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v1tyaz

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Imgur was originally offered as a "gift" to Digg users, and when it didn't gain traction there MrGrimm re-branded it as a "gift" to Redditors.

I don't understand the people commenting that YouTube is not a proper archival tool. Obviously. They're not deleting their own copies of these films, they're just making them available to the public in an easy to use manner. Criticism of this is totally misguided.

I'm glad it's gone since it forced me to look for better alternatives. I tried pretty much all of them, but settled on BazQux Reader. $10 a year for a vastly superior service is well worth it.

If you find that it feels like work to go through your RSS feeds, then you're doing it wrong. Plain and simple. Your whole argument for why RSS readers are bad seems to consist of "I have too many feeds", and "I have a lot of other programs open at the same time."

I have around 40 feeds right now, and I look forward to updates because I'm subscribed to a lot of interesting content without a whole bunch of filler. But here's the thing: even if I don't have time to read everything, I just click "mark all as read." That's why that button exists. The world doesn't end when I click it. It's not like e-mail where I have to read through everything to make sure I don't need to reply to someone. I continue on with my day and await future updates.

The whole argument about an "app-centric world" and having so many things open at once is completely irrelevant because it rests on the faulty assumption that RSS readers are demanding of users. They're not, if you're using them efficiently. And even if they were, I have a really hard time believing that having 30+ tabs and 10+ programs open at once is "not atypical". Maybe for the extremely heavy web users, but not for the average person.

If you insist on being subscribed to a ton of RSS feeds and only want the best posts, then perhaps you'd like Digg Reader. I haven't explored it too much, but they display a little dot beside the most popular items (as determined by social media). I'm pretty sure NewsBlur also tries to figure out which content you're the most interested in, but I haven't tried it out either.

Since you seem to have all the solutions to JStor's woes, maybe you should apply for a spot on the board of directors. I'm sure they've never even thought of using volunteers, or accepting donations. With you on board, they'd never have to charge another cent!

Sorry, but you're being completely unrealistic. Do you honestly think JStor would be able to rake in nearly as many donations as Wikipedia does with a userbase that is no where near as big as them? The people behind JStor aren't some cabal that just loves charging people a ton of money for access to journal articles (key word being access). If it were feasible to use donations and volunteers alone to provide their service to the general public for free, they would've done that.

No it doesn't. All you need to do is free the publicly funded data.

I'm getting tired of this pointless philosophical debate. Hosting the articles is a small portion of what JStor actually does. When this Public.Resource.Org group goes to the library and digitizes all these journals, including tagging and sorting them, let me know if they'll still be able to provide them for free. Hint: they won't. Unless they keep getting people to unlawfully access them from an organization that does, that is.

If JStor were some big corporation that was raking in millions of dollars each year, then you'd have a point, but they're not. They are a non-profit that is doing excellent work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't allowing researchers to freely post their publicly funded papers on whatever medium they desire whether it's their own website or another freely accessible site solve this problem?

So who's going to go back and digitize the 50+ year old articles from a journal that has long since ceased publishing? Also, a decentralized system would make research much more difficult. A lot of academic journals have their own websites where they publish articles; they aren't used because it's much easier to just use JStor.

As you've also pointed out, JStor is a non-profit. Donations and soliciting volunteers would probably help fund this stuff; it seems to work fine for Wikipedia.

JStor is a relatively large non-profit, I'm sure they've looked at different methods of funding and have determined which methods are feasible and which aren't. Wikipedia is not comparable at all to JStor; one is targeted to the general public, the other is to researchers. There is a huge difference in the userbase.

Regardless, publicly funded research shouldn't be kept behind pay walls.

Until a centralized distribution method is publicly funded as well, this is the way it has to work.

"...victimless crime of providing free access to publicly funded research"

Sorry, I'm just curious, but how do you propose funding the scanning, organizing and hosting of this research? JStor is a non-profit that has spent tons of money going back and doing all of this for millions of articles, and continues to spend money doing it so researchers can access the data without having to flip through thousands of paper research journals in some library.

[dead] 13 years ago

Well, for one you're trying to compare a case that took place in New York with one that took place in Florida. If Zimmerman was tried in New York the case would've most likely had a different outcome. Florida has stand your ground laws which allowed Zimmerman to protect himself using deadly force, whereas New York doesn't.

The cases aren't even that similar. The reason Zimmerman was found not guilty was because there was evidence that he was physically assaulted and that his life was in danger when he shot Martin. In the New York case, there was no evidence to suggest the shooter was physically assaulted.

All this is is a poor attempt at playing the race card. You can't compare two different cases tried in two places with different sets of laws. It just doesn't work like that.

[dead] 13 years ago

No. This is one of the dumbest posts I've seen on here. I'm not even going to get into the nitty gritty of why this post is stupid, because it should be self-evident to anyone with half a brain.

Very misleading. In fact, the author of this study is a behavioral neurologist, hence studying human behavior relating to diet drinks rather than diet drinks themselves. Drink as much diet soda as you like, if the rest of your diet is healthy then you're fine. This article is just typical fear-mongering against artificial sweeteners, I'm surprised it got up voted here.