Interesting Links for 07-04-2016

[andrewducker]

Britons learn everything is a massive con and then go back to work (tags: society tax inequality satire ) What is a "Good Job"? (tags: jobs psychology work ) Discovery of 1,000-year-old Viking site in Canada could rewrite history (tags: history canada ) 'Scunthorpe' is a four-letter word: Facebook stops band from promoting Lincolnshire gig (

Comments

[kalimac]

1) If we already know that the Vikings had a settlement in northern Newfoundland, to discover that they also had one in western Newfoundland is extremely interesting and adds quite a lot to our knowledge, but "rewrite history" tends to imply a massive paradigm shift in our understanding that doesn't seem to be on offer here.

2) "Google intentionally bricking devices" is one reason why the Google Books database makes me, as a librarian, nervous. They could shut it down at any time, or Google as a company could fizzle (sounds improbable, but remember: once, AOL stalked the Earth) and the database fall into the hands of someone uninterested in supporting it. As a social democrat, I favor public ownership for such projects of public utility. What you do is hire companies like Google to provide the technical knowhow, and they get paid, but they don't own the product.

3) This is far from the first I've read about the Beagle-Cochran suits. Every polemic I've seen from either side, and I've seen several, has raised far more questions than it's answered. The last I saw either of them was at the San Francisco premiere of the Last Unicorn tour several years ago. It was a well-organized success, Peter looked happy and well, and Connor was being neither bossy nor hogging the show (though he did speak at some length; so did Peter). I can't speak personally to what's happened since then.

4) Sugar conspiracy: When Lustig reported that Yudkin's book was so hard to find when he got back to California, I was immediately suspicious. It's not that obscure a book. The first American edition (which was retitled Sweet and Dangerous, so maybe that's why Lustig couldn't find it) is held by at least 16 university libraries in California, a pretty fair number, including 3 campuses of the University of California, Lustig's institution (though not by his own campus, which is very small). That's not counting the original British edition, the 1973 paperback, the revised 1986 edition from Viking, or (more recently than Lustig was looking for it) the 2012 edition from Penguin. Also numerous translations. I don't know how much else in the article is similarly misleading.

[gonzo21]

1) The 'Paradigm' in our thinking in this regard would be if we could SOMEHOW get away from thinking about how whoever might have 'discovered' the Americas, and for it to become the consensus understanding that America had already been discovered by the people who lived there long before Europeans turned up.

[kalimac]

The only "discovery" mentioned in the article is the discovery of this particular archaeological site. There's nothing about the Vikings "discovering America."

The paradigm I'd like to get rid of is the one that demands that something can only be discovered once. If you find something that you didn't know about and isn't generally known in your cultural milieu, you've discovered it. That's how the word is used. Should we not say that the archaeological site was discovered by archaeologists because, after all, the Vikings had lived there long before the archaeologists turned up?

[lilchiva]

I have agreed with 100% of everything you have typed on this thread. Thank you so very much.

[ckd]

On #2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HathiTrust

[kalimac]

Well, it looks like they're piggybacking on Google Books. You can do that, but if this was suggested as a response to my creeb, I don't think it qualifies.

[ckd]

the database [could] fall into the hands of someone uninterested in supporting it

A consortium of libraries holding additional copies of the database seems like a reasonable way to prevent such a scenario making the content unavailable.

From their "About" page: "HathiTrust is a partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than 100 partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide." (Emphasis added.

[kalimac]

But do they own it? People think they own files provided them by Google or Amazon or whatever, but Google or Amazon or whatever can and do take them away.

[ckd]

It's possible that not a single responsible person at any of the involved institutions has noticed that, despite a clearly stated mission that DRM would make difficult or impossible to fulfill, all of their book scan data is nonetheless impossible for them to use without Google's help.

It's also possible that they're all agents of a secret society formed by Borges fans who are hoping to create his Library of Babel, or at least some practical subset thereof.

I don't find either scenario particularly likely.

[kalimac]

I don't see any need to be sarcastic here. Google owns the Google Books database, in the sense that they organized the scanning, they compiled the database, and they have the right to take it down. I see nothing making clear that this is a separate database that the consortium owns. And it's not necessary to have DRM to remove something that, after all, sits on your own servers.

For that matter, DRM as I understand the term to mean was not necessary when Amazon decided to delete from people's Kindles a book they'd concluded they had no right to sell.

[ckd]

https://www.hathitrust.org/mission_goals
Goals

• To build a reliable and increasingly comprehensive co-owned and co-managed digital archive of library materials converted from the print collections of the member institutions.
  
• [...]
  
• To develop partnerships and services that ensure preservation of the materials in HathiTrust and the entire print and digital scholarly record.
  

ETA: https://www.hathitrust.org/technology goes into much more detail about their infrastructure.

[kalimac]

Still says not a word about whether they own the material or are just licensing it from Google.

On this page it implies the latter: "The initial focus of the partnership has been on preserving and providing access to digitized book and journal content from the partner library collections. This includes both in copyright and public domain materials digitized by Google, the Internet Archive, and Microsoft, as well as through in-house initiatives." That sounds to me like what I said originally, that they're piggybacking on Google, as well as on other collectors and doing their own stuff. It could get taken away, and not just by Google physically removing it from their servers: if Google owns the collection, they can restrict rights of usage legally.

ETA: The technology page sounds like an assurance that the consortium is not going to drop the ball themselves by accident. Still says nothing about whether they own the Google Books database.