I work in a K-12 school setting. And let me be up front about it...Google is Evil Empire 2.0. I'm not a fan of signing over 1,000 students to Google so that they can harvest personal data and target ad services to them.

But nobody, absolutely nobody does a better job at KISS than Google. With Google Apps, school districts can now setup dumb-terminal-2.0s (i.e. Chromebooks) at $250 a pop, teach almost anybody how to administer the @school.k12.xx.us user domain, and no longer depend on specialized staff for server administration. Kids have access to their files at home, at school, on vacation, on their Chromebook, on their school computer, on their iPhone... nothing else comes even close to this level of simplicity and usability. And while Google Apps doesn't cut it for power users, it does exactly what it needs to do for the average student and teacher. And schools are signing up in droves.

You're smoking the FOSS pipe thinking that schools can and will be willing to pay for techs who know how to work with Apache, MySQL, et al. And the iPads haven't failed in LA. There's been a setback, but they're still being deployed. (Though I'm sure not a fan of Apple by any means, either. Root canals are more pleasant than administering iPads.)

And as far as getting people in schools who have a clue about technology, stop your ranting and talk to your local school board member. They represent public interests in your neighborhood school. And besides, in my community, our board members are expecting me to add more tablet technology into our K-12 schools. Why? Because they're convinced that's how kids learn these days. The only way they'll see otherwise is if they get educated by people such as yourselves.

Glad somebody caught the reference. I was worried there for a moment somebody would take me seriously! ;-)

It is not entirely clear to me how this "problem" is hurting me.

George Burns was believed to have smoked 10-15 cigars every day of his life for about 70 years. He died at the age of 100. I'm sure it's not entirely clear to him how this "problem" of smoking was hurting him. (And he commonly joked about doctors advising him to stop smoking, often with a punchline like, "And the last doctor died 20 years ago.")

George Burns is just one anecdote, and one not representative of the common whole. The question we need to ask is not, "how is this problem hurting me." We should be asking, "how is this problem hurting us." And I would agree with the author; we stand to lose a lot.

If you are able, though it sounds like you may not be, I suggest you read Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury imagines a world incapable of deep thought resulting from the absence of books. I found it very enlightening.

Obviously, the first performance enhancement you do on any computer you own is max out the RAM.

Uhh...not exactly. In fact, his subsequent logic about why lots of people don't need terabyte magnetic disks applies directly to this point about RAM. If your system supports 16GB of RAM but all you ever do is browse the web and check email then you almost certainly don't need to max out your system's RAM. In fact, you could probably make do with 4GB.

What bluetooth headphones are these people using? I've only had to pair mine once with each device I use it with, and never had to mess with changing frequencies. I have to charge it once a week for like 2 hours, but that's a fair trade-off for not having a wire attached.

A lot of the world's problems could be solved by banning busybodies. ;-)

Rather than take five minutes to post your question, why not take five minutes doing a simple Google search to get your answer?

Better yet, post the answer to your own question and get some nice karma points.

Thanks for giving them to me instead.

And for the record, the comments were, "I hate a Kathy person at school because she was mean to me," and later, after being disciplined for that post, "I want to know who the f*** told on me."

Or maybe they just enjoy the endorphin rush...

I grew curious about Sriracha sauce after seeing it mentioned in several places, so I bought some a few weeks back after trying the Sriracha sauce on a Subway sub.

My wife & I have been getting Smart Ones because a) they're cheap and b) we're trying to lose weight. The big down side is that they are pretty bland for the most part, so I've been dousing them with Sriracha.

It's nice & spicy, without being overwhelming. The other thing I like about it is that it's not runny like other hot sauces. It has a thicker consistency, like ketchup. I was a little surprised though to find out that it's only between 1000-2500 on the Scoville scale.

I go to a chiropractor for neck & back issues. I typically go once or twice a month, though I haven't been for a couple of months due to working extra jobs. It does wonders for getting kinks out & un-pinching nerves. I have some trouble spots that feel much better after an adjustment. I think where chiropractic gets into trouble is with some of their other claims, like helping allergies, etc. I have allergies too, and as far as I can tell, chiropractic has never done anything to help them. I think they should stick to the neck & back claims, because really that should be enough.