Archive for the ‘I Hate It Here’ Category

If you think it’s bad, it’s worse.

Monday, April 7th, 2008

So it’s been a few weeks now since RIT has started following their new DMCA policy, and it’s everything I knew it would be. Instead of a generic rant on this, I will share an adventure of a co-worker of mine. We’ll call him… Dan.

Dan got up one morning to check his email and was confused when he couldn’t connect to the server. He couldn’t check his news. He was disabled. Dan had been hit with a notice for sharing an episode of Arrested Development. One he didn’t have. He was accused, and had no internet access. He was forced to go through a limited proxy to get to an internal RIT site which had a big long shpiel about filesharing and why it’s bad and what it means that he got accused, and he had to click some “I Agree” button saying he was a bad man to get his internet connection back to full power.

Yeah, it only ate a day of his life, it doesn’t have any lasting effects, it was too early in the quarter to really mess him up. But he got hit for sharing a file he didn’t even have. This is as close as it comes to case & point. The innocent should not be punished. Irresponsible entities should not run amok…
Why can’t RIT get it right?

Posted in Beyond the Bricks, Campus Safety, I Hate It Here, Technology | Comments

McCarthyism part 2.

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

RIT’s Fearless Cleader has not felt it in him to respond to my most recent letter. Now rather than use my RIT access to place my concerns directly into his mail inbox I will stay in the shoes of the “average” student, which is to say I will pay exorbitant sums of money so that administration can ignore me. So since The Banjo-Man doesn’t care about what I have to say, I’ll tell the Internet. So this has become another open letter to the RIT President.

Dr. Destler,

I am responding to the post you made following the flood of email concerning the new RIT DMCA policy. I am sure you’ve gotten even more messages following that response of students who are supremely disappointed by the way RIT has decided to handle this. Our new policy looks like it was written by Joseph McCarthy. How can you possibly believe that the revocation of network access is not a consequence? At an institute like RIT, where professors are often giving their midterm examinations before students have memorized what rooms their classes are in, even a week without access to the network could spell disaster if a class requires online interaction or coursework submission. And why is it suddenly acceptable to do something like this to someone without ANY real investigation or evidence? Are we suddenly guilty until proven innocent? And while it’s true that being forced to denounce an act you may or may not have committed to have the punishment rescinded is NOT an admission of guilt, it is very distasteful.

The RIAA and the MPAA are well-known at this point for blanket or shotgun style threats, hitting people almost at random with threats of legal action and accusations of IP infringement. Are you really going to let these people make RIT an instrument of their witch hunt by taking action against students without proof?

Can ANYONE tell me who thinks this is a good idea?

Posted in Campus Safety, I Hate It Here, Random, Technology | Comments

CUE: RIAA Inquisitor enters, upstage right.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

Today, the 14th of January in the year 2008 RIT has taken the first step in caving to the RIAA/MPAA witchhunt. An e-mail has been sent to the students and staff concerning the “rampant disregard for intellectual property rights”. RIT has outlined a 3 step escelation system for dealing with accusations lodged against RIT students and faculty. The wording in this e-mail is troubling and important. The first bullet point in the e-mail is this:

“An initial reported copyright violation”

(Emphasis has been added).

Now while it is true that the consequence at this level is merely temporary disconnection, the actions taken quickly get serious and at an institute which is so fast paced even a temporary revocation of network access can pose major setbacks to those in courses of study where it is vital. Especially since all that is required to enter this particular track is a REPORTED violation. And that is VERY disconcerting.

The message does mention the accused will have an “opportunity” to defend themselves after such an accusation…presumably once their connectivity has been restored. Of course the message doesn’t say how to do this, it doesn’t say where it is. So do they send it to you after your get accused? So you can try to assemble your defense after your “probation” is up? I’d think something like this would be useful to tell everyone, guilty or innocent, before they even need to worry about it.

If I’m wrong with my interpration I will fully redact the insinuations of this post and apologize to those involved at RIT. In closing I am also including a letter I have written to President Destler. Feel free to resend this or add your names to it.

Dr. Destler,
I have just received the mass media message sent out to the student body regarding the actions being taken by RIT to curb IP infringement. And this message seems to indicate that immediate action will be taken upon receipt of an accusation. The evidence lies in the phrasing: “An initial reported copyright violation”. This says a REPORTED violation, not necessarily an actual confirmed violation. The message then links to the legal download information page and makes a down-played reference to the idea that the accused still technically have some rights and can contest the action…but again this is the action and not the accusation. However I have read the RIT Computer Code of Conduct and Acceptable Use Policy, and I can’t find the exact procedure for defending oneself. My question is…
What is this procedure, where is it, and when was RIT intending to put it out in clear text for those who are looking?

Posted in I Hate It Here, Public Safety, Technology | Comments

Security guards with Segways: Useful tool or useless toy?

Friday, March 30th, 2007

Public Safety at RIT recently purchased at least three Segway Personal Transporter devices, and sources say they plan to purchase at least twenty more. These are the little two-wheeled wonders that stand on their own and are moved simply by leaning forward or back. Why these would be purchased by a security organization on a large campus is obvious - they’re considerably faster than walking. But it’s a bad idea.

At $3000 each, with three totaling at least one third of one year’s tuition at RIT (twice one year’s tuition if the twenty are purchased), this purchase should have been better considered. Yes, the Segways can be useful outside. But a significant amount of the area that is a part of the RIT campus is in fact inside. Indoors, a Segway device can pose considerable danger to students, faculty, other staff, and even equipment - particularly during busy hours, which for some areas is all day. Outdoors, it can also pose a danger, especially on the already overcrowded Quarter Mile. Segways also can provide an advantage over walking in speed, but the RIT campus is criss-crossed with roads, and there is nowhere on campus that a Segway could be used to access more quickly than getting into a car, and as Public Safety does not consider themselves subject to parking regulations such as fire zones and striped areas, they park very near to any building, inside which a Segway is unsafe anyway. And again, although some models of the Segway can maintain speeds of up to 12 mph, actually attempting such speeds on campus would be extremely dangerous, as the Quarter Mile and other walkways are nearly always busy.

This recent purchase is a waste of students’ tuition. After Campus Safety was renamed to Public Safety (for reasons that can only be described as PR) a few weeks ago, and all of its vehicles were repainted and signs changed literally overnight at no doubt significant cost to the institution, the purchase of what amounts to expensive, showy toys for Public Safety is nothing more than a slap in the face.

Public Safety’s slogan is “It’s all about RESPECT.” All I’m asking is that Public Safety show some respect. I don’t know that I can speak for all students, but I believe I speak for a majority of the student body when I say that I’m paying for an education, not for security guards to ride around on glorified scooters that are at best gaudy toys and at worst a safety hazard. Respecting that would be a good start. Return those shiny little toys of yours and spend the money on something that benefits the community at large.

—

(Added 3/30/07) A student has pointed out to the editor that in addition to the fact that the Segways would provide little, if any, benefit to Public Safety staff, they would be all but useless during winter, which comprises a significant part of the school year here in Rochester. Due to the fact that they would be unsafe on ice, such low-weight vehicles cannot possibly achieve a sigificant amount of traction, and that the salt that is liberally applied to road and path surfaces here would likely corrode a Segway to near-uselessness in a matter of days, they could only be used inside, and as stated earlier in this post, it is not safe to do so. So let’s add this factor to the earlier discussion - not only are these little more than toys, they can’t even be used during nearly a third of the school year? Should Public Safety even be testing these in the first place, much less planning to purchase even more?

Now a critique like this would be amiss without providing an alternative option. Let’s assume for now that Public Safety does in fact need another mode of transportation in addition to the current fleet of automotives currently used. Let’s use bicycles as contrast. A mid-range mountain bike, which should be sufficient for individual transportation around campus, averages about $300-400, less than one sixth of the total cost of a Segway. Bikes require little or no training - most people already have experience with them. One can easily maintain 12 mph or even faster on a bicycle. Segways can’t handle particularly rough terrain, soft ground, or thin trails, which mountain bikes are specifically designed for. Security is also a factor. Since a Segway cannot be safely used inside, if a Public Safety person wanted to go inside, they either would have to leave the Segway outside or park it somewhere secure, which may be a significant distance away. Bikes, on the other hand, can be secured with a $15 chain to any random stationary piece of metal. There is also significantly less temptation to hijack a bike or strip it down for parts. There is also the issue of maintenance. Segways probably cannot be maintained by consumers or owners, and even if they can, the parts will still be expensive as Segways have not yet reached a commodity status. A bike, on the other hand, can be stripped down and rebuilt by anyone with even the most basic mechanical skill and bike parts are easily and cheaply available at many stores. The only advantage Segways seem to have over bikes is that they stand out, they’re flashy. Public Safety is wasting an awful lot of money just to look more imposing.


Posted in Campus Safety, I Hate It Here, Public Safety | Comments

How dragons drove me out of my home

Wednesday, January 31st, 2007

If you’re an RIT student who lives in the dorms, you’re probably thinking “fuck the dorms, I want to live someplace way more ballin and shit”. Well, I can officially warn you kids: the dorms are way more ballin than being homeless. Because RIT kicked me out of the dorms and I don’t know where I’m going to sleep tonight, or any night for the next week for that matter.

It all started this past weekend….

I found a floormate’s MySpace profile, in which his username is “dragon 420″. I started to refer to him as dragon 420, or simply “dragon”. Lulz ensued. There was a facebook group created, the “NRH2 Dragon 420 Club” it was known as. Maybe this was wrong of me, personally I didn’t think anyone would be terribly offended. All it was was a facebook group with his MySpace “about me” info posted as a description. It was all things that he wrote. It was a user name he chose for himself. It was himself he chose to be offended by.

Alright, I made fun of him. It was a joke, who could have known how offended he would be? He never asked me to stop, at that point in time, I certainly didn’t realize the apparent effects calling someone a dragon could have. That didn’t last very long though. On Tuesday morning I learned the true seriousness of a dragon related offense. I’ve felt “the wrath of the dragon” if you will.

I got a call at 8:15 or so in the morning, which I was quite angry about before I knew it was campus safety as I had gone to sleep around 5:30 having been up all night working on a project. When I am told I need to come to the campus safety office in Grace Watson, I have no idea what to expect or what it could be for. I get there and I am told that I need to fill out a statement about calling him a dragon and creating a facebook group and… regarding my anti-Semitic actions and biased comments over the course of this year. I didn’t even know what to think about this. At no point in my life have I said anything anti-Semitic to this person in anyway. Yet a few hours later, when I finally get a chance to try to get back to sleep for a few hours, I am woken up to yet another Campus Safety phone call. They issue me a letter formally charging me with violating 6 different counts of RIT policy. I will list those now:

Violation of RIT Policies (Sec. B, #8 , page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
RIT Terms of Occupancy
RIT Policy Prohibiting Discrimination and Harassment
Harassment (Sec. B, #4, page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Violation of the Law (Sec. B, #13, page 6 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Disorderly Conduct (Sec. B, #16, page 6 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)
Inappropriate Behavior (Sec. B, #3, page 5 of the RIT Student Rights and Responsibilities Handbook, 2006-07)

And then this:

You have been interimly removed from RIT housing. Effective at 7:00 p.m. tonight (1/30/07) you are to remove your immediate belongings from
your residence hall room and find another place to live off the RIT campus until this has been resolved in a hearing. Should you need to retrieve
additional belongings, you will need to be escorted to your room by Campus Safety on an appointment basis.

They gave me this at 4:30. I had 2 hours and 30 minutes to find someplace to stay for the night. Keep in mind I am a first year student from out of state with almost no contacts off my floor, and certainly less than that who live off campus. This is a result of telling a kid very much infatuated with dragons that he is, in fact, a dragon.

Not only am I not a racist or an anti-Semite, being falsely accused at the expense of my perceived character and integrity, but I’ve also missed two classes, didn’t get to finish a Java project I had due, and will most likely fail my math exam this evening due to the amount of my time and resources I’m being forced to spend on something so frivolous. So I suppose the lesson to learn from this is, if there is ever someone you don’t like, who offends you by any means, for anything… go directly to campus safety and make up a story about how you have been attacked with bias harassment with absolutely no basis for it, and you’ll get them kicked out of housing.

This is the morning of day 2, I’m sitting in the SAU as I type this story. I’ll be roaming the RIT campus all day for about the next week or so I imagine. It’s time to go get some breakfast I am thinking, unless they decided to interim remove me from my meal plan as well.

Posted in Campus Safety, I Hate It Here | Comments

I Hate it Here 1/5

Friday, January 5th, 2007

I would hope you have figured out what goes here by now.

When one comes to this festering cesspool of brick and wind, one’s eyes tend to be drawn and then promptly destroyed by the rusting carcass of metal that sits in the middle of the campus. Yes, that’s right, the large, obnoxious, pig-raper of an installation known to one and all as the Sentinel.

Now being somewhat of an artist myself, I have to look at it and wonder, what exactly they hoped to accomplish. I see the metal and look at untold numbers of smaller, tasteful works that could have been created by students, I see the potential for a symbol that actually means something to the student body sitting there. I also see a giant penis.

I know Freud would be having a field day, but I could care less. The jizz encrusted shell of my pants is more of an art that this overblown tribute to someone’s penis, Simone, Galisano, Samuel L Jackson… who it is matters not. Christ.

I still hate it here.

Posted in I Hate It Here | Comments

I Hate it Here 12/29

Friday, December 29th, 2006

I still hate it here.

When this gets posted, I probably won’t be at RIT. I’ll probably be far from this hellhole, in quite another hellhole. Spending some time home for the holidays. With the ol’ folks. And by ol’ folks, I mean the geriatrics that I call my parents.

Now, if you’ve ever attended RIT, you know of a place called The Hub. It’s a little known fact that there exists another place called “The Hub” at RIT, where you can get Printing and Postal work done. They’ll charge you out the ass, mess up your print orders, and not have any of the postal supplies you need, but they’re still the best place on campus to get printing actually done, rather than just stuck in print queues.

But the real RIT hub, as run by a proud stream of crazies, is/was, a DC++ hub. It was a great place. A place to share important group project files. A place to put your work to be seen. A place for the people to socialize in a chat that proved who had the biggest net-penis. Because, at RIT, a net-penis gets way more use than a real one ever would.

Recently, RIT shut down this fine bastion of free speech. In fact, they pulled the plug on ALL internet access by the user, as well as placing them under judicial review. I’m not gonna comment on judicial review: The user in question will probably have done that by the time this appears. More, I’m going to state how sad it is that an academic institution should feel the need to destroy something as tiny and yet vital to the RIT community as the hub.

There’s no question: The hub was terribly abused. It was most used for copyright infringement. Well, copyright infringement as defined by the RIAA, anyway. Their definition, to put it simply, is transferring data. Because, for any group of bits, SOMEBODY owns the copyright, and therefore somebody must be paid every time they are moved.

Unfortunately, that’s not how most of the world sees it. Ask any person on the street, and they’ll not give two cents about who might own the copyright. They might care that the artist gets paid, but no more than that. And, with the current label control of copyright, the artist doesn’t really get paid even IF the cd is bought.

What The Hub was used for was the perennial college goal: Free Speech, Social Reform, reworking of the way society works by making more of what can be free free. The shutdown of The Hub was the modern day Kent State: A strategic decision to ruin lives to prevent the spread of ideas that were unfavorable to those in power. But, as those in power learned then and will learn again, they’re shooting at an idea, but ideas are bulletproof.

Posted in I Hate It Here | Comments

I Hate It Here Christmas Special 07

Monday, December 25th, 2006

In case you missed the point, I hate it here.

Here I sit, Christmas eve in the festering squalor I call home and it is all I can do not to not to shit myself in agony at the though of yet another holiday season coming and going. Hell, if it was up to me, everyone who made a big deal of this shit would be forced to eat their own fecal matter amid their overwrought display of electric fantasy.

But that’s not why I hate it. All over one sees yet another mindless automaton condemning the evils of using all but the generic, heartless greeting of Happy holidays. Well for that I tell them to go blow themselves, because they are obviously missing the point. If by now, in this pitiful thing you call your existence you haven’t figured out that the true meaning of the season is talking to people you know and waking up in a pile of your own drool after a night and day of celebrations you can hardly remember, then obviously you are to stupid to continue on with life.

Seriously folks, forget whatever holiday label you want to put on the season. Go out, talk to friends old and new, hell, go get some hookers for all I care (though if you do, Uncle Spidey appreciates bribes), but spend time with those you love. Be thankful for something.

Finally, for the love of sanity, remember, RIT gear does not make good for a good present. Just because its hell does not mean you have to share your pain like its a good thing.

Posted in I Hate It Here | Comments

I Hate It Here 12/21

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

I hate it here.

It’s a simple pretense for a column. It’s pretty easy to grasp: Things here, they piss me off. They probably piss you off, too, though you might not even realize it.

So I’m writing about it. I’m not gonna try and be terse: I’m usually pretty damn terse. I view actions as having much more meaning than words, but I always forget that you can’t see my waving my middle finger at the thought of the bullsh*t they pull here as I type. So, I’ll try and explicate (That’s “Describe in great detail” for those of you who’ve not taken Writing I).

This week, it’s about my Friend. He’s been rather screwed by RIT. He’s been kicked out, what, twice? Three times? They re-instated him, but then still changed the locks… They seem to not know whether he’s coming or going.

He screwed up, he admits. He was on probation, did crappy in classes. Fine, dandy. He petitioned to not be suspended, and was re-instated. 7 weeks into the quarter.

Let that roll around in your head for a bit.

He was told, 7 weeks into a 10 week quarter, that yes, he could continue taking classes. And that, indeed, he needed to maintain a 3.0 GPA for that quarter. For which he had already missed half. Half the tests. Half the grade. Many classes, which had online tests, he wasn’t able to take them. One class had >50% of it’s grade through MyCourses tests. MyCourses tests, which he COULDN’T SEE because he wasn’t properly registered for it.

Now, RIT has plenty of excuses. They have papers, signed and dated, saying he was re-instated 4th week. First off, this is still crazy late. CRAZY late. But it’s also NOT TRUE. He didn’t get the notice that he wasn’t a student till third week. He submitted an appeal as soon as he could.

So, let’s go over the timeline, as it happens:

Before Fall - Friend does poorly over summer quarter. Is put on probation.
Week 1 - RIT sends letter, late. Like, middle of first week, late.
Week 2 - Friend finds out, when his card stops working at the gym, that he’s no longer a student.
Week 3 - Friend gets letter, third week, at his home home, that says he’s been suspended.
Week 4 - Friend submits appeal.
Week 7 - Friend gets his studenthood reinstated, on contract.
Week 10 - Friend fails, horribly. Yay. RIT suspends him again.

Now, he’s submitted another appeal. He submitted it week 1. He’s got no response. He keeps getting no response. They’re still saying “We’re considering it”. Who wants to bet he doesn’t hear back till Week 7 again?

Posted in I Hate It Here | Comments

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.