Posts by Ben Curran
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OnPoint: MSD's Leaky Servers, in reply to Ben McNicoll,
I just hope someone somewhere has still got the cover your ass email/memo where they pointed this lack of security out years ago but were told the solutions were too expensive.
If I was a sys admin with this, I'd be presenting front and centre about now.
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You got a response from WINZ on a Sunday?
That was the 2nd thought that occurred, after the obligatory wtf?
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Do the numbers make more sense if you include sickness and/or superannuation?
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Hard News: Changing news, in reply to Russell Brown,
Actually it is a marketing name.
I stand corrected. But they do ask that people they deal with use their marketing name, believe me.
It's fine to use it. It is one of those little niggly things that's automatically makes me want to point out how silly it is every time I hear it though. Autonomic reflex is not the quite the phrase I'm looking for :)
This ought to be a more productive relationship between the Herald and the University of Auckland's Statistics faculty than the paper having its homework constantly corrected in StatsChat.
Productive yes, more fun though? You have to laugh at some of the abuses statschat finds, though admittedly, not just in the herald. it's laugh or weep quietly into your cornflakes.
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There was a segment in one of the latest More or less pod-casts about the how statistically significant Ye Shiwen's performance was - sorry, can't remember exactly where in the pod-cast. Turns out that her performance looks like a statistical outlier, but not really a suspicious one when you compare it to other record breaking feats. It was a good discussion of all the various factors they take into account when calculating the likelihood of records being broken.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals, in reply to Mikaere Curtis,
Have I misunderstood this change, or does this mean that the Maori Party, who have never received a single seat from list votes, will lose any electorate seats that are in excess of their party vote ?
As I understand it, no. It means that if there would be an overhang under today's system, the system that is used for calculating who gets the next list mp stops before reaching 120. So if we had a party with 1 more electorate mp than their party vote entitled them to, the Sainte-Laguë system which is currently used to calculate who gets what, would stop at the 119th mp rather than the 12th mp. I think.
Gareth: that makes sense. on the other hand, the drop to 4% will increase proportionality and I've no easy way in my head of figuring out if the total of decrease and increase from the two aspects of change results in a net increase or net decrease. Still, reasonably happy with it all.
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Legal Beagle: MMP Review - The Proposals, in reply to linger,
But it still reduces proportionality. It would have been better to have the threshold for extra seats set lower, e.g. 1.5% -- if there must be a threshold at all.
i don't get how it reduces proportionality. Surely it increases it? Maybe not as much as setting the threshold lower, but still it's offers more proportionality than 5%.
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Not the primary, but it was one of the reasons I was happy to sign the petition calling for a referendum on asset sales: it was well worded and asked a relevant, clear and to the point question.
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Hard News: Open or not?, in reply to HORansome,
where the cost of paying for open access publishing is close to the cost of journal subscriptions. Add to this the problem that, at the moment, the money spent on publishing (which, as Luke pointed out, doesn't necessarily go to the editors or reviewers) mostly still goes to the same oligarachs who control the closed journals.
Unless I've got things horribly wrong, then this is one of the things that one of the commenter's Russell highlighted. The Green OA model, will eventually (it's a long eventually I know) destroy the subscriber base for the journals/Gold OA model because most of what people want access to will eventually be open source. Which is why we want the Green OA rather than the Gold OA that the UK is looking at implementing. As Luke Goode says above, heading straight into the Gold OA model "has a strong whiff of racket" about it.
You're probably right about the cost of paying for open access being similar to journal subscriptions. By accounting problem, I was suggesting that if the subscription fees came out of the Library budget and went to the Philosophy department, there would be funds for getting papers into OA journals.
The problem, as you say, is very much the model. As best as I can tell, the Gold model essentially props up a moribund industry that has no idea how to evolve to cope with the needs of todays academics. The Green model, would keep that industry alive for a short while - though when sufficient material is open, they would be forced to innovate and cut their costs to something reasonable or die. Though of course that still leaves the problem of the back catalogue that 81st state pointed out.
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Hard News: Open or not?, in reply to HORansome,
The first problem you outline is an accounting problem. The university has to stump up with the money either through a journal description or a paying for papers to be published. If chunks of the subscription charges were funnelled through departments, this wouldn't be a problem. They're currently not, this needs to be fixed.
In philosophy there might be few A and B grade OA journals but in other fields, especially the sciences where I am, it's not the case. We could put forth an argument for some form of mixed model here though surely?
Those departments that do have the option of publishing in high quality OA journals should be given the chance since it means that the results of their work are open to the public. And once the needless waste/profits are stripped from the publishing industry, there should be more money available for education in general.
And hopefully it would give confidence to those attempting to start high quality OA journals in those fields which currently do not have them.As an individual, there's no problem with you submitting to a closed journal (unless you specifically want to reach the general public) since the public isn't paying for your work.