FTFA: "the 'new' DPR, who either cribbed his handle from the DPR of SR 1.0 fame or who is indeed the original DPR"

I don't think that works the way you (the editor) think it works...

Seriously, do the people posting these stories ever read TFA?

"The metallic oxides are not *melted as with aluminum* but blended in powder form with a molten salt that serves as a medium and electrolyte."

Wrong! The Hall-Héroult process (main Al production method) is exactly that! Dissolving alumina in molten cryolite to allow electrolysis without heating to alumina's melting point.

So actually the apparent amazing breakthrough turns out to be, "oh hey, they found a new solvent to dissolve things in".

Accurate facts please guys, leave the sensationalising by omission to the tabloids.

And look at how well that has gone for us...

A great many countries require their citizens to carry ID cards, and many that don't still issue them. All countries issue passports. There's your physical "outside the internet" ID verification system. All I'm suggesting is the logical extensional step.

Yet again, we see how it is currently impossible to verify identities on the internet. I personally don't find it too hard to envisage a system wherein it is actually possibly to identify a person via the certificate they present.

At some point we were always going to need to have personal digital certificates, surely in the age we live in, with the extent to which the internet is integrated into our lives, some form of GPG-alike certificate ought to be part of our national ID-card/whatever.

Anyone else feel we are getting to the point where that needs to happen?

Hi AC,

I clearly should have added "written on my Mac" to the bottom of that post then.

And don't get me wrong, I own an ebook reader and for some things, scientific papers included I think it's great. Still, having etextbooks just doesn't make up for being able to have multiple books open on my desk, not being tied to a platform, and being able to get books out of the library, a point I initially missed. My university, department, and research group all have great libraries, which could well die a death in the DRM laden ebook world. I can see that eventually pricing a lot of students out of the market. In reach of my desk at the moment I have ~£1500 worth of reference books, just about all from the library. There is no way that is sustainable in the Apple model of the education world, but it could happen if publishers all decide that ebooks are the future.

"As for padding Apple's coffers, their agency model of pricing is the same or LOWER than Amazon, and if you think big publishing houses are giving you a bigger cut as an author then you are deluded." That I can't put figures on but then odds are you can't either. But if you think that any multinational in the modern world, will even think twice about squeezing a captive audience as hard as it can then YOU are deluded. Reel them in with a good deal, then screw them once they are stuck. Happens everywhere, every time.

I will freely admit to having a grandstanding moment wrt to the whole Foxconn plant thing, but I still find the idea of labour camp esque factories abhorrent, and though sadly for the tech I essentially *need* to have, i.e a computer of some kind, mobile phone of some kind, I still do my best to find the least unethical manufacturer I can, (hollow laughter).

-FS-

"Physical textbooks lack portability, durability, accessibility, consistent quality, interactivity and searchability, and they're not environmentally friendly."

For me studying physics every day the e-textbook is still years away from being useful. I can agree with the portability argument but thats about it. I can, with a real, physical textbook have the following advantages over an iTextBook however:

- drop a textbook without breaking it, and even if I damage it I can still use it, not wait for my insurer to maybe replace it because the screen shattered

- flick open at the index and quickly find what I want, and flick back and forth between sticky marked pages, and generally navigate a real book a lot faster

- have several books open on my desk at once - rather a necessity for any scientist

- be sure that the textbook I have bought is decent, well edited, well peer reviewed and correct, because it came from an internationally renowned publisher not "#physicsgeek78695#", as Apple seem to want to make the e-textbook market the same as the Android App Store

- keep a real book if I decide to change my computer manufacturer, phone, name, credit card number etc.

- Be sure that my textbook, while murdering some tree somewhere and not being 100% green and hippy, did not cause several factory workers to jump to their deaths, add to the toll of heavy metal pollution in east asian watercourses, or pad the coffers of Apple in preference to the Authors who sweated over the book. Odds are Apple will take a bigger cut than conventional publishers, because brand power means they can.

Just my $0.02

I believe that's kinda the parent poster's point. For a windows developer MS make their proprietary C# language easy, and C hard work. Now for most stuff that's fine, but sometimes a lower level language is needed. Ever tried writing a kernel mode driver in C#?

They need to make sure they invest in rural areas not the cities, city BB is already pretty good for most people whereas over here at least rural broadband is either a joke/nonexistent.

As a city dweller who has experienced the "Advances" offered by BT's infinity service I can assure anyone wondering about this that there is no point at all in rolling out FTTC in the city as the advantages /at the current time/ are negligible, whereas in the countryside, where villages don't have their own exchange there is a much greater need for Fibre Rollout, example from my own experience follows:

I live in Manchester ~1.5mi from the exchange and get almost identical line speeds on standard ADSL2+ to that delivered by BTs infinity service using VDSL ( difference of 2.5Mb/s in 20+ Mb/s, no server is ever going allocate that much bandwidth to a connection these days so it doesn't matter. Ping speeds and other latency/loss metrics were no better on infinity and in some cases actually a little worse, probably due to the extra hardware between me and the exchange.

Combine these facts with the ridiculous cost of BT infinity with it's 27mins of full speed downloading per month (as noted above) vs a truly unlimited ADSL2+ plan from the like of BE and there really is no surprise people aren't switching.

OTOH there are people like my parents, who live in a village ~5 miles from the exchange where the "broadband" speeds are a joke. On their "up to 24 MB" ADSL2+ connection they get 236/644 kb/s DOWN/UP. Now if BT are really interested both in useful returns on their investment and actually providing a /good service/ to all their customers, (yes I'm an idealist I know) then they should really be spending their money, and the governments money connecting these rural communities to a decent internet service, as I know that my parents and just about anyone else in the village will jump at the chance to have a connection that is actually up to streaming video, and has sufficiently good line metrics to make online gaming possible.

PS. another 500yds down the road from them there is no available landline internet at all, so much for the governments pledge to get all households on broadband by 20xx, at this rate I don't see it happening until 21xx!

And how is this different from an employer? The folks who pay the bills--pay for the labs and computers and lights and empty the trash bins--own the work. If you want to own your work, then work for yourself. Otherwise, that is the trade you make in exchange for salary, stipend, tuition, or whatever.

Okay so some research council gives the money for the research, and the the University gets the rewards? As far as I see it universities should be in the business of education and research, not profiteering. If anyone should own the IP it should be the taxpayers, it's originally their money afterall.

How does the U make a profit on your idea if it never sees the light of day? Doesn't the profit motive give the U incentive to get your innovations out to the world?

My point is that the Uni shouldn't be trying to make a profit on MY idea, I am a researcher, doing moral science for the benefit of the world, not trying to make a quick buck. I am never going to personally make an attempt to turn my research into a real world machine, rather I am saying "Hey Guys, look at the neat stuff this means we might do, look what it could do for the world, go make it!", and the whole idea of some guy sitting in an office somewhere, divining a myriad of different things the research could mean, and arbitrarily patenting them to make sure the university gets money, goes against my whole idea of what scientific study is about.

So expect people to carry that burden, then just give away the results at the end?

No, real world things have to cost money, to develop and make and run, the commercial enterprise of getting a product out to market and into use will always be profit driven.

The difference comes with the research and the science done to begin with, perhaps the distinction appears more subtle to others than to me, but I believe that all the research, done in the spirit of science and human improvement, should be available freely to the world, not locked up behind patent law and available only to the highest bidder.

As an example:

Extract from the University Of Manchester IP Ltd Website http://www.umip.com/university_policy.htm:

The University of Manchester, through the provisions of the Patents Act 1977 and the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, owns the intellectual property rights (IPR) in patentable inventions, computer software, designs and other copyrightable material arising from the research activities of its staff.

The nett income from exploitation is shared with staff and their departments and in accordance with a reward scheme approved by the University's Board of Governors.

I am third year physics student in the UK, hoping to go on to do PHD work in one of the nuclear energy fields, most likely fusion research. The big thing that has worried me for a while is the possibility that I can make a discovery only to have the University I work for pounce on it with patents and copyrighting that prevent the unhindered use of that discovery to improve the world.

I'm not for a moment bigheaded enough to think I would make such a discovery personally, but the concept is a frightening one; the idea that a technology that could revolutionize some part of our world never seeing the light of day, because an academic institution is more interested in profiteering than in actually furthering the cause of science.

As a previous poster (RightwingNutJob) said "Moral science isn't about publishing (peer-reviewed) papers for all to see. Moral science is about understanding the world For the Betterment of Mankind."

Problem is investing in development of real world things from this research is costly, and not always successful. If before even starting on the research a company has to pay through the nose to license the idea, that makes said company less likely to bother in the first place surely?

Open Source University Anyone?

Actually more likely referring to this kind of thing, far better quality sound for a start: http://www.instructables.com/id/Build-A-Plasma-Speaker/