Posts by web_bod

No Fly Zone

̶P̶l̶a̶n̶e̶s̶, Trains and Automobiles

Enough with all the petitions already

Why endure such a hard life?

If he'd named and abandoned his sources then he could have retired to a comfy couch in the Ecuadorian embassy and have people venerate his name.

YAEP #Yawn

Yet another exoplanet - just what we need, a small warm rock 1,400 light years away and 1.5bn years in the future.

I object to the use of the acronym 'TITSUP' - this is business as usual for government websites within 3 months of launch

Better

That looks a lot better - the grey border is a lot easier on the eye and the visited link colour makes the site a lot easier to use - thanks!

I never knew about http://www.theregister.co.uk/Week as a way to bypass the homepage - #BookmarkUpdated - cheers!

What happened to the website?

Were you hacked by the morons that trashed the Guardian site? - it looks a mess

Waste of space

A survey for the shallow and vapid, if you never shut-up about your shiny then you'll do well.

ET Game

Is there a technique for getting out of the hole?

I hope he has breasts

- women can be doctors too, it's just everybody will refer to him as he - otherwise it will get all wibbly.

Body Swapping

Did you just photoshop your head onto that tux - or is that your standard pose?

Is this *actual* news - as in currently happening in2012?

Who uses Gifs nowadays and what happened to bring them to the attention of the OED?

cue Dr Bobby Tables

yeah yeah - coat please!

Ha Ha! I saw it!

The clouds finally cleared just in time to catch the last couple of minutes of it - back to bed :)

F.U.C.K

Build it an they will cum

yeah, that's mine, the mac with the tissues in the top pocket - cheers!

Farewell, snow-filled pictures

fat chance it's Easter - haven't you seen the forecast?

I had to go and have a lie down half way through reading this - really lost my rag - feckin' April fools shite should carry a health warning.

Well done though - b**ds!

At least they listen

Not saying that it shouldn't have happened, but at least they took action.

Urine powered games

http://bit.ly/xpyGBN <- Sega debuts the urine powered TOYLET...

Who's up for a Pub Quiz?

If we time it right we can hit a few and clean-up Mwhahahahahaha!

Hyphenate it properly

Drip-hone - there you go, problem solved

down with rates

What would be the consequences of scrapping the idea of a 'national' interest rate - wouldn't local rates encourage money to slosh around between the regions - or is that the idea - to stop speculation at the expense of regional economies?

not so clever now

""The bidding process, as reported by Reuters, was at times surreal, with Google making bids based upon such mathematical concepts as Brun's constant, the Meissel-Mertens constant, and even pi – one Google bid was, yes, $3.14159bn."

I hope Apple & co sue the arse off them - Google need to grow-up

Missing the point about pricing

Most people don't have a problem with the current set-up:

Imagine two researchers at different points in their work; A is carrying out a literature review and only needs to skim through the paper, B is experiencing a problem that the methodology described in the paper could solve.

How much is the paper worth to A? - it's only one of many - so probably pennines. For B the paper is essential, so they'd probably pay through the nose for it.

A is an undergrad and they can access the material through their University library at minimal personal cost - the University pays a subscription to access the archive, not a per document fee. B works for a pharamaceutical business and his research budget will cover the cost.

A and B would both prefer not to have to pay to read the paper, but considering the cost/benefits they are probably happy enough with the prices they are presented with.

The price of an article from a journal doesn't reflect its value - you can't easily put a dollar amount on knowledge, when prices stop reflecting demand/value there's usually another reason for them.

With a lot of publications you can get unrestricted access to their archive when you take out a longer term subscription - Newspapers do this a lot.

Now consider C - he's interested in the paper for personal reasons - he's not a member of a University and doesn't have a multi-million pound budget. To him $15 to read a paper seems grossly unfair, especially when it would only cost $120 a year to subscribe to the Journal - getting access to everything they've already published for free.

The $15 re-print fee in this case acts as an anchor to make the annual subscription look more attractive.

Journals use re-prints as a marketing tool to sell subscriptions, not as a direct source of income.