How does waiting for a publisher to loosen DRM equate to fighting DRM?
Gandhi and King taught non-violent resistance, but you can win against human beings. You can't win against a profit motive.
Sure you can. Supply and demand. If we reduce demand for DRM-encumbered software, while increasing demand for the non-DRM version (which is a long-winded way of saying "don't buy the DRM version"), then economics should push publishers to the non-DRM version.
In theory, anyway. Personally, I just won't buy DRM that doesn't give me some benefit in return (read: Steam)
Apparently there's no safety or scholarly reason for it.
Why? I can think of both.
And since they're willing to back down for religious reasons, it seems obvious to me that it was a dumb rule in the first place.
The rule has a benefit of X. Losing the ability to wear your hat costs Y, Y X.
Is that really a hard thing to imagine?
(Guessing that the above was Y < X and the HTML ate it.)
Considering that Y = restricting freedom of expression, I would say that X has to be pretty darn big...
Which leads to the obvious question - why aren't hats allowed in school?
Well, in some cultures, it's considered rude to wear a hat indoors or in the presence of a teacher. Obviously, these cultures make religious exemptions... you aren't uncouth, you're following a religious ideal. I have no problems with a school enforcing common courtesy on their students.
Key words - in "some" cultures. Why are some cultures permitted and others aren't. (Or to put another way, why is one hat "OK" and one isn't?)
Baseball caps are really easy to cheat with; write on the underside of the bill.
There are a billion ways to cheat in school, and the solution to all of them is the same - teacher attentiveness. Banning hats just means they'll store the formulas in their calculator, or write it on their palms, or however else they choose to do it. (That's probably why schools are doing the metal detectors and strip searches.)
Lastly, hats are commonly used to display gang colors in inner cities.
Hmm... I think I've seen those - different hats have different emblems and colors, people argue over which representative group is better than the other... yeah, "baseball teams".
And again, I think you're underestimating today's youth - do you think they all said "gee, we can't wear our hats. Guess we'll have to quit our gangs and become insurance salesmen."? They just picked another way to identify each other. So it's still a rule that serves no purpose (other than inventing ways for innocent people to get in trouble.)
I would suggest that anyone who makes their religion, particularly a made-up one, an issue in a job centre is not seriously looking for work. You are entitled to consider this a lie if you wish, but I suggest you look up the word in a dictionary as a "lie" requires there to be established fact before coming into existence - my intelligent speculation is probably correct but not an established fact.
As I understand the article, he didn't walk in preaching the faith - he declined to remove his headwear on religious grounds, after they made an issue of it.
Sikhs can wear turbans to school, where hats are not allowed
Which leads to the obvious question - why aren't hats allowed in school?
Apparently there's no safety or scholarly reason for it. And since they're willing to back down for religious reasons, it seems obvious to me that it was a dumb rule in the first place.
In Canada, if that person gets into an accident, my taxes are going to pay for his hospital bill. I'm all for saving lives, but I would rather prevent injury before it happens. In this case I worked goddamn hard for my money
The idea that you think this gives you the right to tell me how I should live my life is THE single primary reason that a nationalised health system is a bad idea.
It's amusing how many people complain about nationalized health care, but don't have a problem with nationalized military and police. They're paid from your taxes as well - why don't you just let everyone carry the weapon of their choice and protect themselves?
I was saying that no one should be getting this special exemption
What - the exemption to wear your choice of clothes?
That's the real takeaway, in my opinion - a hoodie is not dangerous. Neither is a burqa. They're clothes.
And to those who will point out that they could be Hiding Something Dangerous there, I will bet you five bucks I could walk in there with a top hat, or a fedora, or a beret. Any of those will conceal the same amount of C4/guns/whatnot that a hoodie will.
If I had to decide what made me like programming, it was being six years old and getting to drive that dumb turtle around a screen (wasn't lucky enough to have the physical turtle). Later I picked up Basic and Hypercard in high school, Modula-2, Batch, C and C++ in university, Perl, Javascript, Java and VBA in my career and personal projects. But I probably wouldn't be doing what I do now if I didn't discover how to draw shapes on screen.
Now, Logo isn't a "useful" language. But it shows kids that you can control the Magic Game Box. And your future programmers will see that, go "cool!", and run with it.
It's the Lego theory - people who end up building things as adults liked to build with blocks and legos as kids. The complexity comes later.
and how do you explain that to a child without having them conclude that society expects them to one day commit crimes?
Easy - from the summary:
Apparently, these samples were part of a larger program to build a national, perhaps international, DNA database that could be used to track down missing persons
Same justification they use to get parents to fingerprint their kids.
I'd disagree that most shouldn't show up. Instead I'd say that if you're going to pop up an error, you should tell me as much as possible, in the clearest terms possible.
I maintain a program at work - basic "read all these files, do things to them, put them back" batch stuff. I make sure to catch all my errors (just so it doesn't actually crash), but the error messages vary. Sometimes I can tell exactly what went wrong, and I say it "field X on line Y of file Z is supposed to be a date, and it isn't.
" (I don't have the option of just "fixing" it mid-job, sadly.)
If I can't nail down exactly what threw the error, I tell them what file caused the problem "Something went wrong during step X on file Y."
But at the very least, I can tell you "Something went wrong while doing step X." It's mostly useless, but it's still better than "Error Code 2."
I've gotten errors in MS Access that say error n: there is no message for this error".
This is the truly inexcusable error - you know what the error is (you gave it a number, didn't you?), but didn't bother to put in some text to tell the poor sap what went wrong.
Refusing the laptops was not much of an option - I believe that was the was for the students to access the textbooks.
Then they'll just have to find another option - I'm sure there's a dead-tree version of those textbooks around somewhere. Or I'll provide the hardware, where I control what's installed and what's not. (And if the software is for "theft prevention" as they say, they'd have no objections - it's my problem if it goes missing).
if the student was selling illegal drugs, that's a matter for the police
It's also a matter for the police, but it is still a matter for the school. The school is charged with maintaining a safe environment for the students. I am not condoning what the school has done but they should be looking out for illegal activities that could harm other students. Where they went wrong is with the invasion of privacy that occurred when looking for illegal activities.
I would think schools would want to be very, very cautious about how far they want to extend their responsibility in this matter. Take this instance for the example: is the school really admitting responsibility for all the actions this student takes at home? Do they really want that responsibility for each of the 1800 students in that school?
Considering the issues they have simply maintaining order on the school grounds (and really, there isn't a six-year-old alive that doesn't know exactly where the teachers patrol during recess, and where you can be left alone for 15 minutes), I'd suggest they may not want to be held responsible for everything the kids do after hours as well.
But the entire "what exactly was the kid doing" tangent is really just an attempt to justify the school's bad behavior.
You made the fallacy of the following form: If X and Y did something wrong and X is using Y's behavior to justify its own actions then Y did not do anything wrong. What the school allegedly did with the webcam should not absolve the kid of his crimes.
I'm presuming you're going with the crime of drug dealing and not candy-eating?
Assuming worst possible scenario (picture is of the kid in the middle of a drug deal, money in one hand, bag of crack in the other), do you really think a school write-up is an appropriate punishment?
That's the issue - if the laptop wasn't stolen, then what's going on in the home is none of the school's business, whether he's smacking hos or Gobstoppers.
Whether he was doing drugs or not is entirely irrelevant. If he was, there is no legal or moral way for the school to have found out unless he was caught doing it at the school.
And to take it one step further - even giving the school Maximum Doubtage, if the student was selling illegal drugs, that's a matter for the police; if he's using, that's a matter for doctors and parents etc. In either case, being written up at school the next day is easily the least effective course of action possible.
And furthermore, WTF is their problem with masturbation?
What are you talking about?
The kid wasn't choking kojak - he was eating candy.
Dumbass on the other side of the camera thought a piece of Mike & Ike candy was an illegal drug.
Who knows what kind 'zero-tolerance' befuddled mindset lets them decide that something that looks like a pill was "illegal" via just a webcam shot...
Which brings us back to the original issue - if the "security system" is only used in the case of theft,
What cause did they have to activate it in the first place? (the student obviously hasn't reported it stolen - he has it)
Assuming for the moment that they did believe that it was stolen (and were thus justified in turning on the feature), why did they continue observing once they saw the student on-camera (hence proving he is in possession)?
And assuming further that they happened to turn on the camera, right at the moment he was doing whatever
he's not supposed to be doing, since it's obviously not related to theft of the equipment, on what grounds did
they decide they had authority to punish the child?
Followed the links provided (I know, I'm a horrible/.er), and ended up at the actual code):
1.4. Scope of the Code. This Code applies to any conduct that occurs:
a. on school grounds at anytime;
b. off school grounds at any school activity, function or event;
c. off School Grounds when the conduct may reasonably be expected: (a) to undermine the proper
disciplinary authority of the school; (b) to endanger the safety of Members of the School Community; or (c)
to disrupt the school; and
d. while traveling to and from school, including but not limited to actions on any school bus, van or public
transportation.
A and B are pretty standard (you're still under the care of the school). D is a bit more expansive than I recall (school bus is a bit of a gimme, but when are you no longer travelling "from school" - if I stop at the corner store, am I now traveling "from the store" "to home"?).
C, while I can see the school's POV on it, is a bit weasely. In the original post's instance, we don't know exactly what the kid allegedly did (or what the photo is of), so maybe he's making "School Sucks" posters. But I think it's up to the school to prove the relevance.
Still going to go with "make loud pissed-off parent noises until they give up" - it's a time-honored strategy.
"... where is the justification or authority for disciplining children for activities off school grounds?"
Unfortunately, to my understanding, there's a whole body of recent case law that supports them doing just that. If they had had a forced signing statement in advance, I assume that this too would have sailed through just fine.
I'd say "you must be joking", but I'm afraid you probably aren't.
"Simple immediate solution for parents - refuse the laptops. Tell the school that you don't accept spyware in your home."
If you read the school's new FAQ page today, you'll see that the school-administered laptops are actually required for certain schoolwork.
Interesting... then depending on how annoyed I am, I think we're at (a) uninstalling the software, or (b) duct tape and a cut-off cable in the mic jack. Or, in this day and age, it could be tempting to fire up Ustream and just leave it running 24/7 labeled "Lower Merion School District Student Surveillance Feed".
Either way, I don't think I'd be willing to let it stand as is. (My daughter's only 3 now, but I'm starting to do my research and preparing for the worst.)
where is the justification or authority for disciplining children for activities off school grounds?
The justification is in the lack of action against it when it happens. Of the parents who see a problem with this, few make it past the "threaten to sue" stage.
Agreed - although I don't think suing is the best course of action anyway for these things. Addressing it directly (and publicly) with the administration seems to get better results in my experience.
Visible from school grounds. (Also, it makes a huge difference whether this was a public or private school. I don't know which it is.)
Actually, I don't see why it would matter if it was visible from school grounds - it's after hours, and it's *not* on school grounds. The student is not under the authority of the school at that point.
I suppose the question to the parent is, what did you do about it?
I am not a lawyer, but I've investigated Supreme Court decisions on rights of students several times. They always start "The student doesn't shed his or her constitutional rights at the schoolhouse doors, but...." and then go on to describe rights of administrators that describe a situation where the students have no rights.
All the lawyers have to do is describe a reasonable case that the admins were trying to "keep order" in the schoolhouse and this goes nowhere. The Supreme Court has often went out of its way to make school administrators despots in their own little fiefdoms. Anyone that has attended a public school since 1970 knows this.
I think the angle to go with here is that (a) the activities being punished happened off school grounds and on the student's personal time (unless the school wants to start taking responsibility and liability for all actions students take), and thus outside of the fiefdom, and (b) the surveillance extends to persons who are not attending the school (and again, outside the school realm).
That's the part that tickled me - while there may be some (flimsy) justification for using the AV for tracking down lost laptops, where is the justification or authority for disciplining children for activities off school grounds? Amazing how some educators think that they own kids 24/7, just because they sit in their class for an hour a day.
Simple immediate solution for parents - refuse the laptops. Tell the school that you don't accept spyware in your home. And be vocal about it - school boards will let stuff rot in court for years, but a few weeks on the front page will change their minds ASAP.
You may want to note that while the IOC allows them to use "Olympic" (although that word isn't used on the official site, so that might not be true either), they definitely don't allow them to use the Olympic rings. (And if I read correctly, they're not allowed to use five of anything, because that might "dilute the brand".)
Well, the death of the athlete was after 11 or 12 other crashes on the same course during training (I can't remember if the death counted as one of the "12 accidents" reported). The bobsled had seven crashes in a day. One of the women's ski events was so bad that it was joked that anyone who made it down the hill without falling or crashing deserved a medal...
Slashdot Mirror
How does waiting for a publisher to loosen DRM equate to fighting DRM?
Gandhi and King taught non-violent resistance, but you can win against human beings. You can't win against a profit motive.
Sure you can. Supply and demand. If we reduce demand for DRM-encumbered software, while increasing demand for the non-DRM version (which is a long-winded way of saying "don't buy the DRM version"), then economics should push publishers to the non-DRM version.
In theory, anyway. Personally, I just won't buy DRM that doesn't give me some benefit in return (read: Steam)
Why? I can think of both.
The rule has a benefit of X. Losing the ability to wear your hat costs Y, Y X.
Is that really a hard thing to imagine?
(Guessing that the above was Y < X and the HTML ate it.)
Considering that Y = restricting freedom of expression, I would say that X has to be pretty darn big...
Well, in some cultures, it's considered rude to wear a hat indoors or in the presence of a teacher. Obviously, these cultures make religious exemptions... you aren't uncouth, you're following a religious ideal. I have no problems with a school enforcing common courtesy on their students.
Key words - in "some" cultures. Why are some cultures permitted and others aren't. (Or to put another way, why is one hat "OK" and one isn't?)
Baseball caps are really easy to cheat with; write on the underside of the bill.
There are a billion ways to cheat in school, and the solution to all of them is the same - teacher attentiveness. Banning hats just means they'll store the formulas in their calculator, or write it on their palms, or however else they choose to do it. (That's probably why schools are doing the metal detectors and strip searches.)
Lastly, hats are commonly used to display gang colors in inner cities.
Hmm... I think I've seen those - different hats have different emblems and colors, people argue over which representative group is better than the other... yeah, "baseball teams".
And again, I think you're underestimating today's youth - do you think they all said "gee, we can't wear our hats. Guess we'll have to quit our gangs and become insurance salesmen."? They just picked another way to identify each other. So it's still a rule that serves no purpose (other than inventing ways for innocent people to get in trouble.)
I would suggest that anyone who makes their religion, particularly a made-up one, an issue in a job centre is not seriously looking for work. You are entitled to consider this a lie if you wish, but I suggest you look up the word in a dictionary as a "lie" requires there to be established fact before coming into existence - my intelligent speculation is probably correct but not an established fact.
As I understand the article, he didn't walk in preaching the faith - he declined to remove his headwear on religious grounds, after they made an issue of it.
That's what, three this week?
Sikhs can wear turbans to school, where hats are not allowed
Which leads to the obvious question - why aren't hats allowed in school?
Apparently there's no safety or scholarly reason for it. And since they're willing to back down for religious reasons, it seems obvious to me that it was a dumb rule in the first place.
In Canada, if that person gets into an accident, my taxes are going to pay for his hospital bill. I'm all for saving lives, but I would rather prevent injury before it happens. In this case I worked goddamn hard for my money
The idea that you think this gives you the right to tell me how I should live my life is THE single primary reason that a nationalised health system is a bad idea.
It's amusing how many people complain about nationalized health care, but don't have a problem with nationalized military and police. They're paid from your taxes as well - why don't you just let everyone carry the weapon of their choice and protect themselves?
I was saying that no one should be getting this special exemption
What - the exemption to wear your choice of clothes?
That's the real takeaway, in my opinion - a hoodie is not dangerous. Neither is a burqa. They're clothes.
And to those who will point out that they could be Hiding Something Dangerous there, I will bet you five bucks I could walk in there with a top hat, or a fedora, or a beret. Any of those will conceal the same amount of C4/guns/whatnot that a hoodie will.
Seriously.
If I had to decide what made me like programming, it was being six years old and getting to drive that dumb turtle around a screen (wasn't lucky enough to have the physical turtle). Later I picked up Basic and Hypercard in high school, Modula-2, Batch, C and C++ in university, Perl, Javascript, Java and VBA in my career and personal projects. But I probably wouldn't be doing what I do now if I didn't discover how to draw shapes on screen.
Now, Logo isn't a "useful" language. But it shows kids that you can control the Magic Game Box. And your future programmers will see that, go "cool!", and run with it.
It's the Lego theory - people who end up building things as adults liked to build with blocks and legos as kids. The complexity comes later.
and how do you explain that to a child without having them conclude that society expects them to one day commit crimes?
Easy - from the summary:
Same justification they use to get parents to fingerprint their kids.
But, how is a blood sample from somebody born in 2003 going to solve a cold case? I guess a seven year old is prone to murder.
I'm guessing the plan was to continue collecting info for 20 or 30 years, and use the information to catch adults at that point.
I'd disagree that most shouldn't show up. Instead I'd say that if you're going to pop up an error, you should tell me as much as possible, in the clearest terms possible.
I maintain a program at work - basic "read all these files, do things to them, put them back" batch stuff. I make sure to catch all my errors (just so it doesn't actually crash), but the error messages vary. Sometimes I can tell exactly what went wrong, and I say it "field X on line Y of file Z is supposed to be a date, and it isn't. " (I don't have the option of just "fixing" it mid-job, sadly.)
If I can't nail down exactly what threw the error, I tell them what file caused the problem "Something went wrong during step X on file Y."
But at the very least, I can tell you "Something went wrong while doing step X." It's mostly useless, but it's still better than "Error Code 2."
I've gotten errors in MS Access that say error n: there is no message for this error".
This is the truly inexcusable error - you know what the error is (you gave it a number, didn't you?), but didn't bother to put in some text to tell the poor sap what went wrong.
Refusing the laptops was not much of an option - I believe that was the was for the students to access the textbooks.
Then they'll just have to find another option - I'm sure there's a dead-tree version of those textbooks around somewhere. Or I'll provide the hardware, where I control what's installed and what's not. (And if the software is for "theft prevention" as they say, they'd have no objections - it's my problem if it goes missing).
if the student was selling illegal drugs, that's a matter for the police
It's also a matter for the police, but it is still a matter for the school. The school is charged with maintaining a safe environment for the students. I am not condoning what the school has done but they should be looking out for illegal activities that could harm other students. Where they went wrong is with the invasion of privacy that occurred when looking for illegal activities.
I would think schools would want to be very, very cautious about how far they want to extend their responsibility in this matter. Take this instance for the example: is the school really admitting responsibility for all the actions this student takes at home? Do they really want that responsibility for each of the 1800 students in that school?
Considering the issues they have simply maintaining order on the school grounds (and really, there isn't a six-year-old alive that doesn't know exactly where the teachers patrol during recess, and where you can be left alone for 15 minutes), I'd suggest they may not want to be held responsible for everything the kids do after hours as well.
But the entire "what exactly was the kid doing" tangent is really just an attempt to justify the school's bad behavior.
You made the fallacy of the following form: If X and Y did something wrong and X is using Y's behavior to justify its own actions then Y did not do anything wrong. What the school allegedly did with the webcam should not absolve the kid of his crimes.
I'm presuming you're going with the crime of drug dealing and not candy-eating?
Assuming worst possible scenario (picture is of the kid in the middle of a drug deal, money in one hand, bag of crack in the other), do you really think a school write-up is an appropriate punishment?
That's the issue - if the laptop wasn't stolen, then what's going on in the home is none of the school's business, whether he's smacking hos or Gobstoppers.
Whether he was doing drugs or not is entirely irrelevant. If he was, there is no legal or moral way for the school to have found out unless he was caught doing it at the school.
And to take it one step further - even giving the school Maximum Doubtage, if the student was selling illegal drugs, that's a matter for the police; if he's using, that's a matter for doctors and parents etc. In either case, being written up at school the next day is easily the least effective course of action possible.
And furthermore, WTF is their problem with masturbation?
What are you talking about?
The kid wasn't choking kojak - he was eating candy. Dumbass on the other side of the camera thought a piece of Mike & Ike candy was an illegal drug. Who knows what kind 'zero-tolerance' befuddled mindset lets them decide that something that looks like a pill was "illegal" via just a webcam shot...
Which brings us back to the original issue - if the "security system" is only used in the case of theft,
The whole thing stinks, IMO.
Followed the links provided (I know, I'm a horrible /.er), and ended up at the actual code):
A and B are pretty standard (you're still under the care of the school). D is a bit more expansive than I recall (school bus is a bit of a gimme, but when are you no longer travelling "from school" - if I stop at the corner store, am I now traveling "from the store" "to home"?).
C, while I can see the school's POV on it, is a bit weasely. In the original post's instance, we don't know exactly what the kid allegedly did (or what the photo is of), so maybe he's making "School Sucks" posters. But I think it's up to the school to prove the relevance.
Still going to go with "make loud pissed-off parent noises until they give up" - it's a time-honored strategy.
"... where is the justification or authority for disciplining children for activities off school grounds?"
Unfortunately, to my understanding, there's a whole body of recent case law that supports them doing just that. If they had had a forced signing statement in advance, I assume that this too would have sailed through just fine.
I'd say "you must be joking", but I'm afraid you probably aren't.
"Simple immediate solution for parents - refuse the laptops. Tell the school that you don't accept spyware in your home."
If you read the school's new FAQ page today, you'll see that the school-administered laptops are actually required for certain schoolwork.
Interesting... then depending on how annoyed I am, I think we're at (a) uninstalling the software, or (b) duct tape and a cut-off cable in the mic jack. Or, in this day and age, it could be tempting to fire up Ustream and just leave it running 24/7 labeled "Lower Merion School District Student Surveillance Feed".
Either way, I don't think I'd be willing to let it stand as is. (My daughter's only 3 now, but I'm starting to do my research and preparing for the worst.)
The justification is in the lack of action against it when it happens. Of the parents who see a problem with this, few make it past the "threaten to sue" stage.
Agreed - although I don't think suing is the best course of action anyway for these things. Addressing it directly (and publicly) with the administration seems to get better results in my experience.
Visible from school grounds. (Also, it makes a huge difference whether this was a public or private school. I don't know which it is.)
Actually, I don't see why it would matter if it was visible from school grounds - it's after hours, and it's *not* on school grounds. The student is not under the authority of the school at that point.
I suppose the question to the parent is, what did you do about it?
I am not a lawyer, but I've investigated Supreme Court decisions on rights of students several times. They always start "The student doesn't shed his or her constitutional rights at the schoolhouse doors, but...." and then go on to describe rights of administrators that describe a situation where the students have no rights.
All the lawyers have to do is describe a reasonable case that the admins were trying to "keep order" in the schoolhouse and this goes nowhere. The Supreme Court has often went out of its way to make school administrators despots in their own little fiefdoms. Anyone that has attended a public school since 1970 knows this.
I think the angle to go with here is that (a) the activities being punished happened off school grounds and on the student's personal time (unless the school wants to start taking responsibility and liability for all actions students take), and thus outside of the fiefdom, and (b) the surveillance extends to persons who are not attending the school (and again, outside the school realm).
That's the part that tickled me - while there may be some (flimsy) justification for using the AV for tracking down lost laptops, where is the justification or authority for disciplining children for activities off school grounds? Amazing how some educators think that they own kids 24/7, just because they sit in their class for an hour a day.
Simple immediate solution for parents - refuse the laptops. Tell the school that you don't accept spyware in your home. And be vocal about it - school boards will let stuff rot in court for years, but a few weeks on the front page will change their minds ASAP.
You may want to note that while the IOC allows them to use "Olympic" (although that word isn't used on the official site, so that might not be true either), they definitely don't allow them to use the Olympic rings. (And if I read correctly, they're not allowed to use five of anything, because that might "dilute the brand".)
Well, the death of the athlete was after 11 or 12 other crashes on the same course during training (I can't remember if the death counted as one of the "12 accidents" reported). The bobsled had seven crashes in a day. One of the women's ski events was so bad that it was joked that anyone who made it down the hill without falling or crashing deserved a medal...