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Comment Re:Wow... (Score 1) 614

Umm, you don't know what truly rural areas are like do you. You talk as if a graduating class of 100 is small. My graduating class was 18, and there were maybe 100 kids total in 9th through 12th grades and maybe 200 total for K-12. Having said that $50,000 still seams like an awfuly small amount to be saving for such a drastic change. I would think the reduced fuel costs for both transportation and heating and cooling would be more than that.

Submission + - Computer crashed New orleans real estate market (nola.com)

sustik writes: For a month now the New Orleans real estate market is crippled by a computer crash that caused the loss of online data from the late 1980s that should be researched prior to the closing of any real estate transactions. "The clerk of Orleans Parish Civil District Court said Tuesday that her office continues to make progress in resolving the computer problems that have been holding up real estate transactions in New Orleans for the past month, but there still was no indication of how soon the crisis might end."
Education

Submission + - Texas Approves Conservative Textbook Curriculum (dallasnews.com) 2

suraj.sun writes: In a landmark move that will shape the future education of millions of Texas schoolchildren, the State Board of Education on Friday approved new curriculum standards for U.S. history and other social studies courses that reflect a more conservative tone than in the past.

Split along party lines, the board delivered a pair of 9-5 votes to adopt the new standards, which will dictate what is taught in all Texas schools and provide the basis for future textbooks and student achievement tests over the next decade.

Texas standards often wind up being taught in other states because national publishers typically tailor their materials to Texas, one of the biggest textbook purchasers in the country.

Approval came after the GOP-dominated board approved a new curriculum standard that would encourage high school students to question the legal doctrine of church-state separation --a sore point for social conservative groups who disagree with court decisions that have affirmed the doctrine, including the ban on school-sponsored prayer.

Dallas Morning News: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/DN-sboe_22tex.ART0.State.Edition2.140f306f.html

Comment Re:Same goes for flipping off cops (Score 1) 698

I had it explanied to me like this: You can flip the cop off as long as you keep your arms inside the vehicle, just don't stick your arm out the window otherwise they can ticket you for an inapropriate signal (think left, right turn on your bicycle). All though it is probably not a good idea to flip the cop off anyway.

Comment How many of the cheaters aren't CS majors? (Score 1) 694

When I was working on my mechanical engineering degree I was required to take the intro CS class as opposed to my department having our own programming class. We did everything in C++ and I have not written a single line of C++ since I completed the class, in fact I haven't written anything more complicated then some simple Excel macros. I didn't personaly cheat in the CS class but I know at the small school that I went to there were more mechanincal eningeers in my class then CS majors.

Comment Re:seriously? (Score 1) 550

Wind has about a 30% avaliability factor to it (at least here in the US), so in order to actually have a gigawatt of power availabe at any time you need about 3 times the name plate capacity. So in this case you need about 3 gigawatts of installed capacity to equal a gigawatt of a normal baseload unit (i.e. coal or nuclear, in this case space based solar). The wind doesn't always blow, and the way around that in the US and I'm assuming in Europe and other larger landmasses, is that even though the wind might not be blowing here it is blowing somewhere. Japan has very limited amounts of space avaliable right now and I'm guessing would have a major problem if the wind isn't blowing because there just isn't enough avaliable area to spread out your generation. If you don't think this is a problem try looking up ERCOT (the acroynym for the Texas power grid, yes they are on their own grid) wind event or just click here http://www.nrel.gov/wind/systemsintegration/pdfs/2008/ela_ercot_event.pdf One of the factors of this event was the loss of 1500 Megawatts of wind in 3 hours.

Comment Re:Good (Score 1) 379

For one thing, Up was most definitely not a children's film. In children's films, the villain doesn't tie a protagonist to a chair and drop him out of a blimp. That's straight over the moral event horizon for a kids' film.

Villians in past childrens movies have done things like, "cursed the infant Princess Aurora to 'prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die' before the sun set on her sixteenth birthday after not being invited to the baby's christening" (Maleficent, the villain of sleeping beauty). The queen in Snow White makes several attempts on Snow White's life "First, she visits the dwarves' house as an old peddler woman, and sells Snow White laces for a corset; but laces them tightly to asphyxiate her. When that fails, she returns as a different old woman, and tricks Snow White into using a poisoned comb. Finally when the comb fails to kill her, she visits again as a farmer's wife, and gives Snow White a poisoned apple." So clearly all past villians have been peaches and cream without a hint of malice or evil. All quotes taken from Wikipedia.

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