But research funding in UK universities - given to them by the government - is to a large part determined by the researchers and academics recent publishing record in high impact journals, i.e. those run by people like Elsevier. The government analysis of how well your university research departments are performing (and therefore how much money they will give you in the next round of funding) is dependent on you showing you've published lots of journal articles in hiigh impact journals.
You can publish all you want in open educational archives but until these are considered high impact and valued by the government, then academics will continue to have to deal with the paid for journals. The government needs to make sure that as well as promoting open access of government research - which will be great - that they also acknowledge the value of research being presented in open access archives.
I'd really prefer to publish all my work in open access archives but I know that if I want to look good in my university and make my cv look good for when I have to look for the next fixed term contract, then I need to be publishing in the paid for journals. This is slowly starting to change, but it would be great if the government made a much stronger formal recognition of the value of open resources with respect to funding criteria.
Sometimes you have to sweeten science with some sugar to engage children / the general public. Perhaps the exhibition teaches some really good science about genetics, personalities, psychology, etc, I am not sure. But it looks like they are using Star Wars as a way to engage the public. Perhaps we have to critically analyse what is being purported to being taught: is this education or entertainment? Maybe next year they will teach the same subject but use The Simpsons / Hello Kitty / other popular cultural phenomenon.... is it a problem if it gets more people to think about science and educates them on the way?
"This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.'"
As James Boswell noted of Samuel Johnson in his Life"(1791):" Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."(p.253).
Publishers like Elsevier won't allow material to be put online once you've agreed to publish with them: I've had an article published with a major publisher recently and wanted to put it online in my university's open access resource system (free online repository) - I got told I have to wait 18 months before I can put it up there. The journal wants people to have to buy a subscription to their journal to see my article, doesn't want them to see my research for free.
You crazy radical individualists might argue: "why don't you just tell them to get lost and put it online anyway?" - well, I work for a university, and if the publisher decides they are unhappy, their easy option is to tell the university to get my work offline or they will ban the university from access to their journals. My university is not going to get all their senior professors banned from access to reading or publishing in top journals just to make one little rebellious young postdoc happy. They'd rather delete stuff from my website or terminate my employment with them. In this power equation, I know where I sit. .
When you publish in an academic journal it's very usual for them to demand some level of copyright. This varies country to country and publisher to publisher but generally speaking once you've published in one journal you can't re-present your work in another journal. Often you'll be required to confirm that a certain percentage of the work you're presenting is novel before they will consider it for publishing.
The power journals hold over the academic community is immense. They know your career depends on getting published, and they hold the access.
You can't even re-publish the work yourself on your own website. Last year I was published in one journal and I also wanted to present the article on my university's open access resources (so people interested in my work could view the article instantly, for free, without having to purchase a subscription to that journal) - and I was refused by the journal - I have to wait 18 months after publication before being allowed to put a copy of my own writing on line. This might not seem long, but I am a junior postdoc in a fast moving field: from the original thinking of the ideas to research and then the publication process is a few years, and also my fixed term contracts tend to be only a year or two years long. So getting my work out quickly to the world is crucial to keep me in work. But I need the publishers probably more than they need me, so I have to follow their terms and conditions...
Was this an American minivan, or a European one? (traces of Monty Python here...).
I'm sure an American minivan will be twice the size of a European one - and let's not even think about those super cool minivans you see in Tokyo....
UK minivan: 1.4 to 2 litre engine, room for 6 people, some bags.
US minivan? I'm guessing probably twice the size, air conditioning, armour plating, drinks coolers, on board home entertainment systems, 4 wheel drive....;-)
Most people coming to the USA on holiday to see Mickey Mouse won't care. They really won't spend too long thinking about it, and it won't bother them too much. They trust the US government. They've already bought into the American Dream, they are coming for their holidays because they believe the USA is a wonderful place. The thing that will really bother these people will be if they feel unduly harrassed entering the country by customs etc.
The second large group coming to the USA will be business people, and they will be pragmatic: they will put up with the hassle and the sharing of information if it wins their company business.
I think only a small minority of people will object: those that can are sufficiently bothered and are able to take their business elsewhere (can find a US equivalent to work with) or will want to holiday elsewhere because they are unhappy with this information sharing. I don't think this is a large group of people. I suppose the important question is whether their loss to the USA is important to the well being of the USA.
Unless you mean the Allies combined forces, I am not sure what you mean by "our army" - quite a few different nations fighting there in France and Germany. I'm guessing you mean the US? one of several nations' armies fighting to liberate France in 44 and 45. None of them did it on their own.
Some may disagree with you. Chinese lacquerware can last 2000 years and be worth an awful lot of money. If you're writing from the USA, give us a call in the year 3776 and let us know how you're getting on with your crockery...
OLPC will "...build an educational ecosystem around the laptops". Fail. Don't build children's educational frameworks around a particular device, or an operating system, or any other single technological artefact or format.
Imagine if I turned up to a job interview and said "employ me - my education was built round the ZX81 microcomputer - so I am the person for your job!". I think it would be hard work to persuade my prospective employer that this in itself was reason enough to employ me.
Build the children's pedagogical framwork round a set of educational principles and skill sets that will help them become well developed members of society, with critical abilities and able to respond flexibly to the world and the workplace ten and twenty years from now.
You don't need laptops to develop well rounded adults. They may help, and by all means include them in the tools you use, and even develop a critical skill set partly based on computer hardware and software knowledge, but when you become fixated on them being the sole mechanism for teaching children, I think you've taken a useful tool too far and could blind yourself from the greater picture.
Twenty years down the line their future employers might ask "what's a laptop?".
If your project is led by somebody who believes that the way forward is to drop OLPC laptops out of helicopters into villages and completely bypass locally respected educators, because of the belief that outsiders giving people technology will educate them, what hope have you got?
If the project doesn't seem to respect local teachers, then claims that the reason the project has failed is because of the teachers, well I am suspicious of the findings, or maybe at least suspect a bias.
Is the project too technology led rather than built on sound pedagogical frameworks to support children's education?
Providing teacher training to enable teachers to better employ the technology in their teaching practice (what The Economist article suggests) before dropping all the laptops into classrooms would have been less media friendly but perhaps a more successful strategy.
It does feel like the old story of rusting high tech white elephants in developing countries: well meaning, lots of money spent, not much time understanding local grassroots needs, working with the local educators on the ground. Stuff just gets dropped in with no support and surprise surprise doesn't get used well or technically maintained.
The technology is the easy bit. Engaging with local communities to understand their needs is time consuming and more difficult.
Get used to higher fuel prices, USA. Yesterday I filled my tank and here in the UK it is 1.42 GBP for a litre, that's 1.42 * 1.5849 (GBP->USD) * 3.785 (litre->US gallon) = 8.51836203 for a US gallon of standard gas in US dollars.
It's going to get more expensive everywhere, you'd best think about how you'll alter your life style to manage when it is 8.5 dollars a gallon for you too...
So, you're from the city - and the noise and hectic atmosphere stresses you out. So you travel to the countryside for peace, and are upset... at the industry which is powering the city in which you normally live and provide the on-tap electricity you expect to have 24 hr, 7 days a week?
One alternative is perhaps a coal fired power station or nuclear power station near your aunt's farm. Would that be preferable?
I do find it amusing when city folks get upset that the countryside isn't some idyll as they'd imagined, and there's industry there. Of course another alternative might be to ask your aunt and her neighbours if they'd accept limited or no electrical power to their homes so you and other city folks can have peace and quiet when they come to the countryside.
If you want power, it has to be generated somehow - or you need to reduce your power demands? Not sure of the other alternatives...
Having a PhD in science does not make you good at the media: if anything, maybe the reverse. Working at a university I'm around a lot of highly intelligent, highly focussed people who are brilliant at their subject - and partly so because they don't give a damn about many other things. Some of them have an incredibly limited world view outside of the domain. It's almost understandable in some ways: they've got so good at their domain by spending all their time thinking about it and not spending any time keeping up on current affairs, worrying about how the local sports team is doing and so on.
Now you might argue that their university's PR time should have protected them, that's a different matter. My recollection is they came up with a controversial result, and like good scientists asked their peers to help them understand their results. I think this is the equivalent of "their friends" that you refer to - the peer community. It's how we do things in universities, we post messages or mail the global community in our domain (might only be a couple of hundred people) and ask their advice. Unfortunately the possibilities were so mind blowing that even the mainstream media saw a good story and ran with it. They didn't have a chance....
The problem with trying to make watching other people play board games is the excitement is all in their heads. Their imagination is what's making it such an exciting evening, as well as their in-crowd banter which is all about their own personal jokes. Hard to convey that to a watching non-participating audience.
Physical sports are exciting for a lot of people because there's a lot of fast visual action, people rushing around and crashing into each other, scoring goals, carrying out very visual actions. But games based on mind play? well... they are all in the mind. I don't see how games like chess, or bridge, or the like can be exciting spectator sports, unless you're really into that game yourself so a fan already? Occasionally I've seen poker on tv - incredibly boring for me because I don't understand the game, don't want to learn about it, and don't find the people particularly entertaining. I think tv board game coverage might be the same: fine if you're already a fan of scrabble, or monopoly, or dungeons and dragons... but otherwise? nothing to see, none of the visual pyrotechnics of car racing, top league basketball/football/downhill skiing (etc).
References? Also note that there are different legal systems in England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland so you'll probably want to be indicating which bit of the UK you are referring to.
You wait til a superfast train connection stops there. House prices will go up again... Fast connection across London stopping there will mean it's going to go up in the world.
Good to see London going for public infrastucture development during the recession. Definitely will be great to have a fast Crossrail service and add to the options of moving around London. I was standing waiting for a bus at Angel the other day and I realised all the people sitting in the cars between the two sets of lights in that section could fit into one bus (or a train carriage). Public mass transport got to be the way to go in cities like London. Could you imagine London without the tube? (Mind you it would be great if they could somehow refurbish the old lines, but I guess TfL have that dream as well...)
Apparently felony was abolished in the Criminal Law Act 1967 in England and Wales "which made all felonies (except treason) misdemeanours". Arrestable offences were abolished in 2006.
Leaving aside ethical questions of what data should be required from people to travel, it seems to me that this 'service' (pre-checking, data collection on individuals, interviewing with security agents) has a cost attached. Somebody has to pay for the computer checking, the security officer potentially spending an hour with you asking you questions etc: they need an income to pay their bills. I'm guessing the message is that a software program (even if provided for free to the government) isn't up to the job on its own. Some hundreds or thousands of low level office workers have to be paid to go through the records of all those people who ask for one of these cards. Enforcement agencies might argue that your claim to be 'safe' as you have no criminal record does not hold with their experiences of who commits crime.
I suppose in the USA the model is for lower personal taxes and then more services to be purchased individually later, whereas in places like Europe, the model is more of a larger number of services paid by taxes then offered later to citizens for no cost. Depends on your preferred model of society?
Article refers to a hoax blog posting which the article believed was true. Read down through the comments, no evidence backing up the article's claim beyond the article writer saying "I read it on an assistant to the meeting's blog post". Readers of the article link to the minutes of the meeting which show the actual vote was 22-1.
Political activist quotes blog post which itself has no definitive references and makes unsubstantiated claim. Slashdot picks up on article refering to blog post.
Tell me about these "natural" market forces - what "nature" are you speaking of?
Sorry, but I get very suspicious when people invoke "nature" and "natural" as these usually indicate a social constructed reality, where humans have made social choices, rather than some purely physical environment like the wind, waves, seasons, etc. independent of human philosophies or political positions. Nothing "natural" about democracy, totalitarian dictators, US right wing politics, European centrist politics, or any other such stance, they are all human-constructed. Tell me about this "natural" that you refer to.
Slashdot Mirror
But research funding in UK universities - given to them by the government - is to a large part determined by the researchers and academics recent publishing record in high impact journals, i.e. those run by people like Elsevier. The government analysis of how well your university research departments are performing (and therefore how much money they will give you in the next round of funding) is dependent on you showing you've published lots of journal articles in hiigh impact journals.
You can publish all you want in open educational archives but until these are considered high impact and valued by the government, then academics will continue to have to deal with the paid for journals. The government needs to make sure that as well as promoting open access of government research - which will be great - that they also acknowledge the value of research being presented in open access archives.
I'd really prefer to publish all my work in open access archives but I know that if I want to look good in my university and make my cv look good for when I have to look for the next fixed term contract, then I need to be publishing in the paid for journals. This is slowly starting to change, but it would be great if the government made a much stronger formal recognition of the value of open resources with respect to funding criteria.
Sometimes you have to sweeten science with some sugar to engage children / the general public. Perhaps the exhibition teaches some really good science about genetics, personalities, psychology, etc, I am not sure. But it looks like they are using Star Wars as a way to engage the public. Perhaps we have to critically analyse what is being purported to being taught: is this education or entertainment? Maybe next year they will teach the same subject but use The Simpsons / Hello Kitty / other popular cultural phenomenon.... is it a problem if it gets more people to think about science and educates them on the way?
"This period of time between publication and patent award provides worldwide access to the information included in those applications. In some circumstances, this information allows competitors to design around U.S. technologies and seize markets before the U.S. inventor is able to raise financing and secure a market.'"
As James Boswell noted of Samuel Johnson in his Life"(1791):" Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest."(p.253).
Publishers like Elsevier won't allow material to be put online once you've agreed to publish with them: I've had an article published with a major publisher recently and wanted to put it online in my university's open access resource system (free online repository) - I got told I have to wait 18 months before I can put it up there. The journal wants people to have to buy a subscription to their journal to see my article, doesn't want them to see my research for free.
You crazy radical individualists might argue: "why don't you just tell them to get lost and put it online anyway?" - well, I work for a university, and if the publisher decides they are unhappy, their easy option is to tell the university to get my work offline or they will ban the university from access to their journals. My university is not going to get all their senior professors banned from access to reading or publishing in top journals just to make one little rebellious young postdoc happy. They'd rather delete stuff from my website or terminate my employment with them. In this power equation, I know where I sit.
.
When you publish in an academic journal it's very usual for them to demand some level of copyright. This varies country to country and publisher to publisher but generally speaking once you've published in one journal you can't re-present your work in another journal. Often you'll be required to confirm that a certain percentage of the work you're presenting is novel before they will consider it for publishing.
The power journals hold over the academic community is immense. They know your career depends on getting published, and they hold the access.
You can't even re-publish the work yourself on your own website. Last year I was published in one journal and I also wanted to present the article on my university's open access resources (so people interested in my work could view the article instantly, for free, without having to purchase a subscription to that journal) - and I was refused by the journal - I have to wait 18 months after publication before being allowed to put a copy of my own writing on line. This might not seem long, but I am a junior postdoc in a fast moving field: from the original thinking of the ideas to research and then the publication process is a few years, and also my fixed term contracts tend to be only a year or two years long. So getting my work out quickly to the world is crucial to keep me in work. But I need the publishers probably more than they need me, so I have to follow their terms and conditions...
Was this an American minivan, or a European one? (traces of Monty Python here...).
I'm sure an American minivan will be twice the size of a European one - and let's not even think about those super cool minivans you see in Tokyo....
UK minivan: 1.4 to 2 litre engine, room for 6 people, some bags.
US minivan? I'm guessing probably twice the size, air conditioning, armour plating, drinks coolers, on board home entertainment systems, 4 wheel drive.... ;-)
Most people coming to the USA on holiday to see Mickey Mouse won't care. They really won't spend too long thinking about it, and it won't bother them too much. They trust the US government. They've already bought into the American Dream, they are coming for their holidays because they believe the USA is a wonderful place. The thing that will really bother these people will be if they feel unduly harrassed entering the country by customs etc.
The second large group coming to the USA will be business people, and they will be pragmatic: they will put up with the hassle and the sharing of information if it wins their company business.
I think only a small minority of people will object: those that can are sufficiently bothered and are able to take their business elsewhere (can find a US equivalent to work with) or will want to holiday elsewhere because they are unhappy with this information sharing. I don't think this is a large group of people. I suppose the important question is whether their loss to the USA is important to the well being of the USA.
But if it's superior to digital alternatives, why are you posting this on a website and not a ceefax tool?
Presumably you also use the web for information retrieval: how does Ceefax compare to the web with respect to the points you make in your post?
Probably better to check your electrics are up to scratch and nice and safe than have a short set fire to your house and burn your kids to death....
Unless you mean the Allies combined forces, I am not sure what you mean by "our army" - quite a few different nations fighting there in France and Germany. I'm guessing you mean the US? one of several nations' armies fighting to liberate France in 44 and 45. None of them did it on their own.
Some may disagree with you. Chinese lacquerware can last 2000 years and be worth an awful lot of money. If you're writing from the USA, give us a call in the year 3776 and let us know how you're getting on with your crockery...
OLPC will "...build an educational ecosystem around the laptops". Fail. Don't build children's educational frameworks around a particular device, or an operating system, or any other single technological artefact or format.
Imagine if I turned up to a job interview and said "employ me - my education was built round the ZX81 microcomputer - so I am the person for your job!". I think it would be hard work to persuade my prospective employer that this in itself was reason enough to employ me.
Build the children's pedagogical framwork round a set of educational principles and skill sets that will help them become well developed members of society, with critical abilities and able to respond flexibly to the world and the workplace ten and twenty years from now.
You don't need laptops to develop well rounded adults. They may help, and by all means include them in the tools you use, and even develop a critical skill set partly based on computer hardware and software knowledge, but when you become fixated on them being the sole mechanism for teaching children, I think you've taken a useful tool too far and could blind yourself from the greater picture.
Twenty years down the line their future employers might ask "what's a laptop?".
If your project is led by somebody who believes that the way forward is to drop OLPC laptops out of helicopters into villages and completely bypass locally respected educators, because of the belief that outsiders giving people technology will educate them, what hope have you got?
If the project doesn't seem to respect local teachers, then claims that the reason the project has failed is because of the teachers, well I am suspicious of the findings, or maybe at least suspect a bias.
Is the project too technology led rather than built on sound pedagogical frameworks to support children's education?
Providing teacher training to enable teachers to better employ the technology in their teaching practice (what The Economist article suggests) before dropping all the laptops into classrooms would have been less media friendly but perhaps a more successful strategy.
It does feel like the old story of rusting high tech white elephants in developing countries: well meaning, lots of money spent, not much time understanding local grassroots needs, working with the local educators on the ground. Stuff just gets dropped in with no support and surprise surprise doesn't get used well or technically maintained.
The technology is the easy bit. Engaging with local communities to understand their needs is time consuming and more difficult.
Get used to higher fuel prices, USA. Yesterday I filled my tank and here in the UK it is 1.42 GBP for a litre, that's 1.42 * 1.5849 (GBP->USD) * 3.785 (litre->US gallon) = 8.51836203 for a US gallon of standard gas in US dollars.
It's going to get more expensive everywhere, you'd best think about how you'll alter your life style to manage when it is 8.5 dollars a gallon for you too...
So, you're from the city - and the noise and hectic atmosphere stresses you out. So you travel to the countryside for peace, and are upset... at the industry which is powering the city in which you normally live and provide the on-tap electricity you expect to have 24 hr, 7 days a week?
One alternative is perhaps a coal fired power station or nuclear power station near your aunt's farm. Would that be preferable?
I do find it amusing when city folks get upset that the countryside isn't some idyll as they'd imagined, and there's industry there. Of course another alternative might be to ask your aunt and her neighbours if they'd accept limited or no electrical power to their homes so you and other city folks can have peace and quiet when they come to the countryside.
If you want power, it has to be generated somehow - or you need to reduce your power demands? Not sure of the other alternatives...
Having a PhD in science does not make you good at the media: if anything, maybe the reverse. Working at a university I'm around a lot of highly intelligent, highly focussed people who are brilliant at their subject - and partly so because they don't give a damn about many other things. Some of them have an incredibly limited world view outside of the domain. It's almost understandable in some ways: they've got so good at their domain by spending all their time thinking about it and not spending any time keeping up on current affairs, worrying about how the local sports team is doing and so on.
Now you might argue that their university's PR time should have protected them, that's a different matter. My recollection is they came up with a controversial result, and like good scientists asked their peers to help them understand their results. I think this is the equivalent of "their friends" that you refer to - the peer community. It's how we do things in universities, we post messages or mail the global community in our domain (might only be a couple of hundred people) and ask their advice. Unfortunately the possibilities were so mind blowing that even the mainstream media saw a good story and ran with it. They didn't have a chance....
The problem with trying to make watching other people play board games is the excitement is all in their heads. Their imagination is what's making it such an exciting evening, as well as their in-crowd banter which is all about their own personal jokes. Hard to convey that to a watching non-participating audience.
Physical sports are exciting for a lot of people because there's a lot of fast visual action, people rushing around and crashing into each other, scoring goals, carrying out very visual actions. But games based on mind play? well... they are all in the mind. I don't see how games like chess, or bridge, or the like can be exciting spectator sports, unless you're really into that game yourself so a fan already? Occasionally I've seen poker on tv - incredibly boring for me because I don't understand the game, don't want to learn about it, and don't find the people particularly entertaining. I think tv board game coverage might be the same: fine if you're already a fan of scrabble, or monopoly, or dungeons and dragons... but otherwise? nothing to see, none of the visual pyrotechnics of car racing, top league basketball/football/downhill skiing (etc).
References? Also note that there are different legal systems in England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland so you'll probably want to be indicating which bit of the UK you are referring to.
You wait til a superfast train connection stops there. House prices will go up again... Fast connection across London stopping there will mean it's going to go up in the world.
Good to see London going for public infrastucture development during the recession. Definitely will be great to have a fast Crossrail service and add to the options of moving around London. I was standing waiting for a bus at Angel the other day and I realised all the people sitting in the cars between the two sets of lights in that section could fit into one bus (or a train carriage). Public mass transport got to be the way to go in cities like London. Could you imagine London without the tube? (Mind you it would be great if they could somehow refurbish the old lines, but I guess TfL have that dream as well...)
There is English law (which also includes legal issues in Wales), Northern Irish law, and Scots law. No such thing as "UK law".
Apparently felony was abolished in the Criminal Law Act 1967 in England and Wales "which made all felonies (except treason) misdemeanours". Arrestable offences were abolished in 2006.
Leaving aside ethical questions of what data should be required from people to travel, it seems to me that this 'service' (pre-checking, data collection on individuals, interviewing with security agents) has a cost attached. Somebody has to pay for the computer checking, the security officer potentially spending an hour with you asking you questions etc: they need an income to pay their bills. I'm guessing the message is that a software program (even if provided for free to the government) isn't up to the job on its own. Some hundreds or thousands of low level office workers have to be paid to go through the records of all those people who ask for one of these cards. Enforcement agencies might argue that your claim to be 'safe' as you have no criminal record does not hold with their experiences of who commits crime.
I suppose in the USA the model is for lower personal taxes and then more services to be purchased individually later, whereas in places like Europe, the model is more of a larger number of services paid by taxes then offered later to citizens for no cost. Depends on your preferred model of society?
Article refers to a hoax blog posting which the article believed was true. Read down through the comments, no evidence backing up the article's claim beyond the article writer saying "I read it on an assistant to the meeting's blog post". Readers of the article link to the minutes of the meeting which show the actual vote was 22-1.
Political activist quotes blog post which itself has no definitive references and makes unsubstantiated claim. Slashdot picks up on article refering to blog post.
Tell me about these "natural" market forces - what "nature" are you speaking of?
Sorry, but I get very suspicious when people invoke "nature" and "natural" as these usually indicate a social constructed reality, where humans have made social choices, rather than some purely physical environment like the wind, waves, seasons, etc. independent of human philosophies or political positions. Nothing "natural" about democracy, totalitarian dictators, US right wing politics, European centrist politics, or any other such stance, they are all human-constructed. Tell me about this "natural" that you refer to.