No, it's not disgusting. It's biased and would be better with a control arm (which the author admits to). It also points out a significant issue on it's own - that there are a lot of scams in open access journals.
The more interesting question certainly is "are traditional, purportedly higher quality journals any better?" The author, or someone else, could certainly do that and I suspect someone will. But his methodology stands alone. He was not trying to find who was better or worse, just if there was a problem in the first place. It is a biased, somewhat arbitrary view of the scientific publishing word but he does bring some clarity to this rather murky field.
Just wait until a genomics company literally owns your baby's genome configuration. Almost no one takes the time to read terms of service. Imagine being under the pressure of signing such an agreement after your water breaks.
Won't ever happen, at least in the reasonably near term. We're not exactly sure what an individual's genome actually is. It's becoming apparent that we have several various 'genotypes' in an individual. So, the least of our worries is that Monsanto or Oracle will have some legal claim to your progeny.
The very last part of that being unlikely - the patent part may not be. Imagine choosing from a selection of perfect but generic templates, then adding and remove traits as you see fit. We could end up with a large population of near twin sets.
See above. We aren't there by any stretch of the imagination. The numbers 23andme will give you are going to be estimates, not real values. But it's something to think about in the longer term.
Setting absolutely all of that aside, if the technology this evolves into could build a better human (post-human?) species, I'm all for it regardless of how strange a future it might produce. Can you imagine a future version of the human race absent of our desire to break up into factions and murder each other in as large of numbers as possible? This could result in the survival of our species, or at least a future iteration of our species, which is something that I otherwise think will prove unlikely over the next century if we don't find a way to evolve past being bent on self-annihilation.
We're more than likely going to kill ourselves first (or at least most of us). Yes, the future is going to be.... interesting. Always is.
Reading the article, it appears that they did spray water on it first - makes sense, it's not like it's all that easy to ID a burning car. Then they noticed odd behavior, the fire got worse - OK, we know how to deal with that - stop the water, grab the dry chemical extinguisher.
Then they had to puzzle through how to put the fire out completely given they were out in the middle of the road. Seems like they did a pretty good job. A few motorists were inconvenienced, no one was hurt. People learned things. Probably will be the talk of the department for weeks.
I'll bet it was the highlight of their day (the FD folks, perhaps the owner, but in a different sense).
Except that in TF video, they're just staring at the fire, not putting water on it. They have hoses out but they always do. Besides, there are things OTHER than lithium in the car.
Firefighters get constant updates on all sorts of technologies. Two months ago, the monthly VFD meeting was all about LiOn batteries - from camcorders to cars. There was a slick video with all sorts of cool GoPro shots. Next month it's carbon composite airplanes like the 787. Those are supposed to be quite entertaining.
You will notice, in the brief FA video, the firefighter standing there and looking at the scene. They're not rushing around with hoses. It looks like they understand what they're dealing with and acting accordingly.
And some of us remember the magnesium transmission cases in Volkswagen bugs. Now, those were a PITA to extinguish. The world is full of all sorts of potentially dangerous things, emergency personnel get frequent instruction on how to safely deal with them.
I just gave my old K&E aluminum slide rule to my 18 year old nephew. It was my father's who used it on the Apollo 10 and 11 shots. It's turned into an instant family heirloom - his engineering friends are incredibly jealous and he is sinfully proud of it. Turns out they've been playing with iPhone slide rule apps and only a few had actually seen a real, engineering quality slide rule before.
Oh, I realize that, but the network anchors are so inane that they really do need someone like Shatner to sit with them and not bat an eyebrow when the really dumb question rolls off their lips.
Except that at least the NYT article talks about expected hits in the 10,000 range. Seems that something didn't scale well. We're talking about inputting several thousand bytes of data, max and cross referencing that with some other databases (maybe the hard part).
Maybe they should have talked to Akami or Google or somebody that does this for a living?
Actually, it's kinda interesting tech. They took a fairly easy to understand molecule, Ferritin, which binds iron in the blood, made some little critters with modified ferritin so it bound silicon instead and used them as a lattice to set up a flash memory cell.
Can't make tofu out of it, but perhaps a cell phone. I can't wait for marketing to get a hold of the tech - "organic protein cell phone" or some such. Maybe Apple can invent it.
At a $100 million dollars, you're at the level of taxicab drivers stealing loose change in NYC. It probably cost the FBI more than that in tech support for the email system to get the number fudged up between various departments.
You seem to need a tad of perspectiveness. There aren't many year arguing that the Snowden leaks are the Most Important Thing in the Known World. They won't stop hunger, rape, slavery or even the dent the War on Drugs.
They may well be a turning point in how Internet surveillance is conducted and more important, thought about. It takes lots of people banging on our little tin drums way down here to make you overreaching Godlike philosphers of the Big Picture aware of some things. If you really are worried about those great issues, you should probably hang out on a philosophy mailing list and leave Slashdot for a while. We're not much focused on the big picture down here. Nobody gives us windows (well, not the right kind of windows, anyway).
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's not disgusting. It's biased and would be better with a control arm (which the author admits to). It also points out a significant issue on it's own - that there are a lot of scams in open access journals.
The more interesting question certainly is "are traditional, purportedly higher quality journals any better?" The author, or someone else, could certainly do that and I suspect someone will. But his methodology stands alone. He was not trying to find who was better or worse, just if there was a problem in the first place. It is a biased, somewhat arbitrary view of the scientific publishing word but he does bring some clarity to this rather murky field.
Just wait until a genomics company literally owns your baby's genome configuration. Almost no one takes the time to read terms of service. Imagine being under the pressure of signing such an agreement after your water breaks.
Won't ever happen, at least in the reasonably near term. We're not exactly sure what an individual's genome actually is. It's becoming apparent that we have several various 'genotypes' in an individual. So, the least of our worries is that Monsanto or Oracle will have some legal claim to your progeny.
The very last part of that being unlikely - the patent part may not be. Imagine choosing from a selection of perfect but generic templates, then adding and remove traits as you see fit. We could end up with a large population of near twin sets.
See above. We aren't there by any stretch of the imagination. The numbers 23andme will give you are going to be estimates, not real values. But it's something to think about in the longer term.
Setting absolutely all of that aside, if the technology this evolves into could build a better human (post-human?) species, I'm all for it regardless of how strange a future it might produce. Can you imagine a future version of the human race absent of our desire to break up into factions and murder each other in as large of numbers as possible? This could result in the survival of our species, or at least a future iteration of our species, which is something that I otherwise think will prove unlikely over the next century if we don't find a way to evolve past being bent on self-annihilation.
We're more than likely going to kill ourselves first (or at least most of us). Yes, the future is going to be .... interesting. Always is.
Reading the article, it appears that they did spray water on it first - makes sense, it's not like it's all that easy to ID a burning car. Then they noticed odd behavior, the fire got worse - OK, we know how to deal with that - stop the water, grab the dry chemical extinguisher.
Then they had to puzzle through how to put the fire out completely given they were out in the middle of the road. Seems like they did a pretty good job. A few motorists were inconvenienced, no one was hurt. People learned things. Probably will be the talk of the department for weeks.
I'll bet it was the highlight of their day (the FD folks, perhaps the owner, but in a different sense).
Except that in TF video, they're just staring at the fire, not putting water on it. They have hoses out but they always do. Besides, there are things OTHER than lithium in the car.
Firefighters get constant updates on all sorts of technologies. Two months ago, the monthly VFD meeting was all about LiOn batteries - from camcorders to cars. There was a slick video with all sorts of cool GoPro shots. Next month it's carbon composite airplanes like the 787. Those are supposed to be quite entertaining.
You will notice, in the brief FA video, the firefighter standing there and looking at the scene. They're not rushing around with hoses. It looks like they understand what they're dealing with and acting accordingly.
And some of us remember the magnesium transmission cases in Volkswagen bugs. Now, those were a PITA to extinguish. The world is full of all sorts of potentially dangerous things, emergency personnel get frequent instruction on how to safely deal with them.
It COULD be used to screen for undesirable traits (but that's eugenics), it WILL be used to screen for 'desirable' traits - that's money.
I just gave my old K&E aluminum slide rule to my 18 year old nephew. It was my father's who used it on the Apollo 10 and 11 shots. It's turned into an instant family heirloom - his engineering friends are incredibly jealous and he is sinfully proud of it. Turns out they've been playing with iPhone slide rule apps and only a few had actually seen a real, engineering quality slide rule before.
Funny creatures, humans.
That's because metric is so much easier than imperial units.
I was thinking more along the lines of Kentucky Fried Chicken. They look suspiciously edible from a Chinese point of view.
Bonus points if they're an aphrodisiac.
You blew mod points because of spelling error?
Kudos to you sir, a Slashdot pedant extraordinaire. It's what makes us great!
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
Oh, I realize that, but the network anchors are so inane that they really do need someone like Shatner to sit with them and not bat an eyebrow when the really dumb question rolls off their lips.
It's all theatre.
We're here for you! Group hug!
Except that at least the NYT article talks about expected hits in the 10,000 range. Seems that something didn't scale well. We're talking about inputting several thousand bytes of data, max and cross referencing that with some other databases (maybe the hard part).
Maybe they should have talked to Akami or Google or somebody that does this for a living?
Actually, it's kinda interesting tech. They took a fairly easy to understand molecule, Ferritin, which binds iron in the blood, made some little critters with modified ferritin so it bound silicon instead and used them as a lattice to set up a flash memory cell.
Can't make tofu out of it, but perhaps a cell phone. I can't wait for marketing to get a hold of the tech - "organic protein cell phone" or some such. Maybe Apple can invent it.
Don't worry, you won't have to.
Wait, what?
While I just love jumping in on the Microsoft stomping, thinking that 'shareholders' will drive MS into anything but the ground is really delusional.
Or, are you just being sneaky?
Worried about the government getting your data? Fry up your memory and serve it on crackers.
MMMM. Protein.
At a $100 million dollars, you're at the level of taxicab drivers stealing loose change in NYC. It probably cost the FBI more than that in tech support for the email system to get the number fudged up between various departments.
With a sig like 'Freshly Exhumed' you could curate the thing. I'd vote for you as section editor. What a great idea!
... it always made me a bit queasy that a novelist was treated as a serious option for comment on military or geopolitical 'News' shows.
As opposed to the network anchor? You realize that they don't set the bar up very high for these sorts of things.
After all, it's only 'news'.
Well, my bumper sticker says "Cthulu / Dagon - Why vote for the lesser evil".
So there..
Nah, you don't really want a pony. They take up a lot of room and smell funny.
And you can't charge your iPhone with it.
You seem to need a tad of perspectiveness. There aren't many year arguing that the Snowden leaks are the Most Important Thing in the Known World. They won't stop hunger, rape, slavery or even the dent the War on Drugs.
They may well be a turning point in how Internet surveillance is conducted and more important, thought about. It takes lots of people banging on our little tin drums way down here to make you overreaching Godlike philosphers of the Big Picture aware of some things. If you really are worried about those great issues, you should probably hang out on a philosophy mailing list and leave Slashdot for a while. We're not much focused on the big picture down here. Nobody gives us windows (well, not the right kind of windows, anyway).
Either turn down your radio or up your meds.