Not just PLoS...look at JBC or other journals and you'll see the little disclaimer that the pages are marked as advertisements because of the way the printing costs are defrayed. Also, it already costs the author money to submit a paper for publication to defray the costs of editing and peer review. Peer review costs nothing, it's the shipping to the reviewers and admin costs.
Publishing on the web is not a good alternative.
Sure it is. It's already happening. These days, results are increasingly multimedia. On top of that, journals want high levels of stringency on their papers, but they don't have room to show all results. That's why they invented supplemental results online. Libraries have to adapt and subscribe to more online journals. Sure, you do go out and dig up the 60 year old paper on occasion, but digital distribution won't do away with it. That's silly. And to answer your "profitability" statement, have you noticed that the bulk of scientific journals is actually advertising? It's like Playboy, the good stuff is only a small fraction of the magazine... yeah, that includes the articles we all read in that fine publication.
Also, don't forget how long people have been pushing for this free access. Harold Varmus, the former NIH head, has been quite vocal about this matter for some time now.
Yet there are plenty of books out there that teaches one how to use MacOS and Windows. So by that logic, all desktop OSes are difficult to use. And these days, any time someone writes a book about how to use these, they instantly call it "Hacking Windows/OSX".
I'm not into instant gratification as the article implies. In this consumerist society, I'd prefer to be an intelligent purchaser rather than one of the many throw away consumers. I wait for the CDs to show up on half.com for $5, which ends up less than $8 after shipping. I receive my uncompressed CDs at less than 80% of your $10, FLAC it and I haven't sacrificed any quality of the art. I also have the original so that I can circumvent the next disruptive technology to come along. I know not everyone can wait, but I can most of the time. Oh, yeah, I don't own an iPod. Instead, I have a Rio Karma, so FLAC is portable at the get go.
I don't get it. Nature was talking about this for bit now, right? Anyway, Isn't that what PLoS is for? It's not Nature or Science, but it'll be there someday and there are new journals from it of various interests in the wings.
But it is inaccurate. This is communst dogma at it's height and it's an ego trip about geopgraphy. Tibet had been a long-standing independent tributary to imperial China and was not a true part of China until the reds forced it into becoming a secular province in the 50s and kidnapped their second highest religious leader. And at the time of the Tibetan takeover, let's remember that the Republic of China was internationally recognized as China, not the People's Republic of China until the 70s. It's completely inaccurate to leave Manchuria out as a separate entity (sovereignty is up in the air though) because Japan occupied most of northeastern China and did in fact set up the puppet state of The Empire of Manchuria. So I can't see how you got a +5 insightful by not knowing any of the history that the evil communist Chinese government are supposedly trying to rewrite.
Actually, it's a little more interesting than Sun and CO2. They use controlled eutrophication. As it stands, industrial and agricultural eutrophication is a huge problem because pollutants and fertilizers run-off into streams and creeks resulting in huge algal blooms that kill off downstream ponds by cutting off sunlight. They take advantage of this and indicate that agricultural waste can be used to induce this controlled eutrophication. So you don't have to feed it anything special... just other people's garbage for a good nitrogen source that they'd have to send off for treatment anyway.
It really irritates me whenever there's an article about audio codecs and everyone ends up comparing mp3: vorbis as vhs:beta and citing that the better technology is not necessarily the winner. But just think about why the better technology wasn't the winner with beta. It had to do with a monopolistic control over beta and high prices. Think about the economics of the late 70s and its clear that the cheaper technology would win. And that is why you can't compare Beta to Vorbis.... Because vorbis is free! Vorbis is the better technology and its the most economical. Most people don't realize the added cost associated with having an mp3 capable player along with software that can encode. Royalties go somewhere, you know. Anyway, mp3 has the edge because it is the long standing de facto standard and no one gives a crap about vorbis because they just don't know about it. I am a Rio Karma owner because I do know about vorbis and FLAC. And my FLAC and vorbis library runs fantastically on my Linux and Windows boxes without additional whoring of myself to another corporate cartel in the mdeia industry aside from the RIAA that provided me with most of my CDs.
If I recall correctly, around 1998 or 1999 Washington apple growers were going bankrupt and ended up buldozing their orchards while refusing government bailouts. The problem didn't come from having bad trees or blights or whatever. The problem came from years of misguided selective breeding. Apple farmers were so caught up on making perfect looking red delicious apples that had that beautiful waxy red look on its own. The only problem with these apples was that they were completely flavorless and resulted in low sales. Bet this discovery is just result of this bad breeding. Maybe this is the future for M$. Wishful thinking anyway...
The primary problems lies in economics. Most advanced students in science who don't actually *love* what they are doing plan to leave science. If not for industry (which is still science), then to IP Law or consulting. Most grad students simply don't want to be poor for another few years after receiving their Ph.D. A lot of this perception in remaining poor is fed by the lack of research funding and the very real salaries that 1st year postdocs receive. When looking around in the scientific community, many foreign nationals abound but few Americans actually remain. Following their American Postdoctoral training, most of these foreign nationals inevitably return to their home country.
"How could you not want an iPod now? Now they offer a lossless codec!" Meanwhile in previous posts, anyone who complained about iPod's inability to handle FLAC was met with "Why would you want FLAC, that's what high bitrate AAC is for?"
However, this shows that Apple does have some appreciation for what people want. Now give us gapless playback and a good battery life.
Honestly, Java Desktop System (aka, Suse/Gnome/Staroffice/Evolution/Gaim) is pretty good for newbies and for corporate desktop transitioners. If HP (a gigantic OEM) partners with Novell to push Suse, we'll finally get reputable (brand aware) hardware pushing linux, as opposed to Microtel or other tiny vendors. Even JDS is pushing crap through walmart. Hopefully this will really open the eyes of the public and introduce Linux to the mainstream world. Hopefully this will push Novell to integrate Suse with Ximian and make a complete desktop OS that any newbie transitioning form M$ can use. Cheers to HP.... and finally a good linux laptop(?).
The DHMO site is at least 6 years old. I used to have it linked on my science education web site. I was smart enough to put it under the category of "weird science" or "science humor". Can't remember which as it is no longer active. Thought it was funny and didn't think anyone would ever buy into it... well anyone who actually graduated the 7th grade, at least.
I don't understand why Sun is, on the one hand, so active in and dedicated to the GNOME desktop, whereas on the other hand, they're not doing a single thing about Mono becoming an important part of the desktop, pushing Java back even further.
Face it: Sun, one of the head developers of GNOME, is losing the fight of Java versus C#, which is the official language from GNOME (Linux)'s biggest enemy Microsoft. Where's the logic? I mean, if Java loses even *this* battle, then how are they ever going to keep any significant marketshare?
yeah, it sounds great to you . and that's what everyone else wants?
Why would you need to take a FLAC audio file on a portable device?
because, some portables are capable of playing through a line-out into good speakers and some players even have near audiophile snr to make a difference.
My God man, why do you need OGG and FLAC support?I have thousands of MP3 and AAC files.
because of freedom. freedom to get an encoders that work on different platforms. because people have already encoded their files this way for their media center. because there's no extra licensing.
As a scientist and as an educator, I have to remind people about the possible side-effects involved in tinkering at this level. While Glo-fish are a fad, the original fluorescent zebra fish provide an invaluable tool to study developmental biology, as do green and red mice that are not sold as pets. The bad efffects of not having regulation on these fad pets is that anyone can get these as pets. And I know how people treat pets. Noone says that we have to worry about eating Glofish and ingesting the foreign genes. The real problem comes from the possibility of horizontal transmission of the antibiotic resistance gene. As with any GM food/organism, you simply don't want to introduce exogenous genes into the general population. Some government agency should be regulating these novelty items.
I'm still kicking myself over this. About a month ago, Dell had this for $78, with a $20 rebate to boot. Too bad I didn't see it until the morning after when they pulled it.
And those of us who did order it got it cancelled by Dell soon after.
"I didn't want to hurt anyone," wrote Joshua Buckner. "This will be with me the rest of my life."
Who goes around randomly shooting at cars and says this? And where do they get guns? I can see Leiberman throwing a big stink about this right now. It's a real tragedy, but a civil suit against the deepest pockest isn't going to accomplish anything... and these games will continue to sell. Maybe this means that parents should actually pay attention to what games they're letting their kids play and teaching them what wrong/right and reality/fantasy is.
It's not that bad for us to complain about things that are not technically correct, especially if they are just so technically awful! With the Hulk rewrites, I cringed as i watched the number of marine organisms being cut or poked in an attempt tomake a better soldier. The worst part about it was the fact that Bruce's dad essentially performed Gene Therapy on himself in a way that can't even be done in this day and age. On top of that, they tried too hard to incorporate real science into the movie that it made it even more awful that you couldn't believe what was going on. For example, they really didn't need to show the species name of the jellyfish in the movie... and it seemed like a cheap attempt at explaining why the Hulk was green.
This goes back to the arguement that the standard user does not know these things while you or I do. The whole point of this venture is to get companies to utilize this system by showing how easy it is for the STANDARD user to switch over in a corporate setting. You know.... STANDARD, as in the people who call their IT people whenever there's a paper jam in the printer and don't know how to deal.
Why is it bad to copy the interface that people are used to? Not everyone (the common user) is going to like navigating some strange UI. Sit a Mac peron in front of a WinXP machine and do the converse. Heck, some people haven't moved away from Win 98 or Win2K just because they're not used to the XP GUI. The point of making a desktop linux for the masses, is to have it usable by the masses.
Slashdot Mirror
Not just PLoS...look at JBC or other journals and you'll see the little disclaimer that the pages are marked as advertisements because of the way the printing costs are defrayed. Also, it already costs the author money to submit a paper for publication to defray the costs of editing and peer review. Peer review costs nothing, it's the shipping to the reviewers and admin costs.
Publishing on the web is not a good alternative.
Sure it is. It's already happening. These days, results are increasingly multimedia. On top of that, journals want high levels of stringency on their papers, but they don't have room to show all results. That's why they invented supplemental results online. Libraries have to adapt and subscribe to more online journals. Sure, you do go out and dig up the 60 year old paper on occasion, but digital distribution won't do away with it. That's silly. And to answer your "profitability" statement, have you noticed that the bulk of scientific journals is actually advertising? It's like Playboy, the good stuff is only a small fraction of the magazine... yeah, that includes the articles we all read in that fine publication.
Also, don't forget how long people have been pushing for this free access. Harold Varmus, the former NIH head, has been quite vocal about this matter for some time now.
Yet there are plenty of books out there that teaches one how to use MacOS and Windows. So by that logic, all desktop OSes are difficult to use. And these days, any time someone writes a book about how to use these, they instantly call it "Hacking Windows/OSX".
Franklin's crystal revealed the ultimate helical nature of DNA. But the double stranded bit was based on the Chargaff rules.
I'm not into instant gratification as the article implies. In this consumerist society, I'd prefer to be an intelligent purchaser rather than one of the many throw away consumers. I wait for the CDs to show up on half.com for $5, which ends up less than $8 after shipping. I receive my uncompressed CDs at less than 80% of your $10, FLAC it and I haven't sacrificed any quality of the art. I also have the original so that I can circumvent the next disruptive technology to come along. I know not everyone can wait, but I can most of the time. Oh, yeah, I don't own an iPod. Instead, I have a Rio Karma, so FLAC is portable at the get go.
I don't get it. Nature was talking about this for bit now, right? Anyway, Isn't that what PLoS is for? It's not Nature or Science, but it'll be there someday and there are new journals from it of various interests in the wings.
Why don't they file one for "right-click" too?
But it is inaccurate. This is communst dogma at it's height and it's an ego trip about geopgraphy. Tibet had been a long-standing independent tributary to imperial China and was not a true part of China until the reds forced it into becoming a secular province in the 50s and kidnapped their second highest religious leader. And at the time of the Tibetan takeover, let's remember that the Republic of China was internationally recognized as China, not the People's Republic of China until the 70s. It's completely inaccurate to leave Manchuria out as a separate entity (sovereignty is up in the air though) because Japan occupied most of northeastern China and did in fact set up the puppet state of The Empire of Manchuria. So I can't see how you got a +5 insightful by not knowing any of the history that the evil communist Chinese government are supposedly trying to rewrite.
Actually, it's a little more interesting than Sun and CO2. They use controlled eutrophication. As it stands, industrial and agricultural eutrophication is a huge problem because pollutants and fertilizers run-off into streams and creeks resulting in huge algal blooms that kill off downstream ponds by cutting off sunlight. They take advantage of this and indicate that agricultural waste can be used to induce this controlled eutrophication. So you don't have to feed it anything special... just other people's garbage for a good nitrogen source that they'd have to send off for treatment anyway.
It really irritates me whenever there's an article about audio codecs and everyone ends up comparing mp3: vorbis as vhs:beta and citing that the better technology is not necessarily the winner. But just think about why the better technology wasn't the winner with beta. It had to do with a monopolistic control over beta and high prices. Think about the economics of the late 70s and its clear that the cheaper technology would win. And that is why you can't compare Beta to Vorbis.... Because vorbis is free! Vorbis is the better technology and its the most economical. Most people don't realize the added cost associated with having an mp3 capable player along with software that can encode. Royalties go somewhere, you know. Anyway, mp3 has the edge because it is the long standing de facto standard and no one gives a crap about vorbis because they just don't know about it. I am a Rio Karma owner because I do know about vorbis and FLAC. And my FLAC and vorbis library runs fantastically on my Linux and Windows boxes without additional whoring of myself to another corporate cartel in the mdeia industry aside from the RIAA that provided me with most of my CDs.
If I recall correctly, around 1998 or 1999 Washington apple growers were going bankrupt and ended up buldozing their orchards while refusing government bailouts. The problem didn't come from having bad trees or blights or whatever. The problem came from years of misguided selective breeding. Apple farmers were so caught up on making perfect looking red delicious apples that had that beautiful waxy red look on its own. The only problem with these apples was that they were completely flavorless and resulted in low sales. Bet this discovery is just result of this bad breeding. Maybe this is the future for M$. Wishful thinking anyway...
The primary problems lies in economics. Most advanced students in science who don't actually *love* what they are doing plan to leave science. If not for industry (which is still science), then to IP Law or consulting. Most grad students simply don't want to be poor for another few years after receiving their Ph.D. A lot of this perception in remaining poor is fed by the lack of research funding and the very real salaries that 1st year postdocs receive. When looking around in the scientific community, many foreign nationals abound but few Americans actually remain. Following their American Postdoctoral training, most of these foreign nationals inevitably return to their home country.
However, this shows that Apple does have some appreciation for what people want. Now give us gapless playback and a good battery life.
Honestly, Java Desktop System (aka, Suse/Gnome/Staroffice/Evolution/Gaim) is pretty good for newbies and for corporate desktop transitioners. If HP (a gigantic OEM) partners with Novell to push Suse, we'll finally get reputable (brand aware) hardware pushing linux, as opposed to Microtel or other tiny vendors. Even JDS is pushing crap through walmart. Hopefully this will really open the eyes of the public and introduce Linux to the mainstream world. Hopefully this will push Novell to integrate Suse with Ximian and make a complete desktop OS that any newbie transitioning form M$ can use. Cheers to HP.... and finally a good linux laptop(?).
The DHMO site is at least 6 years old. I used to have it linked on my science education web site. I was smart enough to put it under the category of "weird science" or "science humor". Can't remember which as it is no longer active. Thought it was funny and didn't think anyone would ever buy into it... well anyone who actually graduated the 7th grade, at least.
I don't understand why Sun is, on the one hand, so active in and dedicated to the GNOME desktop, whereas on the other hand, they're not doing a single thing about Mono becoming an important part of the desktop, pushing Java back even further.
Face it: Sun, one of the head developers of GNOME, is losing the fight of Java versus C#, which is the official language from GNOME (Linux)'s biggest enemy Microsoft. Where's the logic? I mean, if Java loses even *this* battle, then how are they ever going to keep any significant marketshare?
So yes, Sun should do something.
yeah, it sounds great to you . and that's what everyone else wants?
Why would you need to take a FLAC audio file on a portable device?
because, some portables are capable of playing through a line-out into good speakers and some players even have near audiophile snr to make a difference.
My God man, why do you need OGG and FLAC support? I have thousands of MP3 and AAC files.
because of freedom. freedom to get an encoders that work on different platforms. because people have already encoded their files this way for their media center. because there's no extra licensing.
As a scientist and as an educator, I have to remind people about the possible side-effects involved in tinkering at this level. While Glo-fish are a fad, the original fluorescent zebra fish provide an invaluable tool to study developmental biology, as do green and red mice that are not sold as pets. The bad efffects of not having regulation on these fad pets is that anyone can get these as pets. And I know how people treat pets. Noone says that we have to worry about eating Glofish and ingesting the foreign genes. The real problem comes from the possibility of horizontal transmission of the antibiotic resistance gene. As with any GM food/organism, you simply don't want to introduce exogenous genes into the general population. Some government agency should be regulating these novelty items.
and would Apple let them pitch it so boldly at other mp3 player builders the day before (supposed) launch?
Cornice makes the 1.5 GB drive that is used in the Rio Nitrus/Eigen. So there's already another mp3 player builder that knows about this company.
Mandrake, Gentoo, SuSe 64bit.
And those of us who did order it got it cancelled by Dell soon after.
Who goes around randomly shooting at cars and says this? And where do they get guns? I can see Leiberman throwing a big stink about this right now. It's a real tragedy, but a civil suit against the deepest pockest isn't going to accomplish anything... and these games will continue to sell. Maybe this means that parents should actually pay attention to what games they're letting their kids play and teaching them what wrong/right and reality/fantasy is.
It's not that bad for us to complain about things that are not technically correct, especially if they are just so technically awful! With the Hulk rewrites, I cringed as i watched the number of marine organisms being cut or poked in an attempt tomake a better soldier. The worst part about it was the fact that Bruce's dad essentially performed Gene Therapy on himself in a way that can't even be done in this day and age. On top of that, they tried too hard to incorporate real science into the movie that it made it even more awful that you couldn't believe what was going on. For example, they really didn't need to show the species name of the jellyfish in the movie... and it seemed like a cheap attempt at explaining why the Hulk was green.
This goes back to the arguement that the standard user does not know these things while you or I do. The whole point of this venture is to get companies to utilize this system by showing how easy it is for the STANDARD user to switch over in a corporate setting. You know.... STANDARD, as in the people who call their IT people whenever there's a paper jam in the printer and don't know how to deal.
Why is it bad to copy the interface that people are used to? Not everyone (the common user) is going to like navigating some strange UI. Sit a Mac peron in front of a WinXP machine and do the converse. Heck, some people haven't moved away from Win 98 or Win2K just because they're not used to the XP GUI. The point of making a desktop linux for the masses, is to have it usable by the masses.
I wonder how this would work in a diabetic...