I never partook in the “extended warranty” offers most computer equipment suppliers proposed to sell me at checkout, but I know many who have. One needed to call it today, highlighting another hidden reason why these plans are a bad idea:
They give you refurbished replacement parts.
Both Google and Yahoo! were started by two Ph. D. students who decided they had more important things to complete than their dissertations. I find that funny as I try against all odds to change the very structure of modern academia rather than working on my dissertation 🙂
(Of course, my dissertation’s basically done already. Writing it was never the problem.)
Seriously, though, I think that there’s something about writing a dissertation that makes you realize there are more important things in life.
The academic publishing model has always been a strange one: scientists publish articles for free, journals insist on taking the copyrights from these authors, and then have the audacity to charge viewers for access to work they had no part in creating!
This seemed so wrong to me that I started writing a long essay on the problem back in 2004, which I never finished because the open access movement started to take hold soon after (so there was no need).
Despite the growing popularity of the open-access movement, many journals still remain closed. Well, what happened to music seems about to happen to academic publishing.
The Pirate Bay is launching a new site called The Student Bay. I can’t read Swedish, but my guess is that it will trade academic material, copyrighted or otherwise.
Now, I don’t condone piracy in and of itself. However, I do embrace making learning material universally accessible, and I view the universal right to learn as a higher right in my moral hierarchy than copyright. I’m not simply saying this from the student’s end, either: I have plenty of IP of my own, which I’ve always given away freely. This includes my academic papers, which I’ve usually posted on my own site for people to read following publication.
Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that I view this as a very positive development. I suspect that authors themselves will upload their works here; certainly I am considering it. And that is going to make things very hard for journals, because there’s a good chance that the first lawsuit brought against an author for infringement on his own work will provoke a sweeping reform of the system itself. This would be suicide for the journals.
They’re parasites. I can’t say I’d be sad to see them go.
A tipping point is when a small change to input results in a large change in output. For example, when you arrive at the bus terminal at 9:31 and the next bus doesn’t leave until 10 – a change of one minute costs a half hour 🙂
Legal language is funny. Corporations require a registered agent to receive any “service of process”. The verb “serve” seems to be used in the same sense it is used by high schoolers: “You got served!”
Flexibility is not being able to shift your schedule by one or two hours a day a week in advance. Flexibility is going home when you’re finished with your work for the day 🙂
Nothing is quite as flexible as setting your own schedule, of course.
In an effort to avoid spam filters, spam mail is getting more and more abstract. I’m getting things like “make your machine run better”, which confused me the first time I saw it, as it sounded like it was pushing computer hardware upgrades at first glance.
Anyway, if this trend continues, pretty soon they’ll start saying things like “Y your X in the Z!” That would be awesome.
This doesn’t always work well, though. For instance, I just got an email from a diploma mill stating “Bachel0rs, mast3rs, MBA, or D0ctorate”. Anyone who is stupid enough to respond to an email that’s afraid to print the word “Bachelors” in full deserves what he gets.
Temple has existed for over a century and is just drawing up its first strategic plan now.
How does an organization even exist for that long without having a plan? Anyway, they’re soliciting fellows to help with the process.
It’s a chance to give input regardless of how late it may be, and there is a lot I think can be improved about the university, so I agreed to participate in helping the provost draw it up. It should actually be quite fun, and valuable experience for Polymath.
It’s funny; in my time at Monmouth and Temple, I’ve already accumulated a pretty substantial amount of experience with how universities operate. It definitely helped shape my views.
I ran Metasquarer for 10 years on nothing but word of mouth, but not a month after its release, the new iPhone version of Metasquares has probably already surpassed it in popularity, despite currently lacking a good deal of its features. It’s a prime example of why marketing is necessary.
I’ve recently started experimenting with cooking, where intuition plays a very large role. I don’t consider cooking a skill to master so much as an algorithm for making lunch, but every so often I end up with something interesting. What I made today was very good (“savory” is the best way to describe it), so I’m posting the recipe:
Note that numbers are approximate; I just sort of mixed stuff without measuring 🙂
2 tbsp. oil
1 dozen Shiitake mushrooms
1 tsp. butter
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 egg
Assorted vegetables (onions, scallions, and carrots work well; others may too)
1/8 cup of soy sauce
1/2-1 tbsp. mirin
1/2 tbsp. Thai chili sauce
Heat oil on medium flame, add mushrooms, butter, garlic, soy sauce, and vegetables. Cook for approx. 2 min., then add egg and remaining sauces. Lower flame a bit to prevent burning and splattering. Continue to cook until lightly browned.