So according to you, anyone who knows history and understands how it applies to the modern age is a hat-and-vest-wearing, latte-drinking hipster? Wow. What a sad little world you must live in.
Quit being an idiot who uses "hipster" to mean "someone who says something I don't understand."
Also, quit trying to tell other people to enjoy things you like simply because you like them. You like the show, and explained why, and that's fine. GPP doesn't, and explained why, and that's fine too.
Believe it or not, but slashdot used to be a site that got tech news before it broke in the mainstream outlets. A story being featured on slashdot used to be an accomplishment for a story, showing it was important to geek culture. Now, slashdot just fishes old headlines from drudgereport, breitbart, fox news, and occasionally CNN.
I've been on Slashdot since the last century, and I remember quite clearly that there have always been stories here which I'd first seen elsewhere. The value of the site has always been more in the discussion than in the headlines.
Believe it or not, we live in a world in which interesting stories often take more than twenty-four hours to play out, and are still worth discussing some time after the CNN blurb appears.
Contrary to Betteridge, the answer to almost any question of the form "is the DEA lying" is yes. They're a worse propaganda machine than every other alphabet-soup agency put together, which is saying something.
I could never understand how there are mathematicians who can easily write in Tex the way I'd write in a word processor.
I can't really explain it other than to say "you get used to it." After a while, the markup becomes transparent; if you're typesetting an equation, for example, you see the layout in your head while you're typing the markup. Which makes it much easier than using an equation editor in a word processor, really--compounded by the fact that equation editors are universally awful.
I found my job at the campus bowling alley to be very different from my dissertation work.
Well, sure, because they're different types of jobs: task-oriented vs. project-oriented. I went from emergency medicine, which is about as task-oriented as it gets, to research, which is entirely about completing long-term projects; along the way I did web development and database administration, which are somewhere in the middle. But none of them is more or less a "job" than any of the others.
Why are there multiple posts telling me I'm wrong when I clearly stated that "a doctoral thesis is a lot of work?!"
Because you also said "academia is not a job," and when you said that, you were... well, wrong.
Here's what my life as a grad student, about to defend my dissertation, looks like: I get a paycheck. I have a desk. I have a boss. I have schedules, and deadlines, and meetings, and performance standards. "Fame and press releases" have absolutely nothing to do with it. What I do looks a whole lot like what I did as a DBA, actually, except with longer hours for lower pay. It's a job.
I may have projected some of the anti-academic bias that seems so pervasive on Slashdot (and is amply on display in many of the comments on this story) onto your post, and I'm sorry about that. Just please understand that unless you've done a PhD, or been married to someone who has, you probably don't know nearly as much about what it's like as you think you do.
BTW, if you think "a highly neurotic and unpredictable world with no guarantees" and "infighting and contacts often trump a true meritocracy" don't describe jobs outside academia just as well, then all I can say is that you've must have been very very lucky in your work history.
And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
If you'd gone on for a PhD, you'd know how absurd that sounds. Dissertation research damn well is a job, probably tougher than any job you've ever had. And I've had plenty of work experience in what people smugly and stupidly call the "real world" (hint: any world where people live and work is just as real as any other) as a basis for comparison.
"Democrat" is a noun, while "Democratic" is the corresponding adjective. "Republican" is both an adjective and a noun. If you choose to pretend you don't understand this, go right ahead, but don't expect anyone except your comrades in your ideological echo chamber to take you seriously.
I'm not sure whether this trend took hold in Old Media or New Media first
Old Media invented it long before New Media was even imagined. The whole idea of "objective journalism" is a relatively recent canard; for most of the news media's existence, it's been unashamedly partisan and emotional. What we're seeing now is really a return to form.
How dare you come in with an example of such a treatment actually working? Don't you know that this line of research is an offense to God and man which will inevitably lead to a hellish Gattasteinian future in which we're all mutant slaves of the Big Science / Big Pharma Conspiracy? Or something like that.
Seriously, congratulations, and speaking as a researcher, thank you.
nowadays increasingly one cannot open a google account without a valid cellphone numbr for verification
Really? I find this hard to believe. My Google account goes way back, so I don't claim to know for sure one way or the other, but I will say that while they've bugged me for my cell phone number a few times, I've never been unable to access any of their services without giving it. Being asked for the number and having to click through the "no, I really don't want to give you this information" box is not the same thing as "cannot open a Google account."
I feel that there is a lot of stigma against nuclear energy these days (particularly here on Slashdot), and for good reason. However, I don't often see people making a case FOR nuclear power
I can only assume that your post crossed over from a different "Slashdot" in some alternate universe.
Now, if Prof. "X" wants to boost his reputation by publishing in a 'prestigious' journal
Last I heard, Prof. X tries to stay out of the public eye for the most part. He doesn't want his school to get too much attention. This isn't typical behavior for academics, I admit, but it seems to work for him.
But it looks to me like the internet is meeting that original reasoning just fine
Kinda-sorta. The situation you describe, in which we can access practically everything we're likely to want from our university libraries online, is certainly a huge improvement over the old in-the-library method of research. But it's a long way from Berners-Lee's original vision of the web, which was as a collaborative markup system that would allow researchers to share and comment on each others' work, with no costs other than those required for information storage and transmission. Honestly, Wikipedia probably comes closer to this vision than anything else we currently have does, and good luck putting that Wikipedia article you wrote on your CV when your tenure review comes around.
The problem is that the genetic code alone isn't a programming language. It looks deceptively like a programming language, and that fact has deceived a generation of computer scientists into thinking biology is easy to understand and hack. But it's really better thought of as a collection of heuristics. Edit your genome to get a prehensile tail, and you might get that, or you might get a blob of useless flesh hanging off your ass (and the latter outcome is a lot more likely).
Now, it may be that once we understand all the regulatory mechanisms that turn a couple of DNA strands into a complete organism, it will turn out that the whole thing is nicely deterministic and we can reprogram at will. But at this point, talking about adding new anatomical features is like talking about writing an operating system right after you've learned "Hello world."
"Today's decision, a 5-4 vote along ideological lines by the nation's highest court, definitively ends their case."
"In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito... The majority opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts... [Breyer] is joined in a dissent by Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan."
Slashdot Mirror
So according to you, anyone who knows history and understands how it applies to the modern age is a hat-and-vest-wearing, latte-drinking hipster? Wow. What a sad little world you must live in.
Geek blackface? WTF?
Quit trying to be a hipster and enjoy the show.
Quit being an idiot who uses "hipster" to mean "someone who says something I don't understand."
Also, quit trying to tell other people to enjoy things you like simply because you like them. You like the show, and explained why, and that's fine. GPP doesn't, and explained why, and that's fine too.
BBT is basically geek blackface
That's harsh, but perfect. Thank you.
get more quality sci-fi on TV ... say, more episodes of Stargate Universe
I think my head just exploded.
Believe it or not, but slashdot used to be a site that got tech news before it broke in the mainstream outlets. A story being featured on slashdot used to be an accomplishment for a story, showing it was important to geek culture. Now, slashdot just fishes old headlines from drudgereport, breitbart, fox news, and occasionally CNN.
I've been on Slashdot since the last century, and I remember quite clearly that there have always been stories here which I'd first seen elsewhere. The value of the site has always been more in the discussion than in the headlines.
Believe it or not, we live in a world in which interesting stories often take more than twenty-four hours to play out, and are still worth discussing some time after the CNN blurb appears.
That's terrible. Can someone please contact Jeffrey Beall and tell him to add Elsevier to the fake journals list.
Thank God! We nearly let that one get through!
[slow clap]
It's too bad; the problems Beall points out are real enough, but his approach is hopelessly tainted by his obvious biases.
Contrary to Betteridge, the answer to almost any question of the form "is the DEA lying" is yes. They're a worse propaganda machine than every other alphabet-soup agency put together, which is saying something.
I could never understand how there are mathematicians who can easily write in Tex the way I'd write in a word processor.
I can't really explain it other than to say "you get used to it." After a while, the markup becomes transparent; if you're typesetting an equation, for example, you see the layout in your head while you're typing the markup. Which makes it much easier than using an equation editor in a word processor, really--compounded by the fact that equation editors are universally awful.
I found my job at the campus bowling alley to be very different from my dissertation work.
Well, sure, because they're different types of jobs: task-oriented vs. project-oriented. I went from emergency medicine, which is about as task-oriented as it gets, to research, which is entirely about completing long-term projects; along the way I did web development and database administration, which are somewhere in the middle. But none of them is more or less a "job" than any of the others.
Why are there multiple posts telling me I'm wrong when I clearly stated that "a doctoral thesis is a lot of work?!"
Because you also said "academia is not a job," and when you said that, you were ... well, wrong.
Here's what my life as a grad student, about to defend my dissertation, looks like: I get a paycheck. I have a desk. I have a boss. I have schedules, and deadlines, and meetings, and performance standards. "Fame and press releases" have absolutely nothing to do with it. What I do looks a whole lot like what I did as a DBA, actually, except with longer hours for lower pay. It's a job.
I may have projected some of the anti-academic bias that seems so pervasive on Slashdot (and is amply on display in many of the comments on this story) onto your post, and I'm sorry about that. Just please understand that unless you've done a PhD, or been married to someone who has, you probably don't know nearly as much about what it's like as you think you do.
BTW, if you think "a highly neurotic and unpredictable world with no guarantees" and "infighting and contacts often trump a true meritocracy" don't describe jobs outside academia just as well, then all I can say is that you've must have been very very lucky in your work history.
And before you ask, academia is a lot of work but it is not a job.
If you'd gone on for a PhD, you'd know how absurd that sounds. Dissertation research damn well is a job, probably tougher than any job you've ever had. And I've had plenty of work experience in what people smugly and stupidly call the "real world" (hint: any world where people live and work is just as real as any other) as a basis for comparison.
"Democrat" is a noun, while "Democratic" is the corresponding adjective. "Republican" is both an adjective and a noun. If you choose to pretend you don't understand this, go right ahead, but don't expect anyone except your comrades in your ideological echo chamber to take you seriously.
I'm not sure whether this trend took hold in Old Media or New Media first
Old Media invented it long before New Media was even imagined. The whole idea of "objective journalism" is a relatively recent canard; for most of the news media's existence, it's been unashamedly partisan and emotional. What we're seeing now is really a return to form.
I do my best. Posterity will judge the results, I suppose. Pre-emptively, you're welcome. ;)
How dare you come in with an example of such a treatment actually working? Don't you know that this line of research is an offense to God and man which will inevitably lead to a hellish Gattasteinian future in which we're all mutant slaves of the Big Science / Big Pharma Conspiracy? Or something like that.
Seriously, congratulations, and speaking as a researcher, thank you.
What could possibly go wrong?
People dying from diseases that their immune systems could easily handle if properly trained to do so?
nowadays increasingly one cannot open a google account without a valid cellphone numbr for verification
Really? I find this hard to believe. My Google account goes way back, so I don't claim to know for sure one way or the other, but I will say that while they've bugged me for my cell phone number a few times, I've never been unable to access any of their services without giving it. Being asked for the number and having to click through the "no, I really don't want to give you this information" box is not the same thing as "cannot open a Google account."
I feel that there is a lot of stigma against nuclear energy these days (particularly here on Slashdot), and for good reason. However, I don't often see people making a case FOR nuclear power
I can only assume that your post crossed over from a different "Slashdot" in some alternate universe.
Now, if Prof. "X" wants to boost his reputation by publishing in a 'prestigious' journal
Last I heard, Prof. X tries to stay out of the public eye for the most part. He doesn't want his school to get too much attention. This isn't typical behavior for academics, I admit, but it seems to work for him.
But it looks to me like the internet is meeting that original reasoning just fine
Kinda-sorta. The situation you describe, in which we can access practically everything we're likely to want from our university libraries online, is certainly a huge improvement over the old in-the-library method of research. But it's a long way from Berners-Lee's original vision of the web, which was as a collaborative markup system that would allow researchers to share and comment on each others' work, with no costs other than those required for information storage and transmission. Honestly, Wikipedia probably comes closer to this vision than anything else we currently have does, and good luck putting that Wikipedia article you wrote on your CV when your tenure review comes around.
Sorry to rant like that, but as an outsider to the academic debate, voices like mine are usually never heard, and treated like they don't exist.
Don't apologize. Speaking as an academic insider, I think it was a fine rant, and one that should be heard far and wide.
The problem is that the genetic code alone isn't a programming language. It looks deceptively like a programming language, and that fact has deceived a generation of computer scientists into thinking biology is easy to understand and hack. But it's really better thought of as a collection of heuristics. Edit your genome to get a prehensile tail, and you might get that, or you might get a blob of useless flesh hanging off your ass (and the latter outcome is a lot more likely).
Now, it may be that once we understand all the regulatory mechanisms that turn a couple of DNA strands into a complete organism, it will turn out that the whole thing is nicely deterministic and we can reprogram at will. But at this point, talking about adding new anatomical features is like talking about writing an operating system right after you've learned "Hello world."
Moving those goalposts around must be pretty tiring. Why don't you take a rest?
Repubmocrat Tyranny
"Today's decision, a 5-4 vote along ideological lines by the nation's highest court, definitively ends their case."
"In an opinion by Justice Samuel Alito ... The majority opinion was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Anthony Kennedy, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts ... [Breyer] is joined in a dissent by Justices Ruth Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan."
False equivalence is false.