Enable Boot Camp. Freaking newbies.

Premium hydrogen and oxygen ain't cheap!

Not networked, networked, not, networked, on and on. Each cycle begets a new cycle. Now it's just called "the cloud."

It goes back to a 1964 Supreme Court case, NY Times vs. Sullivan, with some followup cases. It takes a lot to overturn a bunch of SC case law.

nblender- I'm happy for you and your family.

If you had 5 students, you could test each of them closely to see their skills. 50 students, you can still look into individuals' skills. At 500, you may be able to have some customization. 5000, I doubt it. 50000, no way.
And that's assuming you think it's fair to make personalized tests. If Bob is good at math and Beth is good at English, do you cater or counter-cater to their strengths? Like you said, assessment is hard beyond a single individual.

I think you don't understand how this works. The great students get access to advanced classes. They don't need extra teachers or tutoring, i.e. "extra help." The underachieving students get extra teachers and tutors. At least that's how it is supposed to work, and how it works in my area. I'm not in NY, so I can't gauge the reality of it there.

I wouldn't say the costs are much different, but rather the resources behind the accuser and defendant are vastly different. RIAA vs. Grandma comes to mind, though I think there was MPAA vs. Dead Guy at some point.
There are plenty of other deficiencies, of course, but not having access to a public defense attorney for civil actions is an automatic kick to the groin to the average person vs. a corporation/trade group/etc. Not that I'm advocating civil public defense attorneys.

I've had various level of success. If it was personal, like when my uncle was having no luck getting Social Security disability for his cancer treatment (it was bad enough he couldn't work at all, but he still had a chance of recovery), I got personalized messages back from the offices. I don't know which one pushed it through, but suddenly he got his aid the next month. Now if it's an email about some political issue, yep, form email.

What if I sent 500 valid emails a day?
"Where is X button?"
"Where is Y button?"
"How do I send an email?"
"How do I search for fish?"
"How do I search for monkeys?"
"How do I search for [X]?" ...

Every single question is valid, and I could tie up a person for 10X as long as it took to write that email. What am I going to be charged with, being stupid? As a private citizen with no ties to any competitors, good luck trying to prove intent to damage.

If the fines and/or costs of complying with this stupid law exceeds revenue in Germany, why would Google stay? Lose money for... good will, good bratwurst, good cars? Google is there because it is profitable, so there was no reason to leave Germany. Make it not profitable, not many reasons to stay.

Well, who are you going to blame if your email gets hacked and someone gets all your information? Are you going to try to blame Google for giving out the information to the wrong party when the request looks valid? Oops, too bad they complied with the law.

And it's a company that can shut down its service in Germany. If Germany becomes too much of a pain in the butt, or is costing too much, bye-bye.

Then I'm in!

Chicken that laid a very large egg.