if they are anything like the university of connecticut police (another state university), they are actually state police officers whose duties are related to the university campus, and occasionally the surrounding areas. they are legit police officers, not just campus security bums. they have the right to arrest, pull someone over for speeding, etc. they patrol all grounds in and around the university campus and enforce laws there (which is not limited to campus rules, but also state and federal laws).
i would certainly like to see something to back up this claim. i can understand if the arrest was due to leeching off someone's wireless for the purpose of doing something illegal, or leeching with a computer that was stolen and had something like computrace on it... but not simply using it to surf the web.
here in the united states where we believe (to a degree) in something call civil liberties, there are no repercussions for simply using someone's open wireless network.
this is awesome advice. i got a full time job in higher education based on my work as a student. get involved as much as you can with your school's IT department and you'll find it opens doors. going to college is just as important as having experience now. while recruiters want experience, if you have that and a degree, you're way ahead of anyone who skipped college to work.
once you arrive at the college of your choosing, go talk to the IT department and also get to know your professors. chances are, you'll easily land a job in IT at the college (it might start you off doing tech support, but can lead to more, such as programming, system/network administration, supervising other student employees, etc). if you get to know your professors, there's a good chance at least one of them has some sort of research project going on that they'll want help with (paid help no less). you might also find some other research-related jobs on campus. you might also get published if you're working with a prof on research.
so don't completely rule out college... there's a lot more opportunities there than just going to class and drinking beer. working in college IT is fun, rewarding, and the field is ever-changing (moreso than corporate IT, especially if you're involved on the residential side of things).
i agree with this guy. i've been installing linux and windows on my computers for quite some time. windows xp and windows 2000 just work after installation (granted i have to do all the updates and software installs, but that's the case with linux as well). i've never had problems with a driver or update that broke my computer. with linux, even the desktop champion ubuntu, requires some "serious" (quotated because linux geeks won't consider this serious, but a windows user will) tweaking to get the monitor to function properly. it recognizes my monitor model without a problem, but doesn't put the horizontal and vertical refresh rates into the x config. this causes me to run at a resolution of 640x480 at 55 or 60 Hz. while i love ubuntu and it works great out of the box for that, the hardware it's running on isn't anything strange, new, or severely outdated, and the monitor is a viewsonic monitor, fairly big name and common. once i get the refresh rates in, it works fine. i haven't tried installing it on my XP machine because it's got XP on it and i want my best machine running the OS i use the most.
so yes... the main point of the article is valid. linux does not work out of the box as well as windows does.
you know... i never attributed all the survey calls i get to that, but in RI, we got a big casino battle with a question on our ballot for a constitutional amendment allowing a casino and we have a big battle for senate between lincoln chafee (the liberal republican) and sheldon whitehouse (the democrat running who isn't anymore liberal than chafee). plus the state attorney general who oversaw the station nightclub fire that killed 100 is up for re-election. i guess that explains all the calls, not to mention i'm registered as affiliated with the democratic party.
that whole discussion is hilarious. takereal, the guy fighting for RAC, can't speak english at all. it's really amusing and if that's the kind of guy that represents RAC, then i don't think anyone should be using them.
it's a college that is supposed to be about education. if they want to educate, they need to be open to other points of views, even if it's to use them as proof that non-believers are sinners or heathens or whatever it is they consider us.
last i checked, yale, stanford, and harvard do not block websites because they might contain objectionable material. the only kind of college that might do that is a christian college where it's against their beliefs to look at porn or naked bodies.
i'm sure "private" means christian, and probably more fundamentalist. i've met some people from other fundamentalist christian colleges and the colleges have rules against drinking (even off campus and even for their employees who are well over 21). i wouldn't be surprised if they have rules against viewing certain websites.
frankly, if i was a faculty member at one of these colleges (which will never happen), i would be in an uproar over academic freedom. the village voice website is not high bandwidth and when you couple that with anatomy sites, it sounds more like censorship to me. college students are adults and should be allowed to choose to view what they want regardless of the beliefs of a college's administration. if those sites use a lot of bandwidth, then block what's causing that. HTML does not do that, but streaming audio and video might. sometimes i can't stand these christian colleges that force their beliefs in every way possible.
i believe in order to even use the itunes card, you have to register on the music store with a credit card. i prefer not to buy from itunes for obvious reason (DRM), but i do regularly "buy" their free downloads. it required me to put in a credit card for that.
i work with a guy who, when helping a user with their computer, will call the PCMCIA slot just than and then go and explain to them what it is and say whatever PCMCIA stands for (which i couldn't tell you if i tried). i take the easy route and just tell them it's a slot that most people don't use anymore on laptops, but they can buy things like network cards for them (and no, i don't say NIC).
I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.
I didn't read the f@#king article, but what the f@#k? for your information i am not a lawyer, but as far as i know this is slander, also known as lies. i'd sue for the win as soon as possible. just kidding, laugh out loud.
children need to learn both ways. and the 2 approaches work differently on different kids. some will take approach 2 and screw up again. in that case, as a parent, you aren't left with much choice but to go with approach 1.
approach 2 does not mean trusting them more, it means having faith that they will behave responsibly. the trust never really changes unless they really screw up.
trust and love are separate. sometimes taking something away from your child (the ability to go out, a toy, computer/tv/video game time, etc) is a sign of love. children need lessons. sometimes those lessons are learning that there are repercussions for their actions. they get bad grades in school, they need to learn that they lose something that takes away from homework and study time (unless they have a learning disorder, which is a different story). these lessons are lessons that they take with them when they go on to college, which requires self-discipline to succeed. if you spend all your time drinking, playing games, etc, you won't do well. learning things like how chores are a necessary evil is another thing that carries over to college (cleaning your room, doing your own laundry, etc).
and then there's learning things like talking to strangers and giving out a lot of personal information or posting racy imags of yourself online can get you into other kind of trouble... these things carry over into learning how not to put yourself into a bad situation where you might have some trouble of that sort.
i should've been clearer on the trust and privacy issue. unless they have given me reason not to trust them or give them privacy, it's an automatic. but once they do something that shows they're undeserving of my trust, they lose it. that's how they learn. but there would also be positive reinforcement as well.
i'm not that old... i do remember and i know what i used to do. i also know that i purposely didn't do things that weren't allowed because i preferred not to get in trouble on the off chance i got caught. but of course there were occasions when i did stuff i shoudln't have.
i never said be ever-present and always monitoring them. i said they can earn trust and privacy along the way. if when the kid gets to an age when he should be more independent and shouldn't have so much monitoring, he also has been well-behaved up to that point and deserves the right to privacy, so be it. but if there's been problems or cause for concern, then that needs to be noted and some of that privacy will need to be earned. parenting is differently for each kid. and i would never let my kids know that i was monitoring them. they'd only find out if there was a reason that i had to pull them aside and talk to them about something.
those critical thinking skills need to be nurtured, but we shoudl not assume our child has them and makes good use of them unless it's proven. i was always more mature than most people i knew because my father moved out when i was 11. my mother took on a second job when i was 13. at that moment in time, i was "the man of the house" until my mother got home (and even sometimes after my mom got home) sometime after 6. it was this way until i left high school and went to college (and only then did my mother realize just how lazy my brother was, and he's only 2 years younger than me). it was up to me and my brother to do the chores and it was up to me to make dinner. my brother was lazy (still is) and hasn't matured much beyond that point, although he thinks he has. i've continued to mature because i learned from that experience.
some kids are smarter than others. i've worked with children as well, for many more than 2 years in fact, and i've seen them trust some people you wouldn't really want them trusting. and when properly parented, children do listen to their parents, regardless of the age (becoming a bit more rebellious during their teenage years). children who try to drink mouthwash to get a buzz probably don't have the best parents and probably watch what their older brothers and sisters do for fun, which is also usually a result of poor parenting.
there's no shit i'm trying to pump into children, but i do know what's decent on the internet and what's not. and it's not computer-related conversations that are the problems. hell, i don't think there's any issue with kids having a general interest in something and chatting with strangers online about it. it's chatting with strangers about personal stuff and sharing personal information that becomes the problem. "how old are you?" "where do you live?" "what school do you go to?" "you have a cast fetish?" "what's your address so we can be pen pals?" those are the problems, and that's where the line is drawn. and boobies aren't really an issue either... but bondage, S&M, gag on my cock, bookworm bitches, etc... depending on the age of the child, they might end up thinking that's normal behavior or be a bit freaked out by it and have a little mental scarring.
and again... i am all for privacy, but it has to be earned. i have to be able to trust my children before i will allow them to do certain things. i'm not naive. i'm not thick-headed. i know what kids do. i've done it. i'm fairly hip as well. there's certain mistakes that i wouldn't want to see my children make... and i've known lots of people who have made them all... from alcoholism, drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, physical abuse, mental abuse, rape, sexual assault... you name it, i know someone who's dealt with it. i don't want my kids to end up making those mistakes or putting themselves in a bad situation. i had great parents (or at least 1 great parent and a great step-parent). i had a lot of freedom, but i was brought up well and didn't abuse my priviledges. and when i did, i paid. curfew existed for a reason... i abused it, fell asleep at the wheel, and crash my mom's car. luckily, i lived. but i will do my best to make sure my children are well informed. i'm too old to have really had a computer and internet when i was younger, or even a teenager. but my parents monitored what i watched on tv, what movies i saw, who i hung out with, where i was going, etc. i rarely, if ever, lied because i knew that the more my parents could trust me, the more i was allowed to do. and i was allowed to do quite a bit because they had complete trust in me and it was well deserved trust.
and in all your 18 years of wisdom, you know this how?
i've worked with children, and i'm not talking teenagers. generally, before the age of somewhere between 10 and 12, children are receptive to what their parents say and take it to heart. they don't get truly curious about the really bad stuff until they're older, closer to their teenage years. you obviously don't know a whole lot about child development.
i may not be much older than you, but i'm certainly a whole lot wiser. you have to deal with older children a bit differently, but that's where the privacy starts to be earned. children under 12-13 don't require a whole lot of privacy, but those older certainly do. and those older also need to understand that their parents are the authority. there's a balance between the active and passive monitoring of your kids and that's where the privacy stuff comes in. when they prove they can be trusted, they get privacy. once they violate that trust, they lose it. it's a give and take. when you're older, you'll understand.
and then there's the 18 year old who needs to understand that as long as he's living in mommy and daddy's house, he follows their rules and contributes because they can just as easily kick him out at that age and he can live on his own. but frankly, i'm less worried about an 18 year old on the internet than a 14 year old, or even younger. children are trusting and with the ability to create a fake identity on the internet it can be dangerous to just blindly allow your children to chat with whomever they please with absolutely no monitoring.
i wish i had mod points for your parent... but anyways, children need to learn before they can be trusted with full privacy.
there's nothing wrong with doing some behind the scenes checking of logs after they've gone to bed and there's nothing wrong with leaving the computer in the open so that the parents can see what their children are doing. it's being a parent. if you happen to see them looking at or doing something they shouldn't be, you can sit down with them and talk to them right then and there about why they shouldn't be looking at or doing whatever it might be. if you check the logs when they're not around, you can see if they're using the computer outside of allowed time (like after bedtime or when they're supposed to be doing something else) and you can see if they're sneaking around while you know they're on the computer. if you catch them that way, as far as i'm concerned, there's a bigger punishment involved (or better yet, if you notice a pattern, you pop out when you know they'll be doing it). punishment should include no TV, no video games, and no "fun" computer time (because we all know children of almost every age need the computer for something school related). but most importantly, you need to talk to your children about why whatever it is they did or saw was something that isn't allowed. that's how they learn. it's not surveillance, it's parenting. and they can earn privacy just as they can quickly lose it.
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if they are anything like the university of connecticut police (another state university), they are actually state police officers whose duties are related to the university campus, and occasionally the surrounding areas. they are legit police officers, not just campus security bums. they have the right to arrest, pull someone over for speeding, etc. they patrol all grounds in and around the university campus and enforce laws there (which is not limited to campus rules, but also state and federal laws).
let me guess... she was the lunch lady?
guess that's what i get for not RTFA. :)
i would certainly like to see something to back up this claim. i can understand if the arrest was due to leeching off someone's wireless for the purpose of doing something illegal, or leeching with a computer that was stolen and had something like computrace on it... but not simply using it to surf the web.
here in the united states where we believe (to a degree) in something call civil liberties, there are no repercussions for simply using someone's open wireless network.
that's great... although they are "analyzing" the help desk. so the title is a description of what they do. ;)
this is awesome advice. i got a full time job in higher education based on my work as a student. get involved as much as you can with your school's IT department and you'll find it opens doors. going to college is just as important as having experience now. while recruiters want experience, if you have that and a degree, you're way ahead of anyone who skipped college to work.
once you arrive at the college of your choosing, go talk to the IT department and also get to know your professors. chances are, you'll easily land a job in IT at the college (it might start you off doing tech support, but can lead to more, such as programming, system/network administration, supervising other student employees, etc). if you get to know your professors, there's a good chance at least one of them has some sort of research project going on that they'll want help with (paid help no less). you might also find some other research-related jobs on campus. you might also get published if you're working with a prof on research.
so don't completely rule out college... there's a lot more opportunities there than just going to class and drinking beer. working in college IT is fun, rewarding, and the field is ever-changing (moreso than corporate IT, especially if you're involved on the residential side of things).
i agree with this guy. i've been installing linux and windows on my computers for quite some time. windows xp and windows 2000 just work after installation (granted i have to do all the updates and software installs, but that's the case with linux as well). i've never had problems with a driver or update that broke my computer. with linux, even the desktop champion ubuntu, requires some "serious" (quotated because linux geeks won't consider this serious, but a windows user will) tweaking to get the monitor to function properly. it recognizes my monitor model without a problem, but doesn't put the horizontal and vertical refresh rates into the x config. this causes me to run at a resolution of 640x480 at 55 or 60 Hz. while i love ubuntu and it works great out of the box for that, the hardware it's running on isn't anything strange, new, or severely outdated, and the monitor is a viewsonic monitor, fairly big name and common. once i get the refresh rates in, it works fine. i haven't tried installing it on my XP machine because it's got XP on it and i want my best machine running the OS i use the most.
so yes... the main point of the article is valid. linux does not work out of the box as well as windows does.
you know... i never attributed all the survey calls i get to that, but in RI, we got a big casino battle with a question on our ballot for a constitutional amendment allowing a casino and we have a big battle for senate between lincoln chafee (the liberal republican) and sheldon whitehouse (the democrat running who isn't anymore liberal than chafee). plus the state attorney general who oversaw the station nightclub fire that killed 100 is up for re-election. i guess that explains all the calls, not to mention i'm registered as affiliated with the democratic party.
that whole discussion is hilarious. takereal, the guy fighting for RAC, can't speak english at all. it's really amusing and if that's the kind of guy that represents RAC, then i don't think anyone should be using them.
it's a college that is supposed to be about education. if they want to educate, they need to be open to other points of views, even if it's to use them as proof that non-believers are sinners or heathens or whatever it is they consider us.
last i checked, yale, stanford, and harvard do not block websites because they might contain objectionable material. the only kind of college that might do that is a christian college where it's against their beliefs to look at porn or naked bodies.
i'm sure "private" means christian, and probably more fundamentalist. i've met some people from other fundamentalist christian colleges and the colleges have rules against drinking (even off campus and even for their employees who are well over 21). i wouldn't be surprised if they have rules against viewing certain websites.
frankly, if i was a faculty member at one of these colleges (which will never happen), i would be in an uproar over academic freedom. the village voice website is not high bandwidth and when you couple that with anatomy sites, it sounds more like censorship to me. college students are adults and should be allowed to choose to view what they want regardless of the beliefs of a college's administration. if those sites use a lot of bandwidth, then block what's causing that. HTML does not do that, but streaming audio and video might. sometimes i can't stand these christian colleges that force their beliefs in every way possible.
i believe in order to even use the itunes card, you have to register on the music store with a credit card. i prefer not to buy from itunes for obvious reason (DRM), but i do regularly "buy" their free downloads. it required me to put in a credit card for that.
what's what the guy said... i was just translating it.
i work with a guy who, when helping a user with their computer, will call the PCMCIA slot just than and then go and explain to them what it is and say whatever PCMCIA stands for (which i couldn't tell you if i tried). i take the easy route and just tell them it's a slot that most people don't use anymore on laptops, but they can buy things like network cards for them (and no, i don't say NIC).
I didn't RTFA, but WTF? FYI IANAL, but AFAIK this is slander, AKA lies. I'd sue FTW ASAP. J/K, LOL.
I didn't read the f@#king article, but what the f@#k? for your information i am not a lawyer, but as far as i know this is slander, also known as lies. i'd sue for the win as soon as possible. just kidding, laugh out loud.
children need to learn both ways. and the 2 approaches work differently on different kids. some will take approach 2 and screw up again. in that case, as a parent, you aren't left with much choice but to go with approach 1.
approach 2 does not mean trusting them more, it means having faith that they will behave responsibly. the trust never really changes unless they really screw up.
trust and love are separate. sometimes taking something away from your child (the ability to go out, a toy, computer/tv/video game time, etc) is a sign of love. children need lessons. sometimes those lessons are learning that there are repercussions for their actions. they get bad grades in school, they need to learn that they lose something that takes away from homework and study time (unless they have a learning disorder, which is a different story). these lessons are lessons that they take with them when they go on to college, which requires self-discipline to succeed. if you spend all your time drinking, playing games, etc, you won't do well. learning things like how chores are a necessary evil is another thing that carries over to college (cleaning your room, doing your own laundry, etc).
and then there's learning things like talking to strangers and giving out a lot of personal information or posting racy imags of yourself online can get you into other kind of trouble... these things carry over into learning how not to put yourself into a bad situation where you might have some trouble of that sort.
i should've been clearer on the trust and privacy issue. unless they have given me reason not to trust them or give them privacy, it's an automatic. but once they do something that shows they're undeserving of my trust, they lose it. that's how they learn. but there would also be positive reinforcement as well.
i'm not that old... i do remember and i know what i used to do. i also know that i purposely didn't do things that weren't allowed because i preferred not to get in trouble on the off chance i got caught. but of course there were occasions when i did stuff i shoudln't have.
i never said be ever-present and always monitoring them. i said they can earn trust and privacy along the way. if when the kid gets to an age when he should be more independent and shouldn't have so much monitoring, he also has been well-behaved up to that point and deserves the right to privacy, so be it. but if there's been problems or cause for concern, then that needs to be noted and some of that privacy will need to be earned. parenting is differently for each kid. and i would never let my kids know that i was monitoring them. they'd only find out if there was a reason that i had to pull them aside and talk to them about something.
those critical thinking skills need to be nurtured, but we shoudl not assume our child has them and makes good use of them unless it's proven. i was always more mature than most people i knew because my father moved out when i was 11. my mother took on a second job when i was 13. at that moment in time, i was "the man of the house" until my mother got home (and even sometimes after my mom got home) sometime after 6. it was this way until i left high school and went to college (and only then did my mother realize just how lazy my brother was, and he's only 2 years younger than me). it was up to me and my brother to do the chores and it was up to me to make dinner. my brother was lazy (still is) and hasn't matured much beyond that point, although he thinks he has. i've continued to mature because i learned from that experience.
some kids are smarter than others. i've worked with children as well, for many more than 2 years in fact, and i've seen them trust some people you wouldn't really want them trusting. and when properly parented, children do listen to their parents, regardless of the age (becoming a bit more rebellious during their teenage years). children who try to drink mouthwash to get a buzz probably don't have the best parents and probably watch what their older brothers and sisters do for fun, which is also usually a result of poor parenting.
there's no shit i'm trying to pump into children, but i do know what's decent on the internet and what's not. and it's not computer-related conversations that are the problems. hell, i don't think there's any issue with kids having a general interest in something and chatting with strangers online about it. it's chatting with strangers about personal stuff and sharing personal information that becomes the problem. "how old are you?" "where do you live?" "what school do you go to?" "you have a cast fetish?" "what's your address so we can be pen pals?" those are the problems, and that's where the line is drawn. and boobies aren't really an issue either... but bondage, S&M, gag on my cock, bookworm bitches, etc... depending on the age of the child, they might end up thinking that's normal behavior or be a bit freaked out by it and have a little mental scarring.
and again... i am all for privacy, but it has to be earned. i have to be able to trust my children before i will allow them to do certain things. i'm not naive. i'm not thick-headed. i know what kids do. i've done it. i'm fairly hip as well. there's certain mistakes that i wouldn't want to see my children make... and i've known lots of people who have made them all... from alcoholism, drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, physical abuse, mental abuse, rape, sexual assault... you name it, i know someone who's dealt with it. i don't want my kids to end up making those mistakes or putting themselves in a bad situation. i had great parents (or at least 1 great parent and a great step-parent). i had a lot of freedom, but i was brought up well and didn't abuse my priviledges. and when i did, i paid. curfew existed for a reason... i abused it, fell asleep at the wheel, and crash my mom's car. luckily, i lived. but i will do my best to make sure my children are well informed. i'm too old to have really had a computer and internet when i was younger, or even a teenager. but my parents monitored what i watched on tv, what movies i saw, who i hung out with, where i was going, etc. i rarely, if ever, lied because i knew that the more my parents could trust me, the more i was allowed to do. and i was allowed to do quite a bit because they had complete trust in me and it was well deserved trust.
and in all your 18 years of wisdom, you know this how?
i've worked with children, and i'm not talking teenagers. generally, before the age of somewhere between 10 and 12, children are receptive to what their parents say and take it to heart. they don't get truly curious about the really bad stuff until they're older, closer to their teenage years. you obviously don't know a whole lot about child development.
i may not be much older than you, but i'm certainly a whole lot wiser. you have to deal with older children a bit differently, but that's where the privacy starts to be earned. children under 12-13 don't require a whole lot of privacy, but those older certainly do. and those older also need to understand that their parents are the authority. there's a balance between the active and passive monitoring of your kids and that's where the privacy stuff comes in. when they prove they can be trusted, they get privacy. once they violate that trust, they lose it. it's a give and take. when you're older, you'll understand.
and then there's the 18 year old who needs to understand that as long as he's living in mommy and daddy's house, he follows their rules and contributes because they can just as easily kick him out at that age and he can live on his own. but frankly, i'm less worried about an 18 year old on the internet than a 14 year old, or even younger. children are trusting and with the ability to create a fake identity on the internet it can be dangerous to just blindly allow your children to chat with whomever they please with absolutely no monitoring.
i wish i had mod points for your parent... but anyways, children need to learn before they can be trusted with full privacy.
there's nothing wrong with doing some behind the scenes checking of logs after they've gone to bed and there's nothing wrong with leaving the computer in the open so that the parents can see what their children are doing. it's being a parent. if you happen to see them looking at or doing something they shouldn't be, you can sit down with them and talk to them right then and there about why they shouldn't be looking at or doing whatever it might be. if you check the logs when they're not around, you can see if they're using the computer outside of allowed time (like after bedtime or when they're supposed to be doing something else) and you can see if they're sneaking around while you know they're on the computer. if you catch them that way, as far as i'm concerned, there's a bigger punishment involved (or better yet, if you notice a pattern, you pop out when you know they'll be doing it). punishment should include no TV, no video games, and no "fun" computer time (because we all know children of almost every age need the computer for something school related). but most importantly, you need to talk to your children about why whatever it is they did or saw was something that isn't allowed. that's how they learn. it's not surveillance, it's parenting. and they can earn privacy just as they can quickly lose it.