However there is also the loss of prestige for Elsevier.
MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.* The loss of MIT gives permission to other institutions who may be more concerned about reputation to do the same (they don’t want to generate whispers of “did they do this because they are having money troubles?”). It may also cause authors to submit other prestigious journals before elsevier ones.
* really any change in the top 10 ranked schools from year to year are just a kind of browning motion. They are as a group equally prestigious.
Yeah, that's an odd claim when it is more the adequate to say that MIT is closely observed by other technical institutions worldwide.
The difference in approach, outcome and size of expenditure between MIT and the University of California System in their negotiations with Elsevier interests university libraries everywhere when considering their own publications strategies. It is great that both institutions have been open about their budgets, their negotiation stance, and the outcome.
The fate of journals wax and wane, and for me the apex of el Reg was in the era of Andrew Orlowski and (RIP) Lester Haines (they overlapped). Orlowski knows his computing history and writes really well. Haines wrote not just knowledgeably but with a carefree humour that made you feel like he was smiling with you as you read his work. His loss was a real blow.
I still read it regularly, but some of the spirit has gone. But you never know -- someone new could show up and revive that joi deivivre je ne sais quoi. Haines definitely did that when he joined.
"these days"?
The goal is to memorize single digit products and use the multi-column algorithms when you need to do more digits. To which days are you referring where kids would be called upon to memorize multidigit multiplications?
In the 1980s I had a trapper keeper with a 12x12 table printed on it but even my seven year old ass knew back then that everything >10 was wasteful to memorize. :P
20 years ago my kid still had to learn up to 12x20. The 12s are pretty handy for a bunch of reasons, and especially if you live in the USA. Using base 10 for the metric system was a mistake.
Prize seems rather low. I imagine a waterproof robotic dog with a huge snorkel, a magnetometer, and a big grapple to hoist (not drag) munitions to shore. Different sizes for aircraft bombs and grenades (from a picture in the article -- I wouldn't have thought of that case).
SFR 50K would be a rounding error in developing that.
> It sort of raises the question of, could there be 1 universal language to query relational databases, text file storage (json, csv, etc), and anything else.
Sure there could be -- any turing-complete language (which SQL is) can query anything.
But the reason we have different programming languages* is because they have different affordances and make it easy to express certain things at the cost of being less convenient for other things. Thus APL/Prolog/Lisp/C/Python can all coexist.
SQL is great for relational databases, but it's like commuting to work in a tank when it comes to key-value stores.
* and of course because programmers love building tools, and a language is the ultimate tool.
The idea that a "minty fresh" mouth (or the idea that "mint" implies "fresh" at all) was the product of an ad campaign in the 1930s. It's not some sort of human universal.
But the association could just as well be to cinnamon, or spearmint, or blueberry. US toothpaste aisles have little variation, especially when compared to other countries without the mint obsession.
Then again the flavor choices in US potato chips is extremely constrained too. Never seen the notorious "hedgehog flavoured" in the US!
Practically any other flavor could be used, but mint in general - and peppermint in particular - "drowns out" other scents. So if your breath is just not-so-fresh, rather than downright vile, it's a better choice.
If you have to work around noxious smells, a bottle of peppermint oil gently daubed onto a bandanna or mask helps a lot.
You are arguing a distinction without a difference. If socially one could not muster the will to do something then it will never happen -- it cannot be done.
We certainly could reduce the use of fossil fuels by over 90% in a few months -- global nuclear war would probably work -- but I hope nobody has the will to make that happen. Conversely we could reduce them by that much over a 30 year span, but currently lack the will. So in that case the distinction would make sense.
But few are willing to "replace this working thing for a small gain" (and you can argue about rust but when something works and the downside is a statistical risk demonstrably of low probability* ) it will be hard to find many people willing to invest in it.
Eventually these old programs will be replaced but they won't be replaced with functional equivalents, any more than, say, wired home phones were replaced with fibre optic connections. They will be replaced with something de novo instead.
* nerds like us may say the risk is significant but the level of uproar in security breaches is negligible in practice and the actual incidence of bugs due to things like use-after-free is likewise tiny.
But... there is a difference. The difference is that it will not be done, rather than cannot be done. (Sort of self-explanatory, really.) They're different words, with different meanings, and different real-world consequences.
For example, if government regulations change, or the languages change, or engineering culture changes, or developers' desires and preferences change, suddenly "will not" becomes "will". But "cannot" is not so malleable.
> Part of this was Zuckerberg outright lying to everyone about video's impact.
Perhaps I'm missing some important aspect, but what would be the benefit of lying about this? How would serving video that didn't promote engagement help FB at all? Just more storage and bandwidth without increased opportunity to serve an ad -- backwards from how I understand FB's model.
People do say something false for a believed gain all the time. But usually when I hear something false it's a misunderstanding or misspeaking. So based on my (relatively naïve) model of how FB works as a business, "lying" doesn't seem like the right word here.
they've admitted to knowingly reporting impossible metrics, which is lying as far as i'm concerned.
these specific metrics were used to indicate to business accounts what kind of content was appreciated, and cited in executive keynotes, essentially demanding an internet-wide "pivot to video".
one lawsuit has already settled with a payout and it seems like a second one is ongoing.
i believe the intent was that video embeds are watched in the feed, whereas articles are more often links out.
it was incredibly destructive as nearly every news outfit cited this as the motivation for gutting their investigations and writing staff.
There are many reasons why Facebook would want to push videos at the time. There was probably a strategy shift to video at the board level then it trickled down into this.
Facebook gets paid for showing ads and videos were playing automatically on hover. It looks like more engagement but the call to actions is lower (no one clicks on a link).
MIT is one the the preeminent universities in the world, perhaps the preeminent one.* The loss of MIT gives permission to other institutions who may be more concerned about reputation to do the same (they don’t want to generate whispers of “did they do this because they are having money troubles?”). It may also cause authors to submit other prestigious journals before elsevier ones.
* really any change in the top 10 ranked schools from year to year are just a kind of browning motion. They are as a group equally prestigious.