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Read this http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FLOSS_Concept_Booklet

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia

Looks like the best major link (adding the Deep space catalogs) - I believe the addon's for celestia run to Tb (mostly the Moon and Mars) so it may be hard to find what you want

Just to point it out to you: Ada is an OO language and has Pascal like Syntax. See:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Object_Orientation

Martin

Well, sort of.

There is a project on wikibooks that aims to include mathematical proofs from various topics; http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Mathematical_Proofs The goal is that one can link from wikipedia to this book, where all proofs are allowed.

they're preventing it from growing because they want it to fit a publishing model that no longer applies. Why limit yourself?

they're preventing it from growing because they want it to fit a publishing model that no longer applies. Why limit yourself?

a) Wikipedia is not a math journal
b) Subsequently, how do you know it's correct? Wikipedia does not have the peer review of a math journal.
c) Long proofs like this are more appropriate for the Wikipedia books project, not Wikipedia itself. Articles are supposed to be summaries.

I can sympathize with your plight, as there are many CS papers I'd like to read that are unavailable online. Still, Wikipedia cannot stretch itself too thin. Do one thing well, even at the expense of other useful things if necessary.

I would say details of this sort are more appropriate for Wikipedia books, ie. Wikibooks. It's not that Wikipedia doesn't have a place for these things, it's simply that they must be put in their proper place.

Ack for hitting Submit instead of Preview by accident...

About the manual: the decision was correct, but incomplete. The complete deletion/removal reason should have been, "Wikipedia is not a host for software manuals; however, Wikibooks is, and Wikipedia does not want to cannibalize its sister project." If you point me to the manual, I'll see what I can do to move it there.

As Jimbo Wales once said, Wikipedia is - as an encyclopedia - only one book in our "wiki library", and one book is not a whole library. Of course mathematical proofs are important and should be freely available, but so is tons of other sort of information, too, and we can't just put everything in Wikipedia. Wikibooks offers a place for some book-like-stuff (and I think mathematical proofs belong there). There are also other projects for different kind of information, like learning materials and dictionaries. We should start to transfer Wikipedia's success to other free wikis and projects.

I would like to see a companion site, wikimath or some such, that integrates well with wikipedia but contains the things that wikipedia should not.

In fact, Wikimedia also has other projects for more learning-based content, such as WikiBooks for textbook-style works, and Wikiversity for "learning resources" that appear to be a course-like concept. These resources can be linked to from the Wikipedia article as more of a learning resource as opposed to a quick look-up Wikipedia page.

Math is not that simple. Most people can't understand most of the proofs even with explanations to each symbol and links to the theorems used in the proof. Actually, by the way, most people can't understand the theorems themselves, because the actual objects of the theorem are based on high level math. As for the symbols, the reason symbols are reused is to allow people to read. Otherwise you'll have hundreds of new symbols (or thousands) and it will take a considerable time just to be able to recognize a significant part of them, or have long words for every symbol, so theorems (and proofs) will be unreadable.

As for the actual question, a proof should obviously be in the relevant wikibook. It should be in wikipedia only if it gives some insight into the theorem, it is standard and it is on the same level as the theorem. However, the said book is practically nonexistent, at the moment, so all those pages of mathematical proofs should be passed to it, and all the pages of theorems in wikipedia should be linked there.

Why not choose one proof and show that in Wikipedia. Maybe the shortest or the one that will server the widest audience. Save the rest for one of the Wikibooks on mathematics. A good choice might be The Book of Mathematical Proofs

Why not choose one proof and show that in Wikipedia. Maybe the shortest or the one that will server the widest audience. Save the rest for one of the Wikibooks on mathematics. A good choice might be The Book of Mathematical Proofs

I am a Public Health student currently, and I have been doing some research on this topic, was planning on writing a paper about it, but decided not to for the primary reason that there is little research data available on it and even less on implications from this data! The reason the general public is not concerned with the issue is two-fold.

One, the public becomes concerned with a public health issue when it affects them directly or more commonly when the threat of HOW the issue affects them is conveyed typically BY THE MEDIA! The Media spends very little time on this issue primarily due to its esoteric nature and its extremely low "sexiness" as an issue.

Two, its not a hot topic because there is little exposure from it to the general public. Certain industries and certain populations in these industries are exposed to it and even then, the awareness given to them about it is minimal.

Until nanomaterials are showcased on CNN in a show called Public in Peril: The Coming Nanomaterial Endemic or nanomaterials enter the average everyday workplace and an eight-hour training seminar on their safety comes to a conference room near you, this will be a non-issue as it should be.

The limited research going on is out there though, as it should be:

I don't know if they have hit critical mass(i.e., the books are useful), but Wikibooks seems pretty close to what you are looking for:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

An excellent start! Someone with time should start some kind of wiki for projects like this...

I'm suprised no one mentioned Wikibooks yet.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category:Beginning_Mathematics
Wikibooks is by the same group that runs Wikipedia; this site is designed for just this type of thing.

That's a harder question than it sounds.

I didn't get much from the tutorials on the blender.org site, apart from the basic interface tutorial, mostly because they don't clearly separate learning 3D from learning Blender. If you already know how to visualize and work in computer 3D, the wikibooks manual is better. If you don't know how to work in 3D at all, I'd suggest starting with Google's Sketchup, which is an unconventional 3D architectural modeler capable of spectacular results.

once I've learned it, am I more or less productive than with the alternatives?

You'll be more productive.

The harsh comments you'll see here are from people who can't wrap their heads around Blender's hotkey-based UI. If you get used to the idea of keeping your left hand on the keyboard to command, and the right hand on the mouse to move, you'll be able to work faster than most of the alternatives. The critics are right in that it doesn't reward casual experimentation; you have to commit to learning the hotkeys. They're wrong in claiming that the experience won't translate well to other apps. It doesn't take long for any consistent UI to vanish, and your mind to drill into the modeling or animation, and Blender's UI is consistent.

From the article: "one popular use will be to load textbooks at 25 cents or so each on the laptops, which has a high-resolution screen for easy reading."

WHAT???? - What happened to the books at project gutenberg - http://www.gutenberg.org/ - Wikibooks at http://wikibooks.org/ from the Wikimedia project created with the mission to create a free collection of open-content textbooks.

http://www.math.gatech.edu/~cain/textbooks/onlinebooks.html- Myriads of Math Books!

To quote from the last site: "The writing of textbooks and making them freely available on the web is an idea whose time has arrived"

Please oh please - don't tell me they are attempting to monetize the OLPC by selling textbooks.

There is quality material out there - Make sure the OLPC's come with a comprehensive list of resources where to get quality textbooks and other educational material.

E.

What do you think "volume" is? It's a perception of loudness, which is only roughly related to anything you can measure numerically. A 16-bit data sample on a CD tells you the sampled electrical voltage, which is definitely not loudness. The square of voltage is power, which is getting closer. So the 32,768 to 1 range of voltages (plus and minus) gives you a range of 1,073,741,824 to 1 in power, or as these things are normally measured, about 90 dB dynamic range. Perceived audio "loudness" is roughly logarithmic; that's why the dB number is useful.

A 1 dB change (26% in power ratio) is barely detectable. The threshold of pain is up to 120 dB higher than the minimum detectable sound level. So even an uncompressed CD does not have enough dynamic range to capture what you might hear at a rock concert. (Just before you go deaf.)

You know, I consider that worth then goto. Unlike BASIC modern goto always comes with a label. When reading the code that doubles the changes to notice the jump. See:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Contr ol#Isn.27t_goto_evil.3F

Martin

But you only need a goto because your programmig language can not break out of inner loop. See:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Contr ol#loop_with_condition_in_the_middle

As you can see in Ada loops have (optional) names and with that name the exit statement can break from any lool no matter how deeply nested they are.

But if I where to use a lesser language like C or C++ I would do it the very same way - just use a goto.

Martin

It's "dhanyavaad", or "shukriya" if you're in an area which is largely influenced by Urdu. :)

The problem with Project Gutenberg is that it only has Public Domain works.
So you won't find any work about Java, Ruby, nor Network Administration.

You may find such in http://en.wikibooks.org/

Look up UCITA

Fortunately, most states ended up rejecting UCITA and even passing laws to the contrary.

Somehow though, I have a vague recollection that congress passed it into national law... Maybe it was a bad dream, 1998 was a long time ago.

> Maybe I've missed something, but can you explain exactly where you and the OSI get the authority to define what the words "open source" mean?

Trademark law. You might want to look it up some day, but it grants the legal authority because they first came up with the term. I wonder if it hasn't become somewhat generic by now, but that's a legal worry and it's not mine.

The point of this would appear to be to avoid more crap like the "Office Open XML" which has nothing to do with Open Office and isn't really "open" in the sense many people might expect. Or at least to avoid people calling licenses "open source" that are anything but. To be honest, I'd have said that they'd do better to register free software as a mark, but that's just me.

In any event, trademark law really can give them that right. Period. End of story.

See also:
* http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/tmlaw2.html
* http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_Trademark_Law

Disclaimer: IANAL.

It sounds like this is the site you are looking for.

Not sure where you read what you read, but it is obvious that you did not RTFA, since from the article we learn...

"Boosaule Mons, which at 18 kilometers (11 miles) is the highest mountain on Io and one of the highest mountains in the solar system, pokes above the edge of the disk on the right side." ... and although this is not the height of the volcano that is erupting, it points to structures on Io that are larger than anything here on earth.

You might have read this...

"Unlike most moons, Io has a "young" surface. Because there is so much volcanic activity, the surface is almost free of craters. Also, its volcanoes are quite unusual. Instead of erupting like a normal volcano, they erupt more like geysers do on earth." ...from http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikijunior_Solar_Syst em/Jupiter/Io ...or you might have read this though...

"Io has lots of thermal areas just like Yellowstone," says JPL's Bill Smythe. "The volcanic plumes get most of the attention but there are probably also things like fumeroles and geysers. On a previous flyby the Particles and Fields instruments saw a deficit of energetic particles over Io where gas was probably coming out of the surface -- but no plumes were seen. We call this the 'stealth plume hypothesis.' The closest Earthly analog to what's happening would be a water geyser like Old Faithful. In fact, if you put Old Faithful on Io it would be about 37 km high!" ...which came from http://science.nasa.gov/NEWHOME/headlines/ast04oct 99_1.htm and only indicates that due to conditions on Io, a familiar geyser on earth would eject matter quite high. However, with this data from the article...

"the cloud of volcanic debris, which extends 330 kilometers (200 miles) above the moon's surface. Only the upper part of the plume is visible from this vantage point - the plume's source is 130 kilometers (80 miles) below the edge of Io's disk, on the far side of the moon." ... we can safely infer that the volcanoes erupting on Io are not similar to earth geysers in size, rather only in how they erupt.

Volcanoes on Io are rather different in general from their Earth cousins. From Wikipedia...

"Io's surface is dotted with volcanic depressions known as paterae. Paterae generally have flat floors bounded by steep walls. These features resemble terrestrial calderas, but it is unknown if they are produced through collapse over an emptied lava chamber as with their terrestrial cousins. One hypothesis suggests that these features are produced through the exhumation of volcanic sills, with the overlying material either being blasted out or integrated into the sill. Unlike similar features on Earth and Mars, these depressions generally do not lie at the peak of shield volcanoes and are normally larger, with an average diameter of 41 km (25½ mi), the largest being Loki Patera at 202 km (125½ mi)." ... in other words flat holes in the ground slightly similar to sinkholes. So personally, I wouldn't look forward to an eruption from the still active Loki, at a diameter of 125 miles. I mean, I wouldn't look forward to sitting ringside to that.

You can remap an unused button on most Comcast DVRs to perform the 30 second skip feature, as instructed by the really great howto over at the wikibooks on the Motorola DVRs.

The following technique can be used to map an unused or unneeded button on the "silver" remote to the 30-second skip command. Current versions of the i-Guide software will skip forward 30 seconds into a recording when this command is sent. A good choice is the 'A / Lock' button since many users don't need that function; you can feel both the '15-second-back' and '30-second-skip' buttons with one finger and move between them without looking. Another option is to reprogram the '15-second back' button, since PgDn already provides that functionality.

      1. Press the "Cable" button at the top of the remote to put it into Cable Box control mode.
      2. Press and hold the "Setup" button until the "Cable" button blinks twice.
      3. Type in the code 994. The "Cable" button will blink twice.
      4. Press (do not hold) the "Setup" button.
      5. Type in the code 00173.
      6. Press whatever button you want to map the 30-second skip command to (ex: A / Lock). The "Cable" button will blink twice if successful.

Works great, though I use MythTV with the firewire output of my DCT 3412 (all of my channels, high-def and all, are unencrypted thankfully) so I don't really need the feature. ;-)

Nothing's perfect. If you want a good understanding of a complex mathematical term... take a course in mathematics. I think Wikipedia does a wonderful job of being concise. One can't really ask for more.

Well... to be fair: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Mathematics _bookshelf (a sister project of Wikipedia).

http://wikibooks.org/

It is great that you want to contribute with documentation. A great program/framework/OS/whatever that no one can use because there is no documentation to be found is worthless.

Sun has published a pretty good book called Read Me First! - A style guide for the computer industry. Covers "writing styles", legal guidelines, writing for an international audience, types of techical documents, and so on. Recommended. For a fun example of how NOT to write, read this page and see if you can figure out which sentences refer to the "old" bad way to do animations, and which sentences refer the new recommended way (the rest of the tutorial is pretty good though, and I really appreciate the time and effort people have spent on it - I just wish someone who knows more than me about Blender could rewrite that particular section.)

Which project to contribute to - well, you had three good examples there. Just pick any project you are passionate about and comfortable using, try to think about what documentation you would have found handy when you was learning to use it. Start writing that.

Here are a couple other tutorials...

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Multiterminal_with_ev dev
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Multiseat_X
http://netpatia.blogspot.com/2006/09/multiseat-com puter-with-ubuntu.html

I did a multiseat setup using Ubuntu for Software Freedom Day last year and it worked quite well. The only way I was able to achieve hardware-accelerated 3D on _every_ head was to only use NVIDIA video adapters with the proprietary driver. (yes, I'm aware of the irony!) Unfortunately, none of the free (libre) drivers supported accelerated 3D on multiple heads at that time but perhaps things have changed with the latest release of Xorg.

Setups like this are quite fascinating to me as they reveal how much more efficiently a computer of moderate specs is capable of being used--desktop users don't even notice that they are sharing a machine. Some aspects are a little complicated (like mapping different sound cards to the correct seats) but IMO there is a _lot_ of potential in this area due to ease of administration, energy savings, and a decrease in noise (less computers means less fans whirling).

Apparently he didn't know his rights quite well enough - refusing to consent to a voluntary search is not grounds for a warrant; he should have asked the police officer if he was being arrested, and if not whether the officer had any further questions. If the officer had nothing else to talk about, then he was free to go and should have asserted that fact. The police will hassle you about it, but there really is nothing they can do at that point absent actual probable cause.

IANAL, but wikibooks backs me up on this one: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_Criminal_Law/Searc hes_without_a_warrant
(U.S. v. Fuentes)

I didn't believe you at first, but I looked it up and you're right. That adds a whole new dimension to things, but somehow I doubt it will be widely implemented.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Monopoly/Official_Rul es

There are other reasons why the games take forever, players are overly cautious. Even if the walls are caving in around them as a the one player with a monopoly begins to clean house, they will desperately hang on waiting to land on that one property that will give them a monopoly rather than have a fair exchange with another player.

I can recall once I had a trade in mind but decided to give the other five players the chance to do something themselves for once. After I got to take my turn another ten times I gave up on waiting. It was just ridiculous.

Infinite City Sprawl.
The devs had to make sure it won't work in later versions of the game...
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Civ:The_Basics#Infini te_City_Sprawl

for secure programming. But that not unusual. In fact that seems to be the Zeitgeist.

Everybody speaks of secure programming but allays in combinations with unsuitable tools and programming languages.

Reminds me a bit about the Addams Family. Remember the part where Gomez tries to make huge loss of money. In the end he start a venture in Chocolate-Diet - something he things will never work as chocolate is completely unsuitable for diet purpose and his hope is that people won't fall for such a stupid idea - hence he is going to loose money on the venture.

Of course we now how it ended: Chocolate-Diet was a huge success! He made tons of extra cash. Because people love to go the easy way - even when it is blatantly clear that it won't work.

And the same here: Instead of going to the pains of learning a programming language and/or tools suitable for secure programming you just go or be send my management to take a silly test [1]. Only difference: Unlike Gomez Addams the "Software Security Institute" knows very well how people (and especially managers with little technical knowledge) work and that there "Chocolate-Diet" will bring in the cash.

Of course no ./ article of mine on secure programming without me mention that Ada [2] is well suited for secure programming and since PHP was mentioned: How about using the Ada Web Server [3] for truly secure your web applications? Yes, it will take longer to program for the AWS then quickly hacking together a PHP application. But the bitter truth is: quick hacking and secure programming are mutually exclusive.

Martin

[1] http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=228 589&cid=18530047
[2] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming
[3] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Libra ries/Web/AWS

for secure programming. But that not unusual. In fact that seems to be the Zeitgeist.

Everybody speaks of secure programming but allays in combinations with unsuitable tools and programming languages.

Reminds me a bit about the Addams Family. Remember the part where Gomez tries to make huge loss of money. In the end he start a venture in Chocolate-Diet - something he things will never work as chocolate is completely unsuitable for diet purpose and his hope is that people won't fall for such a stupid idea - hence he is going to loose money on the venture.

Of course we now how it ended: Chocolate-Diet was a huge success! He made tons of extra cash. Because people love to go the easy way - even when it is blatantly clear that it won't work.

And the same here: Instead of going to the pains of learning a programming language and/or tools suitable for secure programming you just go or be send my management to take a silly test [1]. Only difference: Unlike Gomez Addams the "Software Security Institute" knows very well how people (and especially managers with little technical knowledge) work and that there "Chocolate-Diet" will bring in the cash.

Of course no ./ article of mine on secure programming without me mention that Ada [2] is well suited for secure programming and since PHP was mentioned: How about using the Ada Web Server [3] for truly secure your web applications? Yes, it will take longer to program for the AWS then quickly hacking together a PHP application. But the bitter truth is: quick hacking and secure programming are mutually exclusive.

Martin

[1] http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=228 589&cid=18530047
[2] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming
[3] http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Libra ries/Web/AWS

Isn't that what the OpenOffice quickstarter is for?

...and Ada 2005 even supports Real-Time programming. It is possible - just not with C++.

Find a short intro here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Taski ng

Martin

You forgot to mention that Ada 2005 now adds Interfaces to both protected and task objects. See:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Taski ng

Ada's multi-threadeding is not only without the pain but great fun!

Martin

No, just the Talents and above :). But you're wrong.

This TAG finding is all the more reason for the W3C to support declarative approaches to markup, which allow you to express intent in markup, and leave another level to convert that intent to presentation. This approach starts at the top with technologies such as CSS, but the need for dynamic pages is better addressed by recent additions such as XBL (here's an example in mozilla -- think of it as like CSS but binding to script instead of to a fixed set of attributes) and XForms (think of it as a 3-layer model for the web page -- data, logic, and presentation).