71–80 of 196 posts
Don't live in any of those countries (Australia) but Coursera should take a very hard look at themselves. I have a few friends from those countries and they are great scientists/engineers cause they recognize that through education and improving learning standards the world could truly be their oyster. Thanks for taking it away.
As someone who lives in Iran, this is sad but not news. I have gotten used to see half the websites blocked by my government(Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc) and the other half by your government(Java SE or anything else from Oracle, Google Code, Google Play Store, anything from Xilinx, etc). If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites…
How common are VPNs?
The problem here is that Coursera is a for-profit company. If they were an educational non-profit, my guess is that they could find a way to somehow work with individual citizens of these countries. But the sanctions are in place to stop US companies from doing business with these countries, and it probably never occurred to anyone that a for-profit company, in the US, would want to educate people in Iran. Thus, this…
If not, I guess we once again feel the pain of universities selling out their knowledge to commercial gatekeepers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. If you work at it, you can change things. Sometimes it's not as fast, or as much as you want. And it's likely to be a lot of hard work. But you can help change things for the better.
Oh really? You can change decades-old embargo laws by writing to your elected local official? Really?
As someone who lives in Iran, this is sad but not news. I have gotten used to see half the websites blocked by my government(Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc) and the other half by your government(Java SE or anything else from Oracle, Google Code, Google Play Store, anything from Xilinx, etc). If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites…
How common are VPNs?
Facebook is censored in Iran, yet it is very popular. If you want to roughly estimate how many people circumvent censorship on a daily basis, just find out how many Iranians actively use Facebook. I guess it would be possible to find a number with Graph Search.
As someone who lives in Iran, this is sad but not news. I have gotten used to see half the websites blocked by my government(Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc) and the other half by your government(Java SE or anything else from Oracle, Google Code, Google Play Store, anything from Xilinx, etc). If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites…
How common are VPNs?
The problem here is that Coursera is a for-profit company. If they were an educational non-profit, my guess is that they could find a way to somehow work with individual citizens of these countries. But the sanctions are in place to stop US companies from doing business with these countries, and it probably never occurred to anyone that a for-profit company, in the US, would want to educate people in Iran. Thus, this…
Do they license their course materials under an open source license? If so, other parties could easily redistribute the material. If not, I guess we once again feel the pain of universities selling out their knowledge to commercial gatekeepers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. Surely an uneducated adversarial population is more dangerous in the long run than an educated and productive one? I cannot possibly fathom the intended outcome of this sanction. Keeping a few kids from doing programming courses is not going to help the US ever have friendly ties with them. And it's not like this is an issue about which the opposing govt will care enough about to change their policies.
Blocking classes like this is like 0.0001% of what the sanction is for. It's an unintended consequence of a blanket sanction. The sanctions exist for two reasons: to directly prevent "enemy" nations from gaining weapons (or economic infrastructure) to use for bad purposes, and to put pressure on the foreign government (directly on members of the government, and indirectly through the population) to provoke change. Sa…
Interesting, wasn't the US an ally of Iraq in the past, and completely closed their eyes on the gassing of Iranian populations during the Iraq-Iran war, as well as the gassing of Kurds living in Iraq ? Should the US sanction themselves? :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh really? You can change decades-old embargo laws by writing to your elected local official? Really?
I think that's what he alludes to with "hard work" and "not as fast". If you invested huge amounts of capital and campaigning, bought advertisements, setup protests, got on the news, etc. etc. perhaps enough people might notice. Doesn't mean it's effective to write a letter.
http://www.governo.it/Notizie/Presidenza/dettaglio.asp?d=690...
We're not really satisfied with the new law, but it is a small step in the right direction, and we continue to work to improve things:
It's kind of a minor issue, and low hanging fruit, but still, I'm proud of it.
You are right on about writing letters. Go ahead and do it, but know that it's not enough.
Look at the civil rights movement in the US. I'm glad they didn't just decide that, having written a letter or two, and not having seen any change, that it was impossible and to give up.