Academics have found a way to access insanely expensive research papers—for free, by By Aamna Mohdin

Academic papers aren’t all freely available online as paywalls prevent many from accessing peer-reviewed information. Those without logins are often expected to pay $30 or more per article to read the latest research. Now academics are using the hashtag #icanhazpdf to freely share copyrighted papers. continue reading

IT professional careers: is being a generalist a dead end option?

William Turgeon

Bottomline:

"So being a generalist means that one has to understand the basics of a lot of separate AOC’s and know how they integrate and what they need to work together efficiently. The generalist will often not know the specific commands or techniques used in implementing specific features in a product, but he DOES know that the feature exists and in general, what it requires to function efficiently. Knowing that a specific function exists, he/she can always look up the specific command or implementation process.

The generalists’ big advantage over most specialists is that they have an understanding of the fundamental requirements and interactions of most of the AOCs involved, not just a single one, and thus can often resolve problems that specialists are not equipped by their training to do.

Although most IT professionals do not realize it, the need for IT generalists is much greater than most people are aware of, and the few well-trained ones that are available are rarely out of work. Unfortunately, being a generalist is much more difficult than specializing because one cannot focus on a single given area exclusively, but instead must continually ‘keep up’ on the broad spectrum of technologies that make up the IT profession.

Being a generalist is an AOC that will NEVER die, but it IS a difficult one to master!"

continue readin:
http://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/it-professional-careers-is-being-a-generalist-a-dead-end-option

‘Digital Dark Age’ could see our most precious memories consigned to dust – Vint Cerf

One of the “fathers of the internet” has warned that images and documents we store on computers may disappear from history as the ongoing digital revolution makes older hardware and software obsolete.

Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google, made his remarks during a science conference, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in San Jose, California.

Cerf said that important pieces of information, our life, family photographs and memories, that we have stored on our hard drives or on the internet, may be lost as the pace of the digital revolution accelerates. rt.com

Information, information everywhere but not a drop to sync!!!

Here are two articles relating to information access (and the hassles that come in the same package). This is a telling tale of haves, who have to go thro' hope, resiliency, perseverance and much more (if they are not bored) in making their ends meet!!! Can you hear me now? :

Locked in the Ivory Tower: Why JSTOR Imprisons Academic Research. By Laura McKenna, theatlantic.com : Universities have to pay thousands of dollars every year to read their own research online. Blame the broken economics of academic publishing.

The solutions to all our problems may be buried in PDFs that nobody reads. BY CHRISTOPHER INGRAHAM, washingtonpost.com : One final irony to ponder: You know that World Bank report, about how nobody reads its PDFs? It's only available as a PDF. Given the attention it's receiving, it may also be one of their most-downloaded reports ever.

(image courtesy: novamind.com)

Scanner for ebook cannot tell its 'arms' from its 'anus'

 

• Scanner for ebook cannot tell its 'arms' from its 'anus'
: A technical problem with optical character recognition software creates some awkward moments in romantic novels theguardian.com

On the same shelf:

Top 5 embarrassing misprints  theguardian.com:

You'd think the substitution of anuses for arms was as good as a misprint gets, but such hilarious scanning errors are merely the latest in a long history of printing goofs. Here are some of the best. Can you find better ones?
1. The Wicked Bible
2. Ground black people
3. Jonathan Franzen's massive parade of typos
4. Like chips in the sea
5. Guardian Chistmas card

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

How Data Mining Uncovered Rampant Scientific Plagiarism and Fraud

How Data Mining Uncovered Rampant Scientific Plagiarism and Fraud, Harold “Skip” Garner 

www.scientificamerican.com

The author wanted to build software that would navigate medical jargon. He ended up uncovering widespread plagiarism and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential fraud