The education that the kids are getting is EXACTLY what the parents asked for. As others have posted, the spending policies of CA school districts are dictated by the regional school boards and middle management. The teachers don't really get too much of a say on how the money is spent.

When you look at who is running these school boards and what policies they have for education, one would think a trained squirrel would come up with better plans. Millions in solar panels anyone (don't give me that shit about sustainability, they DONT HAVE THE FUCKING MONEY TO TAKE FROM THE CLASSROOM TO PAY FOR THIS!)? New pools at an existing school when a brand new one is built a mile or so away? Big screen TVs for the football field? And yet who shows up for school board meetings? Certainly not 99% of the parents who vote the school board clowns in. No, all that attend are either companies who want to extract money from taxpayer's pockets or the sycophants who applaud the clown school board directors like trained seals. And yet when these school board clowns dare show their face for school functions and for election campaigns, the people who actually show up for these events applaud them like trained seals; there is no correlation between idiotic school spending policies and the election of the people who implement them.

So should there be any surprise we get idiotic iPad giveaways such as this?

You must be new to the United States media, where the local TV devotes far more airtime to crucial stories such as fucking Zippy the Wonder Dog which does backflips and where the local Pravda newspaper devotes front 5 pages to a local recycling effort. If you're lucky, I mean really really lucky, the local Prava may, just may, have an article buried in page A15 of a 30 page section to 2 paragraphs on something which may affect you.

Yes. Next question.

Here's the problem with this capitalistic idea. For every person who uses logic and reason and does not buy a (multi-player) game because it's not supported well, there are at least nine people standing behind him with cash already pulled out of their wallet ready to buy the game. Why? Because they want to play with their buddies, and all their buddies (especially the alpha ones) all are on-line playing that game. So in spite of all the game's and company's flaws, all logic and reason goes out the window, the game is purchased over and over and capitalism falls apart.

This strategy has worked wonders for the Xbox 360. I've seen people who's Xbox die over and over go out and buy a brand new console so they can continue to play Call of Duty with their friends, because the social aspect of the game is the most important thing to them

Google Analytics, DoubleClick, and Scorecard Research are tracking this web page. The irony meter just exploded!

...the phrase "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters." is not there anymore. And you have this stupid article up front which has absolutely nothing to do with nerds. Coincidence?

Technically, corn ethanol subsidies have already ended, so the whole deal about lobbyists and congressmen and farmers paid by the government is moot. However, now the President has mandated corn ethanol via the "Renewable Fuel Standard" which is an EPA executive branch mandate, so now instead of the government shoveling money to farmers for ethanol, government mandates a guaranteed demand instead.

In order to fix this problem now, we have to convince the EPA to adjust the Renewable Fuel Standard to get anything accomplished.

And this folks is precisely why we never get anything done anymore... Between the lawyers / politicians / managers who "just want to get along", we will just sit here and spin our wheels until our society falls apart.

As George Carlin explains "this is the best we can do folks". Bloomberg is just a reflection of the people who vote this clown in.

..all your elected Congressmen and Senators elected by informed, focused voters who stay on top of issues like this. They all make sure these corporations will not get away with this...

Problem is, as the OP was pointing out, is if you are spending all of your time appeasing and doing low level crap, while huge gaping holes of functionality are NOT being addressed because all of your working hours is spent appeasing everyone, your project is not going to be finished on time and the customers are not going to be happy. The term I have for this is "the process IS the product" where you're spending most of your 24hrs a day doing procedural crap instead of addressing the actual problems because you're mired in appeasing process people.

This attitude is precisely why modern day work environments never get anything accomplished anymore and large scale projects mostly go to crap.

This has nothing to do with "appearing weak". This has everything to do with deadlines not moving despite you being sick. Employers don't care about you being sick, they just want something shipped, and if you can't do that, they will find someone who will.

I'm assuming this means the LaserVue line is dropped as well? This sucks as I wanted one of those TVs someday... I've seen the picture on these and they are awesome! I thought this would be an alternative to Plasma...

But according to some, without an ID she DEFINITELY should be allowed to vote!!!