Slashdot Mirror

>"Illegal exhaust and boom boxes are a law enforcement issue. e.g. compare Santa Ana with Irvine."

And here nothing is done about it, and it won't change.

>"Dogs are subject to ultrasound, easy to manage."

Not easy when not your dogs. Trust me, I tried.

>"And the sirens are new to me. You are suggesting that running the siren when going to fire is unnecessary? Or that agencies without need run their sirens?"

Yes. I estimate 75% of the time they are running with sirens unnecessarily; the lights are enough. In fact, often the sirens just scare people and are actually counter productive. They are a major source of unnecessary noise pollution. Many studies corroborate this.

http://www.jems.com/articles/2...
http://noiseabatementsociety.c...
https://www.emergencydispatch....
https://www.emergencydispatch....
http://gradworks.umi.com/35/54...

Master's Thesis on SCADA Sec? Really?

Yes, the cite would be something like

Davies, Aaron G. "A Toolkit for Intrusion Detection in a SCADA Environment." MA thesis. University of Louisville, 2005.

Published anywhere?

Astonishingly, yes, at least if you count ProQuest. Not that I'd bother reading it (or at least anything but the background material) if I were you--it was basically about hooking up a SCADA emulator to Snort and an alert correlator to make a testbed you could deploy potential attacks against to see if your filter configuration worked. I have no idea if anyone ever did anything with it; I can't find any evidence that anyone's ever cited it, anyway.

"An important implication of this study is that researchers are not able to examine the true extent of truancy in this country because each state has a different way of defining truancy. This also makes it impossible to interpret the statistical data on truancy rates because there is no system or statewide information. The lack of consistency in defining truancy makes it difficult to make comparisons. "

How many times has Slashdot said "IT should not be the solution to the business/societal/cultural issue"? Prime example right here, the GPS device should not be doing the job of the parent(s) and the community.

The company's XanEdu division provides electronic learning support materials for college students. Professors use XanEdu resources to create online CoursePacks, a unique way to provide comprehensive, up-to-date information packets to supplement other educational materials. Students access CoursePacks via the Web and download information as needed.

Also proquest has been invaluable in finding niche studies for writing papers in the classes I am taking. Your school or even local libary should have login information.

I doubt this will shake them. There are any number of Universities and libraries that try to make a profit restricting access to copies of things already in the public domain (e.g. Early English Books Online.)

A interesting thing to note though is that most American institutions are far more restrictive than Commonwealth ones. I might get modded down for saying so but it has, honestly, been my experience.

What I find even more surprising/disturbing is what is being done at www.umi.com. The link is especially pertinent to those of you out there who have written or are going to write a dissertation that is filed away at your University's library. If you have already written a Ph.D. dissertation, go ahead and see if your dissertation is listed. If you've just recently written it and it is listed, most likely it is also available for download at a price! Now, mind you, none of that money goes to YOU the one who researched, wrote, stayed up late hours of the night to ponder and rewrite! Every last dime probably goes to UMI (and their partners). I don't know what sort of questionable business contracts UMI has with your University's library or the Library of Congress, but I know someone out there is profiting from works that others so painstakingly prepared. This racket has yet to be fully scrutinized.

Lets make no mistake of it. The SIIA is as bad if not worse than MPAA, RIAA, and Microsoft who are using bullying tactics to maintain their monopolistic grasp on a niche (but very important for the advancement of humankind) market. The information published by the scientific community wants to be free--why else would researchers write and publish THEIR work? The cost is now so restrictive, that those of us who should be benefiting and learning from the information (the lowly students) cannot afford to do so!

Graduate students make somewhere between $15,000 to $22,000 a year. Bear in mind that most journals cost somewhere from $100 to $200 (or more) a year to subscribe. And for me, a grad student in the biomedical sciences, I scan somewhere around two dozen different journals. If I had to pay for access for all of these journals, I'd have to shell out somewhere between $2400 to $4800 a year--a good 10-25% of my salary!

I'm glad /. put this article on the frontpage because it outlines how dire the situation truly is. Forget about music and movies, this directly pertains to a lot of livelihoods and careers of /. readers--their bread-n-butter. At least ponder this: at a time when technology can easily publish scientific material, why are we allowing these large publishers to hoard and monopolize OUR own work and making it difficult for us to access that material at the same time? (This is a rhetorical question, obviously; and I'm sure you have lots to say why we allow it. But really, the answer appears to be so simple, but so out of reach.)

At least one PhD dissertation has been written on using wavelet transforms to attempt to reconstruct musical notation from a recorded performance. It wasn't terribly successful....

I tend to think that it would be a bit more that a small project to come up with rip-tab!

From http://www.contentville.com/c ontent/dissertations.asp
Where do Contentville's dissertations come from?

Excerpts from the UMI® Dissertation Abstracts database are being used by Contentville, which, in turn, collects orders for full-text dissertations. Dissertation orders are fulfilled by UMI® Dissertations Publishing, whose mission is to expand scholarly communication and improve access to academic research. All Dissertation Publishing Agreements with authors remain in effect. Dissertation authors retain all rights to their dissertations. All sales will be tracked for royalty payments. All contracted royalties will be paid, per the agreement. The UMI program continues to expand access to research and maintain a permanent archive of scholarly works. Wider distribution of dissertation research is intended to support the international scholarly community.

UMI is a Bell & Howell" company (I think that's the company that makes educational film strips, and slide projectors). All I can find on copyright from UMI, is how they are will to act as your agent in applying for a copyright. (see this) But on a page linked from there, they say:
UMI publishes dissertations and theses only from accredited institutions and only with a signed publishing agreement from each author. We offer free informational packets with comprehensive details about the publishing process and other UMI services, along with the forms to fill out.

So my guess is that only the abstracts have been 'stolen', and that if you haven't signed an agreement your dissertation isn't really available.

From http://www.contentville.com/c ontent/dissertations.asp
Where do Contentville's dissertations come from?

Excerpts from the UMI® Dissertation Abstracts database are being used by Contentville, which, in turn, collects orders for full-text dissertations. Dissertation orders are fulfilled by UMI® Dissertations Publishing, whose mission is to expand scholarly communication and improve access to academic research. All Dissertation Publishing Agreements with authors remain in effect. Dissertation authors retain all rights to their dissertations. All sales will be tracked for royalty payments. All contracted royalties will be paid, per the agreement. The UMI program continues to expand access to research and maintain a permanent archive of scholarly works. Wider distribution of dissertation research is intended to support the international scholarly community.

UMI is a Bell & Howell" company (I think that's the company that makes educational film strips, and slide projectors). All I can find on copyright from UMI, is how they are will to act as your agent in applying for a copyright. (see this) But on a page linked from there, they say:
UMI publishes dissertations and theses only from accredited institutions and only with a signed publishing agreement from each author. We offer free informational packets with comprehensive details about the publishing process and other UMI services, along with the forms to fill out.

So my guess is that only the abstracts have been 'stolen', and that if you haven't signed an agreement your dissertation isn't really available.

From http://www.contentville.com/c ontent/dissertations.asp
Where do Contentville's dissertations come from?

Excerpts from the UMI® Dissertation Abstracts database are being used by Contentville, which, in turn, collects orders for full-text dissertations. Dissertation orders are fulfilled by UMI® Dissertations Publishing, whose mission is to expand scholarly communication and improve access to academic research. All Dissertation Publishing Agreements with authors remain in effect. Dissertation authors retain all rights to their dissertations. All sales will be tracked for royalty payments. All contracted royalties will be paid, per the agreement. The UMI program continues to expand access to research and maintain a permanent archive of scholarly works. Wider distribution of dissertation research is intended to support the international scholarly community.

UMI is a Bell & Howell" company (I think that's the company that makes educational film strips, and slide projectors). All I can find on copyright from UMI, is how they are will to act as your agent in applying for a copyright. (see this) But on a page linked from there, they say:
UMI publishes dissertations and theses only from accredited institutions and only with a signed publishing agreement from each author. We offer free informational packets with comprehensive details about the publishing process and other UMI services, along with the forms to fill out.

So my guess is that only the abstracts have been 'stolen', and that if you haven't signed an agreement your dissertation isn't really available.

From http://www.contentville.com/c ontent/dissertations.asp
Where do Contentville's dissertations come from?

Excerpts from the UMI® Dissertation Abstracts database are being used by Contentville, which, in turn, collects orders for full-text dissertations. Dissertation orders are fulfilled by UMI® Dissertations Publishing, whose mission is to expand scholarly communication and improve access to academic research. All Dissertation Publishing Agreements with authors remain in effect. Dissertation authors retain all rights to their dissertations. All sales will be tracked for royalty payments. All contracted royalties will be paid, per the agreement. The UMI program continues to expand access to research and maintain a permanent archive of scholarly works. Wider distribution of dissertation research is intended to support the international scholarly community.

UMI is a Bell & Howell" company (I think that's the company that makes educational film strips, and slide projectors). All I can find on copyright from UMI, is how they are will to act as your agent in applying for a copyright. (see this) But on a page linked from there, they say:
UMI publishes dissertations and theses only from accredited institutions and only with a signed publishing agreement from each author. We offer free informational packets with comprehensive details about the publishing process and other UMI services, along with the forms to fill out.

So my guess is that only the abstracts have been 'stolen', and that if you haven't signed an agreement your dissertation isn't really available.

My Ph.D. thesis is there. I'm going write them a note telling them they cannot sell it.

They may not be selling it. UMI makes available abstracts for papers they can't (and don't) sell.

UMI is at http://www.umi.com. They have answers on their site to a lot of questions that are coming up here. It might be worth peoples' time to do a little research before flying off the handle...

If you read the fine print on their site, it appears that they are just reselling the data for a company called UMI. Seems to be owned by Bell & Howell. They also have a page that links to 2 other sources for dissertations. Seems to be something that has been available for awhile via the web and other means.

I'd be curious to see if kkkalen's dissertation is in all those places too. I would assume so.

If you read the fine print on their site, it appears that they are just reselling the data for a company called UMI. Seems to be owned by Bell & Howell. They also have a page that links to 2 other sources for dissertations. Seems to be something that has been available for awhile via the web and other means.

I'd be curious to see if kkkalen's dissertation is in all those places too. I would assume so.

I would suggest that if you were seriously thinking about a Digital Library project, you should familiarize yourself with the "state of the art" and what others are doing in real-world projects in this area.

I find that a lot of the work out there is very research oriented, and conducted by library science folks really, really concerned with "getting it right". It's a little *too* anal for my purposes, but you have to admit, all the 'i's are dotted and the 't's crossed.

I just wrapped up design on an object-oriented framework for a Digital Library project (modeled on my earlier work for Early English Books Online http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo), and I found the work being done at Cornell very valuable as an inspiration. The Making of America II project is also an excellent overview of a well-thought-out Digital Library project.

So, for those interested in a little theory and practice, check these links out:

Digital Library Links and Resources:
http://www.ifla.org/II/diglib.htm

Cornell Digital Library Research Group
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/

Making of America II
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MOA2/

FEDORA (an architecture for information storage and retrieval, *very* nice).

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/FEDORA. html