Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Afraid of Harvard
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report on p2pnet.net, the RIAA's latest anti-college round of "early settlement" letters targets 7 out of 8 Ivy League schools, but continues to give Harvard University a wide berth. This is perhaps the most astonishing display of cowardice exhibited to date by the multinational cartel of SONY BMG, Warner Bros. Records, EMI, and Vivendi/Universal (the "Big Four" record companies, which are rapidly becoming less "big"). The lesson to be drawn by other colleges and universities: "All bullies are cowards. Appeasement of bullies doesn't work. Standing up to bullies and fighting back has a much higher success rate.""
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Are we talking about an African elephant or an Asian elephant?
If a student brings a lawyer to the school where I teach, the school always caves. One student was able to graduate in spite of the fact that he copied most of the work for a final year course. Not only that but he couldn't demonstrate competence no matter how much extra time he was given.
We also paid tens of thousands of dollars to a teacher who didn't pass his probation because it would be cheaper than paying lawyers.
Harvard is the lawyer breeding ground. I'm fairly sure, almost everyone working in the legal departments of the various RIAA members comes from there.
Now, who do they have their knowledge from? The profs there. When you teach, do you tell your student everything you know? More important, when you learn, do you know afterwards as much as your teacher does?
Rarely loses the master against his padawan. So to challenge him, a fool you must be.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nobody in their right mind sues a lawyer assembly plant, coward or not.
If you're a laywer for the RIAA, you are not paid to be brave. You are paid to further the agenda of the recording industry. If they believe suing Harvard students would hinder rather than help their cause, well is that really being "cowardly" or is it being smart? Would suing Harvard be "brave" or would it be counterproductive to their goals?
I'm as disgusted with the RIAA's tactics as anyone, but this childish name calling is getting old. It seems like every day on the front page of Slashdot is some article title with an overblown ad hominem attack against persons, groups or companies that rub us the wrong way. C'mon, people. We're smart, educated and savvy, do we really need to stoop to this?
WARNING: If accidentally read, induce vomiting.
That's the comment I was looking for, seems pretty cut and dry to me.
Pushing around smaller and less reputable colleges and students may be fine and dandy...but trying to shove your weight around against Harvard is like lil timmy firing his peashooter at the deathstar, the RIAA would be decimated and a huge precedent would be set. Better to just leav'em be.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
It is well worth trying out the Freenet p2p network. It is an anonymous distributed data storage system that is ideally suited to filesharing. I have been using it for the past few years and just recently it has got a lot faster and more usable. Music and movies are regularly shared and it can only take a few hours to get a full album. Speeds are slower than bittorrent etc., but that is to be expected - you never get something for nothing.
Well, it's certainly not bravery, but there's no question the media companies have cojones made of alternating layers of graphite composite and titanium alloy. I mean, they've been pulling the same scam for over a century, and they keep getting away with it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No, the "epitome of bravery" is being an Anonymous Coward who snipes at people with lies and inane comments.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I find it funny that they are targeting 7 out of 8 ivy league schools. Doesn't that say that maybe pirating is a good thing? Maybe these smart people know that pirating is illegal in the minds of the IP holders but don't care. They would much rather get educated and cultured through things like torrenting and other p2p programs. At what point does the public have a say in what is right and what is wrong? The way I view p2p and torrenting is that it is the biggest library of any kind. It holds not only entertainment but educational purposes as well. I have tons of videos, music, games, etc. that are very illegal but then again I don't care. 90% of that stuff I wouldn't of seen to begin with so I don't feel guilty about taking what I wouldn't of seen or heard or enjoyed. A lot of it is educational (ie. Modern Marvels, Discovery, History Channel, etc)
I do not care about actors, musicians, directors, managers, producers because they all get paid no matter what. If they are good they will continue to get paid. When I see shows like MTV cribs...and what these celebs buy with my money...screw them. They don't need their 3rd or 4th super car. They don't need their insane boats or whatever it may be. I am sorry but actors/actresses don't need to be paid millions for their roles in movies. Musicians shouldn't expect $90,000 for a small gig at a club. Execs make way too much money for me to give a rats ass about me stealing a damn album.
These guys have outdated ways of thinking and they are fighting for their last breath and instead of working with the consumers they go and fight the consumers. All I know is that I want to see propirating videos on youtube.
Maybe its more like this
Harvard- 350 year history, $2 billion endowment, alumni include Senators, supreme court justices, some of the
best lawyers in the country.
RIAA: Hello Harvard, we want you to hand over the names of students and put our filters on your internet access
Harvard President: No
RIAA: If you dont we'll sue
Harvard President: (chuckle) Let me think about that, who do we know that went to our school.
(checks the alumni directory)
John Roberts
Antonin Scalia
David Souter
Anthony Kennedy
Well you're challenging the entire premise of my story, and I heartily disagree with you. These guys pick on defenseless people. That doesn't take anything except cowardice.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
I would say that the RIAA is a white elephant
-1 not first post
I'm not sure if you're confused or just being a karma whore with the links, but no, the submitter of the story is not Charles Nesson. It would appear to be Ray Beckerman. Or better still, Ray Beckerman.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
As everyone knows (;-), Yale and Harvard are also primary competitors in their law schools, and Yale turns out about as many lawyers as Harvard. In fact, there have been some interesting studies done comparing the two schools, which have radically different teaching cultures in their law schools. The conclusion seems to be that both work quite well, and their graduates have roughly the same success rate after graduation.
...
So what's going on between the RIAA/MPAA and Yale? Does Yale's reputation as being the "nice" law school (if that's not an oxymoron) result in them being attacked more or less? Anyone have data?
Just curious
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I think one likely reason that the RIAA/MPAA are avoiding Harvard is because of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society which is an outgrowth of the Harvard Law school. You may be familar with Berkman through the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, OpenNet Initiative (mapping government repression of the Internet worldwide), and the Stop Badware projects.
Berkman is very forward-looking and proactive regarding emerging issues of Law and Technology. The various fellows have been vocal and supportive of copyright reform. With such an interested, knowledgeable band of law professors and law students, it would be a serious black-eye if the RIAA attempted to litigate on the Harvard campus. I have to believe that they would be handed a bruising defeat, that would establish precedent regarding their campaign of extorting* settlement monies from poor college students.
* I mean extortion in the common, non-technical sense. Don't sue me for libel please.
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
No, Mr. Beckerman, you misunderstand me. My comment was not meant to be in support of the media companies. I haven't bought anything from those people since 1981, because a little research convinced me that they were an overtly amoral operation that I couldn't, in good conscience, continue to support. They still are, and I still feel the same way. Most people don't even want to know who they're dealing when they buy their music, because then they might have to wonder where the cash from that last CD they bought actually went.
I just meant that it takes a certain degree of intestinal fortitude to keep doing what they do, for as long as they've been doing it, and not become violently ill from a sense of self-loathing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, "NewYorkCountryLawyer" is the Slashdot ID of Ray Beckerman, attorney at Vandenberg & Feliu and long standing pain in ass of the RIAA. Charles Nesson and John Palfrey wrote the original Harvard response to the RIAA which was orignally covered at Information Week, then picked up by P2PNet and Ray Beckerman's own blog, amongst others.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Sorry! I was indeed confused by another RIAA story at Slashdot where Nesson's daughter Rebecca and NewYorkCountryLawyer appeared.
At the beginning was at.
Well, both applies. While the RIAA is picking its target carefully in order to avoid starting a fight with someone who can actually fight back, they are rather ballsy for not abandoning their strategy of openly shafting their very customers.
Look at the situation: The internet (easily one of the most influential media today) is full of anti-RIAA sentiments, artists are antagoizing the corporations (like Weird Al with his satiric song "Don't Copy This CD" or Trent Rezor asking his fans to "steal" his CDs because they're absurdly expensive in Australia), alternative business models like iTunes are taking the wind out of the traditional industry's sails. Yet the RIAA members believe themself to be invincible, capable of screwing over the consumer as they see fit.
Corporate execs aren't idiots. They must have noticed by now that their current actions are an absolute PR disaster. In order to carry on as if nothing ever happened they need to have incredibly thick hides.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Money for nothing, pix for free
I'm sure this prolly isn't really true or anything.... they wouldn't include desiring hiring future Harvard grads to do their legal dirty work as a reason to not ding students there.....
Prolly not - but anything involving these guys and following this issue makes me just that cynical and twisted.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
Recording Industry and Creationist Organization would be a much more appropriate name.
Yes but in my life experience I have not found a correlation, but rather an inverse relationship, between "intestinal fortitude" and "capacity for cruelty". And I think this story supports my theory: All bullies are cowards.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Completely off topic... but I have always hated that phrase. I know plenty of people who "do" but don't actually "know" what they're doing... and plenty of people who "Don't" who teach... that DO know. The phrase always struck me a a snide comment against teachers, as though we are incapable of anything else so we teach. Many people who know what they're doing would make TERRIBLE teachers... which happens quite frequently in college. They are hired for their status and intellect for the college... but they don't know the first thing about teaching that knowledge.
Sorry, it's just that that phrase seems to carry a certain hubris that irritates me.
I was so shocked when that actually happened with the Mythbusters... Another groundbreaking achievement made by the duo.
They may be 'stupid', 'insensitive', 'mean', 'cruel'. That is not 'ballsy'. Ballsy is those few people who have stood up these ghouls.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
to support those who stand up to the bullies, as opposed to supporting the bullies as we do now. For a start, vote their anablers out! The power is ours. Stand together and use it wisely.
That is all
What?
True enough, and when push comes to shove most bullies back off. That's been my experience too, and history is replete with examples of big bullies that eventually got taken down. This is just one more ... my only concern is the amount of damage it will do along the way.
The way I see it, as bad as these lawsuits are, they will eventually come to an end. The content companies are going to have to reach some accommodation with modern technology whether they like it or not, however hard they try to turn back the clock. That's always happened, in spite of their near-continuous spewing forth of "end of the industry" scenarios, since the invention of the tape recorder. Why anyone, especially Congress, would continue to pay attention to such an incredible group of congenital liars is beyond me. Seriously, you don't even need to see their lips move.
What concerns me more is that the legacy of bad law they have left us will still be there, and will continue to cause harm long after the studios themselves have been brought to heel.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Far too many still see them as a Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs. Time to turn that percepction around.
What?
Everyone thinks it's just Harvard that isn't being touched. To the best of my knowledge (haven't checked recently, but I tried to find any instance of this about 6 months ago), they have yet to touch a single Berklee College of Music, or Julliard student/faculty member. I mean, it's not surprising. It would be pretty funny for the RIAA to have tried to sue John Mayer a few years ago (when he was attending Berklee) only to have some of their member companies trying to woo and sign him a few months later.
Then again, while music students have more music downloaded/shared in general than almost anyone else I know, they also actually purchase more music than anyone I know.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
My mother teaches a part time class at the local University on early childhood development, and also has her regular job as a kindergarten teacher. She can, and does, and teaches so that other people will be able to.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
I agree. But they're right to be scared of Harvard's lawyers -- they must be the bee's knees
-1 not first post
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
You test strategies in the lower courts. You test strategies on appeal. You establish significant precedents in courts that are not intimidated by the Harvard grad.
The Harvard student is not the typical poster child for the EFF.
He holds a very privileged position. He is supposed to represent academic excellence and personal integrity. He is likely being supported by very generous scholarships, subsidized loans and other charitable programs.
That, or his Dad has more money than God. There is always a risk in backing a defendant like this.
The jury may simply not be prepared cut him any slack.
I know! My mother teaches and she pretty much knows as well.
I was just trying to counter the phrase in the GP with another phrase. These soundbytes are rarely relevant.
Hey hey, I take offense. I'm great at what I do, but I'm a horrible teacher (I tried, years ago). If a college were to hire me, my first question would be "where's the server room", not "how many students do I have", because my place is in front of a machine (or several).
That said, it's easy to get a teaching job even if you're a complete idiot, as long as you're a mildly charismatic idiot (which most are). It's also quite difficult for HR to tell a genius from a quack, because people persons and computer persons speak two very different languages.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I find the cowardice suggestion highly unlikely. It makes absolutely no difference that Harvard has a law school. Yale's is arguably better. Sometimes you make strategic decisions in litigation. If there is one defendant who is going to fight very hard, and has let you know as much, sue the other defendants first and create precedent. Not suing Harvard now doesn't mean Harvard won't be sued.
So, you're tired of the topic. Was anyone forcing you to read this thread?
Since the post you refer to did not make the cut, I presume that it's 'Those than can, do; those that cannot, teach'.
Sorry, but like most truisms, it's - well - based in truth!
I lecture on MBA programs, teach (mainly my own kids) and also do training in industry, including very senior Execs.
The general standard of 'teachers' that I observe around me is appalling.
All that I teach comes from experience in doing - I deliberately balance my time between teaching and project work.
Whilst I would be the first to admit - indeed support - that the transmission of knowledge and, harder still, competency, is a noble, important and difficult task, the simple fact remains that most of the people who pretend to do it are not up to the challenge.
They are also typically the ones who complain the most when criticised. "Those that are confident do; those that are not, bitch".
At least around here a lot of the teacher positions are in the public schools and universities with relativly low status, poor pay, troubled kids/teens/students and very few rewards for achievement. While there are exceptions to the rule, it wouldn't be unfair to say that many that can get a (non-teaching) job in the private sector do, and many that can't teach. I'm ever so grateful for the skilled ones that actually choose a teaching job, but there's more truth to that phrase than it should be.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Well, I'm not exactly a people person, but I enjoy teaching :) Haven't done any "serious" teaching yet though, I mean explaining things to other math students.
I am of the opinion that courage and stupidity (or insanity) are often only distinguished by viewpoint. It requires balls to stand up to a much larger enemy, that's true. However, it also requires balls to delberately alienate your very customer base in an attempt to generate short-term profits. It also requires balls to mismanage a corporation in order to make more money for yourself.
Like all virtues, courage doesn't always lead to good things and can be possessed by bad people.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I think a lot depends on what you study. When it comes to things that are more traditionally academia like science, arts, humanities, and things like that, you end up with teachers that are there because they love the subject matter and enjoy teaching. However, when it comes more to the applied areas of study in colleges, like business, engineering, and complete bullshit majors like aviation, I find a lot of the people teaching are there because they clearly couldn't cut it in industry. Of course, there are lots of exceptions, but in general I find the further removed the major is from the job market, the better the teachers are.
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
I would even go an extra mile here.
Knowing how to TEACH is much more difficult than knowing the subject.
I have very poor teacher that knew a lot about the subject. I learned nothing from them.
I had great teacher that knew the subject well, but not lots. I learned a lot from them.
Anyone can know about any subject. All it takes is a book and some practice (to understand it). However, try and teach a bunch of teenager kids, and your views of teaching will change very fast.
Good teacher are a rarity. If you take a class of 100 CS students, you will probably end up with 50 or 60 good programmers, 2 or 3 exceptional programmers. If you can get 1 good teacher from those 100, you are in luck. In most cases, you don't get a single one.
morcego
The RIAA is understandably afraid the Harvard folks will just yell at them in latin. Abutebaris modo subjunctivo denuo!
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
A civil litigation lawyer has several respinsibilities:
1) To represent his or her client(s) in the best and most effective manner possible.
2) To plead cases that they can win - to do otherwise violates Responsibility #1
3) To make money for their client or to prevent their client from losing money by counseling them not to try a case that is not winnable and/or to settle out if necessary to minimize damages.
The attorneys for the RIAA are civil litigation attorneys.
When the target of litigation is Harvard University, arguably the most prestigious law school in the world, by counseling against pressing action against the university, these attorneys are flfilling all three of these Responsibilities because you can bet your bottom dollar that the legal counsel for Harvard University will most assuredly make the pressing of ANY case against them an EXTREMELY costly affair, indeed! Not to mention that trying to win against the best law school in the world is a really, really tough thing to do...
And, by doing so, they are effectively representing their clients.
In any law practice, that's a Good Day at the office!
It's strategy. If your goal is to get people to settle so you can connect "possibility of having to pay a substantial fine" with "pirating music" in the public mind, then why go after a target (or, targets) who are likely to fight you tooth and nail?
Why?
They don't really need to cost us anything. They're a self-autonomous entity, capable of earning the money to sustain itself off people who like what they do, and because there are many people out there who do, they are very valuable. The only reason they're having any significant impact on the rest of society is because of piracy. I would have thought that piracy itself would be the liability here.
An analogy: a man keeps getting assaulted by assassins, and cries foul murder over and over again. Everybody is sick of him screaming. Would the sensible approach be a) dispatch with him, or b) dispatch with the assassins?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Neither are migratory. The point is moot.
Nobody else has this sig.
Harvard should sue RIAA for not suing them. The lawsuit should question RIAA's motivations for not suing Harvard.
I don't know what it is I find so repulsive about your post. I can't quite put my finger on it.
Perhaps it's presumption that you know the majority of all teachers out there (implied by your support of the phrase, and the emphasis on your personal experiences), which is completely impossible and... well... presumptuous. Perhaps it's the arrogance of claiming your teaching is better than the peers around you, only having your own biased perspective to go on. Perhaps it's the combination with the even more fallacious and insulting "Those that are confident do; those that are not, bitch". Perhaps it's the fact that you substituted the word "try" with "pretend", implying that your fellow teachers not only don't try (which is deeply insulting from the outset), but also deceive others into thinking that they do teach when they really don't (neither of those are true).
Whatever the factors, your post makes you sound like an asshole who feels so insecure about his work that he needs to bitch about his colleagues in order for him to feel good about himself. Hey, it's your reasoning, not mine.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
If i was trying to pull a fast one over on a bunch of extremely wealthy kids that aspire to be attorneys.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
and from what I can tell
:)
1) most kids here are too busy with chairing their Model-UN-Investment-Banking-Labor-Movement meeting to even care about music, so they listen to a few cds and buy tracks from itunes (like many college campuses with high tuition, most kids have some hardware from apple) and hear most of their music on the loudspeakers at god-awful binge drinking parties
2) the few kids who listen to a lot of music are into indie bands, and the RIAA seems to go after folks who download more popular tunes. also there's pretty significant downloading/computer-illiteracy here (kids dont have the time to waste playing with the computer, and thus dont really understand where to get music illegally)
3) there's only like a couple hundred cs majors here, and there's only one out of that group with immaculate taste in music (me!) so I'm probably the only person at harvard that the RIAA could ever be angry at, but I don't download music.
There's nobody to sue!
Note to reader: The error bounds on this comprehensive study may be non-trivial.
That is for n00b stuff.
Teaching in the modern world has come down to pay .edu organization X to get some guy to blah blah in front of you for 50 minutes 3 times a week.
They are not hired for their status - they are hired because they will teach their graduate students who will in turn become good researchers and so on. Undergraduate classes are just a cash cow for universities. Nobody cares about the UG stuff - esp. not the students. Give them an A and they will think the teacher teaches wonderfully.
Stop with the n00b posts.
Your genius index is the sum of the inverse of the acceptance ratio of the conference your paper was accepted to plus the sum of the status of the research journal (e.g. transactions) you published an article on plus a certain function of where your last university affiliation was ( e.g. Phd or post-doc ).
That:
1) They know they're case(s) are weak
2) Their campaign is most certainly not about suing wrongdoers. It's about calculated methods to change copyright by case law.
Really this won't stop until someone with resources starts playing in their playground.
That is, attacks the xIAA for racketeering, price fixing, extortion, by way of the civil courts this is not likely to end soon.
The US legal system is simply broken. Our society treats corporations as equals, yet they are designed to pool capital. Anyone can sue, with little recourse, and if you have enough money, you can make it so the average man cannot possibly fight back. Meanwhile, all the time that you spend fighting the lawsuit, you find it very difficult to better your life in any other way, even save and/or invest.
And if you start talking about methods to put the system back in check... well then you are labeled a socialist or a communist. There has been legislation all throughout the preeminent authority's tenure on free market capitalism, but I dare you to start talking about Antitrust legislation now.
But I digresss...
I can't find the post, so I am going to paraphrase, but someone on slashdot once commented: "Harvard is a breeding ground for lawyers and if they ever got sued, every law student would be up in arms to find the best way to kill the RIAA's case. The profs could possibly assign it as a homework assignment, and you can bet that the kid that cracks it will have once heck of a line item on his resume." My car analogy to this would be everyone looking for the secret code that unlocks James Bond's car safe, and the one that gets it gets to use the Walther P99 stored to shoot the MAFIAA square between the eyes.
and those who don't know what they don't know are students
Your phasing makes it sound like people who teach are incompetent which isn't what the saying means.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Reminds me of the old joke about why a shark won't attack a lawyer...In this case, the RIAA is at least being smarter than SCO grp. Anyone who sues IBM over IP either has to have an iron-clad case or be a nutcase. I think this is more strategy on the RIAA's part than cowardice: they're trying to get the legal precedents established against the second-string before taking on the big-leaguers.
We are the 198 proof..
and not very many people would have understood what the heck I was talking about :)
But yes, for the record, I'm a 'concentrator' in CS.
Also, I really didn't mean to flame anyone if that's the impression I gave, I was just kidding around, a lot of my friends have great taste in music (but most of them are music concentrators, or in the humanities and don't use computers for much more than writing reports and response papers)
Who needs proxies when you have ungodly amounts of power and influence?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Who even needs that? The board could whip out its checkbook and buy every RIAA member company on the spot.
With competent assassins, this becomes much harder.
Or are we talking zombies and ninja assassins here? 'Cause that'd make a great movie.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Harvard would probably turn the incident into a course on how to not be bullied by cases that have no merit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Fucking Christ. What is with you mods today? Did you update your humor detection hardware to Vista or something?
And how do I get my how Harvard.edu IP address?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Ray, you clearly missed the Direct TV extortion campaign of just a few years ago against anyone they could find who'd purchased an inexpensive Smart Card programmer. They sued everyone they could find who'd purchased one with no evidence at all that anyone had ever used it to steal satellite television signals. As with the RIAA, they sent out extortion letters first, and sued everyone who wouldn't pay up.
Direct TV never got in nearly enough trouble over their pseudo-legal assault on the people they targeted, and I'm sure that the RIAA stole a handful of pages, if not the whole playbook, from them.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yeah, they're real cool cats. Let's hope they give the dog a bad name and hang him.
What?
I dare not pretend that I understand all the ins and outs of colleges and law but it would appear to me that more then just Harvard can get away from being targetted. If all colleges and universities were to stand united, perhaps law schools providing the legal front, against the RIAA and develope a system or group that is designed to protect students from this type of thing then maybe all these cases would drop. I'm just a junior in High School, when I go to college I dont want to have these types of issues to deal with. Instead of the universities giving in they should stand together and provide eachother with support. Surely there is strength in numbers.
I am a lowly high school student... please dont assume im an expert.
It's not so much that your professor, teacher, TA, etc couldn't do what they're teaching, it's that for the most part they never have. Most English teachers have never written a novel, most comp sci teachers have never done computing work for a living, etc. Teachers do not lack competence, but in many cases they lack real world experience.
This in turn exacerbates the whole "out of uni into the work place" culture shock where people learn exactly how much they don't actually know and employers learn exactly how much their new employees weren't taught. This plus the general dislike of academics among certain segments of the population tends to lead to a jaded view of even the best of educators and to a populace who doesn't really realize exactly how much of what they learned in uni actually helps them in real life(since it's usually not a direct "I know how to do this because I did course x").
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
If they sued a university or college, they'd have a fight on their hand... which is what the RIAA assiduously avoids.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Funny - In my experience, those who know leave and get jobs elsewhere or get promoted to where they don't 'do' anymore. Those that don't know get certifications.
Hello. My name is Terrence "Mongo" Rennet, and I represent the American Council of Bullies, Toughs, and Schoolyard Ruffians. I'm here to clear up some tragic misconceptions about bullies and their place in the academic hierarchy, misconceptions that have gone unchallenged for too long. It is my hope that by "clearing the air," as it were, bullies and bullied can walk with head erect or cower behind lockers respectively with a newfound respect for one another.
Myth: Bullies are just jealous of your intelligence, sensitivity, or ability to play the oboe.
Fact: Bullies have no more jealousy of your mental abilities than we have of your clean, well-ironed, unfashionable clothing. To the contrary, we are profoundly glad that you have chosen to develop your mental prowess, leaving your body weak and defenseless against our brutality. For that we thank you, even as we elevate your underwear.
Myth: Bullies suffer from low self-esteem, and victimize others to make themselves feel better.
Fact: While each bully has his (or her, as is increasingly the case) own deeply personal reasons for bullying, I can assure you that a poor self-image is not one of them. To the contrary, bullying is a high-pressure occupation, and only someone with an unusual amount of self-confidence will have the elán to shake down younger students efficiently while evading authority. Children without self-confidence tend instead to spend recess in the library, the computer lab, or pretending to be warriors in ridiculous fantasy games. Sound familiar?
Myth: If you stand up to a bully, he will reveal himself to be a coward.
Fact: This is perhaps the most hurtful stereotype of them all, in the sense that if you try it we will hurt you. Endless movies and after-school specials depict a tormented victim finally working up the courage to attack his neighborhood bully, after which said bully runs away crying and -- I must chuckle here -- calling for his mommy. What writers of these "entertainments" don't realize is that bullies invariably establish a complex ritual pecking order through constant low-level violence against each other. Haven't you noticed us punching each other in the shoulder at the bus stop? Then you've witnessed the magic of our social structure. Even if you, with your weak, gelatin-like arms were able to do us physical harm, I can assure you that we would recover faster than you can recite your grade point average and teach you a few things about savage poundings you can't learn from Spider-Man comics.
With that thought, I take your leave, confident that I have, in my own small way, improved the world's understanding of the art and craft of bullying. Good day, and if I see you after school you're dead meat.
brunching.com
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
This couldn't be more wrong for universities.
Now, I can't talk about the US, but I'd assume it is similar, an university here, to retain its status as an university, has not only to teach but also to research. And universities brush that liability down onto its employees, i.e. its profs. "Publish or perish" isn't just a saying here, it's your everyday reality if you're working at a university. You either crank out papers and research results or you're gone.
And if you "don't know", you won't stay long in that climate. If you really are unable to "do", you go to schools or colleges that don't have the research liability. And yes, there I can accept what you said.
But not in universities.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Insert Library of Congress meme here.
What was once true, is no longer so
sucka fool RIAA punks. Don't mess with the Crimson!
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Tons of money. Ivies(and some places like Stanford and MIT) like to confuse merit and affluence for each other.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Is it cowardly to enter a fight you can not win? It's a smart move not to sue someone who is willing to fight back when you have little to no case. It's a cowardly move by the other universities and ISPs who are willing giving out their user information to the RIAA in order for them to be sued. If Harvard really wanted to stop the madness they would offer their legal services to universities and RIAA targets that can not afford it before the precedent is made, but of course we are talking about lawyers and they have no social conscience.
Of the both of them, wouldnt Harvard be the older one? In that case, it'd just make it a battle of money and influence.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I think I'm most repulsed by the inability of such a learned person to click on the "Parent" link when a parent post he wants to know the content of is below his current threshold.
Use Limewire, but use a highly moded version of Limewire Pro that is highly illegal and you don't have to pay for it. I'm not saying that I do that, because that it would be way to highly unethical, and immoral, but from what I hear, RIAA can't touch people who do that, because they can't track the system. Suffice to say, those people who I do know that use the mod haven't been found out yet.
Please. Anyone with a half-functioning brain could figure out the mechanics of a crossbow. There's still plenty of people who HUNT with crossbows because they consider it more challenging than using a rifle, and crossbow technology today is a hell of a lot more advanced than it was 200 years ago. I can't even start to comprehend the level of ignorance that would be required to believe that the net amount of human knowledge doesn't increase over time. Are you just trolling, or what?
Yes, his incessant bullying in supporting his country's right to defend itself against the only nuclear power in the region. Dear God, when will those brutish persians stop bullying Israel!?
The abyss gazes also into you.
. . . towards Durham?
(sorry, can't help myself)
because Duke sucks.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
You declare a concentration, but I've heard "My concentration is foo" (often), or "I'm majoring in foo" (also often) far more often than "I'm a foo concentrator" (never, actually).
well they are more samurai than ninja but versus is indeed a great movie.
Oh it has demons and gangsters in it too, oh and cops on the trail of the guys who broke out of prison... (it's japanese can you tell?)
It's 27% of the student body, just behind the majority, Protestant Christians at 29%, and ahead of Catholics at 24%. [The Truth About Harvard, Dov Fox, 2004]
The proportion of faculty is higher, but the average of the two is still a way off 40%.
It can be observed that this is disproportionate relative to the 1.8% of the U.S. population that declare themselves Jewish, but this is not recommended.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
Oh, the british think evolution is the answer. Here are some statistics for you: Comparing U.S. religious beliefs with other "christian" countries
-- A good compromise leaves everyone mad. --Calvin and Hobbes
Thank you!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Your funny little post is not only wildly inaccurate and devoid of reality, but you didn't answer my question, only took the opportunity to bash Israel for being a nuclear power. Let me ask you this, which leader of these two countries has declared that the other is an illegitimate nation? Hint: It's not the prime minister of Israel.
Besides, take your head out of your ass and look around. There is more to Iran than Israel. They are a threat to most nations in the area, funding and sending weapons and soldiers to Iraq, directly involved with Syria over terrorist activities in and outside of the middle east. Lebanon seems to have a hard time keeping prime ministers from dying at the hands of Syrian and Iranian assassins. Iran directly funds Hezbollah and they even piss the Saudis off, but mostly because they are Persians I guess. Can't take the hate out of radical islamic fascists can you?
You know, the worlds problems aren't because of Israel, it's because cowards like you rush to appease Hitleresque fools like Ahmadinejad.
Agreed. I was an economics major. The whole dept shunned any form of computerized education, and I think I learned a lot more than in my core business courses where everything was ppt. The most advanced technology we saw was an overhead projector, because it's easy to overlay graphs upon one another. If I ever go into teaching, and I want to, I'm adopting that method even if it is 2025 by that time!
While it's great that you're obviously a "glass half-full" kind of guy, I think you have the meaning of this phrase wrong. It really is meant to be disparaging of the teaching profession - painting it as a refuge for those who have failed to make a success of their chosen vocation in the "real world" and are instead relegated to telling others how it should be done. It's most often attributed to GBS, though the idea possibly predates this.
As a disclaimer I'd like to point out I'm just identifying one of the origins of the saying, above; not stating my personal opinion.
In my opinion, highly likely. Their clients are already starting to get punished.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
No, he's an actual lawyer, not some kid blogging. Anonymous cowards these days...
(posting to remove accidental "underrated" moderation of above comment)
Your funny little post is not only wildly inaccurate and devoid of reality
And your post has sweet fuck all to do with news for nerds. GYOFB.
Da Blog
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/19/1928226
--
Nuf Sed.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Funny, that's what you seem to do with OOP concepts -- one by one, as it is shown to you how they make programming better, you invent your own name for them, and declare them "Not OOP".
Most sincere form of flattery, etc, and so on. :-)
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Have you ever actually TALKED to anyone not from the USA?
You could use this here Internet thingy to do that, you know.
Actually, you're probably doing so all the time... Only perhaps you don't even realise it.
In fact, you're talking to someone not from the USA right now: I'm from... Oh, it's a long story; let's just say, I'm from (much of) Northern Europe.
And the GP was right: Over on this side of the Pond, we all think it's bloody hilarious -- or at least, would be hilarious, if it weren't also pretty scary[*] -- how superstitious (=religious) you Yanks are.
HTH!
[*]: The pervasiveness of religion in your society seems unique at least outside the Muslim world; which, ironically, would make the USA the closest thing the Western world has to the erstwhile Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here