Well, technically they can ask you to stop if the building image is copyrighted (as many are). The completely arbitrary definition of a copyright-violating "professional" and an acceptable "amateur" taking snapshots seems to be the use of a tripod. for example, you can take pictures of Rockefeller Center with a hand-held camera but as soon as you set a tripod leg on the ground they will ask you to leave. But if you put your tripod down one inch outside their property line you can shoot away while they watch. In NYC, propery lines outside large buildings are conveniently marked on the sidewalks. You might still violate the copyright if you publish the picture for profit, but they cannot stop you from taking the pictures.
I also think that they cannot make you delete the photographs, as copyright law only deals with subsequent publicaton of those photos. But they are perfectly within their rights to ASK (or even insist) that you delete them. You are just under no obligation to do so.
This is the same concept as a Terry Stop request for ID, where the police can ask you for identification at any time and in any circumstance, but in most (but not all) states you do not have to give it.
American light water reactors were design explicitly to have a negative coolant void and temperature coefficient.
Which is why the Three Mile Island reactor could never have lost its coolant water, could never have had its core partly exposed, and could never have come within minutes of breaching containment?
We're talking about FAILURE mode here, not design mode.
Of course it depends on how you define "failure mode", but a reactor core open to air and out of control at Chernobyl and a reactor core open to air and almost out of control at TMI sounds pretty similar to me.
And in fact, the Chernobyl accident was caused by operators disabling its safeties and pushing the reactor beyond its safe limits - for a military experiment. The act of scramming was only the initiating event, not the cause.
Religious fanaticism, discriminatory hiring practices and the glass ceiling are still a major problem in many American companies to this day. I guess that you could fight these practices in court but in the long run, do you really want to work for people like this?
Let the best talent go to where we are appreciated and our quirks (religious beliefs, the shoes you wear, your not so politically correct conversation or personal convictions) matter the least.
Unfortunatly that doesn't address the problem. Just not working for a company that disciminates may not be an option. The number of available jobs are not unlimited nor are the relative quality of jobs the same. If a person could'nt get a job at a white-owned company would you say the solution is for them is to just go get a job at a black-owned company?
Comapanies that violate anti-discrimination laws should be sued, and prosecuted.
Not so rare any more. Pretty much all the tunnels & bridges in NYC are "no photo" zones.
Not true. These no-photo rules were imposed in the security-frenzy that was NYC immediately after 9/11. When things calmed down objections were raised by citizens and the rules were rescinded. In 2007, revised rules about commercial street photography in NYC specifically allowed photogrphy by ordinary citizens and visitors.
That does not mean that a lot of people, including cops, don't know or care that the rules were changed back to allow photography. Those signs you linked to are probably still there because their removal is at the bottom of the city's To-Do list. If they are true to form the city might get around to taking them down around 2020.
In any event they were the dumbest rules ever devised. If I were a terrorist i could take 10,000 secret pictures of subways, bridges and train stations and no one would ever know. What was the the point of hassling John or Mary from Debuque?
Not unethical - just sloppy and incompetent. On any job there is usually one and only person who is able to anticipate problems and do "what ifs" to head off problems. Everyone else is just doing their 9-5. Clearly the spacecraft people didn't have one of those.
i am increasingly depressed by the sheer incompetence of most people in this country, from assembling hamburgers to Mars landers.
Resistive heating can be 100% efficient: every watt you purchase becomes a watt of heat in your room (until it leaks out the window).
But that's not efficient for heating.
You are mixing qualitative and quantitative measures inappropriately. Converting 100% of electrical power into heat is very efficient (particularly compared to natural gas or oil furnaces) - it just isn't the MOST efficient heating method, which is a heat pump.
"The trouble with these bullshit figures is that they are unrealistic, they assume suspension of disbelief."
No they're not. The stats on how many millions of gallons of gas that could be saved if everyone had proper tire pressure are real, but not everyone is going to inflate their tires properly. Same for the millions of gallons "possible" if all coffee grounds were processed into biodiesel - it isn't going to happen but it does give an idea of the magnitude of the fuel potentially available.
I could see one person collecting coffee grounds from all the coffee shops in his area weekly and converting it to biodiesel in his garage. That could easily be enough to fuel ONE car for free - but that's fine. If one person in each of the 10,000 communities around the nation did that it would be 10,000 cars off the oil treadmill.
The population of the world is so large that anything that can produce a few ml of fuel from each person will result in a lot of free fuel.
There are big battles and there are small battles. Not everyone can fight the big ones. Fighting a small personal battle does not demean anyone else's fight..
it's not like they expelled her for sending the e-mail in the first place. They just told her "now stop it, or you'll face disciplinary action", and she said no. Her e-mail was already out, so she should have said ok and been done with it.
You really have a problem with logic, don't you. First, they haven't expelled her for anything - there has simply been a complaint filed with the University.
Second, there was no second bloody message! It isn't a violation of ANY rule to simply say you are going to send another message! And since no second message was sent how could she be punished for NOT sending it? That makes no sense.
The complaint specifically addressed the sending of the FIRST AND ONLY message. The complaint is what the complaint is - not what you say it is.
Again, I'm not going to get into a tit for tat here with someone who will clearly rationalize any weird position just so he can be right.
GSR-3.04 No student shall represent a group falsely or use the resources of a group without proper authorization.
What about that sentence leads you to think that she wasn't accused of misrepresenting herself? It's right there in black and white. It's a simple sentence.
I'm not going to get in a slashdot dustup where you are always coming up with more and more convoluted rationalizations as to why you just HAVE to be right. The sentence above, which you yourself pasted here from the complaint clearly states she is accused of misrepresenting herself.
She did send it, nobody "refused to allow her to send it".
If my neighbor refused to allow me to walk across his lawn but I did it anyway, would that mean he didn't "refuse to allow it"? No.
In any event, whether the denial of permission occurred before or after she sent the message matters not. Under the University's written rules of email she had every right to send it. The topic was allowed (a change of University policy) and she was sending it in her official capacity as Student Council member. As for necessity, the short comment period dictated by the University made the message necessary since there was no other way to contact all the faculty in the time available.
That the email was acceptable to send may not have been what the University INTENDED when they wrote the email rules, but that's neither here nor there - the way the rule was worded it allowed sending of the email.
You are making a lot of assumptions. I read nothing about an email to her from the IT department. In the complaint I read about a face-to-face meeting in an office. In any event, it doesn't matter if her message was sent prior to or after being told she could not send it.
But she IS representing a University office. She is an elected representative of the Student Council. The Student Council has been considered an adjunct part of the University's administration in every University I have ever attended.
First, she didn't break any rules - that's just what the complaint alleges. Bulk emails about university policy changes are black-letter allowed in the email policy.
Second, you cannot sign away your rights. No agreement you make that requires you to relinquish constitutional rights is valid. And since the University is a governmental organization, it isn't even a question in this case.
Third, by setting a very short comment period about the policy changes, the University essentially made bulk email the only way an individual could express their opinions effectively. Had the University set a comment period longer than two weeks she may have been able to use other means, but they didn't. The short time period plus the prohibition for bulk email amounts to clear prior-restraint.
The part that I don't understand is why she would fight it. Why would you fight to stay at a school that sucks when you can easily go to a school that doesn't suck.
Yeah man - you're right. I never could figure out why all those African-Americans didn't just take their money and go to some other country when they had a problem here. Or why, in the 30s, all those coal miners just didn't go work in some other mine to be killed in. (Its sarcasm, people).
or does anyone else think that universities are treating students more and more like cattle these days? It's as if the concept of helping students goes flying out the window after the university takes their money.
I agree except for the "more and more" part. It's ALWAYS been like that. Many students, over many decades, have blazed the trail a'fore ya.
More likely she is the victim of some jobsworth in an administrative office who was on the mailing list and has nothing more important to do.
Exactly. The complaint came from the Network Administrator and IT person who refused to allow her to send it in the first place. Their complaint language was petty and unprofessional. Apparently the complaint did not come from anyone who actually received the message.
Most people have interpreted the event as a complaint by the University against the student, when in fact it was made by an IT guy TO the University who was irritated that the uppity student refused to do what he told her. In my opinion he tried t misuse his authority to teach her a lesson. He may soon regret having done that.
I thought that too, at first, but then I noticed in TFA that her e-mail was not informative but rather dissension.
1) I read the email and it seemed clearly informative to me.
2) Additionally, what makes you say that dissent isn't informative? Dissent could be called the very definition of free speech and information distribution. The simple fact that someone was objecting to the policy changes is informative in itself.
The complaint is written in very self-serving language and attempts to make the student look as unreasonable as possible. Now that she has FIFA representation I think the truth will come out and the complainants will be embarrassed.
I can easily imagine this scenario:
ADMINISTRATOR: You cannot send this email because you need advanced approval. The approval committee meets monthly so it will take about six weeks, even if it is approved. We'll let you know.
STUDENT: But the comment period set by the University for the policy change is only two weeks!
ADMINISTRATOR: That's too bad, but those are the rules!
STUDENT: That's crazy! I'm sending it anyway.
ADMINISTRATOR: You do and you could be suspended.
STUDENT: Try it.
My opinion? YOU GO GIRL! You have rights and you did not violate the Unversity's email policy because the email was about a University Policy change, which is specifically allowed.
The complainants' are also claiming she violated the University policy against misrepresenting herself in an email (even though she signed the letter with her own name). Their absurd logic: because users expect email to be approved she was misrepresenting herself as being an approved sender by sending an unapproved email. If that is the complainants' best logic they are clearly being vindictive and attempting to hurt her as much as possible. Other wording of the complaint is also written to make her sound a unreasonable as possible. Frankly, the complaint filed with the University sounds like it was written by a bunch of immature jerks with over-sized egos with delusions of being lawyers.
At first I was tending to support the University in this, but after reading the charges, the original email and the Rules it is clear to me that the student is correct. Because the email addressed changes in University policy it is black-letter allowed to be sent in bulk. The fact that the University had set a very short time for comments on the proposed changes just made it all the more appropriate for the message to be sent in the fastest manner.
It is clear that she wasn't being a "good little student" by politely doing what the University IT person told her she had to do. He then clearly decided he couldn't have any uppity students violating HIS network rules.
I support her 100%, and I hope FIFA kicks their legal butts.
The new Dr. Who is surprisingly good. By "new" I mean the NEW new, with the latest Doctor. I couldn't understand a word the previous two new Doctors said, much less any of their side-kicks. It was like they were all speaking a foreign language! At least they are all now speaking a form of English where closed-captioning isn't necessary.
I had to use CC for some of Primeval, but after a promising start, that show devolved into major suckiness. Problem solved - I don't have to CC it because I no longer watch it.
Jeffersons - All in the Family Lavern and Shirley - Happy Days Mork and Mindy - also Happy Days (I think)
HOwever, given the hatred that most scifi fans showed toward BSG before it aired, you never can tell what Caprica will be like. Most thought that BSG couldn't possibly be any good, and now the same folks think Caprica can't possibly be any good.
Maybe it will be bad, but people should stop deciding that it stinks before they've even seen a single episode.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, technically they can ask you to stop if the building image is copyrighted (as many are). The completely arbitrary definition of a copyright-violating "professional" and an acceptable "amateur" taking snapshots seems to be the use of a tripod. for example, you can take pictures of Rockefeller Center with a hand-held camera but as soon as you set a tripod leg on the ground they will ask you to leave. But if you put your tripod down one inch outside their property line you can shoot away while they watch. In NYC, propery lines outside large buildings are conveniently marked on the sidewalks. You might still violate the copyright if you publish the picture for profit, but they cannot stop you from taking the pictures.
I also think that they cannot make you delete the photographs, as copyright law only deals with subsequent publicaton of those photos. But they are perfectly within their rights to ASK (or even insist) that you delete them. You are just under no obligation to do so.
This is the same concept as a Terry Stop request for ID, where the police can ask you for identification at any time and in any circumstance, but in most (but not all) states you do not have to give it.
Which is why the Three Mile Island reactor could never have lost its coolant water, could never have had its core partly exposed, and could never have come within minutes of breaching containment?
We're talking about FAILURE mode here, not design mode.
Of course it depends on how you define "failure mode", but a reactor core open to air and out of control at Chernobyl and a reactor core open to air and almost out of control at TMI sounds pretty similar to me.
And in fact, the Chernobyl accident was caused by operators disabling its safeties and pushing the reactor beyond its safe limits - for a military experiment. The act of scramming was only the initiating event, not the cause.
Basically unless you're hiring for clergy or similar you're not going to be able to get away with it.
Companies get away with a lot of crap in hiring and firing all the time. Being wrong and "getting away with it" are two etirely different things.
Unfortunatly that doesn't address the problem. Just not working for a company that disciminates may not be an option. The number of available jobs are not unlimited nor are the relative quality of jobs the same. If a person could'nt get a job at a white-owned company would you say the solution is for them is to just go get a job at a black-owned company?
Comapanies that violate anti-discrimination laws should be sued, and prosecuted.
Not true. These no-photo rules were imposed in the security-frenzy that was NYC immediately after 9/11. When things calmed down objections were raised by citizens and the rules were rescinded. In 2007, revised rules about commercial street photography in NYC specifically allowed photogrphy by ordinary citizens and visitors.
That does not mean that a lot of people, including cops, don't know or care that the rules were changed back to allow photography. Those signs you linked to are probably still there because their removal is at the bottom of the city's To-Do list. If they are true to form the city might get around to taking them down around 2020.
In any event they were the dumbest rules ever devised. If I were a terrorist i could take 10,000 secret pictures of subways, bridges and train stations and no one would ever know. What was the the point of hassling John or Mary from Debuque?
Where are my mod points when I need them!
I used to cringe at meetings when people would say "automagically", thinking themselves great wits.
He was probably trying to figure out if you actually thought that was subtle humor.
Ten to one you didn't get the job and attributed the reason to their lack of humor. Now that's funny.
Not unethical - just sloppy and incompetent. On any job there is usually one and only person who is able to anticipate problems and do "what ifs" to head off problems. Everyone else is just doing their 9-5. Clearly the spacecraft people didn't have one of those.
i am increasingly depressed by the sheer incompetence of most people in this country, from assembling hamburgers to Mars landers.
You are mixing qualitative and quantitative measures inappropriately. Converting 100% of electrical power into heat is very efficient (particularly compared to natural gas or oil furnaces) - it just isn't the MOST efficient heating method, which is a heat pump.
"The trouble with these bullshit figures is that they are unrealistic, they assume suspension of disbelief."
No they're not. The stats on how many millions of gallons of gas that could be saved if everyone had proper tire pressure are real, but not everyone is going to inflate their tires properly. Same for the millions of gallons "possible" if all coffee grounds were processed into biodiesel - it isn't going to happen but it does give an idea of the magnitude of the fuel potentially available.
I could see one person collecting coffee grounds from all the coffee shops in his area weekly and converting it to biodiesel in his garage. That could easily be enough to fuel ONE car for free - but that's fine. If one person in each of the 10,000 communities around the nation did that it would be 10,000 cars off the oil treadmill.
The population of the world is so large that anything that can produce a few ml of fuel from each person will result in a lot of free fuel.
There are big battles and there are small battles. Not everyone can fight the big ones. Fighting a small personal battle does not demean anyone else's fight..
You really have a problem with logic, don't you. First, they haven't expelled her for anything - there has simply been a complaint filed with the University.
Second, there was no second bloody message! It isn't a violation of ANY rule to simply say you are going to send another message! And since no second message was sent how could she be punished for NOT sending it? That makes no sense.
The complaint specifically addressed the sending of the FIRST AND ONLY message. The complaint is what the complaint is - not what you say it is.
Again, I'm not going to get into a tit for tat here with someone who will clearly rationalize any weird position just so he can be right.
I simply don't get you...
GSR-3.04 No student shall represent a group falsely or use the resources of a group without proper authorization.
What about that sentence leads you to think that she wasn't accused of misrepresenting herself? It's right there in black and white. It's a simple sentence.
I'm not going to get in a slashdot dustup where you are always coming up with more and more convoluted rationalizations as to why you just HAVE to be right. The sentence above, which you yourself pasted here from the complaint clearly states she is accused of misrepresenting herself.
If my neighbor refused to allow me to walk across his lawn but I did it anyway, would that mean he didn't "refuse to allow it"? No.
In any event, whether the denial of permission occurred before or after she sent the message matters not. Under the University's written rules of email she had every right to send it. The topic was allowed (a change of University policy) and she was sending it in her official capacity as Student Council member. As for necessity, the short comment period dictated by the University made the message necessary since there was no other way to contact all the faculty in the time available.
That the email was acceptable to send may not have been what the University INTENDED when they wrote the email rules, but that's neither here nor there - the way the rule was worded it allowed sending of the email.
You are making a lot of assumptions. I read nothing about an email to her from the IT department. In the complaint I read about a face-to-face meeting in an office. In any event, it doesn't matter if her message was sent prior to or after being told she could not send it.
But she IS representing a University office. She is an elected representative of the Student Council. The Student Council has been considered an adjunct part of the University's administration in every University I have ever attended.
Wrong. Read the complaint! It's a two-parter. 1)sending unauthorized bulk email, and 2)misrepresenting herself.
For three reasons:
First, she didn't break any rules - that's just what the complaint alleges. Bulk emails about university policy changes are black-letter allowed in the email policy.
Second, you cannot sign away your rights. No agreement you make that requires you to relinquish constitutional rights is valid. And since the University is a governmental organization, it isn't even a question in this case.
Third, by setting a very short comment period about the policy changes, the University essentially made bulk email the only way an individual could express their opinions effectively. Had the University set a comment period longer than two weeks she may have been able to use other means, but they didn't. The short time period plus the prohibition for bulk email amounts to clear prior-restraint.
Yeah man - you're right. I never could figure out why all those African-Americans didn't just take their money and go to some other country when they had a problem here. Or why, in the 30s, all those coal miners just didn't go work in some other mine to be killed in. (Its sarcasm, people).
or does anyone else think that universities are treating students more and more like cattle these days? It's as if the concept of helping students goes flying out the window after the university takes their money.
I agree except for the "more and more" part. It's ALWAYS been like that. Many students, over many decades, have blazed the trail a'fore ya.
More likely she is the victim of some jobsworth in an administrative office who was on the mailing list and has nothing more important to do.
Exactly. The complaint came from the Network Administrator and IT person who refused to allow her to send it in the first place. Their complaint language was petty and unprofessional. Apparently the complaint did not come from anyone who actually received the message.
Most people have interpreted the event as a complaint by the University against the student, when in fact it was made by an IT guy TO the University who was irritated that the uppity student refused to do what he told her. In my opinion he tried t misuse his authority to teach her a lesson. He may soon regret having done that.
I thought that too, at first, but then I noticed in TFA that her e-mail was not informative but rather dissension.
1) I read the email and it seemed clearly informative to me.
2) Additionally, what makes you say that dissent isn't informative? Dissent could be called the very definition of free speech and information distribution. The simple fact that someone was objecting to the policy changes is informative in itself.
The complaint is written in very self-serving language and attempts to make the student look as unreasonable as possible. Now that she has FIFA representation I think the truth will come out and the complainants will be embarrassed.
I can easily imagine this scenario:
ADMINISTRATOR: You cannot send this email because you need advanced approval. The approval committee meets monthly so it will take about six weeks, even if it is approved. We'll let you know.
STUDENT: But the comment period set by the University for the policy change is only two weeks!
ADMINISTRATOR: That's too bad, but those are the rules!
STUDENT: That's crazy! I'm sending it anyway.
ADMINISTRATOR: You do and you could be suspended.
STUDENT: Try it.
My opinion? YOU GO GIRL! You have rights and you did not violate the Unversity's email policy because the email was about a University Policy change, which is specifically allowed.
The complainants' are also claiming she violated the University policy against misrepresenting herself in an email (even though she signed the letter with her own name). Their absurd logic: because users expect email to be approved she was misrepresenting herself as being an approved sender by sending an unapproved email. If that is the complainants' best logic they are clearly being vindictive and attempting to hurt her as much as possible. Other wording of the complaint is also written to make her sound a unreasonable as possible. Frankly, the complaint filed with the University sounds like it was written by a bunch of immature jerks with over-sized egos with delusions of being lawyers.
At first I was tending to support the University in this, but after reading the charges, the original email and the Rules it is clear to me that the student is correct. Because the email addressed changes in University policy it is black-letter allowed to be sent in bulk. The fact that the University had set a very short time for comments on the proposed changes just made it all the more appropriate for the message to be sent in the fastest manner.
It is clear that she wasn't being a "good little student" by politely doing what the University IT person told her she had to do. He then clearly decided he couldn't have any uppity students violating HIS network rules.
I support her 100%, and I hope FIFA kicks their legal butts.
The new Dr. Who is surprisingly good. By "new" I mean the NEW new, with the latest Doctor. I couldn't understand a word the previous two new Doctors said, much less any of their side-kicks. It was like they were all speaking a foreign language! At least they are all now speaking a form of English where closed-captioning isn't necessary.
I had to use CC for some of Primeval, but after a promising start, that show devolved into major suckiness. Problem solved - I don't have to CC it because I no longer watch it.
Jeffersons - All in the Family
Lavern and Shirley - Happy Days
Mork and Mindy - also Happy Days (I think)
HOwever, given the hatred that most scifi fans showed toward BSG before it aired, you never can tell what Caprica will be like. Most thought that BSG couldn't possibly be any good, and now the same folks think Caprica can't possibly be any good.
Maybe it will be bad, but people should stop deciding that it stinks before they've even seen a single episode.