If your goal is to learn the subject material, I wouldn't bother with most - equivalents from the 20th century may likely be better.
Don't forget Euclid's Elements. I also think there were some groundbreaking math books from the Arab era, but don't know if you can find them on the Internet - or whether there are translations available.
No offense, but most large companies like that thrive on mediocrity and the status quo, not innovation and ingenuity
True. But at the same time, most GPA's closer to 4.0 are more concerned with purity, idealism, and principle. Any of which can bring a company crashing down.
Call me back when Linux or Windows have system-wide drag-and-drop that lets me drag an image off a webpage or into an chat window, or from my desktop into the Mail icon to start a new mail with an attachment, or from an email to a filesystem icon which pops open, lets me browse my hard drive by hovering and dropping where I want, and then goes away.
In other words, "call you back when they make an OS X clone in Linux".
Sorry - won't happen. You seem to like OS X. So stick with it. What's the problem?
Certainly there are folks out there who are trying to achieve all that you ask for, and more power to them. But Linux is king when it comes to customizability, and it's damn hard to make a system with the interoperability that you want, while still maintaining customizability. Perhaps in the OS X world (don't know - I don't use Apple), the emphasis is on ease of use. In the Linux world, it's flexibility - if the user doesn't like how the system is, he should easily be able to customize it to his needs. Sure, they do focus on user-friendliness, etc. But all DE's and WM's I've seen in Linux that sacrifice flexibility for user friendliness don't get far. And all the people I know who use them eventually leave them.
First, just on the side, I know lots of people who got PhD's but did not really stay in research and academia. They still want to read papers, though, as they still maintain an interest.
But the main benefit of opening up journal papers is for the rest of the world to benefit. Yes, if you have a very narrow perspective, you could just dismiss that as charity. If you're open minded, you'll realize that shutting out most of the world to scientific output means much less science globally, and much less benefits to you as a result.
Imagine if all researchers in Japan published papers only in Japanese, and the journals had a copyright condition that prevented the content from ever being translated to another language, and you'll see what I mean. Whereas current journals require a lot of money for access, these ones also have a price: Just learn Japanese. It's not exactly promoting science.
Then again, of course, journals do need a base amount of money to operate. Just that Elsevier kind of companies charge so much more than is needed to make a profit.
One of the main problems of Wikipedia is it has firm guidelines on what it is and what it is not.
Actually, I wish. It's simply not true. They may have a few core rules (e.g. the one you complain about) that are quite rigid, but overall there is virtually no rule in Wikipedia that is not subject to modification - including by certain senior people at Wikipedia - when circumstances dictate it.
Don't take my word for it - I got it from the horse's mouth. He says it in so many words.
Use GPeerReview to sign the review. (It will add a hash of the paper to your review, then it will use GPG to digitally sign the review.)
Here's where everything will fall apart. When almost all faculty members I know (except the math and some CS ones) act like this, I can hardly see how they won't bungle it up.
Getting back to his Why's:
Peer reviews give credibility to an author's work.
We already have it.
Journals and conferences can use this tool to indicate acceptance of a paper.
Bad idea. This will easily devolve into a numbers game. Paper X has 20 signatures approving it, with 5 of them at Level Zen. Paper Y has only 10 signatures approving it, with most being at Level Neophyte. We'll take X and reject Y.
Think I'm exaggerating? Go observe people talk about impact factors. In some disciplines, they've begun to take this quite seriously when hiring ("Sure he had 8 papers during his PhD - but all published in papers with IF less than 4. Reject!").
Researchers can also give credibility to each other by reviewing each others' works.
I can see this being useful. If there's a central repository where people can submit and sign their reviews for the world to see, it could be great. Realistically, though, faculty members won't do it without incentives - their lives are busy enough.
Besides, a lot of academia is back scratching. Friends will give positive reviews frequently. Enemies will trash it. There is a reason current peer review is anonymous (at least one way).
This enables researchers to publish first, and review later.
Eh? You mean just to get feedback? Isn't that what Arxiv.org is for?
It meshes seamlessly with existing publication venues. Even the credibility of works that have already been published can be enhanced by obtaining additional peer reviews.
Same complaint as above. "Candidate A has a number of publications in good journals, but candidate B has more online hashed reviews. B wins!". Unless a mechanism can come up where B won't bribe people to provide friendly reviews, this will fall apart. Academics are already over aggressive about getting citations, and this will just be the next stage.
I know I'm cynical, but I advocate less reliance on numerics in judging quality than there is in the current system. Not more.
Is there something wrong with that? If we didn't have socialized education for all, perhaps it would be of higher quality.
As long as they maintain standards. He was giving a scenario of a barely above average kid going to an elite university. Those guys reduce the standards.
Right. It depends on someone else's wealth. So, you could have two extremely hard-working parents who have a kid that's of average intelligence and native academic skills. They know that putting that kid in a really excellent setting (analagous to an Ivy League school) would help the kid make the very most of his averageness. And they're willing to put their hard work (money) on the line. And then you've got another kid of significant IQ, academic potential, etc., whose parents don't have the same hustle or dedication to getting their offspring educated. You're saying that the two hard working parents should give up on having their kid go to the really good school, and instead write a check to put a different kid - one that someone else decided to have - into that school. That's "social justice?" You're making the average kid's parents slaves to the smart kid.
Wow.
I mean, just wow.
You're suggesting that the criterion for admission should be how hard the parents work?
Well no. I guess you mean it should be money. Yep. That's what you're saying. Those who can pay for it, get in.
Well, FYI, last time I checked, some elite schools actually do care about this thing called standards.
If the hard working parents want their kid to get into a top university, how about making sure he gets a good education before university so that he can get in?
And I do take it you're opposed to public elementary and high schools in the US? You know - the ones that take other's money to teach kids?
Oh no, I get it just fine. You want the government to say which kid gets to benefit from a parent's hard work.
No - he's saying he wants a system where a kid gets benefit because he works hard, not because his parents work hard. As if, BTW, a smart kid with poorly paid parents didn't "work hard" to ensure the kid grows up smart. It seems that for you, working hard equates to making money.
Your notion of "social justice" isn't that a smart kid should naturally get access to a better school, it's that hard working parents don't have a say in which child - their own, or someone else's - gets the benefit of their hard work. How just of you!
Yes, because there's no way the rich parents will benefit out of paying taxes to educate others, right? All those property taxes going to fund other people's kids! What good could that possibly do for them? How on Earth will they benefit when some of those kids become their doctors, I wonder?
True social justice is found in the notion that it's not very smart to have children when you're not ready to provide for them.
And your definition of not being able to provide for them is...? And BTW, if the average performing kid with the rich parents couldn't get into an ivy league school, then have the parents not failed him? Maybe they shouldn't have had him, right?
God, is it any wonder why Digg is kicking Slashdot's butt?! Keep this up and the mighty Slashdot will be nothing more than a niche site frequented by sticky men who proudly use pocket protectors.
If popularity brings with it the junk that is regularly featured on Digg's front page, I pray that Digg will continue to kick Slashdot's butt.
This crap will hurt the schools in the long run. Instead of being able to pickup a patent here and there. People will work hard to keep their ideas secret until they are free and clear of the schools influence. And the schools get NOTHING.
While in this particular case I'd agree, in general I don't.
The reality is most people who come up with good ideas in school end up never trying to make a profit out of them.
In both universities I've attended, if a professor does some work that the university patents, then he gets a cut of any profits, and none of the loss. The article said 1/3, I recall it being more like 1/6. That is a damn good deal. This way, the professor gets free money while still doing the job he loves. Of course, they still have the option to keep it secret and begin a startup - and some have. Most regret that path: It takes them away from the love of their life. With the former solution, they get the best of both worlds - they don't have to waste time with red tape and management. And in both scenarios, the likelihood of becoming filthy rich is low - the former because they only get a small cut - the latter because most faculty don't have what it takes to run a successful corporate enterprise.
Judging from the comments here, this may come as a shock to many of you, but the above is used as an incentive to become a faculty worker - because the most common alternative is working in a company where you get 0% of the profits of any patent resulting from your work.
If this is the same deal that students get, then it is a damn good deal.
So as I said, if the student is fairly sure he wants to go the route of a startup - keep it hidden. If not, he's very likely going to miss out on some good free money.
And that is the real 2 part outrage. Who is this mysterious grad student that Hawking overshadowed, possibly even unfairly scooped? This happens all the time.
It may happen all the time, but I'm not sure the grad student was "scooped". Hawking doesn't hide the fact that a grad student (actually, may have been a postdoc - I forget) argued with him and convinced him about the evaporation.
The 2nd part is that getting your name on published research papers is so crucial to a career in science. Not doing research exactly, no, getting credit for research, that's the key.
I fail to see the relevance to the topic at hand. This isn't a new phenomenon, but one that has been in science for centuries.
to Newtonian, and nearly five hundred year for the next shift to Eisensteinian
Do you know how to do arithmetic?
Your rant is useless. A paradigm shift need not be as great as Newton-Einstein. In the 20th century alone, there were a number of small paradigm shifts. You had quite a lot of major discoveries from 1900-1940. And a lot after that in cosmology. Smolin's point was that the pace set up in most of the 20th century is not being kept.
Not only did it pre-date 1980, it wasn't all his work. Hawking came up with the mechanism, but it was a grad student (not his) who showed and convinced him that thermodynamics dictates that black holes should evaporate.
As a scientist I can honestly say that publishing has become a racket.
Yes.
Peer review is often no more than an attempt to stifle other peoples work.
No.
Peer review is not the problem.
The reason academics indulge in back-scratching behavior is because of the motives to get lots of publications in high places. Take away most of those incentives, and you'll take care of the problem.
There is a big flaw in your reasoning. H-1B workers are NOT "immigrants". They are "guest workers". Thus, your founder examples are misleading. If they were made immigrants, maybe companies would not treat them like indentured servants.
I'd love to see one of those congress critters look the camera in the face and try to explain how someone who has to pay 60-100K for a degree is supposed to compete with someone who pays 25K or less.
The solution isn't limiting H-1, but reducing tuition fees.
Tuition rates in public universities are too high. And most university funding doesn't even come from it.
Slashdot Mirror
If your goal is to learn the subject material, I wouldn't bother with most - equivalents from the 20th century may likely be better.
Don't forget Euclid's Elements. I also think there were some groundbreaking math books from the Arab era, but don't know if you can find them on the Internet - or whether there are translations available.
No offense, but most large companies like that thrive on mediocrity and the status quo, not innovation and ingenuity
True. But at the same time, most GPA's closer to 4.0 are more concerned with purity, idealism, and principle. Any of which can bring a company crashing down.
I came here to post the same. Great video.
I'm a final-year Computer Science student from the UK. During my studies, we covered 3 programming languages: C, C++ and Java.
And the other two languages were...?
Example of drug value inflation
Call me back when Linux or Windows have system-wide drag-and-drop that lets me drag an image off a webpage or into an chat window, or from my desktop into the Mail icon to start a new mail with an attachment, or from an email to a filesystem icon which pops open, lets me browse my hard drive by hovering and dropping where I want, and then goes away.
In other words, "call you back when they make an OS X clone in Linux".
Sorry - won't happen. You seem to like OS X. So stick with it. What's the problem?
Certainly there are folks out there who are trying to achieve all that you ask for, and more power to them. But Linux is king when it comes to customizability, and it's damn hard to make a system with the interoperability that you want, while still maintaining customizability. Perhaps in the OS X world (don't know - I don't use Apple), the emphasis is on ease of use. In the Linux world, it's flexibility - if the user doesn't like how the system is, he should easily be able to customize it to his needs. Sure, they do focus on user-friendliness, etc. But all DE's and WM's I've seen in Linux that sacrifice flexibility for user friendliness don't get far. And all the people I know who use them eventually leave them.
Find me an open access journal that does not lower the price for people in the developing world.
Typical comments from someone in the first world.
First, just on the side, I know lots of people who got PhD's but did not really stay in research and academia. They still want to read papers, though, as they still maintain an interest.
But the main benefit of opening up journal papers is for the rest of the world to benefit. Yes, if you have a very narrow perspective, you could just dismiss that as charity. If you're open minded, you'll realize that shutting out most of the world to scientific output means much less science globally, and much less benefits to you as a result.
Imagine if all researchers in Japan published papers only in Japanese, and the journals had a copyright condition that prevented the content from ever being translated to another language, and you'll see what I mean. Whereas current journals require a lot of money for access, these ones also have a price: Just learn Japanese. It's not exactly promoting science.
Then again, of course, journals do need a base amount of money to operate. Just that Elsevier kind of companies charge so much more than is needed to make a profit.
One of the main problems of Wikipedia is it has firm guidelines on what it is and what it is not.
Actually, I wish. It's simply not true. They may have a few core rules (e.g. the one you complain about) that are quite rigid, but overall there is virtually no rule in Wikipedia that is not subject to modification - including by certain senior people at Wikipedia - when circumstances dictate it.
Don't take my word for it - I got it from the horse's mouth. He says it in so many words.
Use GPeerReview to sign the review. (It will add a hash of the paper to your review, then it will use GPG to digitally sign the review.)
Here's where everything will fall apart. When almost all faculty members I know (except the math and some CS ones) act like this, I can hardly see how they won't bungle it up.
Getting back to his Why's:
Peer reviews give credibility to an author's work.
We already have it.
Journals and conferences can use this tool to indicate acceptance of a paper.
Bad idea. This will easily devolve into a numbers game. Paper X has 20 signatures approving it, with 5 of them at Level Zen. Paper Y has only 10 signatures approving it, with most being at Level Neophyte. We'll take X and reject Y.
Think I'm exaggerating? Go observe people talk about impact factors. In some disciplines, they've begun to take this quite seriously when hiring ("Sure he had 8 papers during his PhD - but all published in papers with IF less than 4. Reject!").
Researchers can also give credibility to each other by reviewing each others' works.
I can see this being useful. If there's a central repository where people can submit and sign their reviews for the world to see, it could be great. Realistically, though, faculty members won't do it without incentives - their lives are busy enough.
Besides, a lot of academia is back scratching. Friends will give positive reviews frequently. Enemies will trash it. There is a reason current peer review is anonymous (at least one way).
This enables researchers to publish first, and review later.
Eh? You mean just to get feedback? Isn't that what Arxiv.org is for?
It meshes seamlessly with existing publication venues. Even the credibility of works that have already been published can be enhanced by obtaining additional peer reviews.
Same complaint as above. "Candidate A has a number of publications in good journals, but candidate B has more online hashed reviews. B wins!". Unless a mechanism can come up where B won't bribe people to provide friendly reviews, this will fall apart. Academics are already over aggressive about getting citations, and this will just be the next stage.
I know I'm cynical, but I advocate less reliance on numerics in judging quality than there is in the current system. Not more.
Is there something wrong with that? If we didn't have socialized education for all, perhaps it would be of higher quality.
As long as they maintain standards. He was giving a scenario of a barely above average kid going to an elite university. Those guys reduce the standards.
Right. It depends on someone else's wealth. So, you could have two extremely hard-working parents who have a kid that's of average intelligence and native academic skills. They know that putting that kid in a really excellent setting (analagous to an Ivy League school) would help the kid make the very most of his averageness. And they're willing to put their hard work (money) on the line. And then you've got another kid of significant IQ, academic potential, etc., whose parents don't have the same hustle or dedication to getting their offspring educated. You're saying that the two hard working parents should give up on having their kid go to the really good school, and instead write a check to put a different kid - one that someone else decided to have - into that school. That's "social justice?" You're making the average kid's parents slaves to the smart kid.
Wow.
I mean, just wow.
You're suggesting that the criterion for admission should be how hard the parents work?
Well no. I guess you mean it should be money. Yep. That's what you're saying. Those who can pay for it, get in.
Well, FYI, last time I checked, some elite schools actually do care about this thing called standards.
If the hard working parents want their kid to get into a top university, how about making sure he gets a good education before university so that he can get in?
And I do take it you're opposed to public elementary and high schools in the US? You know - the ones that take other's money to teach kids?
Oh no, I get it just fine. You want the government to say which kid gets to benefit from a parent's hard work.
No - he's saying he wants a system where a kid gets benefit because he works hard, not because his parents work hard. As if, BTW, a smart kid with poorly paid parents didn't "work hard" to ensure the kid grows up smart. It seems that for you, working hard equates to making money.
Your notion of "social justice" isn't that a smart kid should naturally get access to a better school, it's that hard working parents don't have a say in which child - their own, or someone else's - gets the benefit of their hard work. How just of you!
Yes, because there's no way the rich parents will benefit out of paying taxes to educate others, right? All those property taxes going to fund other people's kids! What good could that possibly do for them? How on Earth will they benefit when some of those kids become their doctors, I wonder?
True social justice is found in the notion that it's not very smart to have children when you're not ready to provide for them.
And your definition of not being able to provide for them is...? And BTW, if the average performing kid with the rich parents couldn't get into an ivy league school, then have the parents not failed him? Maybe they shouldn't have had him, right?
God, is it any wonder why Digg is kicking Slashdot's butt?! Keep this up and the mighty Slashdot will be nothing more than a niche site frequented by sticky men who proudly use pocket protectors.
If popularity brings with it the junk that is regularly featured on Digg's front page, I pray that Digg will continue to kick Slashdot's butt.
If you're reading this from the UK, this pos
Until you're out of school.
This crap will hurt the schools in the long run. Instead of being able to pickup a patent here and there. People will work hard to keep their ideas secret until they are free and clear of the schools influence. And the schools get NOTHING.
While in this particular case I'd agree, in general I don't.
The reality is most people who come up with good ideas in school end up never trying to make a profit out of them.
In both universities I've attended, if a professor does some work that the university patents, then he gets a cut of any profits, and none of the loss. The article said 1/3, I recall it being more like 1/6. That is a damn good deal. This way, the professor gets free money while still doing the job he loves. Of course, they still have the option to keep it secret and begin a startup - and some have. Most regret that path: It takes them away from the love of their life. With the former solution, they get the best of both worlds - they don't have to waste time with red tape and management. And in both scenarios, the likelihood of becoming filthy rich is low - the former because they only get a small cut - the latter because most faculty don't have what it takes to run a successful corporate enterprise.
Judging from the comments here, this may come as a shock to many of you, but the above is used as an incentive to become a faculty worker - because the most common alternative is working in a company where you get 0% of the profits of any patent resulting from your work.
If this is the same deal that students get, then it is a damn good deal.
So as I said, if the student is fairly sure he wants to go the route of a startup - keep it hidden. If not, he's very likely going to miss out on some good free money.
And that is the real 2 part outrage. Who is this mysterious grad student that Hawking overshadowed, possibly even unfairly scooped? This happens all the time.
It may happen all the time, but I'm not sure the grad student was "scooped". Hawking doesn't hide the fact that a grad student (actually, may have been a postdoc - I forget) argued with him and convinced him about the evaporation.
The 2nd part is that getting your name on published research papers is so crucial to a career in science. Not doing research exactly, no, getting credit for research, that's the key.
I fail to see the relevance to the topic at hand. This isn't a new phenomenon, but one that has been in science for centuries.
to Newtonian, and nearly five hundred year for the next shift to Eisensteinian
Do you know how to do arithmetic?
Your rant is useless. A paradigm shift need not be as great as Newton-Einstein. In the 20th century alone, there were a number of small paradigm shifts. You had quite a lot of major discoveries from 1900-1940. And a lot after that in cosmology. Smolin's point was that the pace set up in most of the 20th century is not being kept.
Not only did it pre-date 1980, it wasn't all his work. Hawking came up with the mechanism, but it was a grad student (not his) who showed and convinced him that thermodynamics dictates that black holes should evaporate.
Those who holding a F-1 or J-1 student visas.
And pray tell, what was your GRE verbal score?
Still, a game where you can wield the iron ball on your ankle as a weapon rocks.
I still remember the moment I realized this.
The lack of a save and restore feature
You can save and restore in Nethack.
The catch is that you can restore a saved game only once.
I was just about to mention this. And he beat the Indians to it - he started this in Bangladesh. I just watched Iqbal's talk at TED a few days ago.
As a scientist I can honestly say that publishing has become a racket.
Yes.
Peer review is often no more than an attempt to stifle other peoples work.
No.
Peer review is not the problem.
The reason academics indulge in back-scratching behavior is because of the motives to get lots of publications in high places. Take away most of those incentives, and you'll take care of the problem.
Getting rid of peer review will guarantee junk.
There is a big flaw in your reasoning. H-1B workers are NOT "immigrants". They are "guest workers". Thus, your founder examples are misleading. If they were made immigrants, maybe companies would not treat them like indentured servants.
Most become green card holders.
I'd love to see one of those congress critters look the camera in the face and try to explain how someone who has to pay 60-100K for a degree is supposed to compete with someone who pays 25K or less.
The solution isn't limiting H-1, but reducing tuition fees.
Tuition rates in public universities are too high. And most university funding doesn't even come from it.