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.

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.

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

[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.

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.)

* * 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

[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!

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.

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?

-

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.

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.