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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."
Stallman says that MIT could have implemented a different system that protected the visitors' privacy. Instead, he says, the Institute chose only convenience, and he's ready to call it a day and take his research elsewhere. "The big sacrifice is leaving MIT," he says. "I am prepared to make that sacrifice."
I don't see any reason why the MIT wouldn't have the right, or wouldn't want to see who enters what building when. It's their premises, and if something gets stolen or damaged, RFID would help tracking down the culprit(s).
This thing is a security issue in this case. It's not the same privacy issue as tracking the general public in malls and K-Marts for no good reason. I Stallman should ease off the 1984 Orwellian paranoia a little and adapted his points of views to the environments he's in.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Now I think RMS jsut has his knickers in a twist, simply because people will listen.
Some quotes:
"There is no legitimate justification for keeping track of who opens these doors," Stallman says. "You can just leave these doors open, and the building would have the same amount of security as most of the rest of the campus." MIT says most buildings use the RFID cards.
Well, actually, there are legitimate justifications for keeping track of who opens the doors. If something gets nicked from the lab, you can find out who was in the building and from there you can start to investigate the theft (by that I mean, ask those people if theysaw anything or anyone suspicious etc). If someone props open the doors, as he also hints on, then you can see who the last person was to open those doors using the card and take matters from there.
We have a Proximity card solution at work, and its fine. Yes, you can get tracked, but then you are on private property, and tracking isnt always foolproof because you are not required to beep in if you are part of a group.
Stallman says that MIT could have implemented a different system that protected the visitors' privacy. Instead, he says, the Institute chose only convenience, and he's ready to call it a day and take his research elsewhere. "The big sacrifice is leaving MIT," he says. "I am prepared to make that sacrifice."
Well, MIT arent exactly making the visitors details public knowledge, now are they? From the situation with GNUs su program not supporting wheel (link), I think its clear that RMS has a dubious and somewhat iffy personal view on security, and that much alone makes me want to dismiss him out of hand when he talks about security related matters. If hes prepared to "make that sacrifice" instead of allowing MIT to implement a bit of security to protect their building and valuables inside said building, then good riddence is all I can say.
You do not just call people "babies" because their views conflict with yours. Nomatter how you look at it, Stallman is a great and important character, whose views should be taken into consideration, or at least not dismissed immediately as that of a "baby".
His fear of the Big Brother society is genuine, and if he feels that RFID technology like this one is turning our world into such a society, then he should raise his voice over it. This is exactly what he's doing. Be glad that someone is looking out for YOUR FREEDOM, since you obviously are not.
They state proximity RFIDs...just how far does this proximity go? I have no problems keeping track of who opens what doors inside a building, etc. for security reasons if they're doing classified or confidential work. However, an RFID is a little more invasive.
So, what does MIT do with the data they could collect on how many trips to the watercooler I made?
"Sed Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" -Juvenal
Yes, but I've been to the Stata center. People (hell, maybe RMS) are propping doors open anyway.
Anyway, a lot of buildings at MIT don't have very good security at all. The main campus (buildings 1-10) are pretty much open to all visitors, and they connect, via halls and basements, to much of the campus.
I don't see why the CS/AI Lab and the Linguistics Departments need this much security anyway. I mean, I can understand the nuclear reactor or something having this kind of security, but why are they locking off people from here?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Do me a favor. Walk to any engineering school worth its salt, pay a girl 10 bucks to walk around and smile and say hello and watch the reactions while paying special attention to eyes. He works at MIT. Cut him some slack; eye candy cant be that prevalent.
RMS is in a position to make a difference. Privacy is obviously important to him as it should be to the rest of us. If we were forced to use an RFID, we would gladly do so because, normally, we dont have the power or the opportunity to "just say no". If he doesnt want to, he doesnt have to and neither do you. The difference is if he doesnt use it, people notice. If you or I refuse to use the device, we'd be easily replaced by someone who will. I, personally, would have no problem lugging a key for every door use to get to my office and maintain my privacy than have my boss or some evil entity monitoring what time I come and go or what time I usually get up to relieve myself. Privacy doesnt necessarily have to stop the moment you go to work.
If the RFID chips they used could be easily read from a distance, then this might be more of a problem -- we joked about professors having real-time blips representing their students walking around, a la Harry Potter's Maurader's map :) However, the chips they installed are pretty short-range, so I don't see this as a viable problem: they won't even read from your pocket when you're standing in front of the reader; you have to wave it in front of the scanner.
Near as I can tell, there's nothing "magical" about using the new readers as opposed to the old ones; any privacy issues you might perceive are exactly the same as they've been on campus for years now.
I don't think he has a legitimate complaint. While there is a potential that someone might mine the access logs, and, for example, find out he hasn't actually come to work in the last five years, stuff goes missing from these labs late at night, and it would be totally sweet if the long suffering admin at least had a shortlist of who they could ask if they saw 'anything suspicious'.
Swipecards aren't a perfect solution to the building security problem. People prop doors, people let their friends in, people lose their cards in the quad and other people decide to see just how much access they had, but if they nuke the card program, the alternative proposed by security will probably be cameras, and let me tell you, they're a hell of a lot more intrusive than cards - a camera collects a lot more information than just whether you're there or not* - and they're a lot more labour intensive too.
I guess the bottom line is that he's free to leave if he wants ( as he's indicated ), but the U. should also be free to implement whatever measures it feels are necessary to provide a safe environment for equipment and students. If they can't come to a compromise ( and while Stallman might be a "great and important character", compromise is not seen as one of his strong suits ) then I guess it's splitsville. I ( and I suspect many others here ) would endure a lot worse than an RFID doorlock to be granted a research position at MIT.
B.D.
* - If they'd used cameras in our student labs instead of pin numbers, I probably would have been ejected several times for slovenly appearance unbecoming to the university.
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
I don't think they qualify as sheep. He may have made some significant impacts in the computing world, but that doesn't make his opinions infallible and correct for the rest of his life. He, as anyone else, has the right to be opinionated and be criticized for that opinionation.
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Seriously, would RMS be bitching so much if, instead of RFID cards they use magstripe readers instead?
I'm sure if you asked him, he'd say they're no different, but let's be honest here. RFID is the current hot topic to bitch and complain about.
Fact: There are legitimate reasons for tracking who goes in and out of a building with a hell of a lot of expensive equipment in it.
Fact: How they track this information is largely immaterial, it's a "privacy invasion" just as much with a magstripe card as it is with a RFID card as it is with a hidden camera recording everybody going in the damn door.
Fact: I don't hear anybody bitching about magstripe card entry systems, and they've been around for 50+ years, no?
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
GCC was possibly the most robust C compiler in the late 80's.
Of course, that's can't be *proven*, but consider this: The version of GCC that RMS wrote was good enough for the rest of the FSF staff to write GNU, and it was good enough for Torvalds use to write Linux.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Well, Gehry actually made a building in Spain, an art museum in fact, that used Titanium when it was built, mainly because it was in the 1980's and Titanium was rather cheap at this moment when the decision was built. Maybe he is a one-trick pony but all his curves and lack of right angels have to be proven to be stable and up to code, which they are. This is no easy task designing like this. As for uniqueness, well, I can list over 1000 cities that don't have one of his buildings or anything that resembles one, so he was able to develop a concept and go with it. Are they expensive? Very. Are they unneeded? Perhaps, but so much is unneeded but art serves a purpose to make things beautiful, to make things human and to explore ideas that create results we would have never thought of. It's proof that there is not just one way to do something. Not everything needs to be a single function with a single result. We are not ants. We should embrace our ability to think differently, to try new things and to do things for the sake of doing them.
Architecture serves the public, but the only responsibility the architect really has to the people is that his design is safe, reliable, on budget and beautiful. The ones that can fulfill all 4 of these qualities are the great ones. Also, this building in particular was built using mainly private funds so the public actually has no say in anything about it except for it's safety and zoning considerations.
But alas, art is subjective and one persons masterpiece is anothers eye sore and with someone like Gehry I can see how many people could be turned off by his designs. then again, I'm sure he doesn't care as he's walking to the bank with a nice little check because he dared to be different and do something others haven't thought of or thought were too expensive or unneeded even.
Find me a Piccasso that doesn't contain complicated curves, lack or right angels and excessive paint.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
As someone who's partner is a planner, and who's learned to appreciate all kinds of architecture as a result, I have to say that I find your thinking rather blinkered.
Yes, you may not like it, and yes, it might not be a clone of every other building in the area but that doesn't make it a bad thing. If everyone thought as you do then we wouldn't have the Gugenheim Museums of New York and Bilbao, The Sydney Opera House, La Defense (in Paris), Swiss Re (in London) or the planned "Shard of Glass" (also in London).
And those are just modern examples. Virtually every noteworthy building in history has been on the receiving end of flak for being an eyesore at one time or another, yet today they are regarded as classic examples of their time.
What would you rather have architects do? Design drab, uninteresting buildings? Isn't physical architecture a valid artform? Why not? Because you say so? Why is the building "pretty ugly"? Because you say so? Ah, so you've studied architecture at length, have you? You're an expert on the aesthetics of the built environment? No? I didn't think so.
How would you feel about a world where everyone was required to dress the same way as people have always dressed, like the same art and music that people have always liked, and enjoy only the things that have been enjoyed for ages? Would you really want to live in a world that stood culturally still? Well, you might, but I don't.
Try and appreciate that things change, and that, just because you don't like it, that doesn't mean everyone agrees with you. I guarantee you that, in twenty years time, 90 percent of the people who feel that the building is "pretty ugly" now will be looking at the same building and calling it fantastic.
In fact, the building is beautiful right now. Anyone with a trained eye would rattle off a whole lot of reasons why, just as a good art student could tell you why Picasso's work is genius.
What you call an eyesore is actually anything but. That you don't see it is a real pity.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I find it amusing when I see comment after comment denigrating Richard Stallman, he made it through the math55 program. He has written more complex and well coded software than anyone I have met personally. He has strong opinions and sticks to his guns. Its almost like half the slashdot crowd wants lots of free software sans the opinions of the author. Be a good boy code me something I use every day but don't open your mouth. I am no stallman zealot but if most of the mental midgets who have such a problem with his insistence on precision in terminology, stopped and thought about where it stems from, the fact that he is a bigger math geek than practically and human walking this ball of mud today hence that type of mentality offers no lenience when it comes to imprecission. The man can be an asshole, and he is full of himself. To me he has earned the right to be full of himself. While most of you shooting your mouth off have never done anything for open source at all. As to being an asshole join the club most of us just dont get that kind of spotlight shown on our flaws. Ranting about the peanut gallery is useless I suppose goddamn hypocritical jackdaws.
Panel F, Relay #70