With a title description of "Basic" iPod Touch, I was thinking it would be a smaller, lighter, more storage, non-touchscreen, longer battery version of life iPod touch. Basically, a cross between the nano and original iPod.

But no, you still have WiFi, Bluetooth, web-browsing, a forward-facing camera, etc. How is that basic? It has a touch screen!

Ok, I'll admit it. I hate iProducts... but Apply could convince me to give up my Creative Zen X-Fi 32GB that I bought 6 years ago for $150 bucks. It has:
+Drag-and-drop music loading
+No need for iTunes
+Buttons so I don't have to stare at the screen to skip a track
+SD card slot
+No need for OS updates and obsolescence

To be fair, the Zen is over-engineered to have the ability to play video, view pictures, etc. and had they omitted those dumb things, price could have been even cheaper.

Those things aren't perks to the job so much as mood elevators that create a friendly, inviting, and even party-like atmosphere that elevate mood and creativity.

Those aren't "free perks", they're investments in novel software.

Hi Nemyst,

I love this question and I appreciate your forwardness and honesty in asking it.

The problem with "lazy, complacent, and dull-minded people" just being left to their own devices is that we assume that they are also kind and want for little. But then there's strain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_theory_%28sociology%29).

Strain theory suggest (rather aptly) that people who want (or feel they deserve) more than to what they have legitimate access will find illegitimate means to obtain their wants. When you have a nation full of people who are trained from day one to consume more and more and to seek out luxury, but are not given the necessary requirements to *earn* that luxury through appropriate means, they will (and do) turn to crime.

Your standard education curriculum seeks to change both the goals and the means to achieve those goals by teaching that you don't need a life of luxury to be happy (via ethics, philosophy, history, literature, etc.) and to provide the usable life and career skills to not need to turn to crime.

In short, we can't just let the happily uneducated stay uneducated because they will not be able to contribute enough to their own well-being via legitimate means and will thus ruin it further for us all.

To speak to another point you make ("We're wasting valuable resources trying to keep mediocre people from entirely failing..."), I don't think we're allocating *enough* resources. But I'm not talking about raw cash, electronics, or amazing new buildings. The most important and long lasting investment you can make in beneficially affect low-performing students is to have a fantastic person in front of the classroom.

In California, there are thousands and thousands of these fantastic educators dying to get into the classrooms, but the state and districts are either severely underfunded or the money isn't being spent as well as it should. Moreover, the cost of becoming a teacher is insane. Let's just take a look at someone who, in high school, seeks to become a great teacher:
(1) Do well in school.
(2) Apply to 4-year universities. ($45/application. Assume 6 schools.)
(3) Graduate from 4-year university ($120,000)
(4) Take GRE ($185), CBEST ($40), CSET ($140)
(5) Apply to Masters/Credential Programs ($60/application. Assume 4 programs)
(6) Graduate from MS/Cred program ($40,000), Receive Preliminary Credential.
(7) Apply to school districts/schools. Wait. Wait more. Travel expenses for interviews ($?)
(8) Get hired, non-tenure track, work for 3 years on-and-off depending on June-Layoffs
(9) Enroll in Professional Teacher Instruction Program, take more classes over a year. ($50 application fee, variable tuition)
(10) Complete "Clear" Credential from PTIP.

So... if someone wants to become the teacher that low-income, low-hope students need, s/he would have to spend/in-debt over $200,000 for investing in the *right* to make that change. When your average teacher in California gets paid $35,000/year for the first few years and slowly trudge up to $45,000 without job security, without pension security, and with a for-profit industry doing everything it can to reduce the amount of respect that a teacher receives, it's a pretty hard sell.

I know this stuff because I got to step (5), completely willing to accept the rest with a smile on my face. But then the recession hit and I just couldn't drag my partner through the rest of the steps without any realistic expectation of stability. I took an offer to pursue a secondary passion and am making more than a 10-year veteran teacher would be making after only 2 years on the job.

An educator does not deal with driven, curious, and happily intelligent people all day. Her job is instead to take the lazy, complacent, and dull-minded and instill knowledge and analytical ability.

"Hundreds of people are spending 20 or 30 hours a week just taking free Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. They're not looking for credit, just the challenge of learning."

Hundreds, huh? Out of MILLIONS? They are the outliers within the outliers!

MOOC addicts are not the norm.
iPad owners with 4G connections are not the norm.
Slashdotters are not the norm.
AP students are not the norm.

Increasing access to those who already have access will give only marginal gains. If you want to start a revolution in education, focus on the students that regularly receive Cs, Ds, and Fs as course grades. Change THEM and you change the world.

Honest question.

What alternatives are there to a low-production, high-powered laser that likely requires a ton of support crew/machinery to take out missiles?

Phalanx or successors? Are these considered competent?
What about missile-to-missile platforms?

And how useful is this thing if it's not an on tangential course?

So long as it's not Bill Gates backing high tech in the classroom, entrepreneurs peddling MOOCs, or for-profit schools trying to help defund public schools, I'll be interested in watching. But I have to assume that at least one of those concepts will be highlighted simply because the TED community loves them SO MUCH!

"Hey! Lectures in the CLOUD!" - "OMG! We found the solution!"
"Private schools for everyone!" - "OMG! We're 2 years from Star Trek now!"
"Every student gets a Microsoft Slate!" - "OMG! They'll never be tempted to goof off, I know it!"

I really hope the show goes something like this:
(1) We've continually tried to find an answer to make the education of our youth easier, cheaper, and standardized... and have failed every time.
(2) We need more teachers. We need them to feel safe enough to commit to a life of education. We need to treat them well.
(3) Home life matters. Where the home life is bad, we need more genuine counselors, mentors, and role models.
(4) We need to separate research universities, general ed. colleges, and trade schools while keeping them all at the same level of importance.

Look, crowdsourcing in a tragedy is a phenomenon, not an expectation. If it were an expectation, law enforcement agencies would release all the information they have on crimes (sans names, etc.) and allow "the crowd" to solve the problem.

But they don't. They don't want your help. They only want to be *seen* as being open to public input because the vast majority of public input is utter crap. They also don't want to be seen as incapable of doing their own jobs.

So crowdsourcing was never part of the equation. It was never given the job @ Boston. It was never facilitated. There are no expectations of success when no one asks for your help and thus there is no failure.

Waaah! Someone capitulate! I can't stand not being thoroughly entertained! Help! Help! I'm moderately uninterested! Why isn't someone doing something?! I've made a post on a community-moderated article response forum! Gah! I'm so angry I may talk to someone on a phone! A PHONE!

Grow up, kid. And if you're not a kid, just chill out. This site has a ton of people contributing a ton of stories and a few times out of the year, the employees (which you don't directly pay), throw out a gag. Not all jokes are funny. Some jokes that are generally funny, you won't enjoy. This is one of them. Get over it.

You've made yourself out to be an over-entitled ass and, seriously, maybe 3 people care that you "don't even feel like clicking on the link" but significantly more people are annoyed by the diaper-rash fit you're throwing.

You're not making friends. You're not influencing people. You're becoming a meme.

The 7 year old case of Jammie Thomas, a single-mother, who was fined...

Actually, that's kinda the goal. When it comes to the expenditure of time and money, if you don't come in with a Chicken Little, people are just going to ignore you. With the Chicken Little, you get people to fall in line and the effects of major epidemics or problems are mitigated.

Slashdot-friendly example: Today, people will say that the Y2K issue was completely blown out of proportion. Airplanes didn't fall out of the sky, bank accounts were there on Jan 1, 2000, and everything was just fine. Of course, that ignores the teams of coders working in even-then-archaic coding languages to adapt old software to work beyond their expected lifespan. Who knows what Y2K would have been had we just done nothing, but we're all better off with the purse-string-holders getting concerned.

Wow... you said everything I was about to type.

Also, no one else is suggesting other modified definitions, so I move to vote my definitions into Nerd Law.

Who will second?

=)

I'll start. Here's how I use the words:

Personal Devices (Very limited, proprietary software)
-- Feature Phone
-- GPS Device

Personal Computing Devices (Limited, Consumption-based OSes, optional other-source software)
-- Tablets
-- Smartphones

Personal Computers (Traditional OSes like Windows, Linux, etc.; uses applications not truncated "apps")
-- Laptops/Notebooks
-- Netbooks
-- Desktop Computers

Headline and summary convey two very different things. Less sensation, please.

It's an investigative document, not a declaration of capability. Someone asked the question, "If we found an American terrorist who we know to be planning imminent action on the US, can we kill him?" and this white paper is the exploratory response.

It's the same as if your boss asked, "What would the costs of outsourcing business processes A-B and what are the expected benefits?" and then you responded with a 16-page report.

From page 6 of the whitepaper:

"In the circumstances here, the interests on both sides would be weighty... An individual's interest in avoiding erroneous deprivation of his life is "uniquely compelling."...No private interest is more substantial. As the Hamdi plurality observed, in the "circumstances of war," ''the risk of erroneous deprivation of a citizen's liberty in the absence of sufficient process .. . is very real," id. at 530 (plurality opinion), and, of course, the risk of an erroneous deprivation of a citizen's life is even more significant.

"But, ''the realities of combat" render certain uses of force necessary and appropriate," including force against U.S. citizens who have joined enemy forces...

"In view of these interests and practical considerations, the United States would be able to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen, who is located outside the United States and is an operational leader continually planning attacks against U.S. persons and interests, in
circumstances: (1) where an informed, high-level official of the US Gov't has determined the target individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; (2) where a capture operation would be infeasible-and where those conducting the operation continue to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and (3) where such an operation would be conducted consistent with applicable law of war principles."

Also, try to remember the SOURCE of the commentary. Reason.com is one of those very partisan places (though not as bad as the Free Republic) that produces and distributes highly questionable material with the intent of "stirring up the base".