Any government (of any form) has the potential to become corrupt and totalitarian over time. Our founding fathers understood that. Struggling to make and keep the US free is a constant battle. There have been worse times in the past. Part of what worries me is that technology is making it increasingly easy to abuse power. Still, I'm hopeful that things will continue to progress (in general) towards freedom.
there wasn't anything, strictly speaking, illegal done.
Oh, there was. There was probably a lot of illegal stuff going on. I don't understand that industry, but economists have said that the FTC usually overlooks illegal shenanigans. (purportedly because they don't understand the law either.)
As the other poster brings up, there was a lot of illegal stuff happening at the local level. Not only did entire loan offices commit wholesale fraud, they often did so with the assistance of home appraisers and others.
What you're saying is that they fixed the tax system by breaking it further. I hope you realize how utterly ridiculous that is.
If I had my way, I'd make it illegal for any "foreign" companies to donate to any "domestic" political causes (including campaigns and political parties). That would be an incentive to headquarter in the US (and be taxed appropriately). It wouldn't be enough, granted (we'd need to correct the rest of the tax system too).
Interesting. I'll note then that this "solution" will not decrease this particular environmental impact. If the printing quality is worth it, the recycle center will have no way to know the difference, and must treat the soy product like the conventional one! (not that they are about to sort individual pieces of paper by hand anyways)
The only way it could decrease this environmental cost would be if everyone was using it. (assuming recycling the new stuff doesn't result in its own batch of nasty chemicals)
You've not thought this one through. Your comment comes off as callous and flippant.
A suicide attempt is typically a pea for help. Trying to "scare the kid straight" is simply the wrong approach. He'll simply plea-for-help again.
Think about it from another perspective. This student is so desperate for some type of emotional help that he's willing to die trying to obtain it. He's already proven that in a dramatic fashion. He'd rather die than live the status quo. He's thought about it as much as he needs to. The attempt itself may have scared some sense into him, but a mocking teacher certainly won't.
Problems of this kind cannot be solved by treating the symptom. Any attempt to treat such a thing without first trying to understand the person is foolhardy at best, fatal at worst. (I'm not suggesting fawning over him either- a natural reaction for some people: "...the poor thing...") Traditional therapy has mixed results. At least they attempt to find and treat root causes.
The bottom line, this teacher was dangerously out of line. He should not be in a position of authority over students who may suffer from severe depression. (Typical teachers need to be able to watch for such things and consult professionals... meaning he simply doesn't belong in the classroom in that capacity.)
Unions are a good thing... Except when they are not.
Unions are merely a tool to leverage power out of the hands of employers and place it in the hands of the union leaders (not members). Sometimes this is absolutely vital to protect workers. Typically, it just creates another position of power for tyrants in the system. The three times I've personally seen unions act, it has been to the detriment of workers. YMMV
Did you know that a teacher who opts out of the union (here locally) must still pay dues as part of his/her contract? They're merely smaller than they would be otherwise.
There can be no doubt that unions and egregious tenure* have done great harm to most American public schools.
(*Tenure isn't a bad thing by itself, but it is far harder to fire a teacher than it should be, even allowing for tenure. See original article.)
One of the major reasons we're losing teachers is because the "office politics" is greatly heightened in the public school system. Good teachers are ones who choose the profession because they want to help students. Pay isn't as significant to many of them. Then they realize that they must put up with unusually petty office politics (by tenured teachers who don't care), and they burn out.
The devil's in the details. I like the idea, and have for some time. Such a program has it's own possibilities for bad design. I'm going to assume for sake of argument than they got it right.
Personally, I think every teacher should participate as peer-reviewer for a short time every year. This wouldn't just help weed out bad teachers, but would force teachers into a position where they might learn how others teach (showing them how they might improve should they choose to - good teachers as well as marginal ones.).
Further, I think college professors should be strongly encouraged to audit classes in their department (or "College of...").
In your scenario, the teacher most certainly would not be fired. Why? There are two reasons:
Firing a teacher is extremely difficult (see the original article that you clearly didn't read*). Mediocre teachers simply don't get fired. Bad teachers are only fired once in a blue moon... if it happens to fall on the fifth Thursday in the month.
In this scenario, there would be plenty of teachers doing even worse who would be fired first. This hypothetical teacher was doing well enough in a school that cannot get rid of it's own failing teachers, he/she would certainly be doing much better than many teachers in an average Oakland school (a place good teachers tend to flee as soon as they can).
(*No, I realize this is Slashdot. I know most people don't read the articles before posting. I'm just citing one source that I know that he should be able to find.)
I have; not often, and it's usually subtle. They usually think they need to hedge to CYOA. I have seen teachers come right out and advocate for the Democrats. I can imagine schools where it happens more frequently and intrusively.
Music is already being dropped, much to our detriment. I'm not advocating force fed music lessons to every student. That would be dumb. It's almost as bad that music departments are being marginalized more and more every year (both in funding and in not being taken seriously-- despite good teachers; personal experience, may be local). Band is the only thing that kept me sane during High School. I don't use any of that knowledge or experience professionally, but I use it far more than most of the stuff shoved down my throat in school.
Gym is waning, but won't disappear. Again, from personal experience: they don't teach with perspective. They grade students based on effort in a variety of sports using crummy equipment. They wind up teaching most students to dislike participating in sports. Their goals should be to teach students to enjoy sports (not loath them) and to know how to keep in shape (not covered at all). Still, this is not nearly as emphasized as it once was. When my parents went to school, they were required to take 4 years of PE. I was only required to take 2 (same school, many years later).
The clip is from January 2006 and is heavily biased for school vouchers (of which I'm generally in favor). They do lightly touch on how difficult it is to fire bad teachers.
The narration and choice of words are suitably dumbed down for the general population. It's sad to say, but that's a very low bar. Still, the material is good.
I don't think Godwin's law can jump the shark by definition. It's an interesting thought though.
The term "jump the shark" is not well defined. The best definition that I've read is that the (ex:) television show has taken an irrevocable turn against what originally made it popular. This is usually a specific point when it becomes obvious that the writer/director/producer has become desperate and is willing to kill the show in their attempt to revive it.
Jumping the shark is not about becoming cliche. It's not about merely losing popularity. If people stopped making Nazi analogies online, perhaps then we can say that it has jumped the shark. (Though obsolete would probably be a much more appropriate term.)
The real question is: has "jump the shark" jumped the shark? If it no longer has a meaning unique to "unpopular", then I submit that it has.
In todays world of botnets and forged SMTP headers, the spammers won't care . You'll just cause a whole bunch of extra junk to be sent to both the truly innocent and they quasi innocent. (You'd be surprised how many servers don't implement SPF, and that's only a decent minimum.)
Actually, that's the whole idea of the mailinator.com site. I realize you were trying to be funny, but the joke falls pretty flat.
In other words, somegobbledygook doesn't hate Drantin (and arguably is Drantin), and the server admins could care less (or are amused that someone is using their free service).
I like it, but it has issues that may be hard to work out.
(1) If they only needed to solve one (or any small number), then the spammer's auto system will only need to guess. Present the potential user with 3 of these and they'll get fed up. The spammer's system, on the other hand, will get 11% correct by guessing. That's enough for them to thwart the system.
(2) It's really easy to get samples of spam. Any user who clicks the spam button has stated that it's not their mail. (Multiple users flagging the same message tell you it's practically certain to be spam) It's not a huge stretch to acquire or assume permission to use the message. Getting legitimate samples (of varieties of email) may be much harder.
The good sites have an audio option (usually mp3) so that the visually impaired can hear the words. It does stink that so many sites don't think about accessibility. For most of us it is really easy to forget about.
You're applying what you know about US crime to Mexico. Our war on drugs is figurative. Their war on drugs has become quite literal. Some have suggested that the Mexican government may soon be co-opted or overthrown by the drug cartels. Politicians and law enforcement alike are legitimately scared for their lives and the protection of their families. Kidnapping isn't like robing a bank in that social environment. It's a form of blackmail. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination.
Wait... What? He used the campus mail server's IP address and "most of" the campus routers honored that? What kind of backwards college did you go to?
Further, he was running an SMTP server and used the campus' primary MX address as his own? That sounds like either a very naive mistake or intentional wiretapping. That's probably why they confiscated his machine. They were proving he was recklessly incompetent and not a criminal. They may also have been reclaiming emails stuck on his system (depending on whether the mail was forwarding to a secondary mail server or not, etc). The campus in question still needs to get a clue about routing, but it is very suspicious behaviour worth investigating.
and, Just because something exists doesn't mean that is justified to tax it.
The only things that should be directly taxable are those things that directly lead to government spending.
An interesting philosophy. While this makes some sense, I can't imagine it working in practice. Many legitimate government expenses can't be directly tied to specific spending. (legislative activities, military, criminal court proceedings...) There must always be some generalized tax (income, sales, property, etc) to pick up these government expenses.
To further complicate things, you don't want to generate your taxable income from some activities. Being poor is no excuse for crime, but if every criminal court case resulted in bankruptcy, you'd only see more crime. (We already have this problem, but it would be much worse.)
Slashdot Mirror
Like it or not, this is the land of the free.
Any government (of any form) has the potential to become corrupt and totalitarian over time. Our founding fathers understood that. Struggling to make and keep the US free is a constant battle. There have been worse times in the past. Part of what worries me is that technology is making it increasingly easy to abuse power. Still, I'm hopeful that things will continue to progress (in general) towards freedom.
No, they all boil down to speculation bubbles. Abusing credit in the mix only makes things worse, but it's the speculation itself that is the problem.
there wasn't anything, strictly speaking, illegal done.
Oh, there was. There was probably a lot of illegal stuff going on. I don't understand that industry, but economists have said that the FTC usually overlooks illegal shenanigans. (purportedly because they don't understand the law either.)
As the other poster brings up, there was a lot of illegal stuff happening at the local level. Not only did entire loan offices commit wholesale fraud, they often did so with the assistance of home appraisers and others.
What you're saying is that they fixed the tax system by breaking it further. I hope you realize how utterly ridiculous that is.
If I had my way, I'd make it illegal for any "foreign" companies to donate to any "domestic" political causes (including campaigns and political parties). That would be an incentive to headquarter in the US (and be taxed appropriately). It wouldn't be enough, granted (we'd need to correct the rest of the tax system too).
Now THAT makes sense.
(I will be sharing that one with my group.)
Interesting. I'll note then that this "solution" will not decrease this particular environmental impact. If the printing quality is worth it, the recycle center will have no way to know the difference, and must treat the soy product like the conventional one! (not that they are about to sort individual pieces of paper by hand anyways)
The only way it could decrease this environmental cost would be if everyone was using it. (assuming recycling the new stuff doesn't result in its own batch of nasty chemicals)
You've not thought this one through. Your comment comes off as callous and flippant.
A suicide attempt is typically a pea for help. Trying to "scare the kid straight" is simply the wrong approach. He'll simply plea-for-help again.
Think about it from another perspective. This student is so desperate for some type of emotional help that he's willing to die trying to obtain it. He's already proven that in a dramatic fashion. He'd rather die than live the status quo. He's thought about it as much as he needs to. The attempt itself may have scared some sense into him, but a mocking teacher certainly won't.
Problems of this kind cannot be solved by treating the symptom. Any attempt to treat such a thing without first trying to understand the person is foolhardy at best, fatal at worst. (I'm not suggesting fawning over him either- a natural reaction for some people: "...the poor thing...") Traditional therapy has mixed results. At least they attempt to find and treat root causes.
The bottom line, this teacher was dangerously out of line. He should not be in a position of authority over students who may suffer from severe depression. (Typical teachers need to be able to watch for such things and consult professionals... meaning he simply doesn't belong in the classroom in that capacity.)
IANAP
Unions are a good thing... Except when they are not.
Unions are merely a tool to leverage power out of the hands of employers and place it in the hands of the union leaders (not members). Sometimes this is absolutely vital to protect workers. Typically, it just creates another position of power for tyrants in the system. The three times I've personally seen unions act, it has been to the detriment of workers. YMMV
Did you know that a teacher who opts out of the union (here locally) must still pay dues as part of his/her contract? They're merely smaller than they would be otherwise.
There can be no doubt that unions and egregious tenure* have done great harm to most American public schools.
(*Tenure isn't a bad thing by itself, but it is far harder to fire a teacher than it should be, even allowing for tenure. See original article.)
One of the major reasons we're losing teachers is because the "office politics" is greatly heightened in the public school system. Good teachers are ones who choose the profession because they want to help students. Pay isn't as significant to many of them. Then they realize that they must put up with unusually petty office politics (by tenured teachers who don't care), and they burn out.
The devil's in the details. I like the idea, and have for some time. Such a program has it's own possibilities for bad design. I'm going to assume for sake of argument than they got it right.
Personally, I think every teacher should participate as peer-reviewer for a short time every year. This wouldn't just help weed out bad teachers, but would force teachers into a position where they might learn how others teach (showing them how they might improve should they choose to - good teachers as well as marginal ones.).
Further, I think college professors should be strongly encouraged to audit classes in their department (or "College of ...").
In your scenario, the teacher most certainly would not be fired. Why? There are two reasons:
(*No, I realize this is Slashdot. I know most people don't read the articles before posting. I'm just citing one source that I know that he should be able to find.)
I have; not often, and it's usually subtle. They usually think they need to hedge to CYOA. I have seen teachers come right out and advocate for the Democrats. I can imagine schools where it happens more frequently and intrusively.
Music is already being dropped, much to our detriment. I'm not advocating force fed music lessons to every student. That would be dumb. It's almost as bad that music departments are being marginalized more and more every year (both in funding and in not being taken seriously-- despite good teachers; personal experience, may be local). Band is the only thing that kept me sane during High School. I don't use any of that knowledge or experience professionally, but I use it far more than most of the stuff shoved down my throat in school.
Gym is waning, but won't disappear. Again, from personal experience: they don't teach with perspective. They grade students based on effort in a variety of sports using crummy equipment. They wind up teaching most students to dislike participating in sports. Their goals should be to teach students to enjoy sports (not loath them) and to know how to keep in shape (not covered at all). Still, this is not nearly as emphasized as it once was. When my parents went to school, they were required to take 4 years of PE. I was only required to take 2 (same school, many years later).
The clip is from January 2006 and is heavily biased for school vouchers (of which I'm generally in favor). They do lightly touch on how difficult it is to fire bad teachers.
The narration and choice of words are suitably dumbed down for the general population. It's sad to say, but that's a very low bar. Still, the material is good.
I don't think Godwin's law can jump the shark by definition. It's an interesting thought though.
The term "jump the shark" is not well defined. The best definition that I've read is that the (ex:) television show has taken an irrevocable turn against what originally made it popular. This is usually a specific point when it becomes obvious that the writer/director/producer has become desperate and is willing to kill the show in their attempt to revive it.
Jumping the shark is not about becoming cliche. It's not about merely losing popularity. If people stopped making Nazi analogies online, perhaps then we can say that it has jumped the shark. (Though obsolete would probably be a much more appropriate term.)
The real question is: has "jump the shark" jumped the shark? If it no longer has a meaning unique to "unpopular", then I submit that it has.
I'm beside myself waiting for the infamous Mr. Anonymous Coward to appear at the courthouse.
I've got the tomatoes. Who's got the rotten eggs?
This is established US caselaw, people, and not debatable
But it isdebatable... In other US courtrooms. (Granted, courts are loath to overturn prior case-law, but it happens. Bigger changes have happened.)
If consumers "were" smarter, marketers would be less annoying.
Amusing, but antiquated.
In todays world of botnets and forged SMTP headers, the spammers won't care . You'll just cause a whole bunch of extra junk to be sent to both the truly innocent and they quasi innocent. (You'd be surprised how many servers don't implement SPF, and that's only a decent minimum.)
Actually, that's the whole idea of the mailinator.com site. I realize you were trying to be funny, but the joke falls pretty flat.
In other words, somegobbledygook doesn't hate Drantin (and arguably is Drantin), and the server admins could care less (or are amused that someone is using their free service).
I like it, but it has issues that may be hard to work out.
(1) If they only needed to solve one (or any small number), then the spammer's auto system will only need to guess. Present the potential user with 3 of these and they'll get fed up. The spammer's system, on the other hand, will get 11% correct by guessing. That's enough for them to thwart the system.
(2) It's really easy to get samples of spam. Any user who clicks the spam button has stated that it's not their mail. (Multiple users flagging the same message tell you it's practically certain to be spam) It's not a huge stretch to acquire or assume permission to use the message. Getting legitimate samples (of varieties of email) may be much harder.
The good sites have an audio option (usually mp3) so that the visually impaired can hear the words. It does stink that so many sites don't think about accessibility. For most of us it is really easy to forget about.
You're applying what you know about US crime to Mexico. Our war on drugs is figurative. Their war on drugs has become quite literal. Some have suggested that the Mexican government may soon be co-opted or overthrown by the drug cartels. Politicians and law enforcement alike are legitimately scared for their lives and the protection of their families. Kidnapping isn't like robing a bank in that social environment. It's a form of blackmail. It's not a get-rich-quick scheme by any stretch of the imagination.
Wait... What? He used the campus mail server's IP address and "most of" the campus routers honored that? What kind of backwards college did you go to?
Further, he was running an SMTP server and used the campus' primary MX address as his own? That sounds like either a very naive mistake or intentional wiretapping. That's probably why they confiscated his machine. They were proving he was recklessly incompetent and not a criminal. They may also have been reclaiming emails stuck on his system (depending on whether the mail was forwarding to a secondary mail server or not, etc). The campus in question still needs to get a clue about routing, but it is very suspicious behaviour worth investigating.
and, Just because something exists doesn't mean that is justified to tax it.
The only things that should be directly taxable are those things that directly lead to government spending.
An interesting philosophy. While this makes some sense, I can't imagine it working in practice. Many legitimate government expenses can't be directly tied to specific spending. (legislative activities, military, criminal court proceedings...) There must always be some generalized tax (income, sales, property, etc) to pick up these government expenses.
To further complicate things, you don't want to generate your taxable income from some activities. Being poor is no excuse for crime, but if every criminal court case resulted in bankruptcy, you'd only see more crime. (We already have this problem, but it would be much worse.)