The problem with you arguing that it is a tax, and is thus allowed under the Constitution, is that the president insisted at first that it was not a tax (See http://technorati.com/politics/article/health-care-mandate-thats-not-a/ [Unfortunately, it's a two-pager article].):

On the next page, the article notes that it wasn't until legal challenges were filed against the bill, stating the mandate was unconstitutional, that the administration said it was a tax:

Danger, Will Robinson! The president's either lied to the public or clueless when it comes to the English language. I could assume incompetence over malice, but since everyone says he's a great public speaker, I'm inclined to go with the malice explanation.

While cell phones over the past twenty years have gotten smaller, obviously they're going to have to get larger to accomodate the temporal circuitry.

We absolutely, positively promise that this is going to be the last version for Windows XP! No exceptions!

I sent an email to the address at the bottom of the site...

Dear Sir or Madam,

It was with great interest that I perused the materials on the Music Rules website. (On a side note, it doesn't work properly with Firefox 3.0.) I agree that piracy of music is a problem, and some reform of copyright law is needed. However, I believe that your educational materials are misleading and sometimes directly contradict actions of the RIAA in the past.

In the teacher's guide, on page 4, the answer to question #2 (left column) is given:

Caitlin is not a songlifter because personal use is permitted when music fans buy their music. Caitlin can copy her music onto her hard drive and her MP3 player. Caitlin can even burn a CD with her own special mix of music she has purchased.

This however contradicts earlier cases where the RIAA has pursued music pirates for doing this exact same thing. A Washington Post article from 2007:

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The teacher's guide also ignores the term, "fair use." While fair use is quite limited in U.S. law, generally being restricted to purposes of research and parody, if the RIAA wants to teach third-graders the term, "DMCA notice," why not "fair use?"

Coverage of alternative forms of copyright appears to be non-existent as well, such as the Creative Commons licenses, which allow the creator to turn over specific rights to others, such as the right to modify, or distribute. Public domain coverage is missing as well. Old recordings from before 1923 (such as Edison's early record player) on the Library of Congress site thus would be public domain, and free to download. The materials would scare kids into thinking that everything is copyrighted, and thus illegal.

The materials also should recommend sites where music can be legally downloaded for free. One example is Musopen.com, which contains recordings of public domain works, but also contemporary works where the composer has expressed willingness for his music to be shared. . Warnings should be balanced with alternatives. Also, you could recommend the students to whenever possible purchase music directly from the artist, so that the artist is paid a fair amount.

U.S. federal government training materials ignore this distinction, preferring the "all downloaded music is illegal" mantra. For example, see this training website (it's screen 27 of 48). I can disprove this by visiting this Wikipedia link, where I can download a copy of the W.W.S.S. Wind Ensemble with Dennis Smith playing Arthur Pryor's arrangement of "Blue Bells of Scotland," released under the EFF's Open Audio License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arthur_Pryor_-_Blue_Bells_of_Scotland,_for_Trombone_and_Band.ogg). Similarly, recordings by U.S. military bands, being created by the U.S. government, are generally also public domain.

Copyright reform does need to be effected in the United States. The clause in the Constitution governing copyright is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts," by securing for a limited time. Today's environment, where it is for the lifetime+70 stifles creativity. Two economists wrote a paper for Harvard Business School (a subsidiary of Harvard University) discussing how weak copyright actually benefits culture (HBS article).

I hope that the educational materials can be refined, so that students get all the facts regarding music piracy, so they can properly decide whether it is legal for them to download song X. Reducing FUD on the RIAA's part will improve their standing in the technology community, and consumers will benefit by using a variety of resources to get music: legal purchases, and legal downloads of free music.

Thank you,

[REDACTED]

Just watch. Now I'm going to get investigated by the RIAA. :-)

I have a bad feeling about this...

U.S. government works are automatically public domain. Shouldn't state government materials be the same way?

The latest absurdity to come out of my home state. (The first was yesterday.) And I thought Kroger was a good guy, for a Democrat.

Maybe in the rural area people don't like government but Blumenauer represents District 3, which is basically Multnomah County, which includes the Portland metropolitan area; Portland being the liberal city of Oregon. Looking at his Wikipedia photo, he has a little bicycle pin, so maybe this is some massive plot to drive everyone to ride bicycles and use public transportation.

It's actually nice not having to get out of your car to pump gas...

But yes, leave it to my state to come up with this. Citizens have bumper stickers that say, "Keep Portland Weird."

Here is the Austrialian news article linked to in the original Slashdot post: News article.

While in practice that could mean essentially all Internet cafe users, in theory, it would have applied to everyone.

The controversy was that the Chinese government was requiring this software (I believe developed by the Chinese government) to be installed on all new computers sold in China, including those sold by U.S. manufacturers.

My university here in Oregon doesn't support Linux, so it's more of a, "you're on your own." So for the VPN, I had to hack the config files provided for Windows and Mac users, decrypt the group password, etc. I then wrote up directions, and submitted it to my university's tech department, to include on their wiki! I have yet to get printing support functional---they use some kind of weird print thing I have yet to figure out.

For wifi, I had some problems using NetworkManager, KDE4, and Arch, so I dualbooted into my Windows install to check settings, etc. I then got it to work by using iwconfig, etc.

For documents, teachers want Word documents (to do revisions, etc.), so I use OpenOffice.org and save in DOC. I also requested a copy of Office 2007 Enterprise using my college's licensing program, and installed it in Wine. It has OneNote, which is one of the Office programs I like, and haven't found a good replacement on Linux (I've tried Tomboy and BasKet).

Good luck!

I graduated in June. It was a public high school system, and yes the phones worked. The school was built in the 1960's, and I believe there was an intercom system. As for it being two-way...it may have been, but it was rarely used for that. One-way communications from the office, and the phone systems (and of course email) made up the bulk.

Our school just got a complete new phone system, routed the phone calls over ethernet. I know this because I would sometimes unplug the ethernet cable to get another computer plugged in. I also used said phones to make external calls. Note that we still had phones in the classrooms before then.

A teacher can call parents during their prep period. Personal calls can also be made during this time. My band teacher in high school would ignore his cell phone and class phone if they rang off during class.

Sorry, but at least at our schools, we have phones in the classroom.

Sure, but we still have to deal with the people who fail.