I agree. It is great time that University libraries take over as publishers, and spend their money hosting and archiving online journals instead of paying these ridiculous fees. The libraries should also function in a federated manner (P2P!), so that searches for a journal or author can be automatically propagated. Again like in P2P, downloaded articles should be replicated in the local university's point of access. This way most popular articles will be even more protected for the long term.
As for the reputation aspect, I'm pretty sure if Stanford or MIT decided to host their own open-access no fee journals that they would easily attract top researchers for their editorial boards and immediately be flooded with submissions. There are already great examples of reputable online journals, see the Journal of AI Research for example.
There's now open-source software that helps manage the workflow of journal publication. The tools are there, the willingness is there. Let's do it!
"Sur l'etoile" was a sci-fi comic book he wrote for Citroen in 1983, but more than just a branding operation and a little gift meant for Citroen employees, it was a very beautiful and poetic piece of work.
Wasn't there also supposed to be a Dune movie with his participation and Jodorowsky's?
He was also famous for Lieutenant Blueberry, his western series he signed under his real name, Jean Giraud.
I've liked whatever I've read from Norman Spinrad. He's more interested in political or societal questions that he can explore using Sci-Fi, than the more typical fantasy aspects.
You're still missing out on the course projects, which are probably the most valuable piece. The Stanford students in the AI course get to work on programming projects, and they get evaluated on those by actual humans. Of course those projects are also available to you if you want to work on them on your own, but there's no actual incentive on finishing them, nor any interaction with other students or a TA.
Also, the machine learning course is a "dumbed down" version. The programming assignments are more of an exercise in manipulating matrices than in understanding the deeper mechanics of machine learning. The same prof teaches a much nicer one in person (material is available online though), but it requires math baggage that most people registered to the online course won't have.
I think the database course is the big winner so far. It is very well taught, and is challenging enough to keep you interested.
In any case, kudos to all the instructors for their time and effort.
So then you reach saturation when you can't even get a basic job without a degree. Then you get into degree inflation, where you'll eventually need a PhD to flip (more flipping!) a burger. Degree inflation means even more debt, rinse and repeat.
The way out is to only reward people who deserve the degree, but it's not likely to happen.
I completely disagree with the article, but there's something to be said about the proliferation of PhDs. It seems to me (but correct me if I'm wrong) that once upon a time (say, 50 years ago?) every PhD thesis publication used to be a pretty major event. Researchers from that field would gather and discuss the new findings, analyze and verify the results, etc. Having a PhD actually meant something. Nowadays a PhD defense is just a banal event, dozens take place in a university each month and contribute little to the state of the art.
We've all noticed how nobody knows anything coming out of high school anymore (basic reading, writing and counting skills are lacking). The bachelor degree is the new high school degree, the master's is the new bachelor, and the PhD is the new master's. Since we can't go back and make these degrees more selective, we need something beyond the PhD, where the real cream of the crop would participate in significant research.
This reminds me of the video appeal in pro tennis. If your appeal was bogus you lose it, otherwise you get to appeal again. This makes you think twice before appealing, and will therefore reduce the review load.
Minor possible improvement: you get the right to enter a complaint only after some time since the creation of the account has passed, or if you have reached a certain amount of activity; this will deter the creation of shill accounts, or at least it will increase the friction/cost (time, energy) for doing so.
Well, there's always Datalog... Also, one could imagine a direct expression of relational algebra or calculus in a lisp-based syntax, something like:
(select f (project g (x PRODUCT AUTHOR))) (where f and g are functions defined separately or just included directly as lambdas)
It would maybe feel more natural and more intuitive for math-friendly people, but maybe too scary-looking for anybody else? The same marketing forces behind COBOL and the same misguided ambition that a lay person should be able to program seem to have driven the syntax of SQL.
I think some of the decisions were forced by the marketing division, who were in a hurry to release the language. Marketing was probably right though, given the success of the language, warts be damned.
Do you mind posting a link to the wireless token product in question? I've been working on one myself, and I'd love to know what's out there already. Thanks!
But as a sidebar I just want to point out how lame "college" has become. It used to be for those serious about their education or the academic subjects, but now it is just another mandatory level of education with the same behavioural problems from those who really have no wish to be in attendance. The fact that we're talking about treating 19 to 24 year olds like small children should tell you how silly the situation is becoming.
Indeed! College is the new high school. Grad school is the new college. But what's the new grad school?
Maybe paying for it should be illegal, as it directly and clearly encourages criminal behavior. It would also prevent people from planting incriminating pictures on someone's hard drive.
Ok, we need to stop saying France is a socialist country. Sarkozy is anything but socialist. And this latest idea is much more in line with what a neo-con government would do, which is to subsidize the private sector.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. It is great time that University libraries take over as publishers, and spend their money hosting and archiving online journals instead of paying these ridiculous fees. The libraries should also function in a federated manner (P2P!), so that searches for a journal or author can be automatically propagated. Again like in P2P, downloaded articles should be replicated in the local university's point of access. This way most popular articles will be even more protected for the long term.
As for the reputation aspect, I'm pretty sure if Stanford or MIT decided to host their own open-access no fee journals that they would easily attract top researchers for their editorial boards and immediately be flooded with submissions. There are already great examples of reputable online journals, see the Journal of AI Research for example.
There's now open-source software that helps manage the workflow of journal publication. The tools are there, the willingness is there. Let's do it!
Thanks for the link, that was a great lecture!
"Sur l'etoile" was a sci-fi comic book he wrote for Citroen in 1983, but more than just a branding operation and a little gift meant for Citroen employees, it was a very beautiful and poetic piece of work.
Wasn't there also supposed to be a Dune movie with his participation and Jodorowsky's?
He was also famous for Lieutenant Blueberry, his western series he signed under his real name, Jean Giraud.
I've liked whatever I've read from Norman Spinrad. He's more interested in political or societal questions that he can explore using Sci-Fi, than the more typical fantasy aspects.
You're still missing out on the course projects, which are probably the most valuable piece. The Stanford students in the AI course get to work on programming projects, and they get evaluated on those by actual humans. Of course those projects are also available to you if you want to work on them on your own, but there's no actual incentive on finishing them, nor any interaction with other students or a TA.
Also, the machine learning course is a "dumbed down" version. The programming assignments are more of an exercise in manipulating matrices than in understanding the deeper mechanics of machine learning. The same prof teaches a much nicer one in person (material is available online though), but it requires math baggage that most people registered to the online course won't have.
I think the database course is the big winner so far. It is very well taught, and is challenging enough to keep you interested.
In any case, kudos to all the instructors for their time and effort.
So then you reach saturation when you can't even get a basic job without a degree. Then you get into degree inflation, where you'll eventually need a PhD to flip (more flipping!) a burger. Degree inflation means even more debt, rinse and repeat.
The way out is to only reward people who deserve the degree, but it's not likely to happen.
...this was posted on Reddit a month ago!
Best of luck with your future career, whatever it may be.
Similar coincidence: yesterday I saw Terrence Mallick's beautiful Tree of Life, which also featured the asteroid impact.
I RTFP (and not just TFA!), and they say they left that part (recognizing erotic context of the uttered sentence) for future work.
I completely disagree with the article, but there's something to be said about the proliferation of PhDs. It seems to me (but correct me if I'm wrong) that once upon a time (say, 50 years ago?) every PhD thesis publication used to be a pretty major event. Researchers from that field would gather and discuss the new findings, analyze and verify the results, etc. Having a PhD actually meant something. Nowadays a PhD defense is just a banal event, dozens take place in a university each month and contribute little to the state of the art.
We've all noticed how nobody knows anything coming out of high school anymore (basic reading, writing and counting skills are lacking). The bachelor degree is the new high school degree, the master's is the new bachelor, and the PhD is the new master's. Since we can't go back and make these degrees more selective, we need something beyond the PhD, where the real cream of the crop would participate in significant research.
This reminds me of the video appeal in pro tennis. If your appeal was bogus you lose it, otherwise you get to appeal again. This makes you think twice before appealing, and will therefore reduce the review load.
Minor possible improvement: you get the right to enter a complaint only after some time since the creation of the account has passed, or if you have reached a certain amount of activity; this will deter the creation of shill accounts, or at least it will increase the friction/cost (time, energy) for doing so.
Well, there's always Datalog... Also, one could imagine a direct expression of relational algebra or calculus in a lisp-based syntax, something like:
(select f (project g (x PRODUCT AUTHOR))) (where f and g are functions defined separately or just included directly as lambdas)
It would maybe feel more natural and more intuitive for math-friendly people, but maybe too scary-looking for anybody else? The same marketing forces behind COBOL and the same misguided ambition that a lay person should be able to program seem to have driven the syntax of SQL.
I think some of the decisions were forced by the marketing division, who were in a hurry to release the language. Marketing was probably right though, given the success of the language, warts be damned.
Is that a variation of Godwin's law? The communist strawman argument?
Do you mind posting a link to the wireless token product in question? I've been working on one myself, and I'd love to know what's out there already. Thanks!
I don't think a teenager today would know what "exhume" means.
I agree, CBC radio is very good. Good programming, no commercials, I am happy to pay taxes for that. CBC-TV on the other hand...
But as a sidebar I just want to point out how lame "college" has become. It used to be for those serious about their education or the academic subjects, but now it is just another mandatory level of education with the same behavioural problems from those who really have no wish to be in attendance. The fact that we're talking about treating 19 to 24 year olds like small children should tell you how silly the situation is becoming.
Indeed! College is the new high school. Grad school is the new college. But what's the new grad school?
That's a logical question, coming from a RobotRunAmok. ;)
Maybe paying for it should be illegal, as it directly and clearly encourages criminal behavior. It would also prevent people from planting incriminating pictures on someone's hard drive.
I also came here to point this out! Also, Godard's Week-end has a famous 10-minute long take: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNWaKKQih54
Ok, we need to stop saying France is a socialist country. Sarkozy is anything but socialist. And this latest idea is much more in line with what a neo-con government would do, which is to subsidize the private sector.
There's also Langlois' work at the Cinematheque in Paris. He started collecting and preserving reels even earlier than Scorsese.
Wouldn't picking voluminous fish out of water help keep the water level from rising? ;)
Godwin Law alert: it is a dictatorship if you can only choose between Hitler and Mussolini at the elections.
Any opposition party worth its salt is banned in Iran.