And? What if I was offended by it? Would that make my point null and void? No. People should not be so easily affected by words. The fact that you think I might not be a very good role model for this behavior is irrelevant.
That said, I do not believe I would be affected by such petty things. Why would I be? They can only hurt me if I let them, in which case that is my fault.
You forget that perception becomes reality. Do you want to sit with "the loser" at lunch? If you need someone on your team, are you going to pick "the loser"? Do you think you would get promotions?
Now, add the fact that in a school environment, you don't have an adult's ability to get away from the echo chamber - so that perception is constantly being reinforced, not only in the words, but in how that causes people to relate to you. No-one will sit with you, because no-one wants to sit with the loser, so no-one will sit with you. Rumor causes reality fuels the rumor.
Here's empirical evidence that if you spend an additional $X, you get demonstratively better results - why wouldn't parents be yelling because only selected kids get the bonus cash?
You have a strange definition of evidence then. The charter schools pick their students, and you assume money is the reason their students do better and not the fact that they PICK THEIR STUDENTS? Even when, if you look nationwide, district by district, there is no correlation between per-student spending and academic performance?
I assumed it was obvious that if you cherry-pick your students you're going to get better results "on average". (Which ignores issues of what other programs the school offers - for instance, the school my daughter will attend this fall has the lowest scores for an "advanced placement" school because they *also* offer "developmentally challenged" and those scores drag the school average down). But does it not beg the question - if you're already getting to pick-and-choose your students, why do you need extra money per student? I would think that if anything, charter schools should need *less* money per student.
Out of curiosity, do you also think John Edwards's television show is evidence that he is psychic?
They do, but it's a higher-class of bullying. For instance, rather than push you into a locker, their butler pushes your butler into a locker. Far more civilized.
Hell yeah. Happened to me a few times over the years in school. The saving grace in my case was that we moved around a lot - so while that made me an easy target for such things (no-one to stand up for me), it also meant that I wasn't as invested in their opinion either. And the best defense is really indifference - you have to truly not give a shit about them. Putting up the brave front only encourages them to see if they can break you down. It's only when you can look them in the eye and say "so what?" that they'll usually go find easier pickings.
The relevance is in the fact that if you follow the UK example for reasons given, you'll be focusing on fly on the wall, and ignoring the massive elephant in the room. School's job is far beyond "teaching kids while in school", its mission is to educate and adapt children to become productive adults. In many cases this requires influence outside school doors, which is usually attained via less visible, and acceptable ways such as school-sponsored after-school clubs, parent-teacher meetings, homework, fixed schedules, etc.
And while I support all of those things, I don't think that makes my school responsible for my results. In the end, it still comes down to the kid.
But while we're on the topic, I'm wondering when people will figure out that there just might be a correlation between drop-outs and cutting extra-curriculars? Really, kids go to school for the music, art, sports, drama - you just make them learn math and science and language as payment for the "fun stuff". (My proof? Show me a kid who gets up in the morning and skips off to school because today is math day. I loved school, and even I only went for the "extras".)
Joking aside, I hear what you're saying, but TFA points out the suicide rate among gay and lesbian students is 4 times that of straight students. I'm not saying that justifies trampling on free speech off school grounds, but saying "work it out" is a little simplistic.
How is anyone surprised at this, when you see The Grownups saying the things they do about gays and lesbians? Hell, the schools can't even get on the right page on supporting them - I'm not holding my breath for them to start holding that ground any time soon.
People shouldn't be so easily influenced (emotionally or otherwise) by mere words.
Let's try this as an experiment. Get one or two of your co-workers to call you a loser. Get them to use it everytime you're around - "oh, there's the loser with the report". "Let's see what the loser has to say this time." "Hey loser - coming for lunch?". If someone challenges them on it - they can say "oh, he likes being called loser. Don't you, loser?". Get them to encourage others to call you "loser" as well. And tell them they don't have to stop, even if you ask.
(Feel free to substitute something less subtle with "loser"). Continue for months. Every day, all day. Then come back here and say that people shouldn't be influenced by mere words.
Anyone who watches politics knows the power of echo chambers - you call someone something enough times, and people start to believe it. If it works on grown adults, why do people expect kids to somehow be immune? Particularly when you're trapped in a room with them for 8 hours a day?
Now, that said, I have approximately zero confidence that school admin will be able to do much of anything based on this new mandate. In my school experience, adult authority figures were, without exception, useless or worse in dealing with bullies. I doubt that they've improved too much, and now their mandate is supposed to extend to the internet? Good luck with that one, guys.
I'd be forced to agree - if anything, anti-bullying rules tend to get enforced against the bullied when they try to stand up for themselves. Bullies know the rules. They know where and when the teachers aren't watching, and they know exactly how far they can push before the school is forced to take action - it's their specialty, after all. I've never known a bullied kid to be rescued by school authority. Standing up for themselves, yes. Other kids stepping in, definitely. The school? Not gonna happen.
And the reason why is simple - behind every bully is a parent who thinks that their Little Angel Couldn't Possibly Have Done Such A Thing. And they will fight tooth and nail with the school when Little Bobby gets in trouble. So unless Bobby does something so egregious that the school can't turn a blind eye, they're not going to pick that fight.
If parents want bullying at their schools to stop, they need to teach their kids to stand up to bullies - not just the ones bullying them, but all bullies. You see a kid getting picked on, you go help.
As an aside, I'm dying to know how they're expecting teachers to enforce this sort of thing - will all students be required to hand over usernames and passwords so the school can monitor communications?
It's a bit of an issue right now in Massachusetts (US). Our public school system includes a number of publicly funded charter schools. Some of these schools are really great learning environments. The problem is that these schools are selective, and cost more per student to run than the public school system. Parents of kids who have been rejected from these schools are campaigning to eliminate these special schools or to bring their funding in line with the public system, which will effectively close them.
Sadly, the concept of increasing funding for the other kids never is given serious thought. Here's empirical evidence that if you spend an additional $X, you get demonstratively better results - why wouldn't parents be yelling because only selected kids get the bonus cash? No-one wants their kid to go to the bad school.
Isn't it a defense (albeit a weaker one) against copyright and trademark claims? If they can show that Google is getting a free pass, then it could be parlayed into a claim that the copyright holders aren't properly defending their claims?
I suspect they're not doing it to convince the judge/jury, as they are to force Google to get involved (since G probably doesn't want any sort of precedent around search result blacklisting.)
It does bring up a good point - if IsoHunt turned off the search engine, but still had the database exposed to search engines, are they still doing something wrong?
Same problem, different president, same corporations.
FTFY - I was amused to read a while back that corporate donations are almost as standardized as tipping your server. 60% to the party in power, 40% to the opposition. Tweak according to past behavior and expected behavior in the future.
I'm sick of him selling-out to these megacorps. Damn Republican. What we need is a Democrat president who is not a puppet of the corporations.
Hate to break it to you, but until people can run for office without needing millions of dollars, corporate interests will always take precedence, since they're the only ones that can pay for it.
It's getting bad, even at the local level - to make a serious run in my city's last election was in the $100K range for mayor, $60K for alderman. You don't get that kind of cash together without owing a few favors.
Yes, it does. If you're aim is to make lots of money. If you don't like FB's policies, here's a shocker for you, don't use it you twat.
That would be a great idea, if Facebook would mind it's own business.
But FB will happily let other users slap your name all over photos (and if you're not a user, you won't be notified that Goatse is now labeled as being *you*). Those "like" buttons that are popping up all over the bloody place? They track you even if you're not registered with Facebook. And now they're farming out their logins for other sites (my local paper now requires a Facebook account to send a letter to the editor).
You don't get it. Ask any itard and right now he is twittering/fbing frantically on just how UBER SUPER COOL his tablet is, that he can now watch TV AT HOME!!!!!!!!11!!!
I like watching TV on my iPad - a local station has an app - but it doesn't require me to have paid for the cable package up front, and then pay again for the bandwidth.
It's not a story of what this app does, it's a story of what this app doesn't do. It can't leave home WiFi, won't work while a passenger in a moving bus/train, it essentially acts as a hand-held TV only where you already can put a TV.
With the added benefit of counting against your bandwidth caps!
The reason this works is the guy can charge a premium ($89 is not cheap for the speed of Internet he is offering, more like 3 times the cost if it was DSL or Cable of the same speed), but he can do it because they have no other option.
I'd suspect there's two other forces at work driving that price up. One, he's likely getting gouged on his broadband costs (and thus has to pass them along to his customers). Two, the whole thing started as hobby work (which means he probably doesn't *want* to be too cheap.)
What US *POLITICIANS* call ANYTHING is almost certainly hyperbole and irrelevant. What has the Justice Department called it? Not treason, because it isn't.
Ah. Good things politicians don't have any say over government
And seizing "80,000" domains that may very well be involved in pirated software and other illegalities *IS NOT* even within 20,000 miles of what Egypt and China do.
Ah, so glad you Americans finally stopped worrying about "rule of law" and "innocent until proven guilty" - Those Naughty People might be doing something we don't like, so they must be stopped!
Question for you - are you comfortable with the reciprocal? As in, other countries taking American sites offline? Or do you believe that American law supersedes all?
You're an idealistic college kid, I know, so I'll cut you slack on thinking taking down p2p and other illegal sites is on the same level with freedom of political thought.
Nice try, but that's a swing and a miss, on three counts. I'm a lot older than that, I have no problem with bootleggers being prosecuted, and you're deluding yourself if you think those sites were offline for more than the day it took for new domain registrations to propagate.
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
When was the last time the US Gov blocked / turned off the Internet to deprive the people freedom of speech? Did they block WikiLeaks? No they did not. Your ideological rant is not supported by, you know, actual facts.
I wouldn't use WikiLeaks as an example, since US politicians are calling it treason (protip: you can only be a traitor to your *own* country)
But you should check your news - while other countries turn off the internet within their own borders (which, while abhorrent to us techies, is within their legal rights), the US seized over 80,000 domain names recently - and those sites are blocked not only in the US, but everywhere in the world. Let me repeat that - the United States blocked over 80,000 web sites from being accessed not only inside their borders, but everywhere in the world.
While the US and China can still claim that, I'd say France and England haven't had that level of insulation in decades - and Russia is borderline at best.
Slashdot Mirror
With Sam L Jackson as Gandalf...
And? What if I was offended by it? Would that make my point null and void? No. People should not be so easily affected by words. The fact that you think I might not be a very good role model for this behavior is irrelevant.
That said, I do not believe I would be affected by such petty things. Why would I be? They can only hurt me if I let them, in which case that is my fault.
You forget that perception becomes reality. Do you want to sit with "the loser" at lunch? If you need someone on your team, are you going to pick "the loser"? Do you think you would get promotions?
Now, add the fact that in a school environment, you don't have an adult's ability to get away from the echo chamber - so that perception is constantly being reinforced, not only in the words, but in how that causes people to relate to you. No-one will sit with you, because no-one wants to sit with the loser, so no-one will sit with you. Rumor causes reality fuels the rumor.
Here's empirical evidence that if you spend an additional $X, you get demonstratively better results - why wouldn't parents be yelling because only selected kids get the bonus cash?
You have a strange definition of evidence then. The charter schools pick their students, and you assume money is the reason their students do better and not the fact that they PICK THEIR STUDENTS? Even when, if you look nationwide, district by district, there is no correlation between per-student spending and academic performance?
I assumed it was obvious that if you cherry-pick your students you're going to get better results "on average". (Which ignores issues of what other programs the school offers - for instance, the school my daughter will attend this fall has the lowest scores for an "advanced placement" school because they *also* offer "developmentally challenged" and those scores drag the school average down). But does it not beg the question - if you're already getting to pick-and-choose your students, why do you need extra money per student? I would think that if anything, charter schools should need *less* money per student.
Out of curiosity, do you also think John Edwards's television show is evidence that he is psychic?
Couldn't tell you - don't watch it.
They do, but it's a higher-class of bullying. For instance, rather than push you into a locker, their butler pushes your butler into a locker. Far more civilized.
Maybe I'm naive, but does this really happen?
Hell yeah. Happened to me a few times over the years in school. The saving grace in my case was that we moved around a lot - so while that made me an easy target for such things (no-one to stand up for me), it also meant that I wasn't as invested in their opinion either. And the best defense is really indifference - you have to truly not give a shit about them. Putting up the brave front only encourages them to see if they can break you down. It's only when you can look them in the eye and say "so what?" that they'll usually go find easier pickings.
The relevance is in the fact that if you follow the UK example for reasons given, you'll be focusing on fly on the wall, and ignoring the massive elephant in the room. School's job is far beyond "teaching kids while in school", its mission is to educate and adapt children to become productive adults. In many cases this requires influence outside school doors, which is usually attained via less visible, and acceptable ways such as school-sponsored after-school clubs, parent-teacher meetings, homework, fixed schedules, etc.
And while I support all of those things, I don't think that makes my school responsible for my results. In the end, it still comes down to the kid.
But while we're on the topic, I'm wondering when people will figure out that there just might be a correlation between drop-outs and cutting extra-curriculars? Really, kids go to school for the music, art, sports, drama - you just make them learn math and science and language as payment for the "fun stuff". (My proof? Show me a kid who gets up in the morning and skips off to school because today is math day. I loved school, and even I only went for the "extras".)
Yes, kids should get punished for fighting in school,
Yes, they should - I'm wondering when kids forgot that you went outside after school, just past the school yards for this sort of thing?
Joking aside, I hear what you're saying, but TFA points out the suicide rate among gay and lesbian students is 4 times that of straight students. I'm not saying that justifies trampling on free speech off school grounds, but saying "work it out" is a little simplistic.
How is anyone surprised at this, when you see The Grownups saying the things they do about gays and lesbians? Hell, the schools can't even get on the right page on supporting them - I'm not holding my breath for them to start holding that ground any time soon.
People shouldn't be so easily influenced (emotionally or otherwise) by mere words.
Let's try this as an experiment. Get one or two of your co-workers to call you a loser. Get them to use it everytime you're around - "oh, there's the loser with the report". "Let's see what the loser has to say this time." "Hey loser - coming for lunch?". If someone challenges them on it - they can say "oh, he likes being called loser. Don't you, loser?". Get them to encourage others to call you "loser" as well. And tell them they don't have to stop, even if you ask.
(Feel free to substitute something less subtle with "loser"). Continue for months. Every day, all day. Then come back here and say that people shouldn't be influenced by mere words.
Anyone who watches politics knows the power of echo chambers - you call someone something enough times, and people start to believe it. If it works on grown adults, why do people expect kids to somehow be immune? Particularly when you're trapped in a room with them for 8 hours a day?
Now, that said, I have approximately zero confidence that school admin will be able to do much of anything based on this new mandate. In my school experience, adult authority figures were, without exception, useless or worse in dealing with bullies. I doubt that they've improved too much, and now their mandate is supposed to extend to the internet? Good luck with that one, guys.
I'd be forced to agree - if anything, anti-bullying rules tend to get enforced against the bullied when they try to stand up for themselves. Bullies know the rules. They know where and when the teachers aren't watching, and they know exactly how far they can push before the school is forced to take action - it's their specialty, after all. I've never known a bullied kid to be rescued by school authority. Standing up for themselves, yes. Other kids stepping in, definitely. The school? Not gonna happen.
And the reason why is simple - behind every bully is a parent who thinks that their Little Angel Couldn't Possibly Have Done Such A Thing. And they will fight tooth and nail with the school when Little Bobby gets in trouble. So unless Bobby does something so egregious that the school can't turn a blind eye, they're not going to pick that fight.
If parents want bullying at their schools to stop, they need to teach their kids to stand up to bullies - not just the ones bullying them, but all bullies. You see a kid getting picked on, you go help.
As an aside, I'm dying to know how they're expecting teachers to enforce this sort of thing - will all students be required to hand over usernames and passwords so the school can monitor communications?
It's a bit of an issue right now in Massachusetts (US). Our public school system includes a number of publicly funded charter schools. Some of these schools are really great learning environments. The problem is that these schools are selective, and cost more per student to run than the public school system. Parents of kids who have been rejected from these schools are campaigning to eliminate these special schools or to bring their funding in line with the public system, which will effectively close them.
Sadly, the concept of increasing funding for the other kids never is given serious thought. Here's empirical evidence that if you spend an additional $X, you get demonstratively better results - why wouldn't parents be yelling because only selected kids get the bonus cash? No-one wants their kid to go to the bad school.
Isn't it a defense (albeit a weaker one) against copyright and trademark claims? If they can show that Google is getting a free pass, then it could be parlayed into a claim that the copyright holders aren't properly defending their claims?
I suspect they're not doing it to convince the judge/jury, as they are to force Google to get involved (since G probably doesn't want any sort of precedent around search result blacklisting.)
It does bring up a good point - if IsoHunt turned off the search engine, but still had the database exposed to search engines, are they still doing something wrong?
I think there's a phrase for those folks... "one term President".
Same problem, different president, same corporations.
FTFY - I was amused to read a while back that corporate donations are almost as standardized as tipping your server. 60% to the party in power, 40% to the opposition. Tweak according to past behavior and expected behavior in the future.
I'm sick of him selling-out to these megacorps. Damn Republican. What we need is a Democrat president who is not a puppet of the corporations.
Hate to break it to you, but until people can run for office without needing millions of dollars, corporate interests will always take precedence, since they're the only ones that can pay for it.
It's getting bad, even at the local level - to make a serious run in my city's last election was in the $100K range for mayor, $60K for alderman. You don't get that kind of cash together without owing a few favors.
Yes, it does. If you're aim is to make lots of money. If you don't like FB's policies, here's a shocker for you, don't use it you twat.
That would be a great idea, if Facebook would mind it's own business.
But FB will happily let other users slap your name all over photos (and if you're not a user, you won't be notified that Goatse is now labeled as being *you*). Those "like" buttons that are popping up all over the bloody place? They track you even if you're not registered with Facebook. And now they're farming out their logins for other sites (my local paper now requires a Facebook account to send a letter to the editor).
You don't get it. Ask any itard and right now he is twittering/fbing frantically on just how UBER SUPER COOL his tablet is, that he can now watch TV AT HOME!!!!!!!!11!!!
I like watching TV on my iPad - a local station has an app - but it doesn't require me to have paid for the cable package up front, and then pay again for the bandwidth.
It's not a story of what this app does, it's a story of what this app doesn't do. It can't leave home WiFi, won't work while a passenger in a moving bus/train, it essentially acts as a hand-held TV only where you already can put a TV.
With the added benefit of counting against your bandwidth caps!
This is really a sucker's bet.
The reason this works is the guy can charge a premium ($89 is not cheap for the speed of Internet he is offering, more like 3 times the cost if it was DSL or Cable of the same speed), but he can do it because they have no other option.
I'd suspect there's two other forces at work driving that price up. One, he's likely getting gouged on his broadband costs (and thus has to pass them along to his customers). Two, the whole thing started as hobby work (which means he probably doesn't *want* to be too cheap.)
Easy - it prevents them from moving into that market later. (Or more properly, from maximizing their margins when they do move in).
What US *POLITICIANS* call ANYTHING is almost certainly hyperbole and irrelevant. What has the Justice Department called it? Not treason, because it isn't.
Ah. Good things politicians don't have any say over government
And seizing "80,000" domains that may very well be involved in pirated software and other illegalities *IS NOT* even within 20,000 miles of what Egypt and China do.
Ah, so glad you Americans finally stopped worrying about "rule of law" and "innocent until proven guilty" - Those Naughty People might be doing something we don't like, so they must be stopped!
Question for you - are you comfortable with the reciprocal? As in, other countries taking American sites offline? Or do you believe that American law supersedes all?
You're an idealistic college kid, I know, so I'll cut you slack on thinking taking down p2p and other illegal sites is on the same level with freedom of political thought.
Nice try, but that's a swing and a miss, on three counts. I'm a lot older than that, I have no problem with bootleggers being prosecuted, and you're deluding yourself if you think those sites were offline for more than the day it took for new domain registrations to propagate.
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.
When was the last time the US Gov blocked / turned off the Internet to deprive the people freedom of speech? Did they block WikiLeaks? No they did not. Your ideological rant is not supported by, you know, actual facts.
I wouldn't use WikiLeaks as an example, since US politicians are calling it treason (protip: you can only be a traitor to your *own* country)
But you should check your news - while other countries turn off the internet within their own borders (which, while abhorrent to us techies, is within their legal rights), the US seized over 80,000 domain names recently - and those sites are blocked not only in the US, but everywhere in the world. Let me repeat that - the United States blocked over 80,000 web sites from being accessed not only inside their borders, but everywhere in the world.
Oh, and by the way, the US government would like the ability to block the internet within their borders as well.
While the US and China can still claim that, I'd say France and England haven't had that level of insulation in decades - and Russia is borderline at best.
Making it even easier for folks like Iran and Egypt and Saudi Arabia to control information and (lack of) freedom...
Um, you did notice that the US not only blocks domains in their own country, but prevents other countries from seeing it as well?
Hate to break it to you, but the US has lost the moral high ground when it comes to internet freedom.