Unless you already have a reputation, how do you publish something by yourself and still have people take you seriously? I think it's a fair question...
Absolutely, it's of particular importance to new people in the field.
In the case of a Ph.D student for example whos name is the first on the paper the they do not have a "reputation" per se (since they have not published or are relatively unknown). Personally, and I don't think I am alone in this, I find the "reputation" aspect of the paper has far more to do with the supervisors name (which should appear in the author list) and the group to which they are affiliated that the journal in which it was published.
If the supervisors name is on the paper, and they are well respected within the field, it is reasonable to assume that they don't want any old crap being affiliated with their name. As such they effectivly act as initial reviewers.
This may well be a hint as to the best way to engineer quality control (since that is what the review process should be), and that is the abolishion of that most sacred of proceses the anonymous reviewer!
Of course, persuading people that this is ultimately in their best interests will be difficult since it would reduce the ability for reviewers to covertly engage in politics by rejecting competitors otherwise decent papers (though I'm sure no reviewer would admit to this).
There is a sense in which the review process would become like the gpg "web of trust". Getting people to break out of the mold of course would be no easy task!
I quite agree with you, as I'm sure many readers of scientific journals do. This problem is perhaps one of the main weapons against the "peer review"=="quality" argument. It is quite easy to see why the problem exists when one considers that
the journals get money for whatever they publish (it's not like you can get your money back by showing that the paper you wanted it crap)
the reviewers have no financial incentive, nor an incentive based on reputation (due to the anonymous nature of the review process)
And last but not least, unless the papers are of intense interest at the time it is unlikely (and generally considered "bad form") that another author will write a refutation of the paper. After all, you say the paper you were reading is full of mistakes, why not write a letter to the author or editor of Phys. Rev. B?...
(a rhetoric question)
The more crap you publish the more "successful" you are!
Personally, I think a more fitting punishment for a pirate would be to make him work in the video game industry for free, doing things like coming up with better copy protection, testing games, hell, even programming.
Don't be silly, that would be far too sensible! Far easier to "bang em up" and be seen to be doing justice....:-/
What ever happend to "Thesis", "Antithesis", "Synthesis". This seems to be rather poor "dot joining", it's a bit like blaming the weather on "Linux Hackers"
Perhaps it all depends on quantity. Every time I have exchanged money (both here and abroad, at aeroports and high street banks) I've had to show my passport.
As far as I know, this is a requirement of many places to satisfy their anti money laundering regulations.
This is something that is always welcome. Its quite often the case that one would like the original version of s/w and new version coexisting during (say) a transitional period.
This can be a pain to manage, hopefully the migration of this kind of tool will ease the pain of this.
You can generally find them for about 6 to 10 here in the UK. They are surprisingly bright and perfect for use when you have parked the car somewhere dark and lost your keys. They also look pretty robust, though I havn't had one long enough to attest to that.
Couple questions, I thought I read on one site that you can only go 4 levels down on sections/subsections.
Another poster has answered this below..
Is this true? (Hopefully using the right term...I mean itemized lists with roman numerials, numbers, letters for each part)
If you mean "itemized" or "enumerated" lists then yes there is a limit it appears you can go 5 deep.
The following will give a "Too deeply nested" error. Due to the "sub sub sub sub sub sub item"
N.B. It it not very pretty due to having to get past the "comment compression filter"...
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{itemize}
\item Item
\begin{itemize}
\item Sub item
\begin{itemize}
\item Sub sub item
\begin{itemize}
\item sub sub sub item
\begin{itemize}
\item sub sub sub sub item
\begin{itemize}
\item sub sub sub sub sub item
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\end{itemize}
\end{document}
As with many aspects of LaTeX however if you find it doesn't do something it probably means it's not prudent (from a structural perspective) to do it anyway. For example if you really need that level of deep reference you may well be better off with part,chapter,section, subsection,... . ..,itemize etc... Ironically I tried posting this reply with some deep nesting, slashdot posts are limited to three levels deep!;-)
Of course if you wish to you can always override the builtins with your own "super list" or something.
Also, can ya'll post some good links to a newbie learning LaTex..and some good reference sites that have all the tags layed out with good explanations?
Sure, below are a list places I would reccomend starting, you havn't said if you use Windows, *nix or Mac so i've added both (sorry if you are a Mac man you'll have to Google yourself).
Editing:
*nix If you are a *nix user I would reccomend the following editing combination.
CTANThe Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Here you will be able to download packages, utilities and tools that do not come by default in your LaTeX distribution.
Oh dear. My original post was supposed to be "tongue in cheek humour"
I've written thousands of pages of documentation in Word for my job.....corruption problems since Word 97.
If by that you mean ten or so documents of ~100 pages or so with a few pictures then yes, you will probably be ok. (Despite using a style sheet, you will probably end up with structural problems but that's another issue)
If on the other hand, you had written a "thousand page document", including a couple of hundred graphs, tables few hundred bibliographic entries, equations and cross refereces all with a rigourously inforced style (otherwise known as a large book) then I would sit up and take notice.
The basic issue appears to be memory limitation. On a 256MB machine once you get beyond about 200 pages with ~100 equations or so you will start getting "issues" with Word (based on a friends thesis).
Can't comment on the XP version but this is on Word 2000. In a similar manner to the original parent post (regarding Wordpad crashing) memory "issues" should result in a nice friendly error message telling you to "buy more memory" [*] rather than a resulting cataclismic failure.
These days, 99% of people dumping Word for Latex are either doing it for political reasons...
Is this the result of a long process of statistical testing; or like 80% of all statistics did you just make it up on the spot? [*]
And no, I don't have to write mathematical formuals very often, so Word suffices.
Good for you. If you did have to write equations often (several hundred or so) then you would see what I mean.
------ [*] Yes this is supposed to be moderate cheesy humour.
..Wordpad (which is NOT ment for working with big documents)
And Microsoft Word is? I know many people that tried to write their PhD thesis in Word, they gave up after it corrupted various things too often and used LaTeX.
From my brief (week) visit to Baltimore, my impression was that the inner harbour area was angelic in comparison to north of the harbour (where I was staying). It is certainly an "interesting" city.
In my experience, in a batch of about 10 CDs you will be lucky not to have errors after one year. That's even keeping the CDs in the dark without use... If you use them vaguely regularly then 3 months is about typical.
For any kind of long term storage current CD-Rs are pointless. I've since restored all my backups that I kepts and sprinkled them across hard disks and made several CD impressions, even then I know that data is going to fade away....
Indeed that was the case. Even more insane was they planned to launch from the surface of the earth. That's right, about 5 thermonuclear explosions per second all the way out of the atmosphere!
It's not really true anymore. I've (unfortunatly) had a few early baths in the Thames, its just very silty. There are a *lot* of fish in there and plenty of wildlife.. Of course it could be better, but its far cleaner than it looks (shopping trollies considered)....
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely, it's of particular importance to new people in the field.
In the case of a Ph.D student for example whos name is the first on the paper the they do not have a "reputation" per se (since they have not published or are relatively unknown). Personally, and I don't think I am alone in this, I find the "reputation" aspect of the paper has far more to do with the supervisors name (which should appear in the author list) and the group to which they are affiliated that the journal in which it was published.
If the supervisors name is on the paper, and they are well respected within the field, it is reasonable to assume that they don't want any old crap being affiliated with their name. As such they effectivly act as initial reviewers.
This may well be a hint as to the best way to engineer quality control (since that is what the review process should be), and that is the abolishion of that most sacred of proceses the anonymous reviewer!
Of course, persuading people that this is ultimately in their best interests will be difficult since it would reduce the ability for reviewers to covertly engage in politics by rejecting competitors otherwise decent papers (though I'm sure no reviewer would admit to this).
There is a sense in which the review process would become like the gpg "web of trust". Getting people to break out of the mold of course would be no easy task!
Ah, but thereby hangs the problem. Why would people read his paper if it is not in a "presigious" journal (e.g. on his home page)?
the journals get money for whatever they publish (it's not like you can get your money back by showing that the paper you wanted it crap)
the reviewers have no financial incentive, nor an incentive based on reputation (due to the anonymous nature of the review process) And last but not least, unless the papers are of intense interest at the time it is unlikely (and generally considered "bad form") that another author will write a refutation of the paper. After all, you say the paper you were reading is full of mistakes, why not write a letter to the author or editor of Phys. Rev. B?...
(a rhetoric question)
The more crap you publish the more "successful" you are!
It would certainly appear that way.
Thanks for bringing that to the attention of the masses. He makes a very thorough and interesting case for the prosecution!
Personally, I think a more fitting punishment for a pirate would be to make him work in the video game industry for free, doing things like coming up with better copy protection, testing games, hell, even programming.
:-/
Don't be silly, that would be far too sensible! Far easier to "bang em up" and be seen to be doing justice....
I really need a cynisism cure...
What ever happend to "Thesis", "Antithesis", "Synthesis". This seems to be rather poor "dot joining", it's a bit like blaming the weather on "Linux Hackers"
Perhaps it all depends on quantity. Every time I have exchanged money (both here and abroad, at aeroports and high street banks) I've had to show my passport.
As far as I know, this is a requirement of many places to satisfy their anti money laundering regulations.
Perhaps the Bureau de Change that you used is "less than 100% complient with the law" (a.k.a. bent).... It was apparently not that unusual.
This is something that is always welcome. Its quite often the case that one would like the original version of s/w and new version coexisting during (say) a transitional period.
This can be a pain to manage, hopefully the migration of this kind of tool will ease the pain of this.
Err... I think the phrase is... .... "Doh!"
-ed
You can generally find them for about 6 to 10 here in the UK. They are surprisingly bright and perfect for use when you have parked the car somewhere dark and lost your keys. They also look pretty robust, though I havn't had one long enough to attest to that.
Another poster has answered this below..
Is this true? (Hopefully using the right term...I mean itemized lists with roman numerials, numbers, letters for each part)
If you mean "itemized" or "enumerated" lists then yes there is a limit it appears you can go 5 deep.
The following will give a "Too deeply nested" error. Due to the "sub sub sub sub sub sub item"
N.B. It it not very pretty due to having to get past the "comment compression filter"...
\documentclass{article} \begin{document} \begin{itemize} \item Item \begin{itemize} \item Sub item \begin{itemize} \item Sub sub item \begin{itemize} \item sub sub sub item \begin{itemize} \item sub sub sub sub item \begin{itemize} \item sub sub sub sub sub item \end{itemize} \end{itemize} \end{itemize} \end{itemize} \end{itemize} \end{itemize} \end{document}
As with many aspects of LaTeX however if you find it doesn't do something it probably means it's not prudent (from a structural perspective) to do it anyway. For example if you really need that level of deep reference you may well be better off with part,chapter,section, subsection, ... . . .,itemize etc... Ironically I tried posting this reply with some deep nesting, slashdot posts are limited to three levels deep! ;-)
Of course if you wish to you can always override the builtins with your own "super list" or something.
Also, can ya'll post some good links to a newbie learning LaTex..and some good reference sites that have all the tags layed out with good explanations?
Sure, below are a list places I would reccomend starting, you havn't said if you use Windows, *nix or Mac so i've added both (sorry if you are a Mac man you'll have to Google yourself).
- Other random stuff
- dvipdfm. For converting the output of LaTeX into PDF (highly recommended)
- Prof. Knuth's home page(The author of TeX).
- CTANThe Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Here you will be able to download packages, utilities and tools that do not come by default in your LaTeX distribution.
Good luck and happy LaTeXing.-ed
Don't be such a troll.
..corruption problems since Word 97.
Oh dear. My original post was supposed to be "tongue in cheek humour"
I've written thousands of pages of documentation in Word for my job...
If by that you mean ten or so documents of ~100 pages or so with a few pictures then yes, you will probably be ok. (Despite using a style sheet, you will probably end up with structural problems but that's another issue)
If on the other hand, you had written a "thousand page document", including a couple of hundred graphs, tables few hundred bibliographic entries, equations and cross refereces all with a rigourously inforced style (otherwise known as a large book) then I would sit up and take notice.
The basic issue appears to be memory limitation. On a 256MB machine once you get beyond about 200 pages with ~100 equations or so you will start getting "issues" with Word (based on a friends thesis).
Can't comment on the XP version but this is on Word 2000. In a similar manner to the original parent post (regarding Wordpad crashing) memory "issues" should result in a nice friendly error message telling you to "buy more memory" [*] rather than a resulting cataclismic failure.
These days, 99% of people dumping Word for Latex are either doing it for political reasons...
Is this the result of a long process of statistical testing; or like 80% of all statistics did you just make it up on the spot? [*]
And no, I don't have to write mathematical formuals very often, so Word suffices.
Good for you. If you did have to write equations often (several hundred or so) then you would see what I mean.
------
[*] Yes this is supposed to be moderate cheesy humour.
..Wordpad (which is NOT ment for working with big documents)
And Microsoft Word is? I know many people that tried to write their PhD thesis in Word, they gave up after it corrupted various things too often and used LaTeX.
If memory serves, this was done in various countries in (politically) Eastern Europe not so long ago and can (so I'm told) still be seen.
The symbols used were apparently a circle and a triangle.. Endless confusion I'm sure.
Helicopters can and will land gracefully without power.
;-)
Hmmm...... I guess that is really a matter of "artistic impression".
Pathe, roghly pronounced
;-)
Path ey
Path -> (PATHalogical)
ey -> (hEY)
(if you understand LaTeX accents and how to pronounce French words its basically path\'e)
From my brief (week) visit to Baltimore, my impression was that the inner harbour area was angelic in comparison to north of the harbour (where I was staying). It is certainly an "interesting" city.
Oh! I never knew Kentarians liked garlic so much.
In my experience, in a batch of about 10 CDs you will be lucky not to have errors after one year. That's even keeping the CDs in the dark without use... If you use them vaguely regularly then 3 months is about typical.
For any kind of long term storage current CD-Rs are pointless. I've since restored all my backups that I kepts and sprinkled them across hard disks and made several CD impressions, even then I know that data is going to fade away....
Indeed that was the case. Even more insane was they planned to launch from the surface of the earth. That's right, about 5 thermonuclear explosions per second all the way out of the atmosphere!
;-)
overview here
Thankfully, beyond a chemcial powered prototype (which worked) the idea never really got off the ground..
Sorry, I couldn't help it!
....granted here in the US but are often difficult to get abroad.
when you say abroad what do you mean? I've never had any problems with anything you list. It implies that *only* the US has running hot water.
...release dates are always given in dog-years.
;-)
Te heh hee
Or the one on the wall.... ;-)
"Experience is what you get...
It's not really true anymore. I've (unfortunatly) had a few early baths in the Thames, its just very silty. There are a *lot* of fish in there and plenty of wildlife.. Of course it could be better, but its far cleaner than it looks (shopping trollies considered)....