The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has established four criteria for quality of deterministic random number generators. They are summarized here:
K1 -- A sequence of random numbers with a high probability of containing no identical consecutive elements. K2 -- A sequence of numbers which is indistinguishable from 'true random' numbers according to specified statistical tests. The tests are the monobit test (equal numbers of ones and zeros in the sequence), poker test (a special instance of the chi-square test), runs test (counts the frequency of runs of various lengths), longruns test (checks whether there exists any run of length 34 or greater in 20 000 bits of the sequence) -- both from BSI2 (AIS 20, v. 1, 1999) and FIPS (140-1, 1994), and the autocorrelation test. In essence, these requirements are a test of how well a bit sequence: has zeros and ones equally often; after a sequence of n zeros (or ones), the next bit a one (or zero) with probability one-half; and any selected subsequence contains no information about the next element(s) in the sequence. K3 -- It should be impossible for any attacker (for all practical purposes) to calculate, or otherwise guess, from any given sub-sequence, any previous or future values in the sequence, nor any inner state of the generator. K4 -- It should be impossible, for all practical purposes, for an attacker to calculate, or guess from an inner state of the generator, any previous numbers in the sequence or any previous inner generator states.
"Whatever was going on in Utah needs to be looked at though. That story was downright disturbing. 'Curbing the straight edge movement' was one of their school's stated goals?!"
"In any case, if my child is doing something improper at home, it is my job to punish him, not the school's... work with me to correct the behavior and/or take action if the action 'spills over' into school"
Of course, the school contends that that's precisely what they were doing. Monitoring, not punishing, informing the parents. If you think the school was at fault (as I do), then you've got to focus on the monitoring itself as an intrisic wrong.
"I seem to recall reading somewhere that all of the laptops were meant to remain on campus."
They have successfully misled you; read carefully. The quote is:
2)... Concerned about the security of district-owned and issued laptops, the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops. This included tracking loaner laptops that may, against regulations, have been taken off campus.
Hint: The great majority of laptops will not be of the "loaner" variety.
"The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it."
Again, the school never claimed that. Read carefully: "... the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops". There's no claim that the plan was in fact followed faithfully.
"They claim they never once turned on the software unless a laptop was reported stolen."
As I pointed out in the previous thread, they did NOT actually claim that. Specific claims included, (1) "At no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security- tracking software." (IT staff do not count as "administrators"), and (2) "... the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops". (No claim that the plan was in fact followed faithfully.)
Amusingly, in the past when I've sent similar letters to representatives in Congress, I get an automated letter back to wit, "Mr. Software Professional, we hear how important copyrights are to you, and we're doing everything we can to strengthen them and enforce them as stringently as possible..., etc., etc."
"... so busybody teachers took it upon themselves to monitor students whenever they feel to it. The district claims that only two IT people were authorized to monitor, however how hard is it for an IT guy to tell the URL and the password to a teacher? Teachers were seen as gods until now, or a step above that."
In a school system there are two opposing camps: teachers vs. administrators. It is monumentally absurd to think that teachers would have the time, interest, or access to monitor stuff like that. The control-freaks are the administrators and their non-unionized IT staff that have to do whatever they say. See sig.
I still use IE6 on my personal desktop (Win2000) at home. I've tried others, and keep coming back to IE6 for a few reasons:
(1) It starts instantaneously, while any other browser takes a distractingly long time to start up. (2) It's the only browser I can get to put all the toolbars I need (including address bar) on one single row under the title bar. (3) Any other browser insists on throwing tabbed-browsing in my face at some point.
I've never had a virus as long as I've been running it. I understand that it's not standards-compliant, and I'm highly sympathetic to those who need to deal with that pain, but I personally don't. Sites that stop working with IE6 I just go "eh", and stop visiting. It's lightweight and snappy-responsive, and I can't bring myself to let go of that.
"You're downplaying the severity of a school putting (and using) remotely accessible video-recording devices in the privacy of the children's homes, without informing them (I would say deceptively, but maybe just ignorantly)."
I'm not downplaying anything. I think school adminstrators should be harshly jailed for this. I'm pointing out that they have successfully misled the public with weasel-words that do not actually contradict anything in the legal complaint.
I'll one-up you: I think it's improper to put recording devices in children's homes EVEN IF THEY WERE INFORMING THEM. But, with the greatest sadness, I'll guess that if they had informed them then this whole thing would blow over and be a-ok.
"My impression, through my own experience and people I have spoken to, is that maths is hard to learn because it is generally abstract."
Something I blogged about 2 years ago:
So here I am thinking obsessively deep about what exactly that "biggest idea" should be in each of math and computer sci classes. And oddly I find that all the different math/compsci classes sort of get sucked into the same single, primary big idea in my head. My concern is that it's such a big idea that it can't fit into a single class, or really into the sequence of subjects already mapped out. Or that it will be comprehensible at the level of incoming students...
For today let's say it's this: Abstraction. Getting comfortable with it. Getting proficient with it. Knowing deeply what it implies (Getting rid of details. Panning out just the key big-league concept that you need to apply.) Being able to recognize that any knowledge domain will have a bunch of different abstraction levels, and being able to pick the right one you want to be working at. And being comfortable with forgetting everything else as long as yourk work lasts.
To summarize, I argue this: The whole point of a math class is to be abstract. If it's not abstract, then it's not math. If you didn't need to practice your abstraction skills, then you wouldn't need any math classes.
"Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved?"
I'll say: no, not obvious. Equally legitimate suppositions: (1) It is the difficulty of the task which "will have an impact" on people's emotional state, not the other way around. (2) People's fear reactions should make them more focused, attentive, and capable.
This is the first time on Slashdot that I'll that say there's a legitimate call for "correlation is not causation". The claim in the article is that "anxiety about mathematics can adversely affect tasks as simple as basic counting". But the reported data is simply that "math anxious individuals, relative to their non-math anxious peers, demonstrated a deficit in the counting range (five to nine)..."
I don't see any support for the hypothesis that math anxiety "affects" or "impacts" (per the article) basic math tasks. I think an equally-well supported hypothesis is that people who suck at counting to 5 wind up developing math anxiety.
To test their hypothesis, they need to take equally-skilled people and somehow make an experimental group anxious about the upcoming task (or something). I don't see that happening here. Frankly, I'm highly skeptical of this whole "math anxiety" postulate. I think we've got to accept the fact that for some people, even basic arithmetic is monumentally difficult, and not blame it on their "feelings" towards the task.
Replying to myself -- 1998 article from the New York Times:
"The Bridgeport schools superintendent, James. A. Connelly, said that in the state's largest city and second-largest school system about three quarters of the 30 to 40 expulsions each year are for actions off school property, with 67 of the last 85 expulsions related to off-campus offenses. "
Looks like the key criterion is: "Is the off-school behavior potentially disruptive to the educational process in school?" You can see how liberally that might be applied. For example, earlier this month the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court upheld a suspension for a girl mocking the principal on a MySpace page, after the school argued that students were talking about it in class instead of studying. (At the same time, a different court ruled the opposite in a separate case. My guess is if any of this goes to the current SCOTUS, they will uphold extensive power rights to school administrators.)
PA School District Rules: "When and where the rules apply. The Code of Student Conduct covers students when they are on school grounds, or on the way to or from school. The rules also cover behavior at school events off grounds, as well as any off-grounds behavior (including behavior in the neighborhood) that is likely to lead to disruption at school. (The law is not clear on how far schools can go in punishing students for misbehavior that occurs off grounds or outside of school hours. If your case is of this type, you may wish to seek further advice from a private attorney or the Education Law Center.)"
"Okay, I just read a bit more and it looks like apparently they aren't even *allowed* to take the laptops home, they're just lent out for a couple of lessons. So the laptop WAS stolen, and the camera correctly identified the thief."
No, you've been tricked by their weasel-words. The quote:
(2)... Concerned about the security of district-owned and issued laptops, the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops. This included tracking loaner laptops that may, against regulations, have been taken off campus.
Note the phrase "this INCLUDED loaner laptops". Smart money and experience is that the majority of laptops are not "loaner" ones, and will not be prohibited from being taken off campus.
I'll challenge you to find language that actually says, "any laptop taken home is a violation of school regulations".
"The claim in the class action doc directly refutes the claims by the school."
Honestly, I think I can read between the lines of the school statement and see how they could be technically correct, although highly misleading (note that it's a rich district, and everyone involved has hired high powered lawyers).
1. Did an assistant principal at Harriton ever have the ability to remotely monitor a student at home? Did she utilize a photo taken by a school-issued laptop to discipline a student?
* No...
Did the assistant principal "have the ability to remotely monitor a student"? Well, no, the monitoring was actually done by an IT staff member who then handed off the picture to the assistant principal. (Note that the FAQ question is NOT "does any staff member have the ability to remotely monitor?")
Did she utilize a photo to discipline a student? Well, technically no, if there was no school-based punishment, suspension, etc. handed out... according to the report she met with the parents and just threatened future disciplinary measures. (Note that the FAQ question is NOT "did the assistant principal ever produce a photo taken by a school-issued laptop?")
So I can kind of see this as carefully-chosen weasel words.
"... 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.
"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.
"even if he gets away with this, his new employees will probably think twice before working on unpaid wages for so long."
As someone with friends in the video game business (formerly worked there myself), I'll say sadly probably not. There's a mixture of misplaced loyalty/heroics/naivete/Stockholm syndrome endemic to workers in that industry.
"So whats the rush to regulate it? Oh, thats right money. Money to the people who will game the system and then contribute to the 'right' people. Money to special interest groups who will fund 529s and such to support the 'right' people. So we will see all these non producers buy and sell green credits inflating their wallets at the expense of the middle class. Wall Street wins again because this is where the real push comes from. Why should people not involved in the production of CO2 get to buy and sell credits for it?"
This is pretty much nonsensical B.S. If you want to find the vested money interests in this issue, there's no need for tortured mental gymnastics that end with a question mark. Here is your answer: Big oil, gas, and coal companies. If I need to pick a side of this debate of which to be suspicious, it's extremely easy.
"And who does Utah want researching climate issues, if not climate researchers? Shoe salesmen?"
Read carefully: "[IPCC] does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers..." The key is not "climate researchers", but rather the word "global". In short, they don't trust non-Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
"What exactly does 'more random' mean in the summary? I think something is either random or it isn't."
See statistical classifications such as the BSI Evaluation Criteria:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator#BSI_evaluation_criteria
The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has established four criteria for quality of deterministic random number generators. They are summarized here:
K1 -- A sequence of random numbers with a high probability of containing no identical consecutive elements.
K2 -- A sequence of numbers which is indistinguishable from 'true random' numbers according to specified statistical tests. The tests are the monobit test (equal numbers of ones and zeros in the sequence), poker test (a special instance of the chi-square test), runs test (counts the frequency of runs of various lengths), longruns test (checks whether there exists any run of length 34 or greater in 20 000 bits of the sequence) -- both from BSI2 (AIS 20, v. 1, 1999) and FIPS (140-1, 1994), and the autocorrelation test. In essence, these requirements are a test of how well a bit sequence: has zeros and ones equally often; after a sequence of n zeros (or ones), the next bit a one (or zero) with probability one-half; and any selected subsequence contains no information about the next element(s) in the sequence.
K3 -- It should be impossible for any attacker (for all practical purposes) to calculate, or otherwise guess, from any given sub-sequence, any previous or future values in the sequence, nor any inner state of the generator.
K4 -- It should be impossible, for all practical purposes, for an attacker to calculate, or guess from an inner state of the generator, any previous numbers in the sequence or any previous inner generator states.
"They want weak, inexperienced people to pick on and take advantage of. They are mad that these people have other places to play."
Meta-griefing the griefers. Priceless.
"Whatever was going on in Utah needs to be looked at though. That story was downright disturbing. 'Curbing the straight edge movement' was one of their school's stated goals?!"
You know that's from 11 years ago, right?
"In any case, if my child is doing something improper at home, it is my job to punish him, not the school's... work with me to correct the behavior and/or take action if the action 'spills over' into school"
Of course, the school contends that that's precisely what they were doing. Monitoring, not punishing, informing the parents. If you think the school was at fault (as I do), then you've got to focus on the monitoring itself as an intrisic wrong.
"I seem to recall reading somewhere that all of the laptops were meant to remain on campus."
They have successfully misled you; read carefully. The quote is:
2)... Concerned about the security of district-owned and issued laptops, the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops. This included tracking loaner laptops that may, against regulations, have been taken off campus.
Hint: The great majority of laptops will not be of the "loaner" variety.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1557304&cid=31212912
"The school maintains that they only use the webcams to take a still photo when a laptop has been reported stolen, to aid in recovering it."
Again, the school never claimed that. Read carefully: "... the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops". There's no claim that the plan was in fact followed faithfully.
"They claim they never once turned on the software unless a laptop was reported stolen."
As I pointed out in the previous thread, they did NOT actually claim that. Specific claims included, (1) "At no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security- tracking software." (IT staff do not count as "administrators"), and (2) "... the security plan was developed by the technology department to give the District the ability to recover lost, stolen or missing student laptops". (No claim that the plan was in fact followed faithfully.)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1557304&cid=31212818
Amusingly, in the past when I've sent similar letters to representatives in Congress, I get an automated letter back to wit, "Mr. Software Professional, we hear how important copyrights are to you, and we're doing everything we can to strengthen them and enforce them as stringently as possible..., etc., etc."
"... so busybody teachers took it upon themselves to monitor students whenever they feel to it. The district claims that only two IT people were authorized to monitor, however how hard is it for an IT guy to tell the URL and the password to a teacher? Teachers were seen as gods until now, or a step above that."
In a school system there are two opposing camps: teachers vs. administrators. It is monumentally absurd to think that teachers would have the time, interest, or access to monitor stuff like that. The control-freaks are the administrators and their non-unionized IT staff that have to do whatever they say. See sig.
I still use IE6 on my personal desktop (Win2000) at home. I've tried others, and keep coming back to IE6 for a few reasons:
(1) It starts instantaneously, while any other browser takes a distractingly long time to start up.
(2) It's the only browser I can get to put all the toolbars I need (including address bar) on one single row under the title bar.
(3) Any other browser insists on throwing tabbed-browsing in my face at some point.
I've never had a virus as long as I've been running it. I understand that it's not standards-compliant, and I'm highly sympathetic to those who need to deal with that pain, but I personally don't. Sites that stop working with IE6 I just go "eh", and stop visiting. It's lightweight and snappy-responsive, and I can't bring myself to let go of that.
"You're downplaying the severity of a school putting (and using) remotely accessible video-recording devices in the privacy of the children's homes, without informing them (I would say deceptively, but maybe just ignorantly)."
I'm not downplaying anything. I think school adminstrators should be harshly jailed for this. I'm pointing out that they have successfully misled the public with weasel-words that do not actually contradict anything in the legal complaint.
I'll one-up you: I think it's improper to put recording devices in children's homes EVEN IF THEY WERE INFORMING THEM. But, with the greatest sadness, I'll guess that if they had informed them then this whole thing would blow over and be a-ok.
"My impression, through my own experience and people I have spoken to, is that maths is hard to learn because it is generally abstract."
Something I blogged about 2 years ago:
So here I am thinking obsessively deep about what exactly that "biggest idea" should be in each of math and computer sci classes. And oddly I find that all the different math/compsci classes sort of get sucked into the same single, primary big idea in my head. My concern is that it's such a big idea that it can't fit into a single class, or really into the sequence of subjects already mapped out. Or that it will be comprehensible at the level of incoming students...
For today let's say it's this: Abstraction. Getting comfortable with it. Getting proficient with it. Knowing deeply what it implies (Getting rid of details. Panning out just the key big-league concept that you need to apply.) Being able to recognize that any knowledge domain will have a bunch of different abstraction levels, and being able to pick the right one you want to be working at. And being comfortable with forgetting everything else as long as yourk work lasts.
To summarize, I argue this: The whole point of a math class is to be abstract. If it's not abstract, then it's not math. If you didn't need to practice your abstraction skills, then you wouldn't need any math classes.
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=65175992&blogId=425845770
"Isn't it obvious that the fear of something will have an impact even on the simplest things where something relative to that fear is involved?"
I'll say: no, not obvious. Equally legitimate suppositions:
(1) It is the difficulty of the task which "will have an impact" on people's emotional state, not the other way around.
(2) People's fear reactions should make them more focused, attentive, and capable.
This is the first time on Slashdot that I'll that say there's a legitimate call for "correlation is not causation". The claim in the article is that "anxiety about mathematics can adversely affect tasks as simple as basic counting". But the reported data is simply that "math anxious individuals, relative to their non-math anxious peers, demonstrated a deficit in the counting range (five to nine)..."
I don't see any support for the hypothesis that math anxiety "affects" or "impacts" (per the article) basic math tasks. I think an equally-well supported hypothesis is that people who suck at counting to 5 wind up developing math anxiety.
To test their hypothesis, they need to take equally-skilled people and somehow make an experimental group anxious about the upcoming task (or something). I don't see that happening here. Frankly, I'm highly skeptical of this whole "math anxiety" postulate. I think we've got to accept the fact that for some people, even basic arithmetic is monumentally difficult, and not blame it on their "feelings" towards the task.
Replying to myself -- 1998 article from the New York Times:
"The Bridgeport schools superintendent, James. A. Connelly, said that in the state's largest city and second-largest school system about three quarters of the 30 to 40 expulsions each year are for actions off school property, with 67 of the last 85 expulsions related to off-campus offenses. "
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/nyregion/at-issue-discipline-off-school-grounds.html?pagewanted=2
Looks like the key criterion is: "Is the off-school behavior potentially disruptive to the educational process in school?" You can see how liberally that might be applied. For example, earlier this month the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court upheld a suspension for a girl mocking the principal on a MySpace page, after the school argued that students were talking about it in class instead of studying. (At the same time, a different court ruled the opposite in a separate case. My guess is if any of this goes to the current SCOTUS, they will uphold extensive power rights to school administrators.)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35244016/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/rulings-leave-us-student-speech-rights-unresolved/
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/nyregion/at-issue-discipline-off-school-grounds.html
PA School District Rules: "When and where the rules apply. The Code of Student Conduct covers students when they are on school grounds, or on the way to or from school. The rules also cover behavior at school events off grounds, as well as any off-grounds behavior (including behavior in the neighborhood) that is likely to lead to disruption at school. (The law is not clear on how far schools can go in punishing students for misbehavior that occurs off grounds or outside of school hours. If your case is of this type, you may wish to seek further advice from a private attorney or the Education Law Center.)"
http://www.elc-pa.org/pubs/downloads%202009/School%20Discipline%20in%20the%20Philadelphia%20SD%202-6-09.pdf
"Okay, I just read a bit more and it looks like apparently they aren't even *allowed* to take the laptops home, they're just lent out for a couple of lessons. So the laptop WAS stolen, and the camera correctly identified the thief."
No, you've been tricked by their weasel-words. The quote:
Note the phrase "this INCLUDED loaner laptops". Smart money and experience is that the majority of laptops are not "loaner" ones, and will not be prohibited from being taken off campus.
I'll challenge you to find language that actually says, "any laptop taken home is a violation of school regulations".
"The claim in the class action doc directly refutes the claims by the school."
Honestly, I think I can read between the lines of the school statement and see how they could be technically correct, although highly misleading (note that it's a rich district, and everyone involved has hired high powered lawyers).
Did the assistant principal "have the ability to remotely monitor a student"? Well, no, the monitoring was actually done by an IT staff member who then handed off the picture to the assistant principal. (Note that the FAQ question is NOT "does any staff member have the ability to remotely monitor?")
Did she utilize a photo to discipline a student? Well, technically no, if there was no school-based punishment, suspension, etc. handed out... according to the report she met with the parents and just threatened future disciplinary measures. (Note that the FAQ question is NOT "did the assistant principal ever produce a photo taken by a school-issued laptop?")
So I can kind of see this as carefully-chosen weasel words.
"... 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.
"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.
"even if he gets away with this, his new employees will probably think twice before working on unpaid wages for so long."
As someone with friends in the video game business (formerly worked there myself), I'll say sadly probably not. There's a mixture of misplaced loyalty/heroics/naivete/Stockholm syndrome endemic to workers in that industry.
"Perhaps the global warming crowd has another motive...?"
FUD. We know the big oil/gas/coal companies have motive. No need for question marks.
"So whats the rush to regulate it? Oh, thats right money. Money to the people who will game the system and then contribute to the 'right' people. Money to special interest groups who will fund 529s and such to support the 'right' people. So we will see all these non producers buy and sell green credits inflating their wallets at the expense of the middle class. Wall Street wins again because this is where the real push comes from. Why should people not involved in the production of CO2 get to buy and sell credits for it?"
This is pretty much nonsensical B.S. If you want to find the vested money interests in this issue, there's no need for tortured mental gymnastics that end with a question mark. Here is your answer: Big oil, gas, and coal companies. If I need to pick a side of this debate of which to be suspicious, it's extremely easy.
Ice on land does not contribute to sea levels (Greenland, Antarctica, Himalayas, etc.)
"And who does Utah want researching climate issues, if not climate researchers? Shoe salesmen?"
Read carefully: "[IPCC] does no independent climate research but relies on global climate researchers..." The key is not "climate researchers", but rather the word "global". In short, they don't trust non-Americans.
Highly skeptical. Citations needed.