Texan schoolgirl expelled for refusing to wear RFID tag A plan by a San Antonio school district to continuously monitor its students using RFID has run into legal problems after one of them took a stand against being forced to use the tracking technology. Northside Independent School District (NISD) in San Antonio, Texas has spent over $500,000 on its "Student Locator Project," a …
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Not surprised they are dragging religion into it, my Sis spent "years" on Sumatra in a big ole' compound in the middle of jungly nowhere with her man on a placement, they move with their kids to a Texas city for the next placement, and the only thing the Texan schoolkids wanted to know from the travelling UK kids after their adventures was "what religion are you?" ;)
Proper answer-"Same as you, who do you think you got Independence "from"!
Or possibly "Don''t you want to know about the scary wild animals with the big sharp teeth?" :P
You should really price what it would take to implement the solution.
God I know I'm just going to get down voted for pointing out the obvious.
Its not just the RFID tags, but the software, the additional hardware, etc ...
It adds up quickly.
I am not saying that I agree with the system, or that its a violation of privacy.
Just that 500K isn't outrageous.
Could be wrong but I don't think Martin47 was talking about the sheer cost, but rather that it's 500k to track not a child, but a lanyard.
If they all leave them in their locker / at home / in the bin then that's 500k to track sweet f.a.
Nd skoolkidz being skoolkidz n dat, dey gonna be swappin dem wiv der m8s from diff skoolz for de lulz.
>> "I don't think Martin47 was talking about the sheer cost, but rather that it's 500k to track not a child, but a lanyard".
It wonder how long it will be before someone figures this out and, in order to solve this problem, suggests that RFID chips should be implanted into the students instead (purely for the child's own good, of course).
http://www.in-pharmatechnologist.com/Regulatory-Safety/FDA-clears-RFID-chip-for-humans
Now, that is a GREAT idea!!!!
But, in order to test it properly, a trial must be conducted. For the members of the trial, I suggest this test group:
1) all state governors,
2) all state legislators,
3) all Congress members (House AND Senate),
4) all members of School Boards that want to utilize such a system for tracking students.
Each test group member shall have the RFID tag firmly jammed up their ass, and a law shall be passed to make it a "imprisonment for life" sentence if the tag gets removed.
Any takers????
Seeing none, then I shall conclude that the trial was a failure.
The thing I think most are forgetting that its not just to track the student, but also tie in to their cafeteria billing system and other back end systems.
So the cost could include some additional software too.
We don't know.
As to leaving them in their lockers, I would imagine that they track the student entering and leaving the school.
This would suggest NFC not just a contact against a plate. (Think IPASS that your car uses on the toll roads.)
"...it has 110 campus locations (100k pupils 6K teachers..."
Being the USA, I presume these kilopupils and kiloteachers are extra large examples of the breed?
...or did you mean 'thousand'? in which case why not just put 100 000 and 6000, as writng [or saying] 'K' when you mean 'thousand' makes you sound like a 'kok'
I was merely typing quickly. I tend to make a few typos in my posts and I do abbreviate; I imagine I wouldnt get very far submitted to the broadsheets. Plus, being a site with a technical bent even your pedantry got the mean of 100k. Looking at my own post sure, teachers being cooled to 6 kelvin would be a bit extreme (and a magnificent feat of engineering on such as large scale for the cost) but im sure you got the meaning.
Just a point of interest: If you are going to be putting someone down at least make sure your own house is in order. That is (unless) you can explain the meaning of "writng". Oh and apparantly although unorthodox (assuming wiki is correct) using SI standard prefixes is ok for abbreviations. Oddly enough they are usually capitalised. I appologise to all for incorrectly stating 100k when it should have been 100K. I am unsure how many megajubs this would be or if calculating such a figure on students would put you on list 99.
So fuck off.
Ian,
I actually designed just such a system some years ago. It was meant to track the movements of about (IIRC) 1000 people at various locations across a whole country. Its aim was that we would not leave anyone behind in the event of an evacuation following an armed attack against us.
I cannot remember the actual numbers, but I assure you it was nowhere near half a mill. And back then the necessary technology was a lot more expensive than it is nowadays.
Plus, I like to think at least we had a tolerable purpose.
I worked on a ship where we implimented a personell locator/lone worker system using the motorola UHFs and some badge responders. about 120 compartments wired up to a dedicated machine which displayed where everyone was, and linked into the Man Overboard and General alarms too - most devices had a panic button.
Whole package, hardware, transponders, cabling, and a terminal running some embedded software (OS9, I thihk) - around 20K UKP in the 1990s. We already had the UHFs with lone worker buttons, that was another 12K but was part of the comms package - I could make half-duplex phone calls home from mine.
1980s, I worked in a laboratory where we wore 'lone worker' pendants that called for help if we stopped moving or went horizontal, or pulled the lanyard off.. Around 1.5K total price, for 5 people in 6 spaces.
If anyone's bothered to read The Book of Revelations, I don't think magic mushrooms are far off the mark.
Could've been written by L.Ron.Hubbard, or Joseph Smith. We Christians believe Revelation to be Gospel (oops, did it again) but Rom and Joe's books are regarded as a complete joke in Christian circles. Go on, I dare you. Read, but make sure the toilet is free - you'll need it to relieve the jets of laughter that'll come from your bladder.
I have, and I can't believe millions are fooled by these.
Go on, read it. Mop the bathroom floor when you've finished.
I read the "Book of Mormon" when I was in High School (I won't go into why I embarked on this fool's errand).
A pile of parrot droppings IMHO.
Someone famous claimed to have read the Koran from cover to cover. Apparently a mind-numbing experience of the first order. One is apparently stupider for having read it. YMMV.
However, the King James version of the OT is cracking stuff - a literary cornucopia. Content free of course, but the prose absolutely rocks!
Dweeb
Most non-Muslims who think they've "read the Koran" are wrong. Unless they happen to read Arabic, then what they've read is a translation of the Koran. And once translated, it's no longer "the Koran".
This is because (Muslims believe) the text was dictated verbatim to the Prophet, who took it all down in proto-shorthand. Therefore the words of the Koran are God's own words, i.e. perfect. Once translated, it loses that property and becomes mere human words.
There are myths from the early days of the faith, of heathens hearing the divine Words and being converted merely by the sound of them.
"He's only factually correct if you accept his basic assumption that the Arabic Koran is the divinely dictated word of God."
Not really, to my mind. I wouldn't call a Chinese-translated version of Shakespeare or Mort D'Arthur Shakespeare or Mallory. I'd call it 'a translated version of the Shakespeare/Mort D'Arthur/Koran [or however you care to spell it! Hell: If we can't even get the title in an agreeable English form, it just illustrates my point].
I'm willing to accept that enough nuance can be lost in translation to make the translation 'unworthy' of maintaining the original title and 'authority' on linguistic grounds, without needing to drag mysticism into it.
> Love the way that you are factually correct, but got down-voted anyway
Veti is only factually correct if you believe that the koran is god's own words and becomes mere human words once translated.
According to Veti's logic I have never read War and Peace because I never read it in its original Russian language.
"According to Veti's logic I have never read War and Peace because I never read it in its original Russian language."
So you got all the puns, allusions to Russian sayings, cultural references, word play, etc?
You've read it, but you haven't fully comprehended 100% of the subtleties. So you've missed part of the message. Only a small part, but to my mind - when conveying matters of philosophy and religion - that small, subtle part could be argued as being crucial.
Just sayin'!
"You've read it, but you haven't fully comprehended 100% of the subtleties. So you've missed part of the message"
So, following that reasoning, 99.99% of Christians haven't read the Bible. That explains lots of things! ;)
@AC 15:43
Thing is, no-one cares enough about the precise wording of 'War & Peace' to make that claim. You're not about to take a (translated) quotation from it as evidence that all Russians are savages, and a Russian isn't about to take a quote from it as their reason for stoning an adulteress. It just doesn't matter that much.
The Koran does. The precise wording of it is incredibly important. To get a feel for just how important, consider that the Gospel of St John refers to Christ himself as "the Word" of God.
To Muslims, the Koran isn't "their equivalent of the Bible", it's "their equivalent of Jesus Christ". That's part of the reason why they get so upset when people burn it.
>Love the way that you are factually correct, but got down-voted anyway, just because someone doesn't like religion!
Love the way that someone can get their 'factually correct' facts wrong and get upvoted just because people have studied neither Islam nor comparative religion.
I've always thought this is an interesting argument. Clearly it is a way to keep control over the 'truth' of the scripture, but it has always struck me that following this logic you should never trust the interpretation of any imam or mullah since those interpretations must necessarily be as flawed as any translation.
I'll second that. One of the few impressive pieces of prose to have come out of a committee.
And, you know, Shakespeare was around at that time, and they didn't co-opt him. Didn't need to. THAT'S how good they were at writing English prose in the first decade of the 1600s...
"You mean, most non-Muslims who think they've "read the Koran" are considered to be wrong by those who believe it to be more than just a book."
Actually, I think that's exactly what he means. As far as I can tell, the believers use the term "Koran" for the word of God. If you happen to read and write Arabic, it is possible to reproduce those words in book form as a mnemonic, but that book isn't the real Koran and (quite possibly) unless you are a true believer merely reading the mnemonic won't count. I assume you have to be moved by the spirit to hear the actual words whilst reading before it actually counts.
IT angle: It's a bit like the difference between an EXE file and a running program.
"that book isn't the real Koran"
Try setting light to one, and you'll quickly see just how "real" it is perceived to be!
I do agree with you though. Until it is read, understood, believed etc. it's merely ink and paper.
Analogy - colour. What exactly is it?
Long time reader, first time contributer so excuse the AC.
Ive read the Quran in both Arabic and English and trust me they are different enough to be significant. Far be it for me to comment on the spiritual consequences of the changes in content but my own analogy would be how northerners have many different words for bread (bap, barn cake, butty, teacake etc) classical Arabic tends to have this for a variety of concepts, which i found difficult to get my head round.
Personally the biggest difference is in terms of form, the Arabic version reads like poetry and can be lovely just to hear or read aloud (despite not having a clue whats going on).
So, I would deff give credence to those who make the claim, that to have read the Quran is to have read it in its original form (whilst to understand it requires a fair amount of contextual knowledge)
On topic: i wouldn't say 500k is too much, i suspect there was significant software dev. Also most work places tend to have RFID type systems for entry and exit to various spaces. And I am one of those "baddies" that has exploited such data for a variety of ends. So although i can sympathies with the Rutherford people's claim that this is the sharp end of the wedge, i hate to break it to 'em the thick end is already reality later on in life.
I'm not sure that you understand how much is lost in translation. I tried reading a translation of the Quran myself (I'm pretty much agnostic and was doing it to try to understand the background to the religious conflicts, in the same way that I've read the Bible and the Book of Mormon), and the mess that was the translation I was reading must be poor, because it was difficult to read, and contradicted itself within a few pages. I got about a third of the way through before losing interest.
I've been told by someone who can read Arabic that it is a very difficult language to translate without losing some of the meaning, because the structure of the language differs in several fundamental ways from European languages. I cannot confirm this from first hand knowledge, but I am prepared to believe it.
Thus, I believe that to get the maximum benefit of the Quran, it is necessary to learn and understand (grok?) Arabic, such that you don't need to translate to comprehend.
You know you could have skipped the torture of reading the 'Book of Mormon' and instead waited for the Broadway show...
Yeah I know its not the same thing... but you get the idea...
The Spawn of Satan Icon, because I know I am going to hell for promoting the guys behind South Park... :-P
"You know you could have skipped the torture of reading the 'Book of Mormon' and instead waited for the Broadway show..."
Bet it's nowhere near as funny as the original book. Or, indeed the South Park episode (Dum, Dum,Dum,Dum,Dum,) which was Smart,Smart,Smart,Smart,Smart.
In fact the Book of Ecclesiasticus is not content free - it has some good stuff on dinner party etiquette and some excellent one liners. I imagine it being written by an urban, and urbane, rabbi with a sophisticated flock, kind of like a 3rd century BC Sidney Smith.
There's also some stuff in there explaining the origins of the present conflicts at the back end of the Med, though it is the Fox News version.
I'm with you on this one. I read it for a laugh to see what was in it. Quite frankly I was laughing my ass off and more than a little surprised that these people couldn't smell bullshit. I mean would you or anyone here believe someone if they were told what had happened to them but that they couldn't see the "plates" with the text on them? I mean REALLY?!!??!? Yeah sure Joe Ill believe you on this one. I mean whats the worst that could happen.
As for this girl taking a stand I applaud her. It takes a brass set to stand up to these idiots who think doing something like this is a good idea. I mean making it so you HAVE TO HAVE these tags on for some of the bathrooms? I really find it hard to believe whoever thought that part was a GOOD idea shouldn't be in jail for invasion of privacy and or child endangerment because if someone was to be a kiddie fiddler working there they could have a perfect idea when someone was doing something so they could get pics/videos/etc of said person/act. REALLY!??!!???
I hope she wins and this kind of shit is stopped before it gets to be too big.
"She really could have left out the superstitious BS"
... on the contrary she played it like a pro. If you want to fight back against the next loony govt scheme in Texas you can't do better than suggesting you're doing it for Jesus (whether you are or whether you aren't) cuts the ground right out from underneath those in power.
In passing really good to hear that things have improved so much in the Texas school system that they've nothing better to spend USD0.5M on than a people-control system - the last I heard their public schools would have shamed a third-world country
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