I'd ask "What rights are granted to a consumer when he/she purchases an audio recording?"
For example, is one allowed to download said album if the original copy is destroyed? If a consumer purchased a cassette, are they eligable to obtain the CD release for free? If not, why?
I've attempted to ask this several times to RIAA reps without response.
Software Licensing: Document through small scraps of paper, scattered across disparate IT Departments. Supplement with 5 year old emails that hints of 30 licenses for x.
Passwords: Use 20 character alphanumerics written by hand with the command to shred them after use. Have inconsistency across platforms, and no common theme or strategy. There should be no way to find passwords if the wrong person is out of the office.
Legacy Support: Oral tradition (you need to talk to y, who implemented this system 5 years ago (and has not touched it since)).
Standard Support: Use the handy documentation located at V:\departments\it\it department\support\network applications\documentation\internal documentation\products\applications\Windows\produc ts\new\ANDY'S FOLDER - DO NOT USE\readme.doc. "Oh, that may be several iterations old - can you update it while you're your done fixing that problem?"
Network Diagrams: See whiteboard in conference room. If you need to see it while in the field, ask someone to take a picture and send it to you.
Data drops: Labels take to long. Use a toner.
Broken ports and switches: Plug it in. Does it work? Then it's broken.
Organization / job title chart: Why would we need one of those?
"I have half a million subscribers who would love to use an iPod with my service," says Napster's Gorog.
I'll bet a lot of owners have used Napster (circa 1998) to load their iPods. About 20% of the music in my collection is from this previous version of Napster. Most of that is crappy 128k, misnamed, and ID3tag-less. 60% of the rest of it is from legally ripped CDs. The final 20% is legitimate free music - from archive.org, fingertips, The Hype Machine, other blogs, live torrents, etc.
Perhaps the RIAA should reconsider the free ride they expected from iPod users. When I purchased my Nano, the sole purpose was to haul around some of the 120GB of music I own. I never planned on using Apple's Music Store, and I probably never will. Similarly, I will never purchase DRM encrusted music. The music industry should really consider anything they've sold through iTunes as frosting.
And while we're on it, the RIAA will never see me re-purchasing music I already bought. I've downloaded and feel fully entitled to albums I've previously bought on cassette & LP. I could go through the work of encoding it in realtime, but the same thing is available online for free. The same goes for lost or damaged CDs. I've been emailing the RIAA regularly for several years to see if they have a problem with this policy - with no reply to date.
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple." - Is Gorog willfully ignorant of free music, or just plain stupid? Has he ever even used an iPod?
I see a few posts in this thread that appear to be rather ill informed. Some school districts do blindly throw technology at their users (students & teachers) and call it a successful application, the idea being that computers must magically be better for learning. Of course this is not the case, and schools must have a plan for implementation.
Disclosure: I worked from 1998 to 2002 in support positions at two districts in the Metro Detroit area. One was in a lower-income district with a charter school, the other was for a public district in a middle to upper income suburb. Both used E-Rate grants, and I was involved in minor way for the former's application.
Yes, this story about waste is sickening. And I don't enjoy having yet another tax on my phone bills. But the implementations of E-Rate in my personal experience has been prudent. The former school paid for a fractional T1. That's a significant amount of money that can be put back into books, free breakfasts, materials, etc. The second district used their E-Rate money to fund a major WAN upgrade. There was a lot of competitive bidding from contractors. We wound up with a lot for our buck.
As far as piss-poor IT staffing goes, I would suggest that it depends on the district's value of technology. I was fortunate to work in places where it was an important part of the curriculum and we received an adequate budget. There were staff devoted to IT matters at both the district and school level. And 90% of these individuals were highly competent. So if your kids are complaining about broken computers and lax security, take it up with the district's Director of Technology. Don't complain to the teacher or even principal, because they will have similar complaints that they won't publicly acknowledge.
Of course it is a shame that E-Rate pays for only parts of IT. With poor planning, it could be a recipe for disaster when you can't afford to pay anyone to install your shiny new equipment, much less maintain it.
Since I've worked in education as an IT person, I've had the benefits of seeing how schools work as an outsider. I've heard the complaints from teachers about uninvolved parents and I've seen how well they serve as a significant adult figure for up to 30 kids at a time. I've also heard the complaints from parents in my extended family and at my current workplace about how teachers expect too much from them.
I've given several speeches about the topic, and could write all day about it, but here are a few obstacles to technology in the classroom (in my unprofessional opinion):
- With all the extra committee work, conferences, grading, and lesson preparation, teachers sometimes don't even have time to go to the bathroom, much less explore cool new technology. Translating this into a lesson plan takes even more time. Do you have any idea how much preparation a field trip takes? Ask a teacher sometime.
- Technical hurdles, which I don't really need to get into for this forum. Imagine trying to give a distraction-free lesson to just 10 kids in a computer lab and one browser has the wrong proxy, another has porno adware, and another spontaneously reboots. With as much malware that's out there right now, I'm really glad to not be working for users that click every damn thing that pops up.
- Behavior problems with kids themselves due to family/ADD/just being a kid. Popup ads are distracting, advertisements are everywhere, and the kid next to you has found a really cool picture of a fighter jets. Kids also tend to tune out teachers when a computer is in front of them, and blurt out randomly about things appearing on their monitor.
- The nature of using the Internet as a research tool. The only directions I've ever heard in the classroom regarding reliable sources of information (for reports or whatever) have come out of my own mouth. Students are not taught how to view information critically. It is also much too easy to cut and paste your way into creating a report (and ignoring writing concepts of structure, relevant content, and context).
So failures of technolog
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I'd ask "What rights are granted to a consumer when he/she purchases an audio recording?"
For example, is one allowed to download said album if the original copy is destroyed? If a consumer purchased a cassette, are they eligable to obtain the CD release for free? If not, why?
I've attempted to ask this several times to RIAA reps without response.
Software Licensing: Document through small scraps of paper, scattered across disparate IT Departments. Supplement with 5 year old emails that hints of 30 licenses for x.
Passwords: Use 20 character alphanumerics written by hand with the command to shred them after use. Have inconsistency across platforms, and no common theme or strategy. There should be no way to find passwords if the wrong person is out of the office.
Legacy Support: Oral tradition (you need to talk to y, who implemented this system 5 years ago (and has not touched it since)).
Standard Support: Use the handy documentation located at V:\departments\it\it department\support\network applications\documentation\internal documentation\products\applications\Windows\produc ts\new\ANDY'S FOLDER - DO NOT USE\readme.doc. "Oh, that may be several iterations old - can you update it while you're your done fixing that problem?"
Network Diagrams: See whiteboard in conference room. If you need to see it while in the field, ask someone to take a picture and send it to you.
Data drops: Labels take to long. Use a toner.
Broken ports and switches: Plug it in. Does it work? Then it's broken.
Organization / job title chart: Why would we need one of those?
I'll bet a lot of owners have used Napster (circa 1998) to load their iPods. About 20% of the music in my collection is from this previous version of Napster. Most of that is crappy 128k, misnamed, and ID3tag-less. 60% of the rest of it is from legally ripped CDs. The final 20% is legitimate free music - from archive.org, fingertips, The Hype Machine, other blogs, live torrents, etc.
Perhaps the RIAA should reconsider the free ride they expected from iPod users. When I purchased my Nano, the sole purpose was to haul around some of the 120GB of music I own. I never planned on using Apple's Music Store, and I probably never will. Similarly, I will never purchase DRM encrusted music. The music industry should really consider anything they've sold through iTunes as frosting.
And while we're on it, the RIAA will never see me re-purchasing music I already bought. I've downloaded and feel fully entitled to albums I've previously bought on cassette & LP. I could go through the work of encoding it in realtime, but the same thing is available online for free. The same goes for lost or damaged CDs. I've been emailing the RIAA regularly for several years to see if they have a problem with this policy - with no reply to date.
"You have this device consumers love, but they're being restricted from buying anything other than downloads from Apple."
- Is Gorog willfully ignorant of free music, or just plain stupid? Has he ever even used an iPod?
I see a few posts in this thread that appear to be rather ill informed. Some school districts do blindly throw technology at their users (students & teachers) and call it a successful application, the idea being that computers must magically be better for learning. Of course this is not the case, and schools must have a plan for implementation. Disclosure: I worked from 1998 to 2002 in support positions at two districts in the Metro Detroit area. One was in a lower-income district with a charter school, the other was for a public district in a middle to upper income suburb. Both used E-Rate grants, and I was involved in minor way for the former's application. Yes, this story about waste is sickening. And I don't enjoy having yet another tax on my phone bills. But the implementations of E-Rate in my personal experience has been prudent. The former school paid for a fractional T1. That's a significant amount of money that can be put back into books, free breakfasts, materials, etc. The second district used their E-Rate money to fund a major WAN upgrade. There was a lot of competitive bidding from contractors. We wound up with a lot for our buck. As far as piss-poor IT staffing goes, I would suggest that it depends on the district's value of technology. I was fortunate to work in places where it was an important part of the curriculum and we received an adequate budget. There were staff devoted to IT matters at both the district and school level. And 90% of these individuals were highly competent. So if your kids are complaining about broken computers and lax security, take it up with the district's Director of Technology. Don't complain to the teacher or even principal, because they will have similar complaints that they won't publicly acknowledge. Of course it is a shame that E-Rate pays for only parts of IT. With poor planning, it could be a recipe for disaster when you can't afford to pay anyone to install your shiny new equipment, much less maintain it. Since I've worked in education as an IT person, I've had the benefits of seeing how schools work as an outsider. I've heard the complaints from teachers about uninvolved parents and I've seen how well they serve as a significant adult figure for up to 30 kids at a time. I've also heard the complaints from parents in my extended family and at my current workplace about how teachers expect too much from them. I've given several speeches about the topic, and could write all day about it, but here are a few obstacles to technology in the classroom (in my unprofessional opinion): - With all the extra committee work, conferences, grading, and lesson preparation, teachers sometimes don't even have time to go to the bathroom, much less explore cool new technology. Translating this into a lesson plan takes even more time. Do you have any idea how much preparation a field trip takes? Ask a teacher sometime. - Technical hurdles, which I don't really need to get into for this forum. Imagine trying to give a distraction-free lesson to just 10 kids in a computer lab and one browser has the wrong proxy, another has porno adware, and another spontaneously reboots. With as much malware that's out there right now, I'm really glad to not be working for users that click every damn thing that pops up. - Behavior problems with kids themselves due to family/ADD/just being a kid. Popup ads are distracting, advertisements are everywhere, and the kid next to you has found a really cool picture of a fighter jets. Kids also tend to tune out teachers when a computer is in front of them, and blurt out randomly about things appearing on their monitor. - The nature of using the Internet as a research tool. The only directions I've ever heard in the classroom regarding reliable sources of information (for reports or whatever) have come out of my own mouth. Students are not taught how to view information critically. It is also much too easy to cut and paste your way into creating a report (and ignoring writing concepts of structure, relevant content, and context). So failures of technolog