Websites of Knowledge?

AvantLegion asks: "Every now and then, I stumble upon a website that is just a veritable tome of knowledge - be it of a certain theme (like Snopes.com) or more general information (Everything2.com). Free documentation databases are invaluable, but rarely seem to come up very early in Google searches. What websites out there do you consider to be indispensable sources of knowledge? (save the obvious Slashdot jokes). Where do you look up information besides combing through search engine results?"

Comments

MSDN

[CokoBWare]

For a M$ junkie like me, I do find MSDN to be invaluable for developer reference when I need some definitive answer for an API I don't have handy.

How Stuff Works

[Dfiant]

I like browsing articles at howstuffworks.com. I go there looking for something specific and end up spending hours reading the articles. They're not overly technical, but not so simple as to be inaccurate either. It's something I can share with others and not confuse them right out. ;-)

Re:IMDb

[mattsucks]

Well, dammit, now I'm thinking. I was just trying to be funny before (time will tell if i succeeded).

As the TV becomes the computer becomes the home theatre becomes the DVD player becomes ... this kind of data integration will be a killer app. Want to know what other shows a cast member has been in? Move the cursor over the person on the screen and mash the Info button. Since everything is integrated, a little bit of pattern recognition goes into effect, a request to some webservice is generated, and you get a popup with a list of that actor's other roles. Heck, you wouldn't even need pattern recognition. The digital video stream could include "what actor is where on screen at what time" info, kinda like a big dynamic <map>.

Now if Microsoft would hurry up and get all this done we'd truly be in multi-media heaven (aaahahaha, i kill me ;-)

Great Source for free online computer books

[Alpha_Nerd]

Here are many free books related to math and computer science.

Also dict.org

[Anitra]

I was going to recommend dict.org, but then I went and looked at dictionary.com again. Seems they pull from pretty much the same databases/dictionaries (in English anyway), everything from Webster's to "WordNet" to the Free Online dictionary of computing. Heck, they even (both) have dictionaries of Biblical names & terms! Wow.

I can see why you'd prefer dictionary.com, though. They have better foreign language support, and a thesaurus; dict.org has several different algorithms for searching (that you can choose from), and you can also narrow your choice to a single dictionary with dict.org.