Legal? Ethical? Who knows.

In my opinion the problem with this situation is not who should be blamed for the tragedy. Obviously the loss of a life is horrible but I don’t think anyone needs to be blamed for it. The medical student’s intent for his article was to help elderly citizens make a difficult decision, not assist a teenager in suicide. The weblog cannot be to be blame because a blog is supposed to be a way for individuals to express their opinions and should not be monitored by the blog.  Blaming the teenager would also be unreasonable because teenagers are some of the most unstable and irrational people. If the teenager was predisposed to committing suicide than I doubt the medical student’s article did anything to advance that decision. If anything I would place the most blame on the parents of the teenager. This story does not give enough information regarding how informed the parents were of how emotionally unstable their child was. If the parents had a vast knowledge of how ill their child was then they should have sought help for him/her immediately. This help may have included restricting his/her internet access, I am no expert on dealing with emotionally unstable teens but it would seem that not allowing them access to a page talking about suicide would be valid. I would never charge a parent who has lost a child as being negligent or even bad parents unless the circumstances directly pointed to that, which doesn’t seem to be the case in this situation.

            I don’t feel it is necessary to charge anyone with a crime in this situation, however if the parents felt that someone was at fault then it would not be ridiculous for them to charge someone since they are in such an unfortunate and probably emotional state.

Addressing the ethics of the medical student’s blog post in another situation entirely from the criminal aspects of this case. Again, I don’t claim to be an ethics expert but perhaps the student should have thought a little more about who could access his blog. The medical students should have understood that the world is filled with unstable people who are considering suicide, in fact the Nation Institute of Mental Health estimates that “26.2%”[1] of Americans suffer from some sort of mental illness. I don’t wish to make any statements about the ethics of the student, he surely regrets that the information he provided was used in the suicide of a teenager. The student was attempting to provide a service to a certain group and the information unfortunately fell into the dangerous hands of an unstable teen. We cannot fault the student for his intent, his execution could have been better.

The tragedy does not require that someone get blamed. Instead we all need to understand that there are sick people in the world and that anything that is posted to the internet can be accessed by these people. Everyone involved in the case probably feels some sort of responsibility for the suicide, whether it be the student, the weblog, or the parents, but no one can be, or should be fully blamed. I would hope a real court would find something similar. My view is that it is extremely unfortunate that there is some belief in our country that when a tragedy like this one occurs that someone is financially responsible and the first choice is to go to court and have the court decide who’s fault it is. A better view would be to reflect on how we can ensure that this doesn’t happen again or at least happens less frequently. 

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[1] http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml#Intro

Lynda Excel

I thought learning excel from Lynda was challenging but a very good introduction. I really like that they spend a lot of time on each topic, it makes the tasks easy to understand. However, at the same time it is a little difficult to learn a program like Excel in a none, hands-on way. Easily the best thing about the Lynda.com learning is that the videos are always there to watch, definitely a huge plus!

Copyright Presentation

One thing a new college student definitely doesn't think about when they first enter school is how copyright law will affect the coming years of their lives. I know that wasn't the first thing on my mind when I entered school. In high school, the idea was sometimes mentioned but never really talked about seriously and the discussion usually ended with “as long as you sight your sources, you’re fine.” I never know how much students actually infringe on copyright laws, even though most of it is completely fine because of Fair Use Policies. One thing that does often come up is plagiarism, often students who plagiarize don’t mean to plagiarize, however the consequences are disastrous. Another major issue with especially college students is torrents, either for movies, music or other types of media. Unfortunately for the students the excuse “I’m just a poor college student” won’t work if you’re caught using a torrent, the consequences are severe. 

After taking the copyright quiz, I was less than surprised by most of the answers. However, the third question was surprising. It regarded a video of Richard Nixon leaving the white house after he resigned. I would think this would fall under fair use since the teacher uses the video every year, apparently not. 

Copyright Presentation by Noah Carr Lyford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

My Selfie

My photo shows two half, a light and a dark side, like most people I believe this describes me. I could not get the photo to turn right side up...

Using Lynda.com

Lynda.com was very easy to use. The presenter moved quickly between items and kept a seemingly boring task interesting. The videos were organized well and easy to find. The presenter had a very soothing voice. I didn't really encounter any problems, I was very impressed with Lynda.com. I found the videos comparable to learning in class, I still prefer learning in class as a group because of the ability to ask questions. 

One thing I learned from the online tutorial was how to crop images. 

Trinity LAN Diagram

Network Server Diagram

These three folders are all accessible by students from anywhere on campus and allow easy access to files which may be required for different class, including our ITS class.

Introductions

I'm Noah Lyford. I'm from Anchorage, Alaska. I went to West Anchorage High School, I played baseball in high school and still enjoy the sport. I enjoy fishing and camping as well. I have three brothers, none of us were born in Alaska but all three of us identify with Alaska. I would describe my computer ability as limited, I cannot think of any special skills I have concerning computers. Some concerns I have about the class are my limited ability with computers and that others might be more capable than me. My secret fact is that I've never ridden roller coaster. My Trinity email address is nlyford@trinity.edu.