I worked for some time for a hospial in Austin, TX, and they are of course a 24-hr operation. Here's how we had coverage set up:
We had an 'operator' for 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift, 24/7. 2nd, 3rd, and weekend people were generally not very skilled, but the regular tech people trained them over time to be able to deal with most basic situations. So they answered the phones, and called us when they needed to.
All the techs were on a rotating schedule where they carried the pager 24/7 for one week out of every five. Administrators were one week out of 4, and there were only 2 WAn people, so they traded off. There was a strict escalation from operator to tech support to admin to WAN, and no deviation was allowed.
Payment was $2/hr from 7PM to 7AM, and all day Sat. and Sun. That comes to $216 for the week you wore the pager. If you got paged and called in, you got paid an automatic hour of overtime (plus the 2nd or 3rd shift pay differential, which was 7% or 10% respectively). If you went into the office, you got 2 hours of automatic overtime. Any time over 2 hours was at 1.5* normal, plus the differential. Getting a call at 2AM on Saturday night added an extra 25% to the pay rate, 10% 3rd shift and 15% weekend diff.
Now, since it was a hospital, they already had a policy in place to compensate people for working nights and weekends. YMMV, but for us the basic structure worked well: $2/hr for being on call regardless of what happens, 1hr overtime for using the phone, a minimum 2hrs for going in.
Sometimes I could make an extra $500 in a week... I started picking up other people's pager time when they wanted out of it.
Eventually the calls dwindled as we got the operators trained and all the old crappy PC's replaced, but occasionally the paper would jam in the ER admissions printer and I'd make a quick $60 to go re-align it for them...
What if the code isn't designed to be used in dedicated hardware? What if I design, say, some sales tracking software. All my clients are asking for a certain feature to be implemented, and I happen to know that one of my clients has modded my code to implement that feature. I take the code developed by one of my own clients, roll it into the main code, and voila! my sales tracking program has a new feature I never spent a dime to develop, and it makes me more money because the software is more valuable.
Now, pretend I'm the client who wrote the mods. Aren't I going to be a little miffed that my sales software vendor took my 200 hours of development and used it to increase their profit margin, leaving me with exactly nothing in the way of compensation for the work I did, without which they'd be making less money?
As a client, what motivation would there be to make significant modifications to a program, knowing that the vendor will sell the mods in a future release, profiting from my development expense?
If I were the client in this scenario I would look for some offer of profit sharing, or some other way the vendor is willing to compensate clients who contribute a major new feature to the program. Don't forget, while competition is good for consumers, companies generally don't view it as an added benefit.
Copyright law in the states doesn't specify how often you can copy something, and that's part of this argument. The law doesn't necessarily protect companies against lost revenues due to massive copying of copyrighted works.It also doesn't necessarily grant the unlimited right to make as many copies as possible as long as you don't charge for them.
Basically, Congress never, ever thought you'd be able to distribute a piece of music to 10 million people unless you dedicated your life to the task.
They never thought to ask what happens when you scale up taping songs off the radio to millions of copies while decreasing the time and effort involved to almost nonexistant levels and also practically eliminating the distribution time and expense.
Perhaps you missed my point. A vendor who takes his customer's mods and rolls them into his binary adds value to the product he's supporting, while the customer gets nothing even though he spent the money (in time, payroll, etc) to develop the mods. The customer can't sell support for the product with his own mods because his vendor already beat him to the punch with an installed customer base he can leverage.
This is where I begin to wonder how you can be successful as an OSS company. Note: this isn't a troll, I'm actually unsure how to prevent the following: Say you write a program, release it under the GPL. You're supporting the binaries, incorporating large bugfixes and making them available, everything's going along great. You get a decent customer base, and they start asking for features. You happen to know, through your business relationship, that another company has extensively modified your code to include features your customer base wants.
What's to stop you from taking their modifications, rolling them into your binary, and selling them to your customer base? You get all the $$$ with no development costs and the other company only gets credit in the README and the open source version.
Where's the value in modifying a GPLed program for yourself when you know damn well your own work and expense is making your vendor more money while you get no added benefit?
Several years ago I worked for a local PC shop. One of our customers fried two motherboards before we finally had him bring in his case. He'd build it out of thick plexiglass. We all thought it was great until one of us picked it up... the static electricity made all the hair on your arm stand up. You could stick pieces of paper to the sides of the case. It shocked you half the time you touched it...
I believe you may have misunderstood the point of the case. The fact that the DMCA can be used to suppress a research paper is exactly the thing that 2600's lawyers need to win the DeCSS case on appeal. The existence of the DMCA chills speech, not just code, but actual spoken words. It's the perfect example to bring against the RIAA.
You're right in that the RIAA doesn't have to go to court to threaten, but that's because they have the money to outlast a professor at Princeton. By caving in to the legal threats, he's demonstrated that threats of legal action under the DMCA damage free speech.
Rather than potentially go to court an lose a clstly battle for which the RIAA is already prepared, possibly setting a precedent in the process, the professor felt it was better to fall on his sword, to become a DMCA martyr the 2600 lawyers can hold up in court as an example that we're already on the slippery slope they warned of in the trial. Also, since his position is untested in court, anti-DMCA forces can safely use his example without having a bad decision hanging over their heads.
No. Perhaps you didn't see the list of businesses aligned against UCITA. Perhaps you think that because the power companies have plenty of leeway, then any and all businesses must necessarily be able to go apeshit whenever and however they want.
Perhaps you think that knocking down straw men gives your opinion some legitimacy.
British soldiers killed 5 colonists in Boston in 1770. In point of fact, they were attacked by a mob, and acquitted at trial, but the Boston 'Massacre' became a rallying cry and a symbol of British occupation of the colonies (at the time, there was about 1 British soldier in Boston for every 4 citizens).
I mention it as a dig at you, and to remind you that we have the 4th amendment (in part) as a result of the British attempt to confiscate weapons and deprive the colonists of the means to revolt.
Coverage of war (wait, coverage of war that depicts the USA as a ruthless entity exercising 'military rule') must equal good journalism, then. Right?
And the lack of this specific brand of 'coverage' is evidence that the media has lost its soul.
Next time, dig yourself out of the morass of 'protest' propaganda you've been swimming in, and apply some sort of objective logic filter to your brain before you click Reply to This.
>What about the right to live your life without >being brutally killed?
I'll refer your limey ass to the Boston Massacre and the resulting dust-up as proof that owning a gun can protect your right to live without being brutally killed...
The Bill of Rights enumerates basic rights of humanity, and none is more or less important.
We can run through trial and error... there are 'monkey' robots that can learn to swing through trian and error. Falling over would ruin this behemoth, though, so it has to know how on the first try.
That's true. I can still use it. But I may no longer be able to profit from it. Look at poor ole Eli Whitney and his idea for the cotton gin. Everybody stole his idea, and even though he could still make them, so could everyone else. he died broke after inventing one of the most important agricultural machines of the 19th century.
Hold on a sec... The trademark is for the MARK, not the word. You can't trademark dictionary words, but you can trademark a word in a specific font, or a specific design logo. Blizzard has the mark for the flaming diablo image on the page, not for the *word* d-i-a-b-l-o.
These small ISP's are like the leading edge of a wave. Now that broadband is available in the cities, two or three of the bigger ISP's were able to leverage DSL to stay alive, but cable modems and DSL are running the small dialups completely out of business. Out in the country, however, the small dialup companies are still around, providing a local phone number that several small towns can dial, rather than paying per-minute charges for a 800 service, or using AOL.
It amazes me how what appears to be an otherwise intelligent person can lose his capacity for reasoned thought in the face of an article by Katz. Let's look at this response as our object lesson for the day.
>First off, anyone 15 and over (and living in North America, or another English speaking >country) is, in my book, adult enough to 100% understand the English language, and more >than adult enough to understand killing is bad. I'll assume they were both in the same >class (and, the same age, the story is full of missing details). That would make them 15, >going on what the LA Times says.
Okay, killing is bad. Talking about killing, however, isn't necessarily bad. You neglect this point, however, and having created a mediocre straw man, charge forth.
>If the parents from Lancaster didn't want to spend the money, and the school didn't want to >prosecute, then shit man, you aren't under a gun. Just don't prosecute. If you do and lose, >TS! That's the way the pickle squirts!
Perhaps you didn't read this clearly. The boy's parents sued the girl for turning him in, after the expulsion was overturned. The girl wanted the school to cover her legal fees, since it was the school's policy that exposed her to the suit.
Of course, the Katz article has you frothing at the mouth already, so details and rational thought have already started to lose their importance.
>Neither the stoolie, nor the nutcase (and anyone who suggests that everyone should die is a >certifiable nut) deserve an ounce of sympathy. I didn't see anything about her insisting >she be in the WPP, despite her claims that the nut threatened her. That's what it's there >for. Use it. If she was denied, well, then I'd be angry.
First, the suggestion that everyone should die does NOT = insanity. It's nice rhetoric, but it's also pretty dumb. Here, let me demonstrate:
I think all Slashdot users should die!
Now, have I suddenly vacated my sanity? Of course not. Is this evidence that I wasn't sane before? Of course not. It's a sentence, and standing alone, it means nothing more significant than if I'd said "I think all Slashdot users should eat Fritos!"
Also, if you are right, EVERY serial killer should get off via insanity defense. Of course, they don't.
>If you are a nut and don't seek treatment, TFB. Although, one has to wonder if the parents >of this insane man hadn't noticed this behaviour before. They need a little blame.
Right. Crazy people who aren't lucid enough to get help have only themselves to blame. Here's the culmination of your 'crazy people' straw man: People who talk about killing are crazy, and crazy people must be held accountable for their own actions, so why should we care.
This is completely off-point for the article, besides the fact that it has logical holes you could drive a truck through.
>Why is it that anything that happens on school property makes it automatically 100% the >school's job to deal with it? Heck, if I threaten the life of people at work it becomes >(mostly) my resposibility to defend myself, and the victim's responsibility to prosecute >me.
These two scenarions are completely unrelated. On the one hand, a school is charged by the state with the care of 2000+ minors, all of whom have few legal rights or responsibilities. While in the care of the school, the school is legally responsible for them, much as a parent is responsible at other times.
Your employer is NOT charged by the state with the care of anyone, and since you're an adult (this message nonwithstanding) you get to be responsible for yourself.
Yet another weak straw man. You basically say, "This apple doesn't look like these oranges, therefore it must be wrong somehow". Also, notice that saying "I think everyone should die" or "I want to kill people" is completely different from "I am going to kill John Katz (or whoever)." The boy in this case did not threaten any person or group with death. If you said exactly the same thing at your office that this boy did, you'd be protected by the 1st amendment. Being a minor, the boy is instead subjected to persecution.
You've got the bit in your teeth now, though, and can't be bothered with little things like this.
>>"Turning kids into informers is viscerally anti-democratic."
>That's bullshit. Are you saying that because the police exist we therefore live in a police >state? She had the right to not say anything. She also had the right not to personally sue >the offender, and let the criminal courts take care of the matter. Take anything to civil >court and lose, and you get no sympathy from me.
No, no, and no. He didn't say anything about a police state. He said turning kids into informers is anti-democratic. Read 1984 for a better explanation of this, or take a look at how the 3rd Reich implemented this idea. Also, the girl had no rights; she's a minor. Just as a parent is responsible if she tells her kid to go shoplift some beer, the school could be responsible for telling the girl to inform, thereby placing the power to initiate legal action against another minor into her hands. This demonstrates a glaring lack of judgement on the part of the school, not to mention a shirking of the school's responsibility to maintain order. The kids are *kids*. Even at 15, do they have the evolved judgemental ability to tell the difference between bullshit and psychosis? Moreover, do 15 yr olds have the self restraint to keep from turning in their ex-boyfriends or the girls that laughed at them in the hallway?
Again, she had no rights, and no legal voice in the suit.
>>"there was never any evidence he planned to harm or kill anyone"
>If I come up to you and say "I want to kill people." would you just toss that out the >window? Which side are you on, anyways, Katz? The criminal's?
Of course. I'd have to. If I said "I'm planning to kill you tomorrow.", now that MIGHT be enough to justify a search. But if I just said "I want to kill people today!" it means nothing substantial enough to matter. I might have had a bad commute. Luckily for me, I'm presumed innocent and protected from rabid accusations. Children, however, are not, and the boy's parents have one legal recourse in the event their child is falsely accused: they can sue the accusers.
Katz is on the side of the Bill of Rights in this case. Who's side are you on? You who advocate investigation every time someone says the words 'kill' and 'people' in the same sentence?
>>"[the boy] is threatened with jail for allegedly making a remark that would, in other >>times, be considered stupid or worthy of some suspension time."
>In the Real World(tm) making death threats is serious. Very serious. It shows a plan to >murder. Just plotting to murder is illegal, you know. If you think plotting to kill is just >stupid and is for kicks then you need a check up.
Another miserably weak straw man, and a personal attack (which exposes the real intent of this reply to Katz's article). The boy cannot be proven to have made the remark, in the first place. It's the word of one minor against another. If I called the cops and told them I heard you say you want to kill people, do you think that's enough for them to investigate you? No, because saying that is not the same as plotting murder. You have to actually find some real evidence of a plot. Saying you want to kill doesn't show anything except a kid needs to blow off some steam, or perhaps some evaluation to see if he's actually disturbed or just upset.
These kids, you'll remember. don't live in the real world. That's why the schools get to stomp all over them in a way that would be grossly intrusive and unconstitutional in the real world. You've actually got it backwards.
>Providing "snitch" lines is normal in Real Life(tm) too. Where I am, they have >CrimeStoppers. And, if they use your evidence and the person goes to Jail, you actually get >a cash bonus. *This* line is for anyone, not just teenagers. Most people think this service >kicks ass. The criminals have a problem with it, I hear, though.
If you call crimestoppers and say "I heard this dude say he wants to kill" they won't and can't do anything. Now, if you say " I saw the guy who broke into that house, and I know where he is right now" that's great! The girl, however, had no knowledge of any crime, either in the past or the future, no ability to evaluate the possibility of a crime, and no way to gather evidence to support her assertions.
Furthermore, the tip line example is apples and oranges again. The tip line in the school isn't to help catch criminals, but to foster an Orwellian fear of speaking and to create a culture wherein no student can express his feelings safely.
>These snitch lines are needed. If they were easier for students to access before Columbine >there's pretty good chance someone would have picked up the phone and gotten those muderers >the help they needed before it was too late.
The kids at Columbine made a movie of the actions they took, and no one caught it, including a bunch of adults whose responsibility it was to know better. It's insulting to the students to suggest they might have done something, because it implies that they are partly to blame. Adults have a responsibility to act when they see potential danger. Placing that burden on a bunch of kids is destructive. Imagine if the tip line had been there and no one had turned them in! Then what kind of psychological scars might they have to deal with, as a result of the school's divestiture of responsibility. At least now they can take comfort in the fact that it wasn't their fault.
>>"Online, teenagers flame each other and everybody else all the time."
>And adults don't? You've never seen people on AOL, have you?
Rather than supporting your argument (incoherent as it is), this comment actually harms it, as well as exposing your need to say "nuh-uhhh" to Katz, rather than use your brain.
>>"Anybody who's different or doesn't conform -- or who is angry -- can seem dangerous"
>Total complete baseless bullshit. If you don't conform you aren't necessarialy dangerous. >Look at Ghandi, he damn well didn't conform to being your average Indian. But was he a >dangerous man? You're only dangerous when you start threatening other people.
HAHA!! Wasn't Ghandi assassinated? Wasn't it because his nonconformist ideas wer taking hold?
I think King George would have called Thomas Jefferson a dangerous man. Karl Marx was certainly dangerous. The Pope thought Martin Luther was VERY dangerous. Do you really have to threaten someone to be dangerous?
>>"and kids often had a tough time distinguishing between run-of-the-mill obnoxious and >>posturing behavior, and truly dangerous behavior worthy of being reported"
>Oh please. _Maybe_ there is a _little_ problem with distinction, but not understanding that >to kill is murder? Like I say, if you don't understand that by 15, you need to be locked up >for the good of society.
Even the authorities have trouble understanding this distinction sometimes. I'll refer you to the story the other day re: a Starcraft clan being arrested for death threats. Should we expect a bunch of fickle teenagers to understand it? Hell, teenagers can't even grasp that fucking sometimes gets you pregnant! You want them to take responsibility for judging the mental health of a peer they may have little or no contact with?
This argument of yours relies on straw men you set up earlier in your post, none of which are still around by this time... The ability to understand that killing is murder (which it's not, BTW. You don't murder people during a war...) has nothing to do with the ability to tell between an ill-advised comment and a plot to murder scores of students.
>>"It's the job of parents, educators and psychologists to watch our for and anticipate >>dangerous behavior."
>No, we already employ people to do that. We call them the Police.
Ahh, the crown jewel of your post. Having spent the whole time justifying school snich lines, you tell us that it's the job of the police to anticipate dangerous behavior! I love it!
When a person is charged with the care of a monir, or a group of minors, it is their responsibility to protect them. Thus, educators, parents, and to a lesser degree psychologists, ARE responsible for watching out for and anticipating behavior.
Unless, of course, you'd rather the police take charge of your kids for you. Who was it again that was talking about a police state?
It's clear that the reporter didnt' bother to think about what he was writing. Ket Escrow is necessary, he implies, because Bin Laden can hide his files with crypto. But, in the same article, he explains the reason Bin Laden uses crypto now, namely the FBI is tapping is satphone.
Yathink, maybe, he might cotton to the whole key escrow thing, and start using Islamic Jihad crypto instead? The reporter went to great pains to explain how Bin Laden's people have sharp techs in their side...
Also: if the crypto is "uncrackable', as the reporter states, why are the terrorists bothering to hide the stuff in porn and chatrooms? It's uncrackable, right?
Wait, it's not uncrackable! "Phillipine police found the computer in [Ramzi] Yousef's Manilla apartment in 1995. US officials broke the encryption and stopped the planned attack. Two of the files took a year to decode, the FBI says."
The FBI ought to require Jack Kelley (the reporter)to pull his head out of his ass before writing this propaganda. At least it'd be internally consistant. A quick read conveys the message that crypto is bad, the FBI is your hero, and A-rabs are evil. A thoughtful read conveys the stupidity of Kelley and the anti-crypto movement in general.
Slashdot Mirror
On which planet does a gallon of gas weigh 6lbs?
Not Earth...
I worked for some time for a hospial in Austin, TX, and they are of course a 24-hr operation. Here's how we had coverage set up:
We had an 'operator' for 1st, 2nd and 3rd shift, 24/7. 2nd, 3rd, and weekend people were generally not very skilled, but the regular tech people trained them over time to be able to deal with most basic situations. So they answered the phones, and called us when they needed to.
All the techs were on a rotating schedule where they carried the pager 24/7 for one week out of every five. Administrators were one week out of 4, and there were only 2 WAn people, so they traded off. There was a strict escalation from operator to tech support to admin to WAN, and no deviation was allowed.
Payment was $2/hr from 7PM to 7AM, and all day Sat. and Sun. That comes to $216 for the week you wore the pager. If you got paged and called in, you got paid an automatic hour of overtime (plus the 2nd or 3rd shift pay differential, which was 7% or 10% respectively). If you went into the office, you got 2 hours of automatic overtime. Any time over 2 hours was at 1.5* normal, plus the differential. Getting a call at 2AM on Saturday night added an extra 25% to the pay rate, 10% 3rd shift and 15% weekend diff.
Now, since it was a hospital, they already had a policy in place to compensate people for working nights and weekends. YMMV, but for us the basic structure worked well: $2/hr for being on call regardless of what happens, 1hr overtime for using the phone, a minimum 2hrs for going in.
Sometimes I could make an extra $500 in a week... I started picking up other people's pager time when they wanted out of it.
Eventually the calls dwindled as we got the operators trained and all the old crappy PC's replaced, but occasionally the paper would jam in the ER admissions printer and I'd make a quick $60 to go re-align it for them...
Good luck getting the compensation.
Excellent response, and thank you for the clear explanation. I think I could sell that idea to somebody now...
What if the code isn't designed to be used in dedicated hardware? What if I design, say, some sales tracking software. All my clients are asking for a certain feature to be implemented, and I happen to know that one of my clients has modded my code to implement that feature. I take the code developed by one of my own clients, roll it into the main code, and voila! my sales tracking program has a new feature I never spent a dime to develop, and it makes me more money because the software is more valuable.
Now, pretend I'm the client who wrote the mods. Aren't I going to be a little miffed that my sales software vendor took my 200 hours of development and used it to increase their profit margin, leaving me with exactly nothing in the way of compensation for the work I did, without which they'd be making less money?
As a client, what motivation would there be to make significant modifications to a program, knowing that the vendor will sell the mods in a future release, profiting from my development expense?
If I were the client in this scenario I would look for some offer of profit sharing, or some other way the vendor is willing to compensate clients who contribute a major new feature to the program. Don't forget, while competition is good for consumers, companies generally don't view it as an added benefit.
Copyright law in the states doesn't specify how often you can copy something, and that's part of this argument. The law doesn't necessarily protect companies against lost revenues due to massive copying of copyrighted works.It also doesn't necessarily grant the unlimited right to make as many copies as possible as long as you don't charge for them.
Basically, Congress never, ever thought you'd be able to distribute a piece of music to 10 million people unless you dedicated your life to the task.
They never thought to ask what happens when you scale up taping songs off the radio to millions of copies while decreasing the time and effort involved to almost nonexistant levels and also practically eliminating the distribution time and expense.
Can you blame them?
Perhaps you missed my point. A vendor who takes his customer's mods and rolls them into his binary adds value to the product he's supporting, while the customer gets nothing even though he spent the money (in time, payroll, etc) to develop the mods. The customer can't sell support for the product with his own mods because his vendor already beat him to the punch with an installed customer base he can leverage.
This is where I begin to wonder how you can be successful as an OSS company. Note: this isn't a troll, I'm actually unsure how to prevent the following: Say you write a program, release it under the GPL. You're supporting the binaries, incorporating large bugfixes and making them available, everything's going along great. You get a decent customer base, and they start asking for features. You happen to know, through your business relationship, that another company has extensively modified your code to include features your customer base wants.
What's to stop you from taking their modifications, rolling them into your binary, and selling them to your customer base? You get all the $$$ with no development costs and the other company only gets credit in the README and the open source version.
Where's the value in modifying a GPLed program for yourself when you know damn well your own work and expense is making your vendor more money while you get no added benefit?
heh. They're very fast, and they return fresher hits than Altavista, my old favorite.
Several years ago I worked for a local PC shop. One of our customers fried two motherboards before we finally had him bring in his case. He'd build it out of thick plexiglass. We all thought it was great until one of us picked it up... the static electricity made all the hair on your arm stand up. You could stick pieces of paper to the sides of the case. It shocked you half the time you touched it...
And he wondered why nothing worked.
-Tony
I believe you may have misunderstood the point of the case. The fact that the DMCA can be used to suppress a research paper is exactly the thing that 2600's lawyers need to win the DeCSS case on appeal. The existence of the DMCA chills speech, not just code, but actual spoken words. It's the perfect example to bring against the RIAA.
You're right in that the RIAA doesn't have to go to court to threaten, but that's because they have the money to outlast a professor at Princeton. By caving in to the legal threats, he's demonstrated that threats of legal action under the DMCA damage free speech.
Rather than potentially go to court an lose a clstly battle for which the RIAA is already prepared, possibly setting a precedent in the process, the professor felt it was better to fall on his sword, to become a DMCA martyr the 2600 lawyers can hold up in court as an example that we're already on the slippery slope they warned of in the trial. Also, since his position is untested in court, anti-DMCA forces can safely use his example without having a bad decision hanging over their heads.
Ha! another Maggie and the Ferocious Beast afficionado!
chuckle...
No. Perhaps you didn't see the list of businesses aligned against UCITA. Perhaps you think that because the power companies have plenty of leeway, then any and all businesses must necessarily be able to go apeshit whenever and however they want.
Perhaps you think that knocking down straw men gives your opinion some legitimacy.
You would, of course, be wrong.
Would you like to try again?
http://www.dell.homestead.com/revwar/files/BOSTON. HTM
British soldiers killed 5 colonists in Boston in 1770. In point of fact, they were attacked by a mob, and acquitted at trial, but the Boston 'Massacre' became a rallying cry and a symbol of British occupation of the colonies (at the time, there was about 1 British soldier in Boston for every 4 citizens).
I mention it as a dig at you, and to remind you that we have the 4th amendment (in part) as a result of the British attempt to confiscate weapons and deprive the colonists of the means to revolt.
Coverage of war (wait, coverage of war that depicts the USA as a ruthless entity exercising 'military rule') must equal good journalism, then. Right?
And the lack of this specific brand of 'coverage' is evidence that the media has lost its soul.
Next time, dig yourself out of the morass of 'protest' propaganda you've been swimming in, and apply some sort of objective logic filter to your brain before you click Reply to This.
>What about the right to live your life without >being brutally killed?
I'll refer your limey ass to the Boston Massacre and the resulting dust-up as proof that owning a gun can protect your right to live without being brutally killed...
The Bill of Rights enumerates basic rights of humanity, and none is more or less important.
In'n'Out Burger isn't franchised...
*cough* TROLL *cough*
We can run through trial and error... there are 'monkey' robots that can learn to swing through trian and error. Falling over would ruin this behemoth, though, so it has to know how on the first try.
That's true. I can still use it. But I may no longer be able to profit from it. Look at poor ole Eli Whitney and his idea for the cotton gin. Everybody stole his idea, and even though he could still make them, so could everyone else. he died broke after inventing one of the most important agricultural machines of the 19th century.
Hold on a sec... The trademark is for the MARK, not the word. You can't trademark dictionary words, but you can trademark a word in a specific font, or a specific design logo. Blizzard has the mark for the flaming diablo image on the page, not for the *word* d-i-a-b-l-o.
These small ISP's are like the leading edge of a wave. Now that broadband is available in the cities, two or three of the bigger ISP's were able to leverage DSL to stay alive, but cable modems and DSL are running the small dialups completely out of business. Out in the country, however, the small dialup companies are still around, providing a local phone number that several small towns can dial, rather than paying per-minute charges for a 800 service, or using AOL.
It amazes me how what appears to be an otherwise intelligent person can lose his capacity for reasoned thought in the face of an article by Katz. Let's look at this response as our object lesson for the day.
>First off, anyone 15 and over (and living in North America, or another English speaking >country) is, in my book, adult enough to 100% understand the English language, and more >than adult enough to understand killing is bad. I'll assume they were both in the same >class (and, the same age, the story is full of missing details). That would make them 15, >going on what the LA Times says.
Okay, killing is bad. Talking about killing, however, isn't necessarily bad. You neglect this point, however, and having created a mediocre straw man, charge forth.
>If the parents from Lancaster didn't want to spend the money, and the school didn't want to >prosecute, then shit man, you aren't under a gun. Just don't prosecute. If you do and lose, >TS! That's the way the pickle squirts!
Perhaps you didn't read this clearly. The boy's parents sued the girl for turning him in, after the expulsion was overturned. The girl wanted the school to cover her legal fees, since it was the school's policy that exposed her to the suit.
Of course, the Katz article has you frothing at the mouth already, so details and rational thought have already started to lose their importance.
>Neither the stoolie, nor the nutcase (and anyone who suggests that everyone should die is a >certifiable nut) deserve an ounce of sympathy. I didn't see anything about her insisting >she be in the WPP, despite her claims that the nut threatened her. That's what it's there >for. Use it. If she was denied, well, then I'd be angry.
First, the suggestion that everyone should die does NOT = insanity. It's nice rhetoric, but it's also pretty dumb. Here, let me demonstrate:
I think all Slashdot users should die!
Now, have I suddenly vacated my sanity? Of course not. Is this evidence that I wasn't sane before? Of course not. It's a sentence, and standing alone, it means nothing more significant than if I'd said "I think all Slashdot users should eat Fritos!"
Also, if you are right, EVERY serial killer should get off via insanity defense. Of course, they don't.
>If you are a nut and don't seek treatment, TFB. Although, one has to wonder if the parents >of this insane man hadn't noticed this behaviour before. They need a little blame.
Right. Crazy people who aren't lucid enough to get help have only themselves to blame. Here's the culmination of your 'crazy people' straw man: People who talk about killing are crazy, and crazy people must be held accountable for their own actions, so why should we care.
This is completely off-point for the article, besides the fact that it has logical holes you could drive a truck through.
>Why is it that anything that happens on school property makes it automatically 100% the >school's job to deal with it? Heck, if I threaten the life of people at work it becomes >(mostly) my resposibility to defend myself, and the victim's responsibility to prosecute >me.
These two scenarions are completely unrelated. On the one hand, a school is charged by the state with the care of 2000+ minors, all of whom have few legal rights or responsibilities. While in the care of the school, the school is legally responsible for them, much as a parent is responsible at other times.
Your employer is NOT charged by the state with the care of anyone, and since you're an adult (this message nonwithstanding) you get to be responsible for yourself.
Yet another weak straw man. You basically say, "This apple doesn't look like these oranges, therefore it must be wrong somehow". Also, notice that saying "I think everyone should die" or "I want to kill people" is completely different from "I am going to kill John Katz (or whoever)." The boy in this case did not threaten any person or group with death. If you said exactly the same thing at your office that this boy did, you'd be protected by the 1st amendment. Being a minor, the boy is instead subjected to persecution.
You've got the bit in your teeth now, though, and can't be bothered with little things like this.
>>"Turning kids into informers is viscerally anti-democratic."
>That's bullshit. Are you saying that because the police exist we therefore live in a police >state? She had the right to not say anything. She also had the right not to personally sue >the offender, and let the criminal courts take care of the matter. Take anything to civil >court and lose, and you get no sympathy from me.
No, no, and no. He didn't say anything about a police state. He said turning kids into informers is anti-democratic. Read 1984 for a better explanation of this, or take a look at how the 3rd Reich implemented this idea. Also, the girl had no rights; she's a minor. Just as a parent is responsible if she tells her kid to go shoplift some beer, the school could be responsible for telling the girl to inform, thereby placing the power to initiate legal action against another minor into her hands. This demonstrates a glaring lack of judgement on the part of the school, not to mention a shirking of the school's responsibility to maintain order. The kids are *kids*. Even at 15, do they have the evolved judgemental ability to tell the difference between bullshit and psychosis? Moreover, do 15 yr olds have the self restraint to keep from turning in their ex-boyfriends or the girls that laughed at them in the hallway?
Again, she had no rights, and no legal voice in the suit.
>>"there was never any evidence he planned to harm or kill anyone"
>If I come up to you and say "I want to kill people." would you just toss that out the >window? Which side are you on, anyways, Katz? The criminal's?
Of course. I'd have to. If I said "I'm planning to kill you tomorrow.", now that MIGHT be enough to justify a search. But if I just said "I want to kill people today!" it means nothing substantial enough to matter. I might have had a bad commute. Luckily for me, I'm presumed innocent and protected from rabid accusations. Children, however, are not, and the boy's parents have one legal recourse in the event their child is falsely accused: they can sue the accusers.
Katz is on the side of the Bill of Rights in this case. Who's side are you on? You who advocate investigation every time someone says the words 'kill' and 'people' in the same sentence?
>>"[the boy] is threatened with jail for allegedly making a remark that would, in other >>times, be considered stupid or worthy of some suspension time."
>In the Real World(tm) making death threats is serious. Very serious. It shows a plan to >murder. Just plotting to murder is illegal, you know. If you think plotting to kill is just >stupid and is for kicks then you need a check up.
Another miserably weak straw man, and a personal attack (which exposes the real intent of this reply to Katz's article). The boy cannot be proven to have made the remark, in the first place. It's the word of one minor against another. If I called the cops and told them I heard you say you want to kill people, do you think that's enough for them to investigate you? No, because saying that is not the same as plotting murder. You have to actually find some real evidence of a plot. Saying you want to kill doesn't show anything except a kid needs to blow off some steam, or perhaps some evaluation to see if he's actually disturbed or just upset.
These kids, you'll remember. don't live in the real world. That's why the schools get to stomp all over them in a way that would be grossly intrusive and unconstitutional in the real world. You've actually got it backwards.
>Providing "snitch" lines is normal in Real Life(tm) too. Where I am, they have >CrimeStoppers. And, if they use your evidence and the person goes to Jail, you actually get >a cash bonus. *This* line is for anyone, not just teenagers. Most people think this service >kicks ass. The criminals have a problem with it, I hear, though.
If you call crimestoppers and say "I heard this dude say he wants to kill" they won't and can't do anything. Now, if you say " I saw the guy who broke into that house, and I know where he is right now" that's great! The girl, however, had no knowledge of any crime, either in the past or the future, no ability to evaluate the possibility of a crime, and no way to gather evidence to support her assertions.
Furthermore, the tip line example is apples and oranges again. The tip line in the school isn't to help catch criminals, but to foster an Orwellian fear of speaking and to create a culture wherein no student can express his feelings safely.
>These snitch lines are needed. If they were easier for students to access before Columbine >there's pretty good chance someone would have picked up the phone and gotten those muderers >the help they needed before it was too late.
The kids at Columbine made a movie of the actions they took, and no one caught it, including a bunch of adults whose responsibility it was to know better. It's insulting to the students to suggest they might have done something, because it implies that they are partly to blame. Adults have a responsibility to act when they see potential danger. Placing that burden on a bunch of kids is destructive. Imagine if the tip line had been there and no one had turned them in! Then what kind of psychological scars might they have to deal with, as a result of the school's divestiture of responsibility. At least now they can take comfort in the fact that it wasn't their fault.
>>"Online, teenagers flame each other and everybody else all the time."
>And adults don't? You've never seen people on AOL, have you?
Rather than supporting your argument (incoherent as it is), this comment actually harms it, as well as exposing your need to say "nuh-uhhh" to Katz, rather than use your brain.
>>"Anybody who's different or doesn't conform -- or who is angry -- can seem dangerous"
>Total complete baseless bullshit. If you don't conform you aren't necessarialy dangerous. >Look at Ghandi, he damn well didn't conform to being your average Indian. But was he a >dangerous man? You're only dangerous when you start threatening other people.
HAHA!! Wasn't Ghandi assassinated? Wasn't it because his nonconformist ideas wer taking hold?
I think King George would have called Thomas Jefferson a dangerous man. Karl Marx was certainly dangerous. The Pope thought Martin Luther was VERY dangerous. Do you really have to threaten someone to be dangerous?
>>"and kids often had a tough time distinguishing between run-of-the-mill obnoxious and >>posturing behavior, and truly dangerous behavior worthy of being reported"
>Oh please. _Maybe_ there is a _little_ problem with distinction, but not understanding that >to kill is murder? Like I say, if you don't understand that by 15, you need to be locked up >for the good of society.
Even the authorities have trouble understanding this distinction sometimes. I'll refer you to the story the other day re: a Starcraft clan being arrested for death threats. Should we expect a bunch of fickle teenagers to understand it? Hell, teenagers can't even grasp that fucking sometimes gets you pregnant! You want them to take responsibility for judging the mental health of a peer they may have little or no contact with?
This argument of yours relies on straw men you set up earlier in your post, none of which are still around by this time... The ability to understand that killing is murder (which it's not, BTW. You don't murder people during a war...) has nothing to do with the ability to tell between an ill-advised comment and a plot to murder scores of students.
>>"It's the job of parents, educators and psychologists to watch our for and anticipate >>dangerous behavior."
>No, we already employ people to do that. We call them the Police.
Ahh, the crown jewel of your post. Having spent the whole time justifying school snich lines, you tell us that it's the job of the police to anticipate dangerous behavior! I love it!
When a person is charged with the care of a monir, or a group of minors, it is their responsibility to protect them. Thus, educators, parents, and to a lesser degree psychologists, ARE responsible for watching out for and anticipating behavior.
Unless, of course, you'd rather the police take charge of your kids for you. Who was it again that was talking about a police state?
-Tony
I work Evoke Software; they're hiring developers w/database experience right now. Email me and I'll tell you about them...
adye@evokesoft.com
Yeah, clinton was a real friend to the privacy movement...
DMCA, CDA, Clipper chip, etc.
Hell, didn't he appoint Louis Freeh AND Janet Reno?
Two bastions of liberty if I've ever seen 'em...
Sheesh.
It's clear that the reporter didnt' bother to think about what he was writing. Ket Escrow is necessary, he implies, because Bin Laden can hide his files with crypto. But, in the same article, he explains the reason Bin Laden uses crypto now, namely the FBI is tapping is satphone.
Yathink, maybe, he might cotton to the whole key escrow thing, and start using Islamic Jihad crypto instead? The reporter went to great pains to explain how Bin Laden's people have sharp techs in their side...
Also: if the crypto is "uncrackable', as the reporter states, why are the terrorists bothering to hide the stuff in porn and chatrooms? It's uncrackable, right?
Wait, it's not uncrackable! "Phillipine police found the computer in [Ramzi] Yousef's Manilla apartment in 1995. US officials broke the encryption and stopped the planned attack. Two of the files took a year to decode, the FBI says."
The FBI ought to require Jack Kelley (the reporter)to pull his head out of his ass before writing this propaganda. At least it'd be internally consistant. A quick read conveys the message that crypto is bad, the FBI is your hero, and A-rabs are evil. A thoughtful read conveys the stupidity of Kelley and the anti-crypto movement in general.