how habitable is the earth?

If you have any interest in futurism and possible extra-solar habitation (ie living on other planets) this is an excellent post by an excellent author

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/10/how_habitable_is_the_earth.html

The rise of journal sharing?

There is a very interesting (and short paper) on the impact of and ease of illegal sharing of journal articles here.

For those of the tl;dr (too long didn't read) variety basically a large number of journals that practice closed access (you have to pay to read articles) are having their articles shared via websites etc. The estimated cost of one of these websites to the 2,000 odd journals whose articles were republished as $1.4Million (based on $30.00 per article).

I'm not a big fan of intellectual property (IP) laws (maybe because I have nothing to protect) but I feel that several things have come into play in recent years. The IP laws are now as likely to protect large companies from individuals as the opposite (in fact more likely as an individual will rarely have the resources to cover legal costs) and the rise of the internet which has blurred the line of what can actually be protected. Is code something that you can patent? that particular bit of code or the concept behind it. These issues have already been met by firstly music, then movies and now slowly the publishing world (look at the trouble google is having with news that they license and various books).

In the case of scientific publishing the real question is whether we should pay for information. Prior to the internet a lot of the work of publishers was exactly that: editing and publishing articles that would then be bound together and sent to those who were interested often costing a lot of money in the process. Now in the publishing world most of the work is done electronically, editing and organisation of the information is still important but the cost of actually printing the article is often no longer an issues as people will read the papers online. Should we then be paying up to $30 for an article?

I don't think we should. Information is at its best when everyone can access it, creating a situation in which multiple people can all review and learn from someone's contribution is far preferable to creating an arbitrary barrier for people to cross. This is especially true in the case of the sciences where people are interested but only a very minor percentage will want to pay up to $100 for a paper that they're only interested in browsing. The upshot of charging people to learn is that you create a capitalist market for information. On the internet this means that people will go where it's freely available (eg wikipedia) or where it's free but wrong (eg Answers in Genesis). As part of the purpose of science is the propagation of knowledge forcing people to pay to get good information seems counter-intuitive. This is more of a problem now when information is so freely available in general and people are treating science more and more like magic: either something to be feared or avoided as un-knowable. Giving good and easy access to genuine science will mean that those who are interested can get hold of the actual information that is needed and make their own mind up about it. I'm not saying this will stop websites like Age of autism from spreading misinformation but with access to genuine papers on vaccines or the LHC people who might otherwise take these websites at face value (especially when presented with the scientific world hiding its information behind a pay wall) they may read up and find out the real facts.

While this is a very similar situation to the one found in the entertainment industry I think the subtle differences make the case stronger for open access journals. While the entertainment industry should be free in some form (I pay for the cinema and yet still insists on adverts why!?) funded through pay-to-dodge ads or a pay-to-own system etc. The journals system should be completely free, a lot of journals already have adverts if these moved onto their websites in a "pay for the ad free premium version" system I would be more than happy.

"It's only a theory"

Interesting program on BBC iPlayer called "It's only a theory" hosted by Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter, first episode has a very interesting man on talking about the possibility that the first 1,000 year old person has probably already been born. Seems to be a reasonable argument based on bell curve concepts.

The idea is that people being born now will likely have access to technology that will extend their life significantly and once they get old (again) the process will repeat to the point that essentially life will be sustained ad finatum.

The guy presenting the argument is awesome (HUGE beard) bit of a strange program not too well created, interesting idea with a reasonable approach to science but somewhat trying to hard for jokes that aren't really there.

Further VHDL adventures

Well I've finally made my shiny toy do something vaguely useful. With the amazing power of science (and several weeks hard work/hackery of other's code) I've made my board into an 8-bit binary to hexdecimal converter. It does this by changing the output of the seven-segment LED display to the relevant character based on the position of the 8 sliders.

That's about it. Next stop something genuinely useful.

First week

Well half way through my first week as a PhD (well technically MPhil) student and what have I learnt? Mainly that PhDs HURT I've spent the last 2 days trying to cram the better part of a terms worth of electronics (well logic mainly) into my brain. Doing fairly well so far.

I have also learnt that there are far too many annoying webmail systems that don't sync with stuff properly also that the new Microsoft Outlook live sucks utter balls.

anyway that's all I have to report at the moment (yes this was a worthless post but no one reads this so sod it).

will maybe post something more substantial soon when I think of it.

The obligatory late post

Hello again! I'm back (well while I remember this anyway). Various things to report: firstly I'm heading into a PhD so back to uni very soon (which is just awesome!) Also in a new flat (that's my excuse for lack of posts anyway) and finally loving the iPhone - if you use the net a lot while on the go get one.

Anyway on to something slightly less egotistical: interesting developments. The main thing of interest to me at the moment has been the prospect of building a CNC Milling machine (basically a computer controlled router - the type for carving). This is a project between me and a friend and we're hoping to start on it very soon. This will mean I should have access to an amazing carving machine: essentially plug in the information for what you want to build and it will (so long as it can be carved from a block of whatever).

Other cool gubbins that has been circling is that I've recently finished Iain Bank's "Crow Road" this is an amazing book if quite sad. Well worth a read.

Anyway looks like I can't think of much else to post and I'm ready to install Dawn of War II so I'm off to enjoy that

New Comic

Hey Guys,

I'm back again (briefly) to post a link to this a comic a friend of mine is drawing. Should be a good read once a week so take a look - only one up at the moment though so not too much to worry about.

In other news I'm still fighting with VHDL and my lazyness in trying to get my JAVA-fu going again. Will be posting up some more games reviews soon as well (mainly once I've got some second games down), I'm hoping to put up reviews for 'Race for the Galaxy' and 'Crunch' I've had a single game of RftG and a few of crunch and both are very good. As I'm off to a games club tomorrow I should hopefully have a few more games down to pass judgement on.