A preliminary analysis of other questions in the survey, not yet published, suggests a link between misconduct and the extent to which scientists feel the system of peer review for grants and advancement is unfair. That suggests those aging systems need to be revised, the researcher said.
Sounds to me like the fear of G~d might do science some good.
One thing the article does not address is the impact of press (mis)attention and (mis)reporting of scientific findings by the media. How many scientists rush to publish something attention-getting without sufficient data?
The numbers are interesting, because these are the percentages of those who admitted these "ethical lapses". For example, 1.4% admitted "questionable relationships with students, subjects or clients" which "qualifies for prosecution under federal rules". Other categories would not qualify for federal prosecution, but will get you in all kinds of professional trouble.
I also noted, despite the inevitable excitement of some/. theorists, that there are no numbers for government pressure. While this category may have been omitted, I do not believe the Washington Post would have done so if the numbers were significant.
Kirth's.sig seems unintentionally ironic: "The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be"
Understand that a significant proportion of Americans believe this. It is why so many emigrated to the continent. In the US, this sentiment is accepted at an almost unconscious level.
The problem with the Kyoto Treaty is that those bloody-minded Yanks perceive it as innapropriate prohibitions from outside.
Make no mistake, I am proud to be a bloody-minded Yank, though I grew up in Africa and attended European schools. I have no desire to see the US lead in world pollution, but it also leads in industrial and agricultural output, and I have less desire to see that diminished.
Note this paragraph in the Beeb's article:
The mood in Congress is becoming more favourable towards emissions cuts. At state level, action is already being taken. And an increasing number of large US firms are announcing plans to rein in energy consumption.
Most US citizens would prefer to see action at this level than Kyoto.
US business thinks it should police itself. US business claims developing new technology should be voluntary. Most Americans want the same thing, because most Americans believe this will be the most effective.
So, what the supporters of Kyoto have to prove to us bloody-minded Yanks is that Kyoto is more effective, less costly, and superior to these efforts.
The difficulty is that most of us trust US business more than our government, and our government more than anyone else's.
Prior to 9/11, I did occasionally vote Libertarian (I never have been party-line). Since 9/11, I have decided that I am a single-issue voter. The issue is national security and the war against fanatic Islamist terror.
On this issue, the Libertarians are just wrong, and a lame duck president would be a disaster.
This, at least, is my opinion.
And if Badnarik, Nader, or any other "Third Party Candidate" actually won, the USA would be in dire straits for four years of his lame duck presidency, as the two parties who control the Congress, where said candidate would have no representation, would do everything possible to destroy his administration.
Barring major reforms - which are unlikely to be passed by the two existing parties of any serious power - the USA has a two-party political system.
Even if a third party were to grow, it would most likely grow from, supplant, and destroy one of the existing parties, leaving us with two parties of note.
The good news is you do not have to like it.
For the record, I used to work for Informix and still use what was the Informix flagship, Informix Dynamic Server (IDS)*, which is still technologically superior to most enterprise RDBMS's.
Cloudscape, which was not designed but purchased by Informix, is a small DBMS designed to be embedded in an application. It was touted as the first all-Java database engine, and probably was.
At the time Informix bought it, the big vendors were all scurrying to offer "Java in the server" which boiled down to stored procedures written in Java. IDS was the first to offer this, beating Oracle, the only competition Informix really cared about*. However, the first implementation sucked quite badly, as the performance of the Java stored procedures was not only far slower than the C, C++, or SPL procedures already offered, but even slower than an external JDBC app.
At the same time, Informix had repeatedly tried to come up with a small database engine for those customers trying to embed in an application or for those who needed small datasets but wanted to sync to a parent database from time to time. After several tries going from worse to ridiculous (and I'm thinking of IDS Personal Edition), Informix gave up on this and bought Cloudscape.
The first thing Informix did was enjoy the liquid assets which made the sale a bargain. The second was to effectively doom Cloudscape by taking much of the Java development expertise and task them with fixing IDS Java in the server. Finally, Informix started one of those brilliant marketing campaigns for which it is so famous*.
These steps led to the announcement that, although Cloudscape is great technology and a wonderful app, Informix really could not do anything with it*. Since Informix owned six other databases and was still losing marketshare, it was hard to disagree.
Informix was sold to IBM, which reportedly found many great uses for Cloudscape, internally, but was not going to sell it.
Releasing Cloudscape to Open Source, as mentioned, is a nice PR move, and probably a tax write-off. I imagine the $85 million is the value on paper. I also believe that there is much benefit to future users of Derby.
This will not change the database world, though, or put MySQL out of business, or threaten the big database vendors in any way. Derby will have strengths and weaknesses, like any other. OSS developers will improve the code or find an alternative database, several of which have already been mentioned.
Footnotes:
* IBM bought Informix for $1 billion, and IDS is now part of the DB2 brand. The best technology is being absorbed into DB2 UDB, while IDS settles into obscurity. Let this be a lesson to anyone who believes that building a better mousetrap is all you need for success.
Am I the only one reminded by this of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man?
For those not familiar with the story, Death gets outsourced. In the ensuing chaos, shopping trolleys appear as the larval stage of a city-eating mall.
Slashdot Mirror
One thing the article does not address is the impact of press (mis)attention and (mis)reporting of scientific findings by the media. How many scientists rush to publish something attention-getting without sufficient data?
I also noted, despite the inevitable excitement of some /. theorists, that there are no numbers for government pressure. While this category may have been omitted, I do not believe the Washington Post would have done so if the numbers were significant.
Prior to 9/11, I did occasionally vote Libertarian (I never have been party-line). Since 9/11, I have decided that I am a single-issue voter. The issue is national security and the war against fanatic Islamist terror. On this issue, the Libertarians are just wrong, and a lame duck president would be a disaster. This, at least, is my opinion.
And if Badnarik, Nader, or any other "Third Party Candidate" actually won, the USA would be in dire straits for four years of his lame duck presidency, as the two parties who control the Congress, where said candidate would have no representation, would do everything possible to destroy his administration. Barring major reforms - which are unlikely to be passed by the two existing parties of any serious power - the USA has a two-party political system. Even if a third party were to grow, it would most likely grow from, supplant, and destroy one of the existing parties, leaving us with two parties of note. The good news is you do not have to like it.
Cloudscape, which was not designed but purchased by Informix, is a small DBMS designed to be embedded in an application. It was touted as the first all-Java database engine, and probably was.
At the time Informix bought it, the big vendors were all scurrying to offer "Java in the server" which boiled down to stored procedures written in Java. IDS was the first to offer this, beating Oracle, the only competition Informix really cared about*. However, the first implementation sucked quite badly, as the performance of the Java stored procedures was not only far slower than the C, C++, or SPL procedures already offered, but even slower than an external JDBC app.
At the same time, Informix had repeatedly tried to come up with a small database engine for those customers trying to embed in an application or for those who needed small datasets but wanted to sync to a parent database from time to time. After several tries going from worse to ridiculous (and I'm thinking of IDS Personal Edition), Informix gave up on this and bought Cloudscape.
The first thing Informix did was enjoy the liquid assets which made the sale a bargain. The second was to effectively doom Cloudscape by taking much of the Java development expertise and task them with fixing IDS Java in the server. Finally, Informix started one of those brilliant marketing campaigns for which it is so famous*.
These steps led to the announcement that, although Cloudscape is great technology and a wonderful app, Informix really could not do anything with it*. Since Informix owned six other databases and was still losing marketshare, it was hard to disagree.
Informix was sold to IBM, which reportedly found many great uses for Cloudscape, internally, but was not going to sell it.
Releasing Cloudscape to Open Source, as mentioned, is a nice PR move, and probably a tax write-off. I imagine the $85 million is the value on paper. I also believe that there is much benefit to future users of Derby.
This will not change the database world, though, or put MySQL out of business, or threaten the big database vendors in any way. Derby will have strengths and weaknesses, like any other. OSS developers will improve the code or find an alternative database, several of which have already been mentioned.
Footnotes:
* IBM bought Informix for $1 billion, and IDS is now part of the DB2 brand. The best technology is being absorbed into DB2 UDB, while IDS settles into obscurity. Let this be a lesson to anyone who believes that building a better mousetrap is all you need for success.
Am I the only one reminded by this of Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man ?
For those not familiar with the story, Death gets outsourced. In the ensuing chaos, shopping trolleys appear as the larval stage of a city-eating mall.