Last November, I went to a meeting of Vermont colleges where we discussed doing more consortial activities. We broke up into groups to discuss different ideas and then reported to everyone at the meeting. One of the things we discussed in our group was the idea of skill-sharing. It is often the case in smaller …
Mary Minnow has written several posts on Library Elf and potential privacy issues. Since my library uses Voyager, I haven’t tried Library Elf out yet, but it’s supposed to create an RSS feed for you to keep track of what you have out, what’s coming due, and where you are on your holds. You can …
I found this link via Nexgenlib-L and I found it so amusing/horrifying that I had to share it with everyone. Human Events Online, which is a conservative journal, came out with this list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Apparently, they polled a group of conservative scholars who came …
When I was talking to my dad and he told me that he had a copy of Adobe Acrobat’s PDF Writer, I realized that not everyone is up on the wonders of open source software. I wish I’d told him prior to his purchase that there is a great open source alternative that creates PDFs …
I was more than a little frightened when I saw the survey, sponsored by the James L. Knight Foundation, which found that 35% of the high school students surveyed thought the “First Amendment goes to far in the rights it guarantees.” The study also found that three-quarters of the students think that flag burning is …
I was very excited to hear, via Research Buzz, that Firefox has been downloaded more than 25 million times! That’s fabulous! Hopefully we’ll see it replacing Internet Explorer more and more in libraries. Most of the library bloggers I know seem to use Firefox (or Safari), but I really haven’t seen it on library public …
The Linux Librarian has a great post on why open source and blogging are so great: This is why open source works. From my comments, from yesterday, from James Robertson: Hi, I’m the main BottomFeeder developer. What system are you trying the app on? What specific version did you try? Thanks This is why open …
For those interested in developing open source software based on the patents offered for free by IBM and others, PatentCafe has come out with OSS Patent Search Engine, a natural language patent search. It’s a new search engine and only has the 500 IBM patents in its database so far. It’s free to search the …
NPR this morning had a great story about how Brazil is switching 300,000 government computers from Windows to Linux. Not only are they switching to Linux, but they are dropping all proprietary software. The Brazilian government wants access to the source code of the software they use and control over their information (which includes security …
In light of IBM’s offer to allow use of 500 of their software patents for open source applications, Sun is now freely offering 1600 of its own patents for open source development. This comes on the heels of their announcement that they are open sourcing Solaris’ source code through the CDDL (Common Development and Distribution …
According to Techdirt, a California state senator has introduced a bill that threatens developers of file sharing applications with jail time. John Borland at CNET, writes, “if passed and signed into law, it could expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don’t take …
IBM is making 500 of its patents available for free to people doing open source projects. Rock on! From the New York Times: I.B.M. executives say the company’s new approach to intellectual property represents more than a rethinking of where the company’s self-interest lies. In recent speeches, for example, Samuel J. Palmisano, I.B.M.’s chief executive, …
Bill Gates recently sat down with CNET for an interview (which begins with the frightening teaser “Bill Gates is coming to your living room, whether you like it or not”). In it, Gates talks about the current state of intellectual property law and the recent challenges to it from certain “communist elements” in the digital …
I guess this is the day to post intros! Peter Suber, at Open Access News, has published a very concise introduction to the concept of open access. A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access is a shorter version of his Open Acecss Overview. Both are great documents, though the former is certainly easier to digest …
Wow! In an age of shrinking budgets and shrinking staffs, the Phoenix Public Libraries has secured $175,000 to hire one full time professional librarian and three paraprofessionals to police their no-porn policies. The professional, this “Internet Resource Specialist”, would monitor people’s use of the Internet and deal with people’s requests to turn off the filters …
Here is a disappointing story about the licensing and intellectual property rights . The award-winning documentary, Eyes on the Prize, about the civil rights movement, can no longer be aired on TV or sold on DVD (or new VHS’s) because the filmmakers could only afford to pay for a few years of rights to the …
According to the Curmudgeony Librarian, the FCC has declined a request by a Saul Levine — a California radio station owner — to apply the same standards to satellite radio as they do to AM/FM radio. Essentially, he wanted satellite radio to be censored just like AM/FM radio: Levine argued among other things that this …
Here is an interesting article I found via Resource Shelf. The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) and Google Scholar by Nick Luft looks at one positive effect Google (and specifically Google Scholar) may have on digital publishing. One of the greatest barriers to retrieving and exchanging scholarly information online is the fact that database vendors (and …
According to Wired, a four-year study of the 2.6 Linux production kernel by Stanford University researchers has determined that there are 985 bugs in the 5.7 million lines of code. While this may seem a lot (it’s 0.17 bugs per 1,000 lines of code), compare that to the average piece of commercial software, which has …
I know we always hear about how superior Linux is to Windows in terms of security, but most things I read primarily talk about what is wrong with Microsoft and never admit to any possible vulnerabilities with Linux. This Newsforge article is the first I’ve seen that actually tries to gauge how vulnerable Linux may …