Harlan K Sheppard - Slashdot User

Submission + - XKCD's Author's New Unpublished Book Becomes Scientific Best-Seller (beyond-black-friday.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15, 2015 @05:47PM

An anonymous reader writes: XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe will be publishing a new book in November, but it's already become Amazon's #1 best-seller in two “Science & Math” subcategories, for mechanics and scientific instruments. Inspired by a cartoon describing NASA's Saturn V rocket as "the up-goer V", Randall's created a large-format collection of blueprints describing datacenters, tectonic plates, and even the controls in an airplane cockpit — using only the thousand most common English words. "Since this book explains things, I’ve called it Thing Explainer," Randall writes on the XKCD blog, trying to mimic the humourously simple style of his book. Randall's previous book of scientific hypotheticals — published one year ago — is still Amazon's #1 best-selling book in their "Physics" category, ranking higher than Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time."

Submission + - Paywalled science journals under fire again (theguardian.com)

Submitted by The Real Dr John on Saturday August 15, 2015 @03:19PM

The Real Dr John writes: Emeritus professor Stephen Leeder was sacked by the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) in April after challenging a decision to outsource some of the journal’s functions to the world’s biggest scientific publisher, Elsevier. This month he will address a symposium at the State Library of NSW where academics will discuss how to fight what they describe as the commodification of knowledge. Alex Holcombe, an associate professor of psychology who will also be presenting at the symposium, said the business model of some of the major academic publishers was more profitable than owning a gold mine. Some of the 1,600 titles published by Elsevier charged institutions more than $19,000 for an annual subscription to just one journal. The Springer group, which publishes more than 2,000 titles, charges more than $21,000 for access to some of its titles. “The mining giant Rio Tinto has a profit margin of about 23%,” Holcombe said. “Elsevier consistently comes in at around 37%.

Open access publishing is catching on, but it requires researchers to pay up to $3000 to get a single open access article published. What other options are there for making scientific publications available to everyone?

Submission + - The Challenge of Working at Amazon (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15, 2015 @08:58AM

An anonymous reader writes: The NY Times has a length exposé on the working conditions within Jeff Bezos's Amazon. "Even as the company tests delivery by drone and ways to restock toilet paper at the push of a bathroom button, it is conducting a little-known experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers, redrawing the boundaries of what is acceptable." Over 100 current and former employees were interviewed for the article, and they painted a picture of a demanding and punishing workplace that people tolerate in exchange for the ability to create. "In contrast to companies where declarations about their philosophy amount to vague platitudes, Amazon has rules that are part of its daily language and rituals, used in hiring, cited at meetings and quoted in food-truck lines at lunchtime. Some Amazonians say they teach them to their children." Of course, this attitude causes problems for people whose lives don't allow them extreme levels of effort: "The mother of the stillborn child soon left Amazon. 'I had just experienced the most devastating event in my life,' the woman recalled via email, only to be told her performance would be monitored 'to make sure my focus stayed on my job.'"

Submission + - Lexus creates a hoverboard (usatoday.com)

Submitted by walterbyrd on Wednesday June 24, 2015 @04:22PM

walterbyrd writes: Lexus says it won't be sold. It's for demonstration purposes. It operates using magnetic levitation, with liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors and permanent magnets that "combine to allow Lexus to create the impossible." It says it is working with the world's leading experts in super-conductive technology.

Comment Re:It is time to get up one way or the other (Score 1) 1089

by Harlan K Sheppard on Sunday March 22, 2015 @09:00AM (#49312721) Attached to: Obama: Maybe It's Time For Mandatory Voting In US

>If they were interested, they'd have voted without it being mandatory Nope. A lot of those people would have voted were it not for voter disenfranchisement, having to work (yeah, your employer has to let you vote, but they don't have to pay you while you're gone, and they don't have to give you any extra hours to make up the time missed while voting), not having an address (you didn't forget about the homeless who can't vote absentee and usually can't even register because they don't have an address, did you?).

This assertion above is incorrect. Here in Hawaii, you are guaranteed two hours away from work. Furthermore, you will be paid for those hours upon furnishing the receipt from the polls to your employer. Rights vary by state. My cursory glance at the first list shows that blue states tend to offer the same, with Texas being a noteworthy addition. However, most 'red' states that permit such reserve the right to determine the hours that the employee may go.

Source: http://www.findlaw.com/voting-...
Source: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/... (Hawaii Revised Statutes, 11-95 Employees entitled to leave on election day for voting.)

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