The School Board in my area changed their policy to specifically say that
"Students are advised that many District technology resources, including but not limited to laptops and desktops, may contain input systems such as web cameras and microphones which can be remotely controlled to turn them on and off. The District will not utilize any such input systems remotely unless consistent with the law."
Well, that's one lawsuit avoided... assuming they mean it. And haven't already been doing it.
On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.'
I'm appalled by the sheer lack of concern of the privacy issue raised by this lawsuit, and the respect for students indicated by this official statement. I'd start a campaign to vote out the current admin if my children were given this kind of treatment.
The arrogance of a typical school's administrative personnel is not to be believed. Really, it's just over the top.
Consider it motivation for you, the tax payer, to pay attention to, or to become part of your local school board. Since most school funding is provided through property taxes, you DO have local control.
-Rick
That is so true. I look at my property tax bill and I see that 56% is going towards "education" (or whatever passes for it around here.) That is really an incredible amount of money, when you consider that it overshadows everything else my county spends money on. Police, hospitals, roads, snow removal, etc. I wouldn't even mind so much, given that I don't have any kids, if it weren't for the fact that the quality of the eduction our nation's children are receiving is declining rapidly, and the only solution that the people who run our schools can come up with is to demand yet more money.
Bloodsucking, empire-building assholes when you get right down to it. And now, apparently, perverts.
So again I state, all your post proves is that you too are a money grabbing douche using this as an excuse to make a quick buck, just like this student and his family.
Irrelevant. There need to be consequences. Money-grubbing or not, it's how the system works and it's the only recourse these people have. And the fact is, they won't get all that much money: there's not that much to go around and what is there, most will go to the lawyers. On both sides.
Not these lights - if the camera is powered up, so is the light. Only way to stop that is to modify it physically. You can't turn it off with software.
Which is why Apple isn't being sued here, I suspect. Somebody at Apple Legal had half a brain.
Indeed. My webcam has such an option. Actually, the thing has two lights: one for power and one to tell you it's alive. Both can be disabled individually, for some reason. Probably the guy that wrote the software thought it was cool.
I would go forth and make a guess that through non-radical means it would take us about 300 - 400 years to bring our population down to sane levels, by enforcing one child per family, or giving strong incentives for couples not to have children.
Perhaps we'll become extinct. Perhaps we won't. In the grand scale of things, either outcome, in light of the Earth's roughly 5 billion year lifespan bears less significance than we'd like to believe
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value -- Arthur C. Clarke
The problem would largely go away if people would stop encouraging the FUD, instead listen to reasoned opinion and do something based upon that. By the time we can legitimately talk about changes to climate it'll already be too late to do much about it.
Not really. You're assuming that a well-informed population will have the slightest input whatsoever into the decision-making that's going on around the world regarding global warming | cooling | climate-change | whatever. All that would happen is that the people will know they're being fucked, rather than swimming in a comfortable sea of ignorance.
Nobody, but that won't stop them from assuming that a miracle technology will suddenly appear and solve all their problems.
Well, the truth is, you can't predict how a given line of research will pan out, but overall, if we keep up the investment and keep trying to understand the Universe as best we can... there's a damn good chance that such a "miracle" (bah! I hate that world when applied to science and engineering) will happen. All sciences advance in relation to each other, and because of that, a thing tends to come into being because it is its time.
Exactly
http://www.agci.org/dB/PDFs/03S2_CMarchetti_CCapacity.pdf
Capacity may be as high as one trillion people, with new practices like super-cities and farming bacteria for food.
Current practices the limit may be as low as ten billion, limited by the amount of farmland and the cost of irrigation and fertilizer. However a bit of genetic engineering can and will brush aside the barrier eventually.
Well, there's always Trantor. Not sure I'd want to live there, though, unless I was rich as hell.
Anyone that has dealt with Oracle knows that they are one of the greediest, and worst companies to deal with. (using Java. Their entire claim against Android is that they rolled their own version of Java without a license.
Oracle is a predatory organization run by a corporate thug. End of statement.
That companies like Oracle are suffered to exist by our socioeconomic system just says that something is very wrong with it at this stage.
Ultimately, we need to make it so being a geek isn't cool any more. Then the idiots will leave us alone.
I couldn't agree more. Probably the simplest solution to that problem is for Slashdot to allow us to upload pictures of ourselves to be shown next to each post.
Host countries do have at least some responsibility for the activity of those it hosts.
Yes, and if those activities are illegal under the laws of said host country, and yet enforcement of those laws is, shall we say, selective, there is legitimate cause for complaint.
Slashdot Mirror
Still designed. It's just god didn't get a degree in engineering. Explains a lot, actually.
Reminds me of a comic I saw once: had God taking the Earth out of the oven, saying "Hm. Something tells me this thing is only half-baked."
The School Board in my area changed their policy to specifically say that "Students are advised that many District technology resources, including but not limited to laptops and desktops, may contain input systems such as web cameras and microphones which can be remotely controlled to turn them on and off. The District will not utilize any such input systems remotely unless consistent with the law."
Well, that's one lawsuit avoided ... assuming they mean it. And haven't already been doing it.
From the blurb:
"Lower Merion agreed to pay Blake Robbins $175,000 and cover $425,000 in court costs."
So... an egregious breach of trust has occurred. Who gets paid?
"Court costs". Ha. Lawyer costs.
On Wednesday, Lower Merion spokesman Doug Young called Levin's lawsuit 'solely motivated by monetary interests and a complete waste of the taxpayer's dollars.'
I'm appalled by the sheer lack of concern of the privacy issue raised by this lawsuit, and the respect for students indicated by this official statement. I'd start a campaign to vote out the current admin if my children were given this kind of treatment.
The arrogance of a typical school's administrative personnel is not to be believed. Really, it's just over the top.
Monetary reimbursement requires a lower guilt threshold than putting someone into jail for a year.
Just ask O.J. The proverbial "preponderance of evidence" in a civil trial. Sounds like there's plenty of evidence to go around here, though.
Consider it motivation for you, the tax payer, to pay attention to, or to become part of your local school board. Since most school funding is provided through property taxes, you DO have local control.
-Rick
That is so true. I look at my property tax bill and I see that 56% is going towards "education" (or whatever passes for it around here.) That is really an incredible amount of money, when you consider that it overshadows everything else my county spends money on. Police, hospitals, roads, snow removal, etc. I wouldn't even mind so much, given that I don't have any kids, if it weren't for the fact that the quality of the eduction our nation's children are receiving is declining rapidly, and the only solution that the people who run our schools can come up with is to demand yet more money.
Bloodsucking, empire-building assholes when you get right down to it. And now, apparently, perverts.
So again I state, all your post proves is that you too are a money grabbing douche using this as an excuse to make a quick buck, just like this student and his family.
Irrelevant. There need to be consequences. Money-grubbing or not, it's how the system works and it's the only recourse these people have. And the fact is, they won't get all that much money: there's not that much to go around and what is there, most will go to the lawyers. On both sides.
Not these lights - if the camera is powered up, so is the light. Only way to stop that is to modify it physically. You can't turn it off with software.
Which is why Apple isn't being sued here, I suspect. Somebody at Apple Legal had half a brain.
Many webcams allow you to disable the light.
Indeed. My webcam has such an option. Actually, the thing has two lights: one for power and one to tell you it's alive. Both can be disabled individually, for some reason. Probably the guy that wrote the software thought it was cool.
which sucks cause my wife notices the light being on no matter how many layers of tape I put over it ... no homemade porn for me :(
Don't use Scotch tape next time. Try electrical tape.
You guys need some serious education, which surprises me for a site thats supposed to be frequented by semi-intelligent people.
It shouldn't, really. How many attorneys would you turn loose with RegEdit?
There's a name for this sort of security - "Wish it was two factor" security.
And now a judge is ruling that it's enough, along with a "device fingerprint" that can be trivially faked? That is complete bullshit.
Either nobody asked the experts or the judge didn't care. I hope he uses online banking and finds himself with a negative balance some day.
I would go forth and make a guess that through non-radical means it would take us about 300 - 400 years to bring our population down to sane levels, by enforcing one child per family, or giving strong incentives for couples not to have children.
Well, there's always the Ethical Contraceptive.
Perhaps we'll become extinct. Perhaps we won't. In the grand scale of things, either outcome, in light of the Earth's roughly 5 billion year lifespan bears less significance than we'd like to believe
It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value -- Arthur C. Clarke
The problem would largely go away if people would stop encouraging the FUD, instead listen to reasoned opinion and do something based upon that. By the time we can legitimately talk about changes to climate it'll already be too late to do much about it.
Not really. You're assuming that a well-informed population will have the slightest input whatsoever into the decision-making that's going on around the world regarding global warming | cooling | climate-change | whatever. All that would happen is that the people will know they're being fucked, rather than swimming in a comfortable sea of ignorance.
Nobody, but that won't stop them from assuming that a miracle technology will suddenly appear and solve all their problems.
Well, the truth is, you can't predict how a given line of research will pan out, but overall, if we keep up the investment and keep trying to understand the Universe as best we can ... there's a damn good chance that such a "miracle" (bah! I hate that world when applied to science and engineering) will happen. All sciences advance in relation to each other, and because of that, a thing tends to come into being because it is its time.
That's an empty argument. The earth wasn't supposed to do anything. Spin, perhaps, but even that's debatable.
Yes, and let's face it ... the thing wasn't particularly intelligently designed anyway. It wobbles.
Exactly http://www.agci.org/dB/PDFs/03S2_CMarchetti_CCapacity.pdf Capacity may be as high as one trillion people, with new practices like super-cities and farming bacteria for food. Current practices the limit may be as low as ten billion, limited by the amount of farmland and the cost of irrigation and fertilizer. However a bit of genetic engineering can and will brush aside the barrier eventually.
Well, there's always Trantor. Not sure I'd want to live there, though, unless I was rich as hell.
The problem is entirely economic. Most problems are, at their root.
Most wars are, for that matter.
Anyone that has dealt with Oracle knows that they are one of the greediest, and worst companies to deal with. (using Java. Their entire claim against Android is that they rolled their own version of Java without a license.
Oracle is a predatory organization run by a corporate thug. End of statement.
That companies like Oracle are suffered to exist by our socioeconomic system just says that something is very wrong with it at this stage.
Ultimately, we need to make it so being a geek isn't cool any more. Then the idiots will leave us alone.
I couldn't agree more. Probably the simplest solution to that problem is for Slashdot to allow us to upload pictures of ourselves to be shown next to each post.
A few things about trolls confuse me. How do they use keyboards given the size of their fingers?
Touch keypad and a stylus. Next question.
Nah. They just use T-Mobile's "Genius Button".
Why won't Florian Mueller deny that he raped and murdered a young girl in 1980?
I'm just asking.
That's weird. I heard a rumor that Glen Beck did the same thing...
That's nothing. I want to know why these two won't deny that they raped and murdered each other. Now that would be newsworthy.
Having debated competitively, I detect the belief that aggressively responding to every argument is equivalent to winning.
The guy sounds more like a Scientologist than a professional ... anything.
Host countries do have at least some responsibility for the activity of those it hosts.
Yes, and if those activities are illegal under the laws of said host country, and yet enforcement of those laws is, shall we say, selective, there is legitimate cause for complaint.