(First, as a bit of friendly advice, I'd suggest not publishing comments that refer to your colleagues as "a bunch of goofballs". Perhaps they are, but perhaps they were subject to restrictions such as those that you're now encountering and weren't able to do their jobs effectively. In any case, such criticism won't help you now and might hurt you later.)
Getting something to happen in an organization involves building a business case for it, and presenting the case to your supervisors. Briefly, a business case justifies an action by demonstrating a benefit, usually a financial one. So, perhaps a case based around an argument such as "We're spending X dollars per month for our Internet access, but Y percent of that access is for non-school purposes. We could save Z dollars if we implemented policies A and B." would be effective. Risk reduction, such as protection from the legal liability you mentioned, can also be a justification. So if you have proof that the school's computers are being used for illegal purposes, then present it and describe the steps you could take to protect the school from liability. Another justification might be improved service to your clients (the staff and students, in your case); this sort of justification is harder to use, because it's harder to quantify, but it can be effective.
You might find that a supervisor who wasn't willing to act based on a verbal discussion will take action based on a written business case, which he or she can pass up the chain of command. Remember that your supervisor might, quite justifiably, not understand the issue well enough to create a case for it, and therefore might be unable to take any action unless you provide some hardcopy ammunition.
It shouldn't be too hard to find some resources on the net that help you to learn how to build a good business case. It's a great skill to develop. Good luck!
Hehe...I'd never heard of Lehrer's version, but I used to use the same tune as a mnemonic device in high school: the first few elements fit fairly nicely into it, in order:
There's hydrogen and helium and lithium, beryllium, And boron, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and fluorine, There's neon and there's sodium, magnesium, aluminum, there's silicon and phosphorus and sulfur, chlorine, and argon...
I'll spare you the rest. Saved my life on exams, though. I just hope I never hummed out loud.
Cheap technology won't make this cheap...
on
Cable Without Cables
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· Score: 4, Insightful
...competition will. If the winner of the spectrum auction in your area happens to also own the local cable company or satellite provider, then there'll be little incentive for them to pass the savings realized from the cheap infrastructure along to the customer. Blindly handing the spectrum over to Northpoint sounds stupid, but hopefully the spectrum will wind up in the hands of a company that will compete with other providers. If that happens, then consumers might actually see better prices, better service, and better product offerings.
Microsoft certainly seems more evil when they rattle their sabres at schools and charities than when their target is merely businesses. But really, schools have the same responsibility to understand, assert, and protect their rights -- and to abide by the law -- that for-profit corporations do.
Any school board that falls prey to misinformation or scare tactics designed to increase software license sales must, in part, blame itself. If a school principal doesn't understand whether he can legally accept a donated PC, then is there a resource -- a CIO of sorts at the board of education or perhaps a higher level -- to whom he can turn? Should the principal not be doing this instead of relying Microsoft's (obviously slanted) advice? And should the CIO (or counterpart) not be proactively issuing policies about things like accepting donated PCs?
Bring it up at your next PTA meeting...it's probably more effective than flaming MS on/.:)
IANA historian, but didn't the Indus valley civilization itself only come into existence around 2500BC? For such a monumental city to have existed in 3000BC would really be remarkable.
As the article points out, it's hard to make money selling a free product. IBM is likely to succeed with Linux because they can sell the hardware, non-free software, and (most importantly) the services associated with it. Red Hat might do best if it joined the HP-Compaq family, which might be the best candidate to challenge IBM on the Linux front (especially with Oracle as a partner).
This might help voice recognition catch on as a means of PC input, too. I'd feel slightly less stupid sitting in my office mouthing words at my computer than I would actually talking to it.
Very impressive. After 25 years, we've developed a keyboard with less tactile feedback than that of the Atari 400.
Biology vs. Comp. Sci.
on
Digital Biology
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This area has always interested me because I did my undergraduate degree in molecular biology, and my professional career has been in software engineering.
The first thing that strikes me when biology and computer science are brought together is that although we try to apply principles of the former to the latter, we really have a much firmer grasp of computer science than we do of biology. What we're really doing, I think, is taking some theories and concepts from biology -- evolution and immunology seem to be the big ones -- and adapting those theories to suit digital computers; we're not modelling life per se. It's important to remember, too, that although we can model evolutionary processes like variation and selection in a computer system and produce the anticipated results, we can't thereby prove that evolution applies to life. (I happen to believe that it does, but I have to admit that we have yet to irrefutably prove it). All we're doing is nicely illustrating the theory.
Someone mentioned earlier that everyone claims to be some sort of computer expert these days, and that biologists and psychologists routinely misapply computer concepts. From my perspective, the reverse is true. There seems to be a misconception that biology is straightforward and well-understood, and I just don't know where that comes from. I'm sure I'm not the only biologist who grimaces when "virus" is used to describe software. And the most gaping errors in science fiction always seem to be ones of biology. Computer scientists use words like "genotype" and "phenotype", but genetic algorithms seem to me to be so far removed from the actual complexities of gene expression as to be at best distant cousins. It's more a matter of biology lending ideas and inspiration to computer science than it is some direct translation of life processes to software processes.
Isn't it only that colour if you look at it from here? I mean, a lot of that light is billions of years old; the "colour" of the stars that produced it has probably changed since then. If you were looking at the universe from, let's say, some theoretical point 10 billion light years from its center, I bet it'd be a different colour. And if you could somehow average the colour of all the light that all its stars are producing at this very moment, then it'd be a different colour again.
I don't care which electronics company you are; it's none of your business, because the issue isn't hardware. The issue simply is whether I can broadcast somebody else's IP, and, if I can do so for my own purposes, am I responsible if someone else intercepts it?
For me, nothing compares to the Eagle Nebula (M16) pillars images. The fact that the universe contains things of such scale and beauty leaves me both wonderfully awestruck and horribly aware of our insignificance.
If Korea's only consuming 39 billion pieces of spam a year, they must be running an enviable spam surplus. Half the spam I get bounces off a.kr server.
I wonder if there's any security mechanism for these things to discourage theft and protect the data in the event of loss. Imagine how many lunch hour thieves would wander through the office pulling these things out of USB ports otherwise.
Look, the problem that both countries are facing is that you can't get the benefits that the free flow of ideas and information tends to produce for your economy without taking the risk that some of those ideas and some of that information might be dangerous to your conservative view of The Way Things Should Be. In the case of both the US and China, mitigating this risk means maintaining some level of government control or scrutiny over ideas and information. Argue all you want about how the US is justified in doing it and China isn't because The Way Things Should Be in the US is better than The Way Things Should Be in China. Just don't forget that both parties are doing it. From my perspective, that makes them less different than many people like to believe.
Slashdot Mirror
(First, as a bit of friendly advice, I'd suggest not publishing comments that refer to your colleagues as "a bunch of goofballs". Perhaps they are, but perhaps they were subject to restrictions such as those that you're now encountering and weren't able to do their jobs effectively. In any case, such criticism won't help you now and might hurt you later.)
Getting something to happen in an organization involves building a business case for it, and presenting the case to your supervisors. Briefly, a business case justifies an action by demonstrating a benefit, usually a financial one. So, perhaps a case based around an argument such as "We're spending X dollars per month for our Internet access, but Y percent of that access is for non-school purposes. We could save Z dollars if we implemented policies A and B." would be effective. Risk reduction, such as protection from the legal liability you mentioned, can also be a justification. So if you have proof that the school's computers are being used for illegal purposes, then present it and describe the steps you could take to protect the school from liability. Another justification might be improved service to your clients (the staff and students, in your case); this sort of justification is harder to use, because it's harder to quantify, but it can be effective.
You might find that a supervisor who wasn't willing to act based on a verbal discussion will take action based on a written business case, which he or she can pass up the chain of command. Remember that your supervisor might, quite justifiably, not understand the issue well enough to create a case for it, and therefore might be unable to take any action unless you provide some hardcopy ammunition.
It shouldn't be too hard to find some resources on the net that help you to learn how to build a good business case. It's a great skill to develop. Good luck!
Hehe...I'd never heard of Lehrer's version, but I used to use the same tune as a mnemonic device in high school: the first few elements fit fairly nicely into it, in order:
There's hydrogen and helium and lithium, beryllium,
And boron, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, and fluorine,
There's neon and there's sodium, magnesium, aluminum, there's silicon and phosphorus and sulfur, chlorine, and argon...
I'll spare you the rest. Saved my life on exams, though. I just hope I never hummed out loud.
...competition will. If the winner of the spectrum auction in your area happens to also own the local cable company or satellite provider, then there'll be little incentive for them to pass the savings realized from the cheap infrastructure along to the customer. Blindly handing the spectrum over to Northpoint sounds stupid, but hopefully the spectrum will wind up in the hands of a company that will compete with other providers. If that happens, then consumers might actually see better prices, better service, and better product offerings.
Microsoft certainly seems more evil when they rattle their sabres at schools and charities than when their target is merely businesses. But really, schools have the same responsibility to understand, assert, and protect their rights -- and to abide by the law -- that for-profit corporations do.
/. :)
Any school board that falls prey to misinformation or scare tactics designed to increase software license sales must, in part, blame itself. If a school principal doesn't understand whether he can legally accept a donated PC, then is there a resource -- a CIO of sorts at the board of education or perhaps a higher level -- to whom he can turn? Should the principal not be doing this instead of relying Microsoft's (obviously slanted) advice? And should the CIO (or counterpart) not be proactively issuing policies about things like accepting donated PCs?
Bring it up at your next PTA meeting...it's probably more effective than flaming MS on
IANA historian, but didn't the Indus valley civilization itself only come into existence around 2500BC? For such a monumental city to have existed in 3000BC would really be remarkable.
As the article points out, it's hard to make money selling a free product. IBM is likely to succeed with Linux because they can sell the hardware, non-free software, and (most importantly) the services associated with it. Red Hat might do best if it joined the HP-Compaq family, which might be the best candidate to challenge IBM on the Linux front (especially with Oracle as a partner).
This might help voice recognition catch on as a means of PC input, too. I'd feel slightly less stupid sitting in my office mouthing words at my computer than I would actually talking to it.
...just go straight for subcutaneous implantation. Hey, it worked great on my cat.
Very impressive. After 25 years, we've developed a keyboard with less tactile feedback than that of the Atari 400.
This area has always interested me because I did my undergraduate degree in molecular biology, and my professional career has been in software engineering.
The first thing that strikes me when biology and computer science are brought together is that although we try to apply principles of the former to the latter, we really have a much firmer grasp of computer science than we do of biology. What we're really doing, I think, is taking some theories and concepts from biology -- evolution and immunology seem to be the big ones -- and adapting those theories to suit digital computers; we're not modelling life per se. It's important to remember, too, that although we can model evolutionary processes like variation and selection in a computer system and produce the anticipated results, we can't thereby prove that evolution applies to life. (I happen to believe that it does, but I have to admit that we have yet to irrefutably prove it). All we're doing is nicely illustrating the theory.
Someone mentioned earlier that everyone claims to be some sort of computer expert these days, and that biologists and psychologists routinely misapply computer concepts. From my perspective, the reverse is true. There seems to be a misconception that biology is straightforward and well-understood, and I just don't know where that comes from. I'm sure I'm not the only biologist who grimaces when "virus" is used to describe software. And the most gaping errors in science fiction always seem to be ones of biology. Computer scientists use words like "genotype" and "phenotype", but genetic algorithms seem to me to be so far removed from the actual complexities of gene expression as to be at best distant cousins. It's more a matter of biology lending ideas and inspiration to computer science than it is some direct translation of life processes to software processes.
Isn't it only that colour if you look at it from here? I mean, a lot of that light is billions of years old; the "colour" of the stars that produced it has probably changed since then. If you were looking at the universe from, let's say, some theoretical point 10 billion light years from its center, I bet it'd be a different colour. And if you could somehow average the colour of all the light that all its stars are producing at this very moment, then it'd be a different colour again.
In reply to this move, the Chinese government said, "Thanks", and asked if we could block Chinese access to our evil, subversive websites next.
Hmmm, according to that Salon article, Bill got here 4 years before he was "born". This could explain a lot...
I don't care which electronics company you are; it's none of your business, because the issue isn't hardware. The issue simply is whether I can broadcast somebody else's IP, and, if I can do so for my own purposes, am I responsible if someone else intercepts it?
Actually, the DoT was planning to tell you all about this tomorrow.
I can't go out, get drunk, have fun, and get laid. I'm married.
For me, nothing compares to the Eagle Nebula (M16) pillars images. The fact that the universe contains things of such scale and beauty leaves me both wonderfully awestruck and horribly aware of our insignificance.
If Korea's only consuming 39 billion pieces of spam a year, they must be running an enviable spam surplus. Half the spam I get bounces off a .kr server.
I wonder if there's any security mechanism for these things to discourage theft and protect the data in the event of loss. Imagine how many lunch hour thieves would wander through the office pulling these things out of USB ports otherwise.
Just to be really anal about it: that would be subarean, not subterranean :-)
Hehe, I love inside jokes as much as the next guy, but this one deserves to be shared.
No, the mice are merely hell-bent on its conquest.
Actually, the evidence for the asteroid is pretty compelling IMO. There's a good article about it here.
Look, the problem that both countries are facing is that you can't get the benefits that the free flow of ideas and information tends to produce for your economy without taking the risk that some of those ideas and some of that information might be dangerous to your conservative view of The Way Things Should Be. In the case of both the US and China, mitigating this risk means maintaining some level of government control or scrutiny over ideas and information. Argue all you want about how the US is justified in doing it and China isn't because The Way Things Should Be in the US is better than The Way Things Should Be in China. Just don't forget that both parties are doing it. From my perspective, that makes them less different than many people like to believe.
The most telling point in the article:
The government wants to encourage the Internet's growth as a commercial medium. But Beijing fears its other use as a forum for political dissent.
Now let's revisit the second sentence:
But Washington fears its other use as a forum for terrorist activity.
So, Beijing mandates NetNanny, and Washington mandates Carnivore.
Yep, sure am glad I live in a society completely unlike China.