cshen.ca

The fight against Turnitin.com is certainly easier if more students are aware of the issues and support the cause, this is why I wrote a 2000 word Peak article detailing the copyright and privacy issues as I know it. Wonder how many people will actually read it.

The Peak removed all the references from the article, so quotes are not properly attributed, or even attributed at all. Considering these were in-text references as opposed to footnotes (which I was told they won’t print), I’m kind of disappointed that they were not printed.

The article: The Peak | Original referenced draft

On the subject of religion, tragic events are often brought up. The religious use tragic events to support the claim that god loves you and will help you solve problems. A large list may be enumerated of people who after having suffered a tragic event turned to god for consolation and strength. On the other hand, the non-religious use tragic events to support the claim that god either hates you, don’t care, or is simply inept at his job. A large list may also be enumerated of people who shed their convictions as a result of tragic events, because surely god wouldn’t permit such horrible things to occur. The religious might counter this with a variety of possible arguments, all of which are open to further counter arguments, and so on. So what’s actually the case? Why do tragic events sometime convert people, and sometimes deconvert people?

We all know that Facebook has not had the best track record in the privacy department, with employees viewing profiles for fun, showing your profile to an employer, and having reserved the right to use your information at will. But apparently a new feature goes beyond all that, and actually collects information about your activity on other websites.

The new feature is the Facebook Beacon, you may have noticed it on your feed, something of the form “Jane Doe has played Pacman at Retroarcade”. If you have played a game at any website that uses the Beacon, you would have seen a Facebook-style pop-up at the bottom right corner of the screen, telling you that it is sending the information [of what your playing] to your Facebook profile. As with most Facebook features, there is, of course, a privacy option on it.

But that, apparently, isn’t enough.

Well not really, unless you consider me heretic, which I’m sure many do.

In any case, I was somewhat surprised that The Peak published my response to Lisa Freeman’s All Deserve Respect, which itself is a response to Graham Templeton’s article Religion Never Changes. I was expecting a much more fearful press – like high school papers (which I am all too familiar with) – that tiptoes around anything that might have the slightest chance of being taken as offensive. I guess it was naive of me to think that, judging form the numerous other controversial articles that The Peak publishes. An actually independent press, how wonderful! This is one of the reasons I like university.

With that said, The Peak did make some small edits to sentence structures here and there, which improved the readability in some places, and diminished the flow in others. The content remained untouched (and rightly so). But for anyone interested in reading the original unedited version, it is available from my archive.

Exams

Why is it that every professor gives midterm exams within two weeks of every other professor? As if we’re all enrolled solely in their class and no other. Why are projects and papers all due at the same time as well? What’s so attractive about week twelve?!

Turnitin.com

Because of the aforementioned exams, I took an extended break from Turnitin.com issues. Here is a little update:

• I mentioned earlier that the implied consent constitutes a contract. There is no need to go as far as to qualify the implied consent as such. To begin with, it is already unreasonable to require the wavier of civil liberties and intellectual property rights as a condition of enrolling in a course.