fastfinner

EXACTLY!!! There are so many people who are trying to come and contribute to the US society through legal means. They run into all kinds of obstacles and barriers. Meanwhile it's OK to get a citizenship through fake passports?

I want to get on a tangent inspired from your comment. Myself included, many Hacker News readers would probably be in the BS-detecting, questioning, critical category of students. However, I personally really think that every school child can become great at something, regardless of whether they are the little questioners in the classroom or not. And I personally think that an education system that labels children into "regular" and "advanced" is not a good idea, because it really hurts the self-esteem of the "regular" students.

My point is: different flavors, different emphasis, different difficulty in homework among the essentially same-subject classes is fine. However, we should phrase education as an experience with choices, especially for pre-college (because their personalities are very malleable, imo), instead of making kids feel like they are laggards.

Wow I never associated squeamishness with physicality/abstractness of the idea. It does seem to hold up!

I think Facebook is highly used 1) in countries with the latin alphabet and 2) by people who have friends/contacts in countries with latin alphabets.

That's the market Alty seems to be after and that's a lot more difficult to conquer than making a facebook alternative for China or Russia.

I also like the feel of books and the easy way to mark stuff with a pencil. What I hate, though, is the weight of the books and the hassle to store them, to transport them on a daily basis (student), move them from city to city with airline luggage limits. Erases all the love I had for the convenience when reading.

ic, thanks. I hope the day when every book can be purchased in electronic form comes soon!

I meant on my existing books. Most not available as e-books (proprietary study materials, certificate course materials, books in other languages, ...).

This system doesn't allow for going paper-free on books, right? Unless you rip the pages individually?

I couldn't agree more.