Dmitri Gaskin drinks code with his cereal for breakfast every morning. He’s a jQuery whiz and a Drupal know-it-all. He contributes patches for both Open Source projects. In the Drupal world, he maintains many modules, is on the security team, and is involved in the upcoming Summer of Code as a mentor and administrator. Dmitri has given many talks on Drupal and jQuery, in such places as Logitech, Drupalcon and live on a radio show out of L.A. When Dmitri isn’t coding, a very rare occurrence, he is playing and composing contemporary music. And attending classes in the 6th
grade. (He’s only 12.)
… a truly amazing individual and a wonderful presentation on jQuery.
Sounds almost surreal … taking notes in class is copyright infringement? I know this case is not that clear cut, the Professor is partnering with an e-book manufacturer and they’re trying to sue an organisation that pays students to take good notes which are then published. The whole thing seems to hinge on the notion that notes taken in class are “derivative works”
“Students are buying a particular note packet to do well on a particular exam by a particular professor,” Sullivan said. “The commercial appeal of the product is that it is a copy or close derivative work of that professor’s intellectual property.”
But if a professor’s lectures are copyrighted, aren’t students already infringing just by taking the notes in the first place?
Yes, Sullivan answers, student notes do infringe, but they are protected infringement.
“That’s absolutely fair use,” Sullivan said.
What if a student took notes, but didn’t copy anything verbatim from a professor’s lecture, and then decided to publish the notes online or sell them?
“While that may not be slavish copy, the notes would be a derivative work and a copyright holder has the exclusive right to create derivative notes,” Sullivan said.
Whilst I recognise that this is an attempt to protect the intellectual property of the Professor, and the whole business around paying students to make good notes which are then published so lazy students who dont go to class can benefit from them is of course ethically and morally questionnable … but it seems to me that this lawsuit has wider implications … for example:
How long will it be before students will have to sign an EULA before walking into a class room? Maybe I just don’t get it but this feels so wrong.
Death
Nor dread nor hope attend
A dying animal;
A man awaits his end
Dreading and hoping all;
Many times he died,
Many times rose again.
A great man in his pride
Confronting murderous men
Casts derision upon
Supersession of breath;
He knows death to the bone
Man has created death.
-- by William Butler Yeats
So far 2008 has been a horrible year … another friend died last night … I’m struggling to focus at the moment, my thoughts feel increasingly morbid. Maybe I’m just having a bad day.
For those who don’t know what Danny is referring to The DataPortability movement is about ensuring the data you put into sites like Facebook or LinkedIn etc about yourself and your friends or contacts is available for you to move around between sites. This is still early days though and lot more work needs to be done before this becomes a reality but it’s encouraging that Facebook has agreed to work with the group and develop some standards.
Here’s a useful little trick, you can add a special Recent Items stack to your dock which behaves differently to normal stacks. It allows you to choose between Recent Applications, Recent Documents, Recent Servers, Favourite Volumes and Favourite Items … as shown in this screen shot:
To enable this you need to open a terminal window and copy the commands below into it:
They Flee from Me
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle tame and meek
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themselves in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise
Twenty times better; but once in special,
In thin array after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small;
And therewithal sweetly did me kiss,
And softly said, Dear heart, how like you this?
It was no dream, I lay broad waking.
But all is turned thorough my gentleness
Into a strange fashion of forsaking;
And I have leave to go of her goodness
And she also to use newfangleness.
But since that I so kindely am served,
I would fain know what she hath deserved.
-- by Thomas Wyatt
A friend of mine sent me a link to this video wanting to know how it made me feel. So here goes. The video is a a show produced by ABC News. It shows that Islamaphobia is very real and exists within the US, but that is not all it shows. I found it to be extremely moving because the show highlights both deep prejudices as well as a deep sense of justice that many everyday Americans possess.
The show uses a scenario played out in a popular bakery by a pair of actors as a way to see how the members of the public witnessing what is happening react. One actor plays a young Muslim woman in a hijab, the other actor plays a bigoted store clerk who refuses to serve her based on the fact that she is a muslim, he proceeds to insult her with all sorts of derogatory anti-Muslim remarks.
It’s the reaction of members of the public that is both deeply disturbing but also leaves me with a sense of hope. The majority of the bystanders who witnessed the incident chose not to get involved – tacit support for the clerk?. A minority spoke up and defended the young lady, whilst others, sadly, got involved vocally and supported the store clerk.
For some reason watching this unfold reminded me of videos I had seen in my history class at school depicting the terrible kinds of segregation that existed in American during most of the last century. Also as someone who has spent a lot of time in South Africa it evokes memories of apartheid and recalling the first hand accounts of men and women who lived under that regime.
In this case though I was genuinely moved by the actions of those bystanders who spoke up in defense of the young lady, who saw and injustice and spoke out against it. That fills me with hope.
There’s two old maxim’s that always spring to mind when I think of these things:
Evil is at its worst when it is practised
by ordinary men and women.
Evil thrives whilst good men and women
stand by and do nothing.
I’m hopeful that over time things will change but I guess the challenge for Muslims is to somehow increase the ratio of the informed to the misinformed. Since ultimately this is about a lack of understanding. How do we do this though? When the mass media spends so much of its time demonising Islam, rather than explaining that the warped views of a minority are not shared by the vast majority of Muslims.
This is one of the most energetic talks I’ve ever heard. Clifford Stoll is amazing! I’m not even going to try to explain what he talks about since he moves from one subject or interest to another so quickly it’s hard to keep up …
Strangely listening to Clifford talk reminded me of Alan, I’ve often sat in lectures, or my living room, or in a restaurant listening to him and like Clifford he is a wonderful teacher, but it can be difficult to keep up with him, it’s an assault on the senses so many ideas often tangential come flooding out, and yet it’s impossible not to learn something, and often rather profound.
Clifford ends his talk with this wonderful quote:
All truth is one. In this light may science and religion endevour here for the steady evolution of mankind from darkness to light from narrowness to broadmindedness from prejudice to tolerance. It is the voice of life which calls us to come and learn.
