Drakeman

Some US states have 60/40 plans built into their education budgets. What that means is 60% of the money the state gives to local schools must go to the "classroom." Now, how a state defines classroom is very loose. Most of the time, supplies, working facilities, new desks, books, and teaching materials fit into it. What is the other 40%? Administrative and teacher salaries, lunch programs, and transportation.

In my experience, schools in the US actually waste a huge sum of money because they have incompetent administrative staff (with the added bonus that they're overpaid).

I've acquired a growing distrust of Amazon's seller accounts in the past year. For a while, I was making my rent on used books I'd acquired over the years. However, I found Amazon was more likely to side on the buyer side, even when there was a preponderance of evidence that I had done nothing wrong. So, Amazon closing a person's account and giving no reason is right up their alley.

Education and its trying-to-be-legitimate partner Educational Psychology is even worse. It is essentially a smal set of theories based on very small sample quantitative and sketchy qualitative research. There's an added bonus of philosophical and political policy initiatives that go against accepted theory "just cause."

Yeah, I think the problem with the 4S is that it's a fairly minor update. Look at the difference between the "smartphones" before the original iPhone and after, the iPhone and the iPhone 3G(S), and then the iPhone 4. Each was a significant upgrade in both technical prowess and on-board features. However, the consumer market has already seen -everything- the 4S with this year's Motorola, HTC, and Samsung offerings.

Honestly, I don't know anyone who really seeks out BBB accreditation as a means of judging a business's credibility (I'm talking at the consumer level). In fact, the only times I've ever caught myself viewing any of their web content was for businesses I already knew sucked.

My field is more Education than CS or engineering, but I don't think publishers add value as much as, simply create a convenient baseline for readers to judge the quality of the work. Classrooms, all through grade school to College voraciously decry sources like wikipedia or... well any free media as possibly bad sourcing. With that sort of ingrained mindset, it's really no wonder why publishers still exist (and probably will continue to exist) even with the recent advances in open source.

I know from my experience though, that many in academia would not publish papers without a journal because their contracts with the university either forbid such action or part of their contract explicit state they MUST be published by a respected publisher.

Looks to be a very interesting idea. In fact, I do want one. Buuuuut, I'd have to wonder with those prices for the full models and DIY kits if he is not overcharging by several hundred dollars. True, you're buying a piece of tech for its look and feel more than functionality, but as a guy who's actually bought, played with, and used old style typewriter, $700 is a bit much for anyone.

Could any enthusiasts (I consider myself an amateur) weigh in?

I think some of what you're saying is a bit too broad, but more or less on the same point as I am. Technology drives human progress, some could argue it -is- human progress and the idea that there is anything to fear from computers or "nanobots" is about as ridiculous as believing "The Matrix" is based on a true story.

Luddites have existed in our society (by that I mean First world) for a long time. The ITS is just another in a long list of people conspiratorially whispering about things William Gibson wrote about in fiction 20 years ago.

It's been a while, but a long time ago I heard the phrase, "The Rolling Stones are not in the music business, they're in the t-shirt selling business." In that way, I think if you examine Google's practices and its strategy with Android, it's that Google is an advertising company. It's where all their money comes from. Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle are traditional software companies in the sense they derive their profits from consumers and businesses purchasing services.

> They may have dressed it up as pious and open – but for their purposes, it's a land grab. Is it anticompetitive? I'm not sure.

Well, then, isn't GNU/Linux in general anti-competitive? Or free-libre software since many developers don't charge for services?

As for Google's trustworthiness with patents versus patent-abuse, anyone know a site with a good summary of Google's patent disputes?

I can relate to number one, but what's your evidence for number two?

They aren't proof, but they might be enough (I am not a lawyer) for a search warrant for email addresses, person's homes, and phone/ISP records of the people named in the "d0x."

They mention bit.ly as a success and helping popularize alternative domains for startups. But isn't this a bad example? There have been domains seized by the Libyan government (http://www.circleid.com/posts/libyan_government_has_seized_v...)

As a former English-major nutjob, I do see some problems with how those sentences are constructed. The "internal activities and externally" is very awkward phrasing.