Respect is earned, not given. Trust is the foundation of respect.

When kids walk in to a school with their clear plastic backpack, through the metal detector, under the zero tolerance rules sign, past the cop who may or may not frisk, inspect and check ID papers to get to their classroom, the child has received one message:

We don't trust you.

Do you really think a child is going to respect an adult that needs the full force of the state government to teach math?
Do you think parents have any choice but to be confrontational when the first notice is a summons to court or a 14 day suspension (temporary expulsion) notice?

Please. This isn't about the teachers. It's about administrators who refuse to let teachers do their jobs. It's about adults who have forgot that they were kids once.

I have a website that has been covering this stuff for about a year. It is every bit as bad as people think it is. It's completely out of control.

Incidentally there is a secret to getting kids to behave. It's called respect, and it's something that is sorely lacking when you subject people to zero tolerance policies, random drug tests, cops, invasions of privacy, and other behaviors (clear backpacks, metal detectors, etc) that indicate a total and complete lack of trust or regard for your well being.

I sent my kids to a private school this year. Instead of a metal detector and cop at the door, the principal was standing in front of the school smiling, looking the kids in the eye and greeting them.

This x1000. I pulled my kids out of public education because I will not put them at risk for being wards of the state over what should be small learning experiences. There is a reason that voucher and charter schools are becoming more popular: they are safer for kids It is insecure to trust your child to an institution that will jail your child for years and subject mom and dad to fines over typical, normal school discipline.

The problem is that people believe they have to go overseas to save money. Reality is there are plenty of suppliers in the US, and they are ultra competitive in every way they can be. The issue is connections. Over the past 10-15 years, we've seen a virtual wall appear between the big cities and less urban areas in the US. People just don't know each other... so if you are a product manager in NY, you go to lunch with a buddy in NY who hooks you up with his people in China. The people in northern Indiana who built out for a big GM contract that was just cancelled, never get a shot, even thought they would actually end up costing an order of magnitude LESS because a) they want the business and b) logistics are cheap. One of the best moves a midwest business owner can make is to take trips to the coasts to network.

Check CapturePoint. They have a pretty simple way to do it that puts everything in the router and can extend the network using inexpensive mesh nodes instead of hardwired access points.

If you are rebooting a lot, then your OS is not stable, you need a new battery or your power company is crappy. You should not have to reboot often.

In the US, public officials have no protection from criticism at all. We can and do call our President, bureaucrats, military officers and elected representatives from the Senate to the dog catcher, all kinds of names. In the case of Generals, only members of the military can get in trouble for criticizing or lampooning them. Civilians can say what they want to. In fact, we require our military members who are leaving the service to use up their leave just so they don't exercise their new-found civilian freedoms on base, in front of their former commanders.

US freedom of speech is limited in the case of yelling fire in a crowded theater and making specific threats of violence. It is completely legal to advocate the overthrow of the government and even call for violence in the abstract. You may be investigated, but you cannot be arrested for excising your freedom of speech (note: there have been periods of time when this isn't true).

Actually taking action to overthrow the US government or participate in acts of violence is illegal.

Does this mean we should stop mowing our lawns?

If only we had a best answer button.

I agree... but damn it takes a long time to finish the install OS/install drivers/install security SW/update/upgrade process on windows.

I have five kids (4 daughters, 1 son) and about the same number of computers in the house. Here is what I've learned:

Windows computers, no matter what version become unusable after six months due to kids installing stuff that includes three metric tons of crapware. If you remove the ability to install, you remove the ability to learn to manage the computer, which kind of defeats the purpose of letting your kids have a computer to begin with. When things go wrong, Dad is out 4-8 hours, usually re-installing everything on the laptop.

Macs work well, but are too expensive to let a 13 year old throw in the backpack, get stolen at the school library, etc... a $400 PC is not nearly as likely to grow legs because it will sell for $200 on the street. A $1300 Mac will get $900, which buys a lot of mind altering chemicals. When things go wrong, Dad is out 10-30 minutes.

Linux works fine. The kids like Kubuntu because they can customize everything (KDE4 is good at that), can access everything (Konqueror and Dolphin are amazing) and the browsers (Chrome, FireFox, Reconq and Opera) are all fine. OpenOffice is well suited to K-12 use, and Inkscape and Gimp are fantasic. There is no IE to fsck everthing up to hell. System administration is surprisingly not that big of a deal. It's pretty cool when they tell you, "Dad, I wanted to learn 3d so I found this thing called blender and here's what I made." When things go wrong, Dad is out 10-15 minutes, tops, and can usually SSH in and fix the problem.

Lawyer: The truth is really damaging to my case!
Probably, but you never know. Funny thing how evidence can look very damning until related facts come out. I absolutely hate it when litigants drop stuff like this to the press because it gives the appearance that the case will be easily won... which usually does not follow in the courtroom (see the SCO Novell dustup). If you have the upper hand far better to just be quiet, wait until AFTER the hearing on the 17th and then have a little press conference AFTER the judge rules on the motion.

They're now asking for that finding to be overturned so they can release the documents.

It looks like Facebook's lawyers found a document that is better for Facebook in an area that was off limits for discovery as agreed by both parties. It's going to be sad if this case turns on Ceglia outlawyering Facebook over discovery. We'll see how it goes in the hearing.

it gives the media something to chew on.

Right up to the part where someone in the media bothers to read the article they were handed.

From the last paragraph of the article:

Facebook says all the evidence required to prove Ceglia’s contract is a forgery is in his computers and hard drives.

Wow.