I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by... Slashdot!
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors. The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal. There are so many scandals that one could quote. The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
Back in the early '90s there was a newsletter called Gorilla Programmer with lots of advice and advocacy. Does anyone know what happened to it? Are there archives accessible online? I did a google search but couldn't find it.
Before anyone flames me as being anti-contraception or some such nonsense, let me state that population levels are way more than adequate to propogate the current technology from one generation to the next.
I recently read "Guns, Germs, Steel" by Jarad Diamond, in which he explores the different levels and rates of technological development in ancient peoples. One of the many interesting points that he makes is that there needs to be a certain population size and density before invention can take place. The society must be stable enough to support a leisure class to do the inventing.
Conversely, and this relates to the parent post, when population numbers decline inventions are sometimes lost. He sites examples of societies that had acquired and then subsequently lost, writing, the wheel, and other technologies.
Re:I write my passwords down.
on
Too Many Passwords
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If your email is open to the world as it flies between servers and sits in their caches and spools, it doesn't really matter if it's open to the world as it flies between you and your webmail host.
It matters that the sys-admins at the company where I work can't read it.
I might switch back to yahoo from gmail if they ever allow me to log in encrypted and remain encrypted (I know that I can log in via https, but after that the connection reverts to unencrypted).
Yes, JUnit is nice. All of the XUnits are nice.
They address one of the major problems in software development, which is the constant divergence of tests and code. But there are other ways to address that problem. The method that I subscribe to is this: don't allow developers to check in code until it passes all existing tests. It takes come descipline, but it works.
By the way don't forget to patent that microphone idea.
Well, not really, but my experience has been quite different. I don't know anyone who doesn't at least pay lip service to the concept of Unit Testing. In fact most developers I know follow a pattern of code a little, test a little.
However, I see very little effort put into end-to-end system tests, and that's a shame. The really tricky bugs come from module/process interaction. Furthermore, unlike Unit Tests, system tests reflect the end-user experience. At one place where I worked, the software was just pure crap, but the system testing was thorough and the customers loved the product.
The Holy Grail of test automation is Automated Test Generation, in other words the ability to have your application record inputs and outputs in a way that can be easily played back or transformed into a test. Pro/Engineer has this capability. Are there other applications that can do that?
I went browsing through some of your older comments and I came across this one which contains this broken link! Get it? archives.gov -> broken link? Ha ha... heh.
31 Flavors? like the ice cream shop? I was being
facetious, but from what I know about Sony, they really do have numerous research departments all implementing different flavors of DRM, 99% of which will never see actual production, and none of which will save them from their inevitable decline.
Lots of stuff. Old movies for example. I love the movies from the 30s and 40s, and by all rights people should be able to watch them for free. But Disney lobbied congress and got that taken away from us.
A pirate. But I don't try to justify it. I just want shit for free.
I just can't stand hypocrites who want to pretend that they're doing something noble when they are simply leeching.
You make the mistake of assuming that everyone else shares your own low moral standards.
What are you doing here? Are you just a troll? Are you doing some sneaky devil's advocate thing?
I honestly cannot figure you out.
I see it as a battle between consumers and monopolistic corporations. I see it as taking back that which was stolen from us. Sure, innocent people are going to get hurt, especially if they form alliances with the enemy. I pay artists directly, if that makes you feel any better.
Many who share your attitude seem to think that those of us on the other side simply want a free ride. Well I'm doing extremely well financially and I don't need a free ride. And I never download music because I'm already too busy to listen to the music I've already paid for.
If I'm a hypocrite, then what are you, a corporate lacky? No? I guess this name calling isn't as fun as you thought it was.
The Big 5 corporations represented by the RIAA really don't have a clue. Their various research departments are implementing 31 different, and incompatible, flavors of DRM, which when foisted on the consumer will pretty much guarantee that people will stop buying their products. Management has no clue about cryptography, key management, etc. They just want someone, anyone, to provide them the magic pixie dust that will allow them to continue to operate their monopolistic business model.
Hellooooo.... XKB is the X keyboard event protocol used by XFree86, Xorg, and hence most linux systems.
The topic is linux graphics, so how is this Offtopic?
Regarding (a) and (2), I would just say this: If the article is of so little interest that noone in the field is willing to read it and comment on it then i) it probably would not have been reviewed by a journal either, and
b) that's probably not a great loss.
Regarding (III), there is no reason that the article in question should not be edited by the author in response to comments received. If someone says, "Hey, you misspelled Leaky", or "Actually, the Pliestiocene came *before* the Cambrian", then the author could make the required corrections, just like with Journals!
*Democratically* letting an application (or a group of part-time moderators) filter reviewers cannot provide the same quality of reviews that a good editor
That may or may not be true. I certainly am not convinced. In any case, most papers get refined over the years, taking into account new results and/or new terminology, perhaps being incorporated into text books (another outdated concept?).
Slashdot Mirror
I believe that the scientific Journal has outlived its usefulness, and will be replaced by ... Slashdot!
But seriously, reviewers are biased and sloppy, as are the editors. The fact that reviews are blind means that they are also unaccountable, which fosters even more bias.
Journals take months or years to respond to a submision, and often as not they respond with a rejection so the submitter has to give up or start the whole process over with another journal. There are so many scandals that one could quote. The whole process seems more designed to support the status quo than to promote knowledge.
I have discussed this with many people in academia and they react not with logic, but with horror that I would dare to question a system that they view almost mystical reverence.
And don't forget to send donations to downhillbattle and EFF.
You could be locked up forever!
Thanks! Spelling was always one of my week points.
Back in the early '90s there was a newsletter called Gorilla Programmer with lots of advice and advocacy. Does anyone know what happened to it? Are there archives accessible online? I did a google search but couldn't find it.
All rite, thanks for the corection.
Before anyone flames me as being anti-contraception or some such nonsense, let me state that population levels are way more than adequate to propogate the current technology from one generation to the next.
Conversely, and this relates to the parent post, when population numbers decline inventions are sometimes lost. He sites examples of societies that had acquired and then subsequently lost, writing, the wheel, and other technologies.
That is also what Bruce Schneier does.
I should have been more clear. I am currently using gmail because it provides that functionality.
I should have been more clear. I am currently using gmail because it provides that functionality.
But they wouldn't know how to read it because my computer runs linux.
It matters that the sys-admins at the company where I work can't read it.
I might switch back to yahoo from gmail if they ever allow me to log in encrypted and remain encrypted (I know that I can log in via https, but after that the connection reverts to unencrypted).
Yes, JUnit is nice. All of the XUnits are nice. They address one of the major problems in software development, which is the constant divergence of tests and code. But there are other ways to address that problem. The method that I subscribe to is this: don't allow developers to check in code until it passes all existing tests. It takes come descipline, but it works.
By the way don't forget to patent that microphone idea.
However, I see very little effort put into end-to-end system tests, and that's a shame. The really tricky bugs come from module/process interaction. Furthermore, unlike Unit Tests, system tests reflect the end-user experience. At one place where I worked, the software was just pure crap, but the system testing was thorough and the customers loved the product.
The Holy Grail of test automation is Automated Test Generation, in other words the ability to have your application record inputs and outputs in a way that can be easily played back or transformed into a test. Pro/Engineer has this capability. Are there other applications that can do that?
I went browsing through some of your older comments and I came across this one which contains this broken link! Get it? archives.gov -> broken link? Ha ha ... heh.
Thank you for the correction.
Where do you get 31?
31 Flavors? like the ice cream shop? I was being facetious, but from what I know about Sony, they really do have numerous research departments all implementing different flavors of DRM, 99% of which will never see actual production, and none of which will save them from their inevitable decline.
Lots of stuff. Old movies for example. I love the movies from the 30s and 40s, and by all rights people should be able to watch them for free. But Disney lobbied congress and got that taken away from us.
A pirate. But I don't try to justify it. I just want shit for free.
I just can't stand hypocrites who want to pretend that they're doing something noble when they are simply leeching.
You make the mistake of assuming that everyone else shares your own low moral standards. What are you doing here? Are you just a troll? Are you doing some sneaky devil's advocate thing? I honestly cannot figure you out.
Many who share your attitude seem to think that those of us on the other side simply want a free ride. Well I'm doing extremely well financially and I don't need a free ride. And I never download music because I'm already too busy to listen to the music I've already paid for.
If I'm a hypocrite, then what are you, a corporate lacky? No? I guess this name calling isn't as fun as you thought it was.
The Big 5 corporations represented by the RIAA really don't have a clue. Their various research departments are implementing 31 different, and incompatible, flavors of DRM, which when foisted on the consumer will pretty much guarantee that people will stop buying their products. Management has no clue about cryptography, key management, etc. They just want someone, anyone, to provide them the magic pixie dust that will allow them to continue to operate their monopolistic business model.
Hellooooo .... XKB is the X keyboard event protocol used by XFree86, Xorg, and hence most linux systems.
The topic is linux graphics, so how is this Offtopic?
i) it probably would not have been reviewed by a journal either, and
b) that's probably not a great loss.
Regarding (III), there is no reason that the article in question should not be edited by the author in response to comments received. If someone says, "Hey, you misspelled Leaky", or "Actually, the Pliestiocene came *before* the Cambrian", then the author could make the required corrections, just like with Journals!
*Democratically* letting an application (or a group of part-time moderators) filter reviewers cannot provide the same quality of reviews that a good editor
That may or may not be true. I certainly am not convinced. In any case, most papers get refined over the years, taking into account new results and/or new terminology, perhaps being incorporated into text books (another outdated concept?).
And yes, I also read http://pascal.tsu.ru/en/xkb/ .