Voice recognition might be an option, but I think it's more likely that they'll get their revenue from charging for non-Gmail-to-Gmail calls (calling "real" phones) and attracting more users to Gmail (and thus Gmail's targeted advertising) with the new feature.

Gugusasete kudasai (maybe guguresasete).
Although I don't think people would use that as much as the translation for "Just fucking Google it."

Sites can/will track you regardless of any "private mode" if you have flash enabled. Also, does anyone know where the SSL certificates are stored by Safari in OSX? Thanks in advance.

Cheating on a benchmark test given is NOT cool, no matter what the temperature of the machine.

This might just be my love of the classics (including Wuthering Heights) talking, but I think that kids at least need a basic education in some older literature. Kids aren't allowed to choose what to study in math until they have a basic understanding of things like arithmetic, algebra, and geometry. The point of teaching the classics isn't to indoctrinate; it's to give students a basic education so that they can make a more informed decision about what to study in the future.

I think it's great that countries you wouldn't expect to develop world-class infrastructure are investing so much in the Internet, but it makes me lament the priorities of the U.S. in terms of broadband development. I have no complaints about my personal connection as I live in an urban area (although sprawl is plentiful), but friends from rural areas are stuck with connections akin to old 56k dial-up modems. Dial-up in those areas is something around 5 kb/s at times.

This hurts those areas and broadens the gap in wealth between urban and rural areas because companies aren't really willing to invest in areas with no information infrastructure. Also, education suffers; online schools seem to be a good way to escape bad public schools for kids who really want to take their education into their own hands.

Hopefully, some good policies will help bridge the digital divide. I feel that that's a good start to bridging economic and geographical divides in this country as well.

"Freedom of Consumer Choice" implies that most consumers have a choice when selecting a broadband provider. Lots of folks are stuck with good ol' Comcast because they're the only provider in the area.

I've had a lot of problems with language teachers as well. It seems like it's easier to get around bad teachers in math and the sciences because of the lack of wiggle room for grading. My Spanish teacher senior year of high school would literally assign grades at the end of the semester based on how hard she "felt" you had worked. Luckily, I'd had teachers like that in the past, so I knew how to BS my way into higher grades. She was also a bit crazy; once she lectured us on how Muslims must like the number 11 because of the Moorish invasion of Spain in 711 and the attacks on 9/11/2001.

A lot of the fault in my school district didn't lie with the teachers themselves, though. The more advanced Spanish literature classes had a lot of native speakers who were put into the classes prematurely just because they could speak Spanish. Counselors had incentives to put them in the advanced classes because it looks better for the school when we have more kids enrolled. They had no clue about orthography, grammar, polite speech, etc., which wasn't their fault, but nonetheless detrimental to the class. Teachers had to keep up with multiple levels of learning all in one class period, so it was hard for them to focus on any one group.

On the original topic, though: I obviously don't think that bad teachers help students. Self-motivated learners get dragged down by trying to please the teacher's whims, and those who aren't yet self-motivated see the teacher's actions as a disincentive to try to learn. Why the teachers are bad is a multifaceted problem that involves both the teachers and the bureaucratic environment the teachers work in.