when i met her she had no idea about anything with computers, i taught her everything she knows and got her a job as level 1 tech support / glorified receptionist. now whenever anything computer goes wrong in the house "I'm not the tech support, you are, i don't know anything about fixing computers, i just build web pages." she normally fumes for a bit but fixes most minor issues herself.. i think she just asks me now out of habit then any real requirement for my assistance.
*nix and an old pc, spend the $4900 on mushrooms to make you think the computer is awesome, the benefit of this is that the awesomeness of your machine will last longer than the macs awesomeness does.:)
a technician (by reputation not trade) that uninstalls malware is about as skilled as a backyard mechanic is, why are you treating a car and a computer differently? they are both machines that people specialize in, neither are more or less complicated than the other. a qualified mechanic is someone who has been a mechanic for 4 years, I'd expect someone who has spent 8 hours a day 5 days a week fixing computers to have the same level of competency after 4 years.
Also, you think the mechanic fixes your car? you should be thanking the 16 year old first year apprentice just out of school getting paid $2.50 an hour to fix your car.
I'd like to point out that sales isn't a technical job. in fact its about as far away from a technical job as you can get. also 200k a year wouldn't be impossible if you ran your own business.
its funny, you where polite and got boned, (minor plumbing fixes which benefited him as much as you, for a 4-6 hours computer repair, i bet you also administrate the network and look after the internet too?). if you learned to be rude like the rest of us antisocial geeks then people wouldn't take advantage of you. no one expects that angry geek on the end of the line to do anything for free, and even if it was for free it might not be worth being yelled at for 15 min about being incompetent.
If there was some "minor" problems with your router setup, could you consider it "paying a housemate back" for fixing it? why would you consider him repairing a house he lives in as a payback to you.. unless you own the house that is and was just renting the room to him?
problem is most people learn how to fix computers from trial and error and experience, most of the early experience comes for free and is given to family and friends. its harder to say "no" to a "simple virus clean" when you spend 3 hours building them the computer 5 years ago for free as your first "unofficial" client.
I fail to see how piling on more punishment from the police will help this mess in the slightest.
because i didn't say piling it on top of how the school is punishing them. I'm saying instead of the school punishing them, IMO it should all be handled outside the school, it wasn't even said in school or using school resources and because the school is affected most by it how can you expect a fair reprimand against the action?
my problem is that the school is too close to the issue to be expected to judge fairly on crime and punishment, its the same reason why an independent judge decides a punishment, not the victim. it also sets a negative precedent of handling issues like this "internally" which leads to abuse eg. catholic church and alter boy issue.
Also there is no evidence of the teacher being investigated by police and the fact that the "evidence" was only accessible through a student before it was removed indicates to me that the police weren't even alerted.
so instead of trading money for services your trading "favors" for services. And i consider yourself pathetic because you lean on your family every time you have a "need" and burden them with your problems. I bet your family is the first port of call if you need money too?
I've married into this sort of family and it drives me nuts, calls every weekend to help with some minor task. Where as my family is highly independent, and pays / rewards me for my time and effort. Your not "helping the family" your doing a service call for a luxury item. IF a fix is required so they can pay bills or submit assignments or whatever, then yes, I'd help out family and close friends for free if they couldn't afford to pay me (or for whatever reason could return the favour in a hot meal). but to do it because they are family sounds like your opening your self up to being used and abused.
No. Are they asked to replace a faucet or figure out a wonky socket? Sure. Welcome to friendship.
I consult for free to family and friends (eg: "you need a computer technician to configure your router, it will cost about $60 an hour. but that's probably why your internet isn't working on your brand new device.", a lot of times family and friends contact me because they don't know who they can talk to and what they can do to get it fixed.) but if i am required to do any actual work i expect something in return. I don't ask you to come over and do some annoying and frustrating task like cleaning my oven without offering anything in return, its not about the money though, I'll accept a good home cook meal or a 20 min neck massage or whatever you can offer that I'd consider worth my time. my brother in law does my lawn, my mum looks after my accounting or will cook me a nice home made meal. some rent "problems" disappeared after i fixed the network of the real-estate agency ( only to return with new owners:/ ).
in the end i just say "I'm too poor to fix your shit for free" because a "free fix" costs transport and energy which is a tangible cost. So I'm not actually fixing for free, I'm paying for it.
2 exception though
1) wife / girlfriend, not fixing the device is more frustrating and annoying to you than fixing it, plus you can physically abuse the source of the frustration without being arrested.
2) is if you are learning, if your not confident in your technical abilities then you should offer your services for free without any expectation of being paid for your work, also because of
a) it gets you more work, lots of people will let you learn on their broken systems for free in an attempt to get a working product for free.
b) if you're in over your head its a lot easier to back out. it takes years to have a good system of scape goats and "specialist" contacts to play the "passing the buck" game with.
c) learning to fix / doing the fix while your learning is more entertaining, to crusty old people like myself its irritating and frustrating, but i remember being younger and being excited to try and fix something new.
And this is a perfect example of something that is horribly wrong with your system. Now all of the tax payers get to pay for these iPads, even though many of them won't get used.
there is problems with our schooling system but being funded by the government isn't one of them. you can't have or support a service based society/economy (like Australia or America) without investing in further education. the American government does it too just at a much reduced level, and it shows by the average income the Americans get compared to Australians.
And i don't think that accusations of pedophilia should ever be handled internally, that's the logic the catholic church uses and its just plain wrong. its a serious charge and should be handled by the police. who aren't stupid and easily "duped" into believing pedophile stories. and considering they deal with this sort of thing on a daily bases, maybe its best left to the professionals?
read: the school and the teacher in question has everything to gain by miss-representing the details of the investigation, that's why they shouldn't be the judge, jury and executioner, there is no oversight.
a couple of dodgy things to the story though.
why did the principal delete the evidence of the infringement before pursuing action against the individuals unless its obviously in jest, in which its not legally punishable slander is it? especially when just discussing in between classmates?
The parents quite clearly can't see any problem with their children's behaviour,
I'd just like to point out the following text from the link that YOU provided.
"I'm afraid for my daughter," Maria Sosa said. What her daughter did was wrong, she said. "I know that was not right, but she's 13... . The punishment is hard."
Aside from anything else, were I to learn that a child at my children's school was wont to make public accusations of paedophilia and rape of adults, while their parents stand behind them and support them, I wouldn't have those children in my house, and I would raise serious issues with the school governors about those children being present in any place where I had to go (for example, performance, concerts, parents' evenings). Children who behave like that are like loaded handguns, and until their parents can teach them some decent behaviour (rather than lawyering up for a payday), being around them is a serious risk to other adults.
I guess because a kid made the accusation only sudo-privately (read: publicly) they should be shunned regardless if the accusations were groundless. And heaven forbid that their parents support the kids accusing a teacher of sexual assault, what sort of world do we live in?
not only that, but i just fucking love the fact that your slandering a 12 year old girl (by name no less) to prove a point on how wrong they are making a publicly slanderous statement. hypocrite much?
also, an honer roll student is normally one that is a straight A student who participates in extra credit activities etc. 12 seconds of googling would have made you look like less of an idiot.
Because kids are expected to know that in facebook land their privacy isn't actual private.
Hell, i have enough trouble convincing adults of this fact. my wife posted the other day "got the house to myself all night" which took far to much convincing to get her to take it down.
i doubt the student even though it was possible that this conversation was going to go outside their group of friends.
so when granny gives out all her personal information to a stranger on "facebook" because she thought it was secure "granny was just taken advantage of", yet 12 year old kids are expected to know better.
A more reasonable approach would be public apologies from all of the students involved and staying after school cleaning up the teacher's classroom for him for a while and whatever the parents care to add.
slashdot logic: if you accuse someone of being a pedophile you should be forced into spending time alone with them to do "cleaning".
this is a serious accusation which should be dealt with OUTSIDE of the school. Regardless of if the claims were false or true, its in the schools best interest to "silence" the students and protect the teacher. if it was found to be false then I'm sure the police has the ability to scare a couple of 12 year old kids who don't normally get into trouble or force some sort of punishment. its not necessary for the school to get involved with punishment. but you don't let the victims be in charge of the punishment, they can have their say, but they are not to be in control.
i would do the same thing too regardless of how true things are to avoid being expelled, or have my name posted all across the school as that "kid" that got molested by a pedophile.
how would someone acknowledge a false accusation? its normally child word against adult. if i were the child i would have just said "i don't want to talk about it". unless the kid admits to making shit up they would have gotten away scott free without enough evidence to investigate further.
Also, what the fuck is with the article posting the names of the students who made the accusations? kids that kill others don't get their named published, why the exception here? they are kids, they do dumb shit because they don't realize the full impact of their actions. There is probably a whole bunch of things that i did when i was 12 that could be taken out of context to prevent me from getting hired
Is no one else alarmed that 2 honor students made an accusation against a teacher with no history of previous infringement? what if its not just slander but kids that are being punished for alerting the masses of poor behaviour? clearly approaching the school to inform them could end up in suspension. There is good reason to believe that the kids may inform their peers without informing authority, especially considering the authority would be the infringing party in the first place.
regardless i hope there is an investigation into the allegations to show the students the seriousness of the matter and to ensure this isn't just a cry for help.
i know they apologized for their actions however one could argue that the "guilty response" they provided would have been under duress and threat of expulsion.
And if PFC Manning didn't like the situation he was in personally he could have dealt with it through appropriate channels, eventually even getting some meathead senator on his side. But he didn't. In fact, he probably did enough to get some time in Leavenworth by merely collecting that information off various secured networks.
OR he could have done what he did and ACTUALLY make a difference. instead of making noise internally and just getting reassigned to a dangerous outpost.
To be fair American spies around the world are now under investigation. i guess Americans should ask themselves if informing the American people and the international community of illegal actions the government is taking without the consent of the people is something that should be punished.
Manning is getting punished because he snitched on the American gang Government for breaking international law. the international community should put trade sanctions on America for their behaviour.
Slashdot Mirror
haha, i tell this to my wife,
when i met her she had no idea about anything with computers, i taught her everything she knows and got her a job as level 1 tech support / glorified receptionist. now whenever anything computer goes wrong in the house "I'm not the tech support, you are, i don't know anything about fixing computers, i just build web pages." she normally fumes for a bit but fixes most minor issues herself.. i think she just asks me now out of habit then any real requirement for my assistance.
*nix and an old pc, spend the $4900 on mushrooms to make you think the computer is awesome, the benefit of this is that the awesomeness of your machine will last longer than the macs awesomeness does. :)
a technician (by reputation not trade) that uninstalls malware is about as skilled as a backyard mechanic is, why are you treating a car and a computer differently? they are both machines that people specialize in, neither are more or less complicated than the other. a qualified mechanic is someone who has been a mechanic for 4 years, I'd expect someone who has spent 8 hours a day 5 days a week fixing computers to have the same level of competency after 4 years.
Also, you think the mechanic fixes your car? you should be thanking the 16 year old first year apprentice just out of school getting paid $2.50 an hour to fix your car.
I'd like to point out that sales isn't a technical job. in fact its about as far away from a technical job as you can get. also 200k a year wouldn't be impossible if you ran your own business.
its funny, you where polite and got boned, (minor plumbing fixes which benefited him as much as you, for a 4-6 hours computer repair, i bet you also administrate the network and look after the internet too?). if you learned to be rude like the rest of us antisocial geeks then people wouldn't take advantage of you. no one expects that angry geek on the end of the line to do anything for free, and even if it was for free it might not be worth being yelled at for 15 min about being incompetent.
If there was some "minor" problems with your router setup, could you consider it "paying a housemate back" for fixing it? why would you consider him repairing a house he lives in as a payback to you.. unless you own the house that is and was just renting the room to him?
problem is most people learn how to fix computers from trial and error and experience, most of the early experience comes for free and is given to family and friends. its harder to say "no" to a "simple virus clean" when you spend 3 hours building them the computer 5 years ago for free as your first "unofficial" client.
Charlie Sheen's out of work ATM and i hear he is quite the winner.
I fail to see how piling on more punishment from the police will help this mess in the slightest.
because i didn't say piling it on top of how the school is punishing them. I'm saying instead of the school punishing them, IMO it should all be handled outside the school, it wasn't even said in school or using school resources and because the school is affected most by it how can you expect a fair reprimand against the action?
my problem is that the school is too close to the issue to be expected to judge fairly on crime and punishment, its the same reason why an independent judge decides a punishment, not the victim. it also sets a negative precedent of handling issues like this "internally" which leads to abuse eg. catholic church and alter boy issue.
Also there is no evidence of the teacher being investigated by police and the fact that the "evidence" was only accessible through a student before it was removed indicates to me that the police weren't even alerted.
If your horse expert is shiny he isn't a horse expert, real horse experts smell like horse shit.
so instead of trading money for services your trading "favors" for services. And i consider yourself pathetic because you lean on your family every time you have a "need" and burden them with your problems. I bet your family is the first port of call if you need money too?
I've married into this sort of family and it drives me nuts, calls every weekend to help with some minor task. Where as my family is highly independent, and pays / rewards me for my time and effort. Your not "helping the family" your doing a service call for a luxury item. IF a fix is required so they can pay bills or submit assignments or whatever, then yes, I'd help out family and close friends for free if they couldn't afford to pay me (or for whatever reason could return the favour in a hot meal). but to do it because they are family sounds like your opening your self up to being used and abused.
although in theory this works, I'd prefer not to risk getting into a big 4 hour fix because what should have been simple wasn't.
No. Are they asked to replace a faucet or figure out a wonky socket? Sure. Welcome to friendship.
I consult for free to family and friends (eg: "you need a computer technician to configure your router, it will cost about $60 an hour. but that's probably why your internet isn't working on your brand new device.", a lot of times family and friends contact me because they don't know who they can talk to and what they can do to get it fixed.) but if i am required to do any actual work i expect something in return. I don't ask you to come over and do some annoying and frustrating task like cleaning my oven without offering anything in return, its not about the money though, I'll accept a good home cook meal or a 20 min neck massage or whatever you can offer that I'd consider worth my time. my brother in law does my lawn, my mum looks after my accounting or will cook me a nice home made meal. some rent "problems" disappeared after i fixed the network of the real-estate agency ( only to return with new owners :/ ).
in the end i just say "I'm too poor to fix your shit for free" because a "free fix" costs transport and energy which is a tangible cost. So I'm not actually fixing for free, I'm paying for it.
2 exception though
1) wife / girlfriend, not fixing the device is more frustrating and annoying to you than fixing it, plus you can physically abuse the source of the frustration without being arrested.
2) is if you are learning, if your not confident in your technical abilities then you should offer your services for free without any expectation of being paid for your work, also because of
a) it gets you more work, lots of people will let you learn on their broken systems for free in an attempt to get a working product for free.
b) if you're in over your head its a lot easier to back out. it takes years to have a good system of scape goats and "specialist" contacts to play the "passing the buck" game with.
c) learning to fix / doing the fix while your learning is more entertaining, to crusty old people like myself its irritating and frustrating, but i remember being younger and being excited to try and fix something new.
And this is a perfect example of something that is horribly wrong with your system. Now all of the tax payers get to pay for these iPads, even though many of them won't get used.
there is problems with our schooling system but being funded by the government isn't one of them. you can't have or support a service based society/economy (like Australia or America) without investing in further education. the American government does it too just at a much reduced level, and it shows by the average income the Americans get compared to Australians.
and if the teacher was in fact a pedophile?
And i don't think that accusations of pedophilia should ever be handled internally, that's the logic the catholic church uses and its just plain wrong. its a serious charge and should be handled by the police. who aren't stupid and easily "duped" into believing pedophile stories. and considering they deal with this sort of thing on a daily bases, maybe its best left to the professionals?
read: the school and the teacher in question has everything to gain by miss-representing the details of the investigation, that's why they shouldn't be the judge, jury and executioner, there is no oversight.
a couple of dodgy things to the story though.
why did the principal delete the evidence of the infringement before pursuing action against the individuals unless its obviously in jest, in which its not legally punishable slander is it? especially when just discussing in between classmates?
The parents quite clearly can't see any problem with their children's behaviour,
I'd just like to point out the following text from the link that YOU provided.
"I'm afraid for my daughter," Maria Sosa said. What her daughter did was wrong, she said. "I know that was not right, but she's 13 ... . The punishment is hard."
Aside from anything else, were I to learn that a child at my children's school was wont to make public accusations of paedophilia and rape of adults, while their parents stand behind them and support them, I wouldn't have those children in my house, and I would raise serious issues with the school governors about those children being present in any place where I had to go (for example, performance, concerts, parents' evenings). Children who behave like that are like loaded handguns, and until their parents can teach them some decent behaviour (rather than lawyering up for a payday), being around them is a serious risk to other adults.
I guess because a kid made the accusation only sudo-privately (read: publicly) they should be shunned regardless if the accusations were groundless. And heaven forbid that their parents support the kids accusing a teacher of sexual assault, what sort of world do we live in?
not only that, but i just fucking love the fact that your slandering a 12 year old girl (by name no less) to prove a point on how wrong they are making a publicly slanderous statement. hypocrite much?
also, an honer roll student is normally one that is a straight A student who participates in extra credit activities etc. 12 seconds of googling would have made you look like less of an idiot.
Because kids are expected to know that in facebook land their privacy isn't actual private.
Hell, i have enough trouble convincing adults of this fact. my wife posted the other day "got the house to myself all night" which took far to much convincing to get her to take it down.
i doubt the student even though it was possible that this conversation was going to go outside their group of friends.
so when granny gives out all her personal information to a stranger on "facebook" because she thought it was secure "granny was just taken advantage of", yet 12 year old kids are expected to know better.
Students PAY to be in school.
Teachers get PAID to be there.
A more reasonable approach would be public apologies from all of the students involved and staying after school cleaning up the teacher's classroom for him for a while and whatever the parents care to add.
slashdot logic: if you accuse someone of being a pedophile you should be forced into spending time alone with them to do "cleaning".
this is a serious accusation which should be dealt with OUTSIDE of the school. Regardless of if the claims were false or true, its in the schools best interest to "silence" the students and protect the teacher. if it was found to be false then I'm sure the police has the ability to scare a couple of 12 year old kids who don't normally get into trouble or force some sort of punishment. its not necessary for the school to get involved with punishment. but you don't let the victims be in charge of the punishment, they can have their say, but they are not to be in control.
i guess the lesson here is if a teacher is acting in a manner that makes you feel like they are unstable then just put up and shut up.
i would do the same thing too regardless of how true things are to avoid being expelled, or have my name posted all across the school as that "kid" that got molested by a pedophile.
how would someone acknowledge a false accusation? its normally child word against adult. if i were the child i would have just said "i don't want to talk about it". unless the kid admits to making shit up they would have gotten away scott free without enough evidence to investigate further.
Also, what the fuck is with the article posting the names of the students who made the accusations? kids that kill others don't get their named published, why the exception here? they are kids, they do dumb shit because they don't realize the full impact of their actions. There is probably a whole bunch of things that i did when i was 12 that could be taken out of context to prevent me from getting hired
Especially coming from 2 honor students. somethings a little fishy.
Is no one else alarmed that 2 honor students made an accusation against a teacher with no history of previous infringement? what if its not just slander but kids that are being punished for alerting the masses of poor behaviour? clearly approaching the school to inform them could end up in suspension. There is good reason to believe that the kids may inform their peers without informing authority, especially considering the authority would be the infringing party in the first place.
regardless i hope there is an investigation into the allegations to show the students the seriousness of the matter and to ensure this isn't just a cry for help.
i know they apologized for their actions however one could argue that the "guilty response" they provided would have been under duress and threat of expulsion.
something just doesn't sound right.
And if PFC Manning didn't like the situation he was in personally he could have dealt with it through appropriate channels, eventually even getting some meathead senator on his side. But he didn't. In fact, he probably did enough to get some time in Leavenworth by merely collecting that information off various secured networks.
OR he could have done what he did and ACTUALLY make a difference. instead of making noise internally and just getting reassigned to a dangerous outpost.
To be fair American spies around the world are now under investigation. i guess Americans should ask themselves if informing the American people and the international community of illegal actions the government is taking without the consent of the people is something that should be punished.
Manning is getting punished because he snitched on the American gang Government for breaking international law. the international community should put trade sanctions on America for their behaviour.