Slashdot Mirror

While not directly a content management system (or rather it is a CMS, but aimed heavily at the Encyclopedia market) it does very well as a CMS for pretty much any application. I use mediawiki to handle about ... well let's ask my Mediawiki:

http://www.seifried.org/security/index.php/Special :Statistics

"There are 13,208 total pages in the database. This includes "talk" pages, pages about Seifried Security Site, minimal "stub" pages, redirects, and others that probably don't qualify as content pages. Excluding those, there are 11,475 pages that are probably legitimate content pages."

Well there ya go. Setup takes about 5 minutes if you have a working UNIX/Linux/BSD server with Apache, MySQL and PHP installed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Wikipedia's plans concerning the SW can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki.

From the site:

"The WikiProject "Semantic MediaWiki" provides a common platform for discussing extensions of the MediaWiki software that allow for simple, machine-based processing of Wiki-content. This usually requires some form of "semantic annotation," but the special Wiki environment and the multitude of envisaged applications impose a number of additional requirements."

... is the picture !

• http://www.mutopiaproject.org/
• http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Sound (Check bottom)
• Internet Archive: Open Source Audio
• Free Classical Music Archive recordings performed by the MIT choir and other amateurs (quite high quality)
• The Choral Public Domain Library describes itself as 'A Free Sheet Music Archive'
• Mutopia: a collection of public domain sheet music
• Project Gutenberg music section
• MusicBrainz: a database of structured metadata about audio releases

The Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/ ) has a good deal of content under free licenses (GFDL, PD, CC, etc.). Finding specific typed of stuff is pretty easy. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_ domain . Hope this helps. Good luck.

-molo

The Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/ ) has a good deal of content under free licenses (GFDL, PD, CC, etc.). Finding specific typed of stuff is pretty easy. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_ domain . Hope this helps. Good luck.

-molo

The Wikimedia Commons ( http://commons.wikimedia.org/ ) has a good deal of content under free licenses (GFDL, PD, CC, etc.). Finding specific typed of stuff is pretty easy. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video and http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_ domain . Hope this helps. Good luck.

-molo

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

And this one:

http://www.c-evo.org/

And its graphics are great.

Here is a UML diagram of Windows Vista including the new Human Computer Interface

It also apparently subpixel antialiasing on Windows 3.1 (according to the Wikipedia screenshot). Pretty slick, those Cello devs...

There were *MORE* options for chips back then, not less. MIPS. Alpha. Power. 680x0. AMD 486. Cx 486.

In the consumer market you had a choice between Intel and it's clones (Cyrix, IDT, AMD). By the time the Pentium and PII processors were around only Intel offered reasonable performance. Alpha, power, mips weren't an option for consumer systems. The 680x0 systems were only used for apple systems.

The situation now is about the same, for consumer pcs you have a choice between power and intel/amd. The difference is that the amd cpus are price and performance competitive with intel chips.

However my original comments were about innovations and intel's in the pc market.

Intel has pretty much always "pushed it". Their projected timelines for Mhz improvement has been fairly trackable, and fairly steady since the 1970s.

Look at this graph and you'll notice that transisitor counts and processor introductions started leveling off after the 486 intro and didn't pick up until just after the P3 intro when the athlon came out and started putting up performance numbers that matched or beat the P3 processors.

Nah, Mattel made it, though it was composed of a lot of technology from various companies. Nintendo seemed to get behind it pretty convincingly, though, even though I'm sure many Nintendo employees at the time knew that the glove just didn't work. Anyway, I suspect that if they make a boxing game for the Revolution (with a glove where you can slip the controller into the a slit/pouch, connected through the extension port), it'll work perfectly. And then I can finally actually knock out Mike Tyson.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so I'll leave it at this.

Communications from the Hayabusa probe suddenly and mysteriously fell silent after it returned this image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cf/Godz illa.jpg.

Configure your database software to think that data is written when it's not, and corruption is not the software's fault, it's yours. Or, in this case, arguably the IDE drives' fault for lying to their controllers. In any case, stop blaming MySQL.

See LiveJournal's post-mortem (scroll to "Disk cache issues") and Slashdot's story for more on this. If you administer databases, you should be aware of the problems with IDE drives, because if you misunderstand how they work, you can misconfigure any RDBMS to corrupt your data.

You can grab your own copy (I'm not sure why it's delayed by a couple months though, it used to be up-to-date).

Considering how often Slashdot goes down

Can you be more specific? How often does slashdot go down? Now you're just making stuff up.
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /slashdot.org

Wikimedia Foundation also runs on a small cluster of MySQL servers that are nothing more than dual opterons, and that runs Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquotes, etc. etc. etc.- all languages, worldwide. They average about a thousand web requests per second (roughly 25% of that traffic hits the MySQL servers).

Considering how often Slashdot goes down

Can you be more specific? How often does slashdot go down? Now you're just making stuff up.
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=http:/ /slashdot.org

Wikimedia Foundation also runs on a small cluster of MySQL servers that are nothing more than dual opterons, and that runs Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikibooks, Wikiquotes, etc. etc. etc.- all languages, worldwide. They average about a thousand web requests per second (roughly 25% of that traffic hits the MySQL servers).

As to my understanding, it is not possible to "release things" into the public domain. If an author publishes a statement that a given work is being made "public" or something to that effect, and you use that work, or distribute it, or copy it, or whatever, you might still be infringing. If the origional author decides to take you to court over it, we don't know what the outcome of the case would be. I don't think that there is a legal way to say "this work can be used/copied/distributed by anyone, anywhere". This, I believe, is why the "Creative Commons" was formed. I don't know how defensable this agreement is, and IANAL, but I think this is the best we have so far.

In the EU this is limitedly true - it is impossible to release or trade away your creator or "moral" rights to a work.

In the United States you can place something into the public domain by disclaiming all your rights to it by saying: "I, the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide."

When you do this, you no longer have any exclusive rights to the work. One of the differences between public domain and the BSD license (without attribution) is that the public domain holder cannot place any contractual obligation on someone for a work (a license), and cannot claim copyright on it in the future.

Some prefer the BSD license (without attribution) because it allows them to explicitly disclaim responsibility for the use of the work in contract. This is another topic entirely.

See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Donate_t o_the_public_domain /a> for more details on the public domain and releasing articles into it.

Also keep in mind that Creative Commons does not establish new mechanisms or create new rights. Creative Commons was created to make templates for licenses under current copyright law - to provide licenses retaining some rights. This is the reason for the "some rights reserved" motto.

As to my understanding, it is not possible to "release things" into the public domain. If an author publishes a statement that a given work is being made "public" or something to that effect, and you use that work, or distribute it, or copy it, or whatever, you might still be infringing. If the origional author decides to take you to court over it, we don't know what the outcome of the case would be. I don't think that there is a legal way to say "this work can be used/copied/distributed by anyone, anywhere". This, I believe, is why the "Creative Commons" was formed. I don't know how defensable this agreement is, and IANAL, but I think this is the best we have so far.

In the EU this is limitedly true - it is impossible to release or trade away your creator or "moral" rights to a work.

In the United States you can place something into the public domain by disclaiming all your rights to it by saying: "I, the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide."

When you do this, you no longer have any exclusive rights to the work. One of the differences between public domain and the BSD license (without attribution) is that the public domain holder cannot place any contractual obligation on someone for a work (a license), and cannot claim copyright on it in the future.

Some prefer the BSD license (without attribution) because it allows them to explicitly disclaim responsibility for the use of the work in contract. This is another topic entirely.

See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Donate_t o_the_public_domain /a> for more details on the public domain and releasing articles into it.

Also keep in mind that Creative Commons does not establish new mechanisms or create new rights. Creative Commons was created to make templates for licenses under current copyright law - to provide licenses retaining some rights. This is the reason for the "some rights reserved" motto.

Please-kindly-note that while YOU may release anything you write on Wikipedia into the public domain, Wikipedia itself IS NOT PUBLIC DOMAIN

Wikinews is, but some people are trying to change that. If you want to see Wikinews stay in the public domain, create an account and vote here.

You could have learned that French Quarter is dry by looking at this photo
(it's about 500px from the superdome in the 2 o'clock direction.

Because, as we know, the Earth gets far less sunlight than it did in the 1960s? (it does change, but only a few tenths of a percent over the sun's cycle)

Here's a hint: ionizing radiation not allows for the formation of ozone, but also releases free chlorine radicals from CFCs which break down ozone catalytically. A single chlorine ion will on average destroy about a hundred thousand ozone molecules before it leaves the cycle. Chlorine from natural sources has historically been the largest reducer of the ozone layer in the stratosphere (OH, NO, and Br also play roles); however, present day, 84% of the chlorine in the stratosphere is man-made.

About 5% of the world's ozone layer has been destroyed between 1979 and 1990 - about three times the rate of decline during the 1970s, when it first began to be studied in depth. Naturally, there are huge seasonal variations, especially in polar regions - this is just an average. However, the seasonal variations, too, have become more extreme. This thus leads to the most pronounced effect on the ozone minimum in polar regions.

Studies in the 1980s concluded that without CFC reduction policy (which was enacted), 30-50% of the planet's ozone layer would be destroyed by 2050, based on the concentrations of stratospheric CFCs that we'd end up with.

Depends upon whom the peer is.

or didn't you mean that kind of peer...

Illuminati

  pwned by illuminati secret services and black budget orgz

These are billboards at railway stations.
Funny how many comments got this wrong....

1) Most posters are American
2) Most Americans have never even *seen* a train station

Buffalo are "Bubalus arnee", Bison are "Bison bison". They're both bovines, but that's where their similarity ends. It'd be like calling a cow a buffalo.

Buffalo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3 3/Indonesia-Bull.jpg/180px-Indonesia-Bull.jpg

Bison: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8 d/American_bison.jpg/200px-American_bison.jpg

As you can see, they don't look anything alike.

Buffalo are "Bubalus arnee", Bison are "Bison bison". They're both bovines, but that's where their similarity ends. It'd be like calling a cow a buffalo.

Buffalo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3 3/Indonesia-Bull.jpg/180px-Indonesia-Bull.jpg

Bison: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8 d/American_bison.jpg/200px-American_bison.jpg

As you can see, they don't look anything alike.

One for you: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedians#Gender_ and_sexuality

what the hell happened to wikipedia?! Their stats don't look too hot from the past hour or so.

And for tommorow's launch of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can find your own transfer orbit to Mars (for free, to boot).

1. A version of an article can be validated through the article validation feature (now in beta stage). This validation is a voting by users on several topics, including how neutral, complete, accurate, etc. an article is (see proposal for the interface). This is useful, for instance, for burning certain versions of articles of the Wikipedia into a CDROM, to be used where internet access is expensive or nonexistent.
2. There are measures for protecting a page, and it has been done before. Vandalism has been always kept to a much lower level than alarmists think. Please see replies to common objection

1. A version of an article can be validated through the article validation feature (now in beta stage). This validation is a voting by users on several topics, including how neutral, complete, accurate, etc. an article is (see proposal for the interface). This is useful, for instance, for burning certain versions of articles of the Wikipedia into a CDROM, to be used where internet access is expensive or nonexistent.
2. There are measures for protecting a page, and it has been done before. Vandalism has been always kept to a much lower level than alarmists think. Please see replies to common objection

1. A version of an article can be validated through the article validation feature (now in beta stage). This validation is a voting by users on several topics, including how neutral, complete, accurate, etc. an article is (see proposal for the interface). This is useful, for instance, for burning certain versions of articles of the Wikipedia into a CDROM, to be used where internet access is expensive or nonexistent.
2. There are measures for protecting a page, and it has been done before. Vandalism has been always kept to a much lower level than alarmists think. Please see replies to common objection

Either you end up having centralized control, and all the benefits of the wiki system go flying out the door, or you have a centralized validated version which ends up so far behind the original as to be useless (see Nupedia). Or you make moderators out of everyone who's logged in, and you end up asking who watches the watchmen, ad infinitum.

Funny thing is---this is a solved problem. Or, at least, there's been considerable work done toward solving it. Read about webs of trust---it's a scalable, noncentralized way of validating content. I think it'd fit in wonderfully with the Wiki.

--grendel drago

Early on, it wasn't clear if there would be enough people to create a Wikipedia, and opening edits to the world has made it astonishingly detailed. Now that they have lots of material, perhaps they need to tighten up. You can see this as a lifecycle -- early on, they need ANY material, later on, they need to get stricter about quality and accuracy.

It might even be possible to create that lifecycle inside the Wikipedia itself. E.G., articles that have been around for a while might have less-tight controls than ones that have been around a while. That might simply mean "if the article is more than 3 years old, anonymous users can't change it."

But allowing edits by literally everyone is part of the charm of Wikipedia. I hope and expect they will work to create the least limit possible.

The stable and draft idea is not new to Wikipedia, but is frequently used when negotiating solutions to edit-wars. The article itself is protected and a copy created that can be edited until everyone agrees on a single version.

So far as deciding which articles to lock, there's actually been a lot of talk related to the push towards a paper Wikipedia about incorporating a rating system on the quality and accuracy of articles. Only the most important and best-written versions would be included in a paper Wikipedia. I assume that once this is implemented in the wiki code it will be used for any stable article locking, too.

The problem you have with a citation list is how do you provide it? A web crawler through all of the internet? How do you deal with "citations" of dead tree content? That is an impractical solution. A citation list of articles that link to an article within Wikipedia is already present and running right now, and that is a fair metric that is often quoted. There is even a ranked list of "links" to articles that don't even exist! (The link exists, the article it links to doesn't, however.)

As far as "web of trust" is concerned, that is something that is proposed in a future version of the MediaWiki software that is behind Wikipedia. The rating systems are being proposed. If you want to join in the discussion you are certainly welcome. The decisions on how to accomplish this havn't been decided yet.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, other sources of knowledge (news websites, slashdot, printed books, newspapers, etc.) also have trust problems with them as well... and people decrying that certain media outlets are less than honest to their subscribers/viewers/readers/listeners. I would argue that Wikipedia even now does a better job than most of these other information sources, and it can be pointed out some substantial biases are found in more traditional information sources.

Of course there are "trusted" information sources that we all use every day, and of that I agree that we all have an internal "BS" detector. Unfortunately it doesn't always work the way we want it to work in every case.

Why couldn't they have done this several months ago, before my boss started looking closely at Wikipedia, and their method of allowing anyone - even users not logged into specific user accounts - to edit a given page?

I think they did do it several months ago. Here's a clip from one of their config docs:

        * By adding the following line to LocalSettings.php, it is possible to entirely disable anonymous edits:

    #Entirely disable Anonymous Edits
    $wgWhitelistEdit = true;

Failure: The inability to function or perform satisfactorily. The shuttle performed to the satisfaction of many. And actually, you do. You see private enterprise doing just that. SpaceShipOne sure looks and smells like a resuable space plane. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Spac eShipOne_ground.jpg Next time you are visiting the central coast of Florida, make sure you tell everyone you know that they failed.

http://wikimedia.org/stats/live/

This is Wikimedia's live stats page. Watch those graphs go sky-high!

Knew I forgot to mention something; Wikimedia Commons also has freely licenced art; unlike Open Clip Art, it's not all public domain, but it also has quite a few photos.

Windows http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Prin ceglpyh.jpg

Damn. Patents like this create jobs and make our country secure. Imagine if this patent got into the hands of terrorists. It might help them to make a dirty bomb and blow up our beloved national treasures like the internet or Paul Wolfowitz. We can trust Microsoft who are a great wholesome American family company.Damn. We need patents to support the American economy so we can go into arab countries like Iraq and Iran (which are both in Mexico) and smoke out terrorists John Wayne style.

Our founding fathers like John Wayne and Buffalo Bill who tamed the savage red indians who invaded America (and who were communists and terrorists), would turn in their graves if they thought American companies like Microsoft couldn't wield software patents for smilies. damn

Damn. Patents like this create jobs and make our country secure. Imagine if this patent got into the hands of terrorists. It might help them to make a dirty bomb and blow up our beloved national treasures like the internet or Paul Wolfowitz. We can trust Microsoft who are a great wholesome American family company.Damn. We need patents to support the American economy so we can go into arab countries like Iraq and Iran (which are both in Mexico) and smoke out terrorists John Wayne style.

Our founding fathers like John Wayne and Buffalo Bill who tamed the savage red indians who invaded America (and who were communists and terrorists), would turn in their graves if they thought American companies like Microsoft couldn't wield software patents for smilies. damn

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Chem icalGalaxy_Stewart_2004.jpg

holy shit, that looks like a new solar system than a mapping of all the elements. i never liked navigating the perodic table when i was in high school, but this shit... at least with the current system, everything is in one place. on this new one, youve got them all spread out and shit. who let this asshole go public with this shit?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Chem icalGalaxy_Stewart_2004.jpg If you look at the table, you will see its is actually really nice, and easy to follow and work out groupings.

I think it would be a bit better without the background being so complicated, it is a bit distracting.

Since the painfully brief article buries the most relevant piece of this story 5 pages into a linked slideshow: An image of the chart in question.

::curmudgeony voice:: Dunno... certainly looks prettier, but at quick glance I can gather a lot more information from an "old school" chart.