Viewing profile — jtbigwoo

I worked for a company that ran a pretty big, high-security data center--75,000 square feet serving thousands of customers. There was a team of 6-8 technicians and a couple dozen s…

We, as a society, set up rules to allow the people to have a voice in decisions via various means including public meetings and various review procedures. There is a cost to these …

I think the problem is that Microsoft's hardware quality is super inconsistent. We had a ton of employees using Surface laptops and tablets at my previous company, particularly sal…

As someone who about programming and electronics, but knows very little about parallel computing, is this a good place to start? Does anybody have other resources or projects to re…

I help to run a once-a-week STEAM program for kids. Here's what we've found about cheap tools. + When they are new to a program, kids and parents care about how tools look. We have…

>> I bet their accounting practices are just as screwed up. The difference is that proper accounting has laws behind it. If your accounting practices are crooked enough, executives…

I did a fair amount of volunteering in my kids' school. There is a huuuuge difference between the effective teachers and the teachers that parents like. The school is a public scho…

I volunteer with two organizations--one group serves mostly privileged high achievers (kids on track to be lawyers, architects, etc.) while the other is made up of kids who are pro…

I think the point of most pump and dump schemes is getting someone else to buy so that you can sell and leave others holding the bag. Other scams are probably more like MtGox where…

>> I'll defend the parent comment by observing that we can reproduce this effect with non-judicial metrics, like "murder rate in majority foo-race communities". Assuming the report…

Auto and life insurance are usually more expensive for men, but health insurance is usually more expensive for women. It would be interesting to see who comes out ahead overall.

Since the 80's, the state of Montana has banned insurance underwriting based on gender. There have been attempts to reverse that law, but none have passed. My male Montana cousins …

Fun fact: The rules on coworker dating in the post-WWII era were originally intended to get the woman to quit. Here's how it worked: A company would hire a bunch of high school or …

My mother-in-law has a cabin in northern Minnesota. It's three miles outside a town of 150 people. Her utility lines are buried. Meanwhile, I live four miles from the center of a m…

So let's put together some assumptions: 1. Company X is smart enough to never record this illegal policy in documents/email/etc. 2. The policy is verbally communicated to all recru…

It's not clear from the articles I've read. Here's one that references some of the research: http://educationnext.org/all-together-now/

A minor quibble: The state subsidizes all public colleges, most likely including your community college. Where I live (Minnesota) that subsidy accounts somewhere around half of the…

It turns out to be more complicated than you're thinking. Lower- and average-performing kids get a greater benefit from mixed classes than higher performers. However, high performe…

>> The best insurance policy for your career is to be really good at your job, which means working on your job instead of networking. This isn't true, in my experience. I have a fe…

>> There is an argument to be made for not having corporate tax. Corporations are just collections of people, owners and employees. Forming a corporation allows me to gain benefits…

So many fascinating possibilities to this data. It would be interesting to see the next hundred schools. Places like Michigan State or Minnesota have so many students that it'd be …

They absolutely did. Look up the origins of the Chicago Teachers' Union or the fire fighter's union in Pittsburgh. Even today, government employee unions face serious challenges to…

You want to hear an insane story about why we need teachers' unions? This neighbor of mine was a teacher for 45 years, starting back in the 1940's. She found her first job in a lit…