They're going to be learning math no matter what; so what do you care if my kids learn this system as well as the (woefully inadequate) math taught in schools?

In addition to that, I never said that math was all I would teach my kids. Maybe it's your intention to teach only one thing to your children, but it's not mine. For example, I'll be teaching them that acquiring knowledge is nothing to be ashamed of and that people who believe that being a geek is a negative are worthy of nothing but contempt. Enjoy raising your musically inclined mediocrities.

While your grandmother may have had her own way of doing this, complex calculations can be done very quickly using the Trachtenberg system of mathematics.

I actually have the book and swore to myself that (while I didn't need those computational skills) my kids would be taught it... my first is on the way now so I guess it's time to dust it off (the book... not the child).

For anyone interested in learning these skills, here is the Amazon search result page

Even insurance companies are admitting that the new healthcare reforms will be responsible for maybe a 1 - 2% increase in their yearly costs. If your premiums jumped up a lot, blame your employer for providing such crappy insurance.

If you have a decent enough insurance plan (and mine is decent enough, not steallar) you won't see much of a shift in premiums. My health insurance cost went up by a lower % this year than last, before the health care bill passed. Guess why? Because my insurance already featured the benefits that the health care bill now requires everyone have access to (no charge for preventative care for example). The new law isn't increasing my insurance company's costs for me, so isn't increasing my costs to them.

As far as the majority opposing the health care reform, I haven't had a conversation yet with one person who opposed the new bill that actually had a lucid argument for opposing; they like the actual benefits (kids covered to 26, no charge for preventative services, children not being excluded due to preexisting illnesses, etc.), they just can't help but use words like "socialist" and "communist" when describing any effort to help the least of us get what should be a guaranteed right in any civilized country.

There may be a cogent argument for repealing the health care bill out there, but I haven't heard it yet. Every objection I've heard so far is the ranting of people who would rather cut off their own nose to spite their face.

would be to focus on the real problem; the kids that are using these methods to pose as other students need to be charged with and convicted of identity theft! It's only when they have been punished to the fullest extent of the law that they will truly appreciate the value of a good education. I'm sure there are high school graduation programs available in Australian prisons and at least there we can be sure they will actually attend.

Increasingly companies use the release as their open beta, they just don't mention that in the documentation. Sadly my company is among them.

How long before there's a false-positive (I don't believe that the skeletal structure is so unique that a body scan from a distance will NEVER make a mistake)? And following the false-positive, a plea for all good citizens to submit to a scan for the database, or to sign a release stating the government can have access to your medical records for the purposes of security and to prevent "unfortunate" mix-ups.

Once you're in the system, you're in it; making the notion that you have "paid your debt to society" when you are release from incarceration nothing more than an illusion. You can make whatever arguments you like about the usefulness of databases for certain types of offenders but systems like these mean that if you ever offend and serve time, for anything you will forever be watched; you won't have to be a terrorist or a pedophile.

I'm just glad this is being done in the name of safety, that's gotta be worth a whole bunch of anyone's liberty...

You know what costs more than these devices asshole? Funerals. My parents would have gladly gone bankrupt if it meant my brother wouldn't have died because of some cunt drunk driver. Instead they came closer to bankruptcy burying my brother than the bastard who killed him did.

How the fuck can you have an opinion that the same people who are contemptuous of both the DUI laws and the lives those laws are intended to protect deserve any consideration? You couch this in "anti-prohibitionist" rhetoric; this measure isn't prohibitionist, if anything people who demonstrate themselves to be irresponsible to the point where they will make decisions that threaten the lives of others should not be permitted to drive with ANY alcohol in their system.

The moment alcohol enters your system it begins altering your judgment for the worse; I don't want people who are willingly diminishing the quality of their judgment to be permitted to make the decision for themselves whether or not they are safe to drive. You should either drive, or drink; if you need to drive and you honestly feel that you need to drink too, well that need to drink should tell you something; get some help and stay the fuck off the roads

I stopped just short of wishing that you could learn like my family learned why people with DUI convictions don't deserve consideration when it comes to preventing repeat offenses, but no one should have to know what that is like. Instead I'll hope you never find out but somehow manifest the good sense to realize either people with DUI convictions can be monitored more to prevent at least some senseless loss of life, or they can be let do as they please in the name of "liberty" and the price can be paid by the families of others... again.

I don't think that's very fair. I trust that the editors fact check before they post, but if Digg didn't have anything about the update posted, what were the /. editors to do?

The Iranian embassy is not technically on British soil, just as every embassy in every country is considered to stand on their own soil and not the soil of the hosting country. That being the case, the use of police would not have been justified (police not having international jurisdiction). A military force to rescue hostages would be entirely in keeping with the separation of police and military duties.

So wrong...

And as far as no one needing millions of dollars for a comfortable living, if a someone invents something worthwhile, like the above saw guard, they deserve to make millions from it a whole lot more than some faceless corporation that steals the guy's invention deserves to. With worthwhile inventions millions will be made; companies don't have some exclusive right to be the only entities making fortunes.

I'm guessing that at least one BP exec has gone looking for missing car keys/jewelery/leftover pot roast and discovered a 3 year-old at a newly blocked toilet. How much different can it be 5000 feet under water with oil gushing out at what is now estimated to be more than 50,000 barrels a day?

I will respond to say only that I think it's pathetic that you would post AC and pretend to be a third party speaking "in defense of the GP"

and to say that your "literal truth" is hate-speech.

You obviously believe what you say, but I don't believe that you don't know about or remember the details of the crusades, the Spanish inquisition, Salem witch-trials, the Vatican's current scandals with systemic child-rape and subsequent cover-ups, sections of the old testament that encourage all manner of offenses against decency (slavery, mass-murder, et al), etc.

As far as atheism being "innocent", the atrocities committed by so-called atheist states were not carried out because atheist beliefs motivated or compelled the guilty. There was an entirely different agenda in place and the "atheist state" moniker was not at the core of it. Many of the citizens and soldiers of these states did not consider themselves atheists either, rather people of one faith or another who were not free to practice their actual beliefs.

You are exactly the kind of person I dread the most; articulate, intelligent and hateful. Your specious argument may serve to convince others of the legitimacy of your claims; half-truths flanked by lies and misrepresentations.

I will leave you with this quote:

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I wonder what your history contains that explains all this.

If you're going to call out atrocities, be a little more uniform in how you do so. "Soviet genocides" and "Muslim massacre on Armenians" or "Rwanda Massacres" and "Muslim-on-Sudanese genocide"? What religion were the factions in Russia and Rwanda, or does discussing that not serve to inflame anti-muslim sentiment and is therefore of no value to you?

Japan experienced what is widely accepted to be the longest period of civil and international peace known. The Edo period, from roughly 1625 to 1847. The policies enacted to achieve this are certainly open to criticism, but during that period they had no internal genocide and did not initiate one externally either. I don't know if you just assume that America is the best ever and therefore must have the longest time without a genocide, but if you did, you're wrong.

Here's a clue for you on the genocide in Darfur... it's Muslims killing other Muslims. Maybe you actually think what's happening over there is a religious fight, or maybe you know better and just hope the people who read your post don't and will blithely accept it as an example of Muslim aggression against non-Muslims when it is anything but that.

I'm not pro-Muslim, I am quietly contemptuous of all organized religion, but I am more contemptuous of hate-mongering bigots like you. You deserve to be called out, fuck the Karma burn and fuck the mods who considered your post "Insightful".

I don't believe that most people remember the speed limits on the roads they drive regularly, and even if they do, speed limits can change. Leaving it to the general populous to assume their knowledge of local speed limits is infallible doesn't sound good to me. I agree that constant reminders of what you are already aware of would be irritating though, like a girlfriend who keeps pointing out that all of your clothes are crap...

Again, I disagree; I live near two towns, one with a 15 MPH speed limit (no, I'm not kidding) on their main street, one with a 40 MPH speed limit on their main street. As with the above, I'm not comfortable assuming the speed limit, so I'm sure as hell not comfortable with you or anyone else assuming it either.

Not everyone has a GPS unit, I know only two or three people who have and use GPS devices. I have one myself and I can assure you that it gets the speed limit wrong plenty of times, in an out of towns. Sometimes it thinks the speed limit is higher, sometimes it thinks the speed limit is lower, and I've updated it recently...

The bottom line is that people need to take responsibility for the way they drive, but they're not going to. Automatic transmissions, cars that park themselves, traction control, cars that automatically brake if it thinks we're getting too close... all have their good points (except automatic transmissions, man up and learn to drive stick already) but all move us closer to a time when the machines will be doing practically everything for us. The disconnect between driver and the world they are traveling through is widening; I think most people no longer really consider the potential consequences of poor choices/failure to pay attention when driving. The more cars end up doing for us, the more time that leaves us to text, apply make-up, shave, etc... A frightening thought.

Exactly! Just like the time when a neighbour of mine parked his car on my driveway while he was shoveling snow off his driveway... I went out and slapped a "for sale" sign on that puppy and made an easy $3,000. He was pissed, but I told him "if something of yours comes on to my property, it's mine to use any way I want".

Good thing he doesn't know about the time his wife came over to drop off some mis-delivered mail...