I'm simply happy that the schools have the paper to actually print the tests. Here, the budget is so out of whack that most school systems require that parents to supplement their classrooms with much more than notebooks, pencils, and tissues. The budgetary issues aside, it comes down to the parents (who elect the folks in charge of the school systems) to decide how their children are taught. I do believe that children who are engaged are more apt to learn than those who are bored to tears. Go beyond engineering projects, teach kids that math can be fun, how to have fun with the English and/or foreign languages, or demonstrate how historical events can be fun to learn about. These things are important as well.

And if you feel like you child isn't getting enough education at school, try bolstering their education outside of normal school hours. Get involved with the education of your kids and find out exactly what it is that they're learning. Only then, can you as a parent determine where their education is lacking.

Well, it's still in the process of formation where we can visibly see it. Given that it's 12.7 billion light years away, I'd like to believe that the galaxies are properly formed at this point. Though, given that not one person knows exactly how long it takes to form a proper galaxy, who's to say that it isn't finished. It's all best guess I suppose. Really cool science though, knowing that light from 12.7 billion years ago is illuminating our planet, however faint it may be.

I've got a huge library of .mobi books, and when I want to read one, I copy it to my kindle and it shows up in my list of available titles on my Kindle 3. Haven't had a single problem with any .mobi books and I've read hundreds that way.

In the application settings for the stock Android browser and several other android browsers (firefox and opera come to mind), you can change the user agent string to use a desktop browser string, and all websites then show up in their full "normal desktop" glory. I had this exact same problem on my transformer. Once I changed that setting and I've not had a problem since. Just thought I'd let you know. In the stock browser, its under advanced settings IIRC.

This is also true in almost every movie theater I've attended in recent memory here in the US. All prices listed inside and out of the theater are tax inclusive. It's exceptionally convenient for me, since I can easily calculate in my head if I've got the spare change in my pocket to be able to get the larger size popcorn. It's the same thing with gasoline purchases. If I have a $20 in my pocket, I know that the most gas I can purchase is $20 worth. Given the current price of gasoline, however, good luck getting the dial to stop at exactly $20.

the US government to stop thinking they can police the world.

If overseas pirating operations are what's causing all the ruckus, I don't see what passing stringent laws within the US borders will do to accomplish this task. It could just be me, but it seems that what the plan is with both of these acts is to try and police what happens on the internet worldwide. The United States has no business regulating the internet internationally. If they want to regulate it within their borders, that's the government's realm. Outside of the US, there's not one damn thing the US should be doing other than cooperating with other global governments to begin their own enforcement policies.

Not that I'm advocating internet regulation here, it just seems that the reasoning behind the acts is flawed, as is most of the data. I, myself, have created several copyrighted works, which found their way stolen and posted here and there. Sure it pissed me off, but as the person who owned the copyrights, it was my job to do the foot work responsible for making sure that either the content was taken down, or I was given appropriate attribution.

Going back to my primary point in posting, the US government, and US-based corporations needs to stop thinking that the US government is responsible for policing the world on any level.

That's just my $0.02.

You could use something like Altiris Deployment Solution which was bought by Symantec. Judging by the screenshots of the latest versions, it already has the backup and wipe capabilities built in. So it would be a one box solution. I know that you can assign initial deployment tasks to any new system detected by DS, so you can just set it up to perform the backup first, then perform a data wipe, and when it's completed, the new system will be identified in the UI as such.

I've used an older version primarily for OS deployments in a large-ish (500-800PC) network, and rarely had any difficulty. I think that the biggest downside, other than having to use Windows as your base OS, would be the costs for licensing. I think they sell it in blocks of 100 systems, and it isn't exactly cheap. It will, however, do exactly what you want in an automated fashion.

It's not the government or the ISP's job to monitor and/or determine the usage of the content available on the internet. Were I to publish a game, for example, it would then be up to me as an individual to research, inspect, and determine if anyone is infringing on the copyright of my game. Just because they're a large entity doesn't mean they should be exempted from the same issues facing the individual content owners.

Why should the ISP's be forced to swallow the costs of such a manhunt, when they receive zero benefit from the search, it costs them money, and it displays them negatively in the public light such that their brand is devalued, however slightly.

Essentially, content owners should be, and are, responsible for making sure that everyone who uses their content is abiding by their specified licenses, etc. If you're complaining about the costs that you incur whilst enforcing your licensing model, and want the government to help out, perhaps you should re-evaluate your licensing model. Of course, that particular dead horse has been beaten so severely, at this point, to be unrecognizable.

I know, that in this environment of increasing paranoia, I'm probably not the first person to think that announcing a nationwide test of the emergency broadcast system and giving the exact date and time of the test could potentially be a bad plan. It seems to me that perhaps someone wishing to perform any sort of nationwide nefarious activities would plan to do so on a day like that. I can see it now...

"Did you hear that there is a "

"Oh, don't worry about it, they were just testing the emergency broadcast system today. Nothing to worry about."

Just my $0.02 though.

We do, however, have plenty of hydrogen. That could be used instead of helium and we can send as many balloons as we wanted without a whole lot of fear of "running out" of the lift fuel.

Exactly! And the Blu-Ray format was invented to allow more storage on a physical disc media. Thus, you have the storage available to put an entire movie in High Definition on it(~10 - ~30Gb).

I have the fastest available broadband in my area(18Mbps down). To download an entire high def movie in that size would take significantly longer than I would want to wait in front of my television for it. I bought my Blu-ray player for the quality. If I'm going to be forced to download the same content, I expect, and demand, the same quality.

Also, let us not forget about the fact that a sizable portion of the US is still running on dial-up, so downloading a high definition movie is completely out of the question.

Unless the content providers are willing to invest heavily in the broadband infrastructure of the country then physical media like Blu-Ray is here to stay, at least for the next several years.