The employees of journals are paid by a private company. If the government wants to have the results of journals freely available, they can nationalize the company, or start their own journals. Requiring a company to provide its product for free is unsustainable (and possibly even unfair, no matter what you think of the scientific publishing system.
I am quite certain that the law will not specify that publishers must make their journals available for free. Instead, it will specify that government-funded research will have to be published in those journals that do (which will of course result in many more journals adopting this approach).
Also, remember that open-access does not necessarily imply that the publishers will have to work for free. Author-pays models can enable the publisher to cover all of their costs while ensuring that the end product is freely available.
I'd like to see you back this up, I suspect that you'd find a pretty even mix purchases from grants and libraries.
And? How do you think libraries are funded? My university library is funded by the income that the university receives for research. The university's research is generally funded by grants, usually from the government (via research councils, etc.). Public libraries are also funded by taxes.
How does one prevent other nations from benefitting from this information? Passport sign-in security? Don't make me laugh.
Why would you want to prevent other countries from benefitting from scientific research? Let me guess, you aren't an academic or researcher yourself.
Other countries already have the benefit of the information. Research that is published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is generally available to anyone that can afford the subscription.
If your concern is just that US research will be available for free but that other countries will continue to publish in journals that require subscriptions, I think that your fears are unfounded. If the majority of US research is published in open-access journals, those journals will quickly become pre-eminent and you will find that most of the world follows.
I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of making these journals cheaper, but unless the government wants to fund the peer review process that papers go through before they are published, and the publication costs of the journals, this may well backfire.
The government already funds the peer review process - grants to research institutions pay for the journal subscriptions, which in turn pay for the journals to put the papers through review. Bear in mind however, that the most significant part of the review process is having other researchers review the paper and they already do it for free (while being paid by research grants which often come from the government).
So if the government makes a rocket using public money, they should give free access to all citizens? Crazy idea.
If the government can build a rocket that can be copied at virtually zero cost, using virtually no additional resoures and with no danger to the public from lunatics (literally!) crashing into each other and no adverse environmental consequences, then yes. Free access to text and diagrams over the internet is not really the same as free access to a specialist and dangerous piece of hardware.
Without reading his contract (and also due the the fact that IANAL) I cannot tell who is correct in this case.
This is/. Your knowledge of the law or specific facts is irrelevant. What might be interesting to hear are your thoughts on the merits of the case regardless of the legal facts. Is it morally right for companies to own employees' thoughts? You don't need to be a lawyer to make moral judgements (it usually helps not to be).
Maybe someone can explain something to me. If all you have to do is prove prior art, why would a patent case last more then a few hours in front of a judge?
It takes even a good lawyer years just to understand what the patent actually says. Combining legalese with technobabble is an excellent way of generating truly incomprehensible (and therefore useless) documents. "Patently obvious" long ago became an oxymoron.
The phone has become a fashion item; for quite a lot of people, the phone you use tells others about who you are. Thus people tend to want to get a new phone very often, as fashions and designs change. That drives down prices a lot, as people can't afford to get a new, really expensive, phone every year, and on the other hand, the manufacturers dump the prices of their new models in order to make them the next must-have.
An interesting post, but I'm not entirely convinced by your economic theory. Cars have long been a fashion item for quite a lot of people, but I still can't afford a new Ferrari.
You forget that an election is supposed to be 100% anonymous. While ideally we would have voting systems that were reliable, a paper trail identifying who voted for what candidate would fundamentally damage the concept of anonymous voting.
In the UK, ballots have a serial number. When you turn up at the polling station and are given your ballot, the serial number is written beside your name. The returning officer can match that serial number against a particular voter if required to investigate allegations of fraud but everyone seems to be pretty comfortable with the system and I have never heard anyone seriously complain that the system is not anonymous - there are many other criticisms of our electoral system but that is not one of them.
There is no voter receipt so there is no possibility of coercion (unless you consider mobile phones with cameras, perhaps) and it would take a large amount of effort for anyone to actually determine which candidate any particular voter actually voted for, so voters are confident that it will not happen unless someone has a very good reason.
Almost anonymous voting and verifiable. Is 100% anonymity really necessary, or is it sufficient that it would take a lot of effort and access to all of the ballot papers for anyone to extract the information?
Does this mean a return to the 2.4.x type of problem where no-one could agree on which virtual memory management to use and the stable series ended up being, well unstable, until it reached about 2.4.19 (or thereabouts)?
Unlikely, beside, the large number of people who used Napster, and still use P2P to download copyright material, clearly demonstrates that mere legislation is not the same as effective enforcement.
and Linus stated in an interview that he didn't oppose to DRM in Linux, so you might HAVE to accept it
Unless you (or someone else) take advantage of the rights afforded by the GPL to take the Linux source code and remove any DRM code from it, whatever Linus thinks about it. That's the whole point about the software freedoms which the GPL was designed to ensure.
Given that the judge ruled that mod chips are illegal due to the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and that other EU nations (Italy, Spain) have already ruled the chips to be legal, is there any scope for this ruling to be challenged in a higher court because of misinterpretation of the directive?
What does this mean exactly? Haven't seen many servers that aren't capable of running OSS operating systems. Hope they're going for something more applicable to the job than a Sony Vaio laptop.
What's wrong with Sony Vaio laptops? They may not be the best choice for servers, but mine runs GNU/Linux flawlessly.
Governments should choose the best software for the job, period.
And if you read the article, you would see that the Malaysian government has stated:
"in situations where advantages and disadvantages of OSS and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS."
If open-source software is better they will use it; if proprietary software is better, they will use it; if there is little to choose between them, they will prefer open-source because of all the other (economic and strategic) advantages that this brings.
I've recently switched to a Nokia phone after using Motorola for a few years. It is *much* better for texting (SMS). I just wish that I could run the software that they offer through their website; unfortunately it all requires Windows. Supporting Linux might help them to get back at least a little of the market that they are losing.
Is it really smart to send thousands of exploit riddled IE lusers to a website ran by a government that is known to actively conduct computer espionage?
If his only transgression were for the love of the game, the world would have forgiven him quickly... the court of public opinion would have ruled in his favor. This guy has hosed himself up pretty bad and now he's caught. If it's true that his views are against the people of Jewish faith and that he applauds the horror of 9-11, then the court of public opinion will rule against him if it hasn't already.
And since when has public opinion about someone's views been a legitimate means of determining whether or not they should be punished for breaking the law? Did you miss that whole "freedom of speech" bit in the US constitution?
Simple. Just persuade management to move to GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft Windows. Don't tell them that Outlook doesn't run on their new systems until they have finished the roll-out!
I think what we will see is more "Looks best in FireFox 0.x" disclaimers at the bottom of sites, which is a very good thing for all of us.
I use Firefox and I *don't* want to see "Optimized for Firefox" or similar appearing on the web.
I want web designers to follow the W3C standards. I want to be able to browse in Lynx as well. I want the blind to be able to access web content. It is for that reason that I don't want Firefox to take 90% of the browser market. If 4 or 5 browsers have roughly equal share, there will be much more incentive for web designers to do their job properly. </rant>
Is there an official record of the proceedings of the Dutch Parliament, similar to the UK's Hansard, to which I can direct the attention of my MP? I'm not sure that a wiki page at the FFII website will carry sufficient authority to prompt her to try the same thing here.
"Please provide your feedback in the form below.
Thank you for helping us to improve MSN Search. Although we won't respond directly to your comments, we will use them to improve our service."
Are they being choosy in deciding from whom they will accept feedback? When I click the "submit" button (using Firefox on Linux) nothing seems to happen except that an error message appears in the Javascript console:
"Error: changeImage is not defined".
While in Galileos model the planets made perfect cycles around the sun, Copernicus corrected that by noticing that they are eclipses, and postulating the various laws around that.
Actually, it was Kepler who came up with the laws of planetary motion - including elliptic orbits.
Copernicus introduced a helio-centric universe but used circular orbits.
Galileo, who was a contempary of Kepler, made experimental observations using the newly-invented telescope with which he found moons orbiting another planet (Jupiter).
Slashdot Mirror
I am quite certain that the law will not specify that publishers must make their journals available for free. Instead, it will specify that government-funded research will have to be published in those journals that do (which will of course result in many more journals adopting this approach).
Also, remember that open-access does not necessarily imply that the publishers will have to work for free. Author-pays models can enable the publisher to cover all of their costs while ensuring that the end product is freely available.
And? How do you think libraries are funded? My university library is funded by the income that the university receives for research. The university's research is generally funded by grants, usually from the government (via research councils, etc.). Public libraries are also funded by taxes.
Why would you want to prevent other countries from benefitting from scientific research? Let me guess, you aren't an academic or researcher yourself.
Other countries already have the benefit of the information. Research that is published in peer-reviewed scientific journals is generally available to anyone that can afford the subscription.
If your concern is just that US research will be available for free but that other countries will continue to publish in journals that require subscriptions, I think that your fears are unfounded. If the majority of US research is published in open-access journals, those journals will quickly become pre-eminent and you will find that most of the world follows.
The government already funds the peer review process - grants to research institutions pay for the journal subscriptions, which in turn pay for the journals to put the papers through review. Bear in mind however, that the most significant part of the review process is having other researchers review the paper and they already do it for free (while being paid by research grants which often come from the government).
If the government can build a rocket that can be copied at virtually zero cost, using virtually no additional resoures and with no danger to the public from lunatics (literally!) crashing into each other and no adverse environmental consequences, then yes. Free access to text and diagrams over the internet is not really the same as free access to a specialist and dangerous piece of hardware.
This is /. Your knowledge of the law or specific facts is irrelevant. What might be interesting to hear are your thoughts on the merits of the case regardless of the legal facts. Is it morally right for companies to own employees' thoughts? You don't need to be a lawyer to make moral judgements (it usually helps not to be).
It takes even a good lawyer years just to understand what the patent actually says. Combining legalese with technobabble is an excellent way of generating truly incomprehensible (and therefore useless) documents. "Patently obvious" long ago became an oxymoron.
An interesting post, but I'm not entirely convinced by your economic theory. Cars have long been a fashion item for quite a lot of people, but I still can't afford a new Ferrari.
In the UK, ballots have a serial number. When you turn up at the polling station and are given your ballot, the serial number is written beside your name. The returning officer can match that serial number against a particular voter if required to investigate allegations of fraud but everyone seems to be pretty comfortable with the system and I have never heard anyone seriously complain that the system is not anonymous - there are many other criticisms of our electoral system but that is not one of them.
There is no voter receipt so there is no possibility of coercion (unless you consider mobile phones with cameras, perhaps) and it would take a large amount of effort for anyone to actually determine which candidate any particular voter actually voted for, so voters are confident that it will not happen unless someone has a very good reason.
Almost anonymous voting and verifiable. Is 100% anonymity really necessary, or is it sufficient that it would take a lot of effort and access to all of the ballot papers for anyone to extract the information?
Does this mean a return to the 2.4.x type of problem where no-one could agree on which virtual memory management to use and the stable series ended up being, well unstable, until it reached about 2.4.19 (or thereabouts)?
Unlikely, beside, the large number of people who used Napster, and still use P2P to download copyright material, clearly demonstrates that mere legislation is not the same as effective enforcement.
and Linus stated in an interview that he didn't oppose to DRM in Linux, so you might HAVE to accept it
Unless you (or someone else) take advantage of the rights afforded by the GPL to take the Linux source code and remove any DRM code from it, whatever Linus thinks about it. That's the whole point about the software freedoms which the GPL was designed to ensure.
Given that the judge ruled that mod chips are illegal due to the European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD) and that other EU nations (Italy, Spain) have already ruled the chips to be legal, is there any scope for this ruling to be challenged in a higher court because of misinterpretation of the directive?
What's wrong with Sony Vaio laptops? They may not be the best choice for servers, but mine runs GNU/Linux flawlessly.
And if you read the article, you would see that the Malaysian government has stated:
If open-source software is better they will use it; if proprietary software is better, they will use it; if there is little to choose between them, they will prefer open-source because of all the other (economic and strategic) advantages that this brings.I've recently switched to a Nokia phone after using Motorola for a few years. It is *much* better for texting (SMS). I just wish that I could run the software that they offer through their website; unfortunately it all requires Windows. Supporting Linux might help them to get back at least a little of the market that they are losing.
Do you mean sites like this or this?
And since when has public opinion about someone's views been a legitimate means of determining whether or not they should be punished for breaking the law? Did you miss that whole "freedom of speech" bit in the US constitution?
Simple. Just persuade management to move to GNU/Linux instead of Microsoft Windows. Don't tell them that Outlook doesn't run on their new systems until they have finished the roll-out!
I use Firefox and I *don't* want to see "Optimized for Firefox" or similar appearing on the web.
I want web designers to follow the W3C standards. I want to be able to browse in Lynx as well. I want the blind to be able to access web content. It is for that reason that I don't want Firefox to take 90% of the browser market. If 4 or 5 browsers have roughly equal share, there will be much more incentive for web designers to do their job properly. </rant>
Thank you!
Is there an official record of the proceedings of the Dutch Parliament, similar to the UK's Hansard, to which I can direct the attention of my MP? I'm not sure that a wiki page at the FFII website will carry sufficient authority to prompt her to try the same thing here.
Map it to Meta to make your Emacs happier :)
Are they being choosy in deciding from whom they will accept feedback? When I click the "submit" button (using Firefox on Linux) nothing seems to happen except that an error message appears in the Javascript console: "Error: changeImage is not defined".
Actually, it was Kepler who came up with the laws of planetary motion - including elliptic orbits.
Copernicus introduced a helio-centric universe but used circular orbits.
Galileo, who was a contempary of Kepler, made experimental observations using the newly-invented telescope with which he found moons orbiting another planet (Jupiter).
It already is. Enigmail is an excellent plugin which I have been using for about a year now.