And nobody would have evidence of the serious crimes he told the world about. That's what they're really worried about.
Manning just copied everything and Wikileaks spewed it all over. The noise to signal ratio is so high in that mess that it's hard to say he told the world anything...
Bradley Manning's life (for one) has been destroyed by his naivete in his participation in this activity. You can not think that he really got into all of this with his eyes open.
Had this security system been in place, Manning would have probably done a couple of years in military prison (for attempt, and for stupidity) and then been booted to civilian life. Because it was not he will spend decades in the worse conditions allowed by military law.
In 2008, we kicked out the Republicans, elected Democrats with super majorities. In the end, it was a one issue election: the economy (stupid). The Democrats had a clear mandate: fix employment, fix huge income disparities, regulate the banks, resolve "too big to fail".
They drove up deficits and debt. They passed a "stimulus bill" that failed to stimulate much. They funded their pet projects. They ignored their mandate and focused on a health care bill. I don't know (or care any more) if the health care law was a good law or a bad law. I do know that they spent their super-majority and did not fix the problem we called on them to fix. Their dithering over (relative) trivialities was so unpopular that big blue Massachusetts elected a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy!
The republicans will NEVER willingly regulate business and are not equipped to address economic imbalance. Clearly, addressing economic imbalance is only an election year issue for the Democrats - one conveniently forgotten when elections have been won.
Touche! We can quantify its bigness, but thus far have failed to do so with precision. Perhaps this because each time we find any, somebody declares it to be the last uncounted bit of this finite (but really big) resource.
BTW, your description does a good job describing Saturn's moon Titan. There's always more.
It is not so much that the supply of oil is infinite as that it is so ****ing big that we have yet to quantify its bigness. That doesn't mean that using it as we have isn't bad (CO2 blah blah), but rather that finite supply is not a valid argument for not using it. The use of this argument actually weakens the case for hydrocarbon abstinence.
THEREFORE I CONCLUDE THAT I WILL NEVER HAVE TO GO SHOPPING AGAIN AS I WILL NEVER, EVER RUN OUT OF BREAKFAST RESERVES. WHEN MY RESERVES ARE LOW, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE NEW FOOD TO DISCOVER IN MY KITCHEN.
See any problem here?
Someone else has already pointed out that you've yet to explore for cereal reserves in your basement pantry (because it's dark and you think it's scary), your cupboard, or even on the top shelf in your kitchen. You have the whole analogy wrong however - the kitchen and even your house need not limit your reach. You run out of cereal so you buy more. Your demand increases the price. Increased price means more resources used to produce cereal - more land, farmers, fertilizer, water. You don't like that as it displaces cute gophers so you conclude:
'I WILL NEVER LOOK FOR CEREAL AGAIN WHEN MY CURRENT BOX IS EMPTY AS IT MIGHT OFFEND CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS SO INSTEAD I WILL EAT ONLY GRAPEFRUIT BRUSSELS SPROUTS"
Personally, I like Captain Crunch.
Re:Anyone can sue anyone, merit is not required
on
Falun Gong Sues Cisco
·
· Score: 1
If Cisco were a Chinese company that maybe sent the odd salesman to the US or maybe had a subsidiary division in the US, this would not be an issue.
Whatever the Chinese gov't does in China is legal. By definition, considering the type of government they have.
Yes. If they do it in China. The real legal question will be whether they did any of it in the US. Were the US executives aware of the sale? Engineers? Did they know or should they have known how the equipment would be used? What did they do when their knowledge was undeniable?
Does the US even have any laws that prohibit US companies from participating in such oppression?
The better question is whether they have laws that shield companies in ways that they wouldn't shield individuals. We know that the US is willing to prosecute individuals for crimes, attempted crimes, and planned crimes abroad (think pedophiles in S/ SE Asia for a prominent example). IANAL, but I believe that the critical act granting jurisdiction is planning in the US.
I think that would determine whether this case has any merit to begin with.
If they planned it; if they knew what was being planned; if what they planned would have been illegal if if done in Denver; or PLANNED for Denver; if any of that can be proven, this might be interesting if anyone cares in 30 years when Cisco is done filing pretrial motions.
If the St. Kilda council waved your thief into the lot, promised not tell the police who parked the car, helped him file off the VINs, and helped him fence the car, then I'd say they are complicit. IANAL, but I'd still say go for it!
The USG may well go after the NYT and WSJ, but I would be surprised if they get far. So long as NYT and WSJ limit themselves to commenting on material Wikileaks um... leaks, it's a pretty clear 1st amendment case. If they release something themselves OTOH.....
It looks to me like they are looking for or at information about people involved with Manning or directly with releasing Manning's (stolen?) documents. They may just be building their legal case against Manning...
I'm not being naive here - I firmly believe that the USG is pursuing anyone associated with WikiLeaks now. But while they'd love to snare JA's friend in Iceland, they certainly don't want Manning to get off when his case goes to trial.
And on the ironic side of the ledger, why would anyone associated with WikiLeaks have a problem with sharing information? I thought that was their thing...
Why would I prefer the advice of a "doctor" over your advice, or my own gut, or GGP's assessment, or the combined "wisdom" of Slashdot or any other individual or body? Like you and I, they are have access to some information and merge that with their knowledge and opinions and may offer useful advice. Why not just ask the next person you meet?
Doctors as a class are not as smart as you think they are and are certainly not so broadly educated as you would wish. Just ask your doctor's wife.;)
Seriously, your doctor won't know until someone (your doctor?) conducts a series of large, double-blind studies where some children are given free access to the world of PORN with GP's conditions and some are not... Until then, all your doctor can say as a 'medical professional' is that 'PORN is not intended to treat or cure any disease in children'.
Any opinion your doctor would offer otherwise is irresponsible.
(In the US at least) This could run afoul of the rights of (ex) an accused person to confront an accuser. In an era of excessive statutory damages and vigorous collections, the rights of those accused, even in civil cases, need to be considered. I don't this is a cash-grab exercise, an won't be settled with a one time payment of $16.88 per defendant and a 10% H&R Block coupon...
It could also expose some egregious right doing intended to confound and defeat those enemies. It might expose the identity (or clues to the identity) of agents in the field. The contents of the messages will not protect him. But even if he beats the treason rap, he was brainwashed by the cult of the whistle-blower and is doomed. It's sad really.
They may try to get him on a treason charge, but if that fails, 30k+ counts of espionage, theft, misuse of a computer system, fraud, etc. will be enough to lock him in a deep hole until his bones decay to dust. If he is lucky he'll get solitary for life - a fate worse than death IMO - but that pales in comparison to life of a genuine traitor in the general population of a PMITA prison.
Instead of simply blaming governments and oil industries we have to think about our own desire to consume oil. We, as consumers, have a responsibility in this situation as well.
Let's say an apple farmer gives his apple pickers faulty ladders to work with and, as a result, dozens of workers every year fall and break their necks. Are you saying this would be the fault of consumers who purchase apples? Should people reduce their consumption of apples to fix this problem? Or does the fault lie with the farmer and have nothing at all to do with the people who purchase the apples?
Substitute farmer and apples with BP and oil.
Your analogy is flawed and incomplete.
The consumers demand apples, but also demand that they should not be able to see the orchards. Consumers also demand that apples be cheap; when apples are expensive, the same demanding consumers demand that the farmer be investigated, and that his orchards, ladders, barns, outbuildings, vegetable gardens, asses, horses, children - all of his property and interests - be confiscated. See also socialism.
This forces the farmer to work on steep mountains and in canyons and other places where consumers don't go. He can't stop, because he doesn't want his things stolen. His choice is risk and wealth, or abdication and ruin.
He uses ladders that he believes are safe and takes the precaution of putting a net under each ladder in case someone should should fall. Unfortunately, while working on a particularly tall and steep and inaccessible mountain 50 miles away from civilization, a ladder breaks, and the net fails as well...
---
The real flaw in the analogy is that the consumers don't really care about the dead workers so long as they have access to cheap apples, so our scenario needs to end with an s--- load on apples rolling down the mountain and into the river to wash up on the beaches as smelly and deadly applesauce. If anyone wants to fix the analogy some more...?
---
If the consumers aren't to blame entirely, they at least share in the blame.
...(Texas) is making decisions that should be made at the local level...
So you want county governments to take this action? Towns? School Department Heads? Individual Teachers? Have you met many teachers?
[Full disclosure - I am a technical director for a small school district]
The average elementary teacher can barely SPELL "science" without a crib sheet. Degrees in 'education' do a poor job preparing teachers to develop curriculum in any subject area. Teachers rely on those textbooks to give form, structure, and content to courses. To the extent that teachers choose these books, they choose books they are comfortable with - ones that they agree with. For the most part they lean to the political left - check out the endorsements of the NEA and AFT in elections if you doubt. Textbook companies draw from that pool and market to that pool. It should surprise nobody that the books don't appeal to the political right.
As far as what the board is doing, some of it is just plain dumb - Intelligent Design instead of evolution? Some of their points are valid - "separation of church and state" is not in fact written into the US constitution - and certainly the 'founders' would not have envisioned injunctions against prayers at schools or tearing down war memorials that resemble the wrong mathematical operator.
Texas' actions create a market for materials that lean in a different direction. The size of the market guarantees that materials will be developed. Of course, in Texas choices will be confined to the new market only - but I'm not gonna mess with that.
You say you want to choose the OS for your HIGH SCHOOL science lab based on what your engineer wanabe students may actually use when they make it to industry. Good Grief!
XP is already EOL and DISCON. They won't be using that in 6 years. Win7 will have been replaced by at least 2 subsequent versions and will probably be DISCON. OSX 10.6 will be replaced and DISCON, will be actively unsupported by Apple. Whatever version of Linux you choose will have forked 600 times by the time they get out of college. Whichever one you pick now will be wrong.
The (wrong) choice you make today will have absolutely no impact on your students' preparedness for real-work in 6+ years.
SO: Find the applications you want to use. Choose an OS that runs them all. OR Ask the IT guys where you work to choose. They have to support it, they know what they know how to support best. OR Load an old Slackware Distro and make the IT guys hate you. Make your students write the software they'll need. Then they'll really be prepared.
Protip: When you ask SLASHDOT what OS to use for ANYTHING, the consensus answer is going to be "well, you could use linux..."
That is not the only place the TFA is wrong. Here are just a few of the other places that were incorrect:
1) Labour are not socialists.
Really? How is Labour different from 'Socialists'?
For clarity, I don't think being called a 'Socialist' is any worse than being called a 'Capitalist' in the context of TFA. Apart from disagreeing with the politics of the writer of TFA, why would that aprticular assertion be an error worthy of correction?
Public service or not, he broke the law in the hope of finding or creating a scandal. The law doesn't say "don't crack someone's email UNLESS when you do so you find something juicy". His success is immaterial. The penalty should be the same whether the account is full of lols and party invites or baby killing and kiddie porn.
Distraction is difficult to regulate. There is little moral hazard in regulating _optional_ distraction. Wheezy, twitchy, coughy, and squeaky - those are not optional. Bright lights and moving pictures - are generally optional.
Over-regulation sucks.
Restricting users because of the actions of abusers sucks.
But the alternative is to try to just punish the abusers. There really is no slick way to do this. We could post observers. We could wait for complaints. We could reward the complainers with cash. We could make it policy to use the liquid nitrogen ploy on the laptop of anyone who was complained about. The slope here is really slippery. Send them to a gulag / re-education camp?
Full disclosure: I am employed by an institution that has banned personal electronics in some spaces. Doing this is simply more effective than the prior selective enforcement policy. Effective # popular of course.
College students have at least the theoretical ability to transfer to schools that allow WoW in lecture halls. If they don't have the grades or the motivation to transfer, but can't get over the moral outrage at being subject to rules, they can always explore what true restrictions look like in the dreaded workplace.
Agreed, but the life and death wasn't the point. Regulation was the point. Over-regulation sucks. The question is whether the fact of regulation is reasonable.
You've indicated that life and death obviously merit regulation. And you've said that distraction might be just cause.
Banning screens is regulation. Maybe it is over-regulation. So what would be reasonable?
If you can see the screen, it is a distraction. The human eye is drawn to motion. Even in a best case scenario, your brain will have to check on your neighbor's WoW progress from time to time even if only to classify it as unimportant.
You may do a great job mentally managing these distractions. Others may be less efficient in doing this.
Just because it does not distract you does not mean that it does not distract _others_. You may not be the best person or in the best position to evaluate the distraction.
As long as they aren't distracting other students...
I think that the point here is that in many cases, they are in fact distracting other students. This doesn't mean that other students are going to make a public complaint.
I offer this analogy: "People should be able to drive as fat as they want, wherever they want, so long as they don't endanger others." OK? But sometimes simply driving fast creates the danger. And sometimes, the driver fails to notice this. For example, I think that I don't endanger anyone when I drive 60mph through university parking lots at 9AM...
So the university (or city or whatever) could wait for complaints or deaths, or they can regulate speeds. I concede that over-regulation occurs, but is the regulation itself unjustified?
Unless you are in the back row, your WoW or YouTube or Facebook (or Slashdot) are a visual distraction to _others_ even with ear buds or if muted. The "nannying" happens because you (or a meaningful number of your classmates) can't keep themselves from providing this distraction. You (they?) simply can't stop. Even now.
Slashdot Mirror
And nobody would have evidence of the serious crimes he told the world about. That's what they're really worried about.
Manning just copied everything and Wikileaks spewed it all over. The noise to signal ratio is so high in that mess that it's hard to say he told the world anything...
Bradley Manning's life (for one) has been destroyed by his naivete in his participation in this activity. You can not think that he really got into all of this with his eyes open.
Had this security system been in place, Manning would have probably done a couple of years in military prison (for attempt, and for stupidity) and then been booted to civilian life. Because it was not he will spend decades in the worse conditions allowed by military law.
In 2008, we kicked out the Republicans, elected Democrats with super majorities. In the end, it was a one issue election: the economy (stupid). The Democrats had a clear mandate: fix employment, fix huge income disparities, regulate the banks, resolve "too big to fail".
They drove up deficits and debt. They passed a "stimulus bill" that failed to stimulate much. They funded their pet projects. They ignored their mandate and focused on a health care bill. I don't know (or care any more) if the health care law was a good law or a bad law. I do know that they spent their super-majority and did not fix the problem we called on them to fix. Their dithering over (relative) trivialities was so unpopular that big blue Massachusetts elected a Republican to replace Ted Kennedy!
The republicans will NEVER willingly regulate business and are not equipped to address economic imbalance. Clearly, addressing economic imbalance is only an election year issue for the Democrats - one conveniently forgotten when elections have been won.
We are doomed.
Touche! We can quantify its bigness, but thus far have failed to do so with precision. Perhaps this because each time we find any, somebody declares it to be the last uncounted bit of this finite (but really big) resource.
BTW, your description does a good job describing Saturn's moon Titan. There's always more.
It is not so much that the supply of oil is infinite as that it is so ****ing big that we have yet to quantify its bigness. That doesn't mean that using it as we have isn't bad (CO2 blah blah), but rather that finite supply is not a valid argument for not using it. The use of this argument actually weakens the case for hydrocarbon abstinence.
THEREFORE I CONCLUDE THAT I WILL NEVER HAVE TO GO SHOPPING AGAIN AS I WILL NEVER, EVER RUN OUT OF BREAKFAST RESERVES. WHEN MY RESERVES ARE LOW, THERE WILL ALWAYS BE NEW FOOD TO DISCOVER IN MY KITCHEN.
See any problem here?
Someone else has already pointed out that you've yet to explore for cereal reserves in your basement pantry (because it's dark and you think it's scary), your cupboard, or even on the top shelf in your kitchen. You have the whole analogy wrong however - the kitchen and even your house need not limit your reach. You run out of cereal so you buy more. Your demand increases the price. Increased price means more resources used to produce cereal - more land, farmers, fertilizer, water. You don't like that as it displaces cute gophers so you conclude:
'I WILL NEVER LOOK FOR CEREAL AGAIN WHEN MY CURRENT BOX IS EMPTY AS IT MIGHT OFFEND CUTE LITTLE ANIMALS SO INSTEAD I WILL EAT ONLY GRAPEFRUIT BRUSSELS SPROUTS"
Personally, I like Captain Crunch.
If Cisco were a Chinese company that maybe sent the odd salesman to the US or maybe had a subsidiary division in the US, this would not be an issue.
Whatever the Chinese gov't does in China is legal. By definition, considering the type of government they have.
Yes. If they do it in China. The real legal question will be whether they did any of it in the US. Were the US executives aware of the sale? Engineers? Did they know or should they have known how the equipment would be used? What did they do when their knowledge was undeniable?
Does the US even have any laws that prohibit US companies from participating in such oppression?
The better question is whether they have laws that shield companies in ways that they wouldn't shield individuals. We know that the US is willing to prosecute individuals for crimes, attempted crimes, and planned crimes abroad (think pedophiles in S/ SE Asia for a prominent example). IANAL, but I believe that the critical act granting jurisdiction is planning in the US.
I think that would determine whether this case has any merit to begin with.
If they planned it; if they knew what was being planned; if what they planned would have been illegal if if done in Denver; or PLANNED for Denver; if any of that can be proven, this might be interesting if anyone cares in 30 years when Cisco is done filing pretrial motions.
If the St. Kilda council waved your thief into the lot, promised not tell the police who parked the car, helped him file off the VINs, and helped him fence the car, then I'd say they are complicit. IANAL, but I'd still say go for it!
The USG may well go after the NYT and WSJ, but I would be surprised if they get far. So long as NYT and WSJ limit themselves to commenting on material Wikileaks um... leaks, it's a pretty clear 1st amendment case. If they release something themselves OTOH.....
It looks to me like they are looking for or at information about people involved with Manning or directly with releasing Manning's (stolen?) documents. They may just be building their legal case against Manning...
I'm not being naive here - I firmly believe that the USG is pursuing anyone associated with WikiLeaks now. But while they'd love to snare JA's friend in Iceland, they certainly don't want Manning to get off when his case goes to trial.
And on the ironic side of the ledger, why would anyone associated with WikiLeaks have a problem with sharing information? I thought that was their thing...
Like you and I, doctors ...
Why would I prefer the advice of a "doctor" over your advice, or my own gut, or GGP's assessment, or the combined "wisdom" of Slashdot or any other individual or body? Like you and I, they are have access to some information and merge that with their knowledge and opinions and may offer useful advice. Why not just ask the next person you meet?
Doctors as a class are not as smart as you think they are and are certainly not so broadly educated as you would wish. Just ask your doctor's wife. ;)
Why would you ask a doctor? Viagra?
Seriously, your doctor won't know until someone (your doctor?) conducts a series of large, double-blind studies where some children are given free access to the world of PORN with GP's conditions and some are not... Until then, all your doctor can say as a 'medical professional' is that 'PORN is not intended to treat or cure any disease in children'.
Any opinion your doctor would offer otherwise is irresponsible.
(In the US at least) This could run afoul of the rights of (ex) an accused person to confront an accuser. In an era of excessive statutory damages and vigorous collections, the rights of those accused, even in civil cases, need to be considered. I don't this is a cash-grab exercise, an won't be settled with a one time payment of $16.88 per defendant and a 10% H&R Block coupon...
It could also expose some egregious right doing intended to confound and defeat those enemies. It might expose the identity (or clues to the identity) of agents in the field. The contents of the messages will not protect him. But even if he beats the treason rap, he was brainwashed by the cult of the whistle-blower and is doomed. It's sad really.
They may try to get him on a treason charge, but if that fails, 30k+ counts of espionage, theft, misuse of a computer system, fraud, etc. will be enough to lock him in a deep hole until his bones decay to dust. If he is lucky he'll get solitary for life - a fate worse than death IMO - but that pales in comparison to life of a genuine traitor in the general population of a PMITA prison.
Instead of simply blaming governments and oil industries we have to think about our own desire to consume oil. We, as consumers, have a responsibility in this situation as well.
Let's say an apple farmer gives his apple pickers faulty ladders to work with and, as a result, dozens of workers every year fall and break their necks. Are you saying this would be the fault of consumers who purchase apples? Should people reduce their consumption of apples to fix this problem? Or does the fault lie with the farmer and have nothing at all to do with the people who purchase the apples?
Substitute farmer and apples with BP and oil.
Your analogy is flawed and incomplete.
The consumers demand apples, but also demand that they should not be able to see the orchards. Consumers also demand that apples be cheap; when apples are expensive, the same demanding consumers demand that the farmer be investigated, and that his orchards, ladders, barns, outbuildings, vegetable gardens, asses, horses, children - all of his property and interests - be confiscated. See also socialism.
This forces the farmer to work on steep mountains and in canyons and other places where consumers don't go. He can't stop, because he doesn't want his things stolen. His choice is risk and wealth, or abdication and ruin.
He uses ladders that he believes are safe and takes the precaution of putting a net under each ladder in case someone should should fall. Unfortunately, while working on a particularly tall and steep and inaccessible mountain 50 miles away from civilization, a ladder breaks, and the net fails as well...
---
The real flaw in the analogy is that the consumers don't really care about the dead workers so long as they have access to cheap apples, so our scenario needs to end with an s--- load on apples rolling down the mountain and into the river to wash up on the beaches as smelly and deadly applesauce. If anyone wants to fix the analogy some more...?
---
If the consumers aren't to blame entirely, they at least share in the blame.
...(Texas) is making decisions that should be made at the local level...
So you want county governments to take this action? Towns? School Department Heads? Individual Teachers? Have you met many teachers?
[Full disclosure - I am a technical director for a small school district]
The average elementary teacher can barely SPELL "science" without a crib sheet. Degrees in 'education' do a poor job preparing teachers to develop curriculum in any subject area. Teachers rely on those textbooks to give form, structure, and content to courses. To the extent that teachers choose these books, they choose books they are comfortable with - ones that they agree with. For the most part they lean to the political left - check out the endorsements of the NEA and AFT in elections if you doubt. Textbook companies draw from that pool and market to that pool. It should surprise nobody that the books don't appeal to the political right.
As far as what the board is doing, some of it is just plain dumb - Intelligent Design instead of evolution? Some of their points are valid - "separation of church and state" is not in fact written into the US constitution - and certainly the 'founders' would not have envisioned injunctions against prayers at schools or tearing down war memorials that resemble the wrong mathematical operator.
Texas' actions create a market for materials that lean in a different direction. The size of the market guarantees that materials will be developed. Of course, in Texas choices will be confined to the new market only - but I'm not gonna mess with that.
You say you want to choose the OS for your HIGH SCHOOL science lab based on what your engineer wanabe students may actually use when they make it to industry. Good Grief!
XP is already EOL and DISCON. They won't be using that in 6 years.
Win7 will have been replaced by at least 2 subsequent versions and will probably be DISCON.
OSX 10.6 will be replaced and DISCON, will be actively unsupported by Apple.
Whatever version of Linux you choose will have forked 600 times by the time they get out of college. Whichever one you pick now will be wrong.
The (wrong) choice you make today will have absolutely no impact on your students' preparedness for real-work in 6+ years.
SO:
Find the applications you want to use. Choose an OS that runs them all.
OR
Ask the IT guys where you work to choose. They have to support it, they know what they know how to support best.
OR
Load an old Slackware Distro and make the IT guys hate you. Make your students write the software they'll need. Then they'll really be prepared.
Protip: When you ask SLASHDOT what OS to use for ANYTHING, the consensus answer is going to be "well, you could use linux..."
That is not the only place the TFA is wrong. Here are just a few of the other places that were incorrect:
1) Labour are not socialists.
Really? How is Labour different from 'Socialists'?
For clarity, I don't think being called a 'Socialist' is any worse than being called a 'Capitalist' in the context of TFA. Apart from disagreeing with the politics of the writer of TFA, why would that aprticular assertion be an error worthy of correction?
Public service or not, he broke the law in the hope of finding or creating a scandal. The law doesn't say "don't crack someone's email UNLESS when you do so you find something juicy". His success is immaterial. The penalty should be the same whether the account is full of lols and party invites or baby killing and kiddie porn.
Two wrongs...
In practice, why would that matter to anybody here?
Distraction is difficult to regulate. There is little moral hazard in regulating _optional_ distraction. Wheezy, twitchy, coughy, and squeaky - those are not optional. Bright lights and moving pictures - are generally optional.
Over-regulation sucks.
Restricting users because of the actions of abusers sucks.
But the alternative is to try to just punish the abusers. There really is no slick way to do this. We could post observers. We could wait for complaints. We could reward the complainers with cash. We could make it policy to use the liquid nitrogen ploy on the laptop of anyone who was complained about. The slope here is really slippery. Send them to a gulag / re-education camp?
Full disclosure: I am employed by an institution that has banned personal electronics in some spaces. Doing this is simply more effective than the prior selective enforcement policy. Effective # popular of course.
College students have at least the theoretical ability to transfer to schools that allow WoW in lecture halls. If they don't have the grades or the motivation to transfer, but can't get over the moral outrage at being subject to rules, they can always explore what true restrictions look like in the dreaded workplace.
Agreed, but the life and death wasn't the point. Regulation was the point. Over-regulation sucks. The question is whether the fact of regulation is reasonable.
You've indicated that life and death obviously merit regulation. And you've said that distraction might be just cause.
Banning screens is regulation. Maybe it is over-regulation. So what would be reasonable?
If you can see the screen, it is a distraction. The human eye is drawn to motion. Even in a best case scenario, your brain will have to check on your neighbor's WoW progress from time to time even if only to classify it as unimportant.
You may do a great job mentally managing these distractions. Others may be less efficient in doing this.
Just because it does not distract you does not mean that it does not distract _others_. You may not be the best person or in the best position to evaluate the distraction.
As long as they aren't distracting other students...
I think that the point here is that in many cases, they are in fact distracting other students. This doesn't mean that other students are going to make a public complaint.
I offer this analogy: "People should be able to drive as fat as they want, wherever they want, so long as they don't endanger others." OK? But sometimes simply driving fast creates the danger. And sometimes, the driver fails to notice this. For example, I think that I don't endanger anyone when I drive 60mph through university parking lots at 9AM...
So the university (or city or whatever) could wait for complaints or deaths, or they can regulate speeds. I concede that over-regulation occurs, but is the regulation itself unjustified?
Unless you are in the back row, your WoW or YouTube or Facebook (or Slashdot) are a visual distraction to _others_ even with ear buds or if muted. The "nannying" happens because you (or a meaningful number of your classmates) can't keep themselves from providing this distraction. You (they?) simply can't stop. Even now.
This is a very reasonable response. Parent should be modded insightful, not funny.