LISNews: Librarian News

\"You start up a DVD movie and before the film starts, you encounter an annoying advertisement. But when you try to fast-forward past the commercial, your player doesn\'t respond.\"
\"You can play your new audio CD on your stereo system, but when you insert it into the CD drive on your Macintosh computer [or PC for that matter], the CD doesn\'t work.\"
DRM. Have so few letters ever inspired such fear in the hearts of librarians?

On the desk, I was flipping though the April 8, 2003 PC Magazine that was patiently waiting to be processed. Inside I found a good little article on DRM. If you don\'t know about DRM you might want to learn about it. For starters it is an acronym for Digital Rights Management. But I don\'t need to sit here insulting your intelligence. Read the article, which happens to have a nice DRM webliography.

Alleged menace to public (and academic?) libraries, Borders Group, has teamed with Intel to provide \"high-speed wireless Internet access to customers at more than 400 Borders Books & Music® locations nationwide.\" Nowhere in full article does it state if this access will be available to the public for free of for a cost. Borders has hooked up with Intel® for this venture. Intel® is promoting their Intel® Centrino(TM) mobile technology not only in these outlets, but also Hilton hotels and resorts. [link goes to article and list of hotels] and McDonald\'s.If libraries can\'t be on the cutting edge of this technology, we at least need to be ready and implement it before it gets totally mainstream. While I wish libraries could introduce this technology to everyone, it isn\'t happening that way. The news about Intel® promoting their product is heartening, though, becasue I\'m ready to be connected all of the time. See Wireless Librarian for articles and a list of libraries implementing wireless technology.

David Goldman writes "Kfsource.com recently talked with with Mark Webbink, General Counsel for Red Hat Inc. Red Hat is the largest and arguably the most recognized provider of open source technology in the United States. We asked Mr. Webbink about why open source software is important to librarians and legal professionals, wheter the GPL (GNU Public License) is truly anti-competitive as some have maintained as well as the issues surrounding the controversial DMCA. Mr. Webbink also responds critics who claim, open source software is by nature "viral"..."

CNET Says a consulting group that scrutinizes the source code underlying several operating systems has found that a key networking component of Linux is of higher quality in several ways than that of competing closed-source software.
I'd love to see this repeated in other areas.

"Open-source applications...allow anyone to look at the source code. For major open-source applications, such as the Linux kernel, the Apache Web server, etc., dozens or hundreds of people will read the source code either to learn how it works, make modifications or look for mistakes," Trappe said. "Because the development process is also open, these independent reviewers can report the defects they find and even suggest appropriate fixes."