30. November, 2003 - scanning books

The Great Library of Amazonia as they scan digitize hundreds of thousands of books. And there are groups digitizing books on which copyright has expired. But what about all the books that are still under copyright due to the Disney Protection Act of 1998, and which aren’t sold anymore? I have dozens of books that fall into this class, and trying to replace many of them would be a major effort. It would be nice to be able to digitize them before all the paper copies fall apart with age (which is a distinct possibility with many books from the 60s and 70s that were printed on high-acid paper. I’ve watched some crumble as I try to read them). [boing boing]
New York parking tickets become international incident as New York police are tired of having diplomats not pay their parking tickets and have started parking in the reserved for diplomats spaces. Seemed to me I remembered a picture of another solution and google’s image search turned it up pretty quickly. Now obviously this wouldn’t work in all parking spots, but it might be a start. [strib]
On the other hand, our diplomats apparently need to be told to put on some clothes: US State Department cracks down on diplomatic dress code. Makes sense. Nobody needs to see Colin Powell in a bare-midriff halter top. [fark!]
Bubble Trouble is an addictive little flash game. Dang. There goes the afternoon. [vowe]