Apparently you are not familiar with the definitive research in this area. The Coleman Report (Equality of Educational Opportunity, 1966) contradicts your assertions and found:

"Using data from over 600,000 students and teachers across the country, the researchers found that academic achievement was less related to the quality of a student's school, and more related to the social composition of the school, the student's sense of control of his environment and future, the verbal skills of teachers, and the student's family background."

If you want to fix the slide in educational outcomes in the US, you need to stop spending on all the frills (no more monuments to technology and sports) and signifacntly raise the bar on educational expectations. Then we need to engage the parents and begin to educate them on their role in their child's education. Finally, we need to get rid of half of the administration staff in school districts. The upside to this approach is that we will free up a siginificant amount of money that can be used to hire more teachers and shrink classroom size.

Our problem is not the quality of our teachers, it is the low level of expectations that we have placed upon our students, their peer groups, and their parents.

This acquisition isn't about subscribers or network equipment. AT&T is spending $39B to purchase T-Mobile's frequency spectrum in the US so that they can ensure that they have enough spectrum to roll out LTE and continue to upgrade their 3G HSPA+ network. Any subscribers that opt to stay with AT&T post merger is just an added benefit to them.

I know that everyone is just having fun at Dell's expense, however, the problem is with the Sony manufactured Li-ion batteries. There have been reports of Apple MacBooks suffering the same fate (Apple also procurs its batteries from Sony http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/laptops/who-else-beside s-dell-used-the-sony-batteries-apple-194728.php), however, since they ship far fewer laptops per year than Dell, they have had fewer laptops burst into flames. And then there were the cell phone batteries that were catching fire a few years ago -- http://news.com.com/Cell+phone+batteries+Avoid+get ting+burned/2100-1041_3-5420061.html.

The problem also extends to the shipment of Li-ion batteries. A shipment caught fire on a UPS plane a few months ago - http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/ 17/1857232&from=rss.

The problem is linked to poor quality control and flawed designs.

I know this is off topic, however, this is becoming a serious problem and may lead to further restrictions when traveling on commercial aircraft.