What about abroad? Here in the UK, I can only think of one person out of my whole network of friends and associates who's got more than 512k at home. Reason? Shitty phone companies with shitty monopolistic practices and high prices.
I'm sitting here on a virtually unused 2Mb pipe (office) but at home, like everyone else I know (bar one person) I'm on 512k. And most of the people I'm talking about do read/.
In the UK, especially out in the suburbs and rural areas, 512k is the standard. 1Mb is a rarity and 2Mb is just nonexistent at the residential level.
No, it's great fun. You just need a colour analyser and a drum processor. The feeling you get when you've got an excellent Ilfochrome hanging up over your bath is way better than inkjet can ever provide.
I used to do B&W photography, though I've switched to digital now (that's only because I just take pictures of holidays and family - stopped doing art stuff a while back). I'm not too bothered about losing Kodak paper. I liked TX, and the Kodak IR film. T-Max developer is okay. But the paper didn't seem worth a great deal.
As for Ilford: FP4+ film is excellent, HP5 is a murky pile of crap and some of the MultiGrade can be nice. XP2 is great.
I used to get boxes of stuff called Polygrade from a Hungarian company called Forte which had a beautiful cold image. I think they've gone out of business too.
You don't have to know everything to be a pro. Lawyers and doctors and computer programmers are professionals - they make money - but they still have to look things up in books.
I've lived in Britain since day zero of my life - in Sussex, the Midlands - and worked in London for a year. I've never seen "Tux" chocolate. I can't think of any chocolates or sweets with any computer or nerd related titles.
That said, if you go to Rochester in Kent, there is a newsagent there called "RSS News".
No, some bloggers are the guys with the Ph.D's and the college professorships who knows a hell of a lot more about subject x than some dumb fuckwit at Reuters or the Associated Press does because he's spent his life studying it, debating it with fellow academics, publishing monographs and articles on it and so on. Just because bloggers != journalists does not mean that bloggers == clueless or that journalists == knowledgable.
The point is: if you don't like it you don't have to read it. There is not some tragedy of the commons at work here. Crappy weblogs do not prevent good weblogs from existing. There is not some huge lack of web space, and the bandwidth you use, you pay for.
Indeed. One of the blogs I read the most is an academic group blog on a particular subject of interest. All the participants have Ph.D's and the vast majority are professors with a lot of experience in their subject. I trust them far more than I trust any of the mainstream media. I'm amazed by how often the media have got the science wrong on this particular issue.
I've discovered, time and time again, that the news media fuck it up. I now pay only scant attention to what they say on this particular issue, and prefer reading the blogs of the actual experts. If this is happening with the things I'm interested in, it's probably also happening with all the stuff I'm not interested in.
You are obviously not a traveller on the British railway network. We're usually travelling above 21mph (though not by much), but we're all suffocating inside the carriage. I guess there's a biological or sociological explanation for that one though.
Solution? Get lecturers to give in-office tutorials to students. It works. Okay, one of my lecturers office has a coffin which he uses as a coffee table and general book stack, but otherwise, it makes them keep their working areas absolutely meticulously clean.
Manchester? No, no, no, no, no. London is the only answer. Yes, admittedly, I have to commute an hour and a half a day to get to my college, but, still. Can't resist being in London...
Or move to Europe, specifically Britain. That way the whole Animal House geeks vs. jocks thing is a total irrelevance. The jocks became chavs (petty criminal underclass in to the mindless segment of electronic music and 'doing up' cars) and the chavs lost. The 'jocks' at my old school? Last I heard they were working in Burger King, getting fired from Burger King and moving to McDonald's (or vice versa). They certainly weren't going to university or become Premier League superstars.
Sure, we've still got some class privilege issues which sound Totally Fucking Crazy to Americans but still, for the most part, effort is rewarded, especially academic effort - either with a variety of good private sector jobs, academia or the professions. Much as we Brits complain about 'dumbing down', our state schools are still streets ahead of American state schools.
We also don't have professional sports in our universities. This is undoubtedly a Good Thing. The three sports which people take seriously: football (soccer, not that American dressing up as a sofa stuff), rugby and rowing. There is absolutely no money in university sports, since the professonal clubs pick people up from school and train them in-house rather than rely on universities. Subsequently, all sports on university grounds here in Britain is pretty much amateur (indeed, I study at a small college of the University of London, and we've got sports, sure, but there's no big sponsorship, coaches earning millions, huge stadiums and so on. It's just a bunch of guys who play football when they aren't busy reading Kierkegaard or studying quantum mechanics. And long may it stay like that.
Of course, the university sports situation is a bit different at some of the 'post-92' universities, but it's still nothing compared to the United States.
Indeed. I was ecstatic - as a recovering Mac user - when I found out about mogrify. Had a set of images posted up by a newbie (all ill-sized for the web), and mogrify sorted them up in one single command. Far quicker than the hamfisted batch processing in photoshop etc.
I'm not sure about the Library of Congress, but I'm a Reader at the British Library (that just means I'm a researcher who's got a ticket to use the library). I've just sent them an email enquiring about their privacy policy for Readers (the BL is a stack-request library, and a dang good one at that).
I'll post any response I get here (if it comes soon) or on my blog. Drop me a line (bbtommorris ~at~ gmail ~dot~ com) if you want me to tell you of any response I get.
I will also make enquiries next term over library policies at my university and my specific college (we have a university-wide general library and a specific library for my discipline).
Anyone else who uses research or academic libraries should consult them on their privacy policy for patrons - reference and borrowing - and bring any examples of good and bad practices to the public attention (I'll do my bit: email me with anything you find).
If you are in the United Kingdom, libraries which do not give you helpful information quickly or reasonably can be sorted by using the Data Protection Act 1984 request system.
You simply send your name and details and the current fee (I think it's £10) and the Data Protection Registrar has to send back in a reasonably quick period all the data that the organisation holds on you. (This used to apply to CCTV which was extremely cool!) If they do not provide information or do not do it in a timely or reasonable fashion, you can make a complaint to the Commissioner of whichever bureau it is that handles Data Protection (I forget, but it's easy enough to Google for).
From D,P,A, requests, you should be able to find out what information a library holds on you and your borrowing record.
That is one of the main arguments I have against anyone who says "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" when things like new scary ID cards and Patriot-style laws come up. If you've got nothing to hide, you should be happy to get your bank to send statements on a postcard. You should be happy to publish your itemised phone bill online for all to see.
If you have a problem with showing these things, or any doubt regarding the government's use of such data, you do have something to hide. Congratulations. Nothing to be ashamed of. I have lots to hide, not because it's dangerous or illegal or immoral. Just because it's my stuff and I prefer it hidden in my head or in a secure location than it being in the public domain.
Great post! It's great that librarians are taking privacy concerns seriously. I'm a frequent patron at lots of libraries (university, a big research library, local library out here in the sticks). Though I think libraries should destroy reading records, it would be interesting to get a big list of all the books I've read. The information is not a bad thing per se. It's just I want my information in my hands, not anybody elses.
It would be extremely useful for researchers to get a list of everything they borrowed from a library with full details and everything. Currently, my university library lets you email the OPAC details of any books to yourself. This is extremely useful, as everytime I take some books out, I simply go to their website and email myself the full details. It would be nice if all libraries could do this automatically if you ask them for it - firing off an email with book details.
Also, a "return date approaching" email a few days before would be nice, since libraries don't care about fines, they care about getting their stuff back (right?).
Again, for any other librarians reading this, as a researcher, you have my thanks. You make my life a lot, lot easier...
Exactly. Here in Britain, the new ID card system is going to be around £80-£90 ($140-$160 US). Of course, it's an optional card. You don't have to have it if you don't work, drive a car, need to go to the hospital, travel on public transport, claim benefits or don't have the misfortune of running in to a police officer in the street who wants to see your 'papers'.
When I downloaded Mandrake last (the latest version I got on a magazine-cover DVD), they had a Mini CD version - one disc containing just the OS and a few apps - and a three CD version with all the applications. Now it'll still be easier just to distribute on DVD.
It's not the blank CD's that are the problem. It's the fact that you download a pretty large file (even with DSL: 512 isn't that nippy when it's 700mb ISO's you're downloading) and then a new version is released almost immediately. CD's cost mere pennies. Downloads can take many weary hours.
Perhaps just an XML file that could be exported with a list of all your current extensions and their settings. That way you could just host that up on a server and point a new copy of Firefox to it and say 'Go, set yourself up according to these rules!'. It would download and install all the extensions, set whatever you wanted and, in the case of things like Greasemonkey, install all your User Scripts.
Internet Explorer had something like that but not as cool.
Slashdot Mirror
What about abroad? Here in the UK, I can only think of one person out of my whole network of friends and associates who's got more than 512k at home. Reason? Shitty phone companies with shitty monopolistic practices and high prices.
/.
I'm sitting here on a virtually unused 2Mb pipe (office) but at home, like everyone else I know (bar one person) I'm on 512k. And most of the people I'm talking about do read
In the UK, especially out in the suburbs and rural areas, 512k is the standard. 1Mb is a rarity and 2Mb is just nonexistent at the residential level.
Of course, YMMV.
Too knowledgable for consulting. Probably an academic.
No, it's great fun. You just need a colour analyser and a drum processor. The feeling you get when you've got an excellent Ilfochrome hanging up over your bath is way better than inkjet can ever provide.
I used to do B&W photography, though I've switched to digital now (that's only because I just take pictures of holidays and family - stopped doing art stuff a while back). I'm not too bothered about losing Kodak paper. I liked TX, and the Kodak IR film. T-Max developer is okay. But the paper didn't seem worth a great deal.
As for Ilford: FP4+ film is excellent, HP5 is a murky pile of crap and some of the MultiGrade can be nice. XP2 is great.
I used to get boxes of stuff called Polygrade from a Hungarian company called Forte which had a beautiful cold image. I think they've gone out of business too.
You don't have to know everything to be a pro. Lawyers and doctors and computer programmers are professionals - they make money - but they still have to look things up in books.
I've lived in Britain since day zero of my life - in Sussex, the Midlands - and worked in London for a year. I've never seen "Tux" chocolate. I can't think of any chocolates or sweets with any computer or nerd related titles.
That said, if you go to Rochester in Kent, there is a newsagent there called "RSS News".
No, some bloggers are the guys with the Ph.D's and the college professorships who knows a hell of a lot more about subject x than some dumb fuckwit at Reuters or the Associated Press does because he's spent his life studying it, debating it with fellow academics, publishing monographs and articles on it and so on. Just because bloggers != journalists does not mean that bloggers == clueless or that journalists == knowledgable.
No, really, Microsoft should team up with the Beta Band. That would solve all the problems in the world.
No, blogs and journals are DIFFERENT things.
The point is: if you don't like it you don't have to read it. There is not some tragedy of the commons at work here. Crappy weblogs do not prevent good weblogs from existing. There is not some huge lack of web space, and the bandwidth you use, you pay for.
Indeed. One of the blogs I read the most is an academic group blog on a particular subject of interest. All the participants have Ph.D's and the vast majority are professors with a lot of experience in their subject. I trust them far more than I trust any of the mainstream media. I'm amazed by how often the media have got the science wrong on this particular issue.
I've discovered, time and time again, that the news media fuck it up. I now pay only scant attention to what they say on this particular issue, and prefer reading the blogs of the actual experts. If this is happening with the things I'm interested in, it's probably also happening with all the stuff I'm not interested in.
You are obviously not a traveller on the British railway network. We're usually travelling above 21mph (though not by much), but we're all suffocating inside the carriage. I guess there's a biological or sociological explanation for that one though.
Solution? Get lecturers to give in-office tutorials to students. It works. Okay, one of my lecturers office has a coffin which he uses as a coffee table and general book stack, but otherwise, it makes them keep their working areas absolutely meticulously clean.
Manchester? No, no, no, no, no. London is the only answer. Yes, admittedly, I have to commute an hour and a half a day to get to my college, but, still. Can't resist being in London...
Or move to Europe, specifically Britain. That way the whole Animal House geeks vs. jocks thing is a total irrelevance. The jocks became chavs (petty criminal underclass in to the mindless segment of electronic music and 'doing up' cars) and the chavs lost. The 'jocks' at my old school? Last I heard they were working in Burger King, getting fired from Burger King and moving to McDonald's (or vice versa). They certainly weren't going to university or become Premier League superstars.
Sure, we've still got some class privilege issues which sound Totally Fucking Crazy to Americans but still, for the most part, effort is rewarded, especially academic effort - either with a variety of good private sector jobs, academia or the professions. Much as we Brits complain about 'dumbing down', our state schools are still streets ahead of American state schools.
We also don't have professional sports in our universities. This is undoubtedly a Good Thing. The three sports which people take seriously: football (soccer, not that American dressing up as a sofa stuff), rugby and rowing. There is absolutely no money in university sports, since the professonal clubs pick people up from school and train them in-house rather than rely on universities. Subsequently, all sports on university grounds here in Britain is pretty much amateur (indeed, I study at a small college of the University of London, and we've got sports, sure, but there's no big sponsorship, coaches earning millions, huge stadiums and so on. It's just a bunch of guys who play football when they aren't busy reading Kierkegaard or studying quantum mechanics. And long may it stay like that.
Of course, the university sports situation is a bit different at some of the 'post-92' universities, but it's still nothing compared to the United States.
Indeed. I was ecstatic - as a recovering Mac user - when I found out about mogrify. Had a set of images posted up by a newbie (all ill-sized for the web), and mogrify sorted them up in one single command. Far quicker than the hamfisted batch processing in photoshop etc.
dotat.at - pretty neat. I used to be involved with dotdotnetdot.net. Very Slashdot.
I'm not sure about the Library of Congress, but I'm a Reader at the British Library (that just means I'm a researcher who's got a ticket to use the library). I've just sent them an email enquiring about their privacy policy for Readers (the BL is a stack-request library, and a dang good one at that).
I'll post any response I get here (if it comes soon) or on my blog. Drop me a line (bbtommorris ~at~ gmail ~dot~ com) if you want me to tell you of any response I get.
I will also make enquiries next term over library policies at my university and my specific college (we have a university-wide general library and a specific library for my discipline).
Anyone else who uses research or academic libraries should consult them on their privacy policy for patrons - reference and borrowing - and bring any examples of good and bad practices to the public attention (I'll do my bit: email me with anything you find).
If you are in the United Kingdom, libraries which do not give you helpful information quickly or reasonably can be sorted by using the Data Protection Act 1984 request system.
You simply send your name and details and the current fee (I think it's £10) and the Data Protection Registrar has to send back in a reasonably quick period all the data that the organisation holds on you. (This used to apply to CCTV which was extremely cool!) If they do not provide information or do not do it in a timely or reasonable fashion, you can make a complaint to the Commissioner of whichever bureau it is that handles Data Protection (I forget, but it's easy enough to Google for).
From D,P,A, requests, you should be able to find out what information a library holds on you and your borrowing record.
That is one of the main arguments I have against anyone who says "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" when things like new scary ID cards and Patriot-style laws come up. If you've got nothing to hide, you should be happy to get your bank to send statements on a postcard. You should be happy to publish your itemised phone bill online for all to see.
If you have a problem with showing these things, or any doubt regarding the government's use of such data, you do have something to hide. Congratulations. Nothing to be ashamed of. I have lots to hide, not because it's dangerous or illegal or immoral. Just because it's my stuff and I prefer it hidden in my head or in a secure location than it being in the public domain.
Great post! It's great that librarians are taking privacy concerns seriously. I'm a frequent patron at lots of libraries (university, a big research library, local library out here in the sticks). Though I think libraries should destroy reading records, it would be interesting to get a big list of all the books I've read. The information is not a bad thing per se. It's just I want my information in my hands, not anybody elses.
It would be extremely useful for researchers to get a list of everything they borrowed from a library with full details and everything. Currently, my university library lets you email the OPAC details of any books to yourself. This is extremely useful, as everytime I take some books out, I simply go to their website and email myself the full details. It would be nice if all libraries could do this automatically if you ask them for it - firing off an email with book details.
Also, a "return date approaching" email a few days before would be nice, since libraries don't care about fines, they care about getting their stuff back (right?).
Again, for any other librarians reading this, as a researcher, you have my thanks. You make my life a lot, lot easier...
Exactly. Here in Britain, the new ID card system is going to be around £80-£90 ($140-$160 US). Of course, it's an optional card. You don't have to have it if you don't work, drive a car, need to go to the hospital, travel on public transport, claim benefits or don't have the misfortune of running in to a police officer in the street who wants to see your 'papers'.
When I downloaded Mandrake last (the latest version I got on a magazine-cover DVD), they had a Mini CD version - one disc containing just the OS and a few apps - and a three CD version with all the applications. Now it'll still be easier just to distribute on DVD.
It's not the blank CD's that are the problem. It's the fact that you download a pretty large file (even with DSL: 512 isn't that nippy when it's 700mb ISO's you're downloading) and then a new version is released almost immediately. CD's cost mere pennies. Downloads can take many weary hours.
Perhaps just an XML file that could be exported with a list of all your current extensions and their settings. That way you could just host that up on a server and point a new copy of Firefox to it and say 'Go, set yourself up according to these rules!'. It would download and install all the extensions, set whatever you wanted and, in the case of things like Greasemonkey, install all your User Scripts.
Internet Explorer had something like that but not as cool.
Does it bring back what was in the form? Because that would make it seriously useful for bloggers and forum users (etc.).