I'm am both a graduate student and circulation librarian at Harvard, the biggest library system on the planet. While I can see the benefit of not having to run around such a massive library, especially the torturous process of reshelving returns, one of the benefits of libraries this huge would disappear. One of the great things about humongous libraries is that when you go to get your book, you can look at the other stuff on the same shelf. You'll often find a bunch of other relevant stuff, perhaps even more relevant than the book you came to get. It sounds like this robotic system would totally eliminate this.
The most unfortunate thing is that poorer people will start to study, not what they are good at/like, but what they can afford...
The most unfortunate thing about college is that very few can pay for it on their own, period. This is not something that "will start." People will study "what they are good at/like" or not study at all.
Tuition should be based on the value to society, not necessarily the simple cost of the teaching. English major should pay a lot more given that their contribution to the tax base will be much lower than an actual degree.
so "value" is equal to the amount of money they produce to be taxed? ridiculous.
The point is sensible... majors will have a proportional return on their investment. Engineering majors can pay more because they will earn more than people in the humanities. However, perhaps a better approach would be to admit fewer people into the humanities and fine arts programs, this would ensure to an extent, that people in these programs will be quality, and also help the oversaturated market.
Here at the Harvard grad schools neither the Med School nor the Law School give their students any funding because they will easily earn their tuition back. While at the Divinity School where we train ministers and the academics in religion about 70% of students get a full ride, and they were pushing for a full ride for everyone at the Div School before the economy crashed. Obviously a minister is not going to be able to pay back $150k for a graduate degree, but Lord knows we need some educated ministers...
I assume the other issue is endowments - funds are usually thrown at the sciences constantly but much much harder to come by in the humanities. This may be an effort to produce some funding that could be redistributed to other areas that are lacking in funding. If you think things are bad for STEM take a peek at the local university arts and humanities departments.
It seems like the problem people have with this is their assessment of the value of math, science, etc against other programs like art, history, anthropology, religion, etc etc. I think they're both equally valuable for different reasons.
In order to even begin to be competitive for a 5-8 year PhD in my field you need 2-4 years of Master's level work plus research and several languages. I'm working on a 2 year MA at Harvard, I have published 3 articles, will be competent in 5 languages requires for my field, will have research experience abroad, and I still won't be that competitive for a PhD. Welcome to the Humanities.
You guys finish a PhD in like 5 years after a BA and then complain about not getting a job? You've got time to get a second PhD at the rate I can get one, maybe that would help you diversify your expertise?
I'm a Harvard grad student, and the few times I have attempted to edit Wikipedia articles (in order to correct factual errors) I find my edits being promptly reversed. Haven't tried it since. If they want to attract academics there needs to be way to tell others OMG I GO TO HARVARD IM WICKED SMAWT STFU STOP REVERSING MY $*&%. That, and of course, unlike peer reviewed journals and the like, its intellectual energy that receives no acclaim from anyone you're actually trying to impress...kind of like slashdot.
Having lived in the West Bank, I can tell you this is a Hamas thing, in the Gaza Strip. Probably exercised by very low tech protocols of literally having the netcafe owner tell the police. The West Bank leadership is also completely different, and I am extremely skeptical that there is any kind of internet monitoring there. There isn't enough organization to get internet to many places, let alone have technology and infrastructure sophisticated enough to monitor it. Now the Israelis on the other hand...
Actually, you would be surprised at how much 3g coverage there some spots in in the Middle East, or at least Edge network. I did a lot of volunteering in the Palestinian Territories...in the wilderness and desert. While I didn't have a 3g smartphone I had my Kindle with me, and I never once lost 3g coverage. Here is a map of the Kindle coverage which should give at least a general idea http://client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_intl_tab Frankly I'm surprised they haven't set up these networks already, especially for military ops.
I'm doing graduate school at pretty much the top ranked ivy league university on the planet, and even I must admit that the American university system has systemic faults. I'm not exactly sure why this article made it onto slashdot, but there are certainly dozens if not hundreds more from well respected sources all saying the same thing. At the top universities at least, professors are pushed to publish, not to be great teachers, and the first places the administration turns to offset a budget deficit are increasing tuition costs, decreasing student worker benefits, and hiring more adjunct faculty for cheap labor. I've never attended university outside of America, so perhaps these problems are equally bad all over, and perhaps it's worse in graduate school than undergrad, but my instinct (and all these articles) says its not.
To the readers of my comment: my point is that there's clear, reasonable evidence of the harms of piracy. But we're faced with a questioner who has an adversarial and unconvertible frame of mind.
Okay, let's look at Crysis. You say that Crysis sold fewer copies than previous games "of its scope." You cherry pick one of the most successful games of all time, Doom 3, but the most direct comparison is the one previous game produced by Crytek: Far Cry. Far Cry sold 730,000 copies in its first 4 months (http://www.wiki4games.com/Far_Cry#cite_note-1).
Crysis exceeded sales expectations according to EA, selling 1 million copies in its first 3.5 months (http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612&Itemid=2), eliminating your argument. This came despite the fact that Crysis could barely run even on enthusiast PCs for a year after release, while Far Cry was released to a much larger audience of computers that could run it acceptably.
We know that Crysis was a very popular target of pirates, and Crytek tells us that this is proof that their sales were hurt by piracy, but there's absolutely no evidence connecting the two. Of every 100 downloads, how many would have purchased the game if they hadn't pirated it? Of every 100 downloads, how many see the game, like it, and then buy it in order to play online or out of respect for the developers? People like you assume that the first number is vastly larger than the second, but there's never been any evidence to support that position. I suggest that it's just as likely that piracy increases game sales, and I believe that the automatic assumption that piracy is the scourge claimed by some within the industry is incredibly naive.
Well, if we take a look at a game like World of Goo, which allowed users to access online portions of the game regardless of whether the copy was pirated or not, we can get a good figure, at least for this game. Since the ip address would be the same if someone pirated it and then liked it enough to buy it, and it was only available online, we can get a solid piracy figure. This figure, the estimated piracy rate, was 90% http://www.destructoid.com/wankers-world-of-goo-has-a-90-piracy-rate-111343.phtml. The two man team said they didn't go bankrupt, but to think they could have made so much more is surely proof of the damaging effect of piracy. Have they made a sequel or a new game I wonder. In this instance, beating someone to within an inch of their life and then saying its fine because they aren't dead is hardly a defense. It's clear that piracy hurts the little guys as much as the big guys like EA which we don't feel so bad about.
Slashdot Mirror
there's a Japanese pornography joke in there somewhere...
I'm am both a graduate student and circulation librarian at Harvard, the biggest library system on the planet. While I can see the benefit of not having to run around such a massive library, especially the torturous process of reshelving returns, one of the benefits of libraries this huge would disappear. One of the great things about humongous libraries is that when you go to get your book, you can look at the other stuff on the same shelf. You'll often find a bunch of other relevant stuff, perhaps even more relevant than the book you came to get. It sounds like this robotic system would totally eliminate this.
Pi = 3
The most unfortunate thing is that poorer people will start to study, not what they are good at/like, but what they can afford...
The most unfortunate thing about college is that very few can pay for it on their own, period. This is not something that "will start." People will study "what they are good at/like" or not study at all.
Tuition should be based on the value to society, not necessarily the simple cost of the teaching. English major should pay a lot more given that their contribution to the tax base will be much lower than an actual degree.
so "value" is equal to the amount of money they produce to be taxed? ridiculous.
The point is sensible... majors will have a proportional return on their investment. Engineering majors can pay more because they will earn more than people in the humanities. However, perhaps a better approach would be to admit fewer people into the humanities and fine arts programs, this would ensure to an extent, that people in these programs will be quality, and also help the oversaturated market.
Here at the Harvard grad schools neither the Med School nor the Law School give their students any funding because they will easily earn their tuition back. While at the Divinity School where we train ministers and the academics in religion about 70% of students get a full ride, and they were pushing for a full ride for everyone at the Div School before the economy crashed. Obviously a minister is not going to be able to pay back $150k for a graduate degree, but Lord knows we need some educated ministers...
I assume the other issue is endowments - funds are usually thrown at the sciences constantly but much much harder to come by in the humanities. This may be an effort to produce some funding that could be redistributed to other areas that are lacking in funding. If you think things are bad for STEM take a peek at the local university arts and humanities departments.
It seems like the problem people have with this is their assessment of the value of math, science, etc against other programs like art, history, anthropology, religion, etc etc. I think they're both equally valuable for different reasons.
or it didn't happen
In order to even begin to be competitive for a 5-8 year PhD in my field you need 2-4 years of Master's level work plus research and several languages. I'm working on a 2 year MA at Harvard, I have published 3 articles, will be competent in 5 languages requires for my field, will have research experience abroad, and I still won't be that competitive for a PhD. Welcome to the Humanities. You guys finish a PhD in like 5 years after a BA and then complain about not getting a job? You've got time to get a second PhD at the rate I can get one, maybe that would help you diversify your expertise?
I'm a Harvard grad student, and the few times I have attempted to edit Wikipedia articles (in order to correct factual errors) I find my edits being promptly reversed. Haven't tried it since. If they want to attract academics there needs to be way to tell others OMG I GO TO HARVARD IM WICKED SMAWT STFU STOP REVERSING MY $*&%. That, and of course, unlike peer reviewed journals and the like, its intellectual energy that receives no acclaim from anyone you're actually trying to impress...kind of like slashdot.
damn, I was hoping the bimbo died from snake poison, not the snake from bimbo poison. :(
Having lived in the West Bank, I can tell you this is a Hamas thing, in the Gaza Strip. Probably exercised by very low tech protocols of literally having the netcafe owner tell the police. The West Bank leadership is also completely different, and I am extremely skeptical that there is any kind of internet monitoring there. There isn't enough organization to get internet to many places, let alone have technology and infrastructure sophisticated enough to monitor it. Now the Israelis on the other hand...
Actually, you would be surprised at how much 3g coverage there some spots in in the Middle East, or at least Edge network. I did a lot of volunteering in the Palestinian Territories...in the wilderness and desert. While I didn't have a 3g smartphone I had my Kindle with me, and I never once lost 3g coverage. Here is a map of the Kindle coverage which should give at least a general idea http://client0.cellmaps.com/tabs.html#cellmaps_intl_tab Frankly I'm surprised they haven't set up these networks already, especially for military ops.
I'm doing graduate school at pretty much the top ranked ivy league university on the planet, and even I must admit that the American university system has systemic faults. I'm not exactly sure why this article made it onto slashdot, but there are certainly dozens if not hundreds more from well respected sources all saying the same thing. At the top universities at least, professors are pushed to publish, not to be great teachers, and the first places the administration turns to offset a budget deficit are increasing tuition costs, decreasing student worker benefits, and hiring more adjunct faculty for cheap labor. I've never attended university outside of America, so perhaps these problems are equally bad all over, and perhaps it's worse in graduate school than undergrad, but my instinct (and all these articles) says its not.
To the readers of my comment: my point is that there's clear, reasonable evidence of the harms of piracy. But we're faced with a questioner who has an adversarial and unconvertible frame of mind.
Okay, let's look at Crysis. You say that Crysis sold fewer copies than previous games "of its scope." You cherry pick one of the most successful games of all time, Doom 3, but the most direct comparison is the one previous game produced by Crytek: Far Cry. Far Cry sold 730,000 copies in its first 4 months (http://www.wiki4games.com/Far_Cry#cite_note-1).
Crysis exceeded sales expectations according to EA, selling 1 million copies in its first 3.5 months (http://www.incrysis.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=612&Itemid=2), eliminating your argument. This came despite the fact that Crysis could barely run even on enthusiast PCs for a year after release, while Far Cry was released to a much larger audience of computers that could run it acceptably.
We know that Crysis was a very popular target of pirates, and Crytek tells us that this is proof that their sales were hurt by piracy, but there's absolutely no evidence connecting the two. Of every 100 downloads, how many would have purchased the game if they hadn't pirated it? Of every 100 downloads, how many see the game, like it, and then buy it in order to play online or out of respect for the developers? People like you assume that the first number is vastly larger than the second, but there's never been any evidence to support that position. I suggest that it's just as likely that piracy increases game sales, and I believe that the automatic assumption that piracy is the scourge claimed by some within the industry is incredibly naive.
Well, if we take a look at a game like World of Goo, which allowed users to access online portions of the game regardless of whether the copy was pirated or not, we can get a good figure, at least for this game. Since the ip address would be the same if someone pirated it and then liked it enough to buy it, and it was only available online, we can get a solid piracy figure. This figure, the estimated piracy rate, was 90% http://www.destructoid.com/wankers-world-of-goo-has-a-90-piracy-rate-111343.phtml. The two man team said they didn't go bankrupt, but to think they could have made so much more is surely proof of the damaging effect of piracy. Have they made a sequel or a new game I wonder. In this instance, beating someone to within an inch of their life and then saying its fine because they aren't dead is hardly a defense. It's clear that piracy hurts the little guys as much as the big guys like EA which we don't feel so bad about.