FIRST is international, but most of the teams are US-based. Every regional competition I've attended has teams from Canada, Mexico, and at least one other continent - often two or three (Australia, Europe, South America)

Came here to read that. Thank you for not disappointing!

Sounds pretty efficient to me, provided you end up with the same result. I count that as a win.

Sounds like a problem not with the fact that something _has_ been genetically modified, but what was done. The solution is not labeling, but ensuring that GMO food is safe, healthy, and equivalent to or better than the naturally-evolved original.

However the FDA has been bastardized, its original purpose was to address this kind of concern and prevent it from becoming an issue. I don't want to eat meat where someone has taken a shit in the cow carcass regardless of whether it's some grass-fed organic ideal or injected to hell and back with (let's assume for the sake of argument provably safe) growth hormones. Let's figure out the real issues, separate them, and address them one at a time. We shouldn't be avoiding progress unless it causes some sort of other regression, and even still we should weigh the amount of progress against the damage of the regression before preventing it outright.

If they're provably safe, and for all intends and purposes identical to the original, why on earth should we label them?

I see more value in not labeling them (greater adoption because people aren't scared off by voodoo non-science) than in labeling them (honestly can't see any benefit to doing so if all else is, in fact, equal).

And how are your website's users supposed to reach you in the meantime? As soon as you switch your DNS to point to the new servers, the DDOS follows. Try again.

If anyone's found a solution better (or more cost-effective) than Prolexic or a similar DDOS-prevention service, do let me know. That's some crazy-stupid protection money we're paying out, but it has proven effective.

When did this take place? The BOS-SFO flights on Virgin often have half or more of the guests using WiFi, and those A320s hold 146 passengers. They've had in-flight WiFi since the fleet launched, as far as I know. Certainly since 2009 since I first flew with them.

Is using Google really cheating? That's exactly what you're going to do outside of a school if you don't know how to come up with the answer.

It's important that students understand fundamentals but to be honest anything beyond basic algebra is going to be useless for most people. Even as a software engineer, I use "advanced" math... never. For people wanting to go into careers that require that kind of stuff, they should take those classes or pick it up during an internship.

Then again, that applies to basically every subject. It's good to push slightly advanced stuff so students can find what they like and find enjoyably challenging to pursue it further (I took a lot of bio-type classes, remember none of it, and have used it precisely zero times outside of a classroom), but there's a point past a certain baseline when it's just going to frustrate people and take their time away from subjects that could actually turn into careers.

I've never managed to kill a calculator (graphing or otherwise) and it was definitely put through some abuse during high school. I wasn't exactly throwing it against walls, but I wasn't terribly careful about throwing it in a backpack containing thirty pounds of textbooks either. There were a thousand or more of them at the school as every student had one, and I can't once remember overhearing someone complaining about a cracked or otherwise damaged calculator. Yet at least a third of the iPhones I see are cracked in some way (oddly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many Androids, but I see far fewer of them so that might just be selection bias)

They cost so much because they're devices that are the only accepted model for school use. If someone made an equivalent and sold it for $50, TI wouldn't drop the price because the equivalent hadn't been certified as acceptable for test-taking.

Of course the whole thing is absurd. Algebraic solvers aside, being able to plug numbers into a calculator is all you'll be doing with one outside of very specific fields. Memorizing formulae is totally unnecessary, although knowing which one to use is important - and a calculator isn't going to solve that (Wikipedia or Google, on the other hand...)

I'm more surprised that there aren't decent graphic calculator apps for smartphones. I get the whole thing with physical buttons (and agree), but the last time I had to actually graph an equation I think I had to use excel or some janky web app because that's not in my day-to-day work so I don't have my old TI-83+ sitting around from high school.

They're private companies; they have every right in the world to restrict who they do business with - just as not anyone can walk into a bank and get a loan with equal terms for equal amounts, not everyone can get a merchant account to process credit card payments.

The only thing it would take government intervention to legally stop would be cash donations. And given that the summary suggests the organization is more or less performing money laundering, that's a relatively likely outcome.

Only in TV shows. In real life, that's tampering with a crime scene.

Sure, but that's not relevant. Apple is not a government bureau; they have a right to reserve service to anyone. They exercised that right, then called the police when the person refused to exit the store (which is then trespass). After that point, any misconduct on either side would have been from either the police or the woman (or both).

This isn't DRM, this is just having really weird store hours.

It does, but you can still sue for damages.

Either way, sounds like Not News to me. The fact that it's based on a Yelp review rather than a sign tacked up somewhere doesn't change the nature of the case.