The problem with your argument is that you assume that only Tokyo has good broadband. The whole country has amazing connectivity.
How much do you pay for an 1100 sq ft (102 m^2) apartment? How much do you pay for energy? For gas? For food?
I live in a city of about 80k people, about 45 minutes from Kyoto. I live alone in an apartment that's a very comfortable size for me - over 400 sq ft - and pay only about $400 a month in rent. Even in winter I only pay about $45 a month in electricity. Public transportation and my bike mean I don't even know offhand the price of gas. Food, I can cook for myself cheaply or go out to low-end restaurants for around $10.
I teach in public schools, and taking into consideration what you say about this type of school, I have to say that most suggestions here are not seeming very helpful.
They're tech for tech's sake.
Kids generally have a hard time staying focused on a task. This is why computers are such a nightmare. There are few tasks that really call for students to use computers - mostly, these tasks are to do research, to type up assignments, and to learn about computers (typing, programming, etc).
The focus of a school needs to be on educating. Your IT solution needs to grow out of that, not the other way around - the question needs to be, "What do we need to teach these subjects more effectively?" instead of the technophile's approach of "What can we do if we give these kids a whole bunch of computers?"
As a teacher, I find myself limited by the technology available at my fingertips, more than I am limited by the technology available to my students. Computers as a teaching aid are useful because of how easy they can make multimedia presentations. Look a few posts above for talk of Elmos, little digital cameras that allow you to use full-color sheets of paper, printouts, etc as, effectively, sheets for an overhead projector, without any of the hassles. See to it that there's a projector solution in each classroom and some basic audio features, and give your teachers hardcore training in 1) incorporating multimedia in their teaching curriculum, and 2) how to use the technology to present multimedia.
Students do sometimes need to use computers themselves (for the reasons listed above). In those cases, I'd suggest dedicated computer labs. Laptops would be great, but the upkeep kills you - keeping track of them, keeping students from dropping them, etc. Set up a system with multiple OSes if you can, work on setting up interoperability between them (file formats and such), and then force kids to use all that you have available. That way you'll teach the kids how to use a computer, instead of how to use Microsoft Windows Office 2008, and help them learn the investigative skills needed to tackle any computer system.
They requested data on at least 3,000 people from the ISPs (at £60 per request).
[Citation needed]
I'm not sure where you're getting this figure from. From the article:
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) told the BBC following a freedom of information request that since April of 2006 it had made 9,400 requests for user information, at a total cost of £171,505.99.
That breaks down to about £18.25 per request. Less than a third what you claim. If you look at the claims for 2008, too (4600 claims at £64604)(from the article linked in the article), you get an even smaller figure of £14 per request.
I can't say for certain that it's that expensive to process one of these requests, but it's certainly not that bad. I, too, am not willing to bend over backwards and throw out all sense just because we're "thinking of the children." Let 'em pay their fair share.
Well, I don't have the ironclad proof you're asking for, but I feel like you may be slightly misrepresenting the anti-big-pharma crowd's speculation. I'd like to try to give it a proper defense, at least, although I, too, would love to be proven wrong.
First of all, I never hear any concrete examples, which is a good sign.
I, too, would love to see some good concrete examples either way - if that means info about promising cures that are being aggressively pushed through the approval process, evidence of heaps of money being thrown at the problem, or, in fact, someone sitting on a cure, the truth can do nothing but shed light.
Second, drug companies aren't the CIA, when they do things wrong, like testing in 3rd world countries without real informed consent, it becomes public knowledge before too long. If they were sitting on an effective cure in favor of constant treatments, someone is going to let that slip.
Granted, there are those among the anti-pharma crowd who believe that drug companies are actually sitting on effective cures - I'd say that the majority hold a slightly different opinion, though. We believe simply that there's more money in treatment, and that it can be easier to get drugs approved as treatment for a disease than as a cure. I'm sure to a certain degree it's a case of medical mystery vs. low-hanging fruit, but it's not heartening for the fight against heart disease to keep plodding on with little obvious progress in the span of time it takes for half a dozen new anti-ED drugs to hit the market.
Third, if a company comes up with a cure to a disease, especially a common one, that's a lot of money they get for it. They're going to rush it to market. Supressing that to market a costly treatment is a bad investment even aside from the ethics and scandal: you're lucky to have cured a disease, coming up with a weekly suplement form of it takes more money if it works in the end. Factor in the other stuff, and that goes from a foolish decision to one not even a large corporation would make.
You have a good point about the potential reward of succeeding; however, the search for cures like that is a pretty high-risk venture. I don't know enough of the particulars to say whether it's a good ROI or not.
It is possible that having come up with a costly prolonged treatment they'll relax on trying to find an actual cure, but their competitors will still be.
I very much hope this is true. Unfortunately, I am skeptical of there being an adequate number of players in the pharmaceuticals market to give a lot of pressure in this way.
Again I'll say, I hope I'm wrong on this. It'd be great if we had some good evidence that there are big bucks going to cure these big problems. Without that evidence, though, some of us are skeptics on the issue.
Speaking of which, that's something I see and notice quite a lot in US-made films and TV drama - people regularly driving after being at a bar drinking for (presumably) some time, and rarely is any comment made about them doing it ("Gremlins" is about the only example I can think of that did). Is this really fairly accepted practice in the US, or just artistic licence?
Unfortunately, it's not just Hollywood - it's very common in the US. Whether it's accepted practice or not... Well, it's quite illegal (you will lose your driver's license, at the least), but the truth of the matter is that it happens a lot.
Probably because the process of growing trees specifically to make paper, cutting them down, processing them, printing on them, and disposing of them uses a lot of energy and wastes land.
Also, a lot of places burn paper garbage. So much for carbon sequestration.
Just to be fair, there's no reason to say that all or even most of the people complaining think that Orgone isn't full of shit.
That sounds to me like either someone on the fringe of their fringe, or someone trying to catch some free publicity and sell some snake oil to some of the dumber locals (hippies can be just as dumb and just as smart as any other group of people).
I highly doubt that anyone's being affected, but if they're making such a fuss as they say in the Fine Article, they might as well look into it.
For you, sure, it's a winning proposition. Get the jobs preferentially for your lower pay requirements, and either live frugally to bring back home as much money as you can or else just trust the fact that you have American experience to gain better jobs back home.
Don't expect American workers in those markets to thank you for it, though. Whether the market should truly be that open or not is a different story, but generally speaking America doesn't approve of job competition being too cutthroat for permanent US residents to compete.
Finally, H1B is officially supposed to allow businesses to bring over workers to meet a shortage of skilled labor in a field, not to drive labor costs down in those markets. H1B holders are supposed to receive a salary competitive in the field.
Do you honestly think that after being in school from 8am to 3pm (7 hours) students should be expected to study an additional 6-12 hours? (1-2 hours per subject). This is ridiculous, as no person, let alone child has that kind of attention span or time (12-19 hours).
It is my humble opinion that the majority of 'textbook' learning should be done at school, and afterwards, the students need time to learn to play, interact, and learn responsibilities besides that of doing their homework.
I'm a high school teacher in a country where homework amounts like the GP's are commonplace - Japan. My students are often at school 8am-5pm. They then study more at home, several hours a day. Most go to cram school 1-2 times a week.
They aren't much better off academically for it, on the whole, I'll say. They're known to sleep through classes because they were up too late the night before studying. They can't concentrate that hard that long. It's just not possible.
On top of that, it takes a huge toll on their social development - I have 18 year olds telling me that they wish they could date, but they don't have time for it yet, maybe in college - and it's easy to see that there's a cost without any real measurable benefit.
There are some serious problems with most all educational systems, and from my experience, adding more criteria to test them on is going the wrong way.
Yes, but does it have to do with instigating endorphine release, or does it have to do with "energy" or "chi" mumbo jumbo? If it's the former, which would be more scientific, just go to a body piercer. Not only will you get a natural high, you'll have some nice jewelry when you're done.:)
Or, you know, maybe it has to do not only with the fact that needles are going in, but also where they are going in, and how deep, and how long, and so on and so forth. And maybe the proscriptions of that "chi mumbo jumbo" provide a fairly effective method of treatment. In which case, maybe we should study the hell out of it and see if we can bridge the knowledge gap by figuring out, in Western medical terms, what is getting changed and how to change it.
Again, horseshit. The language of science is independent of spoken language. Either Chi theory is susceptible to analysis using 'Western' methods (controlled studies, statistics, etc...) or it isn't.
Sorry, but you're strawmanning the GP's argument. He said:
the whole concept of Chi is based on a complete medical theory independent of Western medical thought
Hence, he's talking about medical terminology not being the same, not that you can't apply the scientific method.
All the scientific method does is take a base model and allow you to propose refinements to it to better fit observational data. We have a theory, we apply it, and we see where it works and where it's insufficient; we fix the theory to better fit where it's insufficient, and we have a new theory. This is science, and it's not unique to Western medicine.
Take our theories of gravity, for example. We started with Newton's base, which worked well for our everyday calculations. We had to update our model to include General Relativity when we were observing astronomical events. Today, we're trying to figure out how to accurately describe what occurs sub-Planck length. Still, though, we don't know what gravity actually is. Maybe it's a particle, maybe it's a string. We don't know. Hence, we use models to successively more accurately describe what we observe.
Acupuncture has been refined over long periods of time to be more accurate, built on a base set of assumptions about things like Chi flow. It has results. These are scientifically verifiable. The reasoning behind the means to achieve these results, though, is based on these assumptions and this model that is very alien to Western medicine, and as a result it really is another language. Maybe Western medicine will be able to "reverse engineer" the benefits of acupuncture, to the benefit of all. However, even though Chi-based methods are "black-box" to Western thought, they still can show efficacy.
First off, laches is an affirmative defense, and is not a get-out-of-jail-free card: compare it to fair use, another affirmative defense that many here on/. agree is fairly cumbersome to use and burdensome on the defendant. Secondly, laches has a certain component of pressing an unfair advantage gained by biding one's time.
Thirdly and most importantly, I am not a lawyer and I am not your lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. Don't take anything I ever say as legal advice.
Granted, this guy is still a ways away from being able to go off-script at all... but it doesn't take a lot to get some very interesting (and seemingly complex) emergent behavior from some fairly simple rules. The better dating sims out there can provide some pretty good variety, and if their rabid niche market (who, might I add, significantly overlaps with those interested in a robowife) is any indication, can keep some people fairly enthralled already.
I'd say the downside would be dealing with her when she's in "upset" mode for no good reason, but that's hardly unique to wives of the robotic variety...
This is basically our ever-so-slightly-sterilized version of The Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange. We're using it against people never convicted, never tried, never even given a chance to explain themselves to anyone who hadn't already dehumanized them to the label of "terrorist". Yes, this is torture.
My earliest progamming experience was with clunky, limited TI81+'s TI-BASIC. I had the hardware with me throughout the school day, so I could use it whenever I wanted. I couldn't make very many spelling mistakes, because you chose actions from a list. If your program quits, your variables stay in memory, so you can do basic analysis of your program as you go from the normal-function level (use A as your variable, quit program, type "A", press enter, and see what your variable is at).
There were downsides to this method, too. The documentation was poor (more like nonexistent, trying things out on my own and discovering syntax by poring over friends' programs and trial and error). Formatting was lethal - I probably went crosseyed a hundred times trying to find the missing parentheses. Commands were hard to input if you didn't memorize where to find them ("ok, third menu item, then fifth menu item gets you if(...").
Bottom line, though, I feel that language choice isn't the most important issue for you, by a long shot. A lot of people are talking about establishing strong coding practices as if expecting them to enter the workforce at the age of 15; this seems a bit misdirected, to me. You have some really bright kids, who are going to be mostly more interested in what they can do than how they can do it, and you should not try to pidgeonhole them all into a professional programmer role. I know it goes against the orthodoxy here, but quick and messy is the better way to teach people for whom coding will be a casual means to an end - those who need particulars of garbage collection and data typing can cross that bridge when they need to. Especially when they're only 12 years old!
No, everyone should be equal under the law. That's the underlying tenet of a democratic society.
If the last three presidents got caught speeding, they should be forced to pay the same fine I would in the same situation.
If you don't think that the last three presidents deserve to rot in jail for several years for having smoked marijuana, how can you support this punishment for the millions of Americans in exactly the same boat? To amend the GP's statement (which you seem to be twisting by not directly quoting), it's hard to defend the imprisonment for years of people for a crime multiple presidents have admitted committing when they were younger.
Cynically, this makes American law out to one simple imperative: to be a winner, do whatever you want, just don't get caught.
When you look at America's tax structure, it's clear that we mostly have regressive taxes, i.e. the poor pay a larger percent of their income to taxes than do the rich, overall.
It's socialism for the rich, paid for by the no-safety-net capitalism for the poor.
It's really quite simple: Teenagers buy most video games.
Can we get a citation on this? I'm certainly not in that category, and I doubt I'm alone on that.
In fact, one figure I just found says the average game player is 33, and the average game buyer is 40.
Still, a recession or even depression isn't going to kill video games. It may have a minor effect on huge-budget mass-market "moneymakers" (Fifa, Madden et al), but the real gems will be successful unless we find ourselves significantly further in the toilet.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with your argument is that you assume that only Tokyo has good broadband. The whole country has amazing connectivity.
How much do you pay for an 1100 sq ft (102 m^2) apartment? How much do you pay for energy? For gas? For food?
I live in a city of about 80k people, about 45 minutes from Kyoto. I live alone in an apartment that's a very comfortable size for me - over 400 sq ft - and pay only about $400 a month in rent. Even in winter I only pay about $45 a month in electricity. Public transportation and my bike mean I don't even know offhand the price of gas. Food, I can cook for myself cheaply or go out to low-end restaurants for around $10.
My 50mbps cable costs me $40 a month.
I teach in public schools, and taking into consideration what you say about this type of school, I have to say that most suggestions here are not seeming very helpful.
They're tech for tech's sake.
Kids generally have a hard time staying focused on a task. This is why computers are such a nightmare. There are few tasks that really call for students to use computers - mostly, these tasks are to do research, to type up assignments, and to learn about computers (typing, programming, etc).
The focus of a school needs to be on educating. Your IT solution needs to grow out of that, not the other way around - the question needs to be, "What do we need to teach these subjects more effectively?" instead of the technophile's approach of "What can we do if we give these kids a whole bunch of computers?"
As a teacher, I find myself limited by the technology available at my fingertips, more than I am limited by the technology available to my students. Computers as a teaching aid are useful because of how easy they can make multimedia presentations. Look a few posts above for talk of Elmos, little digital cameras that allow you to use full-color sheets of paper, printouts, etc as, effectively, sheets for an overhead projector, without any of the hassles. See to it that there's a projector solution in each classroom and some basic audio features, and give your teachers hardcore training in 1) incorporating multimedia in their teaching curriculum, and 2) how to use the technology to present multimedia.
Students do sometimes need to use computers themselves (for the reasons listed above). In those cases, I'd suggest dedicated computer labs. Laptops would be great, but the upkeep kills you - keeping track of them, keeping students from dropping them, etc. Set up a system with multiple OSes if you can, work on setting up interoperability between them (file formats and such), and then force kids to use all that you have available. That way you'll teach the kids how to use a computer, instead of how to use Microsoft Windows Office 2008, and help them learn the investigative skills needed to tackle any computer system.
They requested data on at least 3,000 people from the ISPs (at £60 per request).
[Citation needed]
I'm not sure where you're getting this figure from. From the article:
The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) told the BBC following a freedom of information request that since April of 2006 it had made 9,400 requests for user information, at a total cost of £171,505.99.
That breaks down to about £18.25 per request. Less than a third what you claim. If you look at the claims for 2008, too (4600 claims at £64604)(from the article linked in the article), you get an even smaller figure of £14 per request.
I can't say for certain that it's that expensive to process one of these requests, but it's certainly not that bad. I, too, am not willing to bend over backwards and throw out all sense just because we're "thinking of the children." Let 'em pay their fair share.
Well, I don't have the ironclad proof you're asking for, but I feel like you may be slightly misrepresenting the anti-big-pharma crowd's speculation. I'd like to try to give it a proper defense, at least, although I, too, would love to be proven wrong.
First of all, I never hear any concrete examples, which is a good sign.
I, too, would love to see some good concrete examples either way - if that means info about promising cures that are being aggressively pushed through the approval process, evidence of heaps of money being thrown at the problem, or, in fact, someone sitting on a cure, the truth can do nothing but shed light.
Second, drug companies aren't the CIA, when they do things wrong, like testing in 3rd world countries without real informed consent, it becomes public knowledge before too long. If they were sitting on an effective cure in favor of constant treatments, someone is going to let that slip.
Granted, there are those among the anti-pharma crowd who believe that drug companies are actually sitting on effective cures - I'd say that the majority hold a slightly different opinion, though. We believe simply that there's more money in treatment, and that it can be easier to get drugs approved as treatment for a disease than as a cure. I'm sure to a certain degree it's a case of medical mystery vs. low-hanging fruit, but it's not heartening for the fight against heart disease to keep plodding on with little obvious progress in the span of time it takes for half a dozen new anti-ED drugs to hit the market.
Third, if a company comes up with a cure to a disease, especially a common one, that's a lot of money they get for it. They're going to rush it to market. Supressing that to market a costly treatment is a bad investment even aside from the ethics and scandal: you're lucky to have cured a disease, coming up with a weekly suplement form of it takes more money if it works in the end. Factor in the other stuff, and that goes from a foolish decision to one not even a large corporation would make.
You have a good point about the potential reward of succeeding; however, the search for cures like that is a pretty high-risk venture. I don't know enough of the particulars to say whether it's a good ROI or not.
It is possible that having come up with a costly prolonged treatment they'll relax on trying to find an actual cure, but their competitors will still be.
I very much hope this is true. Unfortunately, I am skeptical of there being an adequate number of players in the pharmaceuticals market to give a lot of pressure in this way.
Again I'll say, I hope I'm wrong on this. It'd be great if we had some good evidence that there are big bucks going to cure these big problems. Without that evidence, though, some of us are skeptics on the issue.
Speaking of which, that's something I see and notice quite a lot in US-made films and TV drama - people regularly driving after being at a bar drinking for (presumably) some time, and rarely is any comment made about them doing it ("Gremlins" is about the only example I can think of that did). Is this really fairly accepted practice in the US, or just artistic licence?
Unfortunately, it's not just Hollywood - it's very common in the US. Whether it's accepted practice or not... Well, it's quite illegal (you will lose your driver's license, at the least), but the truth of the matter is that it happens a lot.
Probably because the process of growing trees specifically to make paper, cutting them down, processing them, printing on them, and disposing of them uses a lot of energy and wastes land.
Also, a lot of places burn paper garbage. So much for carbon sequestration.
Oh yes, these sound like reasonable people.
Just to be fair, there's no reason to say that all or even most of the people complaining think that Orgone isn't full of shit.
That sounds to me like either someone on the fringe of their fringe, or someone trying to catch some free publicity and sell some snake oil to some of the dumber locals (hippies can be just as dumb and just as smart as any other group of people).
I highly doubt that anyone's being affected, but if they're making such a fuss as they say in the Fine Article, they might as well look into it.
For you, sure, it's a winning proposition. Get the jobs preferentially for your lower pay requirements, and either live frugally to bring back home as much money as you can or else just trust the fact that you have American experience to gain better jobs back home.
Don't expect American workers in those markets to thank you for it, though. Whether the market should truly be that open or not is a different story, but generally speaking America doesn't approve of job competition being too cutthroat for permanent US residents to compete.
Finally, H1B is officially supposed to allow businesses to bring over workers to meet a shortage of skilled labor in a field, not to drive labor costs down in those markets. H1B holders are supposed to receive a salary competitive in the field.
Do you honestly think that after being in school from 8am to 3pm (7 hours) students should be expected to study an additional 6-12 hours? (1-2 hours per subject). This is ridiculous, as no person, let alone child has that kind of attention span or time (12-19 hours).
It is my humble opinion that the majority of 'textbook' learning should be done at school, and afterwards, the students need time to learn to play, interact, and learn responsibilities besides that of doing their homework.
I'm a high school teacher in a country where homework amounts like the GP's are commonplace - Japan. My students are often at school 8am-5pm. They then study more at home, several hours a day. Most go to cram school 1-2 times a week.
They aren't much better off academically for it, on the whole, I'll say. They're known to sleep through classes because they were up too late the night before studying. They can't concentrate that hard that long. It's just not possible.
On top of that, it takes a huge toll on their social development - I have 18 year olds telling me that they wish they could date, but they don't have time for it yet, maybe in college - and it's easy to see that there's a cost without any real measurable benefit.
There are some serious problems with most all educational systems, and from my experience, adding more criteria to test them on is going the wrong way.
Yes, but does it have to do with instigating endorphine release, or does it have to do with "energy" or "chi" mumbo jumbo? If it's the former, which would be more scientific, just go to a body piercer. Not only will you get a natural high, you'll have some nice jewelry when you're done. :)
Or, you know, maybe it has to do not only with the fact that needles are going in, but also where they are going in, and how deep, and how long, and so on and so forth. And maybe the proscriptions of that "chi mumbo jumbo" provide a fairly effective method of treatment. In which case, maybe we should study the hell out of it and see if we can bridge the knowledge gap by figuring out, in Western medical terms, what is getting changed and how to change it.
Again, horseshit. The language of science is independent of spoken language. Either Chi theory is susceptible to analysis using 'Western' methods (controlled studies, statistics, etc...) or it isn't.
Sorry, but you're strawmanning the GP's argument. He said:
Hence, he's talking about medical terminology not being the same, not that you can't apply the scientific method.
All the scientific method does is take a base model and allow you to propose refinements to it to better fit observational data. We have a theory, we apply it, and we see where it works and where it's insufficient; we fix the theory to better fit where it's insufficient, and we have a new theory. This is science, and it's not unique to Western medicine.
Take our theories of gravity, for example. We started with Newton's base, which worked well for our everyday calculations. We had to update our model to include General Relativity when we were observing astronomical events. Today, we're trying to figure out how to accurately describe what occurs sub-Planck length. Still, though, we don't know what gravity actually is. Maybe it's a particle, maybe it's a string. We don't know. Hence, we use models to successively more accurately describe what we observe.
Acupuncture has been refined over long periods of time to be more accurate, built on a base set of assumptions about things like Chi flow. It has results. These are scientifically verifiable. The reasoning behind the means to achieve these results, though, is based on these assumptions and this model that is very alien to Western medicine, and as a result it really is another language. Maybe Western medicine will be able to "reverse engineer" the benefits of acupuncture, to the benefit of all. However, even though Chi-based methods are "black-box" to Western thought, they still can show efficacy.
First off, laches is an affirmative defense, and is not a get-out-of-jail-free card: compare it to fair use, another affirmative defense that many here on /. agree is fairly cumbersome to use and burdensome on the defendant. Secondly, laches has a certain component of pressing an unfair advantage gained by biding one's time.
Thirdly and most importantly, I am not a lawyer and I am not your lawyer. I don't even play one on TV. Don't take anything I ever say as legal advice.
Granted, this guy is still a ways away from being able to go off-script at all... but it doesn't take a lot to get some very interesting (and seemingly complex) emergent behavior from some fairly simple rules. The better dating sims out there can provide some pretty good variety, and if their rabid niche market (who, might I add, significantly overlaps with those interested in a robowife) is any indication, can keep some people fairly enthralled already.
I'd say the downside would be dealing with her when she's in "upset" mode for no good reason, but that's hardly unique to wives of the robotic variety...
This is basically our ever-so-slightly-sterilized version of The Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange. We're using it against people never convicted, never tried, never even given a chance to explain themselves to anyone who hadn't already dehumanized them to the label of "terrorist". Yes, this is torture.
We should be better than this.
My earliest progamming experience was with clunky, limited TI81+'s TI-BASIC. I had the hardware with me throughout the school day, so I could use it whenever I wanted. I couldn't make very many spelling mistakes, because you chose actions from a list. If your program quits, your variables stay in memory, so you can do basic analysis of your program as you go from the normal-function level (use A as your variable, quit program, type "A", press enter, and see what your variable is at).
There were downsides to this method, too. The documentation was poor (more like nonexistent, trying things out on my own and discovering syntax by poring over friends' programs and trial and error). Formatting was lethal - I probably went crosseyed a hundred times trying to find the missing parentheses. Commands were hard to input if you didn't memorize where to find them ("ok, third menu item, then fifth menu item gets you if(...").
Bottom line, though, I feel that language choice isn't the most important issue for you, by a long shot. A lot of people are talking about establishing strong coding practices as if expecting them to enter the workforce at the age of 15; this seems a bit misdirected, to me. You have some really bright kids, who are going to be mostly more interested in what they can do than how they can do it, and you should not try to pidgeonhole them all into a professional programmer role. I know it goes against the orthodoxy here, but quick and messy is the better way to teach people for whom coding will be a casual means to an end - those who need particulars of garbage collection and data typing can cross that bridge when they need to. Especially when they're only 12 years old!
No, everyone should be equal under the law. That's the underlying tenet of a democratic society.
If the last three presidents got caught speeding, they should be forced to pay the same fine I would in the same situation.
If you don't think that the last three presidents deserve to rot in jail for several years for having smoked marijuana, how can you support this punishment for the millions of Americans in exactly the same boat? To amend the GP's statement (which you seem to be twisting by not directly quoting), it's hard to defend the imprisonment for years of people for a crime multiple presidents have admitted committing when they were younger.
Cynically, this makes American law out to one simple imperative: to be a winner, do whatever you want, just don't get caught.
Actually, it's even better.
When you look at America's tax structure, it's clear that we mostly have regressive taxes, i.e. the poor pay a larger percent of their income to taxes than do the rich, overall.
It's socialism for the rich, paid for by the no-safety-net capitalism for the poor.
It's really quite simple: Teenagers buy most video games.
Can we get a citation on this? I'm certainly not in that category, and I doubt I'm alone on that. In fact, one figure I just found says the average game player is 33, and the average game buyer is 40. Still, a recession or even depression isn't going to kill video games. It may have a minor effect on huge-budget mass-market "moneymakers" (Fifa, Madden et al), but the real gems will be successful unless we find ourselves significantly further in the toilet.