I work in a science lab at a major university as an all purpose tech/IT. I am frequently asked to steal software for my researchers. I have told many of them repeatedly that I will not steal software for them nor knowingly maintain that stolen software if they choose to do so themselves. This often incites confrontational behavior, name calling, etc. These are highly educated individuals and if the conversation lasts long enough it is clear that they not only think it is morally ok, but that it is not even theft.
I am not a pristinely innocent citizen, however I'm not about to risk my career and that of my lab so a researcher that just spent 3k on a conference and 2.5k on a new laptop (when their old was sufficient to get the job done) can save 50 dollars on some license that is essential for their work. When I attended college, I truly did so on a shoe string budget. Most of the software I used was open source. It wasn't always as good as the commercial alternatives, but it was "good enough" to warrant the savings.
The sense of entitlement is quite appalling. People do need to realize that software takes significant labor to produce, that it does belong to someone, and that the owner has the right to decide how that property is distributed. If some software is truly *essential* to what you do and nothing else can match that need, then this is only an indication of just how original, insightful, and valuable that software actually is. So either pay for it, write your own, or learn how to steal it yourself (and so bear the sole brunt of any consequences of that theft however slight the chance it may occur). Of course, the fourth option is to pay me to write it for you out of your grant. The fact that they don't consider this option shows that deep down they do realize just how costly it would be to develop such a solution.
which may sound higher than some entry-level college student jobs, but they stay $16/hour until you retire, unlike more professional jobs.
This is incorrect. Yes, many of those that don't go to college end up "stuck" at 16/hr jobs for the rest of their life. However, in my experience (I put myself through college doing blue collar work in petro-chemical plants) these are the same ones that couldn't have made it through college if their life depended on it. As in, they did not possess the mental capacity to do so. I was decent at high school level math and was able to move up from a 14/hr position to a 20/hr position after a single job in a fab shop by demonstrating I could work out blue print schematics for field labor.
Since my family comes from this area of work, I've been able to see first hand the potential it possesses for the diligent, motivated worker with 1/2 a brain. Many were able to increase their salaries from that 15/hr to 50/hr within 5-7 years in the industry. The more goal oriented could attain 60/70 per hour within 10. That's approx. 150k per year U.S. I now work in research at a university and many of my friends are making less then 1/3 of that after 8 years of college. After about 5-6 more years they *may* be making 2/3's of that pay. In private industry, they could approach this income but rarely exceed it except for a very small subset of career paths.
Of course, the work is extremely unrewarding intellectually and it's often dangerous work if not hard (upper management work isn't physically intensive).
Last I checked, my Bible didn't say to wage jihad against the infidels.
Perhaps you should try reading it sometime. I know it's a pretty thick book and with today's hum and drum we might not have time to actually read what we believe in, so I'll give you a head start. Try beginning with the book of Matthew for some good and bloody unbeliever stomping on the part of Jesus.
I can assure you that "Christians" who bomb abortion clinics and picket actors'/soldiers' deaths because of whatever sexual orientation they might be- are hardly Christians at all. While mainstream Christianity disagrees with the issues behind those things, the isolated reactions by a fanatical few are totally uncalled for and vile. Jesus didn't put to death the woman who was caught in adultery- he reviled her accusers (who had committed a greater sin) and told told the woman to go and sin no more. I, however, take great offense at Christianity being likened to Islam.
Many christian apologists like to bring up the contrasts between old and new testament. It's very convenient to discount the old testament. Who wouldn't want to? God was a spiteful, murderous, incestuous, advocator of infanticide, patricide, condoned the prostitution, abuse, and treatment of women as chattel, genocide, etc. in the old testament.
The New Testament isn't bereft of immorality though. Jesus required that his followers abandon their families, tortured hapless pigs, was Jewish and did not think heinously immoral acts against non-jews was immoral (Paul brought Jesus to the infidels). He was prone to cursing hapless animals, trees, and such which had done him no harm, took great pleasure in contemplating the torture of burning souls in hell, has no problems with the old testament (mathew 5:17), is all about murdering non-believers (mathew, revelations), feels murder is a nice solution to troublesome children (mathew, mark), is just fine and dandy with owning slaves and beating them if they put up a fuss (luke).
Hardly a suitable role model. Toss in the fact that religion has been at the root of more murders, genocide, mistruths, contortion of truth, outright denial of science, mass state sanctioned torture and theft, the list goes on. It may make you feel better to disregard the time proven tendencies that religion fosters in its followers and pretend that "enlightened christians" would never do such things, but we're not talking about the minority of followers here but the time proven majority.
And don't get me started on Faith. A doctrine whose core principal is to believe something despite all logical and scientific evidence to the contrary. What sort of perversion turns this into an attribute worthy of adulation?
The only reason you don't see bug crazy christians running around suicide bombing is because the majority live in first world nations that have full on militaries to do their dirty work.
"I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
--George W. Bush commenting to Texas evangelist James Robinson in the run-up to his presidential campaign
This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while. -- Bush
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."
--Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Abu Mazen quoting Bush when they met in Aqaba; reported in The Haaretz Reporter by Arnon Regular
So take all the offense you want. But religion is, by definition, ignorance, wanton stupidity, violence, and death. All for the promise of an eternal salvation for which there is no evidence for and quite a bit of probability against.
Hell,
Even the atheists have been responsible for some atrocities.
It's true that there are evil men of many beliefs. The difference is that there is nothing inherent in atheism that encourages evil acts. Whereas there are explicit, implicit, and inherent traits of religion that do.
Severely insulting one billion people is not the same thing as free speech.
Stating the obvious about a irrational and flawed belief is not being "insensitive" it's being truthful. When a creationists says the earth is only 6,000 years old and is insulted by the prevalence of the Satan inspired theory of evolution I am not being "insensitive" by pointing out that his premise is patently false.
And for the record, hate speech crime is ridiculous. The only moral imperative one individual has to another that should require punishment is actual harm, not "insulting ones sensibilities". This should also form the basis of any defensible law.
This plays to a larger question of what the difference is between religious tolerance and religious oppression--that is, oppression by religion. Obviously we would like to make everybody happy by catering to their particular beliefs (e.g. school vaccinations, peyote, polygamy). However at some point it ceases to be respect for religion and starts to be oppression by religion--the religious saying you can't print this, or you can't marry this person, etc. This seems to be why people like Hirsi Ali, and maybe Chris Hitchens, are so contemptuous of religion, because it's more than just a set of beliefs, it's also a set of prescriptions to be imposed upon the world.
The problem is the position that religious beliefs deserve any more respect then any other system of beliefs. Would we "respect" someone's belief that the moon is made of cheese, the sun revolves around the earth, or that fluoride is a government mind control agent? No. We'd weigh the observed/provable facts against the claim and reject it as foolish. So why should be "respect" the claim that a man rose from the dead, that the earth is only 6k years old, and we should draw pictures of certain (largely) fictional personas.
About the same time I started doubting the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
I wonder if these guys still buy into other childhood mythology. Religiosity is a very sad state. It's indicative to resistance to reason and rationality. We should be asking ourselves by what flaw humans are so susceptible to such tripe. It could have wide spread benefit above and beyond these annoying antics.
If the answer to that question is "they would go out of business", then their motivation for always treating the symptoms and never treating the underlying cause will become clear.
The rest of your post might be spot on, but this is a piss poor litmus test. I can't imagine any specialist profession that the answer to that question wouldn't be "they would go out of business". For example, "What would happen to all the oncologists if cancer were cured?" => "They would go out of business!". But this hardly means there are no oncologists that genuinely care about their patients.
If you don't want to be punched, kicked, or litigated, then don't line up against them.
If you line up against a murderer, expect to be murdered! Oh wait, there goes the entire penal system's reliance on the people standing up for themselves.The fact is, in all of the situations you list... no, you shouldn't expect to be "anythinged". Punching, kicking, litigating, and murdering without cause is not ok.
I also suggest you read up on the whole freedom of the press and anonymous sources thing.
Well, I am of the opinion that..
it was dumb of them to sign away their rights
it was dumb of them to be drinking at parties
it was dumb of them to let pictures be taken of themselves doing illegal things
and..
it was dumb of them to publicly post those pictures on the internet
Also, keep in mind that no one really got in to *that* much trouble.
Of course, I understand the whole abuse of power issues, but aren't there far more troubling abuses of power?
I agree on all counts. Of course, it's dumb of a woman to walk down a dark alley, in a bad neighborhood full of crime, alone, and in a skimpy dress. But we still don't excuse rape because of her idiocy.
There are much more serious abuses of power. However, these abuses can have a significant impact on these kids. And really, of all the dumb things the one they had no choice in was the signing away of their rights (if they wanted to do anything but go to class). The *should* have taken a stand right there, but I imagine they blew it off as in the same category of other hokey shit schools/coaches/etc demand that usually aren't taken by the letter by such institutions. It's more a symbolic thing.
This does serve as a perfect example of abuse of power. I'm not going to drive down there and march for them, but if I were a parent I'd certainly fight it.
In the article, it explains that the only kids that got in trouble were the ones on the sports teams that signed the "no drug" agreements.
Which they were required to sign to participate in sports. Just because the school planned ahead of time to overstep their bounds does not make it any more correct to do so. If they wanted to be responsible citizens (since that's all they are outside the bounds of school functions/property) then they can inform the parents. If the parent's feel suspension from sports is appropriate then so be it.
We won't get into how students who participate in sports and extra curricular activities are far less likely to participate in the very activities that the school is trying to dissuade and so ousting them from those very activities may very well increase the behavior. Want to make them run 20 laps? Fine. Make it a "character" issue or whatever high school coaches like to focus on now-a-days. But the school is not a state sanctioned guardian that supersedes parental judgement for every aspect of a child's life. This is the parent's purview and since some were drinking at weddings and family functions it would seem the parents, at least in some cases, approved.
Yes, I read the article. For one, they're not just punishing athletes:
Natalie Friedman, a senior who is not part of any sports programs, said she was called in by her dean and scolded about Facebook photos of her behind a bar at a friend's house with drinks visible.
and two, this "contract" is required to play sports:
The Minnesota State High School League requires student athletes to sign a pledge that they will not drink alcoholic beverages.
Some of the photo's were taken at family events like weddings. So, no, the school cannot say "If you as parents let your kids drink at their sister's wedding they can't play sports.". It's not their call.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend who saw the school principal at the grocery store. After making eye contact, he gave him the middle finger. The principal was understandably irate and the following Monday suspended him.
When his parents found out, they called the principal and made it abundantly clear that he was far, far outside his bounds and pushed until the school rescinded the suspension. Don't think he didn't suffer consequences, they were just delivered by his parents whose duty it is to do so outside of school.
The duty of school officials is to discipline and teach students within the school environment. From 8-3 or on school grounds, that's it. Period. The minute the child leaves school grounds, he's under the purview of the law and his guardians. The second school officials leave the school grounds, they're just average folks. No legitimate power over and above any other schmo.
Wouldn't it be easier for them to switch to a pay-per-gigabyte-downloaded scheme? So instead of paying $X/month for unlimited access, you'd be paying something less than $X per month. Perhaps $10 less. But you'd get charged $1/GB downloaded, which, I think with most people, wouldn't be that much anyways.
This model would destroy academia. I'll give an example, I work in MRI imaging. I, and many of the researchers in my lab, routinely transfer very large image files to and from home/laptops (when traveling). Some can be about 5gb a piece. If I only make 2 of these size transfers a week, one to home then back to work, that's $20/week or $80/mth *just to get work done*.
Then toss in watching a few tv shows online since I might have odd work hours or a long commute (I'm talking the legally watchable ones..e.g. cbs.com) and my bill could easily reach $100/mth + base cost. That's absurd.
Now tally up the costs for, say, UCLA transferring data to Stanford and stick AT&T in the middle billing every gigabyte. I know the $1/gb was just a random number you tossed out, but realistically to make such a model workable you'd have to reduce the per GB rate to something that'd keep the costs for these legal high transfer clients about the same as before. To do this, they'd lose tons of money on the grandma's who just check their hotmail once a week.
Open source should not be about "preventing" proprietary software. And it usually isn't about that. Except in the GPL case. Open source should be about creating software and letting others use it in any way they want, no matter what political views they have. That's software 'freedom'.
Obviously some people disagree. Some disagree a little and will use GPLv2, some disagree a lot and will use GPLv3, some will complete agree and those will use BSD.
But here's the kicker: All of them OWN the code they wrote and are 100% within their rights to tell you and anyone else the conditions required to use *their* work. And since it does belong to them in every sense of the word, they have no moral imperative to do what *you* thing they *should* do with it.
Now, this has been beaten to death. But please realize that BSD is a license that maximizes the freedoms of the developer while GPL maximizes the freedoms of the user. I use both depending on who I want the code to benefit the most: users or developers.
Bullshit. That's like saying that because you pay taxes, you support torture! Or like saying since you support slashdot, which is part of a corporation, you're promoting the exploitation of poor chinese children! Linus believes that there's a difference between hardware and software, and that software shouldn't dictate hardware. That makes sense to me.
Henry David Thoreau would respectfully disagree. You might want to check out a couple of his works as well as others of the same mind. You may not agree with them, but they're not idiots and have very solid, well thought out reasons for claiming exactly the relationship your calling insane.
I think this is more typical in small shops or in low to medium level positions in large shops. I can already tell you what the response would be if I called the head Networking Engineer at my work and asked him to drop by office and take a look at the printer.
There certainly are gray areas and overlap, but I think this is more common at the low level. I'm not certain of the exact salary of the professional IT guys at my job. But I'd ballpark it in the low to mid six digits. . . quite possibly more. He doesn't even work on his *own* printer.
Little miss dolly dots who can barely operate MSWord and her email client is going to have the expertise to "Control the processing of information directly"? Fuck no. People like that couldn't spill pee out of a boot if the instructions were on the heel.
I'm in an academic environment. I work with a lot of really smart and VERY accomplished people, but that doesn't mean they know jackshit about computers. They need Mike (our I.T. god) on an almost daily basis.
A friend of mine works for a Well Known Thinktank. Nobel prize winners, genius types. Most of them wouldn't be able to distinguish a USB cable from Firewire if their lives depended on it. you could give them tutorials all day long - and all you'd be doing is wasting their time, which is REALLY expensive.
And setting up these networks? And troubleshooting it all? When the print server's on windows, but the file server's on linux and I'm on a Mac and need something to print NOW? I am I going to "Control the processing of information directly"? I could, but in fact: Fuck No. I'm gonna call Mike, the IT deity for our department and he will fix it. IT will never go away, because (not to sound snobby, just acknowledging reality) some of us have better things to do with our time.
RS
I think you have a very different definition of "IT" then I do. The tasks you outline are not what I'd call "IT". I'd call those "Help Desk". IT professionals don't drop by the put paper in your printer. Just as you have "better things to do", IT professionals also have better things to do then hold the hands of the computer ignorant and explain things like "insert paper" or "right click your mouse".
In fact, that kind of job doesn't require an "IT God". All it takes is a 1/2 ass computer savvy college kid working as an intern for 6 dollars an hour. And this is exactly what the article is saying. The true IT departments are the ones that design and maintain the companies infrastructure. Your business may be too small to have one or you just might never actually see him. Your description is the technical equivalent of suggesting that the guy that changes your car's oil is the same as a mechanical engineer that designed the car.
Personally, I don't think this role will disappear completely. However, we are likely to see larger companies scaling back their full time staff as traditionally "in-house" services are contracted out. Doesn't mean IT disappeared, just means their job has shifted.
My wife and son have Macs. I use Linux, I tell you, there is so much more you can do with Linux than you can with Windows or Macintosh. I've tried to use their computers but there aren't enough applications available, every time I want to do something I can't find an easy application to do it.
My experience has been very different. I have yet to find a linux program that did not have a mac alternative and have found many mac programs for which no linux alternative could be found that did the same job as easily.
Obviously I'm not talking about office applications and stuff like that, but playing media on a mac is painful unless it is directly supported. There is no real choice to play music but on iTunes.
Mplayer, VLC, Windows Media, all proprietary media players, and any KDE or Gnome based media player are available for OSX. You can also run any windows only media application via Bootcamp and Parallels.
And yes, I know Mac is based on Darwin which is based on FreeBSD, but the UI is not X11 and is thus crap for anything but local display. Try running a Mac's control panel applet on a different system. Oh, sure, maybe you can find a VNC server for it, but good luck.
X11 can be installed on OSX and any X11 based application can be used via x11 forwarding. VNC is built into the os. So much so that you can do do desktop sharing simply by clicking a button in iChat. Of course, you can do it the old school IP/domain name way as well. Also, all configuration is done via xml files and accessible via CLI commands like systemsetup making remote management straight forward.
I think your issues come more from misunderstanding then reality. Many of the complaints simply aren't true and seem to stem from the same source as someone sitting down to linux for the first time and complaining because they can't find any exe's to double click for installing. You may find the OSX Missing Manual series as a decent start in uncovering the power of this UNIX operating system. You may still find that the operating system is not for you, but it won't be due to the reasons listed above.;)
I'm not sure what software you had issues with. I run development environments on osx servers and clients and it's never been harder then sudo port install X or the equally easy CPAN install if required.
Multi-tasking is impossible. You can only do one thing at a time. But if you adjust the definition a bit, it makes perfect sense in a work environment.
For example, say your a programmer on a large project. What do you do while you build the latest changes? Browse slashdot, stare at the text scrolling by, or work on the latest TPS reports?
When I am put in such a distasteful position as this. There is nothing inherent in the installation of a dvd drive that gives a repairman the right to rifle through personal files. "Looking for something to burn"? It could have been done with an external drive full of "testing files".
I would protect this man's right to privacy in the same way I would protect a bigot's right to spout hate.
If I ran across the files, I'd also likely break his legs at the knee caps when he came in to pick up his computer, but that's another matter all together.
Slashdot Mirror
I work in a science lab at a major university as an all purpose tech/IT. I am frequently asked to steal software for my researchers. I have told many of them repeatedly that I will not steal software for them nor knowingly maintain that stolen software if they choose to do so themselves. This often incites confrontational behavior, name calling, etc. These are highly educated individuals and if the conversation lasts long enough it is clear that they not only think it is morally ok, but that it is not even theft.
I am not a pristinely innocent citizen, however I'm not about to risk my career and that of my lab so a researcher that just spent 3k on a conference and 2.5k on a new laptop (when their old was sufficient to get the job done) can save 50 dollars on some license that is essential for their work. When I attended college, I truly did so on a shoe string budget. Most of the software I used was open source. It wasn't always as good as the commercial alternatives, but it was "good enough" to warrant the savings.
The sense of entitlement is quite appalling. People do need to realize that software takes significant labor to produce, that it does belong to someone, and that the owner has the right to decide how that property is distributed. If some software is truly *essential* to what you do and nothing else can match that need, then this is only an indication of just how original, insightful, and valuable that software actually is. So either pay for it, write your own, or learn how to steal it yourself (and so bear the sole brunt of any consequences of that theft however slight the chance it may occur). Of course, the fourth option is to pay me to write it for you out of your grant. The fact that they don't consider this option shows that deep down they do realize just how costly it would be to develop such a solution.
This is incorrect. Yes, many of those that don't go to college end up "stuck" at 16/hr jobs for the rest of their life. However, in my experience (I put myself through college doing blue collar work in petro-chemical plants) these are the same ones that couldn't have made it through college if their life depended on it. As in, they did not possess the mental capacity to do so. I was decent at high school level math and was able to move up from a 14/hr position to a 20/hr position after a single job in a fab shop by demonstrating I could work out blue print schematics for field labor.
Since my family comes from this area of work, I've been able to see first hand the potential it possesses for the diligent, motivated worker with 1/2 a brain. Many were able to increase their salaries from that 15/hr to 50/hr within 5-7 years in the industry. The more goal oriented could attain 60/70 per hour within 10. That's approx. 150k per year U.S. I now work in research at a university and many of my friends are making less then 1/3 of that after 8 years of college. After about 5-6 more years they *may* be making 2/3's of that pay. In private industry, they could approach this income but rarely exceed it except for a very small subset of career paths.
Of course, the work is extremely unrewarding intellectually and it's often dangerous work if not hard (upper management work isn't physically intensive).
Perhaps you should try reading it sometime. I know it's a pretty thick book and with today's hum and drum we might not have time to actually read what we believe in, so I'll give you a head start. Try beginning with the book of Matthew for some good and bloody unbeliever stomping on the part of Jesus.
Many christian apologists like to bring up the contrasts between old and new testament. It's very convenient to discount the old testament. Who wouldn't want to? God was a spiteful, murderous, incestuous, advocator of infanticide, patricide, condoned the prostitution, abuse, and treatment of women as chattel, genocide, etc. in the old testament.
The New Testament isn't bereft of immorality though. Jesus required that his followers abandon their families, tortured hapless pigs, was Jewish and did not think heinously immoral acts against non-jews was immoral (Paul brought Jesus to the infidels). He was prone to cursing hapless animals, trees, and such which had done him no harm, took great pleasure in contemplating the torture of burning souls in hell, has no problems with the old testament (mathew 5:17), is all about murdering non-believers (mathew, revelations), feels murder is a nice solution to troublesome children (mathew, mark), is just fine and dandy with owning slaves and beating them if they put up a fuss (luke).
Hardly a suitable role model. Toss in the fact that religion has been at the root of more murders, genocide, mistruths, contortion of truth, outright denial of science, mass state sanctioned torture and theft, the list goes on. It may make you feel better to disregard the time proven tendencies that religion fosters in its followers and pretend that "enlightened christians" would never do such things, but we're not talking about the minority of followers here but the time proven majority.
And don't get me started on Faith. A doctrine whose core principal is to believe something despite all logical and scientific evidence to the contrary. What sort of perversion turns this into an attribute worthy of adulation?
The only reason you don't see bug crazy christians running around suicide bombing is because the majority live in first world nations that have full on militaries to do their dirty work.
So take all the offense you want. But religion is, by definition, ignorance, wanton stupidity, violence, and death. All for the promise of an eternal salvation for which there is no evidence for and quite a bit of probability against.
It's true that there are evil men of many beliefs. The difference is that there is nothing inherent in atheism that encourages evil acts. Whereas there are explicit, implicit, and inherent traits of religion that do.
Stating the obvious about a irrational and flawed belief is not being "insensitive" it's being truthful. When a creationists says the earth is only 6,000 years old and is insulted by the prevalence of the Satan inspired theory of evolution I am not being "insensitive" by pointing out that his premise is patently false.
And for the record, hate speech crime is ridiculous. The only moral imperative one individual has to another that should require punishment is actual harm, not "insulting ones sensibilities". This should also form the basis of any defensible law.
The problem is the position that religious beliefs deserve any more respect then any other system of beliefs. Would we "respect" someone's belief that the moon is made of cheese, the sun revolves around the earth, or that fluoride is a government mind control agent? No. We'd weigh the observed/provable facts against the claim and reject it as foolish. So why should be "respect" the claim that a man rose from the dead, that the earth is only 6k years old, and we should draw pictures of certain (largely) fictional personas.
About the same time I started doubting the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
I wonder if these guys still buy into other childhood mythology. Religiosity is a very sad state. It's indicative to resistance to reason and rationality. We should be asking ourselves by what flaw humans are so susceptible to such tripe. It could have wide spread benefit above and beyond these annoying antics.
The rest of your post might be spot on, but this is a piss poor litmus test. I can't imagine any specialist profession that the answer to that question wouldn't be "they would go out of business". For example, "What would happen to all the oncologists if cancer were cured?" => "They would go out of business!". But this hardly means there are no oncologists that genuinely care about their patients.
I also suggest you read up on the whole freedom of the press and anonymous sources thing.
woooshhh!
I agree on all counts. Of course, it's dumb of a woman to walk down a dark alley, in a bad neighborhood full of crime, alone, and in a skimpy dress. But we still don't excuse rape because of her idiocy.
There are much more serious abuses of power. However, these abuses can have a significant impact on these kids. And really, of all the dumb things the one they had no choice in was the signing away of their rights (if they wanted to do anything but go to class). The *should* have taken a stand right there, but I imagine they blew it off as in the same category of other hokey shit schools/coaches/etc demand that usually aren't taken by the letter by such institutions. It's more a symbolic thing.
This does serve as a perfect example of abuse of power. I'm not going to drive down there and march for them, but if I were a parent I'd certainly fight it.
Which they were required to sign to participate in sports. Just because the school planned ahead of time to overstep their bounds does not make it any more correct to do so. If they wanted to be responsible citizens (since that's all they are outside the bounds of school functions/property) then they can inform the parents. If the parent's feel suspension from sports is appropriate then so be it.
We won't get into how students who participate in sports and extra curricular activities are far less likely to participate in the very activities that the school is trying to dissuade and so ousting them from those very activities may very well increase the behavior. Want to make them run 20 laps? Fine. Make it a "character" issue or whatever high school coaches like to focus on now-a-days. But the school is not a state sanctioned guardian that supersedes parental judgement for every aspect of a child's life. This is the parent's purview and since some were drinking at weddings and family functions it would seem the parents, at least in some cases, approved.
Yes, I read the article. For one, they're not just punishing athletes:
and two, this "contract" is required to play sports:Some of the photo's were taken at family events like weddings. So, no, the school cannot say "If you as parents let your kids drink at their sister's wedding they can't play sports.". It's not their call.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend who saw the school principal at the grocery store. After making eye contact, he gave him the middle finger. The principal was understandably irate and the following Monday suspended him.
When his parents found out, they called the principal and made it abundantly clear that he was far, far outside his bounds and pushed until the school rescinded the suspension. Don't think he didn't suffer consequences, they were just delivered by his parents whose duty it is to do so outside of school.
The duty of school officials is to discipline and teach students within the school environment. From 8-3 or on school grounds, that's it. Period. The minute the child leaves school grounds, he's under the purview of the law and his guardians. The second school officials leave the school grounds, they're just average folks. No legitimate power over and above any other schmo.
This model would destroy academia. I'll give an example, I work in MRI imaging. I, and many of the researchers in my lab, routinely transfer very large image files to and from home/laptops (when traveling). Some can be about 5gb a piece. If I only make 2 of these size transfers a week, one to home then back to work, that's $20/week or $80/mth *just to get work done*.
Then toss in watching a few tv shows online since I might have odd work hours or a long commute (I'm talking the legally watchable ones..e.g. cbs.com) and my bill could easily reach $100/mth + base cost. That's absurd.
Now tally up the costs for, say, UCLA transferring data to Stanford and stick AT&T in the middle billing every gigabyte. I know the $1/gb was just a random number you tossed out, but realistically to make such a model workable you'd have to reduce the per GB rate to something that'd keep the costs for these legal high transfer clients about the same as before. To do this, they'd lose tons of money on the grandma's who just check their hotmail once a week.
Obviously some people disagree. Some disagree a little and will use GPLv2, some disagree a lot and will use GPLv3, some will complete agree and those will use BSD.
But here's the kicker: All of them OWN the code they wrote and are 100% within their rights to tell you and anyone else the conditions required to use *their* work. And since it does belong to them in every sense of the word, they have no moral imperative to do what *you* thing they *should* do with it.
Now, this has been beaten to death. But please realize that BSD is a license that maximizes the freedoms of the developer while GPL maximizes the freedoms of the user. I use both depending on who I want the code to benefit the most: users or developers.
Henry David Thoreau would respectfully disagree. You might want to check out a couple of his works as well as others of the same mind. You may not agree with them, but they're not idiots and have very solid, well thought out reasons for claiming exactly the relationship your calling insane.
I think this is more typical in small shops or in low to medium level positions in large shops. I can already tell you what the response would be if I called the head Networking Engineer at my work and asked him to drop by office and take a look at the printer.
There certainly are gray areas and overlap, but I think this is more common at the low level. I'm not certain of the exact salary of the professional IT guys at my job. But I'd ballpark it in the low to mid six digits. . . quite possibly more. He doesn't even work on his *own* printer.
I think you have a very different definition of "IT" then I do. The tasks you outline are not what I'd call "IT". I'd call those "Help Desk". IT professionals don't drop by the put paper in your printer. Just as you have "better things to do", IT professionals also have better things to do then hold the hands of the computer ignorant and explain things like "insert paper" or "right click your mouse".
In fact, that kind of job doesn't require an "IT God". All it takes is a 1/2 ass computer savvy college kid working as an intern for 6 dollars an hour. And this is exactly what the article is saying. The true IT departments are the ones that design and maintain the companies infrastructure. Your business may be too small to have one or you just might never actually see him. Your description is the technical equivalent of suggesting that the guy that changes your car's oil is the same as a mechanical engineer that designed the car.
Personally, I don't think this role will disappear completely. However, we are likely to see larger companies scaling back their full time staff as traditionally "in-house" services are contracted out. Doesn't mean IT disappeared, just means their job has shifted.
I don't think this will happen until everything about computers is literally as easy as flipping a light switch.
X11 can be installed on OSX and any X11 based application can be used via x11 forwarding. VNC is built into the os. So much so that you can do do desktop sharing simply by clicking a button in iChat. Of course, you can do it the old school IP/domain name way as well. Also, all configuration is done via xml files and accessible via CLI commands like systemsetup making remote management straight forward.
I think your issues come more from misunderstanding then reality. Many of the complaints simply aren't true and seem to stem from the same source as someone sitting down to linux for the first time and complaining because they can't find any exe's to double click for installing. You may find the OSX Missing Manual series as a decent start in uncovering the power of this UNIX operating system. You may still find that the operating system is not for you, but it won't be due to the reasons listed above. ;)
I'm not sure what software you had issues with. I run development environments on osx servers and clients and it's never been harder then sudo port install X or the equally easy CPAN install if required.
For example, say your a programmer on a large project. What do you do while you build the latest changes? Browse slashdot, stare at the text scrolling by, or work on the latest TPS reports?
When I am put in such a distasteful position as this. There is nothing inherent in the installation of a dvd drive that gives a repairman the right to rifle through personal files. "Looking for something to burn"? It could have been done with an external drive full of "testing files".
I would protect this man's right to privacy in the same way I would protect a bigot's right to spout hate.
If I ran across the files, I'd also likely break his legs at the knee caps when he came in to pick up his computer, but that's another matter all together.