The website notes the project is in its early stages. So it's either in "ideas debating" mode or "vapourware" if you want to be less generous.
House building is already open source: all the information is out there in your local public library / on the internet. Nothing is closed to you in the way that you can't look inside some proprietary software to understand what's going on. If you have the time, you can read up on everything from applying for the legal permissions to put up a house, designing a building, and all the way through to finding out how to dig trenches, run electric cables and paint walls. Nothing is closed from you (certainly in the majority of countries in the world).
There are choke points: the expense of hiring architects, specialised builders, legal advisors. None of these are closed to you. What you are doing is saving the years it takes to learn these trades and paying somebody else to do these tasks because its quicker, so more efficient for you in energy terms. There is a small but consistently strong movement in many countries of people who already build their own homes, where they have made the choice to give up their jobs as computer programmers/nurses/rangers/whatever and spend several hundred hours digging trenches, laying brickwork, drawing architectural diagrams etc. It's already open source.
I think what these people might be doing is trying to shortcut the architectural expert choke point and break architects' hold on construction. But at the end of the day if you want a self build house, you're still going to have to go up a ladder and move heavy things around a lot and deal with construction elements that need careful attention, like mains electricity, water piping and gas.
The down side to your model is that private hospitals have an incentive to increase the price to you as much as possible. If their operating model is to increase revenue to shareholders then there will be a drive to find financial profit where ever possible.
My impression was that copters are difficult to fly in high winds/storm conditions. Is this true? will this also be true of these copters? If so, the claim that they can fly 24/7/365 is perhaps not credible?
The odd minutes may add up but I suspect it sounds better in marketing-speak: "Over 48 hours!" sounds more impressive than "48 hours 1 minute" or "2 days" perhaps?
Plus as somebody else had noted maybe there's a government contract which specifies money will be given if a prototype can be shown to run for at least 48 hours. Over 48 hours? 48 hours 1 minute, send us the money!.
USA only, because nobody would ever think of posting some to a friend in another country / plant seeds won't ever blow across a national border without checking in with customs officials first of all?
Are the plants sterile, or are we going to find them gradually spreading in the wild?
Both suspects wear baseball caps. They are baseball fans. Suspect and round up all the baseball players and fans you know. Clearly it is a conspiracy by baseball fans against the rest of us!
"Funny how broke-ass Russia can afford to spend 50B next year..." Priorities... you have your national budget and you decide how you want to spend it. Most people think their government should spend more on X (the thing they are passionate about) and less on Y (the thing they don't care about). I guess you have to decide how to slice up the cake.
I'd like to see some evidence that publishing a journal requires each article to be costed at 2995 dollars (a suspicious looking figure to me).
I'm an academic. I get asked to peer review articles for free. We do it as part of our workload. I have colleagues who edit journals. They do this for free. I author articles: I do this within the costs of my project, the journal gets my article for free. Authors work for free, reviewers work for free, editors work for free. It's just the production and publicity team that get paid (the publishing house). We don't even expect them to roll the presses and produce paper versions these days, we are happy with web links to PDFs.
So we need to think hard about what the costs are in putting an online journal live onto the internet.
Why do academics continue to publish in closed journals? because generally they are still the high impact ones (with a very few exceptions). So I, and many other contract researchers like me, tend to publish in closed journals because these look better on the cv. Philosophical high ground is all well and good but when you've got a child to feed and a house to pay for you have to be pragmatic and keep in a job.
I can imagine this might change over the next 20 years or so as more and more folk start open access journals and they are gradually given greater impact ratings.
Personally I think we're going to see a few universities taking the lead with open access journals and this might break into the monopoly held by a small number of publishers right now. If you're doing it not-for-profit you can do it cheaper than a commercial publishing house that has to show profit to its shareholders.
Thanks for your considered response. I think you make a good point indeed, I think there will always be a problem when speed camera companies earnings are related to income, perhaps another metric would help make sure cameras improve public safety rather than generate income. Perhaps a before and after comparison of traffic accidents/ pedestrian fatalities in the areas covered?
I'd agree with you, I'd hope to see revenue declining as more people obeyed the speed limit going past a school where children are walking. And if it doesn't? Does this say that people refuse to slow down when travelling past a school? (would be possibly indicated by repeat offenders) or that there's a lot of passing traffic (single time offenders) and the warning notices aren't well posted (e.g. you come down a fast slope and immediately round a corner there's the school, and there's no distance between the school and the slow down notices?) Have to go and think about the implications of this!
"what if the camera loses its calibration? how do you fight that without knowing?
- you appeal on the grounds that you believe the camera wasn't correctly calibrated and demand a calibration test by an independent tester? Costs to be picked up by the loser in the court case?
I am assuming this is unlikely to be an intermittent fault, what do you think? (not my area). There are millions of speed cameras around the world, there must be some evidence on how often/likely "losing calibration" is and what forms it takes.
- so the judge got caught speeding in the cameras and is unhappy?:-)
Reading the article, it looks like the argument is that not enough notice was given before putting the cameras up. Were the cameras correctly indicated according to the laws? Are speed restriction signs correctly posted on the roads? If so, surely you can "win" as a motorist by just *obeying the speed limits*? If you've been caught speeding and fined, isn't your argument "previously I ignored the speed limits which were correctly marked, but now I got caught and fined without due notice they would actually enforce the speed limit"?
Can anybody comment on whether the cameras were signed correctly and the speed restrictions correctly flagged on the roads? Just trying to understand the dispute here.
I'd definitely agree that a company getting paid a percentage of fines has an incentive to collect fines and that seems very suspect, I wouldn't like that, but hey, it's the USA, you guys prefer payment-by-results model rather than payment-for-a-public-service model so I guess we have to ride with that.
If you are unhappy with being fined for speeding, and the cameras and signs are legitimate, then is the argument not with the cameras but with the speed limit?
Do people object to slowing down to 25mph near a school where children are walking? or is the argument about being fined when you choose to go at a higher speed there?
And in the rainy season if they are on soft ground they can get washed downhill to another place - even if their location was recorded in the first place (not always the case by locals or superpowers).
A friend in Cambodia says this is a real problem in hilly areas, dirt roads are cleared and then after heavy rains you have to assume the road to the next town might be live with UXO again and has to be checked before you can drive out again.
Stuff that was dropped/ planted in 1975 is still killing people.
>"Are academics in the [UK] desparate for tenure because without that job security they would be left in poverty?"
Yes.
It is ok when you are young to work for a while then get government benefits when you are out of work, when all you have are a few possessions that you can throw in your car, and go and sleep at a friend's house for a few months until another job comes along. But as you get older you buy a house and have to keep up the payments, and many people start families and have to think about feeding and clothing their children and maybe supporting a partner who might be not working or only part time working. In the UK some universities assume academics are young, single, highly mobile, with no ties or relationships or financial commitments beyond cheap rent and pizza. It is harder as you get older.
>"here there's no need to worry about tenure, because it's rarely a problem to keep renewing one research or teaching contract year-in, year-out"
Not here in the UK. You are only going to get a few contracts, then they will start looking for somebody younger and cheaper than you and asking why you are not getting promoted (and thinking maybe they should get rid of you...).
So, spending 5 hours a day practicing precision hand/eye coordination tasks... makes you better at work which requires precision hand/eye coordination tasks...
I suppose my question would be - how does playing a Wii game compare to another task which involves hand/eye coordination? e.g. sewing cross stitch, soldering electronic components, playing tennis ?
Would universities be better requiring medical students to play tennis each day or take up cross stitch than playing Wii? or doing work experience controlling those cameras that mole through sewerage pipes?
Good luck with recycling that, where I live it's hard enough to get rid of used auto oil at the local dump (municipal recycling facility).
And if it's like any other "white goods" it's going to be upgraded, have parts replaced, newer model put in.
Going to love what happens when your old nuclear powerplant goes past its warranty date and you want some new hoses, want to chuck out the old model for a bigger model etc. How does that work for the local recycling facilities? or if you want to knock down an old house and level the ground so you've got to dump an old nuclear reactor somewhere?
I'm sure there's a simple answer, please enlighten me. Apparently some cities have mountains of discarded washing machines/fridges/other white goods, will we have the same of nuclear reactors?
" online degrees are a high-priced joke" Your experience shows a US bias, though my understanding is that distance education provision is often of low quality in your country. It looks as if you still have distance learning which has quality control and pedagogical models from 100 years ago. I'm not sure whether this is to lack of regulation, "the invisible hand of the market" driving quality down or other reasons?
Teaching over distance creates specific challenges, though does not imply poor-quality per se.
In other countries, there are higher quality distance learning systems. Check out The Open University in the UK for example. Degrees from this university are considered to be equivalent to a good quality face to face university. In Europe and other places the idea of using technology for learning purposes is considered valid and not necessarily a joke. There is more of an acceptance perhaps of the concept of "lifelong learning", that studying at a higher level is not necessarily something that can only be done fulltime when one is between the ages of 18 and 25.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose its only fair to link to some of the social media photos.
The website notes the project is in its early stages. So it's either in "ideas debating" mode or "vapourware" if you want to be less generous.
House building is already open source: all the information is out there in your local public library / on the internet. Nothing is closed to you in the way that you can't look inside some proprietary software to understand what's going on. If you have the time, you can read up on everything from applying for the legal permissions to put up a house, designing a building, and all the way through to finding out how to dig trenches, run electric cables and paint walls. Nothing is closed from you (certainly in the majority of countries in the world).
There are choke points: the expense of hiring architects, specialised builders, legal advisors. None of these are closed to you. What you are doing is saving the years it takes to learn these trades and paying somebody else to do these tasks because its quicker, so more efficient for you in energy terms. There is a small but consistently strong movement in many countries of people who already build their own homes, where they have made the choice to give up their jobs as computer programmers/nurses/rangers/whatever and spend several hundred hours digging trenches, laying brickwork, drawing architectural diagrams etc. It's already open source.
I think what these people might be doing is trying to shortcut the architectural expert choke point and break architects' hold on construction. But at the end of the day if you want a self build house, you're still going to have to go up a ladder and move heavy things around a lot and deal with construction elements that need careful attention, like mains electricity, water piping and gas.
You need MacArthur's map!
Australia, centre of the world!
The down side to your model is that private hospitals have an incentive to increase the price to you as much as possible. If their operating model is to increase revenue to shareholders then there will be a drive to find financial profit where ever possible.
Why not? The English language managed to handle the Czech word "robotnik" (see: Rossum’s Universal Robots (R.U.R.)) .
What is their average speed and reliability compared to a local with a donkey (classic and well proven difficult terrain portering option)?
My impression was that copters are difficult to fly in high winds/storm conditions. Is this true? will this also be true of these copters? If so, the claim that they can fly 24/7/365 is perhaps not credible?
The odd minutes may add up but I suspect it sounds better in marketing-speak: "Over 48 hours!" sounds more impressive than "48 hours 1 minute" or "2 days" perhaps?
Plus as somebody else had noted maybe there's a government contract which specifies money will be given if a prototype can be shown to run for at least 48 hours. Over 48 hours? 48 hours 1 minute, send us the money!.
USA only, because nobody would ever think of posting some to a friend in another country / plant seeds won't ever blow across a national border without checking in with customs officials first of all?
Are the plants sterile, or are we going to find them gradually spreading in the wild?
going to hurt when you feel that ducking or rolling is the way to get out of trouble in the game! :-)
Both suspects wear baseball caps. They are baseball fans. Suspect and round up all the baseball players and fans you know. Clearly it is a conspiracy by baseball fans against the rest of us!
"Funny how broke-ass Russia can afford to spend 50B next year ..."
Priorities... you have your national budget and you decide how you want to spend it. Most people think their government should spend more on X (the thing they are passionate about) and less on Y (the thing they don't care about). I guess you have to decide how to slice up the cake.
"unspecified strong accent"
There must be a Monty Python reference here, because it sure ain't science....
I'd like to see some evidence that publishing a journal requires each article to be costed at 2995 dollars (a suspicious looking figure to me).
I'm an academic. I get asked to peer review articles for free. We do it as part of our workload. I have colleagues who edit journals. They do this for free. I author articles: I do this within the costs of my project, the journal gets my article for free. Authors work for free, reviewers work for free, editors work for free. It's just the production and publicity team that get paid (the publishing house). We don't even expect them to roll the presses and produce paper versions these days, we are happy with web links to PDFs.
So we need to think hard about what the costs are in putting an online journal live onto the internet.
Why do academics continue to publish in closed journals? because generally they are still the high impact ones (with a very few exceptions). So I, and many other contract researchers like me, tend to publish in closed journals because these look better on the cv. Philosophical high ground is all well and good but when you've got a child to feed and a house to pay for you have to be pragmatic and keep in a job.
I can imagine this might change over the next 20 years or so as more and more folk start open access journals and they are gradually given greater impact ratings.
Personally I think we're going to see a few universities taking the lead with open access journals and this might break into the monopoly held by a small number of publishers right now. If you're doing it not-for-profit you can do it cheaper than a commercial publishing house that has to show profit to its shareholders.
It's not dead, it's resting! (oblig. Motny Python reference...)
2300 years ago Plato was complaining that the invention of writing had affected memory and attention span.
The complaint that things aren't as good as they used to be, and the young don't have the wisdom of the old, is not a new phenomenon.
I completely agree with you: if you're measuring by results then it should indeed be reduction of road traffic accidents that is the measure.
Thanks for your considered response. I think you make a good point indeed, I think there will always be a problem when speed camera companies earnings are related to income, perhaps another metric would help make sure cameras improve public safety rather than generate income. Perhaps a before and after comparison of traffic accidents/ pedestrian fatalities in the areas covered?
I'd agree with you, I'd hope to see revenue declining as more people obeyed the speed limit going past a school where children are walking. And if it doesn't? Does this say that people refuse to slow down when travelling past a school? (would be possibly indicated by repeat offenders) or that there's a lot of passing traffic (single time offenders) and the warning notices aren't well posted (e.g. you come down a fast slope and immediately round a corner there's the school, and there's no distance between the school and the slow down notices?) Have to go and think about the implications of this!
"what if the camera loses its calibration? how do you fight that without knowing?
- you appeal on the grounds that you believe the camera wasn't correctly calibrated and demand a calibration test by an independent tester? Costs to be picked up by the loser in the court case?
I am assuming this is unlikely to be an intermittent fault, what do you think? (not my area). There are millions of speed cameras around the world, there must be some evidence on how often/likely "losing calibration" is and what forms it takes.
"It is a scam that motorists can't win."
- so the judge got caught speeding in the cameras and is unhappy? :-)
Reading the article, it looks like the argument is that not enough notice was given before putting the cameras up.
Were the cameras correctly indicated according to the laws?
Are speed restriction signs correctly posted on the roads?
If so, surely you can "win" as a motorist by just *obeying the speed limits*?
If you've been caught speeding and fined, isn't your argument "previously I ignored the speed limits which were correctly marked, but now I got caught and fined without due notice they would actually enforce the speed limit"?
Can anybody comment on whether the cameras were signed correctly and the speed restrictions correctly flagged on the roads? Just trying to understand the dispute here.
I'd definitely agree that a company getting paid a percentage of fines has an incentive to collect fines and that seems very suspect, I wouldn't like that, but hey, it's the USA, you guys prefer payment-by-results model rather than payment-for-a-public-service model so I guess we have to ride with that.
If you are unhappy with being fined for speeding, and the cameras and signs are legitimate, then is the argument not with the cameras but with the speed limit?
Do people object to slowing down to 25mph near a school where children are walking? or is the argument about being fined when you choose to go at a higher speed there?
And in the rainy season if they are on soft ground they can get washed downhill to another place - even if their location was recorded in the first place (not always the case by locals or superpowers).
A friend in Cambodia says this is a real problem in hilly areas, dirt roads are cleared and then after heavy rains you have to assume the road to the next town might be live with UXO again and has to be checked before you can drive out again.
Stuff that was dropped/ planted in 1975 is still killing people.
>"Are academics in the [UK] desparate for tenure because without that job security they would be left in poverty?"
Yes.
It is ok when you are young to work for a while then get government benefits when you are out of work, when all you have are a few possessions that you can throw in your car, and go and sleep at a friend's house for a few months until another job comes along. But as you get older you buy a house and have to keep up the payments, and many people start families and have to think about feeding and clothing their children and maybe supporting a partner who might be not working or only part time working. In the UK some universities assume academics are young, single, highly mobile, with no ties or relationships or financial commitments beyond cheap rent and pizza. It is harder as you get older.
>"here there's no need to worry about tenure, because it's rarely a problem to keep renewing one research or teaching contract year-in, year-out"
Not here in the UK. You are only going to get a few contracts, then they will start looking for somebody younger and cheaper than you and asking why you are not getting promoted (and thinking maybe they should get rid of you...).
So, spending 5 hours a day practicing precision hand/eye coordination tasks... makes you better at work which requires precision hand/eye coordination tasks...
I suppose my question would be - how does playing a Wii game compare to another task which involves hand/eye coordination? e.g. sewing cross stitch, soldering electronic components, playing tennis ?
Would universities be better requiring medical students to play tennis each day or take up cross stitch than playing Wii? or doing work experience controlling those cameras that mole through sewerage pipes?
Good luck with recycling that, where I live it's hard enough to get rid of used auto oil at the local dump (municipal recycling facility).
And if it's like any other "white goods" it's going to be upgraded, have parts replaced, newer model put in.
Going to love what happens when your old nuclear powerplant goes past its warranty date and you want some new hoses, want to chuck out the old model for a bigger model etc. How does that work for the local recycling facilities? or if you want to knock down an old house and level the ground so you've got to dump an old nuclear reactor somewhere?
I'm sure there's a simple answer, please enlighten me. Apparently some cities have mountains of discarded washing machines/fridges/other white goods, will we have the same of nuclear reactors?
" online degrees are a high-priced joke"
Your experience shows a US bias, though my understanding is that distance education provision is often of low quality in your country. It looks as if you still have distance learning which has quality control and pedagogical models from 100 years ago. I'm not sure whether this is to lack of regulation, "the invisible hand of the market" driving quality down or other reasons?
Teaching over distance creates specific challenges, though does not imply poor-quality per se.
In other countries, there are higher quality distance learning systems. Check out The Open University in the UK for example. Degrees from this university are considered to be equivalent to a good quality face to face university. In Europe and other places the idea of using technology for learning purposes is considered valid and not necessarily a joke. There is more of an acceptance perhaps of the concept of "lifelong learning", that studying at a higher level is not necessarily something that can only be done fulltime when one is between the ages of 18 and 25.