The William & Mary mess? They've also got an extensive (and wealthy) enough alumni donor base that remains fairly generous. He knew it was a safe choice (as such decisions go).
I have yet to have a student (in 4 years) not subscribed to Facebook (I teach college students). My evidence? Inevitably each one of them asks to "friend" me (and is turned down). It astonishes me how willingly they plug information into an online form - and how indifferent they are to the idea that anyone can find out anything about them with the right searches. The reason? They presume it as a fact.
Poke around in a few respected sociology publications - they'll confirm a number of my observations, as will any number of faculty.
Honestly, what I said wouldn't be questioned by most of my colleagues, hence my flippant phrasing. I assure you, I'm far more concerned than my offhand remark might indicate: we have a generation grown up accustomed to giving up information without question online - not to many phishing sites, mind you, but to companies, schools, and state entities. Yes, some students are careful - most of the geeks are - but the majority by far aren't geeks, and they've been programmed. Lessig was right in Code - once corporations drive online development for commerce, architectures of control will become so entrenched as to be accepted as the norm.
Thanks for calling me out - I should have taken the chance when I first posted to explain what I see as the greater threat: not the shiny new intrusion, but the trusted tool we've had in our lives for years.
First - the constitution prevents only the government from banning free speech. It doesn't prevent you from signing away your right.
BUT - these agreements aren't enforceable because the implied threat of withheld medical treatment means that the patient is signing under duress.
The difference between this form and those you sign agreeing to pay is important: this form requires you to "pay" (with the promise of silence) in order to be treated while the latter is a promise by you that you will pay after services are rendered.
For all the gloom & doom - and I'll admit that I agree with some of it - nobody seems to have actually read the article and seen any of the pluses. Yes, it's somewhat suspicious that the biometric registration is being applied only to sixth formers (I assume this is akin to our senior year of high school), whose adult features have pretty much developed, but honestly, who the hell thinks that it will be any easier to spy on them than it is already, given the astonishing amount of privacy they give up via facebook or similar sites?
For those who don't read, here are a few of the stated positives to give a bit of balance to the proceedings:
"Not only a hit with the students, who enjoy signing themselves in, the system is saving a member of staff about an hour and a half each day in recording data." [...]
Principal Richard Barker said: "With this new registration technology, we are hoping to free up our teachers' time and allow them to spend it on what they are meant to be doing, which is teaching. [...]
"Only today (Thursday, 05 March) we had a fire alarm test and the administration staff were able to quickly and effectively print data off from the system showing who was on site.
There's a long history of technologies being used for purposes unintended by the designer - it's one of the marks of a useful tool - and as long as we are users of tools, this will continue.
You're wrong. Students (usually graduate students) sign "patent" agreements stating that patents produced using school facilities are the property of the school. Except in cases where they have to submit to Turnitin, students retain the rights to all copyrightable material.
No. At most schools, they own the patents you produce using their facilities (hence the reason it's called a patent agreement), much like workplaces. If you can't patent it, they can't take it. My articles, my papers, they are mine.
Besides, I'm somewhat skeptical of the OP's premise - who keeps their notes handwritten? My handwriting's so godawful bad I've been transcribing notes since my sophomore year (I'm at the end of a Ph.D. program now).
Circuit City had the same prices as Best Buy. They'd alternate sales weeks, but generally, they're identical around me. Do you think big box stores are ever really different?
PROTIP: Education is not a consumer-oriented service industry. You have as much a responsibility as faculty to facilitate your own learning. Part of college is learning how to learn. Most schools offer free tutoring services, and their centers have well trained staff.
Large research universities are not there to educate, but rather to produce knowledge. Even at state schools, tenured faculty have a greater responsibility to research than to teaching. Want proof? Look at budgets. Less than 10% of salaries in Engineering, Math, and Natural Sciences colleges come from tuition or state funding. The rest comes from grants - private corporations who expect research and care nothing for your pass/fail ratio.
To take your first clause: If I'm receiving $2.5 million for my current project from Bayer, and $50 from you, I expect you to shut up and try your best to learn in the three hours a week we're in class, or failing that, to show up at office hours, because I'm spending the rest of my time earning my paycheck.
If one happens to be a self-directed learner, then the research U's ARE the place to be, with far better resources available to students. I went to a SLAC as an undergraduate, then to Giant Research University for grad school, and I can promise you that I'd have given anything to have the resources of GRU as an undergrad.
It looks like the current members are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group. That is not a long list. I wonder why news sources can't list them. It would seriously help put responsibility where it should be.
They can't list them because that's not the whole story. Sony BMG is the parent company of dozens of labels, including Columbia Records, Loud, Epic, Ruthless, RCA Music Group, Arista Records, J Records, and many more, not to mention that they act as distributor for 18 "independent" labels.
That's fair, but only as long as professors are required to take every assignment in a digital form. The moment there's a class that requires a printed copy of a report, that printing better be included with the price for taking the class.
Under "Required Materials" on my syllabus, I always put "a few dollars for printing/copying."
Can you imagine signing up for a "3 DVD's at a time" plan from Netflix and then when you actually check out 3 at a time they start bitching up a storm because "You're hoarding the DVD's!!! None of the other customers will be able to rent any of them!!!". Of course not. Because like most industry's they understand that if you sell a capacity you better damn well be able to meet it.
BUT... Netflix is notorious for "choking" customers who return DVD's too quickly. Basically, if you return a movie per day, you cost them more in postage than you pay for your monthly fee, and eventually, they start delaying your movies by a day or two, slowing down your "bandwidth" so that they don't meet the "capacity" they sold you.
From what I limitedly know about the Bar (in Indiana) is that once you've been disbarred in one state, you cant reapply in any other states.
It's not necessarily that you can't reapply in other states, it's that in order to be admitted to the bar in any state, you have to pass a "character" review -- and before you start in with slimy lawyer jokes, remember that these people weren't slimy until long after they were admitted and learned how to game the system. Most attorneys are very ethical: just as with any profession, there are exceptions great and small, but because of the nature of the legal profession, violations tend to cause a much greater deal of harm and are much more public.
Anyway, an attorney who has committed such egregious acts against the profession that he is permanently disbarred in one state could NEVER pass this portion in another - who wants to invite such trouble?
Why exactly DO we need professional associations that one is compelled to be in? The AMA shows their true colors every so often too...
It takes three years to complete a law degree (four if part time), and most law schools don't deviate, except in very special circumstances (Robert Byrd, for instance, was permitted six years because he was serving in the Senate at the time). No matter how many years some slackers take to finish their Bachelor's Degree, it counts as four years' full time enrollment (15 hours per semester, etc.).
Seven years of college.
Terminal Professional degrees (like the JD or MD) have always been treated in a manner similar to guilds in that the State (government) lacks the level of expertise required to determine who is or is not a competent professional, and so leaves it up to the professional association. Thus, most states have laws requiring that those who wish to practice law (or medicine) be adjudged fully competent by the profession - which is why in the US, the State bar is usually sanctioned by the legislature.
We need more information. If, for instance, even looked at another student's Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protected information, then the school must, by law, prosecute him. Uncle Sam doesn't mess around when it comes to assessing penalties - schools with violations can lose federal funding (including grants).
If he was poking around in an area that made any student information not considered "directory information" (address, campus box, telephone, degree, or e-mail address) accessible, then they had no choice. And ignorance is no excuse - they shove FERPA down the kiddies' throats when they arrive, just to make sure they know that mommy and daddy can't meet with professors.
Again... Rowling offered them help, let them continue, whatever, as long as the Lexicon remained FREE AND WEB BASED, which should please the party line police here on/.
Once they tried to profit from her work, she stopped them. Rightly so... and this:
And if you've ever looked at the Lexicon website, you know that it does precisely that. The judge fucked up on this point of law,
It's typical to show contempt for those artists you consider crass or over-commercialized, by depicting them as metaphorically abusing their creations.
This is called "parody." It is protected fair use. Creating your own comic strip series starring Opus would not be. You can profit from the former. You may not from the latter. The authors of the Lexicon were trying to profit.
Anybody can collect that evidence, but not anybody can present it. You need to be a recognized "expert." Note: Slashdot posts do not count as making one an "expert" in court.
You're thinking of "rhetoric" - the process of building a logical argument from available proofs - in this case, laws and legal decisions as well as linguistic meanings. Legal argument is more dependent upon Aristotelian rhetoric - not the media-reinforced ignorant sense of "rhetoric as empty language" that is more commonly understood today - than anything else.
I actually agree with you, though - bringing back some critical rhetorical skills to our curriculum might just make a deliberative public forum possible for many legal and political debates.
Slashdot Mirror
The William & Mary mess? They've also got an extensive (and wealthy) enough alumni donor base that remains fairly generous. He knew it was a safe choice (as such decisions go).
I have yet to have a student (in 4 years) not subscribed to Facebook (I teach college students). My evidence? Inevitably each one of them asks to "friend" me (and is turned down). It astonishes me how willingly they plug information into an online form - and how indifferent they are to the idea that anyone can find out anything about them with the right searches. The reason? They presume it as a fact.
Poke around in a few respected sociology publications - they'll confirm a number of my observations, as will any number of faculty.
Honestly, what I said wouldn't be questioned by most of my colleagues, hence my flippant phrasing. I assure you, I'm far more concerned than my offhand remark might indicate: we have a generation grown up accustomed to giving up information without question online - not to many phishing sites, mind you, but to companies, schools, and state entities. Yes, some students are careful - most of the geeks are - but the majority by far aren't geeks, and they've been programmed. Lessig was right in Code - once corporations drive online development for commerce, architectures of control will become so entrenched as to be accepted as the norm.
Thanks for calling me out - I should have taken the chance when I first posted to explain what I see as the greater threat: not the shiny new intrusion, but the trusted tool we've had in our lives for years.
First - the constitution prevents only the government from banning free speech. It doesn't prevent you from signing away your right.
BUT - these agreements aren't enforceable because the implied threat of withheld medical treatment means that the patient is signing under duress.
The difference between this form and those you sign agreeing to pay is important: this form requires you to "pay" (with the promise of silence) in order to be treated while the latter is a promise by you that you will pay after services are rendered.
For all the gloom & doom - and I'll admit that I agree with some of it - nobody seems to have actually read the article and seen any of the pluses. Yes, it's somewhat suspicious that the biometric registration is being applied only to sixth formers (I assume this is akin to our senior year of high school), whose adult features have pretty much developed, but honestly, who the hell thinks that it will be any easier to spy on them than it is already, given the astonishing amount of privacy they give up via facebook or similar sites?
For those who don't read, here are a few of the stated positives to give a bit of balance to the proceedings:
There's a long history of technologies being used for purposes unintended by the designer - it's one of the marks of a useful tool - and as long as we are users of tools, this will continue.
You're wrong. Students (usually graduate students) sign "patent" agreements stating that patents produced using school facilities are the property of the school. Except in cases where they have to submit to Turnitin, students retain the rights to all copyrightable material.
No. At most schools, they own the patents you produce using their facilities (hence the reason it's called a patent agreement), much like workplaces. If you can't patent it, they can't take it. My articles, my papers, they are mine.
Besides, I'm somewhat skeptical of the OP's premise - who keeps their notes handwritten? My handwriting's so godawful bad I've been transcribing notes since my sophomore year (I'm at the end of a Ph.D. program now).
Circuit City had the same prices as Best Buy. They'd alternate sales weeks, but generally, they're identical around me. Do you think big box stores are ever really different?
So now you're in possession of determinate meaning? Please share.
PROTIP: Education is not a consumer-oriented service industry. You have as much a responsibility as faculty to facilitate your own learning. Part of college is learning how to learn. Most schools offer free tutoring services, and their centers have well trained staff.
Large research universities are not there to educate, but rather to produce knowledge. Even at state schools, tenured faculty have a greater responsibility to research than to teaching. Want proof? Look at budgets. Less than 10% of salaries in Engineering, Math, and Natural Sciences colleges come from tuition or state funding. The rest comes from grants - private corporations who expect research and care nothing for your pass/fail ratio.
To take your first clause: If I'm receiving $2.5 million for my current project from Bayer, and $50 from you, I expect you to shut up and try your best to learn in the three hours a week we're in class, or failing that, to show up at office hours, because I'm spending the rest of my time earning my paycheck.
If one happens to be a self-directed learner, then the research U's ARE the place to be, with far better resources available to students. I went to a SLAC as an undergraduate, then to Giant Research University for grad school, and I can promise you that I'd have given anything to have the resources of GRU as an undergrad.
The lawyers ARE the organization. It started as a lobbying group...
It looks like the current members are EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group. That is not a long list. I wonder why news sources can't list them. It would seriously help put responsibility where it should be.
They can't list them because that's not the whole story. Sony BMG is the parent company of dozens of labels, including Columbia Records, Loud, Epic, Ruthless, RCA Music Group, Arista Records, J Records, and many more, not to mention that they act as distributor for 18 "independent" labels.
That's fair, but only as long as professors are required to take every assignment in a digital form. The moment there's a class that requires a printed copy of a report, that printing better be included with the price for taking the class.
Under "Required Materials" on my syllabus, I always put "a few dollars for printing/copying."
Can you imagine signing up for a "3 DVD's at a time" plan from Netflix and then when you actually check out 3 at a time they start bitching up a storm because "You're hoarding the DVD's!!! None of the other customers will be able to rent any of them!!!". Of course not. Because like most industry's they understand that if you sell a capacity you better damn well be able to meet it.
BUT... Netflix is notorious for "choking" customers who return DVD's too quickly. Basically, if you return a movie per day, you cost them more in postage than you pay for your monthly fee, and eventually, they start delaying your movies by a day or two, slowing down your "bandwidth" so that they don't meet the "capacity" they sold you.
More worrying, to me, is that the post, which makes sense, is modded "Offtopic," and furthermore, that this was predictable.
From what I limitedly know about the Bar (in Indiana) is that once you've been disbarred in one state, you cant reapply in any other states.
It's not necessarily that you can't reapply in other states, it's that in order to be admitted to the bar in any state, you have to pass a "character" review -- and before you start in with slimy lawyer jokes, remember that these people weren't slimy until long after they were admitted and learned how to game the system. Most attorneys are very ethical: just as with any profession, there are exceptions great and small, but because of the nature of the legal profession, violations tend to cause a much greater deal of harm and are much more public.
Anyway, an attorney who has committed such egregious acts against the profession that he is permanently disbarred in one state could NEVER pass this portion in another - who wants to invite such trouble?
Why exactly DO we need professional associations that one is compelled to be in? The AMA shows their true colors every so often too...
It takes three years to complete a law degree (four if part time), and most law schools don't deviate, except in very special circumstances (Robert Byrd, for instance, was permitted six years because he was serving in the Senate at the time). No matter how many years some slackers take to finish their Bachelor's Degree, it counts as four years' full time enrollment (15 hours per semester, etc.).
Seven years of college.
Terminal Professional degrees (like the JD or MD) have always been treated in a manner similar to guilds in that the State (government) lacks the level of expertise required to determine who is or is not a competent professional, and so leaves it up to the professional association. Thus, most states have laws requiring that those who wish to practice law (or medicine) be adjudged fully competent by the profession - which is why in the US, the State bar is usually sanctioned by the legislature.
they think it is dirty, like taking a dump.
I thought Germans were supposed to be into that sort of thing.
We need more information. If, for instance, even looked at another student's Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) protected information, then the school must, by law, prosecute him. Uncle Sam doesn't mess around when it comes to assessing penalties - schools with violations can lose federal funding (including grants).
If he was poking around in an area that made any student information not considered "directory information" (address, campus box, telephone, degree, or e-mail address) accessible, then they had no choice. And ignorance is no excuse - they shove FERPA down the kiddies' throats when they arrive, just to make sure they know that mommy and daddy can't meet with professors.
Yes there is a difference between civil and criminal law, but to speak to AC's point, in neither case does "being a bitch" count as a legal criterion.
Once they tried to profit from her work, she stopped them. Rightly so... and this:
And if you've ever looked at the Lexicon website, you know that it does precisely that. The judge fucked up on this point of law,
Has nothing to do with law.
Only if they kept it free and web-based. They tried to jump ship and profit.
It's typical to show contempt for those artists you consider crass or over-commercialized, by depicting them as metaphorically abusing their creations.
This is called "parody." It is protected fair use. Creating your own comic strip series starring Opus would not be. You can profit from the former. You may not from the latter. The authors of the Lexicon were trying to profit.
Anybody can collect that evidence, but not anybody can present it. You need to be a recognized "expert." Note: Slashdot posts do not count as making one an "expert" in court.
You're thinking of "rhetoric" - the process of building a logical argument from available proofs - in this case, laws and legal decisions as well as linguistic meanings. Legal argument is more dependent upon Aristotelian rhetoric - not the media-reinforced ignorant sense of "rhetoric as empty language" that is more commonly understood today - than anything else.
I actually agree with you, though - bringing back some critical rhetorical skills to our curriculum might just make a deliberative public forum possible for many legal and political debates.