Has this ever worked before? Has anyone ever shown that it's possible for children in developing countries to teach themselves basic reading, writing and arithmetic? And have they published their results in peer-reviewed journals?

I thought that most of the research found that computers weren't too useful in teaching basic reading, writing and arithmetic, even when students had assistance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10... Inflating the Software Report Card By TRIP GABRIEL and MATT RICHTEL October 8, 2011 (United States Department of Education's What Works Clearinghouse review of 10 major software products for teaching algebra and elementary and middle school math and reading found that 9 “did not have statistically significant effects on test scores.”)

Why can't the kids learn basic reading, writing and arithmetic from regular teachers ?

The automotive electronics is in terrible shape. The auto engineers do not understand security, their computers have existed without network connections in isolation for a long time. Now data connections are making their way deep into the cars and recently BMW had a security update affecting some 2 million cars. It was apparently communicating to the servers nearly in clear text.

Further the bean counters think the dash space to be some sort of profit center. "They bought our car right? Let us make them pay 200$ for map DVD upgrade, 1800$ for navigational package, ha ha haa, you negotiated 800$ using edmunds.com and truecar.com? Well buddy, I will get that money back, 900$ for mp3 player! ".

Further they are used to product cycles running into decade or more and taking 9 months to admit the ignition switch has a problem and six years to hide it from NTSB. They are not used to software release cycle speeds of once in 8 months or once a year.

They used to do this with car radios and make it impossible to install after market radios. Then SAE defined standard connectors and that market got some real competition. It is high time SAE define user interface API for the common things and allow third parties to come in with custom made tablets to be integrated into the cars. With the 3D printing advances, we could get clean molded plastic brackets that fit almost as good as factory made dash with custom tablets. The market is ripe. Hope two really big companies with good customer base enter and do a serious fight for market share.

Wow. You get to miss the point of my post AND show yourself a smart-ass all in one post. Such efficiency!

When I went to college the internet was but a fetus compared to what it is now. And regardless, my classmates were not tasked and paid to teach me something; the guy up front with the diplomas on his wall and the chalk in his hand was. To give a pass to the person who has an assigned responsibility and fails, only to put that responsibility on your buds isn't as clever as you make it sound.

More than half of my engineering curriculum was taught by prolific researchers who couldn't teach worth a damn. I was a tutor through most of college and found myself "reteaching" a lot of the stuff they would teach to others who came looking for help. Not because I was bright, see I struggled to understand the same topics, but I was able to break the topics down in a way that made more sense. Tying "building block" concepts progressively, until the process showed the complete picture, at which point I could teach them to myself for my own understanding, and then to others. That's when I realized good teachers require the whole package of skills; proficiency in their subject and a mind to educate by facilitating the process of connecting concepts.

Sounds like a good place for a free market to open up. What teaching is worth should lean heavily on a feedback/review framework like Amazon's such that people don't end up paying for a class that sucks, by every student's experience, because the professor can't communicate concepts, or communicate at all. Like the time I spent almost weeks trying to figure out what the foreigner in my Space Systems course meant by "papamaaa". By the way, that's "performance".

...then why are virtually all of the most successful tech companies here?

Yes, a few exist outside of the US. Not many.

If these companies were hiring a cook they would require 3 years experience working on an Ace cooktop, 5-years experience with Acme Food Supply, and be able to demonstrate the restaurant's recipe for their signature meat dish before being considered.

Companies didn't come into existence with their particular toolsets: they learned them, and quickly. Then they refuse to consider hiring anyone who doesn't already know them in depth.

The cool thing about economics, however, is that there is enormous economic demand to do so. This means if we can put an emissions tax on airlines, there is an incredible incentive to make technological advances that significantly decrease emissions. When that happens, we will still be able to meet demand for relatively low cost.

The only people we hire now have relevant experience and skills in our very specific field, and experience commensurate for the position we are posting. We have sadly given up on new graduates; they are too flakey, having never held an actual job before, and needing substantial training to get to a point where they can generate revenue... and leave. Now is a great time for people that graduated around 2010, found a job in their field at terrible pay, and are now ready for an actual career.

The correlation between these parameters suggests that two-thirds of the difference in cancer risk among various tissue types can be blamed on random, or 'stochastic,' mutations in DNA occurring during stem-cell division, and only one-third on hereditary or environmental factors like smoking, the researchers conclude.

By “chance” Tomasetti meant the roll of the dice that each cell division represents, leaving aside the influence of deleterious genes or environmental factors such as smoking or exposure to radiation.

... but their Xfinity Wifi Hotspot program, if implemented correctly, shouldn't cause customers any real harm.

What I believe happens is that your modem gets virtualized into two modems/routers. Cable Internet is already based on shared broadcast signals, so in terms of bandwidth it should be identical to adding a second, mostly inactive cable modem somewhere in your neighborhood. Since the 2nd modem is virtualized, it should not affect your transfer rates or bandwidth quotas.

This second modem is connected to a second, virtual router, with its own SSID. Unless there's a vulnerability in the router (which is possible), users of the Xfinity Wifi Hotspot should not be able to access your network, use your IP address, etc.

Available bandwidth could conceivably be reduced, due to more packets in the air, but WiFi is already unregulated and subject to additional interference. Increased load on the modem/router could theoretically reduce your bandwidth as well, although probably not by any noticeable amount.

The best claim is based on increased electricity usage. However, the additional energy needed is probably negligible. Here is a link to a blog post about the increased electricity costs, where they conclude it's about $8 per year in the mid-Atlantic area -- if it's being used. Comcast could give everyone a $1/mo credit for enabling the Xfinity WiFi Hotspot, completely eliminating the issue.

There is a great portion of my favorite book on Political thought regarding wages and the Artisan. Socrates points out that once a person in society receives ample money for a project they no longer have incentive to do future work. Socrates continues stating that this is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that the person with the wealth is now free to meddle in the affairs of everybody else in society. That meddling is almost never in societies interests, but that person or the person's close friends and associates, so that they gain further control of society and have more stuff than everyone else.

That book in case you are interested is Plato's "The Republic".

The whole "everyone should code" argument is foolish. Society needs plumbers, welders, architects, accountants, doctors, physicists, line workers, and every other job there is. As society has demand for jobs the wages should go up, which draws people into the needed jobs. Since coders are in demand and receive good wages for their work, it seems at least some of this push is to artificially reduce the wages by flooding the market. And lets face it, there are not a whole lot of decent paying middle class jobs left in the US any longer.

Everyone I worked with 15 years ago as an engineer is now in management. What are they managing? Where is this productivity I keep hearing about?

Strange. I've owned a car (several of them, actually) for a couple of decades and I never made a payment other than the first one I used to buy the car. I've also never paid over $3000 for a car. Something about learning to maintain it yourself and not having much money. Also something about how true ownership beats the pants off someone else having control of my stuff.

Guess as you get paid more, you gather this strange belief that everyone does the same crazy dumb shit that you're doing.

Cars are cash items due to severe depreciation and high maintenance costs. Can't afford to buy it cash? Don't. If you have under $1000 cash (the minimum I find drivable cars selling for) the last thing you need are payments! And if you need it for a job, make sure you pay the car off within a month or two (there's plenty of $2000 jalopies you can pick up at the various fleece-me-blind no-credit car lots that should be priced at $1000 cash).

The article spells out the differences - the India probe took longer, weighed less, has fewer experiments, and probably won't last long. Meanwhile the NASA probe got there quickly, weighs 4 times more, has twice the number of experiments, and can serve as a communication relay for probes on the ground.

I can drive across country in a $5000 car, a $50,000 car, or a $500,000 truck. Each of them have different purposes and will get you there in different ways. To say NASA needs to only use the $5000 car isn't in our long term interest.