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Slashback: Quinn, iBackups, Wikipedia
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.'"
run with both feet off the ground at up to 10mph
... which is not easy even for an average person in good physical shape.
For those readers who don't get much exercise, that's a six minute mile pace
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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.
Wow is right. Its actually 6 km/hr. Closer to 4 mph. Original poster probably did the mph->kmh conversion backwards.
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
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.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
> 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.
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.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
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.)
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.
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.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
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."
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.
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900 a.html
For those with questions, here are answers! Enjoy.
Jamie responded.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
This video implies the top speed is 6 km/h, which is just under 4 mph...
-Carl