work – Karen R Savage

6 Reasons to oppose ACTA

By kruthie73

On Saturday, 11 February, 2012

In work

ACTA locks countries into obsolete copyright and patent laws. If a democracy decides on less restrictive laws that reflect the reality of the internet, ACTA will prevent that.
ACTA criminalizes users by making noncommercial, harmless remixes into crimes if “on a commercial scale” (art 2.14.1). Many amateur works achieve a commercial scale on sites like Youtube. ACTA, like SOPA, could mean jail time for the Justin Biebers of the world.
ACTA Criminalizes legitimate websites, making them responsible for user behavior by “aiding and abetting”. (art 2.14.4). Like SOPA, the founders of your favorite sites could be sued or (worse) thrown in jail for copyright infringement by their users.
ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn’t hard enough!
ACTA Permanently bypasses democracy by giving the “ACTA Committee” the power to “propose amendments to [ACTA]” (art 6.4). In other words, voting for ACTA writes a blank check to an unelected committee. These closed-door proceedings will be a playground for SOPA-supporters like the MPAA.
Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy. It’s a secretive process that’s tailor-made to serve politically connected companies. And the movie studios behind SOPA? They’re experts at it. If we can’t make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law, our internet’s future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.

From La Quadrature du Net

Concentration

By kruthie73

On Friday, 10 June, 2011

In work

Something I’ve noticed during this conference: I’ve been retaining more information from the sessions where I’ve knitted than the ones where I tried to take notes (too many distractions available when taking notes on a machine w/internet access).

Conference week

By kruthie73

On Wednesday, 8 June, 2011

In knitting, work

At Open Repositories 2011 this week. Looking forward to meeting other repository managers and learning what is upcoming in the newest version of Dspace.

The conference is taking place in Austin, on UT campus. Didn’t think about it till I got here, but the yarn of the knitting project I brought with me (Easy Baby Aran) is pretty much UT orange, which should be anathema to a green & gold Baylor Bear like me.

New collection

By kruthie73

On Wednesday, 18 May, 2011

In audiobooks, work

Iambik’s first SciFi collection has been released. It contains the first two books in the Chronicles of Valonia series: The Jewels of Valonia, and The Golden Casket and the Spectres of Light.

Really tired tonight. Haven’t slept well the last couple of nights because I’ve been really stressed about a couple of day-job projects that I had to finish upgrading/migrating yesterday and today. Now that they’ve both been successfully completed, I feel like I’m sort of coming out of shock. I feel all wibbly-wobbly (but not timey-wimey). Early night, I think.

Ahh, technology…

By kruthie73

On Wednesday, 26 January, 2011

In work

Did my first TDL training as lead instructor today. Was really glad the TDL rep was there for the first hour or so, because, true to Murphy’s Law, as soon as we started our first hands-on exercise something went wrong on their server. Took half an hour to find a solution, which, scarily, was to add our training log-ins to their production server.

Sending it out to the cloud

By kruthie73

On Tuesday, 13 April, 2010

In work

Sitting in a hotel ballroom listening to Tim O’Reilly talk about cloud computing and the future of data. Feeling a little lost because my laptop’s back light gave out and I only have my phone now. Ack!

One down…

By kruthie73

On Tuesday, 5 May, 2009

In audiobooks, theatre, work

I finished the first of my two paid audiobook gigs last weekend. I just checked, and they’ve already got it listed on the website! http://www.catholicaudiocompany.com/current.html

This was actually the second gig I got, but it had an earlier delivery date, so I’d been pushing to get it finished. The other one, Clara Vaughan, is due by the middle of June, so it’s time to start pushing on it.

At some point the publisher is going to post my profile on their website, but as far as I can tell, they haven’t gotten that far yet. They have, however, posted the excerpt that was the first thing I read for them (it’s available from their front page: http://www.ipublishpress.com/).

One more weekend of Brigadoon to go. It did finally come together (like, the night before we opened!), and it’s going pretty well. Not the hugest crowds we’ve ever had, but not the worst either.

Off to the Amigos conference tomorrow morning. Just going for the first day, not both. They rented me a car from the library, and when I went to pick it up, they gave me a frickin’ Hummer! Not exactly the statement I’m interested in making in life. Still, it’s only for one day and then I can give it back (and thank goodness I get reimbursed for gasoline!!!).

Acronym fun

By admin

On Monday, 4 February, 2008

In random, work

So we were in a meeting of the Library Website committee, and as we were getting near the end of the allotted time, we were starting to get a little silly. Someone asked a perfectly legitimate question about whether the people who keep the web pages up to date have a title, and someone else tried to come up with the most convoluted title for “I update the web pages”. I can’t remember what it was, exactly, but then my officemate, who’s also on this committee, tried to see if he could come up with an acronym for the title. He came up with Electronic Data Input Technician Of Record, or EDITOR. Someone else quickly came up with Acronymical Master & Electronic Savant, for his surname, Ames.

One of the other girls on the committee was trying to get one for her first name and came up with E-Learning Librarian (which is her job title) and then needed help on the last two letters – Ames came up with Extra Nice (so, Ellen). I started working on my surname and got as far as Super Awesome before the meeting was dismissed. When I mentioned this to my officemate, he very quickly came up with Super Awesome, Very Acerbic Girl Extraordinaire. Now he’s supposed to be working on one for our friend across the hall, but she doesn’t know yet because she’s not on that committee.

Starting off the year

By admin

On Monday, 7 January, 2008

In family, friends, librivox, movies, public domain, work

Well, I survived the week in CA, but I was glad I was only there for a week. The place was hectic. Ten people and two dogs, and then the last couple of days, one additional person. Two people had colds when I arrived, and by the time I left, they’d traded them with two others – myself and my mother. So, I was glad I’d asked for the rest of last week off. It gave me time to get better before having to come back to work. With so many of us sick, it was interesting to see how each of us reacted to the same virus – one had really bad chest congestion; another had horrible post-nasal drip and cough; mine was all in the sinuses; mum’s had just started when I left, so I don’t know what hers was like.

I got a great new lap quilt from mum for Christmas. I’d told her how cold it gets in my office, so she made me one that folds up into a pillow to keep at work. I’d been a bit worried about the gift I got for Andy – a physics kit (like a chemistry set but with gears and wires and things), but apparently his parents found him playing with it when they went to bed Christmas Eve (an hour or so after he’d said he was going to sleep). 🙂

MB and Sherry and I got to have a couple of SKVE meetings while Sherry was here for her holiday. We went to see P.S. I Love You one day and met for coffee another day. I’m not a great fan of Hillary Swank, but I enjoyed the movie ok. Sherry hadn’t heard anything about it before going, so she was disappointed that Gerard Butler dies; but then relieved that he comes back in flash-backs and hallucinations. She just likes to look at him. I made them each a short scarf with a slit in one end that you can tuck the other end into. MB opened hers while Sherry and I were waiting for our coffees, and we watched her trying to figure it out. She kept looking at the length of it, then opening the slit, then folding it back up. When she heard us giggling at her she asked me what it was, “It’s too short to be a scarf, and it has this opening thing only on one end…” Once she figured it out, she liked it. Sherry, having spent some time in a colder climate now, knew exactly what it was and how to use it. 🙂

I’m off to my first programming conference this week. It’s a three day conference on XSLT. It’s the first conference I’ve gone to for Baylor. I need to do a bit of research on Austin (which is where it’s going to be), so I can visit stuff after hours.

I’ve started a new project on LibriVox to work on in conjunction with The Elusive Pimpernel. I started Anne of Avonlea last night. I had a sudden craving for some more Anne. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done on these two projects this coming month (while Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is in rehearsals), but I’ll always have weekends.