posted
I shall now write a 5 page extra credit for a class I'm already getting approximately a 97% in, which can get me up to 10% extra credit. I have an hour and a half.
posted
Ouch. I don't know if I'd do that one even if it wasn't extra credit. Well, freshman year I definitely wouldn't have, but this year I probably would. I want to graduate in December.
Posts: 162 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
If it's 5 pages double-spaced, I say go for it!
Then again, this is coming from the person whose senior English teacher complained that she was the only one who ever got more than 100% in her class. All I had to do was memorize an extra soliloquy from Hamlet.
I kicked the overachiever habit when I got to college, though Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I was never an overachiever. Freshman year, I took a gened class where if I'd done all the assignments, I would have had an A without taking the final. Instead, I needed to get 6 questions out of 50 correct. Hot dog.
Posts: 162 | Registered: Dec 2004
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If you're already getting a 97%, I think extra credit has become redundant. There's no grade above an A+. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Look, doing great work is a reward in itself. People who get 97's in classes usually have that attitude anyway (which explains the 97's). Go for it!
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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Fugu can't hear us. He is deep in the throes of brown nose geekdom. He is due to come up for air in about 45 minutes.
Posts: 10397 | Registered: Jun 2005
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The question I have is if you do only 3 pages, will you get 6 percent? I mean come on. 103 instead of 107 percent. I don't know of many geeks who would care about that difference.
posted
Yep, finished just in time, here you go, five pages (when double-spaced in courier new 12pt font, no playing with the margins or anything). Nothing special, but doesn't need to be, and no, while there is partial credit, the report needs to be the full five pages to get any credit (edit: and it took a bit under an hour of real typing and thinking, there was lots of procrastination -- I didn't even type the first word until 7 til 11) (edit: oh, and yes, it was supposed to be 4.5 pages about the book then .5 pages on what I think about the book).
Larry Lessig’s basic message in The Future of Ideas is an argument for an “architecture of innovation” based around a nurturing approach to what he calls the commons, the collective space of those things which are freely accessible in a nondiscriminatory manner (268). He builds a complicated structure under and around this argument, focusing heavily on a very social perspective both legal and economic, using technologies largely as object examples and problem spaces. However, this focused approach in several cases glosses over technical considerations which impact possible positions on the argument.
Despite this small weakness, Lessig’s general argument is persuasive and establishes a clear place for the practice of social thought with regards to information and communication technologies (ICTs). More importantly it goes beyond that with several considerations that, while motivated by ICTs, are not fundamentally tied to such technologies.
One instance where Lessig glosses over a technical argument impacting his larger consideration is with regard to the wireless spectrum. While for low-powered devices interference between devices is minimal (though even moderately high powered cordless phones can disrupt a DSL connection, or a microwave 802.11b), high powered devices such as broadcast towers can and do interfere mightily, as the car radio listener notices sometimes even for the current governmentally separated radio spectrum. Furthermore, one reason there are so many low powered radio frequency devices instead of more high powered ones is because the FCC requires certification that a device is prepared to accept interference and meets certain power requirements. Absent those requirements, companies would leverage the spectrum as far as they dared, and a neighbor’s DSL might not work when someone is using his cordless phone. Radio stations will squash competitors’ signals like bugs, but not intentionally, just because they wish to expand to a larger audience (since malicious intent might lead to criminal violations). The spectrum is an excellent example of where the tragedy of the commons, as explained earlier in the book, readily applies.
Lessig may be aware of this consideration, but he neglects it. Instead, he phrases the situation as a econo-poli-social controversy, saying that those who don’t want his preferred strategy “are of two sorts: those who think it is unnecessary – that the market will get us to the right answer without the experiments with open spectrum; and those who think it unwise – that open spectrum is a terrible way to allocate spectrum resources” (227). His position is still very tenable, but his support for it, and characterization of the opposition, ignores an important way of thinking about the spectrum – as a technology for communicating information, with technological problems (interference).
Perhaps the most powerful sequences in Ideas are those speaking on copyright and its problems. This is no surprise, as Lessig is particularly interested in copyright, and the reform thereof. Occasionally, such as when discussing the Eldred case, emotion shows through his generally more reasoned consideration, but the vast majority of his discussion is excellently informative and damning of the current state of copyright in law and practice by example, not by soap box.
While many of the issues in Ideas surrounding copyright come up because of ICTs, many of the thoughts about copyright are not dependent on anything we commonly think of as “technology”. The legal ability of someone to write a play based on a book is not based on the any technologies used to produce those items, but this is a favorite example for Lessig of the changing face of copyright law. However, I think there is a very good case to be made that several of these things – the book, the play, and copyright law – could aptly be called technologies, or more importantly, may be better understood when considered as technologies much as Lessig goes about considering them (particularly copyright law).
Lessig’s consideration of copyright law devotes much thought to how that law is used – and a technology might well be considered defined as the use of scientific thought in the form of a tool to accomplish tasks. In the case of preventing books from being made into plays absent explicit permission, Lessig notes how this did not make people any more creative, but allowed creativity to leverage more existing material. In another example, about how nowadays anything even remotely possibly copyrighted must be “cleared” by movie studio lawyers before it appears in a film, we see how strong copyright laws to protect the rights of producers actually significantly inhibit producers of completely orthogonal works because of how those laws are used by existing copyright holders. Neither of these examples is particularly tied to ICTs as commonly conceived – some might argue a movie is an ICT, but many fewer would argue a Broadway musical, which carries similar issues, is. However much these situations aggravate, though, their direct impact is on relatively few people. The situation an everyday person might run into involves ICTs very intimately – websites which use copyrighted material. Anyone may put up a website, especially currently, in the age of the blog, and this means anyone may be accused of copyright violations.
ICTs do motivate the greatest aggravations of copyright law, but it is still important and useful to think of non-ICT problems with copyright law “technologically”, as Lessig does. This technological approach allows problems which are not readily apparent from the form of copyright laws to be revealed by an analysis of their use. If Lessig had paid more attention to this when common ICTs like radio frequency devices were under consideration, his book would have been more complete and persuasive.
Overall I greatly enjoyed The Future of Ideas. Partly because of my fair exposure to even more recent evolutions of similar thoughts, some of his ideas seemed somewhat out of date, which reduced my enthusiasm for doing the reading at times, but I am glad I finished the book. Lessig’s close attention to detail means that even if one disagrees with his stance in part or in whole, reading the book means one comes out more educated than one went in. I would readily recommend it to anyone looking for a good background on the issues with copyright law, but less so for someone looking for a good background on the issues with modern ICTs.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Hey Fugu, when you're done, I have a 3500 word essay on how insurance is affected by insolvency you could write. Just, you know, if you're bored.
Posts: 1431 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Its not all that impressive, I let myself be moved by the spirit of the pseudo-BS, and were I writing efficiently could (and should) say it in 3/4 the length or less.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I hated electronic drop-boxes. They just encouraged me to procrastinate even worse than I normally do, and I always misjudged how long things were going to take me. I'm tired so I'm being bad and not reading the paper, but congrats on getting it done. Posts: 24 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Knowing this professor and everyone else in the class, what I turned in should be good for seven to eight extra credit at least, possibly all ten.
As you may have guessed, its a technical class (but in Informatics, so we like cross-disciplinary work on occasion).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'm with Tom that if you've got a 97, it seems redundant. You had NOTHING else better you could've been doing?
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Hey, sometimes the A+ can make a world of difference. If two of my A's were turned to A+s, it would actually make feasible a few possibilities for me that are, at best, long (very long) shots right now.
More power to fugu for spending a couple hours to get that A+.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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I'd like to go to grad school, and I've taken the position that the more A+'s on my transcript, the better, as far as that's concerned.
Plus I had intended to do it, so I might as well do it, and yes, it does make me feel pretty (plus gives me exercise at writing, which never hurts, particularly as my current classes are low in it).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Oh, I think it's fine. It's an ego boost and you can justify it and it's nice to feel pretty. Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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<whisper>and sometimes I even write essays when there's nobody at all to turn them in to, just for the practice, interest, and fun of it</whisper>
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I turned in a report for extra credit in my history class, when I was pretty sure I had an A in the class. But the pretty sure was contingent on me making a certain grade on the final, and I figured, anything could happen. So while I only needed to make 53% on the final to guarantee an A, I decided to turn in the extra report anyway, to ensure I would have that A. I actually wound up making 91% on the final, and he graded those before he looked at the extra credit.
So my history instructor sent the extra assignment back with the note "Good grief, you already have an A."
This is junior college, and they don't give such a thing as an A plus, so I already had the highest grade I could get.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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I'm tired so I'm being bad and not reading the paper, but congrats on getting it done. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
