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Some healthy skepticism is in order. Too often games or game design is just used as a form of entertainment to spice up seemingly dull topics such as math and science. It does not have to be this way. We find that when providing students with the right support they can do amazing things. For instance, we have all these middle school students build sophisticated games including AI base on diffusion equations. That is certainly not sugar. Moreover, we can now begin to measure transfer of game design skills to making science simulations. Pretty exciting stuff. You can see some girls using AgentSheets to build BP oil spill simulations. They started by making 1980 style arcade games. http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/272429/congressman-visits-girlstart-summer-camp

Well, I wonder what they will find out about this balcony, for example three days ago.

And ever wonder why areas that require stricter licenses for building stuff have so much less fatalities in the event of natural disaster than places that don't?

Um, you do realize that lots of people bashing your exalted Dear Leader Bush were harrassed by the FBI

Citation needed.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=111986&SecID=2

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0513-11.htm

http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/past-cases/united-states-v.-brett-bursey

http://www.blogd.com/archives/000743.html

http://www.news8austin.com/content/top_stories/default.asp?ArID=232081 Halfway down the page, video titled "sky is falling". Also, slow-mo footage of runners highlights bounciness.

Yeah you Texans know a lot.

Many try to counter that freedom of speech only applies to speaking about the government.

Whereas in the US, free speech no longer applies when you are speaking about the government -- unless you happen to agree with Bush...

http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html
http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID =111986&SecID=2
http://www.aclu.org/FreeSpeech/FreeSpeech.cfm?ID=1 3699&c=86

The bill history for HB789 is interesting. Notably, it shows how quickly (and without a recorded vote so those of us who live in Texas can't even accuse our representatives of actually supporting this legislation) the bill passed.

Austin Wireless and Austin Wireless City both have coverage of what it means to Austin. The Save Muni Wireless group was put together in response to challenges like this; they include much better commentary on why HB789 is a bad idea than would be worth repeating here. If you really want to understand the issue, check some of these sites.

Even the High Tech Broadband Coalition (a group of telecom, hardware, and software companies) was against HB789.

Several local news stories:

• News8 Austin on "end of free Wi-Fi" - News8 Austin is the local Time Warner cable news channel.
• Austin Business Journal on "Free Wi-Fi Faces Challenges"

For those in Texas who want this law changed, it's probably a good time to call or write your state Senator today before this bill sails through committee and a floor non-vote.

Turns out, it was voter error, not a dark manipulation of the machines as Dems would love to believe. See the news summary of the issue at http://www.news8austin.com/content/election_2004/e lection_stories/?SecID=409&ArID=122743

IMO, there should not a straight-ticket voting option on voting machine. Why promote brain -dead voting?

they've developed a mobile data forensics lab where technicians download your harddrives, copy your CDs and everything else to their own systems and then return the equipment to you. The process takes time, obviously, but the van is loaded with equipment.

news story about it

They're already available in our area.

Then again, Austin's been a testbed for Time Warner with other things as well. Like their all-news channel (Austin and NYC were test markets) as well as RoadRunner when it first came out..