Since the article only has about 100 words beyond the description, I think it is a reasonable assumption that this story kept getting positive votes on the Firehose entirely based on the annoying nature of summary.
Let's hope this doesn't catch on. (I know I know... )
You just made a brilliant argument for getting rid of software patents all together.
After all this time, there is no legitimate process for determining the true origination of an idea or whether an idea is actually original. This process is a band-aid for a broken bone.
If you truly want your idea protected, it needs to be kept secret. That is the only real protection an inventor can provide himself with.
The patent system is over encumbered with legislation and politicization (is that even a word?!?) to the point where a true innovator either has to be working under a corporate structure that can support his or her efforts, or that innovator must stop innovating long enough to gain an understanding of the process and navigate through it.
Initially conceived to protect important intellectual property and therefore inspire ingenuity, the patent system has transformed into a system that actually stunts progress and protects very few who actually change our world for the better.
While there is a semantic difference, I'd hate to leave "Peer Review" to academics and "career experts" that have taken the time and effort to have their own credentials reviewed.
There are plenty of people out there who wouldn't pass muster if you reviewed their credentials, but they know more about the inner workings of some things than anybody else in the industry.
How many key industry players are drop outs that made their money on hard work and ingenuity? More than a few I imagine.
Frank Lloyd Wright was primarily a residential architect. His larger scale projects like the Unity Temple were pretty far from revolutionizing skyscraper architecture. In your zeal to discredit my argument, you missed the point entirely.
If I didn't read TFA, as you suggested, I wouldn't know that a professor from Columbia was behind the article.
The Green Acres project in Jersey is one where the government sold bonds in order to fund the public purchase of private land. Private Landowners did not allow their farms to migrate into forestry - the government purchased the land and converted it to either parks, forests, or wildlife/nature preserves. This project has no such goals.
I see a few problems with the premise of this idea.
First off - you don't need a skyscraper and certainly you don't need to occupy an entire building. Nobody is going to use an entire building in a place like New York for farming.
Second - existing farms will not be converted back to forest land. Farms that don't produce crops get subsidized. If it's not a farm, the farmer doesn't make money.
Third - A professor from a school like Columbia is as likely to revolutionize the farming industry as a professor from the University of Montana is to revolutionize skyscraper architecture.
If you want to see the future of farming, take a look at what marijuana growers are doing. They seem to be the only farmers truly interested in maximizing output in small spaces in less than ideal conditions.
I'm all for hating the RIAA, but this article is terrible. Looks like slashdot is getting gamed.
In only a few months the Net has gone from being a place of freedom were anybody, anywhere regardless of race or creed, colour, sexual persuasion, physical ability or disability, or anything else, had a home.
Gone from to ?
were? or where?
Sexual persuasion? WTF does that have to do with this topic?
are subject to hate mail as a consequence of hubcap
hubcaps are causing hate mail?
How does an article this incomprehensible make the front page?
1) Contracts - existing contracts prevent popular acts from doing it. All of the one-hit wonders are under contract for future albums. Those that have sustained success through the 3-6 album contracts end up with other issues. That's the reason why Prince is now "The artist formerly known as Prince" - he doesn't own his own name anymore. 2) Marketing - small acts have a tough time getting their name out there. Even bands that enjoy extreme local popularity can't go national without help. Major networks like clear channel don't push new acts very much, and small stations are generally owned by music industry execs. No radio = no buyers = nobody knows who you are. 3) Knowledge - Guys who make music don't know how to manage the game online. You can do a lot of marketing online but not a lot of people have tried it and none that have have achieved a billboard hit that I know of. If someone around here put a decent plan together, I bet it would be more successful than any existing online indy site.
It will be a shame if the market goes to retailers with strong B&M presences like Starbucks. A record company isn't that hard to reproduce. Take away the major equipment costs with modern tech and it's that much easier. Really, all you need is a series of 5 great bands, a bit of help from the magic LAMP, and marketing. A few viral videos, some well placed reviews, and maybe a spam jam to the top of some charts (iTunes, etc.) and you've got yourself a replacement business model for the music industry and something that has a legitimate shot at toppling the big boys.
Their ideas consist of advertising at the end of TV shows, unmanaged online ad buys, and the same old bag of tricks that got things moving in the mo-town days. They can't even decide how to think about iTunes. The guys that run those companies aren't smart, they've gotten successful based on greed and bullying. They are all worried about the online world, but they have no clue how to morph their business models to take advantage of it. It's a situation ripe for the picking.
In my experience in the music industry (and granted it was a long time ago), musicians would get typically less than 10 percent of sales, usually 6 percent. If it was a group, that 6 percent was split with the group.
The Producers and Labels would invest money in getting the album put together, but it was all contractually recouped if anything came of it. Very rarely do the labels actually lose money on an artist. They at least make enough to cover their investment, and they do a great deal of free/low cost research about how the music will be accepted. A lot of producers own radio stations or other music related businesses that gives them easy access to the target market.
They also charge pretty huge for "studio time", which is almost all profit since the equipment has all long since been paid for and with the number of recording studios in LA the rental rates really should be next to nothing.
Very rarely does an unknown band get to keep their own copyright. The studio will push for changes to the music and changes to the words in order to achieve at least "collaborative" standing in the unlikely event of a dispute.
I've watched as guys got bullied into contracts. It's brutal to the extreme (mentally, not physically). I remember an incident where a mother got involved. She was pretty tough, but all she really got in negotiation was a guaranteed video production. They passed the video project off to a student with a minuscule budget - basically the lead singer on the roof with a brief scene coming out of a studio limo.
Are you guys actually saying the RealPlayer for linux is less crappy than it's window's counterpart? As in - not constantly putting ads in front of you, not constantly trying to sell you something?
Saw this come from "the mysterious future" and I e-mailed the on-duty editor like it says. I guess that doesn't work so well. Sheesh. This one's only two days old.
The STB remote IR interface "nasty kludge" that you talk about costs all of about $5 and 2 minutes to set up, is reliable and has been a staple in home theater setups for over a decade.
Yes, it would be great to have everything in a functional single unit appliance, but when the cost of a functional single unit appliance is thousands or even hundreds of dollars more than multiple appliances with the "nasty kludge" setup it's not worth the cost.
The fact that these cool new one box media center pc's that you are so excited can't be configured by either the distributor, the vendor, or the designated system experts only adds to the fact that it's not worth it.
My original point was that it's simply not worth it financially even if these things did work - I don't care how nifty it is. I'll take my IR setup that's worked for years without failure over these things any day.
I realize that there's a lot more to a media center pc than Tivo, but come on now.
You can pick up a TV for a couple of hundred bucks, or build a Myth system that works for less than half the cost of an equivalent media center pc, without getting so locked into a single vendor for any service.
Having a cable card inside your system is nice, but is it really worth all that extra money? I don't think so.
I'd have to argue the point. Copyleft, from my perspective, is a concept designed to encourage the development of free software.
I actually just recently decided to adopt the GPL, and my decision was pretty much as follows: I can give it away for free, or I can give it away mostly for free and support the development of free software as well.
I realize that others have different viewpoints, and if there were a very good reason, I'd certainly be willing to entertain an alternative licensing scenario. But frankly, the GPL has worked quite well in fostering OSS and the FSF has insightfully reacted to some potential problems with OSS abuse that I would not have considered in writing my own license.
I understand the desire to be "more free", but I'm pretty happy with the restrictions of derivitave works because that ensures the philosophy I used when starting out my project will continue in future iterations even when I'm no longer involved.
Where would the Open Source world be without FSF? The only people concerned with having more freedom than the GPL provides are interested in taking open source work and making it proprietary.
If you really want to go that route, simply buy up all the MS Development environment based libraries that you need - not a big problem for big companies interested in that market space.
Every version of the GPL basically says, "hey, I made this. I'm giving it away for free. You can use it for your own use, or develop more free software with it, but don't be a dick and steal it to make a commercial product." That's pretty fair.
If you are truly in need of a library and you want to purchase a more lenient license, developers may be open to that - unless the body of work has really turned into a community project in which case there's probably no way to get EVERYONE'S permission.
The only real problem I see, and people have gone through it before, is in situations where a project is migrating to GPL v3, and all of the contributors aren't on board. The whole reason for posting drafts this far in advance is so that people can voice their concerns about licensing changes to the FSF.
Really, the major changes are to stop the exploitive behavior of MS and Tivo - of which both company's practices are damaging to the Free Software movement. Why on earth should people be averse to protecting the thriving community we all participate in?
Well - I said "not entirely sure" because I'm not entirely sure. I don't make my living doing anything having to do with small claims court.
And I was thinking of this particular situation. Gateway may have a legal department. Some companies run departments that have a purpose different than the core business under a separate corporation or LLC with the parent company owning that entity. If that is the case with Gateway's staff attorneys, then the answer is no.
Small Claims judges make decisions and aren't bound by precedents set either by themselves or by other courts. A Small Claims judge could easily disallow an attorney from representing a company if that attorney clearly has no responsibilities associated with the case other than representing the business in small claims court. Each judge has his own discretion.
Certainly if you sued a law office in small claims they would be have to represent themselves. But sending a company employed attorney to manage a small claims case when your core business is not a legal practice isn't something that will be accepted by every judge in every situation - hence "not entirely sure."
Regardless, lawyers tend not to have a great deal of experience more than citizens with small claims court. They don't know the judges or the clerks. They have an idea of what the rules are like, but every small claims court has its own rules. They don't know the personalities of the judges, nor what they will tolerate in their courtrooms. It's a system designed to give even footing to regular people and they do a pretty good job at it.
I'm not entirely sure about a staff attorney, but if he is employed by the same company that is being sued you can probably get away with it - however, it's not an altogether shut and dry decision.
1) The staff attorney has no direct bearing on the matter in his employment capacity and can offer little in terms of evidence in the case. 2) The staff attorney will have to travel to the court location 3) The judge might not be so friendly with a lawyer in the courtroom (small claims judges are a different breed)
In any case, Gateway will be hard pressed to produce an employee who knows all the details of this situation AND who is willing and able to travel to El Dorado. The total judgement in the case at the high side would be less than $5,000.00 and they've already put time, money, and energy into the case that turns further investment into a bad business decision. If he wins the appeal and it still gets kicked to small claims, I expect gateway either will not show up, or they will settle with him prior to trial.
This was actually a pretty big win for him, and it means that the case will not drag on for years as the article suggests.
In California Small Claims (which this case was just kicked down to), an employee or executive of the company must be present at the trial - not a lawyer, and not somebody hired specifically for the purpose of defending the small claims suit.
If the defendant loses, there is exactly one possible appeal. At the appeal (to superior court), lawyers can appear, but the case is still treated as a small claims case (i.e. you aren't going to get out of it based on a legal technicality if that technicality violates the basic fairness of the case).
If Gateway doesn't send an employee, the appeal is going to be much harder because they have some pretty serious explaining to do as far as why the appeal should be heard. If they do send an employee, it is still tough because no new evidence can be presented at appeal so they will basically have to say that the judge was wrong and why.
Either way, this guy will have resolution within 120 days at the far side - as the appealin California for small claims must be filed within 30 days of the case being heard and if the appeal is approved, they put it on the docket pretty quickly.
Researcher: Would you be willing to help us out today by answering a few questions and buying something online? We're researching consumer buying decisions as they correlate to privacy policies of internet merchants. Woman in Mall: Sure, what do I have to buy? Researcher: Just batteries. Oh and a... um... vibrator. Woman in Mall: <turns around and walks away looking for security> Researcher: But you get to keep it! Woman in Mall: Well, I guess if it's for scientific research...
I had the same impression of this "expert" as you - but there are a limited number of people who actually have reviewed the system. His analysis of user activity is questionable and there were a couple of other things in there - like stating google initialized pop-ups.
However - he did find non-school related surfing, spyware, and adware. Whether this spyware was actually the cause of this or whether it happened to just be a component of a visited website isn't really clear either.
I'd have to argue against even losing her teaching credentials. Certainly a reprimand is in order, but the catalyst to the situation was not only beyond her control, it was within the control of the school administration. She was under orders not to turn the computer off under any circumstance. She reported the situation (poorly, but she did report it).
Plenty of young and old teachers alike are not computer savvy.
It's very easy to imagine a person who would not know what to do in this situation. How many times during your scholastic career did a teacher or school administrator make a decision that was contrary to logic, not in the best interest of students, or altogether dumb.
I found naked pictures in National Geographic in third grade. Eventually those issues were removed from the classroom. I can't imagine that my teacher was even reprimanded. The only real difference is that those pictures weren't designed to be tittilating. They still got into the classroom under the guise of an educational tool, and my teacher didn't immediately remove the issues when she discovered what we had been seeing. I'm willing to bet that my third grade class was not the only one in the country to go through this, and I'm also willing to bet that there are National Geographic issues in classrooms today with pictures of naked women inside them.
Also, there, it states that her sentencing was postponed 4 times this spring as the state considered new evidence. It's not clear how much - if any - time was spent in jail.
It's disturbing that the teachers unions did not come to her defense, or at least push to have more light shed on the situations that teachers face regularly in the classroom. Yeah, this girl was a substitute, but the case has a large bearing on teachers in general.
If I was sent to investigate this situation, and ran into a pregnant substitute teacher who was given instructions not to turn off the computer under any circumstances it would be hard not to take a look at the potential pop-up/spyware situation. Is there nobody that works for the police department, prosecutors office, the school, or the school board who has any real IT experience?
Slashdot Mirror
Since the article only has about 100 words beyond the description, I think it is a reasonable assumption that this story kept getting positive votes on the Firehose entirely based on the annoying nature of summary.
Let's hope this doesn't catch on. (I know I know... )
You just made a brilliant argument for getting rid of software patents all together.
After all this time, there is no legitimate process for determining the true origination of an idea or whether an idea is actually original. This process is a band-aid for a broken bone.
If you truly want your idea protected, it needs to be kept secret. That is the only real protection an inventor can provide himself with.
The patent system is over encumbered with legislation and politicization (is that even a word?!?) to the point where a true innovator either has to be working under a corporate structure that can support his or her efforts, or that innovator must stop innovating long enough to gain an understanding of the process and navigate through it.
Initially conceived to protect important intellectual property and therefore inspire ingenuity, the patent system has transformed into a system that actually stunts progress and protects very few who actually change our world for the better.
While there is a semantic difference, I'd hate to leave "Peer Review" to academics and "career experts" that have taken the time and effort to have their own credentials reviewed.
There are plenty of people out there who wouldn't pass muster if you reviewed their credentials, but they know more about the inner workings of some things than anybody else in the industry.
How many key industry players are drop outs that made their money on hard work and ingenuity? More than a few I imagine.
Nice...
5 applications online, 22 instances of prior art submitted.
While everyone's favorite seems to be Method, apparatus and computer program product for providing status of a process, I had to laugh at Database staging area read-through or forced flush with dirty notification - it's pretty much a description of how every memcached/SQL plugin works. I guess somebody should mention that.
Apparently, if you make the description sound complex enough it will pass initial review.
It's good to see this kind of a process come to light. Three cheers for Beth Noveck.
Frank Lloyd Wright was primarily a residential architect. His larger scale projects like the Unity Temple were pretty far from revolutionizing skyscraper architecture. In your zeal to discredit my argument, you missed the point entirely.
If I didn't read TFA, as you suggested, I wouldn't know that a professor from Columbia was behind the article.
The Green Acres project in Jersey is one where the government sold bonds in order to fund the public purchase of private land. Private Landowners did not allow their farms to migrate into forestry - the government purchased the land and converted it to either parks, forests, or wildlife/nature preserves. This project has no such goals.
I see a few problems with the premise of this idea.
First off - you don't need a skyscraper and certainly you don't need to occupy an entire building. Nobody is going to use an entire building in a place like New York for farming.
Second - existing farms will not be converted back to forest land. Farms that don't produce crops get subsidized. If it's not a farm, the farmer doesn't make money.
Third - A professor from a school like Columbia is as likely to revolutionize the farming industry as a professor from the University of Montana is to revolutionize skyscraper architecture.
If you want to see the future of farming, take a look at what marijuana growers are doing. They seem to be the only farmers truly interested in maximizing output in small spaces in less than ideal conditions.
hubcaps are causing hate mail?
How does an article this incomprehensible make the front page?
That makes sense but...
1) Contracts - existing contracts prevent popular acts from doing it. All of the one-hit wonders are under contract for future albums. Those that have sustained success through the 3-6 album contracts end up with other issues. That's the reason why Prince is now "The artist formerly known as Prince" - he doesn't own his own name anymore.
2) Marketing - small acts have a tough time getting their name out there. Even bands that enjoy extreme local popularity can't go national without help. Major networks like clear channel don't push new acts very much, and small stations are generally owned by music industry execs. No radio = no buyers = nobody knows who you are.
3) Knowledge - Guys who make music don't know how to manage the game online. You can do a lot of marketing online but not a lot of people have tried it and none that have have achieved a billboard hit that I know of. If someone around here put a decent plan together, I bet it would be more successful than any existing online indy site.
It will be a shame if the market goes to retailers with strong B&M presences like Starbucks. A record company isn't that hard to reproduce. Take away the major equipment costs with modern tech and it's that much easier. Really, all you need is a series of 5 great bands, a bit of help from the magic LAMP, and marketing. A few viral videos, some well placed reviews, and maybe a spam jam to the top of some charts (iTunes, etc.) and you've got yourself a replacement business model for the music industry and something that has a legitimate shot at toppling the big boys.
Their ideas consist of advertising at the end of TV shows, unmanaged online ad buys, and the same old bag of tricks that got things moving in the mo-town days. They can't even decide how to think about iTunes. The guys that run those companies aren't smart, they've gotten successful based on greed and bullying. They are all worried about the online world, but they have no clue how to morph their business models to take advantage of it. It's a situation ripe for the picking.
In my experience in the music industry (and granted it was a long time ago), musicians would get typically less than 10 percent of sales, usually 6 percent. If it was a group, that 6 percent was split with the group.
The Producers and Labels would invest money in getting the album put together, but it was all contractually recouped if anything came of it. Very rarely do the labels actually lose money on an artist. They at least make enough to cover their investment, and they do a great deal of free/low cost research about how the music will be accepted. A lot of producers own radio stations or other music related businesses that gives them easy access to the target market.
They also charge pretty huge for "studio time", which is almost all profit since the equipment has all long since been paid for and with the number of recording studios in LA the rental rates really should be next to nothing.
Very rarely does an unknown band get to keep their own copyright. The studio will push for changes to the music and changes to the words in order to achieve at least "collaborative" standing in the unlikely event of a dispute.
I've watched as guys got bullied into contracts. It's brutal to the extreme (mentally, not physically). I remember an incident where a mother got involved. She was pretty tough, but all she really got in negotiation was a guaranteed video production. They passed the video project off to a student with a minuscule budget - basically the lead singer on the roof with a brief scene coming out of a studio limo.
For those of you still in the dark out there...
http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.latimes.com
It has a list of account logins and passwords that you can use for this article.
Are you guys actually saying the RealPlayer for linux is less crappy than it's window's counterpart? As in - not constantly putting ads in front of you, not constantly trying to sell you something?
(this is an sarcasm free question)
Which side am I supposed to choose here? The recording industry, or Real Networks. I hate them both.
Wait a second here... that means whoever ends up getting screwed, I win. Rock On.
Saw this come from "the mysterious future" and I e-mailed the on-duty editor like it says. I guess that doesn't work so well. Sheesh. This one's only two days old.
I for one welcome our neuronal impulse driven overlords.
The STB remote IR interface "nasty kludge" that you talk about costs all of about $5 and 2 minutes to set up, is reliable and has been a staple in home theater setups for over a decade.
Yes, it would be great to have everything in a functional single unit appliance, but when the cost of a functional single unit appliance is thousands or even hundreds of dollars more than multiple appliances with the "nasty kludge" setup it's not worth the cost.
The fact that these cool new one box media center pc's that you are so excited can't be configured by either the distributor, the vendor, or the designated system experts only adds to the fact that it's not worth it.
My original point was that it's simply not worth it financially even if these things did work - I don't care how nifty it is. I'll take my IR setup that's worked for years without failure over these things any day.
I realize that there's a lot more to a media center pc than Tivo, but come on now.
You can pick up a TV for a couple of hundred bucks, or build a Myth system that works for less than half the cost of an equivalent media center pc, without getting so locked into a single vendor for any service.
Having a cable card inside your system is nice, but is it really worth all that extra money? I don't think so.
I'd have to argue the point. Copyleft, from my perspective, is a concept designed to encourage the development of free software.
I actually just recently decided to adopt the GPL, and my decision was pretty much as follows: I can give it away for free, or I can give it away mostly for free and support the development of free software as well.
I realize that others have different viewpoints, and if there were a very good reason, I'd certainly be willing to entertain an alternative licensing scenario. But frankly, the GPL has worked quite well in fostering OSS and the FSF has insightfully reacted to some potential problems with OSS abuse that I would not have considered in writing my own license.
I understand the desire to be "more free", but I'm pretty happy with the restrictions of derivitave works because that ensures the philosophy I used when starting out my project will continue in future iterations even when I'm no longer involved.
Where would the Open Source world be without FSF? The only people concerned with having more freedom than the GPL provides are interested in taking open source work and making it proprietary.
If you really want to go that route, simply buy up all the MS Development environment based libraries that you need - not a big problem for big companies interested in that market space.
Every version of the GPL basically says, "hey, I made this. I'm giving it away for free. You can use it for your own use, or develop more free software with it, but don't be a dick and steal it to make a commercial product." That's pretty fair.
If you are truly in need of a library and you want to purchase a more lenient license, developers may be open to that - unless the body of work has really turned into a community project in which case there's probably no way to get EVERYONE'S permission.
The only real problem I see, and people have gone through it before, is in situations where a project is migrating to GPL v3, and all of the contributors aren't on board. The whole reason for posting drafts this far in advance is so that people can voice their concerns about licensing changes to the FSF.
Really, the major changes are to stop the exploitive behavior of MS and Tivo - of which both company's practices are damaging to the Free Software movement. Why on earth should people be averse to protecting the thriving community we all participate in?
Well - I said "not entirely sure" because I'm not entirely sure. I don't make my living doing anything having to do with small claims court.
And I was thinking of this particular situation. Gateway may have a legal department. Some companies run departments that have a purpose different than the core business under a separate corporation or LLC with the parent company owning that entity. If that is the case with Gateway's staff attorneys, then the answer is no.
Small Claims judges make decisions and aren't bound by precedents set either by themselves or by other courts. A Small Claims judge could easily disallow an attorney from representing a company if that attorney clearly has no responsibilities associated with the case other than representing the business in small claims court. Each judge has his own discretion.
Certainly if you sued a law office in small claims they would be have to represent themselves. But sending a company employed attorney to manage a small claims case when your core business is not a legal practice isn't something that will be accepted by every judge in every situation - hence "not entirely sure."
Regardless, lawyers tend not to have a great deal of experience more than citizens with small claims court. They don't know the judges or the clerks. They have an idea of what the rules are like, but every small claims court has its own rules. They don't know the personalities of the judges, nor what they will tolerate in their courtrooms. It's a system designed to give even footing to regular people and they do a pretty good job at it.
I'm not entirely sure about a staff attorney, but if he is employed by the same company that is being sued you can probably get away with it - however, it's not an altogether shut and dry decision.
1) The staff attorney has no direct bearing on the matter in his employment capacity and can offer little in terms of evidence in the case.
2) The staff attorney will have to travel to the court location
3) The judge might not be so friendly with a lawyer in the courtroom (small claims judges are a different breed)
In any case, Gateway will be hard pressed to produce an employee who knows all the details of this situation AND who is willing and able to travel to El Dorado. The total judgement in the case at the high side would be less than $5,000.00 and they've already put time, money, and energy into the case that turns further investment into a bad business decision. If he wins the appeal and it still gets kicked to small claims, I expect gateway either will not show up, or they will settle with him prior to trial.
This was actually a pretty big win for him, and it means that the case will not drag on for years as the article suggests.
In California Small Claims (which this case was just kicked down to), an employee or executive of the company must be present at the trial - not a lawyer, and not somebody hired specifically for the purpose of defending the small claims suit.
If the defendant loses, there is exactly one possible appeal. At the appeal (to superior court), lawyers can appear, but the case is still treated as a small claims case (i.e. you aren't going to get out of it based on a legal technicality if that technicality violates the basic fairness of the case).
If Gateway doesn't send an employee, the appeal is going to be much harder because they have some pretty serious explaining to do as far as why the appeal should be heard. If they do send an employee, it is still tough because no new evidence can be presented at appeal so they will basically have to say that the judge was wrong and why.
Either way, this guy will have resolution within 120 days at the far side - as the appealin California for small claims must be filed within 30 days of the case being heard and if the appeal is approved, they put it on the docket pretty quickly.
Researcher: Would you be willing to help us out today by answering a few questions and buying something online? We're researching consumer buying decisions as they correlate to privacy policies of internet merchants.
Woman in Mall: Sure, what do I have to buy?
Researcher: Just batteries. Oh and a... um... vibrator.
Woman in Mall: <turns around and walks away looking for security>
Researcher: But you get to keep it!
Woman in Mall: Well, I guess if it's for scientific research...
I had the same impression of this "expert" as you - but there are a limited number of people who actually have reviewed the system. His analysis of user activity is questionable and there were a couple of other things in there - like stating google initialized pop-ups.
However - he did find non-school related surfing, spyware, and adware. Whether this spyware was actually the cause of this or whether it happened to just be a component of a visited website isn't really clear either.
I'd have to argue against even losing her teaching credentials. Certainly a reprimand is in order, but the catalyst to the situation was not only beyond her control, it was within the control of the school administration. She was under orders not to turn the computer off under any circumstance. She reported the situation (poorly, but she did report it).
Plenty of young and old teachers alike are not computer savvy.
It's very easy to imagine a person who would not know what to do in this situation. How many times during your scholastic career did a teacher or school administrator make a decision that was contrary to logic, not in the best interest of students, or altogether dumb.
I found naked pictures in National Geographic in third grade. Eventually those issues were removed from the classroom. I can't imagine that my teacher was even reprimanded. The only real difference is that those pictures weren't designed to be tittilating. They still got into the classroom under the guise of an educational tool, and my teacher didn't immediately remove the issues when she discovered what we had been seeing. I'm willing to bet that my third grade class was not the only one in the country to go through this, and I'm also willing to bet that there are National Geographic issues in classrooms today with pictures of naked women inside them.
According to http://www.courant.com/news/local/hcu-amerotrial-0 606,0,4739321.story the state is unlikely to prosecute her a second time.
Also, there, it states that her sentencing was postponed 4 times this spring as the state considered new evidence. It's not clear how much - if any - time was spent in jail.
It's disturbing that the teachers unions did not come to her defense, or at least push to have more light shed on the situations that teachers face regularly in the classroom. Yeah, this girl was a substitute, but the case has a large bearing on teachers in general.
If I was sent to investigate this situation, and ran into a pregnant substitute teacher who was given instructions not to turn off the computer under any circumstances it would be hard not to take a look at the potential pop-up/spyware situation. Is there nobody that works for the police department, prosecutors office, the school, or the school board who has any real IT experience?