If you read between the lines in their statement, it looks like the school is trying to say that the kid took home a loaner laptop - which he was not supposed to do. I think they're going to try to say that since the laptop wasn't the one issued to the kid, they had the right to try to locate it and they "accidentally" caught the kid engaged in "inappropriate behavior," which if this claim turns out to be true was taking something that looked sorta like drugs.
One more thing, from the summary, "the officials involved have done a particularly bad job of actually managing the events." How the hell do you do a good job of managing the event that a school vice-principle got access to pictures taken covertly in a minors bedroom? There's no managing that, that's a grade A screw up from the start.
That's just not true. I don't care how much money you have, you're not likely to get good health care in Zaire. More to the point, being filthy rich may not actually allow you to line jump in more socialist countries, which is why we occasionally hear about people with non-life threatining conditions and lots of money coming to the US for medical treatment. (1) they can afford it, and (2) they don't want to wait behind that pesky kid with the exploding appendix to get their knee replaced.
Rationing (or triage) is a fact of life when dealing with scarce resources like medical care. Socialized medicine rations care based on who needs it and when. The US rations care based on how much money you have.
The swine flu is a world pandemic, in epidemiology the word pandemic has a very specific meaning, that meaning does not include "bringing the world to an end if we don't buy vaccines."
Was the flu milder than we expected? Yes. Did anyone (read: credible scientists) pretend to know how severe the flu would be in advance? No. Should the WHO and the CDC be aware of and plan for worst case situations? Yes - anything else would be irresponsible. Did the media wildly overreact? Well - that's what they do.
A heart palpitation, what you're describing, is an unusual awareness of your heartbeat. It is not a heart attack, it's not even heart disease. It's possible that the people who work in the ER know more than you do and aren't particularly concerned if you notice that your heart is in fact beating. (I don't believe your 240bps claim - you would have passed out.)
Did you have chest pains? Was your blood pressure severely elevated? I'm going to guess no - or you certainly would have included that data in your rant. Heart disease doesn't get better after 8 hours, so as you said, it was probably a matter of caffeine coupled with anxiety. But by all means, they should have dropped everything to figure out why your heart was beating... Next time start clutching your chest and moaning - you'll get service post-haste...
It's too bad you weren't in the US, you never would have waited 8 hours for a non-resolution. (snicker)
It's less an issue of power/corruption, and more an issue of how much power any individual actually has. For instance, you could slam the door on lobyists in the government, but then you're eliminating some of the most qualified people from the pool - people who will be making less in a government job. As for healthcare, the president can't enact legislation unilaterally.
I share your concerns about the obsession with 'citizens' it's a giant race-baiting red herring.
I'm under no illusion that SCOTUS is uninfluenced by politics, but I will say this, Morse was a 5-4 decision. So as long as the current makeup holds, I'd wager that if this were a matter of a school suspending a student for a poster in his bedroom, at least Kennedy would peel off and the matter would be decided the other way.
You know how Mitt Romney et. al. are constantly talking about how the US has "the best health care in the world," WHO rating be damned? Well they're right - for people willing to pay you can receive better healthcare in the US than anywhere in the world. The question we should be asking is whether we want "the best" healthcare available to the rich, or really good healthcare available to everyone.
Freedom of speech applies to everyone, adults, children, and (now) corporations.
Freedom of speech can be limited in certain situations (on private property, speech that meets the legal definition of obscenity, speech that is threatening or libelous, or speech that is likely to provoke imminint lawless action.)
Minors are only a special case in that they have parents who are allowed to punish them - or rather they don't have any legal recourse to parental discipline. In some situations, schools act in loco parentis. This is very different from saying that minors don't have free speech rights.
case in point of why google want's this to be opt-out.
If this is an opt-out system, they will be able to make this out of print material available without tracking down any individual author. If this becomes an opt-in system, they won't bother and the material will languish until it properly enters the public domain (which if Disney has it's way will be never).
There are legitimate arguments on both sides, but suffice to say if copyright weren't essentially perpetual already a lot of these issues would be moot.
I'd like to see the judge mandate that google can scan whatever they want, but they can't hold exclusive license to them - but if google maintains exclusive control and a copyright owner later asserts his rights, as he has a right to do, google can first, pay him, and second, stop distributing his content. If google has non-exclusive rights, you can't ever put that cat back in the bag.
Google can't legally do what they've done, which is why we're talking about whether or not the settlement is fair. The difference between you and google is that google was willing to dare the rights-holders to sue them so they could work something out. You don't have the balls or the wallet.
The real trick is how you declare something "abandoned."
There are probably very few works which, if you tried hard enough, you would be unable to find the rights owner. However, no one is going to try hard enough for the 150million odd works who's ownership is unclear, this is one of the few situations where a law firm wouldn't be able to provide you all the billable hours you needed.
I bet you know with a whole lot more accuracy what year your car is than how old your TV is. Tech companies are just adopting a long standing buisness practice.
Interesting tidbit, DeLoreans (a la back to the future) don't have model years because John DeLorean considered the practice gimmicky. The downside is if your doorhandle breaks on your 1981 Ford Pinto, you know what to ask for at the junkyard, if your door handle breaks on your 1981 DeLorean you have to figure out what month your car was made in.
Deviations from the mean are just that. On average a 20 year old is more mature than a 15 year old. There is overlap, but the aging process has measurable effects on brain structure and chemistry.
You can make a 12 year old work for a living or form a militia, but if you do, most will never become properly functioning adults. Their brains are simply not developed enough to deal with certain experiences.
Again, exceptions are exceptions, but the rule is still important. And just because a student is exceptional in one measure (academics) doesn't mean he is exceptional in another (emotional or social maturity)
I'm just imagining how that first meeting with the parents went:
Administrator: Sir, we believe your son is engaged in "inappropriate behavior" at home. Parent: My little snowflake would never do something like that Administrator: Well we have this photo that we took covertly using his laptop in his bedroom.
...
How fucking dumb can someone be?
At first I really wanted to think that the student hoisted himself on his own petard and was claiming the photo was taken surreptitiously, to deflect some of the blame, but according the school district's website:
Last year, our district became one of the first school systems in the United States to provide laptop computers to all high school students. This initiative has been well received and has provided educational benefits to our students.
The District is dedicated to protecting and promoting student privacy. The laptops do contain a security feature intended to track lost, stolen and missing laptops. This feature has been deactivated effective today.
We regret if this situation has caused any concern or inconvenience among our students and families.The allegations are counter to everything that we stand for as a school and a community. We are reviewing the matter and will provide an additional update as soon as information becomes available.
So now I'm starting to think someone at the school really is that dumb. Second, someone should let the school board know that no one appreciates it when you pat yourself on the back during damage control - and I'm guessing that right about now the laptop program isn't all that "well received."
much has been written about when the GOP ceased to be the party of Goldwater and started being the party of Pat Robertson. Without rehashing too many of the sorted details, it started with Nixon's silent majority race bait, and was complete by the time Regan realized Roe v. Wade was the ticket to electoral success. The problem is, the people who fund the republican party don't give two shits about abortion, and the rise of Sarah Palin has them terrified, that and the handful of remaining conservative intellectuals are universally disliked - like George Will.
As a liberal, I am both captivated by and terrified of the teabaggers, but either way, it's going to make for an interesting next 3 years.
There's plenty of truth to the statement that the dems came to power by being "not George Bush," but now Scott Brown is the avant-guard for the republicans - we're not Washingtonians. Deep down, I really think Americans really want to see Washington accomplish something, and while obstructionism may lead to electoral victory in the midterms, I think it's a flash in the pan. The GOP has to do something constructive - and not ideologically pure, or in the long haul they're in trouble.
Of course never count the democrats out in a foot-shooting contest. How Obama went from a PR Jesus, to not being able to convince Americans that unemployment benefits and tax cuts (i.e. the stimulus) are a good idea in a recession is beyond me.
You'd send a gifted (academically) 14 year old to an out of state school and he'll magically become mature enough? What about a 12 year old? - I'm sure there's a handful of more academically intelligent 12 year olds than the average college student.
The word mature implies the passage of time. There's a reason we let kids be kids and don't throw them into the coal mine to speed up the maturation process.
Just like gambling you exploited short term variance.
Just like gambling, the house wins in the long run.
Unless you're exceptionally lucky, you've probably also bought a $20 extended warranty on a digital camera, a $75 extended warranty on a TV, a $50 extended warranty on a audio reciever, etc. etc. etc. None of which broke.
What's a working refurbished 4-year old iPod going for on ebay these days anyway?
This is unlike auto, fire, or homeowners insurance. If a products fails and you don't have an extended warranty, you're out the value of the product or the cost to repair it. If your car unexpectedly accelerates into oncoming traffic, or your home burns down, your total obligations, including medical bills and liability can vastly exceed your ability to pay. Good insurance is a hedge on an investment. iPods, TVs and even cars aren't investments, so extended warranties on these things are like buying insurance in blackjack - it's a sucker bet.
Right of way keeps every two bit wanna be internet mogul from digging up Main Street with a small business loan to run 1/2 mile of cable before his business goes belly up.
Right of way keeps comcast from only serving the densest parts of town and leaving the suburbs to languish by allowing city council to negotiate coverage and roll out times.
Like it or not, there is such a thing as a natural monopoly, and anything that requires running cable to every house in your market qualifies. You either let municipalities negotiate rights to access to the market, or you get the bird from the invisible hand of the free market.
Risk pooling only makes sense if there is a small chance of a very high cost event happening.
My phone stopped working so I have to buy a new one doesn't cut it.
Someone rear ended me at a red light and now I have a $70,000 hospital bill does.
I agree that it's not fraud, but it's an underhanded way of increasing the profit on a sale. It's like playing the gambling - it's a task on people who don't understand statistics. Unlike gambling, I've never heard someone call buying insurance "fun."
Slashdot Mirror
If you read between the lines in their statement, it looks like the school is trying to say that the kid took home a loaner laptop - which he was not supposed to do. I think they're going to try to say that since the laptop wasn't the one issued to the kid, they had the right to try to locate it and they "accidentally" caught the kid engaged in "inappropriate behavior," which if this claim turns out to be true was taking something that looked sorta like drugs.
One more thing, from the summary, "the officials involved have done a particularly bad job of actually managing the events." How the hell do you do a good job of managing the event that a school vice-principle got access to pictures taken covertly in a minors bedroom? There's no managing that, that's a grade A screw up from the start.
That's just not true. I don't care how much money you have, you're not likely to get good health care in Zaire. More to the point, being filthy rich may not actually allow you to line jump in more socialist countries, which is why we occasionally hear about people with non-life threatining conditions and lots of money coming to the US for medical treatment. (1) they can afford it, and (2) they don't want to wait behind that pesky kid with the exploding appendix to get their knee replaced.
Rationing (or triage) is a fact of life when dealing with scarce resources like medical care. Socialized medicine rations care based on who needs it and when. The US rations care based on how much money you have.
The swine flu is a world pandemic, in epidemiology the word pandemic has a very specific meaning, that meaning does not include "bringing the world to an end if we don't buy vaccines."
Was the flu milder than we expected? Yes. Did anyone (read: credible scientists) pretend to know how severe the flu would be in advance? No. Should the WHO and the CDC be aware of and plan for worst case situations? Yes - anything else would be irresponsible. Did the media wildly overreact? Well - that's what they do.
A heart palpitation, what you're describing, is an unusual awareness of your heartbeat. It is not a heart attack, it's not even heart disease. It's possible that the people who work in the ER know more than you do and aren't particularly concerned if you notice that your heart is in fact beating. (I don't believe your 240bps claim - you would have passed out.)
Did you have chest pains? Was your blood pressure severely elevated? I'm going to guess no - or you certainly would have included that data in your rant. Heart disease doesn't get better after 8 hours, so as you said, it was probably a matter of caffeine coupled with anxiety. But by all means, they should have dropped everything to figure out why your heart was beating... Next time start clutching your chest and moaning - you'll get service post-haste ...
It's too bad you weren't in the US, you never would have waited 8 hours for a non-resolution. (snicker)
It's less an issue of power/corruption, and more an issue of how much power any individual actually has. For instance, you could slam the door on lobyists in the government, but then you're eliminating some of the most qualified people from the pool - people who will be making less in a government job. As for healthcare, the president can't enact legislation unilaterally.
I share your concerns about the obsession with 'citizens' it's a giant race-baiting red herring.
I'm under no illusion that SCOTUS is uninfluenced by politics, but I will say this, Morse was a 5-4 decision. So as long as the current makeup holds, I'd wager that if this were a matter of a school suspending a student for a poster in his bedroom, at least Kennedy would peel off and the matter would be decided the other way.
The left/right terminology has it's origins in the orientation of the french parliament during their revolution.
You know how Mitt Romney et. al. are constantly talking about how the US has "the best health care in the world," WHO rating be damned? Well they're right - for people willing to pay you can receive better healthcare in the US than anywhere in the world. The question we should be asking is whether we want "the best" healthcare available to the rich, or really good healthcare available to everyone.
agree:
Individually each point probably would spawn an interesting discussion. Muddled together there isn't any unifying theme to comment on.
On the Morse decision: SCOTUS ruled that the school could regulate the students speech because it was an "official school event."
If you wanted to hang the, "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS" poster on your bedroom wall, it would be none of the schools damn business.
Freedom of speech applies to everyone, adults, children, and (now) corporations.
Freedom of speech can be limited in certain situations (on private property, speech that meets the legal definition of obscenity, speech that is threatening or libelous, or speech that is likely to provoke imminint lawless action.)
Minors are only a special case in that they have parents who are allowed to punish them - or rather they don't have any legal recourse to parental discipline. In some situations, schools act in loco parentis. This is very different from saying that minors don't have free speech rights.
case in point of why google want's this to be opt-out.
If this is an opt-out system, they will be able to make this out of print material available without tracking down any individual author. If this becomes an opt-in system, they won't bother and the material will languish until it properly enters the public domain (which if Disney has it's way will be never).
There are legitimate arguments on both sides, but suffice to say if copyright weren't essentially perpetual already a lot of these issues would be moot.
yeah this is the real sticking point.
I'd like to see the judge mandate that google can scan whatever they want, but they can't hold exclusive license to them - but if google maintains exclusive control and a copyright owner later asserts his rights, as he has a right to do, google can first, pay him, and second, stop distributing his content. If google has non-exclusive rights, you can't ever put that cat back in the bag.
Google can't legally do what they've done, which is why we're talking about whether or not the settlement is fair. The difference between you and google is that google was willing to dare the rights-holders to sue them so they could work something out. You don't have the balls or the wallet.
The real trick is how you declare something "abandoned."
There are probably very few works which, if you tried hard enough, you would be unable to find the rights owner. However, no one is going to try hard enough for the 150million odd works who's ownership is unclear, this is one of the few situations where a law firm wouldn't be able to provide you all the billable hours you needed.
I bet you know with a whole lot more accuracy what year your car is than how old your TV is. Tech companies are just adopting a long standing buisness practice.
Interesting tidbit, DeLoreans (a la back to the future) don't have model years because John DeLorean considered the practice gimmicky. The downside is if your doorhandle breaks on your 1981 Ford Pinto, you know what to ask for at the junkyard, if your door handle breaks on your 1981 DeLorean you have to figure out what month your car was made in.
which is just another way to say reduced demand and profitability - which is exactly what they're going for
Deviations from the mean are just that. On average a 20 year old is more mature than a 15 year old. There is overlap, but the aging process has measurable effects on brain structure and chemistry.
You can make a 12 year old work for a living or form a militia, but if you do, most will never become properly functioning adults. Their brains are simply not developed enough to deal with certain experiences.
Again, exceptions are exceptions, but the rule is still important. And just because a student is exceptional in one measure (academics) doesn't mean he is exceptional in another (emotional or social maturity)
I'm just imagining how that first meeting with the parents went:
Administrator: Sir, we believe your son is engaged in "inappropriate behavior" at home.
Parent: My little snowflake would never do something like that
Administrator: Well we have this photo that we took covertly using his laptop in his bedroom.
How fucking dumb can someone be?
At first I really wanted to think that the student hoisted himself on his own petard and was claiming the photo was taken surreptitiously, to deflect some of the blame, but according the school district's website:
So now I'm starting to think someone at the school really is that dumb. Second, someone should let the school board know that no one appreciates it when you pat yourself on the back during damage control - and I'm guessing that right about now the laptop program isn't all that "well received."
much has been written about when the GOP ceased to be the party of Goldwater and started being the party of Pat Robertson. Without rehashing too many of the sorted details, it started with Nixon's silent majority race bait, and was complete by the time Regan realized Roe v. Wade was the ticket to electoral success. The problem is, the people who fund the republican party don't give two shits about abortion, and the rise of Sarah Palin has them terrified, that and the handful of remaining conservative intellectuals are universally disliked - like George Will.
As a liberal, I am both captivated by and terrified of the teabaggers, but either way, it's going to make for an interesting next 3 years.
There's plenty of truth to the statement that the dems came to power by being "not George Bush," but now Scott Brown is the avant-guard for the republicans - we're not Washingtonians. Deep down, I really think Americans really want to see Washington accomplish something, and while obstructionism may lead to electoral victory in the midterms, I think it's a flash in the pan. The GOP has to do something constructive - and not ideologically pure, or in the long haul they're in trouble.
Of course never count the democrats out in a foot-shooting contest. How Obama went from a PR Jesus, to not being able to convince Americans that unemployment benefits and tax cuts (i.e. the stimulus) are a good idea in a recession is beyond me.
Really?
You'd send a gifted (academically) 14 year old to an out of state school and he'll magically become mature enough? What about a 12 year old? - I'm sure there's a handful of more academically intelligent 12 year olds than the average college student.
The word mature implies the passage of time. There's a reason we let kids be kids and don't throw them into the coal mine to speed up the maturation process.
Just like gambling you exploited short term variance.
Just like gambling, the house wins in the long run.
Unless you're exceptionally lucky, you've probably also bought a $20 extended warranty on a digital camera, a $75 extended warranty on a TV, a $50 extended warranty on a audio reciever, etc. etc. etc. None of which broke.
What's a working refurbished 4-year old iPod going for on ebay these days anyway?
This is unlike auto, fire, or homeowners insurance. If a products fails and you don't have an extended warranty, you're out the value of the product or the cost to repair it. If your car unexpectedly accelerates into oncoming traffic, or your home burns down, your total obligations, including medical bills and liability can vastly exceed your ability to pay. Good insurance is a hedge on an investment. iPods, TVs and even cars aren't investments, so extended warranties on these things are like buying insurance in blackjack - it's a sucker bet.
Right of way keeps every two bit wanna be internet mogul from digging up Main Street with a small business loan to run 1/2 mile of cable before his business goes belly up.
Right of way keeps comcast from only serving the densest parts of town and leaving the suburbs to languish by allowing city council to negotiate coverage and roll out times.
Like it or not, there is such a thing as a natural monopoly, and anything that requires running cable to every house in your market qualifies. You either let municipalities negotiate rights to access to the market, or you get the bird from the invisible hand of the free market.
Ok first the GP:
What's with the pot of boiling water? Some weird 21st century coven?
Now your reply: :)
Shirt pocket and spaghetti
And actully that's how I destroyed the touchscreen on a cheap 60 dollar touchscreen mp3 player. Had it in a sweatshirt pocket while I was peeing...
This is why I don't cook in the bathroom.
Risk pooling only makes sense if there is a small chance of a very high cost event happening.
My phone stopped working so I have to buy a new one doesn't cut it.
Someone rear ended me at a red light and now I have a $70,000 hospital bill does.
I agree that it's not fraud, but it's an underhanded way of increasing the profit on a sale. It's like playing the gambling - it's a task on people who don't understand statistics. Unlike gambling, I've never heard someone call buying insurance "fun."