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Comment City folk deciding how country folk should live (Score 1) 413

This study is attempting a purposeful deception. There is another reason for setting up districts this way, which is to curtail the influence of highly concentrated urban populations picking representatives for people whose lives and issues they know nothing about. If you look at the NY statewide election, the only reason Cuomo won re-election was that 3 urban centers overwhelmingly voted for him. Every other county, in a massively large state, voted for the other guy.

Now you could argue that those urbanites are just so much more intelligent than the country folk. Talk to people in NYC and ask them why they voted for Cuomo, despite his self-inflicted corruption scandal. Even his competitor in the primary could have trounced him absent the urban vote.

If it were not for gerrymandered districts, these same lackluster voters would be picking representatives who had no interest in representing those who live anywhere else farther than 20 miles from NYC, Buffalo, or Rochester (and those just barely).

Comment Re:Tempting (Score 1) 181

Non-sequitur? He gave money to support a proposition that upheld society's longest existing institution against an onslaught of hyper-liberal hand-wringing. Your ad hominem of homophobe is applied to anyone who happens to agree with the current gay agenda of establishing a protected class with special rights and accommodations.

It is only through the flooding of the airwaves with propaganda and brainwashing of ignorant youth that same sex marriage has gotten the marginal support that it has. Surely it will grow, since the formative years of children are now filled with misinformation campaigns regarding homosexuality and its classification as an inherent trait similar to color or ethnicity that should be celebrated and honored.

In the meantime, there are still many people left who were not recipients of such "special education" and who have respect for the idea of marriage. Everyone has the same inherent right to marry. A male who has reached the age of consent may marry a female who has reached the age of consent, as long as they are not related too closely and meet the other requirement of not having a living spouse (and vice versa). These are not harsh restrictions, and they apply equally to all people. Note that there are no requirements to love one another, though presumably this should be the primary reason why the two would want to be wed.

Eich supporting these normal restrictions, as loose as they are, on marriage is not an act of discrimination.

Space

Why the Universe Didn't Become a Black Hole 109

StartsWithABang writes: With some 10^90 particles in the observable Universe, even stretched across 92 billion light-years today, the Universe is precariously close to recollapsing. How, then, is it possible that back in the early stages after the Big Bang, when all this matter-and-energy was concentrated within a region of space no bigger than our current Solar System, the Universe didn't collapse down to a black hole? Not only do we have the explanation, but we learn that even if the Universe did recollapse, we wouldn't get a black hole at all!

Comment What a crappy of options! - no Pinochle? (Score 1) 274

Pinochle wipes the floor with the rest of these. There is chance involved (based on the deal), wagering, trump cards, having a partner whose cards you are not fully acquainted with, and various styles of play that have all sorts of good and bad consequences based on all of the above, as well as the opponents style.

Networking

Verizon Now Throttling Top 'Unlimited' Subscribers On 4G LTE 274

PC Magazine (along with Forbes, Reuters, and others) reports that those on the rightmost edge of the graph for Verizon's "unlimited" 4G LTE service are about to hit a limit: [T]hose in the top five percent of Verizon's unlimited data users (which requires one to pull down an average of just around 4.7 gigabytes of monthly data or so) who are enrolled on an unlimited data plan and have fulfilled their minimum contract terms (are now on a month-to-month plan) will be subject to network throttling if they're trying to connect up to a cellular tower that's experiencing high demand." As the article goes on to point out, though, [A] user would have to hit all of these criteria in order to have his or her connection slowed down. There are a lot of hoops to jump through, giving even more weight to the fact that Verizon's throttling — while annoying on paper — won't affect a considerable majority of those still holding on to their unlimited data plans.
Robotics

Foxconn Replacing Workers With Robots 530

redletterdave (2493036) writes The largest private employer in all of China and one of the biggest supply chain manufacturers in the world, Foxconn announced it will soon start using robots to help assemble devices at its several sprawling factories across China. Apple, one of Foxconn's biggest partners to help assemble its iPhones, iPads, will be the first company to use the new service. Foxconn said its new "Foxbots" will cost roughly $20,000 to $25,000 to make, but individually be able to build an average of 30,000 devices. According to Foxconn CEO Terry Gou, the company will deploy 10,000 robots to its factories before expanding the rollout any further. He said the robots are currently in their "final testing phase."

Comment Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score 1) 335

I'm actually specifically excluding those to make a point. Take out the athletics. That's right, the horror! Wanna participate in sports? Sign up for Little League, Soccer, etc. on your own. My own children were in Little League, had to buy uniforms (not needed when I was a kid, just a hat and a shirt), and the Little League is not funded by the school. Same for traveling soccer leagues. Gym is called the playground. The teacher is certainly capable of watching the kids do some pushups, sit-ups, and some running. Mix it up if you want.

I counted regular real estate, but the kids don't need an expensive gym. And the total compensation of the teachers at 116,500 includes their retirement.

The only thing that is lacking is admin staff. That is also on purpose. Though, conceivably across those 13 grade levels you can find some money for one super and one secretary. The lack of staff will keep them from getting any spendy ideas, as they will be too busy doing the work they should actually be doing, limited to hiring staff and corresponding.

Comment Re:So in other words, it will be just like Firewir (Score 1) 355

I would disagree. The actual production cost difference was small, but manufacturers wanted to shave pennies, rather than raise the price and worry about the competitor getting placed in stores due to a $1 per thousand unit discount resulting from USB only implementations.

Consumers definitely noticed the slow speed of USB. Think back to when scanners became a desktop reality, before MFPs. USB was 12Mbps, and firewire was 400Mbps. Scanning was atrociously slow over USB. Also, when external hard drives were becoming more common, customers were frustrated at how long it took to transfer even over USB2. And the more you transferred, the slower it got. God forbid you try to use the computer during that time.

No, Firewire was killed by retailers and other penny pinchers. Consumers did not care about $2 on a $1000 computer, or $2 on a $100 scanner.

Comment Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score 1) 335

So you are saying that the 10% of children who might actually have special needs require more than one teacher at any one time? How many more? For example, in our school district, how many more teachers are required to teach the special ed children, assuming the non-special ed teacher has 10 students.

Also, you are obviously not familiar with children with disciplinary problems who get sent to private schools by their parents in an attempt to get them out of their hair. Where do you get your data on prep schools kicking out students for getting C averages?

Comment Re:rich people go back to paying taxes? (Score 3, Interesting) 335

Here in my upstate NY town, we spend $27,000 per student per year, almost on the nose. I just looked quickly at the cost of prep schools. Rutgers Preparatory was one of the first results from Google. It's yearly tuition is $28,240. They have a little over half of the enrollment of our school district. Tell me again how spending on kids has gone down, and tell me how we are going to improve their education by spending more money?

You could take each class year (90 students per class year), hire 9 teachers, for 10 students per teacher, and get:

a 1 million dollar building (more than what you need, and only need to buy it once every 40 years)
2 full time custodial staff at $90,000 total compensation per custodian
$200,000 yearly maintenance/heat/electric on the building.
and pay those teachers 116,500 per year in total compensation.

Now, if you would like to add some features, go ahead and do so. I think I am being very generous with the million dollar property. After all, you could spend 1 million more each year on property and buildings and still not have an issue excepting increased maintenance costs, and that's just for the kindergarteners. I'm sure you have a much more nuanced understanding of what is needed to educate our children. Why don't you enlighten us further?

Earth

Scientists Warn of Rising Oceans As Antarctic Ice Melts 784

mdsolar (1045926) writes "The collapse of large parts of the ice sheet in West Antarctica appears to have begun and is almost certainly unstoppable, with global warming accelerating the pace of the disintegration, two groups of scientists reported Monday. The finding, which had been feared by some scientists for decades, means that a rise in global sea level of at least 10 feet may now be inevitable. The rise may continue to be relatively slow for at least the next century or so, the scientists said, but sometime after that it will probably speed up so sharply as to become a crisis."
Communications

Verizon and New Jersey Agree 4G Service Equivalent to Broadband Internet 155

An anonymous reader writes with news that Verizon and New Jersey regulators have reached a deal releasing Verizon from their obligation to have brought 45Mbps broadband to all NJ residents by 2010. Instead, 4G wireless service is considered sufficient. From the article: "2010 came and went and a number of rural parts of the state are still living with dial-up or subpar DSL. And even though the original deal was made in the days of modems and CompuServe, its crafters had the foresight to define broadband as 45Mbps, which is actually higher than many Verizon broadband customers receive today. ... In spite of that, and the thousands of legitimate complaints from actual New Jersey residents, the BPU voted unanimously yesterday to approve a deal with Verizon ... According to the Bergen Record, Verizon will no longer be obligated to provide broadband to residents if they have access to broadband service from cable TV providers or wireless 4G service. ... Residents who happen to live in areas not served by cable or wireless broadband can petition Verizon for service, but can only get broadband if at least 35 people in a single census tract each agree to sign contracts for a minimum of one year and pay $100 deposits."

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