In all aspects of education, from primary school to university, the growing swarms of administrators soak up the budget. In some school systems, they vastly outnumber the actual teachers, have better pay, and yet contribute nothing to the operation of the schools.

Don't forget those in the construction industry. Like administrators, they contribute where it counts: in the voting booth where they help elect those that will continue to increase spending on that abstraction "education" rather than on actual educators.

There are other advantages to shrinking components. Higher clock rates become possible.

You'd think so, but the problem is global interconnect. Not gates. It was all the way back at the 250nm node when interconnect and gate delay were about the same.

At the 28nm node, wire delay is responsible for something like 80% of the time it takes for signals to work their way through a circuit.

And it some cases inverters are actually used to help signals propagate more quickly down long wires. In other words, long wires are so slow compared to gates that adding gates can speed things up!

We're already at the point where 22nm components are more expensive per transistor than those at 28nm.

Previous shrinks lowered the cost of each transistor. It doesn't look like it's going to happen after 28nm.

I believe many ISPs are actively sabotaging customer's connections to some of the internet's content

They don't have to. The protocols we use are more than capable of screwing with things.

Consider TCP: the protocol is BY DESIGN meant to exponentially increase the amount of data dumped on a link until it overloads and begins dropping packets. TCP then throttles for a little while and then soon goes back to bashing the network with packets until it breaks again.

Oh, it's a bad thing, depending on which way you look at it. For union busters this means you can finally sacrifice the weak and infirm on the altar of efficiency.

Wait. Are you talking about the children or the teachers?

Well, maybe.

Many of the worst and violent crimes are committed by men age 16-24.

Now look at this.

Notice that nice peak in the crime rate around 1992? Many of those crimes were committed by people born in the 60s -- a turbulent, uncertain time, and the 70s -- a rotten decade with a corrupt or weak presidents, increasing unemployment, inflation, and plenty of other rottenness.

I don't think it's too much of a stretch to believe that that sort of environment helps turn some children into violent criminals.

We have in some ways similar situation today. While some groups seem to be enjoying the recovery (baby-boomers, especially) many others are struggling. Young people -- those forming families right now -- have been left behind.

And I expect children being born into that world are having a tough time -- and in 16-24 years, we'll start to see the consequences.

Drivers depend on feedback from the car to help them make necessary adjustments.

If a curve isn't banked enough, the car shouldn't fool the driver into thinking that it is banked enough.

That feeling one gets when the car leans towards the outside of the curve is telling the driver to slow down!

Water like other materials expands when it gets warmer.

Just a nit-pick, but water's maximum density is actually at about 4C.

That means as it cools below 4C, it begins to expand again. If it didn't, ice wouldn't float!

And that little fact is almost entirely due to Congress' inability to think past pork and the next re election cycle.

So much of the budget is off-limits (social security and medicare) that the only areas left vulnerable to cutting are things like NASA.

The USA has locked itself into forced spending in some areas and it's squeezing other areas.

You probably live in a big city with actual choices. In my small town, I have ONE CHOICE for cable TV, and ONE CHOICE for internet, unless you count satellite or wireless options.

And why shouldn't we count satellite and wireless?

I use Fios for internet, TheDish for TV, and I have a cell phone tether plan when I want to use my laptop on the road.

I agree that satellite internet access is probably a mistake unless you have no choice, but a 4G access point or tethered cell phone is really impressive for something that's wireless.

I routinely got 10Mbps and sub 100ms ping times while staying on a horse farm in the middle of no where.

Explore your options and force providers to compete.

Capitalism and the markets demand exponential growth in a finite world,

No they don't. They're just somewhat efficient collective resource allocation systems.

Exponential growth appears to be a requirement because populations grow exponentially.

If an economy can't keep up with the exponential growth of population, then there is less produced per person.

He tell's me that ESPN gets about $30/customer in an all or nothing deal.

Sorry. That's wrong.

The $30 figure is the amount each actual viewer of ESPN would have to pay if they were forced to pay for it themselves, but ESPN doesn't allow that.

The quantity of programming has increased with the prices

......yet the quality of programming decreases......

so (quality/quantity) * price is constant?

I have a friend at BrightHouse Networks.

According to him (and I suppose he could be lying), it's the price that the content holders are asking that's driving up prices, especially ESPN.

He tell's me that ESPN gets about $30/customer in an all or nothing deal.

Also, most health care providers are already paying vast sums for VPN services, this stuff doesn't hit the public internet.

Uh, the 'V' in VPN stands for virtual. It's not a real PN and very well could be sharing the same fiber and wire and routers as the public internet.

It isn't uncommon for VPN providers to give a guaranteed amount of bandwidth to a user on a router and to sell the surplus bandwidth for use by the public internet.

In this scenario the VPN user has a 'fast lane' up to the amount of bandwidth that's been guaranteed. When it's not used, the extra bandwidth is given over to the public internet.

It seems to me the lobbying forces on the part of the content providers, Netflix et al., would be pretty formidableâ"unless they think the price is worth it to suppress upstart competition. Which is it?
I think they're getting to the point where they're willing to pay for prioritization just to guarantee quality.

A big problem is that we have a transmission protocol (TCP) that is a well deployed but incredibly stupid protocol that that intentionally floods the network with packets until it breaks, then backs off for a little while, then tries to break the network again, always trying to consume every little extra bit of buffer space and bandwidth that might be available in competition with every other server that's doing the same thing. It's constant war with attacks and retreats.

There are a least two approaches used to cope with this. One is to add bandwidth. The trouble is that TCP will greedily consume any additional bandwidth that's available and you're back to the original problem.

The second is to buy your own little slice of bandwidth and isolate your stream from all the battles going on between the other streams. This solves the problem for you but creates a kind of bandwidth aparthied. Your traffic is finally safe, but there's less bandwidth available for everyone else.

The media streamers would prefer guarantees so that their customers get the quality they pay for. Adding bandwidth doesn't provide any guarantee. Packet prioritization at the router (almost) does. We're getting to the point where Netflix, etc are willing to pay for prioritization that gives a guarantee.