Well, as someone who has done, and published, some empirical research on the use of technology in teaching, the one thing we know for sure is that any 'one size fits all' approach will not work well. There are some classes where using technology can be useful. For instance, in a class which involves analyzing passages of text, being able to project the text can be handy. However, in such a case, this is only useful if students can download the text ahead of time so that they can annotate it in class. However, there are other classes, say in mathematics, where technical aids are merely a distraction.

There is an unfortunate tendency in higher education for technology enthusiasts to make a great deal of noise, which can garner attention from the admin types, while the same individuals have a poor grasp of the underlying technology. This situation often leads to expensive train wrecks. Another problem is caused by the folks who are weak faculty members who use technology to cover their shortcomings. Interestingly, blogs are a great favorite with this type.

Really, the issue here is that technology is not an automatic panacea. Moreover, integrating technology into teaching has to be done carefully and in a controlled manner. Different technologies need to be deployed experimentally and incrementally, with a great deal of attention paid to effectiveness. Unfortunately, this happens all too seldom, as the evangelists all too often get the ears of the administrators. However, they are the ones which end up with failed projects, while I am the one with successful projects and publications!

As someone who lives in Louisiana, all I can say now is that the whole thing is very scary. We will have to see what happens.

However, what may be of interest to some is something I heard today from a friend who has worked on Transoceana/BP rigs. Apparently, what happened was that they were in the very final stages of finishing the well and the down pipe is filled with sea water for that phase, rather than the more traditional mud. What then happened was that there was a release of gas. This would have been held, or at least slowed by the mud, but just rose up through the seawater at a high rate of speed. When it reached the head, it just vented from the top. Now, as the gas is heavier than air, it sank down. While the drilling floor is a spark free zone, not all of the rig is. One spark from an AC unit, or the like is probably what set it all off, too quickly for anybody to do anything. My buddy also told me that the practices out there can be mighty sloppy and not done by the book. He no longer works in the industry and hope all the companies involved get what they deserve.

Any oil engineers out there want to explain what this story means -- I'm no expert, so I do not fully understand it.

That was my plan. I also intend to lodge a complaint with the Better Business folks. Do you know which statute makes this illegal though?

I fully concur with JoshuaZ. If this happened in one of my classes, they would get an automatic F in the class, assuming they confessed when challenged. Any fancy footwork like she is trying to pull and I would try and get her expelled.

As for the question about why words might be different from music, I am surprised that this question even arises. We have all these niffty things like quotation marks and citation conventions (APA, MLA, etc.), which make it possible to easily indicate when words are not original. To the best of my knowledge, no such conventions and tool exist in the case of music.

I really hope that the people who had their words stolen call their lawyers. It would give the lawyers something useful to do, rather than helping out the greedy fools of the RIAA, MIAA and associated creeps.

Self-righteous 'explanations' after the fact are very common among plagiarists and cheats. So, her putative 'defense' should be held up as an object of ridicule. She should also have her works pulped, forthwith. I find this whole affair "...fills me with the urge to deficate." (Waters, Ezrin, 1982)

References:
Waters, R. and Ezrin, R. (1982), "The Trial" in Pink Floyd, *The Wall*, Columbia Records.

One of the things that many scientists lack, is a good grounding in the Philosophy of Science. The public version of science, largely pushed by science teachers has an origin in the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists. This is now largely known to be problematic, but is still the prevailing view. Folks should read Feyerabend's <a href="http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8y-FVtrKeSYC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=%22Feyerabend%22+%22Against+method%22+&ots=vBXF8-Qt5G&sig=glkJVN6Pjfe3wLmKeTwPGE6-fgk#v=onepage&q=&f=false">*Against Method* </a>, or Ravetz's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Knowledge-Its-Social-Problems/dp/1560008512">*Scientific Knowledge and Its Social Problems*</a> for a more realistic view.

As a scientist, I can also tell tales about how the scientific method gets distorted by ideology. When I was in grad school, I was working on a complex set of problems that were a horror -- a week doing eight hours a day pumping numbers into a scientific calculator is not my idea of fun. However, back then, it was a necessary evil. So, I was about to have to do another horror week with the calculator, which I did not want to do, so I was wasting time and did something silly. It turned out to be a great idea. It gave a whole new method to solve the problem type at hand. A number of other people had a hand in the final paper, but I got to be first author. Unfortunately, as only one author amongst many. The paper made claims about the hypotheses that was being tested, I objected very strongly to this -- there was no hypothesis, but we just got lucky. However, there is a paper with my name on in, published in the 20th Century, that contains claims about what we discovered which are false, at least with respect to hypotheses and all that stuff, in order to ensure that we were following someones idea of the scientific method. It irks me even today. Fortunately, a book about the issue now gives a more accurate account. However, there is no doubt that scientific ideology can drive out the truth. Thus, what is proposed here is a good idea. Telling the truth (even if it does not conform to the ideologically driven official method) is something I teach my grad students even today.

I don't have any dealings with RIAA type issues, as I am not a musician. However, I deal with publishers, who are fundamentally similar to record companies. I produce copyrighted work that I have to 'assign' the copyright to the publishers, in order to get my stuff into print (and this is only after going through the blind refereeing process). Moreover, I seldom get paid for my work. As a result, most professors like me hate publishers, but see them as a necessary evil.

That being said, I also have plenty of friends who are successful musicians -- real record contracts and a smattering of Grammies. Funnily enough, their attitude to their record companies is about the same as mine to publishers -- they stink, but are a necessary evil.

This parallel though suggest that their may be an alternative strategy available in the current context. Musicians and professors only deal with record companies/publishers, because there is no alternative. The question is why not? The answer is simple, these corporations are really diverse monopolies. "Ah ha!", someone will claim, "this is not so, as there are multiple record companies/publishers, thus there is 'choice', so it is not really a monopoly." However, when the record companies/publishers start to work together (e.g. in the RIAA), then they ARE working like a monopoly. Not only that, their business model is predicated on a form of extortion -- 'Give us the copyright, or your record does not get released/your paper does not get published'. Couldn't the RIAA and their like be put out of business on these kinds of grounds? Isn't this just the kind of thing that even the most foaming and rabid right winger would support? More to the point, why isn't somebody actually doing this?

As a professor, I write programs, papers and am currently working on a book. All these activities involve creating copyrighted content. The people of my State pay me to do this, as I work for a State university. So, you are probably thinking that my situation is a bit like Bono and the other 'creative' sorts? Nothing could be further from the truth.

Once I have written a paper, it needs to go through peer review, via the blind referee process. This is all good and stops me publishing silly stuff. The next step is where the copyright problem arises.

Once I have a paper accepted, it is necessary for me to assign the copyright to the publishers of the journal. No copyright assignment, no publication. It is as simple as that. So, who gets the fruits of my labors? Big multi-national corporations. What did they do to get this intellectual content? Absolutely bugger all, other than rigging the system! What about the people of my State who paid for my hard work? They get nothing. If they want to read my papers, they have to buy them from the journal (at $15 per paper and up), or visit a library. Libraries have to pay for a journal subscription ($750 per annum and up).

Thus, all this 'creativity' and copyright bleating is clearly bollocks. It is just a case of the powerful folks using rhetoric to fight for their monopoly 'rights'. I don't care to participate, but am forced to. Of course, I also run an e-journal where the authors retain copyright, but that is another story. My little act of subversion.

Don't fall for all this 'starving artist' rubbish. My bet is that we professors in our professional bondage produce more per year than the people represented by the members of both the RIAA and the MIAA, put together. I wonder what those crooks, or their mouth pieces, would have to say in response to that claim? I bet we will never hear.

"We are led by fools who waste our lives". Copyright is a good idea which has now been subverted into a scam and it sucks.

I often do something fairly similar. I'll go to pick up something and end up cruising in the stacks. There I will browse. When browsing I'll often see something I want to read. The question then is do we have it? With the Opera Browser loaded into my Nintendo DS, I can login to the WiFi link and pull up the catalog. When I'm done, I shut the DS, drop it into a pocket and move on. It works like a dream! Also, even if the kit is bought new, it is pretty cheap too. I bet with second hand equipment, it could be got for under $100. Oh yes, the few students who have seen me do this seem to think that it is pretty cool too.

I remember Muddog well. It was my first mud and burned up many hours of grad school there. Wells2k, thanks for many a good time there! I am still in touch with Kane, Labatt, Semtex, Taylor and a few of the old crew. Many of them moved on to VargonMud, when the place shut. Not only was it one of the funniest muds of all time, with some bizarre twists (who can forget the Spy shades, or the Bucket O'Love!), it was also an amazing community. This is one of the things that modern visual games lack.

Not only that, Muddog spawned a whole interest in muds for academic uses. The Maud (Multi-Academic User Domain) architecture came about from Muddog discussions. It was used for a while as a distance teaching tool. I'd love to hear from some of the Muddog old timers, should any be on here and not posting as anon.

Nomad of Muddog