So $2 Billion/year cuts in Food Stamps leads to a $1.5 Billion/year increase in healthcare costs - sounds like a way to save a half billion dollars/year... Put another way, we need to spend $2 Billion in food subsidies to save $1.5 Billion in healthcare costs.
You could be right. OTOH, poor nutrition this year, leads to additional health care costs over several years, not just one -- particularly if children are involved. That said, the assumption in the article is that benefits would be cut. It's also possible to cut waste and fraud and not impact the nutritional aspect at all.
This whole thing is based on a flawed argument. It assumes that cutting food stamps will lead to decreased nutrition. That is truly a possibility, however, it is only one of many. It is also a possibility to tighten up the controls on food stamps without hurting nutrition at all. Usually this is accomplished by eliminating waste and fraud in the program.
The issue is not about the cuts, but how the cuts are made.
Sending a probe to Mars and sending 3,000 lbs to the ISS are two totally different things. First, if your programming is off just slightly, you miss Mars, or as we have seen previously, you crash into the planet and loose your probe. Hit the ISS with a capsule carrying that extra weight and you loose just more than the capsule.
But the real difference between the Orbital price and India is that India is reporting its actual cost. What Orbital charges NASA includes a hefty profit margin. The actual costs are significantly lower.
We can't have people hearing that humans aren't supposed to eat animals! Quick! Repeat "hunter-gatherer" over and over and over...
Human beings quite clearly aren't supposed to eat meat. Humans don't have claws. We can't open our mouths wide enough to grab an animal in our jaws, unless it's tiny. We most certainly can't kill animals by biting their vertebrae, or by biting them to death, again unless they're tiny. We can't run fast enough to catch animals.
But LOL at all the brainwashed Slashdot sociopaths who can't bring themselves to THINK or QUESTION what they eat. That would be like, scary, wouldn't it... Your so-called 'friends' wouldn't like you if you started caring about innocent creatures who are brutally tortured to death, would they...
Of course, most scientists believe it was the added proteing from animal sources that enabled our brains to form as they did and become what today is known as homo sapiens. If nothing else, the amino acids needed to sustain homo sapiens cannot be found in every geographic location by using only plant sources. Unlike today, early humans didn't have the ability to ship produce around the world.
So, while there were early anscestors that didn't eat meat, it doesn't mean 1) they were human and 2) that homo sapiens shouldn't eat meat.
This is so stupid. An anscestor of modern homo sapiens was not an meat eater, big f*cking deal. If you go back far enough in the evolutionary chain, a really early anscestor relied on photosynthesis. This article isn't news.
Our planet is a data point of one, from which useful questions can be raised like: Why not elsewhere? The fact that Venus and Mars aren't teeming with life tells us things about where life cannot arise. (Or at least hasn't in the past few billion years)
They have to keep releasing these type of wildly speculative stories to keep interest up in science and technology. Because children have the right to dream fantastic dreams of the future and giving them meaningful goals and quests to set them upon is a duty of the current generation. Plus it's fantastically more productive than building hype about what the latest pop-star wore and whose baby she's carrying.
And yeah, reminding people about how cool science is really does help focus them on what's important and keep the research grant taps from shriveling up into nothing.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Before you can answer "Why not elsewhere?" You need to figure out how it began here. Explaining the creation of organic molecules in an early earth atmosphere is one thing. Even getting to the point of self-replicating molecules is not too terribly difficult. Getting from self-replicating molecules to even the simplest life -- that's the hard part and until we can figure that out (and no, it doesn't require a deity), anything we say about alien planet atmosphere sparking life is pure conjecture.
As for these inquisitive young minds, let's say we whet their appetite by these stories, what happens when what we've told them is shown to be untrue? We end up with a bunch of cynical adults who don't trust science, which leads to all sorts of problems (climate change and evolution are prime examples of this).
If you want to spark their imagination, have them read Jules Verne or some other piece of science fiction fiction.
Actually, If you're given the source, and allowed to modify the source, and run the modified source, then it is for all intents and purposes open source. Just because you have to pay to have access to that, doesn't mean it's not open source. If there's a problem, you are still able to fix the problem yourself, which is the main tenet of open source software.
You aren't free to redistribute the source, which is keeping it from being classified as open source, but otherwise, I agree, from the user perspective, it has all of the benefits of open source.
The mods on Ubuntu forums hand out refractions like there's no tomorrow. Anyone who has much as criticizes Unity or mentions the embeded sypware gets an immediate refraction.
If criticizing Ubuntu will get me a new tablet, sign me up! (Per wikipedia: " Refraction is essentially a surface phenomenon")
It's shocking to learn that SUSE/openSUSE are using proprietary forum software vBulleting as well as proprietary single sign on solution.
While vBulletin isn't under GPL, it is pretty liberal. You get the source code, you can modify and compile the source code, you may not redistribute it or remove the copyright notices. So, technically while not open source, your real limitation is in being allowed to redistribute it (not removing copyright is part of GPL, too).
You look at your bank statement (or estatement). If you have multiple bank accounts, it will be the one with the safe deposit box charge on it. If you have multiple safe deposit boxes at different banks, well, at least it narrows down where you need to look.
The problem with this (along with other plans), is that if you get amnesia and forget your password, there may be the chance that you forget where you stored your password as well. So, to be a good plan, it has to involve you either stumbling on to it quickly, or having someone / something tell you it once they get news that you have amnesia.
Let's not forget that the whole point of TARP was to infuse capital so banks could continue lending. Of course, there were no safeguards in place to ensure that outcome and instead the banks used the funds to purchase other assets and investments.
True, it was paid back, but it doesn't change the OP's point. Nor, did the government make a good return on their "investment." While they did make a positive return, it was below what they could have received, which was by design. Put differently, if a business has the opportunity to invest $X amount and one investment yields a ROI of 15% and the other 3%, which would they choose? The government chose the 3%.
The US parties may collude on a variety of things (like counterterrorism, or if you prefer, "counterterrorism") but they have significantly differing views on the relationship of the role of government to the citizenry and the economy. For instance, on the national level, the US Democratic party has been pushing for things like the recent health-care reform laws (for good or ill), additional environmental regulation, increases in the minimum wage, and other increases in taxes and spending which see the government taking a larger role in the economy, including transfer payments (welfare, etc). They also resent military spending as a rule. The Republican party pushes for less government involvement in the economy, lower/flatter tax regimes, market solutions to issues like healthcare and wages, and a regulatory regime which is not simply less stringent, but also more streamlined where it is in fact present (and they do not resent military spending, at least not as a rule).
Things are different outside the economic arena, true, but 2008-2016's top issues were, in order: the economy, the economy, and the economy. So.
The real difference between the two parties in the US is not about government involvement or welfare, but who the government involvement and welfare benefit. For the Democrats, the government inserts itself and provides welfare for the people, particularly the middle class and below. For the Republicans, the government inserts itself and provides welfare for corporations and the upper class (they don't call it welfare, however, instead using euphemisms such as incentives and subsidies). Regardless, both party is about expanding the role of government. They just disagree on who should be impinged on by the expansion.
What a silly premise. Are tablets replacing notebook computers and using a 5 year window to compare against. Well, since prior to the iPad, tablets were a very small market and since the iPad wasn't available 5 years ago, of course it has seen explosive growth compared to notebooks. But seriously, tablets, for the most part are consumer products that also get used by businesses. Laptop/notebooks, on the otherhand are business products that also get used by consumers.
Put differently, worldwide, there are more bicycles purchased than automobiles, but nobody would suggest that bicycles are replacing automobiles. Bicycles and automobiles serve different needs as do tablets and notbooks.
If you are using with a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard, then you went from your 17" laptop to a desktop plus a netbook. The problem with the scenario you present is that when using the tablet for travel, you don't have access to the files, emails, etc. from your desktop. There are ways to mitigate this problem. For instance a web interface to your exchange server would suffice or using only web based email and web storage (of course your company has to be using exchange for that to work and a lot of companies hesitate to put their email and files on somebody else's web server (like Google)).
Yes a tablet can work for some of the functions a regular laptop or desktop provide, but if after switching, it is capable of doing most of what you were doing before, then you probably didn't need the platform you had before.
As for your virus quip, your iPad may not have a virus, but if you are access storage on your company's servers, then you still need to be leary of transmitting an infected file. Look at all of those servers running Linux. Just because the server is limited to a viral attact, doesn't mean that it still can't be used to transmit a virus to other Windows users. A walled garden only protects your iPad, not the other devices you use it to communicate with.
If one is regularly using a tablet with a keyboard, then all they have done is convert their tablet into a notebook and either a notebook or a asus transformer would have been a better choice.
Even more interesting is that the effect measured only applies to paper books. When the same book is read from an e-format, there is no lasting effect.
Research or not the above is bullshit. I am reading Don Quixote right now - on an E Reader. I don't think my brain or me cares about how I read it.
You would be wrong. FMRI studies show that different areas of the brain are used depending on whether one reads a paper book or an e-book. Search slashdot, there were several articles related to those studies in the past.
Textbooks that are beat up still are usuable, what about an iPad?
Doesn't matter. The fad amongst e-textbooks is that they evaporate at the end of the term.
I'm glad I'm not in college these days. I still have most of my dead tree textbooks. Not just the job-related ones either. I find it entertaining to peruse them occasionally.
It does matter in the context of the post I was responding to, which referred to the longevity and durability of the iPad. Compared to a dead tree book that needs replacing every 5 to 7 years, on average, the iPad is not a longer lived solution, which is estimated to be 3 years. In addition, not only is there the cost of the iPad, but the cost of the e-books. So, K-12 will require 3 iPad purchases per student plus the cost of content. Books are the longer lived solution and cheaper once you figure in the cost of the iPads, the maintenance, and other costs associated with it.
Then again, if school administrators were good in financial calculations, they would probably be in a field other than school administration (not to slam them, but finance and accounting doesn't seem to be their strong point)
It seems as though it needs to be something with a lot of prose but either fiction or non-fiction works.
Moderately technical non-fiction is OK as long as it is interesting and mentally stimulating (makes you stop and think etc.).
But pure technical books don't seem to help at all and may just clutter things up with new knowledge that the brain is trying to assimilate. So for example pretty much anything from O'Reilly will not make me feel generally smarter even though it may be very good at cramming in the domain specific knowledge I need for some project.
So just reading tech books is not very helpful at all, and needs to be supplemented with more general works from my experience.
G.
Even more interesting is that the effect measured only applies to paper books. When the same book is read from an e-format, there is no lasting effect. This coincides with other studies that show that reading an e-book utilizes different parts of the brain than an actual book. The e-book registers in the same areas used when watching tv or a movie. The pathways used to interpret the information presented are different.
All of that said, however, researchers indicate that more study is needed to determine if there is a bias to such data (book vs e-book) because most subjects being tested, grew up with traditional books. They estimate it will be another 10 to 15 years before adult subjects could be studied to see if growing up primarily with e-books alters the brain function in the same way. In otherwords, are the results for books because the subjects tested had their neural pathways developed using books (in which case would the results be the same if they had been formed by e-books)?
Regardless, though, the study shows that reading is good, or as they used to say in the 70s (in the US) Reading is FUNdamental.
Expensive tech aside, this is an example of monopoly even worse than MSFT's. Schools should have a say only over the course content, and that can be in form of a generic app designed to run on any device, even on a $25 Android tablet.
That would really be doable, particularly if the course content is all in HTML5. Then any device with an HTML5 capable browser could access the content. If the content doesn't need to be interactive then straight HTML or PDF would suffice.
Of course, with such an open approach, it is hard for any one company to monopolize the system, which is probably why it won't be done.
Kids are just going to destroy, abuse, and lose the expensive tech.
You are overgeneralising. My youngest son goes to a school that uses iPads. The kids all take their iPad to school every day, and after one and a half year, his one is still in perfect condition, and I think the whole class had one 'accident' over that period. The school found a pretty simple solution to prevent this: the parents pay for the iPads themselves...
Average life of a textbook 5-7 years. Will the iPad still be in usable shape, say six years from now? Textbooks that are beat up still are usuable, what about an iPad?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against using technology to educate kids, but school districts that are strapped for cash to start with should really do a cost benefit analysis (as related to education). OTOH, at least with iPads, the kids won't be creating all of those powerpoint persentations.
Here is the gist of my post -- where is the actual research that shows that learning in a school setting is increased by using an iPad (or any other tablet)? There is actually some that shows just the opposite, but even those studies are flawed and minimalistic. In short, before investing in and making such a paradigm change in education, shouldn't there be some sort of objective data to show it is warranted? As it is right now, all we have are ancedotal evidence.
Slashdot Mirror
:)
So $2 Billion/year cuts in Food Stamps leads to a $1.5 Billion/year increase in healthcare costs - sounds like a way to save a half billion dollars/year... Put another way, we need to spend $2 Billion in food subsidies to save $1.5 Billion in healthcare costs.
You could be right. OTOH, poor nutrition this year, leads to additional health care costs over several years, not just one -- particularly if children are involved. That said, the assumption in the article is that benefits would be cut. It's also possible to cut waste and fraud and not impact the nutritional aspect at all.
This whole thing is based on a flawed argument. It assumes that cutting food stamps will lead to decreased nutrition. That is truly a possibility, however, it is only one of many. It is also a possibility to tighten up the controls on food stamps without hurting nutrition at all. Usually this is accomplished by eliminating waste and fraud in the program.
The issue is not about the cuts, but how the cuts are made.
Sending a probe to Mars and sending 3,000 lbs to the ISS are two totally different things. First, if your programming is off just slightly, you miss Mars, or as we have seen previously, you crash into the planet and loose your probe. Hit the ISS with a capsule carrying that extra weight and you loose just more than the capsule.
But the real difference between the Orbital price and India is that India is reporting its actual cost. What Orbital charges NASA includes a hefty profit margin. The actual costs are significantly lower.
We can't have people hearing that humans aren't supposed to eat animals! Quick! Repeat "hunter-gatherer" over and over and over...
Human beings quite clearly aren't supposed to eat meat. Humans don't have claws. We can't open our mouths wide enough to grab an animal in our jaws, unless it's tiny. We most certainly can't kill animals by biting their vertebrae, or by biting them to death, again unless they're tiny. We can't run fast enough to catch animals.
But LOL at all the brainwashed Slashdot sociopaths who can't bring themselves to THINK or QUESTION what they eat. That would be like, scary, wouldn't it...
Your so-called 'friends' wouldn't like you if you started caring about innocent creatures who are brutally tortured to death, would they...
Of course, most scientists believe it was the added proteing from animal sources that enabled our brains to form as they did and become what today is known as homo sapiens. If nothing else, the amino acids needed to sustain homo sapiens cannot be found in every geographic location by using only plant sources. Unlike today, early humans didn't have the ability to ship produce around the world.
So, while there were early anscestors that didn't eat meat, it doesn't mean 1) they were human and 2) that homo sapiens shouldn't eat meat.
This is so stupid. An anscestor of modern homo sapiens was not an meat eater, big f*cking deal. If you go back far enough in the evolutionary chain, a really early anscestor relied on photosynthesis. This article isn't news.
Our planet is a data point of one, from which useful questions can be raised like: Why not elsewhere? The fact that Venus and Mars aren't teeming with life tells us things about where life cannot arise. (Or at least hasn't in the past few billion years)
They have to keep releasing these type of wildly speculative stories to keep interest up in science and technology. Because children have the right to dream fantastic dreams of the future and giving them meaningful goals and quests to set them upon is a duty of the current generation. Plus it's fantastically more productive than building hype about what the latest pop-star wore and whose baby she's carrying.
And yeah, reminding people about how cool science is really does help focus them on what's important and keep the research grant taps from shriveling up into nothing.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Before you can answer "Why not elsewhere?" You need to figure out how it began here. Explaining the creation of organic molecules in an early earth atmosphere is one thing. Even getting to the point of self-replicating molecules is not too terribly difficult. Getting from self-replicating molecules to even the simplest life -- that's the hard part and until we can figure that out (and no, it doesn't require a deity), anything we say about alien planet atmosphere sparking life is pure conjecture.
As for these inquisitive young minds, let's say we whet their appetite by these stories, what happens when what we've told them is shown to be untrue? We end up with a bunch of cynical adults who don't trust science, which leads to all sorts of problems (climate change and evolution are prime examples of this).
If you want to spark their imagination, have them read Jules Verne or some other piece of science fiction fiction.
Actually, If you're given the source, and allowed to modify the source, and run the modified source, then it is for all intents and purposes open source. Just because you have to pay to have access to that, doesn't mean it's not open source. If there's a problem, you are still able to fix the problem yourself, which is the main tenet of open source software.
You aren't free to redistribute the source, which is keeping it from being classified as open source, but otherwise, I agree, from the user perspective, it has all of the benefits of open source.
The mods on Ubuntu forums hand out refractions like there's no tomorrow. Anyone who has much as criticizes Unity or mentions the embeded sypware gets an immediate refraction.
If criticizing Ubuntu will get me a new tablet, sign me up! (Per wikipedia: " Refraction is essentially a surface phenomenon")
It's shocking to learn that SUSE/openSUSE are using proprietary forum software vBulleting as well as proprietary single sign on solution.
While vBulletin isn't under GPL, it is pretty liberal. You get the source code, you can modify and compile the source code, you may not redistribute it or remove the copyright notices. So, technically while not open source, your real limitation is in being allowed to redistribute it (not removing copyright is part of GPL, too).
How do you remember which bank it was in?
You look at your bank statement (or estatement). If you have multiple bank accounts, it will be the one with the safe deposit box charge on it. If you have multiple safe deposit boxes at different banks, well, at least it narrows down where you need to look.
The problem with this (along with other plans), is that if you get amnesia and forget your password, there may be the chance that you forget where you stored your password as well. So, to be a good plan, it has to involve you either stumbling on to it quickly, or having someone / something tell you it once they get news that you have amnesia.
Or a safe deposit box at your bank.
Let's not forget that the whole point of TARP was to infuse capital so banks could continue lending. Of course, there were no safeguards in place to ensure that outcome and instead the banks used the funds to purchase other assets and investments.
tarp was paid back so it is irrelevant.
True, it was paid back, but it doesn't change the OP's point. Nor, did the government make a good return on their "investment." While they did make a positive return, it was below what they could have received, which was by design. Put differently, if a business has the opportunity to invest $X amount and one investment yields a ROI of 15% and the other 3%, which would they choose? The government chose the 3%.
It's the distance.
The US parties may collude on a variety of things (like counterterrorism, or if you prefer, "counterterrorism") but they have significantly differing views on the relationship of the role of government to the citizenry and the economy. For instance, on the national level, the US Democratic party has been pushing for things like the recent health-care reform laws (for good or ill), additional environmental regulation, increases in the minimum wage, and other increases in taxes and spending which see the government taking a larger role in the economy, including transfer payments (welfare, etc). They also resent military spending as a rule. The Republican party pushes for less government involvement in the economy, lower/flatter tax regimes, market solutions to issues like healthcare and wages, and a regulatory regime which is not simply less stringent, but also more streamlined where it is in fact present (and they do not resent military spending, at least not as a rule).
Things are different outside the economic arena, true, but 2008-2016's top issues were, in order: the economy, the economy, and the economy. So.
The real difference between the two parties in the US is not about government involvement or welfare, but who the government involvement and welfare benefit. For the Democrats, the government inserts itself and provides welfare for the people, particularly the middle class and below. For the Republicans, the government inserts itself and provides welfare for corporations and the upper class (they don't call it welfare, however, instead using euphemisms such as incentives and subsidies). Regardless, both party is about expanding the role of government. They just disagree on who should be impinged on by the expansion.
'Why is the government mandating that you support a for-profit company?"
Works for Obamacare.
And the DMV for many states.
What a silly premise. Are tablets replacing notebook computers and using a 5 year window to compare against. Well, since prior to the iPad, tablets were a very small market and since the iPad wasn't available 5 years ago, of course it has seen explosive growth compared to notebooks. But seriously, tablets, for the most part are consumer products that also get used by businesses. Laptop/notebooks, on the otherhand are business products that also get used by consumers.
Put differently, worldwide, there are more bicycles purchased than automobiles, but nobody would suggest that bicycles are replacing automobiles. Bicycles and automobiles serve different needs as do tablets and notbooks.
If you are using with a tablet with a bluetooth keyboard, then you went from your 17" laptop to a desktop plus a netbook. The problem with the scenario you present is that when using the tablet for travel, you don't have access to the files, emails, etc. from your desktop. There are ways to mitigate this problem. For instance a web interface to your exchange server would suffice or using only web based email and web storage (of course your company has to be using exchange for that to work and a lot of companies hesitate to put their email and files on somebody else's web server (like Google)).
Yes a tablet can work for some of the functions a regular laptop or desktop provide, but if after switching, it is capable of doing most of what you were doing before, then you probably didn't need the platform you had before.
As for your virus quip, your iPad may not have a virus, but if you are access storage on your company's servers, then you still need to be leary of transmitting an infected file. Look at all of those servers running Linux. Just because the server is limited to a viral attact, doesn't mean that it still can't be used to transmit a virus to other Windows users. A walled garden only protects your iPad, not the other devices you use it to communicate with.
If one is regularly using a tablet with a keyboard, then all they have done is convert their tablet into a notebook and either a notebook or a asus transformer would have been a better choice.
just search slashdot, it was covered several times previously.
Even more interesting is that the effect measured only applies to paper books. When the same book is read from an e-format, there is no lasting effect.
Research or not the above is bullshit. I am reading Don Quixote right now - on an E Reader. I don't think my brain or me cares about how I read it.
You would be wrong. FMRI studies show that different areas of the brain are used depending on whether one reads a paper book or an e-book. Search slashdot, there were several articles related to those studies in the past.
Textbooks that are beat up still are usuable, what about an iPad?
Doesn't matter. The fad amongst e-textbooks is that they evaporate at the end of the term.
I'm glad I'm not in college these days. I still have most of my dead tree textbooks. Not just the job-related ones either. I find it entertaining to peruse them occasionally.
It does matter in the context of the post I was responding to, which referred to the longevity and durability of the iPad. Compared to a dead tree book that needs replacing every 5 to 7 years, on average, the iPad is not a longer lived solution, which is estimated to be 3 years. In addition, not only is there the cost of the iPad, but the cost of the e-books. So, K-12 will require 3 iPad purchases per student plus the cost of content. Books are the longer lived solution and cheaper once you figure in the cost of the iPads, the maintenance, and other costs associated with it.
Then again, if school administrators were good in financial calculations, they would probably be in a field other than school administration (not to slam them, but finance and accounting doesn't seem to be their strong point)
It seems as though it needs to be something with a lot of prose but either fiction or non-fiction works.
Moderately technical non-fiction is OK as long as it is interesting and mentally stimulating (makes you stop and think etc.).
But pure technical books don't seem to help at all and may just clutter things up with new knowledge that the brain is trying to assimilate. So for example pretty much anything from O'Reilly will not make me feel generally smarter even though it may be very good at cramming in the domain specific knowledge I need for some project.
So just reading tech books is not very helpful at all, and needs to be supplemented with more general works from my experience.
G.
Even more interesting is that the effect measured only applies to paper books. When the same book is read from an e-format, there is no lasting effect. This coincides with other studies that show that reading an e-book utilizes different parts of the brain than an actual book. The e-book registers in the same areas used when watching tv or a movie. The pathways used to interpret the information presented are different.
All of that said, however, researchers indicate that more study is needed to determine if there is a bias to such data (book vs e-book) because most subjects being tested, grew up with traditional books. They estimate it will be another 10 to 15 years before adult subjects could be studied to see if growing up primarily with e-books alters the brain function in the same way. In otherwords, are the results for books because the subjects tested had their neural pathways developed using books (in which case would the results be the same if they had been formed by e-books)?
Regardless, though, the study shows that reading is good, or as they used to say in the 70s (in the US) Reading is FUNdamental.
Expensive tech aside, this is an example of monopoly even worse than MSFT's. Schools should have a say only over the course content, and that can be in form of a generic app designed to run on any device, even on a $25 Android tablet.
That would really be doable, particularly if the course content is all in HTML5. Then any device with an HTML5 capable browser could access the content. If the content doesn't need to be interactive then straight HTML or PDF would suffice.
Of course, with such an open approach, it is hard for any one company to monopolize the system, which is probably why it won't be done.
Kids are just going to destroy, abuse, and lose the expensive tech.
You are overgeneralising. My youngest son goes to a school that uses iPads. The kids all take their iPad to school every day, and after one and a half year, his one is still in perfect condition, and I think the whole class had one 'accident' over that period. The school found a pretty simple solution to prevent this: the parents pay for the iPads themselves...
Average life of a textbook 5-7 years. Will the iPad still be in usable shape, say six years from now? Textbooks that are beat up still are usuable, what about an iPad?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against using technology to educate kids, but school districts that are strapped for cash to start with should really do a cost benefit analysis (as related to education). OTOH, at least with iPads, the kids won't be creating all of those powerpoint persentations.
Here is the gist of my post -- where is the actual research that shows that learning in a school setting is increased by using an iPad (or any other tablet)? There is actually some that shows just the opposite, but even those studies are flawed and minimalistic. In short, before investing in and making such a paradigm change in education, shouldn't there be some sort of objective data to show it is warranted? As it is right now, all we have are ancedotal evidence.