Yeah, yeah. If you'd stop ranting for a second, you'd realize that perhaps I'm not criticizing Asimov, but rather the careless use of the word "prediction" in the comment.
It's *not* prediction when some guy, no matter how famous, says something related to something else that happens later. It *is* prediction if he explicitly announces his belief about that future event and backs it up with facts and arguments.
It's just like an app-store.
Apple and Amazon can extract a good cut because discovery is at least as
important as app cost and quality. Other publishers of software, books, and
stock images get away with even larger cuts.
The Apple and Amazon app-stores aren't anything special. In the open source world, the app-stores are called repositories. Like journals and "app-stores" around the world, the quality of repos varies depending on the amount of effort put in to maintain them. But it's not a function of money.
The Debian repository is one of the best (I'd consider it "the" best), and is run entirely by volunteers, who check that the software works and fix minor bugs etc. All for free, no parasitic "cut extraction" like Apple or Amazon insist on.
I guess my point is, the middle men are everywhere like you say, but they are not *necessary*. All it takes is for talented people to organize alternatives. In a field where there aren't a lot of talented people, that might be a problem. But in both open source and universities, there are a *lot* of talented people with a *lot* of time.
Whilst I would like to see the day where our work (I am a scientist) is all
in open access journals, there is still a cost. The author pays the journal
instead of the library.
You've been brainwashed by past experience. There's no cost that justifies making authors pay for their publications. All the work and cost occurs prior to having a finished paper, at which point it's just a PDF file that needs to be hosted and/or printed, the latter being optional in the internet age. The reviewing process is volunteer work and has no appreciable cost.
That's backwards. No software should prompt *you* to update it, or even offer to do it for you. It should be you who decides, when it's most convenient for you, to update the installed software on your machines, either fully or partially.
Update popup windows must die, but not because they're annoying. They must die because it's bad system design.
If early humans had had gills we might all not exist at all.
When a mother breathes air, her breast-fed child survives and she is able to wean the child before shortly dying of suffocation herself, allowing her to have more children faster.
'Breathing air enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened from infinity to a few years', said slashdot reader Capta1n Obvi10us. 'This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution'.
An Anonymous Coward noted in a reply, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not breathe.
The Open Source model is really a model that originated in academia, so it's not surprising that academia has still most of the pieces available.
I'm somewhat skeptical about the release early, release often approach, though. Whereas the communication aspect of it is very good for teamwork, and that's really something that couldn't have happened world-wide before the internet, the downside is that it produces too much ancillary activity.
You can see this in open source software as well. When a popular project attracts a lot of users, you get all this activity in the form of patches and plugins, which do all sorts of things. Then the main project advances, and the patches and plugins fall off the main trunk and rot away, unmaintained.
It's inevitable for all big/popular projects: they can't incorporate everything (that leads to bloat) and they can't stop evolving (that leads to stagnation). For example, old Gnome/KDE apps are lost whenever these desktop environments bump the major version number, Linux kernel patches are lost if they can't be accepted in the main project, sourceforge/github projects undergo bitrot, etc.
Transposed to academia this means that the burst of activity that accompanies release early, release often is largely illusory. A lot of that activity won't produce lasting value; it's mainly the core activity from the core group of people which survives time and remains influential. And that suggests that the pace of communication of research should be geared towards the core group's preferences. When its stable and mature enough, that's when it should be published widely (for the first time). Because if some outsider wants to build upon that, his work won't be undermined due to major changes in a short time.
This is way too complicated. You can simplify the system a lot while keeping the same goals by repealing the publish or perish system. Give scientists the freedom NOT to publish. Instead of publishing 10 papers with the latest partial results in 3 years, let them publish 1 complete and final paper when they feel it's all been worked out and is ready. Don't make their employment depend on research output, and don't count publications.
That will accomplish two things. 1) It will raise the standards of publication, because the authors won't be under pressure and the referees won't cut them any slack for that, and 2) it will cut down on the noise and volume of publications, so that people in the field will actually be able to read all the important output for a change.
The unavoidable habits of mind that make us think luck and supernatural forces
are real, that objects and symbols have power, and that humans have souls and destinies are part of what has
made our species so evolutionarily successful,
Utter drivel. I've stopped reading the summary at that point. The author clearly doesn't understand evolution at all. Humans aren't evolutionarily successful. We have been around a very short time compared with other species, and the jury is definitely still out. Moreover, the idea that some habits of human minds (of which it isn't even clear if they originate naturally or merely socially) can be identified as success factors is ridiculous. What other species are we comparing with? None, that's what.
"Oh look, we are more evolutionarily successful than dolphins, because we believe in magic while dolphins... er... don't. No, wait. We're more successful than ants, because our brains and everything's the same but... uhm... we believe in the supernatural. Would you believe a comparison with pigs?..."
It's pure mental wankery to pat ourselves on the shoulder and claim we're Nature's best and brightest, and by golly it's all because we're the Chosen People!
That's not new. You're being seduced by money, more precisely, good food and good organization skills coupled with good means, that fill a bored timeslot in your life. The key is to identify why you are bored, and fill that timeslot with something you really like doing, that comes from within yourself. That way, you have control over your time, and the religious groups won't even register as more than general campus background noise.
If you like debating, there's usually debating clubs in universities.
And if its all just about good free food, then you're a victim of poverty (most students are).
And I'm sure some
jackass back then wrote an article saying that demand for books was accelerating at a rate that we weren't
going to be able to afford enough printing presses anymore.
Oh yeah, I remember that guy! He talked to the King about it, and the King said "ok, well, to cope with that we'll introduce copyright. That way, anyone who can't get the books they want becomes a criminal, and no books for crims. Problem solved!"
What a bastard that guy was! But a couple of years later he tried to sell the King a Microsoft solution, and he ended up on the wheel. Served him right, I say.
I call dibs on the patent for a Non-Newtonian Chicken Game. The players stick both feet into a pothole that's in the middle of the road and has been filled with a non-Newtonian fluid. Then they wait for an oncoming car. The winner is whoever stays in his hole the longest. Scoring is in binary (nod to the geeks).
Hmm. I thought this problem was the case with all e-ink readers, but doing a quick search on the net suggests it might be a problem with some displays manufactured by LG. That would be awesome.
I used to think e-ink is great, and I still read books that way, but honestly it's overhyped and much too primitive to be a good book reading device.
The worst problem is that I can't read ebooks outside. As soon as the sun shines on the display, the e-ink starts disappearing (I believe it's something to do with the display heating up, but whatever it is, e-ink is just not good enough). The other problem is glare when reading inside. It's comparable in annoyance to those glossy paper magazines, when you read them next to a lamp.
The last straw is the form factor. I like to read scientific papers, and the screen of just about any ebook reader is too small to read comfortably. Even if I'm reading novels, I find that with a small screen there's too much hand navigation required, basically. Whereas I would flip a piece of paper every two pages on a paperback, I have to press the next page button at least 3 times to get to the same point. It just requires too much hand interaction for my taste.
Nonono! It ain't terrorism until Tony Blair goes on FOX news and tells the world how the dangerous hackers could crack any UK website within 45 minutes!
While I'm not disagreeing with your main points, total downloads have gone up a lot in the last 10 years or so. An average web page is now about 10x bigger than it used to be, which is quite depressing as it's not like there's 10x more content. Your average movie clip is getting to be HD now, which again isn't actually a lot more content, just an improvement in detail, etc. The content side of the net is taking the same bloated direction that the software side of Windows has taken forever.
Risk assessment is used to decide between actions.
Yes, and to do so, you minimize, over the possible actions A, the expected loss E(Loss(A)). Where do your probability weights that enter into E come from? Or do you leave that part aside?
This appears to be a compulsory, non-discriminatory, universal licensing scheme. It doesn't destroy or limit copyright, as the copyright holders will (presumably) get paid for each usage. Compulsory licensing seems like a good idea, except that with 1.3 billion people, that's going to be a challenge to administer.
Slashdot Mirror
It's *not* prediction when some guy, no matter how famous, says something related to something else that happens later. It *is* prediction if he explicitly announces his belief about that future event and backs it up with facts and arguments.
The Apple and Amazon app-stores aren't anything special. In the open source world, the app-stores are called repositories. Like journals and "app-stores" around the world, the quality of repos varies depending on the amount of effort put in to maintain them. But it's not a function of money.
The Debian repository is one of the best (I'd consider it "the" best), and is run entirely by volunteers, who check that the software works and fix minor bugs etc. All for free, no parasitic "cut extraction" like Apple or Amazon insist on.
I guess my point is, the middle men are everywhere like you say, but they are not *necessary*. All it takes is for talented people to organize alternatives. In a field where there aren't a lot of talented people, that might be a problem. But in both open source and universities, there are a *lot* of talented people with a *lot* of time.
You've been brainwashed by past experience. There's no cost that justifies making authors pay for their publications. All the work and cost occurs prior to having a finished paper, at which point it's just a PDF file that needs to be hosted and/or printed, the latter being optional in the internet age. The reviewing process is volunteer work and has no appreciable cost.
Update popup windows must die, but not because they're annoying. They must die because it's bad system design.
Asimov made shit up, which is very different from prediction.
'Breathing air enabled the breast-feeding periods and thereby the time between births to be shortened from infinity to a few years', said slashdot reader Capta1n Obvi10us. 'This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution'.
An Anonymous Coward noted in a reply, however, that the results say nothing about what humans today should or should not breathe.
I'm somewhat skeptical about the release early, release often approach, though. Whereas the communication aspect of it is very good for teamwork, and that's really something that couldn't have happened world-wide before the internet, the downside is that it produces too much ancillary activity.
You can see this in open source software as well. When a popular project attracts a lot of users, you get all this activity in the form of patches and plugins, which do all sorts of things. Then the main project advances, and the patches and plugins fall off the main trunk and rot away, unmaintained.
It's inevitable for all big/popular projects: they can't incorporate everything (that leads to bloat) and they can't stop evolving (that leads to stagnation). For example, old Gnome/KDE apps are lost whenever these desktop environments bump the major version number, Linux kernel patches are lost if they can't be accepted in the main project, sourceforge/github projects undergo bitrot, etc.
Transposed to academia this means that the burst of activity that accompanies release early, release often is largely illusory. A lot of that activity won't produce lasting value; it's mainly the core activity from the core group of people which survives time and remains influential. And that suggests that the pace of communication of research should be geared towards the core group's preferences. When its stable and mature enough, that's when it should be published widely (for the first time). Because if some outsider wants to build upon that, his work won't be undermined due to major changes in a short time.
That will accomplish two things. 1) It will raise the standards of publication, because the authors won't be under pressure and the referees won't cut them any slack for that, and 2) it will cut down on the noise and volume of publications, so that people in the field will actually be able to read all the important output for a change.
Papers shouldn't be treated like a currency.
No worries. Lawyers may take our lives, but they'll never take our FREEDOM!
Utter drivel. I've stopped reading the summary at that point. The author clearly doesn't understand evolution at all. Humans aren't evolutionarily successful. We have been around a very short time compared with other species, and the jury is definitely still out. Moreover, the idea that some habits of human minds (of which it isn't even clear if they originate naturally or merely socially) can be identified as success factors is ridiculous. What other species are we comparing with? None, that's what.
"Oh look, we are more evolutionarily successful than dolphins, because we believe in magic while dolphins... er... don't. No, wait. We're more successful than ants, because our brains and everything's the same but... uhm... we believe in the supernatural. Would you believe a comparison with pigs?..."
It's pure mental wankery to pat ourselves on the shoulder and claim we're Nature's best and brightest, and by golly it's all because we're the Chosen People!
If you like debating, there's usually debating clubs in universities. And if its all just about good free food, then you're a victim of poverty (most students are).
Oh yeah, I remember that guy! He talked to the King about it, and the King said "ok, well, to cope with that we'll introduce copyright. That way, anyone who can't get the books they want becomes a criminal, and no books for crims. Problem solved!"
What a bastard that guy was! But a couple of years later he tried to sell the King a Microsoft solution, and he ended up on the wheel. Served him right, I say.
Yes, you're right. I actually meant this in the sense of no proof *and* no belief, not as an implication.
Not trying to troll, but I can't let you propagate misconceptions.
I call dibs on the patent for a Non-Newtonian Chicken Game. The players stick both feet into a pothole that's in the middle of the road and has been filled with a non-Newtonian fluid. Then they wait for an oncoming car. The winner is whoever stays in his hole the longest. Scoring is in binary (nod to the geeks).
I hope they hired Kate as an engineering consultant for that project. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.
Hmm. I thought this problem was the case with all e-ink readers, but doing a quick search on the net suggests it might be a problem with some displays manufactured by LG. That would be awesome.
Have you tried it on the beach in summer? That's the kind of sunlight I'm talking about.
The worst problem is that I can't read ebooks outside. As soon as the sun shines on the display, the e-ink starts disappearing (I believe it's something to do with the display heating up, but whatever it is, e-ink is just not good enough). The other problem is glare when reading inside. It's comparable in annoyance to those glossy paper magazines, when you read them next to a lamp.
The last straw is the form factor. I like to read scientific papers, and the screen of just about any ebook reader is too small to read comfortably. Even if I'm reading novels, I find that with a small screen there's too much hand navigation required, basically. Whereas I would flip a piece of paper every two pages on a paperback, I have to press the next page button at least 3 times to get to the same point. It just requires too much hand interaction for my taste.
Nonono! It ain't terrorism until Tony Blair goes on FOX news and tells the world how the dangerous hackers could crack any UK website within 45 minutes!
While I'm not disagreeing with your main points, total downloads have gone up a lot in the last 10 years or so. An average web page is now about 10x bigger than it used to be, which is quite depressing as it's not like there's 10x more content. Your average movie clip is getting to be HD now, which again isn't actually a lot more content, just an improvement in detail, etc. The content side of the net is taking the same bloated direction that the software side of Windows has taken forever.
Well, since HTML codemonkeys are now called app developers, why not?
A cop with a stick up his ass?
Yes, and to do so, you minimize, over the possible actions A, the expected loss E(Loss(A)). Where do your probability weights that enter into E come from? Or do you leave that part aside?
This appears to be a compulsory, non-discriminatory, universal licensing scheme. It doesn't destroy or limit copyright, as the copyright holders will (presumably) get paid for each usage. Compulsory licensing seems like a good idea, except that with 1.3 billion people, that's going to be a challenge to administer.