Heh.
"Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."
I don't think either of those characterizations are correct. Presumably iPod users own bigger CD collections and/or are satisfied with the selection and pricing of the Apple Music Store. It's been claimed by some that a reasonable commercial alternative to p2p "piracy" would reduce it -- well here's what it looks like, apparently.
We are no longer able to purchase new spare parts for your Intel 486 workstations. The manufacturer stopped making those parts 10 years ago, and stockpiled supplies have finally been depleted. In the increasingly likely event that you experience catastrophic hardware failure, you will not only need to upgrade to a modern computer running a modern operating system, but your entire business is likely to fail during the 2 months or more it will take to convert your legacy data to a usable form.
Sincerely,
Opportunistic Vendor
But seriously, every small shop that's been around for a while has legacy equipment that's "good enough" along with the latest and greatest. The closest I ever came to having a unified architecture was when one of my clients migrated from Macintosh to Windows. For maybe six months they had identical workstations across the 8 person business. Then they started hiring, and of course the original model was no longer available... and Dells were cheaper, anyway... so now, 5 years later, with new hires and retiring of _some_ of the older machines, I have a 15 person office with 5 different PC models made by 3 different manufacturers. No economies of scale for the little guy...
What I want to know: can you boot Windows on the MacBook? The salesperson I reached at the Apple Store didn't seem to think so.
Triple booting OSX/Linux/Windows would be worth buying a new laptop for. (Throw in Solaris on Intel for extra fun). Otherwise I won't be upgrading from my 1 year old iBook for another year or more. It's adequate for work, but I sure would like to not carry 2 laptops around. And yes I'm aware of virtual pc--- that's not what I'm looking for.
Eh. Comparing apples to apples requires PPC architecture.:-)
But seriously, why is it Linux's responsibility to run a gui so you can compare it to an operating system that cannot be pared down to work efficiently in an environment with limited resources?
How is this different (in terms of bandwidth utilization) from having interesting or desirable content? Imagine if parents are involved in their kids' learning experience. Imagine if the teachers/administration/parents/students actually decide to use the available technology to build a community supporting quality education. The school should be grateful for the opportunity to learn just how lame their infrastructure is.
Dude! If you have someone looking over your shoulder while you do a search, you are having the problem. Turn your screen aside, or maybe use "Find" instead. You can be more specific with find. Search for "WMD" instead of "Osama", know what I mean?
The poster to whom you respond may be referring to the fact that the US provided substantial material support for the coup against Kassem in Iraq in 1963. One could say that, being a member of the Ba'athist party, young Saddam got his start there. By 1968 he's a vice president or something, and then head of security. And US support doesn't stop there. My understanding is that US fear of Soviet influence in the Middle East and the wish to secure access to oil fields were the reason for this and other questionable US activities in the region. So, it's not about being proud of American power, nor about imagining that only the US is powerful enough to install a dictator -- it's more likely disgust with our morally bankrupt foreign policy.
If you understood the article (oh, this is slashdot, maybe you didn't read it), you'd note that it isn't about Microsoft pushing LUA for XP. It's about some consultants who have an app that can find LUA bugs, and who want to create a central repository to document them. I enjoyed the second comment over at the article; an entertaining rant about how Microsoft shouldn't be signing code that requires the administrator account to run.
I've always tried to do the LUA thing with my clients. For the most part I've succeeded, although it always pisses off laptop owners that I want them to spend money to have me install drivers for their home printers. The thing that gets me is the programs that need to write to a directory in Program Files (Palm, Meetingmaker, some third party database applications). Storing user data with the executable is so Windows 98, but the developers don't seem to even recognize this is a problem. Despite the article's claim that LUA will prevent rootkits and trojan horses, I've found that an unprivileged user who is determined to go to porn sites will still get all kinda weird crap -- This effort isn't going to put the antivirus companies out of business.
You know, you're acting as if we should actually be worried about the retalitory ability of Iran. That has never been much of a concern. Pretty much the highest tech stuff they have are 30 year old F-14s which have been serviced only through deals with Russia. (Which were probably disrupted by the fall of the Soviet Union.) Iran doesn't have a chance in hell of standing up to Israel, much less the US. That's why nuclear weapons are important to them.
You seem to think it's about technology. I certainly don't. It's about time and attention. If US gets into it in enough places, it's only about exhaustion of US resources and/or willingness to continue. I'll wager that most Americans consider themselves reasonable, fair-minded, peaceful, 'minding-my-own-business' people. It doesn't really matter if not much is going on in a war of attrition. The simple fact that US has to attend to a bunch of different "fronts' (and I use that term loosely) could bring it all down in time. Or did you forget that we keep lowering taxes, and Bush's approval rating continues to go down. Bush's term will end, and with luck, the next president will be able to salvage some credibility and stop us from eating our children. ( that's a metaphor, ok)
But seriously, are you a troll? Microsoft's effort to have it both ways with the ECMA stamp of approval after the fact is not the same thing as responding affirmatively to a large and valued customer's request for a feature. I actually read some of the background leading up to the present article. Did you know that Mass ITD considered MSXML as a possible standard? There were a few problems with it, (1) apparently it wasn't available at the time (2) It's not being back-ported to existing versions of MS Office (at any price). (3) Most importantly. It's not (so far) an open standard in several ways: there is some MS specific binary data in the format, and there is some patent and licensing nonsense that takes away control of the data from the state of Massachussetts. The state has a data retention responsibility that is truly mind-boggling. Why should they wait around for ECMA to "eventually publish the standard" when there are useable published standards available today? I think it's great that the implications of data formats are being considered at all.
At the end of the day, the CIO has to do what's right for his employers--the executive branch of Massachussetts state government, and by extension, the citizens of the commonwealth. And if you look at the background a little bit, you'll see that he has tried to do that. Is the decision to standardize on ODF/PDF the correct one? If the legislature doesn't shoot itself in the foot by paralyzing its information technology infrastructure, maybe we'll get to find out. What is truly amazing here is that legislators have gotten into the act in the way that they have-- I attribute it to fear of the unknown.
And by the way, support for an open standard isn't the same thing as Open Source. For example, MS Word can save as ASCII text, that's a de facto (if not ISO) standard format, but as we both know, Word is a proprietary application.
Got a little unresolved anger there, don't you? It takes force and coercion to create a monopoly, only government can do it, and our government doesn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them buy Windows. It doesn't necessarily take force or coercion to create a monopoly, but it's illegal to use monopoly power to maintain market dominance. If a company gets into the business first, or buys out its competitors, or corners the supply of a necessary raw material, or makes the best widget, it may naturally monopolize the market. IIRC, monopolies aren't even illegal in and of themselves. It is the abuse of monopoly power to control the market (and hence, to maintain the monopoly) that is illegal.
I think it's entertaining how you go on about the end users paying corporations for what they want. Isn't the state of Massachussetts a customer? Don't they have a need that can not be met with an encumbered document format? Mass is a big customer. Anybody but Microsoft would be falling all over themselves to ensure that Massachusetts gets an open format.
And your last paragraph just makes me laugh. The PC propogated in large measure because IBM's competitors could make inexpensive clones. It's the opposite of monopoly power. The internet exists because a number of different ideas came together in a useful way -- among them, US defense department and university researchers needing a communications protocol (TCP/IP) and Tim Berners-Lee being interested in document sharing. And yeah, Al Gore was actually responsible for some of the legislation that changed the web from a defense research network into what it is today.
But hey, none of this really matters very much. In fifty years, we'll either be huddling around post-apocalyptic trash fires to keep warm, or computing will be a ubiquitous utility.
You are so off the mark I hardly know where to begin. The CIO is appointed, get over it. There are lots and lots of people hired by state government to carry out the business of the state. It would be a disaster if a state CIO had to raise funds and campaign for office.
The decision to adopt ODF was not an arbitrary CIO decision. A process was followed to identify the needs of the Commonwealth. Then there was a panel composed of industry representatives, (Microsoft, Sun, Novell, Redhat and others were all there.) PDF and ODF were determined to be the best fit for document formats that meet the needs of the Commonwealth. Being open formats, they are well documented, they will be readable generations from now, and their openness ensures that Massachusetts can accept bids from a variety of vendors. There's also a big piece about converting data from legacy systems.
As for the elected officials being concerned with the document format --- consider if the IT department does nothing. Within a few years everyone will be creating MSXML formatted documents, with no input from elected officials, and what's more to the point, with absolutely no examination of the implications of that format change.
"If the ELECTED officials want to form a task force of qualified industry specialists to analyze a change in THEIR state that will affect the people they represent they are not only entitled to do so, but should." -- Did you read the article? The task force consists of 8 people, possibly 3 of whom will know anything about technology. Of those 3, two will be representatives from industry -- one in IT, one in telecom. The remaining 5 people all have other full time duties. The point of the fine article is that the CIO is being strongly supported by the General Counsel to the department that will be affected by the ODF document policy. (In case you didn't realize it, the move to ODF was a policy decision within the Executive Branch, the response is coming in the form of an amendment being considered by the Legislative Branch-- an amendment which, according to general counsel, will effectively paralyze the Commonwealth.
So getting back on track here, keep the following points in mind. (1) Mass. ITD did something well within their mandate, and they did it in a public and proper way. (2) A member of the Mass. legislature became upset or fearful, perhaps due to influence from a large corporation's lobbyists (3) In response, an amendment with far-reaching effects on the commonwealth's ability to conduct business was attached to an unrelated bill. (4) A department whose job is to point out the implications of government decisions has weighed in against the amendment.
In summary, this is a good thing. Whether you are for or against vendors actually meeting the stated needs of their customers, you must agree that an ill-considered amendment to an unrelated bill is not the best way for a legislator to deal with his fear of change.
Let me guess: you're in sales or management?
Not at all. I'm a Microsoft certified, self-employed, IT consultant to small businesses. I make a significant part of my income installing and supporting Microsoft products. That old and tired saw about the customer being always right, has worked pretty well for me. I'm not rich, but apparently I'm doing well enough to recognize that the price of the bare product is not the only compelling argument in an IT plan. Anybody who plays along with the state of Massachusetts is going to make millions of dollars.
This is apparently an effort that comes from within the Massachussetts ITD. The people who proposed it won't make more money-- it's a state agency, not a corporation. So what do they get out of this? Maybe they get to have conversations with vendors about meeting their actual needs. And if they spend less money on licenses, maybe that means they have more money for implementation or technical support. My guess is they will actually spend more money in the short term than they will if things stay as they are.
Massachusetts government is trying to force open standards so they don't have to pay for software. We know it's true. Don't come across as one of those "it's because open source is better" when the truth is because open source is free. Open source and open standard aren't the same thing. If the only thing preventing millions of people from abandoning MS Office is the proprietary file formats, then it's already a dead company. Microsoft Office products support a few "openish" standards --.TXT,.CSV,.RTF, and soon PDF. why not one more?
Wrong. Massachusetts is requiring software vendors to enable their products to produce and read a file format for interoperability among disparate legacy systems and longterm data accessibility. Microsoft has for years built features into its products that only a segment of its market will ever use, because they were requested. Massachusetts is a biggish customer, and Microsoft can keep them happy or not, depending on their assessment of the benefits and costs of meeting the customer's needs.
If it can be, it will be. Or have you not noticed such things as FBI demands for backdoors to college networks, DRM that essentially assumes you are stealing, use of Patriot Act for warrantless searches, holding US citizens indefinitely because suspected of terrorism, existence of secret CIA jails, printers that encode their id on all printed material, etc.
I don't know. Instant violent death might be preferable to being tortured in an american secret jail after being blinded and captured. I hope I don't ever have to experience either extreme.
Seems to me that any device that is designed to inflict pain but not actually kill has great potential for habitual use in "controlled" circumstances.
Call me cynical, I don't care.
Re:Can't blind on purpose
on
Set PHASRs On Stun
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Not only that. Driving blind has a high probability of lethality.
Taking a different example, such as opening thousands of connections to a server with intent to deprive others' of access to it, I still can't see what equivalent physical world *criminal* offence has been committed. In this case an analogy requires many people, but what difference is it if a thousand people stand on the pavement outside a shop entrance effectively preventing other shoppers from entering, due to weight of numbers? Sure, the police can ask people to move on, which is the same as closing those open connections, no?
No. Consider if I dump a load of rocks in front of your business. Now your customers can't get into your office. You can haul the rocks away yourself, but you'll probably be wanting me to pay for it, maybe you'll want me to pay for the business you lost while you were busy dealing with my rocks; perhaps you'll want a little help from the law to encourage me not to do it again.
Well I think the point that needs to be made here is that the school board in question is referencing the standards document but violating the spirit of the standard. Kinda like how propaganda works.
Really the National Research Council should be much much more agressive. Perhaps they could be talking to the Kansas higher education system (there are colleges in Kansas, I hope) to publish minimum science education requirements for admission.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh. "Proving that iPod users are either scrupulously honest or more paranoid they'll get sued by RIAA than owners of lesser music players."
I don't think either of those characterizations are correct. Presumably iPod users own bigger CD collections and/or are satisfied with the selection and pricing of the Apple Music Store. It's been claimed by some that a reasonable commercial alternative to p2p "piracy" would reduce it -- well here's what it looks like, apparently.
True, but can you be sure an identical model number will refers to an identical part six months or a year later? Not always, in my experience.
What I want to know: can you boot Windows on the MacBook? The salesperson I reached at the Apple Store didn't seem to think so. Triple booting OSX/Linux/Windows would be worth buying a new laptop for. (Throw in Solaris on Intel for extra fun). Otherwise I won't be upgrading from my 1 year old iBook for another year or more. It's adequate for work, but I sure would like to not carry 2 laptops around. And yes I'm aware of virtual pc--- that's not what I'm looking for.
Eh. Comparing apples to apples requires PPC architecture. :-)
But seriously, why is it Linux's responsibility to run a gui so you can compare it to an operating system that cannot be pared down to work efficiently in an environment with limited resources?
How is this different (in terms of bandwidth utilization) from having interesting or desirable content? Imagine if parents are involved in their kids' learning experience. Imagine if the teachers/administration/parents/students actually decide to use the available technology to build a community supporting quality education. The school should be grateful for the opportunity to learn just how lame their infrastructure is.
Dude! If you have someone looking over your shoulder while you do a search, you are having the problem. Turn your screen aside, or maybe use "Find" instead. You can be more specific with find. Search for "WMD" instead of "Osama", know what I mean?
The poster to whom you respond may be referring to the fact that the US provided substantial material support for the coup against Kassem in Iraq in 1963. One could say that, being a member of the Ba'athist party, young Saddam got his start there. By 1968 he's a vice president or something, and then head of security. And US support doesn't stop there. My understanding is that US fear of Soviet influence in the Middle East and the wish to secure access to oil fields were the reason for this and other questionable US activities in the region. So, it's not about being proud of American power, nor about imagining that only the US is powerful enough to install a dictator -- it's more likely disgust with our morally bankrupt foreign policy.
Ah, so you leave the cell phone at home. You must be a criminal. How about you come down to the station for a little chat.
Seriously though, is there anything in this article that anyone really needs, or even wants?
Point taken.
If you understood the article (oh, this is slashdot, maybe you didn't read it), you'd note that it isn't about Microsoft pushing LUA for XP. It's about some consultants who have an app that can find LUA bugs, and who want to create a central repository to document them. I enjoyed the second comment over at the article; an entertaining rant about how Microsoft shouldn't be signing code that requires the administrator account to run.
I've always tried to do the LUA thing with my clients. For the most part I've succeeded, although it always pisses off laptop owners that I want them to spend money to have me install drivers for their home printers. The thing that gets me is the programs that need to write to a directory in Program Files (Palm, Meetingmaker, some third party database applications). Storing user data with the executable is so Windows 98, but the developers don't seem to even recognize this is a problem. Despite the article's claim that LUA will prevent rootkits and trojan horses, I've found that an unprivileged user who is determined to go to porn sites will still get all kinda weird crap -- This effort isn't going to put the antivirus companies out of business.
You know, you're acting as if we should actually be worried about the retalitory ability of Iran. That has never been much of a concern. Pretty much the highest tech stuff they have are 30 year old F-14s which have been serviced only through deals with Russia. (Which were probably disrupted by the fall of the Soviet Union.) Iran doesn't have a chance in hell of standing up to Israel, much less the US. That's why nuclear weapons are important to them. You seem to think it's about technology. I certainly don't. It's about time and attention. If US gets into it in enough places, it's only about exhaustion of US resources and/or willingness to continue. I'll wager that most Americans consider themselves reasonable, fair-minded, peaceful, 'minding-my-own-business' people. It doesn't really matter if not much is going on in a war of attrition. The simple fact that US has to attend to a bunch of different "fronts' (and I use that term loosely) could bring it all down in time. Or did you forget that we keep lowering taxes, and Bush's approval rating continues to go down. Bush's term will end, and with luck, the next president will be able to salvage some credibility and stop us from eating our children. ( that's a metaphor, ok)
Humor is hard. Cynical humor is harder.
But seriously, are you a troll? Microsoft's effort to have it both ways with the ECMA stamp of approval after the fact is not the same thing as responding affirmatively to a large and valued customer's request for a feature. I actually read some of the background leading up to the present article. Did you know that Mass ITD considered MSXML as a possible standard? There were a few problems with it, (1) apparently it wasn't available at the time (2) It's not being back-ported to existing versions of MS Office (at any price). (3) Most importantly. It's not (so far) an open standard in several ways: there is some MS specific binary data in the format, and there is some patent and licensing nonsense that takes away control of the data from the state of Massachussetts. The state has a data retention responsibility that is truly mind-boggling. Why should they wait around for ECMA to "eventually publish the standard" when there are useable published standards available today? I think it's great that the implications of data formats are being considered at all.
At the end of the day, the CIO has to do what's right for his employers--the executive branch of Massachussetts state government, and by extension, the citizens of the commonwealth. And if you look at the background a little bit, you'll see that he has tried to do that. Is the decision to standardize on ODF/PDF the correct one? If the legislature doesn't shoot itself in the foot by paralyzing its information technology infrastructure, maybe we'll get to find out. What is truly amazing here is that legislators have gotten into the act in the way that they have-- I attribute it to fear of the unknown.
And by the way, support for an open standard isn't the same thing as Open Source. For example, MS Word can save as ASCII text, that's a de facto (if not ISO) standard format, but as we both know, Word is a proprietary application.
Got a little unresolved anger there, don't you? It takes force and coercion to create a monopoly, only government can do it, and our government doesn't put a gun to anyone's head to make them buy Windows. It doesn't necessarily take force or coercion to create a monopoly, but it's illegal to use monopoly power to maintain market dominance. If a company gets into the business first, or buys out its competitors, or corners the supply of a necessary raw material, or makes the best widget, it may naturally monopolize the market. IIRC, monopolies aren't even illegal in and of themselves. It is the abuse of monopoly power to control the market (and hence, to maintain the monopoly) that is illegal.
I think it's entertaining how you go on about the end users paying corporations for what they want. Isn't the state of Massachussetts a customer? Don't they have a need that can not be met with an encumbered document format? Mass is a big customer. Anybody but Microsoft would be falling all over themselves to ensure that Massachusetts gets an open format.
And your last paragraph just makes me laugh. The PC propogated in large measure because IBM's competitors could make inexpensive clones. It's the opposite of monopoly power. The internet exists because a number of different ideas came together in a useful way -- among them, US defense department and university researchers needing a communications protocol (TCP/IP) and Tim Berners-Lee being interested in document sharing. And yeah, Al Gore was actually responsible for some of the legislation that changed the web from a defense research network into what it is today.
But hey, none of this really matters very much. In fifty years, we'll either be huddling around post-apocalyptic trash fires to keep warm, or computing will be a ubiquitous utility.
You are so off the mark I hardly know where to begin. The CIO is appointed, get over it. There are lots and lots of people hired by state government to carry out the business of the state. It would be a disaster if a state CIO had to raise funds and campaign for office.
The decision to adopt ODF was not an arbitrary CIO decision. A process was followed to identify the needs of the Commonwealth. Then there was a panel composed of industry representatives, (Microsoft, Sun, Novell, Redhat and others were all there.) PDF and ODF were determined to be the best fit for document formats that meet the needs of the Commonwealth. Being open formats, they are well documented, they will be readable generations from now, and their openness ensures that Massachusetts can accept bids from a variety of vendors. There's also a big piece about converting data from legacy systems.
As for the elected officials being concerned with the document format --- consider if the IT department does nothing. Within a few years everyone will be creating MSXML formatted documents, with no input from elected officials, and what's more to the point, with absolutely no examination of the implications of that format change.
"If the ELECTED officials want to form a task force of qualified industry specialists to analyze a change in THEIR state that will affect the people they represent they are not only entitled to do so, but should." -- Did you read the article? The task force consists of 8 people, possibly 3 of whom will know anything about technology. Of those 3, two will be representatives from industry -- one in IT, one in telecom. The remaining 5 people all have other full time duties. The point of the fine article is that the CIO is being strongly supported by the General Counsel to the department that will be affected by the ODF document policy. (In case you didn't realize it, the move to ODF was a policy decision within the Executive Branch, the response is coming in the form of an amendment being considered by the Legislative Branch-- an amendment which, according to general counsel, will effectively paralyze the Commonwealth.
So getting back on track here, keep the following points in mind. (1) Mass. ITD did something well within their mandate, and they did it in a public and proper way. (2) A member of the Mass. legislature became upset or fearful, perhaps due to influence from a large corporation's lobbyists (3) In response, an amendment with far-reaching effects on the commonwealth's ability to conduct business was attached to an unrelated bill. (4) A department whose job is to point out the implications of government decisions has weighed in against the amendment.
In summary, this is a good thing. Whether you are for or against vendors actually meeting the stated needs of their customers, you must agree that an ill-considered amendment to an unrelated bill is not the best way for a legislator to deal with his fear of change.
Not sure if this helps --- on macintosh, try senuti http://wbyoung.ambitiouslemon.com/senuti/ I used to offload an ipod full of stuff into a new iTunes library.
Let me guess: you're in sales or management?
.CSV, .RTF, and soon PDF. why not one more?
r ds/etrm3dot5/ETRM_v3dot5draft_information.pdf for more on the ITD's plan.
Not at all. I'm a Microsoft certified, self-employed, IT consultant to small businesses. I make a significant part of my income installing and supporting Microsoft products. That old and tired saw about the customer being always right, has worked pretty well for me. I'm not rich, but apparently I'm doing well enough to recognize that the price of the bare product is not the only compelling argument in an IT plan. Anybody who plays along with the state of Massachusetts is going to make millions of dollars.
This is apparently an effort that comes from within the Massachussetts ITD. The people who proposed it won't make more money-- it's a state agency, not a corporation. So what do they get out of this? Maybe they get to have conversations with vendors about meeting their actual needs. And if they spend less money on licenses, maybe that means they have more money for implementation or technical support. My guess is they will actually spend more money in the short term than they will if things stay as they are.
Massachusetts government is trying to force open standards so they don't have to pay for software. We know it's true. Don't come across as one of those "it's because open source is better" when the truth is because open source is free.
Open source and open standard aren't the same thing. If the only thing preventing millions of people from abandoning MS Office is the proprietary file formats, then it's already a dead company. Microsoft Office products support a few "openish" standards --.TXT,
MS already has readers for it's office documents that are free thus it has NOTHING to do with accessability.
Single user accessibility is only part of the picture. I refer you to this linkhttp://www.mass.gov/Aitd/docs/policies_standa
Wrong. Massachusetts is requiring software vendors to enable their products to produce and read a file format for interoperability among disparate legacy systems and longterm data accessibility. Microsoft has for years built features into its products that only a segment of its market will ever use, because they were requested. Massachusetts is a biggish customer, and Microsoft can keep them happy or not, depending on their assessment of the benefits and costs of meeting the customer's needs.
If it can be, it will be. Or have you not noticed such things as FBI demands for backdoors to college networks, DRM that essentially assumes you are stealing, use of Patriot Act for warrantless searches, holding US citizens indefinitely because suspected of terrorism, existence of secret CIA jails, printers that encode their id on all printed material, etc.
I don't know. Instant violent death might be preferable to being tortured in an american secret jail after being blinded and captured. I hope I don't ever have to experience either extreme. Seems to me that any device that is designed to inflict pain but not actually kill has great potential for habitual use in "controlled" circumstances. Call me cynical, I don't care.
Not only that. Driving blind has a high probability of lethality.
Taking a different example, such as opening thousands of connections to a server with intent to deprive others' of access to it, I still can't see what equivalent physical world *criminal* offence has been committed. In this case an analogy requires many people, but what difference is it if a thousand people stand on the pavement outside a shop entrance effectively preventing other shoppers from entering, due to weight of numbers? Sure, the police can ask people to move on, which is the same as closing those open connections, no?
No. Consider if I dump a load of rocks in front of your business. Now your customers can't get into your office. You can haul the rocks away yourself, but you'll probably be wanting me to pay for it, maybe you'll want me to pay for the business you lost while you were busy dealing with my rocks; perhaps you'll want a little help from the law to encourage me not to do it again.
Well I think the point that needs to be made here is that the school board in question is referencing the standards document but violating the spirit of the standard. Kinda like how propaganda works. Really the National Research Council should be much much more agressive. Perhaps they could be talking to the Kansas higher education system (there are colleges in Kansas, I hope) to publish minimum science education requirements for admission.
yow. In that scenario who's getting the repetitive injury and who's getting it?