michael_dorfman

Elsevier is willing to play this game of chicken; they are convinced that their customers (i.e., research universities) cannot do without their product. Hence the OP reporting that twice, they instantly and without warning cut off all access to their product to the entire university, because of detected scraping.

Telling people what software they can use to read text doesn't scale.

Unfortunately, I think it does. If individual users, even a large number of them, use a plug-in, they might get away with it-- but this would result in an incomplete data set. To systematically textmine the corpus (which is the task at hand) requires some kind of systematic access to the data, and this is where Elsevier steps in and shuts it down.

I'm a member of the ACM and the IEEE, and a lot of other people are; it doesn't seem to me that the modest dues are significantly hindering progress in the field. If, due to some unexplained fortune, the ACM and IEEE were to drop their paywalls tomorrow, and grant free access to all, how much would really change?

You get used to it.

A and Å are different letters, and can't be substituted for each other.

And that's the artist's choice. The artist could choose to distribute their work in some other fashion. So, if you want the artist's product, you have to buy it via the means chosen by that artist.

Of course, all of the parties involved (President, Senators, etc.) have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution.

Article VI of the Constitution explicitly disagrees with you: "[A]ll Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

In other words, the sovereignty was explicitly sacrificed when the treaty was entered into-- and that's the way the Framers intended it.

That ought to do the job; Article VI of the Constitution plainly states that "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."

In other words, if there is a treaty obligation, that trumps all other considerations.

How does the US become party to a treaty, in any case? I'm guessing it has something to do with Congress.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution spells this out: "[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur..."

This seems like a bit of circular reasoning.

How so?

You seem to think that "changing the way advertising works" is something that can be done by 3 devs is 12 months, and success (large enough to "yank this planet") will come "with some marketing."

Based on this alone, I'd suggest a serious reality-check is in order.

At least I know I would, and I've paid a fair bit to JSTOR this past year...

If you can spare two hours a day for two weeks (or the equivalent) you're golden.

Also, in many places, "curbside sorting" of the type you describe already takes place. Here in Norway, I get three trash bins from the city-- one for regular trash, one for paper, and one for food trash. About 25 years ago I lived in Montpelier, Vermont and there we had two streams-- one for recyclables like paper, plastic, and metal cans, and one for everything else. Both of these are based on weekly pickups-- daily pickups would be prohibitively expensive, it seems to me, and would also enlarge the environmental footprint (in terms of fuel required.)

So, as long as there is a way to opt out, I imagine there are a lot of corporate folks who will do so.

In this case, I don't think there's really anywhere obvious for the traffic to go, so the "increased business" is fairly minimal.

Similarly, the claim that Pythagoras was acquainted with the Upanishads is not historically attested; there's some fascinating work (by McEvilley) on cultural diffusion between the Ancient Greek and Ancient Indian worlds, but much of it is conjectural, and there's no "smoking gun" to support blanket statements of the type "Pythagoras read the Upanishads."

Finally, in my reading of the secondary literature, most scholars reverse the chronology in the statement "Philosophical formulations concerning Shunya - i.e. emptiness or the void may have facilitated in the introduction of the concept of zero." The consensus seems to be the opposite-- that the concept of zero in mathematics appears to have influenced the philosophical formulations around emptiness.

The skinny short guy was Steve Goodman, the song was "City of New Orleans", which became Arlo's biggest hit.

"That turned out to be one of the better beers of my life."

Once the segment has been identified, I'd then think about the sales process-- how well are you poised to sell to the decision-makers in this segment? Keep adjusting until you have a good fit.

Then, you turn to the final piece of the puzzle: what do you need to do to get these people to put their money in your pocket? What products or services do you need to provide? Generally, this means looking at a problem they have that is currently underserved; not necessarily a problem that no one else is attempting to solve, mind you, but one where you see an opportunity for competition or disruption. Sometimes, this means solving a problem they don't know they have-- if you can find some way to cut their costs or increase their revenue that they haven't thought of, for example.

When in doubt, look inside their organizations for critical processes that are still being done by Excel spreadsheets, and build a better alternative to these.

I'd definitely recommend this approach to all podcasts.

Sure it is. See, for example, Eleanor Roosevelt.

The karma on comments is hidden, so there's no way for you to see that your comment upvotes aren't having an effect.

I don't know if there is any logic to subtly munge the visible karma on articles here; I know that Reddit does this, so upvotes there are not always immediately visible.

Pace yourself. It's a marathon, not a sprint.