You may be able to make the case that you have a right to access those computers, but it has nothing to do with the First Amendment, which states:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Library computers are a tax-funded program to promote the general welfare by making educational material easilly available... they are a government subsidy, not neccessarilly something you have a "right" to. Your taxes help pay for it, yes, but they also help pay for cruise missiles, and you don't have a right to use those as you personally see fit, do you?
Putting censorware on publicly owned computers is something we should oppose because it is wrong, not because we imagine it to be unconstitutional.
I like your idea, and hope something like it is applied, but I need to reiterate that you do not have a first ammendment right to use a library computer. It is a tax-supported privilage, and therefore the duly elected government that puts it into place can set whatever terms they like. (And you can vote them the hell out if you disapprove of their decision.)
Admittedly it's not hard to tell the time on an analog watch, but those few milliseconds more it takes, multiplied by the thousands of times you look at your watch, is a significant productivity hit.
Some of us have realized that it is even more productive to not wear a watch at all. Why carry a clock with you everywhere you go when there are clocks everywhere, and you are surrounded by people who wear them as fashion statements.
By not wearing a watch, I actually manage my time better, and I have no temptation to glipse at the time over and over when I am anxious.
I have not worn a watch since about 1989, and I have never been in a situation where I wished I had one. The need for a timepiece on your wrist is a complete illusion.
Watches are shackles, dude. Loose it and you will be happier.
How does the community decide what is acceptable? Do they put the software under some sort of configuration management? Does the community get to vote on what sites and subjects are inappropriate or do we simply accept what CP and NetNanny says? Do we trust these corporations to look out for what's best in our community? I think not. I don't trust the majority and I have no interest in having some bureaucrat impose his/her opinions of decency on me or my children.
So, what position are you advocating? On one hand, you want to know how the community can control this... On the other, you "don't trust the majority".
Yep. He was a programmer for a small media company that let him work from home. They always shelled out to put the latest-and-greatest on his desk, with multiple monitors.
A friend of mine used to be a huge Warbirds fan about three years ago. He used one 20 inch monitor with a couple of 17's (one on each side of the 20) on his Mac 9600, so he had a full cockpit view. Very cool.
With any FPS, flight sim, driving game, etc., the more screen real estate you have, the more emmersive the game is.
However, when it
requires that as a condition of funding libraries violate the free speech rights of the blocked sites
The sites in question may still publish and still exist and may still be read from a home computer. Their rights are therefore not being violated by anybody.
If I publish a photo book about people having sex with animals, and the library chooses not to put it on their shelves, are they censoring me? I am still free to sell or distribute the book any way I choose. I don't have the right to force them to put my book on their shelves.
This is a case of the what a library does with its resources. There is no room for debate about whether they are allowed to control what they make available... they are. The only debate that matters is whether they should use these filters or not.
While it is entirely constitutional for a library to put CP or netnanny or whatever on their computers, it is also entirely constitutional for us to raise holy hell over it and try to get them to stop.
If this violates any amendment, it violates the 10th. The Federal government ought not dictate content to county libraries. The libraries who take federal subsidies are not in much of a position to gripe, however.
This is why libertarians (and some Republicans) generally oppose federal social programs, even the ones that look like great ideas (in spite of the inevitable cries of, "how could those mean conservatives vote against more funding for public libraries!?"); because once the government is picking up the check, the local governments have to go to the feds, cap in hand, and accept whatever mandates are handed down to them.
Now you see why "big government" bothers conservatives more than "big business". Crap like this... this is why. I'll let Jon Katz furrow his brow and worry about what Ford Motors is up to; I'm far more worried about what the next federal power-grab is going to be.
Last i checked an internet connection was the same no matter what site you looked at.
Yes, but if I buy you lunch, I can choose what the meal is. If you want something different, buy it yourself.
The internet is a medium, just like books, mags, etc etc.
...and if a library chooses not to offer Jugs magazine for check-out, they may do so. Ditto if they choose not to let you visit geocities porn sites on their computers.
I would say that the "public space vs. government buidling" hair-splitting does not work in your favor.
If you and 200 other picketers were to stage a political rally inside a public library, you would be quickly removed. Do so in a public park, and they would have to allow you to demonstrate.
How about making a political speech in a government-built park, standing on a paid-for-by-the-government sidewalk under a government-planted tree?
By that argument, porn sites should be not only be accessable on publicly owned clients, but should also be hosted on publicly owned servers.
Sorry but your comparison does not apply. Even when the government owns the park, you are still using your own resources (your ears) to access the information.
Speaking in public places and distributing with publicly-owned resources do not correlate... one is a right, the other is a subsidy.
This correlates much more closely to showing rough-sex pornos and snuff films on PBS.
This seems to me like a really blatant example of government censorship.
I disagree. They are not shutting these sites down, and they are not trying to stop you from using your own computer to get at them. If they were, for example, requiring all ISP's to install these filters, that would be censorship.
Gay opinion is not the same thing as gay porn
I never said it was. I was just mirroring the sarcastic tone of your post with hyperbole of my own.:)
"Educationally valid" is a hard thing to define, and I don't want someone's appointed censors to define it for everyone else.
Every parent who sends their kids to school is letting others (teachers, administrators, school boards, etc.) decide what their children should be taught. That is what educators do. That which they do not decide to teach, whatever it is, they have passively decided to "censor".
The hysteria and hypersensitivity about censorship which saturates our culture is a good thing in many ways... I wish we were all as militant about the other 9 "Bill of Rights" amendments. At the same time, we need to be careful not to de-value those rights by playing the "liberty" card every time we think we might be getting shafted over something. As long as the government does not restrict what I can read at home, and what I can say at a political rally, then I don't see what they do within the walls of the library as a threat to the First Amendment.
Well, your first point was just repeating excactly what I was saying.
Your second point was off the mark. I wasn't saying microsoft would lose because of the "taking too long" excuse. I was saying that they would lose because their license was unreasonable and unenforcable, and I would make taking it to court their problem instead of mine, by simply saying 'no, I won't buy additional licenses when I already own all I need, and I am not going to take the software off my computers either, becuase it is too much bother. Sue me if you don't like it, we both know you have no case.'"
If "the gummint" bought it, then _I_ paid for part of it. And _I_ want
my kids to be able to see nekkid wimmin, far more than I want them to be able to see random gore and violence. I want them to be able
to read the facts about gay people and to get support if they determine that they themselves are gay. I want them to be able to access
any and every kind of information at will. If _you_ don't want _your_ kids to have that ability, that's _your_ worry, and enforcing it is
_your_ lookout.
First of all, I don't have kids. Don't make assumtions about people you have not meet.
Secondly, while I am perfectly willing to help pay for your kids to get at educationally valid sites, I am not interested in paying for your kids' gay porn. If you want them to see that, go to an adult bookstore and buy it for them yourself.
Thirdly, if you read my post more carefully you would have seen that I oppose federal mandates for filterware. My only point was that it is not a First Amendment issue.
Freedom of speech and freedom to browse the web on government-bought computers are not the same thing. At all.
The government could just as easilly pull funding for those computers and connections entirely, and nothing in the constitution would stop them.
This is an argument about what is right, not what is legal. Filtering software greatly reduces the usefulness of a web terminal, and expanding federal control of local libraries is a Bad Thing.
Were I running a big company, I would simply refuse to pay twice, and just keep using it when they revoke licenses. If they threaten legal action, my response would be, "it takes too long to move to another platform. You're just going to have to go ahead and sue us. I'm sure you know you will lose, and will get lots of bad press for it, too. On the other hand, you can work with us on this license issue and enjoy the tiny chance of still retaining us as a customer."
If I was running a small company, I would not use M$ products in the first place. They are way too expensive.
So what do you call a website that puts up a huge, fuck-off headline saying that a major web-based email provider is about to collapse, then takes it back in a tiny print comment saying "from-the-well-it-could-happen dept"?
I would call it a funny and irreverent news-oriented discussion forum that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I got a huge laugh out of that headline.
Considering the history of struggle that Microsoft has had with Hotmail, I would be willing to bet that there are even techies working for Microsoft that saw the/. headline and were amused by it.
Windows is the "most prevalent platform" today, but by the time today's HS kids graduate college even Microsoft probably will have moved on to something else.
In my first CS class (back in 7th grade), we used the "most prevalant" system of the day - the Apple II. By the time I graduated HS, they were long gone.
For introducing the basics, I recomend UNIX (or Linux or whatever flavor you like) because the i/o and file system are very transparant and easy to teach. Even this is a small advantage, and not worth starting Holy Wars over.
Beyond that criteria, which OS you use in a high school classroom is utterly meaningless.
He's clearly trolling for ad revenue and perhaps enough controversy to make a follow-up mea-culpa article a winner also.
Damn right. I propose that the link to Moody's "editorial" be removed from the story... why should we do this bastard the favor of slashdotting his pile of BS?
As a former teacher now working in IT, I see a lot of good suggestions here... and some not so great.
It seems to me there are a few basic concepts that I would want a student to come with after his/her first computer class:
1. The basics of computer hardware, and file systems. A *n?x box of some kind seems to be the best choice for this, but you can teach the same concepts with a Windows PC or a Mac if you have no choice.
2. Programming. For an intro class, you can get by with Basic, Pascal, or even shell scripting... the point is to get the concepts of loops, conditions, and so on intot he kids' heads. For more advanced students, move on to an object based language. Don't chew your nails over the platform choice... whatever they use will be obsolete by the time they are out of college anyway. Just get them started.
3. Relational Databases. The school guidance counselor is probably telling your kids that database knowledge is a boarding pass for the Gravey Train. They should be, anyway. Again, don't worry about which platform you teach from. The concepts are very portable, and nobody really knows which database company will be the "it girl" of 2004.
4. Networking. Programming plaforms change, OS platforms change, database platforms change (I'm starting to sound like Avrey Brooks), but networking is the past, present, and future of the digital revolution. Make sure your kids understand TCP/IP, everything from the basics of sub-net masks to IP spoofing. Get down to the nitty-gritty of network file systems. Talk at length about client/server, thin clients, fat clients, terminal apps, web applets, ftp, http, ppp, and lots of other acronyms ending in "p". Give them an introduction to IPv6, the Common Language the whole world will be speaking in a few years. Bring Cisco geeks in as guest speakers. Then, once your kids are network guru's, have them promise when they get older they will remember to send you a photo of their yacts from their summer homes in New Zealand, and let you be a guest at their Florida country club once in a while.
5. Project Management. Once your kids have all the basic skills covered, it is time to let them use a little creativity to come up with their own projects and strut their stuff. If they want to design a game, fine... have them form a design team and get started. Applied knowledge is where the real learning begins.
Slashdot Mirror
Barry Goldwater probably said it best: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."
Sorry, but this review did nothing to persuade me to buy or even borrow the book... although it has made me consider joining the Cato Institute.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Library computers are a tax-funded program to promote the general welfare by making educational material easilly available... they are a government subsidy, not neccessarilly something you have a "right" to. Your taxes help pay for it, yes, but they also help pay for cruise missiles, and you don't have a right to use those as you personally see fit, do you?
Putting censorware on publicly owned computers is something we should oppose because it is wrong, not because we imagine it to be unconstitutional.
I like your idea, and hope something like it is applied, but I need to reiterate that you do not have a first ammendment right to use a library computer. It is a tax-supported privilage, and therefore the duly elected government that puts it into place can set whatever terms they like. (And you can vote them the hell out if you disapprove of their decision.)
Seriously, though... Take off your watch for a couple months and you will find that you tend to adjust to knowing how long you are browsing books.
Some of us have realized that it is even more productive to not wear a watch at all. Why carry a clock with you everywhere you go when there are clocks everywhere, and you are surrounded by people who wear them as fashion statements.
By not wearing a watch, I actually manage my time better, and I have no temptation to glipse at the time over and over when I am anxious.
I have not worn a watch since about 1989, and I have never been in a situation where I wished I had one. The need for a timepiece on your wrist is a complete illusion.
Watches are shackles, dude. Loose it and you will be happier.
The guy also missed the important point that if you are flying a Cessna 172 and shoot down other planes, you will be arrested.
So, what position are you advocating? On one hand, you want to know how the community can control this... On the other, you "don't trust the majority".
Yep. He was a programmer for a small media company that let him work from home. They always shelled out to put the latest-and-greatest on his desk, with multiple monitors.
With any FPS, flight sim, driving game, etc., the more screen real estate you have, the more emmersive the game is.
The sites in question may still publish and still exist and may still be read from a home computer. Their rights are therefore not being violated by anybody.
If I publish a photo book about people having sex with animals, and the library chooses not to put it on their shelves, are they censoring me? I am still free to sell or distribute the book any way I choose. I don't have the right to force them to put my book on their shelves.
This is a case of the what a library does with its resources. There is no room for debate about whether they are allowed to control what they make available... they are. The only debate that matters is whether they should use these filters or not.
While it is entirely constitutional for a library to put CP or netnanny or whatever on their computers, it is also entirely constitutional for us to raise holy hell over it and try to get them to stop.
If this violates any amendment, it violates the 10th. The Federal government ought not dictate content to county libraries. The libraries who take federal subsidies are not in much of a position to gripe, however.
This is why libertarians (and some Republicans) generally oppose federal social programs, even the ones that look like great ideas (in spite of the inevitable cries of, "how could those mean conservatives vote against more funding for public libraries!?"); because once the government is picking up the check, the local governments have to go to the feds, cap in hand, and accept whatever mandates are handed down to them.
Now you see why "big government" bothers conservatives more than "big business". Crap like this... this is why. I'll let Jon Katz furrow his brow and worry about what Ford Motors is up to; I'm far more worried about what the next federal power-grab is going to be.
Yes, but if I buy you lunch, I can choose what the meal is. If you want something different, buy it yourself.
The internet is a medium, just like books, mags, etc etc.
If you and 200 other picketers were to stage a political rally inside a public library, you would be quickly removed. Do so in a public park, and they would have to allow you to demonstrate.
By that argument, porn sites should be not only be accessable on publicly owned clients, but should also be hosted on publicly owned servers.
Sorry but your comparison does not apply. Even when the government owns the park, you are still using your own resources (your ears) to access the information.
Speaking in public places and distributing with publicly-owned resources do not correlate... one is a right, the other is a subsidy.
This correlates much more closely to showing rough-sex pornos and snuff films on PBS.
I disagree. They are not shutting these sites down, and they are not trying to stop you from using your own computer to get at them. If they were, for example, requiring all ISP's to install these filters, that would be censorship.
Gay opinion is not the same thing as gay porn
I never said it was. I was just mirroring the sarcastic tone of your post with hyperbole of my own. :)
"Educationally valid" is a hard thing to define, and I don't want someone's appointed censors to define it for everyone else.
Every parent who sends their kids to school is letting others (teachers, administrators, school boards, etc.) decide what their children should be taught. That is what educators do. That which they do not decide to teach, whatever it is, they have passively decided to "censor".
The hysteria and hypersensitivity about censorship which saturates our culture is a good thing in many ways... I wish we were all as militant about the other 9 "Bill of Rights" amendments. At the same time, we need to be careful not to de-value those rights by playing the "liberty" card every time we think we might be getting shafted over something. As long as the government does not restrict what I can read at home, and what I can say at a political rally, then I don't see what they do within the walls of the library as a threat to the First Amendment.
Your second point was off the mark. I wasn't saying microsoft would lose because of the "taking too long" excuse. I was saying that they would lose because their license was unreasonable and unenforcable, and I would make taking it to court their problem instead of mine, by simply saying 'no, I won't buy additional licenses when I already own all I need, and I am not going to take the software off my computers either, becuase it is too much bother. Sue me if you don't like it, we both know you have no case.'"
First of all, I don't have kids. Don't make assumtions about people you have not meet.
Secondly, while I am perfectly willing to help pay for your kids to get at educationally valid sites, I am not interested in paying for your kids' gay porn. If you want them to see that, go to an adult bookstore and buy it for them yourself.
Thirdly, if you read my post more carefully you would have seen that I oppose federal mandates for filterware. My only point was that it is not a First Amendment issue.
The government could just as easilly pull funding for those computers and connections entirely, and nothing in the constitution would stop them.
This is an argument about what is right, not what is legal. Filtering software greatly reduces the usefulness of a web terminal, and expanding federal control of local libraries is a Bad Thing.
Is it really Luddism that is driving this? Seems to me it is a special cocktail of puratanism and ignorance.
If I was running a small company, I would not use M$ products in the first place. They are way too expensive.
Not my favorite, mind you, I think her music sounds like the aural equivelent of root canal surgery, but to each his own.
I would call it a funny and irreverent news-oriented discussion forum that doesn't take itself too seriously.
I got a huge laugh out of that headline.
Considering the history of struggle that Microsoft has had with Hotmail, I would be willing to bet that there are even techies working for Microsoft that saw the /. headline and were amused by it.
In my first CS class (back in 7th grade), we used the "most prevalant" system of the day - the Apple II. By the time I graduated HS, they were long gone.
For introducing the basics, I recomend UNIX (or Linux or whatever flavor you like) because the i/o and file system are very transparant and easy to teach. Even this is a small advantage, and not worth starting Holy Wars over.
Beyond that criteria, which OS you use in a high school classroom is utterly meaningless.
Damn right. I propose that the link to Moody's "editorial" be removed from the story... why should we do this bastard the favor of slashdotting his pile of BS?
Wipe bug traq clean, and accept no future submissions.
Then wait for Moody to proclaim that Linux is the "best OS ever", based on the fact that it has no listed bugs.
It seems to me there are a few basic concepts that I would want a student to come with after his/her first computer class:
1. The basics of computer hardware, and file systems. A *n?x box of some kind seems to be the best choice for this, but you can teach the same concepts with a Windows PC or a Mac if you have no choice.
2. Programming. For an intro class, you can get by with Basic, Pascal, or even shell scripting... the point is to get the concepts of loops, conditions, and so on intot he kids' heads. For more advanced students, move on to an object based language. Don't chew your nails over the platform choice... whatever they use will be obsolete by the time they are out of college anyway. Just get them started.
3. Relational Databases. The school guidance counselor is probably telling your kids that database knowledge is a boarding pass for the Gravey Train. They should be, anyway. Again, don't worry about which platform you teach from. The concepts are very portable, and nobody really knows which database company will be the "it girl" of 2004.
4. Networking. Programming plaforms change, OS platforms change, database platforms change (I'm starting to sound like Avrey Brooks), but networking is the past, present, and future of the digital revolution. Make sure your kids understand TCP/IP, everything from the basics of sub-net masks to IP spoofing. Get down to the nitty-gritty of network file systems. Talk at length about client/server, thin clients, fat clients, terminal apps, web applets, ftp, http, ppp, and lots of other acronyms ending in "p". Give them an introduction to IPv6, the Common Language the whole world will be speaking in a few years. Bring Cisco geeks in as guest speakers. Then, once your kids are network guru's, have them promise when they get older they will remember to send you a photo of their yacts from their summer homes in New Zealand, and let you be a guest at their Florida country club once in a while.
5. Project Management. Once your kids have all the basic skills covered, it is time to let them use a little creativity to come up with their own projects and strut their stuff. If they want to design a game, fine... have them form a design team and get started. Applied knowledge is where the real learning begins.