with copyright law is irrelevant. Code that is simply posted to github is not by default in the public domain. Copyright is granted implicitly.
It's not possible for code that is not licensed to be used in any way by proprietary or open source projects. That's just not how copyright law currently works. Unless you grant a user specific rights to use the code, copyright law currently does not allow someone else to legally use the code in any derivative way.
Having well-defined license such as the GPL keep source code free. They project all of us. A proliferation of unlicensed Git code is ultimately harmful for everyone in the entire industry because it muddies the waters and puts companies and open source projects in legal jeopardy. It also dilutes the ability of open source code to enforce it's openness with those who would abuse it. Saying "screw it just post code, crappy or not" also dilutes the quality of code that people perceive in open source projects.
Maybe this is where things are heading, but it's not good for anyone, and certainly not legal with our current laws. The only way this would work is if github forced a poster to state whether or not the code was in the public domain. If not and no license was declared, github should put up a big warning, say you cannot legally fork and use the code since the author claims exclusive copyrights.
Though the raspberry pi can do a lot of what the arduinio can with it's gpio pins, the arduino (well the AVR system) is more flexible. It can do PWM, ADC, interrupt-driven signalling very easily, and can do it at 5v if you wish which is often an easier voltage to work with than 3.3v that the Pi uses. Also the shields are nice to add things like motor controllers, etc.
But like another poster said, you can't exactly do AI or image processing algorithms on the arduino. But you probably can on the pi. And the pi has ethernet and a lot of horsepower. So why not combine the two? Check out the AlaMode, a shield for the raspberry pi that plugs in using its expansion port. The AlaMode has a complete Arduino Uno system onboard, and the pins on it are set up to make it work with any existing shield. You can load a firmware like firmata on the arduino portion, then use python or anything that speaks the protocol to drive the arduino from a program on the pi. Kind of a neat idea.
Or you could write your own program on the arduino and a simple serial control interface to drive it from the pi depending on your needs.
Arduino's environment uses essentially straight C++. There's nothing special about it; it all runs through g++. The Arduino system merely provides you a nice lightweight abstraction that you can use or not.
I recently developed a linear actuator controller using Arduino and when I was done I targeted the AtTiny84 processor, took the hex file and burned it with avrdude to the chip and it worked great (though I'm only using it at 1 MHz with no external clocking components. I built the binary from within Arduino's IDE even (added a plugin to target attiny). This is what makes Arduino so interesting. It's a straight forward jump into more complicated AVR programming, or to other smaller chips that don't have an arduino bootloader like the attiny.
I think your post illustrates the confusion over Arduino.
1. It's not a special language; it's simply C++ with a framework to abstract the chip a little and the result resembles processing, but it isn't processing. I've seen people develop little python libraries for Raspberry Pi that emulate this framework on the Pi.
2. The arduino bootloader is nice for rapid develop/load/test cycles, but isn't required. If you have the proper hardware definition files in Arduino you can target other chips like AtTiny (no bootloader at all), or the Teensy (proprietary bootloader).
3. You can port your Arduino programs directly to AVR if you wish complete with the arduino abstractions (framework).
4. Arduino is really about a community and a lot of libraries.
Just as an aside, I recently discovered the QP event framework for Arduino, straight AVR, Arm, Pi, or any number of other platforms. Gives you a complete event-driven paradigm for embedded devices complete with threads, timers, event sources, event sinks, etc. All in just under 3k. It's complicated stuff but looks to be very powerful I'm going to check it out.
I've been using Teensy lately. I can use the Arduino tools and most libraries. It's relatively cheap compared to Arduino at only about $20.
Obviously you can't use the same shields but electrically they are more or less compatible. The teensy can do things Arduino can't like be a usb keyboard, mouse, joystick, serial port, midi device, or x-plane instrument interface.
Also if you're going to do a lot of breadboard you could also look into the adafruit breadboard Arduino. Can't use shields bit it is easier to plug into a breadboard.
All in all they are all pretty cheap so buy a few!
Guess who pays for the rewards programs? That's right. It's the retailers. Credit card companies charge retailers more for the rewards program credit cards. You don't think Visa is actually giving you money do you?
I use a business credit card with some huge multinational companies charging up hundreds of thousands of dollars in business each year. I don't feel too bad about taking airmiles from them. But I do feel bad about taking rewards from little mom and pop retailers. Visa had them over a barrel. If they wanted business they have to accept credit cards. But if they want to accept credit cards they have to do it on Visa's terms (until now), which were higher fees for rewards cards, and Visa would not allow them to pass any of those charges on. It's quite a racket, actually.
To those posters who saying that unlocking a phone is breaking a promise to the carrier because of the subsidized phone, I think they forget what the contract is actually about. The contract is that I'll take service from this company for a period of time, for a specific rate, or else pay a fee for the termination of the contract. Whether or nor I fulfill the contract or buy out with the termination fee, the phone still gets paid for in its entirety. So it doesn't matter here: the phone really is yours and you can and should be able to unlock it. The only time a phone isn't paid for by you is if the carrier changes their terms of service and you exercise your right to leave the contract, but that's their loss for breaking the contract terms to begin with.
There is nothing financial here, nor is there anything about copyright. The SIM lock isn't encryption (an "Access Control" and it doesn't require a firmware modification. So I don't see how the DMCA applies at all, nor why the Library of Congress thinks they have any say in the matter.
Mate runs on F18 and presumably F19 as well. And the fork of Gnome fall-back is likely to have packages for Fedora as well. So the desktop itself shouldn't really play much into your decision whether or not to stay with Fedora, and some version of Fedora. Lots of other things definitely play into this unfolding story.
Seems like devs are chasing mythical "normal/beginner" computer users and in the process leaving those of us who are a bit savy and use Linux in the lurch. In the end, they will have no users at all. Everyone I know is pretty happy with Windows 7, or more likely, Apple.I honestly can't offer them much with Linux anymore, unless they are a programmer and want the sweet development tools Linux can host (Qt and cross-compiling!). But I digress.
Caldera is what you are remembering.
For those of us fed up where with where distros are going these days, it's looking to me like Linux Mint is probably the place I'm going to end up. I want a system I can understand, manipulate and use. Crap like this installer, the new systemd stuff, I just don't need or want. Sadly it looks like Microsoft has little to fear as we're doing a good job of taking ourselves out of the game and market without them having to do much.
Given that the installer is so dangerous, I cannot recommend F18 to any non-expert. Who knows what it will do to your existing windows or linux installs. Maybe F18 should be considered VM only?
Ha well you can keep lisp then. Python I'm a white space ghetto? To funny.
I found Eric s Raymond's take on python very interesting. He started out with your attitude but very quickly changed his mind once he actually started using it. Look it up. It's worth a read.
I've used both lisp and python. There's no comparison. Python is easy nicer. But it has a lot of lisp like features that make it a real pleasure to use. I'd prefer python over JavaScript any day. I was very sad the epiphany browser abandoned python as s plugin language in favor of JavaScript which didn't even have decent gtk bindings at the time. Ah well.
All I see are links to other slashdot articles. Are we going for a new record here? First the ridiculous post about Microsoft welling their entertainment division, now this. And the same style of headline too, which of course is answered with, "No."
Mr Editor, can you at least post a link to some information, like maybe the site where this specification is detailed? Maybe the project web site itself?
I've seen several programs about children with severe allergies that cannot attend school with other kids. The telepresence robots allow them to virtually attend school, and participate in normal classes alongside their class mates. They can go to recess with their classmates, go to the cafeteria, and in general interact with the classroom, the teacher, and the other students in a way that they find to be pretty natural. Sure a webcam and screen would work, but being able to drive remotely and interact as kids do has proved to be very successful. The other kids interact with his avatar robot just as if he were really there. It's quite encouraging to for a child who otherwise would be extremely isolated.
Maybe these are edge cases, but they do prove how this sort of technology can work.
In one part of the complex, two seemingly identical structures are going up, but they are at slight angles to each other. That's gotta drive someone nuts if they are like me. That said I wonder what some of my projects look like from space... I they are lined up down here, but maybe from orbit they'd be obviously crooked.
Actually, from an economics pov, a trillion-dollar coin thing might actually work. Given that the last couple of rounds of quantitative easing had zero impact on inflation, and that we're in a liquidity trap, it's entirely possible that no inflation would result. The reasoning is that government spending is what causes inflation (in large part... fiscal policy), and since neither quantitative easing or seigniorage (the trillion dollar coin idea) changes that necessarily, inflation should hold steady. The money supply would only increase as congress spends it, which is about the same as now, in effect, since congress has been spending for years without paying the bill.
I expect a lot of flames now... Yes there are flaws in the plan, but I am interested in seeing this idea explored in depth (pro and con) by economics experts. The fact that so many people, particularly Republicans, call it absurd while continuing to merely kick the can down the road makes me think (perhaps out of spite) that maybe there's something in that proposal that can finally break this vicious cycle.
We can tell from other parts of the world that simply focusing on austerity makes things worse, not better. But continuing to simply raise the debt ceiling while risking people's retirement savings in government bonds, isn't good either. Except for the possibility of some inflation, and the question as to it's legality (since it would effectively break the Fed's power), PCS seems like quite a decent way out. Or else we should just admit that our grand experiment has failed and throw in the towel.