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Web Pages Are Weak Links in the Chain of Knowledge
PizzaFace writes "Contributions to science, law, and other scholarly fields rely for their authority on citations to earlier publications. The ease of publishing on the web has made it an explosively popular medium, and web pages are increasingly cited as authorities in other publications. But easy come, easy go: web pages often get moved or removed, and publications that cite them lose their authorities. The Washington Post reports on the loss of knowledge in ephemeral web pages, which a medical researcher compares to the burning of ancient Alexandria's library. As the board chairman of the Internet Archive says, "The average lifespan of a Web page today is 100 days. This is no way to run a culture.""
erst post !
(Adolf Hitroll)
suck a duck
One month a thoughtful Microsoft programmer will post the bug on a page with a workaround, source code, and a patch using Visual Studio.
.Net
The next month the bug officially doesn't exist, the workaround page is gone, the source code is who knows where, and it's
If you go to Linux.org though, the FAQ and bug postings are preserved for all to see.
You're right though, in that Microsoft should be identified as one of those bad sources anyway.
While writing an article on the slashdot editors for salon.com, I visited Holland, Michigan, and discovered the truth. In the Holland gay/scat circles, a "taco" involved taking a shit in a taco shell, shooting a load of jizz on it, and having your partner eat it. Rob Malda, it seems, invented this practice.
And now you know... the rest of the story.
Unfortunately we had to wait a few months before hitting Iraq so they had plenty of time to hide things. Finding any chemicals will be a needle in a haystack. The country is as big as a mid size state in the US. Now go find every 55 gallon drum in Illinois. Now think of trying to find them in buildings or burried in the sand someplace. That's the scope of the problem. People are just fucking fools if they think this is easy.
I think it interesting that 3 months ago or so even Clinton said that in 98 there were WMD's that were not accounted for.
I also find it instructive that even though Iraq claimed to have no scuds and even though the inspectors found no scuds, that day 1 of this war, Iraq started lobbing some scuds. But nobody bothered to notice the inconsitancy. Granted, they probably didn't have many, but both Iraq and the inspectors said they weren't there. Hmm what's next?
It's an example of short-term, range of the moment thinking. No understanding of the issues in play need to happen...all that matters is the short-term gratification.
SCO sues IBM & etc., for short-term profits now, oblivious to what the long-term consequences of a change to the legal system might entail for THEM in future....
SCO and Open Source: in the short term, we can own Linux. In the long term....(no plan, as if everyone who contributed to Linux will just keep churning out nice code for SCO to steal).
It doesn't matter that they don't have a prayer...long term consequences of your actions have to be assessed!
Software patents: short-term profits now. No long-term consequences to worry about, because all of our stock will be sold by then! Who cares if new programmers can't create new software without stepping all over patents!
Company takeovers: Sell the company, split it up, sell the parts for a quick buck. Who cares that their research department was 6 months away from a major breakthrough that would have changed the face of the earth forever...We can't gamble on possibilities, we're businessmen! We work on the here and now!
Politics: Mr. B had an affair with some slut! He's a terrible person! Vote for Mr. A! (Mr. A has bad financial policies and ideas that will bankrupt the electorate, but he looks nice in a suit...so we'll vote for him!).
Crime: I want your stuff, so I'm gonna shoot you in the head. Sure, there's jail, and if everyone acted that way, I might get shot...Oh well, I won't think about that, and it will go away.
When the same short-term thinking that leads to crime is the same short term thinking used by our leaders and businessmen, you have to wonder about the direction in which society is going.
What are we doing in this handbasket, anyway?
open4free