These sorts of software tools are useful to anyone, and any organisation, that deals with engineering or invention. Any application where mathematical and scientific theory can be analysed and applied to the 'real world' is undoubtedly useful to all users of the end product. Whether this type of software is used by a majority or not, the majority of the world's population will feel it's effects through the improvement of products and services analysed by the software. There are 75,000 members of IMechE in the UK alone. I would guess there are probably quarter of a million residents in the UK that would find this type of software extremely useful, and no doubt millions more around the world.
I don't have much money
Whether or not the user has money should be irrelevant to the Open Source community. The price of software may be a major factor in choosing it over proprietary, but the fundamental reason for Open source is to create software that is not proprietary.
As a single example of the usefullness of this software: The advancement of a civilised country is based on its improvement of technology. If Third world countries cannot afford software that would help in engineering then they cannot advance without reliance on the developed world's engineering corporations (and their products), for which they have to pay for. Free engineering software would allow undeveloped countries to create their own products and solutions to their problems.
Stop the gripe about the pay.
$0.03 is better than nothing.
Now all we have to do is link it up to RateMyVomit.com or HotOrNot.com!
If millions of people are happy to spend hours of their life rating pictures for free on these websites, then getting a few cents to rate some equally meaningless pictures is good pay.
Upon utilising the search engine and associated search algorithms we can look and search within every title and work for relevant information, and disregard the irrelevancies, with no more hassle than a couple of clicks on a browser.
And you don't have to pay the author for that snippet of information!
I believe that the idea is that the snippet of information is merely a taster of the book, such as the preview on iTunes or free food samples in your supermarket. It is enough to get an idea about the written material and allow you to make an informed decision when purchasing books. This in turn prevents the chumbawumba factor http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19/123521 4&from=rss
from occuring in relation to written material.
Libraries also allows users to read the entire text of a book
Libraries allow users to read the entire text of a book; not the entire text of a copy of a book. That *is* the difference. They still have the original book.
The libraries do not have the original book they merely, except in very rare cases, have a copy. The Author, publisher, lawyer or a collector holds the original manuscript. By having the book published, and therefore automatically stored in all of Britain's six libraries, the author is making a concious decision to have their work and information shared amongst the population. Unfortunately the practicalities and logistics of a physical bricks, books and mortar library mean that not everyone who would be interested in a title can access it and conversely unpopular titles take up precious physical bookshelf space. It makes sense for libraries to become electronic. In this context the medium on which the information is carried should be treated as abstract and irrelevant to the books purpose, which is to communicate information. Whether it is in a library of books or copied into an electronic library should make no difference.
I did not mean to present this letter as a "Starry eyed" view of Google. The letter was meant as an attack on the actions of the Authors Guild who are preventing the creation of a freely accessible electronic library. I do not care whether this project is undertaken by Google, a traditional publisher, the Authors Guild, a government body or my grandmother! The acting body is irrelevant, it is the end product that is of importance.
It appears that Google has been flouting the copyright laws by making electronic copies of paper books still under copyright jurisdiction. In this respect Google is most likely guilty, but I feel that it is guilty of out of date laws. Laws that have been built up around traditional technology where the range of media was limited and has not incorporated the new technologies fast enough. As Google is at the forefront of these technologies it is a victim of its own success, Google has identified a key product for the 21st century and has acted swiftly to capture that market. Something that organisations such as the Authors Guild have failed to do.
As an author of proprietary written material I understand the concerns of authors, and their guild, and that projects such as this may cause a loss of revenues. Yet if properly managed, as Apple's iTunes has shown, online libraries of media can be big business. It allows users to choose and pick titles that *they* are interested in, not what was force fed to them by the marketing companies. It also allows end users to explore titles that were previously unavailable to them and in that sense this opens up the market for the creators of these titles. I beleive an online library of literature and academic material will be an amazing contribution to society.
It is my fear that this litigation will cause all future efforts on this type of project to be hindered to the point that they cannot be completely realised. This indeed would be a great shame
yeah, just noticed the "libarary"! Maybe I should spell check my posts first - but I wrote it on company time so had to write it fast before the boss caught me!
It is with some shock that I read about your latest decision to take legal action against Google, which could, and should, be interpreted as a direct attack against a more progressive and free society.
Whether or not you approve of Google, the company's "libarary" program has made a bold move towards an age where information is searchable to everyone. The ability to see inside a book, albeit only an excerpt at a time, which is stored deep within a vault on the otherside of the globe has to be a great thing. This assists everyone from casual browsers of the internet to academic reseachers, such as myself. Upon utilising the search engine and associated search algorithms we can look and search within every title and work for relevant information, and disregard the irrelevancies, with no more hassle than a couple of clicks on a browser. This is a far greater model than the overburdening and cumbersome system currently in operation, where books have to be physically sought after, a greatly innefficient, resource consuming and wasteful affair.
Surely Google's system represents an electronic library bookshelf of infinite size, where the user can browse at will until the relevant material is found. To sue Google is equivalent to taking legal action against the British library for allowing users to flick through books. Libraries also allows users to read the entire text of a book, not merely small excerpts, so surely there is a greater case for taking legal action against the library services of every nation, university and school in the entire world. No such action has been taken, and indeed I pray it would never be.
Indeed I agree that it is a gray area that Google is a profit making company and will be generating revenue indirectly through advertising, and possibly the sale of hard and electronic copies of the full text. Yet, had the traditional organisations of the book publishing and writing world such as yourselves, the Authors Guild, taken steps to create an electronic source back when the internet was growing the need for Google, a corporation, to do this would have been neglible. Your legal action is not a reaction against copyright infingement but an indicator of failure on your, and your peers, behalf. To prevent access to a searchable library to the entire populous of the world is to hide information and create a teired society, those who have access to the information and those that do not. This is backward and unjust.
You have failed to provide or encourage authors, your clients, to present their work in a relevant medium, electronic, to the masses, their customers, and as such have stifled your industry, the fallout and backlash is obvious to see when observing the blogging phenomena that has grown in the last few years. The Authors guild has failed to keep up with current technology and culture trends and as such has resorted to hiding behind the somewhat dated copyright laws of your country.
Whatever your views on the Google corporation it is unjust to take legal action against such a noble scheme and I urge you to revoke your action and change your policies.
It's faster to skim through articles in a blog than to listen to some amateur whine about how he thinks
I agree, a more life changing tool would be to have some sort of index for podcasts, so you could skip through the trashy audio to get to the rest.
Splitting a large file into smaller ones would be cumbersome (if you have shuffle on, or for downloading and moving files about)
It may appear that china and europe have as bad a problem as the USA, but the population in both of these places is a huge proportion greater than that of the USA.
Therefore the pollution per person in the USA is far higher than that of any other individual country in the entire world, which is frankly atrocious.
As the Kyoto agreement is now by majority of countries an UN agreement, it seems only right for the US to sign up. Yes the US might lose heavy industry to the developing world due to higher pollution penalties, but it has been doing so for the past 50 years.
It doesn't matter who is president so long as pollution decreases faster than it's current state
Surely this is what those pesky kids who send virus have been trying to do to my computer for years, as well as deleting all the files and using it to send untold amounts of spam.
So now after creating a multi billion dollar anti-virus and security software market, we are just going to download this volunatarily and fully aware of it's capabilities and intentions.
My Lacie 120Gb Hard Drive has been an excellent buy, at around GBP£100 it has been cost effective on a price per Gb scale (remember the days of pound per Mb) I store my whole CD collection on it as well as business data when traveling to and from work.
It requires an external power supply to function so not completely portable, but for it's size compromises on practicality are affordable.
I'm still waiting for the day when Microsoft provide support for booting the OS from an external USB device. Then i'll be able to take my desktop and settings and programs and data everywhere with me.
This is only the beginning, a laptop of > 1Kg is still going to be too bulky and heavy for the frontline soldier.
I predict later re-incarnations will be on flexible computer screens that weigh nothing and roll up to fit in a pocket easily. They will also be automatically updated from external data sources, such as information on latest weather, troop movements and terrain conditions; from unmanned drones, low orbit satellites and intel.
Later it will be part of a small computer integrated into a soldiers helmet and fed directly onto the back of the soldiers retina, as part of an advanced HUD.
Slashdot Mirror
This was also reported by New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8564.
only of interest to a tiny audience
These sorts of software tools are useful to anyone, and any organisation, that deals with engineering or invention. Any application where mathematical and scientific theory can be analysed and applied to the 'real world' is undoubtedly useful to all users of the end product. Whether this type of software is used by a majority or not, the majority of the world's population will feel it's effects through the improvement of products and services analysed by the software. There are 75,000 members of IMechE in the UK alone. I would guess there are probably quarter of a million residents in the UK that would find this type of software extremely useful, and no doubt millions more around the world.
I don't have much money
Whether or not the user has money should be irrelevant to the Open Source community. The price of software may be a major factor in choosing it over proprietary, but the fundamental reason for Open source is to create software that is not proprietary.
As a single example of the usefullness of this software: The advancement of a civilised country is based on its improvement of technology. If Third world countries cannot afford software that would help in engineering then they cannot advance without reliance on the developed world's engineering corporations (and their products), for which they have to pay for. Free engineering software would allow undeveloped countries to create their own products and solutions to their problems.Stop the gripe about the pay. $0.03 is better than nothing. Now all we have to do is link it up to RateMyVomit.com or HotOrNot.com!
If millions of people are happy to spend hours of their life rating pictures for free on these websites, then getting a few cents to rate some equally meaningless pictures is good pay.
Upon utilising the search engine and associated search algorithms we can look and search within every title and work for relevant information, and disregard the irrelevancies, with no more hassle than a couple of clicks on a browser.
And you don't have to pay the author for that snippet of information!
I believe that the idea is that the snippet of information is merely a taster of the book, such as the preview on iTunes or free food samples in your supermarket. It is enough to get an idea about the written material and allow you to make an informed decision when purchasing books. This in turn prevents the chumbawumba factor http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/19/123521 4&from=rss
from occuring in relation to written material.
Libraries also allows users to read the entire text of a book
Libraries allow users to read the entire text of a book; not the entire text of a copy of a book. That *is* the difference. They still have the original book.
The libraries do not have the original book they merely, except in very rare cases, have a copy. The Author, publisher, lawyer or a collector holds the original manuscript. By having the book published, and therefore automatically stored in all of Britain's six libraries, the author is making a concious decision to have their work and information shared amongst the population. Unfortunately the practicalities and logistics of a physical bricks, books and mortar library mean that not everyone who would be interested in a title can access it and conversely unpopular titles take up precious physical bookshelf space. It makes sense for libraries to become electronic. In this context the medium on which the information is carried should be treated as abstract and irrelevant to the books purpose, which is to communicate information. Whether it is in a library of books or copied into an electronic library should make no difference.
I did not mean to present this letter as a "Starry eyed" view of Google. The letter was meant as an attack on the actions of the Authors Guild who are preventing the creation of a freely accessible electronic library. I do not care whether this project is undertaken by Google, a traditional publisher, the Authors Guild, a government body or my grandmother! The acting body is irrelevant, it is the end product that is of importance.
It appears that Google has been flouting the copyright laws by making electronic copies of paper books still under copyright jurisdiction. In this respect Google is most likely guilty, but I feel that it is guilty of out of date laws. Laws that have been built up around traditional technology where the range of media was limited and has not incorporated the new technologies fast enough. As Google is at the forefront of these technologies it is a victim of its own success, Google has identified a key product for the 21st century and has acted swiftly to capture that market. Something that organisations such as the Authors Guild have failed to do.
As an author of proprietary written material I understand the concerns of authors, and their guild, and that projects such as this may cause a loss of revenues. Yet if properly managed, as Apple's iTunes has shown, online libraries of media can be big business. It allows users to choose and pick titles that *they* are interested in, not what was force fed to them by the marketing companies. It also allows end users to explore titles that were previously unavailable to them and in that sense this opens up the market for the creators of these titles. I beleive an online library of literature and academic material will be an amazing contribution to society.
It is my fear that this litigation will cause all future efforts on this type of project to be hindered to the point that they cannot be completely realised. This indeed would be a great shame
yeah, just noticed the "libarary"! Maybe I should spell check my posts first - but I wrote it on company time so had to write it fast before the boss caught me!
It is with some shock that I read about your latest decision to take legal action against Google, which could, and should, be interpreted as a direct attack against a more progressive and free society.
Whether or not you approve of Google, the company's "libarary" program has made a bold move towards an age where information is searchable to everyone. The ability to see inside a book, albeit only an excerpt at a time, which is stored deep within a vault on the otherside of the globe has to be a great thing. This assists everyone from casual browsers of the internet to academic reseachers, such as myself. Upon utilising the search engine and associated search algorithms we can look and search within every title and work for relevant information, and disregard the irrelevancies, with no more hassle than a couple of clicks on a browser. This is a far greater model than the overburdening and cumbersome system currently in operation, where books have to be physically sought after, a greatly innefficient, resource consuming and wasteful affair.
Surely Google's system represents an electronic library bookshelf of infinite size, where the user can browse at will until the relevant material is found. To sue Google is equivalent to taking legal action against the British library for allowing users to flick through books. Libraries also allows users to read the entire text of a book, not merely small excerpts, so surely there is a greater case for taking legal action against the library services of every nation, university and school in the entire world. No such action has been taken, and indeed I pray it would never be.
Indeed I agree that it is a gray area that Google is a profit making company and will be generating revenue indirectly through advertising, and possibly the sale of hard and electronic copies of the full text. Yet, had the traditional organisations of the book publishing and writing world such as yourselves, the Authors Guild, taken steps to create an electronic source back when the internet was growing the need for Google, a corporation, to do this would have been neglible. Your legal action is not a reaction against copyright infingement but an indicator of failure on your, and your peers, behalf. To prevent access to a searchable library to the entire populous of the world is to hide information and create a teired society, those who have access to the information and those that do not. This is backward and unjust.
You have failed to provide or encourage authors, your clients, to present their work in a relevant medium, electronic, to the masses, their customers, and as such have stifled your industry, the fallout and backlash is obvious to see when observing the blogging phenomena that has grown in the last few years. The Authors guild has failed to keep up with current technology and culture trends and as such has resorted to hiding behind the somewhat dated copyright laws of your country.
Whatever your views on the Google corporation it is unjust to take legal action against such a noble scheme and I urge you to revoke your action and change your policies.
It's faster to skim through articles in a blog than to listen to some amateur whine about how he thinks I agree, a more life changing tool would be to have some sort of index for podcasts, so you could skip through the trashy audio to get to the rest. Splitting a large file into smaller ones would be cumbersome (if you have shuffle on, or for downloading and moving files about)
It may appear that china and europe have as bad a problem as the USA, but the population in both of these places is a huge proportion greater than that of the USA. Therefore the pollution per person in the USA is far higher than that of any other individual country in the entire world, which is frankly atrocious. As the Kyoto agreement is now by majority of countries an UN agreement, it seems only right for the US to sign up. Yes the US might lose heavy industry to the developing world due to higher pollution penalties, but it has been doing so for the past 50 years. It doesn't matter who is president so long as pollution decreases faster than it's current state
Surely this is what those pesky kids who send virus have been trying to do to my computer for years, as well as deleting all the files and using it to send untold amounts of spam.
So now after creating a multi billion dollar anti-virus and security software market, we are just going to download this volunatarily and fully aware of it's capabilities and intentions.
Damn right we are!
My Lacie 120Gb Hard Drive has been an excellent buy, at around GBP£100 it has been cost effective on a price per Gb scale (remember the days of pound per Mb) I store my whole CD collection on it as well as business data when traveling to and from work. It requires an external power supply to function so not completely portable, but for it's size compromises on practicality are affordable. I'm still waiting for the day when Microsoft provide support for booting the OS from an external USB device. Then i'll be able to take my desktop and settings and programs and data everywhere with me.
This news was pubished over a month ago, i'm surprised it took so long to reach /.
This is only the beginning, a laptop of > 1Kg is still going to be too bulky and heavy for the frontline soldier.
I predict later re-incarnations will be on flexible computer screens that weigh nothing and roll up to fit in a pocket easily. They will also be automatically updated from external data sources, such as information on latest weather, troop movements and terrain conditions; from unmanned drones, low orbit satellites and intel.
Later it will be part of a small computer integrated into a soldiers helmet and fed directly onto the back of the soldiers retina, as part of an advanced HUD.
Todays products are already old news