Domain: wikinews.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to wikinews.org.
Comments · 260
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Re:RTFA
"So in other words, if it weren't for the industrial revolution there's a remote possibility a large chunk of life on earth might've died off?
Not sure about that, but it is a more than a remote possibility that the industrial revolution has already killed off a large chunk of life. -
Re:Article is misleading...The moment you invent something idiot-proof, God creates a bigger idiot.
I'm not a nuclear-reactor-building engineer, but if I remember it well enough, the same stream of water needed to cool the machine of was the stream used to run the turbine, and in the end all this evaporated due to pure heat, and the stream got interrupted, with the disastrous consequences. I'm probably oversimplifying here, but it seems like a design flaw. That said, the test they wanted to perform with all control devices off (!?) was a case of immense human stupidity as well.
Other example: the recent case of the transrapid accident, I wonder where the difference between design flaw and human failure really is. For those who don't know, it's a test track for a magnetic train, standing on poles, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Germany. Since it's a closed track, and on poles, you can imagine they can keep track of every thing that is on the track and where. Now someone in the control room forgot about a maintenance car, that was still on the track but not registered by the main control system (it's just a car on wheels, doesn't use magnetic power). Furthermore, a group of people was taking a test drive in some 'manual' mode, where the people in the control room would clear a piece of track piece by piece. Since the maintenance car was NOT on the control screen, they opened that piece of track for it, and it rammed the car with 400 km/h and it's tons and tons of steel, a very tragic crash. First claim of the authorities: human error of the guy in the control room, who was of course conveniently alive and in reach to put the blaim on. Much easier to do that than to think about why they didn't electronically register every device on the whole track, not as if there are no devices present to do these checks, even on normal traintracks this should be possible. In any case it seems like a big human failure of the designteam to overlook such a trivial feature for the control system, where they expecting people to write down notes of which piece of equipment is where on the track? But I guess anticipating disasters is a whole science on it's own, and a difficult one on that.
As a side note:
I'm normally not much of a RP-basher, it's a difficult task to try and make science generally understandable, and it's good that some people take the effort. Every now and then I would even knowingly click through to his blog and read a bit. But what he did here makes me rethink if he shouldn't join the scientific department of The Sun or any other tabloid instead of trying to do serious work. First of all he copies some old news (with corrected price tag this time). Then he just makes a blurb of it connecting his first knee-jerk reaction. Nuclear, Russia? Must be Chernobyl! What is the next subject, you pityful excuse of a science journalist? As soon as Ford developes a new car, you go around yelling explosive explosive LOLLOL ROFLMAO. Or the next time germans engineer a new mass transportation system you'll scream OMG OMG it'll go BOOM! :P :P ;).But you know what? I won't really block the RP articles here on slashdot, just so I can follow his articles slowly digress into complete crapinessness.
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Re:What better jurisdiction for ICANN?
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Re:What's wrong with other extant examples?
And of course, how could I forget WikiNews ?
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Re:As if the US doesnt censor internet
That's interesting. It's too bad you fail to point to the law that prohibits "broadcasting terrorist media". Oh, and you said he was only receiving these broadcasts, which is not the same as broadcasting. Oh wait, you don't even provide a link to this story that you obviously "read recently" and I totally can't make this up guys.
how about this?
and this
and this
and this
appearently al-manar is designated as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist Entity", though hell if i can find any kind of exact definition of what the F that is besides another government buzzword, and as such all their US assets are frozen and any bussiness between americans and them is prohibited.
i'm not saying i buy it, but it does add up under the law as far as i can see, though it's anyone's guess is the law is legal. -
Re:News travels fastYes, I just submitted this story myself, with an obligatory link to Wikinews since it's more comprehensive than any other news story I've seen so far.
Just after 11:00 AM local time, (0100 UTC,) Steve Irwin was killed by a sting-ray barb to the heart. He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary and that's when it occurred. His wife, Terri, who is trekking on Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, hasn't yet been informed.
In hindsight, I'd say this story came up seconds after I clicked on the submit page and started typing. -
Re:Ahem
So as long as the Swedish government can prove beforehand that you will be convicted, then they'll hand over the data, otherwise it's no-go. And as for non-Swedish authorities, Relakks say they won't give them anything.
Except that Swedish authorities are known to violate the law if they like it. -
Wikinews link.
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Re:Sort your Country out......
Let's just completely ignore all the fanciful opinions that precede the following quote:
"and there wouldn't have been so much death in New Orleans."
What makes you think a Democrat President would have done things so differently? The levees would have still failed. People and governments still would have refused to evacuate. The Coast Guard still would have been performing helicopter rescues. The National Guard still would have performed their duty. Geraldo and Blitzer and others would still cry on camera.
I'm sure the total would be pretty close to 1,577 in any case because you'd still have people stuck in nursing homes and straggling in late to the superdome and convention center. You'll never convince anybody that a Democrat President would have influenced local politicians to follow their own plans and user their own buses before the hurricane hit.
Maybe the media wouldn't have had a field day with George Bush, who I hear "doesn't care about black people", and so we'd get fewer rape and cannibalism stories. Just maybe a Democrat in charge would have had a little more pull with the Democrats in charge of Louisiana so they'd blame him less. Oh, I guess maybe the FEMA head would have been fired a little sooner. Yay for federal scapegoats!
So that adds up to 1,500 trapped, stubborn, and stupid dead people from a hurricane, a neglected levee system, a failed response from local and state relief agencies, and a lot of scrambling from the feds. Sure doesn't sound any different, except that this time the President takes a smaller political hit because he's from the party that cares oh so much about all the poor black people that they'd likely get more than $2,000 on the FEMA debit cards that are passed out like candy. You know, because he actually cares about them... collectively... as black vot^^^ people. -
It's out there.
Unfortunately, the only place you'll see this kind of writing these days are sources seen as fringe by the mainstream. You could either distill the
.005% of blogs with so-called journalistic value, or you could follow things like Indymedia, or to a much lesser degree the bland-by-consensus Wikinews.
The only reason Hunter got published at all in his day was he sold media. Then as now, the elderly media corporations aren't taking any editorial interest in what they print beyond how many papers/ads/commercials it'd sell. In Hunter's day there was the old Rolling Stone magazine (not yet a totally hideous corporate parody of itself) which ate his work up as long as it sold well to its target audience of hippies, armchair revolutionaries, and other stoned people.
Unfortunately, the things that sell the most homogenized corporate papers and magazines these days usually mention "Brangelina" picking something out of their teeth or Britney Spears drop-kicking another baby while driving. Average Joe Sixpack doesn't want to be bothered with anything more than whether his favorite useless overpaid sports team won, who his favorite useless overpaid movie stars are getting it on with, and possibly a feel-good local piece about Granny Gums Magillicuddy who turns 103 years young this week and swears it's all thanks to a lifelong diet of yogurt and aquarium gravel.
This could well shift as more people turn to the customizable, user-publishable news sources on the Internet, but the old school are not going to leave quietly. One result of this is newspapers' web sites renaming their columnists' writings to "blogs" and setting up RSS feeds. -
MySpace are no strangers to the Spyware business
Info is below, and besides, doesn't this recent US patent, kind of fit MySpace?
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-b ool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=7,069,308. PN.&OS=PN/7,069,308&RS=PN/7,069,308
It sure sounds alot like it's describing much of what myspace is, and myspace is a "deleware company" in the US and subject to US laws.
As for their kind fondness of spyware, see the citations below for more info.
Birds of a feather they say.
http://www.intermixedup.com/
"Intermix Management and other Insiders sold approximately $25 million of Intermix stock in full knowledge that the New York State Attorney General (NY-AG), Eliot Spitzer, would soon file a lawsuit against the company for
certain adware promotion activity. Management and Insiders sold vast quantities of stock before disclosing this critical information appropriately to the rest of the marketplace. "
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Bloggers_investigate_s ocial_networking_websites
"Actually, MySpace had simply shut down and become ResponseBase-- as evidenced by the "Freebies" newsletter above. ResponseBase also used a list of 8 million e-mail addresses purchased from Xdrive for their newsletters. In 2002, ResponseBase was booted from their ISP as an illicit spam organization-- with Tom Anderson himself listed as their billing contact. And later still, ResponseBase would be renamed to MySpace."
"Intermix Media itself has a tangled history. In 2004, Intermix (then operating as eUniverse) was named as a spammer organization on USENET. It purchased ResponseBase, shut down its operations, and reformed it as MySpace. On April 28, 2005, Intermix was sued by the State of New York for installing malicious spyware over the Internet. According to their press release:" -
Re:I'll have to look into a donation...Of course their name refers to copyright infringement! Of course they identifying with criminals! The whole point of the party "infringment" shouldn't be a crime. The whole point is disagree with the current laws regarding copyright and that a large portion of the general population be on the wrong side of legality because of it. The head of the Swedish Pirate Party, had a good response in a recent Wikinews interview:
Oh, [piracy of software, movies, music, etc.] is a crime. That's the heart of the problem! The very problem is that something that 20% of the voters are doing is illegal by punishment of jail time. That's what we want to change. Where the established parties are saying that the voters are broken, we are saying it's the law that is broken.
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Re:The sweeden's opinion on itfrom the interview at http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/%22Avast_ye_scurvy_fi
l e_sharers!%22:_Interview_with_Swedish_Pirate_Party _leader_Rickard_Falkvinge
The name "Pirate Party" seems to identify the party with what is currently defined as a crime: piracy of software, movies, music, and so on. Will a name like "Pirate Party" not antagonize voters, given that the label is so negatively used? How about potential allies abroad who argue for a more balanced copyright regime, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation or Creative Commons?
Oh, it is a crime. That's the heart of the problem! The very problem is that something that 20% of the voters are doing is illegal by punishment of jail time. That's what we want to change. Where the established parties are saying that the voters are broken, we are saying it's the law that is broken.
Besides, it's a way of reclaiming a word. The media conglomerates have been pointing at us and calling us pirates, trying to make us somehow feel shame. It doesn't work. We wear clothes saying "PIRATE" in bright colors out on the streets. Yes, we are pirates, and we're proud of it, too.
Also, the term is not that negative at all in Sweden, much thanks to the awesome footwork of the Pirate Bureau (Piratbyrån), who have been working since 2003 to educate the public.
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Re:Hoping for the worst
Oops, I messed up the formatting. Take 2. From my blog.
I just learned that The Pirate Bay and Piratbyrån were raided today. I don't know much about what's happened, but I really do hope that things have been handled very poorly. I hope that the allegations made by SVT that this was triggered by pressure from America are true and that it will cause public outrage. If Thomas Bodström is somehow involved (unlikely perhaps), that would be absolutely superb too.
Why do I hope for the worst? Because I want this to become a topic of fierce political debate so that it will be very clear who is a friend and who is an enemy in the upcoming Swedish election. It's been clear for a long time that none of the big parties are friends, but perhaps this will force some of them to make sensible decisions and become more friendly (look at what's happening in France, it's not impossible). I don't know if the recently formed Pirate Party are sane, but hopefully they'll be given a chance to present their views in the debate that will now follow.
The last time there was some debate about copyrights (when Sweden changed the copyright legislation to conform with EUCD last summer) I discussed and thought about these issues quite a bit. I arrived at the conclusion that copyright probably shouldn't be abolished all together, but that some of the following might be good ideas.
- Shorten the copyright term to something between 5 and 20 years.
- Allow all non-commercial distribution use of works covered by copyright. If the copyright term is very short, this may not actually be necessary. Conversely, with a long term it might be useful to allow even more non-commercial uses (e.g. sampling music or re-editing bad movies).
- Disallow distribution of works which have not been published. The idea is that a creator should have the authority to stop distribution of copies that have been physically stolen or otherwise leaked before they are completed an published. Without this, I think it would be legal to publish someones private letters or photos without permission, and that wouldn't be cool.
Why does it matter? I have a vision that my children will be able to access a wikipedia-like database of all culture that has been produced in human history, with high technical quality and instant access. It's much too hard for to find works of culture these days, at least works that are a few years old. If you have access to a warez top-site you might be able to get anything you want, but it's only for a small elite.
Why are we locking away old culture that no longer makes money for anyone? The works that do make money long after they were created are the ones that were very popular to begin with and don't need a long copyright term. Some people want to make piles of money from The Beatles even though half of The Bealtes are already dead! I want everyone to be able to hear The Beatles at will. Copyright is not given by nature, it's a political tool and we should use it as we see fit to get the results we want. This is the information age, and with the proper legal framework in place we could reach the point where quality culture is a commons, not something for economic and technical elites.
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Re:NAFTA?
No I'm not saying NAFTA is lopsided in favor for US, but the fact is when dispute comes along, the US gov. simply ignore NAFTA and iron-fisted its way and put the issue into arbitration. US gov. wants Canadian's oil/water but not softwood/beef/wheat - pay the tariff at the next cashier, please.
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Re:predictionThis belief that humans are no longer evolving is wrong.
Oh yeah, turns out you're right. Funny, like two years ago, the philosophy teacher said that we were not evolving anymore. Back then I said it was bullshit, then I read in a scientifical magazine (Science & Vie) that it was so. Now we just found out it's wrong.
Awesome, I was wrong two years ago by claiming what's considered true now, and I am wrong now for claiming what was considered true up to 3 months ago. Thanks for making me update the truth.
allow people to reproduce who would otherwise not be able to
Oh yeah that's right, with all these people not living up to reach 14 back then, the only problem is that I can't think of a genetic cause for these deaths that would prevent reproduction. If there's not really any, this factor should have a limited impact on our evolution.
Which raises a question, if people who died of genetic diseases to young to reproduce themselves can live to reproduce themselves, does it mean that it will turn out that more and more of us will have such early-age deadly genetic diseases such as mucoviscidosis for example?
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Re:Who's signing off on the content?
Who's modding this comment: scientists or administration apparatchiks?
For more on administration's influence over NASA, see:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/George_Deutsch_resigns _NASA_post_after_Texas_A&M_refutes_his_resume -
Re:U.S. Government says science "load of hooey"
haven't you heard?
It isn't bad for you any more... -
Re:Slight Problem With Gas Tax
When there isn't enough choice it probably won't matter whether the public supports it or not. Electric isn't an option for a lot of people unless they have secured carports/garages. The cost of a conversion to LPG isn't quite justifiable yet, it would take many years to scratch back the expense. And I'm sure if this became the mainstream fuel then it would become as heavily taxed as petrol is right now.
Here in the UK the prices keep going up until it hits a threshold and protests start. At the moment (and with current exchange rates) the average price per US gallon is about $6 though it can fluctuate a lot depending on where you live. I have one gas station nearby charging as much as $6.50. Although in Europe the UK is expensive, its not the worst. There also appear to be a large number of people who just don't care enough to notice how much they pay, according to this story, some people thought the price per litre was 3 pounds! -
Re:Exactly
have you missed smething maybe ?
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Microsoft_changes_OEM_ license,_forcing_new_purchases_after_motherboard_u pgrade
so, um, that's only in the case of a defect. increase in mb problems might trigger a visit from men in suits pretty soon now ;) -
Competence required
One "problem" with PostgreSQL is that it assumes actual competence on the part of the administrator. The default
./configure ; make ; make install is designed to create a system that will actually start up on as many platforms as possible. After that, it is up to the competent administrator to tune it for the specifics of the installation. Using the default PG install in a performance comparison demonstration shows nothing but the incompetence of reviewer.
Have a 2 CPU AMD64 box and 16 GB RAM and fast SCSI drives as your dedicated DB server? Fine, make your settings appropriate for that. Running on a shared P200 with 128M RAM and a slow IDE drive? Different tuning entirely. I have production systems at both ends of the scale.
I am extremely happy with PostgreSQL. It's robust as hell - I've had individual PG connections to the DB up for over a year. On rare occasions I've had a machine running PostgreSQL get unceremoniously killed but every single time when the machine has been restarted, PostgreSQL has started up without any problem. This is not always the case. -
Wikinews
Wikinews hasn't been the newspaper-killer that Wikipedia is to encyclopedias.
...but then again, people forget that Wikipedia started in 2001.Becoming an overnight tech success takes years
:-) I still love good 'ould text. -
Wikinews
Wikinews has a story on this which could use some editing help.
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There's also a Wikinews article
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Re:Read WikiNews for the rest of the storyHere's the link to the story I quoted.
Tim
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Re:Wow, and update of the leaflet idea
Yeah, it's not like news organizations ever falsify, or use falsified, documents or anything.
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Re:Wow, and update of the leaflet ideaWe aren't short cicuiting anything.
Yeah, we're just doing some PR, it's not like we would actually kill any reporters who are hostile to us or anything.
-Eric
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Re:neither?
Both have a reputation for being slow, insecure,
Maybe on Slashdot... Java has an excellent track record for security. Compare with the PHP worm that swept the net, or PHP based framworks like NukePHP that are hacked so regularly that sites are unusable. .Net I haven't kept up with, so I don't know how they do security in real life.
Server side java is REALLY fast. On artifical benchmarks, java can be as fast as C++, and these people wrote a high performance Linux cluster monitoring tool in Java.
If you need more proof, Java is now the preferred language for Boeing when doing mission critical and real time software. NASA used it during the Mars mission...
and proprietary.
You can join the Java Community Process for free as an individual and vote for how future versions of Java will look like, Sun has handed over control over just about everything but the Java trademark to this JCP. There are also plenty of open source implementations of compilers and JVMs. Sun keeps donating stuff to the open source community. DTrace, Solaris, 1600 patents, cryptography tech.... -
Re:Now _there_ is an idea, WikiNews
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Re:This is a pretty minor limitation.
Wiki isn't a news site - information of that kind should be posted elsewhere first - and only end up in the encyclopedia when it's been verified, understood, etc.
That's mostly true. News coverage should be edited at Wikinews
What I mean by "mostly" is that there is a small amount of acceptable news posted at Wikipedia. That news usually relates to disasters and similar topics.
For example, the Wikipedia acting-like-a-newspaper coverage of Hurricane Katrina was incredibly well done compared to most actual news sites. -
Re:Wikinews? What's the point?Providing a neutral and complete synthesis of news from multiple sources is something that can only be done by humans. If you use Google News, you can create this synthesis yourself, but you have to read multiple sources -- if successful, Wikinews really does give you a good overview of all available information at the time. Take an article like this one about the alleged Bush/Blair al-Jazeera memo. It incorporates information from 10 cited sources. Omissions certainly can and do happen, but I think there's a potential for the opposite to take place - namely a much more comprehensive view of the key facts than provided by a typical single news story.
Furthermore, it is all free content, so you can reuse it in any way, and it's available in a free archive indefinitely. This last bit is important -- it's harder than you might think to find an online copy of a non-major AP story after a few months.
But the area which we really want to expand is Original reporting. Currently there's about 2 stories per week with some OR in it, which I think is not too bad. Some of the stories we've run so far were quite interesting, e.g. Elite Boston Marathon runner Emily Levan discusses life and running and Mothers, teachers air more concerns about leukemia cases at California elementary school (the latter written by a 14-year-old).
The basic model of writing news on a wiki is workable, but it is certainly harder to motivate people to work on Wikinews than it is on Wikipedia. The individual author has to do more work, and in the case of real reporting, invest more resources. I hope that in the feature we can use new tools like SynchroEdit (a browser-based real-time multi-user editor), make the story writing process easier to use, and explore funding models for stories that cannot be done without a budget.
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Re:Wikinews? What's the point?Providing a neutral and complete synthesis of news from multiple sources is something that can only be done by humans. If you use Google News, you can create this synthesis yourself, but you have to read multiple sources -- if successful, Wikinews really does give you a good overview of all available information at the time. Take an article like this one about the alleged Bush/Blair al-Jazeera memo. It incorporates information from 10 cited sources. Omissions certainly can and do happen, but I think there's a potential for the opposite to take place - namely a much more comprehensive view of the key facts than provided by a typical single news story.
Furthermore, it is all free content, so you can reuse it in any way, and it's available in a free archive indefinitely. This last bit is important -- it's harder than you might think to find an online copy of a non-major AP story after a few months.
But the area which we really want to expand is Original reporting. Currently there's about 2 stories per week with some OR in it, which I think is not too bad. Some of the stories we've run so far were quite interesting, e.g. Elite Boston Marathon runner Emily Levan discusses life and running and Mothers, teachers air more concerns about leukemia cases at California elementary school (the latter written by a 14-year-old).
The basic model of writing news on a wiki is workable, but it is certainly harder to motivate people to work on Wikinews than it is on Wikipedia. The individual author has to do more work, and in the case of real reporting, invest more resources. I hope that in the feature we can use new tools like SynchroEdit (a browser-based real-time multi-user editor), make the story writing process easier to use, and explore funding models for stories that cannot be done without a budget.
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Re:Wikinews? What's the point?Providing a neutral and complete synthesis of news from multiple sources is something that can only be done by humans. If you use Google News, you can create this synthesis yourself, but you have to read multiple sources -- if successful, Wikinews really does give you a good overview of all available information at the time. Take an article like this one about the alleged Bush/Blair al-Jazeera memo. It incorporates information from 10 cited sources. Omissions certainly can and do happen, but I think there's a potential for the opposite to take place - namely a much more comprehensive view of the key facts than provided by a typical single news story.
Furthermore, it is all free content, so you can reuse it in any way, and it's available in a free archive indefinitely. This last bit is important -- it's harder than you might think to find an online copy of a non-major AP story after a few months.
But the area which we really want to expand is Original reporting. Currently there's about 2 stories per week with some OR in it, which I think is not too bad. Some of the stories we've run so far were quite interesting, e.g. Elite Boston Marathon runner Emily Levan discusses life and running and Mothers, teachers air more concerns about leukemia cases at California elementary school (the latter written by a 14-year-old).
The basic model of writing news on a wiki is workable, but it is certainly harder to motivate people to work on Wikinews than it is on Wikipedia. The individual author has to do more work, and in the case of real reporting, invest more resources. I hope that in the feature we can use new tools like SynchroEdit (a browser-based real-time multi-user editor), make the story writing process easier to use, and explore funding models for stories that cannot be done without a budget.
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Re:Wikinews? What's the point?Providing a neutral and complete synthesis of news from multiple sources is something that can only be done by humans. If you use Google News, you can create this synthesis yourself, but you have to read multiple sources -- if successful, Wikinews really does give you a good overview of all available information at the time. Take an article like this one about the alleged Bush/Blair al-Jazeera memo. It incorporates information from 10 cited sources. Omissions certainly can and do happen, but I think there's a potential for the opposite to take place - namely a much more comprehensive view of the key facts than provided by a typical single news story.
Furthermore, it is all free content, so you can reuse it in any way, and it's available in a free archive indefinitely. This last bit is important -- it's harder than you might think to find an online copy of a non-major AP story after a few months.
But the area which we really want to expand is Original reporting. Currently there's about 2 stories per week with some OR in it, which I think is not too bad. Some of the stories we've run so far were quite interesting, e.g. Elite Boston Marathon runner Emily Levan discusses life and running and Mothers, teachers air more concerns about leukemia cases at California elementary school (the latter written by a 14-year-old).
The basic model of writing news on a wiki is workable, but it is certainly harder to motivate people to work on Wikinews than it is on Wikipedia. The individual author has to do more work, and in the case of real reporting, invest more resources. I hope that in the feature we can use new tools like SynchroEdit (a browser-based real-time multi-user editor), make the story writing process easier to use, and explore funding models for stories that cannot be done without a budget.
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Re:Wikinews? What's the point?
Where else would you hear about Cars being entrapped by ice?
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Car_entrapped_by_ice_i n_Halifax
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Car_entra pped_by_ice_in_Halifax&oldid=174343 -
Re:Wikinews? What's the point?
Where else would you hear about Cars being entrapped by ice?
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Car_entrapped_by_ice_i n_Halifax
http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Car_entra pped_by_ice_in_Halifax&oldid=174343 -
Re:You have got to be kidding me
He clearly must be paying Slashdot some real money, his site is the 3rd related link. Only a few links that are not Slashdot articles show up under related links, and they are normally the link in the article or another news source that have a article related to the Slashdot article which is very rare (from a quick count it is about 1 out of 10), but where not included in the blurb.
My advice, swap to http://wikinews.org/ -
Re:Artificial Intelligence Reported to DOD
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Dumb Slashdot editors
I can't believe those dumb Slashdot editors accepted this story but rejected my very interesting proposed story about the 10th anniversary gathering of A.L.I.C.E. and chat bot enthusiasts who gathered at Guildford, U.K. last week for a serious colloquim on conversational systems. See http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Computer_professional
s _celebrate_10th_birthday_of_A.L.I.C.E. -
Re:Blogs are a great source of newsYes blogs are more biased. But they wear their bias openly on their sleeve. I greatly prefer that to a writer that pretends (even to him/herself) that they have no bias and writes what they think is "Objective" but always has a slant. I can read a right-wing blog and know where they are comign from. I can read a left-wing blog and knw where thety are coming from. If you range widley you can get a pretty good picture of what is going on, and a lot of interesting stories that the real media just pass right by or else make light notice of.
Personally, I find it a bit sad that objectivity is no longer considered a reasonable demand to ask of the media, and that having a mix of left-biased and right-biased reporting is considered the least worst option. It's getting to the point that people are forgetting that information don't always have to be contaminated with some sort of agenda.
At least projects like Wikipedia and Wikinews are giving this objectivity thing a chance. Sure, it's not perfect, but I think it's a step in the right direction. (Not that this opinion is in any way objective.
;-).Terry
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Re:Silent Translator
heh, and does it detect *global disapproved* chemical warfare?(, which they eventually couldn't deny any longer and admitted)
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Not the largest RSA number factored to date
A nice result! Interestingly, the same team factored RSA-200 last May, which is 663 bits long (confusingly, there's two series of RSA challenge numbers with different naming conventions) but for which no prize was given for its solution. RSA-640 is shorter, at 640 bits, but carries a US$20,000 prize. It's not entirely clear why the team went for the larger, prizeless number first.
Maybe there's other factors at work here besides prize money? (ROFL etc). -
Re:Is the Internet Down?
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Re:What Wikipedia has become
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Wikinews story
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Boycotting
That's nice. I'm still boycotting so-called "news".com.com.com after the uncalled-for article in which they posted personal information about Google's co-founders.
Furthermore, "news".com.com.com posts favorable "reviews" of its advertisers and slights those who do not purchase enormous ads on its web site. I'll stick with Objective Neutral news, thank you very much. -
Re:3901 Metropolitan Street, New Orleans, LA
I think some context is important:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/02/nagin.transcript
/ The mayor, in this trascript, begs for buses from the Federal government, asks that Greyhound buses be sent from across the country and refuses public school buses because... well... it's the federal government, and now we're talking coaches, not public school buses! (No consideration of what is fastest; the Fed is NOT omnipotent and Greyhound buses may well be further away than the school buses.) He lays a great deal of blame on others for their response... and so I feel that he also invites criticism if he shows hypocrisy. That's one thing, no matter what side of an issue you are on, that you are always vulnerable to attack for.
And it is rather sad that you would say "Snopes to the rescue again!" and then simply quote Snopes, as if this alleviated the need to actually analyze the situation for yourself.
The Snopes quote you give is completely inconclusive, has no greater insight into the situation, and raises certain irrelevant doubts with -less- evidence than the picture gives. Some of the questions asked are valid... but none are answered by Snopes, which is necessary to evaluate the validity of the criticism offered by the picture. Just raising a question goes nowhere.
While assumptions are necessary to both condemn the city's efforts or to assume the city was powerless (as well as condemning/approving of the Fed's response), it is a reasonable assumption to believe that the school systems had working buses with which to transport children to the various schools across N.O.. That happens in every city across the US and it was time, at least where I live, for school to start again.
Next, there was opportunity enough for the vehicle-owning population to get in their cars and go to higher ground. Why would buses on the same roads be especially risky?
In all, I think there were a lot of opportunities missed, and this was likely one of those opportunities. Hopefully all will learn from the situation and especially people will understand better, rather than blame, those people who actually CAN NOT leave in the same manner as healthy, vehicled, and moneyed folks can.
For more discussion on the buses, check out the following link:
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Re:Rule #1: Don't build on flood plainsThe city had opportunity and buses to transport people out of dodge had they chosen to do so (buses sitting in flood water)
Things got much worse than the city and the state were able to handle when the levee broke - something that they should have had a plan for but either didn't or they didn't execute it.
And the gist of my post was that there is no reason to ration fuel right now because the high prices that we are seeing makes people choose whether do something or not by cost - there is no need for the government to do anything to restrict gasoline usage when prices are high - it's self limiting.
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Re:Going to die?
For something to enter the public domain today, it must've been created around the early part of last century.
Not true. Consider this, or this, or this.
If you're implying that works without a copyright symbol attached are in the public domain, you are mistaken.
No, I'm implying that works that are explictly placed into the public domain or are produced by an employee in the US government as part of her duties is in the public domain.
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Re:The DRM factor.
Gah, I linked to this before, not sure why it didn't work. http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/450_sheep_leap_to_the
i r_deaths_in_Turkey