My opinion is that every new printed book should have a free ebook 'companion' version available right on release, obtainable with some code/qr from the printed book, with let's say a 6 months expiration date. Then, the ones who have the printed version could purchase the electronic version for let's say 5% of the printed price, and for 20% if you don't have the printed version.

I'm sure I wasn't the first to think of such a scheme, but it seems they just don't want the ebook market to grow 100x faster than it is now, so they don't implement such a structure.

And that's exactly why I never bought any electronic book. The only electronic reading material I ever bought are scientific articles, and even that is very rare, since I find most of them for free somewhere, or get it directly from the authors.

Oh, most certainly you can do a postdoc. And you don't even have to be a postdoc for it :D

Anyway, on the serious side, postdoc jobs mean one thing: working for food. But, there are much worse places to do that than at some university's research lab, so at least you might be at a nice place to be exploited while you figure out a). where to go to actually make some money and then leave, or b). that you can't actually get a job where you could make money so you get stuck. Problem is when one gets to be a postdoc at 27-28 years of age - calculating with 5 years university and 3-5 years until the phd degree, which is pretty normal -, and realizing you're just starting to - eventually - earn some real money, with some friends having got to well-paying positions during those 3-5 years you've spent for that degree.

Especially since there are now companies who actually don't want to hire phd's based on some weird philosophies. Go figure.

It sounds best with an Italian accent :)

So, 'Monitor How You Drive Can Be a Good Thing'. Maybe it can. Problem is, how we drive and how they think we drive will never mean the same.

Firstly, dangerous drivers who present the most risk are not those, who drive faster, make one or two sudden moves from time to time, or drive more than the average. Dangerous drivers are those who can't drive fast enough - ever been in a jam caused by some idots holding everyone back? -, those who can't drive safely according to environmental conditions - ever seen Californians drive in a rain? -, those who are not patient enough - remember those idiots jumping lanes like a kangoroo? -, those who aretoo inexperienced to judge any traffic situation and cause even more trouble, and so on and so forth.

Secondly, if they are not there, and can't judge the circumstances, than they are in no position to make decisions on how safely we drive. They can calculate your prices based on the speeds you drive at, the roads you drive on, the moves you make, and while they all might be safe and adhering to current traffic situations, you might still end up paying more.

This is all too short to speak about all relevant issues, but all things considered, I'll never opt for monitoring-based payments. If my fees will be higher because of this, I'll still be fine with that, since at least they won't lie to my face about how honestly and objectively and correctly they calculated those fees.

Quickoffice? How is ths news? Not long back they made it free, and we even got free extra Google Drive space for downloading and installing it. And it doesn't need to be KitKat, it works with earlier versions as well.

Again, how is this news?

Right.

"However, switch to what is the question?"

oovoo

No, seriously, http://www.oovoo.com./ While the name is idiotic, been using it - along with skype - for a few years now on windows and android, and it's quite alright.

While I could definitely see the benefits of eliminating unnecessary risks from the road, my problem with approximations is that they seldomly come true. While the number of accidents might decrease, that doesn't mean the number of incidents will. E.g. autonomous vehicles can also brake down, algorithms can go haywire, situations can occur when prompt human intervention would be important (and won't happen since they are not paying attention), etc. etc.

One situation where I'd really welcome more self-driving vehicles is in southern CA during rains. Yes, they are rare, however, most people drive like idiots during rainfall, and accidents become much more frequent. Probably because they have so little experience in driving in rainy conditions, so they drive too close to each other, or drive too fast, or drive to slow, and one more thing: they make me lose my temper :) which I really don't like. So yeah, bring self-driving cars on.

Just please, pretty please, make'm so that the autonomous driving mode can be disabled for the times when you actually want to enjoy a nice driving-around from time to time.

Well, I'd be interested to hear him actually pronounce that: 'Oh god, a fuel cell is so bull@%!#'. He knows it, we know it, everyone knows it, so why the hell can't we write the proper word. Ehh.

"good for consumers" of course, and I'd also add 'Think of the children!'.

Back in the days U.S. broadband was a dream for most, higher speeds and lower costs than almost anywhere else. Then times have changed, first by gradually increasing prices to a point where broadband in the U.S. can't be considered cheap anymore (some prices are simply hilarious), and now they come and tell us that going back in the early broadband days when because of the developing infrastructure and a large number of users we had datacaps almost everywhere. And they even tell us that it'll be good for us. Come on! I'd take a slower (by not much, however) uncapped connection over a faster capped one any day. Data caps are only good for the provider, plain and simple (i.e. they can slow down development, and increase profits over the existing infrastructure for a longer time period, who wouldn't want that?). Trying to argue that it's the other way around is a lie, yet they will easily get away with it and we all will suffer the consequences - the most important of which will be increased prices (again).

"Functionality is more important than security."

For average users, quite true. Non-average users, or ones that really want to keep their communications secret, also know that, and they don't use those services. That's why it makes so many people angry that the communications of masses of people are watched, probably 99.999% of the time totally unnecessarily. of course, there's the good old catch-22 as well, since if they wouldn't watch the common channels, criminals wouldn't need to find better ways to communicate. So, as always, the majority of innocent people get hassled for the hope that the lives of the few criminals become harder. Well, a false hope (you all know Newton's 3rd law, right?), but still a hope.

"About a third come to IT with degrees in business, social sciences or other nontechnical fields, while more than 40% of computer support specialists and a third of computer systems administrators don't have a college degree at all!"

Unfortunately this is probably similar in a lot of other countries as well. A lot of people get degrees that they can't build upon later (either because the market is full, or because demand was not there in the first place) so they fill jobs which could've been taken by people who actually got the proper degrees. Also, they are cheaper for hire at the beginning, since they need to accumulate experience, but after a while there'll be no difference, and companies will prefer experience over qualifications in a lot of cases. Universities should really need to have a reality check when accepting people for certain degrees, since there are always fluctuations in every society and every economy in the need for certain qualifications.

I'd start by saying that I'm bigger than the average. Still, having sat in the slim seats for several travels, I have to say they are more comfortable than the old ones, even in a 3-4-3 row setting. I actually feel like having more leg space (especially for my knees) even if the seat in front of me is reclined. If they all will be like the slim seats on transatlantic LH flights, then I'd take them anytime over the old style seats.

"Many programmers have to re-orient themselves from orthodox object-oriented development, and shift to a world in which data structures are transparent but the behavior â" the transformation â" is not."

No, they most absolutely do not. Ideas come and go, and if programmers would 're-orient' themselves each time, they would be spinning endlessly and not get any work done.

As always, choose the proper approach, the proper tools, the proper environment, the proper language, and do the job. Let the idiots 're-orient' themselves however often they want to.

"theyâ(TM)ve made the mistake of not understanding how their motivation differs from the rest of us"

I think we understand all too well the rest of you, who don't care about anything. The problem is: we don't care about you. There, you have it. We don't want a device that's dumbed, locked, tailored to noob-level, without a way to customize it. We have a lot of examples for such designs, and they are all too idiotically dumb. You want "simple"? Find one that is dumb enough for you, but do not try to ruin the one mobile OS that' actually usable for power users as well as average joes who are only a bit smarter than a shoelace.

In all seriousness, I - as a researcher myself - understand the need of easy access to publications. However, I never supported the open access models that came into existence and are being built and pursued today. Why? Because it's all about the money and a lot of such journals absolutely do not care about quality, or about having big name editors who'd perform very thorough revision of reviews and make proper decisions about paper acceptances. Big journals have good editorial and review staff, and they simply can't allow them to be bad and irresponsible, because they actually care about their reputation and credibility. New breed open access journals on the other hand only care about revenue.

The instititue I work at has mandated open access publication as well as others did, however, they did not provide funding for us to actually publish open access versions at big name journals, so we try to play the system whenever we can, and publish in traditional journals with traditional publication schemes. I do not care about some politician-flavored scientists' (most of them not even publishing) dreams about some utopistic open access world. I care about publications appearing in credible journals, reviewed by credible people, producing quality publications - even if they are only attainable for money.