Or possibly: (c) Their bosses are telling them to shut up and play nice because there are bets currently on the table. (d) The media mostly only reports the "up, up, up" stories and not the serious critics.
Isn't this inherently what happens with higher technology? As technology increases, you can get more done with fewer man-hours of labor (e.g., concentrating IT in cloud-like service centers and so forth). It's not like we're socialists who use this to give everyone a dividend in more pay, or less hours per week. Instead, we hire fewer people, and the business world considers that to be a good thing.
You know, when I first saw the web circa 1994 or something I actually mumbled to myself, "Wow, this is just too cool; they totally can't allow this to continue". If anything, I'm a bit surprised it remained free & open for almost 20 years.
My thinking on clouds and downtime is that it's pushing failures to be less frequent, but much higher-impact when they happen. That is, instead of 1 hour down a year (and N man-hours of work lost), you get 20 hours down every decade (and 1000*N lost man-hours or somesuch). Which is bad because we (psychologically and economically) are truly terrible at evaluating or dealing with once-in-a-generation huge catastrophes -- yet we seem to be arranging more of them all the time.
Central planning and power relations and all that, I guess.
In my experience, this is not at all common in universities. (It's the first time I've heard of anything so draconian; contrast this with the corporatists who are accustomed to it being the case in private businesses). Consider calling it an issue of "academic freedom" -- usually that's supposed to be a third-rail issue wherever I've taught.
"If you can go to your course lecturers and justify why you need access to Hackaday to complete your course, I am sure your lecturers have a process to unblock the sites."
I'll bet that you're wrong. In my experience, college IT departments are run separately from teaching staff, and usually from the stance of "we'll tell you how things work" rather than vice-versa. Moreover, this policy is so wildly nonstandard that it smacks of a tyrannical banana-republic college IT department.
Remember: Schools have an administrator side and a teaching side; the two sides are usually in direct conflict; and for the last 20+ years the teachers have always been losing.
The argument of this article smells all wrong to me. It was just a month ago that I speculated someone whether paper currency would be banned in our lifetime, and now here's an article arguing for that. Note the following about TFA:
(1) The article spends several paragraphs finger-wagging at North Korea and what dastardly bastards they are. (Although, "That sounds like a lot of money, but compared to the $1 trillion in cash circulating in the great ocean of commerce, a few hundred million is chump change... probably won't bring about a crisis of faith in our paper money anytime soon. ").
(2) Then near the bottom the article switches to a call to get rid of all paper currency, with a nice jab at "liberty" voters (as some call them), lumping the ACLU in between crazed militias and the Russian mob ("If killing all cash strikes you as a little too radical... At the risk of infuriating cash-hoarding militia members, anonymity-obsessed ACLU'ers, the U.S. Treasury, Russian mob, Laundromat owners, and just about every person who has ever hid a purchase from a spouse or income from the government, I would say this to Kim Jong-un and his posse of counterfeiters: Bring it.")
(3) Ultimately, the headline about North Korea is really just a tiny degree away from "terrorist" fearmongering -- and at the end, it casts off even that garb and goes all-out terrorist/ drug-dealer/ child molester on us ("Who would be most inconvenienced if Washington were to outlaw $100 and $50 bills tomorrow? Cartel bosses in Juarez, Mexico jump to mind. So do human traffickers in China and Africa, aspiring terrorists in Afghanistan, wildlife poachers, arms dealers, tax evaders, and everyday crooks..."). So long as it potentially, minimally inconveniences some "bad guys" then of course it's worth it, even if "killing all cash" (the actual argument) means the end of privacy and convenience for all of us.
Barf. I cull FUD and bullshit. Digital surveillance of every monetary transaction by the government -- that's real end-game here.
Probably not what you expect: When I started teaching about 10 years ago, I was given a class on the Software Development Life Cycle. I dug into the textbook and had this realization: All of the examples and case-studies in the book start from the position of some paper-based business wanting to computerize their processes -- but that's crazy, right!? Here we are post-2000 (by a year or two at the time), so obviously any business at this point is already computerized.
But here I am 10 years after that, and every time I go in for a doctor's visit the secretaries are still pulling manila file folders out of a mammoth set of cabinets at the back of the office. Every time I submit grades to school at the end of a semester, I'm required to transcribe information and daily attendance "X's" onto official paper rollbooks and photocopy them a few times and submit those. This being in New York City.
So, no, not everything has been put online yet, and now I suspect that it never will be.
For older accounts, this was never on in the first place (and thus nothing to remove or pause). Newer account have it opt-out (and thus on by default).
You can get a sneak peak today by looking at U.S. drone warfare operations in the skies around the world. Days of remote monitoring from a bunker and then kablamo from nowhere. Coming soon to U.S. skies as well (legislation signed last week).
I've worked at two universities and both, during my time there, have had IT departments evolve to demand that all communications be done by in-house email (i.e., "we cannot reply to personal email addresses for security reasons"). It seems (a) dumb, (b) not really a security benefit, (c) a violation of academic/speech freedom, and (d) unsustainable if anyone outside wants to communicate with us (i.e., break the whole structure of email itself).
But it's the first thing I thought of with this "monitor faculty email" bit. Link that with "all correspondence must be by faculty email" and then you've got a real academic dystopia going.
"And it is frustrating to make equation collections and things like that."
(A) Suck it up and do the work once. (B) Use a textbook that comes with a premade formula card for use on tests. (C) Find a premade formula card online and distribute that for tests.
Personally, I use option (B) for my math classes. Trying to make the internet non-communicable is like making water not wet.
"On the other hand, TBL arguing that the patent, if valid, would be a problem for the web, amounts to further evidence that the patent was unique, inventive, non-obvious, non-trivial, and fully patent worthy."
If P->Q, then X.
That logical inference is so wildly invalid, there's not even a name for it.
"Vint Cerf, undisputedly one of the Internet's key inventors, will give Gore the [Webby] award at a June 6 [2005] ceremony in New York. 'He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions,' Cerf said."
Slashdot Mirror
I very much agree -- except that I wouldn't say "we" (i.e., all of us) so much as "the people who pushed and profited from it".
Or possibly:
(c) Their bosses are telling them to shut up and play nice because there are bets currently on the table.
(d) The media mostly only reports the "up, up, up" stories and not the serious critics.
Isn't this inherently what happens with higher technology? As technology increases, you can get more done with fewer man-hours of labor (e.g., concentrating IT in cloud-like service centers and so forth). It's not like we're socialists who use this to give everyone a dividend in more pay, or less hours per week. Instead, we hire fewer people, and the business world considers that to be a good thing.
You know, when I first saw the web circa 1994 or something I actually mumbled to myself, "Wow, this is just too cool; they totally can't allow this to continue". If anything, I'm a bit surprised it remained free & open for almost 20 years.
I guess we're going to get Internet-screwed by the U.*. one way or the other.
(Either U.S. or U.N.)
My thinking on clouds and downtime is that it's pushing failures to be less frequent, but much higher-impact when they happen. That is, instead of 1 hour down a year (and N man-hours of work lost), you get 20 hours down every decade (and 1000*N lost man-hours or somesuch). Which is bad because we (psychologically and economically) are truly terrible at evaluating or dealing with once-in-a-generation huge catastrophes -- yet we seem to be arranging more of them all the time.
Central planning and power relations and all that, I guess.
Well said, good luck to you!
It would be pretty much the death of higher education in America if what you say was implemented.
"I was wondering if this is common..."
In my experience, this is not at all common in universities. (It's the first time I've heard of anything so draconian; contrast this with the corporatists who are accustomed to it being the case in private businesses). Consider calling it an issue of "academic freedom" -- usually that's supposed to be a third-rail issue wherever I've taught.
"If you can go to your course lecturers and justify why you need access to Hackaday to complete your course, I am sure your lecturers have a process to unblock the sites."
I'll bet that you're wrong. In my experience, college IT departments are run separately from teaching staff, and usually from the stance of "we'll tell you how things work" rather than vice-versa. Moreover, this policy is so wildly nonstandard that it smacks of a tyrannical banana-republic college IT department.
Remember: Schools have an administrator side and a teaching side; the two sides are usually in direct conflict; and for the last 20+ years the teachers have always been losing.
The argument of this article smells all wrong to me. It was just a month ago that I speculated someone whether paper currency would be banned in our lifetime, and now here's an article arguing for that. Note the following about TFA:
(1) The article spends several paragraphs finger-wagging at North Korea and what dastardly bastards they are. (Although, "That sounds like a lot of money, but compared to the $1 trillion in cash circulating in the great ocean of commerce, a few hundred million is chump change... probably won't bring about a crisis of faith in our paper money anytime soon. ").
(2) Then near the bottom the article switches to a call to get rid of all paper currency, with a nice jab at "liberty" voters (as some call them), lumping the ACLU in between crazed militias and the Russian mob ("If killing all cash strikes you as a little too radical... At the risk of infuriating cash-hoarding militia members, anonymity-obsessed ACLU'ers, the U.S. Treasury, Russian mob, Laundromat owners, and just about every person who has ever hid a purchase from a spouse or income from the government, I would say this to Kim Jong-un and his posse of counterfeiters: Bring it.")
(3) Ultimately, the headline about North Korea is really just a tiny degree away from "terrorist" fearmongering -- and at the end, it casts off even that garb and goes all-out terrorist/ drug-dealer/ child molester on us ("Who would be most inconvenienced if Washington were to outlaw $100 and $50 bills tomorrow? Cartel bosses in Juarez, Mexico jump to mind. So do human traffickers in China and Africa, aspiring terrorists in Afghanistan, wildlife poachers, arms dealers, tax evaders, and everyday crooks..."). So long as it potentially, minimally inconveniences some "bad guys" then of course it's worth it, even if "killing all cash" (the actual argument) means the end of privacy and convenience for all of us.
Barf. I cull FUD and bullshit. Digital surveillance of every monetary transaction by the government -- that's real end-game here.
Probably not what you expect: When I started teaching about 10 years ago, I was given a class on the Software Development Life Cycle. I dug into the textbook and had this realization: All of the examples and case-studies in the book start from the position of some paper-based business wanting to computerize their processes -- but that's crazy, right!? Here we are post-2000 (by a year or two at the time), so obviously any business at this point is already computerized.
But here I am 10 years after that, and every time I go in for a doctor's visit the secretaries are still pulling manila file folders out of a mammoth set of cabinets at the back of the office. Every time I submit grades to school at the end of a semester, I'm required to transcribe information and daily attendance "X's" onto official paper rollbooks and photocopy them a few times and submit those. This being in New York City.
So, no, not everything has been put online yet, and now I suspect that it never will be.
For older accounts, this was never on in the first place (and thus nothing to remove or pause). Newer account have it opt-out (and thus on by default).
Call him a poopyhead. I double-dog-dare you.
You can get a sneak peak today by looking at U.S. drone warfare operations in the skies around the world. Days of remote monitoring from a bunker and then kablamo from nowhere. Coming soon to U.S. skies as well (legislation signed last week).
Better comparison -- Like spraying insecticide on an ant nest.
I've worked at two universities and both, during my time there, have had IT departments evolve to demand that all communications be done by in-house email (i.e., "we cannot reply to personal email addresses for security reasons"). It seems (a) dumb, (b) not really a security benefit, (c) a violation of academic/speech freedom, and (d) unsustainable if anyone outside wants to communicate with us (i.e., break the whole structure of email itself).
But it's the first thing I thought of with this "monitor faculty email" bit. Link that with "all correspondence must be by faculty email" and then you've got a real academic dystopia going.
Somewhere out there, there's a guy who would prefer to stick around and help his sons beat your sons.
MSH FASERIP or GTFO
That is incredibly awesome. Thanks for that!
I had a student once -- Whenever we had an "in-class" test, his mother would always have a heart attack.
"And it is frustrating to make equation collections and things like that."
(A) Suck it up and do the work once.
(B) Use a textbook that comes with a premade formula card for use on tests.
(C) Find a premade formula card online and distribute that for tests.
Personally, I use option (B) for my math classes. Trying to make the internet non-communicable is like making water not wet.
"On the other hand, TBL arguing that the patent, if valid, would be a problem for the web, amounts to further evidence that the patent was unique, inventive, non-obvious, non-trivial, and fully patent worthy."
If P->Q, then X.
That logical inference is so wildly invalid, there's not even a name for it.
Now that's great news. Thanks for pointing that out.
Such a dilemma. Shall I believe you or Vint Cerf?
"Vint Cerf, undisputedly one of the Internet's key inventors, will give Gore the [Webby] award at a June 6 [2005] ceremony in New York. 'He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions,' Cerf said."
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7746308/#.TzVnvlZqDgc