I think the crux of the argument is your comment about the phrase, "sufficiently novel that you could patent it." You are right that the vast majority of IP policies will never be enforced. That is not the primary concern. It is the fact that we do not wish to sign agreements that we may hope to violate. We all hope to do novel work. And if inventions were just ideas we had patents on or were in the process of patenting. We could all list them. But ideas that are "sufficiently novel that they could be patented." That is not possible for many of us.
My first programming job was working on a windows based zip application. For those that asked about paying royalties for the use of the format, the answer is no the other companies do not. Katz developed ZIP files as a published standard. A beautiful standard that he revised with new versions of his compression software. As I worked on my project the 2.04g standard was my guideline. It continues to be my standard for quality technical documentation. One of my assignments was writing the self extraction engine. I never did figure out how he made his so small. The rumour at my company was that he hand tweaked the assembler code with every trick in the book.
Universities are educational institutions, but they do more than simply educate. They also certify. That is what the testing and diplomas are for. The school is saying that you have been exposed to a set of material. An online university can not provide that for all the issues of cheating that have been mentioned. But, it can provide very good educational resources (something along the lines of lectures) that can be improved with time and made into a very useful resource.
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I think the crux of the argument is your comment about the phrase, "sufficiently novel that you could patent it." You are right that the vast majority of IP policies will never be enforced. That is not the primary concern. It is the fact that we do not wish to sign agreements that we may hope to violate. We all hope to do novel work. And if inventions were just ideas we had patents on or were in the process of patenting. We could all list them. But ideas that are "sufficiently novel that they could be patented." That is not possible for many of us.
My first programming job was working on a windows based zip application. For those that asked about paying royalties for the use of the format, the answer is no the other companies do not. Katz developed ZIP files as a published standard. A beautiful standard that he revised with new versions of his compression software. As I worked on my project the 2.04g standard was my guideline. It continues to be my standard for quality technical documentation.
One of my assignments was writing the self extraction engine. I never did figure out how
he made his so small. The rumour at my company was that he hand tweaked the assembler code with every trick in the book.
Universities are educational institutions, but they do more than simply educate. They also certify. That is what the testing and diplomas are for. The school is saying that you have been exposed to a set of material. An online university can not provide that for all the issues of cheating that have been mentioned. But, it can provide very good educational resources (something along the lines of lectures) that can be improved with time and made into a very useful resource.