The article talks about videos, a small subset of multimedia, and the same can be said about animations. Good use of multimedia IMO tends to be when you insert illustrations into a mainly textual context; these illustrations can themselves be animations, video clips or soundbites. The reason this works is that you are still the one that does the work by reading the text, and the illustrations serve to support the meaning of the text; but if the whole thing was produced as a video, you would in a sense outsource the important part of studying the subject - it would essentially be a sort of reading aloud. A comfortable format, but it doesn't teach you the essential skill of doing it on your own.

Some thing you can try out, but there's a lot that you really can't just try out, or which you try out by sitting down with pen and paper, trying to get your head around the concepts. Especially, I have to say, in mathematics. It is all very well to use a PC to draw graphs, but how about higher dimensions? Or objects in really exotic topologies? Abstract algebra? ... and so on; there are many things that are simply unlikely to benefit from the video.format, except to get you started a bit on the way in the elementary stages.

I agree wholeheartedly. I think audio works as a medium exactly because it is so limited; you only have the soundtrack, so you are forced express yourself well to sucessfully communicate the meaning. I have suffered through enough of these tele-conferences with demonstrations of software transmitted to multiple sites, to know how much it distracts, when the presenter struggles with bad technology, and on top of that had rather hoped that the demonstration would compensate for the lack of clear, verbal communication. I realise, of course, that there are things that require visual communication, but it amazing how much you can achieve with clear, verbal communication; a large proportion of presentation could be improved simply by dropping the visual part and working on explaining things in words.

You take the words right out of my mouth. There are many subjects that are not well suited to a video presentation; in fact, in my view there are very few subjects that benefit much from combining graphics, talk and soundtrack. Perhaps if you can't appreciate a mathematical subject as it is presented in its dry text form, then it isn't something you are likely to ever understand - the beauty lies in the insight it provides, 'wow factor' should be irrelevant.

I think one of the problems with the video format is that it entices you into being passive; when you read proof in a book, you get stuck from time to time because there are things you don't understand, so you look up the things you don't understand etc, but in a video you are carried on without understanding, and although it is easy enough to stop and rewind, you tend not to because you are passively watching a video. Also, studies have shown that people tend to remember and understand less of presentations involving graphics, text and speaking, because the three forms crowd each other out.

Look, we already know that global warming is happening and that it is caused or aggravated by human activities, and whatever we do to mitigate it, we will have to live with the consequences for a long time - thousands of years. So, the sensible thing to do under all circumstances, is to learn to live with it - and another sensible thing to do is to try to predict as best we can, what the consequences will be. There will most likely be huge migrations away from arid countries, for one thing, and unless we want to have all out war against desperate people, who have nothing to lose, we will need to find a way to integrate them. It is not unlikely that we will need to abandon some of the lower-lying areas if the seas-level rises, and so on.

There are still very good reasons to stop doing the things that cause massive disruption of our environment - we have to face up to the fact that we as a species have a huge impact on this planet. We have managed to almost completely cut down natural forest in most of the places we live, we routinely change the course of rivers, build dams, strip mine whole mountains, decimate fish stocks etc. How anybody can imagine that this won't have a serious impact on the way we live at some point is beyound me.

Incredibly, there are still people - intelligent and well-informed people, even - who refuse to accept that our current lifestyle is causing massive issues that can't simply be addressed with a bit of half-hearted recycling; we need to learn to economise our resources. According recent statistics, supermarkets throw out huge amounts of food unsold, and on top of that, people discard about half of what they have bought; to my limited understanding of maths, that means we could save hugely on the environment just by learning not to waste so much - without actually cutting back on our real consumption. In short: we can make a big difference simply by not being idiots.

No, that's the Stig, not the Dick. Or should that be 'Dr Who not Dr Who Cares'?

Oops, another 'troll -10' coming my way. Sigh.

Or a more tolerant outlook. TFA may not always be all that interessant to read, and anyway, the point is, should we mod people down for being too lazy to RTFA, when we are too lazy to type in a proper comment?

No, no, people kill, we all know that.

What is this about marking people down as 'troll' or similar for expressing a slight note of doubt? This is petty, at best - either reply with something intelligent or ignore it.

It doesn't help either, that most speedometers are deliberately set to show a speed 5 - 10% too high; if you compare your GPS speed with the meter speed, you'll probably see the difference. In my car, I can drive 55 mph before my GPS shows 50, and given that GPS relies on accurate timing to calculate the current position, it GPS speed must the the correct one.

One wonders how he greets people?

I have to say, this particular joke always gets me modded down below groundlevel, but I am hopeful it will do well in this setting. I would say that a few, saucy jokes is what being male is all about, although come to think of it, it's also what being female is all about, really. If you've ever happened to overhear a gaggle of girlfriends going at warp 5, you'll know us blokes have a thing or two to learn in that department. Still, it is good manners to tone it down when you have reason to think that other might feel embarrassed.

I don't know if women in general feel 'threatened' by male company - I suspect it is often more because there are some people who are on the lookout for reasons to feel outraged. On the other hand, I have several colleagues who are contemptuous about women, whether it is because they are just insecure or perhaps gay, who don't want to come out. Nothing wrong with being gay, but OTOH, nothing wrong with being female either.

Taking into account the rather tattered reputation Greenpeace seems to have on /. - perhaps emphasising this guys past involvement in the same is not the best way to give his words weight. And of course, when I read that he has gone from being the founder of what was always a 'leftist', anti-establishment organisation, to being a more right-wing person living off his past fame, then it seems to be simply what most most people do in their life; and he feels embarrassed and want to put some distance to his past.

Whatever the story may be, the science is science, and this article brings nothing new to the table - "climate change can't possibly be our fault, because who are we to think that we are so important?" - ignoring the fact that other species, and indeed the entirety of life, have a profound influence on the planet's climate, geology etc. Science does not postulate - it presents the facts, it tries to explain those facts, it submits itself to constant, critical scrutiny and gets new adjustments all the time. It leaves everybody to make up their own mind. But when you ask science for its advice on matters, you will get scientific advice - anything less would be dishonest.

I wouldn't say I'm upset, but I think it is in the nature of engineers and scientists - of which there are a fair few - to look at things from an analytical point of view: what are the merits, or weaknesses of something? To me, and to many with a background in engineering, how something looks or whether it will make you stand out as a fashion icon is either irrelevant or unwelcome, even to the extent that if I have to choose a tool, I will stay away from ones that seem to have been designed to look good, based on the suspicion that I would be paying more than it was worth. After all, as somebody who knows how digital equipment and the SW that goes with it are made, I am convinced that smartwatches are without exception overpriced crap - I could have done better.

A good, mechanical clock, on the other hand, is the result of REAL skill. I'm not sure I would be able to learn every step of the process; I respect that a lot.

Well, to be fair, although I see your point about being an idiot for wanting to pay tens of thousands for a thing that just tells the time, there is at least some justification in a sense, when what you are buying is a mechanical masterpiece made from a few, really rather simple bits, but engineering to a breathtaking standard of accuracy. You can understand why something like that would be expensive, even if you can point out that it is irrelevant for anybody in practical terms.

But a smart watch? It adds no actual value to its user, it is exclusively a way of telling the world that you are stupid and rich enough to not care about how you spend money; a fashion statement. And like all digital technology, it is dated as soon as you have bought it, because even before it goes on sale, the next, better version is already in the pipeline.

It's not without dangers, though. You might get someone in power who really, absolutely shouldn't be allowed anywhere near, and who could cause untold damage before he/she was stopped. Just imagine if people voted for some stupid bimbo from Alaska! Oh, wait, that almost happened, didn't it?

Mandatory voting is not a bad idea, really, but I'm not sure it is a good idea in a nation, where in principle any moron can get voted into a position with direct access to the world's largest arsenal of dangerous weapons. Perhaps if you guys had a political system more like in Northern Europe. Yes, it is inefficient and slow to react - that is very much the purpose. In war you may need fast decisions and a firm control, but in peace time you need to slow things down, so everybody has time to think, and you need to be sure that nobody can wield too much power, so that when the inevitable idiot comes along, he can't simply place his cup of coffee on it and say "Was that meant to happen?" when Moscow disappears under a mushroom cloud.

Seriously? I would have thought the only choice would be Linux. As a physicist you ought to be familiar with Linux/UNIX is some form, since *nix in some form is what tends to power most scientific systems - super computers and so on. You would not be unlikely to have a need for Fortran, which is available from GNU, or some of the many scientific tools - such as GAP. I'm not convinced Mathematica is top of the list of tools you are going to need, but then I've never actually had any use for it, personally, so maybe I am just biased. Have look around for what is actually available for scientists as open source, ready to be built and used on UNIX/Linux.

As far finding somebody who can help you - do you actually know from experience what you are talking about? With Linux, there are loads and loads of web sites addressing just about anything you could run into as well as many you are not likely to come across. And, of course, when you use Linux, you are going to learn a technology that covers not just a vast range of hardware, from ARM based thingies over PCs, midrange servers to the biggest you can imagine in mainframes and super computers, but also is valid across the many variants of UNIX. It is VERY easy to go into AIX, Solaris, HP-UX or others, when you are familiar with Linux. And as somebody pointed out - if you buy a Macbook, you can wipe it and install Linux, which you can then keep upgradign to the latest version for free; you can't install OSX on anything other Apple HW and as far as I know, it costs if you want to get the latest version.

Compare that with OSX or Windows: If you are an expert in those, that is all you know, really. PCs and mobiles, that about sums it up.