Archives
Friday, February 27, 2004
Piracy Answer?
Wired News: The Answer to Piracy: Five Bucks?
EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann, speaking as part of a panel on peer-to-peer music sharing, proposed that music fans pay a small monthly fee — perhaps $5 — to share files with impunity, using whatever software they like. The money could be collected by a central organization and then distributed among those who own the rights to the songs, based on popularity.
I’d pay gladly.
Copyright — laura
Privacy Bill
Wired News: Privacy Is in the House
…the Patriot Act shows that the Justice Department in particular needs a strong privacy officer, an idea that at least one committee member said he would be looking into.
Please!
Patriot Act — laura
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
OSS Profits
Wired News: MySQL Profits From Open Source
“Lack of budgets forced everyone to take serious stock of what they were running and if it was worth the money,” he said. “Compared to running MySQL, a lot of commercial databases couldn’t hold up to the scrutiny.”
Open-Source Software — laura
Friday, February 20, 2004
Information Needs Are Legitimate
Copyright was meant to assist authors, the people that created the material, so that they could be acknowledged appropriately. Yet what is happening now is that it is no longer the authors that benefit, but the publishers. That in itself raises the costs because you are no longer dealing with the person who produced the material, but with an intermediary.
Copyright — laura
RIAAcketeering
RIAA sued under racketeering laws
Online chat rooms and bulletin boards populated by file-swapping fans are filled with postings comparing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to a Mafia-like syndicate. Now, one target of the group’s lawsuits against alleged music pirates is asking the judicial system to back that assessment.
Copyright — laura
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Elsevier Responds
Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News)
In a joint statement the Reed Elsevier chairman, Morris Tabaksblat, and the chief executive, Crispin Davis, said they saw no need to change.
Haven’t we heard this song before?
Open Access — laura
Oxford OA
Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News)
Oxford University Press is encouraged by the results of its experimental use of an OA business model for Nucleic Acids Research, a journal rated by ISI as one of the top 10 “hottest” of the decade in biology and biochemistry.
Open Access — laura
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Me Third
The Shifted Librarian:I Second that Emotion
The idea is for a library conference devoted to …planning a library services architecture that can support next-generation library services, and bring together the best hackers we have to bang together some prototypes over the course of a few days to a week?
I love the idea and I think it could save a lot of difficulties down the road.
Library Links — laura
Monday, February 16, 2004
Because Librarians Teach
Content Delivery in the ‘Blogosphere’ is an article discussing the use of blogs in teaching. The authors make some good points both theoretically and practically. They also reminded me of Dr. Elizabeth Lawley, a librarian and tenured professor, who has integrated blogging software into her technology classes.
Dr. Lawley has posted links to her class site along with step-by-step instructions and templates (requires prior knowledge of the software).
You might have noticed that the software she uses is also used to run this site. I can tell you from experience that installation may be a bit tricky but the support forums are very helpful and the software is extremely easy to use. I would encourage others to experiment with it as a means of easing the process for publishing online.
Education — laura
Friday, February 13, 2004
FindLaw’s Writ
…the Framers drew a line between copyrightable and uncopyrightable material. Yet the DCIMA would cross that line.
Excellent source of legal information.
Copyright — laura
Medical Privacy
Manhattan User’s Guide > Archives > Medical Privacy
According to yesterday’s front-page story in the Times, Justice Department attorney Sheila M. Gowan argued before Judge Richard Conway Casey (U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York) that “Individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential.”
First librarians, now doctors. Next?
Patriot Act — laura
The Microsoft killers
Prospect Magazine - Britain’s Intelligent Conversation
For many popular desktop applications, such as word processors, open source software often follows the innovations made in proprietary software. And so Microsoft Word remains a more polished product than its open source rivals. But it is by no means clear that all buyers, especially organisations, choose software solely on the basis of their technical merits. What an open source application may lack in refinement, it may make up for in its friendly licensing regime, its ability to run on older or cheaper computers or the fact that its users are not dependent on the strategic choices of a single company-Microsoft, Oracle or whoever.
Open-Source Software — laura
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Embracing open access
The more successful open access becomes, the more irrelevant our traditional view of library budgets will be. This is an issue of institutional economics, not library economics, and we need to engage our institutional leaders at that level if we are to continue to play our crucial role in information management. Now, more than ever, librarians have to position themselves as change agents for their institutions and be willing to advance into a very uncertain future. It would be truly unfortunate if the open access movement passed librarians by because we were too busy worrying about the library’s bottom line.
Open Access — laura
At it again
I’ve added two new categories, “Open Access” and “Career Info”, and moved some entries over to them from the Library Links page. For accessability reasons, I’m trying to keep that section from becoming a “catch all”. Links to the old versions in the original category should still work for quite a while.
Site — laura
Verlag and Open Access
Caveat Lector: Februarii 08, 2004 - Februarii 14, 2004 Archives: A thousand publishers blooming
Dorothea responds to critisisms of Open Access.
Open Access — laura
Monday, February 9, 2004
OSS in TEIs
Factors affecting the use of open source software in tertiary education institutions
Open Source Software (OSS) is software that has been released under a license which requires the distribution of the software’s source code with any binaries. It is often available at no cost and is mostly supported by developers providing their services for free. Considerable interest has been shown in OSS by tertiary education institutions (TEIs) because of the promise of a reduced total cost of ownership of the software, potentially better support, freedom from vendor lock–in, ability to tailor the software and pedagogic benefits of being able to view the source code. To find out the extent of use of OSS by TEIs in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, a survey was sent out to technical personnel at all TEIs in these countries. The results of the survey show that OSS is already being used by all TEIs who responded to the survey and that the major reasons for this was lower Total Cost of Ownership and freedom from software vendor dependence. It is clear however that the majority of the OSS software being used is in server infrastructure with a lesser amount being used on normal desktop machines.
Open-Source Software — laura
Sunday, February 8, 2004
OSS Filtering
TechnoBiblio: Ahhh, filtering….
See, I’m not the only one.
Open-Source Software — laura
Friday, February 6, 2004
Shared Source
OpenEnterpriseTrends.com: Open Source vs. Shared Source - Hunt for Value
In a nutshell, shared source is a take-off on the open source model without all the benefits that open source offers. Shared source licenses do not allow developers to modify the source code and certain portions of the source code remain hidden and it cannot be redistributed.
It’s good to see companies looking at how they can integrate open-source methods but like all early attempts, this one seems a little flawed.
Open-Source Software — laura
Monday, February 2, 2004
Best of the Web
PCWorld.com - Web Stars: Best of the Web
rustrated by the growing number of pay-per-view Web archives? Your local library’s Web site might be able to help, though you may need a library card to enjoy full access. For example, New York Public Library cardholders can read issues of The New York Times online for the past year, and anyone in the world can ask the librarian any question. You’ll find encyclopedias, community information, and more than enough reasons to ensure that your library card is up-to-date.
Library Links — laura
