You're looking at the data wrong. It's 12% of people who have ever responded to spam, not 12% of all spam that was responded to.
Still, I suspect the 12% figure they report is inaccurate.
The relevant court case (at least for US law, and possibly for UK law) is "Bridgeman v. Corel". Quoting WP:
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality. Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality.
Actually, R is a real (Turing-complete) programming language like Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. It just happens to have lots of statistical libraries and matrix-oriented functions. You put #!/usr/bin/Rscript in your first line and it can work just like any other scripting language, with command-line arguments, etc. I use it all the time as a replacement for other scripting languages (think PDL+Perl or Numpy+Python).
R is an excellent language for any scientist. The sytax and semantics of the language are very well thought-out.
Complex morphologies shouldn't be a problem if syntax and morphology are viewed by the system as one and the same. That is, word boundaries and morpheme boundaries serving similar function. Thus a very analytic language (eg. Mandarin) and a very polysynthetic language (eg. many Native American languages) work pretty similarly. The difference is one likes word boundaries and the other likes morpheme boundaries. This same argument could be applied to fusional languages.
Their Response:
"Images of works in the Ransom Center, including
the Gutenberg Bible, are made available under the terms of our Materials Use Policy (see link at the bottom of every page). As the owners of the physical property, we are entitled to control the use of images made from our materials. This is standard, everyday, library practice in public and
private institutions alike and should not elicit reactions of surprise, shock, and alarm.
You might be interested to learn that the Library of Congress, certainly a taxpayer supported library, has made its copy of the Gutenberg
available though a digital publication which costs $65 (soon to go up).
I would have to disagree that the enlarged images are unreadable. However, we plan to make a cd-rom of higher res images available in the near future."
Any suggestions on how to respond to these points?
As a resident of Texas, I was proud to read about the efforts of the Gutenberg Online Exhibition at the UT Humanities Research Center from a major technology news site. I congratulate your efforts on digitizing some of the most influential works of Western civilization.
However, I became sickened to see the notice "Further
reproduction of any of the Gutenberg Bible images
without the written consent of the Ransom Center is
prohibited" on a work in the public domain.
A) The University of Texas is a public institution:
The HRC's policy of prohibiting the reproduction of
the Gutenberg images is contrary to the University of
Texas Mission statement: "The university contributes
to the advancement of society through research,
creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the
development of new knowledge. The university preserves
and promotes the arts, benefits the state's economy,
serves the citizens through public programs and
provides other public service."
Such a policy of prohibiting the digital distribution
of these high quality images without reservation does
nothing to contribute to the promotion of the arts,
nor does is serve its citizens.
B) The distribution of the high-resolution digital
images without any reservations costs virtually
nothing, via the internet. The servers are already in
place and the research and scanning has already been
done. Both the original and the enlarged images are
illegible on a 19" monitor. Why would the university
bother putting up illegible material on the web?
C) The Biblical prophets wrote the Bible, Jerome
translated it into Latin, Gutenberg printed it, and
the UT HRC scanned it into digital form. And who
among these is prohibiting reproduction??
I urge you to reconsider the policy of prohibiting
reproduction of the Gutenberg images. This is an
important work for the citizens of Texas, such as
myself, and the citizens of the world. Please remove
any legal and technological restriction for both the
low-resolution and the high-resolution images of the
Gutenberg Bible.
Slashdot Mirror
You're looking at the data wrong. It's 12% of people who have ever responded to spam, not 12% of all spam that was responded to.
Still, I suspect the 12% figure they report is inaccurate.
Ever logged in to a computer connected to an LCD projector?
Here's my favorite video of a robot climbing stairs. Pay no attention to the robot behind the curtain.
The relevant court case (at least for US law, and possibly for UK law) is "Bridgeman v. Corel". Quoting WP:
Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), was a decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, which ruled that exact photographic copies of public domain images could not be protected by copyright because the copies lack originality. Even if accurate reproductions require a great deal of skill, experience and effort, the key element for copyrightability under U.S. law is that copyrighted material must show sufficient originality.
Remember that their plans for the 1.0 release was for a stable API for language implementors, not highly optimized performance.
Actually, R is a real (Turing-complete) programming language like Perl, Python, Ruby, etc. It just happens to have lots of statistical libraries and matrix-oriented functions.
You put #!/usr/bin/Rscript in your first line and it can work just like any other scripting language, with command-line arguments, etc. I use it all the time as a replacement for other scripting languages (think PDL+Perl or Numpy+Python).
R is an excellent language for any scientist. The sytax and semantics of the language are very well thought-out.
Complex morphologies shouldn't be a problem if syntax and morphology are viewed by the system as one and the same. That is, word boundaries and morpheme boundaries serving similar function. Thus a very analytic language (eg. Mandarin) and a very polysynthetic language (eg. many Native American languages) work pretty similarly. The difference is one likes word boundaries and the other likes morpheme boundaries.
This same argument could be applied to fusional languages.
Also, give up the idea of new and old languages.
Their Response:
"Images of works in the Ransom Center, including the Gutenberg Bible, are made available under the terms of our Materials Use Policy (see link at the bottom of every page). As the owners of the physical property, we are entitled to control the use of images made from our materials. This is standard, everyday, library practice in public and private institutions alike and should not elicit reactions of surprise, shock, and alarm.
You might be interested to learn that the Library of Congress, certainly a taxpayer supported library, has made its copy of the Gutenberg available though a digital publication which costs $65 (soon to go up).
I would have to disagree that the enlarged images are unreadable. However, we plan to make a cd-rom of higher res images available in the near future."
Any suggestions on how to respond to these points?
Here's an email I just sent to the HRC:
As a resident of Texas, I was proud to read about the efforts of the Gutenberg Online Exhibition at the UT Humanities Research Center from a major technology news site. I congratulate your efforts on digitizing some of the most influential works of Western civilization.
However, I became sickened to see the notice "Further reproduction of any of the Gutenberg Bible images without the written consent of the Ransom Center is prohibited" on a work in the public domain.
A) The University of Texas is a public institution: The HRC's policy of prohibiting the reproduction of the Gutenberg images is contrary to the University of Texas Mission statement: "The university contributes to the advancement of society through research, creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the development of new knowledge. The university preserves and promotes the arts, benefits the state's economy, serves the citizens through public programs and provides other public service." Such a policy of prohibiting the digital distribution of these high quality images without reservation does nothing to contribute to the promotion of the arts, nor does is serve its citizens.
B) The distribution of the high-resolution digital images without any reservations costs virtually nothing, via the internet. The servers are already in place and the research and scanning has already been done. Both the original and the enlarged images are illegible on a 19" monitor. Why would the university bother putting up illegible material on the web?
C) The Biblical prophets wrote the Bible, Jerome translated it into Latin, Gutenberg printed it, and the UT HRC scanned it into digital form. And who among these is prohibiting reproduction??
I urge you to reconsider the policy of prohibiting reproduction of the Gutenberg images. This is an important work for the citizens of Texas, such as myself, and the citizens of the world. Please remove any legal and technological restriction for both the low-resolution and the high-resolution images of the Gutenberg Bible.