Meg, is that you?

One can hope.

> who do you think will fall next [?]

I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I've been predicting for awhile that HP will fall next, it just seems so obviously likely, but I continue to be wrong. At least, so far. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

I guess I can see that, for a few years ago. But most non-Apple smartphones use micro-SD these days, and a 64 Gbyte card is $23 on Amazon today. (Or $120 for similar capacity in an Apple product, of course.) The first thing I did when I got my replacement phone (the previous one not having survived a motorcycle accident) was replace the paltry 8 GB micro-SD with a 64 GB part. And then it took almost an hour to download all my music to it.

One annoyance -- one of our vehicles with an older radio supports stereo Bluetooth, which means I can just play music from my phone through the car stereo, and manipulate the phone through the stereo controls.

In contrast, the radio in my 2014 motorcycle, which supports thumb drives and other neat stuff, will play music from the phone but will not control what is being played. Annoying.

That's it. It's been awhile, but I think I got the gist right, even though the details were off.

Um, this is the California school system we're talking about...

Well yes, I think I would like to keep all my appendages. (Cue OB XKCD, where a $7 crowbar is more effective than a $100M password cracking array.) I have thought about this, and I think it can be solved by having two accounts -- your "real" account, and a "hostage" account, which looks a lot like your "real" account (kinda like keeping two sets of books) and takes the same biometrics, but upon providing a slightly different "something you know", raises (silent) alarms everywhere it would be appropriate to do so.

I think I have about six songs in itunes that are in "protected AAC" format, as I stopped buying stuff in that format early on, as soon as I realized the limitations. I still have a (gen3) ipod in the truck but the sound system in the other car and in the motorcycle understand thumb drives, and once you have that why the heck would you use an ipod? Most phones these days will play music and have removable storage -- why would you carry an extra device?

Once you realize that only Apple products will play "protected AAC" files, why the heck would you buy content in that format?

I guess the point I'm making is that if you lost access to content you paid for because itunes no longer supports your OS, this might be a good time to at least re-evaluate how you purchase content. If you must use itunes, it'll rip CDs just fine, and used CDs are available, often for a pittance, at Amazon and other places.

I can't believe in 2015 we're still saying "just say no to DRM content". That question should have been settled a long time ago.

I intended that as tongue in cheek. As I said in a different thread, my (vaccinated) daughter was homeschooled through most of grade school, (due to a difference of opinion between her doctors, who diagnosed her as severely dyslexic, and her teachers, who diagnosed her as ADD and prescribed Ritalin) and she later interviewed and got accepted into a somewhat exclusive high school.

Other members of my family (who happen to live in California -- I live in a different state) were very vocal in their disapproval of my decision to homeschool, saying that "everyone knows homeschooled kids don't have any social skills or any education and they're a burden on society". (Apparently there's a pamphlet I didn't get.) To which I say, anything can be done badly. The trick is to do it well.

> You do know that thimerosal has been out of all vaccines used in the US and Canada since the early 1990's right? [emphasis mine]

Apparently not. If you have evidence to the contrary, here's your chance to update a wiki entry.

Europe has also done a much more thorough job of banning Thimerosal (a preservative containing mercury) in vaccines, an area where the US is still behind. Just sayin'.

It can work, if done intelligently. My daughter was educated in a homeschool consortium for most of grade school, and then applied and was accepted into a private high school. A consortium works by having each parent teach the subject they're qualified to teach. I'm pretty good at math and have teaching experience, but that job (math teacher) was already taken, by a retired nuclear engineer who also had teaching experience, so I ended up being IT for the classrooms instead.

Side note, you might be surprised by the number of teacher's children who are homeschooled.

The issue in my case was, the doctors (many doctors over many expensive months of diagnosis) concluded that daughter was severely dyslexic and would never read past a 5th grade level. On the other hand, the school had diagnosed her as ADD and insisted I put her on Ritalin. We could not come to an agreement, and I decided (exercising the parental prerogative that so many people in this thread revile) to believe the doctors rather than the teachers, (I'm funny that way) and pulled her out of school.

As far as vaccines go, I don't have much to contribute except that daughter got all her childhood shots including the (new at the time) chicken pox vaccine (because it didn't exist when I was growing up, and i got chicken pox in my 20's, and it was really messy) and she got chicken pox anyway.

I did turn down the gardasil vaccine, after much research. Which I won't bore you with here. Either you're familiar with the controversy, or you can read up on it yourself. Feel free to call me an anti-vaxxer.

Others have pointed out that vaccines are madated by law in Europe much more strictly than (most places) in the US. That's true. It's also true that Europe was much quicker at banning Thimerosal (a preservative containing mercury) in vaccines, an area where the US is still behind.

This has the same problem as any exclusively biometric technique -- the user can be compelled to give up their "password" merely by being physically present. "Something you have" can be taken, even if it's your still-living (for now) carcass. "Something you have" should always be supplemented with "something you know".

The summary rightly brings up privacy concerns but I'd also be concerned about the security of the transmitted data. Like RFID, the information can easily be snooped, and would have to be appropriately encrypted to be useful as credentials.

> Last Wednesday, the legislation stalled in the Senate Education Committee as lawmakers said they were concerned that too many students would be forced into home schooling.

Or even worse, that they found that they liked it. The problem with making something a condition of participating in a government institution is the risk that significant numbers will discover they do fine without it.

too late for Randy Pausch.