war

When librarians snap

Most jobs have built in annoyances – and most often its customers! These are usually tolerated as they are considered part of the territory but sometimes the urge to work these annoyances out becomes too great…

One such occurance concerns the librarian Barbara McCutcheon who will now, with the help of the local police, have people arrested for not returning library books. This article quotes her as saying: “I’m just not going to take it anymore. I want my books back and I want them now,” and “I will track people down. You can run but you can’t hide”.

This may seem a harsh way to go but the police seem to support this action: “If Barbara has books out that are not returned, then we will make reports and begin to seek arrest warrants. We will start arresting people…”

The library is in Texas – why is this not surprising?
(via Biblioteksrelaterat)

Posted on by mklang

Free Films Online

While the main discussion on online films revolves (rightly or wrongly) on pirates downloading material. This discussion sometimes forgets that we have now reached a period when a number of films are being released into the public domain. Here is a selection of films available at the Internet Archive. Browsing their collection is lots of fun and may seriously threaten thesis work.

Things to Come (1936), William Cameron Menzies (dir.), The metropolis of Everytown is a city threatened by world war. Pacifist intellectuals try to turn the tide but efforts go unheeded by the self-interested classes, and war arrives with tanks and aeroplanes and gas bombs. The war continues for thirty years, its original purpose forgotten. Everytown is destroyed by air raids and civilization degenerates… (imdb) (Public Domain).

Le Voyage Dans La Lune (dir. George Meiles), an old 1902 film from france about a small group of scientists that travel to space on a rocket to get to the moon. (Licensed via CC Att-NC-SA).

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943) (dir. Roy William Neill) Based on the Sir Authur Conan Doyle story “The Dancing Men”, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are placed in WWII europe to help protect a scientist and his invention from the Nazis. (Licensed via CC Att).

The Kid (1921) (dir. Charlie Chaplin) The Kid was Charlie Chaplin’s first full-length movie. It, more than anything else to that date, made Chaplin a living legend. It took over a year to produce, and was an incredible success for Chaplin. (Public Domain).

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) (dir. Alfred Hitchcock) While travelling in Switzerland, the child of a well-off couple is kidnapped. She is held to ensure that her father does not reveal what he knows about a planned assassination. Since they can’t talk to the authorities, the parents plan to begin the search for their daughter on their own. This is the original, British-made movie from 1934 and is now in the Public Domain.

Mechanical Monsters (1941) A ten minute Superman cartoon where he battles a criminal mastermind and his robot army (imdb) (Public Domain).

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) (dir. Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton) the story of a naive, college-educated dandy who must prove himself to his working-class father, a hot-headed riverboat captain, while courting the daughter of his father’s rival, who threatens to put Steamboat Bill, Sr. and his paddle-wheeler out of business. (Public Domain).

The New Adventures of Tarzan. (1935) (dir. Edward Kull) Not many realize this feature, along with ‘Tarzan and the Green Goddess’, were produced by E.R. Burroughs, himself. He wanted a screen portrayal of Tarzan as he had written him, a noble intelligent Ape Man/Lord Greystoke, not as Hollywood had made him (“Me Tarzan, you Jane”). And NO Cheetah.

Three Stooges – Color Craziness (1965) “The New Three Stooges” featured the animated adventures of Moe, Larry, & Curly Joe. The cartoons were introduced by live-action inserts with the real Stooges. These inserts were some of the only Stooges material ever filmed in color, and they also feature long-time Stooge collaberator Emil Sitka. (Public Domain).

Posted on by mklang

Meatrix II

Its food politics and awareness served up by Sustainable Table in the form of animated flash films. Sustainable Table wants to make consumers aware of the problems with factory farming and to promote sustainable food.
The followup of the brilliant Meatrix movie is out now. Watch the new movie here!

In an age characterized by mechanization, there exists a large gap between our illusions about where food comes from and the stark reality of industrial meat and dairy production. Enter the Meatrix films. The Meatrix II: Revolting is the sequel to the original smash hit, the critically acclaimed exposé of industrial farming, The Meatrix. Simultaneously spoofing the popular Matrix films while educating consumers about the evils of factory farming, The Meatrix brings the concept of sustainability to a wide audience of mainstream consumers. With a growing audience of over 10 million viewers worldwide, translations into over 25 languages, as well as a 2005 Webby Award, the Meatrix has been an incredibly successful tool for raising interest in Sustainable Tableâ??s unique goals and projects. www.themeatrix.com and www.themeatrix2.com

Check out their earlier movie the Grocery Store Wars.

(via Peter Forsberg)

Posted on by mklang

Did you miss it too?

Today (May, 25) was international towel day. The day is celebrated for being 42 days after the anniversary of Douglas Adams death. To commemorate the day and to remember Douglas – carry a towel…
I missed it – again…

Why towel day? Shame on you for displaying such ignorance. But in the aid of your further education:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Towel Day 2006 – Innsbruck

So long and thanks for all the fish, Douglas…

Posted on by mklang

German Copyright

The German Bundesrat on the 19th May voted to change German copyright law (The Bundesrat position) which was implemented in 2003 and has received heavy criticism. (Press release)

The Bundesrat recommends a copyright legislation which is more positive towards teaching, research and education in an effort to promote scientific information and public access to such information. The public right to information has been laid out in the government plan â??Informationsgesellschaft Deutschland 2006â??

Unfortunately my German is too weak to understand this more fully. Anyone seen any translations/comments?

Posted on by mklang

GPLv3 Conference

On the 22nd & 23rd June its the 3rd International GPLv3 Conference which will be held in Barcelona.

The focus will be on the GPLv3 – this is from the press release

The goal of the GPL is to ensure that recipients of GPL covered software are free to examine it, to modify it, to pass on copies, and to distribute modifications. Version two of the GPL was released fifteen years ago, in 1991. The new version is being drafted to account for changes in the legal and technical environment in which software licences operate.

The main changes in version three are to minimise the harm of software patents, to prevent Digital Restrictions Management from being used against software users, and to make the licence compatible with certain classes of other Free Software licences.

Speakers will include, amongst others, Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen.

Posted on by mklang

CC to version 3

At present the state-of-the-art Creative Commons licenses are at version 2.5 and now we begin the public process of making the transition to version 3. There are four main reasons for this move:

(a) Incorporate MIT negotiated amendments to all licenses (incl. Sampling) to enable MIT to switch over to using a standard CC BY-NC-SA license.
(b) Incorporate Debian negotiated amendments in the hope that they will declare some of our licenses (those without the NonCommercial and NoDerivatives license elements) â??freeâ?? according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines.
(c) Spin off the current â??genericâ?? license to be the US license & (hopefully) create a real generic license.
(d) For those jurisdictions that protect the moral right of integrity, (i) incorporate an icon signifying the retention of this important right in the Commons Deed and, (ii) to ensure that the Legal Code for all of these jurisdictions expressly retains the right of integrity.

These are all important reasons but I am particularly interested in the moral rights (d) issue (maybe becuase I am from a jurisdiction which has moral rights) and the chance of being recognised as “free” according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines (b) because it is important to interact with the Free Software movement in a deeper way. The Free Software movement not only predates CC it remains the most stringent among the movements which most people carelessly lump together as Open Source. For a longer discussion on this and the meaning of free software look here.

Do you want to participate in the process? Here is how…

Getting to Version 3.0

It’s that fun time again when we start contemplating versioning up the licenses. An outline of why we’re thinking about doing this and how CC proposes to do this has just been posted to the cc-licenses list. Please participate in the discussions on the cc-licenses list – you can sign up here.

Submitted by Mia Garlick on 2006-05-17 04:07 PM.
Posted on by mklang

Temporary storage devices

Is it a cat? Or maybe its a rabbit. Childrens chalk drawings outdoors always interest me. In part its the excitement of drawing outdoors. In part its the sheer size of the drawing material. And then its the wonderful part that the drawing is only there fore a short moment. If you dont look now – it gone.

Yesterday at the seminar in Stockholm Lars Ilshammar spoke about information protectionism and the dangers of trusting storage devices. Microfilm has a life expectancy of less than 100 years (and is cost intesive). Most paper we use today will crumble to dust within 80 years due to the residual chemicals. Digital storage devices have a life expectancy of about 25 years (but probably much less). In addition to this digital storage devices require that we save and maintain both hardware and software and the means with which to maintain both.

As Lars put it – its a major problem and also a business opportunity for the company who manages to save everyones digital photo albums…

Posted on by mklang

Stockholm Challenge

Yesterday I was in Stockholm representing Creative Commons as a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge awards. The dinner was held at the Stockholm City Hall which also houses the Nobel Prize dinner. I was determined not to be impressed but I must admit it is a very impressive building.

First we had champaigne in the Golden Hall which is a room covered with a gold and glass mosaic made of over 18 million pieces.

The Golden Hall

This was followed by dinner in the Blue Hall and the winners in each category were announced. For my category (Culture) the project Biblioredes from Chile was the winner.

The Blue Hall

The whole event was very impressive and the range of projects participating made for a very interesting evening.

Posted on by mklang