This would indicate that the author's gender is female. Seeing that Colleen's handle is "momgamer" and having met Colleen, I can confirm that Colleen has breasts and a legion of younger gamers who refer to Colleen as "mom"
It would appear that HE is really a SHE
Reading is FUNdamental. Also, she's not a fan of the NFS series. So it's not something she invests a whole lot of time in.
I think that the $4.95/IP is in addition to the monthy service fee. Bloody savages
BTW- I've had DSL, I now have cable. The cable ain't so bad (I live in a ghetto and don't have to share the pipe with too many people), but it freaks out when I'm transferring files across the net- swings between 130Kbps and 1Kbps within seconds. And that costs me $54.95 per month, not including my cable modem rental fee. Oh, and I'm allowed to have 'up to' three devices connected to my cable modem. And my hub counts as one.
DSL, on the other hand, was a better deal. Sweet talk the salesdroid, upgrade to 1.1Mbps bi-directional (Love that VDSL). Sure, the set-up cost was insane, but they didn't care how many devices I ran behind my Cisco router. Much more stable. I think at one point the metrics came out to 1024Kbps downstream and 825Kbps upstream at the SAME FREAKING TIME.
Sadly, my DSL went the way of the dodo, and I'm left with a broadband solution that loses about 30%of my CounterStrike packets.
Quick breakdown: for 54.95 a month, I get broadband that sometmes works as advertised, but lags like a mother when I'm twitch gaming. I'm allowed up to three devices on the network, including my hub. OTOH, DSL was $80 per month for twice the theroretical speed. In practice, it smoked my cable connection by a factor of 4 in most cases. I was allowed unlimited devices, and was provided with a wonderful router and the software to configure it to my needs.
If my cable provider threatens to charge another $4.95 for extra IP addresses, I'm going with microwave.
Switch
Re:I really gotta disagree with you...
on
Frankenstein Time
·
· Score: 1
"1. Genetic diseases are just as difficult to identify (or, to say, just as easy) as the genes for eye/hair color, thus, your argument must be that for some reason the ability to manipulate these won't be allowed for a (presumably long) period of time. Why? The length of time between the first essential organ transplant and the first nonessential organ transplant wasn't incredibly long, and there are far more possible complications involved in a transplant, for example. And, to doctors, moral issues such as a high chance of killing a person just so they can get, for example, a hand. "
Uhhmm... Apples and Oranges here. If you're hacking the human source code, then there is NO RISK of killing the patient, because the fetus at that point is not considered to be a seperate organism.. it's not like I could walk into a BodyShop at my venerable 22 years and say "Hey, I've got a history of heart disease, cancer and diabetes in my family. How much to tweak the chromos? And while yer at it, I want longer legs and whack that stupid gene for Male Pattern Baldness." These things have to happen at the moment of conception, before the zygote has the opportunity to become a multi-cellular fetus.
While we're on that subject, what about detemining parentage right on the spot? "I'm sorry Mr Jones but your wife's latest endeavour seems to have the SAME sequence along chromosome 12 that your milkman has..." Is THAT the moral duty of a cosmetic geneticist?
"2. It takes a long time for something that many would consider a "sin" or "morally wrong" to be accepted. A *long time*. Do you not think that, in all this time, people would see no moral issues with this at all? if so, you must think humans are a race that is becoming continually less sensitive to people's differences. And, yet, look at our past verses our present, what, with Affirmative Action and such. All signs point towards greater acceptance of differences, not less. And acceptance is largely based on communication between different peoples - and the expanding net is the perfect medium for that. "
We aren't really getting any better at accepting other people's cultures, we're just better at blending them all together. I don't even see cultures anymore. I see people. Then again, I have no culture of my own, as a white person in the USA, I find that trying to get in touch with my roots and find "my people" gets me branded a White Supremicist... and nothing could be further from the truth. I just want a place to belong. The Net is provinding a place where people can meet and homoginize because there is no inherent bias for the digital realm... it's taking away our differnces, not celebrating them. We are heading towards, evolving into, a planet full of Pepsi-drinking English speaking people who eat at McDonalds three times a week and have ulcers. National borders and ethinc lines are being blurred and scuffed out of the sand by the evolution of the collective human condition. I'm part Scot, Welsh, German, Cherokee and Apache (oddly, I'm technically an American Indian becuase of bloodlines, but have to mark 'Caucasian' on every government form because of my skin color. More about that later...). How many other/. readers can claim more than one ethnic background to further muddy the waters about exactly what the differences in all of us really are. Would it suprise anyone to learn that there are ony two genes for skin color? We may well determine that whilte, black, asian or indian are only differences of one pip on a chemical formula billions of molecules long.
As for the morality of it... I was raised Catholic to believe that it was a SIN and I would BURN IN HELL for eating meat on Fridays... Nobody really believes that anymore. I think I even saw the Pope in a Honey's BBQ last Friday... And it's only been in the last few years that the meat-eating rule has really been thrown by the wayside. My parents tell me of eating fish in public shools every Friday as to not disturb the Catholics. Sure, most Americans are God-fearing Christians, but we are moving to a secular society, ruled by the desire for worldly gain. In that light, who is REALLY going to have an issue with modifying their child's DNA to make them the best child they can be? I asked myself this question, and I didn't like the answer. I would certainly allow genetic modification of my child (We'll call her Wendy for the rest of this discussion) for protection agains genetic disorders or potentially lethal disabilities. I don't think I'd allow a genetech to modify height, weight, skin/eye color or any other pysical charictaristics, or even allow someone to boost Wendy's intellegence or personal charm. If I was told that Wendy would be autistic or would be afflicted with Down's Syndrome, would I allow the technician to play that kind of merry hell with her genes? What if I did? Should I ever tell her? and would it be WRONG to do it? I've already made sure shes immune to polio, should I make sure she doesnt have ADHD like her old man? I'm already playing God, shaping my daughter into an ideal image like a lump of PlayDoh, where is the line drawn between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' gene manipulation? What are the social implications of meddling with the Second Most Powerful Force in the Universe? These issues are going to come to light as the technology matures, and will not affect us personally, but my little Wendy may have to ask herself these questions in earnest. We need to examine ourselves and see what the answers should really be.Perhaps we need a few guidelines for the people it will really affect.
"3. Why would parents completely design a child? Why would a parent care what protien forms a marker on their child's cell walls, or the thickness of the phospholipid bilayers of their cells? Almost all genes are something that a parent wouldn't care about - and it would be pointless *not* to leave it to natural selection.
4. Reproductive rights are one of the most strongly guarded human rights, typically second only to the right to survive. You will *never* find a world where no woman wants to give birth to her own children, where no parents want *their* genetics passed along. As someone who cannot have children, barring advances in organ cloning technology, I can attest to this"
these two really go together... I recently built a computer for a friend of mine... PII 600 with 128MB SDRAM, 40 GB HD, 10/100 Mb/s NIC.... who gives a flying f**k what brand the TRANSISTORS are, as long as they are all there. If the technology exists for parents to 'program' their children, I'm sure that they will use their own DNA to make a little froggy thing (maybe even using tradional methods!!) that they take down to the aformentioned BodyShop, put it in the Cyclotron and then start picking options and packages.
"Hrm, let's split this one into three zygotes. Make one female and the other two male. 'K, then.. the first male, designated EDWARDS, BLAKE KYLE (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9999) will get the Hometown Hero package, with the Big Pecs upgrade. Let's also boost his IQ to around the 200 range.. that ought to be perfect... Second male zygote, designated EDWARDS, NATHANIEL LEE (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9998), gets the Alt-Rock Intellectual, with the Real Lady-Killer (tm) relationship sub-package... and for kicks, let's make his eyes Storm Grey... As for the female zygote (isn't this FUN, Honeybun?), she will be EDWARDS, JESSICA ELAINE (oh, after my mother, how sweet!) (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9899), why don't we give her the Head Cheerleader pack, with Girl-Next Door Allure ('They'll all want to take her home to meet Mom!' tm), and the Corporate Raider success drive... That should do it, ring it up, and reimplant the children, please...."
See? Still using your own DNA, slightly modified, and none of that messy "Understand what you're playing with" thing.. It'll be as simple as using the Kodak PhotoComputer at WalMart to make extra copies.. and speaking of which, why NOT make extra copies, just in case Blake takes a header off his bike. You can ease the pain by pulling another Blake outta Cryo and taking him full term again. (this one is v 2.0, cuz version.9 died in Beta...). No one is taking anyone's right to reproduction away. And genetic manipulation may even allow those of us who CAN'T reproduce naturally to do so using tissue samples... In fact, and the last male in my family, and an injury-induced sterility, this is NOT a bad sounding plan... But I'm sure someone would have an issue with it...
"5. Discrimination doesn't occur in the workplace. Because, if it does, there are lawsuits. And they win, because of laws. This is how laws work. If a law is passed (and, in a country where the vast majority of americans would think it a horrible thing to be discriminated by genetics, it will), the law will be enforced by companies, via fear of lawsuits. It happens now, and unless our government collapses (in which case genetic engineering will be the least of our worries), it will happen in the future. "
RIIIIGGGHHHTT.... Because laws against it exist, it NEVER happens. That's a naieve statement. I don't want to be rude, but I've livied in the corp world long enough to realize that less than 1/2 of 1 percent of all (criminal)discrimination incedents are ever reported... I took a night class once.. big mistake. I was the only man... and the other students averaged 36, divorced, and ANGRY. I was discriminated against. But if I had spoken up, I would have been pulled from the class... and it was the only one I could take at that point. I had to determine that my personal dignity and pride were not worth the cost of raising a ruckus. And I see events like that all the time. My last boss was BAD about sexually harassing his female employees and bragging about his infidelity. No one has EVER, in his three years with the company, said anything about it. I don't know why, but I am no better than anyone else for not reporting his CRIMINAL behavior.
The point is, just because there are criminal recriminations possible, doesn't mean that all the good little people are going to stay away. take us for example... the hacker culture. I've done a few things in my quest for knowledge that were of dubious legality... And I'm SURE I'm not alone. Same with drugs....
Interesting scenario... what about engineering sports players? Illegally... The Mafia has a vat somewheres, cuts deals with All American Families to have a genetically superior quarterback taken into their home in exchange for a fat pension... all very quiet, of course... then they get all of these sports figures on a single team, say the Colts... big winnings are possible, and it's SAFER THAN STEROIDS!!!! Takes longer, but the payoffs are far greater as well... John Q. Quarterback could be built to throw 100% completion, have amazing speed, agility, stamina, and lifespan. And he LIVES for football...
"6. You talk about insurance companies offering lower rates for "geneticly superior" people. Do, say, car insurance providers take race into account when they set your fee? I'm sure you'd find corrolations. But, they don't, because that is discrimination (I still think its wrong that they take sex into account, but that is just me). There would be riots if they started taking race into account. "
You are right, but what about Age, Smoking or NonSmoking, History of Heart Disease? You're damn straight that insurance companies would use genetic profiling to determine your eligibility. They do it now, in a family history questionaire... I pay more for health insurance because my grandfather had cancer, my dad has high blood pressure, and my aunt has diabetes. It ain't right, but it's legal. It's called "Risk Assessment" and they do it everyday.
I guess that the point is, this is a big can of worms, and that exremists on both sides will scream, and they'll be right in some cases... but the thing to remember is that this is the most powerful weapon that has ever been devised, and that we need to be CAREFUL about how it's applied. It will take years, decades before these questions are resolved. And maybe some of these fears will come to light during that time and create a need for an international treaty on human genetic manipulation. Who knows? We stand on the cusp of a great future for humanity, let's not blow it.
If this posts as Anonymous Coward, sorry.. forgot to log in, I think...
OK, Jon (and fellow/.ers). I've been reading these comments, and it looks like this is the hottest thing to hit/. since sliced bread. Lemme try to see if I can wrap our brains around what we're saying:
1) What are the procedures for verifying that the 'anonymous' tip line is not abused by jocks/other people afraid/who hate the "outsiders" groups on campus? a) How can it be anonymous if prizes are in the offering? Do they set up random street corner liasons with the students, like a daylight drug deal?
2) What is going to be done with the data that is collected? Will it be stored offline in Pinkerton's HQ, will it be a searchable database accessable via the Web? Does it have an expiration date? Or will this data find it's way onto our Permanent Records?
3) What kind of safguards will be in place to ensure that students who have been reported by their peers will not be treated as further outcasts? Will WAVE conduct interviews about the individual, will the individual be called into a conference with the dean, the councilor, the parent(s), the chief of police and the local jail warden?
And personally, I want to know if WAVE/Pinkerton will have any kind of community oversight program, to make sure that some faceless commitee in another region doesn't make decisions that affect a locality with no input from that locality...
As a kid who DID suffer through two high school incidents involving guns (a girl in one of my high schools committed suicide in a school bathroom with a.38 revolver, and as a senior, one of my friends opened fire with a shotgun in a crowded lunchroom. No one was hurt), I'm personally glad to see that SOMEONE is trying to come up with a program to addesss the issues of violence in our schools. But as a guy who used to wear black lipstick and eyeliner to school along with my slacks and loafers, I cringe at the thought of people like the ones I found out were going to kill me being able to say that I was the dangerous one... and get ME into trouble, when they were the ones who planned to leave my violated corpse on the front lawn of the school because I was OBVIOUSLY a 'fag'... Good luck, Godspeed... And if Jon doesn't come back, well... we know what happened to him... switch
Slashdot Mirror
The author's name is Colleen.
This would indicate that the author's gender is female. Seeing that Colleen's handle is "momgamer" and having met Colleen, I can confirm that Colleen has breasts and a legion of younger gamers who refer to Colleen as "mom"
It would appear that HE is really a SHE
Reading is FUNdamental. Also, she's not a fan of the NFS series. So it's not something she invests a whole lot of time in.
Oh, wait. My bad.
there are no women on the internet...
My tagline for years has been "there's nothing more dangerous than a nihilistic missle".
BTW- I've had DSL, I now have cable. The cable ain't so bad (I live in a ghetto and don't have to share the pipe with too many people), but it freaks out when I'm transferring files across the net- swings between 130Kbps and 1Kbps within seconds. And that costs me $54.95 per month, not including my cable modem rental fee. Oh, and I'm allowed to have 'up to' three devices connected to my cable modem. And my hub counts as one.
DSL, on the other hand, was a better deal. Sweet talk the salesdroid, upgrade to 1.1Mbps bi-directional (Love that VDSL). Sure, the set-up cost was insane, but they didn't care how many devices I ran behind my Cisco router. Much more stable. I think at one point the metrics came out to 1024Kbps downstream and 825Kbps upstream at the SAME FREAKING TIME.
Sadly, my DSL went the way of the dodo, and I'm left with a broadband solution that loses about 30%of my CounterStrike packets.
Quick breakdown: for 54.95 a month, I get broadband that sometmes works as advertised, but lags like a mother when I'm twitch gaming. I'm allowed up to three devices on the network, including my hub. OTOH, DSL was $80 per month for twice the theroretical speed. In practice, it smoked my cable connection by a factor of 4 in most cases. I was allowed unlimited devices, and was provided with a wonderful router and the software to configure it to my needs.
If my cable provider threatens to charge another $4.95 for extra IP addresses, I'm going with microwave.
Switch
Uhhmm... Apples and Oranges here. If you're hacking the human source code, then there is NO RISK of killing the patient, because the fetus at that point is not considered to be a seperate organism.. it's not like I could walk into a BodyShop at my venerable 22 years and say "Hey, I've got a history of heart disease, cancer and diabetes in my family. How much to tweak the chromos? And while yer at it, I want longer legs and whack that stupid gene for Male Pattern Baldness." These things have to happen at the moment of conception, before the zygote has the opportunity to become a multi-cellular fetus.
While we're on that subject, what about detemining parentage right on the spot? "I'm sorry Mr Jones but your wife's latest endeavour seems to have the SAME sequence along chromosome 12 that your milkman has..." Is THAT the moral duty of a cosmetic geneticist?
"2. It takes a long time for something that many would consider a "sin" or "morally wrong" to be accepted. A *long time*. Do you not think that, in all this time, people would see no moral issues with this at all? if so, you must think humans are a race that is becoming continually less sensitive to people's differences. And, yet, look at our past verses our present, what, with Affirmative Action and such. All signs point towards greater acceptance of differences, not less. And acceptance is largely based on communication between different peoples - and the expanding net is the perfect medium for that. "
We aren't really getting any better at accepting other people's cultures, we're just better at blending them all together. I don't even see cultures anymore. I see people. Then again, I have no culture of my own, as a white person in the USA, I find that trying to get in touch with my roots and find "my people" gets me branded a White Supremicist... and nothing could be further from the truth. I just want a place to belong. The Net is provinding a place where people can meet and homoginize because there is no inherent bias for the digital realm... it's taking away our differnces, not celebrating them. We are heading towards, evolving into, a planet full of Pepsi-drinking English speaking people who eat at McDonalds three times a week and have ulcers. National borders and ethinc lines are being blurred and scuffed out of the sand by the evolution of the collective human condition. I'm part Scot, Welsh, German, Cherokee and Apache (oddly, I'm technically an American Indian becuase of bloodlines, but have to mark 'Caucasian' on every government form because of my skin color. More about that later...). How many other /. readers can claim more than one ethnic background to further muddy the waters about exactly what the differences in all of us really are. Would it suprise anyone to learn that there are ony two genes for skin color? We may well determine that whilte, black, asian or indian are only differences of one pip on a chemical formula billions of molecules long.
As for the morality of it... I was raised Catholic to believe that it was a SIN and I would BURN IN HELL for eating meat on Fridays... Nobody really believes that anymore. I think I even saw the Pope in a Honey's BBQ last Friday... And it's only been in the last few years that the meat-eating rule has really been thrown by the wayside. My parents tell me of eating fish in public shools every Friday as to not disturb the Catholics. Sure, most Americans are God-fearing Christians, but we are moving to a secular society, ruled by the desire for worldly gain. In that light, who is REALLY going to have an issue with modifying their child's DNA to make them the best child they can be? I asked myself this question, and I didn't like the answer. I would certainly allow genetic modification of my child (We'll call her Wendy for the rest of this discussion) for protection agains genetic disorders or potentially lethal disabilities. I don't think I'd allow a genetech to modify height, weight, skin/eye color or any other pysical charictaristics, or even allow someone to boost Wendy's intellegence or personal charm. If I was told that Wendy would be autistic or would be afflicted with Down's Syndrome, would I allow the technician to play that kind of merry hell with her genes? What if I did? Should I ever tell her? and would it be WRONG to do it? I've already made sure shes immune to polio, should I make sure she doesnt have ADHD like her old man? I'm already playing God, shaping my daughter into an ideal image like a lump of PlayDoh, where is the line drawn between 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' gene manipulation? What are the social implications of meddling with the Second Most Powerful Force in the Universe? These issues are going to come to light as the technology matures, and will not affect us personally, but my little Wendy may have to ask herself these questions in earnest. We need to examine ourselves and see what the answers should really be.Perhaps we need a few guidelines for the people it will really affect.
"3. Why would parents completely design a child? Why would a parent care what protien forms a marker on their child's cell walls, or the thickness of the phospholipid bilayers of their cells? Almost all genes are something that a parent wouldn't care about - and it would be pointless *not* to leave it to natural selection.
4. Reproductive rights are one of the most strongly guarded human rights, typically second only to the right to survive. You will *never* find a world where no woman wants to give birth to her own children, where no parents want *their* genetics passed along. As someone who cannot have children, barring advances in organ cloning technology, I can attest to this"
these two really go together... I recently built a computer for a friend of mine... PII 600 with 128MB SDRAM, 40 GB HD, 10/100 Mb/s NIC.... who gives a flying f**k what brand the TRANSISTORS are, as long as they are all there. If the technology exists for parents to 'program' their children, I'm sure that they will use their own DNA to make a little froggy thing (maybe even using tradional methods!!) that they take down to the aformentioned BodyShop, put it in the Cyclotron and then start picking options and packages.
"Hrm, let's split this one into three zygotes. Make one female and the other two male. 'K, then.. the first male, designated EDWARDS, BLAKE KYLE (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9999) will get the Hometown Hero package, with the Big Pecs upgrade. Let's also boost his IQ to around the 200 range.. that ought to be perfect... Second male zygote, designated EDWARDS, NATHANIEL LEE (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9998), gets the Alt-Rock Intellectual, with the Real Lady-Killer (tm) relationship sub-package... and for kicks, let's make his eyes Storm Grey... As for the female zygote (isn't this FUN, Honeybun?), she will be EDWARDS, JESSICA ELAINE (oh, after my mother, how sweet!) (Asset/SocSec # 999-99-9899), why don't we give her the Head Cheerleader pack, with Girl-Next Door Allure ('They'll all want to take her home to meet Mom!' tm), and the Corporate Raider success drive... That should do it, ring it up, and reimplant the children, please...."
See? Still using your own DNA, slightly modified, and none of that messy "Understand what you're playing with" thing.. It'll be as simple as using the Kodak PhotoComputer at WalMart to make extra copies.. and speaking of which, why NOT make extra copies, just in case Blake takes a header off his bike. You can ease the pain by pulling another Blake outta Cryo and taking him full term again. (this one is v 2.0, cuz version .9 died in Beta...). No one is taking anyone's right to reproduction away. And genetic manipulation may even allow those of us who CAN'T reproduce naturally to do so using tissue samples... In fact, and the last male in my family, and an injury-induced sterility, this is NOT a bad sounding plan... But I'm sure someone would have an issue with it...
"5. Discrimination doesn't occur in the workplace. Because, if it does, there are lawsuits. And they win, because of laws. This is how laws work. If a law is passed (and, in a country where the vast majority of americans would think it a horrible thing to be discriminated by genetics, it will), the law will be enforced by companies, via fear of lawsuits. It happens now, and unless our government collapses (in which case genetic engineering will be the least of our worries), it will happen in the future. "
RIIIIGGGHHHTT.... Because laws against it exist, it NEVER happens. That's a naieve statement. I don't want to be rude, but I've livied in the corp world long enough to realize that less than 1/2 of 1 percent of all (criminal)discrimination incedents are ever reported... I took a night class once.. big mistake. I was the only man... and the other students averaged 36, divorced, and ANGRY. I was discriminated against. But if I had spoken up, I would have been pulled from the class... and it was the only one I could take at that point. I had to determine that my personal dignity and pride were not worth the cost of raising a ruckus. And I see events like that all the time. My last boss was BAD about sexually harassing his female employees and bragging about his infidelity. No one has EVER, in his three years with the company, said anything about it. I don't know why, but I am no better than anyone else for not reporting his CRIMINAL behavior.
The point is, just because there are criminal recriminations possible, doesn't mean that all the good little people are going to stay away. take us for example... the hacker culture. I've done a few things in my quest for knowledge that were of dubious legality... And I'm SURE I'm not alone. Same with drugs....
Interesting scenario... what about engineering sports players? Illegally... The Mafia has a vat somewheres, cuts deals with All American Families to have a genetically superior quarterback taken into their home in exchange for a fat pension... all very quiet, of course... then they get all of these sports figures on a single team, say the Colts... big winnings are possible, and it's SAFER THAN STEROIDS!!!! Takes longer, but the payoffs are far greater as well... John Q. Quarterback could be built to throw 100% completion, have amazing speed, agility, stamina, and lifespan. And he LIVES for football...
"6. You talk about insurance companies offering lower rates for "geneticly superior" people. Do, say, car insurance providers take race into account when they set your fee? I'm sure you'd find corrolations. But, they don't, because that is discrimination (I still think its wrong that they take sex into account, but that is just me). There would be riots if they started taking race into account. "
You are right, but what about Age, Smoking or NonSmoking, History of Heart Disease? You're damn straight that insurance companies would use genetic profiling to determine your eligibility. They do it now, in a family history questionaire... I pay more for health insurance because my grandfather had cancer, my dad has high blood pressure, and my aunt has diabetes. It ain't right, but it's legal. It's called "Risk Assessment" and they do it everyday.
I guess that the point is, this is a big can of worms, and that exremists on both sides will scream, and they'll be right in some cases... but the thing to remember is that this is the most powerful weapon that has ever been devised, and that we need to be CAREFUL about how it's applied. It will take years, decades before these questions are resolved. And maybe some of these fears will come to light during that time and create a need for an international treaty on human genetic manipulation. Who knows? We stand on the cusp of a great future for humanity, let's not blow it.
If this posts as Anonymous Coward, sorry.. forgot to log in, I think...
Peace, relay_switch
OK, Jon (and fellow /.ers). I've been reading these comments, and it looks like this is the hottest thing to hit /. since sliced bread. Lemme try to see if I can wrap our brains around what we're saying:
.38 revolver, and as a senior, one of my friends opened fire with a shotgun in a crowded lunchroom. No one was hurt), I'm personally glad to see that SOMEONE is trying to come up with a program to addesss the issues of violence in our schools. But as a guy who used to wear black lipstick and eyeliner to school along with my slacks and loafers, I cringe at the thought of people like the ones I found out were going to kill me being able to say that I was the dangerous one... and get ME into trouble, when they were the ones who planned to leave my violated corpse on the front lawn of the school because I was OBVIOUSLY a 'fag'...
1) What are the procedures for verifying that the 'anonymous' tip line is not abused by jocks/other people afraid/who hate the "outsiders" groups on campus?
a) How can it be anonymous if prizes are in the offering? Do they set up random street corner liasons with the students, like a daylight drug deal?
2) What is going to be done with the data that is collected? Will it be stored offline in Pinkerton's HQ, will it be a searchable database accessable via the Web? Does it have an expiration date? Or will this data find it's way onto our Permanent Records?
3) What kind of safguards will be in place to ensure that students who have been reported by their peers will not be treated as further outcasts? Will WAVE conduct interviews about the individual, will the individual be called into a conference with the dean, the councilor, the parent(s), the chief of police and the local jail warden?
And personally, I want to know if WAVE/Pinkerton will have any kind of community oversight program, to make sure that some faceless commitee in another region doesn't make decisions that affect a locality with no input from that locality...
As a kid who DID suffer through two high school incidents involving guns (a girl in one of my high schools committed suicide in a school bathroom with a
Good luck, Godspeed... And if Jon doesn't come back, well... we know what happened to him...
switch