Here's an interesting article on the founding of Cisco Systems. Not quite the story that Cisco has promoted over the years. It was a long time ago and the participants are not always forthright nor correct and maybe the writer is painting a specific picture. But there's no denying that many companies do somewhat shady things. It's about perspective and morality versus law and it's never clear cut. An interesting article...

So _The View_ had this as their hot topic: some mother suing her son's school about the practice of publicly grading papers. This is when the teacher has students exchange papers and then they're graded in class. The mother was angry because apparently her son is stupid and the other kids made fun of him once they knew his grades (as if they wouldn't have gotten out anyways). She was all "this is a privacy issue" and her case got all the way to the Supreme Court where it was thrown out. (By the way, I'm in the "privacy is not a Constitutional Right" camp.)

There was nobody really pro-teacher here. They were all about how humiliating it is and kids shouldn't have to go through that. Joy tried to explain that teachers are overworked and this is one way to help manage time. And even though Joy used to be a teacher, it still doesn't jive with my experience. As far as I could tell, teachers did public grading to motivate students. You don't want to be teased? Study and do better. I was one of the kids that did well in school so I know that having the best grade and everyone else knowing it is a good feeling. I don't have to brag, it's up there on the scoreboard.

Sorry, it's all part of growing up. If you're stupid, then yes, life will be much harder for you. You have to scratch and claw and really work at being better just to come up to the average. But then that's the way it is. Tough. Everybody has their shortcomings. Either work harder to improve them or find a way to make sure they don't come up...

So I got my new MentorNet match. Let's hope that this time I write much more than I did last time. I can't believe that I only wrote once a month to the poor guy last year. This year I have to resolve to write more often. Maybe not big emails but lots of small ones and we'll see if that's better. You need to keep up a feeling of conversation and that there's a live dialog, which I didn't do last year. If the Mentoree feels like you're not interested then of course they'll lose interest too.

This year it's a girl I'm mentoring. That shouldn't make a difference. I do have that habit of treating women differently. Either they're better than me or worse, seldom do I treat a woman as an equal. I think I just don't know how to relate to that situation. Some women are better in which case I'm deferential and someone are worse in which case I'm condescending. Oh well, that's just how I am...

I bought the A*Teens DVD, which includes the seven music videos they've made so far, plus an interview. I was actually a bit surprised to find it and more surprised that it's a Region 1 DVD (i.e. not an import made for another region). Not that anybody really complains (other than the omnipresent fringe), but it's kind of weird that DVDs can only be seen on a player for the same region. Sure, there are workarounds, but for the vast majority of people, if they buy a DVD from another region they won't be able to play it.

Now, I'm all for the copyright holder controlling their works, including who can see it and who can't. And I'm sure that something similar has been done before, but DVDs have become prevalent and people accept these limitations. if they didn't like it then they wouldn't buy them, but they do. That opens up more and more abuses by companies as they seek to control the usage of their works more and more. Sure they have that right. That doesn't mean I want to see that -- my expectation is that market forces will make sure that doesn't happen. But I thought the same with DVDs and that hasn't worked yet, so we'll see how far this goes in the next few years.