

CERN Open Data Portal Demo - miloc_c
http://opendata.cern.ch/

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dalek2point3
Any hints for non-physicists as to what this enables? Presumably you could
have asked for the data anyway, no? Why is this a big deal?

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fnordfnordfnord
There is a good case for delaying the release of the data to give the
associated researchers a chance to write their papers, theses, etc. A lot of
groundwork has to be laid to get one of these experiments constructed, and it
wouldn't be right for the ones who did that work to be jumped by an outside
group, who might then receive credit for a discovery. After some time though,
the data definitely needs to be opened up. It belongs to everyone, and there
is no good in keeping it behind a wall forever.

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epistasis
In the genomics world, data from large projects is released as soon as a
distribution system can be built, and the distribution system is also needed
internally for the consortium so this is usually a very early stage.

Non-consortium members who download data are asked to agree that they will not
publish a paper on the data before the data producers have had a shot to find
things. And if somebody were to go against this understanding, usually journal
editors would wait to publish the paper until after the consortium publishes
its paper.

However in The Cancer Genome Atlas, an even more open approach was taken;
there's just an end date to the embargo on the data, and if data producers and
researchers don't get their act together in time, the data is free for
everyone to publish on.

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noobermin
For those of you who actually are interested in digging in, I have to warn
you: ROOT is terrible, really terrible.

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tenfingers
Can you elaborate? I think you mean the ROOT analysis framework, right?

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noobermin
It could have been designed much better. One fantastic example that irked me
when I used it is its extensive use of global objects. It's been quite a while
so I don't remember the exact details, but I recall trying to open a number of
files and having that fail because the global file object wasn't properly
changed. And note that this was from an example copied verbatim from the
internet. I just did a quick look through my comp and I can't find the stuff I
did then, but I really doubt it was something as simple as forgetting to close
it or call its destructor.

Perhaps part of the issue is that I'm used to programming with normal C++, so
_their_ C++ was hard to get used to. For example ROOT expects you to create
objects on the heap--I recall ROOT failing when you tried to allocate objects
on the stack. Part of it might just be that, I'm used to fantastic, easy to
use and well thought out libs like the STL.

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milliams
Yes, the API of ROOT really is terrible in many places. A gradual change is
the only way to fix it however since any sharp break will only cause
fragmentation.

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pinko
I think this is great; the transition to open data in Big Science will be
slow, but it's clearly the right thing to do.

That being said, the biggest short-term practical consequence of this will be
a stream of disturbed pseudo-scientists "discovering" things in the data.

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fnordfnordfnord
>That being said, the biggest short-term practical consequence of this will be
a stream of disturbed pseudo-scientists "discovering" things in the data.

So? Those guys have been doing that for ages already. OTOH, don't be surprised
if some actual discoveries/improvements happen now, given more open access to
the data.

