> Rather, they are saying, "I don't want my taxes to pay for other people to read this trash."

Not quite. In fact, not at all. What they are saying (and you seem to be supporting) is "Even though my tax money has already been spent, and even though other people contributed THEIR tax money to help buy this book, and even though those people might think the money was well-spent, I want to remove this book from the shelves so that it will be more difficult--or better, impossible--for anyone to read this book that I personally dislike, despite the fact that there is no financial benefit to doing so." It's all about suppressing ideas, and the people who make the complaints make that position quite clear.

There are mechanisms (e.g., elections) for changing future spending priorities. After-the-fact censorship isn't one of them.

Your ignorance of the issues is glaring and appalling.
If the people were really objecting to the choices made by librarians, they would be clamoring for particular purchases as well as objecting to the books that were currently on the shelves. That's not the case. Nor are the citizens asking for the librarian to be replaced or instructed in their tastes. They are quite simply saying, "I don't think anybody in my school/town should be allowed to read this particular book." That's a hugely different question.

You seriously misunderstand. Most of these libraries are government-operated, either public libraries or schools. While it's true that SOME of the libraries rightfully resisted, the ALA's primary point is to illustrate the pressure that is being put on these libraries. And in many cases, the books were actually removed (note that the second-most-frequent challengers were administrators). Sometimes, lawsuits got them back, sometimes not. So yes, it's censorship.

Nor is your claim that "All these materials are easily available elsewhere" supported by the facts. In many cases, the library facing the challenge is the only library in a small town that doesn't have a bookstore, and often the readers can't afford to buy their own books. So your argument really boils down to "If you're poor, you don't get to read what you want."

At least your dig at Twilight gets humor points.

Clearly, the Mozilla folks are clueles. But there's hope: they should just ask Netflix for business advice, and then all will be well.

Obviously, the TSA is slipping, because there are several threats they missed in the current warning. For example, I heard that the bad guys are planning to kidnap the President, replace him with a robot, and hide a nuke inside. If that doesn't work, they're going to hijack a rocket, land on an asteroid, and divert it to crash into New York City. Expect porno scanners for astronauts to be announced in the next few days.

The reason terrorism is relevant is because it is regularly used as justification for loosening wiretap restrictions. If the wiretaps aren't actually being used for terrorism, the justification is bogus. Your claim about the rise in wiretaps being due to the rise in electronic communication is completely wrong; in case you haven't noticed the telephone is over 100 years old and has been the normal mode of communication for many decades. If mobiles were the cause of the increase, you'd expect a very high number of "roving" wiretaps, but the report lists only a tiny number. Likewise, online accounts are a poor explanation since wiretap orders can cover multiple technologies. But your worst "reasoning" is in your postscript, where you try to imply that two year-to-year decreases prove there is no upward trend. A glance at the graphe is sufficient to nuke that allegation; it's obvious that there is noise in the data but the trend is upward (and although it's too early to be sure, there seems to be an explosion going on since Obama took office).

It's even worse than you think. It's midnight right now in California, and the number of calls on the map is tiny. And since you can use Google Maps to zoom in, I had no trouble learning that there was an onSIP customer at the headquarters of the Los Angeles Police Department. Just think of the fun: you can zoom in on somebody's house and tell that they're awake...

I had this same issue (different only in minor details) a few months ago. The best I found was Red Pocket (http://www.redpocketmobile.com). They operate on AT&T's network, so coverage is good. They sell prepaid service at a reasonable price. Cons: you have to get the SIM card ahead of time, and overseas shipping is slow, so if you're leaving soon that's a problem. When I got to the US, only voice worked, and it was impossible to activate data using Firefox & NoScript. IIRC, I eventually had to bring up a VM with Internet Explorer to get data to go. But once I had leapt through the hoops, it was fine.

Funny how it's the right wing that always decries the "nanny state" while constantly trying to control behavior...

Has anybody actually read the complaint? IANAL by a long shot, but I would have no trouble whatsoever writing a better complaint. And this guy seems to have a law degree!

The suit starts with a rambling recitation of accusations, none of which is even properly stated as an allegation, none of which is supported, and many of which are completely irrelevant to the alleged harm. Then it makes two complaints: assault and negligence. The assault charge is unsupported on its face, since it alleges damage without specifying what damage occurred. The negligence is apparently based on the same unsupported claim of damage.

So the suit will be thrown out instantly for failure to state an actionable claim. But I doubt that it'll make the news at that point.

Sorry, not impressed. 99% of long takes are just directors showing off. They drive me nuts, because in the vain attempt to demonstrate skill, the director winds up calling attention to himself and either robbing the audience of reaction shots, or swinging the camera wildly as if an earthquake had hit the set. Spare me the artsy "look at me, I'm so talented and trendy" crap and give me a movie that actually tells a story in the best way possible instead of trying to wow the brainless "in" crowd.

As someone who has been trying for some time to offer BitTorrent as a download option, I think a big part of the problem is that the server software is lousy. Many of the trackers out there are slow, flaky, fragile, and horribly documented. You also need a seeder, and again the server-side seeder software is consistently poor.

If you could go to bittorrent.org, download a couple of programs, and set up bittorrent distribution in an hour or two, that would make a huge difference in adoption rates. As it is, you have to REALLY want to set up a site because of the crappy distributions you have to wade through.

> In general, if you think you know the material better than Khan, why don't you teach your own kid?

I do. I teach for a living, and I supplement my kid's schoolwork with lots of extra lessons. And yes, she knows what "perpendicular" means.

What I object to is that Khan obviously didn't bother to prepare before he turned on the camera, and didn't bother to rewind and try again when he got himself into trouble because of his lack of preparation. That's an amazingly amateurish stunt. But even more, I object to the fact that Bill Gates is lionizing this guy. At best, he's merely OK. There are thousands of better teachers out there. And the TRULY best are making outstanding videos that actually teach math well. Of course, most of those cost money, and Khan's are free. But I think that Gates can probably afford the good ones. Even better, he could easily subsidize their production so that everybody could see them for free, instead of having to suffer through Khan's second-rate stuff.

I stand by what I said.

I'm looking for a solution to let my daughter study geometry at a distance, so Khan Academy sounded intriguing. I watched about half of the first video before puking.

It's not just that the videos are non-interactive lectures. It's not that they're so unpolished, full of hemming and hawing. It's that this guy can't even get his facts right. He tries to define "perpendicular," stumbles ("I wanted to say that they're perpendicular"), and eventually defines them as a horizontal line intersecting a vertical one. Um, yeah.

I suppose the stuff might be useful as a review. But it's diastrous as a substitute for a real--and competent--teacher.