Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued • Hacker News Board

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#51

Post by foldr » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 2:07 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #20

sketerpot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Latin be part of the standard curriculum?

Because learning Latin trains the mind in logical thought. Because studying Latin helps people learn about the grammatical structures which they use in their native tongue without understanding. Because understanding Latin makes it much easier to learn any of the many Latin-influenced languages, or even to guess at what text means without knowing the language. Because knowing Latin is a prerequisite for learning much…

>Because studying Latin helps people learn about the grammatical structures which they use in their native tongue without understanding.

It would be much more helpful just to study those grammatical structures directly in the native tongue. Studying the grammar of your own language via latin is just an odd way of doing it. English and latin are not very similar grammatically.

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#52

Post by tokenadult » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 4:55 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #20

sketerpot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should Latin be part of the standard curriculum?

Because learning Latin trains the mind in logical thought. Because studying Latin helps people learn about the grammatical structures which they use in their native tongue without understanding. Because understanding Latin makes it much easier to learn any of the many Latin-influenced languages, or even to guess at what text means without knowing the language. Because knowing Latin is a prerequisite for learning much…

Because learning Latin trains the mind in logical thought.

[citation needed]

Really, there has been experimental research on this subject, and the best considered conclusion is that Latin doesn't have any particular virtue in training the mind in logical thought.

Note (as anyone who reads my HN profile will see) that I by no means disparage the study of foreign languages, dead or alive.

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#53

Post by boyer » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 6:13 AM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #38

I continue to be amazed that people are not more outraged about this. While there is some outrage and certainly charges will be filed, in general the public's opinion of their right to privacy and anonymity has shifted by orders of magnitude in the last 20 years.

There are a number of facts that I can almost guarantee that anyone not outraged probably aren't aware of - I will list only a few because anyone who doesn't do research before posting or reading posts for opinions is kind of hopeless.

1. Students were required to use these laptops for their coursework - in class and at home. No laptop - no going to class.

2. Despite the software being designed to track stolen property. The school district pursued a student for eating candy (drug suspicion) while is laptop had not been stolen. The software company has come out against the school and disabled the functionality the school used.

3. There's a video on youtube showing a systems administrator messing with the students on the laptops while in school (reading over their shoulders and what not). Keep in mind these are mandatory for classes.

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#54

Post by Niten » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 7:40 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #50

pyre wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where there is smoke, there is fire. I will always hate that phrase, because it's one of the phrases my dad used to 'prove' that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

He did. He used them.

False. (Or at least willfully misleading.)

It is true that Hussein did use chemical weapons, with a wink and a nod from the Reagan administration, against Kurdish civilians in the Iran-Iraq war. However, in this context, the question of whether Hussein "had weapons of mass destruction" is clearly a question of whether he had them leading up to the 2003 US-led invasion, which, to the best of anybody's knowledge, he did not. After the invasion the Iraq Survey Group concluded that Iraq had destroyed all major stockpiles of WMDs and had completely ceased production in 1991.

An increasing number of revisionist apologists are intentionally conflating whether Hussein ever had chemical weapons, and whether he had them in 2003, which was the (ostensible) justification for the war. Let's not let such slimy rhetorical tactics slide.

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#55

Post by ErrantX » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 9:04 AM UTC

redrobot5050 wrote: post #24

CWuestefeld wrote: post #6

I'm glad that somebody is still tracking this story, and it hasn't just dropped on the ground. Too often, it seems, a news story outrages us, but the furor quickly dies down. In the end, nobody even notices the ritual scapegoat. A little while back, somebody proposed here ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1183587 ) a web app that would allow us to follow a news story entire life. This reminds of that, and why it…

One reason the furor over this died down so quickly is that different stories reported the facts differently. My friends and I all debated what had really happened. The student believed the webcam had taken pictures of him acting inappropriate without his knowledge or consent (and no parents were notified of this 'feature' of school-provided laptops). However, it was not clear in initial reports if the student had ac…

> the school's servers, the IT staff and the administrators could all be considered to be part of a child pornography network

No, please lets not go to that silly place.

It detracts from the real child pornography issues.

We don't need CP laws to convict these people of a crime; the crime they have actually committed.

If the administrator was taking pictures of them nude or in sexual positions and then storing them; i.e. with the intent of viewing them sexually, then nail him.

But otherwise this is well covered by voyeurism law. A much more appropriate charge.

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#56

Post by hga » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 12:51 PM UTC

pyre wrote: post #48

hga wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely from the security/retrieval viewpoint, I think not. You'd pass up potentially critical information that way. Hmmm, I suppose from that viewpoint you'd also want to follow their policy of not telling anyone about the security system in the first place.

> Purely from the security/retrieval viewpoint That's the failure in that logic. "Purely from a security viewpoint," it would make sense to strip all airline passengers naked and force them to stow all their luggage/clothes (i.e. no carry-ons), and have armed security agents staring them down the entire flight.

Hmmm, that brings up the question "Can this software ever be moral or legal?"

I.e. if you were to use it outside of the context of a school, there's still the possibility a minor might steal your laptop, set it up in his bedroom, have legal (for him and her) XXX with another minor....

In the above case I think you haven't broken the spirit of US child porn laws (that they are born illegal because they can't be taken without hurting the minor(s) in question), but I could be wrong. Legally your case is much iffier. Morally it's stronger, but how much so?

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#57

Post by hga » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 4:13 PM UTC

boyer wrote: post #53

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #38

I continue to be amazed that people are not more outraged about this. While there is some outrage and certainly charges will be filed, in general the public's opinion of their right to privacy and anonymity has shifted by orders of magnitude in the last 20 years.

There are a number of facts that I can almost guarantee that anyone not outraged probably aren't aware of - I will list only a few because anyone who doesn't do research before posting or reading posts for opinions is kind of hopeless. 1. Students were required to use these laptops for their coursework - in class and at home. No laptop - no going to class. 2. Despite the software being designed to track stolen proper…

I think the latter item (#3) is from a PBS show on another school district. Which doesn't change the general point of "where's the outrage"?

Re: Thousands of webcam images have been found in the school district being sued

#58

Post by Qz » Sat, Apr 17, 2010, 6:15 PM UTC

roofone wrote: post #36

Qz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't take Latin and I still understood it. I don't think the translation was really necessary, more a statement 'I know Latin'.

I didn't take Latin and I did not understand it. I appreciate that someone took the time to translate it.

And yet if someone had not translated it, you could have googled for a translation and maybe learned a little Latin in the process. Which is basically how I learned enough Latin to understand it.