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from the why-pay-twice-when-you-can-pay-three-times-for-the-same-data dept.
The bad blood and high prices with academic publishing houses go back many years. Now the German Rectors' Conference (HRK) has issued a press release regarding the publisher Elesevier's unacceptable demands on the academic community, forcing the community's hand to suspend even negotiations. The HRK is the association of public and government-recognised universities in Germany consisting of 268 member institutions, in which around 94 percent of all students in Germany are enrolled. The German universities, like those in other countries, have been wishing to move to Open Access but have been stymied for decades by the big publishing houses.
“As far as we’re concerned, the aim of the ongoing negotiations with the three biggest academic publishers is to develop a future-oriented model for the publishing and reading of scientific literature. What we want is to bring an end to the pricing trend for academic journals that has the potential to prove disastrous for libraries as it stands. We are also working to promote open access, with a view to essentially making the results of publicly funded research freely accessible. The publishers should play a crucial role in achieving this. We have our sights set on a sustainable publish and read model, which means fair payment for publication and unrestricted availability for readers afterwards. Elsevier, however, is still not willing to offer a deal in the form of a nationwide agreement in Germany that responds to the needs of the academic community in line with the principles of open access and that is financially sustainable,” said Hippler.
The trouble shows no signs of abating. Even now, in a case of the fox watching the hen house, these problematic publishers have inserted themselves between the EU money and the universities even in the matter of advancing open access.
From HRK's web site: DEAL and Elsevier negotiations: Elsevier demands unacceptable for the academic community
(Score: 3, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday July 09 2018, @07:36PM (12 children)
It's called paper.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @07:44PM (1 child)
Interesting. How often do you need to charge the battery for that paper you speak of?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @10:15PM
To the humorless who moded the comment above "Redundant" (let it be, I don't complain).
Consider this piece of old (2011) news: A Magazine Is an iPad That Does Not Work [google.com].
The girl subject of the movie clip is now 8 years old, by the time she'll reach post-graduate age is almost sure the science magazines will be absolutely digital in the distribution/storage format, no "print-on-demand" whatsoever offered by publisher/curator.
(my point: the "how often do you need to recharge that paper" kinda makes sense, dontcha think?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Monday July 09 2018, @08:26PM (3 children)
I agree that it's the superior product. It's just a matter of who is going to be responsible for that GIANT archive that will grow fairly rapidly on a near daily basis. I'm sure someone will want to do that, it's just once again going to cost a boatload of money.
There are quite a few european, and other, nations now that have cancelled, or not renewed, deals with Elsevier so it is starting to be an issue of another central repository which does all the good things but none of the bad things that Elsevier does/did. I'm not sure it's going to be better to say all just migrating away to Google Scholar or whatnot. Google Scholar is both quite nice and also a giant pit of crap.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @09:02PM (2 children)
Not necessarily. There's a large amount of ... mmm.. 'papers' on paper. In libraries already. The ones that aren't, can be downloaded and taken offline for the use while inside the library.
For the new ones... publishing of scientific articles is just a matter of management of a trivial process (keep track or reviewers, send the new papers to review, collate the reviews and relay them to the author, catalogue and make available the article to be published) - I don't see why a bunch of bureaucrats with a bunch of digital archivists can't do the job while paid by a super-state organization which can afford to finance CERN, it's not like the mercantile Elsevier bunch invented something that only they can do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Monday July 09 2018, @11:08PM (1 child)
There might be similarities but I'm not sure it's the same, not to mention I'm fairly certain that most books in the library gets read a lot more then most research papers. Still what you are proposing will take massive amounts of cash and time, everything is trivial in theory and hard as fuck and takes a real long time in reality. Certainly something such as gathering, indexing, scanning, archiving and then also handing out all the papers. It won't be free (it might be free to read but unless all the librarians etc are going to work for free someone is paying). Should it be national or international? Lots of probably interesting things never gets seen cause of language barriers and just poor searching and archiving.
Anecdotal evidence time. Since March of this year I have been looking for a research paper that was written in 2015. It was done for a local government agency and they did order it and they did receive it. But they can't find it anymore. They have been searching now for about three months. There are no paper copies, no books, no digital copies. The researchers that wrote it can't find their copy, their university library doesn't have a copy either even tho they have it in the digital archive for citation purposes just not the actual text (so I'm not sure who is ever going to cite that), my university doesn't have one either, the national archive doesn't have one either. So this is just a report written a few years ago and it's already apparently lost even in this "fantastic" digital age. So there is something to be said for those wonderful deadtree copies. They tend to be occupy space and collect dust somewhere.
I don't mind if all the pointless bad research is just kept digital or just piped almost instantly to /dev/null but for things that might actual matter I would prefer an actual physical copy being stored someplace to.
I'm fairly sure CERN isn't free. It's paid for by all the members and probably also grants and what else there is. Perhaps it could be an EU project to finance this, sadly it's the EU so I'm sure it will all go to shit and then all the papers will also have to be translated to French and the library will have to move every other week or so to another city in France or else they'll be all pissy about it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @11:52PM
Of course it isn't free. It's a socialized cost - everybody is paying, everybody has access to the benefits of it (CERN - by the results obtained, the library/Open Journal - probably free access for everybody interested).
But I can guarantee it's cheaper than what Elsevier propose as prices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @09:15PM (4 children)
Kind of a pain to search.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:33PM (3 children)
> Kind of a pain to search.
That's what grad students are for. Do you want to automate them out of a job too??!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:50PM (2 children)
Yes?
But it's ok, because they'll just get jobs as grad student robot technicians....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:08AM (1 child)
So much for romance between grad students in the library stacks.
Yet another loss from the current race to the bottom that we (collectively) are engaged in.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:53PM
Loss? The gains outweigh the losses! Think of grad students freed from onerous tasks such as searching through mountains of papers. They will have more free time to spend on their education and, of course, romance. There are many other places for a little privacy. Most classrooms aren't occupied 100% of the time....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:55AM
Space for shelves costs money.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Freeman on Monday July 09 2018, @08:03PM (6 children)
While I get the possibility of boosting growth in certain areas that aren't likely to garner private interest. The publishers are just part of a system that's designed to leech as much money from the government as possible.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Informative) by edIII on Monday July 09 2018, @11:03PM (5 children)
Kill the publishers. I don't mean homicide, but the removal of publishers from the equation entirely. 100 years ago you needed a publisher, and farther back the lack of communication is what allowed people to invent/discover nearly at the same time. Which represents work being repeated. Back when publishing meant paper, it required a lot of work to distribute, edit, etc. That service was legit valuable and needed to be compensated, irrespective of the discussion of profit in scientific publications.
These days self publishing is entirely within the capabilities of the scientist, and it can be very cheap and affordable. You need editors or fact checkers? Community to the rescue. Something like Freenet would work very well here. Various universities and institutions can host their own servers, and the scientists themselves could maintain the encryption codes that allow them to modify their documents. Open Access is the only way forward that makes sense with today's technologies, and that's well in line with the thinking that the taxpayer has free access to the results of publicly funded science.
Elsevier is on the "craic" so to speak thinking they can charge the taxpayer thousands upon thousands upon thousands to access all the research said taxpayer funded. They act so wounded that we want to deny the shareholders profit. Rent seeking bastards running a horse and buggy whip industry. Unless I'm wrong and there is something that Elsevier is providing of such clear value to us all?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:41PM (2 children)
> You need editors or fact checkers? Community to the rescue.
It all sounds so easy the way you write it. But I'm a peer reviewer for an engineering society and they have to twist my arm to review papers -- many of the submissions are crap and hardly worth my time to read (but I do it because every now and then there is a gem that raises the bar).
The society is always casting around for additional reviewers who are qualified and will take time out of a busy schedule to read and comment, in a timely and helpful manner.
I don't claim that Elsevier-in-particular is needed, but there needs to be paid staff to run the review process or it probably will fall apart, deadlines not met, etc.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday July 10 2018, @12:37AM (1 child)
American Physical Society runs a lot of not-for-profit journals (Physical Review). I have reviewed and published with them occasionally, they seem to be in general a good crowd. Their model seems to work just fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @03:09AM
But APS does run their journals as a profit center to fund other society activities. Look at their annual report which includes financials. To publish an open access paper with APS is outrageously expensive. If your mission is to support physics research, don't make people be who write papers support shenanigans like fancy award dinners.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:53AM (1 child)
Was that ALL bad?
When you had multiple people and/or teams working on the same thing, in effect, you had your peer review all done, almost immediately.
Compare that to today, when any lackwit can play around in his imagination, play around some more on a computer, then publish a "paper". How many studies have recently been refuted as utter bullshit? How many studies have not actually been refuted, but simply cannot be reproduced?
Those old days had some advantages over today's scientists and wannabe scientists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @03:22PM
Does not sound far wrong!
I'd only add that nothing exists that is more than 2 years old and you put 10 freebie authors (all Chinese) on your paper in return for being on theirs.
Congratulations! System broken.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday July 09 2018, @10:03PM (4 children)
If Elsevier doesn't cooperate, then the research community shouldn't cooperate with them either.
Just make research grants dependent on signing that you won't publish your results in Elsevier journals. If they don't get any papers, what do you think how long they will survive?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday July 09 2018, @10:53PM (2 children)
Sadly a fairly long time, it's sitting on a giant archive of material all ready. It's sort of like whomever owns the musical rights to say the Beatles or Michael Jackson etc. Nothing new is produced, once in a blue moon some compilation is created and in the meantime they rake in the cash every time someone downloads a paper (or listens to that song). I'm sure Elsevier will publish like "Best of " or "Top X " compilations or some crap if nothing else and sell that in book form to all the institutions that doesn't wanna subscribe or whomever.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:03PM (1 child)
Because I've never seen someone make the same error I'm gonna go all pedantic.
All ready = everyone is ready
Already = happened before
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:52PM
Good grief. Somebody is -1 redundant happy today.
*incoming -1 redundant mod*
Oh shi--!
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Tuesday July 10 2018, @08:30AM
If Elsevier doesn't cooperate, then the research community shouldn't cooperate with them either.
The researchers are still not enough on their guard. Elsevier has wormed its way into a major EU project which prior to Elsevier joining was about advancing open science. Argue with some of these people and the generic response is that they assert that Elsevier says it has changed and improved. Obviously not all are that dumb but enough in influential positions are, apparently. Glyn Moody, who has been following open access developments closely for a long time, has writen about that under the title Elsevier Will Monitor Open Science In EU Using Measurement System That Favors Its Own Titles [techdirt.com]. That's conflict of interest, not hitting them in the wallet.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @10:06PM (37 children)
They are stifling the advancement of the entire planet by restricting access to knowledge, often funded by tax dollars.
(Score: -1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 09 2018, @10:15PM (36 children)
There's a lesson here all budding socialists would to well to heed. Under socialism, or more specifically communism since that is what socialism pretty much always turns into right off the bat, government supported monopolies do not decrease but become the norm.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @10:23PM (25 children)
Except that in socialism (or even the disguise of communism I lived in, Uni time included) the access to the (available) scientific papers were unrestricted - no need to pay for them.
Even those with a reduced number of copies, you could read them while inside the library. You didn't even needed to be a student to access them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 09 2018, @11:30PM (20 children)
Talk to a Russian who lived through the USSR. Talk to a Venezuelan. Talk to a Cuban. Ask them how many things are locked up under government monopoly. Free? Only if those providing them are getting a massively overpaid government contract to do so. But wait, if you pay taxes that are horribly mismanaged and blown on outright corruption to pay for the service then it's not really anything like free, is it?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday July 09 2018, @11:47PM (19 children)
Why should I talk to them? I lived under a crypto-communist regime until the age of 25, secret police and lacking the basics and all that included**.
I think I know what is to live those conditions better than you could ever imagine based on your "intellectually" (but without direct experience) principles.
---
** (a thing is clear - the education, school and life, was better than what I can see around me now).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @06:07AM (18 children)
Nostalgia is one of the great delusions of our lives. There are still people who pine for the days of "Uncle Joe" Stalin.
The simple rebuttal is that if everything was so much better, then why did it get worse? Answer: those educated people in that better "life" made it so.
You can "think" whatever you want. People who actually live under those conditions sometimes agree, but sometimes don't. The problem is that the crazy bullshit that they might misremember is crazier than anything you've ever experienced. For example [google.com]:
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @06:38AM (7 children)
But... surprise... it got better. One of the reasons of the revolutions in East Europe was a massive presence of 'intelligentsia' (educated people), with a mindset at odds with repressive regimes, usually able to see beyond the propaganda veil. For the same reason, don't expect though that the same agree with the other extreme, the unregulated capitalism.
Look, mate, I'll be grateful to you if you spare me of citations. I lived them in real life, I can guarantee you you know nothing by reading and citing the above.
You will need to be there to feel how your palm hurt after half an hour of applauding with false enthusiasm and in cadence, not at a congress, but to a public speech outside. That after you were present since 5:30AM, winter time, in the public space where the "meeting" was scheduled to take place around noon, on well below zero centigrade. Nobody left until the speaker didn't. The frostbites typically healed after 2-3 days, but my joints learn the rheumatism by heart since those times, couldn't get them to 'unlearn'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:23PM (6 children)
Revolutions which never went [wikipedia.org] anywhere. The Eastern Bloc system collapsed only when the USSR did and that didn't happen because of a massive presence of intelligentsia, but because the economy was failing.
What unregulated capitalism? Sure, I get that your point isn't entirely a straw man. There are people who advocate for unregulated (by government that is!) capitalism. But even they acknowledge that someone does need to do the regulating whether it be customers, non profit independents, industry self-regulation, or whatever.
And of course, you fail to acknowledge the massive burden of regulation that exists. Just because one extreme is bad doesn't mean that a modest move in that direction (of less regulation in this case) is bad as well.
And as to the intelligentsia, most of them are just as profoundly ignorant of what capitalism is or does as any illiterate prole. Economics is a notable hole in the education of most such people. And well, that makes them not intelligentsia as a result with respect to economic matters.
Then why aren't you learning from that experience? And instead continuing to feed us this line of bullshit (claiming "the education, school and life, was better than what I can see around me now")?
Don't buy it. At least now, you have the freedom to leave whatever shithole country you currently live in and you have the freedom to post whatever you want here. And I doubt anyone is forcing you to risk frostbite for some outdoor public speech any more.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @05:41PM (5 children)
And you say it like it's a bad thing.
Never said it was a single one nor the main one.
It had however an important role: Gorby was intelligentsia and had the good sense to let it fall before a catastrophic social explosion.
At least, something could be salvaged at the time and the loss of life was well below any other revolutions.
Because I'm not interested in the topic. Not in this discussion. It was just a remark "en passant"
Just from curiosity: is economy the only think you value in this life?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @06:29PM (4 children)
You know, you never really said much at all. And needless to say, I don't buy that the "reason" was at all relevant to the revolutions in East Europe.
In other words, one person who had a material role in the collapse of the USSR could be tenuously identified with the category.
You seem to do that a lot - say things and then not really mean them when unpleasant reason enters the fray.
What is the definition of economics? Oxford Dictionary presents [oxforddictionaries.com] it as:
I think that's too limited since wealth in turn is money or valued possessions, leaving big holes like completely ignoring the category of services which aren't possessions or money of any sort.
My view is that economics is the study of the creation, trade, consumption, choices, etc of things we value from the scarce resources at our disposal. If we value a thing, be it concrete like a home or abstract like a purpose in life, we are willing to compromise our existing material state for that thing with the greater we value it the more we're willing to compromise for it. We make choices with trade offs to support the things that we value. Thus, everything of value has a place in economics, even the most vague and abstract. It's not that an economy is the only thing that I value. It's rather that by definition, everything that anyone values manifests in an economy in some way.
That makes economics and economies pretty valuable in their own right since they expedite our behaviors that lend value to the things that we value.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 11 2018, @01:29AM (3 children)
Thanks, I appreciated the sharing of your views on economy.
My last image about these views was shaped by a... let's call it conversation... that we had earlish in S/N time, when your thesis was "Everything of value about a man's life can be reduced to a monetary value".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 11 2018, @04:16AM (2 children)
Sounds like you misunderstood it profoundly. But I could see such a discussion coming say out of the poorly thought out assertion that there are things of value which can't be expressed in terms of monetary value. But as I point out above, if you value something, then you're willing to sacrifice for it. Nowadays, what you're willing to sacrifice for it can be crudely metered in terms of money. As I see it, the thing that you don't value enough to put up any money for it is a thing you don't really value.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 11 2018, @05:50AM (1 child)
I'm not going to put up money for my mother's love. Draw whatever conclusion you like from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:19PM
Assuming that's something you highly value, you've probably already put up significant money (and other compromises of your material state) for your mother's love. You just don't recognize them as such.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @07:29AM (9 children)
And just to be cleat what I meant to say: "the school education and life education - what you call 'school smart' and 'street smart' - were much better than what I see around me now".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:35PM (8 children)
So what did your school smart students know about economics and capitalism? Or of rhetoric and debate for that matter? Are you an indication of how ignorant the rest of them were?
Yes, someone in say, the USSR of the past would have been relatively likely to be educated (though only in what the government deemed safe to be educated in!) and street-smart (in order to survive), but the quality of life would have been shit because of the environment of fear, deprivation, and bullshit that surrounded them then.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @05:29PM (7 children)
A lot about theory, nothing about the practice. No, game theory and Nash equilibrium could not have been founded in communist countries, that's true.
One think most of the people of the time knew very well: one doesn't live to eat, but eat to live. All the same, they knew there's more to life than money
What do you think the current western population know about economics and capitalism? For that matter, what do you imagine you yourself know?
Same as any others in this world. There were taboo subjects on which no debate was possible, but don't think all topics were forbidden - one can debate endlessly on literature, film, etc.
And for the production of bullshit that should sound good or denounce the enemy? Mate, that was an art some followed to the point of mastery, too bad for them most of the population became immune to propaganda.
Have you stopped beating your wife, khallow? Is that all you can do in the matter of rhetoric?
You'd think I won't notice how you tried to slip in the idea of "the rest of them were ignorant" and wrap it into a personal sting, to have me jump into defending myself and let that idea unchallenged?
I see you keep rhetoric on a high value. At the time, that would put you on track towards the position of a mid-level politruk, spewing shit all day and having a better life for it than the rest. Not necessary making you respected by most of the population you'd interact with. MD-es, architects and many other professionals would have a better life too and the respect
As for me? I never cared about rhetoric, that's words play. I'd be grateful to you if you'll tone down the use of such artifices in our discussions.
Never said otherwise. And the relevance of you mentioning it is... exactly what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @06:46PM (6 children)
"there's more to life than money" - that's the ignorance talking right there. It's not about money, it's about making things people value happen and resolving the many conflicts that exist between those desires.
It depends on the people. But if you engage in industry, business, or trade (particularly, more than one at a time), then you know a lot more about economics as practiced on the societal level than someone who hasn't done that. I've done all three both in the real world and in a number of games with sophisticated economic systems. Which is why I imagine I know more than you, for example.
I think that's a large part on why otherwise educated people are so notable ignorant on economics. They aren't exposed to this aspect of the real world and hence, do not comprehend it. Constructing absurd stereotypes like equating economics with "money" is typical coping behavior for this ignorance.
This coming from the guy who just leadingly asked "is economy the only think you value in this life?" You've already thoroughly demonstrated your incompetence in rhetoric.
It's a key part of being able to reason and communicate. You should keep rhetoric on a high value too.
What's more important, a vague assertion that people in your experience are somewhat less educated and live less well, or concrete counterexamples where a single huge factor completely contradicts your frivolous observation?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)
One doesn't need the figures of speech to reason and one can still communicate without any intentions to be persuasive.
Your argument is not convincing, khallow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 11 2018, @04:25AM
One needs something along the lines of rhetoric in order to reason. A good example in this thread is the discussion of fallacies - the study of and methods for dealing with them are a big part of rhetoric.
Communicate poorly, that is. You're not reporting soccer statistics or the weather.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:36AM (3 children)
You raised a loaded question involving me, I considered insuling the implication I'll be unable to detect the load and answered in kind. In your reply, you didn't even bother to deny it was loaded.
And yes, I never pretended I'm competent in using rhetoric, I really cannot care less - as an engineer, is more of a hindrance than a useful tool, especially when I'm doing my job communicating in a non-native language.As such, any effort you spent in 'thorougly demonstrateting my incompetence in rhetoric' is a waste of time.
As, I believe, it is any effort to demonstrate a level of competence in anything regarding me - it's inconsequential in the context of S/N.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 11 2018, @12:59AM (2 children)
No, I didn't. Let us recall that "Have you stopped beating your wife?" is not automatically a leading question. If the subject has indeed persistently beaten their wife in the past (rather than merely being insinuated to have done so via rhetorical trick), then it can be merely a request for factual information. Similarly, you have repeatedly demonstrated ignorance of matters economic and rhetorical. So it is reasonable to ask, when you claim that the students of the past who presumably shared your educational trajectory and experiences are better educated and experienced than today, also share your demonstrated gaping holes of knowledge and bias? If so, then maybe they're not as educated as you claim and maybe today is not as bad as presented either.
You didn't have to post before thinking in the first place. Is it really better to do all this face saving after the fact?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday July 11 2018, @01:23AM (1 child)
I don't need to save face.
Take the hint, khallow, you'll waste less time - I'm not at all interested in presenting a face, much less in saving it. Especially on S/N and especially for you. Trying to mount an attack on my S/N persona is a waste of time.
The above and this very one is "for your information". Your choice if you'll use this info for your benefit or not.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday July 11 2018, @04:17AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:34PM (1 child)
Wha wha whaaaaaatttt?
TMB is being a jackass again trying to push his personal politics in ways that don't work? WHAAATTT??
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday July 10 2018, @12:04AM
Shocking! Absolutely Shocking! The irony has gone to Titaniory!!
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 10 2018, @01:49PM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @05:45PM
Yes, but they weren't common, the access to them very tightly controlled and were most of the time defect.
Taking handwritten notes had the added benefit that you'd need to understand what's useful to you before you left the library.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Monday July 09 2018, @11:28PM (4 children)
That's bullshit though. How does Communism play into this? LOL.
The problem you may be alluding to is when we allow private entities to participate in something we wish to "socialize". What I hear when somebody says Socialism, is that they want me to pay for my fair share for something. That something having demonstrable value to so much of society, that it makes sense we all want to do it together. I remember what you said about the taxpayer paying Anthropological studies, but this is about providing access for the taxpayer to ALL publicly funded science. You're an intelligent guy, and I'm sure you want to look at the data too, not just the fucking abstract.
Disseminating information in science should be as close to free as possible. Look at the distribution infrastructure and management software that we have to do it with. Internet + modified Freenet solves this problem. We don't even need to create a massive bureaucracy that manages it, but allow institutions to self publish. If all you had to do was take a commodity server, running open source software, and install Freenet, those costs you would need to socialize are already paid for. The Internet exists, the laptops and servers scientists use already exist, the bandwidth is negligible (unless it's very large datasets), and universities have plenty of all of that.
You don't need a publisher, or greedy shareholders involved. All I can think of is when there are massive datasets associated with it, but that is a different problem that again would be solved by network and storage technologies. In that case I would rather pay the university or institution directly for a copy of the data sent to me on hard drives.
Socializing this makes perfect sense because there simply aren't enough costs and difficulty (unless artificial) that require private enterprise to come in and solve. We both know that scientific publications in general have sucked ass at the editing and fact checking department, so they provide nothing of value.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:36PM (3 children)
Now I KNOW you're not new around here, maybe just haven't been paying attention? That rotten meat eater only cares when things validate his world view. There are a lucky few times when he doesn't really care one way or another and then he is open to objectively looking at the data.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 09 2018, @11:55PM
[citation needed]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday July 10 2018, @04:44AM (1 child)
Ahhh, yes. The bash on TMB play. Sorry, but I give TMB just a little more credit than that. Plus, if you are attempting to have a genuine discussion with him, it is possible.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 10 2018, @10:23AM
Good, at least he'll be able to repay older debts.
---
Yes, it is possible, except that it's bloody improbable on certain topics.
Here [soylentnews.org] - I'm telling him I lived under a communist regime and he, who doesn't even want to know what's the definition of socialism, it "tutoring" me to speak with Cubans and what not.
Of course he lives with the impression he knows this topic so much better than everybody that the discussion with him is not a discussion, is him loving to hear his own magnificent voice as he types.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday July 10 2018, @12:14AM (2 children)
Of course government supported monopolies would become more common under Communism - it's more efficient than setting up multiple businesses/departments to do effectively the same thing. However, the Netherlands (where Elsevier is based) is not Communist - it's a Constitutional Monarchy that operates under the principles of Western Democracy. Sure, it may look Commie to you because they offer universal health care to their citizens, but _everywhere_ else in the world is Communist compared to the USA.
That has no relevance however to the behaviour of Elsevier, which is the actual point of the discussion in case you missed it. The organisation is acting in a decidedly dickish way, but that behaviour is far more common in corporations based in the US than anywhere else. Think Big Pharma, Disney, the Telcos etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:19AM
> that behaviour is far more common in corporations based in the US than anywhere else.
Maybe in absolute numbers because USA is much larger than Netherlands? But ratio this to the relative populations and I'll bet Netherlands looks just as bad, the Dutch have been tough dealers for many centuries. As well as Elsevier, there is Royal Dutch Shell, Dutch East India companies, and a bunch more -- here's a partial list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Multinational_companies_headquartered_in_the_Netherlands [wikipedia.org]
Compare to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Multinational_companies_headquartered_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 10 2018, @05:34AM
The absolutely most dickish corporation in history is the Congo Free State [wikipedia.org] (and should be standard reading for anyone who thinks capitalism can't lead to large scale genocide). It was a Belgian corporation not a US one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @03:37AM (1 child)
I thought the first thing that happens under socialism is land reform, where rent-seeking property owners lose their easy income. Elsevier would be nationalized in an instant.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday July 10 2018, @02:34PM
Socialism, being more liberal, would be perfectly happy with Elsevier continuing, owned by the workers and the academic contributors to its journals, and even rewarding them for their contributions.
Ironically, that would be less of a change, one simply needs to go on a straight line route via democratic socialism, but it's a change that's easier to resist, as it would take the might of an authoritarian, say communist, government to enforce you going the whole way. And if you're relying on that, you're sure to be taken on a swift detour into the ultimate in conservative governmental control, communism, which will never be yielded. (So yes, communism is needed to enforce you going the whole way, and then refuses to go the whole way, such is life.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 10 2018, @03:31AM
I hate Elsevier as much as the rest of you. But scientific publishing could use some innovation. Why are we stuck with full page PDFs that are a pain to read on small screens? Why is there no built-in computer algebra to check our math? Why can't I embed 3D graphics that the reader can explore? Why can't every paper list the main conclusions in a way that would be useful in computer aided reasoning?