There is no difference between a player who cheats at poker and one who buys his way into a specific position in an MMORPG.
There is a world of difference. Poker is a zero-sum game. In order for me to succeed, you must lose. Any MMORPGs I've played do not have that property -- in general, everyone can go along being happy, killing things that get in their way, finding treasure, making bandages, whatever.
You might not want to hang out with with a level 75 Monk n00b, but you may also not want to hang with a jerk who's worked his way up to level 75 who's going to killsteal and make a pain of himself. One can be just as damaging as the other.
The solution? Don't hang out in-world with people you don't like. Whether they've catassed their way up, or bought an ubercharacter shouldn't make a difference. Live and let live.
as people madly tried to sell off their accumulated wealth.
The results are here. Keep in mind that the nominal prices of tbux are $1.12/2000 (from There.com) and $1/2000 (from tbux.com, another large reseller).
I don't want a doctor that only knows how to expand his mental horizons and creatively problem solve. I want a doctor that can tell me what is wrong and if he determines that there is nothing wrong with me won't just give me drugs to make me happy and go away (otherwise known as creative problem solving.)
This is an entirely different situation. Medicine is considered a "professional school" (much like law, dentistry, etc.) in which the point is to learn the skills and background needed to do the job and not an academic pursuit like philosophy, history, mathematics or physics.
The problem with arXiv.org is that as it gets more popular, the signal-to-noise goes way down (a la slashdot), as anyone with a pet theory can throw it onto the preprint server. It can take a lot of energy to sift through papers to decide which ones contain crackpot ideas, and which ones are simply ahead of the curve.
I don't know what field you're in, but in my area of research, almost all journals have significant page charges.
Example: Electronic manuscripts: $120.00 per page Paper manuscripts: $150 per page Color figures: $600.00 for first figure, $150.00 for each additional color figure
You're looking at ~$1000 minimum for a typical paper.
I'm more than a little surprised (and bitter) this semester at how putting a little bit more work and creativity into my assignments is earning me lower grades and angry lectures from a couple of my professors. Oh well, I'll just follow the rules until I graduate, I guess... my bad, I thought creativity and originality would be rewarded...
I'm curious about this statement. Can you explain a little more? In what ways have you been "creative" with your assignments?
I'm so sick of seing this stupid game at *every* *single* *bar* I go to! Guys taking running jumps at the trackball... It's ridiculous. Forget the belt sander; I want to see these things sent through the wood chipper.
This just sounds like the EU formalizing the common-law parctice of the Anton Piller order, which is basically a civil (as opposed to criminal) search warrant. In general, Anton Piller orders are very difficult to get and I imagine these would be too.
There are plenty of cases in which nearby objects are not particulatly bright. That's why people are exploring the new 30m-class of telescopes. I doubt the resources would be wasted on TMT, OWL if everything left to do in the optical was "boring".
Because the optical is boring. Scientifically, it's not interesting. Deep-field objects are redshifted, and so naturally a big telescope will concentrate on the longer wavelengths.
There's still plenty of interesting science to be done in the optical. Just not high-redshift stuff. Don't be a high-z snob.
While not theoretically impossible to accomplish on earth, this would require building nearly identical telescopes worldwide and then coordinating their exposures to account for the rotation of the earth and then adapting for more variables than I have the patience to explain. For all practical purposes this is not going to happen in our lifetimes.
This is absolutely 100% false. The Hubble UDF image was taken over the span of several months, not over 11.3 days of consecutive orbits. Stacking images from earthbound telescopes taken over several different days/months is a standard astronomical practice. No special equipment (i.e. a worldwide distributed network of telescopes) is required to do this.
As for not having the versatility of Hubble -- there are many terrestrial observatories that are far more versatile (and accessible!) than HST. It all depends on the sort of observing you're doing.
That's a great theory. However, in the real world it doesn't quite work that way.
In the field I'm working in, without two postdocs (1-3 years each) you're barely considered for faculty positions. Much more than that, and you're considered too old to be emplyable in a junior faculty job. A brutal work schedule means no time for my own research (in spite of a guarantee of 50% personal research time) and, consequently, no more first-author publications since taking this position. With no publications *at all* from the project I was employed to work on, that basically leaves me up shit creek.
Enjoy it while you can. I'm a postdoc in the physical sciences at a large research center, and absolutely miss the grad student lifestyle.
Now, I work like a slave (60-80 hrs per week), don't get any holiday time *at all* (yes, that means I have to work straight through Christmas), and the only time I get to travel is for work (which means no time for sightseeing).
It might be worth it if I either enjoyed the work, or made a lot more money than I do, but the project is outside my main research interest, and postdocs are notoriously badly paid.:(
Well, in my case it's a gov't grant, but that's not the point -- The original comment was basically claiming that a collection of information has no value as a discovery/invention. I'm arguing that it *can* have such value.
Perhaps not, but my list of star positions and properties can be very valuable from a scientific viewpoint. I've spent a lot of time, effort, and yes, grant money making observations and compiling very precise catalogs which I can use to make discoveries. Should a competitor be allowed to take and use my data without permission?
Companies (and individuals) expend a great deal of time, energy, and resources to compile information. Why should they not be afforded some protection for that effort? The example of legal databases from the article is a perfect one -- it takes time, money, and a large amount of effort to enter cases and decisions into a database. This proposed law will not make those cases copyrighted, but simply the aggregated collection of cases in the database. There's a world of difference.
All this means is that you can't freely copy a set of information compiled by someone else without their permission. Seems fair to me. It's not the facts themselves (e.g. phone numbers, stock quotes etc.) that would be copyrighted, but some specific collection of facts. If you really want a database of stock quotes, you're free to create your own (or ask the copyright holder if you can use theirs).
Slashdot Mirror
After two years of soul-crushing work in a university for far less than I was worth, I switched into quantitative finance. I've never been happier.
The pay is better, the hours are better, I'm treated with a degree of respect. Never would have happened if I had stayed in academia.
or, um, a seven-sided die
While you're there, check out this thread for a quant's-eye view of "technical analysis" which is being lauded in another thread.
There is no difference between a player who cheats at poker and one who buys his way into a specific position in an MMORPG.
There is a world of difference. Poker is a zero-sum game. In order for me to succeed, you must lose. Any MMORPGs I've played do not have that property -- in general, everyone can go along being happy, killing things that get in their way, finding treasure, making bandages, whatever.
You might not want to hang out with with a level 75 Monk n00b, but you may also not want to hang with a jerk who's worked his way up to level 75 who's going to killsteal and make a pain of himself. One can be just as damaging as the other.
The solution? Don't hang out in-world with people you don't like. Whether they've catassed their way up, or bought an ubercharacter shouldn't make a difference. Live and let live.
TIFF or PNG? Who in the world uses anything other than FITS for astronomical images?
as people madly tried to sell off their accumulated wealth.
The results are here. Keep in mind that the nominal prices of tbux are $1.12/2000 (from There.com) and $1/2000 (from tbux.com, another large reseller).
This is an entirely different situation. Medicine is considered a "professional school" (much like law, dentistry, etc.) in which the point is to learn the skills and background needed to do the job and not an academic pursuit like philosophy, history, mathematics or physics.
I've seen some pretty wacky stuff in gr-qc and hep-th as well. Maybe that's actual M-theory research though... ;)
I'm in Astrophysics. There are a couple of page charge-free journals, but most have fees in the range I gave above.
The problem with arXiv.org is that as it gets more popular, the signal-to-noise goes way down (a la slashdot), as anyone with a pet theory can throw it onto the preprint server. It can take a lot of energy to sift through papers to decide which ones contain crackpot ideas, and which ones are simply ahead of the curve.
I don't know what field you're in, but in my area of research, almost all journals have significant page charges.
Example:
Electronic manuscripts: $120.00 per page
Paper manuscripts: $150 per page
Color figures: $600.00 for first figure, $150.00 for each additional color figure
You're looking at ~$1000 minimum for a typical paper.
"Greedo shoots first!?! WTF!?! Somebody's getting fired over *that* one!"
The copying of music is only legal if the copier does so for himself/herself. Sorry!
I'm curious about this statement. Can you explain a little more? In what ways have you been "creative" with your assignments?
I'm so sick of seing this stupid game at *every* *single* *bar* I go to! Guys taking running jumps at the trackball... It's ridiculous. Forget the belt sander; I want to see these things sent through the wood chipper.
This just sounds like the EU formalizing the common-law parctice of the Anton Piller order, which is basically a civil (as opposed to criminal) search warrant. In general, Anton Piller orders are very difficult to get and I imagine these would be too.
There are plenty of cases in which nearby objects are not particulatly bright. That's why people are exploring the new 30m-class of telescopes. I doubt the resources would be wasted on TMT, OWL if everything left to do in the optical was "boring".
There's still plenty of interesting science to be done in the optical. Just not high-redshift stuff. Don't be a high-z snob.
This is absolutely 100% false. The Hubble UDF image was taken over the span of several months, not over 11.3 days of consecutive orbits. Stacking images from earthbound telescopes taken over several different days/months is a standard astronomical practice. No special equipment (i.e. a worldwide distributed network of telescopes) is required to do this.
As for not having the versatility of Hubble -- there are many terrestrial observatories that are far more versatile (and accessible!) than HST. It all depends on the sort of observing you're doing.
That's a great theory. However, in the real world it doesn't quite work that way.
In the field I'm working in, without two postdocs (1-3 years each) you're barely considered for faculty positions. Much more than that, and you're considered too old to be emplyable in a junior faculty job. A brutal work schedule means no time for my own research (in spite of a guarantee of 50% personal research time) and, consequently, no more first-author publications since taking this position. With no publications *at all* from the project I was employed to work on, that basically leaves me up shit creek.
*That* is why I'm an embittered post-doc.
I'm not qualified to be a plumber. :(
Enjoy it while you can. I'm a postdoc in the physical sciences at a large research center, and absolutely miss the grad student lifestyle.
:(
Now, I work like a slave (60-80 hrs per week), don't get any holiday time *at all* (yes, that means I have to work straight through Christmas), and the only time I get to travel is for work (which means no time for sightseeing).
It might be worth it if I either enjoyed the work, or made a lot more money than I do, but the project is outside my main research interest, and postdocs are notoriously badly paid.
Well, in my case it's a gov't grant, but that's not the point -- The original comment was basically claiming that a collection of information has no value as a discovery/invention. I'm arguing that it *can* have such value.
Perhaps not, but my list of star positions and properties can be very valuable from a scientific viewpoint. I've spent a lot of time, effort, and yes, grant money making observations and compiling very precise catalogs which I can use to make discoveries. Should a competitor be allowed to take and use my data without permission?
Companies (and individuals) expend a great deal of time, energy, and resources to compile information. Why should they not be afforded some protection for that effort? The example of legal databases from the article is a perfect one -- it takes time, money, and a large amount of effort to enter cases and decisions into a database. This proposed law will not make those cases copyrighted, but simply the aggregated collection of cases in the database. There's a world of difference.
All this means is that you can't freely copy a set of information compiled by someone else without their permission. Seems fair to me. It's not the facts themselves (e.g. phone numbers, stock quotes etc.) that would be copyrighted, but some specific collection of facts. If you really want a database of stock quotes, you're free to create your own (or ask the copyright holder if you can use theirs).