Do you think that the main reason Google has offices in other countries (like China) is to enjoy a cheaper labor rate? You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Petition your state and federal government to ban US companies from doing business in countries that meet whatever criteria you feel is appropriate here. Exercise enough care that you don't ban US companies from doing business in the US too.
A "moral law"? What "legal consequences" do you think they would have to pay? I admire your conviction to your beliefs, but I'm not convinced you have a clear idea of what those consequences are, for Google in the short term, and for the prospects of change in that country in the long term.
Not removing someone else's videos asked about in a letter = not legally actionable Not complying with a lawful DMCA order to remove videos to which you own the copyrights = legally actionable
There's a difference between taking a stand against The Man when you can legally justify your position, and taking a stand against The Man when The Man can fine you (sue you), or seize your assets and put your employees in jail until you submit.
Do you have any idea what would happen to Google or its employees in many of these countries if they were to refuse to obey a lawful demand for information?
Assuming a lot of bandwidth and range, there's no reason that each sub-civilization can't stream everything to its neighbors, including every tiny bit of research, product ideas, genomes, materials, etc., that they come up with. You might even see specialization, with one sub-civilization electing not to invest a large percentage of its resources in some areas of research because it would be doing redundant work with a neighbor, who's sharing the results. The only reason you'd do your own research is if you felt you could do it faster than it was arriving.
With a constant stream of information, and the fact that any colonization across the galaxy will be many many orders of magnitude slower than the information stream, it's unlikely that people would stop being able to understand the information being sent.
I think perhaps you misunderstood my post. If you have one or two users that have very specific atypical job requirements (say, developing graphics in a company that normally doesn't), they may need some specialized hardware or software (say, a graphics tablet and high-end graphics software) that is most certainly not on your standards list, and is actually undesirable to add to it, because it only applies to these two users. This has nothing to do with making users "feel" empowered. It has everything to do with ensuring that your users have all of the necessary tools to effectively do their jobs. Telling them to fuck off and support their own damn non-standard products does not help the business achieve its goals. Whether or not the users need to use those non-standard products should NOT be your decision.
I am not advocating that users be allowed to install arbitrary products without a valid business justification. I am advocating that where deviations from the standard are legitimate (i.e. sanctioned by their management), they be allowed and be supported in the most efficient manner possible, which usually means by IT.
That support doesn't even have to be complete. Nobody expects an IT department to be an expert on everything IT-related. If someone's using a non-standard hardware that can't connect to their computer because they're getting an error message about high-speed vs. full-speed USB, what the fuck does it matter if the device is on your standards list? Get them to move the device off of the lower speed USB hub. Stop playing the part of a bureaucrat on a power trip.
A business that fails to fund its IT department in a way that its users can effectively leverage technology simply has no interest in leveraging technology. That's something you'd have to take up with your management. Point out how wasteful it is for users to be spending their time (the company's money) working on things that IT should be more qualified to handle. Bonus points if the salary difference is high (say, a VP making $200k trying for a few hours to get a SQL server installed on his desktop, versus an IT tech at $50k that could have had him up and running in 30 minutes).
"Saving money" by reducing IT frequently just moves costs to other non-IT departments, and since the people in those departments probably can't do the IT function as efficiently as IT, this could be a net loss for the business.
Of course, I don't have all of the facts with respect to your individual situation. I'm speaking in generalities.
This adversarial approach to IT support is not in the best interests of the company.
It's in everyone's best interests to standardize on a hardware and software platform. This minimizes the learning curve for the users, and minimizes the support costs for IT.
However, there are usually many and frequent exceptions that need to be made. Most of the time, non-standard hardware or software is easy enough to support, but certainly more expensive than standard products But if those costs are less than the benefit that this product brings to the business, then it's obvious that the business should permit this deviation.
Who should support it then? Who is more qualified to support it? IT doesn't know about the product, but the user probably doesn't know much more. IT is probably full of geeks that can figure it out, while the user may not be a power user. Except in perhaps rare circumstances, IT is more qualified than the user to support this non-standard product.
So, we've established that it's good for the business, and that IT is the best group to support it. What's the problem? "Oh noes, more work for me!"
The job of IT is to support your users. If your users must occasionally deviate from the standard, IT should be obligated to empower them to do that. Let the user justify what they're doing, and show how this will benefit the business. It will cost more for IT to support them, but if those costs are less than the benefit that this product brings to the business, it's absolutely irresponsible for IT to refuse to do this.
Many IT departments have this delusion that their users work for them, not the other way around, and that since they're in a position of "power" over their users by being able to set standards, that they should be permitted carte blanche to do everything they want to minimize their own costs by preventing their users from being effective. This is a shitty way to leverage technology in any business.
I think everyone refusing to vaccinate their children should be responsible for their share of the resulting ongoing need to vaccinate. So if you have to vaccinate 100M children, at a cost of, say, $10 apiece, and 100k children are deliberately choosing not to get vaccinated, requiring another year of vaccinations for everyone, every one of those children should cost the parents $10k that year.
In a free society the "greater good" doesn't trump personal rights.
Do you believe the government shouldn't be allowed to tax then?
I would respect the right of a parent to not have their child vaccinated so long as I can massively discriminate against them (prevent them from living in my town or having their child go to my child's schools). We'll see how long that attitude lasts when they're forced to keep their children in "anti-vax" schools.
The app that was taken down was a demo application written by Google engineers. It was intended to simply be a sample application. Google's reasons for taking it down were right there in the article's summary. This wasn't an involuntary "take-down" of some Joe's app, it was effectively a Google application. I really don't think it's appropriate to infer anything from this about Google's willingness to take down future applications based on 3rd-party complaints.
I don't think you're understanding the problem at all. The issue is not sending lots of messages to a single address, or the necessity of rate-limiting. The problem is that Google's mail server automatically generates and sends a new mail message to each individual invalid address, even though there is no reason whatsoever to trust the "from" address on a message. *That* fundamental problem is made even worse because in aggregate you usually wind up with tens of thousands of those messages hitting certain domains at a time because spammers generally use a dictionary list on a random valid domain as the return address of their messages.
I realize you're not talking about SMTP bounces here, but someone nearby was, so I want to point out that when a mail server accepts an e-mail message but later realizes it can't deliver it, it's required by the SMTP protocol to generate a bounce and send it to the purported sender. SMTP isn't authenticated, so this will generate backscatter.
In this particular situation, Google has a service where, when you e-mail it, a response is automatically generated. You assert that any service that responds to an unauthenticated e-mail address is effectively spamming everyone that e-mails it. I disagree with that. This would preclude any and every service that responds to "unauthenticated" e-mails, including, paradoxically, everyone that uses e-mail. The solution to this problem is to replace SMTP with something that can be authenticated, which, while theoretically possible, is completely impractical.
Yes, Google should try to classify incoming e-mail to these domains as spam, and avoid responding if it gets classified as such, but it should not feel obligated to eliminate a service that responds to e-mails just because some of those e-mails might have forged senders. But that's just my two cents.
THAT is backscatter spam -- thousands of useless messages sent to forged addresses on your domain, regardless of content.
I think this just amounts to a disagreement on terminology. In my eyes, and the eyes of the poster you're replying to, if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam. Backscatter, yes, but they are, as you say, "identical bounce messages", which isn't spam. It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
The most recent example I can think of is Best Buy, so, neither? As part of their rewards program, they send you "$N off your next purchase" with a unique bar code/serial number that is invalidated once you use it.
Xbox Live uses a similar scheme to redeem codes for membership. So long as you have enough bits of data in your serial number, and enough orders of magnitude of bad numbers versus good ones, you're pretty well protected.
It is possible to generate serial numbers of a sufficient length to make the probability of discovering a collision impractical. Plenty of businesses issue one-time-only printed coupons using these types of serial numbers, and they seem to get by OK without massive counterfeiting.
I've always thought that it would be great if all of these degrees had one final test before the degree would be awarded. Some test that would appear to the layperson to be risking the life of the candidate, but the candidate would know, because of his or her education, that they were perfectly safe.
A physics major might be stuck atop a podium next to a huge, 100-ton boulder (pendulum) hung from the ceiling, at one end of its arc. The pendulum would be released, swing to the other side, and come flying back. If he flinches or leaps out of its way, then clearly he doesn't understand physics or believe what he was taught, so he shouldn't be granted the degree. An EE major might be told to climb out on one of two ropes suspended between two ladders. Halfway out, they reveal the ropes are conductors and they're about to electrify them. If he lets go, he loses his degree. Surely a test could be devised to guarantee degree holders understand electromagnetism.
One of the costs of putting your people in "cubicle space" as opposed to a private office is security. Things will disappear from cubicles. Replacing those things is a cost of doing business, as is establishing good physical security, and the total expense should be a good balance of the two that minimizes overall costs. Unless you're in charge of making those decisions, this shouldn't be your problem. Confidential data shouldn't be kept unencrypted on something that's inherently portable, so if someone walks off with your goods, the only thing you should need to do is request a replacement.
IT departments just LOVE procedures. Basicaly because they are so easy to put in logical yes and no questions and answers. They should start with some debugging of their procedures and realise that the real world is more then if, then, else.
I call this the Principle of Least Work. If you have a department that has or can easily justify some form of authority over another (and any services-oriented department can do this by virtue of controlling access to the service, in this case IT services), without sufficient oversight, that department will always create policies and procedures designed to push work onto the clients. In IT departments, you see this as complex processes and forms that require far more detail than is usually necessary to communicate the request, because why spend 30 minutes trying to understand a request that the client took 30 minutes to prepare, when you can spend 20 minutes on a request that the client needed 60 minutes to prepare? You've saved 10 minutes of work! Ka-ching! Good job!
But since the original value of the spectrum was passed to the public's government, the money they'll pay is already back in the public's hands, and they should work with their representatives to have it spent appropriately or returned directly to the public. The auction isn't about "selling" anything, it's about effectively allocating resources. The money is yours.
Well, since the money is going to your government, it's already at your disposal. Write your legislators and let them know how you'd like to see it spent. Just be aware that the US budget is already spending way more than the government receives in revenues.
No theory of evolution can make predictions about speciation. Speciation is a word we made up. We define it arbitrarily to be the point where one population stops breeding with another. There are many reasons that this could be the case, and only some are genetic. Evolution deals with changes over time, not with speciation specifically. There is no one point where you can say that one population's evolution has diverged "enough" from the other to say that they're two separate species.
You can make predictions about evolution, such as how a species will adapt to a certain environmental change, but given that the mechanism behind all of this is random genetic mutation, your predictions are going to have to be statistical in nature and probably won't be very accurate at predicting the precise mutations your new population should have, or how those mutations will separate it from another population and whether it will be enough to be considered a new species.
Your premise here is fundamentally flawed and suggests a deep misunderstanding of how genetics, mutation and evolution work.
Creationists need not prove anything scientifically as the Creation Story is a historical event and is not subject to the Scientific Method.
So why are they trying to hard to put it in science classrooms? It sounds like we're in agreement: Creationism and its derivatives are not science.
Evolution must be observable. The problem is that nobody has ever really observed it.
It has been observed thousands of times. Bacteria, fruit flies, and other rapidly reproducing species are regularly evolved in laboratory settings to study, for example, antibiotic resistance. Evolution (as a fact, i.e., observed data) has been well-documented, along with other facts (observed data) including the fossil record. Any theory competing with the theory of evolution must necessarily explain all of these things at least as well as evolution does.
By "Evolution", I mean this: when any species spontaneously produces a completely new type of species which did not exist before.
Except this isn't evolution. The word "species" is a human invention. We define it arbitrarily to mean a population that does not breed with another population. There are many reasons this could happen, and given enough time, it's a statistical certainty that each population will develop changes to its genes to make it incompatible with the other. There is no "instant" where this happens. No big clap of thunder and a proclamation from above that some new baby animal is now a new species. The fact that you're even suggesting this is necessary suggests you have a woefully incomplete understanding of genetics.
Where, in the example of dogs and cats being bred into different types of dogs and cats do you see a new species evolving?
When did "speciation" become a prerequisite for evolution? Evolution merely talks about change over time. Take a population that has some variability between generations (say, hair color), kill every newborn that exhibits a trait you want to eliminate (much as an environmental change might select against any other trait), and over enough generations, that trait will cease to exist in that population. The population has "evolved" and no longer produces children that are likely to be killed off.
Speciation is a human term. We define it, arbitrarily, as the point where one population no longer breeds with another population. One could very easily make the argument that two breeds of dog (say, chihuaua and great danes) are now different species because they no longer breed with each other (assuming that's true). If you prefer to wait until the differences between these two lines add up to the point where they can't breed any longer, you're going to have a long time to wait, but it's a statistical certainty.
tell us why either one does or does not meet the requirements of a scientific theory.
This has been explained thousands and thousands of times. I'm not going to do any better attempting it here.
The only way I would accept Creationism/ID being discussed in a science classroom is in the context of teaching children how to identify what is and is not a scientific theory, and why.
By this logic then, everything in science that there is no evidence for should be summarily disregarded and never researched at all.
Umm, yes? If there's no evidence for it, then what exactly is there to research? I suspect we're in disagreement about what the word "evidence" means, or you're just looking at science backwards. Science starts with observed facts (evidence) and works up ideas to explain them. You do not start with ideas, and then look for evidence to agree with you.
There is no scientific evidence that humans evolved from a single celled organism, so, by the afore mentioned logic, that aspect of the theory (of Evolution) should be disregarded.
That humans evolved from single-celled organisms is a theory, not an observed fact. The observed facts that you would need to explain by a theory include, among other things, the fossil record. Since evolution of life on shorter scales is a documented fact (bacteria, fruit flies), it is far more plausible that such a process works across all forms of life at all time scales, and from there we work our way to the theory of evolution. If you have a better (scientific!) theory that explains all of these observations, by all means pursue and investigate it, but do so through the scientific process. Make predictions, devise experiments that attempt to falsify your theory, and only when your theory holds out in the face of these attempts to break it should you consider it valid. Your theory must be consistent with all of the facts we've documented.
In addition, it can be said that there is evidence of a creator. Common designs, the extensive complexity of nature and the universe, Natural Selection, lack of transitional fossils, lack of a natural mechanism, time constraints, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think that the main reason Google has offices in other countries (like China) is to enjoy a cheaper labor rate? You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.
Petition your state and federal government to ban US companies from doing business in countries that meet whatever criteria you feel is appropriate here. Exercise enough care that you don't ban US companies from doing business in the US too.
A "moral law"? What "legal consequences" do you think they would have to pay? I admire your conviction to your beliefs, but I'm not convinced you have a clear idea of what those consequences are, for Google in the short term, and for the prospects of change in that country in the long term.
Not removing someone else's videos asked about in a letter = not legally actionable
Not complying with a lawful DMCA order to remove videos to which you own the copyrights = legally actionable
There's a difference between taking a stand against The Man when you can legally justify your position, and taking a stand against The Man when The Man can fine you (sue you), or seize your assets and put your employees in jail until you submit.
Do you have any idea what would happen to Google or its employees in many of these countries if they were to refuse to obey a lawful demand for information?
Of the videos that YouTube elected not to remove, were any showing killing of any kind? Do you know what you're talking about?
Assuming a lot of bandwidth and range, there's no reason that each sub-civilization can't stream everything to its neighbors, including every tiny bit of research, product ideas, genomes, materials, etc., that they come up with. You might even see specialization, with one sub-civilization electing not to invest a large percentage of its resources in some areas of research because it would be doing redundant work with a neighbor, who's sharing the results. The only reason you'd do your own research is if you felt you could do it faster than it was arriving.
With a constant stream of information, and the fact that any colonization across the galaxy will be many many orders of magnitude slower than the information stream, it's unlikely that people would stop being able to understand the information being sent.
I think perhaps you misunderstood my post. If you have one or two users that have very specific atypical job requirements (say, developing graphics in a company that normally doesn't), they may need some specialized hardware or software (say, a graphics tablet and high-end graphics software) that is most certainly not on your standards list, and is actually undesirable to add to it, because it only applies to these two users. This has nothing to do with making users "feel" empowered. It has everything to do with ensuring that your users have all of the necessary tools to effectively do their jobs. Telling them to fuck off and support their own damn non-standard products does not help the business achieve its goals. Whether or not the users need to use those non-standard products should NOT be your decision.
I am not advocating that users be allowed to install arbitrary products without a valid business justification. I am advocating that where deviations from the standard are legitimate (i.e. sanctioned by their management), they be allowed and be supported in the most efficient manner possible, which usually means by IT.
That support doesn't even have to be complete. Nobody expects an IT department to be an expert on everything IT-related. If someone's using a non-standard hardware that can't connect to their computer because they're getting an error message about high-speed vs. full-speed USB, what the fuck does it matter if the device is on your standards list? Get them to move the device off of the lower speed USB hub. Stop playing the part of a bureaucrat on a power trip.
A business that fails to fund its IT department in a way that its users can effectively leverage technology simply has no interest in leveraging technology. That's something you'd have to take up with your management. Point out how wasteful it is for users to be spending their time (the company's money) working on things that IT should be more qualified to handle. Bonus points if the salary difference is high (say, a VP making $200k trying for a few hours to get a SQL server installed on his desktop, versus an IT tech at $50k that could have had him up and running in 30 minutes).
"Saving money" by reducing IT frequently just moves costs to other non-IT departments, and since the people in those departments probably can't do the IT function as efficiently as IT, this could be a net loss for the business.
Of course, I don't have all of the facts with respect to your individual situation. I'm speaking in generalities.
This adversarial approach to IT support is not in the best interests of the company.
It's in everyone's best interests to standardize on a hardware and software platform. This minimizes the learning curve for the users, and minimizes the support costs for IT.
However, there are usually many and frequent exceptions that need to be made. Most of the time, non-standard hardware or software is easy enough to support, but certainly more expensive than standard products But if those costs are less than the benefit that this product brings to the business, then it's obvious that the business should permit this deviation.
Who should support it then? Who is more qualified to support it? IT doesn't know about the product, but the user probably doesn't know much more. IT is probably full of geeks that can figure it out, while the user may not be a power user. Except in perhaps rare circumstances, IT is more qualified than the user to support this non-standard product.
So, we've established that it's good for the business, and that IT is the best group to support it. What's the problem? "Oh noes, more work for me!"
The job of IT is to support your users. If your users must occasionally deviate from the standard, IT should be obligated to empower them to do that. Let the user justify what they're doing, and show how this will benefit the business. It will cost more for IT to support them, but if those costs are less than the benefit that this product brings to the business, it's absolutely irresponsible for IT to refuse to do this.
Many IT departments have this delusion that their users work for them, not the other way around, and that since they're in a position of "power" over their users by being able to set standards, that they should be permitted carte blanche to do everything they want to minimize their own costs by preventing their users from being effective. This is a shitty way to leverage technology in any business.
I think everyone refusing to vaccinate their children should be responsible for their share of the resulting ongoing need to vaccinate. So if you have to vaccinate 100M children, at a cost of, say, $10 apiece, and 100k children are deliberately choosing not to get vaccinated, requiring another year of vaccinations for everyone, every one of those children should cost the parents $10k that year.
Do you believe the government shouldn't be allowed to tax then?
I would respect the right of a parent to not have their child vaccinated so long as I can massively discriminate against them (prevent them from living in my town or having their child go to my child's schools). We'll see how long that attitude lasts when they're forced to keep their children in "anti-vax" schools.
The app that was taken down was a demo application written by Google engineers. It was intended to simply be a sample application. Google's reasons for taking it down were right there in the article's summary. This wasn't an involuntary "take-down" of some Joe's app, it was effectively a Google application. I really don't think it's appropriate to infer anything from this about Google's willingness to take down future applications based on 3rd-party complaints.
I realize you're not talking about SMTP bounces here, but someone nearby was, so I want to point out that when a mail server accepts an e-mail message but later realizes it can't deliver it, it's required by the SMTP protocol to generate a bounce and send it to the purported sender. SMTP isn't authenticated, so this will generate backscatter.
In this particular situation, Google has a service where, when you e-mail it, a response is automatically generated. You assert that any service that responds to an unauthenticated e-mail address is effectively spamming everyone that e-mails it. I disagree with that. This would preclude any and every service that responds to "unauthenticated" e-mails, including, paradoxically, everyone that uses e-mail. The solution to this problem is to replace SMTP with something that can be authenticated, which, while theoretically possible, is completely impractical.
Yes, Google should try to classify incoming e-mail to these domains as spam, and avoid responding if it gets classified as such, but it should not feel obligated to eliminate a service that responds to e-mails just because some of those e-mails might have forged senders. But that's just my two cents.
I think this just amounts to a disagreement on terminology. In my eyes, and the eyes of the poster you're replying to, if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam. Backscatter, yes, but they are, as you say, "identical bounce messages", which isn't spam. It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
The most recent example I can think of is Best Buy, so, neither? As part of their rewards program, they send you "$N off your next purchase" with a unique bar code/serial number that is invalidated once you use it.
Xbox Live uses a similar scheme to redeem codes for membership. So long as you have enough bits of data in your serial number, and enough orders of magnitude of bad numbers versus good ones, you're pretty well protected.
It is possible to generate serial numbers of a sufficient length to make the probability of discovering a collision impractical. Plenty of businesses issue one-time-only printed coupons using these types of serial numbers, and they seem to get by OK without massive counterfeiting.
I've always thought that it would be great if all of these degrees had one final test before the degree would be awarded. Some test that would appear to the layperson to be risking the life of the candidate, but the candidate would know, because of his or her education, that they were perfectly safe.
A physics major might be stuck atop a podium next to a huge, 100-ton boulder (pendulum) hung from the ceiling, at one end of its arc. The pendulum would be released, swing to the other side, and come flying back. If he flinches or leaps out of its way, then clearly he doesn't understand physics or believe what he was taught, so he shouldn't be granted the degree. An EE major might be told to climb out on one of two ropes suspended between two ladders. Halfway out, they reveal the ropes are conductors and they're about to electrify them. If he lets go, he loses his degree. Surely a test could be devised to guarantee degree holders understand electromagnetism.
One of the costs of putting your people in "cubicle space" as opposed to a private office is security. Things will disappear from cubicles. Replacing those things is a cost of doing business, as is establishing good physical security, and the total expense should be a good balance of the two that minimizes overall costs. Unless you're in charge of making those decisions, this shouldn't be your problem. Confidential data shouldn't be kept unencrypted on something that's inherently portable, so if someone walks off with your goods, the only thing you should need to do is request a replacement.
I call this the Principle of Least Work. If you have a department that has or can easily justify some form of authority over another (and any services-oriented department can do this by virtue of controlling access to the service, in this case IT services), without sufficient oversight, that department will always create policies and procedures designed to push work onto the clients. In IT departments, you see this as complex processes and forms that require far more detail than is usually necessary to communicate the request, because why spend 30 minutes trying to understand a request that the client took 30 minutes to prepare, when you can spend 20 minutes on a request that the client needed 60 minutes to prepare? You've saved 10 minutes of work! Ka-ching! Good job!
But since the original value of the spectrum was passed to the public's government, the money they'll pay is already back in the public's hands, and they should work with their representatives to have it spent appropriately or returned directly to the public. The auction isn't about "selling" anything, it's about effectively allocating resources. The money is yours.
Well, since the money is going to your government, it's already at your disposal. Write your legislators and let them know how you'd like to see it spent. Just be aware that the US budget is already spending way more than the government receives in revenues.
No theory of evolution can make predictions about speciation. Speciation is a word we made up. We define it arbitrarily to be the point where one population stops breeding with another. There are many reasons that this could be the case, and only some are genetic. Evolution deals with changes over time, not with speciation specifically. There is no one point where you can say that one population's evolution has diverged "enough" from the other to say that they're two separate species.
You can make predictions about evolution, such as how a species will adapt to a certain environmental change, but given that the mechanism behind all of this is random genetic mutation, your predictions are going to have to be statistical in nature and probably won't be very accurate at predicting the precise mutations your new population should have, or how those mutations will separate it from another population and whether it will be enough to be considered a new species.
Your premise here is fundamentally flawed and suggests a deep misunderstanding of how genetics, mutation and evolution work.
So why are they trying to hard to put it in science classrooms? It sounds like we're in agreement: Creationism and its derivatives are not science.
It has been observed thousands of times. Bacteria, fruit flies, and other rapidly reproducing species are regularly evolved in laboratory settings to study, for example, antibiotic resistance. Evolution (as a fact, i.e., observed data) has been well-documented, along with other facts (observed data) including the fossil record. Any theory competing with the theory of evolution must necessarily explain all of these things at least as well as evolution does.
(Please note that I am using "evolution" in two contexts: as an observed fact, and as a theory. If this confuses you, please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact.)
Except this isn't evolution. The word "species" is a human invention. We define it arbitrarily to mean a population that does not breed with another population. There are many reasons this could happen, and given enough time, it's a statistical certainty that each population will develop changes to its genes to make it incompatible with the other. There is no "instant" where this happens. No big clap of thunder and a proclamation from above that some new baby animal is now a new species. The fact that you're even suggesting this is necessary suggests you have a woefully incomplete understanding of genetics.
When did "speciation" become a prerequisite for evolution? Evolution merely talks about change over time. Take a population that has some variability between generations (say, hair color), kill every newborn that exhibits a trait you want to eliminate (much as an environmental change might select against any other trait), and over enough generations, that trait will cease to exist in that population. The population has "evolved" and no longer produces children that are likely to be killed off.
Speciation is a human term. We define it, arbitrarily, as the point where one population no longer breeds with another population. One could very easily make the argument that two breeds of dog (say, chihuaua and great danes) are now different species because they no longer breed with each other (assuming that's true). If you prefer to wait until the differences between these two lines add up to the point where they can't breed any longer, you're going to have a long time to wait, but it's a statistical certainty.
This has been explained thousands and thousands of times. I'm not going to do any better attempting it here.
The only way I would accept Creationism/ID being discussed in a science classroom is in the context of teaching children how to identify what is and is not a scientific theory, and why.
Umm, yes? If there's no evidence for it, then what exactly is there to research? I suspect we're in disagreement about what the word "evidence" means, or you're just looking at science backwards. Science starts with observed facts (evidence) and works up ideas to explain them. You do not start with ideas, and then look for evidence to agree with you.
That humans evolved from single-celled organisms is a theory, not an observed fact. The observed facts that you would need to explain by a theory include, among other things, the fossil record. Since evolution of life on shorter scales is a documented fact (bacteria, fruit flies), it is far more plausible that such a process works across all forms of life at all time scales, and from there we work our way to the theory of evolution. If you have a better (scientific!) theory that explains all of these observations, by all means pursue and investigate it, but do so through the scientific process. Make predictions, devise experiments that attempt to falsify your theory, and only when your theory holds out in the face of these attempts to break it should you consider it valid. Your theory must be consistent with all of the facts we've documented.