On the one hand, it seems pretty clear cut to me that sci-hub is in violation of copyright law. Whether or not the law is just or efficient or good policy aside, sci-hub publishes material that it doesn't have legal rights to publish.
On the other hand, the benefit to society is enormous while the harm to the copyright holders is marginal. If we stack up the ethical issues on either side, the balance is unquestionably in favor of sci-hub.
And that should make everyone a little uncomfortable.
How is this an abuse of Let's Encrypt? Would you prefer that victims give their private information to phishing sites over plaintext? Seatbelts can be worn by bank robbery getaway drivers. Does that mean that seatbelts are a problem? The premise is absurd.
>Is a regular, run of the mill R/C toy that is flown within line of sight of its operator at all times considered a "drone?"
No, but RC aircraft are also banned in DC, since they can be weaponized nearly as well as a drone can.
You are mistaken. According to the FAA, any unmanned aircraft is under the jurisdiction of the FAA. The new registrations rules only apply to aircraft over 0.55 lbs. I can't find details about the DC "No Drone Zone," but I assume the same criteria applies even though the FAA's website says, "all unmanned aircraft."
As you can see by the crazy stuff that gets posted here, and worse at political sites, we have a lot of dangerously stupid, deeply-misinformed people running around.
Is a regular, run of the mill R/C toy that is flown within line of sight of its operator at all times considered a "drone?"
According to the FAA, yes. The FAA believes it has authority over ANY rc aircraft, including paper airplanes, though the FAA has so far only sought to apply regulation to aircraft over 0.55 lbs.
Families were separated. Vendors were barred from returning to their booths. People stood outside in a rainy 40-degrees for hours only to be turned away. Traffic was backed up for hours due to inadequate parking. People were packed into an event hall like cattle, with little room to move or maneuver, and countless photo ops that people paid for were left unfulfilled.
Some people on Facebook describe the conditions inside the convention center as unsafe. RICC has responded to some of the comments, saying, "There was no mess up. This happens a lot at large events. It is very difficult to predict the turnover flow of patrons. Sometimes, for the safety of all, we need to halt entry to let the crowd thin out." RICC Organizer Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment has been unreachable by media and disgruntled fans.
People are being very supportive of the Fire Marshals who handled the mess. One Facebook user writes, "Fire marshal #9 guarding the Omni North Garage was awesome. Delt with an angry mob through the whole 4 hours." I personally witnessed that marshal do a really great job with a really bad situation. Rhode Island is the site of the worst nightclub fire in US history, and Rhode Islanders understand that the Fire Marshal was acting with restraint and responsibly.
I have not heard about the conditions at the convention center today. They have apparently already sold to capacity but are stillselling tickets online.
Information theory and quantum physics are in a different category. Quantum physics is a model of reality that happens to predict certain kinds of observations to a high degree of accuracy. Information theory is mathematical truth and not a model. Information theory is inviolable. Quantum physics is violable to the extent that it does not describe reality perfectly.
The arguments in favor of R boil down to this: R is more widely used by statisticians and has a much larger library of statistical packages. But R is not a very good programming language, is difficult to learn, and is not well suited to integrate with or be used for more general purpose programming tasks.
Python, on the other hand, has a vast library of packages but does not yet have nearly as many packages specialized for the statistical computing domain. The arguments in favor of Python are, in essence, that it's very easy to learn and easy to use and easy to integrate with other general purpose programming tasks. Python is also gaining a lot of momentum in the scientific computing community. For many statistical analysis applications (most?), the packages that do exist for Python are more than adequate. Some folks even suggest that R's lead over Python is evaporating fast.
The scientists represented to the IRB that the dataset was preexisting, and so the IRB passed on the review. It's not clear that the dataset was preexisting, though, since the study seems to indicate that the scientists were involved in the design of the experiment from the beginning. What's more, the paper itself claims to have obtained informed consent when clear there was none.
"Wolfram Language" is not new. Wolfram is just trying to decouple Mathematica's programming language from the Mathematica products, which only makes sense considering the direction of the company. Mathematica users have been using this language (minus the Wolfram Alpha feature) for years.
As a domain-specific language, it's really great. The functional programming features have a great syntax (IMHO) for doing math stuff. As a general purpose language, it's awful. The library is large and easy to use, and the documentation is a pleasure to read. It's also as proprietary as it gets. Wolfram Research tries to ease the pain of that constricting noose with the CDF player and the ability to embed certain kinds of Mathematica--er, I mean, Wolfram Language code into web pages. In practice, however, everyone you want to share your code with is going to need to buy a Wolfram Research product or work at an institution that has a site license.
Sagemath is not just freeware but actual open source, and it is not even that, it's just a repackaging of existing software packages IIRC.
This is very incorrect. Sage's website accurately describes it: "It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface.
Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in this thread about what MathML is for. What we are wanting, what we need, is for modern browsers to support the rendering of mathematics. To even get off the ground, we need a markup language for the browser to interpret. Since browsers already know how to speak XML, it only makes sense for the markup to be some flavor of XML. Those who are suggesting LaTeX instead are really missing the point here. We aren't solve the problem of a lack of human writable markup. That problem has been solved many times over. The problem we are trying to solve is rendering mathematics in the browser. Period. THAT is what we need MathML support for.
Again, the problem is NOT a problem of AUTHORSHIP. Authorship is easy. It's a problem of DISPLAY. And it is a serious and important problem to be solved. The web was invented to share scientific information. Education on the web is huge--and growing. Academic publishers, mathematical software, and software shims that display math in a browser all use MathML extensively. It's a ubiquitous technology precisely because it fills a need in the industry, and it fills it well. What's more, MathML is important for an accessible web.
PDF is clearly not good enough for digital consumption. PDF is great for print but totally sucks for screens. MathJax is amazing (as are the people behind it), but it is a huge, complicated, and inefficient solution to the problem of math in the browser. The author of the linked article in the submission works on MathJax professionally and is advocating MathML support in the browser. That should tell you something. (In fact, MathJax itself uses MathML both internally and as an input/output format.)
That's because you don't know what it's for. MathML is what you get when you try to do translate the expressiveness of LaTeX into the domain of HTML/XML. You should ask yourself why it is that the very same people who work on a tool that you this is good, namely LaTeX, are the people who developed MathML, which you think is bad. If you are writing MathML by hand, you are doing it wrong.
Your reply is absolute nonsense. Professors have always been bad teachers. How could that possibly be responsible for a decline in student knowledge retention?
Slashdot Mirror
LSTM networks - 1997
autoencoders - 2008
Max-pooling - 1992, 2010 for backpropogation through max-pooling shown to have superior performance.
Droppout regularization - 2012
GANs - 2014
On the one hand, it seems pretty clear cut to me that sci-hub is in violation of copyright law. Whether or not the law is just or efficient or good policy aside, sci-hub publishes material that it doesn't have legal rights to publish.
On the other hand, the benefit to society is enormous while the harm to the copyright holders is marginal. If we stack up the ethical issues on either side, the balance is unquestionably in favor of sci-hub.
And that should make everyone a little uncomfortable.
How is this an abuse of Let's Encrypt? Would you prefer that victims give their private information to phishing sites over plaintext? Seatbelts can be worn by bank robbery getaway drivers. Does that mean that seatbelts are a problem? The premise is absurd.
>Is a regular, run of the mill R/C toy that is flown within line of sight of its operator at all times considered a "drone?"
No, but RC aircraft are also banned in DC, since they can be weaponized nearly as well as a drone can.
You are mistaken. According to the FAA, any unmanned aircraft is under the jurisdiction of the FAA. The new registrations rules only apply to aircraft over 0.55 lbs. I can't find details about the DC "No Drone Zone," but I assume the same criteria applies even though the FAA's website says, "all unmanned aircraft."
As you can see by the crazy stuff that gets posted here, and worse at political sites, we have a lot of dangerously stupid, deeply-misinformed people running around.
Indeed. ;)
Is a regular, run of the mill R/C toy that is flown within line of sight of its operator at all times considered a "drone?"
According to the FAA, yes. The FAA believes it has authority over ANY rc aircraft, including paper airplanes, though the FAA has so far only sought to apply regulation to aircraft over 0.55 lbs.
It's like you didn't even read his/her comment.
Mike Ferreira describes some of the chaos on the Anime Herald:
Some people on Facebook describe the conditions inside the convention center as unsafe. RICC has responded to some of the comments, saying, "There was no mess up. This happens a lot at large events. It is very difficult to predict the turnover flow of patrons. Sometimes, for the safety of all, we need to halt entry to let the crowd thin out." RICC Organizer Steven Perry of Altered Reality Entertainment has been unreachable by media and disgruntled fans.
People are being very supportive of the Fire Marshals who handled the mess. One Facebook user writes, "Fire marshal #9 guarding the Omni North Garage was awesome. Delt with an angry mob through the whole 4 hours." I personally witnessed that marshal do a really great job with a really bad situation. Rhode Island is the site of the worst nightclub fire in US history, and Rhode Islanders understand that the Fire Marshal was acting with restraint and responsibly.
I have not heard about the conditions at the convention center today. They have apparently already sold to capacity but are still selling tickets online.
Physicist Brian Greene discusses it on RadioLab here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/....
Information theory and quantum physics are in a different category. Quantum physics is a model of reality that happens to predict certain kinds of observations to a high degree of accuracy. Information theory is mathematical truth and not a model. Information theory is inviolable. Quantum physics is violable to the extent that it does not describe reality perfectly.
Most of the programs I write produce stuff I can't explain.
The arguments in favor of R boil down to this: R is more widely used by statisticians and has a much larger library of statistical packages. But R is not a very good programming language, is difficult to learn, and is not well suited to integrate with or be used for more general purpose programming tasks.
Python, on the other hand, has a vast library of packages but does not yet have nearly as many packages specialized for the statistical computing domain. The arguments in favor of Python are, in essence, that it's very easy to learn and easy to use and easy to integrate with other general purpose programming tasks. Python is also gaining a lot of momentum in the scientific computing community. For many statistical analysis applications (most?), the packages that do exist for Python are more than adequate. Some folks even suggest that R's lead over Python is evaporating fast.
The scientists represented to the IRB that the dataset was preexisting, and so the IRB passed on the review. It's not clear that the dataset was preexisting, though, since the study seems to indicate that the scientists were involved in the design of the experiment from the beginning. What's more, the paper itself claims to have obtained informed consent when clear there was none.
And why do we still have antiquated data lines and switches and whatnot when we are paying through the nose for internet access?
It's like you forgot that Google exists. http://qt.digia.com/Qt-in-Use/
"Wolfram Language" is not new. Wolfram is just trying to decouple Mathematica's programming language from the Mathematica products, which only makes sense considering the direction of the company. Mathematica users have been using this language (minus the Wolfram Alpha feature) for years.
As a domain-specific language, it's really great. The functional programming features have a great syntax (IMHO) for doing math stuff. As a general purpose language, it's awful. The library is large and easy to use, and the documentation is a pleasure to read. It's also as proprietary as it gets. Wolfram Research tries to ease the pain of that constricting noose with the CDF player and the ability to embed certain kinds of Mathematica--er, I mean, Wolfram Language code into web pages. In practice, however, everyone you want to share your code with is going to need to buy a Wolfram Research product or work at an institution that has a site license.
Is anyone else surprised that it doesn't already do this? Do the other browsers not do this either?
Soooo....all you do is GUis.
Do you even know what Qt is? It's way more than just a widget toolkit.
Sagemath is not just freeware but actual open source, and it is not even that, it's just a repackaging of existing software packages IIRC.
This is very incorrect. Sage's website accurately describes it: "It combines the power of many existing open-source packages into a common Python-based interface. Mission: Creating a viable free open source alternative to Magma, Maple, Mathematica and Matlab."
There is an additional benefit that is crucial to research mathematicians: the source code can be peer reviewed and checked for correctness.
I don't think there is any confusion. The article linked to in the submission specifically mentions wikipedia by name. Didn't you read it?
There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in this thread about what MathML is for. What we are wanting, what we need, is for modern browsers to support the rendering of mathematics. To even get off the ground, we need a markup language for the browser to interpret. Since browsers already know how to speak XML, it only makes sense for the markup to be some flavor of XML. Those who are suggesting LaTeX instead are really missing the point here. We aren't solve the problem of a lack of human writable markup. That problem has been solved many times over. The problem we are trying to solve is rendering mathematics in the browser. Period. THAT is what we need MathML support for.
Again, the problem is NOT a problem of AUTHORSHIP. Authorship is easy. It's a problem of DISPLAY. And it is a serious and important problem to be solved. The web was invented to share scientific information. Education on the web is huge--and growing. Academic publishers, mathematical software, and software shims that display math in a browser all use MathML extensively. It's a ubiquitous technology precisely because it fills a need in the industry, and it fills it well. What's more, MathML is important for an accessible web.
PDF is clearly not good enough for digital consumption. PDF is great for print but totally sucks for screens. MathJax is amazing (as are the people behind it), but it is a huge, complicated, and inefficient solution to the problem of math in the browser. The author of the linked article in the submission works on MathJax professionally and is advocating MathML support in the browser. That should tell you something. (In fact, MathJax itself uses MathML both internally and as an input/output format.)
That's because you don't know what it's for. MathML is what you get when you try to do translate the expressiveness of LaTeX into the domain of HTML/XML. You should ask yourself why it is that the very same people who work on a tool that you this is good, namely LaTeX, are the people who developed MathML, which you think is bad. If you are writing MathML by hand, you are doing it wrong.
Well, except for the RAM upgrade.
Stanley Milgram's "small-world experiment" suggests that people in the United States are connected by three friendship links, on average: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_world_experiment.
Your reply is absolute nonsense. Professors have always been bad teachers. How could that possibly be responsible for a decline in student knowledge retention?