Private schools are not necessarily rich, but it is true that there's an economic selection going on. The $20,100 per student comes from some parent paying that out of after-tax dollars, and some of those tax dollars went to public education and therefore not expended by the public education on their child. In essence, the parents are selecting a higher expenditure on their child's education. The benefits of private education can be (1) more highly qualified, experienced, and motivated teachers, (2) students for whom their parents and teachers have higher expectations and involvement in their performance, (3) smaller class sizes and less distractions, and (4) more resources for education. If a student doesn't want an education, they are dismissed from private school, and their slot taken by someone on the waiting list who ( and whose parents) does want that education.

In public schools, non-performers become disciplinary problems which take away from teaching and learning, but the public school has to retain them and deal with them.

I was fortunate to go to a great public school system, and my school district had tracks for students with different abilities-- the more academically inclined got the teachers who were more academic, and the less academically inclined got the more discipline-oriented teachers and more supportive educational process. Sadly, in an effort to provide "equal education to all students," many school systems believe that stratification by ability is discriminatory and therefore have eliminated tracking. As a result, the brighter students are slowed down, and the slower students are frustrated or embarrassed, in stead of enabling challenge for the academic, and support for the lesser academic.

Equal opportunity and identical treatment are not the same thing, and fails to recognize the different needs of individuals. The equal opportunity is to provide stratified educational tracts that challenge and don't frustrate every student.

Er, the phrase is "for all intents and purposes,..."

OK.

I'm not saying the "mac way" of viewing pictures is better. I was tryng to respond to your question of viewing the images in a folder and being able to step through them.

Preview is a "lightweight app" that can open all the images in a folder and the up/down arrows move through them.

There's also a "slideshow" mode that gives you the fullscreen maximized mode with arrow keys as you want.

It seems that your perspective is that slideshow should be the default preference. I see these as different ways to accomplish the same thing, just like some cars have buttons on the steering wheel to operate cruise control and others have levers. Both do the same thing, so it's a preference.

Thanks for your articulate and well-reasoned and factual reply.

I answered a question. You attempted an ad-hominem argument.
See my other comment in this article for further detail.

As a career IT executive responsible for over 10,000 Windows desktops, I can tell you that I use a mac for the same reason I drive a well-engineered car- it does what I want it to do with the minimum amount of maintenance on my part, so that my time is spent getting getting results rather than maintaining my system. General industry standards require 1 support person for every 50-100 desktops for "good service." I am able to run Windows 7 and Linux (two different versions of Ubuntu), have my computer backed up over the internet, and back up my machine to my servers at home (Mac, Linux, and OpenBSD). I develop C, C++, and Java in Eclipse. I watch movies in HD, and I get email from IMAP and POP3 servers.

My biggest incompatibility is between Microsoft Office on the Mac and Windows platform, and between versions of Office.

I don't buy products for image- I buy them to get a job done.

And, unfortunately, I'm neither young nor hip.

Step 1. Open folder in "Cover flow" mode.
Step 2. Move slider back and forth to view all the pictures.

Arrow keys move forward and backward in pictures. If you use iTunes, then this is the exact same interface as the cover flow there.

A sample of 2 does not constitute " a lot of mac users."

Any other questions?

Haven't any of these people ever seen "Colossus, the Forbin Project?"

Every system can be "gamed," so get over that. However, to believe that a computer malfunction is conspiracy is itself a "naive belief."
Until you've been in a system with little or no liberties, and no ability to call someone on their errant behaviors, you do not know how good life is now.

So what's your point?

Your delirium is caused by common viruses. Take two Macafees and see your Geek on Call in the morning. However, both will cost you extra, and you'll have to be on both the preventative and see the doctor regularly for the rest of your life.

Luxury price tags are but one indicator of a product's value. Why do people buy BMW's, Lexuses, Infinitis, and Acuras when, for far less money, they could buy a Ford, Saturn, or Honda? All of these have the same functionality and meet the standards for personal transportation. They vary in that "luxury" implies, perhaps opportunity for the privilege of snobbery, but also a better ownership experience. I am not a fan of of any company because of its label, but I surely do appreciate not having to do extensive maintenance and support and to buy lots of different applications to do what I need or want to do.

Reverse snobbery is just as silly as brand affection.

Basic accounting does not consider a loan as profit. The Balance Sheet is defined as Assets = Liabilities + Equity. The loan increases cash(assets) and increases liabilities (obligation to repay). Profit appears on the Income Statement. Profit = revenue from sales less expenses of those sales over a defined time period.

Counter-examples include Microsoft, Apple, Whole Foods (selling high priced organic food against mass market producers), Cisco Systems, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, ...

->rant>
Two years ago, the competition were doing nothing. Apple steps in, re-invents the smart phone making it a delight to use. One year ago, they produced the 3G enabled phone. Meanwhile, the rest of the "smart phone" companies said, "hey, we can copy that!"

Now, journalists and analysts are stating what Apple "must do." Whatever happened to reporters "reporting" news and not trying to show how they could run a company better than its management?
->/rant>

In the phone business, people will (a) buy what they want, or (b) use what their company allows them to use on the company plan. So, big companies will do big deals and stick with what they have, small companies will not get the great deals and have more flexibility, and consumers will buy what they want.

Think about it in comparison to "counting" which everyone does every day, and the *THEORY* of mathematical systems (rings, fields, etc.) which are abstractions of counting.

The value of an abstraction is that it can eliminate bias in thinking; we all try to map our perception of reality onto a model. When we create an abstraction, it enables us to think about the model in the absence of reality. Then, when one gets interesting results, one can then attempt to map them back to reality, and examine what that means in the real world.

It was the development of number theory and the abstraction of counting that led to the understanding of number systems, base 10 and base 2 arithmetic, and binary arithmetic, the basis of today's computing engines.

But you all knew that.