I find it very surprising that the Middle East would be called "East Asia" by many Asians themselves, since it is *west* of by far the largest Asian populations (e.g., China, India)!
It is the business that uses P2P to make a profit (Grokster, in particular) that is the defendant. While the Supreme Court needs to be cognizant and considering of the broader context and the precedent that they are creating, they also have to judge based on the particular case before them.
My wife was asking me this morning, having seen this news item in the paper, whether any developed nation other than the U.S. has a significant proportion of the population not believing in evolution (according to Gallup[http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.as px?ci=14107], 2/3 of Americans do not believe evolution is well supported by the evidence!).
I wasn't aware of any. Can anyone offer other countries with similar situations.
Note, this isn't stray America-bashing. Both my wife and I are American citizens (in the 1/3 minority), although we don't currently reside in the US. It's a sincere question.
Re: Netscape of old "the feeling of boredom while it loaded."
Ah, but what distinguished Netscape was reduced loading time. One of the key things that distinguished Netscape 1.0 from Mosaic was that the text would load simultaneously with the graphics. So you could continue to read the page while waiting for the graphics to finish loading. This avoided the feeling of boredom while waiting for a graphic to load that came to be associated with Mosaic. Netscape established its brand with speed.
I was listening to a radio interview with someone who works with Foster Parents Plan yesterday. She mentioned that in many parts of rural Africa, transistor radios still rule and are the primary method of broadcasting and sharing news across geographic distances.
TVs are expensive and require a power supply which is often not available (transistor radios can run off of batteries much more easily than TVs). Newspapers require literacy levels which are also quite difficult to come by. I won't go into the challenges around computer networks as a source of news.
Transistor radios, on the other hand have massive market penetration. The example used, I think, was rural Senegal where on average there was one transistor radio per family. That's pretty amazing considering the economic situation.
Researchers were surprised to discover that their sophisitcated eye-tracking software discovered, in verified and repeatable experiments, that Hebrew and Arabic readers had much poorer memories - having eye movements that proceded in a retrograde fashion at a 5-1 ratio over eye movements that proceded forward.
The real problem that I had with "Contact" the movie is that the underlying philosophy was diametrically opposed to that of Carl Sagan, as expressed in the book.
** SPOILERS BELOW**
Carl Sagan was a scientist. His book supports the concept of empirical verification rather than taking things on faith. Thus, in the book, you have a team that takes the journey and they return with a method of demonstrably proving God's existence (through a message buried deep within the digits of pi-- and thus within the structure of the created universe). The message is is the scientific one: look for the evidence/proof.
The movie sends precisely the opposite message. While the protagonist starts believing in science, at the end she embraces faith and acknowledges that she has come to accept her experience as real, despite the lack of any objective avidence. (The evidence exists in the hours of blank tape, but she is unaware of them.) She is won over to being just another religious believer, taking things "on faith". It seems to be a waste of billions of dollars that could have been better spent on Earth.
Given the 180 degree change in philosophical direction, I don't think Carl Sagan would have approved.
Cory Doctorow, EFF-staffer, SF writer and co-editor of Boing-Boing, has written a strong critique of this article and its lack of attention to the market experience.
"Fill the frame" is a good tip. Two caveats, though.
1. One advantage of digital photography is that filling the frame can be done after the fact (through cropping) more easily than with film photography. So you can respond quickly to those fleeting moments and not lose them while you rush in closer or fiddle with the zoom - and then crop them down later. (It does reduce the resolution, though.)
2. If you live in a household like mine, where the decent pictures tend to get printed (at 4x6) for inclusion in a photo album, then you need to remember that the digital camera ratios are different from the film camera ratios.
In other words, you'll have to do some cropping to get it to a 4x6 ratio. And if you have completely filled the frame, Aunt Mildred will be chopped off at the knees again.
So you may want to consider learning how the difference plays out, and not quite filling the top and bottom (for a horizontal composition) or the sides (for a vertical composition).
The reality of the book publishing industry (which gets reflected in libraries) is that genre is as much about marketing as it is about content.
These books are considered science fiction by bookstores and libraries because they are published by a scince fiction imprint and marketted as science fiction books. The publisher probably chose to do that because they thought there would be more of a financial reward promoting the books to Stephenson's existing fan base (which looks at the science fiction racks) then seeking a new fan base (which may look elsewhere in the store/library).
Similarly, you tend to see the science fiction of established "literary" authors (such as Margaret Atwood) is not marketted as science fiction.
If you pay attention to these things you may notice that there are a number of books that are marketted to different genres, either simulaneously or sequentially. One of the more famous examples of this was the "adult" (trade paperback sized) version of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_, with the photograph of the steam engine on the cover, which came out at the same time as the children's edition (but with a significantly higher price). A number of books and series have been marketted sometimes as "fantasy" and at other times as "children's" or "young adults".
I'm in Canada, too. I don't have the same problem. And when I do go to www.google.ca, I see a link towards the bottom of the page, on the right, next to the "About Google" link, that is labelled "Go to Google.com" and takes me to www.google.com.
I'm not at this point going to go into why Microsoft is buying Macs or whether or not the guy was right to post what he did. In other words, I'm not going to go into the specifics of the article.
I do, however, want to address something in the framing text that christor wrote: "Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
While I acknowledge that (in the USA) First Amendment rights are limited to government action, I don't agree that non-governmental organizations cannot repress free speech and their actions cannot raise free speech issues.
It is pretty clear that private sector organizations can provide negative repercussions that will discourage individuals from saying or writing things that will provoke them. This can range from dismissal to lawsuits to, in some cases, industry-wide blacklisting that may prevent someone from continuing to work in his or her chosen profession.
If we as a society consider that "free speech" (the ability of an individual to express ideas, no matter how controversial, unpopular or challenging) is a value worth preserving, then we should take seriously threats to that ability, no matter where they originate.
If I want to say something but don't, because of the chilling effect of foreseen consequences, then my "free speech" has been compromised, whether or not those consequences come from the state or private individuals/corporations.
We may find that other values that we hold come into conflict with the "free speech" value. The value that an individual should be able to control his or her own property may come into conflict (leading to the expression that "Freedom of the Press belongs to them as owns a press" which I remember from my days of active involvement in Usenet, where it was often quoted by sysadmins). Conflict with other values lets us put other restrictions and negative repercussions on those who freely express whatever they want to (slander and libel laws from the state; the ability to shun someone who says unpopular things at the individual level).
We may decide that these other values/ considerations outweigh the value of free speech in a particular case and allow the government or private individual/corporation to act to restrict the person's ability to speak freely. But if we don't allow the issue to be raised at all as a free speech issue, then we've lost already.
"I thought the only people still using it were in countries that didn't want to submit to LOC guidelines because their own copyright laws were uhm, different."
DDC is very commonly used in public libraries.
I've used and worked in both university libraries (using a modified LOC) and public libraries (using DDC) and have studied both in library school (on the way to an MLS).
They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both can be used to easily pinpoint very specific books in a large collection (you can use a heck of a lot of decimal places in the DDC, and if you know it well, those decimals can carry a lot of information as the same patters show up all over the system). Both are single access systems (for shelving books) and so will end up putting books (many of which have multiple appropriate subjects) in places where you aren't looking for them. That's why it is best to use the OPAC if you want to thoroughly cover the field before heading to the shelves.
LOC is often found in large research collections. This system was custom designed specifically for the Library of Congress and works better for those libraries that are more similar to the Library of Congress. The more different your library is, the less likely it is to work for you. If you have a very different collection, the LOC may have a wide range to cover just a few books in your collection and a narrow range to cover areas in which your collection is rich. That's why the University of Toronto Library was using a modified LOC - they needed more range in Canadiana.
DDC is more suited to a general collection of the type found in public libraries. Also as the system most people learn and use in their youths, it is appropriate for a library that doesn't want to make infrequent researchers (most users of a local public library) learn a whole new system. If I were selcting a system to use in a small public library branch, I know I'd sure as heck use DDC over LOC.
Interestingly, when I studied Library Science at the University of Toronto, while the overall University Library used a modified LOC (as I mention above) the Faculty of Library and Information Science Library used DDC.
"Regarding "he-who-has-the-gold-makes-the-rules," remember that the American consumer is the one with the gold, and we give it to record companies and we make the rules".
After we give the gold to the record companies, it's the record companies who has the gold.
The total gold held by consumers may be greater than that of record companies, but consumers are not pooling that gold and using it to speak with one voice. The record companies thus have a heck of a lot more gold than any of their opponents and can (and do) use it to make the rules through much better funded lobbying.
If you really think that the American consumer is making the rules, you haven't been paying a lot of attention to the rules being made (by the legislators or in the courts).
Note also that the first "Me, too" poster, two years into the archive, hadn't come up with the innovation of quoting the entire post before adding in the "Me, too!!!".
Do you think the people publishing the the journals are doing it for free? Its a prestigious role to be publisher, and it can make or break someones academic career. If you allow someone to publish something with less than credible methods or results, then yer career can be down the tube as well. As such, these people need to get paid...
And the people who write the articles and verify the credibility of methods and results are paid. However, they are not paid by the publisher, they are paid by the university that employs them.
Universities, for the main part, do not hire professors just to teach. They also hire them to participate in the world of academic research. This includes more than just doing the research. It includes getting it published ("Publish or Perish"). Academic peer-reviewed journals do not pay for articles submitted. In some cases, they are paid to have the article published by the author. It also includes peer-reviewing the articles of one's colleagues (which accomplishes that "ensuring credibility").
The astronomical prices of journal subscriptions cover: coordination, printing and distribution costs and publisher's profits.
Due to the extremely small print runs (most of these are only bought by a small number of academic libraries) an academic journal naturally has a much higher "per-issue" cost than, say, an issue of TIME magazine.
Note that, as most of these journals are only bought by university libraries, the university community is in essence, paying twice for the research. Once when it pays the academics to conduct, write and review the research and again when it pays the publishers for the journals.
Note also that most of the costs that the publishers have to pay (coordination, printing and distribution) are the ones that are most effected by the new Internet technologies making scholarly journals the best choice for early converts to the new "e-publishing".
It is possible to set up agreements that mimic the restrictions of the physical, paper copies.
When libraries purchase electronic materials, they can sign an agreement limiting the number of simultaneous accesses. Contracts with prices based on the number of simultaneous "log-ins" are not exactly new to the networked world.
Similarly, when they are "loaning" the material through inter-library loan, they can instruct the receiving library that it has the right to one simultanous access to the material, and that right is only for a limited period of time (matching the regular duration of an inter-library loan). For the duration, the number of allowed simultaneous accesses at the lending library would be reduced by one.
I expect libraries would be willing to do these sorts of things. They realize the need to keep publishers in business. They just also realize that they can't have a "per use" payment system and maintain the current model of the public library.
Were the libraries to offer to do these sort of things, I don't think it would cause the publishers to stop their assault on the "fair use" provisions.
but it was rejected. I figured it had all the earmarks of a classic/. story: misunderstood and bullied high school geek, censorship, etc. I mean, stories were being accepted about students who got suspended and here is a guy who was put in jail for thirty days for a creative writing class assignment!
The advantage of a domain over an "Approved by the WHO" graphic is that it is much easier for them to control.
Say I run a snake oil web site and I want to mislead the public into thinking that it is approved by the WHO. All I have to do is go to an approved site, save the graphic, and add it to my page.
Sure the WHO can take me to court and ask me to remove the graphic. But first they have to notice the violation, next they may have to spend the legal fees and a possibly a fair amount of time in court. In the meantime, who knows how many people have been to my site and been misled?
If they are the ones that grant the domain name, they don't have to spend any resources looking for and dealing with pirates who are misappropriating their "approved by the WHO" graphic and they don't have to worry about the misinformation that is spread before they can take action.
That seems to me to be a significant advantage (from the WHO perspective) that a.health domain carries over an "Approved by the WHO" graphic.
mangu wrote [in response to the assertion that children are different than adults]:
Well, yes and no. They are smaller in size, and they have less experience. Otherwise they are exactly the same. Indeed, by growing up and gaining experience, children do turn into adults.
Would that it were so simple. Yes, by "growing up" and gaining experience children do turn into adults. But "growing up" involves more than just getting bigger.
Part of growing up is cognitive development. There are types of thinking that five year olds can do that two year olds cannot. The same goes for eight year olds and five year olds or fourteen year olds and eight year olds. It is not just that more experience allows older children to put new information into context better. They actually have a larger "toolbox" of mental abilities that allow them to think about it differently. This is pretty well documented and if necessary, I can look up plenty of studies that support this assertion.
Another part of growing up is qualitative physical changes. Bodies don't just get bigger. Hormonal changes during puberty trigger other changes as well. Surely, you've noticed this? The fact that the hormonal changes of puberty have significant impacts on the brain is also well documented.
The fact is that children think differently than adults. And they think differently than children of different ages. One of the results of this is that there are certain things out in the world that children just do not have the mental toolset to deal with. And it makes sense for adults to protect them from that information until they are capable of understanding the explanation that the parent can give with it. This can mean that a three year old should wait until he is eight to learn something or an eight year old should wait until he is twelve.
This is not an argument in favour of filtering. Every child is different in what they are capable of handling - and what they can handle next week may be different than what they can handle today. Filters are just not flexible enough, not precise enough and not "tuned in" enough to the particular child. Parents (hopefully) are. It is the parents responsibility to monitor their child's media usage; to try and shield them from what they may not be able to handle (like shielding a two year old from a news report about a serial murderer/cannibal) or explain to them what they can cognitively handle but lack the context for. But a parent will be unable to do that effectively if they buy into your notion that children are just inexperienced adults.
"I couldn't find the disks. Nowhere in the house, it wasn't installed on any old computers that I could find, etc etc etc... so I went on a hunt for it at stores (I had seen in in the "Classic titles" boxes that were around a while ago). Couldn't find it. Not suprising for that old of a game.
So I went on the Internet. Tried to find a copy, so I could still play the game that *I still own*. I finally found a copy, and enjoy playing it just as much as when it was new. It's kinda like downloading an mp3 of a song that you already have on CD."
I'm not sure that is the best analogy. It is more like downloading an mp3 of a song that you used to own years ago.
I think a book (the classic example of an intellectual property package) is a better analogy. When I buy a book, how much am I buying the physical object and how much am I buying the content within it? In most cases it is recognized that it is the content that I want. However people pay more for the same content in a better looking package (for example, trade paperback vs. mass market). And most people would agree that if I lose a copy of a book, I have to pay to replace it. I can't just go to the library and photocopy an entire book, just because I once owned it.
Software could fit that model. When you buy the software, you generally buy a physical package as well as the intellectual property. If you lose the physical package and you still want the intellectual proprty are you obligated to buy it again?
Of course, in the case of abandonware, it's not possible. There is a book equivalent to this. It's called Out Of Print. What we are talking about here is the equivalent of photocopying and distributing our favourite out of print books. Unfortunately, copyright law makes no exemptions on the basis of material being out of print (unavailable from the rights holder). It is still illegal to reproduce it.
Of course, illegal does not equal immoral or unethical. My personal library does contain photocopies of out of print or unavailable books in areas of interest to me (e.g., mediaeval culinary history). As far as I'm concerned, so long as I'm willing to purchase a legal copy should one come along, I've done nothing wrong. But I don't fool myself into thinking that I haven't violated copyright. And as far as software goes,...., well, let's not go there.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought this immediately (well, immediately after thinking the Christian Scientists were talking about the end of the world).
This would have made more sense during the Cold War, but better late than never!
Now what they need to do is to make sure that there are always at least one fertile male and female in space at all times to really do the job properly.
Slashdot Mirror
The original "scoop" (if you follow the trail of citations) at http://www.cinescape.com/0/editorial.asp?aff_id=0& this_cat=Movies&action=page&type_id=&cat_id=270338 &obj_id=48836 has the new prequel 800 years before Phantom Menace, not 88. This gets misquoted and the error propagates, as everyone quotes earlier bloggers, rather than looking it up for themselves.
I find it very surprising that the Middle East would be called "East Asia" by many Asians themselves, since it is *west* of by far the largest Asian populations (e.g., China, India)!
Respectfully,
David Tallan
It is the business that uses P2P to make a profit (Grokster, in particular) that is the defendant. While the Supreme Court needs to be cognizant and considering of the broader context and the precedent that they are creating, they also have to judge based on the particular case before them.
My wife was asking me this morning, having seen this news item in the paper, whether any developed nation other than the U.S. has a significant proportion of the population not believing in evolution (according to Gallup[http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/login.as px?ci=14107], 2/3 of Americans do not believe evolution is well supported by the evidence!).
I wasn't aware of any. Can anyone offer other countries with similar situations.
Note, this isn't stray America-bashing. Both my wife and I are American citizens (in the 1/3 minority), although we don't currently reside in the US. It's a sincere question.
Re: Netscape of old
"the feeling of boredom while it loaded."
Ah, but what distinguished Netscape was reduced loading time. One of the key things that distinguished Netscape 1.0 from Mosaic was that the text would load simultaneously with the graphics. So you could continue to read the page while waiting for the graphics to finish loading. This avoided the feeling of boredom while waiting for a graphic to load that came to be associated with Mosaic. Netscape established its brand with speed.
Or so I remember it.
I was listening to a radio interview with someone who works with Foster Parents Plan yesterday. She mentioned that in many parts of rural Africa, transistor radios still rule and are the primary method of broadcasting and sharing news across geographic distances.
TVs are expensive and require a power supply which is often not available (transistor radios can run off of batteries much more easily than TVs). Newspapers require literacy levels which are also quite difficult to come by. I won't go into the challenges around computer networks as a source of news.
Transistor radios, on the other hand have massive market penetration. The example used, I think, was rural Senegal where on average there was one transistor radio per family. That's pretty amazing considering the economic situation.
Researchers were surprised to discover that their sophisitcated eye-tracking software discovered, in verified and repeatable experiments, that Hebrew and Arabic readers had much poorer memories - having eye movements that proceded in a retrograde fashion at a 5-1 ratio over eye movements that proceded forward.
I agree with you 100%. It's one reason that I can't watch it (although my wife really likes it).
The real problem that I had with "Contact" the movie is that the underlying philosophy was diametrically opposed to that of Carl Sagan, as expressed in the book.
** SPOILERS BELOW**
Carl Sagan was a scientist. His book supports the concept of empirical verification rather than taking things on faith. Thus, in the book, you have a team that takes the journey and they return with a method of demonstrably proving God's existence (through a message buried deep within the digits of pi-- and thus within the structure of the created universe). The message is is the scientific one: look for the evidence/proof.
The movie sends precisely the opposite message. While the protagonist starts believing in science, at the end she embraces faith and acknowledges that she has come to accept her experience as real, despite the lack of any objective avidence. (The evidence exists in the hours of blank tape, but she is unaware of them.) She is won over to being just another religious believer, taking things "on faith". It seems to be a waste of billions of dollars that could have been better spent on Earth.
Given the 180 degree change in philosophical direction, I don't think Carl Sagan would have approved.
Cory Doctorow, EFF-staffer, SF writer and co-editor of Boing-Boing, has written a strong critique of this article and its lack of attention to the market experience.
"Fill the frame" is a good tip. Two caveats, though.
1. One advantage of digital photography is that filling the frame can be done after the fact (through cropping) more easily than with film photography. So you can respond quickly to those fleeting moments and not lose them while you rush in closer or fiddle with the zoom - and then crop them down later. (It does reduce the resolution, though.)
2. If you live in a household like mine, where the decent pictures tend to get printed (at 4x6) for inclusion in a photo album, then you need to remember that the digital camera ratios are different from the film camera ratios.
In other words, you'll have to do some cropping to get it to a 4x6 ratio. And if you have completely filled the frame, Aunt Mildred will be chopped off at the knees again.
So you may want to consider learning how the difference plays out, and not quite filling the top and bottom (for a horizontal composition) or the sides (for a vertical composition).
I don't want to know what you are wearing that would fit into it!
The reality of the book publishing industry (which gets reflected in libraries) is that genre is as much about marketing as it is about content.
These books are considered science fiction by bookstores and libraries because they are published by a scince fiction imprint and marketted as science fiction books. The publisher probably chose to do that because they thought there would be more of a financial reward promoting the books to Stephenson's existing fan base (which looks at the science fiction racks) then seeking a new fan base (which may look elsewhere in the store/library).
Similarly, you tend to see the science fiction of established "literary" authors (such as Margaret Atwood) is not marketted as science fiction.
If you pay attention to these things you may notice that there are a number of books that are marketted to different genres, either simulaneously or sequentially. One of the more famous examples of this was the "adult" (trade paperback sized) version of _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_, with the photograph of the steam engine on the cover, which came out at the same time as the children's edition (but with a significantly higher price). A number of books and series have been marketted sometimes as "fantasy" and at other times as "children's" or "young adults".
I'm in Canada, too. I don't have the same problem. And when I do go to www.google.ca, I see a link towards the bottom of the page, on the right, next to the "About Google" link, that is labelled "Go to Google.com" and takes me to www.google.com.
I'm not at this point going to go into why Microsoft is buying Macs or whether or not the guy was right to post what he did. In other words, I'm not going to go into the specifics of the article.
I do, however, want to address something in the framing text that christor wrote: "Note that this is not a free speech issue, even though the blog was hosted on a non-company server, because Microsoft is not, yet, the government."
While I acknowledge that (in the USA) First Amendment rights are limited to government action, I don't agree that non-governmental organizations cannot repress free speech and their actions cannot raise free speech issues.
It is pretty clear that private sector organizations can provide negative repercussions that will discourage individuals from saying or writing things that will provoke them. This can range from dismissal to lawsuits to, in some cases, industry-wide blacklisting that may prevent someone from continuing to work in his or her chosen profession.
If we as a society consider that "free speech" (the ability of an individual to express ideas, no matter how controversial, unpopular or challenging) is a value worth preserving, then we should take seriously threats to that ability, no matter where they originate.
If I want to say something but don't, because of the chilling effect of foreseen consequences, then my "free speech" has been compromised, whether or not those consequences come from the state or private individuals/corporations.
We may find that other values that we hold come into conflict with the "free speech" value. The value that an individual should be able to control his or her own property may come into conflict (leading to the expression that "Freedom of the Press belongs to them as owns a press" which I remember from my days of active involvement in Usenet, where it was often quoted by sysadmins). Conflict with other values lets us put other restrictions and negative repercussions on those who freely express whatever they want to (slander and libel laws from the state; the ability to shun someone who says unpopular things at the individual level).
We may decide that these other values/ considerations outweigh the value of free speech in a particular case and allow the government or private individual/corporation to act to restrict the person's ability to speak freely. But if we don't allow the issue to be raised at all as a free speech issue, then we've lost already.
"I thought the only people still using it were in countries that didn't want to submit to LOC guidelines because their own copyright laws were uhm, different."
DDC is very commonly used in public libraries.
I've used and worked in both university libraries (using a modified LOC) and public libraries (using DDC) and have studied both in library school (on the way to an MLS).
They both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both can be used to easily pinpoint very specific books in a large collection (you can use a heck of a lot of decimal places in the DDC, and if you know it well, those decimals can carry a lot of information as the same patters show up all over the system). Both are single access systems (for shelving books) and so will end up putting books (many of which have multiple appropriate subjects) in places where you aren't looking for them. That's why it is best to use the OPAC if you want to thoroughly cover the field before heading to the shelves.
LOC is often found in large research collections. This system was custom designed specifically for the Library of Congress and works better for those libraries that are more similar to the Library of Congress. The more different your library is, the less likely it is to work for you. If you have a very different collection, the LOC may have a wide range to cover just a few books in your collection and a narrow range to cover areas in which your collection is rich. That's why the University of Toronto Library was using a modified LOC - they needed more range in Canadiana.
DDC is more suited to a general collection of the type found in public libraries. Also as the system most people learn and use in their youths, it is appropriate for a library that doesn't want to make infrequent researchers (most users of a local public library) learn a whole new system. If I were selcting a system to use in a small public library branch, I know I'd sure as heck use DDC over LOC.
Interestingly, when I studied Library Science at the University of Toronto, while the overall University Library used a modified LOC (as I mention above) the Faculty of Library and Information Science Library used DDC.
Respectfully,
David Tallan
"Regarding "he-who-has-the-gold-makes-the-rules," remember that the American consumer is the one with the gold, and we give it to record companies and we make the rules".
After we give the gold to the record companies, it's the record companies who has the gold.
The total gold held by consumers may be greater than that of record companies, but consumers are not pooling that gold and using it to speak with one voice. The record companies thus have a heck of a lot more gold than any of their opponents and can (and do) use it to make the rules through much better funded lobbying.
If you really think that the American consumer is making the rules, you haven't been paying a lot of attention to the rules being made (by the legislators or in the courts).
Or so it seems to me. YMMV, of course.
Note also that the first "Me, too" poster, two years into the archive, hadn't come up with the innovation of quoting the entire post before adding in the "Me, too!!!".
And the people who write the articles and verify the credibility of methods and results are paid. However, they are not paid by the publisher, they are paid by the university that employs them.
Universities, for the main part, do not hire professors just to teach. They also hire them to participate in the world of academic research. This includes more than just doing the research. It includes getting it published ("Publish or Perish"). Academic peer-reviewed journals do not pay for articles submitted. In some cases, they are paid to have the article published by the author. It also includes peer-reviewing the articles of one's colleagues (which accomplishes that "ensuring credibility").
The astronomical prices of journal subscriptions cover: coordination, printing and distribution costs and publisher's profits.
Due to the extremely small print runs (most of these are only bought by a small number of academic libraries) an academic journal naturally has a much higher "per-issue" cost than, say, an issue of TIME magazine.
Note that, as most of these journals are only bought by university libraries, the university community is in essence, paying twice for the research. Once when it pays the academics to conduct, write and review the research and again when it pays the publishers for the journals.
Note also that most of the costs that the publishers have to pay (coordination, printing and distribution) are the ones that are most effected by the new Internet technologies making scholarly journals the best choice for early converts to the new "e-publishing".
It is possible to set up agreements that mimic the restrictions of the physical, paper copies.
When libraries purchase electronic materials, they can sign an agreement limiting the number of simultaneous accesses. Contracts with prices based on the number of simultaneous "log-ins" are not exactly new to the networked world.
Similarly, when they are "loaning" the material through inter-library loan, they can instruct the receiving library that it has the right to one simultanous access to the material, and that right is only for a limited period of time (matching the regular duration of an inter-library loan). For the duration, the number of allowed simultaneous accesses at the lending library would be reduced by one.
I expect libraries would be willing to do these sorts of things. They realize the need to keep publishers in business. They just also realize that they can't have a "per use" payment system and maintain the current model of the public library.
Were the libraries to offer to do these sort of things, I don't think it would cause the publishers to stop their assault on the "fair use" provisions.
but it was rejected. I figured it had all the earmarks of a classic /. story: misunderstood and bullied high school geek, censorship, etc. I mean, stories were being accepted about students who got suspended and here is a guy who was put in jail for thirty days for a creative writing class assignment!
The advantage of a domain over an "Approved by the WHO" graphic is that it is much easier for them to control.
.health domain carries over an "Approved by the WHO" graphic.
Say I run a snake oil web site and I want to mislead the public into thinking that it is approved by the WHO. All I have to do is go to an approved site, save the graphic, and add it to my page.
Sure the WHO can take me to court and ask me to remove the graphic. But first they have to notice the violation, next they may have to spend the legal fees and a possibly a fair amount of time in court. In the meantime, who knows how many people have been to my site and been misled?
If they are the ones that grant the domain name, they don't have to spend any resources looking for and dealing with pirates who are misappropriating their "approved by the WHO" graphic and they don't have to worry about the misinformation that is spread before they can take action.
That seems to me to be a significant advantage (from the WHO perspective) that a
mangu wrote [in response to the assertion that children are different than adults]:
Would that it were so simple. Yes, by "growing up" and gaining experience children do turn into adults. But "growing up" involves more than just getting bigger.
Part of growing up is cognitive development. There are types of thinking that five year olds can do that two year olds cannot. The same goes for eight year olds and five year olds or fourteen year olds and eight year olds. It is not just that more experience allows older children to put new information into context better. They actually have a larger "toolbox" of mental abilities that allow them to think about it differently. This is pretty well documented and if necessary, I can look up plenty of studies that support this assertion.
Another part of growing up is qualitative physical changes. Bodies don't just get bigger. Hormonal changes during puberty trigger other changes as well. Surely, you've noticed this? The fact that the hormonal changes of puberty have significant impacts on the brain is also well documented.
The fact is that children think differently than adults. And they think differently than children of different ages. One of the results of this is that there are certain things out in the world that children just do not have the mental toolset to deal with. And it makes sense for adults to protect them from that information until they are capable of understanding the explanation that the parent can give with it. This can mean that a three year old should wait until he is eight to learn something or an eight year old should wait until he is twelve.
This is not an argument in favour of filtering. Every child is different in what they are capable of handling - and what they can handle next week may be different than what they can handle today. Filters are just not flexible enough, not precise enough and not "tuned in" enough to the particular child. Parents (hopefully) are. It is the parents responsibility to monitor their child's media usage; to try and shield them from what they may not be able to handle (like shielding a two year old from a news report about a serial murderer/cannibal) or explain to them what they can cognitively handle but lack the context for. But a parent will be unable to do that effectively if they buy into your notion that children are just inexperienced adults.
Or so it seems to me.
Zarniwoop wrote:
I'm not sure that is the best analogy. It is more like downloading an mp3 of a song that you used to own years ago.
I think a book (the classic example of an intellectual property package) is a better analogy. When I buy a book, how much am I buying the physical object and how much am I buying the content within it? In most cases it is recognized that it is the content that I want. However people pay more for the same content in a better looking package (for example, trade paperback vs. mass market). And most people would agree that if I lose a copy of a book, I have to pay to replace it. I can't just go to the library and photocopy an entire book, just because I once owned it.
Software could fit that model. When you buy the software, you generally buy a physical package as well as the intellectual property. If you lose the physical package and you still want the intellectual proprty are you obligated to buy it again?
Of course, in the case of abandonware, it's not possible. There is a book equivalent to this. It's called Out Of Print. What we are talking about here is the equivalent of photocopying and distributing our favourite out of print books. Unfortunately, copyright law makes no exemptions on the basis of material being out of print (unavailable from the rights holder). It is still illegal to reproduce it.
Of course, illegal does not equal immoral or unethical. My personal library does contain photocopies of out of print or unavailable books in areas of interest to me (e.g., mediaeval culinary history). As far as I'm concerned, so long as I'm willing to purchase a legal copy should one come along, I've done nothing wrong. But I don't fool myself into thinking that I haven't violated copyright. And as far as software goes, ...., well, let's not go there.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who thought this immediately (well, immediately after thinking the Christian Scientists were talking about the end of the world).
This would have made more sense during the Cold War, but better late than never!
Now what they need to do is to make sure that there are always at least one fertile male and female in space at all times to really do the job properly.