Politics and science

The mudslinging that this comment page is descending into, and the political convictions on both sides, aside, I think SH is wrong in this case. Fundamental science should be shared and disseminated irrespective of politics. As long as it's not used for military or other aggressive technology (not much danger in his case) or propaganda (OK, a "Presidential Conference" might be open to that accusation), a boycott is nearly always wrong. If you don't want to support countries whose governments don't live up to our standards of human rights, where do you stop? China? Russia? The USA (Mr O makes friendly noises, but Guantanamo remains open)? Go there and talk to the scientists about science. You can use the opportunity to talk to journalists or politicians about politics. Progress is made by dialogue, not by "I don't talk to you bastards".

Clustering

What is the latency of this interface, preferably using Linux? Are there switches? 10Gb/s gets you into Infiniband territory. Certainly better than standard GbE. And if it's supported on the Motherboard...

Let me be the first to point out

...that I am not on Facebook, never have been, and don't intend to. But nevertheless keep reading every article about it.

More seriously: I see the lure of a fairly ubiquitous network where you can share family pictures and exchange messages without having to keep track of people's changing email addresses, but every time I read about another of its childish and patronising ("couple page") or exploitative (advertising messages purporting to come from you, just because you "liked" a product) "features", I think: nah, I'm happier alone in the woods.

Lost for words

My desktop is mine! I can see the point of mixing of local apps, a quick link to an installer, and online apps, as long as I am asked if I want it. But mixing paid-for advertising with a local desktop search is such a hare-brained rip-off idea that the members of the Axis of Evil (MS and Google) would not have tried to tread there. This is as bad as Smart Tags and worse than the fact that Google thinks nothing of searching my email, FFS. Even if they retract it now, it shows a mindset that makes me add Canonical to the companies to avoid if possible. In contrast to MS and Google, this one can be completely avoided.

Cost Analysis

Speaking as a semi-academic at a UK university, I do see why sheer inertia keeps the current business model of scientific publishers working, but it's such a rip-off that it must change in the long run. Here's the procedure by which a scientific article gets into a university library.

1) A scientist or group of scientists do some research. They are employed by a university, possibly with additional money from government funding bodies (EPSRC/BBSRC, etc. in UK, NSF/DoE/DoD,... in the US). They write up their results in an article.

2) They submit this article to a scientific journal. The main criterion in choosing a journal is how widely it is read in the community of researchers who might be interested. Actually, they submit it to a scientific editor. This is an academic who does this job because it adds to his standing in the academic community, not because he might be paid for it.

3) This editor, after sifting out any totally hopeless submissions, sends the article to 2-4 other academics in the same field for peer review.

4) The reviewers read the article and write a report, recommending to reject it, accept it, or demand changes. There is little advantage for them in doing this (for one thing, they remain anonymous), but it's part of what's expected from an academic. Abuses do happen at this point, but in my experience they are rare.

5) Based on these reports, the scientific editor accepts or rejects the article. If accepted, the (non-scientific, even though they usually have a degree in the field) editors of the journal create a publication-ready layout. This is the first step in the process that's paid by the publisher. Until a few years ago, this involved combining separately submitted text, figures and tables in a readable form. Nowadays journals require submission in the final publication format, so it's barely any work.

6) This publication-ready "proof" is sent back to the authors, who check for final typos and misspellings. These are sent back to the journal. For free, of course.

7) The article appears online. Web hosting needs to be paid by the publisher.

8) The paper appears in the next issue of the journal, which is sent out to subscribers (university libraries and very flush companies). This is a waste of dead trees. I'm doing literature search on a daily basis, but haven't looked at a bound copy of a scientific journal in years. But we have access to the online archive because we pay for the paper subscription...

Cost analysis:

- What the publisher pays for: Cursory editing. Web hosting. Paper, printing and postage.

- What the publisher charges: tens of thousands of pounds/dollars per year and institution. Having a de-facto monopoly on an important journal, they bundle it with less popular publications to hide the price.

The alternative: Open access journals. Drawback: It doesn't work.

The model: the author pays for being published. It's a few thousand pounds per article, which an academic without a grant just doesn't have. If you do apply for a grant, there is provision for it, but at the same time you are supposed to keep the cost down. And if you do get the money, you are tempted to spend it on something more useful and publish with Elsevier.

The solution:Beats me. Either a wholesale switch to open access (with changes in funding to allow/enforce this), or a slow drift to slightly more reasonable publishers.

Target audience

It's not for the leather-clad Neanderthal with an anger management problem who wants to go 150 mph when the cops aren't watching. It's for the commuter who wants to travel at any speed != 0 on the M25 (or its LA equivalent).

As for sound: if in the din of city traffic you rely on people hearing you coming, you are already betting your life on wrong expectations. Have you noticed the funny wires coming out of everybody's ears lately?

Paris, because the chick-attraction potential may be one of the few weaknesses. But being fortyish (going on fiftyish) and in a midlife crisis, not even a Harley would help.

Taxi?

Re the various comments about emergencies and otherwise unpredictable needs for a car: There's a tried and tested fallback option available, used by many who don't have any car: It's a technology called "Taxi". You spend 20p on a phone call and 20 pounds on the ride (which would have cost you 2 pounds in petrol in an old-fashioned car). If the emergency happens every day, keep your petrol car. If it's once a week, charge your E-car fully all the time at a higher price. If it's once a month, the taxi is cheaper. It's a simple optimisation problem, and you may need to adjust your response to the pricing structure and your circumstances.

Verified by Visa

Slightly off-topic, but one of my pet hates: How do you encourage people to write down their passwords and carry them around or store them in multiple places?

- Demand inanely long/complicated passwords that no-one will remember. Unless it's one permanent one that you could learn by heart.

- Force the user to change it after a small number of unsuccessful attempts, even if at different times. ("Twice wrong already. I'll better try the third time from home, after looking up that piece of paper.")

- Disallow resetting it to a previously used one. ("OK, I jumped through the hoops with birthdate etc. once, but now I do remember." Nice try. So much about learning by heart.)

- Give the impression that stealing minutes and hours from a user's life gives some kind of unbreakable security, when all a crim would actually need is the credit card (easily stolen) and the birthdate (was there a driving licence in that wallet too?).

Back to on-topic: I cam assure you that the biweekly change of password won't make it into my will. It doesn't always make it onto the piece of paper at home.

Tolkien

I don't know about the spelling of dwar{ve,f}s, but Tolkein is definitely wrong!

A bit one-sided

> Perhaps. I've made similar arguments in the past.

My opinions may have changed, but not the fact that I'm right (Ashleigh Brilliant). You're inviting a cheap shot (hereby delivered).

> The moment it's perceived self-interest is furthered by contributing rather than

> free-riding, Amazon will contribute. And not until then.

The managers at Amazon know as much about the future as you, I, and your average astrologer. They make decisions based on company culture, prejudices, hunches, and untroubled by any technical knowledge. So Amazon doesn't contribute; Google does; pretty much any HW manufacturer does... Some companies do, some don't. Success and failure can be found on both sides of the fence (which isn't even a fence, but rather a broad continuum).

I don't know _WHY_ FOSS is successful. In an economic system explicitly based on selfishness and competition, it shouldn't. And yet, since I entered IT more than 20 years ago, when it was a ridiculed idea espoused by a bunch of hippies, it has developed into a billion-dollar industry. The likes of IBM, SGI, Intel, Sun (OK, they went bust, but so did many others) keep investing money into it. Red Hat and Google have built empires on it. All of them following the capitalist maxim of increasing shareholder value and crushing the competition. I don't know why, but enough of those hard-nosed capitalists see an advantage in being part of it. Not to mention the army of volunteers who contribute for a bit of short-term professional recognition.

Log on procedure

Their change (card reader required; up to now this was only the case if you transferred money out of your account) seems to be meant to increase the bank's security by making it tedious and not worthwhile to use internet banking. They seem to be rowing back now, with some "two--step process" (whatever that may be) that doesn't require the card reader.

Slight mistake

You forgot a factor of 2. Every anti-hydrogen atom will also turn one normal proton (and electron) into energy. So you would get 22, not 11, billionths of a joule. Still won't heat the coffee, but I'm feeling pedantic today.

The truth

It has all been said on the Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/massive-flow-of-bullshit-continues-to-gush-from-bp,17564/

Statistics

That's not "32% of notebook owners" who are affected. It's 32% of stolen laptops. For any meaningful international comparison, you would have to relate it to the number of laptops in circulation. Maybe they just nick even more computers outside the home in other countries, or maybe not. We don't know.

Climate Change

I thought according to The Register there is no such thing?

It's a rain coat...

What about the user?

Most of the comments are from the developer's point of view. I don't know Python, and I don't want to learn it. My typical scenario is that I download a tar file of a chemical visualisation program (there are several written in Python) that a couple of grad students wrote five years ago. That today's developers of different codes "saw it coming" doesn't help me one bit!

In my experience, already 2.2/3/4 were not really compatible.

The only choice in Scotland

Credit where it's due: for years, Windows Live has shown our area with reasonable accuracy. Google still thinks the interesting part of the world ends at the Forth (i.e. with Edinburgh).

This was an invitation to cheap quips for the less intelligent readers. It's the one with the tartan...

The answer to the wrong question

If you have the plastic bags collected and isolated, you may as well just burn them and use the energy, instead of burning coal/oil, producing the same amount of CO2. OK, you could add those bacteria to the landfill and make things rot a bit faster.

The problem with plastic bags is that you don't get them nicely isolated (I know, some supermarkets try via recycling boxes). If you're lucky, they end up as part of general trash. If you're unlucky, they adorn a tree near your home or are worn around the neck by a dolphin.

Ban them!

habeas corpus

Isn't habeas corpus about the body of the accused, who has to be physically present when charged and tried, rather than that of the victim?

...because I'd like to have the body.

They all do it

About 10 years ago, I wrote down a few model numbers and prices for wireless phones at a Comet outlet in London (just as a first attempt on looking what's on the market, having no idea what to look out for). We were asked to leave the store. We had bought all our white goods from them a year earlier, but I have never entered a Comet since.

So what?

I don't know about Dolphins, but I see what plastic bags do to the countryside. The victims are humans who have to look at them every day. Ban them, and plastic bottles too! A Punishment fit for the person who designed the Lucozade bottle has yet to be devised.