Blue Anorak » Noteworthy

Nice…

admin — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:48:35 +0000

According to the UK Copyright Service the duration of copyright in Sound Recordings and broadcasts is:

50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was created, or,
if the work is released within that time: 50 years from the end of the calendar year in which the work was first released.

Does this, therefore, mean that Miles Davis‘s Birth of the Cool is no longer covered by copyright?

Technorati Tags: copyright, Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool

Unrestrained children

admin — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:29:41 +0000

For the benefit of those idiots who still allow their small children to travel unrestrained in their cars, the AA has produced a leaflet and video to illustrate the dangers. If you happen to know any of these idiots, please educate them before they learn the hard way.

Scribus: open source DTP

admin — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:04:26 +0000

Today’s NftP was the first to be produced using Scribus, the free open source DTP package that supports SVG. I have been truly impressed at the power of this application and it truly seems to me that open source software has now come of age. NeoOffice 2 knocked MS Office 2004 off my Christmas list a short while ago. Now I can finally achieve professional quality page layout without spending vast sums of money.

A lot of open source software has previously been let down by poor documentation. Not Scribus. It already has enough documentation for me to make good use of it and this appears to have been written by a user rather than a programmer.

The two key differences between Scribus and its commercial counterparts appear to be speed and beauty. As with many open source applications, the icons could be a lot prettier and the program could run more quickly. Frankly, with the money that is saved by not buying commercial software, cheapskates like me could possibly afford to buy a faster machine (or more RAM).

Because the program fully supports SVG, users can make good use of the Open Clip Art Library, a repository of mostly good quality public domain files. One oddity I discovered is that I get a far better end-result by creating a PDF before I print than by sending my work direct to the printer.

For those who are interested, the first open source NftP is available here for download as a 1 megabyte PDF.

Simon Jenkins: Facts should be taskmasters, and there is no exemption for fiction

admin — Fri, 26 May 2006 18:58:28 +0000

Simon Jenkins of the Guardian writes about “The Da Vinci Code”: “Journalism already has a tough time guarding Fortress Fact from marauders (including its own) until the historians can arrive. To find novelists and film-makers getting in round the back and stealing the treasure is galling. Despite Humpty Dumpty, words do not mean anything we choose. Facts are still facts wherever they are used, and should be honoured in fiction as in history. The dictionary offers no exemption to novelists. They have the entire range of the human imagination at their disposal. They can play with light and shade, fantasy and magic, dancing free of reality to conjure their tales from the air. But facts are sacred. If writers use them to disguise their fabrications, I call them liars.”

For an elected House of Lords

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 20:02:57 +0000

Lords Reform Day

“…it is intended to substitute for the House of Lords as it at present exists a Second Chamber constituted on a popular instead of hereditary basis, but such substitution cannot be immediately brought into operation.”

Preamble to the Parliament Act 1911

This Act, which limits the powers of the House of Lords and commits Britain to democratic reform of the House of Lords, received Royal Assent on 10 August 1911. This was only ever intended to be a temporary measure. If the first elections to a democratic Second Chamber are to take place before its centenary, the Government and Parliament must act now.

Don’t let us celebrate 100 years of botched reform in 2011. Sign up to Elect the Lords today!

On 1^st May 1997 I was a happy man. The Tories had finally been booted out of office and replaced with a progressive, forward-thinking party with a commitment to electoral reform.

Can you spot my mistake?

Labour have spent much of the last eight and a bit years abusing the Parliament Act and behaving as though the House of Lords were just an irrelevance. I’m no constitutional expert but I I have not failed to notice that many other states have bicameral legislatures. Labour have tried to force through some terrible laws with no regard for how they could be abused by a future government. It’s time for a change but, sadly, if the Government have their way, we may not even be able to vote in local council elections soon.