As an academic (physics prof.), I can tell you this is exactly why I don't contribute. Ditto for the GP post. I spend many, many hours per week educating students and learning more about my field to stay on top of things, not to mention all the years at university. So, yeah, I expect my opinion in my areas of expertise to count for something more than average.
That being said, my domains of expertise are limited, and that is something not all academics are good at recognizing. Being a PhD in one subject doesn't imply anything about your fluency in another (though it sometimes make you *think* otherwise), so even a 'privileged contributor' status of sorts would have to be implemented carefully I think (e.g., I should not be allowed privileged status to edit medical articles, for instance, I am not qualified for that).
If the climate gets better, I'd love to help out. But that doesn't look likely at this moment. Best I can do for now is keep putting out free texts, notes, solved problems, etc. and hope people find them.
I'd be happy to see a NASA mission go out from the Earth and back for just six months to get beyond the moon.
Man, if only congress thought this way too... we'd have done this already.
Better yet... if only my funding agents thought this way, I might have lab equipment built in the last decade. Sigh. We just have to make a mars mission fall under the Defense budget in some way, and we'd be all set...
from the bbc article:
"Mark Adler, deputy mission manager, said the main science objective was to understand the water environment of Mars not to search for life. He told BBC News Online: 'What we learnt from Viking is that it is very difficult to come up with specific experiments to look for something you don't really know what to look for.'"
I would have to agree, this is the tough part. The evidence is 20 years old from Viking, and its still being debated. Remember the martian rocks that "contained signs of life"? Me either.
. We're not even sure what to look for... at least we're pretty damn sure what water looks like at this point... these missions are expensive, I wouldn't waste a mission on something unlikely to succeed anyway.
One example where this would be absolutely natural and extremely helpful would be scientific publishing. Journal subscriptions are frightfully expensive. I regularly mail copies of my own papers to people in contries (e.g., Ukraine, Iran) where not only can they not afford the journal subscription, but they can't afford to get online.
One existing solution here is arxiv.org, an online article repository. Its free, and has gazillions of papers. Unfortunately, its not peer-reviewed, which is a serious point in any scientific field.
You can do a lot as one person though -- e.g., I licenced my ph.d. thesis under the "open content" license, allowing anyone to copy all or part of it, but requiring my approval for changes (merely because I don't want nonsense inserted). Freely downloadable at
Further, if you carefully read the transfer of copyright agreements for most journals, its trivial to revise your articles to the point that they are no longer restricted.
In any case, however, I don't think this is RMS's domain. For the scientific arena, someone who is already a major player needs to take this on -- someone with an intricate knowledge of the existing system and its problems.
apparently, evolution can be run under OSX, but its hard:
http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/doing/evo-osx.ht ml
I think this doc is a few months old, but at least, with some effort, evolution has been run on OSX by at least one guy. he did have to build it from scratch, though, and says that it isn't "for the faint of heart"
*support*, yes, is another thing... i wouldn't hold my breath, but I know several ximian people with macs, so maybe they'll get frustrated and do it;-)
Re:and how many are single ...
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 1
actually, my comment was only half joking...
i'm only 26, and i do physics for a living (postdoc now)
but, for certain 3 of my previous girlfriends left me because I worked too much... they'd call at 11pm asking when I'd get home, I'd respond "oh, pretty soon, this experiment is going well."
now that I'm desperately single, I realize the error of my ways... the experiment can be done tomorrow, your girlfriend may be *gone* tomorrow*
so, my point, if any, was that this gaming thing seems to be the same sort of dangerous obsession as research, coding, gambling, etc, which we XY-types are all too susceptible to.
DoctorPeper's reply seems to support this, as do the anectodes of nearly all of my science/cs geek friends.
sure, I do know some happily married/attached geeks, plenty of the, but the percentage seems awfully low compared to my non-technical friends...
my drunken $0.02.
-pat
and how many are single ...
on
The Aging Gamer
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I would be more interested in seeing how many of these people are unmarried... or divorced as a direct result of gaming
hope this isn't a reapeat, but this also
just on the heels of that oak ridge fusion
thing. you'd think people would have learned
to be a bit more careful about announcing table-top fusion these days...
Slashdot Mirror
As an academic (physics prof.), I can tell you this is exactly why I don't contribute. Ditto for the GP post. I spend many, many hours per week educating students and learning more about my field to stay on top of things, not to mention all the years at university. So, yeah, I expect my opinion in my areas of expertise to count for something more than average.
That being said, my domains of expertise are limited, and that is something not all academics are good at recognizing. Being a PhD in one subject doesn't imply anything about your fluency in another (though it sometimes make you *think* otherwise), so even a 'privileged contributor' status of sorts would have to be implemented carefully I think (e.g., I should not be allowed privileged status to edit medical articles, for instance, I am not qualified for that).
If the climate gets better, I'd love to help out. But that doesn't look likely at this moment. Best I can do for now is keep putting out free texts, notes, solved problems, etc. and hope people find them.
Here is a little discussion of how copy and paste works in X. Don't know if its all absolutely right myself, but jwz seems like a clever guy.
Anyone more enlightened?
Man, if only congress thought this way too ... we'd have done this already.
Better yet ... if only my funding agents thought this way, I might have lab equipment built in the last decade. Sigh. We just have to make a mars mission fall under the Defense budget in some way, and we'd be all set ...
I would have to agree, this is the tough part. The evidence is 20 years old from Viking, and its still being debated. Remember the martian rocks that "contained signs of life"? Me either.
. We're not even sure what to look for ... at least we're pretty damn sure what water looks like at this point ... these missions are expensive, I wouldn't waste a mission on something unlikely to succeed anyway.
One existing solution here is arxiv.org, an online article repository. Its free, and has gazillions of papers. Unfortunately, its not peer-reviewed, which is a serious point in any scientific field.
You can do a lot as one person though -- e.g., I licenced my ph.d. thesis under the "open content" license, allowing anyone to copy all or part of it, but requiring my approval for changes (merely because I don't want nonsense inserted). Freely downloadable at
http://web.mit.edu/~dingus/www/theses/tue/thesis.p df
if you're curious.
Further, if you carefully read the transfer of copyright agreements for most journals, its trivial to revise your articles to the point that they are no longer restricted.
In any case, however, I don't think this is RMS's domain. For the scientific arena, someone who is already a major player needs to take this on -- someone with an intricate knowledge of the existing system and its problems.
My $0.02 anyway.
http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/doing/evo-osx.ht ml
I think this doc is a few months old, but at least, with some effort, evolution has been run on OSX by at least one guy. he did have to build it from scratch, though, and says that it isn't "for the faint of heart" *support*, yes, is another thing ... i wouldn't hold my breath, but I know several ximian people with macs, so maybe they'll get frustrated and do it ;-)
actually, my comment was only half joking ...
i'm only 26, and i do physics for a living (postdoc now)
but, for certain 3 of my previous girlfriends left me because I worked too much ... they'd call at 11pm asking when I'd get home, I'd respond "oh, pretty soon, this experiment is going well."
now that I'm desperately single, I realize the error of my ways ... the experiment can be done tomorrow, your girlfriend may be *gone* tomorrow*
so, my point, if any, was that this gaming thing seems to be the same sort of dangerous obsession as research, coding, gambling, etc, which we XY-types are all too susceptible to.
DoctorPeper's reply seems to support this, as do the anectodes of nearly all of my science/cs geek friends.
sure, I do know some happily married/attached geeks, plenty of the, but the percentage seems awfully low compared to my non-technical friends ...
my drunken $0.02.
-pat
I would be more interested in seeing how many of these people are unmarried ... or divorced as a direct result of gaming
hope this isn't a reapeat, but this also just on the heels of that oak ridge fusion thing. you'd think people would have learned to be a bit more careful about announcing table-top fusion these days ...
so long as they're about the page 3 girl, i see no problem.