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Comment Re:You're making excuses for hungry children (Score 1) 299

Your strange obsession with comparing poor people to wild animals notwithstanding, there are plenty of valid considerations with the government being involved with free food for kids.

First of all, despite what many here might believe, I do not believe any child should go to bed hungry. In fact, quite the opposite; I believe every child should have quality, nutritious food. I simply doubt the government's ability to do so, a fear that is not without basis.

You have this almost..magical...belief in the competency of the government to provide food to all kids. I find this to be laughable, dangerously so, particularly when paired with the billions associated with such an endeavor.

Comment Re:You're making excuses for hungry children (Score 1) 299

I never said anything about "poor" people; in fact, I suspect those who would most take advantage of such programs to be middle class folks. You are woefully ignorant of the situation if you think it's just "poor" people.

The underlying point, of course, is that the food we serve these children would be garbage, inherent in the "lowest bidder" process inherent in the government process. How do I know? Because they currently serve trash at our schools to our children.

That's even assuming a level of success I don't believe anyone involved is capable of.

Comment Re:You're making excuses for hungry children (Score 1) 299

I can see you are extremely emotional about this issue.

I doubt the opposition to feeding children is based on some "out group" bias, but more in the practicalities. The argument is two fold; quality and cost. Free food for children will prompt more parents to simply rely on the government to feed their children, resulting in worse health outcomes for the children. That's the quality argument, and it's not a bad one truth be told.

Cost is, of course, as I mentioned; I have yet to meet a government program which didn't try to grow their budget while providing the least possible to fulfill their job function ( and, federally, often failing even in that ).

Mind you, none of this considers the secondary impact of free food. Probably the most obvious to me is the creation of food deserts; small grocery stores just barely hanging on which then lose this source of income, shutting down.

Giving things away always have some pretty gnarly consequences that should be heavily considered. But no; it's all about emotion: "Starving children!", and all logic and sense fly out the window.

Comment Re:Once again we can't get Americans (Score -1) 299

And this is why people have issues with the government feeding children; because, invariably, they choose the worst options to feed children. The cheapest, nastiest, least nutritious slop, but we pay top dollar for it, and every year the food gets worse but the bill gets higher.

I get it's emotional to complain about starving children, but at some point we need to consider how much we're spending on poisoning these children.

I don't know the solution, but I know giving the government more and more power/money leads to worse outcomes, not better.

Comment Re:Find another provider (Score 1) 45

"Premium"?

I've used rackspace. "Premium" doesn't really describe the product you get. Free products from both google and ms perform basic functions far better, and without those basic functions I'm not sure what "premium" functions can bring to the table to make its use worthwhile.

Maybe their support is top notch but...it's email. A decent admin interface, a solid product, what need for support?

Comment People used Rackspace? (Score 3, Informative) 45

When I started at a new job 15 years ago they were on rackspace...and it sucked. Spam/phishing detection was horrible, I'd spend 30 minutes every day just sifting through crap, and that was on a new email address. Boss had a 10yr old email address, that was way worse.

Couldn't get us off of it fast enough. Even gmail is better. I can't imagine how any business functions with them.

Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 143

- Teachers can be wonderful...in the moment. Regardless, they don't have to live with the consequences of failing their students, parents do, so it's not their responsibility.

- I'm not even talking about homeschooling. My daughter attended public schools, but I never blindly trusted everything was going well. I stayed on top of her grades, kept in communication with her teachers, made sure she had the extra tutoring she sometimes needed. I was glad to have great teachers supporting me, but that's what it was; they were supporting me, not the other way around.

An interesting note; I got a lot of push back from some teachers and administrators as she got older, particularly in jr high ( strangely enough ). They wanted me to back off and let them teach her, they didn't want me helping her with her education at all. Nor did they want me packing her snacks and a lunch ( school food was absolute trash ). It got so bad I ended up at school board meeting relating my experiences. Things got better after that, but it really demonstrated to me how much better off our kids and the education system would be if parents adopted my mindset.

Comment Re:WTF (Score 1) 143

Dear Educational System: It was YOUR FUCKING JOB to make SURE that students had either sufficiently long attention spans, or skills to cope with shorter attention spans. As one who suffers from ADHD and still has always been able to read and enjoy even long, complex novels, I tell you that you get ZERO respect or tolerance from me for caving in like this.

Point of fact, it is not. It is their job to provide such education/training/tools to students to utilize, but the job ultimately and always belongs to the parents.

To highlight this point, let me ask you this: if a student fails to achieve, who deals with the consequences? The school, or the parents?

It's past time for parents to realize our children's futures are our responsibilities, not the education system and certainly NOT the governments. Neither of them care, nor could they ever care as much as we do.

Comment What reputation? (Score 1) 39

10 still had a host of issues. It's just moderately better than 11, hence it has a "good" reputation.

How low are our standards if that's the case? MS is worthy of such scorn, but they're hardly the only ones who's software continues to get worse and worse as time goes on.

Rare is the software upgrade that is actually an upgrade.

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