I'm a resident of LMSD and have some of my nieces and nephews attending it's schools (none in high school yet). The question as to how this theft system was activated has been flying around a great deal among the parents. The school has not addressed this point, but lawyered up instead. Let me fill you in on what the locals are saying. While I can't profess to any kind of certainty about this, word on the street is that the student in question had lost his laptop privileges prior to this debacle. What this means is that he no longer had a laptop to bring home and had to borrow a loaner while at school. The laptop in this particular case was supposed to be a loaner that was not to leave school property. When the laptop wasn't returned at the end of the day, it was presumed lost or stolen and that is when the infamous picture was snapped. I think we all know where the laptop was. This would explain why a laptop that was not lost or stolen could have been regarded as such. This would explain why the snapshot would have been taken. Please don't take this to mean that I support this kind of invasion of privacy. I think that the school had a responsibility to tell parents that their laptops had this kind of capability. Informed parents could have weighed the pros and cons and taken the laptops only if they felt like these terms were acceptable.

As a former benefits consultant I can tell you that very very very few companies offer relocation benefits. In my anecdotal experience 95% didn't offer their relocated employees anything and I saw data from hundreds of companies. There are usually not even differences between high or low demand jobs, most companies have a blanket benefits package that all the employees get.

Of course companies will make a one off exception from time to time to a relocating employee, but only if they dearly need them and have run out of local options.

That said, it's no skin off of a companies back if you are willing to relocate without any compensation. My guess is they were too impatient to wait for someone to travel across the country and interview two or three times when the process for local candidate would be a whole lot faster.

This isn't at all a scientific study. As an admitted Mac fanboy it bothers me because it makes us look more and more like scientologists. As a market researcher, this makes me even more disappointed then Ford's "'Market Research.'" What's sad is that market research has a great deal to teach us whether we want to admit it or not. Like all sciences we can use it for good or for ill, but this is not a scientific use. This is trying to show a very stretched relation between brand and behavior. What upsets me so much is the jump from the idea that subliminal messaging (which has some research to back it) and some ephemeral quality the mac brand must have (does have). Too big of a jump for any conservative researcher. /still an Apple fanboy