nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
"Colin Wilson" wrote in message
t...

.... All state backed regulations
should be available - in electronic form - for free, or at a nominal
cost

In other words, they should be paid for out of general taxation, so that
all
tax payers bear the cost, instead of just the people who actually want
them.

We`ve already paid for them - the least they can do is make them
accessible !


Exactly how do you think you have paid for any British Standard? The BSI is
a commercial organisation, not a government body, and its work on creating
and maintaining Standards is funded by the sales of those Standards.

As I, and also others, pay for these products, I assume my money pays
for the companies to create these standards. As such, I think that they
should be in the public domain. After all, it is in the company's
interest to make sure that the product I buy still complies to the standard.

Dave

nightjar nightjar@ wrote:

"Dave" wrote in message
...

nightjar nightjar@ wrote:

"Ed Sirett" wrote in message
news

If ordinary people can read for themselves what the rights and wrongs
of a matter this has got to be better than hearing snippets from
BG and CORGI 'priests'.


You can do that down my local Public Library.

Unfortunately, you can only print off ten percent of the content.
I ran into this problem when I wanted to get hold of a B.S. for ladders
for school. I went to my local library and they gave me a PIN number and
told me to go to the central library, where I could brows on line. Not
much good to me when I have to prove to HSE that I am complying with the
reg.


I have never had HSE, or our Quality Auditors, ask to see a copy of a BS to
demonstrate compliance. They have their own copies of any relevant ones and
usually know them off by heart anyway.

The first point of contact with the HSE at school is the HSE designated
teacher/teaching assistant. I was asked if the ladders complied. (I
doubt very much they do and I am more that capable of examining ladders,
both wooden and aluminium, for integrity. Its just that I have no county
qualifications to do so.) I told the HSE at school that she would have
to provide me with any copies of HSE regs that she wanted me to work to.
That was more that 6 months ago and I have had no further contact on the
matter.

On another subject...

If you work at a school as 'site supervisor' (the new name for
caretaker,) you will find yourself in a lone worker environment. When I
asked the head teacher about the lone working policy, she said that she
would look into it. I told her not to bother, as it would only open up
another can of worms (the first being the BSI ladder problem)

Just why does modern law take out of our control so many matters?
Sorry to answer my own question.
It must be this control freak government.

Im on the side of Ed on this. If I want to see what a particular act of
parliament says, I can sit and read it in my local library. Why is it not
the same for a B.S?


You have paid the cost of 'free' access to the Act through taxes, but BSI
cannot collect their income that way.

No, but they collect it through what I purchase though ;-)

Dave

On Fri, 12 May 2006 21:44:42 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

It does not matter really, it needs decripting prior to display, you
knobble it then. (some of the PDF writer software development component
sets are quite handy for this sort of stuff, since you can render
objects one at a time and work out which ones to not bother rendering! ;-)

Yes but you've got to pay for the software ;-)

(Cue: anyone aware of any OSS that does such manipulations?)

On Fri, 12 May 2006 15:09:38 +0100, Cordless Crazy wrote:

However, when downloading or printing them out, they have the company
name, the date and the name of the guy who downloaded it plastered on
every page down the side.

Will be interesting to see if this is the case with the guy's codes on
ebay! If so, the BSI will have no probs tracking the culprit down!!

Or more likely tracking down the mug whose Athens account the eBayer has
cracked.

On Fri, 12 May 2006 23:15:19 +0000, John Stumbles wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2006 15:09:38 +0100, Cordless Crazy wrote:

However, when downloading or printing them out, they have the company
name, the date and the name of the guy who downloaded it plastered on
every page down the side.

Will be interesting to see if this is the case with the guy's codes on
ebay! If so, the BSI will have no probs tracking the culprit down!!

Or more likely tracking down the mug whose Athens account the eBayer has
cracked.

[Update after seeing Ed's copy.]

OK, that'll be a bit harder since they've stripped the watermark off the
edges of the pages (by cropping the pages). They've also lost the document
structure in the process.
Ed's/eBay version: http://82.21.72.246/~john/BS/5440-ES.jpg
Pukka BS version: http://82.21.72.246/~john/BS/5440-RC.jpg

I note the pirate version's document properties says PDF producer "iText
1.53 by lowagie.com" which is an OSS PDF tool in Java. I haven't read &
understood enough to know if this can be used to do the cropping, but if
they've actually imported it and done some fancy footwork to have it hide
the watermark on the displayed resultant PDF I suspect the encrypted
watermark - with details of original licensee - may still be embedded in
the document. It would be fun to know :-)

John Stumbles wrote:

I note the pirate version's document properties says PDF producer "iText
1.53 by lowagie.com" which is an OSS PDF tool in Java. I haven't read &

You beat me to it! ;-)

iText is a pretty decent library, we use it in one of our commercial
applications.

understood enough to know if this can be used to do the cropping, but if

It can do pretty much anything you can do in the full blown version of
agrobat, and a whole lot more.


--
Cheers,

John.

/================================================== ===============\
| Internode Ltd - http://www.internode.co.uk |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------|
| John Rumm - john(at)internode(dot)co(dot)uk |
\================================================= ================/

John Stumbles wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 21:44:42 +0100, John Rumm wrote:

It does not matter really, it needs decripting prior to display, you
knobble it then. (some of the PDF writer software development component
sets are quite handy for this sort of stuff, since you can render
objects one at a time and work out which ones to not bother rendering! ;-)

Yes but you've got to pay for the software ;-)

(Cue: anyone aware of any OSS that does such manipulations?)

Theres lots of freeware pdf manuipulation, conversion, screen capture
etc software about. Between them you can do pretty much anything with
pdf. The thing with freeware on non standard or design type tasks is
you often need to use a few different apps together to get there.


NT

Ed Sirett wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2006 18:20:55 +0100, nightjar wrote:


"Ed Sirett" wrote in message
news ..
I'm not a dishonest person, ...

However you want to dress it up, your aim is to steal BSI's intellectual
property.

I have no problem with the concept of intellectual property.
It the combination of a certain set of intellectual property also being
the law.

I'm not even arguing that the docs should be free - I'm just saying that
they should be affordable to most people who have an interest in them.
If CORGI said that it was mandatory to have access to these documents at
the price they retail at then most professionals would simply (and very
reluctantly) shell out and the whole matter would be yet another overhead
to be amortised by the clients.
Making the correct information available to everyone won't automatically
make things safer but might just help and demystifying the information
has other benefits.

There are gas fitting texts around (eg. CORGI, Viper and various
Training/Assessment centres) the trouble is that they contain summaries of
what the writer thought was important.

I strongly suspect that the BG fitter in the other thread did not have his
own copy of BS 5440-1:2000 although it is possible that he may just have
had Essential Gas Safety (from CORGI) with him.


The way its set up is a recipe for abuse. Does the govt want the public
to be abused by widespread spurious extraction of thousands of pounds
by con artists? Gas testing has become a corrupted area.

Landlord /tenant issues is another area where the govt is squarely
backing criminal tenants.


NT

It is an absolute and outrageous rip off that both BS and ISO standards
are not free. All Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, EU
Directives that drive the production of BS and ISO standards are free
to download - but often charged for if bought as a hard publication.
Likewise all Maritime and Coastguard Agency notices and regulatory
documents and the Boat Safety Scheme document are also free online.
Even the reports of VAT Tribunals are now free off the internet site -
there used to be a nominal charge to cover photocopying and postage.
Just to get all the ISO standards for compliance with the Recreational
Craft Directive is around £500. Luckily, they are also in my library
on DVDs - but due to the cost my library - large main library in Oxford
- is stopping its annual subscription to BS/ISO. At every mouse click
there is a copyright and copying warning!!!
CORGI is also a rip off and does not prevent the con installers.
Likewise Part P and L is going the same way.

nightjar nightjar@ wrote:
"Colin Wilson" wrote in message
t...
.... All state backed regulations
should be available - in electronic form - for free, or at a nominal
cost
In other words, they should be paid for out of general taxation, so that
all
tax payers bear the cost, instead of just the people who actually want
them.
We`ve already paid for them - the least they can do is make them
accessible !

Exactly how do you think you have paid for any British Standard? The BSI is
a commercial organisation, not a government body, and its work on creating
and maintaining Standards is funded by the sales of those Standards. As a

But if the Government chooses to use a BSI doc as the basis of a
regulation then it has in effect sub-contracted the detailed drafting of
the law. That may be more effective and efficient than civil servants
doing the work in-house. So let the government pay for the work by
purchase a license to make the relevant parts of the standard freely
available.


--
David Clark
http://www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk
$replyto = 'an.rnser.is.reqird'

In article .com,
wrote:
It is an absolute and outrageous rip off that both BS and ISO standards
are not free. All Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, EU
Directives that drive the production of BS and ISO standards are free
to download - but often charged for if bought as a hard publication.
Likewise all Maritime and Coastguard Agency notices and regulatory
documents and the Boat Safety Scheme document are also free online.
Even the reports of VAT Tribunals are now free off the internet site
[snip]

I agree. Giving regulations etc the force of law but not allowing free and
easy access to them is beyond common sense.
It's just what happens when profit making bodies are allowed to become
involved in such things.

--
*Why is 'abbreviation' such a long word?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article .uk,
Ed Sirett writes
On Thu, 11 May 2006 14:23:06 +0000, fred wrote:

In article .uk,
Ed Sirett writes
Because I think this is the right move for gas safety and other
construction related matters. I intend to purchase a few of these
(starting with BS5440 - the standard for flues to domestic gas
appliances below 70kW) I will then put them on my web site.

A safer bet may be to anonymously post copies to a suitable binary
newsgroup with occasional reminders here that they have been known to
appear in such a place occasionally.

I'm not a dishonest person, I have no intention to be underhand. A bad law
is one that should not be followed.
The instigating case here was to help decide weather someone had been over
zealous in applying the standard to the flue at an elderly person's home.

I realise that, just get used to the idea of changing hosting companies
regularly and getting threatening letters from solicitors.
--
fred
Plusnet - I hope you like vanilla

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
wrote:
It is an absolute and outrageous rip off that both BS and ISO standards
are not free. All Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments, EU
Directives that drive the production of BS and ISO standards are free
to download - but often charged for if bought as a hard publication.
Likewise all Maritime and Coastguard Agency notices and regulatory
documents and the Boat Safety Scheme document are also free online.
Even the reports of VAT Tribunals are now free off the internet site
[snip]

I agree. Giving regulations etc the force of law but not allowing free and
easy access to them is beyond common sense.

That's why they are available in local libraries.

It's just what happens when profit making bodies are allowed to become
involved in such things.

But these bodies are not profit-making. They are non-profit bodies that must
balance the books between what it costs to produce the standards, and how
many they are likely to sell, without making a profit, but equally, without
falling into the red.

I'm sure if you were to produce a proper standard (do all the research,
organise the committees and experts, the design, editing, etc) and allow it
to be distributed free (i.e. you don't attempt to recover these costs), the
government would have no problem using it in future legislation.

-- JJ