Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?
As Orna had already pointed out there is usually someone there to take care of stuff, and once in a while there isn't. It is not the presenter's fault (and if this was implied than this was a problem), but as I've written earlier - for future reference, ask Moti, or call one of us. Specifically, this time it was a mess due to unfortunate personal circumstances. As for your email Nadav, I strongly disagree. On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 9:15 AM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.il wrote: Just as an example, when I gave my Hspell presentation a couple of months ago, I had a few moments of worry. First, the fascists at the gate didn't let me in - apparently they didn't get the fax that was suppsosed to have been sent by someone in Haifux. While I do not like the security at the entrance to the Technion, and find them annoying, they are far from fascists. Due to many reasons, there is an access control at the Technion (not only due to security reasons, btw), and the fact that someone tries to enforce this, does not make him (or her) into a fascist. Yes, the policy sucks, but please blame the responsible people for that (namely, Kabat Hatechnion, Israeli Police, and some parts of the Chamas, as well as thieves). Please remember that some (?) of the Haifux presenters haven't been in that lecture room in years. Some of them haven't been in the Technion in years - if at all. How exactly do you expect them to manage on their own?? Usually there is at least one person who knows who to talk to or knows Orna/Eli/My cell phones. We also try to communicate with the lecturer before hand, if neither of us has his phone number (so we could call the lecturer). That projector isn't exactly national security... What would it hurt to duplicate the key and give it to many Haifux regulars? Yes. It would. These are the regulations of the CS department at the technion that allows us the use of its facility. If you find a better location in Haifa - we can consider moving there, but until then, they are our hosts, and as such, we follow their regulations, to the latter. How difficult is it to have a smoother car-permit process? In the Technion - terribly. This affects not only lecturers at haifux (which again a donation of the CS department), but also real issues within the technion (try to be a girl being dropped off at night at the gate, 'coz the security guard refuses your companion to give you a ride to your dorms). For sake of fairness, there used to be some mechanisms in the past to bend slightly the rules, but they all had their own downsides. Just to put you at ease, even I, as a lecturer of a course at the Technion, and an advisor of a masters student at the Technion has to suffer the stupid regulations. Blaming the presenters on not taking care of these things is a bit silly, I think. The only point I agree with. In the real world, when I present in a conference, or invited to a meeting, or whatever, all I have to do is show up on time, with whatever I was asked to bring in advance. I don't have to verify in advance (how can I?) that the other side's meeting room will be open, or that the projector I was told in advance that they have wouldn't be locked. If I'm told I can come with my car, I expect that to be true, and again, don't need to verify that this is indeed true. Please recall that we are hosted at the Technion, not a real part of the Technion. And yes, as the person who gets the free horse, you need to check the teeth. Orr. -- Orr Dunkelman, orr.dunkel...@gmail.com GPG fingerprint: C2D5 C6D6 9A24 9A95 C5B3 2023 6CAB 4A7C B73F D0AA (This key will never sign Emails, only other PGP keys. The key corresponds to o...@vipe.technion.ac.il) ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
[Haifux] Moving Dotan's lecture
Hey all, I just noticed that Dotan's lecture is on the same day as IBM's SYSTOR: https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/conferences/systor2010/program.shtml I planned to attend both. SYSTOR is 3 days, and according to the official schedule the first day should end before 18:30. But conferences often run late, and in any case it will be tiring to go to two events the same day. Will Dotan and the people here be interested in postponing the lecture to next week? If not, I'll understand. I should have noticed this clash with SYSTOR weeks ago and told you then, sorry. Ram. ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] Moving Dotan's lecture
On 22 May 2010 16:38, cool-RR cool...@cool-rr.com wrote: Hey all, I just noticed that Dotan's lecture is on the same day as IBM's SYSTOR: https://www.research.ibm.com/haifa/conferences/systor2010/program.shtml I planned to attend both. SYSTOR is 3 days, and according to the official schedule the first day should end before 18:30. But conferences often run late, and in any case it will be tiring to go to two events the same day. Will Dotan and the people here be interested in postponing the lecture to next week? If not, I'll understand. I should have noticed this clash with SYSTOR weeks ago and told you then, sorry. Ram. I have no problem moving the lecture if others want to. I'll let the community decide. Will many people be at SYSTOR? Note that if it is moved it will likely be a two-week postponement, that is until the next Haifux meeting. That would either postpone Asaf's lecture, or postpone my own a month. -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?
This discussion is a bit off-topic, but just to explain myself, On Sat, May 22, 2010, Orr Dunkelman wrote about Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?: While I do not like the security at the entrance to the Technion, and find them annoying, they are far from fascists. Due to many reasons, there is an access control at the Technion (not only due to security reasons, btw), and the fact that someone tries to enforce this, does not make him (or her) into a fascist. I did not mean they are fascists in the sense that they like to kill Jews or that they started a world war. I did *not* say they were nazis, I said fascists. The key point about fascists was that they believed that the state is more important than the individuals in it. While other political systems believe that the state was set up by the inviduals to serve them (e.g., read the preamble of the U.S. declaration of independence), in fascism, the belief is the other way around - that the state is what is important, and the individuals exist to serve it. To return to the nimshal, while I was in the Technion, I got too often the feeling that the security guards forgot that they are there to serve the needs the people of the technion (senior faculty, junior faculty, employees at least - even if we forget about the students). They started to get the feeling that it is the other way around - that the faculty are there to serve them. I've heard horror stories of all kind. One PhD student who lived in the technion and delivered some furniture in, and the guards refused to let the delivery in. One important guest invited by some faculty member who was denied entrence because a fax was misplaced. Faculty having to jump through hoops to get entrance permits despite being entitled to them. And more. Unfortunately, this is not specific to the technion. The saying goes that power corrupts. Unfortunately, it has a basis. Sorry to be (very) blunt, but this is how I feel. That projector isn't exactly national security... What would it hurt to duplicate the key and give it to many Haifux regulars? Yes. It would. These are the regulations of the CS department at the technion that allows us the use of its facility. So it is these regulations which caused the problem that the original poster complained about. If you're fine with that, than so am I. If you find a better location in Haifa - we can consider moving there, but until then, they are our hosts, and as such, we follow their regulations, to the latter. I had the impression that they were not just the hosts, many of you were PhD students there, and had some power there to change stupid rules into sensible rules (I'm talking about the projector now, not the entrance). I guess this impression was not accurate. How difficult is it to have a smoother car-permit process? In the Technion - terribly. This affects not only lecturers at haifux (which again a donation of the CS department), but also real issues within the technion (try to be a girl being dropped off at night at the gate, 'coz the security guard refuses your companion to give you a ride to your dorms). Hmm, remember what I said about security being the *goal*, rather than the *means*? You just gave another example. And yes, as the person who gets the free horse, you need to check the teeth. I guess that for years I had the wrong impression about Haifux. I always assumed that the presenter is doing the crowd a favor (and I remember in awe people like Guy Keren who gave dozens of lectures there). I didn't know that actually Haifux was doing the presenter a favor... Oh well ;-) Anyway, like I said, I'm not angry, and in my case everything went very well, thanks to Orna. I was just ranting on why everything needs to be so complicated when it really isn't. When I was a student in the Technion, I don't remember the blackboards - or even slide projectors - being locked in the afternoon. They were perhaps chained to the floor, but still operable. -- Nadav Har'El| Saturday, May 22 2010, 10 Sivan 5770 n...@math.technion.ac.il |- Phone +972-523-790466, ICQ 13349191 |A language is a dialect with an army. http://nadav.harel.org.il | ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?
It indeed went completely off topic. On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.il wrote: To return to the nimshal, while I was in the Technion, I got too often the feeling that the security guards forgot that they are there to serve the needs the people of the technion (senior faculty, junior faculty, employees at least - even if we forget about the students). They started to get the feeling that it is the other way around - that the faculty are there to serve them. I've heard horror stories of all kind. One PhD student who lived in the technion and delivered some furniture in, and the guards refused to let the delivery in. One important guest invited by some faculty member who was denied entrence because a fax was misplaced. Faculty having to jump through hoops to get entrance permits despite being entitled to them. And more. I agree with the above statement. However, the word fascists is not the best one to describe that. So it is these regulations which caused the problem that the original poster complained about. If you're fine with that, than so am I. I am not happy with the regulations, but in the case of the projector, one needs to remember that projectors are very delicate pieces of equipment, and remotes were stolen (god knows why someone would steal a remote). The easiest way to solve the issue is to lock the remote. So in other words, while the regulations are annoying, some of them actually have good reasons, which follow the fact that not all the people in the world are nice ones. I had the impression that they were not just the hosts, many of you were PhD students there, and had some power there to change stupid rules into sensible rules (I'm talking about the projector now, not the entrance). I guess this impression was not accurate. The cs department has always agreed to offer us its facilities. We showed our gratitude in the past by taking the department's needs in W2L series. I guess both sides found (and still find) the entire solution reasonably useful, but at the same time, we need to remember that even grad students who are not TAs do not get access to the remotes. I guess that for years I had the wrong impression about Haifux. I always assumed that the presenter is doing the crowd a favor (and I remember in awe people like Guy Keren who gave dozens of lectures there). I didn't know that actually Haifux was doing the presenter a favor... Oh well ;-) The lecturer does the crowd a favour. The CS department does haifux a favor (and Dotan does the lecturer a favour). So... at the end of the process, the crowd gets double favours. So please pay back all of you who haven't given a lecture in a while. I don't remember the blackboards - or even slide projectors - being locked in the afternoon. They were perhaps chained to the floor, but still operable. But they were not abused at the same rate (a person leaving the projector on, or turning it on, for his/her amusement causes quite a lot of damage, as the bulbs of the projectors are expensive, a person taking the remote with him/her, causes even more damage). -- Orr Dunkelman, orr.dunkel...@gmail.com GPG fingerprint: C2D5 C6D6 9A24 9A95 C5B3 2023 6CAB 4A7C B73F D0AA (This key will never sign Emails, only other PGP keys. The key corresponds to o...@vipe.technion.ac.il) ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?
On 21 May 2010 09:15, Nadav Har'El n...@math.technion.ac.il wrote: On Tue, May 11, 2010, Eli Billauer wrote about Re: [Haifux] Where were the organizers?: Please keep in mind that the only dedicated staff in any lecture, is the speaker himself (or herself). Arriving at a lecture expecting that everything has been fixed by just somebody is a bit of a gambling. While I agree that nobody owes anybody anything, I don't think this is a valid attitude. You have to remember that even if nobody is in charge of haifux, the lecturer often hasn't got any clue on any of the details. Just as an example, when I gave my Hspell presentation a couple of months ago, I had a few moments of worry. First, the fascists at the gate didn't let me in - apparently they didn't get the fax that was suppsosed to have been sent by someone in Haifux. After 10 minutes of arguments, and help from a chaver telefoni (Orna), they let me in. I usually arrange the entrance to the Technion. Going through the fine archives, I see that nobody requested ahead of time to arrange entrance. I will try to contact lecturers from now on, to ask if they need entrance to the Technion. Thanks for letting me know that this may be a problem. That projector isn't exactly national security... What would it hurt to duplicate the key and give it to many Haifux regulars? How difficult is it to have a smoother car-permit process? Blaming the presenters on not taking care of these things is a bit silly, I think. I think that the process is as smooth as it can be: just let me know. However, if it is not known that I should be contacted, that is a problem! Additionally, there is no place to store such a duplicate key for the projector. There are no regulars. -- Dotan Cohen http://gibberish.co.il http://what-is-what.com ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
