May 2007

Filters Foil Frivolous Fear Mongering. Software has prevented Family First (Australian) senator Steve Fielding from showing Communications Minister Helen Coonan internet pornography on her Parliament House office computer. Senator Coonan initially agreed to allow Senator Fielding to show her offensive material that could be accessed from her office computer and asked him to carry out a similar demonstration at the National Library.

However, as the time drew near for the demonstrations, Senator Coonan said she had discovered that there was an internet filtering program on the computers in her office.

Neat Story On the Haskell Library in Derby Line VT. Step through the front door of the Haskell Library and you’re in the United States.

Walk across the carpeted floor to the circulation desk and you’re in Canada. But if you sit down on the couch, you’re back in the U.S.

The 106-year-old Romanesque building, which straddles the international border, has enjoyed a kind of informal immunity from border restrictions through the years.

But a U.S. Border Patrol crackdown focusing on three unguarded streets linking Derby Line with Stanstead, Quebec, across the border, could soon change that.

“There’s been an increase in illegal activity, both north and south, in the last little while,” said Mark Henry, the operations officer for the Border Patrol’s Swanton sector, which runs across northern New York, Vermont and New Hampshire. “There have been some significant cases.”

Joe Hodnicki writes “Carnegie Mellon researchers have come up with a way for people to type in snippets of books, confirm they’re not machines and help speed up the process of getting searchable texts online. How? By using scanned text images for CAPTCHAs. Brilliant! See The Law Librarian Blog for a link CNN.”

GSO writes “Full story here. Wayne began burning his books in protest of what he sees as society’s diminishing support for the printed word.

Wayne said next time he will get a permit. He said he envisions monthly bonfires until his supply — estimated at 20,000 books — is exhausted.
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Turkish Culture & Tourism Ministry organized a “Conference of Chairmen of National Libraries of Turkic Republics”, it was reported on Tuesday.
The conference is set to take place between June 4th and 8th in Ankara. Chairman of national libraries of 11 countries, namely Azerbaijan, Hakas Republic, Kazakhstan, Kyrgzstan, Crimea, Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), Bashkordstan, Saha Republic, Tajikistan, Tatarstan, and Turkmenistan will attend the conference.

After losing her latest battle to keep Harry Potter books out of the classroom, a Loganville mother on Tuesday said she may start a new case in federal court.
Laura Mallory, who has challenged the use of the books in schools since 2005, said she was not surprised by Superior Court Judge Ronnie Batchelor’s decision to uphold the Gwinnett County Board of Education’s ruling.
“I’ve done the best I can by myself,” said Mallory, who argued her case without an attorney. “Perhaps we need a whole new case built from the ground up.”

mdoneil writes “Some disgusting piece of human flotsam was arrested for looking at child pornography at a public computer in a Houston community center.

Thank our lucky stars it was not in the library — for many reasons.”

madcow writes “Cory Doctorow’s wonderful BoingBoing has a link to Warren Ellis take on “Burst” culture, ie microchunks of culture, data, information, short attention span, what was I just typing? oh yeah. Bursts.

“* Bursts aren’t contentless, nor do they denote the end of Attention Span. If attention span was dead, JK Rowling wouldn’t be selling paperbacks thick enough to choke a pig, and Neal Stephenson wouldn’t be making a living off books the size of the first bedsit I lived in.””

Somebody writes “New York Times The Book of Kells, the splendidly illustrated Gospels in Latin written 1,200 years ago, is about to undergo laser analysis.
For a manuscript written 1,200 years ago and revered as a wonder of the Western world practically ever since, little is known about the Book of Kells and its splendidly illustrated Gospels in Latin. But the book may be about to surrender a few of its many secrets.”

Lawrence Lessig, law professor and champion of the public domain, has created a Wiki to respond to the op-ed by Mark Helprin arguing for perpetual copyright.