Added to the fact that you can't have a contract for something that breaks the law is the legal principle that both parties have to be agreeing to the same contract - i.e. there has to be a meeting of minds on the terms of the contract.

Just saying that the carriers are going to collect data is not enough in my opinion, as the way in which this data is collected and the depth of of the data that is going to be collected was not spelled out. And that is for obvious reasons: not many people would willingly agree to this kind of gross invasion of privacy.

Let's hope that the judge that hears this case has a daughter with a phone that can be affected by this. Hell, and a mistress, too, that would really drive the point home and make it personal.

Same in Hong Kong, Taiwan and I think in Thailand. Chinese people that I have asked about this say that they prefer the cluttered search page of Yahoo to the clean one of Google.

Then why not just skip the whole animation process, and shoot live action?

Especially since the bulk of the funds for the BBC come through a license system that I think you are unable to opt out of if you live in the UK and own a TV. That, and the taxpayer money that makes up much of the rest of their funding, should mean that their content is public domain, and needs no DRM.

Maybe. But when I look at the chart I see the major Android offerings from the major smartphone makers. These phones should be getting updates, especially when it's the position of the manufacturer and the carrier that rooting your phone and updating it yourself is something that will void your warranty.

This is absolutely an area that android needs to address: I have had both iphone and android devices, and I am still on android now. The apple way wasn't perfect, because there is no way of downgrading your os to the one you were happy with, but at least you knew that you were in line for updates. I've got the first dual core android phone, and it still didn't come with the current android on it, or available from the manufacturer. Now that ICS is underway, I doubt I'm going to get an official update. And that really is kicking consumers in the teeth.

While I agree to much of your post, I have to argue about Piaget and language learning. Research has been done in that area, but it's not entirely conclusive when it comes to early vs. late language learning.

What is incontrovertible is that early learners learn all their languages in the same area of their brain, which is usually reserved for first language. Later learners (that is, after about 13 years old, but this varies according to sex and other individual characteristics) store other languages in another region of the brain.

It's not known whether this means that language stored in a different brain area is inherently weaker, however.

There are other major influences in language learning in the early and late levels, even strange things like ego: during your teens, you develop a sense of self and of belonging to a group (factors like accent are part of this process) and learning early can make a difference because there is no radical remaking of who you are (an English speaker changes to an English and French speaker, for example).

From my own experience, I have found that younger learners do well in some areas because of energy and enthusiasm, but older learners bring a much greater arsenal of cognitive assets to the classroom (things like memory), which you can tap into.

So pros and cons on both sides. Early advantage is a myth - and I'm a language teacher with years of experience in more than one country. I do agree that second languages should be learned as soon as possible, but that's from a systemic point of view: it's good for people to see similarities and differences between languages, and it helps you to view the world in a different way. But this should definitely not come at the expense of math, or science.

I'm all for a more rational approach to education, though, and in my opinion a huge part of the crisis in education comes from the fact that when formalized, whole-population schooling was adopted it was done not for the benefit of the children who were attending, but as a way of keeping the newly unemployed kids off the streets and out of trouble (this was during the industrial revolution but after the mechanization of the workplace, which took away a lot of the jobs that children did in factories).

It's because of this that school is structured by age rather than by ability. You should start at the same age, and then promotion should occur when you've shown you can handle the year's material.

Having said that, I do think Zed's stuff is better for me as a beginner. But I can't claim to be the same as everyone else.

http://learnpythonthehardway.org/

Don't think this is a neutral point of view. Dive into Python tends to come up before Learn Python the Hard Way in most searches, and I think that could have something to do with that opinion.

I've used both, and in my opinion, both have a strong case for existence.

Many of the people getting these threats don't know they're toothless, though. And with high-profile craziness like the Jammie Thomas fine being one of the first things that will come up for anyone searching for information after getting a letter from these scumbags, I think many people will happily settle just to make it go away.

The lawyer in the case I linked to above is British, but is trying to move his operations to the States because British law frowns on this kind of racket. Someone pointed out in the comments below that Oz also doesn't take kindly to this, so we can hope that people there realize quickly that it is toothless.

But you never know, and it can be a very lucrative game for the lawyers.

But they probably won't go to court. These particular parasites tend to ask for out-of-court settlements up front, and if you have the balls to weather a stream of increasingly threatening legal letters, they leave you alone.

There was a slashdot article on this earlier this year or last year:

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/09/1518258/patent-troll-lawyer-sanctioned-over-extortion-tactics

From the article, and the pictures that go with it, I think the thing that is being described as elegant is the rollercoaster itself. This guy is a Ph.D in design, and you kind of get the feeling that he had a great idea for a rollercoaster and tacked on the euthanasia part to get some deeper meaning to it - one which is a little ridiculous, as people have pointed out here.

But that coaster itself is quite beautiful, and would make a fantastic desk toy.

And the movies were focused more on the story because of the limitations to the special effects. I think that's where it's all going wrong: many of the changes brought in have been subtle (or even not so subtle) changes to the storyline, as they effect the characterization.

I agree completely with this. I use Lego Mindstorms with classes of 4th - 6th graders, and a lot of what I do is about breaking a problem up into a set of steps, and then writing instructions for each step.

It's amazing how much fun you can have with this, and how you can introduce concepts like ranges, variables and randomness by setting up an obstacle course that they have to run/walk through, and throw a big foam die (random number), or open a folder with a printed number inside (to represent a variable, that they tear out of the folder and carry with them to the function that the variable is used in as an argument - like do x star jumps, where x is the number).

If, else and while can be done in a similar manner: "If you're a boy, throw three red balls into basket A. If you're a girl, throw one ball of each colour into basket C" kind of thing.

You can then let some kids modify your initial obstacles, or come up with a completely new course, and then see how to write a set of instructions that will allow someone to complete the course. They can even save parts of this as reusable code pieces, if you plan your classes in the right way, which is a very powerful idea.

Of course I then move on to the lego robotics environment. But I think the point is to show the kids that computers do many simple processes very quickly, and that every activity can be broken up into a set of simple steps, which need to be followed in order to succeed.

Let me first say that although I'm an atheist myself, I completely respect your right to be religious, especially since you came to it through thought rather than socialization or indoctrination.

I think you're a bit wrong about the article of faith you give as an example, though: scientists may take it on good faith (i.e. trust) that your results need not be checked, the difference is that you gave your methods, and your results can be checked. If there is another explanation for the results than the one you gave, this can also be investigated. The spectacular implosion of that Korean genetics lab is an example of this in action.

In other words, the results you got are very different to a miracle or a prayer being answered, because neither of those are repeatable or verifiable, and other explanations for those phenomena may exist, but you have no way of evaluating what is the cause.

That is the faith of religion, and it is very different to the trust that exists between scientists.