News

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

what's hot what's not

Budapest Open Access Initiative

Prior to the Internet the transfer of scientific and academic knowlege took place in peer reviewed 'Journals'. This continues today. Such publications enjoy unpaid contributors, a captive audience, and price tags to make make you weep.

These are the first three that came up in a Google search. These are academic pricing models. This is one of the reasons that education costs so damn much.

The dissemination of ideas in the scientific and academic world was one of the primary factors in the creation of the Internet.

The Budapest Open Access Initiative hopes to bring this primary goal to reality.

This is the opening paragraph of the Initiative website.

"An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge."

Budapest Open Access Initiative
read here - go there
Source: Budapest Open Access Initiative

Enter the Publishing Sock Puppets!!

"But, says Sally Morris, of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, open-access initiatives will undermine existing journals without replacing them."

"Her concerns are echoed by Albert Henderson, former editor of Publishing Research Quarterly."

"It is a sad day when a well intentioned philanthropist like George Soros is duped into foolishly spending millions undermining libraries, librarians, authors and referees," Mr Henderson said."

Critics attack net journal initiative
read here - go there
Source:BBC.uk

Does this sound the least bit familiar? Isn't this the same party line every other publisher has used?

I'm not a thief. I'm a customer.

Dan Gillmor's latest piece encapsulates an excellent description of what is wrong with the 'entertainment' industrie's attempt to balkanize the internet.

Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don't take a stand
read here - go there
Source: Dan Gillmor

Spammers lose in small-claims court

One state steps up, 49 to go.

"Free-speech group Peacefire.org has won a legal round in its fight against unsolicited e-mail, invoking Washington state's anti-spam law."

Spammers lose in small-claims court
read here - go there
Source: News.com

p i x e l v i e w - behind the screen with independent designers, developers and others.

Bob Frankston
You are here because you have a personal computer.
You have a personal computer because of a program called Visi Calc.
Bob Frankston co-created Visi Calc. He is way beyond that now.

p i x e l v i e w - Bob Frankston
read here - go there

Eldred v. Ashcroft - Eldred Legal Defense Fund

Here is where to send money.