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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.'"
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.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
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?
What happens when the power goes out for Vonage customers? I read the description, but didn't see anything about this.
Would you kindly mod me +1 insightful?
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.
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.
They looked at 42 articles. How were these chosen? Were they on the same topics for the two encyclopedias? Was this done double-blind?
You've not seen anything like the mighty Quinn.
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.)
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
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.
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?
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
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.
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: ." formula to introduce his own summary of the article.
- * * 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 . .
- * * 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.
Couldn't the student just claim that they wrote the Wikipedia entry too? Is it possible to prove them wrong?
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 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!
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.)
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?
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
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.
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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.
- 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.No, I will not work for your startup
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.
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.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
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."
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.
"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
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
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