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Comment Re:I have to agree (Score 1) 728

by koinu (#38941691) Attached to: No Pardon For Turing
No. They could officially make a statement that the man is NOT a criminal (this means "pardon") and it was a terribly wrong thing to push him to suicide because of that (this is an "apology").
Science

Researchers Feel Pressure To Cite Superfluous Papers 107

Posted by Soulskill from the academia-nuts dept.
ananyo writes "One in five academics in a variety of social science and business fields say they have been asked to pad their papers with superfluous references in order to get published. The figures, from a survey published in the journal Science (abstract), also suggest that journal editors strategically target junior faculty, who in turn were more willing to acquiesce. The controversial practice is not new: those studying publication ethics have for many years noted that some editors encourage extra references in order to boost a journal's impact factor (a measure of the average number of citations an article in the journal receives over two years). But the survey is the first to try to quantify what it calls 'coercive citation,' and shows that this is 'uncomfortably common.' Perhaps the most striking finding of the survey was that although 86% of the respondents said that coercion was inappropriate, and 81% thought it damaged a journal's prestige, 57% said they would add superfluous citations to a paper before submitting it to a journal known to coerce. However, figures from Thomson Reuters suggest that social-science journals tend to have more self-citations than basic-science journals."

Comment Re:c't (Score 2) 562

by koinu (#38855461) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Does Europe Have Better Magazines Than the US?

There is an electronic version called "Heise.de" (in form of a website with forums) that you can use, if you want. It is different from the paper version, because no one would buy it anymore, of course. It's the publishing company that brings c't and iX.

I visit the German version (classic view) quite regularly, because the forum discussions are fun and it is my number 1 bookmark. This is comparable to Slashdot in my opinion and has funny troll threads. ;) There is also an version in English that is probably not that busy as the German one and does not publish as many articles. I think they would, if they had more visitors. So it's up to you to make it big, because the competence is available there.

Btw, I can see articles quite frequently here on Slashdot that originate from Heise.de.
Books

Apple Nets 350K Textbook Downloads In 3 Days 376

Posted by Soulskill from the but-what-do-we-leave-on-the-teacher's-desk dept.
redletterdave writes "On Jan. 19, Apple introduced iBooks 2, its digital solution to the physical textbook. In the first three days of release, users have downloaded more than 350,000 e-textbooks from the new platform, and more than 90,000 users have downloaded the authoring tool to make those e-textbooks, called iBooks Author. It makes sense that Apple's iBooks 2 platform is taking off in such a short period of time; there is very little merit to the physical textbook, and the education industry has been waiting for a viable solution like this for some time. Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."
Google

Google Updates Algorithm To Punish Websites With Excessive Ads 321

Posted by samzenpus from the killing-the-Interstitial-ads dept.
hypnosec writes "Google has decided to take punitive actions against those websites that flood the top of their web pages with ads due to which the visitors have to scroll down to finally view the relevant contents on the page. According to Google, this type of layouts annoys the users and thus the web search company will be penalizing those websites through search results. The company disclosed this on its blog. According to Google over the top ads is not good for user experience and thus such websites might not get high ranking on Google web search."

Comment Openbox (Score 1) 357

by koinu (#38462732) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Assembling a Linux Desktop Environment From Parts?

I changed from Gnome2 to Openbox, because I don't want to have any Lennartware on my system anymore. I deselected every kind of crap Lennart made and now... I'm somehow happy, although, I would like to have a nicer file manager that cooperates with automounter instead of any HAL shit. (Btw, don't tell me about udev... I'm using FreeBSD and not Linux.)

Here my desktop:

  • OpenBox
  • xfe
  • lxpanel
  • conky
  • xscreensaver
  • slim
  • gtk-murrine-engine + Orta as GTK theme

My fav applications:

  • chromium
  • claws-mail
  • xterm + screen
  • irssi
  • thunderbird (only for calendar with lightning; claws-mail is a better mail client)
  • libreoffice
  • gimp + inkscape + eog
  • deadbeef + mplayer

Comment Re:There's no debate. The GPL doesn't promote free (Score 1) 480

by koinu (#38117454) Attached to: Andrew Tanenbaum On Minix, Linux, BSD, and Licensing
This has nothing to do with anarchy. BSDL is simply protecting the developer's rights and this is most essential part of a license. A developer does not like to be sued, if someone gets shot in the foot while using a piece of software. And nothing is further enforced on the users of the software.

Comment I have (Score 1, Funny) 480

by koinu (#38117302) Attached to: Andrew Tanenbaum On Minix, Linux, BSD, and Licensing

I started on Linux, too (about 1997). And one time (in 1998), I've been talking with a colleague about licenses. I told him, I really don't care if someone uses my code, I just don't want to get sued, if they use it wrong. He told me that I might be more compatible with the "BSD philosophy" instead of GNU's GPL. And he was correct. I informed myself about it and landed on FreeBSD (in 2001), because of the fantastic application support ("FreeBSD ports collection").

Now, I'm trying to use Linux from time to time (almost every year I try it), but it has nothing to offer for me and it lacks some basic features that are included in FreeBSD and which I really need.

Comment Re:Was boring to me (Score 1) 220

by koinu (#38010050) Attached to: A Cognitive Teardown of Angry Birds
Yupp... me too. This game is too stupid, in my opinion. I absolutely hate typical casual games. I like arcade style games.

A secret tip: "Muramasa: The Demon Blade" on Wii (2D, simple beat'em up side-scroller, made with much love, action, arcade)

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