I work at a national lab and am a physicist. As I have way too much stuff to do, I always look at articles in journals we have access to online first. If we don't have online access because it's too expensive, I have to drive across site to a library to dig it out (which is getting harder as libraries here are cutting back on paper journals), and I am doing this less and less. My colleagues are the same way.
What does this mean? The people publishing in these expensive journals are getting very few reads and citations, as people are having problems getting access, while articles in cheap journals get great access. The American Institute of Physics journals (PRL, PRB, RSI, RMP, etc.) are very reasonable, and EVERY library has access. So guess which journals people actually try to publish in now: the expensive journal no one reads or the cheap one everyone reads.
So, the cheap (society) journals are getting the great papers (with the exception of a few expensive journals such as Science and Nature), while the private journals get the rejects. Everyone in research knows you can ALWAYS find a private publisher to take your paper. The society journals are much harder, as they are not for-profit, and get plenty of submissions anyway.
People used to publish a lot in Physica and Nuclear Instruments and Methods, but NOT NOW! They are very expensive!
Anyway, I am not too worried myself, as the expensive private journals have already signed their death warrants, at least for physics.
There used to be a 8-1/2x10-1/2 paper size that competed with the 8-1/2x11 paper size, so be glad that was thrown out!
I snared the following from the American Forest & Pulp Association website.
---
Why is the standard paper size in the U.S. 8 ½" x 11"?
Back in the late 1600's, the Dutch invented the two-sheet mold. The average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms was 44". Many molds at that time were around 17" front to back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. Sounds big?...well to maximize the efficiency of paper making, a sheet this big was made, and then quartered, forming four 8.5" x 11" pieces.
This was well before paper machines dominated hand made paper labor. A couple centuries later when machines dominated the trade (although many hand made paper makers still existed), and the United States decided on a standard paper size, they stuck with the same size so as to keep the hand made paper makers in business.
Oddly enough, the United States used two different sizes - the 8" x 10.5" and the 8.5" x 11". Separate committees came up with separate standards, the 8" x 10.5" for the government and the 8.5" x 11" for the rest of us. Once these committees found out about each other a couple years later, they agreed to disagree until the early 1980's when Reagan finally proclaimed that the 8.5" x 11" was the official standard sized paper.
United States History
Not until World War I or shortly after was a standard paper size agreed to in the United States. Interestingly enough, within six months of each other, two different paper sizes were set as the standard; one for the government and one for the rest of us.
1. In 1921, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget established an interagency advisory group with the President's approval called the Permanent Conference on Printing which established the 8" x 10½" as the general U.S. government letterhead standard. This extended an earlier establishment made by the former President Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce at the time, who established the 8" x 10½" as the standard letterhead size for his department.
2. Now, during the same year, a Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes consisting of printing industry representatives was appointed to work with the Bureau of Standards as part of Hoover's program for the Elimination of Waste in Industry. This group came up with basic sizes for all types of printing and writing papers. The size for "letter" was a 17" x 22" sheet while the "legal" size was 17" x 28" sheet. The later known U.S. letter format was these sizes halved (8 ½" x 11" and 8 ½" by 14").
Even in the selection of the 8 ½" x 11", no special analysis was made to prove this was the optimum size for commercial letterhead. The Committee that developed the sizes did so using one objective - "to reduce inventory requirements for paper into sizes which would cut from a minimum trimming waste."
References:
1. Labarre Dictionary of Paper and Paper-Making Terms, 1937 Edition.
2. Kuhn, Markus . 1996. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
3. Dunn, A. D. 1972. Notes on the Standardization of Paper Sizes. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/dunn-paper sizes.pdf
> Did it say "Purple-Tinged A4 x 500 Sheets" on the packaging?
Okay, I don't know if you are being sarcastic or serious (this is Slashdot!).
Basically, I get stuff printed out for me when I go places for experiments, and it seems to always be purple-tinged. I never actually open any paper packages. We don't have any such paper in the US. Our colored paper is colored, meaning it is blindingly colored, and meant to really grab attention.
Okay, I've been to only England, Germany, and France for any period of time, so I've only seen plugs from those countries. I found it interesting that Germany and France have different wall sockets, but use the same plug. The English socket is a monster, but comes with a handy on-off switch!
Most of the A4 paper I have gotten was from England, so maybe that's where the purple tinge is from.
The simplest reason A4 won't take off in the US is that A4 doesn't fit in our file cabinets! We'd have to get rid of our file cabinets and folders and get new ones. Any A4 papers I have get all messed up in my filing cabinet as they don't fit!
As an American physicist, I use SI units for work, but happily use US units for everything else. I don't know why it just pisses off the rest of the world that we like Farenheit, inches, etc. WHO CARES! Why doesn't Europe get ONE FREAKING TYPE OF ELECTRICAL PLUG!
I found it funny that the article predicted the US switching, as I really don't see it happening.
Can anyone tell me why any A4 paper I get in Europe has a purple tinge to it? I find that very annoying.
I always just use 'whois' to find the DNS servers. They may not be local, but they work. You obviously need a functioning network account to do this. Once running, you can get a better number later.
Looking up aol.com tells you to look up AOL-DOM, and if you do this, it gives: DNS-01.NS.AOL.COM 198.81.17.232 DNS-02.NS.AOL.COM 205.188.157.232
For all of Ameritech's weirdness about other things, they have a set of web pages that lets you get all the info you need to sign up and log in, all through a browser. I signed up and logged in directly through Linux (all in the same session). I haven't even gotten around to setting up Windows to dial up yet. Obviously, you need a functioning Internet connection to get this information (which I did). Later pages assume you will use Windows or a Mac, but I just ignored these.
I need to write programs that draw a graphics file on the fly. However, I have not been able to find a drawing kit for PNG. Right now, I use the GD library, but I don't want GIF's!
Is there something similar to GD for GIF's? It doesn't need to have a lot of drawing functions, just the basics, like circle(), line(), 8-bit color, etc. A port of GD would be great.
HP makes great instruments. You never had to worry about them acting insane (old Keithley stuff was a nightmare). The GPIB interface always works like it was documented. The documents themselves are very thorough. I love using HP instruments, even though they are a little more expensive.
Why does the computer part keep the name??? Who cares about HP computers? They can change that name, but HP means something with scientific and engineering equipment.
Slashdot Mirror
I work at a national lab and am a physicist. As I have way too much stuff to do, I always look at articles in journals we have access to online first. If we don't have online access because it's too expensive, I have to drive across site to a library to dig it out (which is getting harder as libraries here are cutting back on paper journals), and I am doing this less and less. My colleagues are the same way.
What does this mean? The people publishing in these expensive journals are getting very few reads and citations, as people are having problems getting access, while articles in cheap journals get great access. The American Institute of Physics journals (PRL, PRB, RSI, RMP, etc.) are very reasonable, and EVERY library has access. So guess which journals people actually try to publish in now: the expensive journal no one reads or the cheap one everyone reads.
So, the cheap (society) journals are getting the great papers (with the exception of a few expensive journals such as Science and Nature), while the private journals get the rejects. Everyone in research knows you can ALWAYS find a private publisher to take your paper. The society journals are much harder, as they are not for-profit, and get plenty of submissions anyway.
People used to publish a lot in Physica and Nuclear Instruments and Methods, but NOT NOW! They are very expensive!
Anyway, I am not too worried myself, as the expensive private journals have already signed their death warrants, at least for physics.
There used to be a 8-1/2x10-1/2 paper size that competed with the 8-1/2x11 paper size, so be glad that was thrown out!
r sizes.pdf
I snared the following from the American Forest & Pulp Association website.
---
Why is the standard paper size in the U.S. 8 ½" x 11"?
Back in the late 1600's, the Dutch invented the two-sheet mold. The average maximum stretch of an experienced vatman's arms was 44". Many molds at that time were around 17" front to back because the laid lines and watermarks had to run from left to right. Sounds big?...well to maximize the efficiency of paper making, a sheet this big was made, and then quartered, forming four 8.5" x 11" pieces.
This was well before paper machines dominated hand made paper labor. A couple centuries later when machines dominated the trade (although many hand made paper makers still existed), and the United States decided on a standard paper size, they stuck with the same size so as to keep the hand made paper makers in business.
Oddly enough, the United States used two different sizes - the 8" x 10.5" and the 8.5" x 11". Separate committees came up with separate standards, the 8" x 10.5" for the government and the 8.5" x 11" for the rest of us. Once these committees found out about each other a couple years later, they agreed to disagree until the early 1980's when Reagan finally proclaimed that the 8.5" x 11" was the official standard sized paper.
United States History
Not until World War I or shortly after was a standard paper size agreed to in the United States. Interestingly enough, within six months of each other, two different paper sizes were set as the standard; one for the government and one for the rest of us.
1. In 1921, the first director of the Bureau of the Budget established an interagency advisory group with the President's approval called the Permanent Conference on Printing which established the 8" x 10½" as the general U.S. government letterhead standard. This extended an earlier establishment made by the former President Hoover, the Secretary of Commerce at the time, who established the 8" x 10½" as the standard letterhead size for his department.
2. Now, during the same year, a Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes consisting of printing industry representatives was appointed to work with the Bureau of Standards as part of Hoover's program for the Elimination of Waste in Industry. This group came up with basic sizes for all types of printing and writing papers. The size for "letter" was a 17" x 22" sheet while the "legal" size was 17" x 28" sheet. The later known U.S. letter format was these sizes halved (8 ½" x 11" and 8 ½" by 14").
Even in the selection of the 8 ½" x 11", no special analysis was made to prove this was the optimum size for commercial letterhead. The Committee that developed the sizes did so using one objective - "to reduce inventory requirements for paper into sizes which would cut from a minimum trimming waste."
References:
1. Labarre Dictionary of Paper and Paper-Making Terms, 1937 Edition.
2. Kuhn, Markus . 1996. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html
3. Dunn, A. D. 1972. Notes on the Standardization of Paper Sizes. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/dunn-pape
Okay, I don't know if you are being sarcastic or serious (this is Slashdot!).
Basically, I get stuff printed out for me when I go places for experiments, and it seems to always be purple-tinged. I never actually open any paper packages. We don't have any such paper in the US. Our colored paper is colored, meaning it is blindingly colored, and meant to really grab attention.
Okay, I've been to only England, Germany, and France for any period of time, so I've only seen plugs from
those countries. I found it interesting that Germany and France have different wall sockets, but use the same plug. The English socket is a monster, but comes with a handy on-off switch!
Most of the A4 paper I have gotten was from England, so maybe that's where the purple tinge is from.
As an American physicist, I use SI units for work, but happily use US units for everything else. I don't know why it just pisses off the rest of the world that we like Farenheit, inches, etc. WHO CARES! Why doesn't Europe get ONE FREAKING TYPE OF ELECTRICAL PLUG!
I found it funny that the article predicted the US switching, as I really don't see it happening.
Can anyone tell me why any A4 paper I get in Europe has a purple tinge to it? I find that very annoying.
So now I know why they bought and knocked down my old apartment building!
I always just use 'whois' to find the DNS servers. They may not be local, but they work. You obviously need a functioning network account to do this. Once running, you can get a better number later.
Looking up aol.com tells you to look up AOL-DOM, and if you do this, it gives:
DNS-01.NS.AOL.COM 198.81.17.232
DNS-02.NS.AOL.COM 205.188.157.232
For all of Ameritech's weirdness about other things, they have a set of web pages that lets you get all the info you need to sign up and log in, all through a browser. I signed up and logged in directly through Linux (all in the same session). I haven't even gotten around to setting up Windows to dial up yet. Obviously, you need a functioning Internet connection to get this information (which I did). Later pages assume you will use Windows or a Mac, but I just ignored these.
I need to write programs that draw a graphics file on the fly. However, I have not been able to find a drawing kit for PNG. Right now, I use the GD library, but I don't want GIF's!
Is there something similar to GD for GIF's? It doesn't need to have a lot of drawing functions, just the basics, like circle(), line(), 8-bit color, etc. A port of GD would be great.
Bob
HP makes great instruments. You never had to worry about them acting insane (old Keithley stuff was a nightmare). The GPIB interface always works like it was documented. The documents themselves are very thorough. I love using HP instruments, even though they are a little more expensive.
Why does the computer part keep the name??? Who cares about HP computers? They can change that name, but HP means something with scientific and engineering equipment.