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Education Government Politics

Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P. 132

Posted by Zonk from the myspace-just-a-little-bit-safer dept.
elearning 2.0 writes "It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety and sites like MySpace. The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding — therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space."
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Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P. More

Deleting Online Predators Act - R.I.P.

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  • Destroying Terroristic Buzzwords Act (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:05PM (#17480122)
    e-learning 2.0 space

    In any just society, whoever wrote that would swing next to Saddam, Idi Amin, and the guy who invented clamshell packaging.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by LWATCDR ( 28044 )
      Along with all producers of "Reality" TV show?
    • Who did invent clamshell packaging? So we can lynch him. Or, better, sue him for $150,000 per cut received...
      • Who did invent clamshell packaging?
        I'd guess either God or L. Ron Hubbard.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by wampus ( 1932 )
      Thank you, AC, for saving me from having to type that in, cause it is what I was thinking when I clicked the link.

  • But... (Score:2, Informative)

    by r3st2 ( 987153 )
    Most schools already have those kind of sites banned.
    • I was going to say the same thing. It's a pity, because a lot of teachers would use social networking sites if they could do so from work. I'm a network technician for a school district, and half of my contacts on Facebook are students at the schools I work frequently.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ig0r ( 154739 )
      But they're not banned hard enough.

    • Re:But... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lukas84 ( 912874 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @06:45PM (#17482700) Homepage
      Yeah. Like that is going to accomplish much.

      They'll find other ways to waste time.

      The problem is that the whole approach is wrong. If you want to prevent Students surfing on Myspace using School Equipment, make sure they have something to lose. But our society is no longer able to hand out a "YOU SUCK, GET TO WORK DAMMIT" to children and students who don't do their job right.

      You can't prevent by banning every distraction they find - you have to motivate them by making sure there are consequences when you're bad at school. Encouraging at first, but if you're no good, you get disqualified and can start flipping burgers. No need to waste money on people who don't try to learn.

      And the whole predator perspective is just stupid. Honestly. You can't rape or harass people over the internet. You can't damage them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Korin43 ( 881732 )
        Coming up with more punishments won't help, it just makes people more resentful to their idiotic "technology specialists". How about they just stop waiting their time trying to block sites like that? Why do people care so much about what kids are doing at school when they're done with their work anyway? "Oh noes! Games on school computers!" "Oh noes! Kids are talking to each other online!"
        • Because they're not "done with their work" they're "not doing their work in the first place becasue they'd rather be checking their email and updating their myspace, not only wasting their time in school but tying up resources that could be better used by students who are interested in getting an education, few as they may be." Furthermore, a lot of kids are just as bad or worse as their supposedly computer illiterate parents as far as downloading for unsafe sources and installing things without any foretho

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Korin43 ( 881732 )
            Because they're not "done with their work" they're "not doing their work in the first place becasue they'd rather be checking their email and updating their myspace, not only wasting their time in school but tying up resources that could be better used by students who are interested in getting an education, few as they may be."

            Congratulations on realizing that no one ever gets their work done early. And clearly no school in the United States has more computers than it needs.

            I found that at my high scho
      • You are suggesting that students in public school are wasting their time unless they are doing schoolwork (?) at school computers, and thus should be forced to 'get a job', perhaps flipping burgers. You add that you can't harrass or damage people via the internet.

        If the first assertions are intended to annoy those of us who didn't get excellent grades, it does. The second point is hoping to annoy women, the computer literate? It is too obviously false to get folks to bite on I expect, thoug
        • Bizarre, lucas has posted previously about frustrations in Switzerland not being able to fire high-school aged techie apprentices.
              This person may actually believe the things said, at least those about students.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by lukas84 ( 912874 )

            Bizarre, lucas has posted previously about frustrations in Switzerland not being able to fire high-school aged techie apprentices.

            Yes, that's my opinion. I will try to explain you why:

            We have massive shortage of apprentice places in switzerland. Many kids can't get one. Thats very bad, because those kids will probably get an inferior education. A finished apprenticeship (or higher eduction) is basically required if you want a halfway decent job in switzerland.

            Now, the problem with apprentices is that they'r

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by lukas84 ( 912874 )

          You are suggesting that students in public school are wasting their time unless they are doing schoolwork (?) at school computers

          No. They can waste time on school computers as long as they want, IF their grades are good.

          If the first assertions are intended to annoy those of us who didn't get excellent grades, it does.

          Nobody needs to have excellent grades. That was your assertion, not mine.

          I think that everybody should have AT LEAST sufficient grades. And people with insufficient grades, and no desire to cha

  • 2.0 what? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by NinjaPablo ( 246765 )
    "e-learning 2.0"? Is this a subset of Web 2.0?

  • WTF? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:08PM (#17480178)
    therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space

    Banning MySpace is undermining much of the pioneering work of what?

    I must be missing something.

    • Banning MySpace is undermining much of the pioneering work of what?

      I must be missing something.

      It would have banned, by particular feature sets, social networking sites. MySpace, of course, is one of the more well-known ones that would have been affected, but there is a lot more to social networking than MySpace, and there are certainly applications of similar technology that have been applied in education that would have been banned by the act.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Constantine Evans ( 969815 )

      If I recall correctly, the definition of social networking sites used in the act caused it to include an absurd variety of sites, including most bug tracking sites, Slashdot, Wikipedia and all other wikis, nearly all forums, many blog sites, some mainstream news sites, Amazon, Yahoo, and so on.

      In essence, any site which is commercially operated, and allows users to create profiles or web pages and communicate with other users, would be restricted in schools and libraries. In addition, any site allowing re

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
      I dunno, I've seen some very pioneering typography on MySpace.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:08PM (#17480182)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Bugs42 ( 788576 )

      I hope they are at least leveraging their e-synergies and fully embracing AJAX and SOAP in that 2.0 space.
      Wait, when did Samuel L. Mutha-F***ing Jackson come into this? I mean, I know there was plenty of buzz on teh interweb about that movie, but I don't recall anyone trying to ban it aside from those with no taste for B-movies.

    • Re:Yikes (Score:4, Funny)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:58PM (#17481106)
      What's worse: my boss (like many I'm sure) actually falls for the buzzword of the week.

      We'll bring in one group doing demo or webex of some software product, and they'll claim that their product does "Super hyper-relative process optimization". It'll be some common-sense obvious crap that they decided to tag that name onto.

      The bad part comes when Vendor #2 comes in and demo's their product. He'll (with a straight and shockingly confident face) raise his hand in the middle and ask "Does this support Super hyper-relative process optimization?". When they have no idea what he's talking about he's already looking at me like "OMG. They don't even do super hyper-relative process optimization. Why did you even let these people in the door?". About this time I'm ready to just shake my head in embarrassment.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tack ( 4642 )
        Damn. I need to make every effort to work "super hyper-relative process optimization" into my next departmental meeting. It's genius.

  • It will be back (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kaufmanmoore ( 930593 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:10PM (#17480214)
    We will see it again just in time for the 2008 campaign cause theres nothing like flashing the mug shots of creepy old men across the tv with ominous music while stating that ur opponent supports child predators.
    • You think the Democrats will bring up Foley [wikipedia.org] again in 08?

      • I doubt it. At this point, there would be no real political mileage in doing so.

        If the dems did, the reps could trade barbs with them about Barney Frank, ad nauseum. It was pressure from the conservatives, not the liberals, that caused Foley to resign. He is gone, the dems took congress, mission accomplished.

        Furthermore, raising the issue will almost always segue into societal issues concerning homosexuality, which neither side really wants to address.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Steavis ( 887731 )
      Wonder how Pelosi feels about it....

      http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/on-t he-hill-for-the-children-and-the-grandchildren/ [nytimes.com]

      I know I posted this elsewhere yesterday, but with the "thinkofthechildren" tag, I couldn't resist.
    • Well, there *is* only one party that frees child perverts and American enemies. It's the same party. The party that had protests "against the deaths in VietNam", but as soon as the draft was over, and the war was defunded, held no such protests for the 2,000,000 people of VietNam killed by Pohl Pot.

      This is no advertising gimmick; this is no slogan. Almost every evil dictator [i.e. killing his own people, usually with starvation, but always with roving shock-troops] is loved by these people. Charles Lindber

  • elearning 2.0? Stop with the stupid buzzwords (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheFlyingGoat ( 161967 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:13PM (#17480266) Homepage Journal
    Not only is elearning 2.0 a really poor attempt at piggybacking the Web 2.0 buzzword trend, the submitter seems to have some sort of investment in it as well (look at the name). E-learning 2.0 seems to be teaching using so-called Web 2.0 sites and tools, which is a good concept, but not one that needs its own buzzword. Why not just call it online learning or online social education, as those are more descriptive? Let's lay off the stupid buzzwords (Web 2.0, E-Learning 2.0, etc).

  • WTF is "e-learning 2.0 space"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by TheWoozle ( 984500 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:14PM (#17480280)
    WARNING: You have exceeded your buzzword quota for the day. Any future buzzword emissions will result in fines from the EPA.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by TacNuke ( 890744 )
      It appears you are trying to use a buzzword. Would you like me to help with that?

      --Clippy......

      • Come on, a paradigm shift that operationalizes poststructural Kantian hyperspace in a post-neo-syndicalist fashion is nothing to sneeze at. I concur with the article; this is the pathogenesis of the Bosch-Hegelian refractory-system!
  • I seriously doubt banning MySpace in schools would hamper learning. WTF are the looking at that on school time for anyway? At the HS my kids go to, MySpace is already banned...and blocked. On top of that, using proxies to get around their firewall is a suspension offense.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rubycodez ( 864176 )
      I seriously doubt blocking myspace at libraries and schools will make any dent in the number of teens using it, and any rule about proxies is just a challenge
      • I seriously doubt blocking myspace at libraries and schools will make any dent in the number of teens using it

        I suggest taking off and nuking its servers from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by COMON$ ( 806135 ) *
        beg to differ, given a competent admin it can be made sufficiently difficult to keep any student from wanting to go to any site you want. It just so happens that in my experience, HS network admins are barely competent enough to keep the routers up let alone filter anything. Most I know are either IT wannabes who couldn't hack it in a corporate environment, some poor SOB who was a math teacher and got all the responsibility pushed on them, or a person with illusions of grandeur after they set up their hom
    • The fact is, adding another Federal Law for schools to be in compliance with uses up vast amount of resources. It is one thing if the school IT guy blocks myspace on the school network... it is another thing for it to be a federal law, with greatly adds to the responsiblities, oversight, and beurocratic aparatus involved in implementing it.
    • I seriously doubt banning MySpace in schools would hamper learning.


      Yes, and if the law would have applied only to MySpace, that might be relevant. In the real world, the proposed language applied more generally to restrict access to "commercial social networking websites" and "internet chat rooms", which are a rather broader class of websites than just MySpace.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shalla ( 642644 )
      And I seriously doubt I'd care if DOPA only affected schools or MySpace, but it doesn't. It affects public libraries and a LOT of sites you wouldn't think of immediately. It's a crappy, very broad piece of legislation. Wouldn't it bug you if your kid couldn't use Wikipedia at the public library because it counted as a social networking site?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jdcope ( 932508 )
        I see your point, but that is a bad example for me. I recommend that they DONT use Wikipedia. Its like an op-ed page... As for libraries, the only thing that should be blocked there is pr0n. We quit using our local library because we got tired of walking by all the perverts looking at pr0n in front of everyone. FWIW, I dont have a problem with pr0n, I just dont like little kids being subjected to it. Especially the really raunchy stuff.
    • This wouldn't block just MySpace. As a few examples, it would also block Amazon, CNET, (possibly) the BBC, Yahoo, Sourceforge, any large and commercial Linux projects (Ubuntu, MySQL, ...), all commercially-run bugzilla systems, all commercially-run forums, all commercially-run wikis, most blog sites, GMail (due to the chat part) and most other Google services, and a variety of other sites.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jdcope ( 932508 )
        So it needs to be reworded. Fine. But blocking certain sites from schools is not a bad thing.

  • huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by User 956 ( 568564 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:17PM (#17480348) Homepage
    It looks like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) has died a slow death. DOPA was proposed during the height of last year's moral panic around the issue of child safety

    What do you mean "last year's" panic about child safety? The whole "child safety" cliche is every politician's trump card. I don't think it went out of style when we began 2007.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      No, but last year's panic was specifically about MySpace. These things are cyclical. Suicide, drugs, violence, sexual predators... Pretty much each year sees one of these become a "major" story that represents "an urgent new danger to children". In reality nothing changes, but society is always coming back to these. Somebody that has studied sociology probably knows more about this phenomenon. I'd be surprised if they didn't, because many people that work with children regularly, i.e. teachers, or kids that
      • Pretty much each year sees one of these become a "major" story that represents "an urgent new danger to children". In reality nothing changes, but society is always coming back to these. Somebody that has studied sociology probably knows more about this phenomenon.

        Or somebody that has studied history:

        "But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a
        • Well I was going to say that comparing the Nazis starting WWII was different for a bunch of reasons from the Congress voting to ban Myspace from schools and libraries, and how you totally Godwined yourself.

          But actually it strikes me that this is Myspace [encycloped...matica.com] we're talking about. If jackbooted Homeland Security goons started loading all the myspace users into cattle trucks for 'resettlement in the East', I'd volunteer to appear as a pundit on Fox News explaining how it was totally justified.

          Which reminds me, isn'

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:17PM (#17480354)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Oh the humanity!

      I guess all the tax credits aren't enough...American Parents can't seem to raise their children and satisfy their own lifestyle demands at the same time.
      • But then they would only have ONE CAR!

        You say that sarcastically, but in much of the states it is impossible to hold a job without a car, even if you're just working part time to allow time for your children. Companies rarely provide carpool vans, the bus system is a joke in most cities, and few subways exist beyond the eastcoast. Out here on the westcoast trains are ridiculously expensive, and not viable options for daily transportation (even with the daily commuter discounts). One of my college near-mini

        • I don't mean to sound callous, but I expect people to do the math before having those kids. People seem to think it is their right to raise children, I say it is a privledge. If driving is a privledge in this nation, then child-rearing should be a privledge as well.

          If you cannot afford to provide for your spawn, you don't get to have any.

          Sorry, not very sympathetic today.
          • If driving is a privledge in this nation

            First off, the point of my rant was that driving is not a privilege, and is in fact a necessity (for many). Privilege implies that it is something to be desired, and appreciated. Spend a few hours in L.A. traffic and any concept of it being a privilege will quickly fade. It's a necessary evil, until mass transit improves to the point that it's cheaper and more practical than driving.

            If you cannot afford to provide for your spawn, you don't get to have any.

            Why st

            • I hear you on the driving thing.

              I suppose what we really need is a way to figure out who is trying hard enough and deserves assistance, and who is just a moocher.

              We put warning lables on everything...perhaps we need a law that correlates household income to reccomended quantity children. If you have more children than reccomended for your income bracket, you get no additional assistance.

              • Or perhaps we should just remove the warning labels and let nature take its course. Seriously. The world could benefit from the loss of a few thousand...million...humans of below-average intelligence. And as for the law on quantity of children, you've got my vote.
    • I agree the parents need to get off their lazy asses, but according to the article "The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries"... that says nothing about the kids homelife, 25 years ago my parents didnt go with me to the library... the librarys also didnt have computers
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • yes, it does all begin at home, but there are bad elements out there that try and pry your darling away from your upbringing.
          That being said some things do not belong in school... MySpace is one of them

          • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

            by Anonymous Coward
            but there are bad elements out there that try and pry your darling away from your upbringing.

            Then teach your kdis to be responsible, society isn't supposed to sorround them in bubble wrap because you're too stupid to teach them to not meet up with random strangers. Also it takes one kid to find a work around for whatever filters the school uses then everyone will be abel to bypass it. The network staff will probably be too overworked with other things to fix the hole for a long time.

            Anyway, all things consi

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      ...who are going to have to unvelcro themselves from their armchairs in front of their HDTVs and actually go and spend some time educating and spending time with their kids in order to show them how to behave responsibly - both online and offline.

      I'm behind that idea; I only have one quibble:

      Who's going to show the parents?

      KFG
  • Although I'm strongly in favor of deleting sexual predators- either the online or offline type, DOPA just didn't do the job that it was purported to do.

    The folowing is stolen from wikipedia ( and abridged slightly ):
    ... The Youth Internet Safety Survey from the University of New Hampshire... found two cases of rape/sexual assault through Internet solicitation in its two surveys covering 3,001 children ages 10 to 17. According to the FBI's criminal victimization tables' national rate for sexual assault,

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chris Burke ( 6130 )
      Just more data that shows that this and just about every similar measure whether in cyberspace or meatspace is ignoring the fundamental problem:

      Children are vastly more likely to be victimized by someone they know than by a random stranger online or otherwise. Your typical sexual predator does not search for victims online, they look for victims down the hall.

      All of this hand-wringing and legislating is just a way to avoid recoginizing this admittedly sad and disturbing fact.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lukas84 ( 912874 )

      However, children ages 10 to 17 report more harassment and bullying online -- largely from their peers, not strangers.

      How do you harass someone online?

      I mean, really. If you don't like talking to someone, there's a variety of filter possibilities in every fucking IM/IRC software, and in every web2.0ish application.

      And last time i checked, it was also impossible to rape someone over the internet. Well. If it really was a series of tubes, and you listened to all the spam.. Maybe.

  • How is myspace educational? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nganju ( 821034 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @04:29PM (#17480568)

    Aside from the obvious problems with the sentence "pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space", how does banning myspace et. al. prevent learning? Are teachers seriously encouraging kids to get on myspace during class time for educational purposes?

    I don't see anything wrong with banning social network sites inside school libraries. Wikipedia, Nasa, etc. are legitimate learning sites, I don't see how myspace compares to these.

    • Aside from the obvious problems with the sentence "pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space", how does banning myspace et. al. prevent learning? Are teachers seriously encouraging kids to get on myspace during class time for educational purposes?

      No, probably not on MySpace, per se. OTOH, yes, social networking websites and internet chat rooms are used for educational purposes, and the proposed law covered "commercial social networking websites" and "internet chat rooms", generally

    • This bill, had it passed, would not have stopped at Myspace. It would have banned almost any board which had both comments and info on those posting the comments.
      It would have banned Slashdot from libraries.
      • And we all know how informative Slashdot is.
        Where would they get their truly important news? From a news source?!?! HA!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shalla ( 642644 )
      People are also overlooking the fact that it did not just apply to schools or school libraries, but also to any library that wanted to receive its federal technology funding, and it's so broadly written as to require age checks and parental permission for kids to access things like slashdot or wikipedia or, hell, parts of Yahoo.

      So the end result would be your public librarian (that's me) having to age check everyone who looked under the age of 25 and check for parent permission for them to use the Internet.
    • There are plenty of legitimate educational uses for sites like MySpace (not necessarily MS itself, but it's not the only thing that would have been banned).

      A few possibilities:

      • Connecting your students with students in other states or countries studying the same thing, to look at the issue from many perspectives.
      • Keeping students engaged in learning while they're at home, where they can post questions about the homework or have side discussions about things brought up in class.
      • Giving students a place to
  • Why can't there be a law like this... If you use any media to attempt to meet a minor for nefarious purposes, then you are guilty of gross criminal indecency. Leave it to the courts to decide what nefarious means, it's a good litmus test. hun? why not. The all the teachers and people doing good work have no reason to get screwed over, and the pedophiles can be put in jail. "oh Mr. Convict, Did we mention Jim was a pedophile?" Have fun in general population. You'll get everything you deserve.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Grimbleton ( 1034446 )
      I think "nefarious" would have to be spelled out from the start. I just passed the "Legal Age" a few years back (I'm 20 now), and I still hang out with the 15-17 crowd from time to time, and let's face it, they're just as big a group of perverts as I and my social group were at their age.


      If I were magically imprisoned because someone decided that "hanging out at telling dirty jokes and throwing innuendo around" was nefarious, there would be a serious problem. And I see it as a potentiality.

  • Absolute Bullshit (Score:3)

    by gnu-sucks ( 561404 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:48PM (#17481938) Journal
    The legislation would have banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding -- therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space.

    Every time I walk into the library at my university, I have to actually force some myspace addict off the computer so I can write a paper or do actual research. The school's library has over 300 computers, and there are additional computer labs on campus too.

    "undermining"!?!? What the FUCK! Would legislation to block large distractions and bandwidth wasting really "undermine" anyone's "pioneering" work on a school's IT policy and/or hardware/software?

    Freespeech sure - if you really need to use myspace for school, ask your "pioneering" IT staff for special access.

    While we're at it, can we please block hotmail and ebay? Most schools provide a local email account for students anyway...

    So do I have this thing totally wrong? Or am I right in believing that there are some educators out there that believe government-funded schools shouldn't stop students from wasting their bandwidth? Pioneering!?!? WTF!

    • Or am I right in believing that there are some educators out there that believe government-funded schools shouldn't stop students from wasting their bandwidth?

      It depends on where we are talking about. For children--that is, definitely K-8 and probably even all the way through high school--it should be the school's prerogative as to what they filter or not. In other words, they should absolutely have the right to determine what "wasting their bandwidth" means.

      The example you give, being in a university

      • The example you give, being in a university, is a different animal. The students are adults, and they paid as much money as you did to be attending classes there. In other words, they have exactly as much right to the machines and the bandwidth as you do, and while you're free to complain and call their uses a waste--hell, I might even agree with you--neither you nor the school should have a right to curb that use.

        The thing is, there is an acceptable use policy in-place, and it clearly states that the compu

  • e-learning 2.0 space (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Acy James Stapp ( 1005 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @05:54PM (#17482044)
    I'd like to see you say that to my face, buddy. I'll pop you right in the jaw. We speak English in these parts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

      I'll pop you right in the jaw.

      Pow! Right in the Kisser! Pow! Right in the Kisser! Pow! Right in the Kisser!

  • No Brainer. (Score:3)

    by BaldingByMicrosoft ( 585534 ) on Friday January 05, 2007 @06:36PM (#17482624)
    Encouraging peer communication and collaboration in a learning environment? Good.

    Using the fetid cesspool of MySpace, et al to accomplish it? Silly, if not completely irresponsible.

    We upgraded our filtering device last summer, with the main impetus being effective blocking of MySpace. This is for several K-12 school districts. Why the hell would you even consider MySpace for education, when there's Moodle and other products you could choose?
  • How am I going to get laid now?
  • The legislation in question was just a lame attempt by politicians to buy votes by pretending to care.
    The old fashioned way of creating phony My Space accounts to lure Peds and Chesters in order to Delete them the old fashioned Irish/Italian way will still be the way that works.C'mon people we have a database with addresses and pictures of threats to children at our ping! If you don't want them in your neighborhood,simply delete them yourself.It's not as if law enforcement or anyone but their families, real

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RPoet ( 20693 )
      It is probably illegal to kill people on the sex offender registries. Also, committing murder is not a good way to prove your moral high ground. Please consider this before you act.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by flyneye ( 84093 )
        Of course its illegal to do things against the law and get caught,duh!
        Murder is unjust killing of a human.Killing happens to animals.
        I don't recall trying to prove morality either way,just providing a workable solution to a nearly impossible problem.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by RPoet ( 20693 )
          Organising vigilantes into systematically taking the lives of people who have been entered into public sex offender registries is not a workable solution. You are coming off as slightly psychopathic, I'm sorry.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by flyneye ( 84093 )
            Who's psychopathic,those that ignore the human instinct to protect the children in favor of continuance of worthless human-like mutation or those that still protect the children just as always genetically programmed?
            The point is to make you really think about it in realistic rather than synthetic terms.
            Prisons,probation and chemical castration are not answers to the crime with the highest recidivism rate.Both on economical and moralistic terms its like nurturing smallpox into wellbeing.In the end,do you hav

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

              of worthless human-like mutation or those that still protect the children just as always genetically programmed

              I'll try to avoid insulting your intelligence, but I must make you remark that child molestors are not mutants and that people don't molest children because of their genes but rather because of their psychological issues and such. In other words there's no such thing as born child molestors.

              I don't see what's wrong with prisons by the way, last time I checked it was rather hard to molest children

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

          just providing a workable solution to a nearly impossible problem.

          About as great of a solution as killing all poors to solve the poverty problem, or killing all drug dealers and smokers in order to win the drug war, or killing every corrupt official in order to solve corruption, or kill all queers in order to get rid of the gay problem.

          Back on topic, convicted child molestors don't represent much of a menace to children, most child molestors are never caught (we all know people who got raped by people fro

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 4D6963 ( 933028 )

      Your comment just made me realize the potential danger of these registers. Fortunately, too few people are sufficiently sick to do what you suggest.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by flyneye ( 84093 )
        sick? see my reply to rpoet.
        As for the registry,time will tell and we will see.

      • Quite so... and this is even before we get to the topic of errors in said registers.
        Or malicious additions.
  • "banned the use of commercial social networking websites in US schools and libraries which receive federal IT funding -- therefore undermining much of the pioneering work being done by educators in the e-learning 2.0 space"

    How does banning social networking sites, which provide no educational benefit, hurting anyone's classroom, technology-focused or otherwise?

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