Today — Fair Use Day

EFF_icon_fairuse

Today is Fair Use Day.  What’s that?  Why a day to celebrate fair use, of course.  What’s fair use?  Well, let’s let the copyright office tell us:

The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”

Fort example,my using these images from Amazon is fair use because I am using them in the context of a review.

[Update 2011-01-14 07:41:37] I reread the article and realized I posted the wrong snippet.  Oh, and I thought I would say….this article is not an example of fair use.  Why?  Well, everything produced by the US Government or its employees while at work is in the public domain.  That means there is no copyright on it.  And the eff logo?  Well, I’m not commenting on it directly either.  Perhaps it is fair use, but probably not. But, it is licensed under a creative commons license that allows people to reuse it, like I am here.

Image from electronicfrontierfoundation via flickr

What is this guy talking about?

Take a guess what this guy is talking about below:

From the very first time he asked, I have promised him that I would teach him. But that promise always comes with me enforcing respect and understanding. Thanks to this consistency, my children can by rote say that a xxxxxxxxx is not a toy and that hey are not to touch one unless I am there handing it to them.

…..

That same xxxxxxx is actually hanging within a long arm’s reach of me as I type this, along with several others. And yes, my children have noticed them.

What should be in place of the xxxxxxx?  Well, if you were me, this is EXACTLY what I got taught about firearms.  It was the case in our house with firearms when I was a kid.  They were readily available.  It is EXACTLY what I will teach my kids about firearms.

Go read the original article (first seen here) and come back.  Swords.  They are talking about swords.  Oh, and how old is the kid?  5.  FIVE.  Let’s think about this for a second…..

I doubt anyone would say boingboing is conservative.  I actually think they are quite liberal in many ways.  But here they are praising this guy for teaching his kid…his FIVE year old kid…about swordplay.  I’m sure that most of the editors at bb would think me crazy for teaching my kids about guns.  Certainly, the comments would reflect it.

Riddle me this….what’s the difference?  Why are swords ok and cool but guns are evil?

Shipped

20110111_NexusSShipped

In an update to this article, my Nexus S has arrived!  It actually arrived prior to Best Buy’s order system even telling me it was shipped.  Holy cow…what a horrible shipping system.

As of 7am (GMT) the order site was saying it wasn’t shipped yet.  I was all worried and hacked off.  I get to work and find out that not only had it shipped but it had arrived.

When it gets here, I’ll post about how I like it.

Ramps (take 2)

Ramps!

I met someone today who knew what ramps were.  I was shocked…he was the first person outside of WV who knew what they were.  I was impressed.

Oh…he actually liked them too!

[Update 2012-12-26 15:47:04] Had to redo some internal links.

Image from chrisfurniss via flickr

Look out…

The Ready Shot

this is an example of what happens with socialized medicine.  It is the natural outcome when someone other than you is in charge.

From the article on the BBC site:

People who are not in an at-risk group should be banned from having private flu vaccinations, the chairman of the Royal College of GPs has said.

Dr Clare Gerada told the Daily Telegraph allowing healthy people to buy the flu jab had compounded NHS shortages and left others vulnerable.

The Department of Health said it could not prevent pharmacies from selling the vaccine commercially.

No, the problem isn’t that people wanted it and were willing to pay for it….the problem is that the government didn’t spend the money necessary to get enough. Why? Who knows. Perhaps someone didn’t think they needed another 10 million doses. Perhaps they didn’t have the money. Does it matter?  The government system doesn’t have enough and people who were depending on someone else to do it for them will get left out.

Image from sullyt64 photography via flickr

Let’s get something straight

Case O' Guns

I don’t think gun control would have prevented the terrible horrible shooting that happened in Arizona.  Why?  Quite simply because criminals don’t buy guns (or magazines, or ammo, or anything else for that matter) from gun stores.  Remember, we call them criminals for a reason (they broke the law).  If they have broken one, what makes us think they’ll respect another.  All gun control laws do is take guns away from law abiding citizens who want the ability to defend themselves and their family.

BTW, it looks like the guy passed a background check anyway.  This guy, just like the VA Tech shooter, had been known to have serious mental problems.  Perhaps, as this writer suggests, there should be a way to collate that data and include it in existing FBI check to purchase firearms.  On the surface it looks good, but great care would have to be exercised to avoid people being reported and denied guns just because someone reported them at one time for something.  That would just be gun control in another way.  

The problem isn’t guns but the criminals.

[Update 2012-07-20 17:20:53]  There has been a shooting in a Colorado theater at the showing of the new Batman movie.  Of course, people are blaming guns.  I’ve talked about the inconsistency of some headlines in this post.

Image from gregory wild smith via flickr

400 Years of the King James Bible

InTheBeginningCover

2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the publishing of the King James Bible.  The BBC–and others–here in the UK are doing some special events to mark this.  Even if you don’t care anything about religion, there is more to this than you might think.  One of the things I found out when I read the book on the left–In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culturealt –was how the translation helped shape English just as it was really beginning to take shape.  Many of the words and phrases we use were English translations of Hebrew idioms and phrases.