Having worked for a school district, I can tell you that licensing was a major issue but, not for the reasons that most people think. It has nothing to do with cost even though the licenses were pricy. The problem was the technical solutions that Microsoft instituted to try and enforce their licensing that was the issue. We either had to do limited activation licences that were use and loose which is a major problem when you're doing network imaging as you burn through the licences like they're tissue paper or you had to run clunky and unreliable "activation servers" with severe technical limitations and were even more problematic with people with laptops. In the end, we had to do a hybrid solution on both methods to try and keep our copies of Windows and Office activated and even then it wasn't 100% effective. We were looking for ANY alternative to this nightmare that we could make work; even if it wasn't ideal.

I certainly don't disagree with you. It's just hard as a school to find software or services that meet your needs that don't come with a Faustian price tag.

Public schools hand over student data to corporations and have for a long time. I've worked in multiple school districts since 1994 and I have not encountered an exception. Though it has been steadily increasing since software as a service has been hitting education channels. If you want to start your own privacy-oriented charter school, more power to you; good luck trying to get any IT, truancy or grade services/software though.

From what I understand about Osama Bin Laden, he knew this is exactly what would happen. He knew all of the players involved and what they desired (he was trained and worked for them for years, after all) and all he had to do was give a catalyst to scare all of us to allow our own wolves to devour us. He may have been a monster but, he was a very intelligent man.

As far as what another post said, yes, we were already heading this way but, this sped up the clock by a few decades to bring this all here now. In some twisted way, Osama may have done us a favor by making this happen so fast that we are aware of it instead of it feeling like a natural progression. (Note: Do not take this statement as me condoning his actions; I don't.)

The problem with this is that most of us have no alternatives and those few that do tend to have one (1) alternative and it's often another name on the list. The problem is that these companies know this; hell, they've payed good money to make sure it is like this and they're spending even more money to make sure it stays this way. The only way to fix this at this stage is to let your congresspeople know that you'll fire them if they don't fix this.

I especially enjoyed the fact that oilfield waste pits kill more birds than wind turbines. That takes the issue out of play in this argument right there. You don't even have to argue maters of scale.

If I had mod points at the moment, I'd mark you informative and this would be anonymous.

Some because they feel it's "payback" for all the arguments they loose and many others because they get paid to do so by the coal, oil and other environmentally hazardous industries.

You and I know this but, the base problem is that the average consumer just doesn't care. All they do is buy a "magic box" that the salesman recommends and after that all they care about is "does it work?." This is where Microsoft crushes *nix. The odds of everything working right out of the box is 99% better than any linux distro, especially when it comes to games where Microsoft has been able to corner the market (and the only reason I use Windows).

No, it doesn't. But, being an anonymous poster bashing Google five minutes after a post with their name on it and then replying to a comment against you 8 minutes later certainly does not help your credibility.

Romney didn't lose because his foreign policy was bad. He lost because he essentially called 47% of all Americans worthless moochers and disregarded all women and minorities. It's really hard to win any election when the only people you appeal to are rich white men.

Though I can see your point, there are becoming more incidences either in fact or just in reporting of police officers behaving badly and lying to cover it up. I'm referring in general, not any specific case at the moment. One police department that has the mandatory cameras for officers and the police chief actually enforces it had a huge drop (88%) in citizen complaints and incidents where violence was used (60%). This makes a iron clad case for police cameras.

Plus sadly, this is where Google is correct. Privacy is dead. Any illusion of privacy we still have is just that, and illusion.

One of the simple ways to deal with this is have backup cameras and let the officers know that if their camera is off they are not on duty (and not getting paid!) and do not have the authority of a police officer. Exemptions need to be made for events where the officer was engaged in a struggle, vehicle accident, etc. where failure of the camera is expected, of course.

No kidding, they would have locked up my writing partner and me in high school and thrown away the key! Our english teacher lovingly referred to us as the Jeffery Dahmer society. ...and our papers were no longer read aloud in the class. But, we still got high grades on them for creativity so I had to give the teacher a lot of respect. Plus, he didn't do anything stupid like this idiot teacher did.

What's ironic about this is Stalinist "communism" and modern American "capitalism" are identical in this respect (only). The common people are allowed to vote but, they are only allowed to vote on options that do not challenge the currently accepted system. It's wrong no matter what label you put on it. If people are not allowed to vote at the polls for real change then eventually they'll vote for change with their weapons of choice.

This is just until the news cycle finds its next shinny bloodbath and moves on. Once that happens, then Verizon will slap the bandwidth cap on all the time in every place. They're just trying to find a way to annoy these people into changing plans or switching to another provider without it making front page news.