Many ejournals already have escrow mechanisms in place. Most research libraries won't give up print without it, and even if they do there are often agreements amongst groups of libraries that several will keep print copies (note: that is a UK perspective, YMMV)

I'm a librarian and you are very right that these are important things to consider.

However, most librarians that I know are committed to getting the information to the people who need it (in academic libraries, our faculty and students). You will find that libraries, including Harvard, are already investing in systems to make stuff available and easily searchable from a wide variety of sources: including all those in-house ad-hoc repositories you mention, open access sites like arXiv and pay-for material (where we can afford it).

What worries many librarians I know, is whether someone like Google can do it better, or whether we (with local knowledge of our academics) can add enough value to make it worthwhile to keep us. I think the jury is still out on that one, but it won't be for lack of effort on supporting our users

I'd be fascinated if you could provide some figures on this. I don't know which part of the world you're talking about, but I've worked in a number of UK universities and the opposite is true. It varies a bit from institution to institution, but student numbers have tripled or quadrupled in many places. Administrative staff numbers have not done the same - they've probably stayed the same. In my area, libraries, due to technology we actually employ less staff now than we did 30 years ago, and yet we serve a lot more students and open much longer hours. Some departments have a few more admin staff than they used to, but this was because that admin work was being done by lecturers and professors. It is better value for money to get admin staff to do that and get the academics to write grant proposals and publish research.

Totally agree.

I've seen the MST3K and the original version of both these and while there is some plot cut, in no way does it come close to saving these turkeys. They are both bad films and MST3K makes for a fun evening.

I can see where you're coming from. I've just tried my first conversation with Cleverbot, and while any judge would have be off their head to vote it human, it is at least entertainingly weird and I can see why some humans I know would get scored higher...

Me: Hello.
Cb: Hello?
Me: How are you?
Cb: Fine. How are you?
Me: Not too bad. bit of a cough.
Cb: Do you hear voices in your head?

That's wonderfully surreal...

It isn't possible. See the "Mathematics and Computers" section of the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChessChess article.

According to that article there are approx 10^123 positions in the game-tree. Given that there are about 10^78 atoms in the visible universe, building enough memory to store all the outcomes of a chess game is tricky...

Though not apparently as dead as Nietzsche.

I think you do if it is live, but not if you watch previous programmes - the difference between downloading and broadcast.

The only law I can see conflicting with the Freedom of Information Act, is the Data Protection Act. Data Protection deals with what you can do (or not) with information about individuals. Data Protection in general will override Freedom of Information (you can't make a FoI request to find out the home addresses of the institution's employees, for example.) However, in this case tree ring data is not about individuals, so Data Protection doesn't apply.

The only reason for not complying with a FoI request in this case is that it would be too costly to comply. It appears that the Commissioner disagreed with the University about this, so they must release the data.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I am interested to know why this is. Can you enlighten?

As the replies to your post show (and I can confirm through my own experience), most people I know who are on Virgin cable DO get very close to the advertised speeds. It is ADSL providers who have problems. That is not to say there aren't problems:

• They cap heavily at peak times if you start downloading/uploading lots of stuff
• The fibre comes no where near the home. Virgin don't appear to be making any effort to fix this, even with some old decaying coax in certain parts installed by one of the providers they took over
• They don't appear to be extending their network at all - and I'm not just referring to rural areas. There can be parts of major urban areas that weren't cabled by the original companies that Virgin acquired, and nothing has been done since

You can't run the software on the phones, though, with just the SDK. There is an iPhone simulator, but there are quite a few things it can't do.

How do you know they never consider it? I've not heard anything specific from NASA, but they do seem to have plenty of people who do dream up long terms plans and ideas. Don't forget that most of the people there read/watched science fiction just like we did and many of them were inspired to take up their careers at NASA because of it (see various bios on the NASA sire if you don't believe me).

The problem comes in turning those blue-sky ideas into reality. There is no 'just' when it comes to space. Whenever you find yourself asking, "Why can't they just..." it is almost always for a good reason. A mothership's a great idea, but how do you build one. You've got to get the parts into space. Are you going to test the nuclear propulsion? How long will this project last and will Congress give you the funds? These are the sort of real questions that need to be answered and have scuppered programmes before now (and look likely to scupper NASA's current plans - which are less ambitious than the mothership idea).

The way I look at things, I ask are they likely to cost a lot more than what is happening now. To do this, you need to assume there will be no miracle leap in technology in the short-medium term. For example, if raising parts to space cheaply relies on a space elevator, then rule out the short-medium term. Obviously, we have ideas that one could be built, but technological breakthroughs need to happen to make it a reality. While this is possible (and even likely, I hope), don't assume that we will have a functioning elevator within 20 years.

So, using only slight advances in current tech, could we build a mothership for approximately the same as what the ISS cost? I don't believe so - it would clearly need to be bigger and would involve research and testing in propulsion systems. Given that the US, Russia, ESA, Canada and Japan are struggling to find the cash to keep the ISS up beyond 2015 (when most of it is already built) who is going to fund and build the mothership?

Sorry to sound so negative, but I get fed up with all the unrealistic ideas and whining about NASA on Slashdot. Being a Brit with a government that does no funding of a manned space programme at all, I think they do a fantastic job given the resources they have to work with.

As something of an outsider (being British - we have no manned space programme at all which seems to suit the majority of the population here), it appears to me that there are lots of ideas - the problem is which one. NASA itself clearly has a very definite idea - Constellation, Orion, the flexible path leading to Mars. That is quite a definite vision for space exploration. However, lots of other people have other ideas and some of these people are very powerful.

Personally, I can't really comment which is better or not, but while America itself remains divided NASA will struggle. It needs serious funds for its programme.

Unfortunately, as far as I can see, the only part of America which doesn't seem to have a definite opinion yet is the White House - and that's the most crucial opinion of all. Of course, that is probably not true. I'm sure Obama does have an opinion. The worry for someone like me as a lover of manned space flight is that he would rather spend the money elsewhere but is afraid to go down in history as the President who killed the US manned space programme. Of course, it's not my taxes which will pay for it.

True, but the comment I was making was in relation to Google Scholar where it is surely reasonable to assume most publications are scholarly (as I said, the main Google index is a different thing). If you're not part of an institution when using Google Scholar it doesn't matter - you just decide whether or not to pay when you get to the site.

The other side of the whole debate is whether the scholarly papers (at least those paid for by taxpayers in democracies like the US or UK) should be paywalled. I didn't mention it cos it wasn't relevant to the reply I was making, but in case you decide to raise it I think we need to press ahead with the open repositories for papers (and find a mechanism of peer-review linked to it). As someone who works in a UK university library, I think it is something that libraries need to push up the political agenda rather than meekly following the publishers lead (i'm not advocating libraries break copyright, but we should be at the forefront of the copyright debate and not leave it to the Pirate Bay et al.)