Slashdot Mirror
MIT's Stata Center Dedicated
AJL writes "On Friday, the long-in-coming, $280M Stata Center was dedicated at MIT. Featuring some pretty cool technology (including a row of Linux computers proclaiming 'Welcome to the William H. Gates Building' by Tux, the Linux Penguin), amazing design, and some pretty neat use of space, Stata is among the first of some high-budget, high-tech buildings being put on campuses these days. See some
Pictures
or go to the Main Stata Site for more details. Richard Stallman is now less than pleased that he has to work in the Gates Building, as well as having some other problems with his new office in general."
He's one of the great modern archetects and now the Boston area is blessed with another fabtastic looking building. They have a really cool I.M. Pei building around there as well I believe and now they just need a Calatrava.
Gehry is rather unique in his designs as you can probably see. Let's see if form and function are one with this building, heh. Gehry actually paved his kitchen with asphault, to get an idea of this mans madness/greatness.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
Yes, it's easy to get moderator points up the wazoo when you post first :p Not that I've never done a first post myself. I just don't think this is that informative. Stallman isn't complaining about the usage of keycards to open doors... he's complaining about the use of RFID tags in the keycard, and a system that deliberately tracks where a person is going and when.
http://mediagoblin.org/
A lot of RMS' past is based in MIT... especially the MIT AI hacker lab. I suggest you read "Free as in Freedom"... it is an interesting book.
http://mediagoblin.org/
The architect is Frank Gehry. He's probably best known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. You can see some of his other work at www.frank-gehry.com
he just needs to get to preachingthe goodness of propped open doors or duct taped-over latches (this keeps alarms from going off becuase the doors will be closed but not secure, just like the null passwords) and the same thing will happen...
RMS will be against it, but in the near future, everyone else will use it
e to the pi i plus one equals zero
Meeting the president of India, giving talks in all 26 EU states, working on GPLv3, still acting as project leader of GNU Emacs, learning french and spanish in the last 3 years so that he could give talks in more countries.
He's not a bit past his prime, he's still kicking ass wholesale.
I read it, and went "meh". It complains about Universities monitoring your access on their computers. So what? It's their computer. If you place some monitoring software on your computer as a means of creating an access log (just in case your firewall doesn't stop someone), are you then obligated to remove it if your roommate uses your computer? No, it's your computer and you have the right to monitor it any way you please.
I think Stallman is overreacting. My school doesn't use RFID tags, but they do require access cards to get into certain labs. I have no problems with that. If computers go missing, then they should be able to tell who was in the room at about that time. Does it prevent me from holding the door open for a classmate? No it doesn't. If they steal something, then the cops will come talking to me (as I would have been the last one to use an access card), but I can just tell them that I held the door open for someone. I would rather that happen then have a bunch of video cameras recording everything, or a security guard at the door (the only other real alternatives when it comes to security).
Now, if they record what time you opened your office door, or used the bathroom, they yes, I would complain too. I don't recall reading that they were recording anything more then outside door access. Maybe you can enlighten me if I am wrong?
Another benefit of recording outside door access (other then theft prevention) is in the case of an emergency. By maintaining a list of who has accessed the building, and how many times the exit button was pressed, central security can print off an estimated number of people in the building. If your estimate has 100 people in the building, and only 50 people leave it, then I'm sure the fire department would want to know that. Granted it's only an estimate (since the door can be held open from both sides), but every piece of info is useful. If you are recording access to certain labs/rooms, and their card has been read, but no exit button pushed, then that info would help emergency personell know where people "might" be. No guarantees, but if they can focus on where people might be, then lives could be saved. Every minute counts.
That's just my 2 cents.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
'Pretty' awful, but not the worst I've seen. Good critique here.
You can't be serious. I'm a female undergrad at MIT. Almost all of the guys here are very decent. Stallmen is by far one of the worst. I have myriad male friends in the department. Don't demean them by putting them in his class. Regardless of how many attractive females RMS does or doesn't encounter, there is NO excuse for his behavior. (Plus, in his case, you can't even write it off as him being unaccustomed to attractive women and only behaving poorly with them. A female friend of mine who is size 16+ has had issues with him.)
Additionally, I've heard all too often from people who can stand to work with RMS that while they agree with many of his positions, hes the kind of person who makes you want to disagree with him. I met him once at an event and wanted to punch him in the nose within 10 minutes. Simply put, the man doesn't have the social skills to make a large difference. He can't deal with anybody except a limited subset of male nerds. He will never be able to make his opinions efficiently heard outside of a small minority.
For anyone that hasn't been to MIT's campus, the place is in a warehouse district. Sure the view from the River looks beautiful with Killian Court, but the otherside of the campus is pretty gross. The computer science buildings (32, 34, and 36 IIRC) were on a nearly abandonned ally, and walking in/out of that building late at night was creepy, I can't imagine what the girls in Course 6 (EECS) thought, or perhaps that is why they didn't stay late for labs...
:)
The new building here is in a even less school-like location, right near major roads. If you were a parent and saw that building, you'd probably forbid your son to wander there in the middle of the night, and you definitely would fear your daughter being there.
Forget terrorism, forget equipment, how about the fact that you have 18-25 year olds working in those buildings at all hours of the night... and in the Winter, Boston gets cold, the last thing you want is some psychofrenic homeless man sneaking in the sleep and scaring/assaulting people (my Office, in a nicer area of Greater Boston was left unlocked one night and we had that problem)...
You want to explain to a Massachusetts Jury that the school took all reasonable precautions and isn't liable for a student being assaulted/killed/raped, because security measures would have infringed upon privacy?
Sorry, but MIT needs to look out for the safety of its people... I expect a bunch of liberty/security quotes, but this IS NOT an infringement on ANYTHING, but gives some measurable level of security.
I respect RMS, he's a personal hero for what he has accomplished, but MIT isn't his personal playground, and his desire to come and go as he pleases with nobody knowing is NOT more important that the safety of those grad students that the faculty use as free (paid by grant) labor...
Alex