The trouble is that neither political party is serious about improving American education, although one of them is a little more active in its attempts to destroy it. When voters aren't idiots they'll be less swayed by those things that money buys (flashy TV ads).
I think the/Citizens United/ decision was the correct one if you assume an educated society. If you assume that the American voter is an idiot, however, it makes things worse.
The problem is that the American voter is an idiot, and nobody wants to fix *that*.
I think literacy tests would be a good idea to vote, but sadly the South ruined that for us a hundred years ago because they used it as an excuse for racism.
Then allow people to run their own matchmaking and deal with cheaters as they see fit, rather than forcing everything through the monolith that is bnet.
It has nothing to do with the latest version -- Flash has an auto-updater. If they ship with it, it'll just auto-update when the machine is first connected to the internet.
No, you're not happy to support it, considering that your company has some sort of vendetta against Flash.
Nobody likes traffic cops. Why? Because they recognize that the current methods of traffic safety enforcement are neither rational nor beneficial and resent the police because of it.
It is entirely possible for an arm of the government to do something that is both legally permitted and not in the public interest. If all we expect our elected and appointed officials to do is to not break the law, our standards are pretty low.
My parents have had intermittent connectivity in Alabama these last few days, which is a Big Deal since they have Vonage for phone service. Comcast blames it on the analog-digital switchover, which is horseshit.
Why does a bunch of techies unrelated to any of the actual revenue-generating activity at a university (i.e. teaching classes and doing research) get to be legally responsible for the data?
Let people whose data it is be responsible for protecting it.
Seems like you need to stop using SSN's as ID numbers, then, or tell students that they have the option of choosing another student ID number (and that if they use their SSN and Bad Stuff happens then it's their issue).
Why exactly is it the job of IT cowboys (I'll reuse the term from earlier as it is apt) to make sure nobody anywhere on campus does something stupid with a computer?
It's not the job of the lab safety mavens to stop people from eating plutonium.
I'm at University of Arizona. We switched to PeopleSoft this summer, at the cost of $60 million or so (which we can't afford at all -- maybe you have read about our crazy governor?).
Semester starts, grad students don't get paid (sometimes) for a month, grad students get bills for tuition we're not supposed to and get charged late fees, secretaries can't do their jobs helping students... TOTAL NIGHTMARE, and everyone blames it on this PeopleSoft thing.
Then the correct policy is "Don't haphazardly store personal data on machines without considering what you are doing". There is no reason to barge into Dr. Smith's office, who's madly creating his slides for the conference next week while trying to babysit a supercomputer at Berkeley while fending off emails from his students, and insist in a very bureaucratic tone that you have to scan his workstation, the RAID, his other computer, his student's computer, and the two computers used to monitor various instruments (which the other students are taking data on) for SSN's.
As someone who works rather intimately with the department-level IT guys at a university, this would be a disaster. They don't have time to install automatic encryption software on everyone's disk, and *we* don't have time to wait on the computer to run crypto on it. Yes, disk encryption software is pretty fast -- but it's slower than the RAID we're pulling the data from, and the CPU is busy doing other things.
If you can't trust your professors to follow *reasonable* instructions about the protection of personal data without the nonsense of installing software on everyone's boxes, then you shouldn't trust them to work for you.
I know a lot of scientists who would be quite annoyed if the people from the IT department (who are clueless policy-obsessed wankers at my institution) came in and wanted to search through a bunch of simulation results and LaTeX files looking for SSN's.
"Your Honor, Defendant's misrepresentation caused me to lose an election for the US Senate. This has cost me a Senate seat; as damages I would like Defendant to sign over to me one of its paid-for senators."
I don't like the quarter-million penalty. To a lot of corps this is chump change.
Now, sometimes someone makes a bona fide claim only to have that claim denied, and that act shouldn't be punished. But malicious abuses of the system like this are inexcusable.
I think the penalty for blatant abuse of the law, at least for corporations, should be a legal death penalty: the inability to bring actions, suit, complaints, or any other form of legal action against anyone else. No more patent claims, no more DMCA notices, no lawsuits against anyone for any reason. If you are going to abuse the law, then you don't deserve its protection.
A large radio station had a badly-tuned transmitter that jammed the lower half of the FM band in a major city for years, affecting radio reception in the (poor) quarter of the city badly, and making those low-power personal FM transmitters (for use with ipods) useless within 30 miles.
The residents of that neighborhood heard (shitty) gospel music over their land lines, the signal leakage was so bad.
It took the FCC repeated complaints and 10 years to do anything.
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This, exactly.
The trouble is that neither political party is serious about improving American education, although one of them is a little more active in its attempts to destroy it. When voters aren't idiots they'll be less swayed by those things that money buys (flashy TV ads).
I think the /Citizens United/ decision was the correct one if you assume an educated society. If you assume that the American voter is an idiot, however, it makes things worse.
The problem is that the American voter is an idiot, and nobody wants to fix *that*.
I think literacy tests would be a good idea to vote, but sadly the South ruined that for us a hundred years ago because they used it as an excuse for racism.
You must be new here.
Just imagine if it had been cricket, baseball's close cousin...
Then allow people to run their own matchmaking and deal with cheaters as they see fit, rather than forcing everything through the monolith that is bnet.
It has nothing to do with the latest version -- Flash has an auto-updater. If they ship with it, it'll just auto-update when the machine is first connected to the internet.
No, you're not happy to support it, considering that your company has some sort of vendetta against Flash.
This is a point that needs to be made more often.
Nobody likes traffic cops. Why? Because they recognize that the current methods of traffic safety enforcement are neither rational nor beneficial and resent the police because of it.
Perhaps it can, legally. But should it?
It is entirely possible for an arm of the government to do something that is both legally permitted and not in the public interest. If all we expect our elected and appointed officials to do is to not break the law, our standards are pretty low.
My parents have had intermittent connectivity in Alabama these last few days, which is a Big Deal since they have Vonage for phone service. Comcast blames it on the analog-digital switchover, which is horseshit.
Why does a bunch of techies unrelated to any of the actual revenue-generating activity at a university (i.e. teaching classes and doing research) get to be legally responsible for the data?
Let people whose data it is be responsible for protecting it.
Seems like you need to stop using SSN's as ID numbers, then, or tell students that they have the option of choosing another student ID number (and that if they use their SSN and Bad Stuff happens then it's their issue).
Why exactly is it the job of IT cowboys (I'll reuse the term from earlier as it is apt) to make sure nobody anywhere on campus does something stupid with a computer?
It's not the job of the lab safety mavens to stop people from eating plutonium.
Why does anyone ever need to store the SSN's of students, anyway?
re: PeopleSoft:
I'm at University of Arizona. We switched to PeopleSoft this summer, at the cost of $60 million or so (which we can't afford at all -- maybe you have read about our crazy governor?).
Semester starts, grad students don't get paid (sometimes) for a month, grad students get bills for tuition we're not supposed to and get charged late fees, secretaries can't do their jobs helping students ... TOTAL NIGHTMARE, and everyone blames it on this PeopleSoft thing.
Then the correct policy is "Don't haphazardly store personal data on machines without considering what you are doing". There is no reason to barge into Dr. Smith's office, who's madly creating his slides for the conference next week while trying to babysit a supercomputer at Berkeley while fending off emails from his students, and insist in a very bureaucratic tone that you have to scan his workstation, the RAID, his other computer, his student's computer, and the two computers used to monitor various instruments (which the other students are taking data on) for SSN's.
Luckily the physics department I work for has our own IT guy, who knows the students and faculty and can cut through the bullshit.
As someone who works rather intimately with the department-level IT guys at a university, this would be a disaster. They don't have time to install automatic encryption software on everyone's disk, and *we* don't have time to wait on the computer to run crypto on it. Yes, disk encryption software is pretty fast -- but it's slower than the RAID we're pulling the data from, and the CPU is busy doing other things.
If you can't trust your professors to follow *reasonable* instructions about the protection of personal data without the nonsense of installing software on everyone's boxes, then you shouldn't trust them to work for you.
Does this include professors?
I know a lot of scientists who would be quite annoyed if the people from the IT department (who are clueless policy-obsessed wankers at my institution) came in and wanted to search through a bunch of simulation results and LaTeX files looking for SSN's.
... is that it lies in between ordinary x86-type multicore processors and CUDA/GPGPU, and there's not much room in between.
... I have an Amoeba 3000, it's even better.
Christians.
Oh, that was a rhetorical question?
No, that should be pretty simple.
"Your Honor, Defendant's misrepresentation caused me to lose an election for the US Senate. This has cost me a Senate seat; as damages I would like Defendant to sign over to me one of its paid-for senators."
What was the penalty levied against Universal?
I don't like the quarter-million penalty. To a lot of corps this is chump change.
Now, sometimes someone makes a bona fide claim only to have that claim denied, and that act shouldn't be punished. But malicious abuses of the system like this are inexcusable.
I think the penalty for blatant abuse of the law, at least for corporations, should be a legal death penalty: the inability to bring actions, suit, complaints, or any other form of legal action against anyone else. No more patent claims, no more DMCA notices, no lawsuits against anyone for any reason. If you are going to abuse the law, then you don't deserve its protection.
A large radio station had a badly-tuned transmitter that jammed the lower half of the FM band in a major city for years, affecting radio reception in the (poor) quarter of the city badly, and making those low-power personal FM transmitters (for use with ipods) useless within 30 miles.
The residents of that neighborhood heard (shitty) gospel music over their land lines, the signal leakage was so bad.
It took the FCC repeated complaints and 10 years to do anything.
That's pretty fucking awesome.