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Comment Re:Buyer's remorse (Score 1) 325

Yeah and no one uses encryption anymore....

Well my database is on an encrypted server disk in case hackers break in, so I don't need a firewall.

Is any of it based on science? Would you even know how to tell?

A lot of it is based in cobbled-together science: we know a bunch of things about human development, about psychology, and about impacts of exposure to certain stimuli; we use those to intuit new things. This is basically how new theories are formed, as scientific understanding of two things doesn't necessarily equate to scientific understanding of the effects of plugging those two things together; it does, however, give you a basis for doing so, and a reasonable assumption that outcomes following the predicted model are probably causal.

This is how science starts.

Comment Re:the real crazy: (Score 1) 327

McCain-Feingold was not an attempt to "prevent people from gathering together in a group, pooling their resources, and using those resources to express an opinion about politics"

That's exactly what it was. How else would you characterize you being subject to felony federal charges if you (personally, or as part of a group) run an issue or party advocacy ad in the week before an election? It wasn't about the size or loudness of the "megaphone," it was about political speech, period. Unless you are part of one of the groups that the law allowed to continue. Which is the second reason why the law was struck down - unequal protection. The law abridged free speech, and applied the law unevenly to different parties. Unconstitutional right out of the gate on both counts.

Comment Re:Shocked he survived (Score 1) 327

The DC FRZ is indeed there to cut down on the need to deal with a bunch of yahoos buzzing very high-profile targets. But the who decided to fly his gyrocopter right past crowds after a low-level pass over an urban area is up for reckless operation charges from the FAA either way. That bit of idiocy is idiocy whether it's done around people in DC or around people in downtown Miami.

Comment Re:Shocked he survived (Score 1) 327

Being subjected to over paid messages is NOT free speech it PAID for speech

It would be great if you can point out where, in the First Amendment, it says that your rights to say what you want about politics is taken away if you do it by, say, paying a printer to copy your message onto 500 pieces of paper you want to hand out. Paid speech! Paid speech! The government must censor that, since it took money to reproduce the message and spread it around!

Do you even listen to yourself?

Comment Buyer's remorse (Score 4, Insightful) 325

So wait, you fucked up, and now you want us to pay for it?

No, see, here's what happened: School decides they want product X which works with product Y. Product X sucks; product Y is not defective. School has legitimate claim about product X not delivering; product Y is your fault, and you don't go back to the supplier and make them eat the cost.

The school may have a claim against Pearson, since they delivered shoddy, half-ass work. The school has no claims against Apple, since Apple supplied a device not designed to do what the school wanted, and the school intended to extend it with Pearson's product.

There's a real lesson about bad project management and buyer's remorse here; and, looking back, they're ignoring old and proven lessons about not trying to fix education with unrelated technology. The only technology that belongs in education is education: education methods are a technology, and they are the technology for education.

Until you have an education methodology that shows good, scientific basis and utilizes your fancy toys, you're just throwing toys into education. For example: Japan uses a mathematics curriculum teaching students to use complementary number computation techniques, driven by the exemplary platform of a machine called a Soroban; a Soroban would be a ridiculous toy to bring into the classroom if you were not teaching using these computation techniques and trying to leverage the visual and mechanical aspect of learning by soroban (I've done some self-teaching without the soroban, and learned the same techniques; there are, however, scientific reasons to bring a soroban to the table). If they're just doing workbook activities BUT ON AN IPADZ!!!! and not doing anything known to improve education when an iPad is involved, the iPad is a fucking toy not appropriate in education.

It's worth noting there's a school of educational research suggesting that introducing young children to high technology is actively bad, and that high technology should be taught outright after age 10-12 rather than used as a platform to deliver old teaching methods. Small children need most to learn socialization; they need to interact with other children, and not isolate themselves to curriculum. I have my own educational theory which extends this: small children need most to learn techniques of utilizing the brain effectively, set in an environment of free socialization, so as to develop their social behaviors while also giving them tools to rapidly and effectively learn curriculum. In all of these advanced schools of thought, and in mine, you see that pattern: humans need to learn human behavior first, then learn high technology as a tool; wrapping books in fancy electronics won't suddenly make education better.

This is like the 90s when everyone's answer to everything related to computer security was "ENCRYPTION!" Now everyone's answer to every education problem is "COMPUTERS!"

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 170

Well then play Shovel Knight, Stick It To The Man, and Elliot Quest. (Elliot Quest is a pile of good ideas meshed in bad polish: the game is poorly designed, leaving the player lost and confused, giving inconsistent visual cues, and requiring the use of non-movement-altering to affect movement. For example: the wind ability doesn't affect your movement in horizontal wind; an hour after you get it and an unrelated set of WINGS, you're expected to intuit that the wind ability makes you fly in vertical wind.)

Comment Re:In before JERB-KILLITAXES AND REGULATIONZ (Score 1) 170

US tax rate is 34% or 35%. It's a complex behemoth where the tax brackets are used to guarantee that businesses above $348,000 pay a flat 34% tax (i.e. they pay 34% of their total income, not X% of 1-348k and 34% of 348k+), and businesses above some short millions pay a flat 35% tax. It's ridiculous.

AU corporate tax rate is 30%.

You can imagine the rage when these companies use Ireland-based subsidiaries to collect the profits they make selling to EU states, instead of paying taxes on EU income to AU or US.

Comment Re:the real crazy: (Score 1) 327

We don't even have to get IN to whether or to what degree one ad or another does or doesn't feel "fair" to you. Because it all comes down to what you want: censorship. Until you just plainly say what you want, there's no point getting into the rest of it. And you won't come out and say it because you know that the control you want is not compatible with the constitution.

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