You got the story about weather data wrong on a couple counts. It was about stopping the government providing the data in a form that could be consumed directly by end users in real time. The private companies still wanted the data from the government for themselves. It had nothing to do with FOIA as no one ever disputed that the data was public domain and should be accessible to all, the rub was in how accessible.
FOIA is a 30 year old law that effects every part of federal bureacracy. It will not be repealed.
A FOIA that extended to the legislative branch would mean that any citizen is entitled to the information not just members of Congress. There's a big difference between a right to information and access to information being a privilege that can be granted when a member of Congress decides todo so.
I hope you can see the difference between a right and a conditional privilege. FOIA is one of the most important tools that the press has for gaining information about what the US govt is doing.
While I agree that the Bush administration is rolling back quite a bit of access that's important to our democracy, there is a vast amount of information that the executive branch routinely releases because of FOIA. The principle has been ensconced within the bureacracy enough that it would be extremely difficult to reverse.
If CRS was under the executive branch these reports would be online because they would release them rather than have to deal with FOIA requests which require more work on their part.
The Freedom of Information Act is one of the better laws the US has. All information produced by the USG belongs to its citizens (who paid for it), FOIA dictates that it must be shared unless a fairly narrow set of criteria is met.
Unfortunately, FOIA does not apply to the legislative branch, as Congress apparently saw fit to exempt themselves from it. I could entertain an argument that FOIA is not appropriate for Congress, however, it is difficult to recouncile the values codified in FOIA with not making CRS reports available to the public.
Where's Newt when you need him? THOMAS is considered his baby, information freedom needs an upgrade.
Personally I find the legislative branch's (and your) attitude toward information puzzling. The Executive Branch produces all kinds of information with millions of people watching thanks to FOIA. Officials responsible for producing that information are expected to do their jobs in a responsible manner.
How do you recouncile your view with the values codified in FOIA? At a very fundamental level those reports belong to the people of the US who paid for them.
You missed the earlier part about "The Congress shall have Power To", meaning copyright exists at Congress' option, it is not mandated by the Constitution. Thus, violating Copyright is a violation of a law put in place by Congress, not anything in the Constitution.
it's not an option to fit that diesel Ford F250 truck with a filtration system and biodiesel reservoir
This is the most common misconception about biodiesel. Any engine that runs on petroleum diesel can run on biodiesel with no modifications.
Also, using cooking oil won't make biodiesel economically viable at scale. The amount of cooking oil consumed per year in the US is about equal to the amount of petroleum consumed in one day.
For broad general adoption EoP makes more sense to me than PoE. Every single room in the US has a power outlet in it. So, run the network through the power wiring and make devices that can access it.
Cat5 is more expensive and less plentiful than electrical wiring and parts. Everything needs power.
If I was on the market now I'd probably buy an Asus WL-500g. Its basically the same hardware as a Linksys WRT54G, also running Linux which you are also able to add a custom firmware if you are so inclined. The Asus has a couple big advantages, namely:
- its expandable through a USB port. You can plug in disks, usb speakers, a printer
- the factory firmware is very smart. It includes support for the above mentioned expandability, ftp, samba, traffic shaping
Re:At least etree is still out there
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You could always try letting the download run overnight or while you're at work or something and not using your computer anyway...
I could also rent a pickup truck and a forklift to go check out a few books from the stone tablet lending library. Oh wait, there's a more convenient way for me to access the material that used to be on stone tablets, its called "paper". The quality of the paper versions aren't as good as the lossless stone versions but to my uneducated eye its good enough.
In the future should I want a higher quality version I could still rent the pickup truck and forklift, but between you and me I probably never will do that. Its just not convenient.
I don't mean to harp at you personally for this but I find the situation utterly ridiculous. Its clear that the people responsible for the situation being ridiculous will eventually change their minds. In the meantime they are preventing potential fans from finding good music outside of the major distribution channels.
The 'net is a big place, there are other music sites that actually want me to listen to the music, I'll go visit them.
Re:At least etree is still out there
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EZTree Shuts Down
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Hmm, I like bluegrass so I thought I'd give Big Smith a listen. However, when I went to look all the shows I browsed through are only in lossless format. I'm not willing to wait hours and hours downloading GBs of data to browse a band I might like.
I've spent time in the past trying to find good music on archive.org, I think I'll give up. Its just too much work. With hundreds of bands I've never heard of and thousands of shows its enough of a chore to try to find something I'll like, but since the community places an intentional roadblock in front of me with the lossless format thing I take it that they actually don't want non-obsessed fans to listen.
Contrary to what this writeup is saying archive.org has been providing free hosting forever for free for quite a number of years now. I suppose there is no guarentee that anything is forever but they have definitely put their money where their mouth is.
The freecache project that you refer to was an experiment. It didn't work out, as is often the case with experiments.
That is correct for post 1976 published works, incorrect for earlier works. Simplifying, the earlier works have had their term extended to 95 years if they had not already been in the public domain. That is why 1923 is the cutoff date before which you know works are public domain.
The faq says that most of the images are in the public domain. Despite this apparently the NYPL says that only personal use is allowed and that a payment for a license must be obtained to make other uses.
I think its disgusting when people put additional restrictions on public domain material, especially when its a publicly funded library.
This is partially wrong. The faq states that though most of the images are public domain a license is needed for commercial use. In order to make commercial use you need to pay a fee and get a license.
I personally think its disgusting when people place additional restrictions on public domain material. That a library supported by public money does that is hard to comprehend.
WEF == World Economic Forum, a gathering of the world's rich and powerful that took place in Davos, Switzlerland
Porto Alegre == site of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Brazil. WSF was founded as a counterpoint to WEF and is a large scale gathering of civil society social justice groups.
The general jist of that sentence is meant to contrast the resources the WEF and WSF bring to bear on the problem of translation and online distribution of many simultaneous panels. Whereas WEF can hire an army of translators and techs and give them peerless infrastructure, WSF relies on volunteers, some PC's running GNU/Linux and free software.
Wow, you seem nice and frothy over this. Maybe you should consider calming down. If you did you may be able to appreciate the irony that those trade restrictions are hampering the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner from publishing a book in the US.
If you think that international customers are not concerned by reports of hosting companies pulling contracts based on content criteria decided by the USG then you are mistaken. If you think that pursuing this policy by the USG will have an appreciable effect on the availability of information it does not like then you are also mistaken.
This had shit to do with the dozens of reseller accounts the customer had hosted, including the political activist group.
Asus, Belkin and other manufacturers are selling units based off of the same design as the WRT54G that include a USB port. Some of the vendors support attaching storage, a USB hard drive, flash drive, etc. Of course putting linux on it allows you to do whatever one wants.
The custom firmwares that I've seen are not at the level of what is available for the WRT54G but they will likely be soon.
Slashdot Mirror
You got the story about weather data wrong on a couple counts. It was about stopping the government providing the data in a form that could be consumed directly by end users in real time. The private companies still wanted the data from the government for themselves. It had nothing to do with FOIA as no one ever disputed that the data was public domain and should be accessible to all, the rub was in how accessible.
FOIA is a 30 year old law that effects every part of federal bureacracy. It will not be repealed.
You do not know what you are talking about and should be moderated accordingly.
lobby congress to pass a bill banning Medicare from providing this software
Government produced information is public domain. Period.
sue the government under a 'no compete' clause
"no compete" clauses generally refer to provisions in a contract between two parties. What might that contract be in this case?
A FOIA that extended to the legislative branch would mean that any citizen is entitled to the information not just members of Congress. There's a big difference between a right to information and access to information being a privilege that can be granted when a member of Congress decides todo so.
I hope you can see the difference between a right and a conditional privilege. FOIA is one of the most important tools that the press has for gaining information about what the US govt is doing.
While I agree that the Bush administration is rolling back quite a bit of access that's important to our democracy, there is a vast amount of information that the executive branch routinely releases because of FOIA. The principle has been ensconced within the bureacracy enough that it would be extremely difficult to reverse.
If CRS was under the executive branch these reports would be online because they would release them rather than have to deal with FOIA requests which require more work on their part.
The Freedom of Information Act is one of the better laws the US has. All information produced by the USG belongs to its citizens (who paid for it), FOIA dictates that it must be shared unless a fairly narrow set of criteria is met.
Unfortunately, FOIA does not apply to the legislative branch, as Congress apparently saw fit to exempt themselves from it. I could entertain an argument that FOIA is not appropriate for Congress, however, it is difficult to recouncile the values codified in FOIA with not making CRS reports available to the public.
Where's Newt when you need him? THOMAS is considered his baby, information freedom needs an upgrade.
Personally I find the legislative branch's (and your) attitude toward information puzzling. The Executive Branch produces all kinds of information with millions of people watching thanks to FOIA. Officials responsible for producing that information are expected to do their jobs in a responsible manner.
How do you recouncile your view with the values codified in FOIA? At a very fundamental level those reports belong to the people of the US who paid for them.
You missed the earlier part about "The Congress shall have Power To", meaning copyright exists at Congress' option, it is not mandated by the Constitution. Thus, violating Copyright is a violation of a law put in place by Congress, not anything in the Constitution.
it's not an option to fit that diesel Ford F250 truck with a filtration system and biodiesel reservoir
This is the most common misconception about biodiesel. Any engine that runs on petroleum diesel can run on biodiesel with no modifications.
Also, using cooking oil won't make biodiesel economically viable at scale. The amount of cooking oil consumed per year in the US is about equal to the amount of petroleum consumed in one day.
Biodiesel emits only a fraction the amount of soot, as well as most other pollutants.
... for storage. That honor goes to the Internet Archive with over 500TB.
For broad general adoption EoP makes more sense to me than PoE. Every single room in the US has a power outlet in it. So, run the network through the power wiring and make devices that can access it.
Cat5 is more expensive and less plentiful than electrical wiring and parts. Everything needs power.
If I was on the market now I'd probably buy an Asus WL-500g. Its basically the same hardware as a Linksys WRT54G, also running Linux which you are also able to add a custom firmware if you are so inclined. The Asus has a couple big advantages, namely:
- its expandable through a USB port. You can plug in disks, usb speakers, a printer
- the factory firmware is very smart. It includes support for the above mentioned expandability, ftp, samba, traffic shaping
You could always try letting the download run overnight or while you're at work or something and not using your computer anyway...
I could also rent a pickup truck and a forklift to go check out a few books from the stone tablet lending library. Oh wait, there's a more convenient way for me to access the material that used to be on stone tablets, its called "paper". The quality of the paper versions aren't as good as the lossless stone versions but to my uneducated eye its good enough.
In the future should I want a higher quality version I could still rent the pickup truck and forklift, but between you and me I probably never will do that. Its just not convenient.
I don't mean to harp at you personally for this but I find the situation utterly ridiculous. Its clear that the people responsible for the situation being ridiculous will eventually change their minds. In the meantime they are preventing potential fans from finding good music outside of the major distribution channels.
The 'net is a big place, there are other music sites that actually want me to listen to the music, I'll go visit them.
Hmm, I like bluegrass so I thought I'd give Big Smith a listen. However, when I went to look all the shows I browsed through are only in lossless format. I'm not willing to wait hours and hours downloading GBs of data to browse a band I might like.
I've spent time in the past trying to find good music on archive.org, I think I'll give up. Its just too much work. With hundreds of bands I've never heard of and thousands of shows its enough of a chore to try to find something I'll like, but since the community places an intentional roadblock in front of me with the lossless format thing I take it that they actually don't want non-obsessed fans to listen.
This is insightful? Archive.org generates no revenue yet spends money. Not a very good acquisition for a for profit business to make.
Please think before you speak.
Contrary to what this writeup is saying archive.org has been providing free hosting forever for free for quite a number of years now. I suppose there is no guarentee that anything is forever but they have definitely put their money where their mouth is.
The freecache project that you refer to was an experiment. It didn't work out, as is often the case with experiments.
That is correct for post 1976 published works, incorrect for earlier works. Simplifying, the earlier works have had their term extended to 95 years if they had not already been in the public domain. That is why 1923 is the cutoff date before which you know works are public domain.
For more info check out Circ 15a: Duration of Copyright: Provisions of the Law Dealing with the Length of Copyright Protection from the Copyright Office.
The faq says that most of the images are in the public domain. Despite this apparently the NYPL says that only personal use is allowed and that a payment for a license must be obtained to make other uses.
I think its disgusting when people put additional restrictions on public domain material, especially when its a publicly funded library.
This is partially wrong. The faq states that though most of the images are public domain a license is needed for commercial use. In order to make commercial use you need to pay a fee and get a license.
I personally think its disgusting when people place additional restrictions on public domain material. That a library supported by public money does that is hard to comprehend.
WEF == World Economic Forum, a gathering of the world's rich and powerful that took place in Davos, Switzlerland
Porto Alegre == site of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Brazil. WSF was founded as a counterpoint to WEF and is a large scale gathering of civil society social justice groups.
The general jist of that sentence is meant to contrast the resources the WEF and WSF bring to bear on the problem of translation and online distribution of many simultaneous panels. Whereas WEF can hire an army of translators and techs and give them peerless infrastructure, WSF relies on volunteers, some PC's running GNU/Linux and free software.
hth
Uh, by definition the trade restrictions are for political purposes, so I'm not really sure what your point is.
Wow, you seem nice and frothy over this. Maybe you should consider calming down. If you did you may be able to appreciate the irony that those trade restrictions are hampering the Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner from publishing a book in the US.
If you think that international customers are not concerned by reports of hosting companies pulling contracts based on content criteria decided by the USG then you are mistaken. If you think that pursuing this policy by the USG will have an appreciable effect on the availability of information it does not like then you are also mistaken.
This had shit to do with the dozens of reseller accounts the customer had hosted, including the political activist group.
What is your source for this information?
As a customer you should be concerned that they may terminate your service on short notice based on political content.
Asus, Belkin and other manufacturers are selling units based off of the same design as the WRT54G that include a USB port. Some of the vendors support attaching storage, a USB hard drive, flash drive, etc. Of course putting linux on it allows you to do whatever one wants.
The custom firmwares that I've seen are not at the level of what is available for the WRT54G but they will likely be soon.
Ask and ye shall receive, Dijjer, an Open Source P2P Web Cache for large files.