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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.'"
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?
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.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
They looked at 42 articles. How were these chosen? Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias? Was this done double-blind?
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.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
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.
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.
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?
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.
You thought that this sig was what you think that I thought you wanted me to think. I think.
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.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
I ate your fish.
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.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!