Happy Passover/Easter. Now let’s stop arguing

Listen: Jews and Christians aren’t all THAT different. Both believe that the Messiah will come, only for Christians it will be the second time. First of all, of all disputes to have, it seems to me it’s like arguing over whether or not God visited the 7-11 one extra time.

Anyway, it’s easily resolved: when he gets here, ask the the Messiah, “Hey, have you been here before?” Of course, then the “I told you so”s will begin. Oh- and if he answers, “I’ve always been here,” then he’s not a Messiah, but a Vorlon. And if it’s Ragnarok, then the Norwegians can really get a good laugh at the bunch of us. And if nothing happens, we can all continue arguing. What Fun!

Remembered: Jaime Escalante and the Public Schools of California

CNN reported the death of legendary teacher Jaime Escalante on Tuesday. Escalante was a mathematics teacher in East Los Angeles. He was made famous only in part by his wondrous ways with students, but also by the sheer disbelief that the state and district had that any teacher could helped students in that district score well in math. He was then immortalized in the movie Stand and Deliver, starring Edward James Olmos.

We need more teachers like him, and we need more people to believe that there can be teachers like him. The so-called “No Child Left Behind” Act, is leaving all children behind, and desperately needs to be reformed. Perhaps one thing we could do is pay for more teachers’ educations in exchange for several years of service. Perhaps another thing we can do is fund schools properly. It’s a particularly serious problem in California, with no easy answer. Here is a well written article that explains how the local tax base cannot even take matters into their own hands unless they expend a WHOLE LOT. Not that it would help East LA, mind you. Perhaps this obituary should be for the California public school system.

A social network not to be part of

We’ve discussed the unintended evils of social networking sites in the past. But here is a story about a “Social Networking” site that seems to have intended evils. The site, which I won’t name, uses video cameras, and people are randomly connected to one another. You can then chat with the person, click “next” to go to the next person, or report the person for inappropriate content. Doing so blocks an individual for about 10 minutes. When a friend of mine told me about the site, I thought it was an interesting concept. But then he told me that what he saw quite often would disgust most any normal person. And then he told me that he saw young children using the program.

This raises all sorts of questions:

Where the heck are parents of such children, and why would they ever let them near this type of “social network”? Where’s the little report button to report them?
As someone who believes in free speech, if the primary use of a technology is to violate the law, in this case child protection laws, perhaps I’ve just found my limit. If we look at how Napster fared in the courts, because their business model was predicated on breaking the laws, in the end they had no legal defense. Can this business argue that they have a viable model, absent the lurid behavior being demonstrated?
Even if they claim to have such a valid business model, should this site be required to exercise due diligence in protecting children? A report button that knocks someone off for 10 minutes doesn’t seem like much of a deterrence. How about the report button sending identifying information to the service so that they can review the video, where it could be used as evidence in a prosecution?

Here’s one reason I won’t go to the site in question, and neither should you: what if law enforcement finds even a hint that you’ve been there? Could this be turned around such that you could be assumed to have participated in a lewd act in front of a minor? After all, we’ve seen other instances where the presence of porn was enough for someone to lose his job and face prosecution.

More Airline nonsense!

Yes the airlines are at it again. This time, according to the Wall Street Journal, they are complaining about the idea that you might actually want to get off of a plane after some number of hours of sitting on a tarmac. The pendulum has swung so far to the side of the airlines that they think that they can simply bully the FAA into backing off on the meager regulations they’ve proposed. I have another idea.

With the airlines threatening to cancel flights at the first hint of trouble, I propose that the FAA institute one additional rule: when a flight is canceled, the airline responsible must rebook a passenger for a flight to his or her destination on that same day, or allow the passenger to book the next available flight to his or her destination on any airline. Just for spice, we might add something about allowing that booking to be in a higher class of service if it is the only available manner to get a passenger moving.

Still think we don’t need a real Passenger’s Bill of Rights?

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How Important Is Your EMail Address To You?

Really it’s not clear to me if this is a generational thing or what, people tell me that email addresses are no longer that important to them, what with MySpace, FaceBook, and the like. Others just use SMS, where their cell phone number is the important for people to reach them. For some, however, their email address is their identity, and their only means of being reached by friends and family. That’s true for me, at least. I’ve had the same sets of email addresses for about 12 years– one for work, one main one for play, and a bunch of others for special use. This is nothing compared to my parents, who have had (roughly) the same phone number for almost forty years.

If your email address is important, here’s a question you should ask: is it important for you to control it from a legal standpoint? Why would you want to do this? Let’s look at a few cases:

Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) provides you your email address with your Internet service, be that DSL, Cable, or something else. What happens if you decide to change ISPs? Do you lose your email address? And do you care? Can someone else get your old email address, and what are they likely to receive?
You have a free email account from a service like Yahoo!, MSN, or Google, and the account gets broken into. The first thing the bad guy does is change all of the security questions that are meant to cover password recovery. How, then, are you able to prove to the service provider that the account was yours in the first place? Can you even get your old account shut down, so that the attacker can’t masquerade as you?
This is the inside-out version of (2): suppose someone claims you are masquerading as the legitimate owner of your account? Who do you go to in order to prove that you are the legitimate owner of the account?
Your mail service provider goes out of business, and the domain they have been using for you is sold.
There’s one special case I’ll mention, but let’s not try to solve it: you use your work email for all email, and you change jobs or are laid off. It’s a safe assumption that the primary use of your work email account should be work, and that you are taking a risk by using the account for more than work.

For all but the last case, you have a way of at least mitigating the problem by have your own domain name, like ofcourseimright.com. That is- go to a registrar that you trust and choose a domain name that will be yours as long as you pay the bill for the domain. However, is this just moving the problem? It could be if someone breaks into a registrar account that is not well secured. However, because you own the domain and the registrar does not, you are able to take at least some actions, should either your registrar not recognize you, or should your registrar itself go out of business (this has happened).

The hard part is finding someone to host your domain. This sounds like a royal pain in the butt. And it is! So why not just use your cell phone or a social network site? Cell numbers are at least portable in many countries. Social networking like Facebook is another matter, and can leave you with many of the same problems that email has, and more, as we have seen. Similarly, many financial services that play with your money, like PayPal and eBay, rely on you having a stable email address.

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