Except that the original Bell Labs were a monopoly that had surplus funds which they couldn't (by government mandate) spend on increasing their hold on the market. Instead they poured it into R&D. Now that the Bell Labs are in a competitive environment (Lucent), the famous labs have essentially died. The equivalent today of Bells Labs is Microsoft, they spend money on all sorts of basic research both inside MS and at universities. When the MS monopoly goes so will the research, hence we do need government sponsored (but not directed) basic research because company R&D tends to be narrow, less basic and unpredictable.
Very well said, I couldn't agree with you more. The problem in the US is that we're not used to terrorism and as a result we use a sledge hammer to crack a nut. Our people in general are also weak minded which doesn't help. In 10/20 years time hopefully we will have learned how to deal with the 'threat' (self inflicted due to our policy decisions). It took a long time for the British government to learn how to deal with the IRA, and it didn't involve carpet bombing N.Ireland.
>I am pretty sure BSD and MIT software development, including much of GNU software, was payed for entirely by government grants
You're probably right, however this early work was most likely considered research and therefore could be acceptably funded by tax money. I don't think there is a case for tax payers to fund projects that already exist in the private sector.
Sarcasm ON You're right, farmers should not be allowed to make money out of growing and selling food. It should be given either free to the people or at cost. Better still, take the land into government ownership and let the people collectively grow the food. Preventing profit has worked wonders in the past. Sarcasm OFF
OpenOffice is fine too, though I would personally prefer MS Office. Let schools make the choice and in turn let parents make their choice, this would mean you can send your kids to a school that uses OpenOffice and mine to one that uses MS Office. As the FOSS community preaches, choice is good. Even better have both in school and let the kids decide. As for vending machines I agree with you, coke machine should be baned from school, coke rots young teeth and in turn adds unnecessary cost to society. Water is ok though.
As for trimming education costs, we shouldn't need to. Maybe in the third world they would have to choose, water fountain or software? But in the richest country in the world I don't think such as choice should exist. I would be more than happy to pay extra taxes for high school education. In any case the 2006 discretionary federal budget is a pitiful 56 billion, not sure what the total high school is however (unless that is the total, which if it then it is really bad).
You obviously didn't read the article, check the conclusion paragraph and the third line of text. Your comment suggests you are the kind person who needs to read such an article, it is the obvious that we tend to miss, and you just fell right into the trap.
Quite right, those books and chairs and desks they also buy, they're just subsidizing greedy book sellers and furniture makers. I say make the kids learn how to make and write the books for them themselves. In the wood shop they can make the furniture. As for the tools they'll use, make them build the tools in the metal shop. As for the building, make the kids build their own class rooms, after all it's only greedy building firms that are getting rich on the backs of our own kids! Once they leave school they'll be fully equipped to work in the modern age, oops I mean the middle age.
My kids however, will go to a school where they will use the most up to date tools. I will encourage the school to actually buy books so they don't have to waste time making them and show by example well written books so they can aspire to emulate or improve on them. Secondly I want my kids to learn something like Office and learn it well. It's all very well learning 'concepts' but I also believe in learning some hard-core skills too (Its like reading and writing, why learn how to read and write when all that is needed is to know the 'concept' of reading and writing?!). Once they've learn't Office they can learn pretty much any office like tools. For those who leave school early and go for a job (yes people have to work), Office on their resume will do fine, for those who want to continue at school, they can afford to explore other 'office' like solutions.
We must learn to distinguish between training and education. Both are required but today there is too much emphasis on education so that, for example, when I get students for a summer job, they're next to worthless because they can't actually do anything useful.
Witness the problems parents are having with the new Discovery Math syllabus in the US. Better informed parents are having to send their students out to private tuition because discovery math only teaches concepts. The kids can barely do simple arithmetic when they leave. There must be an element of training in every course.
A new graduate, I assume with only a first degree, can't enter the academic profession without a PhD. A newly minted graduate simply doesn't have the experience or level of knowledge. As a PhD student you won't get much, only about 23K a year. The only people who do PhDs are the dedicated ones, one doesn't do a PhD for the money but for the desire to do independent research.
After you get your PhD one would usually do one or two post doctoral terms. These aren't paid much either, around 40K to 45K. Again people generally do postdocs because it is a chance to continue doing independent research. Once you've done a few postdocs (say 5/6 years) you are then ready to apply for a university teaching position.
You normally enter as an assistant professor. The salary depends on whether you're at a state or private school. State schools pay less, around 62/65K, private schools around 75K I think. After a few years as an assistant and you've done good research (i.e work that is well cited by your peers) you can apply for associate professor. Again the salary depends on what school you go to. The top ones will pay around 90/100K. After a few more years and if you're good enough at that position you might become a full professor with tenure which pays 125K+.
If you don't believe any of these figures (which you probably won't by the tone of your last message), you can look up Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor) or better yet look up the federal NIH pay scales for scientific researchers.
I don't know what you're paid but these salaries might be much less than what you get if you work in industry. Secondly the hours are long with tedious grant applying, reviews, paper writing and many reports to write. Plus there is the teaching load, course development etc means you'll be working much more that a 40 hour week. I think I do about 60 hrs a week. An academic career is not for everyone. This might explain why we get so many H1-Bs coming into Academia because it is not the kind of job American citizens like, long hours, relatively low pay and having to be a student for 9 years before one can even get a paid job. I used to be a software contractor about 7 years ago and I was paid 100K a year then for doing 40 hrs a week. From my own experience, industry does pay more. I had far fewer hours to work, much less stress, my weekends and evenings were my own. What you get in an academic job is what Google gives its employees, some free time to explore your own projects.
If we didn't have a visa system, two things would have to happen, significantly increase salaries to attract more Americans into academia(I don't think this would go down well with tax payers, I am sure you wouldn't want to pay more tax), or outsource as much as possible. We could for example outsource the bulk of our industrial and university R&D to China and India. With much of the technical expertise required abroad instead of at home we wouldn't need such a high level of education and training and we could save a lot of money by not having to pay professors to teach. The whole educational system could be downsized with considerable savings to the tax payer.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether you're a US citizen or resident alien, if you work hard, are willing to make some sacrifices and are educated, you will do well in this country.
Dear Coward, you are a racist and a hypocrite. The US deserves better. However, I've a couple of programming jobs coming up, why don't you send me your CV, maybe I can offer you job? If not programming I might have other positions who could handle?
I'm just stating what I know, in Academia we can't pay less than the going rate, it wouldn't be legal. Having said that it is very hard to get American citizens to apply for jobs in research and teaching. In over 6 years I've never employed a single US citizen not because I don't want to but because they don't apply for the jobs, I've employed Indians, Germans and Koreans (9 in total). I've had applications from all over the world but not a single US citizen has applied. I've might have a couple of programming jobs coming up in the next 8 months but I bet I won't get any US citizens to apply. Maybe its because we don't pay enough? Of course if the US doesn't want to employ immigrants we can outsource the R&D as well, I'll go anywhere in the world where the jobs are. However you might be right about industry paying less to H1-B holders. I have to admit I don't have that information so I will accept your assessment since presumably you have direct experience of pay levels to H1-B holders in industry.
PS I'm British Caucasian, Bangalore is not quite my place though if the jobs and pay are there....
Thing is, if I want to watch a show about people, relationships etc, I can get more and better entertainment from watch House (or even 24) etc. There is a severe lack of good SciFi on TV, I was hoping that BSG would fill that gap and in the first season or two I thought they did a really good job, they were excellent, the characters were strong and the stories were SciFi not just soap in space. When they put earthy material in a SciFi they are competing with all other earth based shows which is hard to do.
As for B5, it had plenty of SciFi mixed in with some soap (but not too much).
Completely agree with you. I don't even bother watching it now. The first season and 0.5 were very good, after than it went down the tube. As it stand, BSG is now rubbish. As you so well put it, "I want to see Humans and Cylons kicking some ass." Let's have some Sci-Fi on BSG!!!
I've used Sakai and liked it, it has a clean and uncluttered interface and I found it relatively easy to use. However the version I used had been installed by a central administrator, I've since moved to another institution where they have something much more inferior (can't even manage grades and assignments which is my primary reason for using it). I tried to install Sakai myself but like much open source software you need to be an expert to install it, in the end I ran out of time and had to give it up.
I've developed commercial software before and we always distributed our software in an installer (easy to do) this allowed anyone to install the software with ease. I can't understand why a lot of OSS requires manual installation?
>That is simply not true. You're lying. A higher number is not a lower number.
I don't think you quite appreciate economics. It's all relative. Let's say your cost of living increased 20 percent (which it might do with gas and housing costs increasing), but I only give you a 5 percent increase in salary, sure your salary *has* increased in absolute terms but your spending power has gone down. It's not a lie just a fact of arithmetic.
>only raises the wages of their employees and dependents by 0.44 % that year? Or less.
One could hold wages down, and why not? Lets freeze the salaries of all scientists and technologists, say for the next ten years, that would save a ton of money. For you personally it would save you 2 dollars a month, well worth it, don't you think? Sacrifice R&D for 2 dollars a month, definitely worth it, for two dollars you could buy one extra DVD movie ever 8 months.
7 cents a day is negligible compared to other government expenditure. This country is successful not just because of it's entrepreneurial people but also because we are *always* at the cutting edge of science and technology, this is due to a special partnership between government and business that has been built up over the last century. Government does the basic research (and trains people) and industry funds the applications (obviously there is overlap in some cases but the division is largely correct).
>You can pay for all of us then. Seriously, there's a line on your tax form to pay whatever additional >amount you want.
As for adding my own contribution to R&D in extra tax, I would be more than happy to do so (I mean what the hell is 7 cents a day) but I would only, so long as people like you could *not* receive any economic benefits from it (I'm certainly not paying for you!). That would mean of course that at University I would be taught the latest science and technological advances and skills. You realize that the material one learns at university ultimately has come from NSF funded research. I could then get a high paying job, nice house etc, and you could serve me at a super market, fast food drive through or what ever low paying job you'd have, seems completely fair to me.
Your policy of strangling R&D would eventually lead this country to economic decline, this is not something I would like to see.
It's a cut, look at the 2005 to 2006. The increase was 0.44 percent. Given that wages go up by 2.5 percent that means something else has to give, what gives are the number of grants and fellowships that are awarded.
Also put the expenditure in to perspective, 5.5 billion is roughly 7 cents a day (assuming 200 million tax payers in the US) for each of us. I don't think 7 cents a days too much to pay for our future. Compare that with roughly 6 billion that Microsoft spends alone on R&D per year and that's only CS (IBM spends roughly the same amount), NSF has to fund *all* sciences. Also in the last three or four years we've spend almost half a trillion dollars on fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's roughly 2.30 dollars a day for every tax payer.
Compared to other things we spend money on, the amount spend on basic R&D is very small.
Will the new colorful apples be just as tasteless? I would be nice if they focused on growing apples that actually tasted of something other than wet and crunchy cardboard.
Scholarly work is not necessarily just original research, it could simply be an excellent review of a given field. I am sure there is some excellent scholarship on wikipedia.
What an amazing rant. What from I can gather, I am:
Ignorant Computer illiterate Generally illiterate Irrational Living in the past and finally I embarrass myself.
Some of these I could agree with, living in the past, yes, sometimes the past has great stuff worth learning about, you should look into it sometime. Ignorant, definitely, I wish I knew more in general. Illiterate, I don't think so. I'm not going to respond to what meager arguments you made, but as an sub-editor, research scientist and educator, I can assure you that I have seen many people cite urls in their papers which the following year have gone into the abyss, never to be seen again. Another kind of citation I am not particularly fond of (its not just internet citations I an suspicious of) are proceedings citations, most libraries don't tend to hold them and they are very difficult to get hold of. I recommend formal journals, whether open or not, as primary sources. I only recommend web citations if it is absolutely unavoidable.
I wish I could be as certain as you on this matter, but having been in the business a long time and seen the effects of web citations on scholarship, the time is not yet here to embrace the web as a primary source. Now I know there is an internet archive so in theory one could trace every lost url but I am not sure how reliable it is. If a system were put in place that guaranteed persistence no matter what happened to the constantly changing web then it is a possibility. Also, unlike the library at Alexandria, as you so aptly put, persistence must be mirrored, perhaps one in every country. After all, I think every university library now holds the complete works of Archimedes, so if one library burnt down, we would still have the others. Of course if one day civilization breakdown to the extent that electrical power fails across the planet then we have the equivalent of the burning at Alexandria. I really hope we will still have paper libraries if that event were ever to happen.
>I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
Actually, I think he is being very professional. The trouble with web based citations is that they are in constant flux and cannot be guaranteed to exist in the future. Paper records however are fairly robust, for example we can still read today manuscripts written 2000 years ago. The advantage of paper is that there is an audit trail to support an argument, you cannot do this with the web. When we write papers I insist that web addresses be only used in the last resort, if at all. There are now many papers published in journals which cite urls which no longer exist which makes the paper much less useful.
>You are living and the past.
Its not a case of living in the past, it's just sensible. In professional science you must have a reliable audit trail to support your argument.
>Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media >formats.
Slashdot Mirror
> Protein Folding should take precedence over pointless searches for noise-in-patterns.
Exactly, you're a hypocrite.
Except that the original Bell Labs were a monopoly that had surplus funds which they couldn't (by government mandate) spend on increasing their hold on the market. Instead they poured it into R&D. Now that the Bell Labs are in a competitive environment (Lucent), the famous labs have essentially died. The equivalent today of Bells Labs is Microsoft, they spend money on all sorts of basic research both inside MS and at universities. When the MS monopoly goes so will the research, hence we do need government sponsored (but not directed) basic research because company R&D tends to be narrow, less basic and unpredictable.
Very well said, I couldn't agree with you more. The problem in the US is that we're not used to terrorism and as a result we use a sledge hammer to crack a nut. Our people in general are also weak minded which doesn't help. In 10/20 years time hopefully we will have learned how to deal with the 'threat' (self inflicted due to our policy decisions). It took a long time for the British government to learn how to deal with the IRA, and it didn't involve carpet bombing N.Ireland.
So what's next, anonymous coward, burn him at the stake? You people are just out of control.
>I am pretty sure BSD and MIT software development, including much of GNU software, was payed for
entirely by government grants
You're probably right, however this early work was most likely considered research and therefore could be acceptably funded by tax money. I don't think there is a case for tax payers to fund projects that already exist in the private sector.
Sarcasm ON
You're right, farmers should not be allowed to make money out of growing and selling food. It should be given either free to the people or at cost. Better still, take the land into government ownership and let the people collectively grow the food. Preventing profit has worked wonders in the past.
Sarcasm OFF
OpenOffice is fine too, though I would personally prefer MS Office. Let schools make the choice and in turn let parents make their choice, this would mean you can send your kids to a school that uses OpenOffice and mine to one that uses MS Office. As the FOSS community preaches, choice is good. Even better have both in school and let the kids decide. As for vending machines I agree with you, coke machine should be baned from school, coke rots young teeth and in turn adds unnecessary cost to society. Water is ok though. As for trimming education costs, we shouldn't need to. Maybe in the third world they would have to choose, water fountain or software? But in the richest country in the world I don't think such as choice should exist. I would be more than happy to pay extra taxes for high school education. In any case the 2006 discretionary federal budget is a pitiful 56 billion, not sure what the total high school is however (unless that is the total, which if it then it is really bad).
You obviously didn't read the article, check the conclusion paragraph and the third line of text. Your comment suggests you are the kind person who needs to read such an article, it is the obvious that we tend to miss, and you just fell right into the trap.
Quite right, those books and chairs and desks they also buy, they're just subsidizing greedy book sellers and furniture makers. I say make the kids learn how to make and write the books for them themselves. In the wood shop they can make the furniture. As for the tools they'll use, make them build the tools in the metal shop. As for the building, make the kids build their own class rooms, after all it's only greedy building firms that are getting rich on the backs of our own kids! Once they leave school they'll be fully equipped to work in the modern age, oops I mean the middle age.
My kids however, will go to a school where they will use the most up to date tools. I will encourage the school to actually buy books so they don't have to waste time making them and show by example well written books so they can aspire to emulate or improve on them. Secondly I want my kids to learn something like Office and learn it well. It's all very well learning 'concepts' but I also believe in learning some hard-core skills too (Its like reading and writing, why learn how to read and write when all that is needed is to know the 'concept' of reading and writing?!). Once they've learn't Office they can learn pretty much any office like tools. For those who leave school early and go for a job (yes people have to work), Office on their resume will do fine, for those who want to continue at school, they can afford to explore other 'office' like solutions.
We must learn to distinguish between training and education. Both are required but today there is too much emphasis on education so that, for example, when I get students for a summer job, they're next to worthless because they can't actually do anything useful.
Witness the problems parents are having with the new Discovery Math syllabus in the US. Better informed parents are having to send their students out to private tuition because discovery math only teaches concepts. The kids can barely do simple arithmetic when they leave. There must be an element of training in every course.
Ok, now I'm off my white horse.
A new graduate, I assume with only a first degree, can't enter the academic profession without a PhD. A newly minted graduate simply doesn't have the experience or level of knowledge. As a PhD student you won't get much, only about 23K a year. The only people who do PhDs are the dedicated ones, one doesn't do a PhD for the money but for the desire to do independent research.
After you get your PhD one would usually do one or two post doctoral terms. These aren't paid much either, around 40K to 45K. Again people generally do postdocs because it is a chance to continue doing independent research. Once you've done a few postdocs (say 5/6 years) you are then ready to apply for a university teaching position.
You normally enter as an assistant professor. The salary depends on whether you're at a state or private school. State schools pay less, around 62/65K, private schools around 75K I think. After a few years as an assistant and you've done good research (i.e work that is well cited by your peers) you can apply for associate professor. Again the salary depends on what school you go to. The top ones will pay around 90/100K. After a few more years and if you're good enough at that position you might become a full professor with tenure which pays 125K+.
If you don't believe any of these figures (which you probably won't by the tone of your last message), you can look up Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor) or better yet look up the federal NIH pay scales for scientific researchers.
I don't know what you're paid but these salaries might be much less than what you get if you work in industry. Secondly the hours are long with tedious grant applying, reviews, paper writing and many reports to write. Plus there is the teaching load, course development etc means you'll be working much more that a 40 hour week. I think I do about 60 hrs a week. An academic career is not for everyone. This might explain why we get so many H1-Bs coming into Academia because it is not the kind of job American citizens like, long hours, relatively low pay and having to be a student for 9 years before one can even get a paid job. I used to be a software contractor about 7 years ago and I was paid 100K a year then for doing 40 hrs a week. From my own experience, industry does pay more. I had far fewer hours to work, much less stress, my weekends and evenings were my own. What you get in an academic job is what Google gives its employees, some free time to explore your own projects.
If we didn't have a visa system, two things would have to happen, significantly increase salaries to attract more Americans into academia(I don't think this would go down well with tax payers, I am sure you wouldn't want to pay more tax), or outsource as much as possible. We could for example outsource the bulk of our industrial and university R&D to China and India. With much of the technical expertise required abroad instead of at home we wouldn't need such a high level of education and training and we could save a lot of money by not having to pay professors to teach. The whole educational system could be downsized with considerable savings to the tax payer.
In the end, it doesn't matter whether you're a US citizen or resident alien, if you work hard, are willing to make some sacrifices and are educated, you will do well in this country.
Dear Coward, you are a racist and a hypocrite. The US deserves better. However, I've a couple of programming jobs coming up, why don't you send me your CV, maybe I can offer you job? If not programming I might have other positions who could handle?
I'm just stating what I know, in Academia we can't pay less than the going rate, it wouldn't be legal. Having said that it is very hard to get American citizens to apply for jobs in research and teaching. In over 6 years I've never employed a single US citizen not because I don't want to but because they don't apply for the jobs, I've employed Indians, Germans and Koreans (9 in total). I've had applications from all over the world but not a single US citizen has applied. I've might have a couple of programming jobs coming up in the next 8 months but I bet I won't get any US citizens to apply. Maybe its because we don't pay enough? Of course if the US doesn't want to employ immigrants we can outsource the R&D as well, I'll go anywhere in the world where the jobs are. However you might be right about industry paying less to H1-B holders. I have to admit I don't have that information so I will accept your assessment since presumably you have direct experience of pay levels to H1-B holders in industry. PS I'm British Caucasian, Bangalore is not quite my place though if the jobs and pay are there....
Academia
I'm on a H1-B and I can guarantee that I am not paid less than my peers.
Thing is, if I want to watch a show about people, relationships etc, I can get more and better entertainment from watch House (or even 24) etc. There is a severe lack of good SciFi on TV, I was hoping that BSG would fill that gap and in the first season or two I thought they did a really good job, they were excellent, the characters were strong and the stories were SciFi not just soap in space. When they put earthy material in a SciFi they are competing with all other earth based shows which is hard to do. As for B5, it had plenty of SciFi mixed in with some soap (but not too much).
Completely agree with you. I don't even bother watching it now. The first season and 0.5 were very good, after than it went down the tube. As it stand, BSG is now rubbish. As you so well put it, "I want to see Humans and Cylons kicking some ass."
Let's have some Sci-Fi on BSG!!!
I've used Sakai and liked it, it has a clean and uncluttered interface and I found it relatively easy to use. However the version I used had been installed by a central administrator, I've since moved to another institution where they have something much more inferior (can't even manage grades and assignments which is my primary reason for using it). I tried to install Sakai myself but like much open source software you need to be an expert to install it, in the end I ran out of time and had to give it up.
I've developed commercial software before and we always distributed our software in an installer (easy to do) this allowed anyone to install the software with ease. I can't understand why a lot of OSS requires manual installation?
llgaz, you're a sad sad person.
>That is simply not true. You're lying. A higher number is not a lower number.
I don't think you quite appreciate economics. It's all relative. Let's say your cost of living increased 20 percent (which it might do with gas and housing costs increasing), but I only give you a 5 percent increase in salary, sure your salary *has* increased in absolute terms but your spending power has gone down. It's not a lie just a fact of arithmetic.
>only raises the wages of their employees and dependents by 0.44 % that year? Or less.
One could hold wages down, and why not? Lets freeze the salaries of all scientists and technologists,
say for the next ten years, that would save a ton of money. For you personally it would save you 2 dollars a month, well worth it, don't you think? Sacrifice R&D for 2 dollars a month, definitely worth it, for two dollars you could buy one extra DVD movie ever 8 months.
7 cents a day is negligible compared to other government expenditure. This country is successful not just because of it's entrepreneurial people but also because we are *always* at the cutting edge of science and technology, this is due to a special partnership between government and business that has been built up over the last century. Government does the basic research (and trains people) and industry funds the applications (obviously there is overlap in some cases but the division is largely correct).
>You can pay for all of us then. Seriously, there's a line on your tax form to pay whatever additional >amount you want.
As for adding my own contribution to R&D in extra tax, I would be more than happy to do so (I mean what the hell is 7 cents a day) but I would only, so long as people like you could *not* receive any economic benefits from it (I'm certainly not paying for you!). That would mean of course that at University I would be taught the latest science and technological advances and skills. You realize that the material one learns at university ultimately has come from NSF funded research. I could then get a high paying job, nice house etc, and you could serve me at a super market, fast food drive through or what ever low paying job you'd have, seems completely fair to me.
Your policy of strangling R&D would eventually lead this country to economic decline, this is not something I would like to see.
It's a cut, look at the 2005 to 2006. The increase was 0.44 percent. Given that wages go up by 2.5 percent that means something else has to give, what gives are the number of grants and fellowships that are awarded.
Also put the expenditure in to perspective, 5.5 billion is roughly 7 cents a day (assuming 200 million tax payers in the US) for each of us. I don't think 7 cents a days too much to pay for our future. Compare that with roughly 6 billion that Microsoft spends alone on R&D per year and that's only CS (IBM spends roughly the same amount), NSF has to fund *all* sciences. Also in the last three or four years we've spend almost half a trillion dollars on fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's roughly 2.30 dollars a day for every tax payer.
Compared to other things we spend money on, the amount spend on basic R&D is very small.
Will the new colorful apples be just as tasteless? I would be nice if they focused on growing apples that actually tasted of something other than wet and crunchy cardboard.
>compared to the data you idiot... it's fscking hard to replace a stolen identity
Touchy touchy, someone got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.
Scholarly work is not necessarily just original research, it could simply be an excellent review of a given field. I am sure there is some excellent scholarship on wikipedia.
What an amazing rant. What from I can gather, I am:
Ignorant
Computer illiterate
Generally illiterate
Irrational
Living in the past
and finally I embarrass myself.
Some of these I could agree with, living in the past, yes, sometimes the past has great stuff worth learning about, you should look into it sometime. Ignorant, definitely, I wish I knew more in general. Illiterate, I don't think so. I'm not going to respond to what meager arguments you made, but as an sub-editor, research scientist and educator, I can assure you that I have seen many people cite urls in their papers which the following year have gone into the abyss, never to be seen again. Another kind of citation I am not particularly fond of (its not just internet citations I an suspicious of) are proceedings citations, most libraries don't tend to hold them and they are very difficult to get hold of. I recommend formal journals, whether open or not, as primary sources. I only recommend web citations if it is absolutely unavoidable.
I wish I could be as certain as you on this matter, but having been in the business a long time and seen the effects of web citations on scholarship, the time is not yet here to embrace the web as a primary source. Now I know there is an internet archive so in theory one could trace every lost url but I am not sure how reliable it is. If a system were put in place that guaranteed persistence no matter what happened to the constantly changing web then it is a possibility. Also, unlike the library at Alexandria, as you so aptly put, persistence must be mirrored, perhaps one in every country. After all, I think every university library now holds the complete works of Archimedes, so if one library burnt down, we would still have the others. Of course if one day civilization breakdown to the extent that electrical power fails across the planet then we have the equivalent of the burning at Alexandria. I really hope we will still have paper libraries if that event were ever to happen.
>I'm supposed to cite something else because of your personal bias? That's pretty unprofessional.
Actually, I think he is being very professional. The trouble with web based citations is that they are in constant flux and cannot be guaranteed to exist in the future. Paper records however are fairly robust, for example we can still read today manuscripts written 2000 years ago. The advantage of paper is that there is an audit trail to support an argument, you cannot do this with the web. When we write papers I insist that web addresses be only used in the last resort, if at all. There are now many papers published in journals which cite urls which no longer exist which makes the paper much less useful.
>You are living and the past.
Its not a case of living in the past, it's just sensible. In professional science you must have a reliable audit trail to support your argument.
>Teach your students how to judge the credibility of sources not arbitrary biases against specfic media >formats.
And if the source no longer exists?