On Cspan a couple of nights ago there was a panel on the lawsuit by a publishers association against the Google Library Project before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. There were people on all sides, mostly lawyera, as well as in the audience.
The interesting result of this discussion was not so much that the Google plan is opposed by the publishers of in-print books, only about 5% of the 25 million books, that could be copied by the project, that is to be expected, but that the bulk of the books still covered by copyright are out of print. There is this huge gap, most the the 25 Million titles that are not profitable enough to reprint, and yet the way copyright law works Google has to mount this expensive effort to contact the copyright holders and get their permission to copy their books.
The Google Library Project does not make the whole text available to its users, only small "snippits" of indexed chunks of material. The whole work will be copied and put into databases and the company assures us that the content will be secure. Of course people are up in arms that digital copies can be compromised. Ironically, many large library systems have been digitizing their holdings for years as a conservancy. Google is volunteering to help them do this task.
Like the parellel debate over music copying, the question seems to boil down to short-term profits for publishers, which they and the artists are entitled to, vs. long-term availability of creations whose economic value is not supported by traditional publishers. On the one hand there are many valuable materials that are not used enough to return a profit in the usual business model and on the other there are things of value that never get selected for distribution for profit that come to get value either for only a few people, or become important much later. Traditionally, works that become famous after copyrights have elapsed go into the public domain, where reworkings by others can garner copyright protection. The issue for the Google plan appears to be how copyright holders "opt out" of the system. The argument for the suit appears to be that the publishers want copyright law to automatically exclude materials from the plan. The Court could decide in favor of Google that "opting out" is a new business model for publishers, a cost of doing business; that it is far more valuable for society to have hard to get creations that are out of print and not profitable to publish available at least in part on-line and to allow copyrighted works to be included when it is either the intention of the author to make his work available and that the role of the publisher is to tell the system to exclude works in-print or under copyright. The Court could also rule that works kept out of print for a period of time before the copyright expires could be included except when the creator opts out.
Friday, November 25, 2005
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Got PhP to work on Mac OSX
I had been stuck on reading an HTML form using PhP with the POST method when I learned about the declare globals problem and saw that the arguments to the POST, are teated like a perl associative array. To get "foo=..&" from the POST you use {$_POST['foo']} in the PhP script.
Secondly, provided PhP is enabled in the web server, ususally apache, one can use perl's opendir() and readir() to generate index pages on the fly. For example I have a dir of XML files and rather having to try xlink, which may not be implemented, to keep an index file up to date, I can make the index be the PhP file which reads the dir and spits out links to the files, or I can run the PhP file once whenever I edit the XML and save the output HTML file as the index.
Secondly, provided PhP is enabled in the web server, ususally apache, one can use perl's opendir() and readir() to generate index pages on the fly. For example I have a dir of XML files and rather having to try xlink, which may not be implemented, to keep an index file up to date, I can make the index be the PhP file which reads the dir and spits out links to the files, or I can run the PhP file once whenever I edit the XML and save the output HTML file as the index.
Monday, November 21, 2005
Reading Bach from a score, crossing parts.
This morning I was listening to the J. S. Bach Double Violin Concerto in D Minor BWV 1043, a piece most beloved by me. Like the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto the top string parts cross a great deal as Bach's invertible counterpoint or canon style dictate. You notice this if you are looking at the score, but listening will not show it unless you are hearing it live or on a very good recording with excellent acoustical source localization.
In the Double Concerto it is the invertible counterpoint in the two solo parts that cause one soloist to alternatively play higher notes than the other and they switch top melodic lines throughout. Also, the solo parts are doubled in all the tutti passages, making one think of this music as more like a concerto grosso than a two violin concerto. The Mozart Sinphonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin and Viola is much less a Concerto Grosso because although there are tutti passages, the solo parts are much harder than the tutti strings and are therefore not strictly doubled as in the Bach.
In the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto first movement the parts are much more in the style of canon with the parts alternating as leader and follower. In the other movements the counterpoint is more invertible.Either segment of melody can function in the lower or upper voice with another segment below.
One wonders what forces Bach expected for the Brandenburgs. Today we hear many players on a part, but Bach may have written the parts all for soloists. Certainly hearing them on original instruments is a revelation as the thinner sonority reveals why Bach wrote the inner parts that are not often heard in modern performances, but maybe they were also true chanber works intended for a string sextet as in the Sixth Brandenburg.
In the Double Concerto it is the invertible counterpoint in the two solo parts that cause one soloist to alternatively play higher notes than the other and they switch top melodic lines throughout. Also, the solo parts are doubled in all the tutti passages, making one think of this music as more like a concerto grosso than a two violin concerto. The Mozart Sinphonia Concertante in E-flat for Violin and Viola is much less a Concerto Grosso because although there are tutti passages, the solo parts are much harder than the tutti strings and are therefore not strictly doubled as in the Bach.
In the Sixth Brandenburg Concerto first movement the parts are much more in the style of canon with the parts alternating as leader and follower. In the other movements the counterpoint is more invertible.Either segment of melody can function in the lower or upper voice with another segment below.
One wonders what forces Bach expected for the Brandenburgs. Today we hear many players on a part, but Bach may have written the parts all for soloists. Certainly hearing them on original instruments is a revelation as the thinner sonority reveals why Bach wrote the inner parts that are not often heard in modern performances, but maybe they were also true chanber works intended for a string sextet as in the Sixth Brandenburg.
Formatting
The form one submits postings to is somewhat stupid about line breaks as the last posting shows. I tried to reformat it in the blog editor, but it got worse. Oh well.
The skeptic's approach to "Intention"
The book "The Power of Intention" by Dryer, and his televised speeches make claims about the power of one's mind to make fundamental changes in one's life. A common flaw of teachings that refer to consciousness raising, self-empowering or self-realization schemes is that the verbiage often sounds spiritual, religious or mystical. It can be lost on the very most fixated,"realist"
and "skeptical" out there. So when Dryer walks up to lighted prop in his talks or speaks about an infinite force that comes from a quantum. Quite a few smile, at least to them selves.
So, is there any way to look at Dryer and others who make similar claims or people who speak in even more psychic or spiritual terms about connection to the cosmos etc. so that a hard headed "realist" might consider that what they are saying is a metaphor at least for something that it true?
One way to look at this is to say that the abundance that is out there exists but that our failure as fixated beings is to notice it and use it. Consciousness in the sense of socially-mediated "normal", "rational" thought is an artifact of conditioning that closes off our minds from noticing subtle signs that are always there which when we become aware of them make us appear to have extraordinary perceptions and to have unnatural powers. In this sense our fixated perceptions are always subtracted from the larger field of events we choose or are conditioned not to notice. When one experiences the opening of awareness it imay feel like a spiritual or religious experience, but it may also be similar to the flood of sensations that a psychoactive drug can sometimes cause. The latter experience can induce psychosis, but in a less extreme case such experience can cause a redefinition of the filtering of inputs in which a person becomes aware of things that he did not notice before.
In this way the mind can be seen as a filter in which we truly can change the parameters. Consciousness is a product of this filtering which is absolutely necessary to prevent overload, but it is not reality. Reality is at least a consensus of what people think is out there, but if it truly is external to ourselves, we are not directly aware of it. What we call "reality" can be thought of as created by ourselves, thus we have much more control of that as attitudional habits and beliefs. It is that which the self-realization verbiage addresses.
Our development often fixates us into the false conclusion that the filtering we call reality, which is mediated by our family, social associations, societal expectations, etc., is immutable, out of our control. We can feel like a victim of it, or we can cling to it without questioning the power we might have to interact with and change it. The idea that we can change it is the message of all these lines of helping.
One can regard all manner of unscientific or pseudoscientific systems from wicca to psychic as metaphor for this interaction we can have with the filtering done by our minds. What Dryer and others emphasize is that focusing of attention and intention may really shape our destiny. It may be as simple as what we set as goals manifest fleeting signs of what we must get to achieve them, but most of us miss these "gifts" either for not forming the goal or for paying attention for the signs of their arrival. So, the search for the Holy Grail story contains the result that the path was always close by but for looking for it after we have searched far and wide.
and "skeptical" out there. So when Dryer walks up to lighted prop in his talks or speaks about an infinite force that comes from a quantum. Quite a few smile, at least to them selves.
So, is there any way to look at Dryer and others who make similar claims or people who speak in even more psychic or spiritual terms about connection to the cosmos etc. so that a hard headed "realist" might consider that what they are saying is a metaphor at least for something that it true?
One way to look at this is to say that the abundance that is out there exists but that our failure as fixated beings is to notice it and use it. Consciousness in the sense of socially-mediated "normal", "rational" thought is an artifact of conditioning that closes off our minds from noticing subtle signs that are always there which when we become aware of them make us appear to have extraordinary perceptions and to have unnatural powers. In this sense our fixated perceptions are always subtracted from the larger field of events we choose or are conditioned not to notice. When one experiences the opening of awareness it imay feel like a spiritual or religious experience, but it may also be similar to the flood of sensations that a psychoactive drug can sometimes cause. The latter experience can induce psychosis, but in a less extreme case such experience can cause a redefinition of the filtering of inputs in which a person becomes aware of things that he did not notice before.
In this way the mind can be seen as a filter in which we truly can change the parameters. Consciousness is a product of this filtering which is absolutely necessary to prevent overload, but it is not reality. Reality is at least a consensus of what people think is out there, but if it truly is external to ourselves, we are not directly aware of it. What we call "reality" can be thought of as created by ourselves, thus we have much more control of that as attitudional habits and beliefs. It is that which the self-realization verbiage addresses.
Our development often fixates us into the false conclusion that the filtering we call reality, which is mediated by our family, social associations, societal expectations, etc., is immutable, out of our control. We can feel like a victim of it, or we can cling to it without questioning the power we might have to interact with and change it. The idea that we can change it is the message of all these lines of helping.
One can regard all manner of unscientific or pseudoscientific systems from wicca to psychic as metaphor for this interaction we can have with the filtering done by our minds. What Dryer and others emphasize is that focusing of attention and intention may really shape our destiny. It may be as simple as what we set as goals manifest fleeting signs of what we must get to achieve them, but most of us miss these "gifts" either for not forming the goal or for paying attention for the signs of their arrival. So, the search for the Holy Grail story contains the result that the path was always close by but for looking for it after we have searched far and wide.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
New to this, other blogs interesting, varied
I've had a look at some of the other blogs here. I am amazed with the variety and with what others have done with the templates and incorporating images with the text, and the freedom to customize appears to be greater than I first thought. I am going to try to get a friend who is a writer who doesn't post much on-line beyound e-mail to do her own blog. I have alot to learn about all this.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
Trying a posting from another system and browser
This posting is being made from a Red Hat 9 system running Mozilla 1.2.1. The other postings were made on a Mac Mini running MacOS 1.4 running the shipped version of Safari. I notice that there are more options in the editing tool bar under Mozilla.
I see from the page source that the posting tool is a java script. The template looked like XML with a stylesheet. This is like stuff I have been trying on my website with perl and XML. I didn't yet have a form like this, though, which is why am trying this.
I see from the page source that the posting tool is a java script. The template looked like XML with a stylesheet. This is like stuff I have been trying on my website with perl and XML. I didn't yet have a form like this, though, which is why am trying this.
What if the troops were pulled from Iraq?
I listened with interest to the debate in the House or Rep. last night and the tactic of forcing a vote on immediate withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. The resolution was defeated immediately.
Despite the possibility that the issue was not really that anyone wanted to have an immediate pull-out now, but more that they wanted accountability, a plan, the question can be raised about what would really happen if we decided to be out of Iraq sooner than later. The possible answeres reveal much about what our unstated goals may be.
First, I would guess that most Iraqiis don't want us in their country much longer. Of all the factions the Kurds have the most to gain by us being there as protection against reprisals from the Sunnis. The Sheite majority also gain by having us there, but they are really uncomfortable with unvelievers there and would probably like an Islamic Republic like Iran that would be hostile to the US. Ironically, it was a secular Sunni centered government that was most in line with U.S. Interests. Were it not for Sadamm Hussain, we might have tolerated a repressive regime in Iraq.
If we pulled out within say the next six months, what is likely to happen? I think that what is now an insurgancy that targets Americans as well as other factions degenerates into all out civil war. What is wrong with that? We stepped in and destabilized the country much like Yougaslavia was distabilized after the death of Tito. We could do an about face and embrace a UN brokered peace keeping mission like we had to in Bosnia and Kosovo, but the attitude of the Bush Administration to the UN makes that unlikely. So, the only outcome without us is probably a civil war unless some miracle consensus emerges.
People in Congress have said that the Iraqiis need to find their own solution. This is either going to be now or after a bloody civil war which we could choose not to be in the middle of. So why do we care and does it matter for finding out how we got into this mess in the first place?
It may be that the worst accusation that can be made about the reason we went to war, namely that it was all about control of oil, may be true afterall. This is certianlly in line with the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman Turks when in 1921 the British proved large reserves of oil there and north in Iran. Whatever real regard we have for the people of Iraq and the painful realization that their self-determination has to be determined by themselves without our intimate help. We may be doing more harm than good, but the Administration may have a not so hidden agenda in geoeconomics in "staying the course". People in the Pentagon have been saying that we would be there for years.
Despite the possibility that the issue was not really that anyone wanted to have an immediate pull-out now, but more that they wanted accountability, a plan, the question can be raised about what would really happen if we decided to be out of Iraq sooner than later. The possible answeres reveal much about what our unstated goals may be.
First, I would guess that most Iraqiis don't want us in their country much longer. Of all the factions the Kurds have the most to gain by us being there as protection against reprisals from the Sunnis. The Sheite majority also gain by having us there, but they are really uncomfortable with unvelievers there and would probably like an Islamic Republic like Iran that would be hostile to the US. Ironically, it was a secular Sunni centered government that was most in line with U.S. Interests. Were it not for Sadamm Hussain, we might have tolerated a repressive regime in Iraq.
If we pulled out within say the next six months, what is likely to happen? I think that what is now an insurgancy that targets Americans as well as other factions degenerates into all out civil war. What is wrong with that? We stepped in and destabilized the country much like Yougaslavia was distabilized after the death of Tito. We could do an about face and embrace a UN brokered peace keeping mission like we had to in Bosnia and Kosovo, but the attitude of the Bush Administration to the UN makes that unlikely. So, the only outcome without us is probably a civil war unless some miracle consensus emerges.
People in Congress have said that the Iraqiis need to find their own solution. This is either going to be now or after a bloody civil war which we could choose not to be in the middle of. So why do we care and does it matter for finding out how we got into this mess in the first place?
It may be that the worst accusation that can be made about the reason we went to war, namely that it was all about control of oil, may be true afterall. This is certianlly in line with the history of the region since the fall of the Ottoman Turks when in 1921 the British proved large reserves of oil there and north in Iran. Whatever real regard we have for the people of Iraq and the painful realization that their self-determination has to be determined by themselves without our intimate help. We may be doing more harm than good, but the Administration may have a not so hidden agenda in geoeconomics in "staying the course". People in the Pentagon have been saying that we would be there for years.
Please see my website in the side bar link
I put the link to my website in the side bar.
My website is my personal site but also concerns my interest in classical music. See the music essays about my ideas
on repertiore and musical materials and forms.
My website is my personal site but also concerns my interest in classical music. See the music essays about my ideas
on repertiore and musical materials and forms.
This is Bruce Salem's Blog
This is an experiment. I want to see how well this templated environment works. I have a web journal on my private site at euphon.org, but it doesn't have a feedback mechanism yet. I want to try this to see how well the interface works and what the quality is of the people who do this sort of thing.
Having participated in USENET newsgroups years ago, I know what people can say and do. I do see that there is a moderation feature here.
I am 59, and have worked most of my life in some form of High Tech. My degrees were in Geology, but I have had a life-long passion for classical music, which is in evidance in my website.
Having participated in USENET newsgroups years ago, I know what people can say and do. I do see that there is a moderation feature here.
I am 59, and have worked most of my life in some form of High Tech. My degrees were in Geology, but I have had a life-long passion for classical music, which is in evidance in my website.
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