Tuesday, April 09, 2013

Aaron Swartz is dead, his prosecutors are still in office, but open access lives on.

Cry for the bastards, this link.

Crabgrass has posted on Swartz, this google, and you can do your own web search.

My bet, better odds than even money, most readers do not know what The Berlin declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge of 22 October 2003, says, or who signed it. A gold star to you if you already knew.

Linked data.

Stuff at the Internet Archive, e.g., here and here, besides what misc. websites used to look like. I cannot vouch for the Data Hub. I have not used it, but it does exist. Everyone and every cause needs a foundation. You have the right to know about right to know legislative proposals - even a possibility in Minnesota despite the two party political system and its impact on knowing.

A second gold star to you, if you know what the CFAA is, and how anyone might relate it to this post's headline. If you did not already know, some lawsuits can be stupid, and if you burned Truman Capote's Bonfire of the Vanities, would that bonfire relate to vanities, or to pay-the-author presses? (I believe that text was a mainstream item, and Capote did not pay to publish.) Did someone say, lawsuits?

Wrap up links, here, here, here, and did you know that there once was - back to lawsuits - an "Ontario insolvency case," involving dueling attorneys general, north of us? Or did you know that politicians there give speeches, about of all things, public budgets?

In closing, after posting some admittedly eclectic stuff, I recall what at least one pre-med or another would ask when a prof might have gone a bit astray on an academic riff during a lecture, "Will we be responsible for this on the final?"

PLoS.

End of post. (By the way, Bonfire of the Vanities was by Tom Wolf. Not Capote. But the big question, was it a vanity?)