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I'd say it is just as doomed as Nupedia too. Apparently this really surprised the Wikinews regulars as a sort of strike of lightning out of the dark and that their relationship with Jimmy Wales is dubious at best. Mr. Wales got zero input and feedback from the Wikinews regulars in terms of how to set up the site or how to effectively manage it. That sounds like a colossal waste of time and energy as well as basically shooting himself in the foot right out of the gate as those would likely be the largest experienced group of users who could make it work.

At the very least, Mr. Wales needs to mend some fences there and smooth over the feelings of the volunteers at Wikinews before they poison the effort for this "WikiTribute" effort completely. I've seen him run roughshod over other Wikimedia projects, and stuff like his random deletion of what he claimed to have been porn on the Wikimedia Commons really backfired in a miserable way and spilled a whole lot of bad blood too.

The editing of news articles by volunteers in a manner like Wikipedia has already existed for a great many years. It is called Wikinews.

Of course Jimmy Wales already knew about that site and is obviously dismissive of the ability of that project's volunteers to objectively look at news information and to distinguish between actual news and fake news.

On a practical side, Wikinews is really quite effective in terms of what it does and also has an interesting set of stories that is quite a bit different than from other news sources. Definitely worth reading for its own sake. The drawback is mainly a lack of eyeballs and the fact that writing a news article is hard work.

When Wikipedia was proposed, I thought the original intent was that Wikipedia would be the drawing board for Nupedia articles maintained by professional writers. Is there a similar relationship between Wikinews and Wikitribune?

RTFA? I closed the CNN tab when an ad started playing audio.

Isn't this already a thing [wikinews.org] ?

Already a thing

Isn't this already a thing?

The probable most obvious question is how will that project differentiate itself from Wikinews?

Also illegal, so far... It's illegal to use something other than the ActiveX plugin authorized by the Korean government to do online banking in South Korea. The current president promised to change things, but so far, nothing has changed. Here's his promise being reported:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/So...

The problem is that Korea requires use of their own national encryption standard, which has a governmental back door (and for which exploits have already been demonstrated at BlackHat) in order to "secure" banking transactions from snooping by foreign powers (guess they called that one correctly).

Here are some other articles about where the plugin is required to establish secure communications channels:

http://gadgets.ndtv.com/intern...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
https://www.techdirt.com/artic...

Correct.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

It's not a good idea to wander round the City of London wearing a Tshirt or carrying a sign saying "Scientology is an evil cult" - you WILL be arrested.

(It's happened a few times in the past, but this is the most recent example I could find)

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/...

Thankfully the UK crown prosecution service has more sense:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/No...'

Lots of links off the bottome of the last article.

He also promotes using nuclear energy as part of the solution.

Well, it is.

As much as we would all really love solar and wind to scale to a level necessary for global needs that is not going to happen with current technology. Its many decades off. Lots of science and engineering are needed to get solar there. We need something to bridge the gap between today and that future date where solar scales.

If not nuclear then its natural gas, oil and coal.

Even environmentalists are starting to realize this, including a co-founder of GreenPeace.
"Moore says that his views have changed since founding Greenpeace, and he now believes that using nuclear energy can help counteract catastrophic climate change from burning fossil fuels. Says Moore, "The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2 annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles." Moore also cites reports from the Clean Air Council that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. "Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2 emissions annually," says Moore. "Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely." Moore points out that the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. He predicts that advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future. According to Moore, British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, also believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change. Concerns about past accidents in the nuclear industry were also mentioned, as he claims the Chernobyl nuclear disaster as example, calling it "an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up". He also recognized the difficulty of dealing with nuclear waste."
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Gr...

Regarding nuclear waste from current reactors. 4th generation reactors can use this waste as fuel. And the waste from 4th gen is short lived. Hundred of years rather than tens of thousands.
http://www.ga.com/energy-multi...

NASA also thinks nuclear has greatly improved the environment.
"Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent (GtCO2-eq) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000-7.04 million deaths and 80-240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power."
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/...

In the United States, CGNAT is most common on wireless networks (such as cellular). But with IANA having doled out its last /8, ISPs in some countries that were late in setting up Internet infrastructure have implemented CGNAT for wired home customers. Several years ago, Wikipedia caused a shitstorm when it blocked editing from a single IP address that ended up representing all of Qatar. Other countries where CGNAT has become common reportedly include Russia (citation needed).

In any case, this game is rated "M" - anything goes.

Not quite. "M" games can get away with a lot of stuff, mainly violence (even gory violence, like Manhunt 2[1] or MadWorld), but if you show too many boobies, sex scenes, or maybe even a single instance of fully-rendered genitals, you get the abhorred Adults-Only (AO) rating. From the ESRB's website:

MATURE
Content is generally suitable for ages 17 and up. May contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
ADULTS ONLY
Content suitable only for adults ages 18 and up. May include prolonged scenes of intense violence, graphic sexual content and/or gambling with real currency.

AO (roughly equivalent to the NC-17 movie rating you mentioned) is abhorred because no chain in America will stock games with that rating. Some indie video game stores might, but I'm not aware of any particular ones. This is why very few games have the rating. Leisure Suit Larry is probably the most well known AO series; Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas got a retroactive rating of AO after the Hot Coffee scandal. (Warning: NSFW image/details)

Digital releases should make an AO rating far less of an issue, but it seems that even Steam won't allow them[2], so developers still have to release on their own. Were retailers less restrictive about this (perhaps stocking it behind the counter or something), in America they likely would have gone for and gotten the AO rating for Stick of Truth.

When they make a kid show an ID to buy an M-rated game, or enter an R-rated film, it's also not governmental requirements, except in rare cases where local laws have been enacted to piggy-back on them.

These have historically been thrown out as unconstitutional, as well, even when all most do is codify what most chains have as a policy (blocking the sale of M-rated games to minors). I don't know that any state has gone after the AO rating in any fashion or, if they have, that it has been challenged in court.

[1] Manhunt 2 did receive an AO rating originally, but Rockstar edited the game and re-submitted to get the M rating. The "Uncut" edition still has the AO.
[2] I can't find neither a specific policy or any AO games on Steam with a quick search, except for an article about them pulling a sex game from Greenlight on day one

The capture at the ISS was flawless, even though the software glitch previously prevented the rendezvous and capture.

Try and spend a few days on Wikinews or some other volunteer news outlet, much less a commercial news publishing source before you can realistically start to criticize the kind of pressures that journalists find themselves under.

What a coincidence, there are (or were) 15-year-old administrators on Wikipedia. Which I discovered to my dismay back in 2006.

Lets all remember George Bush and the GOP proposed cutting this truly amazing program to save a paltry $4 million per year...

Just saying...

Sure, but Will Smith thinks Scientology's Applied Scholastics in its Delphi Academy is such a good idea he started his own school based on it

Maybe in the future, you'll have ordinary citizens posting their short (tweet-like) reports, photos or videos of a breaking or continuing event to a refereed news site.

It will be the job of designated editors to filter the truth from the trolls and propagandists. The editors will be helped by simple algorithms. Posters who have already proved reliable both in terms of information and timeliness will receive the equivalent of a karma bonus, making them a more attractive "source" for the editors.

This Is different from Wikinews, which doesn't differentiate between reporters and editors. Everybody can report and edit.

Wikipedia was one of the last places to report that Michael Jackson had died "Last"? By how long? A few hours maybe.

Wikipedia isn't a breaking news site, its an encyclopedia.
If you want news, go to Wikinews.

"X has died" is one of the most common form of vandalism. It has to be verified. Better to wait a few hours and be sure.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Not_enough_names_to_go_around_in_China,_ministry_says

Sounds to me like they were dumbing it down for people who find science "too hard".

Like...the Italian Government?

It doesn't help that this:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Scientist_says_he_predicted_Italy_earthquake,_was_ignored
happened a month before.

I'm used to this. I have this site bookmarked and amuse myself with all the colored squares:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/

There's always 3.0s and 4.0s on there. Does that mean CA is getting a 6.3 in a month? Might. I'd never bet on it though and the odds would be against it.

You'd think this would be detected rather quickly. Unfortunately, history disagrees with you. It took almost two years. And this one wasn't even deliberately obfuscated by anyone.

It's US citizens like him that's why many countries in the world worry more about the USA attacking them ( than other so called evil and dangerous countries).

The more people like him, the more the US leaders can get away with starting illegal "military actions".

If anyone thinks the Iranians will be happy for the US to liberate them from the evil Iranian leaders, they should go read some Iranian history and make sure to not skip the "Operation Ajax" bits.

I remember a US general calling some people "ungrateful" after all the stuff the US did for them. I found that hilarious.

You liberate the Iranians, give them democracy and they'll elect another bunch of leaders who'd be just as anti-Israel and anti-US.

When Hamas won the 2006 elections, the US and Israel weren't very happy with the result (but not sure why anyone was shocked). http://wallwritings.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/the-palestinian-democracy-that-might-have-been-after-the-2006-election/
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Hamas_wins_Palestinian_election

Ask the British, WWII nearly bankrupted their country, and we still had to write off most of the debt we loaned them.

My, you guys are almost as good at history as you are at geography. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Britain_makes_final_World_War_II_debt_payments

It's more related to effects of low doses of radiation

That sounds like a wild speculation - do you have any citation to this claim? I doesn't look very plausible to me that insurers are wary of people coming in 20 years and asking for compensation for their cancer, which they'll have a very tough time proving as caused by radioactivity. I'm pretty much convinced that they simply do not want to compensate for the potential loss of real estate and business in case some large city needs to be evacuated.

Look at radioactivity in polluted areas near Fukushima and then look at radiation levels in Ramsar in Iran

You asked earlier "is that all anti nuclear people can muster?" so I'll get back to you the same: is that all nuclear fanatics can muster? Of course if you decide that radio-isotopes at large in the environment are not a problem, then you have indeed solved the one annoying problem with nuclear energy :-)

Even if we consider the amount of land made unarable by this event, it compares favourably to, for example, hydro, let alone solar

I fail to see how solar captors on roofs or in the deserts shut down large extents of arable land.

Because big Oil has no subsidies?

I never said that oil had no subsidies, or that coal was not bad for your health and get a free pass regarding pollution. Only that NP would probably not be very viable if at all without huge public funding. Do not dismiss the fact that the existing nuclear technology is mostly a by-product of decades of military investments, all publicly funded. Renewable energy never have benefited from such massive investments, which is too bad imho.

All energy sources have effects on population.

Solar thermal energy doesn't have any of those drawbacks; now is it a viable energy source for all of our needs is open to debate.

The one with smallest effect on both population and environment is nuclear.

That's not a conclusion you can draw from the facts we have now. You might say that NP has been the least polluting energy generation in the last few decades. However we've been inches from a major disaster, and you're advocating multiplying the existing nuclear reactors park a hundred-fold, and deploying them in countries with very different standards regarding personal responsibility, corruption, accountability, technical expertise, education, etc. We might face in ten or twenty years a Fukushima-style accident where a whole megacity would have to be indeed evacuated, at which point your statement will not be true anymore. Even if you deem any new such accident simply impossible, because the designs are now so good that no degree of human stupidity, corruption and greed will ever be able to overcome them, you still assume that the waste are properly processed, which is far from a given.

And this is generally how you can solve this problem

It's not even that simple because businesses might as well leave the dirty work to existing criminal organizations which are obviously not going to be deterred by jail penalties.

Speciation has been observed, but I'll concede the point that it hasn't been observed in dinosaurs .

No modpoints left, so I just wanted to thank you for this one. It's pure gold :)

>> And Evolution is still a theory because fossil can only prove a species existed not that it turned into another. That can't be proven empirically.

Gravity is still a theory, too.

Speciation has been observed, but I'll concede the point that it hasn't been observed in dinosaurs.

Actually, vitamin D (the sunshine vitamin), Iodine, and eating more vegetables, fruits, and beans are a better bet to prevent (or in some cases cure) cancer.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article24.aspx
http://breastcancerchoices.org/iodine.html

Avoiding food additives and avoiding burned food (acrylamide) will help, too.
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Study_finds_burning_your_food_could_cause_some_cancers

And no doubt avoiding some other toxins etc.

so that means another 20% of all space junk is from when we shot one of our satellites down
and in the 80s, we shot down another satellite, so that must mean another 20%!
and again russia shot down a satellite
so that must mean 80% of all space junk is from rockets that blow up old satellites in order to maintain standing in some international geosynchronous pissing contest

if we keep looking through history chances are other countries have shot down satellites as well, perhaps more than once. why, If the report had been released 25 years ago you might even see the word china replaced with the word Russia.

NASA: great place for science to be done, but has an ugly habit of political rhetoric being injected into its reports.

they are going to start Filtering Our Internet AFTER the plan to start Filtering Our Internet was Scapped

So what you're saying is that you're a pedophile. Because the sites that are being censored are primarily child abuse sites.

[Citation direly needed] I don't trust an opaque system. Even more as you took the reserve of slipping in the primarily word in you phrase.

You see, I'm not suffering from ADHD or Alzheimer's, so I still remember that a bunch of legal location were filtered out only some 2 years ago.

Peter Jackson and his battles with New Line for his full share of the profits is one of the few instances that I can recall where someone fought the big studios "accounting" system and won. Although the terms of the settlement weren't disclosed it was nice to see a creator get their fair share of the profits.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Peter_Jackson_banned_from_working_with_New_Line
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1576672/peter-jackson-new-line-reach-hobbit-deal.jhtml

Clearly his mistake. Being an illegal alien makes it OK to get shot in the head. Especially if he was resisting arrest...oh wait.

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Leaked_documents_reveal_killed_Brazilian_was_not_acting_suspiciously

Oops

If the idea shows support they run with it. If not, they distance themselves from it and the impression they leave is the one you express there.

I see your point. If they can speak what most people think is unthinkable then what are they thinking?

On the other hand, they don't try to hide it on page 3,907 section IX subsection 3 paragraph xxvii of a completely unrelated bill like the twats in Brussels do.

Does anybody still remember the digg revolt: en.wikinews.org/wiki/Digg.com_suffers_user_revolt

While main focus of Wikipedia are historical articles about things that happened in the past (and either passed away or continue to exist and function), both Wikipedia main page and Wikinews have a high quality recent news - independent, free, ad free, from all over the world, with no corporate control, in essence everything Fox is opposed to.

So attacking Wikipedia is simply attacking the competitor.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have journalism majors write for Wikinews instead? They could even get accredited for press passes.

Wouldn't it make more sense to have journalism majors write for Wikinews instead? They could even get accredited for press passes.

Not effective at all.

I decided to post the whole thing as a reply here since it is not easily accessible, even though there are a couple of replies there and additional comments by me.

Embedded software developer Joseph Stack allegedly intentionally flew a small plane into government offices in Austin, TX, in an act that has been labeled as domestic terrorism. He cited, among other things, IRS regulations about independent contractor status as well as other issues related to government corruption.

Could his behavior have been partially due to vitamin D deficiency syndrome from indoor work? Could vitamin D deficiency also have contributed to the violent behavior alleged of Hans Reiser or Amy Bishop? And is part of the problem also that Joe Stack was not talking to anyone about any of this to think through real solutions and find positive things to do that, as Mr. Rogers sang, would not hurt himself or anyone else?

Here are some useful resources for preventing more copycat violence to show how there are plenty of alternatives to violence despite Joe Stack's claim otherwise in his manifesto:

Treating Disease With Vitamin D

Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy

Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals

Albert Einstein on: Religion and Science

A wombat talks about a global mindshift

TED | Peter Eigen on moving beyond corruption

The Optimism of Uncertainty

Social Movements and Strategic Nonviolence

As another software developer who has done embedded work, here are some non-programming things I've worked on related to helping people see positive alternatives to violence:

Possible cures for a jobless recovery

Post-Scarcity Princeton, or, Reading between the lines of PAW for prospective Princeton students, or, the Health Risks of Heart Disease

Rebutting Communiqué from an Absent Future

The amazing thing to me is not that stuff like this happens. What is amazing is that it does not happen more often, which is a tribute to most of humanity's basic social nature. In a way, even Joe Stack chose a relatively limited approach; an embedded software developer such as he was could have done far more damage if trying to create general mayhem (he could have tampered with nuclear power plants or medical devices or airplane software). There is also irony here that a person took a very advanced piece of technology — a private airplane, and all that it represents as a technological marvel — and used it to destroy a past instead of to create a future.

What do people think and feel about all this?

I can address your argument quite succinctly, I believe.

Admission of guilt when that guilt is not possible to have been committed, does not make it a fact that such person is guilty of the crime to which they confessed.

Take for instance, the forced confessions of "Witches" in both the dark ages, and the 1600s.

These people confessed in court to having made contractual agreements with the devil for supernatural powers. Does this mean it actually happened?

Allegorically, NYCL is demanding to know what supernatural powers were granted, and to know what terms they were granted under, and demanding that their existence be demonstrated for the court, in order to determine the validity of the "confession."

Since, without said powers, any allegations of being involved in such a supernatural contract are just that-- unproven allegations.

In this case, the defendant confessed to distribution, when in fact, no distribution, as it is defined by law, could have occurred. His demanding to know where the distribution took place, who received the distribution, and for how much and on what terms, are all perfectly valid, and the court MUST be able to supply that information to make the distribution charge stick. Otherwise the "Confession" is just as meaningless as admitting to witchcraft.

This is very much like requiring a dead body in order to prove that a homicide indeed took place. In order for there to be a homicide, somebody has to be killed, and that means there has to be a body.

Likewise, for there do be distribution (as defined by the law), then some good must have exchanged ownership/possession, and it must have occurred within the stipulations of the laws which define what distribution "IS."

NYCL is simply demanding that the court provide proof of its ruling. EG-- Show us the body of the person the defendant murdered, to prove this murder even happened, since it is impossible to murder without producing a body.

If they cannot prove it, by providing a history of the alleged transaction(s), there is no grounds for a verdict of any sort on this matter, and the charge should have been dropped.

By your argument, the man who claimed to have been Jon Bennett Ramsey's killer should have been immediately convicted and prosecuted for his public confession, even though there was absolutely no evidence tying him to the scene, the time, or the victim. As it stands, the man was indeed arrested for making the confession pending an investigation, but was released, because no evidence to substantiate his story could be found.

It seems to me that YOUR argument revolves around refusing to accept the legally defined definition of "Distribution", and how it invalidates the confession, more than anything else.

So yes, I believe that 'Troll' does apply.

I can see how the submitter might be surprised that Google would help Wikipedia, which competed with its own Knol, because Google has certainly never tried to do this before

What if he sells his likeness and the movie studio uses it in a way that he finds morally repugnant?

Maybe he should have thought of that before selling his likeness?

What are the implications of creating CGI films containing models of public figures?

Are those any different than, say, political comics? Anyway, there's a precedent, amazingly enough from Finland. So if even a country that tries to imitate China doesn't have a problem with them, why should any country?

Or models just strikingly similar to yourself or a friend?

Why shouldn't I be able to use my own likeness in wherever I please? As for my friends, I'm pretty sure that there's existing laws governing, say, using photoedits or something that would be applicable here.

You must have a different source of news on the vast Iraq war combat operations for US troops.

Huh? You claimed that "We won the war and the combat troops are coming home."

Well, you got it half right...the troops are coming home:
But the
war is
far from
over

Hardly. I will have to give general kudos to the Slashdot editors who usually look at multiple submissions and have to make a judgement call on links in the summaries.

Yes, it is sometimes a blog post, but far more often it is the link to the actual news source (which can be a blog, too!) If the "announcement" is on a blog, that is the original source.

Word of mouth will often come through news aggregators and via blogs. Heck, I've found out some interesting stuff from blogs that I regularly visit... and then posted it on /. Still, the links to the actual source of information is often in the summaries.

Yes, summaries often lack a bit of quality that perhaps leave some room for criticism an hour or two later.... so live with it or start your own site that you think could do better. This is more a function of the rush to get a scoop than trying to be 100% accurate. I prefer the scoops of interesting information I get from slashdot rather than the polished news articles from MSNBC or Fox News... if it gets covered in the "mainstream" news at all.

One news source that I have hope will improve and gain more popularity is Wikinews. If you are a grammar Nazi and want to constantly fix somebody else's grammar on a news story.... that is the place for you. It just doesn't have the "penetration" in the geek community as /. has, unfortunately.

You're absolutely right. No other countries have racists or xenophobes or bigots or religious nutjobs, of which Israel is totally comprised of. Nope, that's totally not biased anti-semitic (er, I'm sorry, anti-Israeli, lol) cherrypicking of the idiots that are bound to occure in any and all particular population that we should try to move beyond in order to enjoy a peaceful and fufilling relationship with all other nations and acknoledge the beauty of other lands and cultures. Hey, I think you're forgeting one more equally relevant link.

Wikinews: Suicide bomber kills 30 in northwest Pakistan

Sources?

"Deadly blast in Pakistan market". Al Jazeera, September 18, 2009
Pir Zubair Shah "Suicide Blast Kills 30 in Pakistan". New York Times, September 18, 2009

Who paid for it? It wasn't free.

Lets see Free vs Paid, I know which one I trust more.

To cite Microsoft alone, was shipping Windows Media Player with Windows a crime?

Erm.. yes, it might have been, but Microsoft settled out of court - the court in San Jose that is. I guess that makes it not a crime, technically.

How much did MS have to pay out to other American companies, $4.6bn last time I looked. So the fact that the EU got involved with dodgy dealings by Microsoft isn't really without cause, and isn't somehow anti-American.

As for Intel.. they've never been sued by any American company for anti-competitive practices, have they?

Link