If professors make chapters of a book available as e-reserves in the library, or get that material to their classes via Blackboard, students don’t need to buy the book, and the professors may get out of having to pay a permission fee to the publisher.
To resolve the problem, presses “are going to have to start making it easy for people to ask for permission,” said Alex Holzman, director of Temple University Press and president of the Association of American University Presses. “It’s something we really need to start thinking about.”
Mr. Holzman said that his July and August textbook sales were down about 15 percent, in dollar terms, from a year ago. “My gut is telling me that electronic downloading is adding seriously to what would normally be just a straightforward economic downturn,” he said. “There’s something more going on here than in the past.”
Emphasis mine. It’s finally occurred to them to make it easy to get permission??? Nearly three years ago Slate mentioned a nonprofit venture started by Peter Osnos and backed by the MacArthur Foundation with a group of university presses:
[Books would be published] in five formats simultaneously—hardcover, print on demand, digital, audio, and by the chapter. Osnos is trying to ensure that serious nonfiction books are available at different price points. But he’s also bringing some of the insights of Frederick Winslow Taylor to an industry that still works half-days on Fridays in the summer. “The problem with publishing is that you print 10 hardcover books and only sell six,” Osnos said. By moving closer to a system of just-in-time publishing, “we can significantly improve the business and margins by getting rid of the problem of excess inventory.”
I searched for more on that venture back then and found nothing. Since that time I’ve heard nothing. And today I read that the president of the Association of American University Presses thinks it’s time they start making getting permission easier for professors!
Apple’s had incredible success with iPods and iPhones. Both are ideally designed for purchasing chapter-by-chapter audio books through an iTunes store the students are already intimately familiar with.
If they’re offered the right product at the right price point the student set is willing to pay. And if they feel gouged by a monopoly market in which they’re required to buy, does it surprise us that they go looking for alternatives?
September 3rd, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
Below is an email from the PPIAC, Professional Private Investigator’s Association of Colorado, to which I belong. “Do no evil” takes on many colorations, it seems.
Not sure how Google wanting to take any and all searches any person does online while using their browser “Chrome” (which sounds in passing conversation a lot like the word ‘Crone’… rather poetically so), so Google can publicly display, translate into other languages, et al, forensics and data investigation from annual fee data bases of criminal records etc, that PI’s engage with online regularly.
Google’s promotional purposes, are not exactly what a PI considers a useful by-product of their work… that data gathering is usually held as confidential and is most often protected by legal statutes.
Wonder what that means for the feds who might use Chrome to gather data. Are you laughing yet at the possibilities for gaffes and freak spillage? Goodness.
You may have heard that Google is introducing a new Web Browser, “Chrome.” If you are tempted to install and use this browser for investigative research of any kind, pay attention to the following quote from the “Terms of Service…”
“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”
Read the fine print… Your “confidential data” may not be so confidential.
How do you feel about spam on your cell phone? Once I got a text message from “Brianna” who “wanted to meet me” and I did not appreciate the porn spam.
I’ve heard this story twice on NPR this afternoon and think it’s a terrible idea. If I heard this correctly, the Obama campaign will text-message its supporters and ask them to text-message everyone on their cell phone’s contact list. All we need is political spam on our cell phones, so I sure hope not! Unwanted text messages are not only annoying but also cost $$!
All Things Considered, August 28, 2008 · The Obama campaign has used text messaging to communicate with its supporters. Andrew Rasiej, founder of TechPresident, a blog that focuses on technology and the presidential campaigns, says the cell phone numbers can be used to get out the vote on Nov. 4.
It’s the question that’s been on almost every political junky’s lips: Why has Obama failed to connect to parts of the electorate his candidacy promises to help the most?
“Obama proposes tax cuts that would benefit more people, but his message hasn’t ‘reached’ the middle class. Obama proposes public works and a federal investment program that harkens back to the time of Roosevelt, but workers that have lost jobs recently due to the emergence of new technologies still haven’t ‘heard’ the message. … The problem here in electoral terms, is that Obama’s detailed and well-formulated proposals don’t have the obvious ideological appeal that, perhaps, must be more easily understandable and acceptable to the electorate he has to win over. Ironically (or tragically, if you wish), what seems like a rationally crafted proposal lacks the easy “appeal” that the Republicans know how to exploit so well.”
It’s not only C-Span and the television networks that will cover the convention this year. Bloggers, video-loggers, and even party delegates themselves are promising to provide their take on the events at the Democratic National Convention. This could be the most blogged, v-logged, and photographed convention in the nation’s history.
Even C-Span, the square, lumbering public affairs cable network is getting interactive: It’s making its convention footage searchable and embeddable online. It’s augmenting its old boob-tube camera-on-a-tripod footage with raw footage shot from cell-phones and streaming online video with Qik. (The network teamed up with the Washington DC firm New Media Strategies to create its convention hub.) The hub is also aggregating blog and Twitter postings about the convention.
The Democratic National Convention Committee is itself encouraging independent-spirited coverage of its convention. Its providing video-uploading stations for v-loggers in the convention hall. It also plans to communicate with and ask for feedback from attendees with text messages, says Brooke Colangelo, the DNCC’s director of technology in an interview.
Barack Obama’s now-famous text-message announcement of his VP pick reveals something about the candidate that should really worry the Republicans. What it reveals is not that he’s a smart technologist. If he was, he would have known that sending 10 million SMS messages at the same time is pretty much guaranteed not to work; it’s not designed for that. [WaPo stories here.] What it does reveal is that this is probably the smartest marketing campaign we’ve seen in decades.
It’s well known that Obama’s campaign is sophisticated about collecting and cross-referencing voter contacts and using this information to identify two especially important populations: new voters and persuadable voters…
A tool that automatically steals IDs of non-encrypted sessions and breaks into Google Mail accounts has been presented at the Defcon hackers’ conference in Las Vegas.
Last week Google introduced a new feature in Gmail that allows users to permanently switch on SSL and use it for every action involving Gmail, and not only, authentication. Users who did not turn it on now have a serious reason to do so as Mike Perry, the reverse engineer from San Francisco who developed the tool is planning to release it in two weeks.
When you log in to Gmail the website sends a cookie (a text file) containing your session ID to the browser. This file makes it possible for the website to know that you are authenticated and keep you logged in for two weeks, unless you manually hit the sign out button. When you hit sign out this cookie is cleared.
Even though when you log in, Gmail forces the authentication over SSL (secure Socket Layer), you are not secure because it reverts back to a regular unencrypted connection after the authentication is done. According to Google this behavior was chosen because of low-bandwidth users, as SLL connections are slower.
To permanently switch on SSL log on to your GMail account, click on Settings at the upper right corner of the page. The last choice at the bottom of the Settings page is ‘Browser Connection’. Choose ‘Always use https.’
Today marks 10 years since the release of the iconic iMac. Introduced to the public in May of 1998 and available on August 15, 1998, Apple’s friendly all-in-one has undergone many changes over the last 10 years in order to stay current. Although the iMac wasn’t Apple’s first or only all-in-one machine, it was—and remains—the most popular by far, and remains a symbol of Steve Jobs’ lasting impact on Apple.
Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 after a 12-year hiatus spent tinkering with Pixar and NeXT. His first year back was marked by cutting back on projects, reorganizing resources, and desperately trying to turn things around for the suffering company. That included axing a number of products that were simply not going anywhere, such as the much-maligned Apple clone project and the Newton. [READ ON]
Across the country, police are using GPS devices to snare thieves, drug dealers, sexual predators and killers, often without a warrant or court order. Privacy advocates said tracking suspects electronically constitutes illegal search and seizure, violating Fourth Amendment rights of protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and is another step toward George Orwell’s Big Brother society. Law enforcement officials, when they discuss the issue at all, said GPS is essentially the same as having an officer trail someone, just cheaper and more accurate. Most of the time, as was done in the Foltz case, judges have sided with police.
With the courts’ blessing, and the ever-declining cost of the technology, many analysts believe that police will increasingly rely on GPS as an effective tool in investigations and that the public will hear little about it. Last year, FBI agents used a GPS device while investigating an embezzlement scheme to steal from District taxpayers, attaching one to a suspect’s Jaguar.
…several security experts have spoken up, and raised the question of whether or not the Russian government is actually involved. According to Gadi Evron, former Chief information security officer (CISO) for the Israeli government’s ISP, there’s compelling historical evidence to suggest that the Russian military is not involved. He confirms that Georgian websites are under botnet attack, and that yes, these attacks are affecting that country’s infrastructure, but then notes that every politically tense moment over the past ten years has been followed by a spate of online attacks.
[Gadi Evron] compares the latest first cyberwar ever to the Russia-Estonia event, and tentatively chalks it up to Russian partisans self-organizing the attack. That type of perpetrator would likely not feel bound by any cease-fire agreement, as it appears they are not.
Active route hijacking by Russian hackers, redirecting traffic to Russian telecom operators. If confirmed it would suggest that Russia ISPs are capable of enforcing an information blockage against a “cyber-locked” Georgia. This now appears implausible.
Not knowing exactly how to sign up for a cyberwar, I started with an extensive survey of the Russian blogosphere. My first anonymous mentor, as I learned from this blog post, became frustrated with the complexity of other cyberwarfare techniques used in this campaign and developed a simpler and lighter “for dummies” alternative. All I needed to do was to save a copy of a certain Web page to my hard drive and then open it in my browser…Once accessed, the page would load thumbnailed versions of a dozen key Georgian Web sites in a single window. All I had to do was set the page to automatically update every three to five seconds. Voilà… Read the rest of this entry »
Now John McCain has gone and done it! The Chinese have picked up on the fact that the Republican candidate for president has been misquoting the Great Helmsman Himself, Mao Zedong - and they are not pleased.
“In almost every campaign speech he mentions that, ‘It’s always darkest before it gets pitch black.’ In fact, the original from Chairman Mao was, ‘it’s always darkest before the dawn.’ It’s possible that the Chinese people will soon have had their fill of McCain’s quotes of Mao’s Little Red Book.”
This is the first in a planned series of posts on energy policy, arguably one of the most critical, long-term problems facing not only the United States but the world, and an issue that is already being discussed in the current electoral campaigns.
Fundamentals – The nature of energy
What do we mean when we talk about energy? Most people think of oil, and when they think of oil they think of gasoline prices. Some of the more broad-minded think also of electricity, natural gas, and coal. In the end, some nonsense about energy independence is spoken in most discussions about energy policy, with proposals for the future involving some combination of biofuels, wind power, nuclear, and other non-petroleum-based forms of fueling our lifestyle.
The problem we face regarding energy use and future sources is extremely complex, and solutions cannot be analyzed without a good working knowledge of the underlying science and technology. Unfortunately, it is questionable whether the average American citizen has a good working knowledge of science.
This may seem too basic, but it needs to be remembered that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It changes form (including going to and from matter via the infamous E=mc2 relationship), but it has to come from somewhere. Some of the forms energy can take are taught at the middle school level, such as kinetic energy, which is associated with motion, and gravitational potential energy related to elevation changes in a gravitation field, like being on a hill. When we drop a ball, we are converting gravitational potential energy into kinetic energy.
Chemical potential energy is what makes gasoline so useful to us, and that chemical energy is converted to heat when the gasoline is burned in our cars. Some of the heat is then converted by the engine to kinetic energy used to move the vehicle, while most of the heat is wasted.The point is that the energy is not created, nor is it destroyed, it merely changes form. This fundamental law must be kept in mind during any discussion of energy policy.
August 13th, 2008 By JOE WINDISH, Technology Editor
In a much noticed article today, the NYTimes notes that, weeks before the gunfire, cyberattacks hit Georgia:
Jose Nazario of Arbor Networks in Lexington noticed a stream of data directed at Georgian government sites containing the message: “win+love+in+Rusia.”
Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers. […]
As it turns out, the July attack may have been a dress rehearsal for an all-out cyberwar once the shooting started between Georgia and Russia. According to Internet technical experts, it was the first time a known cyberattack had coincided with a shooting war.
The more oddly serendipitous outcome, however, is that the Russian president’s official Web site is now being hosted in the United States, by Atlanta-based Tulip Systems. The Associated Press reported in a short story Monday that Tulip CEO Nino Doijashvili, a native Georgian (the country), happened to be vacationing there when the fighting broke out.
So who’s behind the attacks? Monday the WSJ found investigators claiming the St. Petersburg-based criminal gang Russian Business Network was responsible. Wired’s Danger Room found skeptics; the NYTimes says the evidence remains unclear.
Salon’s Ratliff talks with a security expert who raises another question:
Since most of Georgia’s Internet connections likely originate in Russia, why wouldn’t the Russians just unplug the Georgians? It would seem at least as effective as denial of service attacks. The New York Times Bits blog reports that Georgia has connections through only Russia and Turkey, although the CIA World Factbook, at least, doesn’t list a Turkey-Georgia fiber connection. At least one major cable into Georgia (as of 2002, it was the only one) originates from Soti, Russia. A planned cable to Bulgaria via the Black Sea isn’t yet complete. But it’s possible, of course, that the government is predominantly utilizing a satellite link.
Wired’s Danger Room and ZDnet’s Zero Day are among those tracking developments.
Cable operators and phone companies signed up about half the number of subscribers in the second quarter of 2008 that they signed up during the same quarter in 2007.
Phone companies are hardest hit. Om Malik says its easily explained:
Cable companies added phone service and offered triple-play service, stealing voice customers from the phone companies. Phone companies are responding to the triple-play threat by rolling out their own video networks, but it is early days and really slow going.
Malik says they should lower prices. Leichtman might agree. They say the telcos are pushing expensive higher speed services when their market wants traditional DSL.
I do not know about anyone else, but I would like to take a little rest from reading, pondering, discussing, and writing about the numerous allegations and accusations that have been flying back and forth between the presidential candidates recently. For lack of a better term, let me call these “Unidentified Flying Accusations,” or “UFAs,” which (how conveniently!) takes me to the topic that I would like to briefly discuss, “Unidentified Flying Objects,“ or “UFOs”
What brings me to this topic is a recent New York Times article by Nick Pope who, according to the Times, is “the author of ‘Open Skies, Closed Minds, [and] was in charge of UFO investigations for the British Ministry of Defense from 1991 to 1994.”
I am neither a believer of UFOs nor one who considers those who believe in them to be total kooks. Nor am I an expert in this sort of phenomena. However, the national security implications that Pope raises in “Unidentified Flying Threats” piqued my interest–and skepticism.
Pope starts his interesting essay as follows:
On the afternoon of Nov. 7, 2006, pilots and airport employees at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago saw a disc-like object hovering over the tarmac for several minutes. Because nothing was tracked on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration did not investigate. Yet radar is not a reliable detector of all aircraft. Stealth planes are designed to be invisible to radar, and many radar systems filter out signals not matching the normal characteristics of aircraft. Did it really make sense to entirely ignore the observations of several witnesses?
Pope describes various UFO sightings in Britain, France and in the U.S., and is concerned that:
[T]he American government has not investigated U.F.O. sightings since 1969, when the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, while Britain and France, in contrast, continue to investigate U.F.O. sightings, because of concerns that some sightings might be attributable to foreign military aircraft breaching their airspace, or to foreign space-based systems of interest to the intelligence community.
Referring back to the weaknesses or deficiencies he attributes to radar, Pope assumes that:
…in the United States, this translates into overdependence on radar data and indifference to all kinds of unidentified aircraft — a weakness that could be exploited by terrorists or anyone seeking to engage in espionage against the United States.
One of my areas of some expertise while in the U.S. Air Force and with industry was related to air defense and air traffic control radars, but such “expertise” is about 20 years “out-of-date.” However, I can not believe that, considering the development and use of stealth and other “invisible” technologies by our adversaries here on earth, we would not have come up with our own “counter-technologies“ to provide timely and effective detection, identification, and, if necessary, destruction of any possible threat to our security—terrestrial or otherwise.
True, the Air Force “officially” ended its Blue Book Project in 1969, but, again, I am confident that our government, through other agencies, methods, technology—and funding—is continuing to be vigilant in this area.
The famous October 20, 1969, (USAF Brig. Gen. C. H.) “Bolender Memo” that recommended termination of Project Blue Book significantly included several caveats such as:
Termination of Project Blue Book would leave no official federal office to receive reports of UFOs. However, as already stated, reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.
Moreover, reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55-11, and are not part of the Blue Book system
And, finally,
… the defense function could be performed within the framework established for intelligence and surveillance operations without the continuance of a special unit such as Project Blue Book.
Again, I am not an expert on, nor am I on either side of the UFO debate, but I have absolutely no problem repeating what we used to say during the days of the Soviet nuclear-tipped-ICBM threat: “Sleep well, your U.S. Air Force is watching over you.” This, I am positive, still goes not only with respect to the present earthbound threat, but also when it comes to the “little green men” threat.
There are some people in this world who think President Bush has been a great president - even in France. One such person is French historian Alexandre Adler - also known as France’s foremost neocon. In this article, Adler makes a very convincing case for President Bush’s legacy and his ‘unparalleled service to Europe.’
“At a time when “Obamania” is in full swing, why not say all the good things we can about George W. Bush, if not about the eight years he spent battling terrorism? Indeed, a certain amount of false evidence has been laid at the doorstep of the current U.S. president. … The first such item is in the process of crumbling before our eyes: not only was the destruction of the Baathist regime in Iraq not a failure for the United States, but it’s now turning into a genuine success. First of all, because indeed, Saddam Hussein did a good job organizing what was left of Iraq’s state apparatus into an unwavering support system for terrorist operations that America found intolerable. Then, because the current transformation of Iraq has had a considerable medium-term impact: Iraqis have voted freely three times since 2003, although to be sure, these free elections are not yet entirely pluralist. Nevertheless, they have played a role in helping assess the actual size of the three major communities in the country [Sunni, Shiite and Kurd] and have also allowed the real political majority to emerge in Iraq [Shiites rather than Sunnis].”
“We now see that by maintaining strong growth, and even at this moment, by keeping America from entering a recession that the bursting of the subprime bubble clearly provoked, George Bush, helped mightily by [FED Chairman] Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, his remarkable treasury secretary, has done unparalleled service to the whole of Europe.
Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, the already-mentioned Hank Paulson, and General Petraeus in Baghdad, as well as Zalmay Khalilzad, ambassador and a veritable patron of Afghanistan, will in time come to be seen as true statesmen whose achievements are simply impressive.”
Adler also looks at the situation in the wider Middle East, Latin America, China and North Korea - and although significant blunders are mentioned, he gives President Bush high marks.
In mid-July, representatives of Microsoft traveled to San Francisco in search of people who hated Windows Vista. The company recruited 140 Mac and PC users who thought Microsoft’s latest operating system was slow, that it crashed constantly, that it was incompatible with various devices, and that installing it would be a pain. None of these people had ever used Vista; they’d only heard from others that it sucked. When they were asked to watch a short demonstration of a brand-new Microsoft operating system called Windows Mojave, the Vista-haters were blown away. The new OS was quick and pretty, it handled photos and videos and music with aplomb, and it never crashed. “Why didn’t you guys release this instead of that Vista crap?” many wondered.
You know what’s coming…”Windows “Mojave” was really Windows Vista.” Farhad isn’t buying. He says the Windows Vista isn’t a terrible operating system. But that they put videos of the experiment online and turned it into an ad campaign, at best, conveys a mixed message. What’s more:
Participants in the Mojave Experiment were selected based on an obviously irrational aversion to Vista. They were silly to have hated Vista without ever trying it. And that’s what the experiment proved—that people who blindly believe that Vista is a nightmare are happy to learn that it’s not.
But it’s also important to point out what Microsoft’s test doesn’t prove: that you should buy Windows Vista. Participants in the Mojave Experiment handled the software for just a few minutes, and they were helped along by a technician who showed them the ins and outs (a service that Apple offers for new Mac buyers but which you’d be hard-pressed to find for a Windows machine). The test subjects didn’t have to suffer through the frustration of installing the OS, setting it up to work with a printer or home network, starting it up, shutting it down, or seeing it drag during a fast-paced game.
Microsoft says it did the campaign because “perceptions [of the improved Windows Vista] have not necessarily kept pace with reality” and that people who harbored “a negative perception hadn’t actually seen or used the product.”
My experience with college students suggests that Microsoft is correct; they’ve got a big perception problem. If Farhad is correct — “if you’ve got to fool them, haven’t you already lost?” — this campaign won’t do much to help out.
Schwartz concludes that, “To say that trolls pose a threat to the Internet at this point is like saying that crows pose a threat to farming.” He wonders:
[E]ven if we had the resources to aggressively prosecute trolls, would we want to? Are we ready for an Internet where law enforcement keeps watch over every vituperative blog and backbiting comments section, ready to spring at the first hint of violence? Probably not. All vigorous debates shade into trolling at the perimeter; it is next to impossible to excise the trolling without snuffing out the debate.
Mike Nizza of the Times’ The Lede Blog follows the diverging threads of two lessons that have emerged on avoiding trouble online and off based on the simple act of doing nothing:
Every day people are encountered with difficult questions — and not just from trolls and cops. But should you answer them? As they say, shoot for a Socratic dialogue, and you just might reach a decent discussion.
Xeni Jardin says, “the [Troll] piece is a really good read” and digs up some really good relevant links. Among them — Fox 11 News video investigates anonymous “hackers on steroids,” and “Craigslist griefer” Jason Fortuny’s very sound advice on the “only two ways to deal with a troll.”
In a separate post Schwartz answers the question, do you troll? “…yes, I think we all troll from time to time, most often in person. We’re just not always aware of it”
So do we blame the Internet? Or Free Speech? Or is it just us? Schwartz again, from the magazine piece:
Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?
One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you.
Why inflict anguish on a helpless stranger? It’s tempting to blame technology, which increases the range of our communications while dehumanizing the recipients. Cases like An Hero and Megan Meier presumably wouldn’t happen if the perpetrators had to deliver their messages in person. But while technology reduces the social barriers that keep us from bedeviling strangers, it does not explain the initial trolling impulse. This seems to spring from something ugly — a destructive human urge that many feel but few act upon, the ambient misanthropy that’s a frequent ingredient of art, politics and, most of all, jokes. There’s a lot of hate out there, and a lot to hate as well
tells us 
