We teach our kids in preschool that they should share, and then we punish them for it.

Talk 'bout mixed messages...

Maybe then the "sorry, I don't read spam" defense?

Show me one parent who gives a shit about copyright. If a letter comes with contents to the ring of "you might be sued for billions and billions", at least it will turn the older generation against the overreaching copyright too...

That's what a lawyer is for. So it's his time and his time costs your money, which is far easier to get back.

I tell her to carry condoms. At least there's a chance she'll heed that one.

Hormones are more powerful than anything you can do as a parent. Deal with it.

Huh? We're not talking about artists suing studios.

How is this labelled "Informative"? You may as well be saying, "We should cut educational expenses by only allowing smart people to have children, and only allowing well-behaved children to attend school." It completely misses the point. We, as a society, need to anticipate that lots of people will have children whether or not we individually believe it to be a wise move. Once those children exist, we need to deal with them, and the best thing we can do is to make sure they're educated, and that they have the opportunity to become productive adults.

There are plenty of IT departments that are not "enterprise" IT departments. Aside from that, "enterprise" IT departments often still go with a vendor like Dell or HP rather than trying to build their own systems, because the peripheral costs associated with building their own would wipe out any savings.

Again, I would need more of a justification before I could possibly agree with you.

What do you imagine, that poor children will go sit on the cold sidewalk next to McDonalds every night in order to do their homework? And what if the WiFi gets saturated from having a bunch of kids? I think McDonalds would likely be unhappy with this arrangement and maybe even cut off the internet. Or should these children be eating at McDonalds every night to keep McDonalds happy? Because that's great for children.

But you're right. There's also Home Depot, so 200 children will go sit in the aisles of Home Depot. I'm sure that'll work out really well.

We're quickly getting to the point where the Internet is required for living what society considers a "normal life". It's not weird to think that the Internet is becoming a form of infrastructure that should be expected to be available to everyone, like water and electricity.

It's likely that I won't respond to anything else that you write, because either you're a troll or you're... I don't know what. Dumb and heartless? Ignorantly indifferent to the struggles people face? Whatever it is, it's not worth arguing until you're actually thinking about what you're saying.

What, you don't think there's anything involved in configuring and maintaining tablets? I would guess, then, that you're not an IT guy.

You may be imagining that they're just handing out 20,000 tablets for each student to use as they please, but I would not expect that. I may be wrong, but in most cases where I've heard of schools providing tablets for children, there's an absurd amount of labor involved.

In IT in general and especially with schools, where you're going to want to restrict them, every tablet is going to have to be monitored and tracked, and regularly wiped and reconfigured. The configuration may be complex and very restricted. There will probably be 3rd party tools involved, which the IT staff will have to buy and will have to be trained on. Very often, spending a little extra to get the right tablets and tools will save enough money in labor and training to be worth it.

The very LAST thing I can use is a yes-man. Then again, my job is security. I need people who have the balls to stand up against self-important board members who can't identify and threaten them with termination (amongst more unpleasant things) if my security people don't overlook said board members' blunders.

So your solution for providing poor people with the Internet is to suggest that they go to Starbucks and McDonalds?

I guess that's a solution. I guess we could also say that poor people don't need indoor plumbing because they can just use the toilet at their local gas station. It seems to me like it's a silly, inefficient solution that will be unpleasant for everyone involved, so I'd need more of a justification before I would agree.

There are more things to consider than simply the cost of the hardware. Do the iPads have any specific features that are required for their plans? Are there specific apps that they want to use? What platforms are those applications available for? What kind of administrative tools are available for each platform, and have they already invested in any of those tools? Is their IT staff more familiar and skilled in managing a specific platform? What kinds of price cuts and support are offered by the manufacturer?

Saving even a couple of hundred dollars per unit might be a drop in the bucket when compared with the peripheral costs. Yes, IT departments everywhere might be able to save a little money on the purchase of each computer by buying all of their parts from NewEgg and installing Linux on the computer that they cobble together from parts. Still, it ends up being cheaper, when you add up all the peripheral costs, to buy ready-made computers from Dell with Windows pre-installed.

Not everyone who buys Apple products is an idiot.

On the other hand, it's a can of worms that probably wouldn't have needed to be opened if we had some kind of a plan to develop public internet infrastructure that was free/cheap for people without a lot of money.

I only bring this up because I would imagine some people looking at this and saying, "A public school system should not be intruding into the area of being an ISP, which has traditionally been an area for private business." I would respond by pointing out that the Internet really should be considered public telecommunications infrastructure.

I'm fine with http. I'm just stating my opinion. If that is grounds to lock me up, you can as well lock me up for then I'm in a prison already.