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About a month ago I wrote about James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins of the Center of the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School releasing a free download of an Intellectual Property Statutory Supplement (which normally big publishers try to sell for around $50). As noted, this was a kickoff for an even bigger project, an open coursebook in intellectual property. That Open Intellectual Property Casebook is now available. You can download the whole thing for free. If you want a nice printed copy, it’ll currently run about $24 on Amazon — which is about $135 less than other IP case books. The entire book weighs in at nearly 800 pages, so there’s a lot in there if you felt like delving into a variety of topics around copyright, trademark and patent law — including specific efforts by Congress around those laws and the way that the courts have interpreted them.

As mentioned in our last post, Boyle and Jenkins are doing this, in part, because they recognize the insane prices that academic publishers have been getting away with charging for their books:

Partly, we do it because we think the price of legal casebooks and materials is obscene. Law students, who are already facing large debt burdens, are required to buy casebooks that cost $150–$200, and “statutory supplements” that consist mainly of unedited, public domain, Federal statutes for $40 or $50. The total textbook bill for a year can be over $1500. This is not a criticism of casebook authors, but rather of the casebook publishing system. We know well that putting together a casebook is a lot of work and can represent considerable scholarship and pedagogic innovation. We just put together this one and we are proud of it. But we think that the cost is disproportionate and that the benefit flows disproportionately to conventional legal publishers. Some of those costs might have been more justifiable when we did not have mechanisms for free worldwide and almost costless distribution. Some might have been justifiable when we did not have fast, cheap and accurate print on demand services. Now we have both. Legal education is already expensive; we want to play a small part in diminishing the costs of the materials involved.

However, they also note that it’s not just about making the books cheaper, but better and more useful:

Our point is not only that the current casebook is vastly too expensive, it is also awkward, inflexible, lacking visual stimulus, incapable of customization and hard to preview and search on the open web. Casebooks do not respond well to the different needs of different professors. Students cannot easily be given free, searchable digital access to all the materials, on all their devices, anywhere, access that does not go away when the course—or the publisher—ends. We can do that.

There are also lots of people outside of law school, or outside this country, who would like to know more about American law—just as there are people outside of computer science who want to know about artificial intelligence. Free is a good price-point for them. Customizable is a good form. This book is merely a beta-test version, but it is an example of what can be done.

In case you’re wondering, while the statutory supplement was available on a CC: BY license (requires just attribution), this casebook is under a CC: BY-NC-SA license. The key differences: the former can be resold commercially while the latter has a block on commercial uses. It also has a "share alike" requirement. While I’m a huge fan of Creative Commons, I’ve been critical of its licenses that include the non-commercial restriction and believe there are strong reasons to remove them, in part because of a perception and branding problem that people have, which potentially do more harm than good to the Creative Commons brand. Many people believe that all CC licenses are "non-commercial" which has actually limited those who wish to use them to encourage commercial use. Separately, the definition of "non-commercial" can be pretty vague (though, to its credit, Creative Commons has worked hard to clarify).

While Boyle and Jenkins are using an NC license with the casebook, I’m happy that they at least put in a note defining their interpretation of commercial use:

Editor’s note: we interpret this to mean “providing the material above cost.” Digital cost is zero. You are free to reproduce the material in paper form and charge a fee to cover copying costs, but nothing more. This applies both to commercial and non commercial entities.

I still think it would have been fine if they’d skipped the "NC" altogether, but it does not appear to be a huge issue here. On the whole this is great news for folks who want to learn more about copyright, patents and trademark law — whether you’re a law student or just an interested bystander…

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Intellectual Property Casebook Now Available As A Free Download

An anonymous reader writes Duke Law School’s James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins just published a CC licensed, freely downloadable textbook called "Intellectual Property Law and the Information Society." (Which includes a discussion of whether and when the term "intellectual property" is a dangerous misnomer). The book is apparently part of an attempt to lower what the authors describe as the "obscene cost" of legal textbooks. "This is the first in a series of free digital/low cost print legal educational materials to be published by Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain—starting with statutory supplements aimed at the basic classes. The goal of this project… is to improve the pricing and access norms of the world of legal textbook publishing, while offering the flexibility and possibility for customization that unfettered digital access provides. We hope it will provide a pleasant, restorative, competitive pressure on the commercial publishers to lower their prices and improve their digital access norms." The book’s "problems range from a video of the Napster oral argument to counseling clients about search engines and trademarks, applying the First Amendment to digital rights management and copyright or commenting on the Supreme Court’s new rulings on gene patents.. [The book] includes discussions of such issues as the Redskins trademark cancelations, the Google Books case and the America Invents Act."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Free Law Casebook Project Starts With IP Coursebook

Homemade firearms are widely seized across china, a large number used illegally for pest control and hunting. Notable is the frequency at which handmade semi automatic pistols are encountered, loosely based on the Type-64 copy of the Walther PPK as well as the Type-77 in use by police and military. The poverty stricken county of […]

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The post Homemade semi-automatic pistols illegally produced in China appeared first on The Firearm Blog.

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Homemade semi-automatic pistols illegally produced in China

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Dilbert 2014-08-24

Sometimes there is need to use conditional expression inside stored procedure to control the flow of execution.We can use IF or CASE statements for this.Below is a stored procedure to check the performance of a student based on its score.Store the below stored procedure in a file called get_performance.sqlDELIMITER $$DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS get_performance$$CREATE PROCEDURE get_performance    (score NUMERIC(8, 2),    OUT result VARCHAR(11))BEGIN    IF (score >= 90) THEN        SET result = ‘OUTSTANDING’;    ELSEIF (score >= 70 AND score < 90) THEN        SET result = ‘AWESOME’;    ELSEIF (score >= 60 AND score < 70) THEN        SET result = ‘GOOD’;    ELSEIF (score >= 40 AND score < 60) THEN    SET result = ‘OK’;    ELSE    SET result = ‘FAIL’;    END IF;END$$DELIMITER ;Execute the procedure:mysql> SOURCE get_performance.sql;Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)Execute the call:mysql> CALL get_performance(67, @result);Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)mysql> SELECT @result;+———+| @result |+———+| GOOD    |+———+1 row in set (0.00 sec)Basically IF, ELSEIF check for conditions, ELSE matches any condition which has not been matched by any preceding condition and finally THEN executes the set of statements for the satisfied condition and breaks out of the conditional expression. Similarly, we can use CASE for switching to statement sections based on equality comparison with a set of unique values.
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Using conditional expressions inside MySQL Stored Procedure

Loops -> Repetitive tasks3 types of loops in MySQL stored program: – Simple loop using LOOP and END LOOP clauses- WHILE and END WHILE clauses that runs while a condition is true- REPEAT  and UNTIL clauses that runs until a condition is trueTermination of loop -> LEAVE statement.I will demonstrate the use of loops the simple loop way.Simple counter from 1 to 10:Store below stored procedure in a file named my_loop.sqlDELIMITER $$DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS my_loop$$CREATE PROCEDURE my_loop()BEGIN    DECLARE counter INT DEFAULT 0;    my_loop: LOOP        SET counter = counter + 1;        IF counter = 10 THEN            LEAVE my_loop;        END IF;    END LOOP my_loop;    SELECT CONCAT(‘Done counting up to ‘, counter) AS result;END$$DELIMITER ;Execute the stored procedure:mysql> SOURCE my_loop.sqlQuery OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.00 sec)Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)mysql> CALL my_loop();+————————+| result                 |+————————+| Done counting up to 10 |+————————+1 row in set (0.00 sec)Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)Explaining simply, we are defining a counter that starts with 0 and a LOOP labelled my_loop that increments from 0 onward and a condition inside to check for counter value of 10, when the loop terminates through the use of LEAVE clause. You can give a try to the other loop clauses 🙂
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Use of loops in MySQL stored procedures

Bosses who are abusive to one employee can actually cause conflict among the whole team, which hurts productivity, according to … Continued

The post A bad boss can make the whole team mean appeared first on Futurity.

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A bad boss can make the whole team mean

Your office is your home away from home, and keeping the office clean is very important to your everyday work life. While it’d be great if you could clean up everyday, simply giving the appearance that things are organized can help you not look like an absolute slob.

This post originally appeared on GetVoIP.

The truth is that you’ll probably hold off on the bigger cleaning chores until you absolutely need to—that us, until somebody important knocks on the door, forcing you to de-clutter everything like a highly-efficient cleaning ninja. But keeping just a little order will go a long way.

Here are ten things you can do so your office looks good when you need it to.

Keep Your Desk Clear

This is the most obvious thing to do—and the most difficult. I know you want your funny coffee mugs and printer user guides and rogue pen caps on your desks and ready to be utilized at a moment’s notice. But do you really need them there? Probably not.

What you should do: So clear off the desk top surface before people walk in to visit your office. Find anyplace that can accommodate all that junk stuff. And then, most importantly, pretend like it was always that clean to begin with.

Keep A Catch-All Drawer

You need a quick place to stash those funny coffee mugs, printer user guides, and rogue pen caps that were sitting on your desk. This is where your catch-all drawer comes to the rescue. Otherwise known as a junk drawer.

What you should do: Keep one desk drawer available to quickly store away any unwanted stuff from off the top of your desk. If the mess is out of sight, you can keep up the appearance that you’re a clean freak. Obviously, remember to clean that drawer often, or else you’ll end up with another mess on your hands.

Let Some Light In

Sometimes, all the fluorescent lamps in the world can’t make your office look as pleasant as you want it to. And for that, there’s always the window.

What you should do: Open the blinds and let some light peek into the room so that your visitors don’t have to talk to you in the dark. Maybe even crack the window open a little if the ventilation can help.

Hide All Your Cables

Few things are more distracting than computer cables and other wires dangling around the back of your desk as if you’re housing NSA mainframes in your office. If you’re not housing NSA mainframes in your office, then do without that clutter.

What you should do: Run all the cables through your desk’s grommet and under your desk so that it’s out of sight for anybody walking into your office. If you need the help, make use of colored cable ties to better organize those pesky cables.

Get Some Plants

Nothing is more inviting than a couple of beautiful plants to spice up your office feng shui. Not only does it add some pizzazz to your room, but it also makes people think you’re not weird for cracking open the window for air and sunlight on occasion.

What you should do: Get a plant or two that work with the colors and accents of your room. Don’t go over-the-top here—it’s still an office, after all. But understand that good-looking plant life can be an excellent distraction from the rest of your room.

Close Unnecessary Computer Applications

Keeping your digital workspace clean will be helpful too. This is pretty straight-forward. You should be working, not playing Counterstrike, ordering a car stereo, and doing virus scans—all at the same time. And, let’s face it, you don’t want to be distracted by irrelevant apps and games on your computer screen when your boss happens to be in the room.

What you should do: Close whatever applications you don’t need to be staring at so that you don’t have to get called out for it by your office visitor. Prioritize the tasks you do work on over the course of the day so that you’re not doing 100 things at once and crushing your system memory, either.

Keep The Furniture Clean

If you’ve got office furniture, chances are they’ve collected dust or need cleaning on occasion, too. But in a pinch? That space behind the office couch can become your go-to storage space for anything you want to quickly hide from view.

What you should do: The best bet here is to keep that furniture clean at all times, but make use of the space behind it when you need to. Sometimes, flinging some paper behind the couch is easier than picking up the paper and walking it to a garbage pail.

Don’t Eat Messy Food At Your Desk

Whatever you do, don’t bring that incredibly messy triple-layered spicy bean lathered burrito into the office. Not only does that sound regrettable, but it will end up leaving a mess.

What you should do: If you do eat messy food at your desk, use some Febreeze afterwards to neutralize the odors in the air. And wipe down anything that’ll make people regret visiting your room.

Put A Lid On Your Garbage Can

Nobody wants to see your trash. And, if you’re one of those messy burrito eaters, nobody wants to smell your trash, either.

What you should do: Get a garbage bin with a lid on it to at least mitigate the sight and smell of piling up trash. But remember to have that trash taken care of frequently so that the room is as fresh as it can be—until your next messy burrito.

Keep The Floor Clear

Because you never know when an impromptu dance session will strike. Just remember to toss out any kazoos and streamers when you’re done. And hide that boom box, too. This isn’t the ’90s.

What you should do: If you happen to have a small vacuum, use it a few times a week to make sure your office floor looks as good as the day you walked in there. While you may know how best to navigate your office floor, remember that other people need to walk in there, too. And, often, it’s the first thing they notice when they step foot inside your office.

Sometimes, you need to go above-and-beyond relying on the after-hours office cleaning workers to make sure your office looks its best—and of course if its your home office, the responsibility is all yours. Always remember that keeping the room clean during the day is the best option, but if you can’t do that, you can be sneaky about it, too. And that part’s always fun.

10 Simple Ways To Make Your Office Look Cleaner Than It Really Is | GetVoIP

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Charles Samuel is Senior Editor at GetVoIP. When he’s not writing, he’s making music, doing graphic design work, or managing his blog. He is interested in all forms of geekery, including, but not limited to, technology and discussions about Firefly.

Illustration by Karnoff (Shutterstock). Photos by Mingo Hagen, Bryan Ledgard, Jeremy Levine, Tim Moreillon, Nick Richards, Jean-Baptiste Lebrune, Donnie Ray Jones, Michael Bentley, Dave Friedel (Flickr).

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Ten Simple Ways to Make Your Office Look Cleaner Than It Really Is