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Attorney General Eric Holder Speaks at the E-books Press Conference Washington, D.C. ~ Wednesday, April 11, 2012 "Earlier today, we filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, against Apple and five different book publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster. In response to our allegations, three of these publishers - Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster - agreed to a proposed settlement. If approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department's antitrust concerns with these companies, and would require them to grant retailers - such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble - the freedom to reduce the prices of their e-book titles. The settlement also requires the companies to terminate their anticompetitive most-favored-nation agreements with Apple and other e-books retailers. In addition, the companies will be prohibited for two years from placing constraints on retailers' ability to offer discounts to consumers. They will also be prohibited from conspiring or sharing competitively sensitive information with their competitors for five years. And each is required to implement a strong antitrust compliance program. These steps are appropriate - and essential in ensuring a competitive marketplace. Beginning in the summer of 2009, we allege that executives at the highest levels of the companies included in today's lawsuit - concerned that e-book sellers had reduced prices - worked together to eliminate competition among stores selling e-books, ultimately increasing prices for consumers. As a result of this alleged conspiracy, we believe that consumers paid millions of dollars more for some of the most popular titles. During regular, near-quarterly meetings, we allege that publishing company executives discussed confidential business and competitive matters - including Amazon's e-book retailing practices - as part of a conspiracy

"Why a supposed German breakthrough in e-book DRM is just as dumb as the old e-book DRM By Cory Doctorow | Jul 06, 2013 " > The idea that copyright owners might convince a judge, or, worse, a > jury that because they found a copy of an e-book on the Pirate Bay > originally sold to me they can then hold me responsible or civilly > liable is almost certainly wrong, as a matter of law. At the very > least, it's a long shot and a stupid legal bet. After all, it's not > illegal to lose your computer. It's not illegal to have it stolen > or hacked. It's not illegal to throw away your computer or your > hard drive. In many places, it's not illegal to give away your > e-books, or to loan them. In some places, it's not illegal to sell > your e-books. > > So at best, this new "breakthrough" DRM scheme will be ineffective. > But worse, what makes anyone think this kind of implicit fear of > reprisal embedded within one's digital library is acceptable, or, > for that matter, preferable to old-school DRM?

"Public Knowledge Public Knowledge ‏@publicknowledge Ask @whitehouse to support #books4blindtreaty! http://wh.gov/hcED Sign the petition now. More info: http://bit.ly/121podd Wired Obama Stops Championing Treaty That Gives the Blind Better Access to... By David Kravets @dmkravets The President Barack Obama administration went on record four years ago supporting a proposed international treaty to make books more accessible to the blind across the globe. Fast forward to today.... 8:46 PM - 23 May 13"

Primo uso dell'hashtag #books4blindtreaty su Twitter, per promuovere una petizione che chiede alla Casa Bianca di sostenere all'OMPI la proposta di un Trattato per i ciechi, ipovedenti e altri con disabilità che impediscono l'uso di testi stampati, sotto attacco da parte delle lobby dei grossi produttori di film e musica US, nonché degli editori europei.

"Sparky Sweets' self-styled "gangster" approach to education is bringing books like Jane Eyre and To Kill a Mockingbird to new audiences. Miranda Dobson meets him For those students who hastily scan SparkNotes, Wikipedia or CliffNotes before a seminar, the latest comedy sensation to hit YouTube could be a godsend. Sparky Sweets PhD invites his viewers to join him as he gives the lowdown on the great and the good of literature, urging his Twitter followers to, "Educate yo'self, son", by using his Thug Notes. Hailing from the streets of L.A. and claiming to have a doctorate in Classics, Dr Sweets delivers literary summaries and analysis in his "original gangster" style, in a way that he hopes will both entertain book nerds and educate/enlighten those who aren't into their literature. With an unprecedented surge of YouTube fans, Sparky has over 99,000 subscribers to his channel, and counting, and nearly 506,000 views on his most popular "drop" on classic American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Also included on Sparky's reading list are George Orwell's 1984, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and popular culture's latest literary buzz courtesy of Baz Luhrmann's film, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Sparky tells me the idea for Thug Notes came about as a result of his "frustration with the world of academia." "In my opinion," he says, "an academic's job should be to utilise their passion for the classics to make the gift of literature available to everyone. Unfortunately, in my experiences, that is not the case." Sparky believes academia is "enshrouded by a veil of unnecessarily convoluted terminology and intellectual one-upmanship", which negates the whole point of education. "Instead of promoting the universality of these works, they are building them up to a virtually inaccessible plane and saying 'If you want to truly understand classical literature, you have to get on my level.' So Thug Notes is my way of tri

Il video che illustra l'articolo è quello delle Thug Notes per Hamlet.

(EIFL = Electronic Information for Libraries) "Published: 23 Apr 2014 To celebrate UNESCO's World Book and Copyright Day on 23 April 2014, and WIPO's World IP Day on 26 April 2014 - we asked librarians in EIFL partner countries what they wish for copyright today. Read what librarians in Armenia, Latvia, Botswana, Kenya, Estonia, Russia, Uzbekistan, Uganda, Kyrgyzstan, Senegal, Mongolia, Poland, Ghana and Nigeria said."

"Royalty Calculator* Use the royalty calculator to figure out how much you'll make every time your book is manufactured. (...) * Figures generated by this tool are for estimation purposes only. Your actual royalty will be calculated when you set up your book."

"\n Represents a line break that was inserted with the Shift+Enter key combination. To change a line break into a paragraph break, enter \n in the Search for and Replace with boxes, and then perform a search and replace. \n in the Search for text box stands for a line break that was inserted with the Shift+Enter key combination. \n in the Replace with text box stands for a paragraph break that can be entered with the Enter or Return key. \t Represents a tab. You can also use this expression in the Replace with box. \b Match a word boundary. For example, "\bbook" finds "bookmark" but not "checkbook" whereas "book\b" finds "checkbook" but not "bookmark". The discrete word "book" is found by both search terms. ^$ Finds an empty paragraph."

(per cercare e sostituire/sopprimere ad es. un segno di paragrafo)

Stessa pagina ma in italiano: https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/List_of_Regular_Expressions/it

"Dopo molti annunci, è finalmente andata online "LIA, la vetrina di ebook accessibili pensati per le persone non vedenti e ipovedenti". Era legittimo chiedersi cosa fossero i libri italiani accessibili, poiché né la nazionalità italiana né "libro accessibile" fornivano un qualche indizio sulla natura di questi libri. Ora, dopo la messa in onda, regna lo stesso la confusione: non si riesce a capire in cosa consista il servizio LIA. A prima vista, il sito si presenta come un espositore di libri in formato epub, la cui unica differenza con i normali epub disponibili online in innumerevoli store sembra essere l'apposizione di una specie di certificazione di accessibilità denominata "bollino LIA". (...) Il testo della "certificazione" è perlomeno generico: (...) Questo eBook è certificato accessibile da LIA come? Con quali criteri? Chi sono i certificatori? Non è dato di saperlo. Così come sembrano piuttosto scontati i parametri di valutazione (...) D'accordo, il corretto uso degli elementi sicuramente aiuta la navigazione, ma siete sicuri che inserire dei titoli in ordine gerarchico sparso e casuale, basta che ci siano, sia utile a qualcuno? La "vetrina" sembrerebbe dedicata soltanto a questo: selezionare nella vastità degli epub disponibili sul mercato alcuni titoli scelti e valutati accessibili da qualcuno non si sa chi e come, e rimandare a store esterni per l'acquisto degli stessi. Sì, avete capito bene, bisogna usare due carrelli elettronici: prima quello del sito LIA, dove si selezionano i libri desiderati, e poi quello dello store esterno per effettuare l'acquisto vero e proprio. Siamo davvero sicuri che questo sia un aiuto per chi non ci vede o ha gravi problemi di vista? Non era già abbastanza complicato dover affrontare un carrello? No, due. Potrebbe essere complicato per chiunque, ma per chi utilizza uno screen reader lo è il doppio: effettua l'acquisto in un sito, poi deve anche essere in grado di continua

Ah: m'ero fermato a LIA e non avevo fatto caso si trattasse di un commento su! Conoscevo l'IWA (un anno mi pare ci sono stato iscritto, ai loro esordi), non questo loro impegno. Posso però dire che la legge Stanca è estremamente discutibile: sia per come ha "personalizzato" gli standard invece di applicarli sia per restrizioni di contorno ed obblighi in alcuni casi assurdi che ha imposto. Non so però quanto sia farina del loro sacco e quanto contributo politico. Comunque adesso vado e leggere cosa ne dice lui

Non ha tutti i torti nelle sue critiche: effettivamente l'accessibilità del sito lascia molto a desiderare. La spiegazione però potrebbe esserci. Andando alla ricerca di chi ne fosse il proprietario (che non è specificato da nessuna parte sul sito!) scopro che si tratta di Ediser S.r.l. che - cercando - ha un sito sua che così la descrive: Ediser è la Società di servizi dell'AIE - Associazione Italiana Editori, fondata nel 2002 per l'erogazione di servizi rivolti alle case editrici, tra cui: - l'erogazione di corsi e seminari di formazione e aggiornamento per il personale che opera nella filiera editoriale e dei contenuti digitali o per persone che intendono avviare una casa editrice - la gestione dell'agenzia ISBN per l'area linguistica italiana, di cui è titolare l'AIE - la gestione dei diritti d'autore per la tutela dei diritti di riproduzione delle opere librarie e periodiche - l'organizzazione di fiere del libro attraverso la realizzazione "step by step" di stand collettivi e istituzionali - l'organizzazione di eventi legati al mondo dell'editoria - la gestione di progetti specifici di rilevanza nazionale e internazionale legati al mondo dell'editoria - il «Giornale della libreria»: il mensile professionale dell'editoria libraria e dell'industria dei contenuti editoriali italiana Inoltre LibriAccessibili.it - e più in generali il progetto LIA che ha un sito a parte chissà perchè... (progettolia.it) - è "Realizzato mediante il finanziamento del Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali" come dice il disclaimer (obbligatorio per chi usi finanziamenti pubblici) accompagnato da loro del ministero definito "Partner di progetto". Insomma: sono gli editori che definiscono le condizioni per darsi il bollino e poi se lo danno... Ma pagato con i soldi che il Ministero non ha per salvare Pompei! Altro che bastoni e carote...

"About the Project Open Library is an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web page for every book ever published. More Just like Wikipedia, you can contribute new information or corrections to the catalog. You can browse by subject, author or lists members have created. If you love books, why not help build a library? Developers If you're even remotely interested in libraries or big data, we encourage you to have a look around the Open Library API. We welcome any and all patches and data re-use."

"Cinematic Montage II from GameOvais 1 day ago All Audiences The second cinematic montage created by me. Over 300 movies used. I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed making it. Movies used are: 21 300 2012 12 Years a Slave 3:10 to Yuma 300 Rise of an Empire A Christmas Carol A Few Good Men A Good Day to Die Hard A League of Their Own A Little Princess Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter Alien Aliens Aliens vs Predator American Beauty American Gangster American History X Angels and Demons Apocalypse Now Apocalypto Avatar Back to The Future I,II & III Bad Boys II Bambi Bangkok Dangerous Beauty and the Beast Ben Hur Berverly Hills Cop III Big Fish Big Hero 6 Black Hawk Down Blade Trinity Blood Diamond Braveheart Bridge on the River Kwai Brotherhood Captain America: Winter Soldier Cars Casino Royale Cast Away Catch Me If You Can Chronicles of Narnia Cleopatra Constantine Cool Hand Luke Crimson Tide Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Defendor Deja Vu Despicable Me II Die Hard District 9 Donnie Darko Drive Eagle Eye Edward Scissorhands End of Days Enemy of the State Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer Fast & Furious Field of Dreams Fight Club Forrest Gump Gangs of New York Ghosbusters GI Joe: The Rise of the Cobra Gladiator Godzilla Gone Baby Gone Gone With The Wind Good Will Hunting Goodfellas Gran Torino Grease Harry Potter: The Complete Saga High Plains Drifter Hitman Home Alone I & II Hook How to Train Your Dragon I Robot Ice Age Immortals In The Heart of The Sea Inception Independance Day Indiana Jones: Quadrilogy Inglorious Basterds Inside Man Into The Woods Iron Man I, II & III Jack the Giant Slayer James Bond: The Franchise Jaws John Carter Jonah Hex Jumanji Jurassic Park: The Trilogy Jurassic World Kick Ass Kill Bill: Vol 2 Kindergarten Cop King Kong Kingdom of Heaven Kung Fu Panda Lawrence of Arabia Leon: The Professional Little Miss Sunshine Live Free or Die Hard Lockout Loncoln Lone Survivor Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Lord of The

"The purpose of this document is two-fold: - to offer an online history of the development of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - to use that history to describe major elements of a MOOC Each chapter of this guide looks at one of the first MOOCs and some early influences. It contains these parts: - a description of the MOOC, what it did, and what was learned - a description of the element of MOOC theory learned in the offering of the course - practical tools that can be used to develop that aspect of a MOOC - practical tips on how to be successful Contribute to this Book You are invited to contribute. If you participated in a MOOC, add a paragraph describing your experience (you can sign your name to it, so we know it's a personal story). If you know of resources or can add information about an element of MOOC theory, add to or edit the text that already exists. If you know of tools, provide a link to the tool, a short description, and your assessment of the tool. If you have a tip, add the tip. In order to participate, please email or message your contact details, and we'll you to the list of people who can edit pages. Send your request to stephen@downes.ca Your contributions will be accepted and posted under a CC-By license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Thanks for your participation. The finished product will be published online and made freely available on the web. Stephen Downes"

Trad: Questo documento ha un doppio scopo: - offrire una storia online dello sviluppo del Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - adoperare questa storia per descrivere elementi importanti di un MOOC. Ogni capitolo di questa guida esamina uno dei primi MOOC ed alcune delle influenze iniziali. È composto di: - una descrizione del MOOC, di cosa vi si è fatto ed imparato - una descrizione dell elemento della teoria dei MOOC imparato nell'offrire il corso - strumenti concreti che possono essere adoperati per sviluppare quell'aspetto di un MOOC - consigli concreti per la riuscita Contribuite a questo Libro Siete invitati a contribuire. Se avete partecipato a un MOOC, aggiungete un paragrafo dove descrivete la vostra esperienza (potete firmare il vostro nome, così sapremo che si tratta di una storia personale). Se conoscete risorse o se potete aggiungere informazioni su un elemento della teoria dei MOOC, aggiungetelo al testo esistente o modificatelo. Se conoscete strumenti, date un link allo strumento, una breve descrizione, e la vostra valutazione dello strumento. Se avete un consiglio, aggiungete quel consiglio. Per partecipare, mandateci un e-mail o un messaggio con i dati per contattarvi, e vi aggiungeremo alla lista di coloro che possono modificare le pagine. Mandata la vostra richiesta a stephen@downes.ca I vostri contributi verranno accettati e pubblicati sotto una licenza Creative Commons BY (attribuzione) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Grazie della vostra partecipazione. Il prodotto finito verrà pubblicato online e reso liberamente accessibilie sul web Stephen Downes.

Opening Remarks WIPO DIP Com 18 June 2013 By: Maryanne Diamond on behalf of the WBU [World Blind Union] "...I urge you to play your part in making a difference in the lives of these millions of people, by agreeing a treaty that is simple, usable and meaningful. We cannot accept a treaty which has no substance, nor, can we accept a treaty full of bureaucratic and cumbersome requirements. We cannot accept a trophy treaty that will not work in practice. When considering your proposals, changes or amendments to the text, please stop and think about what that change will make on the ground to the people this treaty is about. You have received copies of our positions on the key issues in the current text of concern to us. * Commercial availability in articles D and E will ensure the treaty fails * The treaty must allow for distribution to individuals * The treaty must not allow TPMs to be a block to access to a book by blind people Please ask us if you're not sure what the impact of text you are considering will be on the ground. We are here for the entire conference. ..."

"By Kimberly Kindy, Published: June 22 Hundreds of negotiators from around the world have descended on Morocco this week to finalize a treaty aimed at ensuring that millions of blind and vision-impaired people can get books in accessible formats like audio, Braille and large print. But the treaty, years in the making, could be in jeopardy because of unresolved differences between advocates for the blind and the Motion Picture Association of America, which says the accord could undermine protections important for filmmakers, publishers and other major industries."

Lungo pezzo seriamente documentato sulla proposta di un trattato OMPI che faciliti la condivisione tra paesi diversi di libri in formati accessibili ai ciechi - e sul lobbying accanito della MPAA e di altri grossi produttori di contenuti contro questo trattato. La corrispondenza e-mail tra i lobbyisti della MPAA e il rappresentante US all'OMPI citata verso la fine dell'articolo può essere scaricata da http://keionline.org/node/1759 . La traduzione italiana automatica dell'articolo con http://translate.google.com/ ha le sue pecche tipiche, però rende abbastanza il senso generale.

"In Douglas Adams's famous Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of science-fiction books, interstellar species use Babel fish - "small, yellow, leech-like" creatures that feed on "brain-wave energy" - to translate speech in real time. A team of developers at Google is working on the real thing, using statistical models to translate different languages, including Afrikaans, on the Web and on mobile phones, using voice input and output as well as text. TechCentral sat down with Google Translate research scientist Ashish Venugopal at Google's headquarters in Silicon Valley last week and asked him about the stumbling blocks to effective real-time translation and the future of the technology. This is an edited transcript of that interview. (...).Do you have a team of linguists working all over the world? We have a team of statisticians, all working right over there [points and laughs]. It's less linguistically orientated. There are linguistic ideas that influence our decisions. To give you an example, when I was working on the last set of Indian languages that were launched, I didn't use any linguistic knowledge; I used Wikipedia and my grandmother. So, it's Wikipedia, my grandmother and statistics. That's what we use to put a language together. - Duncan McLeod, TechCentral"

Intervista a uno sviluppatore di Google traduttore, su come funziona, pubblicata nella rivista sudafricana TechCentral il 12 gennaio 2012.

Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Anne Enright, Howard Jacobson, Will Self and Lionel Shriver reflect on their own disappointments in life, love and work

"Connectivism is the thesis that knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore that learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks. The bulk of this work is devoted to tracing the implications of this thesis in learning. Yes, this could have been a shorter book - and perhaps one day I'll author a volume without the redundancies, false starts, detours and asides, and other miscellany. Such a volume would be sterile, however, and it feels more true to the actual enquiry to stay true to the original blog posts, essays and presentations that constitute this work."

"By Harry Keller Editor, Science Education Despite plenty of nay-sayers, the textbook is dead. It just doesn't know it yet and continues on walking about as though alive. Textbooks have evolved considerably over the last fifty years and even somewhat in the previous fifty years. I even have one, A Text-Book of Physics, on my bookshelf beside me that was printed in 1891. It has some line drawings and no color. Its size is about 5"x8". Today, textbooks have lots of colorful images, plenty of side bars, and lots of engaging questions sprinkled about on their heavy-weight glossy paper stock. They also have tons of advice to teachers on how to use them effectively. They've gone about as far as they can go with paper as the medium. (...) You can learn faster and learn more than you think you can. Textbooks do not tap into our brains to realize that learning potential. New software that uses true active learning will. By so doing, it will eliminate textbooks of all forms, both printed and online, both passive and so-called interactive. Today, the textbook is a zombie. It's just waiting for that wooden stake or silver bullet to put it to a well-deserved rest."

Interessante la coincidenza con http://blog-micromega.blogautore.espresso.repubblica.it/2013/07/22/boscaino-guastavigna-libri-di-testo-digitali-un-ragionevole-stop/ , già bookmarkato qui da Francesco Vallotto.

Analisi decisamente più interessante rispetto alle precedenti (citate) perchè vola decisamente più alta evitando di impantanarsi sulla falsa questione del formato dei contenuti per ragionare piuttosto di metodo. Ho condiviso filosofia e conclusioni