1: Education needs the parents back in charge. Yes, that means some bad decisions, but it will have more people involved with the education of their own children. As a parent of a 4th grader, I can tell you I am all but excluded from a lot of the decisions that get made for him at school.Too much money is being spent in administration of the school system, and that takes precious resources away from the teachers themselves. Parents can be counted on to do more for their children. We are waiting for the opportunity.

2: Technology could make schools more interactive for the purpose of easing the burden on teachers. Teachers don't need home rooms, students do. Then you only have to move around teachers to the virtual desk they have in the system. The result is less time in the halls for the students, and more time in a familiar place.

What camera would you recommend for getting into basic photography?

Have you considered an iphone? The photo quality is really good and the latest is 8 megapixel. You won't leave it behind, and given the price points of cameras, not a bad deal if you are talking about taking pictures of family and friends. If you want to take a larger variety of pictures and you need more features, like optical zoom, try the Canon PowerShot ELPH 300 HS. It is fast, simple, and cheap.

"But I don't have the expertise to know at what point spending more money isn't going to do me, as a camera newbie, any good. Any thoughts?"

If you want to stop spending at couple of hundred, go with a quality smartphone or a small point and shoot. If you consider spending more than 300, you should wait, get comfortable fiddling with the settings of a point and shoot (take a class), and then buy an Cannon or Nikon DSLR. Beyond that, it does not make sense to burn $600-$2000 on a device you are not committed to lugging around.

I use the Pulse Pen as well and it flat out works. Not only can you sync audio with your notes (which not all professors allow), but your handwritten notes are searchable after you upload the information and the battery lasts for days.

Really? We should not forget where the current economic meltdown began. Congress, particularly one committee in the House, regulated and looked out for the interests of the nation monitoring the financial health of Fannie and Freddie Mac. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, both high ranking members of that committeereceived the most political money from Fannie Mae and Fannie Mac over the past 10 years (Obama was in the top 3 as well [quite the coup for someone who has not been in politics that long]). Their failed oversight may have gotten Dodd a sweetheart deal on his home loan, but the rest of us? We get the to pay for the bailout. Those two knuckleheads are still on Congress.

When a company fails, it fails a percentage of the people. When government fails, it fails all of the people.

Accountability in government is a shell game.

To be fair, Microsoft's customization data is from users who participate in their "Customer Experience Improvement Program." If 2% of slashdot users are in it, I would be surprised. I am currently in the program only because I have Office 2007 and I want to represent aggravated users.

Ireland maybe the least "EU" of the EU countries. They voted no on the last EU constitution mainly to protect their lower corporate tax rates, which is bringing a lot of business to Ireland.

We need tax reform (simplification, clarity, yada yada yada), both personal and corporate, not just tax increases.

If they are losing money, they are not being taxed anyway (even the federal tax code has limits).

Just between us, are you comfortable with a newspaper's independence if government officials and bureaucrats can threaten their tax-exempt status?

Couple this with the return of the fairness doctrine, and you have a recipe for an Orwellian experience.

I would prefer that they turned the video off.

Not everyone who uses the internet is out to watch television.

Just a few things:

A test of internal controls has nothing to do with a company's solvency. A company can be hemorrhaging cash and have excellent controls in place to protect from theft of money and information.

The argument is that the law of diminishing returns applies to government regulation and you can reach a point of over-regulation. Since law is not a monolith we have passed that point in some areas and clearly haven't in others.

There are still people who believe that government cannot solve every problem, and, to stay on topic, the current financial crisis happened with SOX in place. The real problem is that government requires businesses to invest in unprofitable markets and then deregulates when the businesses complain about being over regulated. They create a company (Fannie Mae) then allow said company's leadership to contribute to its regulators in Congress. After 20 years of new laws, unwillingness to repeal older laws, and turning a blind eye, the system is left to teeter until it does the inevitable.

Yes and no. If a non-publicly traded company wants to do business with a company that falls under SOX, they may be subject to additional requirements (like an audit of internal controls). SOX is much bigger than most people think and bad for business.