Wikipedia has nothing on science... if for my research I was limited only to Wikipedia I would fail miserably... and I say this as a donor and contributor. Need proof? See for yourself: Wikipedia has *nothing* on the JRP (Joint Reprenishment Problem), and not only there isn't any article on it but also no wiki page at all references it (Google search), and yet the book I have in my hands right now (bought, not rented) has plenty of info on JRP. And not only that, Wikipedia has nothing on the variable neighbourhood search (see google). Need more? Wikipedia has only *one* page referencing p-median problems (google). Wikipedia is good, but their notability policies kill science and the wiki in general. Also, last time I checked the Sun article it had no info on the internal chemistry of our star, so I had to write a basic stub section (which isn't really good but I did it hoping that someone else could hop in and improve, but it looks like I was overconfident... in the old wiki days people came to improve anything you wrote but now with the recent influx of masses who learnt about the wiki from the media the culture has changed a lot, although I believe that in the end even the "wiki immigrants" will learn and adopt the true wiki culture and help each other improve all articles). How can you educate people about the Sun without discussing how it works internally, I don't know. Perhaps knowing that the Sun is composed of such and such elements is enough detail for most people, I don't know, but I think all people should know about the element abundances and their diffusion and how gravity affects them etc. In the unfortunately very few ocassions when Wikipedia has an article, however stubby, on areas I research I cite it liberally, and when I have time I write articles myself (there was no article on Peligot's salt or for Peligot himself for FSM's sake, or even for the Cannon's algorithm and Latour's thesis for example, and outside science, for example there was no article on Luycx, and all that while there are plenty of articles on obscure pornstars and celebrities or even small villages in the middle of nowhere, so sometimes I wonder whether Wikipedia should be renamed Poppedia, and I don't say this as criticism but rather as a motivation for improvement).
It's worth noting I think that what people put on Wikipedia reflects the interests that dominate in the populace since Wikipedia is so popular now (sometimes I equate the massive influx of new wiki editors after it started being mentioned in the media with Usenet's eternal september), so we can see for example that people in general regard celebrities and fiction books more highly than chemistry, artificial intelligence, or science in general. This can only be explained with stupidity, as a sane and intelligent person would prefer to spend their time learning about true knowledge (for example an algorithm which can be used to solve many problems in practical time) rather than stupid celebrity trivia (and if you know everything about your favourite celeb, what have you achieved? you are still a small dot in the universe knowing everything about another small insignificant ego-boosted dot while you bo
There aren't many libraries in my locality, but even if there were, I wouldn't use them, because I prefer to own my books instead of renting them. This allows me to keep marginalia and personalise them. So if I think of something while reading a book, I quickly keep a short note on it on the book's margin. I have marginalia going back 10+ years and they remind me of all my life:)
Some Internet connections are metered, usually based on the data volume (per kb). If Adobe uses your network connection to transmit data, then this means that some bandwidth (however small) that you pay for is wasted, especially if one is using an Adobe program a lot. Yes, it may be only a few bytes, but the principle holds true: Adobe may be using some of your metered Internet connection. Is this explained in their agreement? There are a lot of reasons why one should dislike this, apart from privacy.
So, not only users pay for Adobe products, not only these products are closed-source, but the user is also feeding the business of a profit-making analytics company as well as helping some marketing guys in Adobe justify their bonuses without the user getting any payment. User software usage data have value, so why should the user give up their usage data with no payment? Why should Adobe users give all this value for free without something in return? We do this with free software like Gimp (via ingimp), but I see no reason why one should help closed-source shops this way. One could say that users are paid in terms of better software releases, but I call bullshit: if Adobe was so concerned about this they would make their stuff free. We all know very well that there is no business reason (apart from legalities over code copyright belonging to third parties etc) to keep the code hidden, since making money with free software is not only possible but many times easier (and more ethical, since the user is not coerced in any way). This is the best way to conduct business: Create value without coercion. The popularity of a free software package can quickly be monetised, for example soon-to-be-a-Dr Drupal founder recently got $7 million out of the blue. I actually could go on to even say that not making a piece of software free is stupid from all perspectives (business, ethical, etc).
"The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued new rules limiting travel with lithium batteries.
Airlines can count me along their lost clients: Even though I'm in EU, the sad truth is that all countries now copy the US, so I'm not going to fly anymore, unless for emergency reasons. I can make up for the extra travel hours by actually working, since being on ground means I have 3G or GPRS Internet most of the time (now if some telecom engineer could find a very cheap way and persuade companies to cover country roads behind high mountains that normally get no signal, that would be great), and the scenery is much more enjoyable than boring clouds. People want to fly to get their work quickly, we don't want to spend our lives waiting in a security check queue and risk losing our stuff by opening bags or removing clothing. If they can't make air travel easy AND quick AND secure (not OR) then I'm not going to fly.
spare batteries must have the terminals covered
Seriously, is there any sane human being out there that doesn't cover space batteries? And is there any user who after the recent laptop explosions doesn't treat their batteries as potential bombs? I always carry my batteries double or triple-packed, and when the laptop is not used I also remove the battery from it. I cannot imagine anyone not packing batteries. Even if you don't know the instability of lithium, common sense says that anything that is related to electricity must be somehow protected from the environment. The batteries of course do have their own protection built-in, but we have all seen how good it is.
From TFA I see that they restrict to two batteries per person, which is insane. No traveller who actually uses laptops for business instead of watching DVDs can work with only two batteries. However, I think they do not limit batteries installed on the devices, therefore now we just need some sort of smart laptop mod that would connect to the laptop somehow and allow us to virtually connect all of our batteries on the laptop (one battery would be really connected, the others just snapped in without electrical connection). Or maybe a simpler DIY solution like putting all your batteries on your laptop with duct tape... I can imagine the dialogue:
Security officer: You can only take two, but here you have 10 spare batteries!
Traveller: No Sir, they are installed on the laptop, there is no limit on installed batteries.
Officer: I haven't seen a laptop taking its batteries with duct tape in my career yet.
Traveller: Look, that's a new model, it's the new fashion, all new laptops now come with duct tape!
Since ISPs sell NXD data, a small script trying out millions of domains 24/7 could obscure your true searches, no? and by the way, I can't see any legitimate reason for domain tasting...
This idea may sound a bit wacky, but I believe that at some point in the future we will have mathematical models of disease, and we will be capable of modelling and "treating" diseases with mathematics. For example, perhaps we could model cancer as some form of deviance from a Pareto optimal frontier of the body or something like that. And when I say "model" I mean to model every cell at very low level (of course we would need good algorithms and supercomputers, but at some point I believe this will be possible). Thus, after having a model of a disease and a model of a human body expressed in mathematical functions, perhaps using some sort of swarm models of the cells of the body, we could then compute the transformations that could lead to health (for example some movement along a Pareto frontier or some tradeoffs between functions representing the efficiencies of various body susbsystems or maybe even groups of cells). Then we could load this mathematical model of treatment onto a swarm of nanomachines and unleash them into the body to heal it by implementing the mathematical treatment. Too wacky, eh?
A personal webpage is something you purposefully visit, not something that is being broadcast to you. You have to explicitly request a file from my webserver to get to my personal webpage, which means that you agree to an implied agreement that you do so out of a desire to learn more about me as a person. Therefore, if something I say makes you feel offended, you should simply stop visiting my page. It is as if you ask a person "what do you think about Bush?" and he says "he is a *beep*". If you are a Bush supporter you may feel offended, but you have no right to sue or do anything because it was you that asked and you got exactly the information you asked for. When you asked and I replied, I had no intention to offend you, but only to document the contents of my brain and be truthful to you by telling you exactly what my brain was thinking about Bush. I don't think one should feel offended for received a truthful exact answer to their question. That's exactly what happens on a personal webpage (or blog): You ask me for my personal opinions by downloading my files from my webserver. Since it is you that asks me, and not me broadcasting this information to you (for example, by sending this via email without you asking for it first, or by broadcasting it on radio and holding a megaphone to your ears, etc), you have no right to create problems to me for documenting my life and my opinions online. People of the Internet era want to be open humans and want the world to be able to know their opinions on every topic (if you haven't understood it yet, we have entered the voluntary openness era and privacy is not the same as it was before, while in the past people were reluctant to talk about their opinions a lot, now people actually want to do exactly that).
The problem with various laws and especially laws like libel etc is that it is very easy to have an innocent face charges for anything they said even if it wasn't really offensive or libelous. I have come up with a solution that can enable me or anyone else to say anything I want without having people feel uncomfortable or offended: I express my opinions with numbers instead of words. So if I want to say that I dislike Bush I will say "Bush gets -1" and if I want to say that I like Ron Paul I'll say "Ron Paul gets +1". If I want to explain why I feel such about a politician, I just list all their policies or actions and give numbers next to each other indicating my approval or disapproval (for example, Preemptive War: -1, or Pro-life: +1). This way, nobody can claim that what I say is libel or offensive or anything. It's just numbers, and numbers cannot offend anyone (well, expect for some fundamentalists who get mad over 666 and other superstitions). The advantage of communicating with numbers is that since numbers aren't regulated by laws, you can say anything you want (within reason) and document your exact opinions (if you use many numbers), without allowing anyone feel offended. So for example, if you want to comment on a news story on your blog and the story is politically sensitive and could somehow lead to legal problems, just say "my opinion is -1" instead of "my opinion is that this politician is a thief or whatever".
Of course I should also draw attention to another issue, that if you stop using a right given to you (free speech), then you lose that right at some point in time, so rights are supposed to be used every day. However, the idea of communication with semantics different to those in mainstream (and therefore legally liable) use, such as numbers instead of words, can be useful in various situations where you either cannor or don't want to attract many critics.
Yeah some day I also had this idea, but later I understood that the researchers themselves aren't much better in terms of bias or of ethics than the average person. Even researchers "steal" ideas from others and sometimes from students as well, you know. And many do research not for the love of it but because they want grants, ie they see it only as a job. I think it's better to do anything under the public scrutiny. Some form of peer review system could be implemented into a wiki as well. And I also want to somehow integrate research with ethics in some way (you know, knowledge without ethics is dangerous).
The assumption that research is useful only or primarily for researchers must stop: This assumption undermines the open access idea (it goes like this: "since research is read only by researchers, and most of them probably get access from their institutions or have the money to buy access if this is their job, there are no strong drivers for the adoption of open access"). This is wrong. Everyone can, should, and in many cases does read research.
Apart from researchers in the same field, there are other professional researchers from other fields who may be interested to read, for example a physicist may want to broad their horizons by reading some of the latest finds in archaeology. There are also the amateur researchers and gentleman scientists who may not have an official position in academia but nevertheless they also do research. But research can, should, and sometimes is being read by students as well. Moreover, even the general public should, and sometimes may, read some research if there is easy access to it.
Research must be democratised and ideally everything should be done publicly on a wiki (by the way I recently started CosmosWiki to support this idea). If research was more easily accessible and approachable, perhaps more people would take the steps to learn more about the world and become amateur or even professional researchers, and people's kids would perhaps feel more inclined to study science instead of becoming supermodels or office employees.
One could say that the public should read books instead of research, but the problem is that there are not enough authors who are capable of translating science in simple terms, therefore books often do not fully capture the available research in a meaningful way, and books quickly become outdated, and most importantly it usually takes a few years until the newest trends in research start appearing in book form. Therefore, if you only read books, you get maybe only 10-20% of what you could get by reading research papers (and when I say papers I mean real papers with actual results, not papers written simply to put one's name in a conference or spend a grant - you usually can distinguish betweenthe two categories of papers by checking whether the conclusions are testable or repeatable and whether the author makes extremely broad claims about the importance of their paper). I believe everyone should spend some time every week to skim through the most interesting papers on arxiv and similar sites where papers can be downloaded for free. Even though you may not understand everything, usually you can get the basic idea and keep yourself updated on the newest scientific findings.
We need to make people more inclined to integrate science in their daily lives. Open access can help with this. But another danger comes from the researchers themselves: They often assume that what they write is read only by people who are in their field. Papers authors should write keping in mind that interdisciplinary researchers or even students (and when I say students I also mean high school nerds, not only those in university) and the general public may read their paper, and they should do so without compromising the quality of their papers. For example, they could explain the various shorthands or abbreviations they use, rather than assume that every reader is familiar with them. So, please, when you write your next paper include a brief list of abbreviations to help people who need to search in order to understand some words or symbols they are unfamiliar with.
I really wonder why people generally don't understand these ideas... How can one in their right mind be more interested to learn the most uninteresting trivia about their favourite basketball player but not this? (by the way this guy is real
So, in case I lock my home keys in my home, I'm going to pay a monthly fee to a megacorp to let them unlock it for me, and just in case something bad happens I also let them keep an eye in my home and put an implant in my hand to know where I am.
Who wants it anyway? I don't know a lot about this system, though, and maybe I'm missing something, but I see it like a spy in your car. Can someone tell me why some non-business drivers may want this stuff?
Find out the people who have set up webpages and are public personas on the Net. You can find people from your connections (LinkedIn!), googling, from the free software community, or from professional societies.
Watch their blogs and generally their sites for some time, to ensure they are really the right people.
At some point introduce yourself and start discussing with them for non-professional topics.
If you "talk the same language", start sharing ideas about professional issues.
Do some small "virtual" projects with them, some small contracts maybe or in some cases just some open-source development together.
When you're sure these are the people to hire, sign contracts with, start a business with, invest in, or whatever, send them your big offer.
Only problem with this method is that it excludes most people who don't publish much about themselves (for this reason, in parallel, you can also utilise common "wanted" ads, to give a chance to invisible talent to contact you). Otherwise, it works great. Why have a pile of CVs laying around when you can fire up google and find up the best people in a field?
Forgot to add that if you really want to see how our planet looks like from the vastness of space, just fire up google earth in skygazing mode. Every pixel now is a whole world full of action, with many of them having other smaller worlds in orbit around them, and perhaps on some of these there are creatures like us calling their little pixel their home, and arguing, making love and war, playing with their gadgets (oh yeah there are surely geeks out there!), trying to find new theories of everything (surely there are also nerds out there as well!), or just losing their time going from home to office and back everyday instead of setting up as self-employed/freelancers. They are experiencing their world as the most real and important thing, and yet their world for you is a tiny unimportant pixel.
They probably can see the planet but not us, which is a good thing IMO if they are like us.
When I see Earth with Google Earth (by the way, FSF, where I am a member, has called the creation of a free compatible client a high-priority project, and if you have free time please try to help, and if you need hosting for your project I can give you), I hardly can detect life, let alone humans, on Earth. Visually it's very difficult to detect it (and nothing suggests that an alien would expect a green planet to be filled up with plants, in fact a scientist would expect plant life to be red-coloured and in fact that's how it was in the past as red-colour has greater absorption efficiency... Earth plants became green only after changes in the atmosphere). I can see, of course, that the planetary atmosphere is a very dynamic system (clouds go and come every day), but all the rest is nothing but white places over the poles (ice), vast blueness (oceans), a few greenie plains (jungles, where remained by the human effects), and some light brownish-yellowish regions (deserts). That's all. I would need to analyse the Earth's spectrum or possibly other means to find out what chemistry this funnily coloured vastness has.
But wait, there's more: I can zoom in a little and see mountains etc. And if I zoom more I see that some oceans have little green islands in them, so perhaps I could start to understand that this bluish abyss could be some kind of liquid and the greenish spots could be areas of higher elevation. But still, it could very well be a dead planet with no life, let alone humans. So I have to zoom more. Oh, now I can see that there are some grayish spots near the greenery, as if someone had vomited on the Earth's plains. Yea, it certainly looks like vomit, but what is it? Zooming more... oh, it looks different from anything else, it has some kind of structure, lines etc. Still looking like vomit, though... structured vomit. Who the hell vomited on the planet we, the alien scientists, discovered? How can we write a paper on a vomited planet? Everyone will laugh, our academic reputation is at risk because of this vomit on this extra-Gliese planet.
But let's move away from this freaking vomit and look closer at the green plains and the brownish-yellow regions to see what there is there to be seen. Zoom a bit... oh what's this? Some kind of lines in the desert? Oh, it looks like other aliens visited this dead planet earlier and played some earth games on it, eh? Perhaps they were having some kind of planetary football games or something and this was their soccer field... But wait, some lines are quite intriguing. Nah... these aren't lines, these are complete drawings. Let's move away a bit and zoom closer... Hm, here these look like symbols. Ok, there may once have been some intelligence on this planet, but now it must be dead, probably, as it is too far away from its star (we the aliens like hot stuff so we live near our star, and this is what we consider the only habitable zone possible, for us if it feels hot it's good and we believe the whole universe is somehow made for us to explore and play in, so any planet outside our habitable zone must be dead because that's what the big scientists here say).
Where did this intelligence come from? Maybe it came from the vomit, so let's go back there and zoom more. Wow, what's that? It looks like the lines that divide the vomit in little rectangles have little ant-like things running over them. Oh, and by these lines there are big boxes. But what these boxes contain? Maybe there's more vomit in there! Ok, our scientists found the truth, these running things transfer the vomit from box to box! And maybe this vomit is intelligent! But not much, as it probably has not discovered telecommuting or work-from-home yet. And that's what we would expect from a planet outside the habitable zone, it must be so cold these (15-25C, which for us is too cold) that this vomit has its intelligence sabotaged by the tem
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All the world's information is on wikipedia!
Wikipedia has nothing on science... if for my research I was limited only to Wikipedia I would fail miserably... and I say this as a donor and contributor. Need proof? See for yourself: Wikipedia has *nothing* on the JRP (Joint Reprenishment Problem), and not only there isn't any article on it but also no wiki page at all references it (Google search), and yet the book I have in my hands right now (bought, not rented) has plenty of info on JRP. And not only that, Wikipedia has nothing on the variable neighbourhood search (see google). Need more? Wikipedia has only *one* page referencing p-median problems (google). Wikipedia is good, but their notability policies kill science and the wiki in general. Also, last time I checked the Sun article it had no info on the internal chemistry of our star, so I had to write a basic stub section (which isn't really good but I did it hoping that someone else could hop in and improve, but it looks like I was overconfident... in the old wiki days people came to improve anything you wrote but now with the recent influx of masses who learnt about the wiki from the media the culture has changed a lot, although I believe that in the end even the "wiki immigrants" will learn and adopt the true wiki culture and help each other improve all articles). How can you educate people about the Sun without discussing how it works internally, I don't know. Perhaps knowing that the Sun is composed of such and such elements is enough detail for most people, I don't know, but I think all people should know about the element abundances and their diffusion and how gravity affects them etc. In the unfortunately very few ocassions when Wikipedia has an article, however stubby, on areas I research I cite it liberally, and when I have time I write articles myself (there was no article on Peligot's salt or for Peligot himself for FSM's sake, or even for the Cannon's algorithm and Latour's thesis for example, and outside science, for example there was no article on Luycx, and all that while there are plenty of articles on obscure pornstars and celebrities or even small villages in the middle of nowhere, so sometimes I wonder whether Wikipedia should be renamed Poppedia, and I don't say this as criticism but rather as a motivation for improvement).
It's worth noting I think that what people put on Wikipedia reflects the interests that dominate in the populace since Wikipedia is so popular now (sometimes I equate the massive influx of new wiki editors after it started being mentioned in the media with Usenet's eternal september), so we can see for example that people in general regard celebrities and fiction books more highly than chemistry, artificial intelligence, or science in general. This can only be explained with stupidity, as a sane and intelligent person would prefer to spend their time learning about true knowledge (for example an algorithm which can be used to solve many problems in practical time) rather than stupid celebrity trivia (and if you know everything about your favourite celeb, what have you achieved? you are still a small dot in the universe knowing everything about another small insignificant ego-boosted dot while you bo
There aren't many libraries in my locality, but even if there were, I wouldn't use them, because I prefer to own my books instead of renting them. This allows me to keep marginalia and personalise them. So if I think of something while reading a book, I quickly keep a short note on it on the book's margin. I have marginalia going back 10+ years and they remind me of all my life :)
Upon hearing of the Novell-M$ "interoperability" deal I promptly switched all my SUSE machines to Debian GNU/Linux, and it works great.
the best way to avoid that is to be independent, ie to start a business.
what's that bright thing near the shore of Argentina in South America? did anyone nuked the Falklands? :)
when someone invents a cheap way to illuminate a whole city during nighttime, amateur astronomy will die :(
Some Internet connections are metered, usually based on the data volume (per kb). If Adobe uses your network connection to transmit data, then this means that some bandwidth (however small) that you pay for is wasted, especially if one is using an Adobe program a lot. Yes, it may be only a few bytes, but the principle holds true: Adobe may be using some of your metered Internet connection. Is this explained in their agreement? There are a lot of reasons why one should dislike this, apart from privacy.
So, not only users pay for Adobe products, not only these products are closed-source, but the user is also feeding the business of a profit-making analytics company as well as helping some marketing guys in Adobe justify their bonuses without the user getting any payment. User software usage data have value, so why should the user give up their usage data with no payment? Why should Adobe users give all this value for free without something in return? We do this with free software like Gimp (via ingimp), but I see no reason why one should help closed-source shops this way. One could say that users are paid in terms of better software releases, but I call bullshit: if Adobe was so concerned about this they would make their stuff free. We all know very well that there is no business reason (apart from legalities over code copyright belonging to third parties etc) to keep the code hidden, since making money with free software is not only possible but many times easier (and more ethical, since the user is not coerced in any way). This is the best way to conduct business: Create value without coercion. The popularity of a free software package can quickly be monetised, for example soon-to-be-a-Dr Drupal founder recently got $7 million out of the blue. I actually could go on to even say that not making a piece of software free is stupid from all perspectives (business, ethical, etc).
Airlines can count me along their lost clients: Even though I'm in EU, the sad truth is that all countries now copy the US, so I'm not going to fly anymore, unless for emergency reasons. I can make up for the extra travel hours by actually working, since being on ground means I have 3G or GPRS Internet most of the time (now if some telecom engineer could find a very cheap way and persuade companies to cover country roads behind high mountains that normally get no signal, that would be great), and the scenery is much more enjoyable than boring clouds. People want to fly to get their work quickly, we don't want to spend our lives waiting in a security check queue and risk losing our stuff by opening bags or removing clothing. If they can't make air travel easy AND quick AND secure (not OR) then I'm not going to fly.
spare batteries must have the terminals coveredSeriously, is there any sane human being out there that doesn't cover space batteries? And is there any user who after the recent laptop explosions doesn't treat their batteries as potential bombs? I always carry my batteries double or triple-packed, and when the laptop is not used I also remove the battery from it. I cannot imagine anyone not packing batteries. Even if you don't know the instability of lithium, common sense says that anything that is related to electricity must be somehow protected from the environment. The batteries of course do have their own protection built-in, but we have all seen how good it is.
From TFA I see that they restrict to two batteries per person, which is insane. No traveller who actually uses laptops for business instead of watching DVDs can work with only two batteries. However, I think they do not limit batteries installed on the devices, therefore now we just need some sort of smart laptop mod that would connect to the laptop somehow and allow us to virtually connect all of our batteries on the laptop (one battery would be really connected, the others just snapped in without electrical connection). Or maybe a simpler DIY solution like putting all your batteries on your laptop with duct tape... I can imagine the dialogue:
Since ISPs sell NXD data, a small script trying out millions of domains 24/7 could obscure your true searches, no? and by the way, I can't see any legitimate reason for domain tasting...
This idea may sound a bit wacky, but I believe that at some point in the future we will have mathematical models of disease, and we will be capable of modelling and "treating" diseases with mathematics. For example, perhaps we could model cancer as some form of deviance from a Pareto optimal frontier of the body or something like that. And when I say "model" I mean to model every cell at very low level (of course we would need good algorithms and supercomputers, but at some point I believe this will be possible). Thus, after having a model of a disease and a model of a human body expressed in mathematical functions, perhaps using some sort of swarm models of the cells of the body, we could then compute the transformations that could lead to health (for example some movement along a Pareto frontier or some tradeoffs between functions representing the efficiencies of various body susbsystems or maybe even groups of cells). Then we could load this mathematical model of treatment onto a swarm of nanomachines and unleash them into the body to heal it by implementing the mathematical treatment. Too wacky, eh?
A personal webpage is something you purposefully visit, not something that is being broadcast to you. You have to explicitly request a file from my webserver to get to my personal webpage, which means that you agree to an implied agreement that you do so out of a desire to learn more about me as a person. Therefore, if something I say makes you feel offended, you should simply stop visiting my page. It is as if you ask a person "what do you think about Bush?" and he says "he is a *beep*". If you are a Bush supporter you may feel offended, but you have no right to sue or do anything because it was you that asked and you got exactly the information you asked for. When you asked and I replied, I had no intention to offend you, but only to document the contents of my brain and be truthful to you by telling you exactly what my brain was thinking about Bush. I don't think one should feel offended for received a truthful exact answer to their question. That's exactly what happens on a personal webpage (or blog): You ask me for my personal opinions by downloading my files from my webserver. Since it is you that asks me, and not me broadcasting this information to you (for example, by sending this via email without you asking for it first, or by broadcasting it on radio and holding a megaphone to your ears, etc), you have no right to create problems to me for documenting my life and my opinions online. People of the Internet era want to be open humans and want the world to be able to know their opinions on every topic (if you haven't understood it yet, we have entered the voluntary openness era and privacy is not the same as it was before, while in the past people were reluctant to talk about their opinions a lot, now people actually want to do exactly that).
The problem with various laws and especially laws like libel etc is that it is very easy to have an innocent face charges for anything they said even if it wasn't really offensive or libelous. I have come up with a solution that can enable me or anyone else to say anything I want without having people feel uncomfortable or offended: I express my opinions with numbers instead of words. So if I want to say that I dislike Bush I will say "Bush gets -1" and if I want to say that I like Ron Paul I'll say "Ron Paul gets +1". If I want to explain why I feel such about a politician, I just list all their policies or actions and give numbers next to each other indicating my approval or disapproval (for example, Preemptive War: -1, or Pro-life: +1). This way, nobody can claim that what I say is libel or offensive or anything. It's just numbers, and numbers cannot offend anyone (well, expect for some fundamentalists who get mad over 666 and other superstitions). The advantage of communicating with numbers is that since numbers aren't regulated by laws, you can say anything you want (within reason) and document your exact opinions (if you use many numbers), without allowing anyone feel offended. So for example, if you want to comment on a news story on your blog and the story is politically sensitive and could somehow lead to legal problems, just say "my opinion is -1" instead of "my opinion is that this politician is a thief or whatever".
Of course I should also draw attention to another issue, that if you stop using a right given to you (free speech), then you lose that right at some point in time, so rights are supposed to be used every day. However, the idea of communication with semantics different to those in mainstream (and therefore legally liable) use, such as numbers instead of words, can be useful in various situations where you either cannor or don't want to attract many critics.
Yeah some day I also had this idea, but later I understood that the researchers themselves aren't much better in terms of bias or of ethics than the average person. Even researchers "steal" ideas from others and sometimes from students as well, you know. And many do research not for the love of it but because they want grants, ie they see it only as a job. I think it's better to do anything under the public scrutiny. Some form of peer review system could be implemented into a wiki as well. And I also want to somehow integrate research with ethics in some way (you know, knowledge without ethics is dangerous).
This is a tremendous asset to researchers
It is, but is it only to them?
The assumption that research is useful only or primarily for researchers must stop: This assumption undermines the open access idea (it goes like this: "since research is read only by researchers, and most of them probably get access from their institutions or have the money to buy access if this is their job, there are no strong drivers for the adoption of open access"). This is wrong. Everyone can, should, and in many cases does read research.
Apart from researchers in the same field, there are other professional researchers from other fields who may be interested to read, for example a physicist may want to broad their horizons by reading some of the latest finds in archaeology. There are also the amateur researchers and gentleman scientists who may not have an official position in academia but nevertheless they also do research. But research can, should, and sometimes is being read by students as well. Moreover, even the general public should, and sometimes may, read some research if there is easy access to it.
Research must be democratised and ideally everything should be done publicly on a wiki (by the way I recently started CosmosWiki to support this idea). If research was more easily accessible and approachable, perhaps more people would take the steps to learn more about the world and become amateur or even professional researchers, and people's kids would perhaps feel more inclined to study science instead of becoming supermodels or office employees.
One could say that the public should read books instead of research, but the problem is that there are not enough authors who are capable of translating science in simple terms, therefore books often do not fully capture the available research in a meaningful way, and books quickly become outdated, and most importantly it usually takes a few years until the newest trends in research start appearing in book form. Therefore, if you only read books, you get maybe only 10-20% of what you could get by reading research papers (and when I say papers I mean real papers with actual results, not papers written simply to put one's name in a conference or spend a grant - you usually can distinguish betweenthe two categories of papers by checking whether the conclusions are testable or repeatable and whether the author makes extremely broad claims about the importance of their paper). I believe everyone should spend some time every week to skim through the most interesting papers on arxiv and similar sites where papers can be downloaded for free. Even though you may not understand everything, usually you can get the basic idea and keep yourself updated on the newest scientific findings.
We need to make people more inclined to integrate science in their daily lives. Open access can help with this. But another danger comes from the researchers themselves: They often assume that what they write is read only by people who are in their field. Papers authors should write keping in mind that interdisciplinary researchers or even students (and when I say students I also mean high school nerds, not only those in university) and the general public may read their paper, and they should do so without compromising the quality of their papers. For example, they could explain the various shorthands or abbreviations they use, rather than assume that every reader is familiar with them. So, please, when you write your next paper include a brief list of abbreviations to help people who need to search in order to understand some words or symbols they are unfamiliar with.
I really wonder why people generally don't understand these ideas... How can one in their right mind be more interested to learn the most uninteresting trivia about their favourite basketball player but not this? (by the way this guy is real
An office without a dvorak keyboard is not an office worthy of your work.
And if Seat 69 is an adult entertainment businessperson or webmaster? They won't be able to do their job!
they could have had IP as well if they used avian carriers
here is how you can help them
So, in case I lock my home keys in my home, I'm going to pay a monthly fee to a megacorp to let them unlock it for me, and just in case something bad happens I also let them keep an eye in my home and put an implant in my hand to know where I am.
Geez. I see where society is heading.
Who wants it anyway? I don't know a lot about this system, though, and maybe I'm missing something, but I see it like a spy in your car. Can someone tell me why some non-business drivers may want this stuff?
A better way:
Only problem with this method is that it excludes most people who don't publish much about themselves (for this reason, in parallel, you can also utilise common "wanted" ads, to give a chance to invisible talent to contact you). Otherwise, it works great. Why have a pile of CVs laying around when you can fire up google and find up the best people in a field?
Forgot to add that if you really want to see how our planet looks like from the vastness of space, just fire up google earth in skygazing mode. Every pixel now is a whole world full of action, with many of them having other smaller worlds in orbit around them, and perhaps on some of these there are creatures like us calling their little pixel their home, and arguing, making love and war, playing with their gadgets (oh yeah there are surely geeks out there!), trying to find new theories of everything (surely there are also nerds out there as well!), or just losing their time going from home to office and back everyday instead of setting up as self-employed/freelancers. They are experiencing their world as the most real and important thing, and yet their world for you is a tiny unimportant pixel.
They probably can see the planet but not us, which is a good thing IMO if they are like us.
It's funny how I wrote all this vomit stuff and cockroach fiction while eating and am still able to safely finish my food
When I see Earth with Google Earth (by the way, FSF, where I am a member, has called the creation of a free compatible client a high-priority project, and if you have free time please try to help, and if you need hosting for your project I can give you), I hardly can detect life, let alone humans, on Earth. Visually it's very difficult to detect it (and nothing suggests that an alien would expect a green planet to be filled up with plants, in fact a scientist would expect plant life to be red-coloured and in fact that's how it was in the past as red-colour has greater absorption efficiency... Earth plants became green only after changes in the atmosphere). I can see, of course, that the planetary atmosphere is a very dynamic system (clouds go and come every day), but all the rest is nothing but white places over the poles (ice), vast blueness (oceans), a few greenie plains (jungles, where remained by the human effects), and some light brownish-yellowish regions (deserts). That's all. I would need to analyse the Earth's spectrum or possibly other means to find out what chemistry this funnily coloured vastness has.
But wait, there's more: I can zoom in a little and see mountains etc. And if I zoom more I see that some oceans have little green islands in them, so perhaps I could start to understand that this bluish abyss could be some kind of liquid and the greenish spots could be areas of higher elevation. But still, it could very well be a dead planet with no life, let alone humans. So I have to zoom more. Oh, now I can see that there are some grayish spots near the greenery, as if someone had vomited on the Earth's plains. Yea, it certainly looks like vomit, but what is it? Zooming more... oh, it looks different from anything else, it has some kind of structure, lines etc. Still looking like vomit, though... structured vomit. Who the hell vomited on the planet we, the alien scientists, discovered? How can we write a paper on a vomited planet? Everyone will laugh, our academic reputation is at risk because of this vomit on this extra-Gliese planet.
But let's move away from this freaking vomit and look closer at the green plains and the brownish-yellow regions to see what there is there to be seen. Zoom a bit... oh what's this? Some kind of lines in the desert? Oh, it looks like other aliens visited this dead planet earlier and played some earth games on it, eh? Perhaps they were having some kind of planetary football games or something and this was their soccer field... But wait, some lines are quite intriguing. Nah... these aren't lines, these are complete drawings. Let's move away a bit and zoom closer... Hm, here these look like symbols. Ok, there may once have been some intelligence on this planet, but now it must be dead, probably, as it is too far away from its star (we the aliens like hot stuff so we live near our star, and this is what we consider the only habitable zone possible, for us if it feels hot it's good and we believe the whole universe is somehow made for us to explore and play in, so any planet outside our habitable zone must be dead because that's what the big scientists here say).
Where did this intelligence come from? Maybe it came from the vomit, so let's go back there and zoom more. Wow, what's that? It looks like the lines that divide the vomit in little rectangles have little ant-like things running over them. Oh, and by these lines there are big boxes. But what these boxes contain? Maybe there's more vomit in there! Ok, our scientists found the truth, these running things transfer the vomit from box to box! And maybe this vomit is intelligent! But not much, as it probably has not discovered telecommuting or work-from-home yet. And that's what we would expect from a planet outside the habitable zone, it must be so cold these (15-25C, which for us is too cold) that this vomit has its intelligence sabotaged by the tem
But they don't know if they said the truth.