According to JSTOR "130 Public Libraries in 32 countries participate in JSTOR." According to the American Library Association there are about 16,000 public libraries in the US. So the actual number of public libraries that provide access to JSTOR is very, very low. SOME people who live close to PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES may be able to access JSTOR, but most of the US public (much less the rest of the world) is SOL.
It isn't hard to get the Amazon data out of their database. What is needed, and what Amazon has in its ASIN, is an identifier for books that can be used link up copies of the same book in different libraries or locations. The ISBN only came into existence in 1968, so there is no ID for older books. That's why Amazon needed the ASIN.
Because it has such a large database, the OCLC record number has become a de facto identifier for books and other resources. The OCLC number is in every one of those (now restricted) records in thousands of library systems across the globe. But if we want to get free of OCLC, we obviously can't use their identifier.
The difficulty is getting an identifier into the millions and millions (or 1 sagan) of records in library databases. The options seem to be
1) develop a good, solid, computable identifier from the bibliographic data itself (nearly impossible)
2) create a switching system that will take bibliographic information as input and switch to a common identifier (like ASIN) (maybe more plausible?)
I was actually asked this many years ago in Italy when I applied to teach English at a language school. First, the interview took place entirely in Italian, because the owner of the school didn't speak English himself. Then he asked me: "But can you teach REAL English?"
I answered yes, but in fact I couldn't and cannot. One of the worst things for me is trying to help out European friends who need to write something for a British audience. The spelling is easy (spell-checker) but getting the prepositions right is a bitch!
I took a regular drafting table and put one of my computers on it. So I can sit for a while, then move to a standing position for as long as I'd like. It's totally adjustable in terms of height and you can set it to whatever angle you would like as well.
And it's rather obvious that anyone reading this thread and posting replies is, de facto, engaging in an unhealthy activity RIGHT NOW! Sitting! Typing! Mousing! Avoiding real work!
We should all just fling ourselves out the windows. If we have windows. And if they open. And as long as no one is walking below. And that we'd be quickly bio-degradable upon landing.
Plus, I hear it'll come with a card game installed so that you can practice using the mouse. I bet it'll take thousands of hours to get those mouse movements right!
It is a reason, but a reason with a cost. So you have to weigh the cost of some students sending spam with the cost of opening up your users to the RIAA or law enforcement (both often with over-reaching requests). Identifiable to the IT department means identifiable to anyone with a convincing subpoena. It's your choice. Fight for it.
They send notices to the schools asking them to identify the persons at such-and-such an IP address. so from a
MacWorld article on the Oregon case:
"The modus operandi is to send the university - or Internet provider - a list of IP addresses on their networks that the RIAA claims was used for illegal file sharing. It then demands the institution to turn over the identities of the individuals to whom the IP addresses were assigned to."
As the article goes on to say, in some cases the IP address is in a single-occupancy dorm room, but others could be in public areas.
This is why I oppose mandatory log-ins on campus computers. The IT folks like to think that they "have control" by requiring log-ins, but in fact they are playing into the hands of the RIAA or the FBI by making it possible to identify users based on log-in and IP address.
This is the second time that librarians have gone up against the PATRIOT ACT and won. Amazing that a rather under-appreciated profession should be the one to take on the government.
However, note this entry in the American Library Association's policy manual:
53.4 Governmental Intimidation
The American Library Association opposes any use of governmental prerogatives that lead to the intimidation of individuals or groups and discourages them from exercising the right of free expression as guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ALA encourages resistance to such abuse of governmental power and supports those against whom such governmental power has been employed.
Unfortunately, you have to give a member ID to read the ALA policy manual (WTF?).
Or update the book for Hardy and sell more copies? Or put an addendum relating to Hardy online? Basically, in software, everything is always changing; even the books are in beta release.
Sobell did a great
book on Unix that went through a few editions and that I still keep on my shelf although it is a bit outdated. I'm looking forward to the Ubuntu one.
The difference between the Jacquard Loom and Babbage's Analytical engine is explained by Ada Lovelace in her Notes on the Analytical Engine:
The Analytical Engine, on the contrary, is not merely adapted for tabulating the results of one particular function and of no other, but for developing and tabulating any function whatever. In fact the engine may be described as being the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity, such as for instance,
F(x, y, z, log x, sin y, x p, &c.),
which is, it will be observed, a function of all other possible functions of any number of quantities.
In other words, the jacquard loom could follow a set sequence, but the analytical engine could be programmed to tabulate any mathematical function. That is the brilliance of Babbage's work.
In his Sketch, Babbage lays out the workings of the Analytical Engine, but only Ada's notes point out, in clear language, the true impact of his discovery.
Yes, it did. According to the veterinarian who did the autopsy on the tiger:
An autopsy conducted by a zoo veterinarian on the Siberian tiger after police shot it to death showed that the animal had been "very determined to get out," Matthews said. Its claws were broken and splintered by clambering up the concrete moat wall, Matthews quoted the veterinarian as saying.
The children's concept reception is much better than before. Despite the use of US keyboards (all we had at the time), the children have had little problem adapting, and have figured out all they keys.
This is an interesting problem. We have virtual keyboards that mean that any set of keys can be used to type any set of alphabetic characters, but we don't have a way to display those virtually on the physical keyboard. Anyone who has tried typing a text on a keyboard designed for a different language knows the difficulties of using the "wrong" keyboard. I'm thinking we need something like a backlit display or e-ink key cap so the physical keyboard can show the right character values on the keys, and you can even switch from one alphabet to another with the same keyboard. We don't want new language learners to be learning incorrectly, that is, without the actual character set of their language. Also, there are languages, such as Inuktitut, that are only now getting written forms, for whom creating actual key caps may not be economical.
A certain amount depends on where he files. The article says he filed in Manhattan. New York is one of the states that has a "right of publicity" law. In New York the law only applies to living persons. In California, the "Astaire Celebrity Image Protection Act" protects the use of an image for 70 years after the person's death. So, if Chuck were dead, but still suing, he'd have to do it in California.
Many public libraries in the US are lending e-books. True, you've got limited time (1-2 weeks, usually), but you can renew them if no one has a hold on them, just like print books from the library. Libraries actually love them because the books cannot be stolen and they 'return' automatically at the end of the lending period. E-books are used heavily for those books that "have legs," that is, the ones that are often stolen from the library: Cliff's notes; the various For Dummies books. A lot of university libraries now subscribe to the O'Reilly Safari service because O'Reilly automatically updates the subscription with new editions of the books. (Every library I've ever been into has shelves full of "Microsoft Windows 98" and "MS-DOS for Dummies" manuals, now useless.)
Oh, and you check these e-books out without going to the library.
In fact, until 1994 commercial activity, that is selling or advertising on the Net, was forbidden by the "appropriate use policy" (AUP). This was based on the fact that some amount of the funding for the Net, by then primarily the backbone, was (US) federally funded. It was Clinton and Gore who "freed" the net from US funding and allowed it to
become commercial. Thus, the first commercial spam which appeared on Usenet shortly after the ban was lifted, in April of 1994.
The early dot coms that I remember were providing software downloads or tech support over the Net, but not products or advertising. People got very upset if someone from a company mentioned one of their products in a Usenet post, which was the main "social network" of the day.
Institutions like universities also had AUPs. Some of these were quite draconian, basically threatening to take away your Net access if you used the network for anything but scientific purposes. The NSFNet AUP stated:
UNACCEPTABLE USES:
1. Use for for-profit activities (consulting for pay, sales or administration of campus stores, sale of tickets to sports events, and so on) or use by for-profit institutions unless covered by the General Principle or as a specifically acceptable use.
2. Extensive use for private or personal business.
What was acceptable was:
6. Announcements of new products or services for use in research or instruction, but not advertising of any kind.
Plus, of course, we all had to walk to the Internet in the snow and punch cards with our bare hands. Those were tough times.
I'd have thought the majority of the hobbiest-contributors (i.e. those who aren't die-hard users) simply don't have anything else to write.
I agree that the most enthusiastic hobby-ists have probably done what they will do, but I see another aspect: that Wikipedia has gotten so large that it has reached a level of chaos, rather than organization. People cannot visualize the location of their page in the whole, so it doesn't seem worth adding it. I would expect the next few years to concentrate on creating narrow topic WP's where the contributors can see the value that they are adding.
I think of this as the "all the x in the world" phenomenon. People are always starting off to create a site or system that has a goal of capturing the whole, but the whole turns out not to have boundaries, and in the end we can't relate to it. Most of us don't want everything, we want something, and we want the right something.
I have a hard time believing that MS would stack the deck so blatantly, but have no doubt that they would do so in a more covert manner.
Having spent some time working in a standards area where Microsoft had an interest, I can tell you that they can be totally blatant about their actions. When working on the DRM standard at OASIS , members of a Microsoft company, Contentguard, chaired the committee, stacked the meetings, and called for votes after non-Microsoft members had left the conference call (personal communication of someone who was there). So, in a sample meeting , there were 15 attendees, of which 5 were from ContentGuard (the owner of a DRM language and key patents in the DRM area), and two were from Microsoft (the main owner of the ContentGuard company). In the email of the group, you can hear the accusations (such as this one from Mike Godwin and this one from the folks at the Samuelson Law Clinic claiming that their documents were expunged from the site).
Things got so bad that the non-Microsoft players decided to boycott and the whole effort simply dissolved. I have witnessed some of this myself, although in a different venue, but in the end Microsoft's technology became the ISO standard for rights management languages, a part of ISO 21000, using many of these same techniques.
Now, if I have a mysterious accident any time in the near future, you know where to look.
Unfortunately, the fact that there is a legal way to download music will probably go against anyone caught using a less legal source. And it proves (in the minds of some) that the university has some responsibility for the download behavior of the students. Anyone remember the days of the Appropriate Use Policy? Basically, the rules on how you could and couldn't use the university's internet access. Fifteen years ago or so, those AUPs were all about not using the Net for commercial use. Today, they are about copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
According to JSTOR "130 Public Libraries in 32 countries participate in JSTOR." According to the American Library Association there are about 16,000 public libraries in the US. So the actual number of public libraries that provide access to JSTOR is very, very low. SOME people who live close to PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES may be able to access JSTOR, but most of the US public (much less the rest of the world) is SOL.
Because it has such a large database, the OCLC record number has become a de facto identifier for books and other resources. The OCLC number is in every one of those (now restricted) records in thousands of library systems across the globe. But if we want to get free of OCLC, we obviously can't use their identifier.
The difficulty is getting an identifier into the millions and millions (or 1 sagan) of records in library databases. The options seem to be
1) develop a good, solid, computable identifier from the bibliographic data itself (nearly impossible)
2) create a switching system that will take bibliographic information as input and switch to a common identifier (like ASIN) (maybe more plausible?)
I answered yes, but in fact I couldn't and cannot. One of the worst things for me is trying to help out European friends who need to write something for a British audience. The spelling is easy (spell-checker) but getting the prepositions right is a bitch!
"On April 28, 2008, Davidson was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Marcia S. Krieger to serve 21 months (just under 2 years) in federal prison."
I took a regular drafting table and put one of my computers on it. So I can sit for a while, then move to a standing position for as long as I'd like. It's totally adjustable in terms of height and you can set it to whatever angle you would like as well.
We should all just fling ourselves out the windows. If we have windows. And if they open. And as long as no one is walking below. And that we'd be quickly bio-degradable upon landing.
OK, next post.
Plus, I hear it'll come with a card game installed so that you can practice using the mouse. I bet it'll take thousands of hours to get those mouse movements right!
It is a reason, but a reason with a cost. So you have to weigh the cost of some students sending spam with the cost of opening up your users to the RIAA or law enforcement (both often with over-reaching requests). Identifiable to the IT department means identifiable to anyone with a convincing subpoena. It's your choice. Fight for it.
As the article goes on to say, in some cases the IP address is in a single-occupancy dorm room, but others could be in public areas.
This is why I oppose mandatory log-ins on campus computers. The IT folks like to think that they "have control" by requiring log-ins, but in fact they are playing into the hands of the RIAA or the FBI by making it possible to identify users based on log-in and IP address.
However, note this entry in the American Library Association's policy manual:
Unfortunately, you have to give a member ID to read the ALA policy manual (WTF?).
Wouldn't that be "Monetiser"?
Or update the book for Hardy and sell more copies? Or put an addendum relating to Hardy online? Basically, in software, everything is always changing; even the books are in beta release.
Sobell did a great book on Unix that went through a few editions and that I still keep on my shelf although it is a bit outdated. I'm looking forward to the Ubuntu one.
The Analytical Engine, on the contrary, is not merely adapted for tabulating the results of one particular function and of no other, but for developing and tabulating any function whatever. In fact the engine may be described as being the material expression of any indefinite function of any degree of generality and complexity, such as for instance, F(x, y, z, log x, sin y, x p, &c.), which is, it will be observed, a function of all other possible functions of any number of quantities.
In other words, the jacquard loom could follow a set sequence, but the analytical engine could be programmed to tabulate any mathematical function. That is the brilliance of Babbage's work.
In his Sketch, Babbage lays out the workings of the Analytical Engine, but only Ada's notes point out, in clear language, the true impact of his discovery.
Yes, it did. According to the veterinarian who did the autopsy on the tiger:
The children's concept reception is much better than before. Despite the use of US keyboards (all we had at the time), the children have had little problem adapting, and have figured out all they keys.
This is an interesting problem. We have virtual keyboards that mean that any set of keys can be used to type any set of alphabetic characters, but we don't have a way to display those virtually on the physical keyboard. Anyone who has tried typing a text on a keyboard designed for a different language knows the difficulties of using the "wrong" keyboard. I'm thinking we need something like a backlit display or e-ink key cap so the physical keyboard can show the right character values on the keys, and you can even switch from one alphabet to another with the same keyboard. We don't want new language learners to be learning incorrectly, that is, without the actual character set of their language. Also, there are languages, such as Inuktitut, that are only now getting written forms, for whom creating actual key caps may not be economical.
A certain amount depends on where he files. The article says he filed in Manhattan. New York is one of the states that has a "right of publicity" law. In New York the law only applies to living persons. In California, the "Astaire Celebrity Image Protection Act" protects the use of an image for 70 years after the person's death. So, if Chuck were dead, but still suing, he'd have to do it in California.
If you have to break in you're doing it wrong.
Many public libraries in the US are lending e-books. True, you've got limited time (1-2 weeks, usually), but you can renew them if no one has a hold on them, just like print books from the library. Libraries actually love them because the books cannot be stolen and they 'return' automatically at the end of the lending period. E-books are used heavily for those books that "have legs," that is, the ones that are often stolen from the library: Cliff's notes; the various For Dummies books. A lot of university libraries now subscribe to the O'Reilly Safari service because O'Reilly automatically updates the subscription with new editions of the books. (Every library I've ever been into has shelves full of "Microsoft Windows 98" and "MS-DOS for Dummies" manuals, now useless.) Oh, and you check these e-books out without going to the library.
The early dot coms that I remember were providing software downloads or tech support over the Net, but not products or advertising. People got very upset if someone from a company mentioned one of their products in a Usenet post, which was the main "social network" of the day.
Institutions like universities also had AUPs. Some of these were quite draconian, basically threatening to take away your Net access if you used the network for anything but scientific purposes. The NSFNet AUP stated:
What was acceptable was:Plus, of course, we all had to walk to the Internet in the snow and punch cards with our bare hands. Those were tough times.
The question should be put as "one gram of crack cocaine + 1 year for every shade in skin color darker than, say, Britney Spears."
I agree that the most enthusiastic hobby-ists have probably done what they will do, but I see another aspect: that Wikipedia has gotten so large that it has reached a level of chaos, rather than organization. People cannot visualize the location of their page in the whole, so it doesn't seem worth adding it. I would expect the next few years to concentrate on creating narrow topic WP's where the contributors can see the value that they are adding.
I think of this as the "all the x in the world" phenomenon. People are always starting off to create a site or system that has a goal of capturing the whole, but the whole turns out not to have boundaries, and in the end we can't relate to it. Most of us don't want everything, we want something, and we want the right something.
Having spent some time working in a standards area where Microsoft had an interest, I can tell you that they can be totally blatant about their actions. When working on the DRM standard at OASIS , members of a Microsoft company, Contentguard, chaired the committee, stacked the meetings, and called for votes after non-Microsoft members had left the conference call (personal communication of someone who was there). So, in a sample meeting , there were 15 attendees, of which 5 were from ContentGuard (the owner of a DRM language and key patents in the DRM area), and two were from Microsoft (the main owner of the ContentGuard company). In the email of the group, you can hear the accusations (such as this one from Mike Godwin and this one from the folks at the Samuelson Law Clinic claiming that their documents were expunged from the site).
Things got so bad that the non-Microsoft players decided to boycott and the whole effort simply dissolved. I have witnessed some of this myself, although in a different venue, but in the end Microsoft's technology became the ISO standard for rights management languages, a part of ISO 21000, using many of these same techniques.
Now, if I have a mysterious accident any time in the near future, you know where to look.
Yeah, well that'll be worth $100 any day now.
Unfortunately, the fact that there is a legal way to download music will probably go against anyone caught using a less legal source. And it proves (in the minds of some) that the university has some responsibility for the download behavior of the students. Anyone remember the days of the Appropriate Use Policy? Basically, the rules on how you could and couldn't use the university's internet access. Fifteen years ago or so, those AUPs were all about not using the Net for commercial use. Today, they are about copyright.