Do you have or have you ever had teenagers? Here is my real world experience: "Learn hard lesson. Do the same stupid thing the next day."

You may be content to trust that a hormone engorged and not fully developed brain will remember to shut the garage door. I'd prefer a little insurance.

As for the rest of your comments, I could quite easily survive on the technology that was around in the 60's when I was born, but I recognize that technology can both make things better and make them worse. I see having the door unlock automatically as I approach with an armful of stuff as a helpful application of technology.

Not taking medications at the right time in the proper dosage is a huge problem for seniors. The blister pack can't flash or sound an alarm when it's past time to take the meds. It can't notify a caretaker/relative/friend if a senior has missed one or more scheduled times. It can't stop someone from taking the morning and lunch time meds together if they are not supposed to but they forgot in the morning.

Went went through this with my mom about 6 years ago. She was starting to suffer from Alzheimer's but we wanted to keep in her own home if possible. At the same time we couldn't have someone with her 24 hours a day.

We had an automated pill dispenser at the time that came with a dialup service that was quite expensive. It was difficult to set up and the notifications had to go through a 3rd party and was not very flexible. Even with those limitations and caveats it was much better then a blister pack. And what is possible today could be so much better.

Actually I see a lot of potential for smart homes to help people lead more independent lives further into their old age.

Kid leaves garage door open, stuff gets stolen over night
A/C comes on while windows/doors are open
I'm on vacation, water leak floods home
Forget to lock doors when leaving house
Forget to turn off lights in an unoccupied room
Walk up to the house with an arm full of stuff and the door is locked
Aging person has lots of medications but frequently forgets to take them or can't remember if they did


All it takes is a little imagination to realize how automation could solve problems and make things more convenient. Usability, expense, data privacy, standards are all issues that need to be tackled but it will happen.

I could argue that those are different things entirely but instead let's assume that more tolerance and acceptance of people with Aspergers is something that society should move towards. It won't happen overnight. You must manage with the hand that was dealt to you, - not the one you wish you had.

For example I don't have Aspergers but I was very shy as a kid. As a teenaged boy this does not lead to many dates. I used to get upset over the expectation that the boy had to be the one to make the first move. "They can come to me" was my attitude. You can imagine how well that worked.

Eventually rather than lamenting over the way the world operated and that it wasn't fair to people like me, I figured out that with some effort I could learn to be more charming and outgoing, -even with people I didn't know. It's gotten much easier and I'm much more confident, but I'm still envious of the people for whom it seems to be effortless and who apparently thrive on those same social interactions that I find challenging.

You left off some key words in my post: "I can't imagine that THIS is an inherent advantage...". I was referring to the ability to take multiple pictures in the span of a few seconds, - nothing else.

That was the topic of the post I was responding to.

I don't think sensor size has much to do with it.

Those things have something to do with a smartphone supposedly not being able to take 2 pictures within 10 seconds?

I'm not sure I understand how this is any harder to achieve with a smart phone. My phone is rarely turned completely off and I can access the camera feature without even unlocking tit. I can easily take 2 pictures within 10 seconds and with burst mode I can get 10 within 1 second.

Even if I'm missing something I can't imagine that this is an inherent advantage to a dedicated camera that improvements in technology won't eliminate.

We only homeschooled for a year but here's how I see it:

Pros:
Academics - sky is the limit
Flexible Schedule
Can be tailored to suit the individual child
Have more control over who your kid spends their time with*


Cons:
Danger of controlling too much of your child's life*
Expense - you've got to provide all your own materials
Have to be careful of materials and programs made available to homeschoolers, - often have a political bent
Takes a lot of time to prepare and execute, - especially as the kids get older

He was in public school through second grade. Kindergarten and 1st grade were great. He had awesome teachers. In the 2nd grade he ended up with a teacher in poor health that probably should have retired 5 years prior. It was not a great year and my wife had always wanted to try to homeschool but I was skeptical. So in 3rd grade he stayed at home.

Overall it went pretty well. There are tons of resources available to help however you must pay attention. My wife wanted to send our son to this 2 hour "science club" thing that met a couple of times a week. At first glance it sounded great until I read through all the literature. Turns out the guy taught Intelligent Design. I just about lost it. Some other home schoolers had recommended him to my wife. People homeschool for a variety of reasons but for a fair number it's because they don't like what is taught in public schools. I'm a fairly liberal guy. Hanging around that crowd was a tough thing for me at times and it was a source of tension between my wife and I.

My son is a social kid and he wanted to go back to school after a year. So for 4th grade, we found a private school with a small class size that seemed like a good fit. He was there through 8th grade but we often questioned whether it was worth the money, - especially once he got to middle school. From a math and science perspective he probably would have been better off in a public school.

We have neighbors with a large family that also homeschool. Once the oldest got to be about 12, he wanted to go to a school and the rest of them kind of followed suit once they got older. They're great kids. We know other families too where the results have definitely been more of a mixed bag. With one family in particular the kids are very accomplished in some areas while severely lacking in others, but that may have happened no matter where they went to school.

My take away from all of this is that success can be had in public, private, or home schools but it depends on the schools, the parents, and most of all the kid.

That's true. The report is about "advanced industries". The OP really just screwed up though.

Even that report indicates that Minneapolis/St. Paul ranks 15th in the nation in terms of advanced industry jobs. Not exactly at the top, but definitely "above average" as they say on Prairie Home Companion.

If the OP based that statement on the map in the report, they either missed the big blue dot smack dab on the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area, thought it was in Wisconsin or doesn't really know which state Minnesota is.

Put Salmon Khan in a classroom with 25 third graders and see how well he does.

I'm not saying you need a degree in education to teach, but different sets of skills are required for different students in different settings. Degree programs prepare teachers to succeed in a variety of situations many of which are more challenging than making videos.

Perhaps Developer D created app A for iOS because iOS provides a market and a platform in which app A can succeed. You don't think there was work involved in that?

Clearly iOS came before the apps. I'm not saying that applications haven't contributed to the success of the iPhone but Apple invested a ton of money and time to get something right that other smart phone venders at the time were getting wrong. And Apple's success did not prevent Android from also succeeding even though they don't have the same API. Google embraced some of what Apple did and created their own mobile platform while Blackberry was still in denial.

Obviously this is very important to you and if you want to get the last word in that is fine, I'm done posting after this. But I have to wonder though if you meant to post a link to something else because the first line under the heading "Socialism" in your link says this:

An economic and social theory that seeks to maximize wealth and opportunity for all people through public ownership and control of industries and social services.

Perhaps I do have a simple mind, but "public ownership" would seem to be part of that definition. While the word "control" is also used, it refers to control of industries, not just economic decisions.

Look, if you'd prefer to put countries on scale with "Capitalist" on the right side and "Socialist" on the left, I'd agree that Germany and many Scandinavian are further left than we are. However, if you are going to label them either capitalist or socialist, they are definitely more capitalist. More to my point, any mainstream US Democrat or Republican is definitely to the right of center on the scale.

Homebrew is a decent enough package manager for my purposes.

I am a software developer and my main OS is OS X but I have VMs that I use with various flavors of Windows and Linux. OS X comes with a lot of OSS stuff built in like perl, Postgres, PHP, Python, and Apache. The problem is that they're not always the version you want and haven't necessarily been compiled with the options you need. It was especially rough early during the transition from 32 to 64 bits.

Personally I like OS X enough to deal with some minor hassles but I can see why other people might prefer to install Windows or Linux. Having choices is good.