And even if he isn't lying, there are multiple other routes by which the school could have obtained the picture that don't involve spying.
And can you provide us with a reason for the District not mentioning any of those 'other routes' in their press statements?
No. But then I can't come up with a reason why they would either. The suit is about alleged routine misuse of the security feature, not about their possession of a single picture. No reasonable lawyer in the world is going to let his client raise irrelevant side issues.
Thought so
No, you aren't thinking at all. Just trying on each piece of the puzzle to see if it fits in your blinkers.
Parent: Where did this photo come from? School: Your son took it and put on the computer. Parent:... that webcam... what is it for anyhow? (not a relevant question, actually) School: All Apple notebooks have them.
Not relevant to who? I'm not assuming the parents are techies who know all this stuff. Even a mildly techie parent might ask why the computer supplied by the school has something not obviously related to the purported purpose of the laptop.
You see, if the school got the photo from the computer, or from the email, or through other common channels like that, it wouldn't even occur to anyone to pursue this highly improbable theory that a webcam may be turned on by the school.
Maybe you should read the suit. The school told the parent about the security when the parent inquired about the webcam and the picture the school has (according to his son) possession of.
Also, if webcams are used only for security, a vice-principal of the school would never even remember that little detail.
An assumption, and a particularly shaky one. Why would a vice principal of a school not know about the security system that was such a large feature?
A few days ago, most of us were still waiting to see if this story was in fact exaggerated and/or untrue: what about the school's side of the story?
On which planet was this? Everywhere I've seen the story posted the comments have been (virtually 100%) unquestioningly and uncritically accepting the students side of the story and condemning the school. They didn't wait so much as a nanosecond before leaping to conclusions.
But it appears that the initial impressions were correct: the school is in fact just scrabbling around for excuses ("It was a security feature, promise!"). This suggests that there was in fact no good reason or alternate story.
In other words, even though you were 'waiting', what you were waiting on was something, howsoever thin, to justify what you really wanted to believe in the first place - that the school was at fault and the kid completely innocent.
Somebody actually interested in getting the full story, and with even the slightest experience with the real world, would know full damn well the school isn't (under the the very correct advice of the lawyers) going to say a damn thing substantive.
Which is good, because I can go and get properly angry now.
Go right ahead. But spare us the bullshit about you waiting to hear the schools side of the story. You've heard it, and since you don't like it (and are seemingly ignorant of the fact that the school is under no onus to shape their story to your approval), you're going to do exactly what you wanted to do in the first place.
Each $1,000 laptop is insured by parents, with $55/yr premium and $100 deductible. 2,800 laptops netted $154K, enough to fully replace 154 laptops every year. But they lost only 42, and over more than a year. So the school should just remove all the security software and let the insurance deal with it.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the theft/recovery system was mandated by the insurance company. It's pretty much standard procedure for commercial insurance to be conditional on the insured being proactive. It's also standard procedure for insurance rates to be reduced if the insured takes steps to reduce risks.
I still find it far more plausible that the student took a photo himself and sent it to his buddies
Then you need to explain how the remote webcam activation thing was claimed, and was true (at least to the capability of doing it.)
Trivial - kid gets in trouble at school and complains to parents. Parents call school and want to know how the school could have obtained the picture and why the computer has a webcam anyhow. The administrator explains the laptops have a webcam as part of the security system.
So then why was a student reprimanded for their in home behaviour with a picture from the webcam used as evidence?
Because the kid forwarded a picture of whatever it was he was doing while eating that candy to his buddy, who then forwarded to all his buddies - and the picture ended up on a laptop turned into the school for repair or because the student was leaving the district. Or maybe he forwarded the picture to his girlfriend, whose parents subsequently discovered the picture and sent a copy to school. Or maybe the kid though he was attaching to his homework a picture of him signing in ASL but instead clicked on the wrong file and sent a picture he took of himself eating candy.
All this assumes of course that the kid is telling the truth, and not lying to cover up something else - something the school would never accuse a student of doing.
And even if he isn't lying, there are multiple other routes by which the school could have obtained the picture that don't involve spying.
Those people know what the hell they're doing. They're killing someone. You think the people that sat in nuclear silos at the height of the cold war didn't know what that red button would do? You think they didn't break out in cold sweats at night, hoping and praying the day would never come when they'd be ask to do their last duty for their country?
We most certainly did know these things, and we all fervently hoped we'd never be called upon to let the birds fly.
Even today when I meet someone from Russia, it strikes me that I could have been the agent of their death.
Now we have guys sitting in rooms filled with computer screens blowing people up, and is there anyone there to talk to about it? Can they light a cigarette after, put a fist in the wall, and say "Goddamnit, I wish there'd been another way!" No. You're stuck in a sterile environment, air conditioned, quiet, and after blowing the fuck out of someone you can get up and go get yourself a soda from the vend, grab your coat, file some paperwork, and drive home.
You think they don't talk to other people in their unit? That they (the pilots) never interact with anyone else? You think they just 'blow people up' and head home for the day? You're living in a surreal dreamworld.
Huge disclaimer -- I'm not in the military, I don't know what these guys to for stress relief, or to deal with the emotional consequences of what they're doing. But I do know the dangers of becoming emotionally numb to violence, and without advocating for or against what the military is doing, I want to ask -- what are we doing to help these soldiers deal with those issues? For that matter, is it even an issue? I don't really know. But I think it helps to look someone in the eye if you have to kill them. To know they were a real person. To remember what you've done -- even if it was the right thing to do, even if there was no other choice, it's a statement about the value of human life.
When I was on a SSBN back the 80's and worked with nuclear weapons, we sure as hell talked among ourselves and with our contemporaries about what we were doing and it's on ourselves and on the world. Not just about the happy parts ("keeping the world safe through deterrence") but also about the consequences of flipping the switches and pushing the buttons and letting the birds fly. We were about as far from emotionally numb or depersonalizing our targets as you could get.
If you think military personnel are just automatons without feelings or an awareness of what they are doing, again you're living in a surreal dreamworld.
Even today, twenty five years since I last sat a live console, when I meet someone online from Russia it still strikes me sometimes that I could have been the instrument of their death. (Or, if they are young enough, of their never even existing.)
Yep. And when you read the text of the class action suit claiming that the size of class (1,800 IIRC) is 'too big' for all members of the class to join the suit and thus the individuals that filed the suit should be considered as sole representatives of the class... Something smells there.
Nupedia also had a fairly convoluted workflow path that the author had to traverse between proposing an article and final approval. Not only was the software needed to drive the system completely non functional, but there weren't enough (unpaid volunteer professional) people to do the actual work. As a result, the system became constipated almost immediately.
It's interesting to note that Larry Sanger put much the same convoluted and constipated process in place when he founded the Citizendium - with pretty much the same results. Few contributors, few approved articles - and Larry off on his way to another project. (And in between, he was the chief architect of the Encyclopedia of Earth project, and again you find a convoluted approval process, unpaid professional volunteers, few contributors and few finished articles and Larry off on another project.)
And he avoids mentioning that he had the money to fund the early years of Wikipedia because he operated a website largely known for being a pornography portal.
Wales' business, Wikia, is in that category - VC-funded, losing money, and lacking an exit strategy. The problem is that VCs looked at Wales' success with Wikipedia, which is a nonprofit, and thought that would translate into business success. It didn't. They should have looked at his unbroken string of business failures.
Except Wales doesn't have an unbroken string of failures - because he has Bomis, a search engine largely known back in the day as a pornography portal. (Though it now appears to be a DMOZ mirror.) Wales has expanded access to VC capital because he has two big notches in his belt, Bomis and Wikipedia.
That's not quoting the Vice Principal - that's what the kid named in the suit claims he was told by the Vice Principal.
But what the quotes and the lawsuit don't tell is one vitally important fact - how the school came by the photograph. Did the kid take a picture of himself chugging a beer and forward it to all his buds, and the photograph subsequently ended up on a laptop turned in to the school? Or did another parent find it on his kids laptop and forward it to the school?
The lawsuit and the spin by the plaintiffs is very carefully written to imply the school spied on the kids, but stops well short of actually accusing them of doing so or presenting any evidence they actually did so.
Very good point. Though I find it equally believable that the kid took a picture of himself masturbating, smoking weed, chugging a beer - and the school got hold of the picture by some other route. Maybe the student forwarded it to all his buds, or to his girlfriend, and the picture ended up on a laptop turned in because a student was moving or because it was faulty. Maybe another parent found the picture on his kids laptop and turned it into the school.
Though it's very carefully written and spun to produce the impression that the school is at fault, the class action suit stops well short of directly accusing the school of monitoring the students or of taking the picture in question, or of providing any evidence whatsoever that the school is at fault. Which I find to be very curious indeed.
Fascinating how, completely without any evidence save the word of a 15 year old kid and despite the existence of numerous other avenues by which the school could have obtained the photograph - you've already decided the district is guilty and the outcome of the court case.
Got any stock tips for next week? The outcome of this years World Series?
On page 6 of the class action doc, it specifically says that Lindy Matsko, assistant principal at Harriton High School informed the minor Blake J. Robbins, that he was engaged in improper behavior and she produced a photo of said conduct that was captured from the laptop's cam.
In their rush to proclaim the school district Big Brother - people seem to forgotten there's a whole raft of potential routes for the school to have obtained the picture. (Assuming it exists - we have only the words of the kid, and it's not like kids never lie to deflect attention away from their misdeeds.)
Maybe the kid took the picture and sent it to his girlfriend or best buddy - who subsequently distributed it. Maybe the kid took the picture and it ended up on a laptop being turned into the school because the student it was issued to was moving out of district or turned in because it needed repairs or upgrades. Etc... etc...
Not to mention the fact the class action suit stops well short of stating the school took the picture. They sure as hell want the reader and the court to infer that is what happened, but they go out of their way to avoid stating that it actually did happen.
They may tend not to play like that - but that doesn't change the fact that they just did play like that. They actively *discouraged* competition and took steps to eliminate it from the marketplace.
The class action complaint mentions the ability to remotely activate the cameras (a capability the school district confirms the existence of) - but it only alleges (without evidence) that said ability was used to take the photograph in question. So the hypothesis that the kid took the picture and the school district obtained it via an indirect route completely matches the facts available at this time.
Assuming that the school was spying on the students, which is not evident from the facts at hand.
We know the a student claims the school had a photograph. We do not know if such a photograph existed or how it came to be in the hands of the school. It's not impossible that they obtained it from another students laptop that had been turned in (for repair or because the student was moving out of district), of from the parent of another child who found the picture and forwarded it to the school. (For just two of many possible routes.)
The BoingBoing article has commentary beyond simple reporting of the facts
Which it pretty much has to have - as the known facts can pretty much be fit into one short paragraph.
"A student claims the school was in possession of a photograph and he was chastised for improper acts. The school district admits cameras were installed on the computers it provided to the students. The parents of the student making the claim have sued the school district claiming to represent a class."
But so far, that allegation appears to actually be an assumption. There's damn few facts in the filing - in fact it mostly appears to be justifying a witch hunt/fishing expedition to find evidence of improper/illegal behavior on the part of the school district. (That is, not to find out whether or not such behavior occurred, but rather to find evidence of acts the suit treats as if they had already occurred completely absent any indication that such acts occurred.)
Let's assume for a minute that the complaint is correct and that the school was remotely monitoring some set of students. (This might not be correct. Did the snapshot come from some public source like FaceBook?).
That's what I've wondered all along... There's any number of ways the picture could have been taken and any number of ways the school district could have come into possession of the picture... And only one of those myriad ways adds up to "the school engaged in routine surveillance of the students".
And really, at the moment, the entire case rests on the word of a single kid - and we all know that kids never lie to avoid getting into trouble for their own acts.
Re:End of twitter? not likely...
on
Two Scoops of Buzz
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Google, being the power house that it is, could easily build the apps and operability that Twitter has. Except for ONE snag:
Google's notoriously short attention span.
Re:might turn out to have been smart
on
Two Scoops of Buzz
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Indeed. And leveraging Gmail shows they've learned that when critical mass is required, their usual method of using limited invites doesn't work. That, and Google's notoriously short attention span, is what killed Orkut.
Facebook succeeded because they built a critical mass in a target rich environment (college students) and when enough students had graduated to form a critical mass in the 'real world', they opened it up to all comers. Twitter succeeded because it melded the 'pure' version of Facebook (status updates) with the world of text messages.
For Buzz there is no obvious demographic or niche for Google to exploit, but Google has what no other 'startup' social networking site had - an existing massive base of installed users who've already shown a predilection to use their (Google's) services. That they bungled their opening moves in no way invalidates their basic strategy.
Slashdot Mirror
No. But then I can't come up with a reason why they would either. The suit is about alleged routine misuse of the security feature, not about their possession of a single picture. No reasonable lawyer in the world is going to let his client raise irrelevant side issues.
No, you aren't thinking at all. Just trying on each piece of the puzzle to see if it fits in your blinkers.
Not relevant to who? I'm not assuming the parents are techies who know all this stuff. Even a mildly techie parent might ask why the computer supplied by the school has something not obviously related to the purported purpose of the laptop.
Maybe you should read the suit. The school told the parent about the security when the parent inquired about the webcam and the picture the school has (according to his son) possession of.
An assumption, and a particularly shaky one. Why would a vice principal of a school not know about the security system that was such a large feature?
On which planet was this? Everywhere I've seen the story posted the comments have been (virtually 100%) unquestioningly and uncritically accepting the students side of the story and condemning the school. They didn't wait so much as a nanosecond before leaping to conclusions.
In other words, even though you were 'waiting', what you were waiting on was something, howsoever thin, to justify what you really wanted to believe in the first place - that the school was at fault and the kid completely innocent.
Somebody actually interested in getting the full story, and with even the slightest experience with the real world, would know full damn well the school isn't (under the the very correct advice of the lawyers) going to say a damn thing substantive.
Go right ahead. But spare us the bullshit about you waiting to hear the schools side of the story. You've heard it, and since you don't like it (and are seemingly ignorant of the fact that the school is under no onus to shape their story to your approval), you're going to do exactly what you wanted to do in the first place.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that the theft/recovery system was mandated by the insurance company. It's pretty much standard procedure for commercial insurance to be conditional on the insured being proactive. It's also standard procedure for insurance rates to be reduced if the insured takes steps to reduce risks.
Trivial - kid gets in trouble at school and complains to parents. Parents call school and want to know how the school could have obtained the picture and why the computer has a webcam anyhow. The administrator explains the laptops have a webcam as part of the security system.
Because the kid forwarded a picture of whatever it was he was doing while eating that candy to his buddy, who then forwarded to all his buddies - and the picture ended up on a laptop turned into the school for repair or because the student was leaving the district. Or maybe he forwarded the picture to his girlfriend, whose parents subsequently discovered the picture and sent a copy to school. Or maybe the kid though he was attaching to his homework a picture of him signing in ASL but instead clicked on the wrong file and sent a picture he took of himself eating candy.
All this assumes of course that the kid is telling the truth, and not lying to cover up something else - something the school would never accuse a student of doing.
And even if he isn't lying, there are multiple other routes by which the school could have obtained the picture that don't involve spying.
We most certainly did know these things, and we all fervently hoped we'd never be called upon to let the birds fly.
Even today when I meet someone from Russia, it strikes me that I could have been the agent of their death.
You think they don't talk to other people in their unit? That they (the pilots) never interact with anyone else? You think they just 'blow people up' and head home for the day? You're living in a surreal dreamworld.
When I was on a SSBN back the 80's and worked with nuclear weapons, we sure as hell talked among ourselves and with our contemporaries about what we were doing and it's on ourselves and on the world. Not just about the happy parts ("keeping the world safe through deterrence") but also about the consequences of flipping the switches and pushing the buttons and letting the birds fly. We were about as far from emotionally numb or depersonalizing our targets as you could get.
If you think military personnel are just automatons without feelings or an awareness of what they are doing, again you're living in a surreal dreamworld.
Even today, twenty five years since I last sat a live console, when I meet someone online from Russia it still strikes me sometimes that I could have been the instrument of their death. (Or, if they are young enough, of their never even existing.)
Yep. And when you read the text of the class action suit claiming that the size of class (1,800 IIRC) is 'too big' for all members of the class to join the suit and thus the individuals that filed the suit should be considered as sole representatives of the class... Something smells there.
Nupedia also had a fairly convoluted workflow path that the author had to traverse between proposing an article and final approval. Not only was the software needed to drive the system completely non functional, but there weren't enough (unpaid volunteer professional) people to do the actual work. As a result, the system became constipated almost immediately.
It's interesting to note that Larry Sanger put much the same convoluted and constipated process in place when he founded the Citizendium - with pretty much the same results. Few contributors, few approved articles - and Larry off on his way to another project. (And in between, he was the chief architect of the Encyclopedia of Earth project, and again you find a convoluted approval process, unpaid professional volunteers, few contributors and few finished articles and Larry off on another project.)
And he avoids mentioning that he had the money to fund the early years of Wikipedia because he operated a website largely known for being a pornography portal.
Except Wales doesn't have an unbroken string of failures - because he has Bomis, a search engine largely known back in the day as a pornography portal. (Though it now appears to be a DMOZ mirror.) Wales has expanded access to VC capital because he has two big notches in his belt, Bomis and Wikipedia.
That's not quoting the Vice Principal - that's what the kid named in the suit claims he was told by the Vice Principal.
But what the quotes and the lawsuit don't tell is one vitally important fact - how the school came by the photograph. Did the kid take a picture of himself chugging a beer and forward it to all his buds, and the photograph subsequently ended up on a laptop turned in to the school? Or did another parent find it on his kids laptop and forward it to the school?
The lawsuit and the spin by the plaintiffs is very carefully written to imply the school spied on the kids, but stops well short of actually accusing them of doing so or presenting any evidence they actually did so.
Very good point. Though I find it equally believable that the kid took a picture of himself masturbating, smoking weed, chugging a beer - and the school got hold of the picture by some other route. Maybe the student forwarded it to all his buds, or to his girlfriend, and the picture ended up on a laptop turned in because a student was moving or because it was faulty. Maybe another parent found the picture on his kids laptop and turned it into the school.
Though it's very carefully written and spun to produce the impression that the school is at fault, the class action suit stops well short of directly accusing the school of monitoring the students or of taking the picture in question, or of providing any evidence whatsoever that the school is at fault. Which I find to be very curious indeed.
Fascinating how, completely without any evidence save the word of a 15 year old kid and despite the existence of numerous other avenues by which the school could have obtained the photograph - you've already decided the district is guilty and the outcome of the court case.
Got any stock tips for next week? The outcome of this years World Series?
In their rush to proclaim the school district Big Brother - people seem to forgotten there's a whole raft of potential routes for the school to have obtained the picture. (Assuming it exists - we have only the words of the kid, and it's not like kids never lie to deflect attention away from their misdeeds.)
Maybe the kid took the picture and sent it to his girlfriend or best buddy - who subsequently distributed it. Maybe the kid took the picture and it ended up on a laptop being turned into the school because the student it was issued to was moving out of district or turned in because it needed repairs or upgrades. Etc... etc...
Not to mention the fact the class action suit stops well short of stating the school took the picture. They sure as hell want the reader and the court to infer that is what happened, but they go out of their way to avoid stating that it actually did happen.
They may tend not to play like that - but that doesn't change the fact that they just did play like that. They actively *discouraged* competition and took steps to eliminate it from the marketplace.
The class action complaint mentions the ability to remotely activate the cameras (a capability the school district confirms the existence of) - but it only alleges (without evidence) that said ability was used to take the photograph in question. So the hypothesis that the kid took the picture and the school district obtained it via an indirect route completely matches the facts available at this time.
Assuming that the school was spying on the students, which is not evident from the facts at hand.
We know the a student claims the school had a photograph. We do not know if such a photograph existed or how it came to be in the hands of the school. It's not impossible that they obtained it from another students laptop that had been turned in (for repair or because the student was moving out of district), of from the parent of another child who found the picture and forwarded it to the school. (For just two of many possible routes.)
Assuming of course that they were routinely spying on the students - an assumption not entirely supported by the known facts.
Which it pretty much has to have - as the known facts can pretty much be fit into one short paragraph.
"A student claims the school was in possession of a photograph and he was chastised for improper acts. The school district admits cameras were installed on the computers it provided to the students. The parents of the student making the claim have sued the school district claiming to represent a class."
But so far, that allegation appears to actually be an assumption. There's damn few facts in the filing - in fact it mostly appears to be justifying a witch hunt/fishing expedition to find evidence of improper/illegal behavior on the part of the school district. (That is, not to find out whether or not such behavior occurred, but rather to find evidence of acts the suit treats as if they had already occurred completely absent any indication that such acts occurred.)
That's what I've wondered all along... There's any number of ways the picture could have been taken and any number of ways the school district could have come into possession of the picture... And only one of those myriad ways adds up to "the school engaged in routine surveillance of the students".
And really, at the moment, the entire case rests on the word of a single kid - and we all know that kids never lie to avoid getting into trouble for their own acts.
Google's notoriously short attention span.
Indeed. And leveraging Gmail shows they've learned that when critical mass is required, their usual method of using limited invites doesn't work. That, and Google's notoriously short attention span, is what killed Orkut.
Facebook succeeded because they built a critical mass in a target rich environment (college students) and when enough students had graduated to form a critical mass in the 'real world', they opened it up to all comers. Twitter succeeded because it melded the 'pure' version of Facebook (status updates) with the world of text messages.
For Buzz there is no obvious demographic or niche for Google to exploit, but Google has what no other 'startup' social networking site had - an existing massive base of installed users who've already shown a predilection to use their (Google's) services. That they bungled their opening moves in no way invalidates their basic strategy.
Even more interesting is to compare their 2007-2008 budget with their 2008-2009 budget.