I am amazed that Slashdot continues to take the bait on this stuff. Who has SCO sued? IBM, over a specific contract dispute. Since the exact contracts are not available for public inspection we can not know what whether SCO actually has a leg to stand on.
Sure SCO has made all kinds of wild claims in public and there has been even more uninformed speculation.
But they have not actually done anything else.
They have not presented their "invoices" for Linux licenses.
They have not made any specific copyright claims of anybody.
They have not demanded that any of the kernel archives be taken down.
They have not done anything but generate a lot of smoke.
Untill SCO actually puts up, there is no news here. If they actually sued somebody. If they actually made some specific copyright claims. If they actually did anything besides make noise, then that would be a newsworthy item.
I think something very vital is being missed here. Your name, address, phone numberm and SSN is not your identity. This is all public information. The problem is that we treat this information as if it was our identity.
Are people really suggesting that this information be "secret"? The SSN is not meant to be secreat, can not really be secret, and every SSN card says explicitly that it is not meant to be secret.
Surely we are not suggesting that one's name, address, and telephone number be secret.
The problem is that this non-secret, non-unique information is used to identify people for many significant transactions. I.E. Driver's license, Mortgages, Credit Cards, etc...
The other problem is many people are opposed to instituting any kind of authoritative nation wide identification system.
Put aside your libertarian angst for a second and imagine if we did have a national DNA registry that positively and uniquely identified everyone. Sure we have all seen Gattaca and imagine ways of forging DNA derived identification, but it would be much harder.
Much harder than the current system where all the tokens we use to identify ourselves are from non-secret, non-uniquely identifying information sources.
First, these guys are not with it if they do not have a pretty good idea of what software is installed already. In the current enviroment, you better have some kind of combination of process and technology that allows you to at least know, if not also control the software installed on the network.
This stuff can happen to any company at any time. If Microsoft asked my company for a license audit we could turn the results over immeditely, because we constantly track software licenses owned, used, and installed. This was not easy or cheap, but you have to do it.
Second, I think we can all see that the key to the educational software license is that the schools pay a fixed fee per computer, regardless of whether the computer uses Windows or not. Sound famaliar?
Look, this is nothing special. Everywhere you go, if you are young, then you are going to be The Kid. When I was 18 I was working shipping and receiving and I was treated that way. But also remember that it is not just your age, but how you dress and act.
I do some independent consulting now and then and I can really see the difference between showing up for a job in jeans and a t-shirt and showing up wearing slacks, shirt, tie, and jacket.
Also, how you act is pretty important. If you act like a kid then people treat you like one.
Actually, I only wanted to make one comment. Which was about the outrage many people express when they learn that many very large corporations do not pay income taxes. I just wanted to correct the misconception that money was being made without (God Forbid!) Uncle Sam getting his cut.
You are correct about the idiosyncratic way in which the legal fictions which surround a corporation shield the actual owners from debt. However, you could really just imagine that a corporation is a mechanism which allows an individual to issue unsercured debt.
Every time a corporation pays taxes on income, a stockholder is taxed twice. Corporations don't make money. The people who own a corporation, i.e. stockholders, make money. Stockholders pay income taxes on corporate dividends and capital gains on appreciated equity. So, if a company has to pay taxes on income and then the shareholders pay taxes on the divendends realized from that income, it just means that the same income stream is taxed twice.
So, please stop. Corporations are not people, the shareholders are and we already pay lots of taxes.
This is pretty amazing to see. On the one hand Jon provides a pretty good modern description of luddite'ism. The fear of new technology and the desire to freeze technical progress or even regress.
But while he denounces one particular branch of luddites. The coporate and goverment interests that seek to restrain the growth, power, and inevitable social changes that computers and the Internet bring. He does not want condem the idea itself. Since he is himself a luddite.
Oh? You say. Jon Katz a luddite, no way! Well listen up buddy. Ask Jon about genetic engineering. Anytime someone speaks, in reference to a particular technology, and says "I think advancements in this field are outpacing man's [moral|ethical] abilities". What are they saying? Other than we are afraid of this New Thing.
Still goes to the web page with all the bible quotes.
So what does taken away mean? What authority does the WIPO have in these matters and who gave it to them? Did the US sign a treaty granting the WIPO powers of mandatory arbitration to US companies? This guy is registered in the US with NSI.
The problem with the US Patent office is not the underlying principle, I.E. Encourage the development and dissemination of new technology by providing a mechanism for the developer to profit from it. The problem is implementation. The existing requirements for patents are just fine, if only the patent office would enforce them. I.E.
1. Your invention must be novel/original:
- That is to say that the patent must ADD to the body of knowledge. - You can not patent parts of nature or other things that already exist. - The idea must not be obvious to a skilled practitionar in the field.
2. Reduction to practice:
- A practical demonstration of the patent must be at least described.
I think that if the patent office simply enforced these two principles we would be in reasonably good shape. Unfortunately, in the absence of the necessary expertise required to be able to appraise proposed high-tech patents, the USPTO seems to have taken a "grant them all and let the courts figure it out" attitude.
Historically speaking the patent office has always had problems. If the bio-tech patents of today bother you then imagine what it was like for South American farmers when they discovered in the late 1800's that the wheat they grew had been patented in the US and that they would have to pay license fee's to import it.
At some point it becomes impossible to think about physics questions without being struck by the philosophical implications. However in this particular case the question of whether time is "real" or merely an exercise in human perception has been a batted around for a long time.
Think for a moment about a mechanical computer. One that perhaps even happens to be sentient. This computer works by a complex gear mechanism that is driven by being moved forward on a track.
So as the black box moves forward along the track, the mechanical action drives a complex gear train that allows it to think. Since it thinks, it perceives itself, and it perceives itself to exist in a single dimension. It thinks that "right now" is the present, what it will think when it is a mile down the track as the future, and what it thought when it was a mile back as being in the past. Furthermore, a mechanical interlock prevents it from rolling backwards, or travelling back in time.
An outside observer can tell that "time" is just an illusion of the machine's motion down the track. However, because of the inherent nature of the machine, to it time is an inescapable quality of existence.
We are that machine. The track is the chemical reactions that take place in our brain and allows us to think. These chemical reactions are, thanks to thermodynamics and entropy, non-reversible. They only work as me move forward in time and that defines the nature of our existence.
BTW: This was not my original idea, go read Bertrand Russell
For the glib take on the above read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Every time I see this sort of article posted the same luddite, knee-jerk replies are written:
It is wrong to predestine your kids.
This will create a Brave New World style dystopia.
Well, I'm sorry but I just don't understand how people extrapolate to these problems from the advances being suggested.
For the people afraid of programming their children's future from birth, I have two things to say. 1) At least in the United States I seriously doubt that prenatal genetic therapy will ever be mandatory. 2) What makes you think it is such a bad thing? Have you ever worked with a person suffering from Down's syndrome? Moreover what about people who are obese or nearsighted, if you knew your child was going to suffer from some medical disorder later in life would you really condemn them to it rather than interfere with their "natural" fate?
For the people convinced that mass scale genetic engineering would bring on a horrible dystopia, I have several things to say. 1) The moderately free societies of the United States and western Europe do not support the sort of totalitarian regimes necessary to impose massive, coerced genetic engineering on the populace. 2) Where exactly do you come off making the assumption that efforts at genetic engineering would have fatal consequences? I.E. If we engineer people for genius we will create a society of insane people. People studying this stuff are very well aware of that specific genes can have undesirable interdependencies. Part of the whole effort of the Human Genome project is not only the complete sequencing of the human genome, but also understanding, fully, what each gene does. This is why even though the sequencing task will be completed in a few years; it is not expected that we will have full understanding of the genetic code for something like 50 years.
There seems to be some class of people who are always afraid of new technology. Who are convinced that any new technology will be a disaster for society and themselves. For them I suggest that instead of thinking of all the bad consequences of a possible technology they imagine all the good possibilities.
I myself think that the elimination of all congenital defects is worth the price of admission. Furthermore, as one who has suffered through life with a less than desirable body image, I certainly would not have objected if my parents had fixed my nearsightedness and obesity while I was still in the womb.
1. Unique serial numbers have been with us for a long time. (The MAC address of your Ethernet card is unique to your computer. Moreover, the tools are already in place to track your computer using this identifier, I.E. arp.)
2. Unique ID's have many useful functions besides violating, your already non-existent, privacy. (Just to start with, tracking is not necessarily bad. Anybody who has had a laptop stolen from them probably knows what I am talking about.)
3. The real threat is not that we can be tracked, it is that it may be done without our consent and in secrecy. (There are more than enough trojan java and activeX applets that will track every web site you visit AND record your passwords already out there.)
Don't fight the technology, demand a better implementation. Anytime something like this comes up, just make sure the implementation is open and well documented.
You pose the most direct question, which if I may simplify, seems to be:
Well if schools are dangerous, then isn't it reasonable to take steps to make it safer?
My answer to that question, is with more questions:
Is school really dangerous?
Are the steps being taken really reducing school violence?
What are we giving up in exchange for this reduced risk and is it worth it?
So first, a pithy quote:
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for safety, deserve neither."
If I was a student at a school that really was dangerous. That is to say that there was active violence and mayhem on school grounds. I would certainly appreciate it if the administration started taking steps to reduce said violence. However, I would also immediately start seeking out other options for my education. It seems doubtful to me that useful education could take place in an environment where one is in constant fear, or in one with Gestapo like repression of the student population.
However, my real point, was an attempt to attack the blanket denial of common freedoms to juveniles in this country. For example, most people observe that in the criminal justice system kids seem to get better treatment than adults do. But, in reality, kids are denied many rights that adults take for granted. Such as the right to a jury trial. Moreover there is a whole class of behavior that if comited as a child can land you in the clink, i.e. truancy, sexual intercourse, giving your parents a hard time, which adults are completely free off.
Basically I was just referring to this strong environmental dissonance I felt while in school. That is, we live in a country that celebrates individual freedom. But, we are taught about this in an institution that observes the opposite values.
To this day the part that most galls me about elementary, junior, and high-schools in this country is that the institutions where we try to teach kids about freedom and responsibility is run like a miniature fascist state or prison. On the cusp of adulthood we treat teenager like third class citizens. Let's think of all the rights kids *Do Not* have in school which adults in this country take for granted.
1. Free Speech: Beyond limiting simple vulgar language in school, most schools limit political and religious expression. Not to mention criticism of the school administration and it's policy's. While this usually takes the form of censorship of the school newspaper, schools have tried to punish kids for self-published web sites that are independent of the school.
2. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Schools reserve the right to search not only a student's locker, but also their bags, and even their person. Full body cavity searches are even administered with some frequency.
3. Freedom of association. In the wake of Columbine many kids have been harassed for being part of their local school's equivalent of the Trench Coat Mafia. But even before this latest frenzy it has been common place for school administrations to directly harass kids who do not "fit in" or hang out with the wrong crowd.
Beyond these basic issues I think it is worth noting that school administrations routinely tolerate peer abuse that would be legally actionable in any other context, except prisons. Beyond, simple issues like verbal and sexual harassment, school routinely tolerate physical intimidation and assault.
In the current frenzy schools are simply becoming the full fascist entities they have always wanted to be. I can't wait till we have the announcement that some school will have all students wearing orange jumpsuits (to make it more difficult to conceal weapons, and discourage gangs), ID tags (to keep out non-students, and make tracking students easier), card lock doors, metal detectors, transparent book bags, random mandatory drug testing, and armed guards cruising the hallways. (Did I miss anything?)
Does this sound like a school to anyone?
Forget about encryption, think Internet telephony
on
CALEA update
·
· Score: 2
The only thing you need to bypass Government wiretaps is Internet telephony. While the FBI may be pushing for eavesdropping on so called packet switched media. The reality is that this is beyond mere technical difficulty, and well in to the realm of technical impossibility. Think about this for a second.
To tap a phone line law enforcement only has to lean on one, possible a few parties. Namely your telephone company. Since telephone companies are cowardly, heavily regulated monopolies this has not proved very difficult. After all, they only balked at the *cost* of CALEA.
However think about what it would take just to tap an IP stream. First, because of the very nature of packet switching, you need taps everywhere. Since there is no analog for the central office on the Internet. So just to start with you need to lean on a lot more parties, every ISP basically. While many, most, ISP's are cowardly corporations, not all are. There are lots of community and non-for-profit providers who do have some spine. Not to mention that clandestine "gray"-nets would immediately spring up, should such regulations be imposed (look at what's happening in China if you do not believe me). So, even if extremely intrusive, almost certainly unconstitutional laws where passed, wily individuals would still get around them.
Furthermore we have not even addressed the problem of making something meaningful out of a raw IP stream. For that the eavesdropper would need, not only all the packets sent and received, but would also need to know what program you are using. A raw stream of UDP packets does not provide very much info. and programs could easily be written to obfuscate their purpose.
Let's face it packet switched communications is taking over from circuit switched. Packet switched is technically extremely difficult to tap without having monolithic control of the entire network. Given the current political climate I find it impossible to believe that after decades of decentralized authority the Internet would revert to the sort of central control authority required to make the DOJ's dreams possible.
So, basically, fight CALEA like hell, but promote Internet telephony even more.
The old ways seem to be the best ways...
on
Feature:Geek Jobs
·
· Score: 1
I have not been in this business a long time, but I have traversed the path from lowly minimum wage phone tech support to running my own consulting business, and have applied for my share of jobs. So far my experience has led me to ignore intermediaries. I have submitted my resume as ASCII text and.DOC files to my share of temp agencies and head hunters, and frankly none of them worked as well as faxing or even snail-mailing my resume directly to employers who advertise in the classifieds. At this point in my career I am also very dependent on contacts. So for example when I want a job with a company that usually only hires through temp agencies I find somebody who works for that company. This person may be a friend of a friend, but I will send them my resume and ask that they forward it to anybody in the company who they think is appropriate. I may end up working through a temp agency, but this short circuits having to deal with the temp agency first.
Slashdot Mirror
I am amazed that Slashdot continues to take the bait on this stuff. Who has SCO sued? IBM, over a specific contract dispute. Since the exact contracts are not available for public inspection we can not know what whether SCO actually has a leg to stand on.
Sure SCO has made all kinds of wild claims in public and there has been even more uninformed speculation.
But they have not actually done anything else.
They have not presented their "invoices" for Linux licenses.
They have not made any specific copyright claims of anybody.
They have not demanded that any of the kernel archives be taken down.
They have not done anything but generate a lot of smoke.
Untill SCO actually puts up, there is no news here. If they actually sued somebody. If they actually made some specific copyright claims. If they actually did anything besides make noise, then that would be a newsworthy item.
I think something very vital is being missed here. Your name, address, phone numberm and SSN is not your identity. This is all public information. The problem is that we treat this information as if it was our identity.
Are people really suggesting that this information be "secret"? The SSN is not meant to be secreat, can not really be secret, and every SSN card says explicitly that it is not meant to be secret.
Surely we are not suggesting that one's name, address, and telephone number be secret.
The problem is that this non-secret, non-unique information is used to identify people for many significant transactions. I.E. Driver's license, Mortgages, Credit Cards, etc...
The other problem is many people are opposed to instituting any kind of authoritative nation wide identification system.
Put aside your libertarian angst for a second and imagine if we did have a national DNA registry that positively and uniquely identified everyone. Sure we have all seen Gattaca and imagine ways of forging DNA derived identification, but it would be much harder.
Much harder than the current system where all the tokens we use to identify ourselves are from non-secret, non-uniquely identifying information sources.
I don't understand how NEC can charge so much for their monitors. The Samsung 21" LCD display is cheaper (More than $1000 cheaper!) and better.
First, these guys are not with it if they do not have a pretty good idea of what software is installed already. In the current enviroment, you better have some kind of combination of process and technology that allows you to at least know, if not also control the software installed on the network.
This stuff can happen to any company at any time. If Microsoft asked my company for a license audit we could turn the results over immeditely, because we constantly track software licenses owned, used, and installed. This was not easy or cheap, but you have to do it.
Second, I think we can all see that the key to the educational software license is that the schools pay a fixed fee per computer, regardless of whether the computer uses Windows or not. Sound famaliar?
Look, this is nothing special. Everywhere you go, if you are young, then you are going to be The Kid. When I was 18 I was working shipping and receiving and I was treated that way. But also remember that it is not just your age, but how you dress and act.
I do some independent consulting now and then and I can really see the difference between showing up for a job in jeans and a t-shirt and showing up wearing slacks, shirt, tie, and jacket.
Also, how you act is pretty important. If you act like a kid then people treat you like one.
Actually, I only wanted to make one comment. Which was about the outrage many people express when they learn that many very large corporations do not pay income taxes. I just wanted to correct the misconception that money was being made without (God Forbid!) Uncle Sam getting his cut.
You are correct about the idiosyncratic way in which the legal fictions which surround a corporation shield the actual owners from debt. However, you could really just imagine that a corporation is a mechanism which allows an individual to issue unsercured debt.
Stop and think a moment:
Every time a corporation pays taxes on income, a stockholder is taxed twice. Corporations don't make money. The people who own a corporation, i.e. stockholders, make money. Stockholders pay income taxes on corporate dividends and capital gains on appreciated equity. So, if a company has to pay taxes on income and then the shareholders pay taxes on the divendends realized from that income, it just means that the same income stream is taxed twice.
So, please stop. Corporations are not people, the shareholders are and we already pay lots of taxes.
This is pretty amazing to see. On the one hand Jon provides a pretty good modern description of luddite'ism. The fear of new technology and the desire to freeze technical progress or even regress.
But while he denounces one particular branch of luddites. The coporate and goverment interests that seek to restrain the growth, power, and inevitable social changes that computers and the Internet bring. He does not want condem the idea itself. Since he is himself a luddite.
Oh? You say. Jon Katz a luddite, no way! Well listen up buddy. Ask Jon about genetic engineering. Anytime someone speaks, in reference to a particular technology, and says "I think advancements in this field are outpacing man's [moral|ethical] abilities". What are they saying? Other than we are afraid of this New Thing.
Down with all luddites! Embrace change!
I do not know what everybody is talking about:
http://www.corinthians.com/
Still goes to the web page with all the bible quotes.
So what does taken away mean? What authority does the WIPO have in these matters and who gave it to them? Did the US sign a treaty granting the WIPO powers of mandatory arbitration to US companies? This guy is registered in the US with NSI.
Hey, if you follow the link through and read the description you will notice that one of the "features" is that it is an SDMI device.
Don't buy SDMI devices unless you want to pay the same amount of money for your music, but have less flexibility in how you listen to it.
The problem with the US Patent office is not the underlying principle, I.E. Encourage the development and dissemination of new technology by providing a mechanism for the developer to profit from it. The problem is implementation. The existing requirements for patents are just fine, if only the patent office would enforce them. I.E.
1. Your invention must be novel/original:
- That is to say that the patent must ADD to the body of knowledge.
- You can not patent parts of nature or other things that already exist.
- The idea must not be obvious to a skilled practitionar in the field.
2. Reduction to practice:
- A practical demonstration of the patent must be at least described.
I think that if the patent office simply enforced these two principles we would be in reasonably good shape. Unfortunately, in the absence of the necessary expertise required to be able to appraise proposed high-tech patents, the USPTO seems to have taken a "grant them all and let the courts figure it out" attitude.
Historically speaking the patent office has always had problems. If the bio-tech patents of today bother you then imagine what it was like for South American farmers when they discovered in the late 1800's that the wheat they grew had been patented in the US and that they would have to pay license fee's to import it.
At some point it becomes impossible to think about physics questions without being struck by the philosophical implications. However in this particular case the question of whether time is "real" or merely an exercise in human perception has been a batted around for a long time.
Think for a moment about a mechanical computer. One that perhaps even happens to be sentient. This computer works by a complex gear mechanism that is driven by being moved forward on a track.
So as the black box moves forward along the track, the mechanical action drives a complex gear train that allows it to think. Since it thinks, it perceives itself, and it perceives itself to exist in a single dimension. It thinks that "right now" is the present, what it will think when it is a mile down the track as the future, and what it thought when it was a mile back as being in the past. Furthermore, a mechanical interlock prevents it from rolling backwards, or travelling back in time.
An outside observer can tell that "time" is just an illusion of the machine's motion down the track. However, because of the inherent nature of the machine, to it time is an inescapable quality of existence.
We are that machine. The track is the chemical reactions that take place in our brain and allows us to think. These chemical reactions are, thanks to thermodynamics and entropy, non-reversible. They only work as me move forward in time and that defines the nature of our existence.
BTW: This was not my original idea, go read Bertrand Russell
For the glib take on the above read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Every time I see this sort of article posted the same luddite, knee-jerk replies are written:
It is wrong to predestine your kids.
This will create a Brave New World style dystopia.
Well, I'm sorry but I just don't understand how people extrapolate to these problems from the advances being suggested.
For the people afraid of programming their children's future from birth, I have two things to say. 1) At least in the United States I seriously doubt that prenatal genetic therapy will ever be mandatory. 2) What makes you think it is such a bad thing? Have you ever worked with a person suffering from Down's syndrome? Moreover what about people who are obese or nearsighted, if you knew your child was going to suffer from some medical disorder later in life would you really condemn them to it rather than interfere with their "natural" fate?
For the people convinced that mass scale genetic engineering would bring on a horrible dystopia, I have several things to say. 1) The moderately free societies of the United States and western Europe do not support the sort of totalitarian regimes necessary to impose massive, coerced genetic engineering on the populace. 2) Where exactly do you come off making the assumption that efforts at genetic engineering would have fatal consequences? I.E. If we engineer people for genius we will create a society of insane people. People studying this stuff are very well aware of that specific genes can have undesirable interdependencies. Part of the whole effort of the Human Genome project is not only the complete sequencing of the human genome, but also understanding, fully, what each gene does. This is why even though the sequencing task will be completed in a few years; it is not expected that we will have full understanding of the genetic code for something like 50 years.
There seems to be some class of people who are always afraid of new technology. Who are convinced that any new technology will be a disaster for society and themselves. For them I suggest that instead of thinking of all the bad consequences of a possible technology they imagine all the good possibilities.
I myself think that the elimination of all congenital defects is worth the price of admission. Furthermore, as one who has suffered through life with a less than desirable body image, I certainly would not have objected if my parents had fixed my nearsightedness and obesity while I was still in the womb.
So let's get a few things straight:
1. Unique serial numbers have been with us for a long time. (The MAC address of your Ethernet card is unique to your computer. Moreover, the tools are already in place to track your computer using this identifier, I.E. arp.)
2. Unique ID's have many useful functions besides violating, your already non-existent, privacy. (Just to start with, tracking is not necessarily bad. Anybody who has had a laptop stolen from them probably knows what I am talking about.)
3. The real threat is not that we can be tracked, it is that it may be done without our consent and in secrecy. (There are more than enough trojan java and activeX applets that will track every web site you visit AND record your passwords already out there.)
Don't fight the technology, demand a better implementation. Anytime something like this comes up, just make sure the implementation is open and well documented.
You pose the most direct question, which if I may simplify, seems to be:
Well if schools are dangerous, then isn't it reasonable to take steps to make it safer?
My answer to that question, is with more questions:
Is school really dangerous?
Are the steps being taken really reducing school violence?
What are we giving up in exchange for this reduced risk and is it worth it?
So first, a pithy quote:
"Those who would sacrifice freedom for safety, deserve neither."
If I was a student at a school that really was dangerous. That is to say that there was active violence and mayhem on school grounds. I would certainly appreciate it if the administration started taking steps to reduce said violence. However, I would also immediately start seeking out other options for my education. It seems doubtful to me that useful education could take place in an environment where one is in constant fear, or in one with Gestapo like repression of the student population.
However, my real point, was an attempt to attack the blanket denial of common freedoms to juveniles in this country. For example, most people observe that in the criminal justice system kids seem to get better treatment than adults do. But, in reality, kids are denied many rights that adults take for granted. Such as the right to a jury trial. Moreover there is a whole class of behavior that if comited as a child can land you in the clink, i.e. truancy, sexual intercourse, giving your parents a hard time, which adults are completely free off.
Basically I was just referring to this strong environmental dissonance I felt while in school. That is, we live in a country that celebrates individual freedom. But, we are taught about this in an institution that observes the opposite values.
To this day the part that most galls me about elementary, junior, and high-schools in this country is that the institutions where we try to teach kids about freedom and responsibility is run like a miniature fascist state or prison. On the cusp of adulthood we treat teenager like third class citizens. Let's think of all the rights kids *Do Not* have in school which adults in this country take for granted.
1. Free Speech: Beyond limiting simple vulgar language in school, most schools limit political and religious expression. Not to mention criticism of the school administration and it's policy's. While this usually takes the form of censorship of the school newspaper, schools have tried to punish kids for self-published web sites that are independent of the school.
2. Freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. Schools reserve the right to search not only a student's locker, but also their bags, and even their person. Full body cavity searches are even administered with some frequency.
3. Freedom of association. In the wake of Columbine many kids have been harassed for being part of their local school's equivalent of the Trench Coat Mafia. But even before this latest frenzy it has been common place for school administrations to directly harass kids who do not "fit in" or hang out with the wrong crowd.
Beyond these basic issues I think it is worth noting that school administrations routinely tolerate peer abuse that would be legally actionable in any other context, except prisons. Beyond, simple issues like verbal and sexual harassment, school routinely tolerate physical intimidation and assault.
In the current frenzy schools are simply becoming the full fascist entities they have always wanted to be. I can't wait till we have the announcement that some school will have all students wearing orange jumpsuits (to make it more difficult to conceal weapons, and discourage gangs), ID tags (to keep out non-students, and make tracking students easier), card lock doors, metal detectors, transparent book bags, random mandatory drug testing, and armed guards cruising the hallways. (Did I miss anything?)
Does this sound like a school to anyone?
The only thing you need to bypass Government wiretaps is Internet telephony. While the FBI may be pushing for eavesdropping on so called packet switched media. The reality is that this is beyond mere technical difficulty, and well in to the realm of technical impossibility. Think about this for a second.
To tap a phone line law enforcement only has to lean on one, possible a few parties. Namely your telephone company. Since telephone companies are cowardly, heavily regulated monopolies this has not proved very difficult. After all, they only balked at the *cost* of CALEA.
However think about what it would take just to tap an IP stream. First, because of the very nature of packet switching, you need taps everywhere. Since there is no analog for the central office on the Internet. So just to start with you need to lean on a lot more parties, every ISP basically. While many, most, ISP's are cowardly corporations, not all are. There are lots of community and non-for-profit providers who do have some spine. Not to mention that clandestine "gray"-nets would immediately spring up, should such regulations be imposed (look at what's happening in China if you do not believe me). So, even if extremely intrusive, almost certainly unconstitutional laws where passed, wily individuals would still get around them.
Furthermore we have not even addressed the problem of making something meaningful out of a raw IP stream. For that the eavesdropper would need, not only all the packets sent and received, but would also need to know what program you are using. A raw stream of UDP packets does not provide very much info. and programs could easily be written to obfuscate their purpose.
Let's face it packet switched communications is taking over from circuit switched. Packet switched is technically extremely difficult to tap without having monolithic control of the entire network. Given the current political climate I find it impossible to believe that after decades of decentralized authority the Internet would revert to the sort of central control authority required to make the DOJ's dreams possible.
So, basically, fight CALEA like hell, but promote Internet telephony even more.
I have not been in this business a long time, but I have traversed the path from lowly minimum wage phone tech support to running my own consulting business, and have applied for my share of jobs. So far my experience has led me to ignore intermediaries. I have submitted my resume as ASCII text and .DOC files to my share of temp agencies and head hunters, and frankly none of them worked as well as faxing or even snail-mailing my resume directly to employers who advertise in the classifieds. At this point in my career I am also very dependent on contacts. So for example when I want a job with a company that usually only hires through temp agencies I find somebody who works for that company. This person may be a friend of a friend, but I will send them my resume and ask that they forward it to anybody in the company who they think is appropriate. I may end up working through a temp agency, but this short circuits having to deal with the temp agency first.