I’ve had a hectic day – 0530 -> 2230++ so only the bare bones.
And WE’VE been as well (PMR talks grotty photos!) – Chuff and AMI2:
In the morning I (PMR) presented the idea that we should create a Semantic Web for Materials. I’d worked many days to create material. As always I create about 3 times what I know I will use. Today went smoothly – all demos worked. I don’t know what I used and what I didn’t (my presentations are non-linear – I choose slides and say whatever seems right at the time). It’s a performance, not a lecture.
The key points are:
- We can create a Semantic web for materials based, at least partly, on Crystaleye
- WE agree that the semantic tools are largely created
- AMI2 presented her NEW PDF Reader for diagrams. She can read a PDF graph in less than a second and convert to CML. It needs robustifying but…
We are ready to start extracting content from ALL physical science publications – closed or not – when Hargreaves kicks in this October. This will transform semantic physical science.
Then to Datafest at the Melbourne Age. There were 6 teams challenging using data sets produced by the Age – weather, political donations, etc. Could you make a story/ (DaveF tried to get me into a one-person team and I gave a surreal pitch to the judges which made no sense to anyone). LOTS of people, lots of excitement. Several old friends.
Finally to Tim Berners-Lee at Melb Uni. House full but we got in as DaveF was partial organizer. (Many thanks to Pia Waugh from Canberra for fixing it all up).
In 1994 I heard Tim at CERN and it changed the rest of my life. Today it started much slower for me – perhaps familiarity. But when Tim go to Aaron Swartz there was reall intensity, emotion, passion, compulsion. I’ve tweeted as best I can. Here’s my tweets (scraped and in reverse order). Hope they give an idea?
#tbldownunder will probably be an “Aaron’s Law”. New momentum for openness – e.g. academic journals. e.g. #pdftribute to personal PDFs
#tbldownunder aaron was great guy. We shal never know precisely what his motivation was.
#tbldownunder Aaron charged under law which used to require serious but then changed to any break-in
#tbldownunder Feds tried plea bargaining – A would have record for life. Threats fo decades in jail.
#tbldownunder TBL now in full stride. really compelling. Feds said aaron had stolen millions of dollars. JSTOR was fine. Fed continued
#tbldownunder aaron_sw downloaded articles (that he had right) to. But MIT police found out where and set up trap. MIT police handet to Camb
#tbldownunder aaron_sw wrote open access manifesto. wrote loop to downloaded journals. MIT cut off his mac address but aaron switched mac
#tbldownunder now telling how aaron_sw accessed JSTOR
#tbldownunder aaron_sw asked for own file and put on web as pubdomain
#tbldownunder aaron_sw found time when court records were free and downloaded large chunk. FBI opened file and watched his house.But no case
#tbldownunder “hacker” means crafty person
#tbldownunder aaron_sw realised there were things that should be online that weren’t – courrt records were 10 cents.
#tbldownunder aaron_sw was a great member of community. worked on Rss 1.0; f2f mtg of RDF WG “do you know he is 14?” very mature for age
#tbldownunder aaron swartz. tbl met Aaron on IRC