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GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

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Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#91

Post by OnlyLys »

bayindirh wrote: post #55
truth_ wrote: post #12

Not totally unrelated: Pearson is a piece of trash company. They sell very overpriced textbooks and always use DRM in online copies. They lobby for standardized tests in states and get them mandated. Students are put through them. And guess who provides the certificate required by teachers to evaluate those exam copies? Yes, Pearson. And they make a ton of money. Please watch this talk for more context (even if you d…

IMHO, the books I've bought from InformIT are not that bad. They're only watermarked, and were useful. IDK, maybe because they're not geared towards universities. I'd happily stand corrected though.

I've bought a few Pearson ebooks from InformIT (all the books were programming related), and they all come in PDF format with watermarks.

Honestly, I'm happy as long as publishing companies don't force me to use their crappy proprietary ebook readers.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#92

Post by [deleted] »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #43
truth_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unethical practice employed by some companies. Although in many cases it can be circumvented by buying old textbooks anyway. I am glad that many CS authors nowadays make textbooks available for free. And companies like O'Reilly, Packt, and Manning provide DRM free copies.

If you have an ACM Membership, you get access to tons of books too!

[deleted]

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#93

Post by dragonwriter »

IshKebab wrote: post #83
projectileboy wrote: post #73

The story I don’t see being discussed is that Github is now engaged in the same kind of rotten behavior as YouTube.

GitHub are legally required to do this.

No, they aren’t. If there is no merit to a copyright claim, there is no vicarious liability for Github to be insulated from by the DMCA safe harbor.

It’s cheaper and less risky not to evaluate the merits of DMCA notices and just to blindly execute them, but it is erroneous to say that thet are legally required to act in that manner.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#94

Post by rococode »

bronson wrote: post #77
truth_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unethical practice employed by some companies. Although in many cases it can be circumvented by buying old textbooks anyway. I am glad that many CS authors nowadays make textbooks available for free. And companies like O'Reilly, Packt, and Manning provide DRM free copies.

When I tried using a previous edition, the page numbers and most of the exercises didn't line up. "Thursday's test will be on pp 144-172 inclusive, and get to know exercise 5.17." It put me at a surprisingly big disadvantage. Pretty sure the publishers anticipated this.

That's often the only thing that actually substantially changes between editions. Shuffle the exercise numbers and change the font and spacing and voila, brand new edition completely incompatible with older versions!

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#95

Post by ok123456 »

sitkack wrote: post #68
sokoloff wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed: https://youtu.be/X9advgMBbdo

TED Talk or a pitch for VC money, "Just two Ivy League grads working 6 figure tech jobs with a little too much time on our hands."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cflCyyEA2I

much better version.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#97

Post by salawat »

matsemann wrote: post #51
modin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT but is there a reason one would not like TED talks? Your parenthesis made me feel it could be controversial (comparable to social media).

TEDx talks (like the linked one is) are not proper TED talks, there are affiliated events all over hosting them. While there are many good TEDx talks, many of them aren't what you would expect when hearing the TED name. Especially bad is it that some TEDx events let quacks talk, which gives them a kind of legitimacy based on TED's reputation even though they're saying bullshit. Of course, this commingling has also ta…

You know, there is utility to letting the "quacks" talk, right?

Ever had a thought that just kept popping up in your head, that you then mentally suppress because "Dear , how horrifying."

After doing that it keeps coming back again and again? Usually after a shorter and shorter period of time, because it becomes an indexing thought for recollections of all the times you've squashed it or thought about all the ways in which it was wrong?

Ever then talkedabout itwith someone else then had a cathartic release from the sharing, and possibly even a moment of relief that someone else besides you stumbled on too?

It's the same dynamic. Just writ at a societal scale. It's why no censorship is a truly good idea. Bad ideas crop up organically as we've got a constant influx of new members of society seing the same warts, the same problems, following the same dead ends each and every one of us has. How are they to recognize a false start without being exposed to them?

The part that frightens people is that previously, you never had it possible for the whole world's population of false starters to get into one place and coordinate in real-time. You had an implicit depletion of critical mass activity that ensured the feedback loop for these ideas petered out, or remained tightly constrained to just the local nuts. The world we're in means that barrier has fallen, so everybody has to be able to cope with the entire planet's equivalent of the crazies all the time realistically.

It's a learned skill. Only practice gets you better at it, and I assure you, however good you think you are, cut the estimate in half. Odds are you've got fundamental blind spots you haven't even run into the craziness for yet.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#98

Post by mon77 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #93
IshKebab wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub are legally required to do this.

No, they aren’t. If there is no merit to a copyright claim, there is no vicarious liability for Github to be insulated from by the DMCA safe harbor. It’s cheaper and less risky not to evaluate the merits of DMCA notices and just to blindly execute them, but it is erroneous to say that thet are legally required to act in that manner.

Yes, they are, and yes, there is. The claiming and counterclaiming process is independent of the merit of copyright under DMCA. Budget and risk are not part of the equation. Evaluating copyright applicability cannot be part of the equation; it’s not your content. The law specifies almost exactly what you must do with some vague concepts for interpretation (like expedient). If you don’t do those things even on an obviously bogus complaint that is otherwise properly formed, you stop having safe harbor, because those disputes are intended by the law to be handled in court and not your legal department. It’s genuinely not complicated (read OCILLA) and you should be annoyed with the law for this situation, not its subjects.

You are sharing an opinion disguised as fact. It’s a wrong one, but I get why you’d conclude it.

Source: Write DMCA policy for UGC.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#99

Post by swiley »

mabbo wrote: post #89
IceWreck wrote: post #35

We should have a penalty/fine for fake DCMA requests. Big corps keep sending automated DCMAs with little consequence and often the little guys do have the resources to fight back.

Even simpler, require those filing a claim to put down a monetary deposit. If the accused disputes, they too file a deposit. The winner gets the money back and the platform gets to keep the losers deposit as a fee for having a trained, certified human make the decision. Make the fees scale up with the number of claims by an accuser. No one would file a frivolous claim. No one would dispute an obviously correct claim.…

This is a fantastic idea, I'm sure there are issues with it but none are immediately obvious.

Re: GitHub repository for Sedgewick's Algorithms is taken down

#100

Post by temp8964 »

truth_ wrote: post #12

Not totally unrelated: Pearson is a piece of trash company. They sell very overpriced textbooks and always use DRM in online copies. They lobby for standardized tests in states and get them mandated. Students are put through them. And guess who provides the certificate required by teachers to evaluate those exam copies? Yes, Pearson. And they make a ton of money. Please watch this talk for more context (even if you d…

> They lobby for standardized tests in states and get them mandated. Students are put through them.

This is totally false. State standardized test is the natural consequence of state public education accountability system. There must be a comparable measure across all the public schools in the state as the foundation for accountability measurements. And all (>95%) the students must be tested for equity reasons. No matter how many misinformation you read about standardized tests, the simple fact is that it is the only way to measure student learning of a huge population and get meaningful / comparable results. Is it perfect? No. Is there a better alternative? No.

The whole idea that a few testing companies imposed the standardized tests on students is simply a conspiracy theory.

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