...But what you've just said proves that you didn't even bother to read three sentences into the article summary on Slashdot. You only read the headline and jumped to your own conclusion.
First, here's what you missed from the article summary:
Once Sprint began knocking on their doors asking to license their spectrum -- once they began seeing dollar signs in a forgotten resource -- dozens, then hundreds of these organizations applied to the FCC to renew long-dormant licenses.
The article itself goes on to explain further how these school districts never used this wireless spectrum, how some didn't even know they owned it, until Verizon came knocking at their door. Only after Verizon came asking for rights to the spectrum did the schools and non-profits step up and try to renew licenses that they already let expire.
On the one hand, these businesses are playing dirty pool and are only stopping Verizon's development of that wireless spectrum because of the money. On the other hand, that slice of the wireless spectrum (2.5 GHz band) was specifically reserved for school & non-profit use, and was never meant to be utilized for commercial development.
My personal opinion: let Verizon have it. Verizon's attempting to buy out a slice of the spectrum to develop a privately-owned wireless network. While they expect everyone to buy Verizon equipment to exclusively operate on that frequency, chances are the market will prefer public-access frequencies that are more widely available and cheaper. Let them waste their money.
In the past, she said, students were only allotted 10MB of server space on the school's network. "We knew this year [students] would be creating movies and doing other things, [so] they needed a lot more space," she said.
School admin here. This quote is just laughable. Granted, up until last year, I had my students set at 100 MB apiece. Looking at the quota log, most students could get along just fine with 25 MB, although those who have more usually just have too many pictures saved up.
But, as soon as we started up doing a multimedia class last year using PhotoShop and Movie Maker, 100 MB was laughable. Some PS projects alone were 60-70 MB, and editing raw video requires ~200 MB per minute of video data. I upped these kids to 300 MB, and when they worked on videos, it was in a separate lab that let students save their data to the hard drives.
I can understand the desire to have portability for students and staff, but that's what thumb drives are for. Besides, there are a number of families who still do not have online access yet.
Most rural areas have not been deregulated. Unless the area was a "Bell Holdings Company" (owned by Ma Bell before the company was split), regulations still exist preventing competition in that region. Whoever owns the area has every [legal] right to say no to expansion.
I wrote an earlier post on the subject about the same thing going on in my neck of the woods.
Justice department lawyers have argued that, even if the pair of lawyers were monitored, judging the president's authority to do so requires looking at the specific reasons why the duo were surveilled. And those facts would be national secrets that would tip off terrorists, so no court can ever rule on the program.
"This is not to say there is no forum to air the weighty matters at issue, which remains a matter of considerable public interest and debate, but that the resolution of these issues must be left to the political branches of government," Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief on the case.
They may as well have just taken a copy of the Constitution, shat all over it, and filed that as their legal brief. It's like they're arguing that the entire third article of the Constitution does not apply to them.
"Within the past few weeks, students across Boerne ISD were being called into offices to discuss the use of proxies to circumvent the schools websense system."
Have a line in the students' Acceptable Use Policy that says students are not permitted to use proxy sites to circumvent IT security systems. Of course, I don't punish a student just for using a proxy site though...they always use them in conjunction with accessing webpages that are blocked. If a student used a proxy to access playboy.com, he'd lose his internet access for a month...for looking at an adult website, not for using the proxy.
The problem is that some of these students are being suspended from school for up to 3 months at a time.
Why? What damage was done? If they were suspended 3 months for using a proxy to look up porn, I'd say it was unjustified. To access MySpace? Likewise. On the other hand, if they were using proxies to do some serious business...running rogue file servers, distributing illegal MP3s and movies, and filtering the traffic through a proxy...then I could see some justification. (I'm sure someone's going to flame me for that comment and say 3 months of suspension is still ludicrous, but I'll back it up if I have to.)
Shouldn't the school district be liable for their own insecurity?
Shouldn't students be liable for their misuse of the school's network? The answer to both questions is yes. Realize, though, that there are proxy sites that are incredibly frustrating to block. kproxy.com for example... go ahead and find out how many servers are managed by kproxy.com. They have valid hostnames ranging from www.kproxy.com, www0.kproxy.com - www9.kproxy.com, and www00.kproxy.com - www99.kproxy.com. I'm never too happy about kids forcing me to have to go through and take the time to block off that many IPs. And who says that kproxy will keep the same address range a week from now? I have a lot of better things to do with my time then actively police the websites students visit. I trust them to use the internet for purposes that do not interfere with the AUP. When they think they have the right to screw around and bypass security just because they're capable of doing so, that's when the school has to step in and remind them that they don't have that right just because they're savvy computer users.
...and obviously, I'm not going for mod-points here, since the article's so far down in the thread, but let me say these few things:
1) Sorry about the slander vs. libel mix-up, I always get those mixed around.
2) I do not disagree that the principal overreacted. He went way off the deep end, and I'm aware that he looks like a bigger fool now than when he just had the false myspace pages.
3) What I'm absolutely floored at is that no one is really putting any blame here on the teenagers. Just because they're teens doesn't let them off the hook. As a teacher, I've been made fun of plenty of times (a few bulletin boards allegedly claim that I'm gay and the like...). It (unfortunately) goes with the territory. But just because it exists doesn't mean that it's ok, and just because students do it doesn't mean they have a right to. If we catch someone doing that, they'll get suspended. I would expect that a minimally-appropriate punishment would be a week's suspension plus a letter of apology from each student responsible for posting the page.
4) IANAL, but the internet is still a gray area in terms of the legal sense of the word "publish." Plus, I have not seen these myspace pages, so I don't know how over-the-top they are. It may just have a bitmapped picture of a dick attached to his face, or someone may have posted a realistic-looking resume that claims that he was fired from his last two positions. The former wouldn't be grounds for libel, the later would. And with lawyers nowadays, we all know that it's the lawyers that bend the law to their will, so even a dickface might be called libel if spun the right way in court.
I'm sticking up for the principal, because I know where the anger is coming from. It's not easy to be a teacher and to work hard to help students who keep mocking you. The principal may have gone on a power trip, and that's where he went wrong, but it's still wrong for students to do this. They were caught, and they need to learn that what they did was wrong. Don't just blame the principal (even if he was the bigger ass) and let the kids off the hook.
...but let me defend the principal, at least on some grounds.
These teenagers, as well as most teenagers in general, do not understand and will not consider implications of their actions before doing something stupid. They especially don't understand that when you post something on the internet, it is a form of publication; the world is able to read what you wrote. Purposefully publishing lies in printed form with the willful intent to harm someone's reputation is called slander, and is punishable by law. These kids clearly did exactly that. The principal's daughter was emotionally distraught when she discovered the pages, as well as the principal. The student's work was malicious in nature. An apology isn't going to make up for the harm that was done.
I will agree that the principal overreacted in regards to obliterating access to a computer in the school, but I can understand where his anger is coming from.
First off, I love Wikipedia. There's no quicker, more efficient resource to obtain background information from. And not just "encyclopediaish" information (ex: What is the population of Bermuda? or In what year did Napoleon invade Russia?) If you want to know exactly what "Numa Numa" is and the name of that fat dude on the webcam, Wikipedia has it.
That being said, it's just not an academic resource. It's not. For the same reasons why I love Wikipedia (modern, up-to-date, and information available for all to modify), it cannot be used as an academic resource. One of the suggestions in the article read, "And then once the user's bona fides have been verified in this or some other way, couldn't they put their seal of approval on any article whose contents need to be considered reliable, or that readers want to cite as an authoritative source?"
People can still change that article. What was certified one day can still be changed the next. I can almost anonymously say that Pat Robertson is an athiest, or that Hugo Chavez loves to eat little children for breakfast. And while ten minutes later, someone else might read that and correct the mistake, in those ten minutes, some high school kid could go and do a research paper on that subject, cite Wikipedia as their source, and turn in a paper saying that Pat Robertson is an actual athiest. Granted, this does bring up a different problem that kids are unable to accurately judge the reliability of internet resources, but that's another subject for another thread.
The point I'm trying to make is that Wikipedia's a wonderful resource, but it's not an academic resource. Academic resources need to remain consistantly credible in their work and their publications. Wikipedia cannot guarantee this without impeding on their current principals of freely editing content.
From the article: The cheap A4 desktop printer...is just one of the revolutionary new devices promised by Silverbrook, a company which holds more than 1400 patents, but has never released a product.
So, they're patent whores for one. According to Silverbrook's website, they were founded in 1994. If you can't bring a product to market after filing over 1400 patents over 13 years, something's not adding up right. How does the business survive for 13 years without a product at market?
From the article: Other products that Silverbrook says will be made possible by the new technology are a $150, desktop photo printer that prints 30 photos per minute (shown in the video above). This is more than 10 times faster than all existing desktop products, and 2 to 3 times faster than the speediest competitor, HP's new Edgeline printer, which is not available in a retail product for ordinary consumers.
So, HP, a huge corporation that's been in business for 68 years, resources and research labs that make you drool, can't figure out how to make an inkjet printer that prints a photo every two seconds, then a tiny little David-of-a-company, who's never ever made a single product before in their company history, is able to smack the giant down at their own game.
From the video: Things to be skeptical about: 1) You never see any blank paper, so how do you know that the printer is actually printing anything? 2) Each page comes out with ink completely dry and perfect. The ink alone should create at least a little wetness and curling. 3) On the A4 printer, where's the paper tray? I don't see any try in the back, which means it has to curl up from the bottom. But every page comes flat, no curl whatsoever. 4) On the A4 printer, the paper doesn't flop around like paper. It falls perfectly into place, like it has additional weight to it. Rather unnatural for a typical deskjet printer.
From the comment board: "LarryTWorth" writes, I admit, now I'm impressed. All the same, I'm curious to know how the will handle the problem of the ink drying up and blocking the printhead. With such small nozzles, it could be that they will get blocked more easily.
Magically, two "anonymous" commenters write in reply:
Interesting thought. But if they can do what they have done do you not think they have already thought of that solution. To spend what they must have spent to develop this, they would not release it only to be blocked by such a simple question as will the ink dry up. Come on world let's embrace the new thinkers and get a positive attitude,
and, "Thats a good point. If i had to guess, I'd say they'll probably do what the newer HPs do, which is run ink from the cartridges quickly through the print head, then suck it back into the cartridge. On the other hand, clearly this company has a few tricks up their sleeves that HP can't touch, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some new impressive technology that eliminates that problem, though that seems improbable."
Amazingly positive for a pair of anonymous cowards. My apologies to both for not "embracing the new thinkers."
If you go to Silverbrook's own website, for having such marvelous new technology, I'm amazed to see how empty the website is, devoid of any real depth of information other than these new technologies that they herald. Plus, the company's headquarters are in Australia of all places. Any mates out there in New South Wales who care to check out this address for us: 393 Darling Street, Balmain NSW 2041 Australia ?
It may sound humorous, but the parent makes an important point that these educators don't seem to understand. Kids see games as entertainment, and they will only engage themselves insofar as they remain entertained. In Oregon Trail, there was always that option to "Talk With People," where you would learn historical facts and viewpoints, but that only slowed me down from getting to Oregon. The point I'm sure the parent post was trying to make was that kids only absorb information in a game when it's directly a part of gameplay, and even then, they're only snippets of information. (To be absolutely honest, I still don't know exactly what dysentery is, even though I can attribute probably 500 character deaths to it over my lifetime of playing Oregon Trail.)
I think many educators do not understand that engagement in a game does not mean a child will be learning anything from it. Here's the difference:
When a child is engaged in learning, learning is the goal they set upon themselves, and they seek information to further their understanding of what they are studying. Since learning is the goal, information they find on their research brings them further to their goal.
When a child is engaged in a game, winning the game is the goal they set upon themselves, and they seek information to further their understanding of what they are playing. Since winning is the goal, information they find during their gameplay brings them further to their goal.
The information you gain when playing a game is very fragmented, because you only absorb enough that you need to get you closer to winning. As the parent poster noted, you don't know what dysentery is, you only know that it's bad and it kills your characters.
It's funny you say that because I've always thought it was funny that you couldn't show a nipple on TV, but you could show a bomb going off and killing people in a crowded hospital or somebody getting shot.
I just watched the movie This Film is Not Yet Rated. Kirby Dick does an amazing job opening up a peephole into the MPAA. He reveals to the audience that there is no formal criteria for what makes a PG movie a PG movie, and what makes it different from a PG-13 or an R-rated movie. (Although he does a hilarious Flash-like animation that describes the obvious differences between the ratings, but to the MPAA, there is no formal, published criteria.) The only judges who determine what rating a movie gets are people hired by the MPAA to sit in a room and judge for themselves, without any rules or guidelines to follow whatsoever. What bugs the movie industry so much is that this "process" is kept a complete secret to everyone, including movie producers, outside the MPAA, and no one is "supposed" to know who is on this panel of raters (though Kirby Dick uses a private investigator to discover who is on the panel, and reveals that to the audience).
The documentary does a fantastic job as well exposing the double-standard between rating sex and rating violence. Here's an interesting fact taken from the movie: if the producers of a movie ask for the aid and equipment of the US armed forces, military commanders require their personal screening of the movie before it is allowed to be distributed. If they find any objectionable content which they determine sheds the military in a bad light, they'll demand the content be pulled or edited, less the movie never sees the light of day.
I guess there are reasons for why we encourage our kids to watch violence.
The person or organization that can devise a method to remove at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere will be able to claim the bounty. There are a few catches, of course. There can't be any negative impact on the environment.
That's like asking a baker to take all that unhealthy fat out of a doughnut, but not have it have any impact on the taste. It would be foolish of Branson to think that you can make a dramatic change to the chemical makeup of our atmosphere, but not have any "negative" consequences. Plants need CO2, so removing it from the atmosphere might harm plant life. Temperatures will decrease (probably), and I'm sure that there's at least some species of wildlife that's now thriving with the warmer temperatures. Wind paterns will change. Climate patterns will change. To expect absolutely no "negative impact" on the environment is foolhardy.
I think Tubes looks like it will catch on. If sites like Facebook and Technorati implement some hooks into it, there is no telling where this could go.
I'm already worrying about how I'll need to block its data traffic.
This is exactly what kids will love. Kids love to share parts of their life with their friends. They share photos. They share messages. They share stories. Poems. Videos. Every kid socially needs to define themself, and the internet has become a great way to do it.
Why has myspace (& its clones, which I'll just wrap together in the name "myspace") become so popular? Kids love to share who they are online. After watching the presentation, this tool lets them do that more than ever. They can define tubes that connect them with their friends, their cliques, their relatives...whole social circles can now be defined in this program. Myspace only organizes "friends," but it doesn't organize "networks of friends" like Tubes appears to do.
While I don't think this app will replace myspace, I can see it being a part of the page...almost like subscribing to an RSS feed. Why bother posting links to hundreds of files on a website (personal, commercial, or otherwise), when you can just "tube" that page? (I'm not trying to be the first to verbify the name of the program, i.e. "google", but if Tubes catches on...I can say I was the first to lay claim to its usage!) You could pull up a sidebar in your web window, select that tube, and automatically have access to all the data they share.
There is one drawback, however...everything gets downloaded to your hard drive. And with up to 2GB of storage per tube...well, let's just say that 300GB hard drives might just not hold the needs of your typical social 14-year-old teenage girl anymore.
Please sit down and shut up. Take your issues that you had in high school, and treat them as your issues, rather than overly-generalizing them to make it appear as though you understand every problem ever related to schools and education.
I'm a teacher (math and computer). I'm also a tech coordinator. I wear both hats at my school. I've been studying, taking apart, assembling, and troubleshooting PCs for 12 years. And I take offense to anyone who says "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach." If you were to take the time and evaluate MANY teachers, you would see how much time and effort we put into helping students, as well as research how to better educate students in our discipline(often through professional teacher organizations...I myself belong to the MCTM...www.mctm.org).
Sadly, even at my school, I have seen and am upset with some teachers who do not give a rat's ass about the students they teach, and I wish that administrators and teachers got a lot more serious about evaluating teachers' behavior and teaching inside and outside the classroom. It upsets me a great deal to see how much time and effort I put into helping a student learn, both about a particular subject and about the world & life in general, in hopes that I can build trust with students and show them I care about their lives, only to have that trust destroyed by a teacher who makes rather damning comments to students demonstrating apathy to their profession. Yet while I have met and even work with a few teachers who behave this way in one way or another, I will not sit by and watch some stupid punk think that we teachers are a waste of space.
There are so many students that depend on us teachers for social and academic support. We don't just sit and twiddle our thumbs when kids ask us questions. We understand our discipline. (I, as well as the vast majority of teachers, majored in their discipline in college; if you want to discredit our education, you may as discredit your own, assuming you graduated from college, at least.) Most of us have a great passion for it, as well as for helping other students learn to love it as well. And if you wanted us to actually demonstrate that in a job, I certainly could do so. But I would find great boredom in, say, being an actuary, doing nothing but number-crunching for 8 hours straight. And I've tried tech support before, but to be quite honest, I don't like living an OfficeSpace-kinda life. I actually enjoy being around other people and talking with them, teaching them, interacting with them, and even watching them grow and being a part of it!
And it's teachers like me who help make the students who become a part of your work force. They're not just born smart, stupid.
Theoretically I have already paid for all the content the BBC produces. Therefore I should own the copyright to it?
Your incorrect on your wording. The BBC owns the copyright, or "right to copy (distribute)", the content they produce. If you buy a DVD published by the BBC, you own that DVD. You have property rights to the DVD (meaning you can buy the DVD, own and watch the DVD, and sell the DVD), but you have no rights to distribute the contents of said DVD.
I think what you're trying to get at, and I want to make clear for everyone, is that this is clearly a legal case of double-dipping. This Universal rep makes it quite clear in his quote:
In the words of Universal Music's Doug Morris, 'These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it.
Right now, Universal (as represented by the RIAA) is suing the pants off of anybody they catch pirating music. Without bringing into question the validity of these lawsuits, if Universal is going to sue people for violating copyright, they certainly cannot also impose taxes under the assumption that people are violating copyright. Doing both is what is known as double-dipping; you collect payment assuming that people violate copyright, then you collect payment again when you catch them violating copyright.
Clearly, Universal hasn't consulted with their legal department on this issue. But then again...I suppose if you're paying your lawyers (and the government) enough, you can tell them what the law is supposed to be...
The Reason Foundation is yet another free-market think tank that believes that eliminating government oversight in the broadband sector will result in broadband utopia.
In my neck of the woods, there is a small community called Lake George, MN. Lake George is a nice small lakeside tourist town, population ~150 and growing. It's got a few nice cafes, some tourist shops. They just got their first apartment complex, and there's a lot of tourist dollars that go there every summer. There's a lot of people that would love to live there year-round, but there's a problem. Their phone provider is CenturyTel, based out of Louisiana. CenturyTel has NO PLANS to build broadband infrastructure there in Lake George. From a business standpoint, I can understand. There's no reason to. It would cost to much to create that kind of infrastructure just so that maybe 50 households could sign up.
But everybody in the area knows about Paul Bunyan.net. They're a regional provider that delivers phone, internet, and cable all in one package for $80. Nobody can offer a better bundled package. Sure, we can sign up with Charter for cable internet and TV, and Qwest for phone access, but it's not the same price. Paul Bunyan Coop has been doing a fantastic job offering cable and broadband internet access to rural areas surrounding Bemidji, MN. (Here's a map showing their whole service area. Mind you, Laporte is a town with 150 people, and they offer service in the ENTIRE township.)
Now, why do I bring these two different companies into the picture? Because Paul Bunyan just got awarded a government contract to lay lines into Itasca State Park. Itasca State Park is located about 10 miles west of...guess where...LAKE GEORGE!!! They were laying the lines right down Main Street in the town just last week! And yet, legally, they cannot build infrastructure in Lake George. They have to run the line straight through. And why is that, when they're laying an access line right through the town? Oh, here's the kicker everybody...get this...since Lake George never was owned by Ma Bell (and many rural areas weren't...there's a specific legal name for this condition...can't remember it for the moment), since Lake George's phone lines were never built by Ma Bell, they aren't subject to deregulation laws like the larger communities are. So, CenturyTel has exclusive rights to offer telecommunications service to Lake George. And they're not selling.
Deregulation my ass. Companies will do whatever they want with whatever they have exclusive access to. Big Business isn't going to build jack squat in rural America. Three cheers for the regional Coop's that are willing to bring modern telecommunications access to the rest of the country.
God forbid the Boy Scouts teach kids how to obey the law!
As an Eagle Scout, I can say first-hand that the Boy Scouts DOES teach scouts how to obey the law. Here are a few examples:
One of the twelve points of the Scout Law (a moral code which all scouts pledge to follow and uphold) is that every scout is obedient, to leaders, and to the law.
Scouts, as they work towards their Eagle Scout rank, are required to obtain the Citizenship in the Community, Nation, and World merit badges (three separate badges) that teach scouts how the law is created, legal methods in changing and upholding law, as well as what it means to be good citizens in the community.
However, I am personally sad to see special interest groups who are imposing a political agenda upon scouts. Once upon a time, scouting was about kids discovering themselves. While there was a core set of requirements which every scout was expected to achieve as they worked their way up the ranks (the basic skills of camping, first aid, being a leader...), there were hundreds of merit badges which scouts could work towards and earn, depending on what interests they had. A great example of this was when Spielberg, himself an Eagle Scout, helped create the Cinematography merit badge, for any scout who may have an interest in learning more about movie making. Looking back, the most amazing thing about scouts was all the opportunities I had to learn about new things, as well as all the people who willingly worked so hard to offer me those opportunities.
Nowadays, I feel more and more that special-interest groups, including but not limited to the RIAA, are seeing scouting as a vehicle for "indoctrinating" their agendas onto future leaders of America (and believe you me when I say that Eagle Scouts truly are leaders). I was asked last year by a parent if I could be a merit badge counselor for the Computer merit badge. As the tech coordinator at my school, I thought it would be a great chance to catch-up with boy scouts again. I opened up the merit-badge book, and lo-and-behold, one of the requirements to obtain the merit badge was for scouts to be able to understand and give examples of piracy, whether it was burning CDs or P2P. This had NOTHING to do with learning about computers, how they work, learning about how to create documents, spreadsheets, and databases, and programming a computer. This was a political agenda, and it didn't sit well with me.
Scouts are certainly educated every day about how to be obedient to the rules and be good citizens of this country. But I want scouts to find and grow their own ideals, not have them spoon-fed by the RIAA.
It appears artists and labels will have the choice when digging into Google's pockets either through a business deal or lawsuit. Which will they pick?"
If I was a musical artist, and I discovered one of my songs in a YouTube video that had a million views, I would write a letter of personal thanks to YouTube for promoting my song! Where else am I going to get that widespread promotion without hiring a record company to help negotiate with Big Radio? And besides, even with a really good hit record, record companies have to pay to play and promote almost anything now days. But YouTube is completely free. You can't get a better deal than that.
But unfortunately, record companies have always been like hawks seeking their prey, and a million song views in their eyes is like a million field mice all waiting to be swooped down on. A million views means a lot of royalty money that could be earned if royalty deals were in place. They control music distribution via radio, TV, movies...but darn that blasted internet.
From the submission: I am curious what other Slashdot folks are experiencing, and I am also wondering if I say, 'Please remove from any list that you have.' when I am called, will this do any good?"
From the parent post: Also note that once you say one of those two phrases, they are required to give the three pieces of information they need for every call if they have not yet mentioned them, and then terminate the call immediately...Again, this is if they're following the rules.
That phrase right there sums it all up. I heard this exact same explanation from a student of mine at school who worked for a legit telemarketer. If you say the magic words, "Add me to your do not call list," they are required to follow the rules and do follow the rules. If they do not follow the rules, they will be fined big time by the FCC. However, the US is powerless against some calling agency operating out of Costa Rica, who doesn't give a rip about telecommunication laws. These people will war-dial phone numbers at unscrupulous hours of the evening, varying their tactics anywhere from constant nagging to actually demanding that you buy from them, even sometimes claiming that you've already established an "oral agreement" to make a purchase that you cannot back down from without penalty. (I've heard stories of telemarketers saying anything from, "We already have your name and address, and we will file suit if you break your oral agreement," to, "We have your banking account information, have this conversation recorded for proof of transaction, and we will proceed with making an electronic withdrawl from your checking account whether you like it or not.")
The national do-not-call list will help keep the legit soliciters at bay. But the bad guys...well...international law is a bitch.
Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it."
From the parent post...
So, if this lecturer is claiming it is extra effort to produce lecture notes, then he is not doing his job, frankly.
One of my disappointments in college was to find that every professor has their own theory of what they are "obligated" to offer as professor at a university. Some professors see classes as an obligatory tax paid in return for support from the university; they see themselves first and foremost as scholars in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and classes are a burden yet a formality of the lifestyle which they choose. These professors walk into a lecture, often times purposefully parading their vast genius before their students to deter the weak-minded, confuse the passive learner, and leave the few that actually possess a parallel academic mastery in that field busy with such a plethora of challenging thought and theory that the majority of students are left in shock, unable to question one who has made them feel inferior. These professors are not interested in helping students; they are only interested in helping themselves. And they see the only people that they need to impress are the deans, the boards, and their colleages. One of my old college profs told me about a math professor he had at Vanderbilt who taught his lectures in a rectangular hall; two of the four walls were lined with chalkboards, with the second chalkboard ending right at the door to the hall. The professor would come in, set his briefcase right by the door, walk to the opposite end of the hall, grab his chalk, being lecturing and writing on the chalkboard, continuing to walk, chalk, and talk his way across one blackboard, across the second blackboard, finishing at the end of the blackboard, putting down the chalk, grabbing his briefcase, and exiting the room, signaling the end of the lecture.
On the other hand, I encountered many professors who would go above and beyond their "contractual obligations," providing lecture notes, plenty of office time, and especially individual instruction for anyone who did not understand the lecture the first time around. What was really neat was that the foreign professors (many of which were IMPOSSIBLE to understand the first time around) were especially willing to try their best to help students out of the classroom. I guess they themselves especially understood what opportunity really means.
I personally wish that universities would do a better job at defining obligations of professors, for both the students' benefit and the universities'. I think students who can expect professors to offer additional help and encouragement, rather than (through verbal or nonverbal communication) be made to feel incompetent and stupid, will feel a lot more comfortable about their own knowledge and seek that which they don't understand. As the old Unix fortune goes, "Those who don't know, and know that they don't know, they are ignorant. Teach them."
Oh, and one final bit of advice for students: go to class. You're paying for it. Don't miss class and then expect the professor to bend over backwards for you. Don't demand another opportunity when you pass up the one provided for you.
No longer in development, but still powerful...
on
FreeDOS 1.0 Released
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· Score: 2, Informative
Network admin here. I take care of about 150 computers in a small school district. I've been using Ghost 8 for the last two years, and it's worked great. For a boot disk, I've been using Bart's Boot Disk also for the last two years. I download the image, grab all the additional driver plug-ins that I need for the different network cards that are around (though I got a crapload of Intel Pro/100 PCI NICs lying around for whenever I run into an oddball NIC now and again). After I created the disk, got the right drivers on it, and set up the menus during the booting of the disk exactly the way I wanted it to be, I burned a copy of the disk to CD-ROM, made it bootable, and from bootup, I now have a bootable CD that takes 10 seconds (not including time to type in password, though I could automate that also if I wanted to...I don't myself) to log into the Windows domain, map a drive on the server that has all the Ghost images, and automatically loads Ghost for me. It uses the Win98 DOS kernel, but whoop-dee-doo. Nothing else comes close (not even Symantec's own bootdisk builder) to creating an efficient method of auto-detecting and loading drivers for your NIC, loading the TCP/IP protocol and using DHCP to grab you an IP, authenticating inside a Windows domain, mapping drives, and above all, doing it in DOS in under 10 seconds (on a CD...took about 45 seconds from the floppy).
As for updating all the stupid BIOS programs that still need DOS to run the flash programs...well, I still got some spare floppies lying around for just such an occasion.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone should email the governor and complain!
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(If you don't get the joke, look up his email address some time when you're not too busy.)
...But what you've just said proves that you didn't even bother to read three sentences into the article summary on Slashdot. You only read the headline and jumped to your own conclusion.
First, here's what you missed from the article summary:
Once Sprint began knocking on their doors asking to license their spectrum -- once they began seeing dollar signs in a forgotten resource -- dozens, then hundreds of these organizations applied to the FCC to renew long-dormant licenses.
The article itself goes on to explain further how these school districts never used this wireless spectrum, how some didn't even know they owned it, until Verizon came knocking at their door. Only after Verizon came asking for rights to the spectrum did the schools and non-profits step up and try to renew licenses that they already let expire.
On the one hand, these businesses are playing dirty pool and are only stopping Verizon's development of that wireless spectrum because of the money. On the other hand, that slice of the wireless spectrum (2.5 GHz band) was specifically reserved for school & non-profit use, and was never meant to be utilized for commercial development.
My personal opinion: let Verizon have it. Verizon's attempting to buy out a slice of the spectrum to develop a privately-owned wireless network. While they expect everyone to buy Verizon equipment to exclusively operate on that frequency, chances are the market will prefer public-access frequencies that are more widely available and cheaper. Let them waste their money.
In the past, she said, students were only allotted 10MB of server space on the school's network. "We knew this year [students] would be creating movies and doing other things, [so] they needed a lot more space," she said.
School admin here. This quote is just laughable. Granted, up until last year, I had my students set at 100 MB apiece. Looking at the quota log, most students could get along just fine with 25 MB, although those who have more usually just have too many pictures saved up.
But, as soon as we started up doing a multimedia class last year using PhotoShop and Movie Maker, 100 MB was laughable. Some PS projects alone were 60-70 MB, and editing raw video requires ~200 MB per minute of video data. I upped these kids to 300 MB, and when they worked on videos, it was in a separate lab that let students save their data to the hard drives.
I can understand the desire to have portability for students and staff, but that's what thumb drives are for. Besides, there are a number of families who still do not have online access yet.
Most rural areas have not been deregulated. Unless the area was a "Bell Holdings Company" (owned by Ma Bell before the company was split), regulations still exist preventing competition in that region. Whoever owns the area has every [legal] right to say no to expansion.
I wrote an earlier post on the subject about the same thing going on in my neck of the woods.
I threw up my hands in the air and cheered when I got to this sentence:
"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"
Even though I enjoyed the whole book, that line alone deserves its own reward (once you understand who it's coming from and who it's directed to).
FTA:
Justice department lawyers have argued that, even if the pair of lawyers were monitored, judging the president's authority to do so requires looking at the specific reasons why the duo were surveilled. And those facts would be national secrets that would tip off terrorists, so no court can ever rule on the program.
"This is not to say there is no forum to air the weighty matters at issue, which remains a matter of considerable public interest and debate, but that the resolution of these issues must be left to the political branches of government," Justice Department lawyers wrote in a brief on the case.
They may as well have just taken a copy of the Constitution, shat all over it, and filed that as their legal brief. It's like they're arguing that the entire third article of the Constitution does not apply to them.
Let me try and field these questions here...
"Within the past few weeks, students across Boerne ISD were being called into offices to discuss the use of proxies to circumvent the schools websense system."
Have a line in the students' Acceptable Use Policy that says students are not permitted to use proxy sites to circumvent IT security systems. Of course, I don't punish a student just for using a proxy site though...they always use them in conjunction with accessing webpages that are blocked. If a student used a proxy to access playboy.com, he'd lose his internet access for a month...for looking at an adult website, not for using the proxy.
The problem is that some of these students are being suspended from school for up to 3 months at a time.
Why? What damage was done? If they were suspended 3 months for using a proxy to look up porn, I'd say it was unjustified. To access MySpace? Likewise. On the other hand, if they were using proxies to do some serious business...running rogue file servers, distributing illegal MP3s and movies, and filtering the traffic through a proxy...then I could see some justification. (I'm sure someone's going to flame me for that comment and say 3 months of suspension is still ludicrous, but I'll back it up if I have to.)
Shouldn't the school district be liable for their own insecurity?
Shouldn't students be liable for their misuse of the school's network? The answer to both questions is yes. Realize, though, that there are proxy sites that are incredibly frustrating to block. kproxy.com for example... go ahead and find out how many servers are managed by kproxy.com. They have valid hostnames ranging from www.kproxy.com, www0.kproxy.com - www9.kproxy.com, and www00.kproxy.com - www99.kproxy.com. I'm never too happy about kids forcing me to have to go through and take the time to block off that many IPs. And who says that kproxy will keep the same address range a week from now? I have a lot of better things to do with my time then actively police the websites students visit. I trust them to use the internet for purposes that do not interfere with the AUP. When they think they have the right to screw around and bypass security just because they're capable of doing so, that's when the school has to step in and remind them that they don't have that right just because they're savvy computer users.
...and obviously, I'm not going for mod-points here, since the article's so far down in the thread, but let me say these few things:
1) Sorry about the slander vs. libel mix-up, I always get those mixed around.
2) I do not disagree that the principal overreacted. He went way off the deep end, and I'm aware that he looks like a bigger fool now than when he just had the false myspace pages.
3) What I'm absolutely floored at is that no one is really putting any blame here on the teenagers. Just because they're teens doesn't let them off the hook. As a teacher, I've been made fun of plenty of times (a few bulletin boards allegedly claim that I'm gay and the like...). It (unfortunately) goes with the territory. But just because it exists doesn't mean that it's ok, and just because students do it doesn't mean they have a right to. If we catch someone doing that, they'll get suspended. I would expect that a minimally-appropriate punishment would be a week's suspension plus a letter of apology from each student responsible for posting the page.
4) IANAL, but the internet is still a gray area in terms of the legal sense of the word "publish." Plus, I have not seen these myspace pages, so I don't know how over-the-top they are. It may just have a bitmapped picture of a dick attached to his face, or someone may have posted a realistic-looking resume that claims that he was fired from his last two positions. The former wouldn't be grounds for libel, the later would. And with lawyers nowadays, we all know that it's the lawyers that bend the law to their will, so even a dickface might be called libel if spun the right way in court.
I'm sticking up for the principal, because I know where the anger is coming from. It's not easy to be a teacher and to work hard to help students who keep mocking you. The principal may have gone on a power trip, and that's where he went wrong, but it's still wrong for students to do this. They were caught, and they need to learn that what they did was wrong. Don't just blame the principal (even if he was the bigger ass) and let the kids off the hook.
...but let me defend the principal, at least on some grounds.
These teenagers, as well as most teenagers in general, do not understand and will not consider implications of their actions before doing something stupid. They especially don't understand that when you post something on the internet, it is a form of publication; the world is able to read what you wrote. Purposefully publishing lies in printed form with the willful intent to harm someone's reputation is called slander, and is punishable by law. These kids clearly did exactly that. The principal's daughter was emotionally distraught when she discovered the pages, as well as the principal. The student's work was malicious in nature. An apology isn't going to make up for the harm that was done.
I will agree that the principal overreacted in regards to obliterating access to a computer in the school, but I can understand where his anger is coming from.
But it also sounds like an inviting and tempting invitation for hackers to prove that nothing is ".safe"
What next? Will someone build a ship and claim it's unsinkable? Oh wait...
First off, I love Wikipedia. There's no quicker, more efficient resource to obtain background information from. And not just "encyclopediaish" information (ex: What is the population of Bermuda? or In what year did Napoleon invade Russia?) If you want to know exactly what "Numa Numa" is and the name of that fat dude on the webcam, Wikipedia has it.
That being said, it's just not an academic resource. It's not. For the same reasons why I love Wikipedia (modern, up-to-date, and information available for all to modify), it cannot be used as an academic resource. One of the suggestions in the article read, "And then once the user's bona fides have been verified in this or some other way, couldn't they put their seal of approval on any article whose contents need to be considered reliable, or that readers want to cite as an authoritative source?"
People can still change that article. What was certified one day can still be changed the next. I can almost anonymously say that Pat Robertson is an athiest, or that Hugo Chavez loves to eat little children for breakfast. And while ten minutes later, someone else might read that and correct the mistake, in those ten minutes, some high school kid could go and do a research paper on that subject, cite Wikipedia as their source, and turn in a paper saying that Pat Robertson is an actual athiest. Granted, this does bring up a different problem that kids are unable to accurately judge the reliability of internet resources, but that's another subject for another thread.
The point I'm trying to make is that Wikipedia's a wonderful resource, but it's not an academic resource. Academic resources need to remain consistantly credible in their work and their publications. Wikipedia cannot guarantee this without impeding on their current principals of freely editing content.
So, they're patent whores for one. According to Silverbrook's website, they were founded in 1994. If you can't bring a product to market after filing over 1400 patents over 13 years, something's not adding up right. How does the business survive for 13 years without a product at market?
So, HP, a huge corporation that's been in business for 68 years, resources and research labs that make you drool, can't figure out how to make an inkjet printer that prints a photo every two seconds, then a tiny little David-of-a-company, who's never ever made a single product before in their company history, is able to smack the giant down at their own game.
Magically, two "anonymous" commenters write in reply:
Interesting thought. But if they can do what they have done do you not think they have already thought of that solution. To spend what they must have spent to develop this, they would not release it only to be blocked by such a simple question as will the ink dry up. Come on world let's embrace the new thinkers and get a positive attitude,
and, "Thats a good point. If i had to guess, I'd say they'll probably do what the newer HPs do, which is run ink from the cartridges quickly through the print head, then suck it back into the cartridge. On the other hand, clearly this company has a few tricks up their sleeves that HP can't touch, and I wouldn't be surprised if they had some new impressive technology that eliminates that problem, though that seems improbable."
Amazingly positive for a pair of anonymous cowards. My apologies to both for not "embracing the new thinkers."
I think many educators do not understand that engagement in a game does not mean a child will be learning anything from it. Here's the difference:
The information you gain when playing a game is very fragmented, because you only absorb enough that you need to get you closer to winning. As the parent poster noted, you don't know what dysentery is, you only know that it's bad and it kills your characters.
Teach these kids how to learn, not how to play a game. (Perfect example: MadTV Hooked on Phonics Parody)
It's funny you say that because I've always thought it was funny that you couldn't show a nipple on TV, but you could show a bomb going off and killing people in a crowded hospital or somebody getting shot.
I just watched the movie This Film is Not Yet Rated. Kirby Dick does an amazing job opening up a peephole into the MPAA. He reveals to the audience that there is no formal criteria for what makes a PG movie a PG movie, and what makes it different from a PG-13 or an R-rated movie. (Although he does a hilarious Flash-like animation that describes the obvious differences between the ratings, but to the MPAA, there is no formal, published criteria.) The only judges who determine what rating a movie gets are people hired by the MPAA to sit in a room and judge for themselves, without any rules or guidelines to follow whatsoever. What bugs the movie industry so much is that this "process" is kept a complete secret to everyone, including movie producers, outside the MPAA, and no one is "supposed" to know who is on this panel of raters (though Kirby Dick uses a private investigator to discover who is on the panel, and reveals that to the audience).
The documentary does a fantastic job as well exposing the double-standard between rating sex and rating violence. Here's an interesting fact taken from the movie: if the producers of a movie ask for the aid and equipment of the US armed forces, military commanders require their personal screening of the movie before it is allowed to be distributed. If they find any objectionable content which they determine sheds the military in a bad light, they'll demand the content be pulled or edited, less the movie never sees the light of day.
I guess there are reasons for why we encourage our kids to watch violence.
The person or organization that can devise a method to remove at least a billion tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere will be able to claim the bounty. There are a few catches, of course. There can't be any negative impact on the environment.
That's like asking a baker to take all that unhealthy fat out of a doughnut, but not have it have any impact on the taste. It would be foolish of Branson to think that you can make a dramatic change to the chemical makeup of our atmosphere, but not have any "negative" consequences. Plants need CO2, so removing it from the atmosphere might harm plant life. Temperatures will decrease (probably), and I'm sure that there's at least some species of wildlife that's now thriving with the warmer temperatures. Wind paterns will change. Climate patterns will change. To expect absolutely no "negative impact" on the environment is foolhardy.
I think Tubes looks like it will catch on. If sites like Facebook and Technorati implement some hooks into it, there is no telling where this could go.
I'm already worrying about how I'll need to block its data traffic.
This is exactly what kids will love. Kids love to share parts of their life with their friends. They share photos. They share messages. They share stories. Poems. Videos. Every kid socially needs to define themself, and the internet has become a great way to do it.
Why has myspace (& its clones, which I'll just wrap together in the name "myspace") become so popular? Kids love to share who they are online. After watching the presentation, this tool lets them do that more than ever. They can define tubes that connect them with their friends, their cliques, their relatives...whole social circles can now be defined in this program. Myspace only organizes "friends," but it doesn't organize "networks of friends" like Tubes appears to do.
While I don't think this app will replace myspace, I can see it being a part of the page...almost like subscribing to an RSS feed. Why bother posting links to hundreds of files on a website (personal, commercial, or otherwise), when you can just "tube" that page? (I'm not trying to be the first to verbify the name of the program, i.e. "google", but if Tubes catches on...I can say I was the first to lay claim to its usage!) You could pull up a sidebar in your web window, select that tube, and automatically have access to all the data they share.
There is one drawback, however...everything gets downloaded to your hard drive. And with up to 2GB of storage per tube...well, let's just say that 300GB hard drives might just not hold the needs of your typical social 14-year-old teenage girl anymore.
Please sit down and shut up. Take your issues that you had in high school, and treat them as your issues, rather than overly-generalizing them to make it appear as though you understand every problem ever related to schools and education.
I'm a teacher (math and computer). I'm also a tech coordinator. I wear both hats at my school. I've been studying, taking apart, assembling, and troubleshooting PCs for 12 years. And I take offense to anyone who says "Those who can, do, those who can't, teach." If you were to take the time and evaluate MANY teachers, you would see how much time and effort we put into helping students, as well as research how to better educate students in our discipline(often through professional teacher organizations...I myself belong to the MCTM...www.mctm.org).
Sadly, even at my school, I have seen and am upset with some teachers who do not give a rat's ass about the students they teach, and I wish that administrators and teachers got a lot more serious about evaluating teachers' behavior and teaching inside and outside the classroom. It upsets me a great deal to see how much time and effort I put into helping a student learn, both about a particular subject and about the world & life in general, in hopes that I can build trust with students and show them I care about their lives, only to have that trust destroyed by a teacher who makes rather damning comments to students demonstrating apathy to their profession. Yet while I have met and even work with a few teachers who behave this way in one way or another, I will not sit by and watch some stupid punk think that we teachers are a waste of space.
There are so many students that depend on us teachers for social and academic support. We don't just sit and twiddle our thumbs when kids ask us questions. We understand our discipline. (I, as well as the vast majority of teachers, majored in their discipline in college; if you want to discredit our education, you may as discredit your own, assuming you graduated from college, at least.) Most of us have a great passion for it, as well as for helping other students learn to love it as well. And if you wanted us to actually demonstrate that in a job, I certainly could do so. But I would find great boredom in, say, being an actuary, doing nothing but number-crunching for 8 hours straight. And I've tried tech support before, but to be quite honest, I don't like living an OfficeSpace-kinda life. I actually enjoy being around other people and talking with them, teaching them, interacting with them, and even watching them grow and being a part of it!
And it's teachers like me who help make the students who become a part of your work force. They're not just born smart, stupid.
Theoretically I have already paid for all the content the BBC produces. Therefore I should own the copyright to it?
Your incorrect on your wording. The BBC owns the copyright, or "right to copy (distribute)", the content they produce. If you buy a DVD published by the BBC, you own that DVD. You have property rights to the DVD (meaning you can buy the DVD, own and watch the DVD, and sell the DVD), but you have no rights to distribute the contents of said DVD.
I think what you're trying to get at, and I want to make clear for everyone, is that this is clearly a legal case of double-dipping. This Universal rep makes it quite clear in his quote:
In the words of Universal Music's Doug Morris, 'These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it.
Right now, Universal (as represented by the RIAA) is suing the pants off of anybody they catch pirating music. Without bringing into question the validity of these lawsuits, if Universal is going to sue people for violating copyright, they certainly cannot also impose taxes under the assumption that people are violating copyright. Doing both is what is known as double-dipping; you collect payment assuming that people violate copyright, then you collect payment again when you catch them violating copyright.
Clearly, Universal hasn't consulted with their legal department on this issue. But then again...I suppose if you're paying your lawyers (and the government) enough, you can tell them what the law is supposed to be...
...did they included P2P in their calculations? I'm pretty confident that more than 1% of that traffic is porn.
...of bullshit.
The Reason Foundation is yet another free-market think tank that believes that eliminating government oversight in the broadband sector will result in broadband utopia.
In my neck of the woods, there is a small community called Lake George, MN. Lake George is a nice small lakeside tourist town, population ~150 and growing. It's got a few nice cafes, some tourist shops. They just got their first apartment complex, and there's a lot of tourist dollars that go there every summer. There's a lot of people that would love to live there year-round, but there's a problem. Their phone provider is CenturyTel, based out of Louisiana. CenturyTel has NO PLANS to build broadband infrastructure there in Lake George. From a business standpoint, I can understand. There's no reason to. It would cost to much to create that kind of infrastructure just so that maybe 50 households could sign up.
But everybody in the area knows about Paul Bunyan.net. They're a regional provider that delivers phone, internet, and cable all in one package for $80. Nobody can offer a better bundled package. Sure, we can sign up with Charter for cable internet and TV, and Qwest for phone access, but it's not the same price. Paul Bunyan Coop has been doing a fantastic job offering cable and broadband internet access to rural areas surrounding Bemidji, MN. (Here's a map showing their whole service area. Mind you, Laporte is a town with 150 people, and they offer service in the ENTIRE township.)
Now, why do I bring these two different companies into the picture? Because Paul Bunyan just got awarded a government contract to lay lines into Itasca State Park. Itasca State Park is located about 10 miles west of...guess where...LAKE GEORGE!!! They were laying the lines right down Main Street in the town just last week! And yet, legally, they cannot build infrastructure in Lake George. They have to run the line straight through. And why is that, when they're laying an access line right through the town? Oh, here's the kicker everybody...get this...since Lake George never was owned by Ma Bell (and many rural areas weren't...there's a specific legal name for this condition...can't remember it for the moment), since Lake George's phone lines were never built by Ma Bell, they aren't subject to deregulation laws like the larger communities are. So, CenturyTel has exclusive rights to offer telecommunications service to Lake George. And they're not selling.
Deregulation my ass. Companies will do whatever they want with whatever they have exclusive access to. Big Business isn't going to build jack squat in rural America. Three cheers for the regional Coop's that are willing to bring modern telecommunications access to the rest of the country.
As an Eagle Scout, I can say first-hand that the Boy Scouts DOES teach scouts how to obey the law. Here are a few examples:
However, I am personally sad to see special interest groups who are imposing a political agenda upon scouts. Once upon a time, scouting was about kids discovering themselves. While there was a core set of requirements which every scout was expected to achieve as they worked their way up the ranks (the basic skills of camping, first aid, being a leader...), there were hundreds of merit badges which scouts could work towards and earn, depending on what interests they had. A great example of this was when Spielberg, himself an Eagle Scout, helped create the Cinematography merit badge, for any scout who may have an interest in learning more about movie making. Looking back, the most amazing thing about scouts was all the opportunities I had to learn about new things, as well as all the people who willingly worked so hard to offer me those opportunities.
Nowadays, I feel more and more that special-interest groups, including but not limited to the RIAA, are seeing scouting as a vehicle for "indoctrinating" their agendas onto future leaders of America (and believe you me when I say that Eagle Scouts truly are leaders). I was asked last year by a parent if I could be a merit badge counselor for the Computer merit badge. As the tech coordinator at my school, I thought it would be a great chance to catch-up with boy scouts again. I opened up the merit-badge book, and lo-and-behold, one of the requirements to obtain the merit badge was for scouts to be able to understand and give examples of piracy, whether it was burning CDs or P2P. This had NOTHING to do with learning about computers, how they work, learning about how to create documents, spreadsheets, and databases, and programming a computer. This was a political agenda, and it didn't sit well with me.
Scouts are certainly educated every day about how to be obedient to the rules and be good citizens of this country. But I want scouts to find and grow their own ideals, not have them spoon-fed by the RIAA.
It appears artists and labels will have the choice when digging into Google's pockets either through a business deal or lawsuit. Which will they pick?"
If I was a musical artist, and I discovered one of my songs in a YouTube video that had a million views, I would write a letter of personal thanks to YouTube for promoting my song! Where else am I going to get that widespread promotion without hiring a record company to help negotiate with Big Radio? And besides, even with a really good hit record, record companies have to pay to play and promote almost anything now days. But YouTube is completely free. You can't get a better deal than that.
But unfortunately, record companies have always been like hawks seeking their prey, and a million song views in their eyes is like a million field mice all waiting to be swooped down on. A million views means a lot of royalty money that could be earned if royalty deals were in place. They control music distribution via radio, TV, movies...but darn that blasted internet.
From the submission: I am curious what other Slashdot folks are experiencing, and I am also wondering if I say, 'Please remove from any list that you have.' when I am called, will this do any good?"
From the parent post: Also note that once you say one of those two phrases, they are required to give the three pieces of information they need for every call if they have not yet mentioned them, and then terminate the call immediately...Again, this is if they're following the rules.
That phrase right there sums it all up. I heard this exact same explanation from a student of mine at school who worked for a legit telemarketer. If you say the magic words, "Add me to your do not call list," they are required to follow the rules and do follow the rules. If they do not follow the rules, they will be fined big time by the FCC. However, the US is powerless against some calling agency operating out of Costa Rica, who doesn't give a rip about telecommunication laws. These people will war-dial phone numbers at unscrupulous hours of the evening, varying their tactics anywhere from constant nagging to actually demanding that you buy from them, even sometimes claiming that you've already established an "oral agreement" to make a purchase that you cannot back down from without penalty. (I've heard stories of telemarketers saying anything from, "We already have your name and address, and we will file suit if you break your oral agreement," to, "We have your banking account information, have this conversation recorded for proof of transaction, and we will proceed with making an electronic withdrawl from your checking account whether you like it or not.")
The national do-not-call list will help keep the legit soliciters at bay. But the bad guys...well...international law is a bitch.
From the article...
Quote Dr. Schrag "Your tuition buys you access to the lectures in the classroom. If you want to hear one again, you can buy it."
From the parent post...
So, if this lecturer is claiming it is extra effort to produce lecture notes, then he is not doing his job, frankly.
One of my disappointments in college was to find that every professor has their own theory of what they are "obligated" to offer as professor at a university. Some professors see classes as an obligatory tax paid in return for support from the university; they see themselves first and foremost as scholars in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, and classes are a burden yet a formality of the lifestyle which they choose. These professors walk into a lecture, often times purposefully parading their vast genius before their students to deter the weak-minded, confuse the passive learner, and leave the few that actually possess a parallel academic mastery in that field busy with such a plethora of challenging thought and theory that the majority of students are left in shock, unable to question one who has made them feel inferior. These professors are not interested in helping students; they are only interested in helping themselves. And they see the only people that they need to impress are the deans, the boards, and their colleages. One of my old college profs told me about a math professor he had at Vanderbilt who taught his lectures in a rectangular hall; two of the four walls were lined with chalkboards, with the second chalkboard ending right at the door to the hall. The professor would come in, set his briefcase right by the door, walk to the opposite end of the hall, grab his chalk, being lecturing and writing on the chalkboard, continuing to walk, chalk, and talk his way across one blackboard, across the second blackboard, finishing at the end of the blackboard, putting down the chalk, grabbing his briefcase, and exiting the room, signaling the end of the lecture.
On the other hand, I encountered many professors who would go above and beyond their "contractual obligations," providing lecture notes, plenty of office time, and especially individual instruction for anyone who did not understand the lecture the first time around. What was really neat was that the foreign professors (many of which were IMPOSSIBLE to understand the first time around) were especially willing to try their best to help students out of the classroom. I guess they themselves especially understood what opportunity really means.
I personally wish that universities would do a better job at defining obligations of professors, for both the students' benefit and the universities'. I think students who can expect professors to offer additional help and encouragement, rather than (through verbal or nonverbal communication) be made to feel incompetent and stupid, will feel a lot more comfortable about their own knowledge and seek that which they don't understand. As the old Unix fortune goes, "Those who don't know, and know that they don't know, they are ignorant. Teach them."
Oh, and one final bit of advice for students: go to class. You're paying for it. Don't miss class and then expect the professor to bend over backwards for you. Don't demand another opportunity when you pass up the one provided for you.
Network admin here. I take care of about 150 computers in a small school district. I've been using Ghost 8 for the last two years, and it's worked great. For a boot disk, I've been using Bart's Boot Disk also for the last two years. I download the image, grab all the additional driver plug-ins that I need for the different network cards that are around (though I got a crapload of Intel Pro/100 PCI NICs lying around for whenever I run into an oddball NIC now and again). After I created the disk, got the right drivers on it, and set up the menus during the booting of the disk exactly the way I wanted it to be, I burned a copy of the disk to CD-ROM, made it bootable, and from bootup, I now have a bootable CD that takes 10 seconds (not including time to type in password, though I could automate that also if I wanted to...I don't myself) to log into the Windows domain, map a drive on the server that has all the Ghost images, and automatically loads Ghost for me. It uses the Win98 DOS kernel, but whoop-dee-doo. Nothing else comes close (not even Symantec's own bootdisk builder) to creating an efficient method of auto-detecting and loading drivers for your NIC, loading the TCP/IP protocol and using DHCP to grab you an IP, authenticating inside a Windows domain, mapping drives, and above all, doing it in DOS in under 10 seconds (on a CD...took about 45 seconds from the floppy).
As for updating all the stupid BIOS programs that still need DOS to run the flash programs...well, I still got some spare floppies lying around for just such an occasion.