This whole case is ridiculous. Kids are kids, they don't always know how to behave, they make mistakes.
Punishment is an accepted step in teaching children how to behave, last I checked. If the children didn't know right from wrong, that would be one thing. But they were all 12-13 years of age, which should mean they already know that lying about their teacher being a pedo/rapist is wrong. Once you have gotten past the point of knowing right from wrong, we move to the step of teaching the consequences of doing the wrong thing. That is the punishment step. The kids did wrong, they know it, and they were caught. Now they get to face up to the consequences. Hopefully this will teach them further how to behave in the future, since simply knowing right from wrong wasn't enough in this case.
The instant libel and slander laws were enacted. We are not free to call the teacher a pedophile, and neither are the children in question. By their age (13) they know enough about right from wrong to know not to lie about people. This student went ahead and no only lied about her teacher, but made a false claim about her teacher behaving in a criminal way. If she had gone to the police, it would have been the criminal act of filing a false police report. As it stands, expulsion for something potentially is libel seems appropriate.
The only thing that I had a problem with in the article was that the school administrators forced the student to log into her Facebook account. That seems, as the article claims, to be a gross violation of privacy.
Because if its the police doing the recording its easier for the recording to go missing or accidentally glitch than it would be if the person being pulled over did the recording.
And the article mentions that claim:
Police also claim dashboard camera videos of her arrest aren't available because the equipment wasn't working that night. Hipple said police don't have maintenance records to prove the cameras weren't working.
That was from an earlier arrest of a different person, so it might be no surprise that the man the article focused on didn't trust the police to have records of his traffic stop.
I have no problem with creating a website devoted to hate. What I do have a problem with are their funeral protests.
Agreed. We all need to remember that no matter how disgusting their website is (or was) we all had the ability to ignore it. Their right to free speech didn't interfere with any of our rights, so we shouldn't be interfering with their right to free speech. However, when they turn up physically to protest something, they very well may be violating someone else's rights (private property, privacy, etc.). Your right to free speech ends when it starts to violate my rights.
Let them publish whatever crap they want and ignore it. That was the people who wrote the first amendment would probably have wanted us to do.
Satellite radio already was struggling. Remember, cash flow was a big part of the reason for the merger between XM and Sirius. They were competing with free broadcast stations, and it was slow going to convince people to sign up. I think they were finally getting help from auto manufacturers including satellite radio equipment in new cars. However, if they now have to raise their rates to pay for copyright royalties, I think they are going to start to lose market share.
Consider the first shuttle flight. [...] And it worked first time. They were hot at the time, coming off the experience of Apollo.
Well, the first space shuttle, the Enterprise, never went to space. It's easy to have a successful first flight when you have the resources to build a full size scale model to 'test' with. And they weren't coming hot off Apollo; the space shuttle was about a decade later.
No, those were just drop tests to see how the shuttle glided. The shuttle is notable in NASA history for being the first manned vehicle to not have an unmanned test in full launch configuration. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all had unmanned test launches of the vehicle. The first time a shuttle (Columbia) was sent into orbit, there were two crew members on board.
I suppose this helps prove that you cannot force people to change their beliefs regardless of the political system they operate under. Sure, the US invaded and changed the government in Afghanistan, but you can't change the religious beliefs of the the people living there. For many of the followers of Islam in the Middle East, things like blasphemy are punishable by death. Those beliefs are reflected in how government responded, since even "democratically" elected leaders hold the same beliefs.
What I consider the bigger concern in this article is that the separation of Church and State as it is understood in the US is not being practiced in this newly started democracy. Here we have an instance where a religion calls for death to blasphemers. The government, showing that it is clearly backing a specific religion, was going along with it. That was what the Taliban represented in the first place. They ruled the country according to what they understood their religion dictated. The US may have changed the way that people achieve power in the country, but it seems that elements of the Taliban are still alive and well in this non-Taliban government.
Do you get the feeling that judges are tired of dealing with the RIAA now? I know what they have been doing is crap legal tactics to intimidate people, but I would have to guess its very rare for a judge to recommend fining a lawyer for their tactics.
Unfortunately, I assume not even a fine like this will slow down the RIAA. They will probably just move on to their next questionable tactic and keep going.
Besides cutting production costs to fire sale prices, the process avoids some key drawbacks of making ethanol from corn, company officials said. It wouldn't impact the food supply, and its net energy balance is high because the technique works almost anywhere using almost anything with great efficiency. If it can do all that, then lets go for it. I always had reservations about corn ethanol's impact on the food supply and prices, but by using the garbage/waste products they describe, that problem goes away. Corn is central to our food economy, from sweetener (corn syrup) to feed for livestock. Little price hikes due to burning corn in our cars means bigger price hikes in so much of the rest of the food we buy. Let take ideas like these and stop burning usable food in our cars.
I always felt that the interest of SS1/SS2 was not in the rocketry, thrust/lift capacity, or any other comparison with payload lifting spaceships, but its unique design for a manned vehicle. As far as I know, it is the only manned spacecraft without a complex or heavy reentry heat shield. Anyone interested in space knows how complex the Thermal Protection System is on the Space Shuttle, and all other vehicles seem have a heat shield on the underside of the capsule. The feathered reentry design was highly innovative and never seen before SS1.
Give the man credit, he did come up with something inventive and new, even if the uses are only for joyrides right now.
Really, the primary thing this project has going for it is that it is not funded by a government. It might be boring and not state of the art now, but further development of private space flight should lead to some truly interesting technology and vehicles.
The F-1 rocket engine used on the first stage of the Saturn V (the S-1C) had combustion instability that required years of testing to work out. In more recent years, the first Delta IV Heavy launch experienced cavitation that caused all three of the Common Booster Cores to shut down early and left the demonstration payload in the wrong orbit. NASA knows there might be problems, and that is why the first three flights of the Ares 1 vehicle are currently planned as uncrewed trial launches. They will get it worked out well before an crew would be in danger.
Once again, it seems like companies want control over the product after they sell it to us to excuse themselves from having to make the product good enough in the first place. We have the RIAA/MPAA making crappy products and selling them at excess prices, then trying to block us from making copies via copyright law. We have the telcos/cable cos trying to manipulate (using traffic shaping, throttling, or just out right attempting to block traffic) the "unlimited" internet connection we pay for because their infrastructure isn't up to snuff. Now it seems like the power companies are following suit and trying to control how much we can draw from the grid to make up for the fact that the infrastructure of the grid is not up to the demands that their customers are placing on it.
Attention Corporations: If you sell a product that doesn't suck or keep your distribution system up to the demands, your customers will be happier and will buy more of your product. We don't need you to keep going to the government to pass laws to excuse your crappy product.
Attention Innovators: If the corporations continue to ignore the demands of the customers, you might be able to make a killing by creating a better product. In California, more efficient A/C systems might become the rage is this law passes.
I've often wondered who comes up with the numbers for how much stuff is going to go bad over time. Half of the DVDs might be bad in 15 years? Where did we get that number? Are we looking at CDs created in the 1990s and seeing how they lasted?
I recall a negative message about burned CDs that was making the rounds a few years ago saying that the media might not last more than 5 years. Since I didn't want to lose any content, I went ahead and setup a Linux based RAID fileserver, and copied all the files to it in addition to keeping the CD-Rs. Now, 3-4 more years down the road, I was going through my CD collection, and still can't find any dead ones.
We need to learn the difference between the worst case scenario that we see in the news and the likely scenario that we will actually see. Remember, the newspapers (like the New York Times) get more attention when it is all doom and gloom rather than "maybe a few crappy films will be lost in 20 years due to digital breakdown."
The vast majority of elected politicians have been in their offices for so long, they don't know what it's like to live in the real world under the laws that they have created, modified, or otherwise butchered.
It is more than just their separation from the real world. Congress seems to believe that it is their job to pass new laws on a regular basis. It doesn't seem to really matter what direction the new laws seem to go, just as long as we get that new law.
I also think that Congress does not tend to stop and think about potential consequences of their actions. I'd bet some lobbyist told this Congress-critter that this would be a great thing for Hollywood (which is in his district) by maying a list of advantages about how great it is. I'd also bet this same congress-critter never stopped to wonder how many items on that list of advantages are true and if there is a list of disadvantages that needs to be examined as well.
I liked them just fine, as much as one can like a big box computer store. That is something I agree with, and a part of the reason I fail to understand the reaction that people see to be happy they are going away. It seems to me that they were just another place to look for the best deal when you decide you want to buy something locally rather than online. I think the loss of competition and selection is unfortunate, but doesn't bother me too much as I don't go there often.
The other part of of why I don't understand the reaction is: if you have already stopped shopping there because of a bad experience, how does their going away now make your shopping experiences better now. If its a store you don't go to, it shouldn't matter if they go out of business or not. I suppose if you are trying to snag a few things at "going out of business" discounts, then it makes a slight bit more sense. Most of my dealing with CompUSA did not require me talk to sales people. I went in, found what I needed, bought it and got out. Maybe if I'd dealt with salespeople more often I'd be happier about their closing, but I can't say I am at the moment.
One of the things that bothered be most about this article was the phrase "young students." To me, that means kids in elementary and middle school (jr. high or what have you) but prior to reaching high school or college. I would think that during the early school years, use of Wikipedia in school research projects has to be properly introduced to a student so they understand its use over the long run. A "young student" might not understand the problems inherent with inaccuracies when doing research and the need to go to multiple sources for fact checking. I think after explaining the multiple source concept, you could introduce Wikipedia as a handy reference, but also give an example of vandalism to drive home the point of why multiple sources are necessary.
Hopefully as they learn more they will understand more nuanced aspects of inaccuracy (bias, for one) and you can apply the more formal academic rules of research papers that would view Wikipedia as not acceptable as a primary source. By that point, you are more than welcome to go look around it to find information to lead you to primary sources.
Alright, users of Palm 3's, rase your hand. * raises hand *
I still use my Palm IIIxe, and for what it was designed to do, its a great little device. Its pair of AAA batteries last longer than the rechargable ones in my cell phone and iPod, and it has more than enough memory for a number of third-party apps to be installed. Compared to many of today's products, I think I'll trade the reduced CPU speed and memory capacity for the much longer battery life, which for me seems to be about 1.5-2 months with the way I use it. Sometimes the older and simpler devices are better than the new ones just because they are so simple.
I also have a MessagePad 120 (Newton OS 1.3), which mostly sits on the shelf because of how bad the handwriting recognition was and how much smaller and easier to carry the Palm III is. I do still like the MP120, and don't intend to ever sell it, but I don't take it to work wth me. Even if Apple did produce a true PDA type device (instead of the not-quite PDAs like the iPhone and iPod touch) I'd give it a serious consideration.
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This whole case is ridiculous. Kids are kids, they don't always know how to behave, they make mistakes.
Punishment is an accepted step in teaching children how to behave, last I checked. If the children didn't know right from wrong, that would be one thing. But they were all 12-13 years of age, which should mean they already know that lying about their teacher being a pedo/rapist is wrong. Once you have gotten past the point of knowing right from wrong, we move to the step of teaching the consequences of doing the wrong thing. That is the punishment step. The kids did wrong, they know it, and they were caught. Now they get to face up to the consequences. Hopefully this will teach them further how to behave in the future, since simply knowing right from wrong wasn't enough in this case.
When did it stop being free speech?
The instant libel and slander laws were enacted. We are not free to call the teacher a pedophile, and neither are the children in question. By their age (13) they know enough about right from wrong to know not to lie about people. This student went ahead and no only lied about her teacher, but made a false claim about her teacher behaving in a criminal way. If she had gone to the police, it would have been the criminal act of filing a false police report. As it stands, expulsion for something potentially is libel seems appropriate.
The only thing that I had a problem with in the article was that the school administrators forced the student to log into her Facebook account. That seems, as the article claims, to be a gross violation of privacy.
Because if its the police doing the recording its easier for the recording to go missing or accidentally glitch than it would be if the person being pulled over did the recording.
And the article mentions that claim:
Police also claim dashboard camera videos of her arrest aren't available because the equipment wasn't working that night. Hipple said police don't have maintenance records to prove the cameras weren't working.
That was from an earlier arrest of a different person, so it might be no surprise that the man the article focused on didn't trust the police to have records of his traffic stop.
I have no problem with creating a website devoted to hate. What I do have a problem with are their funeral protests.
Agreed. We all need to remember that no matter how disgusting their website is (or was) we all had the ability to ignore it. Their right to free speech didn't interfere with any of our rights, so we shouldn't be interfering with their right to free speech. However, when they turn up physically to protest something, they very well may be violating someone else's rights (private property, privacy, etc.). Your right to free speech ends when it starts to violate my rights.
Let them publish whatever crap they want and ignore it. That was the people who wrote the first amendment would probably have wanted us to do.
Satellite radio already was struggling. Remember, cash flow was a big part of the reason for the merger between XM and Sirius. They were competing with free broadcast stations, and it was slow going to convince people to sign up. I think they were finally getting help from auto manufacturers including satellite radio equipment in new cars. However, if they now have to raise their rates to pay for copyright royalties, I think they are going to start to lose market share.
No, those were just drop tests to see how the shuttle glided. The shuttle is notable in NASA history for being the first manned vehicle to not have an unmanned test in full launch configuration. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo all had unmanned test launches of the vehicle. The first time a shuttle (Columbia) was sent into orbit, there were two crew members on board.
I suppose this helps prove that you cannot force people to change their beliefs regardless of the political system they operate under. Sure, the US invaded and changed the government in Afghanistan, but you can't change the religious beliefs of the the people living there. For many of the followers of Islam in the Middle East, things like blasphemy are punishable by death. Those beliefs are reflected in how government responded, since even "democratically" elected leaders hold the same beliefs.
What I consider the bigger concern in this article is that the separation of Church and State as it is understood in the US is not being practiced in this newly started democracy. Here we have an instance where a religion calls for death to blasphemers. The government, showing that it is clearly backing a specific religion, was going along with it. That was what the Taliban represented in the first place. They ruled the country according to what they understood their religion dictated. The US may have changed the way that people achieve power in the country, but it seems that elements of the Taliban are still alive and well in this non-Taliban government.
Do you get the feeling that judges are tired of dealing with the RIAA now? I know what they have been doing is crap legal tactics to intimidate people, but I would have to guess its very rare for a judge to recommend fining a lawyer for their tactics.
Unfortunately, I assume not even a fine like this will slow down the RIAA. They will probably just move on to their next questionable tactic and keep going.
I always felt that the interest of SS1/SS2 was not in the rocketry, thrust/lift capacity, or any other comparison with payload lifting spaceships, but its unique design for a manned vehicle. As far as I know, it is the only manned spacecraft without a complex or heavy reentry heat shield. Anyone interested in space knows how complex the Thermal Protection System is on the Space Shuttle, and all other vehicles seem have a heat shield on the underside of the capsule. The feathered reentry design was highly innovative and never seen before SS1.
Give the man credit, he did come up with something inventive and new, even if the uses are only for joyrides right now.
Really, the primary thing this project has going for it is that it is not funded by a government. It might be boring and not state of the art now, but further development of private space flight should lead to some truly interesting technology and vehicles.
The F-1 rocket engine used on the first stage of the Saturn V (the S-1C) had combustion instability that required years of testing to work out. In more recent years, the first Delta IV Heavy launch experienced cavitation that caused all three of the Common Booster Cores to shut down early and left the demonstration payload in the wrong orbit. NASA knows there might be problems, and that is why the first three flights of the Ares 1 vehicle are currently planned as uncrewed trial launches. They will get it worked out well before an crew would be in danger.
Once again, it seems like companies want control over the product after they sell it to us to excuse themselves from having to make the product good enough in the first place. We have the RIAA/MPAA making crappy products and selling them at excess prices, then trying to block us from making copies via copyright law. We have the telcos/cable cos trying to manipulate (using traffic shaping, throttling, or just out right attempting to block traffic) the "unlimited" internet connection we pay for because their infrastructure isn't up to snuff. Now it seems like the power companies are following suit and trying to control how much we can draw from the grid to make up for the fact that the infrastructure of the grid is not up to the demands that their customers are placing on it.
Attention Corporations: If you sell a product that doesn't suck or keep your distribution system up to the demands, your customers will be happier and will buy more of your product. We don't need you to keep going to the government to pass laws to excuse your crappy product.
Attention Innovators: If the corporations continue to ignore the demands of the customers, you might be able to make a killing by creating a better product. In California, more efficient A/C systems might become the rage is this law passes.
Wishful thinking, isn't it?
I've often wondered who comes up with the numbers for how much stuff is going to go bad over time. Half of the DVDs might be bad in 15 years? Where did we get that number? Are we looking at CDs created in the 1990s and seeing how they lasted?
I recall a negative message about burned CDs that was making the rounds a few years ago saying that the media might not last more than 5 years. Since I didn't want to lose any content, I went ahead and setup a Linux based RAID fileserver, and copied all the files to it in addition to keeping the CD-Rs. Now, 3-4 more years down the road, I was going through my CD collection, and still can't find any dead ones.
We need to learn the difference between the worst case scenario that we see in the news and the likely scenario that we will actually see. Remember, the newspapers (like the New York Times) get more attention when it is all doom and gloom rather than "maybe a few crappy films will be lost in 20 years due to digital breakdown."
It is more than just their separation from the real world. Congress seems to believe that it is their job to pass new laws on a regular basis. It doesn't seem to really matter what direction the new laws seem to go, just as long as we get that new law.
I also think that Congress does not tend to stop and think about potential consequences of their actions. I'd bet some lobbyist told this Congress-critter that this would be a great thing for Hollywood (which is in his district) by maying a list of advantages about how great it is. I'd also bet this same congress-critter never stopped to wonder how many items on that list of advantages are true and if there is a list of disadvantages that needs to be examined as well.
The other part of of why I don't understand the reaction is: if you have already stopped shopping there because of a bad experience, how does their going away now make your shopping experiences better now. If its a store you don't go to, it shouldn't matter if they go out of business or not. I suppose if you are trying to snag a few things at "going out of business" discounts, then it makes a slight bit more sense. Most of my dealing with CompUSA did not require me talk to sales people. I went in, found what I needed, bought it and got out. Maybe if I'd dealt with salespeople more often I'd be happier about their closing, but I can't say I am at the moment.
One of the things that bothered be most about this article was the phrase "young students." To me, that means kids in elementary and middle school (jr. high or what have you) but prior to reaching high school or college. I would think that during the early school years, use of Wikipedia in school research projects has to be properly introduced to a student so they understand its use over the long run. A "young student" might not understand the problems inherent with inaccuracies when doing research and the need to go to multiple sources for fact checking. I think after explaining the multiple source concept, you could introduce Wikipedia as a handy reference, but also give an example of vandalism to drive home the point of why multiple sources are necessary.
Hopefully as they learn more they will understand more nuanced aspects of inaccuracy (bias, for one) and you can apply the more formal academic rules of research papers that would view Wikipedia as not acceptable as a primary source. By that point, you are more than welcome to go look around it to find information to lead you to primary sources.
I still use my Palm IIIxe, and for what it was designed to do, its a great little device. Its pair of AAA batteries last longer than the rechargable ones in my cell phone and iPod, and it has more than enough memory for a number of third-party apps to be installed. Compared to many of today's products, I think I'll trade the reduced CPU speed and memory capacity for the much longer battery life, which for me seems to be about 1.5-2 months with the way I use it. Sometimes the older and simpler devices are better than the new ones just because they are so simple.
I also have a MessagePad 120 (Newton OS 1.3), which mostly sits on the shelf because of how bad the handwriting recognition was and how much smaller and easier to carry the Palm III is. I do still like the MP120, and don't intend to ever sell it, but I don't take it to work wth me. Even if Apple did produce a true PDA type device (instead of the not-quite PDAs like the iPhone and iPod touch) I'd give it a serious consideration.