Re: [Dfey-nw-discuss] How to deal with an nasty and vague Acceptable Use Policy ?

[Chris Hilliard]

I have never signed an aceptable useage policy, and I'm at uni and
have been faced with many - even one for using school (was called a
home school agreement which both me and my parents refused to sign).

As far as I could ever see, I was going to break the policy within 5
sec of logging in and loading up paint shop pro off my pendrive or
doing something else such as hacking the system (although the sys
admins were rather pleased when I gave them the heads up and we
developed a rather good working relationship). So I never signed it.

My first rule in life is never to sign something you know you can't keep to.

thanks,
badspyro

On 11/5/08, Lucy <address@hidden> wrote:
> 2008/11/5 Tim Dobson <address@hidden>:
>> Lucy wrote:
>>> Okay, to play within the rules, what if the college provided some
>>> forums that allowed you to talk to like minded people within the
>>> college?
>>
>> Interesting suggestion. I've actually seen this implemented in at least
>> one
>> place. My previous school had a internally moderated social forum through
>> the Moodle VLE.
>>
> [snip]
>> On a more technical level, allowing students within the college isn't
>> really
>> going to help one learn much because the only information on how to write
>> functions in VB for example will come from other students who probably
>> just
>> know what they have been taught...
>>
>> In addition, plagerism is probably more likely in a very closed
>> environment
>> where everyone uses the same examples of how to do $foo in $barlanguage.
>>
>> In general, I think closed environments are a bad idea.
>
> Closed environments can sometimes have their advantages. I think
> plagiarism is actually less likely because the teachers will be able
> to see everything that is posted. On the other hand, like you say, you
> won't learn as much as you could by speaking to people outside of your
> course. I put forward the suggestion as a possible compromise, because
> I feel it's unlikely the college will allow full access to outside
> chat spaces (irc, forums, etc).
>
>
>>> I can understand that the college wants to restrict personal
>>> communications/web-surfing, I'm sure it was the same 'in my day'
>>> although I just quietly ignored it (like everyone else).
>>
>> Hehe. Quietly ignoring it is a 'great' plan until someone comes down on
>> you
>> with everything they have as they object to you using
>> CGI:Proxy/phpproxy/tor
>> to check your personal email/slashdot/anything with *blog* in the url...
>> ;)
>>
>> It's best to object loudly when you are not in the wrong than hope that by
>> staying quiet, things won't effect you.
>
> True, but I think it's wise to pick your battles.
>
> They say that you aren't allowed to do 'private' stuff on the college
> computers, yet you're allowed to check your private email accounts for
> an hour? What if you propose allowing access to personal email, news
> sites and blogs, etc for one or two hours a day? Can you demonstrate
> specific examples where the restrictions are preventing you from doing
> work? Are the restrictions in place because they have a problem with
> bandwidth (even though they have a fast JANET connection)?
>
>
>