Slashback: Quinn, iBackups, Wikipedia

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including the exoneration of Peter Quinn, the debut of Honda's new ASIMO robot, Vonage customers now all have 911 access, Nathan Peterson pleads guilty to copyright infringement, an interesting follow up to the recent Wikipedia articles, the Citizen e ink clock makes its first real world debut, and a response for criticism of the $100 laptop - read on for details.

Peter Quinn exonerated. An anonymous reader writes "Groklaw is reporting that Peter Quinn, the man who terrified Microsoft by moving part of the Massachusetts government to ODF, has been exonerated of any alleged impropriety concerning his trips to tell others about Massachusetts' move to ODF."

Honda debuts new ASIMO robot. Tomo Hiratsuka writes "Honda's ASIMO robot has received his annual refit and now has the power to carry objects with a cart, serve drinks, and run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph."

911 now available to Vonage users. Ben writes "Only a month after Vonage 911 Deadline Passed the VoIP phone service announced today that all of its customers now have access to 911 services."

Nathan Peterson pleads guilty to copyright infringement. Chris Bradshaw writes "iBackups' owner Nathan Peterson pled guilty to two counts of criminal copyright infringement for illegally copying and selling nearly $20 million worth of computer software. The FBI was first alerted to possible software piracy by the Software Information Industry Association (SIIA) back in 2003. iBackups was selling pirated copies of software over the internet claiming that they were "backup copies" to be used by software owners in case of system crashes."

Wikipedia still just as effective as normal encyclopedia. AxelBoldt writes "The Australian newspaper The Age reports that Nature has run a formal comparison of the science coverage of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. From the article: 'The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three.'"

Citizen e ink clock makes its debut. Tim Jones writes "The flexible e ink clock that Citizen announced what seems like ages ago is finally making an appearance in the real world. It's apparently going to be displayed at a Tokyo exhibition this week."

$100 laptop not quite so ineffectual. segphault writes "Ars Technica posted a response to Intel chairman Craig Barret's criticism of MIT's $100 laptop. From the article: 'Despite Barret's criticism, interest in the $100 laptop remains as strong as ever, and lightweight, affordable technology continues to weave its way into the classroom with great results. Young students in Olathe, Kansas now read their textbooks on Palm handheld computers. According to survey statistics, 28 percent of American school districts offer handheld computers for student and teacher use. A study done at a high school in South Dakota in 2001 found that the the availability of school-provided handhelds actually improved student grades. Eric Johnson, educational sales director for Palm, says the public schools represent a US$300 million market. If handheld computers can do so well in the public school system, surely the $100 laptop can too.'"

Comments

Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Jugalator]

While I knew Britannica has inaccuracies, and while I know inaccuracies often remain for quite a while there due to their revision model, I didn't believe it would fare that well, and rather that it would have much less but staying for a longer time. 42 entries may be a small sample size though; I'd rather see a few hundreds in a larger test, and also from more than science.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[ral315]

Well, you have to remember that this was for Nature, so I can understand the bias toward science-related articles. I think where Wikipedia would probably beat out Britannica would be on technology-related articles...not just for recent developments, but because the format of Wikipedia plays to a tech crowd.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Proposal: a moneyback guarantee for all encyclopedias.

Same should apply for operating systems. If you sell me and OS with a security bug, I want my money back.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Bear in mind that the last critical evaluation of Wikipedia to hit the news considered just one article, and the one before that considered just two. I'd say looking at 42, and comparing with another encyclopedia as well, is a definite step up.

There's more research to be done, of course, but there's always more research to be done. This is a very important first step in taking the wiki debate beyond emotive appeals to idealism or prejudice or commercial interest, and into the realms of scientific investigation and hard facts. I, for one, welcome it.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[k98sven]

The list of surveyed entries. The list is obviously leaning heavily towards natural sciences.

So it's hardly very well-rounded, which is probably good for Wikipedia here, since the natural science entries (In my experience) tend to hold a higher level of accuracy/quality than the humanities ones.

It'd be more intersting to see a larger survey, and with more obscure topics. In my opinion, an encyclopedia should be judged by its weakest entries, not its strongest.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? Editing error.. well, here's the list.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[AKAImBatman]

Of course, you still have to be careful. A lot of the unfinished articles in Wikipedia are the types of things that Britannica wouldn't tell you about anyway. For example, who would have thought that David Weber of Honor Harrington fame was also responsible for developing the third editions of the famous Starfire board game? And while you were looking that up, who'd have thunk that Sun had done a promotional video called Starfire about the "Office of the Future" circa 2004? (That was an amusing film.)

My point is that Wikipedia is not only going toe to toe with traditional Encyclopedias (sorry, I can't do the ae thing on Slashdot), it's actually surpassing them. Like the Internet was designed to do, Wikipedia is slowly sapping up the sum of human knowledge for all to learn. The process is fraught with difficulties, but it's otherwise a good process.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[rgmoore]

It'd be more intersting to see a larger survey, and with more obscure topics. In my opinion, an encyclopedia should be judged by its weakest entries, not its strongest.

In which case Wikipedia should do much better than Britannica. After all, there are many obscure topics for which Wikipedia has an articles and Britannica doesn't. Any hard copy encyclopedia is going to get trounced by Wikipedia for articles on popular culture and recent events, for instance.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[SquadBoy]

"For example, who would have thought that David Weber of Honor Harrington fame was also responsible for developing the third editions of the famous Starfire board game?"

Anybody who has read more than his trendy stuff and/or the backs of pretty much any of his books? He has done and is famous for *much* more than Harrington and in fact many, like myself, think that is some of his weakest works. Although it's pretty much all train jumpers know.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[rblum]

The secret is æ ... æ

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[AKAImBatman]

Anybody who has read more than his trendy stuff and/or the backs of pretty much any of his books?

Lemme see: I'm pissed off because he didn't write more Dahak, Starfire is almost better than HH because it spans a much greater period of time, and I really wish he hadn't helped write 1633. 1632 was much more realistic without Weber's hard edge "those BASTARDS!" style of writing in it. Of course, 1634 is a snooze, so who am I to talk? No, I haven't read the March Up Country series. It hasn't interested me yet. :-)

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Maserati]

The March Upcountry series is actually quite good. It reads like more of Ringo's work than Weber's, for what that's worth. The series works out to be a pretty good coming of age tale, and the paeans to the martial virtues are not overblown. I caught the first two books when they were in the free library and then bought the last two.

Ahh Starfire. The original pocket edition is one of the best games of its generation. It hasn't stood up well - although I prefer the 2d6 weapon rolls to the 1d10 just because I love the feel of the 2d6 bell curve- so I'm playing Full Thrust these days, predominantly online with FTJava - multiplayer, transport over email so not realtime, fog of war, and fighters coming this week in the 1.0 release. Starfire was cursed with mediocre expansions and overcomplex campaign games. Weber came along for the 2nd edition and rewrote the game to be more complex to handle the large battles he wanted (yes, that's what happened). And he wrote novels. They degenerated into one massive assault through a warp point after another. There's no ftl travel, you go through warp poitns and come out in another system. And they're easily defended with vast minefields and ginormous fortresses. Ungameably ugly in my opinion, you're forced into brute force up-the-middle attacks. This forces fleet sizes upwards to sustain the horrific casualty rates (90% attrition in fighter units in battle after battle, 90% percent people. Add in an even more extreme version of the technological one-upmanship in the Honor Harrington books and you get a really flashy strategic situation that's utterly boring to play.

On the other hand, the game for the Honor Harrington series is based on the excellent Attack Vector, which manages to put 3d Newtonian space combat on the tabletop. They're calling it the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator and yes, I do have a (small, non-financial) interest in the company. It's on my Christmas list for myself, just ordered it now (yes, I've been good).

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[AKAImBatman]

Ahh Starfire. The original pocket edition is one of the best games of its generation. It hasn't stood up well

Indeed. The current owner is only maintaining the game part time, and is 100% focused on distributing rules over the Internet rather than complete game packages. The fourth edition rules have been clarified (as promised), but in the process completely lost any hope of explaining to a new player how to play the game. It was a full two weeks before something finally clicked in my head and I was able to play a one ship on one ship game. Considering how easy such a game is, that's just pathetic. I still haven't managed to work out the empire building, but that may be in part because of how busy I am.

Weber came along for the 2nd edition and rewrote the game to be more complex to handle the large battles he wanted (yes, that's what happened). And he wrote novels. They degenerated into one massive assault through a warp point after another.

I'm thinking that's because of the introduction of Imperial Starfire. He first created a separate game set in the same universe so that he could have the empite building aspect. Then he went about combining the two concepts into one, with predictably unpredictable results. Still, a lot of players swear up and down by the Third Edition. I would have gone for third instead of fourth, but I couldn't figure out all the materials I needed to order. Galactic Starfire came in a bundled set (two manuals, two counter sheets, two hexmaps, and a 10 sided die), so it was much easier at the time to order that.

On the other hand, the game for the Honor Harrington series is based on the excellent Attack Vector, which manages to put 3d Newtonian space combat on the tabletop. They're calling it the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator

I've been hearing nothing but good things about both Attack Vector and Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. Is the latter really as good as everyone is claiming? At the very least, the idea of getting a well thought out, well commercialized, game with professionally crafted pieces for about the same cost as Starfire is very appealing. When I got the Starfire kit, I couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed in the artwork on the counter sheets. (Yes, they're still using the same artwork that goes all the way back to 1st edition.) The 3D artwork on the manual covers isn't much better. :-(

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[AKAImBatman]

P.S. I can't stand Ringo, so that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. ;-)

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[SquadBoy]

I have decidely mixed feelings about Ringo. I do like some of his stuff and loathe other bits. Having said that the March books are good fun. I've not read the last one yet.

I really like the books collected in Empire From the Ashes, Apocalypse Troll, The Excalibur Alternative, and his other "non-series" stuff, also the Starfire stuff does rock. I'd love to see him get a chance to play in Drake's RCN universe I think he could do some fun stuff there.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[Terralthra]

Sure, you stop using it, send all media and such back to the manufacturer, and they'll be happy to give you a refund.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[zCyl]

In which case Wikipedia should do much better than Britannica. After all, there are many obscure topics for which Wikipedia has an articles and Britannica doesn't. Any hard copy encyclopedia is going to get trounced by Wikipedia for articles on popular culture and recent events, for instance.

That's because, for all that people go around calling Wikipedia an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is not just an encyclopedia. It's an information index. If you want to evaluate Wikipedia on popular culture or current events, the proper comparison is Google, rather than Britannica. Do a Google search, examine the top few entries, and see if you can obtain valuable information faster and more efficiently in Google, or by following links in Wikipedia. There are some entries where Google wins this comparison, and some where Wikipedia wins. There are also some places where Wikipedia is more accurate in such a comparison, and some places where Google is more accurate.

An attempt at a rigorous comparison might be intriguing.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[AKAImBatman]

Empire From the Ashes

Empire From the Ashes is the collected 3 book Dahak series, so I don't think that really counts as "non-series". :-)

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[SquadBoy]

No it doesn't and I didn't really thing it was. That was just a badly written sentence. Meant non-series stuff in addition to the Dahak stuff, of course. :)

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[bill_mcgonigle]

Well, you have to remember that this was for Nature, so I can understand the bias toward science-related articles.

The advantage for a science article is that it's testable. Everything in the article can pretty much be verified through research or experiment.

It's really the easiest types of articles for an encyclopedia to write.

Articles about culture and history can be more muddy. Just the other day I was reading the talk page on Geisha, and it mostly consists of a flamewar of people either bashing or arguing about the meanings of regional Japanese words an the 'mysteries' of Japanese society. It's not a great article, at least yet. I would be interesting to compare to Britanica - if I felt like driving to the Library, that is.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[danpsmith]

the format of Wikipedia plays to a tech crowd.

Not only that but wikipedia is good in areas no other encyclopedia covers, such as everything from TV series, to entire musical artists careers and bios. Old style encyclopedias just aren't changeable enough to contain all the info wikipedia does.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[loginx]

If that magazine was so bright that they had found 4 errors per article on Wikipedia, I sure as hope, at least, that they took the time to address them.

Re:Interesting encyclopedia comparison

[jonadab]

> I think where Wikipedia would probably beat out Britannica would be on
> technology-related articles

Yes, especially in terms of coverage. Wikipedia's math coverage is also pretty good. Actually, coverage tends to be overall better in Wikipedia (well, in the English Wikipedia anyhow). OTOH, Britannica has fewer utter-garbage articles. (I'm not saying WP is loaded with them or anything, but they do appear occasionally; I've seen I think three altogether, out of perhaps a couple of thousand articles I've looked at.) Also Britannica is more consistently formal in its grammar and style, which appeals to me. But Wikipedia is in many ways more convenient; the page layout is substantially more convenient for one thing, and allows the main text of the article to use a much larger percentage of the total window width, which makes it easier to read. It's also a good deal easier to navigate, especially because of the pervasive article-to-article hyperlinking. Then too, the search works better. Furthermore, to access Britannica online, I've got to go through OPLIN and type in a fourteen-digit library card number. This particular wrinkle, aside from the inconvenience, also makes Britannica worthless for hyperlinking purposes, and linking to them is a tremendously useful thing to be able to do with encyclopedia articles. Britannica is *slightly* preferable for traditional formal citations, but at that it's still an encyclopedia, fundamentally a tertiary source.

And yeah, for obvious reasons Wikipedia covers very recent topics better.

I do hope Wikipedia's plans to establish approved "stable" versions of articles turns out well; it seems to me that that's headed in the right direction.

Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the newspaper people then fixed the inaccuracies in the wikipedia articles, making it 0 to 3, which would be a clear win for wikipedia?

Re:Edit

[m50d]

Whenever you do such an analysis, the assumption is you found 20% of them. That makes it 15 for Britannica and 16 remaining for Wikipedia.

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

4 * 5 is 16, love that "new math"...

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if the newspaper people then fixed the inaccuracies in the wikipedia articles, making it 0 to 3, which would be a clear win for wikipedia?

I checked one article to see if that might be the case. In the article for "quark" the only recent edits are one that changed all occurrences of "hadron" to "hardon", and then one that changed "hardon" back to "hadron".

Of course if the Encyclopedia Britannica had an article on quarks that mentioned "hardons" it would take years before a correction would make its way into print. So score this as a clear win for wikipedia.

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

> Whenever you do such an analysis, the assumption is you found 20% of them. That makes it 15 for Britannica and 16 remaining for Wikipedia.

Found 3 on Britannica, so guessing 15 total, 0 corrected, leaving 15.
Found 4 on Wikpedia, so guessing 20 total, 4 corrected, leaving 16.

Re:Edit

[pomo monster]

So if you find mistakes in Wikipedia, that just proves the validity of the Wikipedia model, because those mistakes were, after all, corrected.

Isn't that the same fucked-up logic they use to justify capital punishment? "Yes, we've sent innocent people to death row before, but they've all been freed once it was discovered they were innocent. So that really just proves the system works!"

I don't buy it.

Re:Edit

[Carthag]

That would negate the point of the study. It would be like nature documentaries stepping in and stopping wolves from eating their prey.

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not appear that they bothered to correct the problems they found.

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course if the Encyclopedia Britannica had an article on quarks that mentioned "hardons" it would take years before a correction would make its way into print. So score this as a clear win for wikipedia.

Sarcasm this brilliant is too good for Slashdot. Half your audience won't get it, and the other half will get it but will be afraid that you weren't kidding.

Re: Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc.

Re:Edit

[Eideewt]

I don't think that was parent's point. I think he just wondered if they had fixed them after finding them or not, and wasn't talking about what fixing them would mean to the study.

Re:Edit

[Binary Boy]

Oh, I love bad analogies.

I think yours would be a little more accurate if we had the capability to un-execute people -- then for each error found (whether pre- or post-execution), it could be corrected, mooting concerns at least for the issue of the permanence of execution. Like Wiki

Re:Edit

[pomo monster]

No, you misunderstand the analogy, or perhaps I communicated it poorly. It's not about any one mistake per se, or even all the mistakes in total, since these can obviously be fixed. The analogy is to the system itself, and the common defense of the system as provably correct on the grounds that any mistakes, once found, are quickly corrected. That defense is garbage.

Re:Edit

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is we are dealing with information, bits and all that, not human lifes.

Slashback on a Wednesday?

[Eberlin]

Ain't it a little early to look back at the week in nerdy news? Or is it just slashdot's way of getting all the dupes done and over with?

correction

[Jugalator]

I didn't believe it would fare that well

should be that bad of course... Posting too late :P

Re:correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you mean "badly"?

But what happens...

[Cheapy]

What happens when the power goes out for Vonage customers? I read the description, but didn't see anything about this.

Re:But what happens...

[The Warlock]

The same thing that happens when your power goes out and the only phone in your house is cordless: you lose 911 service unless you have a charged cellphone handy.

Re:But what happens...

[Phroggy]

This is what UPSes are for...

Re:But what happens...

[Smidge204]

From Their website

311 Dialing, 911 Dialing, and Vonage Service DO NOT function during an electrical power or broadband provider outage. While you cannot control a power outage that actually disrupts the broadband Internet service, one method Vonage has found is to use an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)to continue to provide AC power to the cable/DSL modem, phone adapter and the cordless phone base station. A Uninterruptible Power Supply can be purchased at an electronics store near you.

Vonage also offers the free option of having a Network Availability Number. Now you don't have to be inconvenienced if your Internet connection fails. Your calls will be automatically forwarded to the phone number of your choice in the event your Internet connection is disrupted or your telephone adapter is disconnected. To set up your Network Availability Number, log in to your web account, and click on the "Features" tab on your Dashboard.

=Smidge=

Re:But what happens...

[Cheapy]

D'oh. Hadn't thought of that.

Makes me wonder how I got modded up for that post...

Re:But what happens...

[Professor_UNIX]

The same thing that happens when your power goes out and the only phone in your house is cordless: you lose 911 service unless you have a charged cellphone handy.

Except with a regular line I have the option of keeping an cheap corded phone around for emergencies and it'll be powered from the central office. That's a BIG advantage for me and a reason I will never go entirely to VOIP. There's simply no major advantages for me since I need to keep my phone line around for DSL anyway.

Re:But what happens...

[xlv]

Except with a regular line I have the option of keeping an cheap corded phone around for emergencies and it'll be powered from the central office. That's a BIG advantage for me and a reason I will never go entirely to VOIP. There's simply no major advantages for me since I need to keep my phone line around for DSL anyway.

You know that at least here in California, a disconnected line still has a dial tone so that you can order service and call 911 from that line. I switched to Vonage about 2 years ago and I still get a dial tone on my disconnected landline. I haven't dialed 911 on that line yet but if there's a dial tone, it should work. Maybe I'll test it later tonight to make sure...

Re:But what happens...

[matth]

Yeah and with voip you have the option of keeping a cheep ($60) battery backup around which will run your service for at least an hour (constantly on)... or for days if you flip it on only when you need to make an outbound call in an emergency... what's the problem again?

Re:But what happens...

[The Warlock]

You can keep a cheap corded phone around anyways, assuming you didn't rip the wires out of your walls. Any phone plugged into the line can call 911, whether you pay for a plan or no. Same with any cellphone.

Re:But what happens...

[Planesdragon]

What happens when the power goes out for Vonage customers? I read the description, but didn't see anything about this.

Depends on whether or not the cable modem and the Vonage-box both have battery backups.

Time Warner Cable's digital phone comes with a right-to-cable box, that has a built-in battery backup. I had a circuit trip in my computer room that I didn't notice for a good day of phone calls, until I finally tried to turn on my computer.

Re:But what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

All my cordless phones have a built-in speakerphone which still works when the power is off. Any properly designed wired phone will "fail to POTS" and power only what it can handle from line power when main power is gone.

Re:But what happens...

[drinkypoo]

Unfortunately, it is often not enough. For example, in both Marysville and Kelseyville (cities in California, one of which is so small you can fart on one end of town and someone can smell it on the other, the other of which is decent-sized) if the power is off long enough, the cable network goes down. I don't know what it is that goes out, but I suspect it's a repeater or something somewhere.

You're probably better off depending on a cellphone with no service plan.

Re:But what happens...

[instarx]

Except with a regular line I have the option of keeping an cheap corded phone around for emergencies and it'll be powered from the central office.

Not necessarily. The central office only powers the phones for as long as their back-up batteries last. During the New York/NE regional blackout a couple of years ago POP phone service in NYC only lasted a couple of hours and then was gone. Cell phones may have worked longer, but I couldn't say because my battery ran down after using it as a flashlight to get up the pitch-black stairwell to my 10th floor apartment.

Re:But what happens...

[nicolaiplum]

The problem is assuming that all the infrastructure to run the IP network is going to stay up in a power outage, bad environmental (hurricane, flood) situation, or similar. That infrastructure is distributed all over the place, like the cable distribution boxes in streets, instead of in one well-built Central Office. Some of it is rated for 911-grade service (especially in places where the cable operator offers phone service), and some of it is not.
Actual telcos have a lot of experience of building infrastructure to survive problems, and (simple wired) telephones are centrally-powered from the CO (or the nearest branch exchange) which makes it a lot easier to make them reliable. Some other IP operators aren't so experienced, or don't care so much.

Re:But what happens...

[geekoid]

Or are smart enough to keep a corded one with your emergency supplies.
I do, and it has alreqad come in handy a few times. can't charge a cell phone without power. So I operfer to only use it if absolutly neccessary in an emergency. Plus, you know, if the towers are down, or being flooded it's handy.

The age of batteries is upon us

[Resident Netizen]

Wow- a $100 laptop would be quite handy, I betcha.
The other text in the blurb (referring to the use of handhelds for reading of textbooks) gave me the heads up that it's nearly past time to invest in manufacturers of batteries. Duh!

Any recommendations to that effect?

Re:The age of batteries is upon us

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, invest in companies that can make high-capacity batteries, maybe. The energy storage of current lithium-ion batteries (about 500 Wh/L) is rather poor compared to petroleum fuel (10000 Wh/L).

Re:The age of batteries is upon us

[Eideewt]

Makes you want to strap a gasoline engine to you laptop, doesn't it. And I thought my laptop was too warm now!

Re:The age of batteries is upon us

[drinkypoo]

Maybe you haven't been watching the tech news - in fact, I can tell you haven't, because you said that. A couple of companies claim to be getting close to having marketable microturbine generator systems that run on assorted "clean" fuels, mostly hydrogen or methanol. I suspect the biggest holdup is that they're trying to get the FAA (and similar orgs) to let people bring little compressed fuel canisters on planes, since the "killer app" for this tech is to use it for laptop power.

Re:The age of batteries is upon us

[Eideewt]

Now that you mention it, I did see something about that a few months back. That's okay though, jokes don't need to be in accord with reality. Stereotypes are the foundation of standup comedy, after all.

5 years vs 2 centuries

[dubl-u]

The interesting part is that Wikipedia did so well so quickly. Wikipedia's only been around since 2001, but they wrote the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1771. Britannica has had more than 200 years to get their process together, and their accuracy rates are still pretty close to Wikipedia's.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[BigZaphod]

That is kind of interesting, but how different is the Britannica model from Wikipedia, anyway? I think they both fundamentally rely upon peer review and the "many eyes" approach. Wikipedia as the serious advantage of having a heck of a lot more eyes available with the power to fix what they see as broken. Sure, some aren't going to be subject experts, but then any given expert in any given field is always going to have personal biases and beliefs that don't quite mesh with actual facts, too, so I'm not sure there's a difference in the end. Wikipedia is a brute-force parallel approach while I would perhaps classify Britannica is a brute-force serial approach.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[Wolfstar]

What you should be amazed at is that Wiki does more poorly than Brittanica.

If an article has not substantially changed in facts or representation in a few decades, a new version of Brittanica is likely to use the same article, with a cursory once-over to ensure that there's no major errors still - and that I would bet would be more in the way of spelling and grammar rather than factual.

Wiki, on the other hand, performs worse, and the articles are only four and a half years old at most.

Copy errors in a document alone will, over time, introduce more errors than Brittanica is showing I would think, especially over a period of 235 years. The same cannot be said of Wiki.

That being said though, had you told me five or six years ago that an open-contribution online encyclopedia could consist wholly of anything other than spam and garbage, I would've laughed myself silly at you. I'm amazed that Wiki performed as well as it did, but I'm almost more amazed at Brittanica's ability to keep the errors very low amongst almost two and a half centuries of compiled information.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[roystgnr]

The interesting part is that Wikipedia did so well so quickly. Wikipedia's only been around since 2001, but they wrote the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1771.

Well, the articles tested "covered topics including Agent Orange, quarks and synchrotrons". Brittanica hasn't had two centuries head start on any of those.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[im_thatoneguy]

So if I write 42 great articles does that make me as thorough and accurate as Britannica?

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[macbutch]

My reading was that Brittanica has 2 centuries head start on developing a good process (ie. editing, review etc). If the process has had so much time to mature then you might expect the result to be of a higher quality (as seen in less errors per article) than a process some dude thought up a few years ago which lets any random internet user edit articles.

I'm not really sure that this is a valid argument but it is interesting...

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[dubl-u]

My reading was that Brittanica has 2 centuries head start on developing a good process (ie. editing, review etc). If the process has had so much time to mature then you might expect the result to be of a higher quality[...]

Yes, that's exactly my point.

When you hear the anti-Wikipedia crowd rant, they suggest that the process of building the encyclopedia is the important thing, that an open effort could never come close. If Wikipedia has gotten this far with only a few years of process innovation, it's very reasonable to think that they're still on the low end of the improvement curve.

Looking at Britannica's history, that's certainly plausible. I have a reproduction of the first edition of the EB, and the thing seems hopelessly crude compared with a modern version.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[Eideewt]

No, but if you write as many natural science articles as Wikipedia has and 42 randomly picked ones are as accurate as Britannica's then you're as thorough and accurate as they are.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[Raul654]

Britannica changes very, very little from year to year. They entirely rewrite it only about once in a lifetime. They did so two times in the 20th century - in 1911 (a famous edition which was much lauded) and again in 1976 (the current version). So the Agent Orange entry has probably been around for going on 4 decades now.

Re:5 years vs 2 centuries

[drinkypoo]

That brings up an interesting question; data is forever (let's not quibble, it CAN be true) but how exactly does britannica handle copy? When did they go digital? How were they handling things in the pre-digital age? Assuming you have original photostats for articles, you should be able to keep the first generation, and cut up second generation copies for layout. Then, you will have no copy errors from that point...

Ten mph? wow ...

[s20451]

run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph

For those readers who don't get much exercise, that's a six minute mile pace ... which is not easy even for an average person in good physical shape.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[mabinogi]

Actually, I've got no idea where they got 10mph from.
The article states 6km/h

Maybe someone did their km -> miles conversion the wrong way round?

Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Game_Ender]

Honda's ASIMO can now run at 6 kph not 10 mph. 6 kph is 3.73 miles per hour. This is doulbe the old 3 kph of ASIMO.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[yamamushi]

It's still faster than I can run... :-/

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[damiam]

You can't run 3.73 mph? Are you serious? I can walk faster than that, and I don't consider myself to be in particuarly good shape.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[jeffmeden]

Bingo, i was just about to post this after reading honda's site in disappointment that he's running only marginally faster than before. Considering ASIMO's rather small size (48 inches tall) running at 10mph would be quite a feat. Thanks for the let-down, slashdot!

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[iamlucky13]

That makes a lot more sense. I was awestruck that it could've improved so much so quickly. I'm still impressed that it could be putting enough energy into its stride to have both feet simultaneously off the ground and not trip.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[StikyPad]

Honda's ASIMO can now run at 6 kph.

So what you're saying is, Asimo can now keep up with the elderly and infirm?

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[shut_up_man]

It's conversion errors like that one that sent the Mars Climate Orbiter into oblivion... damn imperial units.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[raoul666]

So what you're saying is, Asimo can now keep up with the elderly and infirm?

To be fair, while that's a pretty sad running speed, it is good enough to keep up with an average person walking at a typical pace. That's a good start, in my book.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Lars T.]

They are called Stormtroopers.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Ether]

The first rule of a predator is to go after the weak and the infirm.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Furmy]

I was going to post that correction too and I would've if I hadn't looked at the pictures and got distracted
.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[ktakki]

So what you're saying is, Asimo can now keep up with the elderly and infirm?

It has to be, in order to eat their medicine.


k.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[JahToasted]

I'm Sam Waterston, of the popular TV series "Law & Order". As a senior citizen, you're probably aware of the threat robots pose. Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel. Well, now there's a company that offers coverage against the unfortunate event of robot attack, with Old Glory Insurance. Old Glory will cover you with no health check-up or age consideration.

You need to feel safe. And that's harder and harder to do nowadays, because robots may strike at any time.

And when they grab you with those metal claws, you can't break free.. because they're made of metal, and robots are strong. Now, for only $4 a month, you can achieve peace of mind in a world full of grime and robots, with Old Glory Insurance. So, don't cower under your afghan any longer. Make a choice.

WARNING: Persons denying the existence of Robots may be Robots themselves.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Anonymous Coward]

... and push them down the stairs.
PAK CHOOIE

HELLO GRANDMA

GREATINGS 7

WHAT ARE YOU DOING GRANDMA?

PAK CHOOIE

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[StikyPad]

Yeah, I'm guessing I got modded down by a robot too. You can watch a clip of the commercial here by the way. (Quicktime or equivelant required).

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Anonymous Coward]

km/h is the accepted notion, kph is just confusing.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Anonymous Coward]

Never had a cat? They'd consider that rule unsporting. They capture/release/capture for fun/practice, and before the kill bite --instinctive and very precise -- the prey is often kept intact, so you can release it (a bird can die from fright; a mouse will calm down eventually).

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Sketch]

If by marginally faster, you mean twice as fast, then yes, you are correct. It's not going to win any races, but doubling the speed is a significant improvement.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[SpinyNorman]

I saw Asimo when he was "on tour" in his previous version, and he's very impressive - a bit freaky really! We're so used to seeing special effects in movies, that it's easy to write off a robot walking around as no big deal, but to see Asimo walking up a flight of stairs was very impressive, knowing that this is the real deal - he does that totally autonomously.

The latest videos show lots of enhancements - running in circles and turing on the spot, plus now capable of doing other things such as carrying a tray of coffee and placing it down on a table, or pushing a trolly around an obstacle course... he's beginning to become actually *useful*. He could easily deliver drugs in a hospital they way "box on wheels" robots are currently doing.

What I'd like to see would be a DARPA grand challenge (drive across the desert) entry where they used a stock car, and Asimo walked up to it, got in, and drove off. Maybe with a babe in the passenger seat. It seems that the technology to do this is now available - just load rhe requisite software into Asimo, and give him wireless access to any additional data sources (GPS, Sonar) that the vehicle is equipped with.

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[Paraplex]

Ah yes, hold on to your delusions of superiority naive human, for soon the coin will flip to decide who will serve and who will eat. - asimo

Re:Its not 10 mph for ASIMO

[geekoid]

"...damn imperial units."

Uh, metric was involved in it as well. Point in fact, if the europeans has used imperial, it wouldn't have happen either.

This is a QA issue, not measurement unit issues.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yah, that's pretty damned quick for a biped.

I seriously doubt one in a hundred Americans (or Westerners in general) could run a six-minute mile. I'm in decent shape myself, but would be hard-pressed to do better than an 8:00 pace, not being a regular runner.

Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[Noksagt]

The article lacks important details.

They looked at 42 articles. How were these chosen? Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias? Was this done double-blind?

the difference in accuracy was not great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, around three.

About a 30% difference (running their numbers of 162 and 123), which is big. More importantly (from the article):

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopedia.

The article also doesn't comment if corrections were made to the Wiki and submitted to the editors of Brittanica....

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[Frogbert]

Your comment lacks important close tags.

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[doubtless]

they looked at only 42 articles since that is the answer.

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[MrOrn]

They looked at 42 articles. How were these chosen? Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias? Was this done double-blind?

Gotta love getting an Insightful when you haven't even bothered to read the article thoroughly. All your questions are answered in the text of the article.

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[Noksagt]

All your questions are answered in the text of the article.

Are we reading the same article? They weren't answered very well at all.

How were these chosen?

The article said they were science-related topics selected by Nature that covered things like "agent orange, quarks, and synchrotrons." This doesn't speak to how these were selected. Favorite topics by a person or people at Nature? Randomly drawn from a scientific glossary of some sort? Somehow automatically selected based on most significant topics in wide-reaching fields?

Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias?

I'll agree that the article implies they were.

Was this done double-blind?

The article does not directly answer this. It claims they weren't told which encyclopedia they came from. Were they told that one came from Wikipedia & one came from EB? If so, was the reviewers sufficiently isolated that they couldn't go back to the sources to see which the article came from (and thus bias results)?

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[MrOrn]

All your questions are answered in the text of the article.

Are we reading the same article? They weren't answered very well at all.

Am I dreaming or are you now saying that the article answered the questions, just that these answers were not as informative as you'd prefer? Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.

As to how they were chosen: I think it matters little how they were chosen: whether they were pet topics of one of the editors at Nature or by some other method is irrelevant to the comparison.

You've already addressed your own second question by stating that your question was perhaps already covered in the article. The article doesn't imply -- it states explicitly: "Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias".

As to the third question: the article states that the reviewers were unaware of the source of the articles. One would assume that the editors from Nature are aware of the value of ensuring their data are valid.

A news-bite is hardly worthy of publishing rigourous data about the methodology (though I'm sure if you are that interested Nature would share the data). The point is not to prove a scientific hypothesis but to provide a simple comparison of the accuracy of Wikipedia against the paragon that Britannica is held up to be.

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[Noksagt]

Am I dreaming or are you now saying that the article answered the questions, just that these answers were not as informative as you'd prefer?

You're not dreaming. I conceded that you might be happy with the puff piece, but that (despite your claims), I did read the article & that I wasn't completely satisfied.

Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.

My exact words were:"The article lacks important details." I stand by that.

I think it matters little how they were chosen: whether they were pet topics of one of the editors at Nature or by some other method is irrelevant to the comparison.

It does matter. People are biased. If articles were selected by people who read both articles & knew the source, the samplings could be tainted to favor one of the sources.

As to the third question: the article states that the reviewers were unaware of the source of the articles.

Again, it stated they "were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from" (emphasis mine). If they were emailed or faxed or mailed a copy of the two articles & were told one came from Wikipedia & one came from Britannica (but not which came from which), it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to find which article came from which source. Even if they weren't informed of the original sources, I think it should be simple for professionals who routinely perform literature searches to figure it out.

One would assume that the editors from Nature are aware of the value of ensuring their data are valid.

The blind could be established if the person who copied the articles was different than the one who described the task to the scientists & who analyzed the data. The sources could be revealed after the results were in.

A news-bite is hardly worthy of publishing rigourous data about the methodology

Ah...we agree on something. The article didn't detail methodology well & I had just wanted more details. (Nowhere, by-the-way, did I say the article shouldn't have been published or that it should have answered all of my quesions in more depth. I only said I was left with those questions.)

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[MrOrn]

I conceded that you might be happy with the puff piece...

Just by the way, I never stated any measure of satisfaction with the standard of the article and still haven't. At least I recognised what the purpose of the piece was and didn't try to imply that rigourous standards should be imposed on reportage that doesn't deserve it. Intellectual arrogance for the win.

Which is not what you originally imply in your post, which was that they weren't addressed at all.

My exact words were:"The article lacks important details." I stand by that.

Interesting that you selectively quote your own words...your post went on to imply that three questions were not addressed: coincidentally those I picked up on. So in fact your statement that those were your "exact words" is false: you included three specific examples of what you felt was missing. I pointed out that these had been addressed in the article, not the extent that they had been addressed. Your implication was that they hadn't been addressed. If you had posted based on what you have subsequently tried to imply you meant then I'd simply point out that trying to misapply standards meant for scientific results on material that is not presented as a scholarly article. This is intellectual arrogance, simply designed to karma whore.

It does matter. People are biased. If articles were selected by people who read both articles & knew the source, the samplings could be tainted to favor one of the sources.

You seem to be unable to follow your arguments to a logical conclusion. Assume that the editors of Nature were prepared to open themselves up to complaints of professional misconduct which may well threaten their standings on the editorial board on the basis of a trivial comparison between Wikipedia and the Britannica. Assume that those involved had spent hundreds of hours reading both encyclopdiaedias simply to choose articles that reflected badly on one or the other -- after all, the comparison is Earth-shattering science and will be remembered for eternity as a distinct turning point in history. Then what motivation do you ascribe for them doing this? Perhaps you might remember a principle called Occam's Razor: think on it. If they were after a particular result they could have simply printed the article without even bothering to send any articles; they also could have sent the articles out and then paid the referees money to say that the Wikipedia articles were of approximately the same quality; the possibilities of what they could have done are endless.

I'm also amused that you assume that the editors of an extremely well-respected science journal wouldn't follow standard experimental design and methodological procedures reinforced ad nauseum from the first days of university training. But then again, I don't have a superiority complex.

Again, it stated they "were not told which encyclopedia the stories were from" (emphasis mine). If they were emailed or faxed or mailed a copy of the two articles & were told one came from Wikipedia & one came from Britannica (but not which came from which), it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to find which article came from which source. Even if they weren't informed of the original sources, I think it should be simple for professionals who routinely perform literature searches to figure it out.

The blind could be established if the person who copied the articles was different than the one who described the task to the scientists & who analyzed the data. The sources could be revealed after the results were in.

Wow, I guess that the editors of Nature obviously hadn't thought of that when they designed the effort. After all they are probably only freshmen at universities, not practising scientists with years of work under their belts. But then again, they obviously need more professsional people on the staff. You can probably apply for the job as editor-in-chief

Re:Accuracy of Encyclopedias

[Noksagt]

There's a difference in me implying something and you assuming it. I didn't imply anything you accused me of implying. That you resort to accusing me of making implications indicates, at least, I made no direct statement about the lack of details in the article which you can prove "wrong."

I pointed out that these had been addressed in the article

You said that the presence of what you thought were answers was evidence that I hadn't read the article.

If you had posted based on what you have subsequently tried to imply you meant...

I'm sorry for trying to clarify my original post!

then I'd simply point out that trying to misapply standards meant for scientific results on material that is not presented as a scholarly article.

I'd say "fine" -- but I was still curious as to the answers! God forbid we learn something beyond what was in the article!

This is intellectual arrogance, simply designed to karma whore.

First you accuse me of "implying" things & now of whoring for meaningless points?

Assume that the editors of Nature were prepared to open themselves up to complaints of professional misconduct which may well threaten their standings on the editorial board on the basis of a trivial comparison between Wikipedia and the Britannica.

Misconduct?! There's a difference between "sloppy" science & actual misconduct.

Then what motivation do you ascribe for them doing this?

Results can be biased without a conscious motive. Why do you think they need to be malicious to run a sub-par "experiment?"

I'm also amused that you assume that the editors of an extremely well-respected science journal wouldn't follow standard experimental design and methodological procedures reinforced ad nauseum from the first days of university training.

Why? The sample size is small; the article isn't peer-reviewed or intended to be "serious;" it was an editorial. It is a preliminary study at best & I have seen first-hand the short-cuts that are made.

But then again, I don't have a superiority complex.

Your bickering and accusations of "whoring" have really shown that!

then I'm sure you emailed Nature asking for details of their methodology.

No. I asked on here. I then waited until someone posted a link to a blog article with links to more details.

If you had and then posted their reponse, then that would have deserved an Insightful rating.....you didn't deserve an Insightful.

You certainly seem obsessed with karma! I could care less.

Leave physics and try law

To be quite arrogant, I'd rather scientists have curiosity & you don't seem to share mine. Perhaps you can become a bureaucrat? They get to call each other worse things than "karma whore."

Re:But...

[Anonymous Coward]

You've not seen anything like the mighty Quinn.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Tablespork]

That's a limitation on human stamina more than speed. The average human can sprint much faster than that. As far as a robot, I'd say this is more of a sprint speed, as it's stamina is only limited by battery life. Not to say that it's not impressive.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow is right. Its actually 6 km/hr. Closer to 4 mph. Original poster probably did the mph->kmh conversion backwards.

Britannica Inaccuracies

[Tiberius_Fel]

I would be interested to know if any of the inaccuracies in Encyclopedia Britannica are actually things where we have discovered some new fact or phenomenon since the latest revision was printed. Do they count those?

Re:Britannica Inaccuracies

[ral315]

I would be interested to know if any of the inaccuracies in Encyclopedia Britannica are actually things where we have discovered some new fact or phenomenon since the latest revision was printed. Do they count those?

Even if it does, that shows the strength of Wikipedia. When a new discovery is released, it can take a few years for Britannica to take care of it. On Wikipedia, new discoveries are usually on the site within 24 hours- sometimes just minutes afterward.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[mctk]

run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph

Hey, you know, levitation isn't easy even for someone who does get a lot of exercise.

Nathan Peterson and iBackups

[King_TJ]

I wasn't even aware that this "iBackups" company existed until now. But it occurs to me that his defense; "This software is sold simply to serve as a backup copy.", is as old as the pirate bulletin board system. That used to be a VERY popular "disclaimer" on the "NPD" (non public-domain) boards.

The thing is, I wonder if it held more water on a free BBS, where you simply couldn't be accused of selling the software?

If "iBackups" was going to try something this shady, they should have at least tried to obscure what was being paid for. (EG. Pay our price of $X.XX for a copy of our guide to software installation and optimization, and take your pick of a free backup copy of one of the following commercial programs in our library.)

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Spy der Mann]

Actually, I've got no idea where they got 10mph from.
The article states 6km/h

It seems they multiplied instead of dividing, when making km / mile conversion.

6Km = 3.728 miles
6Miles = 9.654 km.

Nelson, your line :)

Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[ron_ivi]

Wikipedia still just as effective as normal encyclopedia.

I'd like to see a law stating that you get your money back or a free fixed edition if you buy an encyclopedia with an error.

That should make the damn overcharging industry start taking the accuracy of their material seriously and stop throwing stones at community efforts. If Wikipedia's wrong - well, I got what I paid for - but if I fork out hundreds of dollars for something it should be held to some sort of standard.

If not, what is it I'm paying for?

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[pHatidic]

If not, what is it I'm paying for?

Social status.

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[everphilski]

If not, what is it I'm paying for?

No one *made* you purchase that encyclopedia. You saw it. You felt it was a good investment you purchased it. It all comes down to the same argument Pontious Pilate made to Christ - "What Is Truth"? Some things are concrete fact, yes. Some things are evolving events, others are ideas and not set in stone. The print edition you buy is the best stab at capturing the world as we knew it at time X. Encyclopedia are *never* an acceptable reference for a paper. They are a first order reference for general knowlege.

-everphilski-

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[StikyPad]

Encyclopedia are *never* an acceptable reference for a paper.

That's why I never list them in my bibliography.

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[kesuki]

If not, what is it I'm paying for?

You're paying to support a network of door to door soliciters who sold you the book using their people skills and slick convincing talk...

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[westlake]

I'd like to see a law stating that you get your money back or a free fixed edition if you buy an encyclopedia with an error.

The Britannica has been publishing its hardcover Book of the Year since before World War Two. Britannica, full text, on CD/DVD costs about $20-$40.

what is it I'm paying for?

Historically, among other things, signed and credentialed, peer-reviewed, articles, often book-length essays, by authors as significant as Einstein and Freud, essays that can stand on their own merits as prime examples of English prose.

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one *made* you purchase that encyclopedia.

Encyclopaedia are a special case where normal market forces don't apply. In order for the free market to work, consumers need to make informed decisions about how much they value the product. Yet how can a consumer make an informed decision about the quality of material in encyclopaedia when the whole purpose of them is to inform they buyer about things they don't know about?

Invoking free market arguments against encyclopaedia ignores the fact that the free market doesn't help the buyer in this particular instance.

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[Brandybuck]

In other words, because it's free beer, Wikipedia should not be held to any standards? Because it doesn't cost anything people should ignore its flaws?

Gee, imagine that attitude extended to the rest of the universe:

"This pie was terrible! It tastes like shit!"

"Shut your hole you freaking ingrate! It's not like it's Sarah Bloody Lee that you had to pay for!"

"But it had a dead rat in it!"

"It was free so shut up about it!"

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Methinks they need to take this "peer review" a bit more seriously if they want to be seen as anything above Wikipedia. Or by "peer" do they mean "greedy guys who'll do anything for a buck".

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yes. Neither Wikipedia.com and UserMode.com should be held responsible for any mistakes that might be on their web sites.

If whomever's using QBrew(I assume that's your SW) makes a drink that tastes like shit (to use your example), why should you be held liable?

Re:Encyclopedias and responsibility.

[Brandybuck]

The difference is, if I make a mistake, I own up to it. I don't blame the user when my software crashes.

iBackup

[StikyPad]

iBackup? iWish iDthoughtathat..

Peterson has agreed to pay restitution in the amount of $5,402,448.

Yeah that sucks, except..

Documents submitted by the US Attorney state that Peterson made $5.6
million selling pirated software with a total retail price of just under $20
million.

I triple checked my work, but I keep coming up with a $198 thousand dollar profit. That'll teach him.

Re:iBackup

[Anonymous Coward]

What about all the tax he payed on the $5.6 million? When you take that into account it's not so good.

Re:iBackup

[ltmon]

$200k over how long a period? The article doesn't say that, but if he took more than 3 years to make this profit (depending on where he lives etc. etc.) he probably would have done much better in a boring-but-legal developer job.

L.

Re:iBackup

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming he paid taxes on an illegal enterprise..

Re:iBackup

[StikyPad]

Well, he may have held a boring-but-legal job at the same time, and/or made money off of investing some of that $5M.. who knows? Any way you cut it, this guy got a slap on the wrist, especially when you consider how many hacking/cracking groups get jail time for their non-profit efforts. If anything, you'd expect the opposite. The moral of the story seems to be: If you're going to break the law, make sure you do it as a business.

Re:iBackup

[Anonymous Coward]

Subtract business expenses and taxes from that 5.6 million dollars.
Then subtract for the wild parties, hummers and houses for all family members including the 13 year old sister - and last but not least, the bankruptcy laywer he's talking to right now - and the end result is that the restitution comes out to about, well, nothing.

Re:iBackup

[weeeee]

"Sentencing guidelines call for a prison term of 70-87
months." I don't know if 200K is worth the prison sentence.

Re:iBackup

[capnchicken]

Well that depends. Is it "pound me in the ass prison"?

Re:iBackup

[FurryFeet]

The 5.4 million are restitution only. I assure there'll be fines in the order of several hundred thousand dollars. Plus jail time. No profit here.

Another Wikipedia Announcement

[pHatidic]

As a member of the Wikipedia community, I'd like to make another announcement. Some of you may remember earlier in the year when The Slate published an article stating that seven out of ten instances of plagiarism are from Wikipedia. Jimbo responded:

"Wikipedia is now the source for 7 out of 10 instances of classroom plagiarism. We hope to reach 8 of 10 by next year."

I'm proud to announce that we have achieved our goal -- 8 out of 10 instances of classroom plagiarism can now be attributed to Wikipedia. Congrats everyone, now lets break out the champagne.

Re:Another Wikipedia Announcement

[chrispycreeme]

Couldn't the student just claim that they wrote the Wikipedia entry too? Is it possible to prove them wrong?

Re:Another Wikipedia Announcement

[jacoplane]

Yes, just look in the history of the article at who actually wrote it.

Re:Another Wikipedia Announcement

[Deltaspectre]

Ok, who's Nardz0nFire? No one? Ok... what about one two seven point zero point zero point one?

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

when normal people run there are periods when both feet are not touching the ground this is why it is running not walking
go watch walking comps there always has to be at least 1 foot on the ground

so both feet off the ground is impressive

Overestimating the capabilities of schools

[Glock-40SW]

One advantage cited for the $100 notebook:

"Use of open software makes the platform versatile, so it shouldn't be that much of a challenge for individual schools to build additional software for it that meets their needs."

Right.... we're talking K-12 right? If we are talking about from the ground up application development, I don't see how the machine being open source helps. If we are talking modifying what it comes with, if you really think K-12 schools have access to that kind of programming talent I want some of what you're smoking...

Re:Overestimating the capabilities of schools

[gmuslera]

Individual schools are not that isolated from the world. They probably teach or have needs common to the other schools of their area, state or country, so the development of what they need (that probably could be in good part open source) could be shared with other schools or even government.

But if there is one particular need for one particular school, there is always the possibility of developing over this, thing that could have hard or impossible on closed systems.

Re:Overestimating the capabilities of schools

[Al_Maverick]

I learned to develop in BASIC when I was 5, and by the age of 12, I used to do technical support for the computers at my school, and that included hacking a couple of programs using C when the copy protection floppies broke apart and the school had no money to replace them. So I think if you have the tools and you encourage the kids a little, they can learn to write their own programs, and if led by a knowledgeable teacher, perhaps even develop useful software for the school. By the way, at university, the sign up system was first developed as an exercise at an algorithms class. And it could handle over 40000 students trying to sign up for subjects every three months.

Re:Overestimating the capabilities of schools

[midicase]

if you really think K-12 schools have access to that kind of programming talent

Programmers can be volunteers too.

Nature article on Wikipedia now online

[AxelBoldt]

Nature's comparison of the science articles in Wikipedia and Encylopaedia Britannica is here.

One new interesting tidbit: about 12% of all nature authors consult Wikipedia on a weekly basis. I wonder how many consult EB on a weekly basis...

Re:Nature article on Wikipedia now online

[Anonymous Coward]

It says 17%

Re:Nature article on Wikipedia now online

[AxelBoldt]

It says 17% of 70%.

The newspaper's research highligted this error

[hellomynameisclinton]

From the newspaper research, one of the examples where Wikipedia was incorrect was in the definition of the "pyramidal tracks".

The Wiki article mentioned a "housing development outside of Cairo", but that may have been removed by now.

Not so fast ...

[s20451]

There are an awful lot of Wikipedia articles (esp. articles on historical figures) which are heavily based on the 1911 edition of Britannica, an edition that is in the public domain. As an example, I found this one with hardly any effort.

So the question of "which model is better" is not as simple as you make it seem.

Re:Not so fast ...

[pembo13]

Just out of curiousity, do you consider this good or bad?

* * Beatles-Beatles

[ndansmith]

I propose an additional topic for Slashback tonight: * * Beatles-Beatles. I consider Slashback to be the most appropraite forum for this topic, and perhaps there is a chance that the editors actually read these comments.

What I think many of us want to know can be stated simply: What in the world is going on with * * Beatles-Beatles? Here are some of the facts of concern:
- * * Beatles-Beatles does post some nice, thought-provoking articles.
- * * Beatles-Beatles posts often come in clumps of two or more, with three straight (two on the front page) on December 11th.
- The vast majority of his submissions are posted by ScuttleMonkey.
- Rather than posting the original article summary (if there even is one), ScuttleMonkey uses the "* * Beatles-Beatles tells us . . ." formula to introduce his own summary of the article.
- * * Beatles-Beatles links to a number of sites, mostly the George Harrison one, which seem "shady" to put it lightly (that is they have a bare-bones amount of content and a lot of links, news feeds, and popups).
- * * Beatles-Beatles is utilizing all these Slashdot posts to increase his Google page rank (Googling for George Harrison puts him result number 5 on the second page).
- Despite a growing chorus of complaint by loyal Slashdot readers, we have had absolutely no communication (that I am aware of) from the editors on this issue.

I (and some others, I think) would like to use the Slashback forum to get some answers from any editor. This situation stinks of unethical behavior (or just plain ineptitude on the part of the editors,) and it makes me question the integrity and professionalism of the Slashdot system. If there is no response, I think I will take my concerns directly to CmdrTaco (malda@slashdot.org) through email, and from there (assuming the issue is not addressed) I will have to contact OSTG (editors@OSTG.com). I encourage anyone else who shares my concern to do the same. This is all motivated by the fact that I love Slashdot. I hate to a wonderful community-driven site corrupted by such an influence.

P.S. If the * * Beatles-Beatles thing is just leading up to the best April Fool's post of all time, I am cool with that.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[gatzke]

P.S. If the * * Beatles-Beatles thing is just leading up to the best April Fool's post of all time, I am cool with that.

Yeah, like Beatles-Beatles replaces his website with a combination of goatse and tubgirl, along with anything from rotten.com.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[LordByronStyrofoam]

My feeling is that if this guy is delivering good articles, I'm OK with us slashdotters indirectly helping him financially (hitting his page, upping view counts for his linked ads) - he works for those views more than most of us who just sit here and participate in the comment-stream.

I'm not happy he's poppin' stuff up on us, and think he ought to go for a better class of customers than those that want to 'get in our face' in such a rude way, but he does seem to come up with better-than-average stories.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[Lord_Dweomer]

We never got any resolution on Roland articles which were FAR worse (the guy was scummy enough to not link to the original site and only linked to his blog), what makes you think we'll get any resolution on this. By the way, does anybody know if there was an editor who tended to post the majority of Roland articles? Wouldn't that be some coincidence if it was also Scuttlemonkey.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[Anonymous Coward]

Cynical old me thinks this is just supply and demand in effect. No doubt Beatles gets a lot of stuff rejected as well, so picture him scrounging around for slash-worthy material for quite some time in excess of what you see posted. The editorial staff just accept or reject these submissions based on subjective evaluation of appropriateness. Beatles is (apparently) motivated to do this tedious work by the reward of direct traffic through to his site and indirect page-rank benefits. The editorial staff see no reason to care about these aspects of the issue, I'm sure.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[Bogtha]

Despite a growing chorus of complaint by loyal Slashdot readers, we have had absolutely no communication (that I am aware of) from the editors on this issue.

Jamie responded.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[Hosiah]

Is it too late to suspect that Beatles-Beatles is a script running on Scuttle-Monkey's home server?

I was trying my own hand at a hand-rolled newsfeed aggregator, once, with an eye towards including it in my blog as a sidebar newsalerter. This was extensive Bash, sed, awk, grep, and lynx + Tcl/Tk/Expect work (and a couple of parsing algorithms in C), and the results were quite interesting, but I never got it past beta (it really wasn't worth the time for me, I might pick it back up later). With the right AI, a news-anchorman isn't that much harder to imitate than a Rogerian psychiatrist - and I could add or remove RSS URLs from a simple list, and use frequency analysis plus a dictionary counter to determine "overreported" and "underreported" stories, and give it a preference for crawling the web looking for more stories containing keywords from the "underreported" category, while shunning the "overreported" stories to avoid dupes.

I've never typed out the whole story on that damn thing before. Looking back, forget it. Nobody could possibly come up with such a contraption!

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[TubeSteak]

Who exactly is Jamie?

He gets flamed pretty hard for his (non)explanation & since it seems like he hasn't accepted any articles since October, I wonder if he's in the loop.

I'm wondering why we should care what he has to say...
just to put his words into some kind of context.

Here's his list of recent articles, courtesy of /.'s search function. At best he seems like a part time editor.

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[ndansmith]

I really appreciated reading Jamie's responses to the issue (and thanks to Bogtha for pointing them out). At least one editor is actually reading comments and posting, woohoo! Having read the posts, I am a little less uneasy about the whole thing, though there are still some troubling aspects. Anyway, I guess I will just have to quit this whole Beatles-Beatles thing for a while and start some new creative troll account. I know... "First Prime Factorization Post" . . .
... D'oh!

Re:* * Beatles-Beatles

[Tim C]

You're new here, aren't you?

Jamie McCarthy has been involved with slashdot for as long as I can remember; certainly, I don't remember a period "before Jamie". If you doubt how long that is, check my UID. It's not particularly impressively low, but it does demonstrate that I've been here a few years.

Now, I'm not saying I believe or accept his response, but he's not just some guy, either.

Wikipedia Vs. Britannica

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just a matter of accuracy, but of how exhaustive they are. Does Britannica have these articles?

- $100 laptop
- ASIMO
- Vonage
- OpenDocument

I take every piece of information with a grain of salt. If I want to know something, I try to find a primary source. Just because something is called CNN, Britannica, or NYTimes doesn't mean you should trust their information blindly.

Supposedly, Wikipedia is no good because it's not accountable. Oh, and Brittanica is? From their terms of use:

Limitation of Liability: IN NO EVENT SHALL BRITANNICA, ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, SHAREHOLDERS, PARENTS, SUBSIDIARIES, AFFILIATES, AGENTS AND LICENSORS, OR CONTENT PROVIDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE, INABILITY TO USE, PERFORMANCE OR NONPERFORMANCE OF THE SERVICES, EVEN IF BRITANNICA WAS PREVIOUSLY ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES AND REGARDLESS OF WHETHER SUCH DAMAGES ARISE IN CONTRACT, TORT, UNDER STATUTE, IN EQUITY, AT LAW, OR OTHERWISE.

Indemnification: To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold Britannica, its directors, officers, shareholders, parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, agents, and licensors harmless from and against all losses, expenses, damages, and costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, arising out of the use or unauthorized copying of the Services or any of their content, the violation of these Terms of Use or any applicable laws or regulations.

Re:Wikipedia Vs. Britannica

[martinX]

Disclaimers aren't worth shit if they (Encyclopaedia Britannica) have broken the law. For instance, if EB has defamed someone, then that someone would be entitled to seek redress regardless of any disclaimer. The disclaimer is so you don't sue EB because you didn't get an A+ on your book report.

wikipedia is good for the important stuff...

[wpegden]

Wikipedia is a good first resource for topics of enough interest that the articles are widely read (and thus corrected). The funny thing about the article on Seigenthaler (and his incessent wining on the matter) was that it was obvious that the only reason the article wasn't corrected was that he is a relative nobody... not many people look him up on a daily basis, I imagine. Science articles may be one strength of wikipedia. Another is certainly its mathematics articles. Though sometimes the articles are not as clear as they could possibly be, I have yet to find a mistake in a math article on wikipedia... it is quickly replacing (or at least, joining) Wolfram's Mathworld as a first reference.

edit this page

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia much more effective than normal encyclopedia. AxelBoldt writes "The Australian newspaper The Age reports that Nature has run a formal comparison of the science coverage of Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica. From the article: 'The exercise revealed numerous errors in all encyclopedias other than Wikipedia and among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was phenomenal: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained no inaccuracies; Britannica, around three hundred.'"

Wow! The wikipedia model does work!

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess all of us westerners, especially Americans are out of shape? Where the hell did you come up with that? I guess most easterners can run a minute mile then. Go post your America/westerner bashing bullshit elsewhere.

Shallow eyes and wikipedia:bullshit gets a pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Wikipedia is a hilarious joke. These are links to google (first entry) so you can see the cached version after wikifans go do the fixups.
Can you spot the bullcrap?
Span (unit)

How it propogates. This scary, look how many times this bullshit has been copied.
fungu'lu

I give you Oliver Bailey author of the famous
Jambo Kitty

My personal favorite; can you spot the bullshit?
Buddy System

The most hysterical part is how people have edited and reformatted the crap I pulled out of my ass. This stuff has been in wikipedia for a year, so much for shallow eyes.

Re:Holy crap.

[Guy Harris]

RUN with both feet OFF THE GROUND?

Well, maybe not run, but, given that, at least from the pictures on the Honda site, ASIMO looks a bit like a kid with a backpack, perhaps they were thinking of a certain other robot who could certainly move rather fast with both feet off the ground, although, admittedly, that's not running....

(In any case, what the page at the Honda site said was "Through proactive control of ASIMO's posture while both feet are off the ground, the running speed was doubled from the previous 3km/hour to 6km/hour.", so it's not as if both its feet are always off the ground when running; I guess they just fixed it so that it works better in the part of the step when one foot's pushed off the ground but the other one hasn't made contact with the ground yet.)

$100 Laptop An (Actual) Linux Killer App?

[Angry Toad]

Everyone (well, a lot of people) will want one. They all come with Linux.

    This is a potentially huge market that Windows would be at least temporarily shut out of.

    Seems like there's a real opportunity for mainstream Linux inroads there...

Re:$100 Laptop An (Actual) Linux Killer App?

[1u3hr]

a potentially huge market that Windows would be at least temporarily shut out of.

Well, Windows may not come as OEM, but I'm sure you can install it, (there are installers now that give you a minimal Windows for efficiency or lower-powered boxes) it's standard x86 hardware. And as they say there will be commercial versions of the laptops (at a higher cost), they probably will come with the choice of an OEM Windows. It will be interesting to see MS having to actually compete as an after-market product again, rather than being seen as the natural, only choice.

Wikipedia vs Britannica: Raw errors vs error rate

[Alsee]

The Wikipedia vs Britannica comparison appears to have been on the raw error number alone. A far more valid measure would be on the error rate, the ratio of errors per unit of content.

Which raises the question, how did Wikipedia and Britannica compare on quantity of material on each subject? If Wikipedia articles are on average twice as long with twice the content, then a 4-to-3 raw errors would translate into a 2-to-3 in favor of Wikipedia. If Britannica articles are on average twice as long with twice the content, Wikipedia would fare far worse with an 8-to-3 rate.

It would have been nice if they had asked the experts to rate the articles for overall content and quality as well.

The story only reported three of the 42 subjects on which they did their analysis: Agent Orange, quarks and synchrotrons. Does anyone have a recent Britannica encyclopedia handy? And if so could they do a comparison of length and content on those three subjects and reply with their results?

-

Schools can fend for themselves - They already do

[cloricus]

Smoking good business sense I'd say. Freelance programmers can easily do work for schools or it could be hired out to contractors as it is already. And once that is done since every one is in the shary fuzzy feel good mood the software will most likely be OSS as well; meaning that other schools and even families of school children can use the software (and modify it) at no charge. It will open up a whole new market that is yet to be tapped.

Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite Barret's criticism, interest in the $100 laptop remains as strong as ever, and lightweight, affordable technology continues to weave its way into the classroom with great results. Young students in Olathe, Kansas now read their textbooks on Palm handheld computers.

One of those "textbooks" wouldn't happen to be the Bible, would it? The irony...

Re:Kansas

[Stormbringer]

Probably. I wonder if that Psalm Pilot uses a KJV desktop...

Re:Kansas

[ab0mb88]

It was only a matter of time before Kansas had to switch, the stone tablets caused too many injuries.

Article not about ex-old-SCO Nathan Peterson

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record, the ex-old-SCO Nathan Peterson is *not* the person mentioned in the article. Sorry to disappoint some of you, but I'd still rather write kernel drivers and lurk :-)

Nathan
---cut paste glue---

Wikipedia is good for geek stuff.

[MrHanky]

That is computers, some sciences, and pop culture. The reason is obviously that most of the hardcore Wikipedians are also hardcore geeks. It's possible that this will skew the so-called "neutral point of view" -- or perhaps NPOV is a geek invention anyway -- and it's certain that it gives preference to nerdy subjects. If it's unsuitable for geeks, it's unsuitable for Wikipedia.

Compare for instance the articles on Henrik Ibsen and on Star Wars. Oh, and don't even look at the stubs that are supposed to present Ibsen's plays. There's a lot more to say about Ibsen than about Lucas (he could even write dialogue), but I doubt the Wikipedia article about him ever will reflect that his work is, in fact, more important than Lucas'.

Re:Wikipedia is good for geek stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Ibsen's work more important than Lucas'? According to whom?

From the Desk of Rob Malda

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Dan,

Thank you for bringing these issues to my attention. While it may appear that the situation stinks, I can assure you that the smell is, in fact, nothing more than a bit of taco meat that's gone bad.

As far as questioning our integrity and professionalism, let me assure you that both are absolutely beyond question.

Finally, regarding the **Beatles-Beatles controversy, you may have noticed the lack of Slashvertisements over the past few days. We're just test marketing a new revenue stream. Rest assured that when the test is through we'll use many different names so that the connection won't be quite so obvious.

Thanks again,

Rob

PS, your karma is now in the toilet.

Re:But...

[Quinn_Inuit]

Did someone say my name?

Olathe, Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really...I live in Olathe, Kansas and the students do not read their books on palms. The palms are very rarely used and only one of the 4 schools in the district has given them to all their students. No one finds it practical to read a book on a few inch screen.

Re:Wikipedia vs Britannica: Raw errors vs error ra

[AxelBoldt]

They only compared articles that were preselected to have about the same length. Obviously that introduces a bias, but it's not clear in whose favor. The full Nature article is here.

I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[GWBasic]

I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop. Granted, given that my sub $100 Zire was powerful enough for the 10 months that it worked, I have no doubt that a $100 laptop can be designed... What keeps me skeptical is listed below:

1. Manufacturing semiconductors is HARD. Manufacturing millions of semiconductors is even HARDER. Where are the chips for all of these going to be made? I doubt AMD can handle the load without dropping their high-profit chips. If we are to see millions of these units, the fabs to make the chips would have to be built very soon, and would cost billions of dollars.
2. How are these things going to get onto the internet? Granted, they will be fine machines without connectivity, but in order to reach the goal of free access to information, there will need to be a working communications infrastructure. This is not free.

My prediction is that if the design of the laptop actually works, it will be used in a limited distribution before it becomes obsolete and replaced by some kind of an Intel/AMD/Microsoft/Mac/Linux system.

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[Doppler00]

Manufacturing semiconductors is HARD.
Umm... complex, yes, hard? no. Actually, just look at the per/unit cost of the chip. That's all that matters. If it is a $100 computer it doesn't need to be a high end Pentium M. There are many CPU's out there that are faaar chaeper. If you can make a CPU for $5/chip then that's how much it costs. Create a BOM for the laptop and add everything up. You do realize they manufacture tens of billions of semiconductors every year right? And there are alread fabs all over the world, they only need to be retooled for this product like they would for any other or use an existing set of ICs.

How are these things going to get onto the internet?
This is a very, very good point. The only way that makes sense is through a cellphone network or maybe a few localized hotspots, but I doubt this will happen. Heck, they can't even do this right in the U.S. let alone the third world. If it costs $70/month for data services on cellphone networks in the U.S. with existing infrastructure, you can imagine the cost it would be to build out new networks and maintain them in poorer countries where people will not pay that installation cost.

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[drinkypoo]

If it costs $70/month for data services on cellphone networks in the U.S. with existing infrastructure,

Okay, there's the if statement. Where's the else? T-Mobile sells unlimited GPRS for $20/mo on top of your cellphone bill, and even has a data-only plan for $25/mo. At least one other provider offers internet for the same price, but won't let you use it for a computer under their AUP, just one of the devices they sell you.

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[Lawfer]

Apparent information on the $100 laptop's internet access can be found at wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%24100_laptop#Wireles s_networking

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[GWBasic]

Chipmaking isn't like sending a jpeg to cafe express and getting a t-shirt back. Retooling, test runs, ect cost a lot of money. A chip costs $5 / unit because its die size is so small that the volume allows costs to be recovered. Someone has to put this money upfront. Even then, there's no garuntee that you'll be able to get millions made in a timely manner.

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[An Onerous Coward]

I think we're both speculating about the economics of chip manufacturing. But it doesn't seem like a couple million chips is an impossibly large fraction of AMDs capacity, especially if this project is stretched out over five years or so. Also, it's unlikely that the chips being used are anything AMD isn't manufacturing in fairly large quantities anyways. A special order processor would be prohibitively expensive.

As for the Internet, these things are supposed to come pre-equipped with wireless equipment, and software to form a mesh network between the units. This doesn't get them onto the Internet directly, but it means that the range of any central hub can be greatly extended. According to the faq, they're working on a separate project for Internet connectivity.

The laptops are already AMD/Linux systems, so the last sentence of your post doesn't make sense to me.

Re:I'm still skeptical of the $100 laptop

[GWBasic]

The laptops are already AMD/Linux systems, so the last sentence of your post doesn't make sense to me.

... For example, a company could design a low-cost AMD-based palmtop that runs Linux, effectivly cutting MIT out of the loop.

Faster faster

[Chuck Chunder]

Even if many Wikipedia articles are based on the 1911 Britannica that does not seem particularly relevant to this discussion as many (most) of the articles analyzed for accuracy are clearly post 1911 subjects.

Serious structural difficulties...

[Errandboy of Doom]

Despite a few areas of marginal success, there are still fundamental structural difficulties in Britannica as a project, that its founder (Colin "Jimbo" Macfarquhar) has yet to address.

Now, don't get me wrong, Britannica is acceptable for satisfying incidental questions, perhaps a good tool for satisfying children's curiousity, but I wouldn't rely on it as a serious reference tool.

Some say they prefer the tactile sensation of a book over our more traditional, electronic forms of learning. But I don't think Britannica can rely on such an obvious gimmick for too long.

It's clear to anyone who thinks seriously about this issue that an encyclopedia which doesn't allow immediate revision of errors by anyone who finds them will never have the credibility of a wiki.

Britannica's slow production schedule and restriction of edits to a tiny, select group of so-called 'experts' will always plague it with difficulties. I, for one, will have nothing to do with it, and hope they abandon this foolhardy experiment before people begin to hastily grant them an ounce of credibility.

Re:Serious structural difficulties...

[adorai]

It's clear to anyone who thinks seriously about this issue that an encyclopedia which doesn't allow immediate revision of errors by anyone who finds them will never have the credibility of a wiki.

It's clear to anyone who thinks seriously about this issue that an encyclopedia which allowsimmediate introduction of errors by anyone who wants to will never have the credibility of a old-fashioned encyclopedia.

Re:Serious structural difficulties...

[JasontheMason]

Ah yes, children's curiosity! That's precisely the only use, right there. When I was younger (a little over a decade ago, when I hadn't lived a decade yet) I used to get up early Sunday mornings and hang out with Dad in his study. And what did I read? The Encyclopedia, of course! And my life was greatly enriched by leafing through whatever volume took my fancy and reading interesting looking articles - those 1992 edition World Books seemed such a treasure trove of information in a computerless household. Little did I know about the innacuracies. (No, a seven year old might not care that the population of Zimbabwe is actually higher than that, but it's the PRINCIPLE, by golly.)

Now, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that children are the motivating force behind the continuing sales of Encyclopedia sets, as everyone knows that a younster's favorite activity is curling up on the couch and absorbing a wealth of mostly accurate knowledge from a book. This is not something that should be encouraged, if it gets out of hand it could be detrimental to the development of more authoritative and comprehensive sources of information. It really is all just a gimmick - maybe even a plot - just to keep us away from our beloved computer screens.

Australian schools could use the $100.00 laptops..

[marcushnk]

Although a 1st world country our education system is very third world in some area's.
If you offered this to our schools and their parents I believe you would see a MASSIVE uptake in the devices.

Nature editorial asks experts to edit Wikipedia

[AxelBoldt]

This Nature editorial asks scientific experts to kick in: "Select a topic close to your work and look it up on Wikipedia. If the entry contains errors or important omissions, dive in and help fix them. It need not take too long. And imagine the pay-off: you could be one of the people who helped turn an apparently stupid idea into a free, high-quality global resource."

Re:Schools can fend for themselves - They already

[Glock-40SW]

Last I checked, OSS ran on non-OSS systems. The OS being open or not is unrelated to developed applications. That's my point. Last I checked, Firefox runs well on Windows.....

Trick not to be compared to Digg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that how you copy stuff from Digg and make bunch of the same stories appear in a row on Slashdot? I am sorry this has anything to do with diggvsslashdot.com?

  thank you.

Link to Nature editorial about Wikipedia

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900 a.html

For those with questions, here are answers! Enjoy.

It's just the definition of running

[TekGoNos]

RUN with both feet OFF THE GROUND?

Yes, exactly, otherwise it wouldn't be running.
Actually it is extremly difficult to balance a robot running.

Already walking (having one feet off the ground sometime) is much harder than just using wheels (ground contact all the time). Every time a foot lifts, the other foot must rebalance the entire body. This is very hard. Robots only learned to walk recently and IIRC ASIMO was the first who managed to walk steps. The benefits are, of course, a far greater mobility (humans can walk over almost every terrain, while wheels end at the first higher step).

Real running is even more difficult. Having both feet off the ground (and even just for 0.08 seconds as does ASIMO) is a highly delicated thing. First, you need the force to propulse yourself in the air. Then, you have to put the other feed correctly on the ground, catch the impact without affecting your innertia forward too much and push yourself forward again. Running is controlled falling.

To illustrate how hard 2-legged running is : humans are the only primate capable of real 2-legged running, and IIRC, the only 2-legged runner.

Re:It's just the definition of running

[Anonymous Coward]

other 2-legged runners:

jesus lizard (too lazy to use wikipedia for the real name)
emu
ostrich
kiwi
your mom

and i'd be willing to be any number of primates can run on 2 legs but find it faster to use their long, monkey-arms. like your mom.

(also, maybe if you got out of the house more instead of correcting people on slashdot, you wouldn't think running was so difficult)

((it's making me type aggrieve to post this article... how does it know?))

Re:It's just the definition of running

[SirBruce]

For four-legged runners, having all four feet off the ground is called the double-suspension gallop. This was the subject of a famous bet in 1892, and was proven via the first know example of high-speed time-lapse photography. Some canines and felines are also capable of this.

Bruce

Wikipedia: Go straight to the source, perhaps?

[ta bu shi da yu]

Source is here.

Fulltext of Nature article

[Anonymous Coward]

Special ReportInternet encyclopaedias go head to head

Jim Giles
Top of page
Abstract

Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica?
Unfortunately we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this. If you require assistance to access this image, or to obtain a text description, please contact npg@nature.com

AP PHOTO/M. PROBST

Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator Robert Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting pioneer Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was making the entry more accurate.

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature -- the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science -- suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.

But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better."

Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.

But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid professionals for accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former Britannica editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry -- on US founding father Alexander Hamilton -- as "what might be expected of a high-school student". Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means that reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.

Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
Unfortun

Did they correct the inaccuracies they found?

[SimHacker]

So they found four inaccuracies in the wikipedia articles they tested -- did they correct them while they were at it?

When they found thee errors in the Encyclopedia Britanica article, too bad they couldn't check the discussion page and history of modifications to see when and how they got there.

-Don

Re:Schools can fend for themselves - They already

[cloricus]

Last time I checked proprietary software ran on OSS systems. My point is that when schools understand what OSS offers them as a development model this rubbishy system of contract coders doing their allocation systems and the like could easily be cleaned up. The advantages are there.

Nature Intervention Reality TV

[SimHacker]

"It would be like nature documentaries stepping in and stopping wolves from eating their prey."

That sounds like it would make a great Reality Television program! Maybe they could get that Australian aligator chap who sticks his thumb up animals' bums to do it.

-Don

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Coward]

How many rods to the hog's head?

Door to Door Wikipedia Salesman

[SimHacker]

A wikipedia salesman walks into a bar...

-Don

Re:Door to Door Wikipedia Salesman

[bill_mcgonigle]

Y'know, Wikipedia will [currently] fit on a Blu-Ray disc... it might not seem so far fetched.

"Good afternoon, Ma'am, I have here today a copy of the sum of human knowledge, readable on any computer any time anywhere. Just today, we're offering it for $19.95 - can I interest you in a copy?"

Remember to carry nickels...

You forgot about TAXES

[Anonymous Coward]

Documents submitted by the US Attorney state that Peterson made $5.6
million selling pirated software with a total retail price of just under $20
million.

I triple checked my work, but I keep coming up with a $198 thousand dollar profit. That'll teach him.

Not when you take into account TAXES on his 5.6 million dollar revenue......

Re:You forgot about TAXES

[julesh]

The restitution payment will be tax deductable.

of course?

[hackwrench]

What are you, some sort of fanboy?

But seriously, it's part of the syndrome of thinking the cathedral is better than the bazaar.

æ Works in the subject too

[tehdaemon]

æ -> æ

The difference is similar to iso 9000 compliance

[tchuladdiass]

I remember reading an article a number of years ago about how the Velcro corporation almost lost their contract with Ford when their patents expired. This was because quality was inspected into the product, and not engineered (via process) into the product. Even if the end results were the same, a well-engineered process is considered more of a guarantee of future success than a proven track record (all else being equil). It wasn't until Velcro improved their processes that Ford felt comfortable with them again. (Note, it may have been GM, not Ford, my memory is a bit foggy).
So, the same line of thinking can apply to compairing Britanica with Wikipedia -- one has a process to produce consistancy, the other uses random inspection & correction.

Re:The difference is similar to iso 9000 complianc

[BigZaphod]

Interesting. Yeah, I understand what you mean about designing with quality in mind as a goal. Wikipedia certainly doesn't handle that aspect of things. There's plenty of room in the world for both approaches, I think. The real beef that the "genuine" encylopedians likely have about Wikipedia is that it's free and open to the masses. It's very hard to compete with something like that, so I suspect they feel very threatened by all of the Wikipedia press of late. There's always going to be people who want that built in quality guarantee that Britanica can provide - but perhaps the real question is: are there enough people like that to keep their institution alive in the coming future?

How about a link to Nature?

[Anonymous Coward]

Special Report

Nature
Published online: 14 December 2005; | doi:10.1038/438900a

Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900 a.html

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[mctk]

Only on Slashdot. Ooooonly on Slashdot.

Cheap $100 laptop? HOW?

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, every time I see a "cheaper" laptop or computer I get sick to my stomach. Dell sells those $300 crappy desktops that break time and time again. I mean really, WTF? What is wrong with people that everyone needs everything as cheap as possible? It makes no sense to me. I'm not saying that you need to spend $10,000 on a computer but a reasonable $1,000 isn't out of the question to assure that you get something that will work with some respect. This is bullshit because I can only see a $100 laptop made quickly and shittly and people wanting it supported. I mean, when you go car shopping do you buy the cheapest car you can buy? I don't think so. So go out, buy a nice computer and don't be calling my computer repair business with your shitty $100 laptop because I feel obligated to tell you to shove it up your ass.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Did they not use Google?

Does anyone with near-continuous Internet access really remember metric-customary conversions anymore?

While I'm mentioning Google Calculator, here's another stupid but informative example. (The currency rates are very recent, though not realtime.)

Palm Project

[SQFreak]

I'm quite interested in these Palm statistics. My high school a few years ago implemented what we called the Palm Project. They offered incentives to students and teachers who used them in classes. There was a contest for students to program the best educational application for Palm (the prize was PALM stock). I used it for two things:
1) To take notes in history class
and
2) for my math class which required this application we were beta testing called FrontRow developed by some Harvard computer scientists. (And I know that class grades went down because of using the app - nobody except two people could figure out how to submit homework for the first two weeks!)

The Palm project ended up as a miserable failure. After that and another year of mandated Palm posession (by the way, most people bought Palms and left them in their boxes), the school's IT Director declared that they were no longer required. No teacher used them and maybe three students in the whole Upper School of 400 would ever be seen with one on any given day. (One of those had a Pocket PC instead.)

Now, that was all four years ago. The school doesn't want people to know about its failed endeavor. A quick Google search for "fcds palm project" (without the quotes, of course) turns up little of interest, except this one press release.

If this Kansas school district can make it work, I'd be interested in following it. Textbooks, besides Project Gutenberg ones, weren't really available for Palm, and even Gutenberg textbooks needed an 3rd party app to read them well. Again, we were using IIIcs, which were outdated when we got them.

To bring this back closer to topic, I think a $100 laptop would do a whole lot more good to students (I know my $700 laptop was amazing for me in high school!) and would probably be cheaper than handhelds.

Great. A flexible clock!

[munpfazy]

For years we've dreamed of doing away with those power-hungry and unpleasantly rigid clocks that line our walls.

Remember when we used to throw our hands up in desperation and say, "if only there were some way to make a clock that's flexible, and one which doesn't consume a whole 1/4 watt, the world would be a better place."

Now, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the time has finally arrived.
Seriously, folks, what gives? e-ink is awesome. A wall clock made with an e-ink display, on the other hand, is just silly.

And, while I'm firing meaningless rants into the void, why do so many people seem surprised to learn that Britannica suffers from such inaccuracies? Anyone who has ever read an encyclopedia article in a field about which they know something ought to know better than to expect accuracy from an encyclopedia. They're great for getting a very brief intro to a subject one has never heard of before, and for picking up enough keywords to find more information, but only a lunatic would rely solely on an encyclopedia article for anything.

Ah well, enough ranting.

... offtopic, but...

[rolandog]

Heh, anyone browsing using NoScript in Firefox? There are quite a number of 'paid advertisement articles' on the right side of the page. They all seem to try to advertise some subpage

Java slashback.

[LarsWestergren]

Despite the claim that Java is So 90's, IBM, RedHat and Novell continues to pledge their commitment to J2EE and the Java community. Also, Java has recently overtaken C++ as the most popular language on Sourceforge. Also, every Blu-ray unit will come with a JVM, and menues and other content will be created with J2ME, and it seems like Blu-ray is winning the next gen DVD war.

Accuracy?

[beefubermensch]

These print encyclopedia comparisons crack me up. Comparing door-to-door kindling like Britannica with Wikipedia is a flamboyant exercise in retardation. The number of topics rigorously covered by the latter -- in advanced fields like number theory, unification physics, voting systems, music theory, software, etc. etc. (not to mention literature and contemporary culture) -- that would cause lavatory parchment like Britannica to burst into flames upon mere mention is astounding.

From where does a word like "Britannica" derive, anyway? How anyone can mention a publication called "Britannica" in a straight-faced discussion of scholarly reference material is certainly a mystery.

And throwing around a count of "inaccuracies" per article takes scholarly trash-talk to a new level. I can't imagine a more vacuous metric for... well, anything.

-Carl

Asimo top speed

[beefubermensch]

Tomo Hiratsuka writes "Honda's ASIMO robot has received his annual refit and now has the power to carry objects with a cart, serve drinks, and run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph."

This video implies the top speed is 6 km/h, which is just under 4 mph...

-Carl

Re:Asimo top speed

[geekoid]

so twice as fast as 10MPH?

Wait for it...

Elderly a big market in Japan

[fantomas]

I was under the impression that house companions for the elderly is actually a big driver for robot development in Japan, so you might not be far off the mark. Maybe a large number of robots will be aimed at negotiating small flats to help the elderly rather than providing a jogging companion for baby boomers. Aging population, small number of kids, help required with small jobs around the house, companion to play chess with etc.

Why Intel doesn't like the $100 computer

[Anonymous Coward]

There's more to intel's rubbishing of the $100 computer than just sour grapes because they're not making it.

Intel depends on selling ever more powerful processors for a high premium. They only
get to sell these if people buy new computers.

People buy new computers because they want to run new software which needs either a) a more powerful
computer or b) a new operating system.

If several million people suddenly have $100 laptops there's going to be a big incentive for software
producers to make sure their new versions of software will still run on the $100 laptop. This means a slowdown
in "computing power inflation" which means people won't have to buy a new computer to run new software which means
less demand for intel's high powered chips.

Another thing the $100 laptop people are conveniently ignoring is that although MIT's idea of educational software
is something like wikipedia or mathlab, for most schools its brightly coloured graphically intense programs which are specially written in scripting languages like Flash, Director and Authorware.
I suspect the $100 laptop will have very poor graphics which will be a problem for this kind of thing. The most popular scripting type languages don't tend to be available for linux - with the exception of a rather badly supported Flash player. Several million $100 laptops may provide the incentive to port scripting languages to Linux (which would be good) but you've still got the problem of trying to run graphically intensive education programs on an under powered machine.

Re:Why Intel doesn't like the $100 computer

[JSBiff]

I agree with a lot of what you say, but not necessarily about the 'poor' graphics.

I agree that this isn't going to have a fancy accellerated 3D chipset. But all you need for most of the types of apps you describe is a basic 2D chipset with basic 2D accellerations. This has been available as a dirt-cheap integration option built-right into motherboards for a very long time.

Heck, something that is equivalent in power to the ATI Rage Pro 3D (which was released way back in like 1998), or the intel i810 chipset, should not be expensive to add into the motherboard of these laptops. Now, the speed of the CPU *may* tend to cause these to run a little slower, but it doesn't take that much CPU power to run most basic 2D applications.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Iron Fusion]

Ah yes, the dollar-second, one of the most useful compound units known to man.

Details about the Nature article

[Ragesoss]

The 42 entries were the same for each encyclopedia; they chose experts on each respective topic to do each review (for example, the author of a Mendeleev biography for the Mendeleev articles).

They did not release the actual reviews, so the errors are unknown, although the number in each specific article is published. And no, it was not double-blind... that refers to when neither the researcher (i.e., the journalist) nor the subject (in this case, the reviewer) knows which is which. It was single-blind; that's all that matters, unless you think the fact that the person supplying the (unlabeled) articles would influence the results by his/her behavior.

But the Nature article implies that it was mostly obvious which one was the Wikipedia article because of the (mis)organization of information and writing quality, factuality aside.

Re:Great. A flexible clock!

[chord.wav]

Salvador Dali (the "inventor" of bending clocks if you like) would have died again if he saw this. I thought they were going to recreate the clock in Dali's painting Persistence of time but they've made a digital one!?!

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

the dollar-second, one of the most useful compound units known to man.

It's useful in measuring the US Deficit(tm)

READ THE FAQ!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hate the way the Slashdot community behave, they act like they know what they are talking about when they have NO CLUE.

The FAQ answer your questions, READ IT.

E-literate

[danpsmith]

Young students in Olathe, Kansas now read their textbooks on Palm handheld computers.

Shame those textbooks contain unintelligent blather like "intelligent design."

Re:But...

[Castar]

Wow! I'm jumping for joy, I'll tell you.

Re:Ten mph? wow ...

[Anonymous Slacker]

The original articles I saw about this (I lost the links from Chicago Tribune and Yahoo News) claimed the speed was doubled from 2 to 4, still nowhere near the 10 claimed here.
Definitely a math error on someone's part here.

Re:Wikipedia vs Britannica: Raw errors vs error ra

[Alsee]

Thanx. That pretty well answers my question.

It's interesting to note that 28% of the difference in score between Britannica and Wikipedia comes from a single item, the Dmitry Mendeleev biography. 8 points against Britannica vs 19 points against Wikipedia, ouch.

-

Quinn & Massachusetts

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why Quinn et al don't use Saugus, Massachusetts as an example more often of how open formats can be successful. The effort in Saugus predated the rest of Massachusetts by years (largely the work of one Saugus advocate of open formats apparently) but it looks like they've already successfully switched with no major issues.

Most of it is up to par...

[gandalfur]

...but how does that justify the lack of accountability?

Re:But...

[Philip K Dickhead]

Two "troll" mods? For a bad joke? Does anyone know what a Troll is?