Memes @lemmy.ml

7mo ago

Piracy

105 comments

I have had uni professors sign books to make sure people actually bought new books and not used ones (he wrote them); unfortunately for him i had access to toluene to get pen ink off; did the same to all of my peers; Fuck those kind of professors
- Do what happened if you bring a book to class already signed?
  
  He threatened you to either buy a new book or he would make your uni career hell, one of my mates did it, at the last exam he sent him back 5 times, the last time he went to take the exam the coordiator said "what else have you got to ask to him; he told you everything in your course; [insert name] give me the paper" he signed the paper and sent him off; the prof. Still gave him only 60/100.
  I still want to slap that piece of shit.
  After that i taught other people in the uni to do that; he tried to mitigate by writing over the printed title of the book; hoping that any tampering would be evident; toluene didn't touch the toner, so it didn't work
  Edit: grammar mistake (thanks mac)
- Buy/collect used books off students after they finish the course... Remove the ink, resell undercutting him by a ton and make a huge profit!
  
  Nah I'm fine with spreading how to remove the sign, there are already enough people capitalizing on education here
- Side note: to anyone looking to follow this method, please try to limit the amount of toluene you are exposed to by wearing gloves and working in a well ventilated space. It can do dirty shit to your nervous system and I've seen chemists start to experience symptoms from relatively little exposure to the fumes.
  
  In general if you can get a respirator or ~~at least an n95 mask if you still have them from covid~~(apparently that doesnt work); also make tries on an old book before going on the good one, at least if you mess up it isn't another hole punched in your wallet
- What an absolute buffoon.

God bless this professor. Piracy is a victimless crime!
- Aaar, matey.
  
  The name of my Plex server has been "The Pirate's Booty" for about a decade 😂
- Like punching someone in the dark!
  J/K, I have a pavlovian response to the phrase "victimless crime"
- Piracy is a victimless crime, most of the time.

This reminds me of when Weird Al told Canadian (or maybe Australian?) fans who wanted to watch his movie, "there's Very Probably No way to do this. I know you probably have a TORRENT of questions, but I don't have time to answer them right now."
- Once in a while maybe you will feel the urge To break international copyright law By downloading MP3's from file sharing sites Like Morpheus or Grokster or LimeWire or KaZaA

based professor

Asus had some different ideas about libgen.rs 😯
- Yo control your router lol (freshtomato or openwrt or something might be good options)
  
  Seconding the recommendation for OpenWRT - I’ve been using it for years on my routers.
  
  I loved AsusWRT-Merlin back when I used an Asus router.
  
  It's running Merlin, works pretty well. Then again, all it does is NAT and DHCP (and apparently the parent control thing)
- To be fair it might actually be possible to find smut there.
  
  You're probably correct. It's the Internet. The Internet is for porn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTJvdGcb7Fs

Unfortunately many courses now give assignments through sites that are only accessible by purchasing a textbook with a unique access code
- So in every other country if they tried something like that, students would kick up shit, government would step in and sort it
  So it's either, too pussy to stand up for yourselves, or you're living in a dictatorship
  Which is it? 😂
  
  i don't know who's downvoting you. As an american who had to go through that shit, you're not at all wrong.
  
  Selfishness and greed. Anyone that stands up stands alone, and the others are quick to lick a boot as they grovel for scraps. For some inconceivable reason too many consider this preferable to standing together and working to make things better.
  
  North American here. Funny how it's very much less "which is it?" And more "Yeah. Basically."
  We've been culturally domesticated to not cause trouble for our bosses / schools / etc. If the State steps in after you cause trouble for enterprise, it's usually to kick you back into your place.
  We might not live in a State dictatorship, but that only matters so far, because that State enables many tiny, petty dictatorships that more directly affect your life and run amok unopposed.
  Somehow people accept petty tyranny in everything from corporations to universities to shifts at the burger joint. They'll get all riled up that some politician they never met is bawking about foreign policy, but their tail is tucked firmly when their company tells them they can't get sick days and arriving a minute late is a fireable offense.
  Many have bought the lies of rugged individualism and competition. "An insult to one is...well, that really sucks for you but I told you to just stay quiet. I'm just working hard doing what I'm told."
  Like someone said before me: Even the most rebellious in us think twice about making our move, because many people simply think "That's how it is." And don't believe it can get any better.
  There's not a lot of examples of collective action winning in recent history, so a lot of people don't even know how to begin to push back in the first place, besides writing an angry tweet or two.
  
  Even worse, they are gaslighted into thinking intellectual property exctracting rent is completely fine and actually desirable.
- A professor at my university tried that, but the students quite quickly made a huge fuss, got the principals office involved, and the universities lawyers informed said professor that what she was doing was illegal, and that she should stop before she got any more trouble. She stopped.
  
  Where was this? The practice described above is common in US universities.
  
  Your university has a principal's office?

I paid $1000 for books my first semester of college back in 2007. I felt so burnt and violated I never bought another textbook. I made it through the rest of undergrad, a masters, and a PhD in biochemistry by checking out books from the library, borrowing textbooks from friends, and going sailing. When I taught I made it a point to teach my students about all the ways they can avoid becoming a victim like myself.
- What could you have possibly learned from sailing though?
  
  There's a lot to be learned at sea, lad.

I bought some textbooks for university.
Ended up not using most of them.
Most computers science students are used to computers, internet and StackOverflow.
Not paper.
- Here is a PDF of the book you need for this course, you may not share it and the file will self destruct the day after finals. Thanks for the $150
  
  The younger teachers were doing something similar to this. Teachers have to follow certain sets of rules to not get fired.
  It was mostly the oldest, gray-haired teachers that were requiring textbooks. Stuck in their old ways.
- Textbooks that are good references are great. Textbooks that are just another class and withhold the answers are garbage.
- There's nothing wrong with paper books.
  
  I never said there's something wrong with paper books.
  I'm even reading one right now. Lord of Rings paper version.
  But for computer science students textbooks, it's heavy, inconvenient and spacey.
  The internet or even PDFs are better.
  Why?
  It's easier to do research, CTRL+F and copy/paste some programming code.
- The best investment I made in textbooks was the class that wanted a Schaum's Outline book, $15 brand new and still a book I use for occasional linear algebra reference.
- I found this in my first and second year so I stopped buying them.
  Half the time it was just "recommended reading" and the book wasn't even used in class.
  Yep, not gonna shell out $120 per book for "recommend reading"

The California Community College I went to allowed you to filter classes in the schedule by whether they offered ZTC - Zero Textbook Cost or OER - Open Educational Resource.

I love how he doesn't even bother trying to consistently maintain the facade. It's a *Chef's Kiss

Use Anna's Archives
Wikipedia Library
Wosonhj

In one of my uni courses, I found a free copy of the required textbook and posted a link to it on the forum in the LMS saying "Hey prof, is this the correct textbook?" By the time the prof responded and politely took my message down a week later, everyone had helped themselves to a copy.

Sites like that saved me thousands getting my psych degree. God bless professors like this. Also the ones who were like, "the new edition of the book you need for this semester is $500, but you can get the previous edition for $5 at this site. Here's copies of the pages that were changed." or "I photocopied every page you need for this semester from the book for all of you."

Our profit margin demands you buy over-priced books from our shop
College material monopolies should be illegal, just like all other monopolies. Want to give students an education in the real world? Let the free market determine textbook prices.

A professor of mine sent me a similar email when I said I was having trouble accessing some journals through the University library portal:
"One should definitely not use Sci-hub, if you catch my drift."
- Too bad it doesn't have the latest papers. annas-archive is supposed to be growing that database, though.

I once had a class where, day one, the professor said something like, "If you don't want to buy the book, that's fine with me. I can't tell you where to find a copy, but maybe one of your classmates can." Someone raised their hand and started rattling off a few useful websites.

Fuck Pearson

I had a professor who kept all the materials from the books that he wrote on his website. He was cool with students printing the html pages and bringing it to class.
- Me fighting my instinct to say * Hello. Based department? *

My Analysis professor once did basically the same thing in class. She said that we should never go to these websites, since they were illegal. Based lady.

I had a stats professor who told us to not buy the book. He would print out hand outs and gave them to us every class. He was super nice. One time a girl brought her bunny to class because she had to give it medicine on a schedule and he made her do show and tell lol.

That professor is legendary

Perfect professor fr

A creative way to tell a student how to download a free book while telling them “not to”. The professor probably just wants to teach and is as tired of the university bullshit as the students.

I often usually post the chapters we use for my classes in case students haven't bought the book yet. I also have a hard $60 limit for books that I use.

Textbook example of Streisand Effect.

These sites also usually have the solution manuals

I really think Khan Academy should publish a textbook that everyone can use. Cheap or free, doesn't change every year, allowed to print out yourself.
Isn't one of the Gates kids doing some educational reform?
- I don't think the problem is the availability, it's probably the adoption. But I'm not in higher ed.
  
  I see some profs trying to choose good books, but they don't seem to be able. But I'm also not in higher ed.
  
  Exactly. We already have stuff like OpenStax. Great content, but comparatively little adoption by faculties.

Respect.

105 comments