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Odd, that's pretty much exactly what I did with my new Dell Ubuntu box (except for the configuration - what does that do again?). It also found my old HP networked Laserjet (which some of my computers won't do) once I told it there was a printer on the LAN.

It just worked. Even better than my Mac. Impressive.

Really? You plugged your CPU into a wall socket, and what exactly happened?

Your denials are pointless now that this story has been proven to be true, and Jimbo has announced a confession that the edits were oversighted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078336.html Please cease this foolish denial. Denying something when you have plausible deniability is one thing. But you no longer have plausible deniability at all. This story is true. Even Jimbo admits that it is based in truth.

But that's simply not true. Jimbo has admitted that the edits were oversighted, so your denial of it, after it is proven and admitted just makes you look stupid. http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078336.html

Don't tell me I forgot the link to Jimbo's confession: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078336.html If its possible, could someone move that up in to my post above? Thanks.

This is now being discussed openly (ish) on the Wikipedia mailing list. After an investigation uncovered that some of SlimVirgin's edits to Pan Am 103 had been oversighted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html and that there was a Wikipedia Review topic that thoroughly investigated the oversighting at the time: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078266.html http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=186 4&hl= http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=113 5&hl= Wikipedia has been forced to admit fault here (after dozens of deleted edits from Crum375, ElinorD, Jayjg and SlimVirgin, including many blocks to people who linked to Slashdot). They have now added it to the Wikipedia Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2007-07-30/In_the_news The speculation about whether this issue is true or not should end now. It is true, confirmed by Jimbo himself. The only question now is what we should do about it.

This is now being discussed openly (ish) on the Wikipedia mailing list. After an investigation uncovered that some of SlimVirgin's edits to Pan Am 103 had been oversighted: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html and that there was a Wikipedia Review topic that thoroughly investigated the oversighting at the time: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078266.html http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=186 4&hl= http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=113 5&hl= Wikipedia has been forced to admit fault here (after dozens of deleted edits from Crum375, ElinorD, Jayjg and SlimVirgin, including many blocks to people who linked to Slashdot). They have now added it to the Wikipedia Signpost: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_S ignpost/2007-07-30/In_the_news The speculation about whether this issue is true or not should end now. It is true, confirmed by Jimbo himself. The only question now is what we should do about it.

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html

Or this?

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078242.html

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078241.html

Or this?

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2007 -July/078242.html

Ok smartass. I've looked at the map, where is this "New Zealand" you're talking about?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum b/a/a5/Map_of_USA_with_state_names.svg/959px-Map_o f_USA_with_state_names.svg.png

Original appointment: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005 -July/026675.html Second appointment: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006 -January/037980.html Election results prior to second appointment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mathbot/Results

Original appointment: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005 -July/026675.html Second appointment: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006 -January/037980.html Election results prior to second appointment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mathbot/Results

Arthur/RISC OS: "Arthur is an early graphical user interface (GUI) operating system (OS) that was used on Acorn ARM-cpu-based computers from about 1987 until the much-superior RISC OS 2 was completed and made available in April 1989." (Wikipedia). Arthur had a task bar at the bottom. The desktop was written in BASIC, using software interrupts to communicate with modules that did the actual WIMP handling.

See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5b/Acor nArthur110desktopsmall.png

Yes? Which is based on FreeBSD and not OpenBSD. FreeBSD which is also used by many people on the desktop (I did a while ago, but that laptop died, unrelated to FreeBSD of course ;-) ). They are really only related by their name and their license. OpenBSD is a fork of NetBSD, which came from 386BSD which also forked into FreeBSD. Let's say OpenBSD and PC-BSD are something like cousins.

True, the heatshield sitting next to a man-made crater was pretty cool:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/24/Oppo rtunity_Heat_Shield.jpg

Abuse on wikipedia is systemic and ridiculous. The number of people who have been through it are numerous. The number of reliable, credentialed academics who've been abused, voluminous. The number of times they have covered up their abuses, the number of sheer scandals. (note that they've deleted all of the Essjay material, to cover up and try to hide what he pulled; a long-running scam to abuse and mistreat and demean Catholics).

Wikipedia administrators regularly abuse their power - in any way possible. The caste system of wikipedia is set up this way; gather thousands of mindless edits (and they keep pushing the boundary upwards, for fear that someone might get in and try to fix the system from within). Decry anyone who rightly points out that the system is broken and needs fixing as a "troll."

Abuse and attack; ban and call them a "troll" later; lie about the results of "CheckUser", lie about what a user said and what a metric really means, attack attack and do your best to smear anyone who says anything at all.

This is the method by which wikipedia administrators exist; this is the methodology by which the caste system is enforced. It used to be, way back when, that users were encouraged to seek out another administrator if one was giving them grief for redress: now the policy is against "wheel warring", and no administrator is allowed to undo the action of another for fear of being accused of such, and administrative policies have been changed to enforce this.

In the Wikipedia system, the administrators are the pigs of animal farm - "more equal than others."

Jason Scott put it very well indeed.
So did Jerry Holkins: "a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

However, the core of it is worse than that. Wikipedia is not merely controlled by "consensus": it is actively controlled by cliques whose goal is to bias the hell out of articles and keep them in their biased mode. They operate by getting their friends, members of their clique, elevated to admin status and then patrolling these articles, ostensibly for "trolls" but really for anyone who might try to un-bias them. They abuse these newcomers, make false accusations against them, hurl insults and then have their friend ban the newcomer for fighting back. They abuse the prohibitions on "multiple reversions" like a game; instead of a real consensus, all you have to have is one more guy than the opposing viewpoint and you completely control the damn article - and since you have a sympathetic admin on your side, you can have them block the new user for "edit warring", which comes in real handy when you have your buddy bring them to the drumhead trial system called "Arbcom" and say "see he should be banned he's got X blocks already."

Wikipedia is beyond broken - at its best, it is a worthless pile of crap with some whipped cream sprayed on top to try to make it look presentable. At its worst it is a classic case of letting the inmates run the asylum, of the Lord of the Flies syndrome; the worst abusers of the system are those who are "highly-ranked" and "respected" administrators, who operate by fiat, who can and regularly do abuse anyone else without mercy.

The caste system is mercilessly enforced by the admins - without it, they would not have nearly so much power. The whole point of being an administrator of wikipedia is not to make the encyclopedia better but rather to protect your friends, protect your clique, rise in

Abuse on wikipedia is systemic and ridiculous. The number of people who have been through it are numerous. The number of reliable, credentialed academics who've been abused, voluminous. The number of times they have covered up their abuses, the number of sheer scandals. (note that they've deleted all of the Essjay material, to cover up and try to hide what he pulled; a long-running scam to abuse and mistreat and demean Catholics).

Wikipedia administrators regularly abuse their power - in any way possible. The caste system of wikipedia is set up this way; gather thousands of mindless edits (and they keep pushing the boundary upwards, for fear that someone might get in and try to fix the system from within). Decry anyone who rightly points out that the system is broken and needs fixing as a "troll."

Abuse and attack; ban and call them a "troll" later; lie about the results of "CheckUser", lie about what a user said and what a metric really means, attack attack and do your best to smear anyone who says anything at all.

This is the method by which wikipedia administrators exist; this is the methodology by which the caste system is enforced. It used to be, way back when, that users were encouraged to seek out another administrator if one was giving them grief for redress: now the policy is against "wheel warring", and no administrator is allowed to undo the action of another for fear of being accused of such, and administrative policies have been changed to enforce this.

In the Wikipedia system, the administrators are the pigs of animal farm - "more equal than others."

Jason Scott put it very well indeed.
So did Jerry Holkins: "a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information."

However, the core of it is worse than that. Wikipedia is not merely controlled by "consensus": it is actively controlled by cliques whose goal is to bias the hell out of articles and keep them in their biased mode. They operate by getting their friends, members of their clique, elevated to admin status and then patrolling these articles, ostensibly for "trolls" but really for anyone who might try to un-bias them. They abuse these newcomers, make false accusations against them, hurl insults and then have their friend ban the newcomer for fighting back. They abuse the prohibitions on "multiple reversions" like a game; instead of a real consensus, all you have to have is one more guy than the opposing viewpoint and you completely control the damn article - and since you have a sympathetic admin on your side, you can have them block the new user for "edit warring", which comes in real handy when you have your buddy bring them to the drumhead trial system called "Arbcom" and say "see he should be banned he's got X blocks already."

Wikipedia is beyond broken - at its best, it is a worthless pile of crap with some whipped cream sprayed on top to try to make it look presentable. At its worst it is a classic case of letting the inmates run the asylum, of the Lord of the Flies syndrome; the worst abusers of the system are those who are "highly-ranked" and "respected" administrators, who operate by fiat, who can and regularly do abuse anyone else without mercy.

The caste system is mercilessly enforced by the admins - without it, they would not have nearly so much power. The whole point of being an administrator of wikipedia is not to make the encyclopedia better but rather to protect your friends, protect your clique, rise in

I think the reason they don't do this is because NASA has had a hard time finding reliable martians with which it could entrust the construction of the landing strip.

So now can my graphics coprocessor render moebius strips on demand?

Many (most?) UK citizens still don't want to be associated with continental Europe, despite what the government says.

Regardless, I don't see what relevance your statement has here - how about France, Germany, or Sweden instead?

Probably what happened is that someone read somewhere that QWERTY was designed to minimize jamming of the typewriter, and assumed that the jamming was due to people typing too fast. It then got perpetuated as 'common knowledge.'

Circuit Courts of Appeals only have jurisdiction over cases arising in their proper Circuit. This decision is not applicable anywhere but the Ninth Circuit.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thum b/d/df/US_Court_of_Appeals_and_District_Court_map. svg/620px-US_Court_of_Appeals_and_District_Court_m ap.svg.png

Editors, please.

He still hasn't learned from Pearl Harbor that not every movie needs a love story, but I think that it was still a very good movie.

Yea, you can't blame the guy: he had just something like around $200 million to make this movie. With such a scarce budget, last thing you wanna do is think about whether there should be a love story in it or not. Love stories are cheap and don't involve CGI, so that's good to thrown in, just in case.

I'm sure if they keep giving him movies, few billion later he'll eventually learn. I can't wait to see the kind of movie Bay would do on a budget of 500 million. He may even hire screenwriters.

---

Regarding special effects: what's with Hollywood complaining about how complex it was for them to pull off the effects? I mean, guys: you cast it upon yourselves.

Is transformers complex to do in CGI? I mean, look at them - they're just a bunch of colored boxes. But that's not good enough for ya, right? Naaah!

They have to actually take the original designs, and make them look as if someone mounted a bomb in them, and it exploded right before the movie shooting began.

With so many parts randomly sticking out, a real-world robot like this would constantly find himself hitching all sorts of garbage laying around that gets stuck in most inconvenient places.

Also it wouldn't hurt they they consider how fast a huge metal robot could move and transform, so to look real (yea, it's about of robots turning cars from outer space, but in a live movie, it HAS to look realistic).

I don't blame the CGI crew for this last one though. Apparently they pitches realistic physics to Bay, but he was convinced that huge metal robots from outer space would move fast and smooth like "ninjas". Yea, like ninjas.

The result is you get a mix of realistic physics (on impact with buildings) and the rest of the time, the Transformers look like paper models that could get carried away if you blow a household fan at them.

Great job.

This is totally true. The glass film from the article was designed for application in large, modern office buildings that are mostly glass. Specifically, you may recognize this building:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84 /National_Security_Agency_headquarters,_Fort_Meade ,_Maryland.jpg

This stuff is far too expensive for any standard citizen to bother with, and as you said, there are more cost effective methods that are just as good.

The fools. They should have had their slaves build something like this.

well maybe contact [imdb.com], but contact comes second in my mind to blade runner

Contact is definitely first in my list, because of the "my daddy is an alien" and "your mind can't bear how we actually look" cop-out ending.

You gotta be very brave to masterfully build suspence for hours in this otherwise great movie, and end with daddy talking condescendingly to the main protagonist "honey, you're too stupid to even have a look at me".

I mean, what the hell could they be? Really ugly fat green gelatinous blob monster? Seen that. Gaseous purple clouds? Seen that, too (although the comic version looks kinda different).

I mean WHAT, what the hell did it look like? Maybe they all looked like middle-aged average dads and this is why all the lies. Outer space jerks.

a socially acceptable manor: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b1/Trec esson_-_moat_view.JPG

time to go up the attic and find my trusted tinfoil hat

So clearly public domain exists

Clearly it does, but it's not necessarily the case that because Copyright exists Public Domain must also. I can easily imagine a government corrupt enough as to abolish the Public Domain entirely.

You seem to be completely missing Bruce's point. As far as I can see, neither he nor anyone else has claimed that there is no such thing as works in the public domain. The law is crystal clear in that regard; once copyright on a work expires, it enters the public domain.

What is not clear at all is whether you are entitled to renounce copyright on works of your authorship before it expires. There are many examples of rights that cannot be waived, such as those to liberty or life; you can't sell yourself into slavery, nor lawfully commit suicide. A case could therefore be made that the moral rights entailed by copyright law are similarly unrenounceable, and that any legal instrument purporting to renounce them is actually invalid. I am not saying that this is the case (AFAIK there is no precedent on the matter in the USA), but given that it is a clear possibility, it may actually be more reasonable to choose a generous license than to attempt dedication to the public domain.

Incidentally, see the template to that effect in the Wikimedia Commons to see a cautious approach to the issue.

He's an Ori!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c8/Prio r_4_(Beachhead).jpg

But then again, I don't kill kittens for fun in my spare time.

Well, that's your loss. If you do it right, killing kittens can be quite enjoyable.

In an even smaller spot, this picture was found...

And Mac users owe BSD everything they have...
so...
...eat a dick

Look? John Cramer..., Cosmo Kramer, I don't think so...
But strangely there's some resemblance to the "real" Kenny Kramer (which the character Cosmo Kramer was based on)...

Look? John Cramer..., Cosmo Kramer, I don't think so...
But strangely there's some resemblance to the "real" Kenny Kramer (which the character Cosmo Kramer was based on)...

> We should be able to use Windows ClearType instead of the ported OSX version (which sucks)

You mean that black letters on white backgroung actually appear as black letters on white backgroud sucks? You really prefer Windows' black-letters-appear-in-rainbow-colors technology? (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/d/d4/Cle artype.png)
I tried Safari for Windows only for a very short time at a fried's house so I didn't experience any crashes, but at least the font rendering was way better than the ClearType stuff in IE.

Well, you have to keep in mind that, even considering swap, hard drives by the time didn't have that much space, although they occupied a lot of it. Take a look at this comparison, a 5.25" 111 MB MFM drive against a 2.5" 6495 MB IDE drive. I remember running Windows 95 on a Pentium MMX 133MHz with a 256 MB HD and 8 MB RAM. I even managed to install Windows 98 on it, but it was a big mistake, as Win 98 SE hadn't been released yet and the first version (as most O.S. that come out Redmond since ever) was miserably buggy.

Time passes, and nowadays a cellphone has more power than that machine. That's progress.

Cause of death: Blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.

I'd like to say you're welcome, but it brings me no pleasure to inform you of these unpleasant facts.

The fact that more people don't know about this, that more people think the worst thing that happened at abu Ghraib was some dude had panties put over his head, is just saddening. Even the initial Taguba report listed much worse, including beatings with table legs and rape with broomsticks. I mean seriously, haven't you seen this picture? Do you think that man ended up on his back packed in ice because of having panties put on his head?!

The submitter, the analysis, and the relevant claims in the first linked article are from the "Pacific Institute". That's fine and doesn't mean anything about it is incorrect, but probably means there is an agenda at work - surprise, just as there's an "agenda" served by the White House, too - and this is also a factual statement:

Pick any year since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997, Mr. Bush should have said, and the U.S. CO2 emission performance is superior to that of all major Kyoto parties, including and most notably Europe (CO2 being the focus of the many pending legislative proposals).

Also, the submission complains that the US metric shown in a positive light - surprising they'd choose something that reflects positively! - is that because only CO2 emissions are considered. Well, CO2 emissions account for nearly three quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Further is the problem with using 2000 as the reference point. In fact, it is perfectly valid to use 2000 as a reference point; it's just as valid as using 1997 or any other time. There is no magical time in terms of statistical length or any point in time that is any more valid than any other. You can argue that the submitter is "cherry picking" his own data. It's laughable to say there is a "right" base year.

Of course, the issue is much, much more complex, and no one wants to take into consideration the very real economic impacts of taking drastic action to reduce emissions, especially when China and India - forget the EU - are not saddled with the same restrictions.

Firefox extension: http://www.customizegoogle.com/ lets you filter out URLs from the results (plus dozens of other useful things).

You can filter out Wikipedia mirrors (using that extension) with the list here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mirror_filter

Faceball 2000 looks fucking awesome. It even has shadows! IShootU!

The post forgets to mention that although it only has two legs, it has four arms.

penthagon shape

It's an Israel flag minus a vertex.

There were stupid, 8 is better than 5 because is more orthogonal.

penthagon shape

It's an Israel flag minus a vertex.

There were stupid, 8 is better than 5 because is more orthogonal.

• It's an USA spacecraft : PASS!.
• It's an USA spacecraft : PASS!.
• It's a non-USA spacecraft : alarm! alarm! alarm! Kill it? [yes/no] Autodestruct the base? [yes/no].

Headline should read:

Apple's usual litigation-trigger-happy attitude has netted an incalculable amount of free publicity to Anne Summers.

I can't really see how Apple can claim some sort of copyright over silhouettes. I mean - the original iPod adds seemed very.... reminiscent of the James Bond opening credits sequences from the 70s.

Perhaps Apple is jealous that the Anne Summers' logo also contains an Apple.

Star nosed moles are so ugly they've wrapped right back around into cute. Kinda like pug dogs. Now, naked mole rats took a wrong turn after they hit ugly and veered off into monstrously hideous instead of wrapping back to cute. Most people would breath a sigh of relief knowing a naked mole rat got whacked.