[Haifux] Where were the organizers?

[Orr Dunkelman]

It indeed went completely off topic.

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Nadav Har'El <nyh at 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.Dunkelman at gmail.com

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