7/17/2003
COURT KOS COLLEGE WHIZ KID:
July 16, 2003 — A 15-year-old Manhattan girl whose parents sent her to college instead of high school has been told by a judge that she can’t get her associates degree even though she’s got enough credits - as city officials launched an “educational neglect” probe against her dad.
Angela Lipsman has been passing courses since she was 11 at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Manhattan Community College. She has a 3.8 average.
Excelsior College, an Albany school that grants degrees based on work at other colleges, said she has more than enough credit to get her degree.
But Albany Supreme Court Justice Bernard Malone ruled Monday that because she’s not 17, Angela is too young to obtain a high-school equivalency diploma. And without some kind of high-school diploma she can’t qualify for a college degree.
Malone said she could have taken accelerated courses in high school and graduated early, as other students do.
The Post first reported on Angela’s unusual case in April.
She has one hope. If the city Department of Education rules her college courses “equivalent” to a high-school diploma, she could qualify for her degree. Chancellor Joel Klein is reviewing her case.
Meanwhile, her dad, Daniel, said the Administration for Children’s Services notified him he’s being investigated.
ACS opened the probe after getting a complaint through a child abuse hot line.
“I’d rather go to jail than send my daughter to high school,” he said.
“They don’t know my parents or me,” Angela said.
“If they did, they wouldn’t be doing this investigation. Is there something wrong with college?”
This ranks up there with the little girl’s lemonade stand being shut down. So how do you think the conversation on the complaint line sounded like?
Operator: ACS, what can I do for you?
Do-gooder: Yes, I’d like to open a file regarding possible abuse.
Operator: What seems to be the matter?
Do-gooder: Well, you see, there is this girl who is the same age as my daughter, we’ll call her Lisa S. Her parents think they know what is best for her and refuse to budge on certain issues.
Operator: Could you be more specific, what exactly is the crime?
Do-gooder: She doesn’t have to attend high school like my daughter does nor is she continually harassed, torn down and utterly collectivized.
Operator: Why didn’t you say so in the first place? This is heinous and must be stopped else others will get the same idea. Without State education how can you grow up to live a mediocre, uneventful and insipid life?
Evil deviant non-conformists, they should all be locked away in the Tower of London, with Urkel and ALF.
First they came for the spammers, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a 419er;
Then they came for linking to the DeCSS, and I did not speak out–
because I was not 2600;
Then they came for reverse engineering, and I did not speak out–
because I was not Dmitry Sklyarov;
Then they came for the file traders, and I did not speak out–
because I was not a K-Lite user;
Then they came for me–
and there was no one left to Slashdot for me.
I wonder if your average Chuck Schumer politician goes to sleep trying to think up of ways to annoy passive constituents. For instance:
The Conyers-Berman bill would operate under the assumption that each copyrighted work made available through a computer network was copied by others at least 10 times for a total retail value of $2,500. That would bump the activity from a misdemeanor to a felony, carrying a sentence of up to five years in jail. It would also outlaw the practice of videotaping a movie in the theater, a favorite illicit method of copying movies.
A quick analysis from Caesar over at Arstechnica:
Frankly, that’s outrageous. Maybe we should apply this to murder, too? I mean, the guy had a gun, and he shot someone. Surely he was going to shoot 9 other people if we didn’t stop him, so let’s charge him for 10 murders, shall we? The worst part about this is the purpose of multiplying by 10: it takes the value of the offence and automatically raises it to a level that would be categorized as criminal. The next thing they need to propose to bring things into even more parity would be to charge people also based on what kind of music they were pirating. Just as drug sentencing is different for crack (aka, inner city) cocaine and power (aka, suburban) cocaine, so too shall the sentencing be different for downloading Snoop Dogg and Celine Dion.
With respects to the language used by members of the political class and 4th Estate, the following comment at Slashdot is poignant for this latest bugaboo:
A good reason to avoid using words like theft and piracy when discussing copyright is the fundamental difference between physical property and copyrightable information: Theft of property deprives you of the stolen item, copyright infringement does not take the information away from you. What copyright infringement does is affect your potential for deriving profit from the information concerned.
I’m not saying that unauthorised copying is OK, just that it becomes easier to confuse the matter under discussion, when improper terminology and associations are used. This is similar to the terrible term “Intellectual Property”, which not only tries to equate information with property but also confuses several different kinds of law.
In short, lets keep it simple but correct: What we do with KaZaa is copyright infringement, what thieves and pickpockets (and possibly some corperate executives) do is theft.
You mean there is a difference? Egads — does that mean Hilary Rosen might be full of caca?
fmaxwell describes this profound understanding:
Theft and copyright infringement are different for a very important reason: In a theft, the victim is deprived of something that they previously had, whether it is money, jewelry, a car, or some other tangible thing. In copyright infringement, the victim has no less after the crime than before.
I’m beginning to see a repeating theme…
And what is the moral of the story? bheersen thinks:
So, the lesson we should be teaching our kids is “Shoplifting is much better than copyright infringement if you are going to obtain music illegally. Steal it from the record store instead of downloading it from the internet.” After all, the penalties are much less, even though shoplifting actually hurts more people.
And yes, we all know that Slashdot comments are highly weighed upon in court, as if Zeus himself was talking.
Anyways, if you’re up for it, instead of saying “theft” say “copyright violation” — it’s a world of difference and is intellectually honest. No one is harmed in a “copyright violation,” no property stolen, no one impregnated, no sky resting upon chicken-little — zero point nada.
Remember, when sharing is outlawed, only outlaws will share.
Well, better late than never. If you read this within the next couple hours of its posting, you’ll have a chance to see Mars with your naked, unaided and virgin eyes.
I was out walking my dog (well, letting him run around in the dark at least) and looked up at the moon, lo and behold there was an orangish ball I hadn’t noticed before (and I let the dog out each and every night). I actually thought it was sunlight bouncing off the ISS (which many people report as a UFO sighting), but the object was quite stationary (relative to the space station which orbits the Earth about once every 90 minutes).
Space.com has come to the rescue though. If you’re interested in seeing this, check out the charts at the angle and time you will be able to see the moon eclipse Mars (in addition to seeing the Red Planet in all its glory).
Note: this August our friend Mr. Mars will be the closest he has ever been in the past 60,000 years. If you have some binoculars or one of those cheesy Christmas telescopes, go out a couple times before the 27th day of the month, named after Julius Caesar’s nephew — Augustus (the day it is the closest), so that your eyes can adjust to the atmospheric disturbances, light pollution, etc. You might get a chance to see the canale and/or the highly disputed scantily clad female etched into the surface of the dusty, barren planet.
If you miss this upcoming chance, you should be ashamed of yourself and [insert obligatory post regarding all the probes heading to Mars here].
