Mirk - Slashdot User

Submission + - PeerJ is changing everything in academic publishing (techdirt.com)

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Mirk

on Tuesday February 12, 2013 @06:21PM

Mirk writes: "Academic researchers want to make their papers open access for the world to read. If they use traditional publishers like Elsevier, Springer or Taylor & Francis, they'll be charged $3000 to bring their work out from behind the paywall. But PeerJ, a new megajournal launched today and funded by Tim O'Reilly, publishes open access articles for $99. That's not done by cutting corners: the editorial process is thorough, and they use rigorous peer-review. The cost savings come from running lean and mean on a born-digital system. The initial batch of 30 papers includes one on a Penn and Teller trick and one on the long necks of dinosaurs."

Submission + - Petition Obama to mandate free access to research (access2research.org)

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Mirk

on Monday May 21, 2012 @07:19AM

Mirk writes: "The UK and the European Union are both in the process of introducing mandates that all publicly funded research must be publicly accessible. At the moment, the USA has no concrete plans to do the same. But Open Access advocates have the ear of Obama's scientific advisor and think there's a good chance this could change — PROVIDED that citizens show it's an issue we care about. So please sign the Whitehouse.org petition at http://wh.gov/6TH"

Submission + - Doctor Who: first impressions of the 11th Doctor (wordpress.com)

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Mirk

on Saturday April 03, 2010 @05:08PM

Mirk writes: "The first episode of Doctor Who's new series 5 has just aired on BBC1 in the UK. This is an important episode for the show because so much has changed: Matt Smith plays the new Doctor, replacing David Tennant, and Karen Gillan portrays a new companion, Amy Pond. Maybe most important, Russell T. Davies is replaced as showrunner by Stephen Moffat, who's known for acclaimed Doctor Who scripts including The Empty Child and Blink. The Reinvigorated Programmer offers an early review of the new Doctor, companion, showrunner, and series."

Submission + - Programming the Commodore 64: The Definitive Guide (wordpress.com)

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Mirk

on Saturday March 13, 2010 @07:38AM

Mirk writes: "Back in 1985 it was possible to understand the whole computer, from the hardware up through device drivers and the kernel through to the high-level language that came burned into the ROMs (even if it was only Microsoft BASIC). The Reinvigorated Programmer revisits R. C. West's classic and exhaustive book Programming the Commodore 64 and laments the decline of that sort of comprehensive Deep Knowing."

Submission + - The value of BASIC as a first programming language (wordpress.com) 2

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Mirk

on Tuesday March 09, 2010 @05:34PM

Mirk writes: "Computer-science legend Edsger W. Dijkstra famously wrote: "It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration". The Reinvigorated Programmer argues that the world is full of excellent programmers who cut their teeth on BASIC, and suggests it could even be BECAUSE they started out with BASIC."

Submission + - Whatever happened to programming? (wordpress.com)

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Mirk

on Saturday March 06, 2010 @06:46PM

Mirk writes: "In a recent interview, Don Knuth wrote: "the way a lot of programming goes today isn't any fun because it's just plugging in magic incantations — combine somebody else's software and start it up." The Reinvigorated Programmer laments how much of our "programming" time is spent pasting not-quite-compatible libraries together and patching around the edges."

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