When you talk to the PUC you may also want to mention the magic words "common carrier".
A telco can impose reasonable technical standards on the physical and electrical characteristics of the devices attached to its network. It cannot impose restrictions on the communications across that network.
There are a few exceptions (e.g., speech which is criminal in all cases such as kiddie porn), but denying service to Linux systems simply because they are Linux is (or should be!) as unacceptable as denying service to Spanish speakers because they don't speak English!
This is where a polite mention that the other baby bells have no problem with Linux -- and neither does this telco, when the users quietly install Linux on their systems after the installer has left -- will go a *long* way. If the telco can't tell when some users have switched to Linux, and other telcos openly allow Linux boxes, then why is the telco making this an issue?!
Many of us are not disturbed that "justice is harsh," we're concerned that justice is blind and drunk.
A classic example from RL: in the mid-80's the Florida criminal justice system got inverted and it was better for a 7-11 robber to execute the clerk and any patrons than to simply rob it. The nominal penalty for murder was worse than armed robbery (execution vs. 20 years), but the practical effect was that murderers were harder to catch (no witnesses) and had better legal representation since it was a capital case. Armed robbery, in contrast, was practically a pro forma railroad. The cumulative effect was that the word on the street was that it was better to herd everyone into the freezer and shoot them... and a rash of such murders stopped only after the state printed (and distributed) signs basically saying that any cop who discovered such a robbery in progress would simply execute the robbers on the spot as they "resisted arrest."
The harsh de facto sentences against crackers are forming a similar inversion. Most cracker activities are non-violent white collar crimes; some involve modest risk to human life (e.g., taking down a 911 system), but for the most part these are crimes without violence and to a large extent without financial loss. (There is plenty of asserted financial loss, but much if not most of that loss would never be accepted in any other criminal case.)
How long until a cracker decides that if he has to serve time, he might as well make his crime fit the sentence? If he won't serve a longer sentence for carrying a gun, why not carry one? If the sentences approach that of armed robbery, why not simply commit armed robbery and have any cracking offense served concurrently?
Hackers are constantly patrolling the Net to keep it, and the vast information on it, free.
This is... interesting. The US (and others) will deliberately sail warships through waters claimed by other states, but recognized by most as international waters, to keep them free. They call it "showing the flag."
In the 60's, individual citizens did something similar to protest what they viewed as unjust laws. It was called "civil disobedience" and while many people were convicted, few people were felt (in retrospect) to have been criminals.
But in our brave new world we suddenly have everything cast as property rights, and not just on the net. For instance, most people don't realize that they can't picket many stores anymore since the mall is private property and protesters can be ejected. Picketing on the distant sidewalk, if it even exists, is still possible, but it exerts far less pressure on a store than the pickets of the 50's and 60's.
How do you picket a web site? Because of the emphasis on property rights, some decisions are going against protesters who register variants of the real domain name for protest sites. It sounds like this will be even more common in the future. We can still put up our protest sites under innoculous domain names, but what happens if no search engine will link to them out of fear of legal action?
I don't have a solution to this problem, and I don't know if a net-based solution even exists since there are related problems in p-space as well. But it does seem damning that the corporate media focuses on "hackers" instead of the bigger issues.
Why should a company be forced to disclose all [of] their trade secrets?
There is a long history of requiring manufactured items to have documented specifications. You don't have to specify how you produce the object, but you do have to specify the item in sufficient detail to allow meaningful competition. A car manufacturer, for instance, can't prevent aftermarket competition for components such as fan belts, oil filters, window glass, even body panels. Or much more, flipping through the aftermarket catalogues for my Jeep...
In the software world, I believe the existing philosophy allows the government (and users) to require file formats be adequately documented to allow third party tools to be used with those files, but it doesn't require that the exact algorithm be documented.
I know that there are some significant legal questions with compelled disclosure of the details of the file format, but I also know that the existing attitudes of some software publishers is nothing short of irresponsible. If I use a software tool to manage the financial books of my company, who owns that information? Some software companies would have you believe that they, and they alone, own that information.
If that's so, does it not follow that the manufacturer of the hard disk also owns the information stored on the disk? Or that the manufacturer of filing cabinets owns the information stored within them?
you remove the basic freedom of innovators to keep trade secrets
In software, your trade secrets lie in your algorithms. You can document the associated file format without providing details of the algorithm that manipulates them, or you could document a public file format and implement a complete import/export utility. (Unlike the import/export utilities commonly provided today.)
IBM was never broken up. It was investigated for anti-trust behavior, and I think it even had government monitors installed into the document chain, but it wasn't broken up like AT&T.
I understood the I know it from experience... line as a statement implying that "geeks" can stop being oppressed by denying their own interests. It's one thing to suggest that a teenager may make more friends by learning to feign interest in sports or popular music. It's a very different thing to suggest that a teenager must deny their own interests to make friends. Hence the analogy to other things that people would find intolerable to deny - their religion, their family, etc. Judging by the score given my response, others agree.
As for the other issues I must side with Jon Katz. The author appears to have an agenda that makes debating points on her own terms an exercise in futility -- I know that I can't credibly believe someone repeatedly published in the Village Voice was unaware of how "identity politics" has been used and abused by an astonishing variety of groups.
Of course the principal suggested that the cheerleader *voluntarily* withdraw from school. It would be a violation of the jock's Federal rights (as defined by the US Dept of Education) to expel him simply because of a restraining order for violence against a fellow student.
I kid you not. One of the local weekies had a detailed article in response to a similar problem at a different school. Minors *must* be allowed to attend class unless they have been formally suspended or expelled. Suspension/explusion is controlled by the schools, not the courts, and they are not required to consider any outstanding criminal or civil actions against a student -- in fact, I think they may be *prohibited* from considering that unless the acts occured on school property *and* the schools have pursued the matter - in other words, unless the school themselves decide that the matter is important.
I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to the bureaucratic mindset. Forms must be completed and regulations followed. Students must be expelled for possessing a weapon, even if the weapon is a fragile ceremonial dagger brought to geography class by a student who spent a year in Africa. Students *can't* be expelled just because they've been arrested for violent crimes committed off campus.
Hmm; I think I might remember more of the details of that other case. Student was a non-US citizen convicted of a violent crime and in jail pending extradition. Student is demanding that the Denver public schools send him a tutor in jail, since he can't attend class. DPS says that they have no choice, due to Federal law.
I wonder how old "Jane Dark" is, in light of her Woodstock comments.
My HS years (late 70's) were far darker than those presented in movies and TV shows... and few adults believe my horror stories. It was a surreal experience; all of the adults saw "the Brady Bunch" where I saw "Heathers" or "Pump up the Volume." From what I've heard from later students, the schools have gotten steadily worse.
I wonder how many adults read the horrors of HS and think of a scene from "Leave it to Beaver" instead of "Lord of the Flies, on Bad Acid." The Beav never had to deal with the 'roid rage, or drugged out classmates, or students who can't sit at the same table because of restraining orders for domestic violence.
If the number shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation.
That Village Idiot article reminded me of something that happened in my health club lockerroom shortly after the shooting. Two men were talking about the shooting from the perspective of parents of sons who had competed with Isiah Shoels. One commented that had the shooting occured in a central Denver HS it would have been covered as "gang violence." He had a point, since a series of (mostly) minority violence *was* covered as a "summer of (gang) violence" a few years ago. But I and another man argued that the shooters would be covered as nuts regardless of race.
Now I'm not so sure. This reporter appears to group all white males together (like I, the son of working class Southern parents, would be a natural shoo-in for exclusive Boston country club membership were it not for those pesky non-discrimination laws). Could she handle the fact that some black men are psychopaths, or would she brush it under the rug of "gangs" -- and then paint gangs as a natural response to white oppression? I hope I never have to learn the answer to that question.
(Oh, and for the racist bean counters, the informal discussion group in the lockerroom was two white males and two black males. No women since this is a cowtown with unisex lockerrooms.)
I think the most offensive aspect of that article, which is saying a lot, is the implication that geeks choose to be outcasts.
Sucks to be a kid. Sucks especially if you decide againt the moves for playing along with the popularity game.
I guess the editor will also dismiss antisemitism; you can't help Jews who decide against adopting the dominant religion.
I know the editor dismisses homosexuality. At least, homosexuality among white males, the only other example of an identity group driven by the white middle class. I guess white male gays wear the jackboots used to put down other gays.
And why do I keep thinking about the charming old tradition of "passing"? A black kid with light skin tones who doesn't attempt to "pass" as white deserves what he gets, neh?!
I guess I've been deluding myself by seeing people as individuals, not as official minority groups and the oppressive overclass. Where I see Bob, a nice guy who happens to be an athlete, I should see a jock -- can't reserve the latter term for athletes with attitude problems vis-a-vis non-athletes. And Sue, the math genius, must always be referred to as Sue, black coed.
And I must never, ever, recognize that Bill is being beaten up because other students have labeled him a 'snortzball.' A 'snortzball' is not a Recognized Political Correctness "identity group" and his bloody nose is therefore his own damn fault for running into Allen's, Sam's, Jim's, John's, Roger's, and George's fist. Repeatedly.
With Focus on the Family and other "right thinking" religious groups headquartered within 100 miles I've always identified myself as liberal. But I find this shit far more offensive than anything I've seen come out of the conservative camp.
That's a false analogy. Math problems, especially at the HS level, have well defined solutions and encourage the "correct" mathematical reasoning.
Programming problems are a different matter, especially at the introductory level. The problems are either trivial or the teacher can't identify bad solutions. I know that even in college most of the CS majors (but not all) were notorious for tweaking loop boundaries until the code "worked." That is hardly a "problem solving" attitude.
WARNING Your browser "(MSIE-Mozilla-compatible-6.0)" is incapable of handling industry standard HTML. We cannot guarantee that your Microsoft browser will protect your confidential information or correctly render our pages; we recommend you download a free, modern browser such as mozilla or netscape. If you do not wish to see this advisory notice in the future, please bookmark and use this url
(Argh. That looks a lot better with the font/color tags...)
The best thing is that we can do that with all Apache web servers today. In fact, some sites are already refusing to serve MSIE clients.
This is a game Microsoft can't afford to play. Even if only 10% of all Apache sites decide to go black on MS browsers, the harm to MSIE's reputation would be immeasurable... and as more people learn about the bogus DR-DOS "error" messages Microsoft will get damn little public sympathy.
Next you'll be claiming that the FBI deliberately sat on the NTSB's early conclusions that the TWA 800 flight was destroyed by mechanical problems, not terrorists. Besides, we needed to tighten security at airports anyway and my presentation of my passport (and references to the internal passports required for travel within the old Soviet Union) instead of my driver's license is sheer hyperbole.
Or that the FBI turned Waco from a major ATF screwup into a national disgrace.
Or that J Edgar Hoover abused his position to collect blackmail material for political purposes while ignoring organized crime.
I'm sure most of the field agents are dedicated, hard working individuals. But I'm getting damn tired of the way that the senior levels of the FBI seem to think that the ends justify the means.
Hopefully the judge will hear the arguments and toss the lawyers into jail for a week for contempt and refer the matter to the federal bar for disbarment hearings. The government lawyers, since it's precisely this type of abuse of power that the First Amendment (press and speech) was intended to prevent.
It really happens. Besides doing my checkbook in hex (and not always catching it later, since I was so used to seeing the digits 'A'-'F'), I kept overcounting in Korean during my exercise classes. I was focused elsewhere and knew I was supposed to count to "10", so I kept "accidently" repeating the middle numbers.
But doing your math in hex is nothing. After playing 'go' intensely for a while, I found myself driving down the street and thinking about how you could change the landscape by putting a tree there (and remove some buildings), a short building over there (and remove a cluster of highrises), etc. Talk about baffled looks when you mention that to others...
I've seen this argument several times, and it always falls flat on a simple fact. What the authors have in mind is something akin to lawyers, doctors, CPAs, etc., but the industry won't support it. The problem is that holding people to a high standard also requires that they have the final word on their own actions. There's some room for reasonable compromise, of course, but everyone with any real industry experience knows that management is notorious for ordering programmers to ignore what the latter consider critical issues.
That said, I'm in the ACM and I do follow a code of ethics. The results can only be described as "be careful what you wish for" -- part of my code is that I'll only accept assignments which I feel can be reliably executed by the client... and I've been forced to decertify the entire Microsoft line of operating systems and applications. In some cases I've left existing jobs rather than compromise reliability by porting applications from Unix to NT. No doubt the NYT will now do a followup article on "Prima Donna" programmers.:-)
It's hard to respond to this argument since its wrong on so many levels. Where to begin?...
Hitler is an obvious example of diversity harming people, but what about Martin Luther? Without Martin Luther we would have not had millions of deaths in wars between Protestants and Catholics, the Spanish Inquisition, etc. But without Martin Luther our culture would be unimaginably different; nailing the 47 questions (?) to the church door lead to...
Charles Darwin. Without Darwin we would have still had the theory of evolution (Darwin didn't originate the theory, he just gave compelling evidence of its breath and proposed that *all* variation could be explained by it without divine intervention; contemporaries of Darwin were on the same track and Wallace arguably had the idea and evidence first). But without evolution it would have been far harder to understand the implications of DNA (assuming Watson & Crick still did their work) and we would have none of the recent medical advances.
Then there's Einstein with his silly theories explaining the anomolous precession of Mercury. The researchers at Bell Labs who discovered cosmic background radiation or invented the transistor, laser, and Unix. And let's not forget that crackpot Guttenburg and his ideas for printing with reusuable, movable type instead of woodcuts.
If you think "different is dangerous", go find a cave. Without fire -- fire is dangerous. Or atl-atls -- new technology is dangerous.
If someone downs several shots of NyQuil, of course they shouldn't be driving. But my point is that there have been several cases of a teenager with a cold taking an OTC medicine without realizing it contained alcohol and getting a modest 0.01-0.02% BAC, roughly equivalent to a single beer. After they were stopped for whatever reason, the fact that they had consumed *any* alcohol was used to yank their license for a year or more; there was no allowance for the profound difference between illegally acquiring and drinking a beer and attempting to be a good citizen and going to school or work despite a mild cold.
The bottom line is that these zero tolerance policies undeniably lead to deaths. Just west of Littleton 6 teens were killed by a train a few years ago; all had *huge* BACs (.20 and above) and were still driving around the somewhat rural areas west of town. This is totally insane from a public policy perspective, but to the kids it made sense since there was no incremental cost to getting caught driving with a.20 BAC and getting caught sitting quietly in a public park with a single 3.2% beer! But since it's harder for the cops to find you driving in the country instead of in a park, they decided to drive.
So what happens when someone buys a FOOBAR(tm) product and fines it horrible. The company refuses to honor any warranty (in the customer's view), refuses to refund the cost, etc.
So the customer puts up a web page saying how horrid FOOBAR(tm) products are... and uses a META tag intending search engines to show how FOOBAR(tm) products differ from what the sales droids would have you believe.
The company doesn't want that, of course, and sues for trademark infringement. The customer says that he has a clear First Amendment right to tell other people about the problems he had with that product. After all, he bought it in a store and signed no non-disclosure agreements (and refuses to honor any shrink-wrapped "NDA" since the company refuses to honor the same document's promise of a full refund if the terms are unacceptable.)
The customer would win, right? After all, the intent of trademark law is to prevent another party from diluting the market recognition of a product, not to suppress dissent Except the proposed UCC 2B appears to contain language that *does* allow a company to suppress criticism of its products.
This specfic case doesn't involve consumers, but it also illustrates risks in suppressing META tag content. It's one thing for to ban (for instance) another company from selling "kleenex tissues"; it's another thing entirely to essentially tell them that not only can't they call their product "kleenex", they can't even put it on the same aisle in the store!
It's amazing how some people refuse to hear what's being discussed.
It's not a problem with other students mocking the geeks or goths. It's not a problem with light hazing of underclassmen.
It is a problem with actions which anywhere outside of the hallowed grounds of a public high school would be called assault, even attempted murder. It is a problem which principals and "guidance counselors" who are really tinpot dictators violating fundamental civil liberties.
Finally, it's time to realize that this has moved far beyond the point of a few "goths" being harrassed in school. As others have pointed out, the school system would be hard pressed to find a more effective way of destroying itself as it forces previously indifferent adults to take a long hard look at the alternatives. Charter schools have their own flaws, but they don't have a history of raping the law and demanding everyone salute them "for the sake of the children!"
That's a very adult attitude... but we're talking about children and teenagers who are still forming their own self-image. I don't think it's possible for an *adult* to form an accurate self-image without feedback from others, and it's certainly not possible for teenagers who are experiencing many things for the first time.
In an ideal world the kids would get accurate feedback from their parents and relatives, teachers, and other trusted adults. In reality, many teachers don't know all of their students and parents feel they have "more important" things to do than really learn who their kids are (as opposed to who they think they are, or wish they were, or who they were as teenagers, or...)
In my HS (and many others) calculus was not offered. Since I had attended a couple optional summer sessions (to get out of the oppressive Florida heat) I could have taken independent study calculus my senior year, but I skipped straight to a four-year university.
Some districts use a more rational breakdown of the math sequence... but they still need to find qualified teachers. That's a nontrivial problem in the states; I think some districts assume any student demanding calculus in HS will skip their senior year anyway. I remember one person did that when I was a junior, and I was one of three who did it my senior year. Colorado, iirc, actually picks up in-state college tuition of nominal HS students, and it's common for recent HS grads to enter state schools as sophomores.
In any case, any US student in calculus is definitely on the "academic" track and is either "well rounded" (if also active in sports) or a "geek."
There was a segment on _Today_ this morning mentioning something like 16 bomb scares nationwide in one day in the wake of the Littleton shootings.
They did not say how many are normal, especially at this time of year. 16 might be a few more than normal, or a few less. Or it might be much more than normal and a reason for concern... or maybe not. An event which was quietly handled two weeks ago, rating no more than a 1" column on page 37A, will now appear as the lead story on page 1.
More to the point that Katz and others have brought up, it's reasonable for the administrators to take strong action when a student possesses a pipe bomb, posts a detailed "hit list", or has written plans for placing a bomb in the school.
But what on earth does the students' choice of clothing material have to do with this? So what if a student wants to wear all black? Or combat boots? Or funny makeup?
(I can accept that banning dusters and trenchcoats might serve a public good... but why strip search a student wearing one? Does the principal expect to find a shotgun stuffed in the student's undergarments?!)
Clearly these events are totally different, yet we've had numerous reports from students of authorities seeing no difference between a tube of eyeliner and a pipe bomb. We know this is insane, apparently a few reporters sniffing for stories know this, but why isn't it in the mainstream press? Do the editors somehow think that a bit of mass panic is good for everyone?
I saw one story where Dylan Klebold was described as "one of the best math minds in the school." I don't know about Harris, but anyone taking calculus in HS (where it's offered, of course!) is at least a protogeek.
Not all geeks are saints, of course, but I wonder how much anti-intellectualism was going on at that school and if that contributed to pushing them over the edge.
In many of those cases the young people said nothing wrong... but the authorities have lost all perspective and overreacted in a manner that borders the criminal (imho). The worst thing is the implication that there is no difference between verbalizing a general frustration and overt, specific acts intended to harm another person.
That doesn't change the fact that the administrators can still make life miserable for someone, but the kids shouldn't feel that they did something wrong.
Just a reminder, schools can ban items of clothing if they pose a legitimate safety concern. Trenchcoats can conceal long guns, so the school districts can make a reasonable claim that such bans are based solely on safety.
(You might argue, legitimately, that handguns can still be concealed in acceptable clothing. That's correct, but a sawed off shotgun is much more lethal than most handguns, especially any easily concealed one. Besides, some school districts now require transparent plastic or mesh backpacks for precisely this reason.)
Fighting a ban on trenchcoats will be difficult unless the policy is obviously not uniformly enforced. There's no legitimate basis for banning dark clothes, eye liner, camo, combat boots, or the like.
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When you talk to the PUC you may also want to mention the magic words "common carrier".
A telco can impose reasonable technical standards on the physical and electrical characteristics of the devices attached to its network. It cannot impose restrictions on the communications across that network.
There are a few exceptions (e.g., speech which is criminal in all cases such as kiddie porn), but denying service to Linux systems simply because they are Linux is (or should be!) as unacceptable as denying service to Spanish speakers because they don't speak English!
This is where a polite mention that the other baby bells have no problem with Linux -- and neither does this telco, when the users quietly install Linux on their systems after the installer has left -- will go a *long* way. If the telco can't tell when some users have switched to Linux, and other telcos openly allow Linux boxes, then why is the telco making this an issue?!
whining because justice is harsh
Many of us are not disturbed that "justice is harsh," we're concerned that justice is blind and drunk.
A classic example from RL: in the mid-80's the Florida criminal justice system got inverted and it was better for a 7-11 robber to execute the clerk and any patrons than to simply rob it. The nominal penalty for murder was worse than armed robbery (execution vs. 20 years), but the practical effect was that murderers were harder to catch (no witnesses) and had better legal representation since it was a capital case. Armed robbery, in contrast, was practically a pro forma railroad. The cumulative effect was that the word on the street was that it was better to herd everyone into the freezer and shoot them... and a rash of such murders stopped only after the state printed (and distributed) signs basically saying that any cop who discovered such a robbery in progress would simply execute the robbers on the spot as they "resisted arrest."
The harsh de facto sentences against crackers are forming a similar inversion. Most cracker activities are non-violent white collar crimes; some involve modest risk to human life (e.g., taking down a 911 system), but for the most part these are crimes without violence and to a large extent without financial loss. (There is plenty of asserted financial loss, but much if not most of that loss would never be accepted in any other criminal case.)
How long until a cracker decides that if he has to serve time, he might as well make his crime fit the sentence? If he won't serve a longer sentence for carrying a gun, why not carry one? If the sentences approach that of armed robbery, why not simply commit armed robbery and have any cracking offense served concurrently?
Hackers are constantly patrolling the Net to keep it, and the vast information on it, free.
This is... interesting. The US (and others) will deliberately sail warships through waters claimed by other states, but recognized by most as international waters, to keep them free. They call it "showing the flag."
In the 60's, individual citizens did something similar to protest what they viewed as unjust laws. It was called "civil disobedience" and while many people were convicted, few people were felt (in retrospect) to have been criminals.
But in our brave new world we suddenly have everything cast as property rights, and not just on the net. For instance, most people don't realize that they can't picket many stores anymore since the mall is private property and protesters can be ejected. Picketing on the distant sidewalk, if it even exists, is still possible, but it exerts far less pressure on a store than the pickets of the 50's and 60's.
How do you picket a web site? Because of the emphasis on property rights, some decisions are going against protesters who register variants of the real domain name for protest sites. It sounds like this will be even more common in the future. We can still put up our protest sites under innoculous domain names, but what happens if no search engine will link to them out of fear of legal action?
I don't have a solution to this problem, and I don't know if a net-based solution even exists since there are related problems in p-space as well. But it does seem damning that the corporate media focuses on "hackers" instead of the bigger issues.
Why should a company be forced to disclose all [of] their trade secrets?
There is a long history of requiring manufactured items to have documented specifications. You don't have to specify how you produce the object, but you do have to specify the item in sufficient detail to allow meaningful competition. A car manufacturer, for instance, can't prevent aftermarket competition for components such as fan belts, oil filters, window glass, even body panels. Or much more, flipping through the aftermarket catalogues for my Jeep...
In the software world, I believe the existing philosophy allows the government (and users) to require file formats be adequately documented to allow third party tools to be used with those files, but it doesn't require that the exact algorithm be documented.
I know that there are some significant legal questions with compelled disclosure of the details of the file format, but I also know that the existing attitudes of some software publishers is nothing short of irresponsible. If I use a software tool to manage the financial books of my company, who owns that information? Some software companies would have you believe that they, and they alone, own that information.
If that's so, does it not follow that the manufacturer of the hard disk also owns the information stored on the disk? Or that the manufacturer of filing cabinets owns the information stored within them?
you remove the basic freedom of innovators to keep trade secrets
In software, your trade secrets lie in your algorithms. You can document the associated file format without providing details of the algorithm that manipulates them, or you could document a public file format and implement a complete import/export utility. (Unlike the import/export utilities commonly provided today.)
IBM was never broken up. It was investigated for anti-trust behavior, and I think it even had government monitors installed into the document chain, but it wasn't broken up like AT&T.
I understood the I know it from experience... line as a statement implying that "geeks" can stop being oppressed by denying their own interests. It's one thing to suggest that a teenager may make more friends by learning to feign interest in sports or popular music. It's a very different thing to suggest that a teenager must deny their own interests to make friends. Hence the analogy to other things that people would find intolerable to deny - their religion, their family, etc. Judging by the score given my response, others agree.
As for the other issues I must side with Jon Katz. The author appears to have an agenda that makes debating points on her own terms an exercise in futility -- I know that I can't credibly believe someone repeatedly published in the Village Voice was unaware of how "identity politics" has been used and abused by an astonishing variety of groups.
Of course the principal suggested that the cheerleader *voluntarily* withdraw from school. It would be a violation of the jock's Federal rights (as defined by the US Dept of Education) to expel him simply because of a restraining order for violence against a fellow student.
I kid you not. One of the local weekies had a detailed article in response to a similar problem at a different school. Minors *must* be allowed to attend class unless they have been formally suspended or expelled. Suspension/explusion is controlled by the schools, not the courts, and they are not required to consider any outstanding criminal or civil actions against a student -- in fact, I think they may be *prohibited* from considering that unless the acts occured on school property *and* the schools have pursued the matter - in other words, unless the school themselves decide that the matter is important.
I'm sure it all makes perfect sense to the bureaucratic mindset. Forms must be completed and regulations followed. Students must be expelled for possessing a weapon, even if the weapon is a fragile ceremonial dagger brought to geography class by a student who spent a year in Africa. Students *can't* be expelled just because they've been arrested for violent crimes committed off campus.
Hmm; I think I might remember more of the details of that other case. Student was a non-US citizen convicted of a violent crime and in jail pending extradition. Student is demanding that the Denver public schools send him a tutor in jail, since he can't attend class. DPS says that they have no choice, due to Federal law.
I wonder how old "Jane Dark" is, in light of her Woodstock comments.
My HS years (late 70's) were far darker than those presented in movies and TV shows... and few adults believe my horror stories. It was a surreal experience; all of the adults saw "the Brady Bunch" where I saw "Heathers" or "Pump up the Volume." From what I've heard from later students, the schools have gotten steadily worse.
I wonder how many adults read the horrors of HS and think of a scene from "Leave it to Beaver" instead of "Lord of the Flies, on Bad Acid." The Beav never had to deal with the 'roid rage, or drugged out classmates, or students who can't sit at the same table because of restraining orders for domestic violence.
If the number shootings were to increase to a figure, such as 100, we would see more minority representation.
That Village Idiot article reminded me of something that happened in my health club lockerroom shortly after the shooting. Two men were talking about the shooting from the perspective of parents of sons who had competed with Isiah Shoels. One commented that had the shooting occured in a central Denver HS it would have been covered as "gang violence." He had a point, since a series of (mostly) minority violence *was* covered as a "summer of (gang) violence" a few years ago. But I and another man argued that the shooters would be covered as nuts regardless of race.
Now I'm not so sure. This reporter appears to group all white males together (like I, the son of working class Southern parents, would be a natural shoo-in for exclusive Boston country club membership were it not for those pesky non-discrimination laws). Could she handle the fact that some black men are psychopaths, or would she brush it under the rug of "gangs" -- and then paint gangs as a natural response to white oppression? I hope I never have to learn the answer to that question.
(Oh, and for the racist bean counters, the informal discussion group in the lockerroom was two white males and two black males. No women since this is a cowtown with unisex lockerrooms.)
I think the most offensive aspect of that article, which is saying a lot, is the implication that geeks choose to be outcasts.
Sucks to be a kid. Sucks especially if you decide againt the moves for playing along with the popularity game.
I guess the editor will also dismiss antisemitism; you can't help Jews who decide against adopting the dominant religion.
I know the editor dismisses homosexuality. At least, homosexuality among white males, the only other example of an identity group driven by the white middle class. I guess white male gays wear the jackboots used to put down other gays.
And why do I keep thinking about the charming old tradition of "passing"? A black kid with light skin tones who doesn't attempt to "pass" as white deserves what he gets, neh?!
I guess I've been deluding myself by seeing people as individuals, not as official minority groups and the oppressive overclass. Where I see Bob, a nice guy who happens to be an athlete, I should see a jock -- can't reserve the latter term for athletes with attitude problems vis-a-vis non-athletes. And Sue, the math genius, must always be referred to as Sue, black coed.
And I must never, ever, recognize that Bill is being beaten up because other students have labeled him a 'snortzball.' A 'snortzball' is not a Recognized Political Correctness "identity group" and his bloody nose is therefore his own damn fault for running into Allen's, Sam's, Jim's, John's, Roger's, and George's fist. Repeatedly.
With Focus on the Family and other "right thinking" religious groups headquartered within 100 miles I've always identified myself as liberal. But I find this shit far more offensive than anything I've seen come out of the conservative camp.
That's a false analogy. Math problems, especially at the HS level, have well defined solutions and encourage the "correct" mathematical reasoning.
Programming problems are a different matter, especially at the introductory level. The problems are either trivial or the teacher can't identify bad solutions. I know that even in college most of the CS majors (but not all) were notorious for tweaking loop boundaries until the code "worked." That is hardly a "problem solving" attitude.
WARNING Your browser "(MSIE-Mozilla-compatible-6.0)" is incapable of handling industry standard HTML. We cannot guarantee that your Microsoft browser will protect your confidential information or correctly render our pages; we recommend you download a free, modern browser such as mozilla or netscape. If you do not wish to see this advisory notice in the future, please bookmark and use this url
(Argh. That looks a lot better with the font/color tags...)
The best thing is that we can do that with all Apache web servers today. In fact, some sites are already refusing to serve MSIE clients.
This is a game Microsoft can't afford to play. Even if only 10% of all Apache sites decide to go black on MS browsers, the harm to MSIE's reputation would be immeasurable... and as more people learn about the bogus DR-DOS "error" messages Microsoft will get damn little public sympathy.
Next you'll be claiming that the FBI deliberately sat on the NTSB's early conclusions that the TWA 800 flight was destroyed by mechanical problems, not terrorists. Besides, we needed to tighten security at airports anyway and my presentation of my passport (and references to the internal passports required for travel within the old Soviet Union) instead of my driver's license is sheer hyperbole.
Or that the FBI turned Waco from a major ATF screwup into a national disgrace.
Or that J Edgar Hoover abused his position to collect blackmail material for political purposes while ignoring organized crime.
I'm sure most of the field agents are dedicated, hard working individuals. But I'm getting damn tired of the way that the senior levels of the FBI seem to think that the ends justify the means.
Hopefully the judge will hear the arguments and toss the lawyers into jail for a week for contempt and refer the matter to the federal bar for disbarment hearings. The government lawyers, since it's precisely this type of abuse of power that the First Amendment (press and speech) was intended to prevent.
It really happens. Besides doing my checkbook in hex (and not always catching it later, since I was so used to seeing the digits 'A'-'F'), I kept overcounting in Korean during my exercise classes. I was focused elsewhere and knew I was supposed to count to "10", so I kept "accidently" repeating the middle numbers.
But doing your math in hex is nothing. After playing 'go' intensely for a while, I found myself
driving down the street and thinking about how you could change the landscape by putting a tree there (and remove some buildings), a short building over there (and remove a cluster of highrises), etc. Talk about baffled looks when you mention that to others...
I've seen this argument several times, and it always falls flat on a simple fact. What the authors have in mind is something akin to lawyers, doctors, CPAs, etc., but the industry won't support it. The problem is that holding people to a high standard also requires that they have the final word on their own actions. There's some room for reasonable compromise, of course, but everyone with any real industry experience knows that management is notorious for ordering programmers to ignore what the latter consider critical issues.
:-)
That said, I'm in the ACM and I do follow a code of ethics. The results can only be described as "be careful what you wish for" -- part of my code is that I'll only accept assignments which I feel can be reliably executed by the client... and I've been forced to decertify the entire Microsoft line of operating systems and applications. In some cases I've left existing jobs rather than compromise reliability by porting applications from Unix to NT. No doubt the NYT will now do a followup article on "Prima Donna" programmers.
It's hard to respond to this argument since its wrong on so many levels. Where to begin?...
Hitler is an obvious example of diversity harming people, but what about Martin Luther? Without Martin Luther we would have not had millions of deaths in wars between Protestants and Catholics, the Spanish Inquisition, etc. But without Martin Luther our culture would be unimaginably different; nailing the 47 questions (?) to the church door lead to...
Charles Darwin. Without Darwin we would have still had the theory of evolution (Darwin didn't originate the theory, he just gave compelling evidence of its breath and proposed that *all* variation could be explained by it without divine intervention; contemporaries of Darwin were on the same track and Wallace arguably had the idea and evidence first). But without evolution it would have been far harder to understand the implications of DNA (assuming Watson & Crick still did their work) and we would have none of the recent medical advances.
Then there's Einstein with his silly theories explaining the anomolous precession of Mercury. The researchers at Bell Labs who discovered cosmic background radiation or invented the transistor, laser, and Unix. And let's not forget that crackpot Guttenburg and his ideas for printing with reusuable, movable type instead of woodcuts.
If you think "different is dangerous", go find a cave. Without fire -- fire is dangerous. Or atl-atls -- new technology is dangerous.
If someone downs several shots of NyQuil, of course they shouldn't be driving. But my point is that there have been several cases of a teenager with a cold taking an OTC medicine without realizing it contained alcohol and getting a modest 0.01-0.02% BAC, roughly equivalent to a single beer. After they were stopped for whatever reason, the fact that they had consumed *any* alcohol was used to yank their license for a year or more; there was no allowance for the profound difference between illegally acquiring and drinking a beer and attempting to be a good citizen and going to school or work despite a mild cold.
.20 BAC and getting caught sitting quietly in a public park with a single 3.2% beer! But since it's harder for the cops to find you driving in the country instead of in a park, they decided to drive.
The bottom line is that these zero tolerance policies undeniably lead to deaths. Just west of Littleton 6 teens were killed by a train a few years ago; all had *huge* BACs (.20 and above) and were still driving around the somewhat rural areas west of town. This is totally insane from a public policy perspective, but to the kids it made sense since there was no incremental cost to getting caught driving with a
So what happens when someone buys a FOOBAR(tm) product and fines it horrible. The company refuses to honor any warranty (in the customer's view), refuses to refund the cost, etc.
So the customer puts up a web page saying how horrid FOOBAR(tm) products are... and uses a META tag intending search engines to show how FOOBAR(tm) products differ from what the sales droids would have you believe.
The company doesn't want that, of course, and sues for trademark infringement. The customer says that he has a clear First Amendment right to tell other people about the problems he had with that product. After all, he bought it in a store and signed no non-disclosure agreements (and refuses to honor any shrink-wrapped "NDA" since the company refuses to honor the same document's promise of a full refund if the terms are unacceptable.)
The customer would win, right? After all, the intent of trademark law is to prevent another party from diluting the market recognition of a product, not to suppress dissent Except the proposed UCC 2B appears to contain language that *does* allow a company to suppress criticism of its products.
This specfic case doesn't involve consumers, but it also illustrates risks in suppressing META tag content. It's one thing for to ban (for instance) another company from selling "kleenex tissues"; it's another thing entirely to essentially tell them that not only can't they call their product "kleenex", they can't even put it on the same aisle in the store!
It's amazing how some people refuse to hear what's being discussed.
It's not a problem with other students mocking the geeks or goths. It's not a problem with light hazing of underclassmen.
It is a problem with actions which anywhere outside of the hallowed grounds of a public high school would be called assault, even attempted murder. It is a problem which principals and "guidance counselors" who are really tinpot dictators violating fundamental civil liberties.
Finally, it's time to realize that this has moved far beyond the point of a few "goths" being harrassed in school. As others have pointed out, the school system would be hard pressed to find a more effective way of destroying itself as it forces previously indifferent adults to take a long hard look at the alternatives. Charter schools have their own flaws, but they don't have a history of raping the law and demanding everyone salute them "for the sake of the children!"
That's a very adult attitude... but we're talking about children and teenagers who are still forming their own self-image. I don't think it's possible for an *adult* to form an accurate self-image without feedback from others, and it's certainly not possible for teenagers who are experiencing many things for the first time.
In an ideal world the kids would get accurate feedback from their parents and relatives, teachers, and other trusted adults. In reality, many teachers don't know all of their students and parents feel they have "more important" things to do than really learn who their kids are (as opposed to who they think they are, or wish they were, or who they were as teenagers, or...)
In my HS (and many others) calculus was not offered. Since I had attended a couple optional summer sessions (to get out of the oppressive Florida heat) I could have taken independent study calculus my senior year, but I skipped straight to a four-year university.
Some districts use a more rational breakdown of the math sequence... but they still need to find qualified teachers. That's a nontrivial problem in the states; I think some districts assume any student demanding calculus in HS will skip their senior year anyway. I remember one person did that when I was a junior, and I was one of three who did it my senior year. Colorado, iirc, actually picks up in-state college tuition of nominal HS students, and it's common for recent HS grads to enter state schools as sophomores.
In any case, any US student in calculus is definitely on the "academic" track and is either "well rounded" (if also active in sports) or a "geek."
There was a segment on _Today_ this morning mentioning something like 16 bomb scares nationwide in one day in the wake of the Littleton shootings.
They did not say how many are normal, especially at this time of year. 16 might be a few more than normal, or a few less. Or it might be much more than normal and a reason for concern... or maybe not. An event which was quietly handled two weeks ago, rating no more than a 1" column on page 37A, will now appear as the lead story on page 1.
More to the point that Katz and others have brought up, it's reasonable for the administrators to take strong action when a student possesses a pipe bomb, posts a detailed "hit list", or has written plans for placing a bomb in the school.
But what on earth does the students' choice of clothing material have to do with this? So what if a student wants to wear all black? Or combat boots? Or funny makeup?
(I can accept that banning dusters and trenchcoats might serve a public good... but why strip search a student wearing one? Does the principal expect to find a shotgun stuffed in the student's undergarments?!)
Clearly these events are totally different, yet we've had numerous reports from students of authorities seeing no difference between a tube of eyeliner and a pipe bomb. We know this is insane, apparently a few reporters sniffing for stories know this, but why isn't it in the mainstream press? Do the editors somehow think that a bit of mass panic is good for everyone?
I saw one story where Dylan Klebold was described as "one of the best math minds in the school." I don't know about Harris, but anyone taking calculus in HS (where it's offered, of course!) is at least a protogeek.
Not all geeks are saints, of course, but I wonder how much anti-intellectualism was going on at that school and if that contributed to pushing them over the edge.
In many of those cases the young people said nothing wrong... but the authorities have lost all perspective and overreacted in a manner that borders the criminal (imho). The worst thing is the implication that there is no difference between verbalizing a general frustration and overt, specific acts intended to harm another person.
That doesn't change the fact that the administrators can still make life miserable for someone, but the kids shouldn't feel that they did something wrong.
Just a reminder, schools can ban items of clothing if they pose a legitimate safety concern. Trenchcoats can conceal long guns, so the school districts can make a reasonable claim that such bans are based solely on safety.
(You might argue, legitimately, that handguns can still be concealed in acceptable clothing. That's correct, but a sawed off shotgun is much more lethal than most handguns, especially any easily concealed one. Besides, some school districts now require transparent plastic or mesh backpacks for precisely this reason.)
Fighting a ban on trenchcoats will be difficult unless the policy is obviously not uniformly enforced. There's no legitimate basis for banning dark clothes, eye liner, camo, combat boots, or the like.