The EFF is suing over Section 1201 the DMCA. This has the potential to be HUGE for advocates of fair use and remix culture. The DMCA has so many things wrong with it, and DRM has been for too long used as a bludgeon to those who would exercise their fair use rights.
Now, what constitutes fair use is another matter entirely.
From ArsTechnica.
Ars Technica has a fascinating article today about Jimmy Carter’s involvement in saving the Space Shuttle program. I was born during the waning days of the Carter administration and had no idea that he was fairly lukewarm on NASA’s manned spaceflight program. It is a wonderful glimpse into this key period of development for the shuttle, and the author even got a few words from President Carter himself for the story.
Check it out here.
This article is a few weeks old, but I finally got around to reading and watching the video in its entirety during lunch today.
Buzzfeed version of the title: What happens when a filmmaker and a computer programmer get together and let an AI write a script? The results may surprise you.
I find this interesting on a number of levels, not only for the computer programming portion, but more so about what the results (i.e. script) say about the sci-fi medium. As the article points out (and what is apparent just by watching the film), so much of the dialogue centers around “I don’t know what you mean,” as so much sci-fi dialogue does in order to allow for the explanation of things to the audience. It is a mirror to our culture.
Interesting story today in WIRED about the effort to archive the entirety of the Internet in its dynamic form. To avoid having a “digital black hole,” we need to make sure old sites and information are still accessible into the future. Be still my digital archivists’ heart. Find it here.
I love to browse ArsTechnica and Wired as a break from my work day. I find both of them to have smart, well written, and insightful articles that speak to those things that I am passionate about.
Today, ArsTechnica has a feature story about the history of Open Access publishing in academia. As a librarian, this is a subject that is near and dear to my profession as probably the biggest issues facing libraries (even bigger than Google, Wikipedia, and eBooks), especially academic libraries, is the crushing cost of journal subscriptions. Within academic circles, this problem is well known and some very smart people, spearheaded by scientists who need open access to find the latest research and results in their field but sometimes find the way blocked by pay walls, have been leading the charge for journals without access fees.
I hope to write a post about Open Access, Open Source, and Creative Commons soon, but for now, just check out the ArsTechnica story here.
