Install "Kidoz" - a kid friendly front end to the internet. http://kidoz.net/plus/index.html

Some people can drive AND use a cell phone safely. Some people cannot. In fact, some people cannot drive without being distracted by a story on the news radio station, or because they are fiddling with the radio controls, or turning around to yell at their kids in the back seat. I know a person who drove into a telephone pole while doing so. I once saw a guy driving a car (with a famous insurance company's name prominent on the side) who had a laptop in the passenger seat, and kept turning to type on the computer while driving!!! This kind of legislation will never fix the problem. Some people will always find something to fiddle with, become distracted, and kill themselves and/or someone else. Unless we ban cars and go 100% mass transportation :-)

The kits need "vigorous" testing? Really? The dictionary defines vigorous as characterized by forceful and energetic action or activity; "a vigorous hiker"; "gave her skirt a vigorous shake". So, these kits have to be violently shaken while being tested? The testers have to jump up and down 'vigorously' while testing? Or could it be the kits should be ' rigorously ' tested, as in rigidly accurate; allowing no deviation from a standard; "rigorous application of the law"; "a strict vegetarian"

Just for fun I enabled the text-to-speech on my iPad. It's so bad, it's laughable. The guild has nothing to worry about because only someone desperate would use that sucky text-to-speech instead of a good audio book.

I follow primarily websites that provide news, such as New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNet, PBS, IBM, Time, New Scientist, Scientific American. I also follow a few people that I find interesting and informative. Twitter is the internet equivalent of the crawler across the bottom of a TV newscast or sportscast, except it's hyperlinked and I can click to get details. P.S. I qualify for senior discounts...

This thread is exactly why I'd never ask a question on SlashDot. You wanted recommendations on websites, books, and other resources. What do you get? Tons of comments about how useless calculus is, or how useless statistics is, or what sciences use which one(s), and on and on. Sure, there's probably some good recommendations in here. Is it worth digging though 343 comments to find the handful that are useful? Not to me.

let's take it to the next level and ban restaurants... no, just ban all food. Problem solved.

"older users had more than 4x the friends each, on average, than the young" - true that for some, it may be eagerness to build up the friends list, but for many of us, just having family members makes for a lot of 'friends'. I have my wife, two children, my brother and sister and their kids, my Uncle and his kids and some of his grandkids, I have my other uncle and his kids... so, as you get older, the family tree keeps expanding, and the friends list grows... you have to worry when the list shrinks due to attrition!!!

But how much will the power cost the school district? :^)

You are making a big assumption that people creating human-computer interfaces have taken any classes about human-computer interfaces/interaction/etc. Therefore, they are ignorant of even the most basic advice on creating effective human-computer interfaces.

"News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters." How does the original post come even remotely close to meeting either of those criteria. It's not news, and it doesn't matter...

To every person who said "I don't need subject XYZ to work in field ABC", I say, you are a fraking idiot. For many of the classes people take, it's NOT the content, it's the process of learning. Just as athletes do all kinds of exercises and training to prepare to compete in sport X, 'brain workers' need to exercise and develop their brain to prepare to be an expert at Z. Be it Organic Chemistry, Calculus, English Literature, Latin, History of Japan, etc, etc, it's the mental exercise of mastering the material, NOT the material itself that is essential. I don't want a Doctor or Lawyer or EE or whatever who hasn't sufficiently built up mental muscle power to cure me, represent me, or design the equipment that saves my life.