Slashdot Mirror

The terms I actually used, "most slashdotters", and "many slashdotters", are not logically equivalent to "all slashdotters".

You may want to review the laws of formal logic regarding quantifiers. Try http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Formal_Logic/Predicat e_Logic/The_Predicate_Language

Just a thought

On the other hand, if what you are trying to say is something like "put your efforts somewhere where they will be more effective", then, yes, a donation to http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ has been given.

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

Some books that were original and have been created almost entirely by Wikibooks authors that I consider to have some value include:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/US_History%3A_Content s (A book about U.S. History)
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_studies
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming About Ada programming
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D/Noob_to_Pr o Introduction to design using Blender

All of these were made book of the month. The Japanese Wikibook is a little bit embarassing as it was recently restructured, but the participants ganged up on the voting page for the book of the month to try and get some additional exposure to their little project. Even so, there has been some significant progress there, and they are learning from some other well-done language Wikibooks, including Portuguese and Chinese

Another section where we are trying to learn a little bit from our earlier mistakes on Wikibooks is the Wikijunior sub-project where we are trying to make introductory texts for elementary school children. There are four "books" there right now in various stages of completion, and are more than just a few screen fulls of text. There is a big push right now to try and get the Big Cats book ready into a formally published format, and the Solar System book is undergoing a huge editorial revision right now to simplify and provide encyclopedia-level citation coverage for every fact in the book. We are also trying in Wikijunior to avoid the mistake of having everybody run off into all directions and instead try to make it more of a group project to actually complete something.

That really is the largest problem right now, a lack of focus. A couple of people come onto Wikibooks and try to write a book, only to discover that it is a much harder process to complete than it seemed right in the beginning. They usually get an outline written (if they are any good at all) and start a chapter and a half, then get bored and move on.

Another problem we have contended with is that there was a period of about a year where Wikibooks was incredibly neglected by the original founders, who moved onto other projects. A whole new group has essentially taken over what was on Wikibooks in the past six months or so and really tried to reorganize the whole thing. That is an ongoing task, and there is a lot of stuff to clean out that shouldn't be there. Some huge debates over what should be there and what should not is continuing, and an attempt to re-focus the aims of the project. We are also trying to get people with real leadership qualities to try and help build the project, including not just recruitment but also raising the standards to make some very real book-length projects instead of a bunch of mini-encyclopedias.

In terms of Alexa ratings, Wikibooks is now in the top 10,000 websites (see http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? q=&url=wikibooks.org for more information), and the #1 e-book related website in terms of number of visitors. This beats even the "professional" e-book websites. The Assayer by contrast is only in the top 2,000,000 websites (it does have some specialized features though that are very good). BTW, I have also contributed to The Assayer in the past, so it wasn't a completely new site to me either. I would like to in fact add some links to your site, but I hope you can handle the increased bandwidth as a result.

I do want to thank you for

The #1 problem I see with your assessment of Wikibooks, Mr. Crowell, is that it is very premature to realistically judge the final output of what you find there. Some progress is being made, and some discussions are being done to make a "best of..." section that really shows off the substantive books (not just computer gaming guides) that might be valuable to those involved.
Can you point me to any examples of wikibooks that are good, complete books at this point? I'd love to have my negative impressions of wikibooks proved at least partly wrong. The project is 2.5 years old now, so I don't think it's premature to wonder whether it's ever produced any complete, high-quality book. When I go to the wikibooks site, what's highlighted is "New Wikibooks," which is obviously not the place to look for a completed project; the "Book of the month," which, however, is also only the bare beginnings of a project; and the Collaboration of the Month, which is also in the very early stages. If there are books that are success stories, the site really seems to be doing an excellent job of hiding them.

The #1 problem I see with your assessment of Wikibooks, Mr. Crowell, is that it is very premature to realistically judge the final output of what you find there. Some progress is being made, and some discussions are being done to make a "best of..." section that really shows off the substantive books (not just computer gaming guides) that might be valuable to those involved.
Can you point me to any examples of wikibooks that are good, complete books at this point? I'd love to have my negative impressions of wikibooks proved at least partly wrong. The project is 2.5 years old now, so I don't think it's premature to wonder whether it's ever produced any complete, high-quality book. When I go to the wikibooks site, what's highlighted is "New Wikibooks," which is obviously not the place to look for a completed project; the "Book of the month," which, however, is also only the bare beginnings of a project; and the Collaboration of the Month, which is also in the very early stages. If there are books that are success stories, the site really seems to be doing an excellent job of hiding them.

The #1 problem I see with your assessment of Wikibooks, Mr. Crowell, is that it is very premature to realistically judge the final output of what you find there. Some progress is being made, and some discussions are being done to make a "best of..." section that really shows off the substantive books (not just computer gaming guides) that might be valuable to those involved.
Can you point me to any examples of wikibooks that are good, complete books at this point? I'd love to have my negative impressions of wikibooks proved at least partly wrong. The project is 2.5 years old now, so I don't think it's premature to wonder whether it's ever produced any complete, high-quality book. When I go to the wikibooks site, what's highlighted is "New Wikibooks," which is obviously not the place to look for a completed project; the "Book of the month," which, however, is also only the bare beginnings of a project; and the Collaboration of the Month, which is also in the very early stages. If there are books that are success stories, the site really seems to be doing an excellent job of hiding them.

It's the other way around. When an image is uploaded the Commons, you can instantly use it in all Wikimedia projects by specifying its filename. Anyone who is motivated to do so can watch the stream of newly uploaded images and add them to the right Wikipedia articles, Wikibooks pages, Wikinews stories, etc. This happens, which explains the redundancy you see -- the Wikimedia Commons is first of all a media archive for the Wikimedia projects. However, material is originally uploaded there, not the other way around.

With almost 350,000 files, it's shaping up to become the largest archive of free content photos, sounds and other media files (we're not too big on videos yet). I've personally uploaded reproductions of 10,000 public domain paintings that were donated by a German publisher, and I operate FlickrLickr, a collaborative project to find useful Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr (we've uploaded over 4,000 photos already). So Wikimedia Commons very much has an identity of its own.

As for Wikibooks, I do not agree about its state. While most books are still incomplete, that doesn't make them useless. Take a look at the recently featured books of the month, such as Blender 3D: Noob to Pro. Sure, they can all still use work, but they're already useful resources for various topics. Importantly, this is the kind of Wikimedia project that is likely to see substantial outside grants in the future, because it ties into the whole "Let's help the developing world" vision that Wikimedia espouses (textbooks in developing countries are often more expensive than they are here!). It might be interesting to start paying people to edit and finalize some textbooks.

Wikinews has produced over 3,500 stories in the English version alone in a year, so while I agree that it's not an alternative to a newspaper (which primarily makes use of licensed newsfeeds), I think we've made some good progress, and I do recommend adding the English RSS feed to your favorite reader - it is often refreshingly different from other news sources in its priorities.

The projects you cite I would actually count as the most successful so far. Wikisource (which is mostly a Project Gutenberg clone) and Wikiquote (which seems very dubious in terms of being "free content") are of less interest; Wikispecies and Wiktionary are of little value without specialized software that adds structure to the data contained in these projects (incidentally, I am working on a project called "Wikidata" to change that).

It's the other way around. When an image is uploaded the Commons, you can instantly use it in all Wikimedia projects by specifying its filename. Anyone who is motivated to do so can watch the stream of newly uploaded images and add them to the right Wikipedia articles, Wikibooks pages, Wikinews stories, etc. This happens, which explains the redundancy you see -- the Wikimedia Commons is first of all a media archive for the Wikimedia projects. However, material is originally uploaded there, not the other way around.

With almost 350,000 files, it's shaping up to become the largest archive of free content photos, sounds and other media files (we're not too big on videos yet). I've personally uploaded reproductions of 10,000 public domain paintings that were donated by a German publisher, and I operate FlickrLickr, a collaborative project to find useful Creative Commons licensed photos on Flickr (we've uploaded over 4,000 photos already). So Wikimedia Commons very much has an identity of its own.

As for Wikibooks, I do not agree about its state. While most books are still incomplete, that doesn't make them useless. Take a look at the recently featured books of the month, such as Blender 3D: Noob to Pro. Sure, they can all still use work, but they're already useful resources for various topics. Importantly, this is the kind of Wikimedia project that is likely to see substantial outside grants in the future, because it ties into the whole "Let's help the developing world" vision that Wikimedia espouses (textbooks in developing countries are often more expensive than they are here!). It might be interesting to start paying people to edit and finalize some textbooks.

Wikinews has produced over 3,500 stories in the English version alone in a year, so while I agree that it's not an alternative to a newspaper (which primarily makes use of licensed newsfeeds), I think we've made some good progress, and I do recommend adding the English RSS feed to your favorite reader - it is often refreshingly different from other news sources in its priorities.

The projects you cite I would actually count as the most successful so far. Wikisource (which is mostly a Project Gutenberg clone) and Wikiquote (which seems very dubious in terms of being "free content") are of less interest; Wikispecies and Wiktionary are of little value without specialized software that adds structure to the data contained in these projects (incidentally, I am working on a project called "Wikidata" to change that).

if it works maybe we will see some form of freeware educational e-books. it seems like a noble effort to help educate people.

Check this out!

What I discovered one day - because i dodn't visit the Wiki every day - was that the whole thing had been co-opted by some anarchistic fool who simply thought that *his* take on my project was a better one. That person literally stole my Wiki URL, erased what I and many others had constructed, and started putting his content on it. That, instead of simply starting his own project under a different name. I had to find an intermediary to help me negotiate with this person, just to get him to cease and desist. In the interim, I lost the promise of help for the project that I had received from several people who could have made the project move along faster. they were afraid that their work could/would be wiped out.

The entire incident caused immeasureable harm to my project, and to the project's self-image. The project lost viable contributions from nearly 100 contributors that really cared about what I was doing.This has since been repaired. I had to reconstruct everything from scratch. This disaster happened simply because there was no proper control designed into the process. Thiings are noe getting better on Wikipedia

If you want to see the project- the California Open Source Textbook Project [COSTP] now almost fully back from near-decimation, go to http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/COSTP_World_History_P roject

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

If you are serious, go to Wikibooks.org, part of the Wikimedia project (same people who do Wikipedia). It looks like someone has already started a book on the GIMP. Maybe you could add to it or use some of it.

If you are serious, go to Wikibooks.org, part of the Wikimedia project (same people who do Wikipedia). It looks like someone has already started a book on the GIMP. Maybe you could add to it or use some of it.

and we always used the: "paying the fines and taxes on the Community Chest and Chance cards, and income taxes into the kitty rather than to the bank" method of building the free parking kitty.

Hi,

Have you ever heard of Ada? No, then read:

Easy (at wikibooks):

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Types /access

Detailed (ISO/IEC 8652:1995(E)):

http://www.adaic.com/standards/rm-amend/html/RM-13 -11.html

All you wanted - especially the savety part. Still you can also use an "access all" if you need more flexibility.

The thing I like about Ada it that it comes with of lot of savety features which I can all switch off if I need to.

Martin

Carter began the process of deregulation, starting with airlines, rail transport, natural gas, oil, and banking. Of course, Reagan kept this going, along with a coherent freee-market philosophy to back it up.

And then learn how not to be a "niu bi"

Interestingly, I asked the exact same question some time ago. If you look at the replies to that post of mine, you'll see some others who said they might be willing to negotiate building a MythTV box for someone else (you can check into those if you want).

If you're interested, what I ended up doing was building it myself. It really was a fun and manageable project. I added this wikibook to describe the process (which also mentions some alternatives to building your own MythTV).

Even without much linux knowledge, building a MythTV is do-able... in fact I used it to get-to-know linux.

Okay, considering I helped create this page, you misunderstood.

Grandparent was asserting ALL hybrids only charge from regenerative braking, and I'm asserting the Prius's HSD has more than one mode, namely direct charging from the engine also.

If you count the teeth on the planet-carrier of the PSD to the ring carrier you'll find that 28% of the engine's torque is always sent to the MG1 which then shunts it back out to MG2 to drive the wheels, or back to charge the battery. The heavy math is here. This means the HSD can consume, and/or store, the excess energy created by the ICE, which is important for maximizing engine efficiency, and for low-end torque which the Atkinson/Miller cycle ICE cannot manage. This ability is what makes it a FULL hybrid.

So yes, the HSD does suffer for highway mileage and high-end HP compared to Honda's system, but Honda's system isn't as flexible, nor as efficient yet.

Also yes, the HSD's "spinning inertia" regenerative-mode (no foot on brakes/accelerator) is somewhat like compression braking, but it isn't as strong. B-mode puts it into max-regen as well as sending the energy into the engine with the cylinders not firing so it performs air-compression braking and throwing that energy away doing that.

Did you know below ~25mph, B-Mode can also charge into the batts besides just free-spin compressing air?

It involves building spacecraft to hover at a stable point between the sun and the earth to divert sunlight off into space. Sound crazy?

Have you been to school?

Yes, and I recall it being woefully inadequate, highly subjective, socially distracting, and prone to favoritism. Computer-based learning has none of these limitations.

A teacher has to come up with a corpus aimed at the middle of the class's collective aptitude. Students sufficiently below that aptitude (and cant follow it) or above that aptitude (and are terminally bored with it) tend to lose out. Since the teacher has to provide the lesson en masse to the class, they have limited ability (largely due to time and the need to give nearly equal attention to each student) to provide a different lesson for the advanced or the lagging students. But computer-directed learning under aid of a teacher can be provided at a different level for each student, with the teacher able to assess and provide that direction instead of having to provide a Lowest Common Denominator direction to the class as a whole.

Quite probably the problem with your high school is that they were unable to break from the traditional model of teaching, seeing the computer as just a way to save paper on textbooks and quiz sheets, instead of an opportunity to change the way education is delivered to the student.

Books don't inexplicably refuse to open or spontaneously erase themselves.

Maybe not, but they get torn, thrown in the garbage or knocked in the sewer by bullies, and scribbled on. And they're harder to replace than an electronic document that everyone else in class has a copy of already. And when you get a used electronic document, it's as good as new, which is more that can be said for what's generally available at a used textbook sale.

Pretty much everything else you say is a problem of poor selection or of lack of demand. There is *some* good stuff out there, and nowadays people like Wikibooks are making an attempt at decent free material.

As far as concerns about being computer savvy, much of the lack of computer savviness, especially in the past, is the result of poor accessibility. Kids of today who grow up using computers (and VCRs, DVD players, digital cable, etc. etc.) are more computer and gadget savvy because those things are more available to them and are a universal part of their lives.

Giving computers to kids in developing nations will introduce them to an essential part of the modern world. Arguing that these kids *shouldn't* have computers is to argue that they should not be introduced to that world.

And besides, as anyone who has been to high school should be able to remember, those damned textbooks are freakin' heavy.

There is WikiBooks, but that doesn't seem to have gotten that far yet. I guess they could be made into PDF's or the like, and distributed along with the laptops. Of course, there's also Project Gutenberg, but that would really only be useful for courses like English, or mebbe History (in English still, though; language will likely be a problem).

In regard to your point about the material not beeing freely available. These machines have wireless if the school can afford to create an access point then there are wonderful resources like project gutenburg http://www.gutenberg.org/ and wikibooks http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page that will provide an imense amount of information just for the getting.

Providing a library of information, except in contrast to libraries every student can have a copy and in the instance of wikibooks, they can even contribute to the overall wealth of knowledge if they desire.

In fact GameGuard does not block one single hack I know of for Lineage .....

Five years ago, when I first learned PHP, I needed a tutorial-style book to help me along. Granted, the PHP documentation is AWESOME as a reference, especially considering there are functions for practically anything you can think of. However, I can definitely say that having a book that went through the basics first in a style where one could easily learn the language from scratch helped me out a lot.

(If anyone's trying to learn PHP, by the way, I highly recommend Sams' Teach Yourself PHP In 24 Hours. If you don't feel like buying a book, you could also check out the PHP Wikibook [Disclaimer: I have added parts.])

Imagine a doctor sharing video of a cardio CT with a cardiologist 1000 miles away using less than $2500 in hardware and a DSL connection.

This bring so many possibilties to the medical field. A specialist in Massachusetts consults with the primary care physician in Maine and a colleague in Florida, all viewing the same CT footage... A patient able to carry MRI images to a specialist.

With a quick look at the OsiriX Documentation it looks like it has an Export to QuickTime option, which should make it easy to produce videos for the iPod - though I wouldn't want to wait for a Mac mini to do it. It is possible that a doctor could drop video onto a 6G iPod and view it on the small screen or output it to a TV.

Some really great features that Blender has over the competition:

• Open-source (obvious, but a plus)
• Embedded python scripting (can import other modules, cross-platform)
• Cross-platform to a ridiculous extent
• Platform consistent (meaning it looks the same whatever you run it on), OpenGL-accelerated user-interface
• Less than 10 megs for any platform!!
• Loads in a few seconds, compare that to the behemoths Maya and 3dsmax are
• No funky copyprotection servers/dongles to worry about
• Runs well on older hardware

Heck there is even a ton of free documentation, ranging from a wikibook to other books and guides.

Google is leading, Yahoo is following, they will never be number one. :)
But it is good that Yahoo do this, because Google was criticised for doing it, but now Yahoo does it too.

Now it is easier to get hands on information, and there is no wear and tear on digial formats like in books, so data can be preserved longer (hopefully).

Wikibooks also has free content. http://wikibooks.org/
"Think free. Learn free."

Also http://wikisource.org/

Hope this really sparks Free/Open Content!

On top of that, reading in front of a monitor at this point in time is not enjoyable.

"no cost of shipping, no middleman warehouse distribution, no physical cost to print/bind, no brick and mortar store paying electricity, rent, stocking risky books at a premium, they'll be dirt cheap!" I was wrong.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_P ro

Here are quite a few.. :)

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Tutorial_ Links_List

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

Here's one I found:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Computer_Science:Algo rithms:Chapter_4
Look under the heading: find-median

Errr... I'd say it's a long way from being complete, but it's very much in existance.

I think that this is a step in the right direction. We need an viable alternative for those who cannot afford to either commute, pay for tuition (or more expensive online courses), and/or take the time off their current jobs to go to a regular college yet have the motivation to work with an online program and educate themselves. A necessity for an alternative educational system to work would be a way for it's student's coursework to be recognized by industry (perhaps by using some form of paid (yet still affordable) standardized testing or securing accreditation. Gotta get a job once you get that degree and most places demand (with reason) that your college be accredited for your degree to be recognized.

Heck, this could be a boon for private industry since they could help shape the education their prospective employees get or even go as far as create modules or options they require new or current employees to take to be qualified for their job.

I wonder what professor created this curriculum: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Manual_of_Crime

Nevertheless, I'm highly opposed to the "subscription" model and clearly see the badness down the road. So, to that end, I've been working (alone now, but hopefully soon to gain colleagues) on a free textbook for my field in the form of a wikibook. In my professional opinion, wikibooks--not commercial EULA-bound e-books--are the "right thing" for academic textbooks. We can all work on them, and it's in everyone's best interests (students and profs) to ensure that these texts are accurate, clear, and monitored for vandalism (which, if it is existed at all, would likely be from paid agents of the textbook syndicate).

I doubt that I'll be able to convince many of my esteemed colleagues too soon, though, because (a) textbooks aren't counted towards tenure and (b) lots of professors make good money writing the damn things (want that new car? Write a textbook for us!) Meanwhile, the textbook reps are knocking on my everyday depositing free textbooks in my office--though they tend not to mention how much they'll cost the students should I assign one.

Little do they know--I'm using these textbooks to help me construct the wikibook intended to destroy them! (sardonic laughter...)

You sound like you are looking for Wikibooks. They are developing and disseminating free open content textbooks, manuals, and other texts.

I'm sorry that I get a little rough on-line. Some of it may be sleep deprivation (from reading /. at ungodly hours of the night) and from a usually combatative on-line environment that /. usually gets.

I agree that things can be done to improve the system... and that is why I'm involved in doing exactly that myself. I tend to hang out at Wikibooks instead of Wikipedia. This is a much smaller community, and one that has been overrun by vandals from Wikipedia that see it as an easy target. Some recent changes are going to make life a little harder on the vandals, but I don't care to discuss them in so public of a forum as /.

One thing I'm involved with right now is trying to tighten up the standards for Wikibooks, and your comments about citations apply doubly so for textbooks and educational materials to be taken seriously in an acedemic environment. One of the successful projects is a textbook for high school physics that apparently is going to be used in South Africa this fall (if it can be completed as far as a version 1.0 is conerned). There are a couple of "best of" that look promising, but almost nothing at this site is really up to publishing quality yet.

I've been spending so much time on organization issues and trying to clean up messes left behind by others that unfortunately I havn't been spending as much time writing content as I have wanted to do. And there are a couple of cool books I'm working on that may make a minor impact in this world. Hopefully I can get back to them soon.

Well, you are a bit late. For in-depth information there is WikiBooks (http://www.wikibooks.org./

And a few WikiPedia articles already have links to the relevant WikiBook where the reader can find out more about the topic.

Martin

"Time is a measure, therefore they actually do thave the authority to regulate it."

Yeah, but let's make sure this isn't like when the State of Indiana when they tried unsuccessfully to legally solidify Pi as 3.2 in 1897.

Now, if only people got serious about real time reform, and not only disconnected the link between time and the sun, but also did away with DST, Timezones, a Base 12/60 numerical time hybrid, and disconnected the calendar and the moon as well!

Here's a good wiki writeup about the available film editing software available on linux:

Movie Making Manual-Linux in film production

- shazow

Ok, don your tin foil hats campers, here goes!

1. Changes to time and time zones are one of the least anticipated changes to an OS. Just look at Y2K.

2. Most people don't update software if it still works to suit their needs. This isn't just the OS, but all supporting software.

3. Bill Gates wished everyone used the latest Windows OS.

Conclusion - Bill Gates isn't just pushing for changes to DST now, but for changes to time every 3-5 years to keep up with the release of new Windows OS's. Just watch as this change nearly guarantees that any business or person relying critically on Dos, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98 (which won't get patched anymore, iirc, and Windows 2000 joining them in the not too distant future) will be literally forced to buy new computers (Michael Dell is behind the conspiracy too) with Windows XP or better in order to operate under the new time changes.

That's the conspiracy theory at least. But, the conclusion of who will benefit is most likely a given, and that's just in the tech sector.

This change will have a serious economic impact, which will ripple across the entire world. It will weaken small and medium businesses that will be forced to upgrade, and strengthen big businesses that directly sell the necessary upgrades as well as indirect benefactors who will profit from their products being re-purchased or purchased to replace old software. (That old DOS inventory won't work on XP, you'll have to call Oracle for the latest software.)

My opinion is to get it over with and change over to the logical conclusion of all of this, Triangular Earth Calendar [TEC], which features a symmetrical and intuitive calendar, and decimal time without time zones.

Time Zones and DST is too similar in thinking as Time Cube, as in a "Stupid educated learn DST" kinda way.

Support universal digital time, via Triangular Earth Calender. For time and calendar, it's simply the most logical.

No, it's actually still possible on all of them one way or another:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San _Andreas/Appendices/Game_Mods

I will say that it's just plain lunacy to think that with all the violence in the game that a little pixelated sex should have a huge impact on the rating.

However, medical students are well aware of this phenomenon (at a rational level) and soon get over it. The problem with having so much medical information (even assuming it is all trustworthy) available to the general public is that your average person has no preparation whatsoever to deal with it. Expect to find plenty of aunties with prostate cancer... :-)

Despite all of these pitfalls, I think the advantages of having broader access to information still outweight the disadvantages. If not for anything else, it keeps doctors on their toes: they are not the sole guardians of the "mystical medical knowledge" anymore.

At last, consider that in some cases you may discover on the Internet "second opinions" about some medical treatments which otherwise you would be totally ignorant about. Check this story for a very enlightening example.

Stross' "Singularity Sky" is a great read, if a bit odd. While reading it I did get the impression that it relied on knowing beforehand what a singularity was, and what causality violations are. It had a kind of spent-the-last-few-years-reading-slashdot mentality, and I worried that it relied on too much geek-background to be widely enjoyed.

Some of us over on Wikibooks have started putting together a "technical companion to Accelerando, available here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accelerando_Technical _Companion

Hopefully this can help provide some of that "geek background" for Accelerando. Here's (the current version of) the introductory description:

This is a technical companion to Charlie Stross's latest novel, Accelerando. Stross's book can be quite dense in unusual technical terms and concepts, which can sometimes be quite confusing to readers unfamiliar with them. The purpose of this companion is to help alleviate any confusions the reader may have, as well as to introduce new confusions by giving the reader an idea of the current state and expected future of the technologies described in the novel. Wherever possible, brief information on relevant research papers is provided.

The novel is available as a free download from the official site, and will also be available for purchase in bookstores on July 1, 2005.

The first part of this technical companion is a glossary, intended to explain and elaborate on concepts without giving away plot details. Keep in mind, however, that simply knowing that the novel involves a particular term may be a spoiler in some sense, so some may wish to defer consultation of the glossary. Indeed, part of the appeal of Accelerando is the sense of confusion one gets by being exposed to the technical flurry.

The second part is a chapter guide, where chapter-specific commentary is given. This is bound to be chock-full of spoilers.