The set-up: I am not a lawyer, i am a senior computer science major at a decent sized private universtiy who has just started using turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com) OK...
The school just announced the use of turnitin.com in the school paper about 2 weeks ago. I have no problem with the school fighting plagerism. The university has a strong policy on it actually and im normally in support of it. But ive had friends who (before turnitin.com) have been accused of plagerism. Now ive been there when they've written the papers and even advised on a few of them. But what turnitin does is definatly a big gray cloud over academia. Is the world so corrupt as a company can make some $$ on this? unfortunatly yes. Is this going to hurt schools and their respective charges... namely students? yes. From my knowledge of copyright, anything that i put down in a tangeble format ( a paper for instance) is instantly protected under copyright law in the USA. As long as i put some originality into the effort that work becomes mine. You are allowed to quote given that you cite your work. When you dont cite, its just being a bad student. Now everyone misses things here and there. When i do research for a paper i may not use everything that ive read. So when im actually writing, a phrase or line that ive read may come up and im either a)not going to remember exactly where it came from (yes, i do that much research and thus alot of reading) or b) it sounded good somewhere else and it remained in my subconscience. Everyone retains certain phrases/actions/patterns that they pick up from different places. Ever notice that you start saying things your mom or dad said when you were a kid? same thing. Ill think that ive come up with a decent approach at something when it may have already been used. Does that make me guilty of plagerism if i honestly dont remember dealing with the same phrase during research?
There are too many gray areas for this debate to be ended anytime soon. From now on im making sure to put the copyright symbol on all my work and making it clear to my teachers that my work is my work. Any unauthorized use of it is copyright violation. I may even go so far as to have them sign an agreement that they will only use my paper for grading purposes and that anything beyond that requires my written permission. that means that any attempt to store, modify or transfer my paper to any other entity be it teacher or turnitin.com becomes a legal issue. Its not that i dont trust my teachers. I love them (yes my friends are laughing at me for this.) I have no desire to see any harm but i do need to protect my rights. NO i dont cheat but i dont want to be involved in something that has legal problems written all over it.
I've had my problems with tech support. But I have to admit that I've also had about the same number of good experiences with tech support. It all depends on the company and more likely on the tech you get.
Even better than tech support is your own personal guru. It seems everyone knows that one person who is "really good with computers." I know that I rely on these type people. But you do have to remember, guru's have lives too. Don't call them expecting them to drop everything to fix your problem. My experience is that they are more than willing to help, but their own lives come first. Remember they are helping, you cant dictate to them. Use them only when there are no other options.I try to make sure that I am not interupting their lives with all my questions. And ALWAYS remember to say thank you and maybe back it up with something (beer is the currency of choice with my guru's). Treat your guru right and they will keep you out of trouble.
Now before anyone jumps on my case about Napster being the first to do p2p or at least being its "killer app", remember that I loved it too, pre-RIAA.
Now I believe is the time to add Napster to the "Remember when..." quote series. Other favorities in this series are the "Remember when your Commodore 64 was the fastest machine out there." or "Remember when you first learned THE CODE for Contra on the 8-bit NES." My personal favorite is still the "Remember when you first beat Zelda."
Napster is a great program. It opened the worlds eyes to P2P and helped alot of smaller artists(read not RIAA affiliated) spread their music. It is sad to see that it has come to the courts and lawyers saying what the system can and can not do. Each new step is further and further away from the idea that drove Napster to its own succes and thus demise. It will always be with us, sadly our children will only know it from our fond memories. "I remember when Napster still had all the music you could want. Including Metalica!"
It sounds to me like the RIAA wants to be the Napster Executive board so they can make all the decisions. They want a scenario where they, the RIAA, gets to decide what the company does and how they do it. When they have found a way to surpress the whole idea structure that Napster and other(better) p2p packages are built on(swapping files) they then pass it along to the hirelings, aka Napster and its employees, to implement. Does this sound to you like what the RIAA is trying to accomplish through all these court procedings?
Just because a scientific entity uses a computer as a tool does not mean that the entity is being redefined as computer science. An accountant uses a spreadsheet to do balance sheets and the like, does that mean they are computer scientists? If it does, im switching to an easier major(already a CS person) that still uses computers because according to the article I would still be a computer scientist.
You are absolutely correct! If EarthLink would open up and say, "Yeah, we encoded X,Y and Z in those strings. They are used for (insert idea here) and will not be sold licensed, leased, etc. to outside companies, partners, mergers etc...." Now all we have to do is hope that X,Y and Z are all nice and good. But thats just what I think.
I agree. Why not license it out to another company? It would continue to provide a source of revenue (which every company kills for - especially its share holders!!). Going so far as to open source it would probably not happen. If HP spent X years and $Y millions developing it, they are not gonna just release it to OpenSource folks. While I agree that would be a great thing, it just doesnt make business sense. And as we all know, just because it makes sense to us tech folks, doesnt mean the people upstairs agree. To them it seems(IMHO) that the only thing that makes sense is the bottom-line and share holder value. Hopefully I am wrong (it wouldnt be the first time and definatly not the last), but I doubt it goes OpenSource.
Being a fellow college student who spends most of his time doing computer stuff (yes I am guilty of being a CS major), I share your fears. I didnt like it when they blocked Napster- unfortunatly they had a good reason-bandwidth. We tried going to the Admins but were denied. Luckily, being the good CS geeks that we are, we found ways around it.
When you go before the Admin group at school, have your battle plan laid out. Know your strong points and be able to defend your weak points. Be sure to bring friends who share your concerns. If your Teachers agree with you, bring them along too. The bigger your group and more importantly, the better your arguments are, the better off you look to those in charge. If they see that you are not alone they will be more likely to deal fairly with you. Even if your solid, logical approach at this meeting fails, get creative. If the packet filter gets installed, experiment with different ways of getting around it. Now, I am in NO way promoting the idea of doing any type of damage to it or even causing more work for the admins., but see if there are certain things the filter misses. When you find that out you may be able to use it to your advantage. Just remember, try the system first (it may actually work) but there are always other ways.
Depending on where you go in the country a hogie is a grinder is a submarine. But it is all still lunch!(A very good lunch too - ham and Swiss- sooo goood!) Just because the name changes doesnt mean the actual substance changes.
Just because you change somthing's name doesn't mean you change the thing. If I copy a file and rename it, what really changes? It still has all the same information but a few couple of bits say B and not A.
The FBI is still gonna use Carnivore/DCS1000 for the same purposes(hopefully all legal) but in the end, the system is still the same. Do they think that the public is that stupid that changing its name to an acronym will make people forget that it exists? I hope not!
I agree. DirectTV fought back and won and the hacker's own turf. They get alot of respect for that.
Yeah, they did use a bunch of lawyers to try to achieve their goal of eliminating 'non-paying' customers. But if you ran the company, wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop people from "keeping" money that should belong to you for your service(no matter how much it cost).
No matter whose side you take, directTV or the hackers, One must admit that they did good and damm good to beat the hackers at their own game.
As for Game Over not yet. Let's just call this round as a point for DirectTV.
The goal that the media industries have isn't eliminating ALL piracy, it's eliminating mainstream piracy.
Everything, at one point or another, WILL be hacked, decoded etc. just because it is out there. The idea, as I understand it, is to make the entire process such an inconvience that it is easier to go out and spend the money on the real thing. Look at what it took to break it, the announcement came out in the begining of Sept. 2000 and it took till almost the end of January. And to pull it off took a grad student and a Phd canidate.
In the end those who make a living cracking and selling data/music/etc. will continue to make a living at it. The whole thing is to just make them work as hard if not harder than those who created the original work.
Does the idea of being able to track someone thru patterns in word choice/thought layout scare anyone else? It is not that I am worried about anyone tracking me cause i have nothing to hide, but the idea that it can happen is somewhat disturbing. Is Big Brother learning a new trick? Normally I dont give that much thought to the idea of being tracked, its a fact of life in today's society, but going this far seems somewhat ridiculous to me. But thats just my opinion.
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The set-up: I am not a lawyer, i am a senior computer science major at a decent sized private universtiy who has just started using turnitin.com (http://www.turnitin.com) OK...
The school just announced the use of turnitin.com in the school paper about 2 weeks ago. I have no problem with the school fighting plagerism. The university has a strong policy on it actually and im normally in support of it. But ive had friends who (before turnitin.com) have been accused of plagerism. Now ive been there when they've written the papers and even advised on a few of them. But what turnitin does is definatly a big gray cloud over academia. Is the world so corrupt as a company can make some $$ on this? unfortunatly yes. Is this going to hurt schools and their respective charges... namely students? yes. From my knowledge of copyright, anything that i put down in a tangeble format ( a paper for instance) is instantly protected under copyright law in the USA. As long as i put some originality into the effort that work becomes mine. You are allowed to quote given that you cite your work. When you dont cite, its just being a bad student. Now everyone misses things here and there. When i do research for a paper i may not use everything that ive read. So when im actually writing, a phrase or line that ive read may come up and im either a)not going to remember exactly where it came from (yes, i do that much research and thus alot of reading) or b) it sounded good somewhere else and it remained in my subconscience. Everyone retains certain phrases/actions/patterns that they pick up from different places. Ever notice that you start saying things your mom or dad said when you were a kid? same thing. Ill think that ive come up with a decent approach at something when it may have already been used. Does that make me guilty of plagerism if i honestly dont remember dealing with the same phrase during research?
There are too many gray areas for this debate to be ended anytime soon. From now on im making sure to put the copyright symbol on all my work and making it clear to my teachers that my work is my work. Any unauthorized use of it is copyright violation. I may even go so far as to have them sign an agreement that they will only use my paper for grading purposes and that anything beyond that requires my written permission. that means that any attempt to store, modify or transfer my paper to any other entity be it teacher or turnitin.com becomes a legal issue. Its not that i dont trust my teachers. I love them (yes my friends are laughing at me for this.) I have no desire to see any harm but i do need to protect my rights. NO i dont cheat but i dont want to be involved in something that has legal problems written all over it.
I've had my problems with tech support. But I have to admit that I've also had about the same number of good experiences with tech support. It all depends on the company and more likely on the tech you get.
Even better than tech support is your own personal guru. It seems everyone knows that one person who is "really good with computers." I know that I rely on these type people. But you do have to remember, guru's have lives too. Don't call them expecting them to drop everything to fix your problem. My experience is that they are more than willing to help, but their own lives come first. Remember they are helping, you cant dictate to them. Use them only when there are no other options.I try to make sure that I am not interupting their lives with all my questions. And ALWAYS remember to say thank you and maybe back it up with something (beer is the currency of choice with my guru's). Treat your guru right and they will keep you out of trouble.
Now before anyone jumps on my case about Napster being the first to do p2p or at least being its "killer app", remember that I loved it too, pre-RIAA.
Now I believe is the time to add Napster to the "Remember when..." quote series. Other favorities in this series are the "Remember when your Commodore 64 was the fastest machine out there." or "Remember when you first learned THE CODE for Contra on the 8-bit NES." My personal favorite is still the "Remember when you first beat Zelda."
Napster is a great program. It opened the worlds eyes to P2P and helped alot of smaller artists(read not RIAA affiliated) spread their music. It is sad to see that it has come to the courts and lawyers saying what the system can and can not do. Each new step is further and further away from the idea that drove Napster to its own succes and thus demise. It will always be with us, sadly our children will only know it from our fond memories. "I remember when Napster still had all the music you could want. Including Metalica!"
It sounds to me like the RIAA wants to be the Napster Executive board so they can make all the decisions. They want a scenario where they, the RIAA, gets to decide what the company does and how they do it. When they have found a way to surpress the whole idea structure that Napster and other(better) p2p packages are built on(swapping files) they then pass it along to the hirelings, aka Napster and its employees, to implement. Does this sound to you like what the RIAA is trying to accomplish through all these court procedings?
Just because a scientific entity uses a computer as a tool does not mean that the entity is being redefined as computer science. An accountant uses a spreadsheet to do balance sheets and the like, does that mean they are computer scientists? If it does, im switching to an easier major(already a CS person) that still uses computers because according to the article I would still be a computer scientist.
You are absolutely correct! If EarthLink would open up and say, "Yeah, we encoded X,Y and Z in those strings. They are used for (insert idea here) and will not be sold licensed, leased, etc. to outside companies, partners, mergers etc...." Now all we have to do is hope that X,Y and Z are all nice and good. But thats just what I think.
I agree. Why not license it out to another company? It would continue to provide a source of revenue (which every company kills for - especially its share holders!!). Going so far as to open source it would probably not happen. If HP spent X years and $Y millions developing it, they are not gonna just release it to OpenSource folks. While I agree that would be a great thing, it just doesnt make business sense. And as we all know, just because it makes sense to us tech folks, doesnt mean the people upstairs agree. To them it seems(IMHO) that the only thing that makes sense is the bottom-line and share holder value. Hopefully I am wrong (it wouldnt be the first time and definatly not the last), but I doubt it goes OpenSource.
Being a fellow college student who spends most of his time doing computer stuff (yes I am guilty of being a CS major), I share your fears. I didnt like it when they blocked Napster- unfortunatly they had a good reason-bandwidth. We tried going to the Admins but were denied. Luckily, being the good CS geeks that we are, we found ways around it.
When you go before the Admin group at school, have your battle plan laid out. Know your strong points and be able to defend your weak points. Be sure to bring friends who share your concerns. If your Teachers agree with you, bring them along too. The bigger your group and more importantly, the better your arguments are, the better off you look to those in charge. If they see that you are not alone they will be more likely to deal fairly with you. Even if your solid, logical approach at this meeting fails, get creative. If the packet filter gets installed, experiment with different ways of getting around it. Now, I am in NO way promoting the idea of doing any type of damage to it or even causing more work for the admins., but see if there are certain things the filter misses. When you find that out you may be able to use it to your advantage. Just remember, try the system first (it may actually work) but there are always other ways.
There is gonna be one big splash in the Pacific at exactly;
2001-03-22 06:26:37Can I get my tshirt in a 2X please...
Depending on where you go in the country a hogie is a grinder is a submarine. But it is all still lunch!(A very good lunch too - ham and Swiss- sooo goood!) Just because the name changes doesnt mean the actual substance changes.
Just because you change somthing's name doesn't mean you change the thing. If I copy a file and rename it, what really changes? It still has all the same information but a few couple of bits say B and not A.
The FBI is still gonna use Carnivore/DCS1000 for the same purposes(hopefully all legal) but in the end, the system is still the same. Do they think that the public is that stupid that changing its name to an acronym will make people forget that it exists? I hope not!
Yeah, they did use a bunch of lawyers to try to achieve their goal of eliminating 'non-paying' customers. But if you ran the company, wouldn't you do everything in your power to stop people from "keeping" money that should belong to you for your service(no matter how much it cost).
No matter whose side you take, directTV or the hackers, One must admit that they did good and damm good to beat the hackers at their own game.
As for Game Over not yet. Let's just call this round as a point for DirectTV.
The goal that the media industries have isn't eliminating ALL piracy, it's eliminating mainstream piracy.
Everything, at one point or another, WILL be hacked, decoded etc. just because it is out there. The idea, as I understand it, is to make the entire process such an inconvience that it is easier to go out and spend the money on the real thing. Look at what it took to break it, the announcement came out in the begining of Sept. 2000 and it took till almost the end of January. And to pull it off took a grad student and a Phd canidate.
In the end those who make a living cracking and selling data/music/etc. will continue to make a living at it. The whole thing is to just make them work as hard if not harder than those who created the original work.
Does the idea of being able to track someone thru patterns in word choice/thought layout scare anyone else? It is not that I am worried about anyone tracking me cause i have nothing to hide, but the idea that it can happen is somewhat disturbing. Is Big Brother learning a new trick? Normally I dont give that much thought to the idea of being tracked, its a fact of life in today's society, but going this far seems somewhat ridiculous to me. But thats just my opinion.