Okay, so I’m finally getting in on the Bill C-61 bashing. Kind of. I’ve actually read the bill… and everything you’ve heard is true. A few wonders I found, in 45 minutes no less:

• It allows for one-time recording. Yes, thats right. One-time. All those VCRs, DVRs, TIVOs, and DVD Recorders would now be illegal. And of course, there is no taping allowed if there is a “Do not tape” flag on the content. Which adds to the complexity of the items, as well as confuses consumers when the product they bought to tape Canadian Idol doesn’t do what its supposed to!
• Librarians that send out any digital copyright data, say, a paper on the rates of Amazonian Killer Bee reproduction, that content must be deleted in some way in five days. Yes. Five days. Now, our overworked and underpaid librarians need to become lock masters.
• It also now allows moral rights to be signed away. Except I check wikipedia, and discover that it could be waived before, but it is now officially part of law.
• Only one “legal” copy of content per device. If you buy a CD, and rip it, you must now destroy the CD. If you bought some music, and burn it to CD, or put it on a thumb drive, you must delete it from your computer. Thats right.
• There are “rights” given in the bill… except if there is any form of technological lock or “do not copy” flag on it, you now have no rights. No rights to protecting your privacy, no rights to backup and protect what you legally bought, no rights to use as you see fit. There are provisions for encryption and virus research, privacy protection, and content backup… so long as none of the content is copyrighted. Or protected with a technological lock. And you can’t distribute any information ON circumventing technological locks, or any software. That makes my dvd-playing linux illegal!
• No fair use mentions. None. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Fair use is effectively abolished, which makes the several rulings on fair use, well, illegal.

Those are just a few points.

So, I’ve been thinking about this issue, and I’ve got quite a few thoughts,which I’ll post later.

References and helpful links:

• Bill C-61 in its entire tabled form
• Online Rights Canada
• Copyright for Canadians
• Michael Geist -Law Professor, and constant guardian of our rights and freedoms

Yes, thats right. Those insufferably inscrutable blocks of rosetta code, about this esoteric subject of computer science. I really didn’t have an idea what I was getting into when I chose this major, but I’d still pick it. I just have a few beefs with computer science papers.

A bit of background first. On the first day of my research job, I was given three papers to read and research. All told, they constitute 70 pages. Yes. 70 pages. So you’d think there’d be some rather amazing, in-depth stuff there. Nope. Well, depends on your perspective.

Now, in reading them, I got to see a wide range of approaches, and an admittedly small cross-sample of writing styles. Except theres one problem.

They use one-letter variables. You know what I mean. They use things like S, to represent a function, and i, j, k, x, y, z for psuedo-code variables. FOR THE LOVE OF A GOD I DON’T BELIEVE IN, STOP DOING THIS. /rant. Seriously. Its like the researchers wrote up their papers, using full variables, then, did a search and replace… to make it harder.

Maybe it looks more impressive when your algorithm uses a series of single-letter variables. Its definitely harder to read. I don’t know why this is an accepted approach. And seemingly the only one.

Wait, I do. My even more unlucky co-worker, whom goes by the name khumba, has to work on convex equations in scilab. The source code was originally written by a student majoring in math… and minoring in GREEK. Well, thats what it looks like. Except its not just one student. But its a series of solely math students, asked to program in scilab for their professors. Every other line looks like something straight from The Daily WTF. I’ve seen it. And that, I realize, is where the computer science papers get it from. The mathematicians. When mathematicians branch out into new algebra systems, they inevitably fall into the computer science category, which then ends up inspiring the rest of the papers. Because its the “accepted” style. But its mathematicians using their daily variable calculus in code, which then seeped into the Computer Science discipline, since thats where most of the first papers came from, mathematicians. And it has been that way since.

Now, its done because everyone does it. And everyone does it, because thats the way its done. Which makes me want to hurt someone very badly.

So, if you’re going to write a computer science paper, don’t do this; I will shoot you if you do so.

(Not really. But one really should program and write code as if there will be a psychopath maintaining your code.)