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Comment by wheelerwj | Hacker News Reader

Fuck man, let NASA have the $20. I understand the consternation but of all the agencies who need money... just let people pay for it.

We aren't talking about pirating lil'wayne's next album or someone who has too much money.

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NASA doesn't see a penny of that $20, which is the problem; it goes to the publishers of Science (the AAAS, which is, to be fair, a non-profit organization). While musicians don't get much from the average record sale, scientists get exactly nothing.

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You've got the wrong AAAS.

The one that publishes Science magazine is the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Their journal Science is actually a pretty good value -- I think the paper copy is about $140 per year, 52 issues of nerdy goodness.

The current president of AAAS (!= editor of Science) is Bill Press, of Numerical Recipes fame. Not a phony, by any stretch.

You're correct, I removed the comment.

> While musicians don't get much from the average record sale, scientists get exactly nothing.

actually, that is exactly true. Scientists make $0 off of record sales. :D

yeah... that's lame. NASA should take a cut. in fact, new decree.. all sales from academic papers should go to NASA. agreed?

Good grief no. They might build another Space Shuttle; bigger and stupider than the last one. I know it sucks, but let's wait the bureaucrats who're in charge now out for just a few more years.

since when does HN support downvotes?

Anyone with karma high enough can - and should - downvote comments that detract from the overall quality of the discussion.

Your karma is close to that point. When you get there, use it wisely.

FWIW, I think it must be based on the average karma, because my profile is older and I have more karma than wheelerwj but I have no downvote capacity.

Also, I can't even imagine the amount of contributions that are required to reach the amount of karma you have.

It's total karma, but the line keeps rising as HN grows. I've only gained them when my karma reached 500.

Errm, I think the commenter may be farther away than you believe...the threshold for downvoting is at least 500 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782174).

Since the proverbial dawn of time. You have to have reached a certain karma threshold in order to have access to downvoting, though.

Think of the bigger picture. Is it okay to monetarily starve one of the US remaining prominent scientific bodies because "they can always just charge money for their papers"?

Why reward ugly hacks when it's much cheaper and better to solve the root problem?

I don't disagree, but solving the root problem is way off in the future.

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