From: Chad Perrin <perrin@...>
Date: 2007-10-05T02:10:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Confession: I never did ASM

On Thu, Oct 04, 2007 at 02:52:52PM +0900, Marc Heiler wrote:
> "That paper, as well known as it is, was pretty tough to track down in 
> HTML."
> 
> That's why we need governments all over the world to sponsor/push 
> efforts to make the knowledge available in a "web-ready" format, be it 
> html, database, pdf, whatever. Good reason exists too, paper is 
> information with an expiration date :)

We'd be better off with volunteer efforts -- think a "Library of
Alexandria" variation on the Wikipedia theme -- for a number of reasons.
For one thing, political interests wouldn't necessarily have as big an
impact on how it was managed (and if it did, someone else would come
along and fork it, whereas with a government effort that's unlikely).
For another, it wouldn't involve another tax hike.  For yet another,
governmental bureaucracy wouldn't slow things to a crawl, misallocate
funding as a matter of course, and make contributing to it a severe pain
in the fourth point of contact.  Additionally . . . et cetera.  I could
probably go on in this vein for quite some time.

. . . but I'm all for a "Library of Alexandria" volunteer resource.  It
wouldn't take too much, in terms of planning, I'd think -- but putting
together the resources for it would be a bit more of a challenge.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Leon Festinger: "A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him
you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts and figures and he questions
your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."