If you didn't understand that ACORN was a scam when you first heard about it, you don't understand people. Same with BlueHippo.

There are times in everyone's life when you look at someone poor unfortunate soul and decide you should do something to help them or lift them up somehow. But to make a business out of doing this? No, sorry, it doesn't work that way. Neither financially or psychologically. What this means is that when you encounter any organization, group or company that seems like they are doing only good, altruistic work 100% of the time there is something wrong. Say, like when you hear about a company that takes people with no credit history or bad credit history and helps them get a computer by financing them. You can bet there is a substantial amount of fleecing going on.

Now, could Dell give 1 computer to poor people for every 1,000 they sell? Sure. Or the equivalent in some form more useful to poor people than a computer. And maybe they do with far less publicity.

So do you think an organization that is dedicated to getting housing for poor people, people with limited means, bad credit history and unstable work history might have some sort of alterior motive? Absolutely. And everything I have read about ACORN since the 1970s indicates that they have been playing games since their very inception. Games that have to do with power, control and influence that have nothing to do with their supposed mission.

Court records, including the names of the parties involved, are sealed all the time in the US, for a variety of reasons. Germany simply has a different set of reasons than the US does.

Of course, this isn't about Court Records, is it? The Wiki articles in question aren't "court records".

The Germans can do what they like about news articles in Germany. Alas, they don't have the power to extend their whims to news article in other countries....

Most states require that I, as a manager, offer an employee a treatment option if I suspect that a performance issue is due to a problem with alcohol. However, if they have I think it is a problem with 'illegal' drugs I can fire them right away.

Socially we view alcohol addition as a moral weakness, but treat it as a medical problem. How about we join the modern world and do the same with all substance abuse problems?

I helped a customer get off AOL's blacklist a couple months ago.

It was a straightforward process with an immediate automated reply.

In order to complete the process you must be able to receive an email at abuse@, postmaster@, or the technical or administrative contact for your domain.

The final email was from a human. It was completed the day following.

It's been a while since I had contact with teachers and computers.

Our company bought its first computer (Commodore 8032 used for counting money...spreadsheets). Except for one-of's here and there, computers were not in classrooms.

I occasionally traveled to another province where the brother of a fellow employee had a job to investigate what was available for use in education. He was a teacher prior to landing this plum job. When I was in town, I looked him up, had dinner, visited his friends, etc. They were all very knowledgeable about computers. They were writing instructions/ideas , many were messing with BASIC, etc.

They were all teachers... real teachers with home rooms who marked papers at night and they were all learning on their own and from each other. That group of sort-of randomly group of a dozen or so folks was quite likely the best "amateur" computer experts in the province.

Where I currently work we have a help desk that treats or escalates calls from "Fonts are wrong in Word", "Can't log in.", to calls requiring senior IT folks with meetings and conversations in hallways. Our customers vary from three person family operations to national accounts with multiple small and large offices. For most of these we provide first level support. "Fonts, email bounced, I lost a file, etc.

If your business is not computers. (oil, pizza, educated children, etc.) then you have to provide first level support to the folks who work in that business. It's expensive per user and it's a cost that's easy to hide by requiring users to do it themselves or sleeze it from someone whose job is to do something else.

A few years ago we quoted on a hardware software job for a group of schools. (we weren't chosen)The quote was for supplying hardware, installing software and standard warranty on the job. No costs were allocated for support.

If you want workers to produce something and work with computers, and use them to count money or pour concrete, you have to support the dumbasses, smart ass know it all's and klutzes.

I think it is reasonable to have most teachers trained to the level of a "user" with first level support for "Getting an error when opening Word"

It doesn't matter whether the operating system is Microsoft Linux, PICK, or what applications are used. If you expect folks to use computers to do their job, you have to provide ongoing support.

I've seen many schools with computer labs with more than half the equipment not working and teachers with computers on their desks that aren't being used because of a problem

Teachers are no different than any other trade around computers. Office clerks, engineers, lawyers, executives, shpppers... they all contain a subset of people who are horribly clueless and dangerous with a computer.

It seems that people expect teachers to be better with computers than a typical tradesman in another industry.

I think it is possible for a middle aged teacher with very low computer skills to teach an elementary class programming if they are provided with the tools and support. A teacher who has two servers at home and writes software for Linux in his spare time might... might be able to do it better.

I'd have a hard time deciding the weight of "Good Teacher" against the weight of "Good at the subject being taught"