Actually, for the last six or seven years, my home address and telephone number *have* been available on my web site, and intentionally so.
Like you said, anyone really determined could find it out. It's easy, and takes maybe five or ten minutes. If anybody is determined to threaten me or cause me trouble, then five minute is unlikely to be enough of a deterrent to stop them.
On the other hand, if someone is just interested in knowing how to reach me, then I consider it rude and annoying to force them to take those five minutes to hunt me down. It's all a matter of priority.
Amusingly enough, that's somewhat the case even now in areas where copyright control is weak. I have a copy somewhere of a bootleg that was floating around Eastern Europe, having been labelled as being the 4th Enigma album (called "Metamorphosis"). Two of the tracks were Enigma B-Sides, and the rest were done by (mostly) unknown bands.
It's quite a pleasant album, but it really is an interesting example of trying to use someone's name and reputation capital to promote one's work.
The initial question specifically specified that this included graduate work. Now, while in your typical undergrad degree, you can get away with doing next to no work, to do a graduate-level thesis (or even an undergraduate honours thesis most places) requires quite a bit of work, and usually involves research in a new area.
The intellectual property issues of that kind of work have been contentious for quite a while. A number of important intellectual property issues (RSA comes to mind immediately) came out of academia. And the question of whether the intellectual property belongs to its creators or to the University is also tricky. Columbia University has a massive portfolio of patents that it uses for revenue stream - ideas developed by its professors and graduate students.
Ultimately, the question is about the role of universities in our society. Should they increase the common good of knowledge, using government and student funding, or should they be attempting to use the knowledge that they have to fund their research and teaching activities?
Just to give some more numbers to Parity's comment:
According to adherents.com , in 1990 self-identified UUs counted for 0.3% of the population, Buddhists for 0.4%, and Hindus for 0.2%. I suspect those numbers are higher now, but can't find more recent numbers.
Numbers for neo-paganism are much harder to find, because a lot of pagans are still "in the broom closet." However, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance estimate that there are currently roughly 750,000 practicing neo-pagans in the US, which makes up about 0.2 to 0.3% of the US population as well.
So, we're over your 1% of religious people already, without considering a number of the other minority religions. But also, a number of studies such as a recent one done by the Covenant of the Goddess have found that members of these minority religions are more active voters. 86% of those who took CoG's poll had registered to vote - against 50% in the normal population, making them an even more significant voting block.
So, in short - "minority" religions are here, and we care about people who are going to try to infringe on our freedom to worship the Gods. Deal with it.
It's a well-written and interesting piece, but I'm almost certain that at some point in the relatively near future, it's going to be revealed as being a hoax. Why?
Too many Linux community in-jokes.
Focuses far too much on how to improve Linux
The writing style just thoroughly doesn't match Bill Gates' columns or book -- not that this is a deathblow, since I suspect most stuff issued by him these days is at least partially ghostwritten for time reasons alone.
Is it just me that finds it horribly ironic that the headline of the press release is "Phantom by Square USA Inc. ensures that their new Computer-Generated Film is on time and on budget."?
While not ruling out several holocausts, in the long term I see humanity stabilizing with the environment in a new ecological balance. This won't happen any time soon, I think we have to wait until industrialization runs its course and we run out of our fossil fuels. Then, we wait for biotechnology to run its course and settle down into something stable. We then will be in symbiosis with our manmade ecology. Once we settle down into a several hundred year groove and all are new technologies become old, we will be in a steady state. But mind you, I see bumps and population "corrections" along the way.
Why in the name of all the Gods should we wait until after we've exhausted all of the fossil fuels we can get our hands on to do something about this? There is absolutely no excuse for not using renewable energies in significant quantities - wind power is a good example of a technology that doesn't ever run out, is completely free to harness, doesn't pollute (other than noise pollution), and is generally a good idea. Biomass projects are also fascinating. In Toronto, there are projects working on trying to harness energy from the decomposition of city landfills - now that's cool.
But of course, no one right now is putting in the initial seed money to use green power, even with "energy crises" looming, and people barricading refineries in Europe. Because we'll just wait until we've burned the last coal, put more carbon dioxide into our air, made winter feel like summer and made summer unbearable, because that's what is needed for our industrial society to run its course.
And then people wonder when people predict that our society as a whole is fucked.
The problem is that in this case the musician gets absolutely nothing either. As far as I'm concerned, buying used CDs is not much morally different from copying.
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Like you said, anyone really determined could find it out. It's easy, and takes maybe five or ten minutes. If anybody is determined to threaten me or cause me trouble, then five minute is unlikely to be enough of a deterrent to stop them.
On the other hand, if someone is just interested in knowing how to reach me, then I consider it rude and annoying to force them to take those five minutes to hunt me down. It's all a matter of priority.
ian.
It's quite a pleasant album, but it really is an interesting example of trying to use someone's name and reputation capital to promote one's work.
ian.
The initial question specifically specified that this included graduate work. Now, while in your typical undergrad degree, you can get away with doing next to no work, to do a graduate-level thesis (or even an undergraduate honours thesis most places) requires quite a bit of work, and usually involves research in a new area.
The intellectual property issues of that kind of work have been contentious for quite a while. A number of important intellectual property issues (RSA comes to mind immediately) came out of academia. And the question of whether the intellectual property belongs to its creators or to the University is also tricky. Columbia University has a massive portfolio of patents that it uses for revenue stream - ideas developed by its professors and graduate students.
Ultimately, the question is about the role of universities in our society. Should they increase the common good of knowledge, using government and student funding, or should they be attempting to use the knowledge that they have to fund their research and teaching activities?
ian.According to adherents.com , in 1990 self-identified UUs counted for 0.3% of the population, Buddhists for 0.4%, and Hindus for 0.2%. I suspect those numbers are higher now, but can't find more recent numbers.
Numbers for neo-paganism are much harder to find, because a lot of pagans are still "in the broom closet." However, the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance estimate that there are currently roughly 750,000 practicing neo-pagans in the US, which makes up about 0.2 to 0.3% of the US population as well.
So, we're over your 1% of religious people already, without considering a number of the other minority religions. But also, a number of studies such as a recent one done by the Covenant of the Goddess have found that members of these minority religions are more active voters. 86% of those who took CoG's poll had registered to vote - against 50% in the normal population, making them an even more significant voting block.
So, in short - "minority" religions are here, and we care about people who are going to try to infringe on our freedom to worship the Gods. Deal with it.
ian.
It's a well-written and interesting piece, but I'm almost certain that at some point in the relatively near future, it's going to be revealed as being a hoax. Why?
- Too many Linux community in-jokes.
- Focuses far too much on how to improve Linux
- The writing style just thoroughly doesn't match Bill Gates' columns or book -- not that this is a deathblow, since I suspect most stuff issued by him these days is at least partially ghostwritten for time reasons alone.
ian.ian.
Why in the name of all the Gods should we wait until after we've exhausted all of the fossil fuels we can get our hands on to do something about this? There is absolutely no excuse for not using renewable energies in significant quantities - wind power is a good example of a technology that doesn't ever run out, is completely free to harness, doesn't pollute (other than noise pollution), and is generally a good idea. Biomass projects are also fascinating. In Toronto, there are projects working on trying to harness energy from the decomposition of city landfills - now that's cool.
But of course, no one right now is putting in the initial seed money to use green power, even with "energy crises" looming, and people barricading refineries in Europe. Because we'll just wait until we've burned the last coal, put more carbon dioxide into our air, made winter feel like summer and made summer unbearable, because that's what is needed for our industrial society to run its course.
And then people wonder when people predict that our society as a whole is fucked.
ian.
The problem is that in this case the musician gets absolutely nothing either. As far as I'm concerned, buying used CDs is not much morally different from copying.