Thursday, June 21, 2012

Why I hate asshole school administrators - and authority in general

Third grade boy gets accused of stealing from a little girl.  He denies it.  Female principal orders him down to his underwear, and runs her fingers inside the cuffs.  Turns out - the kid didn't steal anything.  The boys parents were never igven the opportunity to be present.  In fact, they were never even told it happened.  Of course, the super intendant defends:

 The assistant principal was within her legal authority, her legal right, to do the search.  She may have been overzealous in her actions.
 
Third-grader strip-searched at North Carolina school after stealing claim | Fox News

Thursday, June 14, 2012

punishing thought crime isn't censorship so long as its your boss that's punishing the thought

in this case, it was like the catholic school set up a teacher with a questionnaire about her personal views, then punished her for being frank about her personal views - even though she said those views didn't influence the way she taught her class.  aside from the marriage equality issue - and the increasing distance between the church and its members on these sorts of issues - there's the whole idea that when you work for somebody, you're merely selling your time and services. employment isn't slavery - the employee is not owned by their boss.  so long as you do your job to the letter, no employer should have so much control over a person that they can punish you for what's in your mind on your off time.

Catholic School Fires Teacher For Supporting Gay Marriage In Self-Review | The New Civil Rights Movement

some people deserve to go to hell when they die

 like greedy businessmen that sell us poison to feed to our children

BPA | Toxic Ingredients Hiding in Kids' Products | The Stir

iSlavery

Apple’s suppliers claim to the press that they have ended excessive overtime and doubled workers’ salaries.  Meanwhile, interviews with the workers themselves reveal that, for many not in management, pay has actually decreasedEven worse, workers are now being told to work UNPAID overtime or risk losing their jobs
(emphasis retained from original)

Apple: Get serious about improving worker conditions | SumOfUs

Tell House Democrats: Support President Obama by drawing a line in the sand on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

All Democrats have to do is nothing. And yet . . . they can't help themselves! I predict that these great defenders of medicaid and social security will manage to somehow put compromises to those programs on the table and still not get what they want. The biggest differences between the democrats and republicans isn't so much the extent to which they favor wealthy business interests - its the extent to which republicans are open about it and democrats make excuses.


Tell House Democrats: Support President Obama by drawing a line in the sand on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Another reason to run Linux

Flame malware hijacks Windows Update to spread from PC to PC | Ars Technica

Breaking with Ubuntu is probably a good thing - but keep the name if Canonical is cool with it

Lots of people like Kubuntu.  I've always had a much better KDE experience on OpenSuse and Mint.   Kubuntu is still horrible on my Asus eepc 900 (obviously a low power computer - the system runs fine on my other machines), whereas OpenSuse has always ran adequately (but not as well as standard install Ubuntu). 

Personally, Kubuntu always felt like an after thought to the main distro.  It may be that the whole thing goes to hell with Canonical lessening their support.   But so long as Kubuntu remains an official -buntu, Canonical will have every reason to fund it sufficiently and provide enough support to prevent it from dragging down the overall -buntu brand.

From Kubuntu's perspective, losing the name means you eventually just become another KDE distro with an interesting history.   There are plenty out there to choose from.

Kubuntu Community Update | wonderly@blog:~#