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Comment two-thirds of American schools cannot appropriatel (Score 2) 107

two-thirds of American schools cannot appropriately connect their students to the 21st century.

I am unaware of any school system in the United States without internet access. This is probably dependent highly open their own reports definition of "appropriate". I live in a relatively poor school district, and all of the schools have internet including wifi, even in the external buildings like the band room and the gym. there is even expensive switching equipment in every single classroom for some reason.
If schools are struggling with internet costs it is probably because the contractors are raping them on equipment and installation, making them buy unnecessary equipment.

Comment Re:Let me be the first to say (Score 4, Interesting) 107

Teacher's salaries pale in comparison to the administrators salaries. Administrative costs for schools have gone up by thousands of percent over the last 30 years. Where there used to be 1 administrator per every 100 students, there are now sometimes 1 for every 15 in some school districts, more than there are teachers, and the administrators are more highly paid. It is this cost which must be curbed and would free up 2/3 of a school's budget for more appropriate spending. Write your congresscritter.

Comment Re:Real investments come with guidance (Score 1) 473

GP described what amounts to pre-IPO investing and you are describing common stick investing. However, in both cases, you still have a say and you still are entitled to get pissed if they start changing their minds about their product. I'm sure EA stock dropped when they announced no offline mode for Simcity, and I'm sure it rebounded some when they came up with their halfhearted offline mode.

Comment I don't think a blanket classification works (Score 1) 642

I don't think a blanket classification works. I mean, there is sexism in real life. Should we write the games such that there is no sexism in an effort to improve society? Is it the game makers responsibility to mold reality for the better, or is it okay that they reflect reality?
What if it is a game modeling an area of life where sexism is rampant?
If people are really offended by the sexism wouldn't they just not buy the game and thus force the game maker to reevaluate their product?

Comment Re:Nope (Score 1) 91

In my case they felt that the letters written and the HR policy weren't quite specific enough about not showing up for work and claiming "vacation" in an email at 9:30 AM.

Where I work, I think that the unemployment office would find that the vacation policy contains far too much of trying to have their cake and eat it too on the part of the employer. Here, they went from 2 weeks of vacation with unlimited carryover plus sick days to X number of weeks of vacation including sick leave depending on seniority. People like me who ha been here for 8 years lost $25k or more in vacation time due to the change in policy. However, even though they went to this PTO option, they still require you to schedule your time months in advance. Also, if you quit or are fired, they only pay you for half of your earned PTO time,because they figure that half of that is sick leave. I'm sorry, but if it is earned, it is earned and you are entitled to it. Are they going to start firing people right before payday and then not paying them for the last two weeks of work as well?
I refused to sign this new policy, but my boss says that doesn't matter. The company policy is company policy. In which case, why do they need people to sign it?

Comment Re:Stupid, trucks cause the problem (Score 2) 554

And as an added benefit, when the trucking companies go out of business, we won't have to fund the roads anymore at all because everyone will die of starvation except for the farmers, and they won't need the roads.
There is some societal benefit to keeping the cost of freight transportation low. Given that trucks pay about 35 times the amount of taxes that non-commercial vehicles do, I think they already pay more than their fair share.
I am also not convinced that a truck causes hundreds of times the damage that a car does. Given the number of tires and axles, a truck's weight is spread out over a large area. With the contact patch on a truck tire, the pressure per square inch is less than most passenger vehicles. By the way, the Prius has one of the highest ground pressures per square inch of a passenger vehicle. It has higher than normal weight for a passenger car and smaller than normal tire contact area for a passenger vehicle. This causes is to be much more damaging than other passenger vehicles, while paying far less into the transportation system.

Comment Re:Of course you can have self cleaning windows! (Score 1) 203

I had a 180 gallon tank and the glass was quite thick and the magnets were quite strong. I would be worried about popping it against the glass and cracking it. I only had the magnets on the front glass, but I also was using natural filtration with a good cleanup crew and I never got much more than a light dusting of algae on the front glass which the magnets were able to easily dismiss.

Comment The Sears (non known as Willis) Tower (Score 1) 203

The Tower which I will always know as the Sears Tower had purpose-built automated washing systems. When you are up in said tower, you can see dozens of other buildings that have rails on the roof for their automated washing systems. It sure seems like a lot of skyscrapers have these systems. Kind of flies in the face of what the article says.

Comment Re:Of course you can have self cleaning windows! (Score 1) 203

When I had a salt water tank, I found these magnets to be awesome. The only real issue was that you had to have one for each pane. It would be kind of clever if they made one magnet slightly larger than the other so you could get the inside one to scrub slightly behind the outside trim piece.

Comment Re:It seems like squeegeeing is the wrong approach (Score 1) 203

The insurance company is supposed to be clever enough to work it all out and then charge you a flat rate of $XXX per person per year per building, or whatever rate is applicable. The price may change over time with inflation and changing statistics (work place safety, weather conditions, etc...) but "spikes" are the *last* thing that you should be seeing in your insurance bill.

That is not how health insurance works. Every year there is a spike in health insurance, especially since the affordable healthcare act came out. Mine jumped by 350%, then this year it jumped another 25%. I have had 0 medical expenses in the last year and probably under $1,000 in medical expenses in the last 25 years
That is also not how Home insurance works. My home insurance spikes up 25% every single year, supposedly because of tornadoes. So far, I have had $0 in home insurance claims over the last 25 years. This years 25% or so hike followed a season in which there were several orders of magnitude less damage in the state due to tornadoes than there usually is.

Comment Re:Abstaining (Score 2) 307

I'm abstaining as well. I can't really think of a task I want a robot to do. I like doing the mundane things such as mowing the lawn, vacuuming, fixing up the house, etc, I just like do them on my terms on my schedule when I have time. I'm not really interested in a robot to do these things. What I am interested in is more tools. I suppose at some point the distinction between robot and tool becomes difficult. But I would say I don't want any sort of tool to have autonomy to do a task without my direction.

Comment Re:Comcast tried to steal $50 from me (Score 1) 223

When I see a discount offered as a rebate, I generally discount it by about 90%. If I see a product offered for $300 with no rebate at one store and $275 after a $50 rebate at another store, I will pay the $300. It is not worth the effort to deal with the rebate process, wait for the rebate to come, deal with the fact that it is probably a debit card or a store use only card, probably has decreasing balance if not used, charges for checking balance, no actual cash value, etc.

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