Archive for category politics
Quotes of the week…
Instead of picking a topic and writing a lengthy thesis, here are three quotes/stories that really got me going in the past week:
Windows Bug Discovered
A Slashdot thread discussed a security bug that affects all Windows versions released within the past 17 years. One of the commenters really cracked me up:
Every time I read about one of these long-undiscovered instant pwn bugs, I always have to wonder if there’s someone sitting deep underground in an NSA computer center saying “Well shit, looks like we’ll not be using that exploit anymore.”
Is this a hole nobody knew about or a hole nobody but the people who knew about it knew about, and those people weren’t talking?
Obama on Scott Brown election
The election of Scott Brown really caused a stir in political circles, prompting a comment from Obama:
The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.
Accountability much? Whatever happened to “The buck stops here?” I’m sure there will be more blaming Bush in tonight’s State of the Union. If more people took responsibility for their own actions, including the president, maybe the current political and economic climate wouldn’t be such a mess.
Budget Proposal Halts Return to the Moon
A White House budget request effectively axes the Constellation program, with a Slashdot commenter reacting:
So unless Congress steps in (which isn’t unlikely), Obama will be the President that ended America as a space-faring nation.
This comes on the heels of India’s announcement proposing a manned space mission in 2016. Instead, the Obama administration wishes to focus on terrestrial science. Yet another step backwards.
Who pays for the Internet?
This was the question presented by the professor of my undergraduate networking class. As far as I can tell, the answer is: you do. And you’ll pay increasingly more for it if some people have their way.
Unless you live in an area with subsidized broadband and/or wifi, you’ve got to pay an access fee to an ISP. At this point, dial-up is more or less useless, so you’ve got to fork over $40 every month just to get online. Like most people, your ISP is probably a large telecom, like Verizon, Comcast, or AT&T, so the true cost is probably a lot more than that since it’s almost impossible to buy internet access by itself. You’re forced into signing up for a “bundle” which is some combination of land line phone, cell phone, TV, and internet all provided by the same company. A lot of the junk (and added cost) that comes along with the bundle is probably unwanted, like bizarre foreign language TV channels, call waiting, and hardware rental fees since the option isn’t often given to buy your own modem or cable boxes. By purchasing a bundle from an ISP, you’re subsidizing the weirdos who actually watch some of those high-numbered TV stations, listen music on their TV, or enjoy being nagged by call waiting that can’t be turned off. Since the number of providers available for a given location are usually pretty limited, you’re forced into paying monopolistic prices as well as paying for services that you don’t even want.
It’s bad enough that you’ve got to fork over the dough for services that you don’t even want in order to get internet access, but in truth, it’s a lot worse. Access is merely a base cost for using the internet. In nearly all cases, there’s also a cost for accessing content. Somebody has to pay for hosting and generation of that website you frequent or the videos you watch, and again, it’s going to be you. Advertising is one commonly used method to shift the cost onto consumers. Nearly every website has it. Until around five years ago with the advent of pop-up blockers, Javascript removal tools, and ad-blocking tools, every website I visited spammed me with a torrent of flashing banner ads, pop-ups, and keyword advertising. Somehow, the notion goes, enough people would actually click on that crap and buy whatever it was that was being advertised. The advertising revenue would keep the servers running and provide the blog/newspaper authors with a small paycheck.
Personally, I can’t stand advertising in general. It gets in the way of whatever it is I’m trying to do, whether it be searching or browsing the internet, reading a print newspaper, or watching TV. Reading the paper or watching TV probably adds about fifteen minutes of sifting through all the ads or waiting through commercials to get to the rest of the TV show I want to watch or the newspaper article I want to read. I’ve never clicked on a banner ad, much less even bought something that was advertised in this manner. On the internet, it’s hard to manually filter out all the crap to get to what you want. Fortunately, current ad-blocking tools do a pretty good job. I’ve even forgotten how good a job they really do, for when I sit down in front of a computer without any ad-blocking software, the harassment of flashing banners and keyword ads drive me up the wall.
Though internet advertising revenue has increased in the last year, it is predicted to fall in 2009. Everyone is finally getting sick of all the junk constantly being pushed at them as advertising approaches levels seen in “Idiocracy” and methods used in “Minority Report.” A great argument against internet advertising states that it is “not trusted, not wanted, and not needed.” While print newspapers are folding due to declining subscriptions, content providers on the internet are worried about a similar fate due to declining ad revenue. Ironically, the print newspapers mainly blame their plight on the shift to electronic media. To that end, content providers are considering increasing their usage of a second tool to provide revenue: yet another access cost.
Most online newspaper websites and online offerings of network TV shows do so with fairly low restrictions on who accesses their content. The front page stories for nearly every newspaper are available online as well as last night’s Lost episode. This freedom of access is what makes the internet so great: once you get in, there are few barriers to access anything. However, the same people that brought you bundled internet access want to change that. One media executive says, “We want to change consumer behavior somewhat, so the expectation that everything online is free has to change.” If this expectation changes, the internet as we know it is finished. It is the freedom and openness of the internet that makes it as valuable as it is. You can find anything or anyone and learn about nearly any topic available. On the internet, you can collaborate with people half a world away. The introduction of a second access cost for some internet content will most likely remove that openness. The effort to preserve network neutrality has been in place for several years, but now it may be coming to an end. Several ISPs are currently proposing pay access for channels and TV shows online. The movement of this business model may force providers of other media to do the same. Original sources will become locked down, leaving open and collaborative efforts to rot without them, such as Wikipedia, or IMDB. Someone may want you to look at a video posted to YouTube, but you can’t look at it because you don’t have the money to pay the access fee.
Nobody really wants to pay a pile of access fees to get the latest news, or even to watch videos on the internet, especially when an ISP is charging a significant monthly fee just to get online (though some say they are). The problem is that the annoyance and unprofitability of internet advertising is forcing a shift to another solution to prop up content providers. If the shift to selling access to content goes too far, the internet may become segmented into a large number of tiers, causing the digital divide to span both the physical and electronic worlds.
School can be more than an education…
…but academics come first.
Another Flat Hat article got my attention, this time about the difficulties of performing well in school while competing in intercollegiate sports. The author, a student-athlete, states that here at William and Mary, a divide exists between athletes and non-athletes. From my experience and the author’s, this divide seems to exist for two reasons.
The first reason is that due to time constraints between school and practice/traveling for competition, athletes self-segregate from other students. Going to class, practice, and doing homework consumed all my (and my teammates’) time and energy, leaving almost no time for any kind of social life. What little free time we had was spent with our roommates, who were also teammates. Living, studying, sleeping, eating, traveling, suffering through workouts, and showering with 40 other guys was enough of a social activity that we didn’t need anyone else. In fact, very few of us had friends or even girlfriends who were not on the team. Anyone who hung out with other non-teammate friends was seen as the odd one out.
Those who wanted to do well in races and in school didn’t do much else except practice and study. If you tried to squeeze in late night parties every week, your performances in school and running suffered. I’ve seen this happen to several teammates, who tried going out on weekends only to bomb tests and races. Anyone who wanted to compete effectively without hurting their grades had to make some sacrifices. Consequently, a lot of non-athletes see us as weird. My sister says my teammates stick out in the already nerdy William and Mary population like a sore thumb: “they’re skinny, don’t drink, have a shaved head…”
Since high school, my coaches have always said that we are students first and athletes second. If school is taking a hit, we should back off on the running. For me, it never came to that, but a few teammates during my five years of eligibility did quit the team citing academics. Nearly everyone on the team set high standards for themselves academically, and few failed to hit these standards. Almost everyone on the team that’s graduated since I’ve been here has gone on to graduate school of some sort, many to law or medical school. There aren’t many student-athletes at William and Mary that I’ve met that haven’t done well academically, but this high level of academic performance seems to be the exception, rather than the norm.
At other schools, student-athletes really do seem to live up to the “dumb jock on scholarship” stereotype. USA Today reported on how nearly all student-athletes on DI football and basketball teams major in the same discipline, usually something like “social sciences,” or “management.” They pick the easy way out to keep their grades high enough to compete and somehow many of them still fail to graduate. This is where NCAA policy should really push towards getting a useful degree not just “majoring in eligibility.” Those that do graduate “have been hesitant to cite their degree on job applications,” since their major was worthless.
The thought of incompetent athletes flunking out of the easiest classes really hits a nerve with the average William and Mary student, who most likely busts his or her butt to get through Organic Chemistry. Odds are that student’s classmates are also members of the basketball, tennis, track, and football teams, among others. William and Mary boasts a nearly 100 percent graduation rate with all of its teams and 36 Academic All-Americans since 1992.
Money is the second reason for the athlete and non-athlete divide. In the comments section of the article, a lot of students believe that the teams at William and Mary get their budgets and athletic scholarships entirely from the $1,259 per year athletic fee tacked on to tuition. They feel cheated that their tuition money is going to pay for others’ athletic scholarships. This is hardly the case. All athletic scholarships are funded from endowments and alumni donations, not from tuition. Without a strong alumni base, the athletic programs would be nonexistent. One commenter mused that he wasn’t able to use the athletic fields or run on the new track because priority went to athletic teams. Again, those fields and the new track were paid entirely by alumni donations, which specified their use for athletics. With respect with complaints about the athletic fee in general, there are plenty of fees that I pay in my tuition that go towards school programs that I never took advantage of. There are also plenty of government programs that I pay for in my taxes that I never use, either.
To me, non-athletes complain about athletic scholarships in the same manner that out-of-state students complain about in-state tuition. Out-of-state students had a choice to attend a public school in their own state and pay less money, but they didn’t (they also don’t pay VA state tax). Non-athletes had a choice to work hard in a sport in high school and potentially get an athletic scholarship, but they didn’t. As for athletic slotting, plenty of non-athletes get accepted in the same manner, but due to their socioeconomic status.
At William and Mary, we have our cake and eat it too. We can be successful students while kicking butt as athletes.
School isn’t about getting an education anymore
Increasingly, nobody seems to think the main purpose of school (especially college) is to learn and prepare for a career. It seems that college is becoming less of a place to get an education and more of some kind of camp where you go for four years. It’s not about learning as it is about the “experience.” I’ve been on this issue for some time and it only seems to be getting worse. Yesterday the Flat Hat had an interesting piece about one of the Deans of Admissions and admission policy. It used to be that admissions were based on high school GPA, difficulty of classes taken, SAT scores, and your essay. Now, according to one of the assistant deans, admissions considers:
“…all aspects of diversity, including socioeconomic, gender, race, disabilities, sexual orientation, geographic location and ethnicity.”
Aren’t all these “diversity” issues things that the admissions staff shouldn’t even know about when someone applies? Academic performance should dominate all other factors in deciding admission, and only after someone has the academic credentials and is accepted should any socioeconomic or monetary factors come into play. Truthfully, I don’t think that an applicant’s name should be on a college application: the admissions process should be completely blind to any external factors such as gender or race. The requirement that a student have some kind of college “experience” with a diversity quota seems to be overpowering the idea that going to school is about learning job and career skills. No wonder so many college students graduate and go back to menial jobs: it’s not about learning career skills anymore. It’s about the “experience.”
The Associate Dean of Admissions goes on to say that affirmative action “should be applied not just in grades K-12, but from the day a child is born.” I can’t believe she said that — especially coming from someone in her position. It’s the “spread the wealth around” mantra. It completely kills the incentive for anyone to work hard or accomplish anything. Those that have some property of “diversity” don’t have to prove their worth since they will get what they want based on their status. Those that aren’t in one of the “diverse” categories won’t have any incentive to apply to the schools they want to or to get good grades in high school since they know the admissions slots will go to those that meet specific diversity criteria.
The DoG Street Journal had an editorial recently illustrating the consequences of continuing these policies. The author argues that while there is still a gender gap in wage, that gap has reversed itself with respect to high school dropout and college admission rates. Following these trends, it is certain that the wage gap in gender will soon reverse itself as well. But, heaven forbid someone starts a movement to protect men’s rights. Those with the special privileges will fight hard to keep them, even after whatever divide they faced is long gone.
And fight they will, because those in control want to milk these policies for all they’re worth. Title IX was originally aimed at ensuring that women had an equal opportunity to attend college. With college admissions and attendance no longer a factor, the new focus is intercollegiate athletics. After JMU two years ago, Delaware, another school in our conference (CAA) is considering giving track and cross country the axe because of Title IX. Under Title IX, schools must try to have a ratio of women’s to men’s roster spaces that is representative of the entire student population. Thanks to football, this really throws things for a loop. Since most schools desperately want to cling on to a football team that incurs the school a net loss in expenditures, administrators have no choice but to cut other men’s sports. They do this despite the fact that equal opportunity does not equivocate to equal demand.
It is obvious that education is the key to solving any socioeconomic imbalances, but the key to doing so and generating a productive and globally competitive society is to reward those who work the hardest instead of those who happen to have some special property.
Yield to Pedestrians: Right Idea, Wrong Result
Earlier this week, I read in the Flat Hat that the local police would be cracking down on cars that fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalks. Specifically, crosswalks located along Jamestown Road and Richmond Road, which is right next to campus. Sure enough, as I’m driving towards the Rec Center, I see a cop car failing miserably at hiding itself among the other parallel-parked cars on Richmond. It’s tough to disguise a blue and white Dodge Charger with lightbar.
Signs were installed at the crosswalks around campus a few years ago commanding drivers to yield. Now that pedestrians legally have the right-of-way, they believe it’s safe to boldy march out into the street regardless of any oncoming traffic. Doing this anywhere else would be surefire suicide: when I was in New York City a few years ago with some teammates, they would try to cross the street regardless of the pedestrian traffic signals. I had to hold back one of my teammates by the jacket at nearly every intersection to keep him from getting flattened by oncoming taxis. At home in the suburban sprawl of Virginia Beach, pedestrians are unheard of, so when running I assume nobody is watching me as I come to an intersection. In Williamsburg, I guess nobody cares about Newton’s laws.
Before the yield signs were installed a few years ago, only a small handful of students would step in front of traffic at a crosswalk since most rational thinkers didn’t want to risk getting hit. Now, everyone crosses without caring about the traffic. The worst are the crosswalks in front of the sororities: gobs of sorority girls march right out in front of me every time I go by, cell phones clamped to their ears and not even looking for cars. Yesterday, walking home from the office, I came to a crosswalk and was going to wait for the traffic to pass. Instead, some guys came up behind me and continued into the intersection, causing everyone to jam on the brakes. In Williamsburg, stepping out into traffic is followed with the quintessential wrist flick/hand wave at the nearby cars, which serves as some kind of apology for any driver heart attacks.
The logic behind the signs was to give crossing pedestrians an extra margin of safety by telling the cars to stop. After a few incidents, the city put the signs in. I can understand this, but it creates an externality: most pedestrians (students) now think they are invincible and that all cars will stop. What about people from out of town not familiar with the hard to see yield signs? What about at night? Even paying close attention as I drive, it’s hard to predict when someone will suddenly pivot along the sidewalk and rush out into the street in front of me. The signs would work well if pedestrians still yielded to traffic at the crosswalks and waited for any nearby cars to stop and let them go. Unfortunately, that isn’t what happens.
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