Hmmm. Let's see, $50 a unit (or, more likely, around $20 in large quantities). Guided missiles at (low estimate) $10,000 each. You could saturate an area with jamming devices to the point where you'd run out of stuff to blow them up with. And as the limitations of warfare are economic and reasource (as in manppower and time) as well as in hardware, just spreading these far and wide would sap a force relying on GPS pretty significantly. Making the other guy spend $10,000 plus the use of an expensive aircraft and pilot even for a few minutes at a cost of $50 is a pretty decent deal.
Actually the idea that the amount of wealth is fixed is faulty. Take a simple example:
I make widgets. They cost me $10 each to make. I thus exchange $10 in cash for an equivalent value in a widget. Now, I sell the widget to you. I charge $12, which you feel is perfectly all right as it saves you the hassle of building and operating your own widget factory. Now, suddenly, the widget that had an exchange value of $10 has a value of $12. $2 has been 'created'.
Of course, a limitation on this is the amount of paper notes and coins with numbers on it. Had the amount of money (money is a subset of wealth only) been fixed we'd get a cash crunch. People would not be able to buy widgets, the market would drop and the economy would slow (=the turnover of stuff would slow).
So, a trusted entity in charge of those bills print more. The trick is to add money at a rate that matches the actual increase in wealth; too little and you will get deflation (as the value of stuff goes down due to insufficient money to trade them with), too much and the value of that money will lessen due to the oversupply and you get inflation.
Today, of course, this is not regulated by printing bills, but by setting the lending rate for banks, as credit works the same as money for the purpose of regulating money supply.
Money is only transferred, yes, but _wealth_ is made.
The specific sector (in this case IT) that is being squeezed certainly loses some in competition. For the economy as a whole, though, the money freed by getting cheaper IT solutions won't be stuffed into mattresses, but will enable more investment in other sectors (including up and coming areas). The economy as a whole doesn't get poorer; depending on the situation it may get richer at a somewhat slower pace.
Meanwhile, the poor countries get a _lot_ wealthier; each transferred unit of fund is a far larger fraction of total wealth in the poorer country receiving the payment than it is in the richer country paying it. The net result is that the difference in wealth between the countries are asymptotically diminishing - and at the same time, both the wealthier economy and the world economy increases its wealth.
Yes, it sucks to be a 'line programmer' or general consultant in our industry right now. It sucked to be a textile worker in europe or north america for most of the twentieth century, it sucked (and still sucks) to be a high-volume parts supplier to major manufacturing corporations. One day, it will suck to be a human bioengineer or nanotech designer.
However, if you have specialized skills, or work for a niche or speciality company, things are different. Being a cloth designer or speciality weaver does not suck. Being a nimble small-volume and/or speciality parts integrated designer and manufacturer is good eating. And being a highly skilled specialist (VLSI designer, for example) in our industry is still viable and likely to remain so.
Churning out app code or designing yet another business database bridge app is the equivalent to sowing slacks for off-the-rack or molding ten million stereo volume control knobs. They are the equivalent of sowing Nike's. Those jobs will leave - and will leave India as well as even more low-cost countries develop the population skills and infrastructure to take them.
You might want to read the parent post again; he claimed 99% for him, nothing else. And while he won't know the number of messages lost as a recipient, he will have a good estimate of how many sent messages that are lost.
For me, I've been lucky enough never to have lost a sent SMS other than at special occasions (new year's).
I install mplayer using apt-rpm, and yes, as far as it goes it works pretty well.
The problem is, whoever packages it chooses options that are not the same one's I'd have chosen. Stuff I don't want are there, and stuff I want are not. mplayer is a pretty complex piece of software with many, many options for building. What you want to do to get full use of it is to compile it yourself; the problem I've had with mplayer is that it is pretty messy, drawn out and error prone to do so.
mplayer actually supports more video formats that mediaplayer; I see no reason for me to use anything else. If only mplayer could get a definitive release and become a bit easier to install...
No. DMCA is an american law. He was tried, and acquitted in a norwegian court, according to norwegian law. Other than in extraordinary circumstances you do not take precedent from another country's legal system.
Note that I said "no more dangerous" - the situation would be the same if he were an obsessive surfer, spent all his time in chatrooms or icq or any other monomanical activity a computer and a connection allows. My point was that Everquest being a game does not make it unique compared to other activities. Drugs (like tobacco), on the other hand, do have a physiological component, and are dangerous in a far more direct and serious way.
This is _exactly_ how many games work to motivate the player. You do something, get a small reward, do something, get a reward ad infinitum.
What is more, the frustrations he describes about going through hoards of lower level monsterw with no reward, and frequent boss monsters with little or no reward is exactly in line with it as well. Far from lessening the players motivation, it strengthens it. Other aspects that seem taken straight from classical or instumental conditioning are monsters that only occasionally bear a reward (a variation of the above), periodic resupply of opportunities for rewards (rather than having them there at all times), and the importance of guilds (as social approval is the strongest reward we have available).
This is not true just for Everquest and its ilk; even the lowly Tetris and Minesweeper uses these mechanisms to hook their players.
Now, as the writer has found out, motivation does _not_ have to imply happiness (there's even some solid neurophysiological backing for this). And why would Sony care if you are happy, as long as you are motivated anyhow?
So is this like cigarettes? Well, no. There is a strong motivational component in tobacco addiction, but there is a physiological component as well that is missing here. Also, in the end, cigarrettes do cause cancer and other lung-related diseases, while playing Everquest is no more dangerous than any kind of computer use (obesity and heart condition due to incufficient exercize and so on).
There is no safe career to be had in any profession today. The dream of being a 'company man' that the baby-boomer generation had just doesn't exist. People do not get a job, expecting - or able to - still be working for the same company thirty years later. Transient workers were once regarded as flighty and unreliable; today it's the norm. In some professions (science, programming, some engineering disciplines) it's even seen with suspicion when somebody stays at the same place for long.
Forget job security, defined skill sets and straight career paths. This uncertainty is here to stay.
What's the chance of that hardware ever being available without DRM? Not all that useful if we cannot actually use it for backing up any data, moving the discs to any other device and so on.
_If_ bloggers are considered the same as print journalism, they should, on the balance, be happy about it. It would mean they have a right to protect their sources, for example, among other special considerations. Of course, if this implies they have all the responsibilities and none of the rights it's a different matter...
A major problem - and the cause of the A380 - is in the airports today. Large airports have their landing and take-off slots filled to the brim already. At the same time local regulations and the high cost prevents major upgrading or rebuilding. As a consequence, the A380 is designed to use the existing slots more efficiently (by transporting more people per slot) and to interface with existing airport facilities.
A blended-wing plane, while potentially able to increase passenger numbers even more, would likely need major terminal redesign - something which will simply not happen at most airports today.
A lot of my thesis is previously published as well. Only after finishing it did I take a real look at what the publication statements said; I would probably not be able to actually publish my thesis if I did follow those agreements to the letter. Still, I'm giving the thing away, assuming that no corp is willing to commit the kind of suicide it would be forbidding a graduate student to use their own text in their thesis. I can only assume that others are (unknowingly) in the same situation./Janne
Re:Science is open to everyone
on
Who Owns Science?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Yes, "Science" and "nature" are prety much available for everyone. They are possibly the two most prestigious journals you could find yourself in. Also, because they are the most prestigious journals, the cost is very low, as so many people - not just libraries or departments, but individuals - are subscribers. They also charge quite a bit for every page you publish.
I think the very point is that mosts cientific publishing is not in the vein of science or nature. There you get the finished results; the consensus stuff or the magnificient breakthroughs that would be a pride to any daily paper headline setter.
Most of scientific publishing is very boring, very cautious or very incredible. I know that all I've published certainly belongs to this class. That doees not mean it's bad science; for every revolutionary, you need a small army of people dotting the I:s and crssing the T:s. In that process you also tend to find a surprising amount of good, solid science.
Unfortunately, as soon as you step away from the Big Stars of science, things look bleak, as so many othes are documenting./Jannne
If you read the statement, this is an initial fee until other sources of income have been established. In addition, as they mention, they have money for waiving the fee in any cases of insufficient funds.
It sounds pretty reasonable; no, I wouldn't have the fee needed, but I could serve as a coordinator for a month or so, paying the fee in lieue./Janne
My reply to Nytmes.org
on
Who Owns Science?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I sent more or less this as a reply to the editorial board of the New York Times earlier today:
You had a feature describing the reality of scientific publishing today. As a scientist I can unfortunatey inform you that it was nowhere near the actual situation today.
This is the typical sequence of events for a scientific publication:
1) We do science. This is sort of a basic prerequisite for anything else to happen. It is also usually funded directly by the public, or indirectly funded by various foundations. This part - which by many is seen as our core competency - is largely funded by public institutions.
2) We try to publish. Now, here is the problem: We try to publish in the most 'prestigious' journals that we can. Why? Because the number of papers that we publish - and the importance of the journals that we publish in - is absolutely critical to our future careers. And our carreers is rather important to things like money for food, clothes to our children and so on. There is no certainty in the academic world apart from the one that expounds that few papers = few citations = no future. Of course, having a lot of papers in prestigious journals guarantees nothing except a greater chance of being noticed.
3) So, our important paper has been sent away - in some cases with a $10 charge (or more) per page. This paper is immediately sent on to the editors. Who are the editors? Why, our own colleagues. The very act of being an editor for any publication is still regarded as being important. In no case is either the author nor editor compensated for anything-
4) Now, after several rounds between us, the editor and the reviewers (who, like the editor, are doing the work for free), the paper is finallyu ready for publication. Observe that not only is the content finalized, but the entire typographical layout has been perfected by the very same authours that are being paid by the university (ie. either a private grant or by the public) to do research, but are now spending a month of their time making usre their manuscript is conforming to the smallest detail to the publications' standards.
4.5) As a small addendum, the authors are requested to sign a form agreeing to the publication actually publishing the paper in question. The researchers, having little choice, sign it.
5) Finally, the paper is out. It appears, formated exactly as the researchers did it, in the next 'issue'. The number of 'issues' is equal to the number of research libraries prepared to pay $5000 or more for four issues of maybe four or five of these papers a year.
These publications pay nothing for the content (the researchers sometimes evan pay cash to get content into them), editing (it is done for free by otherresearchers) or typesetting (as it is done by the researchers themselves). The total work for these publishers is maximally in one half-time secretarial position to connect papers with appropriate editors and reviewers. Yet they charge $5000 per year (or more - sometimes much more) for four issues - or more than $10 per page - for the very same results that the univerities, and, in the end, the public, has paid for being conducted in teh first place.
6) So, even with this gouging, our researcher and her doctoral students have at least a good publictaion to their name? Well, no. It turns out that the to publish the rsults, the publishing company actually owns the text of the paper. The doctoral students can not use the text they have written as part of their theses. The people that have done the research - and that want only to spread the results to their colleagues - do no longer own their own text. Only with permission - and with a great deal of money - may they actually use their own text in other situations, like on the web or in their onwn theses.
The end result is that the authors do all the preparatorial work, using the publics' money; the editors and reviewers does their work using the publics money, and som printer somewhere prints a few hundred copies of the publication for a standard (low) fee. Meanwhile the company owning the publication retains the ownership of the papers and $5000 minus the printing cost of one (out of a few hundred (at the max)) printed copies of the journal.
Hell yes, I'd be delighted with being in a business with a 20000% profit margin...
We need ONE sWe need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.
So... Who, exactly should get this authority to decide? And how, exactly, do you propose stopping people from happily continue development on all the other desktops?/Janne
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. Let's see, $50 a unit (or, more likely, around $20 in large quantities). Guided missiles at (low estimate) $10,000 each. You could saturate an area with jamming devices to the point where you'd run out of stuff to blow them up with. And as the limitations of warfare are economic and reasource (as in manppower and time) as well as in hardware, just spreading these far and wide would sap a force relying on GPS pretty significantly. Making the other guy spend $10,000 plus the use of an expensive aircraft and pilot even for a few minutes at a cost of $50 is a pretty decent deal.
Actually the idea that the amount of wealth is fixed is faulty. Take a simple example:
I make widgets. They cost me $10 each to make. I thus exchange $10 in cash for an equivalent value in a widget. Now, I sell the widget to you. I charge $12, which you feel is perfectly all right as it saves you the hassle of building and operating your own widget factory. Now, suddenly, the widget that had an exchange value of $10 has a value of $12. $2 has been 'created'.
Of course, a limitation on this is the amount of paper notes and coins with numbers on it. Had the amount of money (money is a subset of wealth only) been fixed we'd get a cash crunch. People would not be able to buy widgets, the market would drop and the economy would slow (=the turnover of stuff would slow).
So, a trusted entity in charge of those bills print more. The trick is to add money at a rate that matches the actual increase in wealth; too little and you will get deflation (as the value of stuff goes down due to insufficient money to trade them with), too much and the value of that money will lessen due to the oversupply and you get inflation.
Today, of course, this is not regulated by printing bills, but by setting the lending rate for banks, as credit works the same as money for the purpose of regulating money supply.
Money is only transferred, yes, but _wealth_ is made.
Well, yes and no.
The specific sector (in this case IT) that is being squeezed certainly loses some in competition. For the economy as a whole, though, the money freed by getting cheaper IT solutions won't be stuffed into mattresses, but will enable more investment in other sectors (including up and coming areas). The economy as a whole doesn't get poorer; depending on the situation it may get richer at a somewhat slower pace.
Meanwhile, the poor countries get a _lot_ wealthier; each transferred unit of fund is a far larger fraction of total wealth in the poorer country receiving the payment than it is in the richer country paying it. The net result is that the difference in wealth between the countries are asymptotically diminishing - and at the same time, both the wealthier economy and the world economy increases its wealth.
Yes, it sucks to be a 'line programmer' or general consultant in our industry right now. It sucked to be a textile worker in europe or north america for most of the twentieth century, it sucked (and still sucks) to be a high-volume parts supplier to major manufacturing corporations. One day, it will suck to be a human bioengineer or nanotech designer.
However, if you have specialized skills, or work for a niche or speciality company, things are different. Being a cloth designer or speciality weaver does not suck. Being a nimble small-volume and/or speciality parts integrated designer and manufacturer is good eating. And being a highly skilled specialist (VLSI designer, for example) in our industry is still viable and likely to remain so.
Churning out app code or designing yet another business database bridge app is the equivalent to sowing slacks for off-the-rack or molding ten million stereo volume control knobs. They are the equivalent of sowing Nike's. Those jobs will leave - and will leave India as well as even more low-cost countries develop the population skills and infrastructure to take them.
You might want to read the parent post again; he claimed 99% for him, nothing else. And while he won't know the number of messages lost as a recipient, he will have a good estimate of how many sent messages that are lost.
For me, I've been lucky enough never to have lost a sent SMS other than at special occasions (new year's).
I think somebody really needs to come out of the closet to relieve their pent-up frustrations...
On the other hand, they didn't find frozen Old Ones at the foot of a forbidding mountain range either, which we presumably can be grateful for.
I install mplayer using apt-rpm, and yes, as far as it goes it works pretty well.
The problem is, whoever packages it chooses options that are not the same one's I'd have chosen. Stuff I don't want are there, and stuff I want are not. mplayer is a pretty complex piece of software with many, many options for building. What you want to do to get full use of it is to compile it yourself; the problem I've had with mplayer is that it is pretty messy, drawn out and error prone to do so.
mplayer actually supports more video formats that mediaplayer; I see no reason for me to use anything else. If only mplayer could get a definitive release and become a bit easier to install...
No. DMCA is an american law. He was tried, and acquitted in a norwegian court, according to norwegian law. Other than in extraordinary circumstances you do not take precedent from another country's legal system.
No it doesn't.
:)
Well, close enough, if you sort of squint.
How about "CannedHamHitMan"? It rhymes at least...
Note that I said "no more dangerous" - the situation would be the same if he were an obsessive surfer, spent all his time in chatrooms or icq or any other monomanical activity a computer and a connection allows. My point was that Everquest being a game does not make it unique compared to other activities. Drugs (like tobacco), on the other hand, do have a physiological component, and are dangerous in a far more direct and serious way.
This is _exactly_ how many games work to motivate the player. You do something, get a small reward, do something, get a reward ad infinitum.
What is more, the frustrations he describes about going through hoards of lower level monsterw with no reward, and frequent boss monsters with little or no reward is exactly in line with it as well. Far from lessening the players motivation, it strengthens it. Other aspects that seem taken straight from classical or instumental conditioning are monsters that only occasionally bear a reward (a variation of the above), periodic resupply of opportunities for rewards (rather than having them there at all times), and the importance of guilds (as social approval is the strongest reward we have available).
This is not true just for Everquest and its ilk; even the lowly Tetris and Minesweeper uses these mechanisms to hook their players.
Now, as the writer has found out, motivation does _not_ have to imply happiness (there's even some solid neurophysiological backing for this). And why would Sony care if you are happy, as long as you are motivated anyhow?
So is this like cigarettes? Well, no. There is a strong motivational component in tobacco addiction, but there is a physiological component as well that is missing here. Also, in the end, cigarrettes do cause cancer and other lung-related diseases, while playing Everquest is no more dangerous than any kind of computer use (obesity and heart condition due to incufficient exercize and so on).
There is no safe career to be had in any profession today. The dream of being a 'company man' that the baby-boomer generation had just doesn't exist. People do not get a job, expecting - or able to - still be working for the same company thirty years later. Transient workers were once regarded as flighty and unreliable; today it's the norm. In some professions (science, programming, some engineering disciplines) it's even seen with suspicion when somebody stays at the same place for long.
Forget job security, defined skill sets and straight career paths. This uncertainty is here to stay.
Emotion and Learning
What's the chance of that hardware ever being available without DRM? Not all that useful if we cannot actually use it for backing up any data, moving the discs to any other device and so on.
_If_ bloggers are considered the same as print journalism, they should, on the balance, be happy about it. It would mean they have a right to protect their sources, for example, among other special considerations. Of course, if this implies they have all the responsibilities and none of the rights it's a different matter...
A major problem - and the cause of the A380 - is in the airports today. Large airports have their landing and take-off slots filled to the brim already. At the same time local regulations and the high cost prevents major upgrading or rebuilding. As a consequence, the A380 is designed to use the existing slots more efficiently (by transporting more people per slot) and to interface with existing airport facilities.
A blended-wing plane, while potentially able to increase passenger numbers even more, would likely need major terminal redesign - something which will simply not happen at most airports today.
A lot of my thesis is previously published as well. Only after finishing it did I take a real look at what the publication statements said; I would probably not be able to actually publish my thesis if I did follow those agreements to the letter. Still, I'm giving the thing away, assuming that no corp is willing to commit the kind of suicide it would be forbidding a graduate student to use their own text in their thesis. I can only assume that others are (unknowingly) in the same situation. /Janne
Yes, "Science" and "nature" are prety much available for everyone. They are possibly the two most prestigious journals you could find yourself in. Also, because they are the most prestigious journals, the cost is very low, as so many people - not just libraries or departments, but individuals - are subscribers. They also charge quite a bit for every page you publish.
/Jannne
I think the very point is that mosts cientific publishing is not in the vein of science or nature. There you get the finished results; the consensus stuff or the magnificient breakthroughs that would be a pride to any daily paper headline setter.
Most of scientific publishing is very boring, very cautious or very incredible. I know that all I've published certainly belongs to this class. That doees not mean it's bad science; for every revolutionary, you need a small army of people dotting the I:s and crssing the T:s. In that process you also tend to find a surprising amount of good, solid science.
Unfortunately, as soon as you step away from the Big Stars of science, things look bleak, as so many othes are documenting.
If you read the statement, this is an initial fee until other sources of income have been established. In addition, as they mention, they have money for waiving the fee in any cases of insufficient funds.
/Janne
It sounds pretty reasonable; no, I wouldn't have the fee needed, but I could serve as a coordinator for a month or so, paying the fee in lieue.
I sent more or less this as a reply to the editorial board of the New York Times earlier today:
You had a feature describing the reality of scientific publishing today.
As a scientist I can unfortunatey inform you that it was nowhere near
the actual situation today.
This is the typical sequence of events for a scientific publication:
1) We do science. This is sort of a basic prerequisite for anything else
to happen. It is also usually funded directly by the public, or
indirectly funded by various foundations. This part - which by many is
seen as our core competency - is largely funded by public institutions.
2) We try to publish. Now, here is the problem: We try to publish in the
most 'prestigious' journals that we can. Why? Because the number of
papers that we publish - and the importance of the journals that we
publish in - is absolutely critical to our future careers. And our
carreers is rather important to things like money for food, clothes to
our children and so on. There is no certainty in the academic world
apart from the one that expounds that few papers = few citations = no
future. Of course, having a lot of papers in prestigious journals
guarantees nothing except a greater chance of being noticed.
3) So, our important paper has been sent away - in some cases with a $10
charge (or more) per page. This paper is immediately sent on to the editors. Who
are the editors? Why, our own colleagues. The very act of being an
editor for any publication is still regarded as being important. In no
case is either the author nor editor compensated for anything-
4) Now, after several rounds between us, the editor and the reviewers
(who, like the editor, are doing the work for free), the paper is
finallyu ready for publication. Observe that not only is the content
finalized, but the entire typographical layout has been perfected by the
very same authours that are being paid by the university (ie. either a
private grant or by the public) to do research, but are now spending a
month of their time making usre their manuscript is conforming to the
smallest detail to the publications' standards.
4.5) As a small addendum, the authors are requested to sign a form
agreeing to the publication actually publishing the paper in question.
The researchers, having little choice, sign it.
5) Finally, the paper is out. It appears, formated exactly as the
researchers did it, in the next 'issue'. The number of 'issues' is equal
to the number of research libraries prepared to pay $5000 or more for
four issues of maybe four or five of these papers a year.
These publications pay nothing for the content (the researchers
sometimes evan pay cash to get content into them), editing (it is done
for free by otherresearchers) or typesetting (as it is done by the
researchers themselves). The total work for these publishers is
maximally in one half-time secretarial position to connect papers with
appropriate editors and reviewers. Yet they charge $5000 per year (or
more - sometimes much more) for four issues - or more than $10 per page -
for the very same results that the univerities, and, in the end, the
public, has paid for being conducted in teh first place.
6) So, even with this gouging, our researcher and her doctoral students
have at least a good publictaion to their name? Well, no. It turns out
that the to publish the rsults, the publishing company actually owns the
text of the paper. The doctoral students can not use the text they have
written as part of their theses. The people that have done the research
- and that want only to spread the results to their colleagues - do no
longer own their own text. Only with permission - and with a great deal
of money - may they actually use their own text in other situations,
like on the web or in their onwn theses.
The end result is that the authors do all the preparatorial work, using the publics' money; the editors and reviewers does their work using the publics money, and som printer somewhere prints a few hundred copies of the publication for a standard (low) fee. Meanwhile the company owning the publication retains the ownership of the papers and $5000 minus the printing cost of one (out of a few hundred (at the max)) printed copies of the journal.
Hell yes, I'd be delighted with being in a business with a 20000% profit margin...
There is. It has its own update page as well.
We need ONE sWe need ONE standard desktop -- KDE, Gnome, I don't care. Pick one and use it.
/Janne
So... Who, exactly should get this authority to decide? And how, exactly, do you propose stopping people from happily continue development on all the other desktops?
...or actually want to be amused for more than ten minutes.