Slashdot Mirror

Where does this come from and why can't it ever be debunked once and for all?

I would call it a Meta Rule. A rule that is not what copyright says; but was proposed once as a guideline, and took on a life of its own through the power of word of mouth -- with various institutions codifying it. With various degrees of strictness --- if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time and use 31 seconds of a media recording; I suppose you might get expelled from some school, because you're over the limit.

Examples:

Halldavidson: This copyright chart form was designed to inform teachers what tehy may do under the law

Music: Up to 10% of a copyrighted musical composition may be reproduced, performed and displayed as part of a multimedia program produced by an educator or student for educational purposes. ---- Authorities site a maximum length of 30 seconds. See notes by congressman below.

Temple University: College of Liberal Arts: Fair Use Policy:
Educators May use their projects for teaching, for a period of up to two years after the first instructional use with a class. ....
Music, Lyrics, and Music Video Up to 10% but no more than 30 seconds from any single musical work Any alterations shall not change the basic melody or fundamental character of the work. .... Motion Media Up to 10% or 3 minutes, whichever is less

WILEY: Permission requirements .... . A single quotation or several shorter quotes from a full-length book, more than 300 words in toto. ..... A single quotation of more than 50 words from a newspaper, magazine, or journal. .... Material which includes all or part of a poem or song lyric (even as little as one line), or the title of a song. ...

The Law of Fair use and the Illusion of Fair use Guidelines

Pikes Peak Community College: Copyright Portion Limits; Rules of the road: Music, lyrics, music video - Up to 10%, but no more than 30 seconds Arlington Independent School District: Copyright: Portion Limitations
CCSJ: Copyright Fair Use: 'Allowable portion for fair use'
Public Schools of North Carolina: Copyright in an Electronic environment:

Up to 10% of a body of sound recording, but no more than 30 seconds

St. Olaf College: Copyright guidelines

Music, lyrics, music video: up to 10% but in no event more than 30 seconds of an individual work

MolStead Library; North Idaho College The amount of work to be copied is based on the “portion limit” set for that “medium.” [....] In general, you should never use more than 30 seconds or 10 percent of a piece of recorded music. Ball State University, guidelines for educational media:

4.2.3: Music, Lyrics and Music Video : Up to 10%, but in no event more than 30 seconds, of the music and lyrics from an individual work. No alteration(s) of the music and/or lyrics are allowed.

I hear NUTS has an exchange program with Ball State University.

I'm glad that it's a private university. I'd shit in disgust if Apple's shiny gadgets were being shoved in my face at my public university.

Universities should be OS-agnostic when it comes to student requirements(is it really that difficult to have interoperability with Java and almost universal support of most popular formats and protocols?). Texas seems to be the best(worst?) place for Mac-friendly universites but the madness continues elsewhere...

Build a homemade blast furnace in your back yard. Use coal as fuel and a leaf blower as a bellows. Hard drives are mostly aluminum, which melts at the relatively low temperature of about 1200 Fahrenheit.

One time I put a hard drive in, and the rest of the evening I would randomly get brilliant purple sparks out of the furnace. Maybe the metals in the magnets?

Perhaps it needs a P2P-based hosting system to serve up its content.
Here is a product that apparently provides some kind of P2P-Wiki
Here is an academic proposal for hosting wikipedia over a P2P network.
And here is someone else working on the same problem.

http://www.bsu.edu/web/jfillwalk/wireless/ - half-hidden on the news article. A much more educational page as to how exactly they're doing it, which (call me crazy) -might- be of more interest to a "News for Nerds" site.

Digging further I find. That even though the entire sculpture is made possible by Apple computers and software the dang this is only viewable via Microsoft Media player!. Talk about frustration city. Less effort on their part would have resulted in greater market penetration. Funny too how the sculpture done on Mac G5's celebrates an Intel award.

The average person spends about nine hours a day using some type of media, which is arguably in excess of anything we would have envisioned 10 years ago. It includes television, books, magazines, cell phones, the Internet, instant messaging, e-mail and radio ... full report is here

In terms of portability, Psion's are about as portable as this phone. The trouble with some devices is that they can't decide if they'll be a phone, pda, or mini laptop. When something tries to 'do it all', they generally fail dismally. My old manager had a 'small' Psion and swore by it, but the thing was so damn clunky and awkward you rarely saw him actually using it. Palm did one thing (pda), did it well, and it remains to be seen IMO that they 'failed'.

I thought that the definition of worms made them diffrent from viruses in that they don't need to pick up a ride on a file, they can come on there own. Maybe this is just another public misconception, like when people call crackers, hackers. We all should know that a statement like "I caught a worm from an email sent by a hacker" makes no sense at all.

wanting to improve my german, i found some old used berltiz
tapes from 1958 containing six hours of graduated conversational
german - digitized these into mp3 files, and i just play them
on endless repeat on my ipod.

over the course of three months, for each itteration,
i find i keep filling in more and more of the words
as i keep coming back to the same parts on the tape.
i keep repeating until i catch every single word
without missing any - the more effort you put into
trying to say the words you hear also helps.

for reading - the best thing was peter hagboldt's
graduated german reader - they have stories with a
several hundred word vocabulary, and each chapter
adds in a dozen new key words, with definitions in
the footnotes for each new instance. the graduated
nature of these readers helps a lot, because it uses
a core grammar, and then introduces the new words
gradually as you're getting used to using the words
you already know. --if you can OCR, or find digitized
versions of one of his texts, you can download it
into a palm pilot, and practice reading with a text
editor.

there are no shortcuts to learning a language.
there is no technological solution. but using an ipod
with endless repeat on some good audio language content,
or using a palm pilot to read practice texts
can help facilitate the process. :D

the next step is to set my google news page to german... :-P

hab ein guten tag!
john.

"form follows function" is a central bauhaus tenet - I've got a bauhaus-styled watch and car, and you've probably seen these chairs. It is a fashion, it is functional, and in my eye, it's beautiful.

"form follows function" is a central bauhaus tenet - I've got a bauhaus-styled watch and car, and you've probably seen these chairs. It is a fashion, it is functional, and in my eye, it's beautiful.

The first was mentioned in a blog, and uses F-Prot, which is FAIB for home/personal use.

There's also Knoppix STD, a security/vulnerability live CD that includes ClamAV. Doesn't look like they're using the Captive NTFS driver, though, so not sure how well that'll work compared to one that does, like...

BitDefender, which seems to be All That And More. It uses Captive, has ClamAV, and I'm pretty sure it's GPL'd, too. (The company does make commercial/proprietary products too.)

These take care of viruses. I'm not aware of any spyware-removal programs that run under Linux, which is a shame. It really would make it easier to boot from the CD, sip coffee for 15 minutes, then go back to Windows with that fresh feeling...

My web page was designed to keep people away from my web page... That is why I went CLI (Requires Newest Flash Player) for my Command Line Flash web page at: CLF

Enjoy

--Bucktug

I was taught that you very often, but not always, put commas between multiple adjectives that are all describing the same noun.

The subject of this post should get one. "Bite my shiny metal ass," on the other hand does not.

Comma rules

But in the case of "poor, abused Fax.com," the comma certainly does belong. There are lots of times that the rules of the English language will allow an ambiguous sentence, and that's when you have to fall back to your ability to reason, and examine the context of what is said.

Frankly, if you really read that as "Forbes Sympathises With Poor (people), AND ALSO Forbes Abused Fax.Com (at some time in the past)," then you're an idiot. It's very clear that abused is an adjective in this case.

It's a bit dated, but this bibliography has some of the more interesting works in the field.

That's what I did: http://www.cs.bsu.edu/~gjjones/administrivia

I am not as popular as most but I do get 50 or so visitors a day for some of my tech support workarounds. Every little bit helps. I think it would be more of a statement if hundreds of thousands of pages had similar protest pages instead of just high-profile sites.

If you uncle goes by your site to look at pictures of your children, raising his awareness isn't a bad thing.

With some simple cutting and pasting, and a cp command or two, I have replaced my front page... more people should do the same. I remember the Internet Blackout from years ago... it was quite stunning to go to all of these pages that were turned black in protest. I don't know if something like that would have an impact today or not, but it would be interesting to find out.

http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/gjjones/administri via/

Rose-Hulman has been requiring laptops and having wired ethernet in nearly every classroom since 1995, the year before I got there. They've since added wireless which I believe gets the rooms that weren't able to be wired easily.

While I saw and was part of some of the type of on-topic conversing going on back then, it wasn't a large part of the usage of the laptops. Aside from where they were explicitly used as part of the lecture, I used mine for about 1/2 on and 1/2 off topic.

For instance, during math and science classes it was very useful to be able to do and play around with complex calculations quickly while a lecture was going on. The ability to do bits of research in realtime helped too. And yes, some real-time conversing on the subject.

I guess some of my usage fell in-between on and off topic. Things like working on homework for that or other classes, being able to do little bits of work on projects as you happen to think of things during classes, speaking with or emailing team members, that kind of thing. Education related, but not necessarily related to the topic at hand.

As for off-topic, that ranged from emails to web surfing to playing network games with other people in that and other classrooms around you. 95% of that probably happens in the first quarter of school, though. That kind of goofing off drops off pretty quickly as the novelty wears off and as you realize just how much you're paying for that time. Many (probably most) of the profs were too intense to be able to do other things anyway.

I've recently learned that my high school will begin requiring/providing laptops in this coming school year. The whole campus is already bathed in 802.11b goodness. It will be interested to see how *that* turns out...

The design specs for payphones are histerically funny to read. If I remember correctly, the coin boxes need to be able to withstand repeated blows from a Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Many that are used in "high risk" areas also have the ET function. They "phone home" when jostled too much or when they have been damaged (failing certain diagnostics) and alert the company that they are in need of service.

My aunt was a switch technician for a while back in the early nineties and the red light district of her town generated a ton of calls for service from "customers." It seems when a payphone was having problems, it affected business and people needed it fixed pronto. They were also some of the most abused phones around. The stuff they would hear during a line test would melt your ears, supposedly.

Putman defines social capital as "features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit."

Well dang, he just described the Internet. I participate in listservs and web forums every day for cooperation and mutual benefit. I apologize if Putman prefers in-person contact (which for me would only happen at an expensive conference, because there just aren't many like-minded folk who live near me).

Masons, Elks Lodges, and other social organizations were hugely popular in the late 1800s. Now they operate in obscurity because people fill their time with other activities. Is that bad? It is out of elitism or fear that people blindly tell us the status quo is better than change.

This /. article was entitled "Browsing Alone." The last thing I feel on the Internet is alone. Maybe Putman should stop being a lurking grue and start communicating.

Our client wanted to be able to post reports that were output from the software to the web. Our head programmer put a very rudimentary web template system in place that would output reports with choices of sort order, gawd-aweful background colors (from a 16 color palett), and customized headings and footers. This was all done without the user having to know any HTML. You can see samples here dating back to 1997.

The About SCORE page even references automated HTML authorship. From the page:

SCORE (Scheduling Classes with Order Reliability and Efficiency) is an application developed by a group of Computer Science students enrolled in the Software Engineering sequence at Ball State University. SCORE is an application that is a flexible scheduling advisor for use by faculty involved in the creation of course offerings by a department. SCORE has features which allow for powerful schedule reporting, class conflict catching and reporting, persistent and consistent data retieval and automated HTML authorship of documents for Internet/Intranet display.

Though ugly, I think these qualify as prior art and beat IBM's 1998 application.

Our client wanted to be able to post reports that were output from the software to the web. Our head programmer put a very rudimentary web template system in place that would output reports with choices of sort order, gawd-aweful background colors (from a 16 color palett), and customized headings and footers. This was all done without the user having to know any HTML. You can see samples here dating back to 1997.

The About SCORE page even references automated HTML authorship. From the page:

SCORE (Scheduling Classes with Order Reliability and Efficiency) is an application developed by a group of Computer Science students enrolled in the Software Engineering sequence at Ball State University. SCORE is an application that is a flexible scheduling advisor for use by faculty involved in the creation of course offerings by a department. SCORE has features which allow for powerful schedule reporting, class conflict catching and reporting, persistent and consistent data retieval and automated HTML authorship of documents for Internet/Intranet display.

Though ugly, I think these qualify as prior art and beat IBM's 1998 application.

Our client wanted to be able to post reports that were output from the software to the web. Our head programmer put a very rudimentary web template system in place that would output reports with choices of sort order, gawd-aweful background colors (from a 16 color palett), and customized headings and footers. This was all done without the user having to know any HTML. You can see samples here dating back to 1997.

The About SCORE page even references automated HTML authorship. From the page:

SCORE (Scheduling Classes with Order Reliability and Efficiency) is an application developed by a group of Computer Science students enrolled in the Software Engineering sequence at Ball State University. SCORE is an application that is a flexible scheduling advisor for use by faculty involved in the creation of course offerings by a department. SCORE has features which allow for powerful schedule reporting, class conflict catching and reporting, persistent and consistent data retieval and automated HTML authorship of documents for Internet/Intranet display.

Though ugly, I think these qualify as prior art and beat IBM's 1998 application.

Our client wanted to be able to post reports that were output from the software to the web. Our head programmer put a very rudimentary web template system in place that would output reports with choices of sort order, gawd-aweful background colors (from a 16 color palett), and customized headings and footers. This was all done without the user having to know any HTML. You can see samples here dating back to 1997.

The About SCORE page even references automated HTML authorship. From the page:

SCORE (Scheduling Classes with Order Reliability and Efficiency) is an application developed by a group of Computer Science students enrolled in the Software Engineering sequence at Ball State University. SCORE is an application that is a flexible scheduling advisor for use by faculty involved in the creation of course offerings by a department. SCORE has features which allow for powerful schedule reporting, class conflict catching and reporting, persistent and consistent data retieval and automated HTML authorship of documents for Internet/Intranet display.

Though ugly, I think these qualify as prior art and beat IBM's 1998 application.

I doubt econoboxes are driving insurance rates up. The insurance industry has gone back and forth over this (for higher rates: safety, theft, higher liability, cause more deaths, etc.; against: safety for occupants). Allstate and Progressive charge more for SUVs while State Farm gives them a discount. Given that they waste about $250 a month on ego. For people to claim that SUVs are safer, they are only looking at from the aspect of being an SUV occupant in a crash. They are actually dangerous if you are in a car and are hit by one. Given that SUVs are less maneuverable and take longer to stop due to their mass, you probably have a better chance of avoiding an accident in a car. Since 85% of them aren't being used for what they are designed for, it is a waste. For most people, having a SUV in a metro area is just plain DUMB (let's have one person commute ina 10-15mpg vehicle, take up two parking spaces, or can't fit in some parking garages [a guy at work can't park his Excursion in the garage because it's too tall]). I can think of better things to spend my money on.

Wow. Just when you think something has fallen off into relative obscurity, it pops up in comments like the one above.

Unfortunately, Neep was a rather good first try. The last published version is over a year and a half old now, and suffers from several problems:

• The single quote (') and grave accent (`) characters have good, but wrong, intentions. They follow the old and misguided glyph forms ('9'-shaped right quote and backwards-'9'-shaped left quote) perpetuated by otherwise useful programs such as gcc and groff. At the time, i was following the lead of the then-prevalent 'fixed' family of fonts shipped with XFree86. I am sorry for the consequences of my ignorance.

• The fonts are designed for increasingly obsolete 75-dpi displays. When i recently (nine months ago is recently?) switched most of my X displays to default to 100 dpi (and my fontservers to 100 dpi fonts), i discovered that Neep doesn't provide 100 dpi variants. At 1280x1024 on a 17-inch monitor, -*-neep-medium-r-normal-*-*-120-75-75-*-*-iso8859- * is just too small. And i don't like -*-neep-medium-r-normal-*-*-140-75-75-*-*-iso8859- *, even in its unpublished, more legible form. I made that one because other folks wanted it. ;)

• Neep does not come in Unicode/ISO-10646 encoding. It was a mistake for me not to make Neep into a Unicode font to begin with. I apologize for the consequences of my ignorance.[*]

• Related to the above points: Neep is composed of beautiful, legible, hand-tuned bitmaps, and i just plain have kein Bock mehr to make more and bigger sizes, not to mention merging the existing, improved, but unpublished ISO8859-* fonts with Markus Kuhn's[*] UCS-encoded ones. I really wish i had learned how to create and hint TrueType or OpenType fonts instead of making bitmaps, so i could be lazy and simply make two or three fonts instead of fifty-some.

I myself have pretty much stopped using Neep and am using Lucida Console (10 pt, 100 dpi) instead[**] (though i still wish i could find actual bold, italic, and bold-italic variants so that i could use it with nedit).

Regardless, if you must get Neep, please get it from http://www.jmknoble.cx/fonts/ rather than the place that points to. Web pages move easily, but jmknoble.cx is likely to stick around for quite a while.

If someone is interested in maintaining jmk-x11-fonts further, using the improved, unpublished edition, feel free to contact me (address is listed at the bottom of this page). Note, though, that i'm liable to be slightly cranky, and i may not hand these over to just anyone; i'd prefer for the design goals and aesthetic sense to be preserved, since they do have my name on them....

[Sigh.] Success's sword has two edges. (And yes, Brainchild = Jim Knoble).

________________
[*] Markus Kuhn has converted the most recently (year-and-half-old) published version of Neep into Unicode fonts. I'm not sure whether he's published them or not; check here. I have them, though, and (as i mention above) am partway through the process of merging them with subsequent changes in the ISO-8859-* fonts. If enough folks ask (and it's okay with Markus), i suppose i could publish them if they're not available at his site.

[**] I've been through several iterations of "there must be something else out there that has what i want", and i continually come up with this:

• Andale Mono is nice, but it has too much leading (at least, after getting used to the Lucida type family) and its punctuation is too light.
• Lucida Sans Typewriter has the single-quote problem in XFree86-3.3.x, and it's neither TrueType nor UCS-encoded.
• Courier New has too much leading, is too light in normal weight and too heavy in bold weight, and is much too ugly in any weight.
• None of the other easily available monospace fonts look as good or legible to me as Lucida Console.

Some nice fonts for coding and other fixed pitch applications: Monospaced Fonts for the Screen are here. Since I use Windows at work, I grabbed MS's Andale Mono for the web here. It's a nice font for coding (at least to me) and doesn't require any license payments.

Andal Mono 8 point is my coding default, on a 17-inch monitor at 1152x864 resolution. When I really need to see as much code as possible on my screen, I'll change down to HyperFont bit-mapped 8 point. I found a very useful review of monospace fonts here.

Andal Mono 8 point is my coding default, on a 17-inch monitor at 1152x864 resolution. When I really need to see as much code as possible on my screen, I'll change down to HyperFont bit-mapped 8 point. I found a very useful review of monospace fonts here.

I *do* want a Beaver t-shirt, before they change their name