Personally, I never liked PvP games. Invariably, the loser gets sick and tired of the game, sometimes offended, and what started as a fun idea ends with anger and discontent.

I'm more of a PvE gamer. Give me something that I and a couple friends could do with an external enemy or a joined goal and everyone comes out happier at the end.

The big pain in the ass here is that AB32 trickles down to California businesses and state-run entities. Everyone has to do their part to reduce California emissions back to 1990s levels (NOT per capita... raw GHG tonnage per year). That's easy for some, but not so easy for others.

If your organization was a big time polluter with little employee growth since the 1990s, you can switch to plug-in hybrids for your fleet, swap out incandescent bulbs for fluorescent/LED, put in new thermostats, disallow hot water in the bathrooms, adopt roof-top solar, and, if necessary, buy bio-methane energy credits. Reaching your AB32 goals would be easy.

But what if you were one of the model organizations in the 1990s that was at the forefront green tech but have since doubled in size? Ya, you may still have a fantastic per capita GHG emissions rating, but you've doubled in size! That means you have to cut your per capita in HALF to get back to your 1990 emissions level. Organizations with this problem are actually going back through their numbers and hoping to INCREASE their back-casting GHG emissions. They want to be seen as having been bigger polluters than they were because, with AB32, if you weren't a big polluter, you're going to have to invest beyond the diminishing returns curve to get anywhere near your state-mandated goals.

If AB32 could be amended to require going back to 1990 PER CAPITA emissions, my organization would be sitting pretty. Hell, we'd be able to sell off the credits from our being BELOW our 1990 per capita emissions. But that's not the case... so we, as one of the lowest per capita polluters in the nation for our industry, will end up paying more in cap-and-trade fees and offsets than actual big polluters.

And that's the way it's supposed to be. The big funding, risk, and genuine exploration is done by the bloated, but driven, government. Once all the basics have been proven, once all the risks have been measured, and once a potential business model evolves from that exploration, then private business comes in to profitize it.

When the government loses the drive to continue exploration, private industry moves in to profitize and expand until they can no longer profitize. Then government comes in, uses what private business learned, and then does big exploration all over again. Etc.

All big exploration starts with governments. The private sector comes in only after the risky, heavy lifting is done. It's a symbiotic relationship.

This would be great to use in sweatshops! You'd need fewer armed guards and you'd be able to see who is too relaxed (AKA slacking off)! Oh, panoptic society, I thought you were just a fantasy!

Wait, 1984 wasn't a guidebook? Well, then why have been working towards all the same tech? Oh... we're idiots. Got it.

I've spent my entire life in the hustle-bustle. I want to go on a cycling tour of villages, towns, and nowheresvilles.

You may have missed the first line I wrote, so I'll post it again: "... it's not just increased education spending that creates better educated students."

The raw number of dollars spent within the general concept of education is irrelevant because it includes really stupid expenses like competitive athletics expenses, hair-brained over-investment in classroom tech, and luxury buildings for brand new schools who are seeking to attract the best and brightest teachers (to the detriment of other schools).

Moreover, I provided links to research and case studies that show the benefits of my suggestions. One doesn't need to prove that a combination of treatments work before trying a combination of treatments.

I'll brake it down easy for you:

Given: Schools in poor neighborhoods provide poor education to their students. Those students grow up with a higher rate of criminality and a lower chance to enter the (fiscal) middle class.

Suggestion: Decrease class room size (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Ensure sufficient climate control (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Engage the parents (proven benefits by research)
Suggestion: Recruit passionate and competent educators and make the necessary efforts required to convince them to stay long-term (proven benefits by experience)
Suggestion: Implement all of the above for a single school in a very bad part of town.

Would you assert that these actions, widely implemented over a low-income, low-performing area are not likely to beneficially affect the futures of the students, families, and neighborhoods treated?

No, because it's not just increased education spending that creates better educated students. Buying iPads for everyone in the school will accomplish nothing. Spending money on a giant football field is worthless.

That money has to be spent on:

(1) Small class sizes
--- Case Studies: http://www.classsizematters.or...
-- Decreasing class sizes while keeping the same student population requires more classrooms and more teachers.

(2) Climate Control
--- Research: http://healthyschools.cefpi.or...
-- Ensuring sufficient climate control in classrooms requires permission to expend resources on the use of A/C and heaters and, in many cases, the actual installation of HVAC systems.

(3) Sufficient school supplies
--- Research: Not handy, but it's fairly common sense that if your school can't afford to make copies of worksheets, those worksheets cannot be completed. Then, of course, there's paper, pencils, etc.

(4) Passionate teachers and their retention
-- This does not necessarily mean "pay teachers more". It means choosing teachers better and ignoring those who are in Teach for America for 3 years so they can pad their law school applications.
-- Good, committed teachers are worth tenure, pension, and reserve fund to pay for substitutes. If you don't give them the financial security required to work hard in bad neighborhoods, they will take their resumes and go to other districts.

(5) After school programs for parents of students
-- 99.99% of the valuable education these students will receive comes from the school, but if the parent's do buy into it, that student will have to *fight* all the ailments of home just to graduate high school. Involve the parents by bringing them to school or visiting home and you'll see the investment stick.

This and many similar disparities are only solvable with enhanced K-12 education in low-income, low-performing areas. Yes, that means spending more federal/state dollars per capita than in median income areas. More teachers (that stay for more than 3 years), smaller classrooms (that also have heating, cooling, and supplies), and more reliable funding. It does not suffice to provide equal state funding-- we got shit to fix.

Not enough minorities at Microsoft? What's the proportion of minorities in the tech field?
Not enough minorities in the tech field? What's the proportion of minorities taking STEM majors?
Not enough minorities in STEM majors? How prevalent and to what quality was their STEM education in K-12?

It always comes back to the K-12 education. Crime, poverty, treatment of women, minority imbalance in industry-- How good was the education?

Want to fix the future? Focus on the education of the poor.

I'm so done with this "Wikipedia has incorrect information and thus it's not worth anything" BS. The brilliance of Wikipedia is that if you know about something and can cite some high quality source, you can ethically edit an article. Some people edit articles imperfectly, but others will come by and improve.

While we like to think that being absolutely perfect is the best option, it's impossible. Getting that last 5-10% of absolute perfection requires a massive amount of work (time, money, etc.). When striving for anything error-free, perfection becomes the enemy of good and we don't have the massive community within Wikipedia to actually add new articles and information. Instead of perfection, it's the agility of the Wikipedia community that brings the greatest value. They can add, remove, and correct anything-- and so can you. You just have to care enough to do so and do so with informative source material.

No, a flat tire is a reasonable issue about which to complain. It becomes a meme-worthy "First World Problem" when you complain that you have to use the keyboard on your smartphone to find a nearby auto shop because Siri doesn't understand what an auto shop is.

Hello Kilobug,

You're speaking my language. What you describe is the method of making a decision, but not necessarily the general goals of the decisions made. Together, goals/motivation and method create an ethic. With that, I have a couple questions for you:

1. Being a consequentialist, how do you determine which consequences are acceptable. Do you consider pain, loss, preference, pleasure, happiness, gain, etc.? If so, at what balance? Just for yourself or for the consideration of others as well?
2. While you are a consequentialist, have you always been? Was there a time when you could describe your ethical decisions based on virtues, rules, or duty?
3. As a consequentialist, do you find that virtue, rules, or duty still work their way into your decision-making or the methods of decision-making you prescribe for others?

"Now with them only working 5 days and many U.S. Post Office holidays, they're still getting the same money for significantly less."

Depends on your definition of the term "significantly less". If peoples' lives were hanging in the balance based on the arrival time of your DVDs, then yes, service is significantly less. If your income relied on Netflix DVD arrival times, then yes, "significantly less". But if the only value coming from the DVDs arriving per the previous expected schedule is that you can get through the entire Gossip Girls collection in 6 fewer days, then no, service is not "significantly less."

Sure you could make an argument for the raw percentage increase in time between DVDs, but without the context of the value of the product delivered, you really can't argue much about service. In the world of complex economics, we tend to term this issue as "not a big freakin' deal, man".

Sometimes service decreases and the cost to the user stays the same. It's a strategic move in contrast of charging everyone more to keep service levels the same after a market as changed. That's business. Don't like it? Try one of the Netflix wanna-be companies and compare the per-dollar value.

What the hell are energy deposits? Have we renamed "fossil fuels" like oil and natural gas to simple "energy"? Because PR professionals don't get to do that!

Can we please set some sort of standard for the vocabulary of artificial intelligence? Because I'm fairly certain that kiosk manufacturers "BCS" has not created a networked artificial intelligence just to help you decide if you want to upgrade to more leg room.

It's a set of video recordings set to play in response to input stimuli and complete actions in the background and nothing more. It's "smart".

I propose:
Intelligent -- Smart and Sentient.
Sentient -- For others to describe/debate.
Smart -- Capable of making complex decisions from multiple forms of input (sensory, data input, etc.). (A really good bot.)
Clever -- Capable of making decisions and acting on those decisions. (A bot.)
Terminal -- Capable of acting on commands. (An ATM.)

"Students who chose to independently use online instructional websites are also more likely to exhibit behaviors and traits associated with academic success and lifelong learning."

While the above statement from the summary doesn't directly suggest causation, do to the intricacies of the English language, it implies that taking online classes contribute to academic success and lifelong learning. However, I would assert that, if you're going to imply causation, it may be accurate to suggest those who have been academically successful have already started on the road of lifelong learning and utilizing online classes is just one method of travel along said road.