When I was stationed in Germany, a barracks was scheduled to be demolished. The barracks was ALSO scheduled to be repainted. So the crews came in and repainted everything, and then literally a week later the whole thing got demolished.

And the interesting thing is that the brilliant and efficient federal government BORROWED the money for this, at 5% interest (which was the interest rate on 10-year Treasurys at the time).

Just to give one example, here in Denver there is a perfectly fine road that was repaved because it was "scheduled," using federal DOT dollars. This sort of thing doesn't appear in official budgets. And the local authorities like it because it's "free" money from their point of view.

... actually you're confusing New York for North Carolina and Rhode Island. Amazon is collecting sales tax on NY sales, and has not cut off NY affiliates. It has, however, cut off RI and NC affiliates.

The unintended consequences for RI and NC is that they will now lose out on income taxes that they would have gotten from Amazon affiliates based in their states.

Unless you work for free, your labor required to do the paperwork for sales tax collection is a cost to you and your business.

"It's extremely important to preserve freedom of speech, and not to grant the state the right to determine what is or isn't said. A sometimes conflicting right is privacy and protection against verbal or other forms of violence. Once the state is granted the right to prevent speech (writing, songs, etc.) that it claims might precipitate harm, we're on a very dangerous slope. That's why the Supreme Court, in 1969, finally reached the standard of protection of speech that was proposed during the Enlightenment (and I believe may be unique to the US): speech is protected until the point where it is part of imminent criminal acts. So if you and I go into a store to rob it, you have a gun, and I say "shoot," that's not protected speech. How far should it go? Very delicate questions, and my personal feeling is that one should err on the side of restricting state power, as a general rule."

Ironic to hear that, given Germany's free speech laws. It's too bad these murderers weren't carrying swastikas, because then they'd really have gotten stiff sentences!

This post is a good example of the "Appeal to motive" fallacy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_motive

The AC's argument basically boils down to saying "This woman has wrong beliefs about Issues A, B, and C because of her bad philosophy, and therefore her belief about Issue D must also be wrong. Move along now."

We're in the land of Clayton Christensen's 'disruptive innovations' here.

See 'the Innovator's Dilemma': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology

The costs of in-person delivery of education have made the American educational experience extremely expensive for most (whether it be taxpayer or student). And the opportunity cost of spending 4 years in college is also very high.

The thing about disruptive innovations is that they are never as good, on the face of it, as that which they disrupt (the early PC against the mini or the mainframe, the Honda minibike against Harley/Triumph, etc.) but they do, over time, steal the market.

The incumbents are never well placed to address, because they serve their existing customers well and with great focus and attention to quality.

But the disruptive innovation transforms the market, and usually gets better, so eventually the incumbents have to notice it.

If you look at where the future students are, they come from lower socioeconomic groups who cannot borrow $200k for college. They come from overseas, and are blocked from entry into the US by tighter visa rules. They live in Emerging Markets and will never be able to afford the cost of a western university.

So eLearning and eDelivery is an inevitability, even if something will be lost in the process in the quality of education.

A Harvard or MIT degree will always carry an imprimature of quality that will make it valuable, but watch out if you are outside the top 100 institutions: the pressure is going to be on.

Just my personal opinion, but I think a reliance on technology for technologies sake can be an impediment to great education. Human interaction is an important part of communication and teaching.

Not only powerpoint, but some classes at my alma matter began having so-called laptop classes. I had one for calculus II. It was basically an excuse for kids to goof off. People were instant messaging each other or going on the internet. Laptop classes are a waste in most cases in my opinion, unless it is graduate work and complex programs are needed. It is like teaching from a powerpoint. If a lecturer just repeats exactly what is on the powerpoint it is extremely boring.

Give me a professor who wants to interact with students and really teach, and I will take that every time over any great online lecture, powerpoint slides, etc.

I agree. I've been victimized by the "upgrades" to a once-fast browser. Just one day I will open it and it will be upgrading itself. Wait, wait, must restart, etc. Now some ad-ons don't work anymore, gotta go look manually for up them, and so on. Hang on, did I say I wanted a Firefox upgrade? No, it just happens.

No, the phrase that includes any country in North or South America is "en america" (saying it in Spanish, that is).

A little talked-about advantage of having solar panels + battery backup at your home is that you get reliability and close to 100% uptime for your electricity needs. (The entire block could be in a blackout but you have your own power source.)

I'd definitely recommend looking into solar power.

There, fixed that for you.

Since most /.ers are college students or live in their parents' basement (and in either case don't pay income taxes), probably not. :P

Here you go ... http://www.google.com/analytics/