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An overwhelmingly large portion (83.3% according to 2007 study reported on here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/story/2012-02-14/home-schools-secular/53095020/1 ) of the home-schooling crowd does it due to religious reasons, so I don't think it is a stretch to assume that this was the reason in this case.

I don't appreciate the condescending "sheeple" comment, by the way.

Public schooling did actually do me good. I was a bright child who read a couple of grades above level in elementary school and took AP classes in high school. I got A's without having to work too hard at it while still being challenged intellectually. I learn quickly. I am also lucky enough to have a mother (single mother at that!) who raised me well and encouraged me to read and learn on my own, as well as to think for myself.

Please stop making stupid statements. Read this for enlightenment.

USA Today was reporting on this 5 years ago.....

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-26-urban-blacks_N.htm

Why cant they just do "Researchername,DOB"?

There have been numerous reports from many countries about duplicate government ID numbers due to schemes like this. There was a recent story about a similar case in Canada, with two people born the same day in the same hospital that were given identical names.

Yes, the probabilities are low, but they aren't zero. If the money has any legal or financial impact, duplicates inevitably lead to lawsuits, lost time, etc, etc.

If the ID number is important, you need to guarantee that two people don't get assigned the same number. If you let this happen, you might be surprised at how quickly it happens -- and it's your fault.

I wonder if it'd be useful to collect a list of as many such ID collisions as we can find. It could serve as a warning to anyone thinking of making the same mistake in yet another "unique ID" scheme. I did a bit of googling, but didn't find any such list anywhere.

We should ask why this story is summarized with sociological mumbo-jumbo. I've been here a while now and I can't recall ever seeing a submission quite like that. This same story has been written in a comprehensible manner by many others. Some examples:

Public Apathy Over Climate Change Unrelated To Scientific Literacy
Culture splits climate views, not science smarts
Climate skeptics know their stuff

Most everyone else managed to express the central point clearly; the claim that AGW sceptics are comparatively ignorant is false. Yet, here we are at Slashdot with a paragraph full of obtuse weasel words that manages to avoid conveying much of anything.

Perhaps it's just that certain folks aren't happy with the otherwise obvious conclusion and can't bring themselves to expose it. Better to have not posted the story at all.

Yeah every now and then Slashdot has these silly articles about PC power consumption, "kill a watt" etc.

The power consumption of modern PCs (post P4) has gone down to a level where most home users would usually be better off looking for savings in other areas. Driving more efficiently, not using as much cooling/heating (and making it more efficient - insulation, sealing etc).

As for gaming, sure a high powered gaming rig will use a few hundred watts (and usually less if you're not doing SLI). But that's far from the most energy hungry way of having fun. Your hobby could be drag racing, or hiking/rock climbing somewhere that requires a 1 hour drive, or even baking cakes. FWIW even cycling and other sports might be more energy hungry if you replace the calories burnt by eating more of stuff that requires a fair bit of energy to produce ( e.g. US corn fed beef).

From various sources:
1 pound of beef = 13-15 pounds of CO2 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-04-21-carbon-diet_N.htm )
1 kWh = 2.3 pounds of CO2 ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html )
so 1 pound of beef = 5.6-6.5kWh

So if all that exercise makes you eat an additional half pound of beef (400kcal), that's about the equivalent of running a 300W gaming rig + monitor for 9 to 10 hours.

In contrast 1 pound of chicken = 1.1 pounds of CO2.

I've even seen many people here who say they still prefer to use incandescent lighting. It doesn't take that many bulbs to use as much as a gaming rig, even fewer for a facebook/browsing PC/notebook. A single fluorescent tube lamp uses about 40W already.

Interesting article (ok it's USATODAY but still) about the real deficit this year. Note that the number is FOUR times the officially reported number... http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2012-05-18/federal-deficit-accounting/55179748/1 I think we have a little bit more than a few edge cases where programs are not pulling their weight. I don't know what else to say to try to get through to you. The official number is INSANE and if the real number is FOUR times the official number we are well and truly screwed.

A white gang and a black gang killing each other isn't a hate crime, but a white man killing blacks for being blacks or a black man killing whites for being white is.

Really? What Earth do you live on?

"A black Chicago-area teenager has been charged with a hate crime for allegedly beating a 19-year-old white youth during a robbery because he was angry about the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Chicago Tribune reports."

On the other hand, if you search "what is the best web browser" (without the quotes!) like the person you're replying to did, you get slightly different results. I see, in order a comparison from some site I've never heard of with Google Chrome as #1, a LifeHacker page (Chrome again), a random Yahoo! Answers link ("Google Chrome is, for Windows users, the fastest web browser."), a review with 4 equal "best browsers" including Chrome, a PC Mag review (spoiler: Chrome wins!), a really annoying YouTube video where Firefox comes first, "Review: Best Web browser? Google's Chrome outshines pack", a review where Firefox wins, and finally one that doesn't answer the question at all.

Really, and how do you do this without having to use a 3rd party paid app? The classic desktop is an app now and the start menu is gone.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/story/2012-03-30/windows-8-questions/53861344/1

"For Windows 8, Microsoft is replacing the Start button and Start menu with a Start screen based on the Windows Phone 7 Metro interface. Microsoft made this change because the Metro interface is very touch-friendly, and Windows 8 is going to appear on touch-screen tablets. Unfortunately, it isn't as friendly for people using a keyboard and mouse. It's not likely Microsoft will bring back the Start button. Fortunately, other companies are doing it for them. Longtime Windows customizer Stardock has released Start8. This free tweak re-adds the Start button and makes the Start screen more mouse friendly."

Speed! When the polls close, you know your vote tally.

How fast do you need them? Even sixty years ago the returns were in before the morning (In '52, huge computer called Univac changed election night)

The solution is a paper receipt that shows how you voted.

Oddly, that's how it's done in Illinois. I say "oddly" because our government is so corrupt you'd think they'd want an uncountable system, but maybe they want it countable because both parties are crooks (Our two last Governors are in Federal prison, one is Republican and one is Democrat).

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

--Theodore Roosevelt (supposedly, a W. African proverb)

Congress loves to shout about how crappy the TSA is, but then they keep giving them huge sums of money to continue being crappy.

And they actually expect the public to believe they give a rat's ass about anything besides money

The longest distance between interstate exits is almost 50 miles.

(Even bicycles are occasionally faster than flying.)

They had to travel 38 miles. TFA:

The plane had just taken off when the cyclists arrived.

Bikes were faster because they had to go through security. Not because the plane was slow. Get rid of security, and you wouldn't have to get to the airport so early.

High speed rail will get you to your destination faster than by air, curb to curb, up to about 400 miles. (Even bicycles are occasionally faster than flying.) And to date, no terrorist has ever steered a train into a building, so unless you're going through the tunnel under the English Channel, there will always be less groping to board a train than an airliner.

Such a simple step would probably save large sums of money in litigation; a lawyer once told me that in his experience, most litigation is the result of bad manners.

I forget where, but I saw a study or a news report of a study that if doctors who make mistakes apologized for their mistakes, malpractice suits would plummet.

Google to the rescue.

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/healthcare/doctorsnurses/2010-08-20-medical-errors-malpractice_N.htm

--
BMO

The design wasn't severely flawed. The death toll stems from a lot of small design mistakes:

• Insufficient insulation around structural steel (that tended to flake off easily).
• Sprinkler system design problems—the requirement of manual activation of the pumps, the need for power to the pumps, and only a single water riser with a single connection to it per floor.
• Elevator doors and cars that were not blast rated, thus causing the cars to turn into giant fireballs.
• Poor placement of elevators and stairwells (all in the center instead of distributing some of them at the corners)
• Lack of controlled descent systems.

And the government made a fair number of mistakes, too:

• Failure to evacuate the south tower the moment the north tower was hit. Thankfully, some 3,000 people ignored the instructions to shelter in place and evacuated anyway prior to the second crash. Were that not the case, the death toll on that day could have easily doubled.
• Building code changes that required installation of door restrictors that trapped people in elevators.
• Lax building code that allowed for the building to be fire-rated at two hours when an actual evacuation (after the first bombing) took five.
• Lax building code that does not take into consideration the height of buildings when determining stairwell capacity.
• Local laws that prevented employers from requiring employees to practice stairway evacuation.
• Placement of the command and control center in one of the WTC buildings (and failure to move it after the first terrorist attack on the WTC).
• Laws that allowed the buildings to be noncompliant with local building codes (under which both towers would have required a fourth stairwell, which would have significantly improved the odds of people getting out of the first tower.

Go read the NIST study on the twin towers. It is eye-opening.

Be careful, small business growth isn't all it's cracked up to be: http://www.usatoday.com/money/smallbusiness/story/2012-02-25/small-business-as-job-creator/53227084/1

Didn't Gm pay almost all of it back.

Not really. It used some Government tax dollars in an escrow account to pay back some of its Government loans. And the Government has lost billions on GM stock. So we gave GM some money, we got some stock. GM used some of that Government money to pay back Government loans, and the Government sold some of the stock at a loss. Not even close to paying all of it back.

Ted Kennedy (the US Senator, now deceased) was stopped trying to board a plane in 2004 because his name was on a terror watch list.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-08-19-kennedy-list_x.htm

He was rich and powerful. Of course that was 8 years ago and perhaps TSA changed their policies since then to no longer search the rich and powerful. I don't have any more recent examples.

fell from the sky without hope

Well considering the pilots in that case did all the wrong things I'd say it wasn't hope but stupidity that caused that crash. You're more likely to die from a defective plane or a pilot either lacking training or sleep.

Counting only revenue generated by the athletic departments — including money from ticket sales, donations, radio/TV and marketing rights payments — the number of schools able to cover their athletic expenditures fell to 14 in 2009, down from 25 the previous year. This measure of generated revenue against total expenses is the yardstick the NCAA uses to determine whether an athletic program is self-supporting. Only seven met this benchmark during each of the five years studied: Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana State, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.

Not to mention the fact that something like 80% of the American public was totally against the Iraq war before it even started

[emphasis mine]

No, that's bullshit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_opinion_in_the_United_States_on_the_invasion_of_Iraq

Which in particular cites: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-03-16-poll-iraq_x.htm

"With a war against Iraq perhaps days away, Americans are backing President Bush but remain split over launching an attack without United Nations support, a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.

By a 2-to-1 ratio, Americans favor invading Iraq with U.S. ground troops to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Not since November 2001 have they approved so overwhelmingly. Nearly six in 10 say they're ready for such an invasion "in the next week or two."

But that support drops off if the U.N. backing being sought by the United States, Britain and Spain Monday is not obtained. If the U.N. Security Council rejects a resolution paving the way for military action, only 54% of Americans favor a U.S. invasion. And if the Bush administration does not seek a final Security Council vote, support for a war drops to 47%."

"But let's not do anything practical to actually reduce gas prices (drill)"

Drilling doesn't reduce gas prices. Crude oil /= motor fuel.

The US __exports__ gasoline. The free market sets gas prices, and no one has an economic incentive to sell you cheap fuel.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/story/2011-12-31/united-states-export/52298812/1

"Gasoline supplies are being exported to the highest bidder, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "It's a world market," he says.

Refining companies won't say how much they make by selling fuel overseas. But analysts say those sales are likely generating higher profits per gallon than they would have generated in the U.S. Otherwise, they wouldn't occur."

I wish everyone else would stop shoveling money at these evil people

They are, and in increasing numbers
Sony posts its worst loss ever
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-04-10/japan-sony-earnings/54144022/1

says it all really, treat your customers with contempt and they will make sure you cease to exist, one way or another

I think a more appropriate change that I would love to see, is the ability to treat a red light as a stop sign.

In some states, motorcycles can. Citation

Can't see why it would rank so high in stress when those are the factors. If I want to "get away" i can retreat to the cockpit and close the door: that removes "Working in the Public Eye" and "Meeting the Public" quite easily (depending on how those are defined), not that people stress me out. "Outlook/Growth Potential"- don't get me started on the age 60/65 retirement issue: it's been five years of stagnation on top of a bad economy and 9/11. "Environmental Conditions"- I do walkarounds in the winter, but I get to control the temp in my workspace to warm back up. Oh yeah, polar crossings are prohibited during solar events, but I do get the equivalent of a couple extra X-rays per year in cruise. If "Own Life at Risk, Life of Another at Risk" are considered important, maybe they could add a few dollars to my pay to sooth my nerves... a surgeon is paid 3-5 times what I make but he only holds one person's life in his hands at a time, I've got hundreds."Hazards Encountered"- that's fairly open ended. Maybe you should ask Clayton F. Osbon's copilot about that. "Physical Demands (stoop, climb, etc.)"- I'm not 20 pounds overweight from physical exertion, but lethargy is its own physical demand. "Deadlines"- I'll move when I'm damn well ready to, and not a moment sooner. At least safety is still both under the pilots control and his responsibility.

What stresses me out isn't even considered: 1) being paid half what I used to and working twice as much, and 2) not having had a pay raise for 9 years and 3) having managements tell employees "We're very committed to getting a deal with the pilots too. But it has to be fair; fair to them and fair to us." while they continue feed at the trough. Still love my work, just eager for some rewards to return to the profession.

Now she got Slashdotted too.

Isn't that interesting?

Looking at her websites and everything, she looks like one of those artsy people that would benefit incredibly from exposure. Actually, anyone doing any sort of business on the net needs exposure to get noticed.

Over the last decade, I've become extremely cynical about things like this.

If she were really getting threats and people were posting illegal things like child pornography as she said, then the cops would be involved to go after this guy and take him out. But no. Things are continuing for some reason and here she is getting all this free publicity and hits on her website.

Read up on any of the "Gorilla Marketing" type of books out there and you too will become cynical of any sort of public exposure.

From her website:

In my How Facebook Deleted My Ass article I discussed how my account was deleted because I was accused of impersonating myself.

. I don't consider FB to be that credible either, but then again, I wonder what made them come to that conclusion?

And if she is in fact truly being stalked, I blame the marketing people of the World for making public exposure of any sort a cheap way to market products, services, people, art, etc ...

After all, we do live in a World where people actually burn themselves to death to bring attention to issues. What's a little cyber-stalking?

This article describes 3 different diseases where there have been breakdowns in herd immunity in the US:

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/05/health/la-he-vaccines-herd-immunity-20110801

If you do further research you will find that in Europe the problem is much worse. For example post the Wakefield article in Lancet measles vaccination rates dropped to 80-85% causing several outbreaks and the British Medical Society to declare measles as endemic in GB.

Are you sure your children will never want to travel to Europe? Or somebody from Europe will never visit your town? Last year the largest outbreak in the US in 15 years occurred from this source.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2011-10-21/Unvaccinated-behind-largest-US-measles-outbreak-in-years/50852098/1

A lot of people are going to the London Olympics this year. Some have predicted it will trigger a measles epidemic in the US.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9156762/London-2012-Olympics-may-spark-measle-outbreak-US-warns.html

People like you are compromising the society you live in by playing at amateur epidemiologist. It is immoral behavior.

The thing that gives the US the best health care is the fact that patients generally get treatment when needed, as needed.

Only if you can afford insurance, and one in six cannot. When one in six people can't be treated until they're on death's door, the system is seriously flawed.

I believe you'll find a huge positive correlation between infant deaths and lack of insurance.

If nothing else comes of this, it's an excellent example of how that SYG law allows for insane vigilante warfare, making the streets more, not less, dangerous.

Tell that to Sarah McKinley

What's more wrong, adultery or smoking marijuana? I say adultery is wrong even if it is legal, and there's nothing whatever wrong with smoking the illegal herb.

Actually, in some US states, adultery IS illegal:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-04-26-column26_ST_N.htm

Don't have to wear a scarlet letter though!

longer than the life of a normal car

The average age of a car in the US is now 10.8 years, which means that the life of a normal car is even longer than that.

The lack of line of sight is the killer. From one of many articles on the subject: FAA regulations developed in the 1970s to cover the amateur use of radio-controlled planes, which also apply to today's DIY drones. Those rules include restricting their altitude to 400 feet (120 meter), requiring them to always be in view of their controller on the ground and prohibiting them from being flown over built-up areas.

You could ask for a specific waiver. That is how researchers have been able to fly their drones. I am skeptical though that the FAA would be willing to issue a waiver for something is just a hobby.

Dated April 02
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2012/04/report-ashton-kutcher-to-play-steve-jobs-in-movie/1#.T3mlMtlAqnA

The Mormons declare prior art. They've been baptizing ghosts into their "social network" for years.

You sound like yet another republican failing to admit to having lost.

Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed

It's been nearly 12 years, it's time to admin you're wrong and get over it.

You've got Section 331 of Title 18 covered, but you failed to realize that there is a separate, new law prohibiting melting pennies and nickels, and prohibiting the exportation of them in quantities over $100. Here's a story about it. This was enacted recently exactly because the metal content of these coins is worth more than their face values.

Have used sketchy processors.

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/180626/security_breach_costs_atlanta_based_credit_card_processor_two_huge/

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-01-20-heartland-credit-card-security-breach_N.htm

I don't know, USA Today seems to agree with me, as does Hilary Clinton and Obama. Here's another.

I'm not digging for it right now, but it seems articles have run here on Slashdot about help desk jobs moving to India partially because the government made it the most logical step.

Also, whoever modded me "Flamebait", that looks an awful lot like "I disagree with this person's political leanings", when everything I wrote was simply verifiable fact about Rick Santorum's Google problem:
Rick Santorum's original comments
Dan Savage on why he found those comments offensive.

Citations provided. It's pretty grisly stuff. The profitability of doing organ donations on the side, without official due process, has even motivated some jurisdictions to convict more readily. Better still, fraud is a capital offence.

There are plenty of immigrants in Europe who are integrating. Integrating is not a problem if you share some basic common values like individual freedom and dignity (which pretty much all of Western world shares), and you actually want to integrate. The problem is with those that explicitly do not want to integrate. It's a problem that you have in US as well, it's just that you have a much fewer number of those kinds of immigrants than Europe, and so it's not as pervasive and in-your-face.

What the politicians don't want you to know is that the production of crude oil doesn't affect the price at the pumps as much as the production capacity of the oil refineries. In fact, the US has been enjoying an oil boom in 2011 with exports of petroleum at it highest in the past 11 years or more (reference).

The republicans are using the seasonal nature of gas pricing (summer months mean higher prices) to pressure Obama into allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to be constructed through environmentally sensitive areas by threatening his reelection over an issue they feel the populace could rally behind. Welcome to election year rhetoric folks.

Why on earth would oil companies sell gasoline here for $2.50 a gallon when they can sell it in France for $10 a gallon? Gas prices are higher because we're selling gasoline overseas. Welcome to the global economy.

There's at least one domestic downside to America's growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that's sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.

I still remember crowds of complete fucking idiots chanting, "Drill, baby, drill!!" Pathetic.

"I've moved my garden activities ahead as much as possible. I really hope that we do not see another hot summer like last year."

Then you've probably also already noticed that the USDA has updated its hardiness zones to reflect the warming. The fact is that you can plant less hardy seeds earlier and further north that you used to be able to. The warming is having real results.

Likewise, if there was a law that prohibited prayer in anyplace outside of a religious institution, I could say I was not an anti-religious zealot because I only supported the enforcement in flagrant cases, for instance, where a family was praying in public in a distracting manner, or where someone was having a party and playing Fireflight too loud. Then we could bring them to court and prosecute them for playing. You see, I don't hate the people who choose to worship false idols and fails to follow the bible(Matthew 6:5), I simply want an ordered society where we follow the rule of law. That I get to harass people who annoy me, even when they are in the privacy of their own home, is just frosting on the cake.

Just because one hates a little less than one peers does not give the person a right to deny their bigotry. Is a person who only burns down empty churches and synagogues any less of a bigot than someone who shoot the members? I would think not. Just because one is a little less hateful and therefore is ridiculed by one's peers, does that give free reign to other denegate the annoying people? I don't think so.

I believe that Card thinks he is not a homophobe just like rush thinks he did nothing wrong on his little trip to the DR or Santorum thinks that he believes he has respect for the ability of woman to think for herself. And all these people are probably a little less crazy than some of the other people in their peer group, and for that we can be thankful. That there are some insane people who are not so insane as to actually want to do harm to the people they hate, unless, or course, they don't know their place. People who are just keeping the lesser folks in their place and enforcing the norms of society, then, are to thanks, not called out for who they are.

Which is to say that I know where Card is coming from, and by the measure of the religious right that wishes to convert anyone they do not agree with I am sure he is a flaming liberal that love to bend over for Obama, but in the world where love and tolerance and acceptance prevail, only a homophobe could write something like that. The rest of us believe that we adults should be able to have consensual sex in our homes and show affection for who we please outdoors. After all, I don't see police harassing straight couples leaving the theatre.

Not too long ago, we had a similar issue here when a local religious fanatic (who home schools his children, BTW) demanded the local high school ban, among others, Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaugherhouse V, claiming it too was pornographic in nature.

The school ended up bowing to the holier-than-thou asshole and banned the book; however, doing so had the unexpected side effect of Slaughterhouse V becoming the most read book in the city of Republic. The Vonnegut Library even donated several hundred copies of the book to the local library, all of which were swiftly checked out.

Experience tells me Ender's Game is about to become the most read book in Shofield, SC.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2009-03-22-electronics-fires-airlines_N.htm

Unfortunately just after Louis CK delivered a particular scathing line for team talent, Gallagher would squash him with a novelty-size mallet.

Seeing as how he just came out of a coma his mallet swing might lack a little umph.