Re: Stanford University: Probabilistic Graphical Models

[Macy]

Thank you for sharing. As a Stanford lifetime alumnus, I will alert them to how 
inappropriate their approach is.  

Words mean something. And, a person of their word is a person of their word. 

One does not protect intellectual property by demanding people adhere to a 
strict standard of code and then assume these same people will not strictly 
adhere to that overly strict standard, because it is overly strict!, thus 
somehow establishing a 'desired' balance to the amount of protection they 
originally sought! Seems like another example of 'relative ethics' becoming 
accepted as the norm. 

You mentioned lawyers getting into the classroom. Only lawyers would have the 
brass to say all in the same sentence, "The cost of a free meeting with an 
attorney is $25." Go to the Santa Clara County Bar of California [where 
Stanford is located] and seek a free meeting with an attorney. You will find 
the cost of the 'free' meeting is $25, unless it's gone up.

Regards,
Robert

--- address@hidden wrote:

From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>
To: pathematica <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Stanford University: Probabilistic Graphical Models
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:20:15 -0400

On 13 March 2012 19:05, pathematica <address@hidden> wrote:
> For those interested, it is possible to register for the course here:
>
> http://www.pgm-class.org/
>
> I plan to take the course and I hope to see Jordi there again!

I'm quite flattered to receive a personal invitation, and I was about
to accept it, but I came across this:

    https://authentication.coursera.org/auth/auth/normal/tos.php

which appears to be required for signing up to it. This is new. The
machine learning course did not have such extensive legalese.

I cannot in good conscience agree to this. It is asking me to agree to
not copy the course materials, but this is something that would be
very beneficial to other students, for example, setting up a torrent
of the course materials for sharing once the course is done. It is
asking me to not share my code, and makes no provisions for deciding
when sharing my code is appropriate. It says I can't make derivative
works, such as notes from the course that may also help my fellow
students. It repeatedly refers to the annoying meaningless term
"intellectual property".

If they want to make free education, they should make it free. This is
bait-and-switch. "Free," but not free to copy it. "Free" but not free
to share it. "Free" but not free to modify it.

    http://jordi.platinum.linux.pl/piccies/unacceptable.jpg

I urge you to not sign up for the course unless they change their
provisions. Who ever heard of a professor telling you to not create
derivative copies of their work, such as what your course notes might
reasonably be? Who let the lawyers into the classroom?

> I was just wondering whether any progress had been made with Debian packages
> for 3.4

Yes, the Debian Octave Group is furiously at work:

    http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/DebianOctaveGroup

The 3.6.1 release has already hit Debian unstable, so it will probably
be part of the next Ubuntu release.

    http://packages.debian.org/sid/octave

I only hope Ubuntu manages to package the Octave version that actually
works, not the one that is currently in flux.

In the meantime, you can probably get the 3.6.1 low-quality package
that Juan Pablo Carbajal made:

    
http://www.octave.org/wiki/index.php?title=Octave_for_GNU_Linux:_Binary_Octave_packages_for_GNU_Linux#Unofficial_binaries

These might not be great, but they should be sufficient for your
purposes. If not, building Octave yourself on Ubuntu is relatively
easy.

HTH,
- Jordi G. H.