I urge you to oppose a provision contained in H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, specifically in Section 494, entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention." This provision unfairly and needlessly places a burden on colleges and universities to subscribe to services that may have little or no educational value and/or to purchase, possibly with federal funds, software or equipment to impede file sharing on their computer networks.
It is not the job of colleges and universities to police student activities at the behest of private businesses, notably those represented by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. The money spent by colleges and universities in compliance will inevitably be passed on to students through fees and costs, negating the very idea of "College Opportunity and Affordability" that the bill's title purports to create. Federal funds used to further this end could be better spent on actual student aid if it is truly the goal of Congress to help students financially through this bill.
Further, it is not technically feasible for filtering software to distinguish between legal peer-to-peer traffic and other peer-to-peer traffic on a network. Such software will either stifle all peer-to-peer traffic, including legal, protected speech necessary to academic freedom, or it will take an ineffective approach that may prevent some illegal file sharing traffic, but may also permit some such traffic as well as block legal file sharing traffic. Copyright holders can and often do permit distribution of their works through peer-to-peer and other distribution channels. Blocking any such distribution channel is tantamount to blocking academic freedom and free speech itself.
I urge you to get Section 494 stricken from H.R. 4137. Failing that, I urge you to vote against this bill. I eagerly await your reply.
Sincerely, Saxophonist
(Well, I used my real name.)
Feel free to use any or all of this in your e-mail or letter. Of course, use your own representative's name. If you feel it would be more effective, call in addition. Let your opinion be heard.
Minor musical nitpick: (modern) brass instruments, such as the trombone, change resonant frequencies through changing the length of the tube. Woodwind instruments change effective lengths in ways that probably don't work so well in describing antennas.
In Slashdot postings regarding other consumer issues in the UK, I have seen references to Trading Standards. Further, said postings seemed to indicate that Trading Standards actually has some weight. Would Trading Standards be useful in this situation?
You mention a number of points about privatization of schools that I would like to address:
Students who do well have to interact with students who have nothing better to do than be discipline problems. Never in my life after school have I had to deal with the kinds of abuse I'd gotten in school (and I'm far from antisocial). In real life people choose not to associate with these kinds of people - children shouldn't be treated any differently.
So long as children are all required to attend some school and have opportunities to interact with each other, this is a potential issue. Privatization won't solve this problem. That doesn't mean that there is any excuse for a school, public or otherwise, to tolerate bullying, but there is nothing inherent about the public school system that makes this issue any more likely than in a private school setting. Yes, in a private school, it is possible to find a different school to attend, but that in some cases is a choice more extreme than dealing with the actual problem. When I taught private school, we did have to deal with this issue quite a bit -- in fact, at the high school level, I thought we had to deal with it more than I have seen at public high schools, in part because socioeconomic disparities were more apparent (despite mandatory uniforms).
I do believe that most teachers genuinely want to see their students do well. However, some do not succeed in this and I'm not a big believer in rewarding effort in the absence of results. In most industries people mean well but don't achieve results end up homeless - or working far-less-paying jobs than many teachers.
You seem to be making the assumption that the teachers are always at fault. Sometimes, they are. However, sometimes (I believe more often), it is a matter of lack of resources or support or onerous, irrelevant requirements (e.g., excessive standardized testing) that prevent teachers from actually doing their jobs. The fault in these cases either lies with the school somehow or with outside requirements and/or restrictions placed on the school. Generally, employees in industry expect their employers to provide them with the tools reasonably necessary to do their jobs, and the business is expected to handle obstacles in their way. If this problem would occur in industry, the business would end up shutting down if it could not adapt and continue to make money. A private school could encounter the same fate in the same situation. Public schools, on the other hand, keep on running anyway. You could argue that this is a benefit of privatization, but there is nothing saying that a private school would have any better management or any less onerous regulations than a public school.
A competitive school system would benefit everyone. Teachers would have many more schools to choose to work at, which means higher salaries for those who can get offers anywhere.
Actually, this already occurs in public schools so long as the teacher is willing to change districts (which may require relocation). I have yet to see a private school that had salaries comparable to a public school in the same area. They may be out there, but this was one of the reasons that many teachers would get out of private schools as soon as they could. I am not convinced that a more privatized system will fix this issue. In particular, barrier to entry to the profession becomes too high, as a new teacher either may get no offers (which occurs now anyway) or can only get a very low-paying offer. The state in which I taught has mandated a minimum salary for new teachers in public schools to prevent this problem.
Parents could choose whatever criteria they prefer for picking a school - if they don't believe in standardized tests they can pick a school that doesn't bother with them - if they do then they can look who has the highest scores.
You make a number of excellent points about the benefits of home schooling. One of the common themes I have heard from people who have experience in home schooling is that they can cover a day's worth of public school material in a morning rather easily, leaving time for the student to pursue other interests that could not be pursued in public school. I do think that a couple of the interests you mentioned actually do get some treatment in public schools; a parent's first language might be available for study depending what language it is, and there are general music curricula that do things with ethnic percussion in general (in fact, it's written into a number of states' music standards). Your point, however, does stand in that a given public school cannot offer absolutely every potential interest.
It is important to be careful about falling into what I call the "random curriculum." That is, activities that do have educational benefit in one or more areas, such as the photography and cake-baking activities you mention, are strung together without looking at the bigger picture to see whether the student is learning everything that he or she should be. A parent who home schools with only these activities is likely to be unsuccessful. Fortunately, resources for the parent who wishes to home school are plentiful and do address larger issues of curriculum. Also, there exist home-school cooperatives that allow students to interact with other home-schooled students to provide the cooperative atmosphere that could otherwise be missing. There are certain activities and classes, however, that do not work at all individually, such as music performance classes (band, choir, orchestra) and athletic teams. The typical solution I have seen has been for the student to go to the public school for just those activities -- the student still has the right to attend public school, after all, and one may as well make use of any quality resources that he or she is funding through taxes.
Public schools really get my dander up, because this sort of thing is so common. There is so much blame to go around, and all of it is well-deserved. Bad teachers who don't give a crap, teachers unions, stupid politics, PTO moms who bulldoze the schoolboard into making ridiculously bad decisions...I could go on and on. There is hardly a punishment great enough for people responsible for ruining promising childrens' lives.
I was in K-12 education (that is, teaching) for three years before I decided to go back to school. Let me run through your list of blame and suggest an alternative or two:
Bad, apathetic teachers: Honestly, there are good and bad teachers in the schools, just as there are good and bad employees many other places. My experience has been that most teachers do actually want to do well so that the students do well. There are a number of reasons for teachers to become disenfranchised, however, and often, they have far less control over their situations than they should. The actual problems that teachers encounter vary somewhat from place to place, or perhaps by urban versus suburban versus rural setting, etc. Most teachers will agree that NCLB is horrific, not because teachers do not wish to do their jobs, but because complying with NCLB takes significant time and resources away from actual education. However, I think there is a bigger problem that I will get to momentarily.
Teachers' unions: I'm pretty pro-union in general, and I have taught in both a Catholic school (non-unionized) and a public school (unionized, but it was a right-to-work state). Honestly, teachers' unions seem to be failing for the most part, and it's really too bad, because we need them now more than ever. Pay has not kept pace with industry, particularly given the lack of attention paid to the amount of "unofficial" time that teachers spend working. The amount of money that teachers have to spend to take tests themselves, keep licensure, and meet bureaucratic requirements has skyrocketed in the last decade. The bad reputation that unions get is usually for protecting teachers that someone thinks should not be protected. The trouble with cherry-picking which teachers should or should not be forced out of the profession (besides that it was illegal for a union not to represent someone in a district that the union represents, member or not, in the state where I taught) will be discussed momentarily.
Stupid politics: Yep. Next point.
Parental influence: This is a tough one. The absolute best thing that could happen to education would be for more parents to take the right kind of interest in their children's education. Notice I said right kind of interest. Too many parents do not value education, often because they did not do well in school themselves and therefore do not see the relevance. After all, if they got by without really trying in school, why should it be any different for their kids? On the other hand, there are too many parents with delusions that their children can do no wrong and do not back up reasonable discipline so that the school can actually function. These parents tend to be the "PTO moms" you referenced. It's really frustrating, in both circumstances, to sit across the conference table from the problem with the kid being discussed. Whether the kid will admit it or not, parents have a huge influence on how their children perceive school and how much they make of their education.
The problem I was mentioning in the first two points that you did not address is school administration. There are a lot of truly incompetent administrators (think PHB-types) that would not know quality education from a hole in the wall. That's why the unions are so important -- do you think these administrators give truly objective evaluations?
Home schooling used to seem like such a wacky idea, but my wife and I are
I thought about this the other day, anyone know if they've ever tried splitting the smarter/average/dumb kids up into their own classes permanently from 5th or so through 12th, as in they hardly ever see the other groups anymore except between classes and at lunch? I would be curious if the social structures in each group would clash, or if the system would work.
That is known as tracking. Tracking, that is, grouping students by ability through all classes rather than judging ability by subject, was usually referred to as illegal in education courses I took or in schools in which I taught, but I cannot find a citation to back that up. The closest I found was here, which alludes to the potential for civil rights violations.
I live in Minneapolis as well, and I used to work for a transit agency, though not in the metro area.
The problem with getting more transit service is a Catch-22. Funding for transit service is dependent upon ridership and how it factors into government formulas. So, if there are fewer riders, there is less service due to the budget. However, if there is less service, the service is less convenient, and there are fewer riders.
I'm not sure where you live or work, but there is supposed to be a major service expansion to the northern metro in June, which may or may not help. It sounds like the bus stops are not where you need them, though, and the bus lines are not running in general where you need them to. The structure of the outlying transit systems (Southwest Metro, etc.) puzzles me a little bit. I looked at using the bus system to get to a job for which I applied, and it looked like about 90 minutes each way. If I get the job, I'll have to add to the congestion on 35W, then, unfortunately.
The University of Minnesota already does this with their student ID cards. Not quite the same, but I still don't like it, as it makes the ID itself less useful. Policies then restrict what can be done with the card, and you end up having special cards for other functions (like, say, checking out a music practice room key card) because no one is allowed to keep the student ID because it's an ATM card. So, it really doesn't even result in fewer cards.
13 letter alphabet... "QWERTYASDFGZXC"... "YUIOPGHJKLVBNM"...
You forgot to mention that there will have to be a protocol developed for sharing the Y and G keys which appear in both of the fourteen-letter alphabets...
Morton Subotnick played on an electronic music concert at the university I attend. They literally wheeled out a laptop (some variety of Mac) on a cart, and he sat down at the laptop as though he was sitting at a piano. I don't recall what he played, but he is considered a pioneer in electronic music.
If any sort of this nonsensical "Intellectual Property" will become the standard way of producing research results (as opposed to old-fashioned attribution, to which the students have full rights and the University a moral obligation to protect) then this will mean the death of acedemic science. Period.
If every piece of every half-baked paper will cost $50 to read it, a typical researcher will end up with no viable access to any sort of external research.
Incidentally, I started my phd with the explicit requirement that all software instantiations of my research that I created were to be released under the GPL, and that no-one else had control over my findings. I had an understanding supervisor, and the prerequisites were accepted.
If you release your work under the GPL, anyone can distribute your work according to the terms of the GPL, and they can charge for doing so. It's just that they have no right to prevent others from distributing your work for free or for profit.
Now, if the pay-for-access portal tries to state that there are more stringent restrictions on distribution, I can see where you would have a problem with that insofar as the work was released to them under the GPL and that you did not agree to a different license. However, that issue is totally separate from whether they are charging for distribution.
If events like this make enough of a stink, perhaps Congress will have to revisit the DMCA.
More than likely, if there is a revision to the DMCA stemming from this event, it would be to eliminate the "loophole" that penalizes a second takedown notice after a counternotice. Or, counternotices would no longer be available. The stakeholders in the DMCA have sufficient finances to make sure that revisions would benefit their perceived interests, not those of the public at large.
If you don't care about the graphics, you can role-play in a Middle-earth sort of environment at MUME (telnet link). Level-related
stuff happens there too, but at least it's free-as-in-beer to play.
I used to work for Wal-Mart, and to log in (at the store level) to work on anything, it was a System V prompt (though with menus after login, not a shell or anything).
Here's an even more effective method: almost all spam contains one of the letters {a, e, i, o, u}. Simply write a grep filter to reject all such messages!
Naked shorts would be an awesome thing to have, but are quite illegal....
Naked puts, though, are legal, last I checked. Problem is, there might not be anyone writing or selling options for these stocks (or at least not at a price that makes them worthwhile). Using puts, though, would limit losses to the amount paid for the puts. Even if someone was able to short the stocks, a "squeeze" would be very likely if the stock went up at all, even if the short-seller is eventually right. The worst that can happen with a put is that it expires worthless.
The 3.5 inch floppy? It's not 8.89 cm, it's exactly 9 cm. The 3.5 inch drive bay? Exactly 10 cm wide. The 5 1/4 inch bay? Not 13.335 cm, exactly 15 instead. Etc. Everything metric from the beginning, re-measured and rounded to fit the imperial system (what with the US probably being the biggest target market in the beginning of the PC). The sad thing is, the rest of the world seems to be accepting it unconditionally. It's as if no-one has had a ruler handy for quite some time.
I don't have a ruler handy either (I even looked), but as I recall, the measurement of the floppy disks is the diameter of the actual magnetic disc inside the cover/case. The actual disk on the outside would need to be larger, so it's no surprise that they are. The bays need to be larger still. I imagine the two standard sizes of bays emerged from their original uses, as places to put 3 1/2 inch floppy drives and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. Of course, CD/DVD drives now generally occupy the 5 1/4 drive bays because the size of the bays works well for that.
This is almost always only true for band directors - people who have received training as teachers. Teaching!=Conducting. I'd go so far as saying that their very different things.
I'd go further to say that Teaching != Conducting != Rehearsing. My undergraduate training was in music education (and composition), and I have conducted student bands and choirs from beginning level through high school as well as a lower-level orchestra and a pit orchestra of some high school musicians (including the chorus on stage) and some professional musicians. Of course, as part of my undergraduate training, and since then in professional playing and in graduate performance study (I am a doctoral student in performance now), I have played for very fine conductors as well as very poor ones. While the actual stick technique does vary in quality, the main difference between a good conductor and a bad one tends to be in rehearsal technique. Particularly egregious is the conductor who spends time in rehearsal trying to "fix" ensemble problems that are in reality conducting and/or score preparation problems -- this issue is the very first one covered in any decent conducting curriculum, but for some reason, this lesson does not stick with some (or, the conductor has no idea how to prepare for rehearsal, which is even worse).
In fact, conducting to teach is different from any other kind. It's must less subtle and requires much less talent on the conducting side of things.
I disagree. Students need to be taught how to watch a conductor at first, but once they pretty much get it, the quality of conducting can dramatically affect their performance. A large part of conducting is knowing how to get the response desired from the performers without saying anything. Obviously, doing so saves rehearsal time in some areas, allowing more attention to other areas.
Of all of the Drum Majors I've known well (off the top of my head, I've known 15 very well - watched them practice,hung out, etc.), only one of them couldn't do almost as well by listening to the tape *once* or five minutes looking over the music as they could after doing five or ten performances.
That probably says more about the music that the drum majors are conducting than about the abilities of the drum majors, though the drum majors would have to have some
ability to pull that off. Most (but certainly not all) marching band music tends to be metrically straightforward; after all, the band has to be able to march to it! Further, if the drum major does not have any responsiblity for rehearsing (as opposed to conducting) the ensemble, they may not need to know much more than the time signature, tempo, and basic dynamics. Some drum majors do have more responsibility for rehearsal, though, which makes things more challenging.
It should be noted, in fact, that at a professional level, musicians are generally so good that they don't need a conductor much (in the exceptionally good quality sound stages we've got today), and the conductor is so good that he needs very little preparation for any specific piece.
On the contrary, the conductor has to be absolutely prepared; it's just that the preparation must happen away from the ensemble. If the conductor has already prepared the work (quite common with standard orchestral repertoire, for instance), then, sure, it's a matter of recalling what is already learned, just as it would be for the performers in such a situation. Some practice may still be needed as a refresher, but the amount of time required is generally much less. Of course, the basic conducting skills, just like the skills to play an instrument, rarely change from piece to piece, so an exceptional conductor will apply his or her talents to produce exceptional results.
Of course, the conductors are generally so good that having them adds that extra little bit of cohesion that makes
Slashdot Mirror
Doesn't anyone (in the USA) remember the Yugo? Although I could have sworn I remember commercials advertising it for $3333.
Representative Ellison:
I urge you to oppose a provision contained in H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act, specifically in Section 494, entitled "Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention." This provision unfairly and needlessly places a burden on colleges and universities to subscribe to services that may have little or no educational value and/or to purchase, possibly with federal funds, software or equipment to impede file sharing on their computer networks.
It is not the job of colleges and universities to police student activities at the behest of private businesses, notably those represented by the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. The money spent by colleges and universities in compliance will inevitably be passed on to students through fees and costs, negating the very idea of "College Opportunity and Affordability" that the bill's title purports to create. Federal funds used to further this end could be better spent on actual student aid if it is truly the goal of Congress to help students financially through this bill.
Further, it is not technically feasible for filtering software to distinguish between legal peer-to-peer traffic and other peer-to-peer traffic on a network. Such software will either stifle all peer-to-peer traffic, including legal, protected speech necessary to academic freedom, or it will take an ineffective approach that may prevent some illegal file sharing traffic, but may also permit some such traffic as well as block legal file sharing traffic. Copyright holders can and often do permit distribution of their works through peer-to-peer and other distribution channels. Blocking any such distribution channel is tantamount to blocking academic freedom and free speech itself.
I urge you to get Section 494 stricken from H.R. 4137. Failing that, I urge you to vote against this bill. I eagerly await your reply.
Sincerely,
Saxophonist
(Well, I used my real name.)
Feel free to use any or all of this in your e-mail or letter. Of course, use your own representative's name. If you feel it would be more effective, call in addition. Let your opinion be heard.
Minor musical nitpick: (modern) brass instruments, such as the trombone, change resonant frequencies through changing the length of the tube. Woodwind instruments change effective lengths in ways that probably don't work so well in describing antennas.
In Slashdot postings regarding other consumer issues in the UK, I have seen references to Trading Standards. Further, said postings seemed to indicate that Trading Standards actually has some weight. Would Trading Standards be useful in this situation?
You mention a number of points about privatization of schools that I would like to address:
So long as children are all required to attend some school and have opportunities to interact with each other, this is a potential issue. Privatization won't solve this problem. That doesn't mean that there is any excuse for a school, public or otherwise, to tolerate bullying, but there is nothing inherent about the public school system that makes this issue any more likely than in a private school setting. Yes, in a private school, it is possible to find a different school to attend, but that in some cases is a choice more extreme than dealing with the actual problem. When I taught private school, we did have to deal with this issue quite a bit -- in fact, at the high school level, I thought we had to deal with it more than I have seen at public high schools, in part because socioeconomic disparities were more apparent (despite mandatory uniforms).
You seem to be making the assumption that the teachers are always at fault. Sometimes, they are. However, sometimes (I believe more often), it is a matter of lack of resources or support or onerous, irrelevant requirements (e.g., excessive standardized testing) that prevent teachers from actually doing their jobs. The fault in these cases either lies with the school somehow or with outside requirements and/or restrictions placed on the school. Generally, employees in industry expect their employers to provide them with the tools reasonably necessary to do their jobs, and the business is expected to handle obstacles in their way. If this problem would occur in industry, the business would end up shutting down if it could not adapt and continue to make money. A private school could encounter the same fate in the same situation. Public schools, on the other hand, keep on running anyway. You could argue that this is a benefit of privatization, but there is nothing saying that a private school would have any better management or any less onerous regulations than a public school.
Actually, this already occurs in public schools so long as the teacher is willing to change districts (which may require relocation). I have yet to see a private school that had salaries comparable to a public school in the same area. They may be out there, but this was one of the reasons that many teachers would get out of private schools as soon as they could. I am not convinced that a more privatized system will fix this issue. In particular, barrier to entry to the profession becomes too high, as a new teacher either may get no offers (which occurs now anyway) or can only get a very low-paying offer. The state in which I taught has mandated a minimum salary for new teachers in public schools to prevent this problem.
If the sort of privatization y
You make a number of excellent points about the benefits of home schooling. One of the common themes I have heard from people who have experience in home schooling is that they can cover a day's worth of public school material in a morning rather easily, leaving time for the student to pursue other interests that could not be pursued in public school. I do think that a couple of the interests you mentioned actually do get some treatment in public schools; a parent's first language might be available for study depending what language it is, and there are general music curricula that do things with ethnic percussion in general (in fact, it's written into a number of states' music standards). Your point, however, does stand in that a given public school cannot offer absolutely every potential interest.
It is important to be careful about falling into what I call the "random curriculum." That is, activities that do have educational benefit in one or more areas, such as the photography and cake-baking activities you mention, are strung together without looking at the bigger picture to see whether the student is learning everything that he or she should be. A parent who home schools with only these activities is likely to be unsuccessful. Fortunately, resources for the parent who wishes to home school are plentiful and do address larger issues of curriculum. Also, there exist home-school cooperatives that allow students to interact with other home-schooled students to provide the cooperative atmosphere that could otherwise be missing. There are certain activities and classes, however, that do not work at all individually, such as music performance classes (band, choir, orchestra) and athletic teams. The typical solution I have seen has been for the student to go to the public school for just those activities -- the student still has the right to attend public school, after all, and one may as well make use of any quality resources that he or she is funding through taxes.
I was in K-12 education (that is, teaching) for three years before I decided to go back to school. Let me run through your list of blame and suggest an alternative or two:
The problem I was mentioning in the first two points that you did not address is school administration. There are a lot of truly incompetent administrators (think PHB-types) that would not know quality education from a hole in the wall. That's why the unions are so important -- do you think these administrators give truly objective evaluations?
That is known as tracking. Tracking, that is, grouping students by ability through all classes rather than judging ability by subject, was usually referred to as illegal in education courses I took or in schools in which I taught, but I cannot find a citation to back that up. The closest I found was here, which alludes to the potential for civil rights violations.
Some of the differentials are enormous at the university I attend (pdf link):
Thankfully, I have no aspirations to become management, and I just take classes in the CS department (I'm a doctoral student in music)...
I live in Minneapolis as well, and I used to work for a transit agency, though not in the metro area.
The problem with getting more transit service is a Catch-22. Funding for transit service is dependent upon ridership and how it factors into government formulas. So, if there are fewer riders, there is less service due to the budget. However, if there is less service, the service is less convenient, and there are fewer riders.
I'm not sure where you live or work, but there is supposed to be a major service expansion to the northern metro in June, which may or may not help. It sounds like the bus stops are not where you need them, though, and the bus lines are not running in general where you need them to. The structure of the outlying transit systems (Southwest Metro, etc.) puzzles me a little bit. I looked at using the bus system to get to a job for which I applied, and it looked like about 90 minutes each way. If I get the job, I'll have to add to the congestion on 35W, then, unfortunately.
The University of Minnesota already does this with their student ID cards. Not quite the same, but I still don't like it, as it makes the ID itself less useful. Policies then restrict what can be done with the card, and you end up having special cards for other functions (like, say, checking out a music practice room key card) because no one is allowed to keep the student ID because it's an ATM card. So, it really doesn't even result in fewer cards.
You forgot to mention that there will have to be a protocol developed for sharing the Y and G keys which appear in both of the fourteen-letter alphabets...
Morton Subotnick played on an electronic music concert at the university I attend. They literally wheeled out a laptop (some variety of Mac) on a cart, and he sat down at the laptop as though he was sitting at a piano. I don't recall what he played, but he is considered a pioneer in electronic music.
Have you ever been shopping in Indiana?
The obvious citation here: Richard Stallman's "The Right to Read".
If you release your work under the GPL, anyone can distribute your work according to the terms of the GPL, and they can charge for doing so. It's just that they have no right to prevent others from distributing your work for free or for profit.
Now, if the pay-for-access portal tries to state that there are more stringent restrictions on distribution, I can see where you would have a problem with that insofar as the work was released to them under the GPL and that you did not agree to a different license. However, that issue is totally separate from whether they are charging for distribution.
More than likely, if there is a revision to the DMCA stemming from this event, it would be to eliminate the "loophole" that penalizes a second takedown notice after a counternotice. Or, counternotices would no longer be available. The stakeholders in the DMCA have sufficient finances to make sure that revisions would benefit their perceived interests, not those of the public at large.
The blogger's favorite Microsoft app is Outlook Express? Well, I guess given the choices...
If you don't care about the graphics, you can role-play in a Middle-earth sort of environment at MUME (telnet link). Level-related stuff happens there too, but at least it's free-as-in-beer to play.
Gee, I wonder where they're going to get a good enough lawyer to defend against that lawsuit.
I used to work for Wal-Mart, and to log in (at the store level) to work on anything, it was a System V prompt (though with menus after login, not a shell or anything).
@pp@r3ntly y00 h@v3n't r3c31v3d th1s sp@m. G3t st0ck 1n SC0X b3f0r3 1t's t00 l@te!
Naked puts, though, are legal, last I checked. Problem is, there might not be anyone writing or selling options for these stocks (or at least not at a price that makes them worthwhile). Using puts, though, would limit losses to the amount paid for the puts. Even if someone was able to short the stocks, a "squeeze" would be very likely if the stock went up at all, even if the short-seller is eventually right. The worst that can happen with a put is that it expires worthless.
I don't have a ruler handy either (I even looked), but as I recall, the measurement of the floppy disks is the diameter of the actual magnetic disc inside the cover/case. The actual disk on the outside would need to be larger, so it's no surprise that they are. The bays need to be larger still. I imagine the two standard sizes of bays emerged from their original uses, as places to put 3 1/2 inch floppy drives and 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. Of course, CD/DVD drives now generally occupy the 5 1/4 drive bays because the size of the bays works well for that.
I'd go further to say that Teaching != Conducting != Rehearsing. My undergraduate training was in music education (and composition), and I have conducted student bands and choirs from beginning level through high school as well as a lower-level orchestra and a pit orchestra of some high school musicians (including the chorus on stage) and some professional musicians. Of course, as part of my undergraduate training, and since then in professional playing and in graduate performance study (I am a doctoral student in performance now), I have played for very fine conductors as well as very poor ones. While the actual stick technique does vary in quality, the main difference between a good conductor and a bad one tends to be in rehearsal technique. Particularly egregious is the conductor who spends time in rehearsal trying to "fix" ensemble problems that are in reality conducting and/or score preparation problems -- this issue is the very first one covered in any decent conducting curriculum, but for some reason, this lesson does not stick with some (or, the conductor has no idea how to prepare for rehearsal, which is even worse).
I disagree. Students need to be taught how to watch a conductor at first, but once they pretty much get it, the quality of conducting can dramatically affect their performance. A large part of conducting is knowing how to get the response desired from the performers without saying anything. Obviously, doing so saves rehearsal time in some areas, allowing more attention to other areas.
That probably says more about the music that the drum majors are conducting than about the abilities of the drum majors, though the drum majors would have to have some ability to pull that off. Most (but certainly not all) marching band music tends to be metrically straightforward; after all, the band has to be able to march to it! Further, if the drum major does not have any responsiblity for rehearsing (as opposed to conducting) the ensemble, they may not need to know much more than the time signature, tempo, and basic dynamics. Some drum majors do have more responsibility for rehearsal, though, which makes things more challenging.
On the contrary, the conductor has to be absolutely prepared; it's just that the preparation must happen away from the ensemble. If the conductor has already prepared the work (quite common with standard orchestral repertoire, for instance), then, sure, it's a matter of recalling what is already learned, just as it would be for the performers in such a situation. Some practice may still be needed as a refresher, but the amount of time required is generally much less. Of course, the basic conducting skills, just like the skills to play an instrument, rarely change from piece to piece, so an exceptional conductor will apply his or her talents to produce exceptional results.