I've talked to people who thought (usually justifiably) that their home country was pretty good, but the only people I've ever heard say anything like shining light, beacon of hope or pinnacle of whatever have been Americans.
Except that they changed the scale this year. And even if they didn't your metric only makes sense if the scale is linear, which it almost certainly isn't.
Huh. I left because of the volume of insurance spam I was getting through them. That and the organization itself being almost completely useless to me.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a new type of open access journal. There's a considerable advantage to having lots of competing journals, run by lots of different people. Systematic abuse requires a large conspiracy. Your proposal requires some kind of central reputation tracker, with rules. Kind of like Google does with search. Except Google biases their search results.
The editor usually IS one of your peers. He's generally someone with an established, excellent track record in a field. He wades through the crap that comes in (think Firehose), then passes on the stuff that isn't wildly inappropriate or unintelligible to other reviewers. He's triage.
If there was only one journal, a bad editor could theoretically do some damage. But that's not the situation. First, most journals have multiple editors, and there are multiple journals. If a journal starts rejecting good papers due to some kind of bias they'll get published elsewhere and the first journal's reputation will suffer. Suffer a lot, because scientists talk to each other.
Journals are a filter. They're supposed to prevent some things from getting published - the low quality, scientifically dubious and shoddily done research. It's hard enough keeping up with the reviewed, edited and published work, never mind some kind of free for all "scientific" networking site that would probably be 90% drug and equipment supplier spam within a week and the other 10% long papers espousing crackpot theories.
Not likely. Being a reviewer is a PITA, and generally doesn't advance you in any way. I once applied for a grant that asked how many papers I'd reviewed in the past year, but they just wanted a number, completely unsubstantiated, so I doubt they put much weight on it.
Scientists do peer review because it's a duty. Not publishing with a journal you don't like is an easy choice. Refusing to participate in peer review with them just means they'll get someone else to do it, and poor papers may slip through.
The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.
"No treaty or agreement should have any effect upon US citizens within our own borders."
Good idea. Stop pushing them on the rest of the world.
As far as the phone bill goes, your local phone company has an agreement (possibly through one or more third parties) with that African phone company. You make the call, your local phone company pays the bill, then they charge you. The Africans aren't billing you, they've already been paid.
"Yes, it is. It's just throttling over a short period. Latency and throttling are one and the same. You have a piece of pipe that can take hold ten marbles at a time before the marbles come out the other end. If the marbles can flow at only a certain speed (say one marble pulled out per second), then this behaves very much like a network cable. (See, it is a series of tubes.)"
Oh, a pipes metaphor. You know the Internet isn't a series of tubes, right?
Packets take different routes, and arrive at different times. Frequently out of order. You're not pouring marbles into pipes.
Arranging packets so the latency sensitive ones take fast routes and tend to stay together more, at the expense of scattering the latency insensitive ones a bit more is one thing, provided the overall throughput of the insensitive ones over some suitably small timescale stays the same. Throttling implies that the "undesirable" packets are delayed to the point that it's noticeable, and detrimental to the user. That's NOT okay.
If you want a metaphor, it's the difference between me borrowing your lawnmower that you're not going to use today and giving it back in a few hours, versus my borrowing it and not giving it back until you need it and have to come looking for me.
Besides, the original issue was actually about World of Warcraft, which is not overly latency insensitive anyway.
However much you oversold your network, it is NOT okay for you to give some other customer with the same kind of connection preferential treatment over me.
Submitted hey? Well that's fantastic. You can submit a kermit the frog soliloquy for peer review if you want to. I admit, it's an arduous process, usually requiring twenty or thirty mouse clicks on a web page.
The proper way to do it is to wait until the paper is accepted, PUBLISHED, and the scientific community has had a look at it. The FTL neutrino guys did that (IIRC their paper wasn't peer reviewed first, but they published it as is normal in the physics community, for review by that community), used cautious language, and have been receptive to criticism. The media still went nuts, but there was no backlash from the scientific community.
I didn't say it was Wolf-Simon's fault, although it sounds like (I'm not a microbiologist, but there is no shortage of them that have said this) the original work was somewhere between rushed and shoddy, and her responses to criticism haven't exactly been scientifically productive. The real fault lies with NASA though. Without the NASA press conference "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus" probably wouldn't have attracted much attention from the mainstream media and could have been given a good airing before, if it was justified, being hyped. NASA lost a lot of credibility with that one and, if you want to go with your interpretation, possibly damaged the careers of a few overeager young scientists.
However, judging by your first sentence, you have some kind of emotional attachment to this story and probably haven't bothered reading this far. If you're involved with the research itself and that's how you respond to criticism, I'm even less surprised at the response you've gotten.
What most people who don't use it frequently don't seem to realize is that four wheel drive only helps you GO. It doesn't help you STOP (everyone has four wheel brakes). SUV drivers especially seem to have a bad habit of hitting the 4x4 button and thinking they're now stuck to the road.
I was with a friend once, both of us northerners. We were at a Remembrance Day ceremony and they had started parking cars on a field, which promptly got packed into ice. It didn't help when all the city people in their SUVs and pickups started spinning their tires when they got stuck on this one particular slippery spot on the way out. My friend in her Sentra shifted into first, was careful not to spin her tires, and made it out without a problem.
Winter tires help, but mostly when it's cold. I've seen people with winter tires think they're suddenly invulnerable too (and be spectacularly proven wrong). Not driving like an idiot seems to be the biggest factor.
There was the little matter of the heritage and/or industry ministers responsible for those bills getting either outright fired or "reassigned to another portfolio."
Harper's not an idiot. If there's enough outcry against this, he'll drop it. If not, well, hopefully it's bad enough that the massive lawsuits start up here and continue until the next election.
You are responsible for the government you elect. That's what it means to live in a democracy. No, you're not all dicks. Unfortunately a large percentage of you are too apathetic to both voting (which is certainly not unique to the US), virtually all of you can't be bothered to run and actually commit to what you believe in, and the rest haven't bothered to think enough to figure out that abstaining from voting is completely stupid and everybody not voting for alternative candidates because "they don't have a chance" is nearly as dumb.
I'm Canadian. I didn't vote for Harper (and I DID vote), but as I Canadian I know he's our fault. We're getting what we asked for. And we'll pay for it. Next time hopefully we'll know better. If not, it's still our fault.
Vote your conscience. If everyone did that you guys would actually have a pretty decent democracy.
Sorry, but the leaked diplomatic cables and various actions like putting Canada on the pirates list make it pretty clear that the US government (i.e. the US - you guys are responsible for who you vote into power) is actively pushing this stuff on the rest of the world.
I doubt it. Three years is a long time to remember a bill, unless it affects your daily life. And it will. When the RIAA starts pulling it's massive lawsuits up here and people start getting bitten by them, they'll remember. And that's not going to be over in three years.
If they pass this, it might well be the issue at the next election that gets the Conservatives smacked down to reconsider their platform.
You guys have had the DMCA since when? 2001? And have been pushing the rest of the world to adopt something similar ever since. Canada has held out for the last decade.
"Our voices count for even less in Canada than American voices do in the USA."
How do you figure? Both countries have free elections. And the ones in Canada are governed by functional campaign financing laws and feature parties that represent actual distinct choices.
And form a minority of the border. I suppose if you include the great lakes and the St. Lawrence river, there IS water between the parts of Canada and the US that most Americans and Canadians are familiar with.
I like to tell Torontonians and Montrealers that they're not actually Canadians because they live south of the 49th parallel.
I grew up in northern Canada. Most people I know, including those who live down gravel roads, love minivans. They're good on ice, stable, and relatively cheap. If you need to go offroad on the farm you get a pickup. Never an SUV.
I heard the same thing from the owners of a remote lodge on the Alaska highway who used a minivan for supply runs.
Slashdot Mirror
"ho[w] such things could never happen in America."
There's the seed of it, right there. When you think it can't happen to you, it probably will.
Hm. None of these seem like human rights or civil liberties violations.
I've talked to people who thought (usually justifiably) that their home country was pretty good, but the only people I've ever heard say anything like shining light, beacon of hope or pinnacle of whatever have been Americans.
Except that they changed the scale this year. And even if they didn't your metric only makes sense if the scale is linear, which it almost certainly isn't.
Huh. I left because of the volume of insurance spam I was getting through them. That and the organization itself being almost completely useless to me.
Sounds like an interesting idea for a new type of open access journal. There's a considerable advantage to having lots of competing journals, run by lots of different people. Systematic abuse requires a large conspiracy. Your proposal requires some kind of central reputation tracker, with rules. Kind of like Google does with search. Except Google biases their search results.
You COULD go to a library and get it for free.
The editor usually IS one of your peers. He's generally someone with an established, excellent track record in a field. He wades through the crap that comes in (think Firehose), then passes on the stuff that isn't wildly inappropriate or unintelligible to other reviewers. He's triage.
If there was only one journal, a bad editor could theoretically do some damage. But that's not the situation. First, most journals have multiple editors, and there are multiple journals. If a journal starts rejecting good papers due to some kind of bias they'll get published elsewhere and the first journal's reputation will suffer. Suffer a lot, because scientists talk to each other.
Journals are a filter. They're supposed to prevent some things from getting published - the low quality, scientifically dubious and shoddily done research. It's hard enough keeping up with the reviewed, edited and published work, never mind some kind of free for all "scientific" networking site that would probably be 90% drug and equipment supplier spam within a week and the other 10% long papers espousing crackpot theories.
Not likely. Being a reviewer is a PITA, and generally doesn't advance you in any way. I once applied for a grant that asked how many papers I'd reviewed in the past year, but they just wanted a number, completely unsubstantiated, so I doubt they put much weight on it.
Scientists do peer review because it's a duty. Not publishing with a journal you don't like is an easy choice. Refusing to participate in peer review with them just means they'll get someone else to do it, and poor papers may slip through.
The same reason it's illegal to import DVDs from Africa to sell in the US. The drug companies find they can sell drugs in the US for a LOT more than they can almost anywhere else, so they do. Allowing imports from other countries would defeat that.
"No treaty or agreement should have any effect upon US citizens within our own borders."
Good idea. Stop pushing them on the rest of the world.
As far as the phone bill goes, your local phone company has an agreement (possibly through one or more third parties) with that African phone company. You make the call, your local phone company pays the bill, then they charge you. The Africans aren't billing you, they've already been paid.
He got a talk show?
"Yes, it is. It's just throttling over a short period. Latency and throttling are one and the same. You have a piece of pipe that can take hold ten marbles at a time before the marbles come out the other end. If the marbles can flow at only a certain speed (say one marble pulled out per second), then this behaves very much like a network cable. (See, it is a series of tubes.)"
Oh, a pipes metaphor. You know the Internet isn't a series of tubes, right?
Packets take different routes, and arrive at different times. Frequently out of order. You're not pouring marbles into pipes.
Arranging packets so the latency sensitive ones take fast routes and tend to stay together more, at the expense of scattering the latency insensitive ones a bit more is one thing, provided the overall throughput of the insensitive ones over some suitably small timescale stays the same. Throttling implies that the "undesirable" packets are delayed to the point that it's noticeable, and detrimental to the user. That's NOT okay.
If you want a metaphor, it's the difference between me borrowing your lawnmower that you're not going to use today and giving it back in a few hours, versus my borrowing it and not giving it back until you need it and have to come looking for me.
Besides, the original issue was actually about World of Warcraft, which is not overly latency insensitive anyway.
However much you oversold your network, it is NOT okay for you to give some other customer with the same kind of connection preferential treatment over me.
Submitted hey? Well that's fantastic. You can submit a kermit the frog soliloquy for peer review if you want to. I admit, it's an arduous process, usually requiring twenty or thirty mouse clicks on a web page.
The proper way to do it is to wait until the paper is accepted, PUBLISHED, and the scientific community has had a look at it. The FTL neutrino guys did that (IIRC their paper wasn't peer reviewed first, but they published it as is normal in the physics community, for review by that community), used cautious language, and have been receptive to criticism. The media still went nuts, but there was no backlash from the scientific community.
I didn't say it was Wolf-Simon's fault, although it sounds like (I'm not a microbiologist, but there is no shortage of them that have said this) the original work was somewhere between rushed and shoddy, and her responses to criticism haven't exactly been scientifically productive. The real fault lies with NASA though. Without the NASA press conference "A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus" probably wouldn't have attracted much attention from the mainstream media and could have been given a good airing before, if it was justified, being hyped. NASA lost a lot of credibility with that one and, if you want to go with your interpretation, possibly damaged the careers of a few overeager young scientists.
However, judging by your first sentence, you have some kind of emotional attachment to this story and probably haven't bothered reading this far. If you're involved with the research itself and that's how you respond to criticism, I'm even less surprised at the response you've gotten.
What most people who don't use it frequently don't seem to realize is that four wheel drive only helps you GO. It doesn't help you STOP (everyone has four wheel brakes). SUV drivers especially seem to have a bad habit of hitting the 4x4 button and thinking they're now stuck to the road.
I was with a friend once, both of us northerners. We were at a Remembrance Day ceremony and they had started parking cars on a field, which promptly got packed into ice. It didn't help when all the city people in their SUVs and pickups started spinning their tires when they got stuck on this one particular slippery spot on the way out. My friend in her Sentra shifted into first, was careful not to spin her tires, and made it out without a problem.
Winter tires help, but mostly when it's cold. I've seen people with winter tires think they're suddenly invulnerable too (and be spectacularly proven wrong). Not driving like an idiot seems to be the biggest factor.
There was the little matter of the heritage and/or industry ministers responsible for those bills getting either outright fired or "reassigned to another portfolio."
Harper's not an idiot. If there's enough outcry against this, he'll drop it. If not, well, hopefully it's bad enough that the massive lawsuits start up here and continue until the next election.
You are responsible for the government you elect. That's what it means to live in a democracy. No, you're not all dicks. Unfortunately a large percentage of you are too apathetic to both voting (which is certainly not unique to the US), virtually all of you can't be bothered to run and actually commit to what you believe in, and the rest haven't bothered to think enough to figure out that abstaining from voting is completely stupid and everybody not voting for alternative candidates because "they don't have a chance" is nearly as dumb.
I'm Canadian. I didn't vote for Harper (and I DID vote), but as I Canadian I know he's our fault. We're getting what we asked for. And we'll pay for it. Next time hopefully we'll know better. If not, it's still our fault.
Vote your conscience. If everyone did that you guys would actually have a pretty decent democracy.
Sorry, but the leaked diplomatic cables and various actions like putting Canada on the pirates list make it pretty clear that the US government (i.e. the US - you guys are responsible for who you vote into power) is actively pushing this stuff on the rest of the world.
I doubt it. Three years is a long time to remember a bill, unless it affects your daily life. And it will. When the RIAA starts pulling it's massive lawsuits up here and people start getting bitten by them, they'll remember. And that's not going to be over in three years.
If they pass this, it might well be the issue at the next election that gets the Conservatives smacked down to reconsider their platform.
You guys have had the DMCA since when? 2001? And have been pushing the rest of the world to adopt something similar ever since. Canada has held out for the last decade.
What was it you were saying about being just?
"Our voices count for even less in Canada than American voices do in the USA."
How do you figure? Both countries have free elections. And the ones in Canada are governed by functional campaign financing laws and feature parties that represent actual distinct choices.
And form a minority of the border. I suppose if you include the great lakes and the St. Lawrence river, there IS water between the parts of Canada and the US that most Americans and Canadians are familiar with.
I like to tell Torontonians and Montrealers that they're not actually Canadians because they live south of the 49th parallel.
I grew up in northern Canada. Most people I know, including those who live down gravel roads, love minivans. They're good on ice, stable, and relatively cheap. If you need to go offroad on the farm you get a pickup. Never an SUV.
I heard the same thing from the owners of a remote lodge on the Alaska highway who used a minivan for supply runs.
I think it's a scale model for display.