Oh YES! Now I remember that scene. Deeply disturbing to my 7 or 8 year old psyche. Memories flooding back...
What is far more disturbing is that my brain has room for more or less full recall of even that television special, that I haven't thought about for 20 years. If there was storage space for that special, one must not junk ANYTHING upstairs. It just takes the right trigger for the memory and bam, there you are...
I think the post entitled Public Information, F.O.I.A, and accessibility.... gets this exactly right. The government is obliged to give you the information, and to hide it. Charging an excessive fee ("Sure, we'll tell you who killed Kennedy, just pay us 14 billion dollars and 37 cents") is not Freedom of Information.
Now here's the harder question. What is the definition of "excessive?" Surely the government (and ultimately the taxpayers) should not have to routine eat the cost of the media involved. Nor should they have to eat the cost of formatting the data exactly as the requestor desires.
Myself? I figure as long as the data is available in some form, that's just fine. The F.O.I.A. is supposed to prevent the government from unnecessarily restricting access to information. It is not meant to force the government to play reference librarian to the whole country.
In general, I agree with you. However, I thought that the Freedom of Information Act (see my post on the subject) set limits on the ability of the government itself to make a profit from the provision of public information. But IANAL; perhaps there is someone here who can tell us for certain.
What an interesting question! I am not a lawyer, but this seems like it might fall under the Freedom of Information act.
For a bit of background, I quote from one of the government's own web sites on the Act.
The right of the public to obtain information held by the Federal Government is summarized in a report published by the U.S. House of Representatives, entitled "A Citizens Guide on Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request Government Records" (H.Rpt. 102-146), as follows:
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes a presumption that records in the possession of agencies and departments of the Executive Branch of the United States government are accessible to the people. This was not always the approach to federal information disclosure policy. Before enactment of the FOIA in 1966, the burden was on the individual to establish a right to examine these government records. There were no statutory guidelines or procedures to help a person seeking information. There were no judicial remedies for those denied access. With the passage of the FOIA, the burden of proof shifted from the individual to the government. Those seeking information are no longer required to show a need for information. Instead, the "need to know" standard has been replaced by a "right to know" doctrine. The government now has to justify the need for secrecy.
The FOIA sets standards for determining which records must be disclosed and which records can be withheld. The law also provides administrative and judicial remedies for those denied access to records.
Above all, the statute requires federal agencies to provide the fullest possible disclosure of information to the public.
How can you use dynamic, database driven content and still get it indexed into the major serach [sic] engines?"
One obvious possibility is to generate - using the database - a set of static pages as "targets" for the search engines. This could be done weekly or monthly, for example. Each target page would contain a prominent link to the dynamic database-driven front-end of the website, so that searchers could find the site and then quickly get directly to the main front end. Not particularly elegant, but it seems like a reasonable work-around for the time being. The real solution, in the long run, will involve more sophicated searching and indexing paradigms.
I was pleased to see that the idea of update packages was raised in the interview. It seems to me that one might want a very different upgrade philosophy for certain fast-developing sets of interrelated applications (e.g. GNOME) than for other more stable programs (e.g. tetex). For the former, the rapid pace of improvements in functionality and stability make it desirable to upgrade relatively frequently, even at a small stability cost with respect to distribution testing etc. For the latter, the current "make-it-bulletproof-before-release" philosophy of Debian seems ideal.
Thus it would be nice to have a way to decouple the upgrade process for sets of applications like GNOME from that for sets of applications like tetex. The upgrade-pack idea seems to be a fine solution.
I'm not claiming that Emory is in any way violating its students' rights by not allowing mp3 file storage. No one requires them to provide free disk space for any reason. After all, when I was in college we had a 500 kilobyte filespace limit on our student accounts. And we had to walk uphill five miles through the snow both ways to class, and we...oh, nevermind.
That said, I'm nonetheless not happy about the fact that this message implies that sysadmins are actively checking through student and faculty accounts.
None of this has any bearing on myself, because I have my own directly-connected linux box running my own mail and web servers, and so I never rely on the university servers for anything.
Even if I did need to rely on the university account, I would not be stupid enough to leave.mp3 files named as.mp3 files, if I wanted to keep the university from deleting them.
I've now placed a few work-related files on the system with.mp3 extensions: ThisFileIsNotAn.mp3 and FreeBird.mp3. I'll let you know what happens.
NOTE: Any MP3, MP2 and GAME files not related to school and academic research will be deleted without advanced notice. If you need temporary disk space then type make_download and read the instructions.
Whether or not anyone is actively checking through accounts for MP3 files, I can't say (I haven't had any in mine.) It is tempting, as a friend suggested, to rename all files to *.MP3, just to see what happens. After a thorough backup, of course.
Remember the IBM "butterfly-keyboard" laptops? One should be able to do something similar with an LCD screen. Getting the alignment right to the last pixel might be difficult, but shouldn't be impossible. Now THAT would be a machine worth buying. Butterfly keyboard, butterfly LCD...
This is exactly the same mistake people make when they say "I don't mind if the cops search my car. Why should I? I don't have a dead body in my trunk..."
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
To this general end, I was quite impressed with Stefano Ghirlanda's Free Science Campaign. In particular, there is a lot of useful information decoding the copyright policies of the various academic publishers. Take a look!
From the Preamble:
When authors of scientific papers submit their manuscripts for publication in scientific journals, they are frequently asked to sign a copyright-transfer agreement to the publishers of the journal. After such a transfer, the authors may retain little freedom to use their own papers. For example, some copyright agreements forbid authors to make their works available on a web page: you might be reading something more interesting than this, now!
We feel that such copyright policies greatly reduce the freedom of scientists and researchers to exchange information and ideas. In our view, what is important is making scientific literature fully available to all scientists, free of the restrictions that are imposed today. Who owns the copyrights is a secondary issue (please read our objectives for more information).
If you are a scientist or researcher, or simply an interested person, please read on.
Why do you find any value whatsoever to this trite deconstructionist jargon? Thieme talks exactly like the black-turtlenecked oedipal poseur in the back of every college literature class. This sort of babble may intimidate a few of his fellow freshmen, but I don't see why it belongs on slashdot, let alone why it is deserving of any praise.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh YES! Now I remember that scene. Deeply disturbing to my 7 or 8 year old psyche. Memories flooding back...
What is far more disturbing is that my brain has room for more or less full recall of even that television special, that I haven't thought about for 20 years. If there was storage space for that special, one must not junk ANYTHING upstairs. It just takes the right trigger for the memory and bam, there you are...
I think the post entitled Public Information, F.O.I.A, and accessibility.... gets this exactly right. The government is obliged to give you the information, and to hide it. Charging an excessive fee ("Sure, we'll tell you who killed Kennedy, just pay us 14 billion dollars and 37 cents") is not Freedom of Information.
Now here's the harder question. What is the definition of "excessive?" Surely the government (and ultimately the taxpayers) should not have to routine eat the cost of the media involved. Nor should they have to eat the cost of formatting the data exactly as the requestor desires.
Myself? I figure as long as the data is available in some form, that's just fine. The F.O.I.A. is supposed to prevent the government from unnecessarily restricting access to information. It is not meant to force the government to play reference librarian to the whole country.
In general, I agree with you. However, I thought that the Freedom of Information Act (see my post on the subject) set limits on the ability of the government itself to make a profit from the provision of public information. But IANAL; perhaps there is someone here who can tell us for certain.
What an interesting question! I am not a lawyer, but this seems like it might fall under the Freedom of Information act.
For a bit of background, I quote from one of the government's own web sites on the Act.The right of the public to obtain information held by the Federal Government is summarized in a report published by the U.S. House of Representatives, entitled "A Citizens Guide on Using the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974 to Request Government Records" (H.Rpt. 102-146), as follows:
[ The emphasis is my own. ]One obvious possibility is to generate - using the database - a set of static pages as "targets" for the search engines. This could be done weekly or monthly, for example. Each target page would contain a prominent link to the dynamic database-driven front-end of the website, so that searchers could find the site and then quickly get directly to the main front end. Not particularly elegant, but it seems like a reasonable work-around for the time being. The real solution, in the long run, will involve more sophicated searching and indexing paradigms.
What do people think about this approach?
Thus it would be nice to have a way to decouple the upgrade process for sets of applications like GNOME from that for sets of applications like tetex. The upgrade-pack idea seems to be a fine solution.
Actually it is a violation of the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure) not the First.
NOTE: Any MP3, MP2 and GAME files not related to school and academic research will be deleted without advanced notice. If you need temporary disk space then type make_download and read the instructions.
Whether or not anyone is actively checking through accounts for MP3 files, I can't say (I haven't had any in mine.) It is tempting, as a friend suggested, to rename all files to *.MP3, just to see what happens. After a thorough backup, of course.
Remember the IBM "butterfly-keyboard" laptops? One should be able to do something similar with an LCD screen. Getting the alignment right to the last pixel might be difficult, but shouldn't be impossible. Now THAT would be a machine worth buying. Butterfly keyboard, butterfly LCD...
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
From the Preamble:
When authors of scientific papers submit their manuscripts for publication in scientific journals, they are frequently asked to sign a copyright-transfer agreement to the publishers of the journal. After such a transfer, the authors may retain little freedom to use their own papers. For example, some copyright agreements forbid authors to make their works available on a web page: you might be reading something more interesting than this, now!
We feel that such copyright policies greatly reduce the freedom of scientists and researchers to exchange information and ideas. In our view, what is important is making scientific literature fully available to all scientists, free of the restrictions that are imposed today. Who owns the copyrights is a secondary issue (please read our objectives for more information).
If you are a scientist or researcher, or simply an interested person, please read on.
Hard access limit has been reached for this user.
*sigh*
Thanks...I realized now that Fouc'ed up.
People like you spend more time about how to communicate than you actually spend communicating.
Uh...perhaps you should spend more time "about how to communicate."
What the HELL are you talking about? And what does it have to do with the inital post?
Come on, man, and recognize understated parody next time it bites you in the ass.
Or, if that is asking to much, quit with the ad hominem attacks and answer my original question:
What, of interest or value, does he actually say?
Hello?
"His ideas?"
The article reads like someone gave the staff of Wired a copy of Foucoult.
The only idea I see here is "hey - maybe I can bullshit these techies with a bunch of deconstructionist babble."
This isn't about flaming everything that isn't tech stuff. This is about flaming bad writing, and poor thinking.
Why do you find any value whatsoever to this trite deconstructionist jargon? Thieme talks exactly like the black-turtlenecked oedipal poseur in the back of every college literature class. This sort of babble may intimidate a few of his fellow freshmen, but I don't see why it belongs on slashdot, let alone why it is deserving of any praise.
Or, to put it more simply,
What, of interest or value, does he actually say?
Agreed!
And actually, there's relatively little evidence in the deconstructing hackers piece that Thieme IS a good writer....