Based on this list [wikipedia.org], it looks like merger activity between US banks dramatically slowed since Obama took office, after going through the roof during the Bush years.

I counted 48 mergers during the Clinton years versus 39 during Bush.

Well, shit, when an industry is consolidating of course there are going to be a bunch of mergers (of small companies into medium companies) at the beginning, then a moderate amount of mergers (of medium companies into big companies), then just a few mergers (of big companies into gigantic, dangerous ones).

So yeah, we should fully expect Clinton mergers > Bush (II) mergers > Obama mergers, just because by the time Obama got in office there were hardly any companies left to merge!

i have no problem with opposing monsanto, the corporation with dubious goals that should be opposed

I want labels on GMO crops because I'm opposed to use of the "terminator gene" and Monsanto's contractual prohibition of seed-saving. I want to be able to buy corn and know it's wasn't grown by a farmer in cahoots with Monsanto, and GMO labeling is a very good proxy to inform me about that.

Perhaps because all the modern devices are meant to work with your fingers and not with a stylus?

You've got the cause and effect backwards: devices are designed not to use a stylus because their makers had no desire to support handwriting recognition, not the other way around.

Because Steve Jobs fucked everything up by refusing to support it on the original iPhone, and Google followed suit.

If Palm -- or Microsoft, for that matter -- had been the breakthrough smartphone innovator, we'd have had handwriting recognition all along.

The neighborhood in that area isn't like that -- the neighborhood itself is probably about a 50%/45%/5% black/white/other mix. If there were only one school that all the kids went to, it would be thoroughly integrated.

If you think you can get an average 13-year old ready for college-level CS in one year, without sacrificing the rest of their usual middle school and high school education, you're severely deluded.

Absolute bullshit.

First of all, they're not trying to teach "average" 13-year-olds; they're trying to teach 13-year-olds who've applied to a special magnet school because they want to be software engineers (and presumably have at least some aptitude for it). That's a very different demographic.

Second, I coasted through my college intro to programming class (and the data structures / object-oriented programming class after that) on what I had taught myself back in middle school and high school. Anyone who can't do at least as well with a year (or less) of actual, dedicated instruction is completely unsuited to the field.

AMD chips run all three latest-gen gaming consoles...

What, you mean with the trolling ACs spouting bullshit? Slashdot has always been that way.

More importantly, I'm right and you're wrong. Go use your reading comprehension skills to RTFS[ummary], specifically the sentence that says "Students in GALA will follow a six year sequence of computer courses starting in middle school that will culminate in AP Computer Science Principles."

Now fuck off.

We all know that girls need special help.

It's pretty clear to me that that's what the people designing this program think, at least!

I mean, holy shit! They're talking about implementing a six-year academic program just to get these girls ready to pass the AP exam, which is only equivalent to an introductory college CS course! How fucking insulting can they be, to imply that those girls need six years to learn what they should be learning in one?!

We have those already; they're called "charter schools." Here in Atlanta, anyone can attend the charter schools in theory, but in practice the white parents are the ones who sign their kids up, so the charter school ends up 70+% white and the regular public school (that serves the same neighborhood) ends up 80+% black.

(By the way: yes, those are real numbers; I looked them up.)

Replicant is the only one I know of that aims to be actual, you know, 100% Free Software.

I have no idea why hardly anybody knows about it.

The key is to remember who makes those rules: politicians, i.e., lawyers themselves. It's the ultimate regulatory capture.

RTFM

Still, one can openly admit in most countries in the Americas that the indigenous peoples were mistreated, and in many cases whole tribes and ethnic groups were wiped out, without some crazy ass Mexican, American or Chilean hackers shutting down your website.

I don't know about Chile (having never been there or met any Chileans), but I get the impression that Mexico did a much better job of preserving the native culture and absorbing the Spanish into it (rather than the other way around) than the United States did. (I'm not saying Mexico has necessarily done a good job, just that it's been less bad than the piss-poor job the US has done.)

The Net Neutrality regulations were a major overstep by the FCC and SHOULD have been a law passed by Congress.

The Net Neutrality regulations WERE a law passed by Congress! Specifically, Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 (as amended by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, etc.).

The FCC isn't doing anything "new," it's just reclassifying Internet service providers from one category ("information service" to another ("telecommunications service"). And it's putting them in the category that they should have been in all along!

In other words, the FCC fucked up in 2002 when it made this ruling (where it exercised "forbearance" by not classifying ISPs as telecommunications services, even though the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found that they were in fact telecommunications services), and now it's fixing that fuck-up.