July 8, 2008
Consider this comment by Anders Norgaard of Spain, on the current Open Access discussion:
...For society and everyone who is not Nature (or other Toll-Access, high overhead journals) the framing [of the discussion as provided by Nature] does not make sense. The debate is part of a broader debate of…
July 8, 2008
As I recently reported, there is an order of magnitude difference between the market share of Linux "out there" in the world, and the market share of LInux on Scienceblogs.com and on this very blog. Subsequently, I was trolled by my very own brother "... so, when is Luniux going to reach 1% market…
July 8, 2008
The Golden-winged Grosbeak - Socotra Grosbeak Rhynchostruthus socotranus shown in image - has been chosen as Yemen's national bird. Photo by Richard Porter The Golden-winged Grosbeak has been declared, by the Yemen Council of Ministers, to be the Yemen National Bird. This bird is endemic to…
July 8, 2008
First, an important note: According to what I've read lately the Reiser File System does have a maintainer, and should progress as a project. If you want, I can give you more details.
Now, for some breaking news just in (Hat tip: Virgil Samms)
CONVICTED MURDERER Hans Reiser led prosecutors and…
July 7, 2008
I've noticed that the current discussion of Open Access has produced, on my site, a high ratio of comments to visitors. There are very few people actually reading these posts (relatively speaking) but lots of talking.
Passionate positions among few people.
I would like to take this moment to…
July 7, 2008
(click on this picture to go to the map)
July 7, 2008
This:
Professor wants to observe illegal assisted suicides
Academic seeks understanding of the right-to-die movement
Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun
Published: Thursday, July 03, 2008
Canada's university professors are preparing to defend the right of a Metro Vancouver researcher to witness illegal…
July 7, 2008
Thanks to Evan I am now aware of LOLcode. I knew there was a proposal, but I had no idea how much it had advanced. LOLcode is being developed in a series of projects that I would divide into two categories: Bleeders and sneakers.
Bleeders are implementations in a particular interpreted language…
July 6, 2008
The Carnival of Cool Homeschoolers #3 is HERE at Homeschooled Twins.
Carnival of the Godless #95 is HERE at The Atheist Blogger.
Carnival of Space #61: Tunguska Edition is HERE at the bat page or something...
Carnival of the Liberals, 68th Edition is HERE at Atheist Revolution.
Bookworms…
July 6, 2008
Sourceforge.net has announced their 2008 Community Chocie Awards Finalists.
You get to vote (if you are a member). The final projects for Best Project category are:
Drupal
Firebird
FreeMind
KeePass Password Save
OpenOffice.org
PortableApps.com: Portable Software/USB
Sphinx
XAMPP
XBMC media…
July 6, 2008
OA pillars The following are excerpts from the journal Nature regarding the Public Library of Science. These were located with a simple search for the phrase "Public Library of Science." For each item, I provide the source, and a selected bit of text. I have no selection criteria to report…
July 6, 2008
I don't think you see this too often. It is my first. An LOL cat used in an actual commercial advertisement, in this case for an esoteric software development tool on a techie web site:
July 6, 2008
The Carnival of Cinema: Episode 81 - On the Bloggerfront
Carnival of Education (178th Edition)
Carnival of Homeschooling - Celebrating July 4th
Festival of the Trees
Friday Ark #198
The 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle
Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival: The Fourth Of July Everything…
July 5, 2008
I was looking for something else and came across this instead. I've seen this in person. There is probably a group like this in your neighborhood, check them out!
July 5, 2008
The House of Commons (U.K.) Select Committee on Science and Technology investigated Open Access publishing alternatives, and pursuant to this obtained written evidence from Nature Publishing Group consisting of answers to specific questions about "pay to publish." Here are excerpts from the…
July 5, 2008
Hans Reiser asks for a new lawyer (see below) This first item is not exclusively Linux at all...
Remember the effort by Firefox to break a downloading record? They did it. Guinness has given Firefox the record, officially. Over eight million hamburgers sold...
The de facto registrar of…
July 5, 2008
PLoS The flap that started with the ill advised commentary by Delcan Butler started out looking like it MIGHT be an Orwellian, perhaps Nixononian attempt by a well established publishing icon in the fields of science to damage an up and coming competitor, the Public Libary of Science in…
July 4, 2008
Nature (left) vs. OpenAccess A number of bloggers, including myself, had recently responded to a news item in Nature by suggesting that anti-OpenAccess and anti-PLoS position taken by the author, Delcan Butler, constituted an attack of one company against another. How silly of us to have done…
July 4, 2008
Ding dong.
The mo'fkr died on the Fourth of July. Probably on purpose.
Early on, his habit of blocking nominations and legislation won him a nickname of "Senator No." He delighted in forcing roll-call votes that required Democrats to take politically difficult votes on federal funding for art…
July 4, 2008
Cletus From the National Center for Science Education:
Over the protests of leading scientific organizations such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Louisiana's governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law,…
July 4, 2008
(... makes me laugh .. )
The previous Four Stone Hearth Anthropology Blog Carnival was Four Stone Hearth Number 43, here, at Swedish Extravagaza. It was the Lard Edition. Go check it out. The home page for Four Stone Hearth is here. The next edition, due on or about July 16th, will be at…
July 4, 2008
Ana One of my favorite commenters, and a good friend off line, known to you as Ana, is having a birthday today. Born on the Fourth of July, she is one of the most patriotic individuals I've ever met in my life. In a radical overthrow the government if necessary kind of way. Although we fight…
July 4, 2008
Leavitt Henrietta Swan Leavitt
You were born on this day in 1868, in Lancaster, Massachuetts. You figured out how to use Cepheids with the ultimate result of understanding the size and, in the end, the fundemental nature of the Cosmos. The Big Bang theory is based in part on your…
July 3, 2008
The Earth Today The Earth has moved as far from the sun as it typically gets, and like a ball that has been thrown into the air, stopping at its maximum height before plummeting back to earth, The Earth has slowed down to as slow as it typically gets.
Starting some time today, The Earth will…
July 3, 2008
In OpenOffice, the OpenSource office suite that beats the pants off of Microsoft Office in so many ways it is not funny, has long been able to save documents as pdf files. "So what?" you say, "I've always been able to do that with thisorthat add in."
Don't interrupt me. OpenOffice has always…
July 3, 2008
I have a partially written half baked (eventually to be fully baked) post expanding on Open Access publishing and the PLoS - Nature controversy (which is heating up quite nicely). But I may or may not finish it. What I do want to point out now is that I've made a couple of changes in my earlier…
July 3, 2008
I've noticed, of myself, lately, that I never have a knife or a bottle opener handy, but I was once the guy who always had a knife or a bottle opener handy. That is generally true of archaeologists, and I used to be a full time archaeologist. Originally, I assumed that my lack of preparedness…
