As far as tablets go, iOS is way ahead for accessibility because they put a lot of resources into it. There is some decent voice command with Siri, and the screen reader VoiceOver, speaks what is on the screen, reads text, web pages, etc. There is still a learning curve, but it makes things possible. There are braille displays for iOS devices too. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/ios/

For Smart phones, last time I checked what my blind friends were using they said the best thing at the time was a specialized operating system and app for a Nokia phone and it worked really well. But they also said iOS was improving fast and that several years ago.

For dumbphones it's a lot easier, you can get fairly easy to use talking phones, check what the associations for the blind recommend now. Or check http://www.blindbargains.com/

For desktops and laptops I think Windows is still ahead a little because the software packages available for it, JAWS and WindowEyes are built for it and have been around a long time. The learning curve is so steep for them though that they said unless you needed windows, then apple with it's built in, free, screen reader was a cheaper and almost as good option and a lot of blind people do use it.

There is basically no way around the fact that if you are refusing one of the required vaccines you are making a bad choice, for both your child (or you) and for society. All of the required vaccines are required based on evidence. If you have looked at the specific data and found it lacking, then you didn't understand what you were looking at, just as you are incorrect (by omission) about the ways that a person can acquire Hepatitis B.

If people could make stupid decisions based on incorrect understanding of information they didn't understand that affected only them that would be sad, but up to them. Doing it to their children is child neglect at best. Certainly no one that refuses the required vaccines should be allowed to place other people at risk such as by entering unvaccinated (by choice as opposed to medical necessity) childen into school.

Not sure why I'm responding to you though. If you've already showed a pattern of making incorrect decision based on information you don't understand, you're not likely to change.

Yeah not the biggest, but they look like they are doing a good job and that's all that matters. Gotta love /. haters finding something to whine about (not you TwoStep, the people whining about other things). If you can't get excited about a place where geeks and people that want to make stuff can share equipment that few people can afford on their own, so they can make cool stuff, go read somewhere else.

The Geek Group also has 42,000 square feet, but it appears to be a work in progress.

Something can be interesting, but still not worth the resources. For example, it may be interesting to grind away all of the earth's crust and send it into the sun, but that doesn't mean it's worth it. Everything has tradeoffs and the smarter thing to do is to think for a bit about those tradeoffs rather than knee jerk responding that it's interesting therefore it must be done, damn the cost. Maybe the same resources could be put to a more valuable and interesting use while 95% of the learning and interest value could be gotten out of this project without expending so many resources. Maybe not, but it's probably worth considering.

Oh and I found the last slashdot discussion about library software. A lot of options were discussed. http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/01/05/0415249/ask-slashdot-tech-for-small-library-automation

This is probably the best comment. Only other thing I would say is that If you really do want a catalog for your books and a checkout system for a sense of organization and security, then adding custom jackets or loops for the books that don't have ISBN/barcodes is a workable solution. It's certainly no worse than RFID tags since those would have to be glued on just the same as a barcode. The jacket, if made out of acid free paper, would also protect the book. Bar or QR codes would certainly be the easiest, fastest, cheapest way to catalog your books. If you don't want to make jackets for all your books that don't have ISBN's people here have mentioned bookmarks with a code on it. Another way is a loop around the front or back cover with the bar or QR code on it. If the loop was made tight enough, it would stay in place better than a bookmark and be much easier to make than a jacket. Just make it wide enough to include all the information you want and be quickly readable by whatever scanner you use. A loop also wouldn't affect the shelf aesthetics like a full jacket would.

Finally, there are a large number of library software systems that would be suitable for home use, including open source ones. Many have been mentioned in comments, but there are far more out there. You may want to do some searching to find the one most suitable for you. Here are some links to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_library_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_computer_system http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_library_and_information_science_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Library_and_information_science_software

unfortunately this scanner doesn't incorporate anything that would use google's 3d structured lighting (laser grid, etc) scanning patent, so the patent grant for this scanner does not open up that patent. Google's laser grid patent allows automatic dewarping of a curved page, but this is a moving flatbed scanner. Nothing I've found so far incorporates any of the laser grid stuff.

This is correct but these are partly two different issues. If you set up an LLC you can elect to have it taxed as an S or a C corporation when you set it up. Which one you would want would depend heavily on your circumstances. Generally an LLC is more favorable now than either an S or C corp for this fexibility and ease of setting it up and reduced record keeping requirements, but LLC requirements and benefits vary quite a bit from state to state. Yes, you can form and LLC anywhere, Delaware for example for it's more lax and corporate friendly laws etc, but in some cases your home state's laws would determine if you got any benefit out of it.

To the original poster, basically you should consider and LLC or corporation when your business is successful enough to make it worth it. In other words when it has some substantial income and or assets that you'd like to protect, and the costs and hassle are made up for by the liability protection, etc. As others have noted it's not full liability protection, but it does protect you from certain things that can make it worth it, even as a sole proprietor. It can make your business more attractive to lend money to, more salable, etc.

It's just not that complicated, so it wont cost many thousands from a decent attorney, unless you want a full corporate setup with consulting on how to set up the minutes, how to avoid piercing the corporate veil, and other issues. But for an LLC and some basic advice, it doesn't cost that much, and you'd get correct advice unlike what you are giving. There are enough complications and mistakes that people make doing it on their own to make it worth setting it up right the first time if the business has any success. Most people should not set up an S corporation because they do not understand the record keeping requirements and the various estate, share, and liability issues. So please don't give advice when you don't know what you're talking about. Especially don't advise people not to seek competent advice.

Yes, but this isn't really a proposal that teachers are going to like. Teachers in this program will be more highly paid than those not in it and will not be well liked by their peers. They will be expected to disseminate their expertise among their peers. Imagine how well that would go over in the lunch room. Teachers unions and their democratic members are staunchly against pay for performance systems and this is basically another one.

To some extent these concerns are founded and to some extent, of course, they are not. Teaching is looked down upon and much of that is due to teaching not being treated as much as a professional career as it should be. Another portion of why teaching is rightly looked down on is the large number of teachers that teach poorly yet are not removed as teachers due to union efforts. There are a variety of reasons why teachers don't treat their jobs more professionally. One is that the job is harder than most people think and there is nothing directly forcing teachers to treat it more professionally. There is a perverse incentive system where the teachers that work harder to teach better get paid less per hour and have less free time because the teacher that punches in the clock and goes home two second after the bell rings gets paid the same amount. Teaching certification programs and tests are far too easy, leading to teachers that do not have a broad understanding of their material. Finally, teacher development programs for active teachers are beyond terrible. They are rarely appropriately content focused or focused on the actual items that need to be addressed by each teacher to develop their teaching to be more effective. But teacher education and certification programs have a perverse incentive to turn out more graduates so they get more tuition and state money, instead of making standards and coursework more rigorous. The only solution is to make the certification tests more rigorous and test the right things, unlike the current ones. Then the teacher education programs would be forced to adapt.

But it's a vicious cycle. Because many teachers don't treat their jobs professionally, and bad teachers are difficult to weed out, parents don't have the respect for teachers. Thus the support for teachers from parents and students reduces. The answer is to change the system of incentives so that good teaching is rewarded. Better, more effective teaching can be identified, but it's not easy or cheap. Unions need to stop blocking efforts to adopt pay for performance and instead should work with schools to develop appropriate evaluations for teachers instead of rightfully pointing out that pay for performance with bad evaluation systems are not a good idea. They should also be more willing to help weed out bad teachers for the greater good of all their members.

No, I've never heard of those. I can't remotely think of anything web animated that I could bother to care about either as I have other things I like to do with my time. There are those people that do like web animated stuff I suppose, and when flash dies it seems there will be a vacuum. That vacuum will create a business opportunity. Where there's opportunity, there's money to be made.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but at the same time my experience is very different from yours. Where I went to undergrad, math and stats majors took a mathematical statistics class and social science majors were required to take at least a general ed stats class (or could substitute it with more rigorous courses). Because I could get credit for it, I took the general ed stats class after the rather rigorous mathematical stats class. Most of the social science majors sat slack jawed in the general ed stats class and it was renowned for being the most difficult class they had to take. After the first day I realized I could just show up for the exams and did so, studying just a little out of the book. It's not that I'm that brilliant and it turned out the courses covered rather different material. Other math and science majors i knew reported similar experiences to mine. But the social science majors were simply not prepared to think analytically enough and even at the level of rigor of the general ed stats class. And the general ed stats class had a total enrollment of about a thousand students each semester across many sections, so it's certainly not a small sample size.

Where I do agree with you is that the primary difference between statistics and mathematics is uncertainty, and that hard science students are often unhappy grasping this central concept. If you've seen that soft science students have a better time grasping the principles of statistics, then that is certainly something to take advantage of to level the field. Hard science students will tend to have an easier time with the rigor and equations.

As you seem to be aware of by the end of your post, the companies such as Microsoft that fund the BSA, and thus the BSA, are well aware of the benefits of piracy to their bottom line. But they also want to ignore that fact and throw piracy out there as the big bogey man for a number of reasons including pressuring for ever more draconian copyright laws so that they can squeeze those that they do manage to catch those pirating or just without proper software license documentation. Not having saved all the documentation perfectly isn't the same thing as pirating it, but the BSA and it's contributors such as Microsoft will sure use the laws they've bought and paid for to charge you the same.

Which makes it all the more important that the metric used for the evaluations is a good one. If the metric used for your evaluations at a private company are a bad one, pretty much only the owners of the company and employees suffer. If the metric used for evaluations at a public school are bad, it can have a heavy cost to a generation of kids. In this case, the union isn't just whining that we don't want to be evaluated and don't want them to be public (though they seem to do that too whih hurts their credibility), but they are correctly calling the evaluation method into question. The evaluations in this case are based on regression of multiple choice results of students, and have a huge error rate. There are ways to evaluate teaching performance that are effective, but this isn't it. The good ways are more expensive, and aren't as easy to check a box to say they're done. Tough luck. Doing a job right doesn't have to be easy, but as you say, it's important, so it is worth doing right.