and instead of the government actually doing something productive with these fee's they just use this issue as an excuse to grow and grow.

then I as a customer have the right not to choose their service, simple as that. I really don't see how this can be legal, but I am unable (and unwilling) to be a person who brings this to court to test the waters.

Facebook isn't on school property so I fail to see how in loco parentis would work or be held up in this situation. Sure, the issue is causing problems for the school community but it is off-site, where the principal has no authority.

I am not saying what the children did was right, they have done something that could negatively impact the lives of a teacher and his family, personally and professionally. They need to be held accountable and given consequences. The right thing would have been for the administration to notify the parent and get their consent...better yet, get the parents to come in and watch as the child logged in to her facebook account. Better accountability and openness that way, makes it easy to avoid the children and parents bringing suit for invasion of privacy (just wait, it will happen).

true, but the child was in no way obliged to open her account and let the staff look at it. I agree the principal needs to back his staff, but if it were me at that age I would have told him to stuff it...politely.

the children deserve consequences and you are right that their allegations were quite dangerous. Unless the postings happened at school (and even that issue is questionable) the principal had no authority to make the student open her facebook page in front of him. Best case, this should have been a legal issue between the children and teacher in the form of a lawsuit.

yeah, that one eludes me. The school had no grounds to get involved, this should have been a civil matter between the teacher and the children making the statements (libel, defamation, etc). Now, that the school did get involved I don't see how claiming someone as bipolar is worse than claiming they're a rapist and a child molester. Were I the student in question and the principal asked me to login to facebook for him I'd just refuse. What the children did was wrong but the school took it too far.

if you want to block/edit how facebook is viewed on your end check out fb purity. It is available as an extension for several browsers as well as a greasemonkey script. Works wonders on cleaning up FB for me and I am amazed at how clean it appears once you get rid of the cruft (compared to a browser that doesn't use it). It doesn't help in privacy settings but it is a nifty tool to have.

I've tried FF4 twice, both times letting it go in less than a week. It has been faster than 3.6.x but it has this horrible tendency to cause my plugins to stop working. I had a scenario in which I couldn't use Google Chat (in Gmail) to make calls out. It worked under Safari and FF3.6 but it kept telling me to download the plugins. Flash also stopped working and sites like YouTube wouldn't load. When I looked the plugins up via about:plugins nearly all my plugins had failed to be recognized by FF4, where all them were recognized by FF3 and Safari. When 4.0b12 was released I was excited as it seemed to solve the plugin issue, but after a couple of days use it too started to fail at recognizing the plugins. Nothing I could do would get them to work. Until this issue is resolved I can't use FF4, which is a shame as it is a general improvement over FF3.

that is what we're doing. in the times of the year when it is cloudy and raining we have an electric booster of sorts that helps out, but the water is directly heated by the sun most of the year.

friend the office for free wifi but limit what that friend account can see and do :)
win/win I think

In the building I live in (at an orphanage in Beirut) we have a series of solar panels to augment our hot water for tap and bath...other than that we're plugged into the grid and have a nice generator for the inconsistent electricity in this country.

the thing is, why didn't you read the review before posting? I did and the review was a fair OPINION, not no libelous in any form or fashion. With a few exceptions those that are really active in the Middle East blogging scene are genuinely nice people and value the power of words, this guy is one of the best ones out there.

yet they still get compensated quite nicely with those extra benefits and options. When they refuse the bonuses of being the figurehead I'll accept it as greater morale and leadership example, until then one of the "benefits" is a decreased tax burden.

and managing a multi-billion tech company is only worth being paid $1? While the salaries of your examples may be set by a board their official pay is not accurately describing the value of what they bring to the company. Sorry, can't agree w you there.