Hi - not Latvian, but a professor (with some little IP education). Generally speaking, "educational use" is not held to mean "so long as it's for education, do whatever you want". Educational use typically means discussion and criticism - using excerpts and passages to demonstrate a particular point, or using an example from a text. If the teacher had used fractions of the book as part of his lessons, he would likely have been covered under fair use provisions in many nations (including the US and Australia, where I teach). Conversely, wholesale duplication of a text is rarely considered fair use in an educational context.

Typo - the correct link is http://robotics.itee.uq.edu.au/~metr3800/.

That's a depressing attitude to take. Let me give you a similar example: nursing. As part of a nursing degree you are required to take practical educational modules such as how to find a vein and deliver an injection, how to properly insert an IV drip, how to administer blood and so on. These are skills that require immediate hands-on training; while there are some conceptual aspects that can be delivered via video ("tap the fixture to remove bubbles from the flow so that they do not enter the bloodstream"), other critical components require you to see and feel a patient under guidance. Short of some ridiculously advanced haptics, you can't deliver that instruction without being colocated with the student. I'm sorry, but it's not imagination failure: it's reality. I /can/ imagine the haptics, but that won't be primetime for a long time, if ever. So, do we castigate nurses for failing to adequately deliver remote education? No. We simply fly students out to the university when it comes time to do their practical educational components.

Likewise, when we instruct students on debugging, soldering, group work and critical discussions it is expected that they present at the university to undertake it. It is remarkably easy to show a student one on one what proper soldering looks like, how it feels and what the quality of the joint is afterwards - it's a tactile thing like finding a vein. Interactive skills like group discussions are greatly diminished over remote media, which is why many many business people and technical staff travel to do their jobs even in our increasingly technical age.

It is my expectation that, by the time a university student is committed to undertaking a four year degree, they will be sufficiently independent of their parents so as to be able to travel to a location proximal to their school. This is very very routine, and easily 70 percent of my class are from out of state. You're absolutely right - genius is not geographically determined (cf. Ramanujan) - and those students who excell at school are typically eligible for remote student scholarships to pay for their moving expenses to study at our university. The university really loves giving them out - it lets them talk about how they're helping the best and the brightest have new opportunities they might otherwise be denied through their remoteness.

Pitying me just because I recognise that one way of teaching absolutely sucks and one way of teaching is somewhat better (and then choose to advocate for the better way) is somewhat disengenuous. I would be doing my students a disservice if I told them "Sure! We can teach you all you need to know just fine over the phone." They would be unprepared for their profession. If you would like to see something of my approach to teaching, I will put my money where my mouth is and show you my teaching materials. I currently teach a fourth-year project course in mechatronics. My class site is here and is publically accessible. You can see my project design, lectures and feedback to students. I urge you to tell me how to do my job better - I really am committed to improving my teaching and providing the best training possibile to my students.

I teach engineering - specifically practical project based courses in robotics. If students can't be in the lab, it's not really clear how they could be effectively instructed. If doing tech support over the phone is hard, consider the difficulties of effectively debugging a student's circuit when the students themselves don't understand what they've done (or why it's faulty).

The pedagogical aspects of instruction can (and certainily should) be abstracted into online resources, but some aspects of instruction in practical disciplines cannot be effectively remote-taught. At least, so I think - I'm staking my future career on it. :)

Actually, Australia is incredibly densely populated in a few select bits - 90% of Australia's population is urbanised. The flying doctor service was for those few too far to drive from a local hospital or clinic; these days it's increasingly eccentric to live that deep in the bush.

If they fired me just because I didn't provide my own phone it would be wrongful dismissal. So no.. they could not lay me off me on that basis. It helps that, as an academic, there is little about my job that would be improved with a smart phone. I feel I provide much better instruction talking to students face to face than through some app.

I don't want a smart phone. I choose not to use one - I only care to have a simple phone that does the bare minimum. If they want me to have a smart phone, they'd better provide it for me because I will not spend my own money for a device I choose not to have. Under Australian law (to which I am subject) I don't believe a company can force you to provide your own equipment.

Oh for a mod point or ten. I spent the first year of my faculty position scrambling to get funding, and now that I've got it I need to scramble to do research whilst also running classes. Between the dozen 'urgent' things to be done at any one time, I never get a chance to really sit and think hard about my research problems - I just have to hope that I hit on something novel and important when I'm in the shower and that a student then does it justice to get the papers out. It's shit and it makes our research shit.

Yeah, just like fireworks!

... Oh wait.

I'm a robotics researcher - some of my work includes developing aids for the blind. Of all the comments here, this is the sanest one and the one that would actually work for people with vision impairment. It's simple, it's cheap and it will WORK. We've had good success with similar systems for other tasks like navigation and playing soccer.

This really does highlight the absurdity of the current legal framework.

Spoken like someone who has never had to actually prep G-code, fixture a part or debug mill routing. CNC machining is a technical discipline requiring real skill and experience. Experts are paid very good money for their time and talent.

Fortunately, the Geneva Convention specifically excludes non-state combatants from its protection. Mercenaries, terrorists and insurgents/freedom-fighters are all excluded. The moment you take up arms without being in the military, you are not covered by it.

I think a big misconception here is that being totally 'off the grid' is somehow the logical goal. Leaving the grid will satisfy your need to not be tracked, certainly, but I think the pareto principle applies: you can do 20% of the effort to gain 80 percent of the benefit - no need to become a survivalist to avoid intrusive tracking. Turn off cookies, use public transport, leave the cellphone at work when you go home, pay in cash.

Yes, stores have CCTV cameras in them, but they rarely check them except in case of a crime being committed. Sure, they could use fancy face-tracking software cross-referenced with databases to find out who everyone who pays cash is, but really, they won't bother because the vast majority of people will pay with a loyalty card anyway, incentivised with frequent flyer miles or somesuch. Companies go for what's going to turn a profit - they don't do long-tail very well unless it costs them nothing.

You might say that being conspicuously absent from some modes (eg. trackable transactions) highlights you for scrutiny, but I would argue that that's a bit paranoid - companies won't double their tracking efforts to make 2% more from 'different valuers'. Governments might worry about the 2% of weirdos out there, but they already track the things that concern them - purchases of explosive materials, weapons, and phonecalls to known agitators. The best way to keep the government out of your life is to keep your nose clean, follow the law and don't publicise it if you belong to the scarlet letter club du jour (eg. communists, satanists, pedophiles, science fiction writers, etc).

Although Minecraft is DRM free, it still requires server-side activation. For this reason, I did not buy it. I simply will not pay for a game that requires someone's permission to install it, even after money has changed hands. This is a great pity, as I very much respect the work Mojang has done and would like to support it.

"Peripheral vision."