Technology Blog

The new issue (vol. 10, no. 3/4) of Internet Reference Services Quarterly is devoted to the tangled relationships between Google and libraries.

source: Google and libraries

True story. Back a few weeks ago, I had this sudden flash of a vision of a technology so cool I figured it just had to have a patent in it. Everything about it made sense, I thought, and it would revolutionize the industry. I told May, she went to sleep leaving me laying there with diagrams and schematics racing through my brain.

Flash forward to yesterday and there it be, live and in colour, the feature on MusicThing, who said this was just wrong, but it’s not.

It’s not ‘wrong’, it’s just already invented … back in 1977! and patented, and in production, and after 30 years it is still not catching on because, now that I see it, nobody in their right mind would want a 9v transformer pack tethering their drop-dead ugly Kinetic-MAX to a wall socket.

Nevertheless, here’s Ron Hoag, the k-max guitar and his surprisingly cheesy scrunched-image website for the Amazing Light Transducer for Musical Instruments:

“MAXIMUM KINETIC ENERGY, SUSTAIN. has more audio range than other pickups. Also, is more responsive to the touch and…”
[ HOAG GUITARSý PRESENTS ]

He needs flaming rotating guitar GIFs, minimum. But bad webdesign and infomercial presentation apart (give ‘em a break, he’s a 50 year old techie geek musician, unlike me who’s a vibrant young 49 year old de-geeked musician) there’s some very keen merits here: LED lights shine across the strings to an optical resistor measuring the umbral image as a modulated luminocity loss, and in plain english that means the transducer will measure vibration in anything that moves … you can use nickel, bronze-wound, nylon, you can even use cotton strings and Ron has the MP3 to prove it. It’s also non-invasive optical, and that means no magnets dampening the strings, and the dynamic range and frequency response are such that you could detect 40 octaves above a high-E from a distance of 40 miles, a real bonus if you play for whales.

source: The Optical Guitar

source: OA videos of major scientists and artists

If you read OAN regularly, then you already know about Neil Jacobs’ forthcoming collection, Open Access: Key strategic, technical and economic aspects, Chandos Publishing, 2006. (I’ll have a chapter in it on OA in the US.) To whet your appetite further, here’s Ian Gibson’s foreword to the book. Gibson chaired the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee when it undertook its 2004 inquiry into STM publishing and produced its exemplary OA recommendations.

The era of open access is dawning and it could not come a moment too soon. The rapid development of the internet and its increased use across the globe has meant that there is a wide and growing audience that is hungry and in some cases, desperately in need of information that traditionally few have been able to access.

The idea of open access is highly controversial and divisive. If one were to politely mumble the phrase at a dull gathering of academics, publishers and policy makers, one would be sure to instantly divide the room and instigate a heated debate. This book is therefore an important introduction for those who know nothing of a debate that has been raging in academic circles for a long time. And for those with seemingly entrenched positions, this book will most certainly change some minds.

In science, my own area of expertise, the issue of open access has been making troublesome waves in the last few years. The 2004 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry ‘Scientific Publications: free for all?’ which I chaired, looked into a number of issues; such as whether the market for scientific publications was working well, the trends in journal pricing, the impact of new publishing trends on the scientific process, the integrity of journals and so on. What we found was not pleasant.

The commercial publishing world has an increasingly harmful monopoly on a number of prestige journals which are essential to disseminating new ideas and research. This monopoly over knowledge has been one factor underlying an increase in the price of subscriptions, leaving some academic libraries with no choice but to cancel subscriptions as they can no longer afford to pay for a full range of journals.

I believe the current situation is highly unethical. As vast amounts of public money is used to fund research, it should follow that such research should be freely available to the public to boost up their knowledge and appreciation of science, instead of increasing the profit margins of a few publishing houses. One therefore would be hard pressed to deny the ethical case for open access. Indeed one only has to think of the need to make new research readily available to developing countries which do not have the resources to purchase such information and yet face some of the world’s most devastating problems.

However, better ethical conduct is only one of the many objectives of the open access project as this excellent collection of essays will show. I do not deny that there are legitimate fears about the implications of open access. It is one thing to make information readily available for the public who through taxation fund such research, and developing countries who need access to life-saving ideas; but it is quite another matter to make knowledge available for those who will free ride their way through improved access to profit themselves. But these are problems I believe can be overcome with a bit of creativity as some of the authors in this collection show. Turn the page and start reading.

source: Ian Gibson on OA

source: New issue of Access

• Is the pace of change really such a shock? (plasticbag.org)
  ‘That’s the only way that snails catch you up. If you weren’t paying bloody attention.’
  (tags: bbc tv technology broadband internet data fat-pipes pace-of-change fear fud)
• Windows Genuine Advantage US failure map
  Los Vegas - home of Windows XP piracy!
  (tags: los-vegas piracy windows-xp wga maps microsoft)
• bloglines and memeorandum on flat files instead of SQL
  via O’Reilly Radar. good to hear I’m not the only person hacking awfulness with Data::Dumper and eval()
  (tags: flat-files sql bloglines memorandum mark-fletcher gabe-rivera databases eval data-dumper)
• This copy of Windows is not genuine.jpg (JPEG Image, 1024×768 pixels)
  hello new Linux desktop wallpaper!
  (tags: via:stx desktop-wallpaper images funny windows microsoft wga)
• Troublemaking
  Google Maps mash-up from John Handelaar, mapping the locations of all of Eircom’s DSL-enabled POPs in Ireland. excellent! some major holes in the map: not so excellent
  (tags: google-maps eircom pops dsl ireland geowanking john-handelaar irelandoffline)
• Streaming to an Airport Express in Linux using AmaroK
  using an ALSA output plugin called raop-play, which streams to the remote server. If only Apple had just used esd’s remote streaming protocol, instead of inventing their own crappy DRM-laden proprietary one, this would be a lot simpler
  (tags: esd raop raop-play linux amarok kde alsa apple airport-express lan-streaming)
• Revolution has a new name!
  everybody seems to be taking the piss out of this, for some reason
  (tags: wii nintendo tragic funny ohdear puns)

Tags: 

This post was written by dailylinks, source: links for 2006-04-27

Steve Hitchcock, Nature brings the Semantic Web and enhanced citation, visibility to papers in EPrints, Eprints news, April 25, 2006. (Thanks to George Porter.) Excerpt:

EPrints repositories can be part of the Semantic Web in a real and practical way thanks to Nature Publishing Group and its free Connotea online reference management service. This service enables users to publicly bookmark and tag articles from within EPrints repositories with remarkable potential to expand the visibility and findability of those articles….Here is how it works, and our take for those responsible for managing EPrints repositories.

When journal readers, say, find an article they want to cite they have to record in a conventional reference form at all the metadata necessary to identify and locate that item. If that article is online the user can create a bookmark, although that simply records the URL…Further, that bookmark is stored in the user’s browser and is not shared with other potential readers of the article. Connotea formalises the bookmark as a reference and can share the data publicly. To do this it needs to identify information about the article - its author, title, etc. - and to identify the source data….Connotea can do this for a number of journals, and now it can do the same for any EPrints repository using its OAI-PMH interface. Connotea has discovered this information for some EPrints repositories. To learn more and see if your repository is included, and to find out what to do if it isn’t, go to http://www.connotea.org/news#2006-01-31 …

The potential for overlaying the Semantic Web on the cited content in repositories and improving the findability of this content arises from another feature of the service: tagging. As well as producing a citable reference, the user can supplement the reference with keywords that describe the referenced item. Librarians, indexers and cataloguers have long done this. So have authors of online pages, by virtue of Web links. The power of indexing is here massively extended by enabling all users to become indexers by tagging cited articles with keywords….Supplied with this information the Connotea database can make all sorts of connections between articles and present these as links. Serendipity never had it so good!…

Tagging and bookmarking can now be applied within EPrints….To provide this interface for your users all you have to do is download and install the TaggingTool code to your EPrints repository, which can be located from this description….

We know that findability is enhanced by exposing data to Web search services, also that on average open access increases the citation impact of papers. Now we have a different type of citation service - Connotea bookmarking - allied to tagging. Repositories based on EPrints are uniquely able to take advantage of all three means of enhancing retrieval and citation of their papers. Don’t let anyone tell you that content in repositories is less easy to find than sources indexed in more formal current awareness services. For open access content in EPrints repositories the opposite is fast becoming the case.

source: More on using Connotea with Eprints

This last panel—”The New Media Age: Surviving and Thriving in a World of Changing Technology“—is moderated by the very entertaining Dennis Kneale, the managing editor of Forbes. Speakers are:

• Peter Chernin, President and COO, News Corp.; Chairman and CEO, Fox Group
• Robert Iger, President and CEO, The Walt Disney Co.
• Jonathan Miller, Chairman and CEO, AOL

Moderator: Are we really at the digital revolution now, or are we still a decade away?
Chernin: There’s been unbelievable change over the past ten years, but that the pace of change will only accelerate from this point. People are still desperate to see stories, to see content, to consume information. They want to be entertained, be informed. (Wow. Amazingly passive view of the audience.)

Moderator: Is Disney catching up to online piracy, or are they still trying to stop it the way Disney tried to stop the VCR?
Iger: We’re not playing a game of catchup, but we do need to get on board the train, so to speak. Otherwise the consumer will simply pass us by. Technology to media companies is what refrigeration was to Coca Cola.
Miller: The old projections were that the new media would replace the old media. But that’s not what happens. The new doesn’t replace the old, but things rebalance. What’s going on now is real convergence. People are being convergent—they are multimedia, multidimensional, in ways they haven’t been before.

Moderator: Is the video industry doing a better job than the music industry?
Miller: We’re not stupid. We see what happened to the music industry!
Iger: WE’ve got to get with the program—the barriers we’ve perceived are dissolving, and we have to occupy this space.
Chernin: We as an industry were better positioned to deal with piracy. You get piracy when price points and access aren’t acceptable to the market. The video industry has a long history of tailoring products to different needs and different markets (PPV, DVD, theatres, HBO, etc). They understand that different platforms require different price points.

Moderator: Have any of you visited YouTube? 40 million viewings a day of tiny little web-based videos. All from users. The revolution is happening from the bottom up—how do you deal with that?
Chernin: The incredible pent-up demand for video is amazing to see. Most of the favorites on YouTube are copyrighted material. There’s a huge demand for our video product.
Iger: User-generated content, as ridiculous as it is (he’s talking about America’s Funniest Home Videos, which he first started at ABC), is endlessly fascinating to people. It won’t put us out of business. We’re living in a world where people are spending more time consuming media of all kinds—for companies int he business of creating media, that’s a good thing.
Miller: Amazon didn’t replace WalMart. YouTube won’t replace current content creators. The big question is how do you find the things you want? Your social network becomes important as well as formal guides.

Moderator: Are the movie studios the ones who will create this content? Or will other, younger people need to do it?
Miller: The history of the media world says that the great broadcasting companies didn’t create the great cable companies, and neither of those created the great internet companies. New companies tend to arise, while they may well later combine.
Chernin: MySpace cost 540 million, and was probably the best deal they ever made. He asks the moderator why the edge he seems to have about MySpace—is his profile not attracting the kinds of people he wants?

Moderator: The decision to put Disney/ABC shows on iTunes was stunning. How many conversations did they have with affiliates over this?
Iger: None.
Moderator: Excellent!
Iger: Of course new delivery puts a strain on existing channels. But asking permission would have resulted in it never getting done. We create a lot of value for the stations when we create these shows, and the stations still get to show them first. What the music industry ignored is that the customer had a lot more power over how they got and used music in a digital age, and ignoring that power shift was their biggest problem. Disney’s not going to ignore that power shift. We’re going to continue to make moves for the big screen, but they’ll move onto new media more quickly.
Chernin: Fox is trying to do a 60-day post-theatrical high-def release. That’s a better direction than trying to have the two compete with each other. “My job is not to protect the existing business, it’s to maximize the current business and find ways to grow the new business.” You have grow more than you erode, or someone else will be sitting in your chair. We won’t replace the billions in revenue from theatrical releases until we’ve got something that will generate more revenue.

Moderator: What’s happening with new development in content?
Miller: New kinds of music content—downloadable music videos and concerts. You can’t put music on TV and get good ratings, but you can put it online and “cum” (as in “accumulate”) an audience over time. A big question is how do you find content? They want to make video search as good as text-based search.

Moderator: If I can download a show without commercials for $2, aren’t you undervaluing commercials?
Iger: We’re selling a few things. Convenience is critical (mobile, time-shifted). The experience is good, but not nearly as good as what you’ll get on a big HD TV. Their experience has been very positive. They put a $9.99 movie called “High School Musical” on iTunes, and it was incredibly popular.
Moderator: What more are you doing with properties like High School Musical?
Iger: It’s out on DVD this week—you can buy it at WalMart. We’re also looking to turn the company into a more global company—we have great brand depth but not as much breadth as we’d like. They’re releasing it in other languages, they’re releasing materials for schools to be able to do it as a school play. The soundtrack album went double platinum in 7 weeks.
Miller: Disney has always set a standard of multiple platforms for products. These things are additive, not subtractive. They grow the reach of the property. The fact that something’s been viewed 30 million times on YouTube doesn’t mean they won’t watch more of it on TV. It may make them more likely to watch it on TV.
Chernin: We’re thinking a lot about different media for delivery. We’re thinking a lot about interactive aspects of delivery. We invented “Mobisodes” for wireless. That’s about as exciting a platform as exists. There are twice as many cellphones as televisions in the world, and probably 3-4x as many as there are computers. Our new affiliate deal lets us run shows not just after they run on the network, but also run it before it’s on the network for a higher fee. Are there people desperate to see the finale of a show, and willing to pay $4 for it. In return, they give the network affiliates a 12% share of that first year’s revenue.

Moderator: Bob Iger, are you cutting a share of your extra revenues to your local affiliates?
Iger: Not from our iTunes downloads. We have a very different relationship with our affiliates than Fox has. ABC pays compensation to their stations already, whereas Fox gets paid by their affiliates.
Miller: If you think about what Google did, they cut everybody in on the action. Because of that, everyone put that box up there and it kept spreading. The web model says figure out how to cut everybody in on the action and they’ll be your distribution path.

Moderator: Is Google a distribution rival?
Iger: We don’t see them as a rival—perhaps that’s a mistake. They’re a tool that consumers can use to find our content. Google is both distribution and content; search results are a kind of content. They have become a real force in the advertising world, for good reason. Advertisers are paying extra to advertise in the Internet-based distribution. They won’t be able to charge for shows that force you to watch ads. But other choices for download may well be for pay (downloadable, archivable versions, for instance).
Miller: Internet advertising is becoming as expensive in CPM terms is comparable to many cable channels. Search fragments things—it sends people in lots of different places. In a world that fragments, the people who have things that are truly unique stand out the most.
Iger: In a world with much more choice and fragmentation, the value of brands will increase. Most of our investment is in brand.
Chernin: Traditionally, CPM have tracked audience size. Advertisers are so desperate to get video advertising on the web, they’re willing to now pay a premium for getting those ads online.

Moderator: Most of the time our ads don’t hit people when they most need them. Google does this perfectly—you see the ad when you’re engaged in the shopping behavior. It’s more targeted, shouldn’t it be more expensive?
Miller: If someone visits a car site, they’re 10-30% more likely to click on a car ad the next time they see it.
Chernin: That’s a very simplistic view of advertising. Ads aren’t just to sell things. Some are there to build brands, some are intended to generate interest, others to sell a specific product.
Iger: I agree completely.
Miller: Google ads can’t, be definition, be underpriced—they’re offered in a marketplace, and you pay what the market thinks it’s worth.

Moderator: Why the $2 price for television shows? Why not higher?
Iger: Well, these were things that were already available for free the night before. You’re going to watch this on a much smaller and lower quality screen than your television. They felt they should be reasonable in their pricing.
Miller: The scarier thing would be will anybody buy it? Will they buy something they could get for free on their TV?

Moderator: What are the obstacles? Does anybody really want to watch Gary Coleman in a rerun on their cell phone?
Chernin: None of these models work at all if there’s rampant piracy. [missed some here]
Miller: The biggest obstacle is making great experiences. People want what they want when they want it…moving media across platforms is not fluid and easy now. What Jobs and Apple did was they made it great, they made the experience great. Great experiences lead to adoption, and then the money follows.
Iger: Conflict and competition among channels and retailers. We want to create more value for our shareholders, and we’re not sure we can grow these new channels without damaging existing ones. We need to stay in touch with the consumer in this ever-changing world. It’s not an obstacle, but it is a challenge.

Moderator: Was their internal opposition at Disney to these changes?
Iger: Of course. Change results in fear, but you have to overcome that. That’s why I’m charged to do, really, more than anything else in my role as CEO. You can’t ask all the questions and get all the answers before you make these decisions…you have to take some risks and get things out there. We have to give people what they want often before they know they want it.
Chernin: The most positive thing happening right now is all this experimentation. There’s very little first mover advantage now, we can steal ideas that work from each other. (laughter) The growth of the distribution model benefits the content creators.

Moderator: I’m fascinated with “sellavision”, the 24 promotion. How did that work?
Chernin: I thought it was both a brilliant idea, and a dopey idea. Cell phones aren’t great platforms for narrative content. But it allowed them to learn a lot about how to deliver short-form content. This is a rush hour medium—people are watching on trains and in airports.
Moderator: what wins? Cell phones or ipods?
Iger: They all win. They’re all important. And cell phones are enormously important in helping them to enter global markets with branded content.
Miller: We still don’t know if cell phones are a derivative medium (a tiny TV), or a truly new medium. We’re focused on mobile search right now more than mobile content. (Wow, search is a big theme for AOL in today’s presentations. Fascinating.)

Moderator: So, if this new distribution takes off, who loses? Does Comcast lose?
Iger: Not if they migrate off their traditional approach and start to deliver to multiple platforms—they could be fine. But he’s not focused on who loses, he’s focused on who wins. Content companies are well positioned to win.
Chernin: The losers are those who are trying to protect rather than grow their businesses.
Iger: “You’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, the times they are a changin’…”
Miller: Is geography now a limiting factor or an enabling factor for companies? That’s shifting.

There’s some brief Q&A at the end, but I’m all typed out.

source: milken conference: media moguls on parade

Pertti Saariluoma, The Importance of the Free Flow of Information and Knowledge, Human Technology, April 2006. (Thanks to Kimmo Kuusela.) Excerpt:

To get new information to the right people at the right time requires knowledge producers to break down many different barriers. The barriers to the flow of information are not just geographic. A fissure can be found between universities and private companies, which tacitly means between scientific knowledge and product knowledge….Knowledge becomes significant only when it is expressed in practical terms, such as product development and other applications. However, information becomes knowledge and applicable only when built upon the ever-growing body of basic knowledge, which is discovered in the academic inquiry of the university. To achieve such a complementary fusion of knowledge, those interested in the creation and application of knowledge need to find ways to scale the fences that might separate them. Such fences involve the languages (both cultural and terminological) of the fields of expertise, the different social rules and forms of expression between and within organizations, a lack of trust, and varying goals and interests, to name a few, which create barriers to effective communication and the quality use of knowledge. One possible means of bridging the gap between these distinct cultures is through open access scientific publishing.

Open access journals make knowledge and discovery freely available for those who need it. As search technologies gradually improve, knowledge seekers shall undoubtedly find it much easier to surface the pieces of knowledge needed from among a great variety of available information. Open access journals allow those who seek information to find those whose prior seeking has resulted in new perspectives, new data, new knowledge. For this reason alone open access journals are an essential part of communicating about scientific research findings and knowledge. And it seems that open access publishing is an especially natural way for university research to be distributed for the greater good. The salaries paid to university researchers normally come from public money, by extension from the taxpayers. Ethically, it seems a good principle that knowledge generated through the support of the general public should be equally available and, perhaps beneficial, to all the members of society….

If universities keep the new knowledge behind their walls or offer limited access to it, then they have overlooked their duties to society. And if government officials, who make decisions regarding university funding for research and dispersal of research knowledge, do not see that new scientific innovations must be easily and effectively offered for the use of society, then the barriers to innovative use of new ideas slow down the availability of knowledge to those who need it and who have paid through their taxes to create it. The time seems right to give up the old images and practices regarding research, knowledge, and innovation. Open access publishing makes it possible, but also necessary, to look at the role of basic knowledge within society and the roles of university research in the webs of innovation management in a new way.

source: Scaling the fences of knowledge

Those who have not read Alan Watts are going to find this utterly perplexing; those who have will be nodding their heads and smiling like a lizard pie at the stark symmetry recently discovered where ordinary chaos spontaneously melts into beautiful order proving once and for all that indeed Eng-a-land do swings just like a pendulum do:

“… the pendulums, when pushed by forces according to a regular rhythm, behaved chaotically and swung out of sync. Yet when the researchers introduced disorder—applying forces at random intervals to each oscillator—they began to swing in synch. The ‘forces’ were applied along the rods of the ‘pendulums’ to make them swing … When you introduce disorder… the chaos that was present before disappears and there is order”
[ Order from chaos ]

Being biophysicists, they also muse on whether perhaps their result could have relevence in neuro-cognitive research, and whether it is not the neuron physiology per-se so much as just its coupled oscillation that effects the magic. For example, since we already see brain cells reacting like chain-link fence groups, could this help explain how these cells can sometimes sync their response to a stimulus?

Hmmm … coupled oscillations evoking unified response from a chaotic vibration … don’t that sound, well, a little like applied space music?

source: Unexpected Order Out of Chaos

Carsten Orwat, Digital Rights Management in Public Science, the report of the 4th INDICARE Workshop (Brussels, December 8, 2005). There were plenty of unsurprising suggestions for using DRM to block access to non-OA content. But here are some of the ideas for using DRM to enhance OA content and to mitigate its harms:

Instead of the publicly perceived definition of DRM ? mainly as a measure used by publishers to restrict access and control usages ? Mark Bide (Rightscom) pleaded for an understanding of DRM as an essential element of a trustworthy network computing environment. He also suggested talking about “Digital Policy Management” instead of Digital Rights Management, since not all digital policies are based on intellectual property rights. In his view, Digital Policy Management is about defining, describing, communicating and enforcing policies, which control access to and use of networked resources. This would be needed unless one would believe that all networked resources should be available for anyone to do anything they want. Thus, Digital Policy Management will be fundamental for the trusted identity of resources, people and organisations, and for the certainty in defining ways in which resources may be used. He saw this necessity for the future management of the network even in an era of “open everything” including open access, open archives etc….

In public debates the terms ‘DRM’ and ‘open access’ are often treated as oppo-site models of scientific publishing. In the following, however, the question is raised what role DRM can play in Open Access publishing models. One opinion on the careful and limited use of DRM in Open Access models was brought in by Ulrich Pöschl from the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry and from the Open Access journal ‘Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics’. From his perspective (mainly as a researcher), DRM for scientific publications especially from publicly-funded research can be desirable and acceptable only to a very limited extent, for instance, to assure authenticity as well as correct referencing of documents and sources of information. He warned that, by no means, the successful and future development of Open Access should be inhibited by DRM….

Furthermore, in discussions of the workshop another DRM application in open access was mentioned: in ‘green road’ models of open access authors can choose the open access condition for single articles. Thus, it is no longer possible to use common licensing agreements for the whole journal, but the licensing and use rights has to be specified for individual articles. Therefore, there could be a need to attach rights information to single documents, what is understood here as digital rights management….

To mitigate the [many problems caused by DRM, Manon Rees from] CPTech propose[d] the registration of DRM systems and TPMs before their implementation in practice. Within registration it should be checked if DRMs meet with public standards such as regarding to the ex-haustion of copyright protection, enabling private copying or archiving. DRMs should not be protected by law from circumvention unless they meet public standards.

source: More on DRM and OA

Meet Semir Osmanagic. Semir is not a wacko. Semir does not re-sharpen razor blades. Semir digs things up. Last summer, while on a trek through the Bosnian country side, Semir found something worth digging for, something massive, something way bigger than the Great Pyramid at Giza.

This is his story, the story of the hill at Visocica and the Greater Pyramids of Europe:

In April of 2005, during my visit to Visoko, I noticed two geometrically symmetrical elevations: Visocica (Bosnian pyramid of Sun) and Pljesevica (Bosnian pyramid of Moon). Even though both were covered by trees, the characteristics of pyramids were evident. Taking into consideration their fit with the sides of the world for me there was no doubt that we were talking about pyramids.

Route from unbelievable hypothesis to the scientific argumentation, which will confirm my vision, was logical. First, I started with geological trial excavations in August which showed many anomalies convincing even some experts around me that this was not a natural formation.
[ BosnianPyramids.org ]

Subsequent sifting and satellite surveys all confirm his hunch and the dig is on to unearth Europe’s largest prehistoric monuments, one of them a good third larger than Giza, possibly pre-Roman, possibly pre-Babylonian and quite tragically paradoxically, all of them racing against corrupt land developers who have already weilded bulldozers against “their share” of the base masonry.

source: The Greater Pyramids of Visocica

Jonathan Zittrain gave his inaugural lecture yesterday as Oxford’s first Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation. His title: The future of the Internet – and how to stop it. A webcast is available. The Oxford press release contains this tidbit:

Another issue explored during Professor Zittrain’s lecture, was the potential of the Internet for scholars and students around the world. He argued: ‘Universities should encourage or even require their faculties to publish in open access journals and to publish working papers ahead of final drafts, so that their work is not locked up by some journal copyrights which are increasingly testing the budgets of libraries who wish to subscribe.’

Comment. I applaud Zittrain for endorsing OA in his inaugural lecture. However, universities should require deposit in OA repositories not publication in OA journals (although they should encourage publication OA journals). (1) There aren’t enough OA journals today and there won’t be for some time. OA journals can easily grow in size but cannot as easily grow in number or scope. (2) Even when there are enough OA journals and they cover every research niche, a requirement to publish in OA journals would limit the freedom of authors to publish in the journals of their choice. (3) If the goal is OA, then universities needn’t steer faculty away from subscription journals, at least when these journals consent to the OA archiving of peer-reviewed postprints, as about 70% of them do today. By contrast, (4) OA repositories are available today; (5) they scale quickly and easily; (6) they are compatible with the survival of conventional journals; and (7) they are compatible with author freedom to submit their work wherever they like. These are the reasons why all the OA mandates by funding agencies (public and private) focus on OA repositories, not OA journals.

source: What form of OA should universities recommend to faculty?

A group of Canadians has launched Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (CivicAccess). From the wiki:

Citizens for Open Access to Civic Information and Data (CivicAccess) is a group of citizens which believes all levels of government should make civic information and data accessible at no cost in open formats to their citizens. We believe this is necessary to allow citizens to fully participate in the democractic process of an “information society.”

Objectives: [1] To encourage all levels of governments (county, municipal, provincial, federal) to make civic data and information available to citizens without restrictions, at no cost, and in useable open formats. [2] To encourage the development of citizen projects using civic data and information

If you’re interested, join the mailing list.

source: OA to civic information in Canada

I had always thought there was something intrinsically missing at the root of economic theory. Got myself laughed out of the FoRK-list for even just hinting that the God of Bizquations was a stone idol. There was just something not right in all that smoke and mirrors we routinely crunched through during my tenure at the Bank of Montreal’s domestic investments, something weird and neck-hair raising about Greenspan and all the rest who stand before the cameras and say, “Our projections for the next ten years show …” It all seemed as rationally ‘reasonable’ to me as when the press caught Nancy Reagan, undoubtedly the First Lady of a Successful Presidency, hiring astrologers for Oval Office work.

Well, well-done Nancy because you weren’t no worse and probably better at the game because at least she was open to inner-world equations. Anyway, to make a long story less long, news via the Harvard Medical School tells us that in addition to neuro-circuitry that ‘learns’ colours, sounds, theatric motomotion and the exact layout of the RBFuller interview in Playboy, turns out we also may have an intrinsic neural annealer module that apes value, economic strategic gain value, and as such, as just another neuro-valuating perceptron, like our eyes ears and sex drive, overall it works pretty well, but it’s prone to falling for optical illusions …

“Economists have long studied how such individual decisions, made by millions of people, affect whole economies. But recent research has found that the choices often aren’t perfectly rational—as economists, for simplicity, traditionally assumed they would be.”
[ Brain cells that track value of objects ]

Surprise, surprise. ‘Economic Value’ is a feeling. But dig, as every AI student well knows, even acarologicianal organic wet-ware vastly out-performs axiologically-misguided hard-ware in real-world subjects. Thus flip-side, ipso-facto, we grant the neuro-cognitive non-linear equation solutions annealled topologically by the dynamically always upgrading omni-input fully-analog 9-dimensional brain-matrix can be fooled (and usually, unless you’re the president, shamed only once), only it stands to reason that like the astounding neuro-similar auditor, visual and amygdala neuro-valuators, when we are intelligent enough to step back and let our OFC alone to do what it does and stay mindfully sensitive enough to ‘feel’ its resulting value assessment the neuro-cognitive computation hardware evolved over millions of years by whatever spaghetti monster you believe is very very likely to routinely arrive at a better answer, and faster.

source: Buying into Neuro-Economics

Michael Cross, Is NHS data there for any company - or just one? The Guardian, April 27, 2006. Excerpt:

Few repositories of public sector information contain more political dynamite than those in NHS data sets. This week it was NHS staff numbers; next week it could be surgeons’ death rates. Earlier this year, the official custodian of the NHS’s data raised eyebrows by announcing a special relationship with a commercial firm. At least one competing business has questioned whether a level playing field is possible under the new arrangement.
The case provides an example of the potential conflicts created by the government’s policy of earning commercial returns on public sector information - a policy challenged by Guardian Technology’s Free Our Data campaign….

Locus, a body set up to represent businesses relying on public sector information, said any exclusive supplier deal was a cause for concern. Richard Pawlyn, the chairman of the Locus Association, said: “This is symptomatic of the lack of clear guidance from government. The Office of Public Sector Information advocates fairness, transparency and common sense, yet other parts of government promote exclusive supplier deals and create new natural monopolies such as this.” He said the association would be asking the Office of Fair Trading, which is investigating the market in public sector information, “to get a hold of these anomalies so the private sector can invest with confidence rather than be wrong-footed and excluded”.

source: Making public data accessible to some and not all

source: Free podcasts of Berkeley lectures

Heather Morrison, Open Access: to Help the Helpers, Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics, April 26, 2006. An Open Letter to Gerald P. Koocher, President of the American Psychological Association (APA), and to all APA members. Remember that last week the APA Executive Director published an argument that OA to research literature was useless to most lay readers and therefore unjustified. (PS: See my response to that argument, blogged yesterday.) Excerpt from Heather’s open letter:

There are a very great many good reasons why researchers and practitioners across many disciplines are enthusiastically embracing the potential of the internet to create, as the Budapest Open Access Initiative describes it, an unprecedented public good: open access to the scholarly literature that was never produced for the creator’s profit.  Today, my request is that the American Psychological Association give some thought to the potential of open access to help the helpers.

Many, if not most, of us, are involved in helping relationships at various points in our lives. A few of us have the advantage of professional training and resources to allow us ready access to the scholarly literature, such as the professional clinical psychologist practicing in the research hospital.  A very great many helpers, however, do not have access to these resources. Consider, for example, the social worker in the inner city. Many social workers work long hours, and without much pay. Having to travel to a university, or pay to read research is a real barrier for someone like this. Ready access to the scholarly literature in psychology could make the difference between a practice that is evidence-based, and one that is not. What a difference this can make - for the social worker and clients alike.  Or, what about the parent struggling to understand an autistic child?…How about all of the other caregivers - of family members with dementia, major or minor mental illnesses, or all the volunteers who help the caregivers?  Or, for that matter, the professional health care workers? Picture the doctor, or psychologist in a rural practice - no university library nearby. Couldn’t open access make a world of difference to these people?…Or, let’s think about all the people involved in various areas of crime and delinquency - our police and correctional officers? Wouldn’t ready access to the latest in psychology help to inform their practice - and wouldn’t open access be the optimum way to provide this?

If, like me, you believe that the science and art that is psychology truly matters to the world - because what, after all, could be more important than understanding ourselves - surely you will agree that our knowledge of psychology - all of it - should be shared, as openly as possible. There is a time for each discipline and profession to consider its own commitment to open access. Psychologists - it is your turn.

source: More on OA to psychology literature

Jacqueline Trescott, Historians Protest Smithsonian’s Deals, Washington Post, April 26, 2006. Excerpt:

The Society of American Historians, a group that promotes excellence in historical writing, has suspended Smithsonian Books from its ranks in protest over the Smithsonian Institution’s “increasingly commercial approach to its mission.” The suspension itself will have little impact, but it is the latest symptom of friction between the Smithsonian’s top managers and many of the nation’s scholars. The latest criticism follows a month of public debate over partnerships the Smithsonian made with commercial businesses and the change in policy about access to its archives. In a resolution passed by the historical group’s executive board yesterday, the society raised questions about the deal with Showtime Networks to create a series of 100 programs a year based on the Smithsonian collections and experts. But the historians also raised questions about a second contract, this one a publishing pact with HarperCollins….

In recent weeks, the Smithsonian has come under attack from writers, historians and filmmakers. The primary issue is how much access that researchers and producers not affiliated with Showtime will have to Smithsonian archives and the appearance of “right of first refusal” awarded Showtime for any project that has more than “incidental” use of Smithsonian materials. “The Smithsonian is an institution that involves public money and public trust and is a public archives,” said Elizabeth Adkins, president-elect of the Society of American Archivists. “It should follow the general guidelines of equal access. We are distressed.” The exact nature of the agreements are secret. The Smithsonian contends they are proprietary and not subject to freedom-of-information laws that require most federal contracts to be available for public inspection. However, a Smithsonian directive states that “the institution follows the intent and spirit of the [FOIA] as a matter of policy.”…Last week, about 215 filmmakers and historians asked the Smithsonian to reconsider the deal. Ken Burns, one of the country’s best-known documentary filmmakers, called the Showtime terms a mistake. The Society of American Archivists also asked the Smithsonian to reconsider the Showtime arrangement. “We urge the Smithsonian to revisit the agreement and to abandon those portions that limit either access to the archives or distribution of a researcher’s final results,” said the society’s president, Richard Pearce-Moses….The American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries asked the Smithsonian for a copy of the contract with Showtime. The two organizations argued that the “mission of the Smithsonian militates toward full disclosure of this document.” They argued that as a public institution, the Smithsonian had a responsibility to let the taxpayer know about its business dealings. “The public interest in disclosure here is clearly high in light of the unique nature of the agreement and its potential impact on public accessibility of Smithsonian resources,” said the organizations in a letter to the Smithsonian.

source: Historians criticize Smithsonian Institution for access-limiting deals

Rufus Pollock, Removing the nc: why license restrictions on commercial use are problematic and (frequently) unnecessary, Open Knowledge Foundation Weblog, April 24, 2006. Excerpt:

I think the adoption of the ‘non-commercial’ restriction is a big mistake. Removing the restriction would deliver significant gains in terms of greater freedom for reuse, demonstrating a commitment to full ‘openness’, and prevention fragmentation of the ‘commons’. At the same time the downside of doing this would be minimal.

First, a by-sa license is clearly ‘freer’ than a by-sa-nc in that it places fewer restrictions on the use of the work. In general this is a good thing since it means fewer occassions on which people have to /ask permission/. The Open Knowledge Definition following the approach of the F/OSS community prohibits discrimination against fields of endeavour (article eight) including restrictions on commercial use. Just as for open source I think it is important to have commercial users join the community. Furthermore this kind of restriction not only adds further complexity (what exactly counts as ‘commercial’ use?) but also is the basis for the introduction of a whole panopoly of further cases of ’special treatment’ (for developing nations, against military use, etc etc) leading rapidly to a fragmenting of the ‘commons’. I’d therefore go as far as to say that a license which incorporates ‘nc’ type provisions should not be described as ‘open’ and should be avoided wherever possible.

Second is all commercial usage bad? I know someone who made a documentary about Chavez and distributes it for free. At the same time he has received payments when it has aired by commercial tv stations (they often pay even when they don’t need to). This would make his work ‘commercial’ but it seems a far cry from, say, use in a coca-cola advert. Do you really want to prevent that kind of usage? If you do you’ve just cut out most of the main avenues for ’serious’ reuse of your work - ultimately most documentary makers would like to see their stuff get out to as wide an audience as possible and that means broadcast on a commercial network.

Third for the types commercial usage that I imagine you would most object to (e.g. adverts) the share-alike clause should be a sufficient obstacle - the makers of a major ‘brand’ advert probably do not want to have ‘reshare’ their work. They would need to come and relicense from you and at that point you are in the same position as with an nc license.

Update. Rufus has posted a follow-up (May 2, 2006).

source: The case for permitting commercial use of open content