Accept no substitutes

Month: March 2005 (Page 1 of 5)

Top Secret ibiblio project to be revealed

Some time in the next few hours, at least before tomorrow noon, the ibiblio team will be revealing a special top secret project that will make the Makers at MIT insanely jealous, that will help Dave Winer in his quest to lose weight, that will compete with Doc Searls for having the best collective knowledge of net.goingson, that will help NC State and Duke forget their NCAA loses, that will put shine on Howard Rheingold’s shoes, that will double the value of Tim O’Reilly’s backlist, that will make a preacher lay his Bible down, that will make a coon dog hung a hound, that will complete Brewster Kahle’s Internet Archive, that will be of course under Creative Commons license, that will help Jessamyn West tolerate overdue books, that will combine the Cathedral AND the Bazaar and the Bizarre, that will allow Larry Lessig to wear a color other than black, that will allow Jamie Boyle to speak with a Southern Drawl, that will give Eben Moglen a close shave, that will make John Hood approve of public transportation, that will allow Douglas Rushkoff to drink a can of Sprite without irony, that will turn Boing Boing into something serious and Cory Doctorow into a long haired poet, that will allow Pamela Jones to see the upsides of the SCO claims, that will fill in the large blank spots in Roblimo’s blog, that will make the perfect SlashDot post, that will get the attention.xml of Steve Gillmor, what will get down to the grassroots with Dan Gillmor, that will help Jeff Pomerantz find the next highest prime number, that will reveal Glenn Otis Brown‘s biggest secret, that will put hair back on Bob Young‘s head (so he can quit wearing so many hats, [more later]

UPDATE Bloggy is here! or see the post above. After April 1, find Bloggy here.

Full Frame Festival and Panels (April 7 – 10)

Full Frame Festival logo
Laurie Racine, President of the Full Frame Documentary Festival which is upcoming April 7 – 10, writes to alert us and to invite us to several panels of interest at the Festival.

Some information is on the Festival site, but more specifically there are three flyers (decribed and linked below), grouping the panels by area of interest:

  1. IP and first amendment [PDF poster]
    • Friday 10 am – Intellectual Property: New Rules
    • Saturday 11 am – Speak Out: Risky Business
  2. distribution and the film industry [PDF poster]
    • Sat 9 am – 3 Billion Films: A workshop onf subtitling technology
    • Fri 2:15 pm – Film Distributors: Finding the one that’s right for you
    • Fri 12 pm – TV Broadcasters: Finding the one that’s right for you
  3. filmmaking [PDF poster]
    • Fri 4:40 pm – Heyday: The reality of theatrical success
    • Sat 1:45 pm – Soul of the Story: filmmakers and their personal journeys
    • Sun 9:30 am – Kultur/Culture: The Turkish American Exchange Project

[further details and additional panels here]

Variable Google Fights

Doc writes that he is amazed to see Tony Pierce win over Instapundit in a GoogleFight. But Tony and Instapundit have nothing on Paul Jones. We collectively chalk up from 10 million to over 12.2 million GoogleFight points depending on when you search (in fact our score could be higher). As a big winner, I’m not whining, but a difference of 20% is great.

I just got that difference in two searches back to back. Paul Jones v. ibiblio yields 10 million v. 1.5 million. Paul Jones v. George Bush yields 12.2 million v. 17 million.
Note that ibiblio bests Doc Searls and Instapundit but not Tony Pierce. Interestingly enough, ibiblio scores 1,570,000 when fighting Tony Pierce and 1,640,000 when against Instapundit.

One further note: A regular Google search for Paul Jones yields about 15,200,000 entries (March 31 at 8 am EST) and a search for ibiblio yields about 1,700,000.

No consistancy here.

UPDATE: Tony Pierce admits defeat to Paul Jones in GoogleFights even as he praises Motley Crue (which explains something about why he loses GoogleFights; Paul Joneses are all better musicians!).

Hole in Skype and Open Space Tech

Brian tried to do a 6 person (I was one of those involved) 2 continent Skype conference to plan a Podcastercon. One obvious catch to this is that the originator needs to be on a very fast connection since he seems to be acting as a hub for the conference. The other is that if one person has a bad connection, all suffer.
The short of it is that we ended up on a conventional phone conference system with a lot of us using SkypeOut (in particular Cameron Reilly in Australia).
We could have moved over to text conferencing, but the Mac version of Skype doesn’t yet support multiple person text conferencing. That’s in Skype for other platforms so it should be coming to the Mac version soon. Half of us were (are) using Macs.

Jeff De Cagna pitches using Open Space Technology, which isn’t so much technology as a process for self-organizing at a conference.

Jones on Library Cuts in Daily Tar Heel

Took a call last night at 5ish from a Daily Tar Heel reporter, Greg Steen, about the state budget cuts and how they might affect the Academic Libraries. I did say things about digital access and how with digitization the wealth held in the Libraries are easily accessible to all the citizens of the state especially K-12 students and teachers and of course citizen researchers.
Here’s the article and here’s what I ended up having said (I actually said all this too):

Paul Jones, clinical professor in the School of Information and Library Science and in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, expressed concern that a lack of resources will affect others besides students and professors.

“One of the strengths of our library has been the outreach to public schools and citizen researchers,” Jones said.

“When you buy those books, you’re investing in knowledge that ripples through the state, not just knowledge in one guy’s mind.”

Jones said he believes that having to search for resources will distract professors from completing their duties.

“How do you want professors spending their time: trying to finagle ways of getting books or actually reading those books and developing ways of teaching in the classroom?”

Faster Stats? Google buys Urchin

We gave up on all the free ways to get stats for ibiblio.org since processing our 13 million hits per day (not including errors or streaming or a few other things) took over 24 hours for most programs. Instead we threw down and bought/licensed Urchin. It works great.
Now Urchin announces that it will be acquired by Google. Does that means faster stats? Or will we be among the first to get a Gstats invite? (oops! Already a program called that).

Wireless in Laurinburg and the Triangle

Doc was nice enough to pick up on my references to Fiona’s stories over at his IT Garage, but he got a few things a bit off. First the article that has all of the links to Fiona’s stories on Muni-nets wireless and other is here.

Next, that’s Laurinburg, NC! Once called MacLaurinburg, it’s now called Laurinburg. The town is close to the South Carolina line — just above the famous South of the Border — but it is definitely in Nawth Cakalacky.

IP talks at Duke Law upcoming

Jennifer Jenkins of Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain writes to tell us of their upcoming events.

What: Hot Topics in Intellectual Property Law Symposium
Date: Friday, April 1, 2005
Time: Registration/breakfast at 8:15 am, presentations begin at 9:00 am
Location: Duke Law School, Room 3043 and breakout rooms
Full Schedule: http://www.law.duke.edu/student/act/intprop/Symposium2005/sympinfo.htm

The day begins with experts from Red Hat, the European Union, and other major Software IP players discussing their views with one another in a topical panel debate entitled Software: Patents vs. Open Source.

Then, attend prolific author George Gilder’s exciting keynote presentation,
Patents vs. Latents – Invention and the Law.

This will be followed by informative breakout sessions given by IP experts from private practice, government, and academia.

View the full schedule and register at http://intprop.law.duke.edu.
Students attend free. CLE Credit available.

What: “Patenting Life and Its Parts: Ethics and Rights in the Political Economy of Intellectual Property”
Who: Professor Daniel Kevles of Yale University
Date: 04/07/05
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: Duke Law School, Room 3043
Lunch will be served

Since the late 1970s, patents have been issued on living organisms and their parts, including microrganisms, plants, animals, and genes. These developments enjoy strong support in a number of quarters, including the biotechnology industry, university technology transfer offices, and the patent bar, who hold that such patents guarantee to inventors the natural right to the fruits of their labors. However, they have also stimulated widespread dissent in the academy and among patients’ rights groups, religious groups, and social activists. Part of the dissent is ethical, a consideration that has no place in U.S. patent law but does explicitly appear in European patent law. Professor Kevles will discuss these and other issues during his lecture.

What: “Working Knowledge: Ownership of Workplace Knowledge and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930”
Who: Duke Law Professor Catherine Fisk
Date: 04/14/05
Time: 12:15 p.m.
Location: Duke Law School, Room 3043
Lunch will be served
(More details to come)

Professor Fisk is currently writing a book on intellectual property rights in the nineteenth-century employment relationship. Her recent publications include “Knowledge Work: New Metaphors for the New Economy,” Chicago-Kent Law Review (2004); “Authors at Work: The Origins of the Work-for-Hire Doctrine,” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities (2003); and “Working Knowledge: Trade Secrets, Restrictive Covenants in Employment, and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1920,” Hastings Law Journal (2001). Prior to entering law teaching, she was an attorney for the Civil Appellate Division of the United States Department of Justice in the District of Columbia; an associate at Rogovin, Huge & Schiller in the District of Columbia; a law clerk for the Honorable William A. Norris, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit; and a staff attorney for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Skype here

I finally signed up for Skype so I could talk to Brian Russell while my tween son is on the land line. The good news is that Skype was simple to install and use. The bad news is that some one already has PaulJones. But my AIM handle smalljones is now my Skype handle so all is well.

Podcaster Con – Help Make It So

Anton, who as MisterSugar created our Triangle Bloggers Con and the local blogger meet-ups, and Brian, who as AudioActivism was just featured on Voice of America’s story on podcasting, have come up with a plan (in the planning stage) for a Podcaster’s Convention.
You can get in on the planning now. Just go on over to the Podcastercon.org site and contribute to the Podcastercon wiki. Already some very good folks signed up and contributing.

Mark Cuban defends Grokster

Mark Cuban made serious money on the mysterious (to me) Broadcast.com. He also made the Dallas Mavericks into something serious when they once were a joke.
Now Cuban has a lot to say about digital content and innocation on his BlogMaverick.com. Even more to the point, Cuban who sees himself as a content man (I see him as a distribution guy more tho) is standing up for Grokster in the MGM v Grokster challenge and is even offering to finance the EFF’s supoport of Grokster.

The whole article is well worth a read, bur I won’t be giving much away by giving you the final paragraph:

Thats what is ahead of us if Grokster loses. Thats what happens if the RIAA is able to convince the Supreme Court of the USA that rather than the truth, which is , Software doesnt steal content, people steal content, they convince them that if it can impact the music business, it should be outlawed because somehow it will. It doesnt matter that the RIAA has been wrong about innovations and the perceived threat to their industry, EVERY SINGLE TIME. It just matters that they can spend more then everyone else on lawyers. Thats not the way it should be. So , the real reason of this blog. To let everyone know that the EFF and others came to me and asked if I would finance the legal effort against MGM. I said yes. I would provide them the money they need. So now the truth has been told. This isnt the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban and my little content company. Its about our ability to use future innovations to compete vs their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. its that simple.

Cool Macroinvertebrates

The water temperature was higher then the air temperature and the Eno River was running very high on the banks when I went down to help our friend, Sylvia, and her family do the quarterly River Watch today. The air temperature was cool for the last week in March in NC–only in the high 40s. That made dipping in the water less warm than back in December at the last watch!
Nevertheless, I managed to catch more crawfish than in December and we all found river pennys, dragon fly nymphs, may fly larvae, black fly larvae and, holding on in the rushing water, was a nice collection of snails. This shows us that the river is feeling fine although very cool.

OrphanWorks (and Duke Law)

Duke CSPD Proposal Cover
James Boyle write to tell us all about Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain and their part in the presentations to the Library of Congress on Orphan Works and Orphan Films

I wrote about the problems of orphan works earlier by posting a note from Larry Lessig about it.

Jamie says:

Anyway, we put together a report for the copyright office on orphan films, and another on orphan works — For both of them we interviewed people around the country on their experiences.? Some amazing stories came out of that, and the orphan films research is tragic? At the end of the orphan works report, we offer a proposal to fix the problem.

The two Duke reports are in PDF, but have a good introduction to each of the two CSPD reports.

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