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Have 100GB Free? Host Your Own Copy of Wikipedia, With Images

Posted by timothy on from the put-it-in-every-router dept.

First time accepted submitter gnosygnu writes "Want your own copy of English Wikipedia with images? Got 100 GB of disk space? Then open-source app XOWA may be of interest to you. The project released torrents yesterday for the 2013-11-04 version of English Wikipedia. There's 100 GB of sqlite databases containing 13.9 million pages, and 3.7 million images — readable from any Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X system. Image downloads for other wikis are building, but you can still use XOWA to read the text-only version for other wikis like Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote and 660 more. Next time you find yourself stranded without the internet, you can pull out your own copy of Wikipedia for use."

151 comments

  1. Article Ownership by Russ1642 · · Score: 5, Funny

    It comes with software that automatically reverts your edits and insults you.

    1. Re:Article Ownership by bradorsomething · · Score: 5, Funny

      It comes with software that automatically reverts your edits and insults you.

      Citation Needed.

    2. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Ah yes, I was worried it wouldn't have the full wikipedia experience.
      Without the abuse, it just isn't wikipedia man.

    3. Re:Article Ownership by anss123 · · Score: 1

      Sure, just give me an account.

    4. Re:Article Ownership by sjwt · · Score: 5, Funny

      It comes with software that automatically reverts your edits and insults you.

      Citation Needed.

      1 http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4488409&cid=45527247

      --
      You have 5 Moderator Points!
      Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
    5. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Source of information: Russ1642's sense of humour.

    6. Re: Article Ownership by um...+Lucas · · Score: 1

      What really impresses me is that it downloads the entire Wikipedia, with "no internet connection required!" That's an engineering feat if I've ever heard of one!

    7. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Citation

    8. Re: Article Ownership by JustOK · · Score: 1

      The send it on DVD via station wagon.

      --
      rewriting history since 2109
    9. Re: Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they have it up on a BBS somewhere.

    10. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL. There are not enough moderation points on /. to thank you!

    11. Re: Article Ownership by sycodon · · Score: 1

      It's ok. You can still edit the articles to say whatever you and then cite them on Slashdot. No one can defy you!

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    12. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This article's introduction may be too long for the overall article length. Please help by moving some material from it into the body of the article. For more information please read the layout guide and Wikipedia's lead section guidelines. (July 2013)

    13. Re:Article Ownership by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

        This section has been nominated to be checked for its neutrality. Discussion of this nomination can be found on the talk page.

  2. Finally! by lagomorpha2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Finally I can have my own version of wikipedia so I can correct all those changes I haven't been allowed to enter into the official version!

    1. Re:Finally! by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      I hear this from a lot of slashdotters. No one bothers to give examples. I find that suspicious. I believe it happens, I just am skeptical that the edits slashdotters are trying to put in shouldn't be rejected.

    2. Re:Finally! by BringsApples · · Score: 2

      You say that and laugh, but wait until someone that manages their own DNS, and with an evil intention gets a good idea...

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    3. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

    4. Re:Finally! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Finally I can have my own version of wikipedia so I can correct all those changes I haven't been allowed to enter into the official version!

      Or you could just switch to using Conservapedia.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    5. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      TIL: Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf is operating from his parents' basement, doing pr for wikipedia.

    6. Re:Finally! by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      You say that and laugh, but wait until someone that manages their own DNS, and with an evil intention gets a good idea...

      That reminded me of the Upsidedownternet. ;-)

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    7. Re:Finally! by Arancaytar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's pretty much impossible to get into now (as a new editor), because you're either banned for being too sane to pass ideological purity, or banned for being so insane you're mistaken for a troll.

    8. Re:Finally! by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Yes, but only over being slammed on slashdot. I've never actually edited a wikipedia page.

    9. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HAHA!! I can't believe that an encyclopedia fit on a CD!! Wow, I haven't hard "Encarta" in so long. It must not have had much content!

      But, just think, Wikipedia (English) *can* fit on a single disc too. If there is such thing as a DOUBLE-sided double layer Blu Ray disc, you could just barely fit the site from November 2013 on it!! It's 25GB per layer (50 GB per side) so 100GB total! Cool, eh?

    10. Re:Finally! by rosencreuz · · Score: 1

      If you are making changes please make in my version too. I don't want it to get outdated.

    11. Re:Finally! by lgw · · Score: 2

      Ah, a Wikieditor/fanboy. Admit it: you will be torrenting this 100GB copy just so you can delete every article, then do it all again.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    12. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or uncyclopedia.

    13. Re:Finally! by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 2

      You've always been able to download every page and image. Am I missing something?

      http://dumps.wikimedia.org/

    14. Re:Finally! by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      I hear this from a lot of slashdotters. No one bothers to give examples.

      Here's one for you. In 2006 I needed eye surgery, an artificial lens for my left eye. My surgeon suggested a new design that had been out since 2003. Before the new design there were two types: monofocal and multifocal. Multifocal was like having bifocals in your eyeballs, with monofocals you needed reading glasses.

      The new design is called an accomodating lens and sits on struts inside the lens capsule, so it will focus using the eye's natural focusing muscles.

      It had been out for three years but no mention in wikipedia at all. So I edited (and if I don't write well I'm fooling a lot of people, some who have paid me for my book).

      The next day it was gone. I added it back. Gone again. I gave up.

      Two years later I mentioned it at slashdot when someone on Wikipedia's staff (not shilling, he was upfront about who he was) said something similar to what you just said so I told him what I just told you.

      The next day the article had CrystaLens added.

      Go on, try to edit something. It can't be done.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    15. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It would be interesting to see the racial makeup of those taking advantage of this offer. I expect that Negroes would account for 0.5 per cent (one half of one percent) at best. I just can not imagine any Negro who would be reading this Slashdot article, let alone take the time to avail himself to this offering.

    16. Re:Finally! by enter+to+exit · · Score: 1

      The trick (i use) to getting an edit in Wikipedia is to state my intent on the Talk page, something like "If no-one objects,..." wait a day, then post. Either someone will respond and a discussion will ensue or no one will respond at all. I've never had an edit reverted when i do this.

      I have no idea about the internal mechanisms behind this though, i only edit/add a few lines at a time - i might just be lucky.

    17. Re:Finally! by YttriumOxide · · Score: 1

      I'm not doubting your story - especially since you're someone I generally trust well on slashdot (you're my "friend" here); however:

      Go on, try to edit something. It can't be done.

      A little while ago (back in 2008 looking at the article history), I found this article about MFPs to be horribly weak and focused only on home devices with no mention of office or production devices at all.

      Working in the MFP industry, I was able to add a lot of information and give good citations for it; so I did so. Other than the occasional spammer trying to advertise their products, none of my changes were reverted. In the cases where people were spammy, it was always almost immediately reverted back to my version.

      I'm definitely not a regular wikipedia editor and haven't really done much of anything other than on that one page. So, my experience as a 'fly-by editor' was overwhelmingly positive.

      --
      My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
      Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
    18. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've had some revisions stick and then other ones, like spelling corrections reverted back to incorrect spellings. It's totally random, apparently some editors don't use spell check or genuinely believe that htere is a word.

    19. Re:Finally! by mcgrew · · Score: 1

      I've always suspected that it was one of Bausch&Lomb's competitors who removed my edits since thye new IOL was so superior (even if it was $1000 more expensive, being under patent). I can see where you would have been more successful with your attempt.

      --
      Free Martian Whores!
    20. Re:Finally! by LienRag · · Score: 1

      I didn't actually believe it either when I first saw it on Slashdot.

      And then I read the webcomic Namesake, and went to Wikipedia to check one thing about Alice Liddel which was featured on the webcomic (which is very good by the way, and is quite famous now).
      I noticed that there was a section of the wikipedia notice called "Alice Liddel in fiction" and which didn't feature Namesake, so I added Namesake.

      It was immediately reverted, citing "no link".

      So I reverted the revert and added a link.
      It was immediately reverted.

      I reverted the revert and went to the user page of the reverter, asking the reason of his vandalism. He actually answered me in quite a polite way, with bad arguments, and reverted again.

      You can guess that an average Wikipedia user will not go so far (I usually don't even check that my inputs are not reverted), so yes these people are actually destroying public participation in wikipedia, slowly but surely.

    21. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One guy has a blog where he tried to edit wikipedia about Hamas. Wikipedia says "Hamas is viewed as a terror organization". He tried to add "but not by Russia". This edit was not allowed. So, "Hamas is a terror organization, full stop" - he wrote. He could not nuance the picture of Hamas.

    22. Re:Finally! by madhi19 · · Score: 1

      I bet you could even fool a browser into using that offline version really practical for pranks!

    23. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A few years ago I created a Wikipedia page for an incident of police misconduct which made international news in the late 1970's. This was important locally and worldwide interest continued for several years. Multiple non-fiction books were written about this one incident. I own copies of all of these books and I have most of the original news articles I archived from paid research databases.

      There was no Wikipedia page, so I created one. Never again. I couldn't believe the vitriol, the immediate "suggestions for immediate deletion," fast track or something like that, comments posted which declared the topic irrelevant (?) and then I received a few private messages suggesting kindly that I cease and desist. I felt threatened. This wasn't my damned relative, and I have no dog in this fight. So I deleted the page. To this day there's no Wikipedia page, but there are several pages of legitimate news sources (newspapers, civil rights groups, the police department's official response team, the results of a years-long Federal Justice Dept. investigation, etc.) All of this information is readily free and available for the clicking when you do a Google search for the dead person's name. Gee. I guess this is subject is irrelevant. Fuck you, Wikipedia, and the fake ugly mule you rode in on.

    24. Re:Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It happened to me, Wikipedia fanboi. Google the name "Eulia Love" and see what you find. Certainly not the Wikipedia page I created and then removed after an onslaught of insults and other more ominous behavior which scared the fuck out of me. I'm over the age of 40 and not easily scared by anything.

  3. No internet connection required! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    XOWA is a free, open-source application that lets you download Wikipedia to your computer. No internet connection required!

    How do I download it if I don't have an internet connection? Does this require special hardware?

    1. Re:No internet connection required! by parkinglot777 · · Score: 2

      You are right. That's a silly summary they put on. They should say something like 'No Internet connection required while browsing/searching through the wiki' (one of their feature).

      Navigate between offline wikis. Click on "Look up this word in Wiktionary" and instantly view the page in Wiktionary.

    2. Re:No internet connection required! by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      I prefer ZModem myself.

      But if you don't have that you can probably use XModem.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:No internet connection required! by kelemvor4 · · Score: 1

      http://www.wps.com/FidoNet/source/Fido-FidoNet/Fido-12u-29Oct1991/MYLIB/ZMODEM.C
      Enjoy.

    4. Re:No internet connection required! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ZModem isn't going to help you download anything if you don't have a connection.

    5. Re:No internet connection required! by TheAxeMaster · · Score: 1

      Is two more than X!

    6. Re:No internet connection required! by SimonTheSoundMan · · Score: 1

      How do I download it if I don't have an internet connection? Does this require special hardware?

      Order Wikipedia on DVD, from Wikipedia themselves. http://dumps.wikimedia.org/dvd.html

    7. Re:No internet connection required! by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Direct Dialup connection. That is how I downloaded files before I had Internet access.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  4. It's that time of year again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Does it include the seasonal donation nag banners?

    Holidays are coming! Holidays are coming!

  5. Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 1

    ...yet. But I guess most phones won't easily read sqlite databases yet, either. I suppose it won't kill me to lug around a full-sized SD card.

    Still looking forward to the library-of-Congress-on-a-card from Rainbows End.

    1. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Still looking forward to the library-of-Congress-on-a-card from Rainbows End.
      about the same time we can get 10 exabytes onto the size of a sd card...

    2. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by vux984 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card...

      Just exclude the star trek / star wars related entries; that should pare it down. And besides we all have it all committed to memory anyway right? :p

    3. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      ...yet. But I guess most phones won't easily read sqlite databases yet, either. I suppose it won't kill me to lug around a full-sized SD card.

      Still looking forward to the library-of-Congress-on-a-card from Rainbows End.

      Most phones _won't_? Four out of five smartphones today have sqlite preinstalled and ready for use: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/database/sqlite/package-summary.html

    4. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The LoC is 10 TB (uncompressed) in "volume". Not 10 EB.
      Compressing the LoC with efficient algorithms and it fits on any modern HDD.

    5. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I was misremembering the line:

      "The British Museum and Library, as digitized and databased by the Chinese Informagical Coalition. The haptics and artifact data are lo-res, to make it all fit on one data card. But the library section is twenty times as big as what Max Huertas sucked out of UCSD. Leaving aside things that never got into a library, that's essentially the record of humanity up through 2000. The whole premodern world."

      128PB, 97% in use.

    6. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sqlite is built-in to Android, dumbass.

    7. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by cheater512 · · Score: 1

      Nokia S40 phones are no longer being made dude. Its 5/5 phones these days.

    8. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by Mastacheata87 · · Score: 1

      ...yet. But I guess most phones won't easily read sqlite databases yet, either.

      The structured storage for Android Apps is just SQLite databases. Of course Android doesn't include a database management tool for the end user, but in the background it can read SQLite just perfectly.

    9. Re:Rats. It won't QUITE fit on a microSD card... by GodGell · · Score: 0

      Lack of familiarity with any specific specialist field has no bearing on intelligence, dumbass.

      --
      [SHOW SOME LENIENCY TOWARDS ... I mean, FUCK BETA] Eat. Survive. Reproduce. GOTO 10
  6. Google Fiber by RocketChild · · Score: 0

    I live in Austin. When I finally get Google Fiber to my neighborhood, it will be easy to help host this kind of stuff for global knowledge growth and I look forward to helping. But till then...I'm not going to kill my cheap TWC upload speeds or thrash my older HDDs because of the webtraffic. But I'm hopeful for the future.

    1. Re:Google Fiber by MrDoh! · · Score: 2

      Alas, the terms and conditions will forbid you running a server to do this. They'll want you to use one of their cloud servers to do it (that kinda makes more sense to put something like that further upstream).

      --
      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    2. Re:Google Fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I suggest a website like say wikipedia.org

    3. Re:Google Fiber by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You can't run a commercial(non-personal) server. But you can run a server for friends and family. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/10/google-fiber-now-explicitly-permits-home-servers/

    4. Re:Google Fiber by Ichijo · · Score: 1

      You can put it on a neighbornode without violating any terms of service. Your internet connection would only be needed to download updates.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  7. LIVE FOREVER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Vault a copy today!!

  8. Day after tomorrow... by bob_super · · Score: 1

    When the supercold storm blasts through your town, your device will freeze. And I'll still be able to read the pages of my Universalis as I tear them to burn them for heat.

  9. Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by caveat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd have put en.wikipedia at at least a couple of terabytes. Not inconceivably large, but with some housecleaning I could actually get 100GB free.

    --

    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by CastrTroy · · Score: 2

      I'm thinking this must be compressed data. Clicking through, it says that there 20 GB of text data, and 13.9 million articles. This only gives 1.4 KB per article. Which seems extremely small, especially if you're getting all the formatting data. Also remember, I'm pretty sure this doesn't contain all the revision data, only the current version of each article, so the amount of data at Wikipedia would have to be quite a bit larger.

      --

      Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
    2. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      How many articles are shitty little 100 byte stubs. As far as revision data you are probably correct

      --
      Time to offend someone
    3. Re: Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 2

      Well, if they were pulling only text content, 1.4kB would actually be pretty close to correct. Using averagr characters/word, 1.4kB would be 350 words of text, which is not far off the estimated 400 words/article as calculated in 2005. I'd expect now it would be 450/article, but still not unreasonable depending on the types of articles added since 2005 (I.e., if every town has their own 1 sentence blurb).

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    4. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by gravis777 · · Score: 1

      yeah, 3.7 million images under 100gb? Do I even want to look at these? I can't imagine how compressed and low res those would have to be.

    5. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by Anubis+IV · · Score: 1

      I downloaded all of the (current revision) text a few years back from some of their public data dumps. Stored in a handful of massive XML files, it ended up only being around 3GB. I'd guess it isn't much bigger now, and that the vast majority of the 100GB is simply due to images.

    6. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by foobar+bazbot · · Score: 1

      Fortunately, you don't have to imagine. The simplest of arithemetic will reveal that's an average of about 20kB per image. If we assume as near-worst-case an uncompressed 16-bit pixmap format, that means 100px x 100 px or so; realistically, most of them are probably jpegs, so search your hard drive...

      find / -name '*.jpg' -size -25k -size +15k

      And take a look at what you have in that range. Then keep in mind that that's an average -- there'll be some much better and some even smaller/compresseder.

    7. Re:Quite a bit smaller than I'd have thought. by gravis777 · · Score: 1

      that's an average of about 20kB per image. If we assume as near-worst-case an uncompressed 16-bit pixmap format, that means 100px x 100 px or so; realistically, most of them are probably jpegs

      Exactly my point. :-)

  10. Re:As a long long time editor... by amalcolm · · Score: 1

    Wow .. you must be a walking encyclopedia or have a lot of spare time ... 19 minutes of clicking on 'random' failed to turn up anything I could claim to know about in depth. Respect to you !

    --
    Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
  11. legitimizing torrents by stenvar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's a good thing. The more we use torrents for the distribution of legitimate content, the more such distribution methods will become legitimized.

    1. Re:legitimizing torrents by BringsApples · · Score: 1

      Let this be heard by everyone in IT management that's trying to sync data between multiple national locations.

      --
      Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
    2. Re:legitimizing torrents by QuasiSteve · · Score: 1

      It's already legitimate and doesn't need legitimizing.

      Of course that doesn't mean that just because your favorite popular zero-day movie/series/albums/ebooks/software site of rather unauthorized nature magically gains "but what about the copy of wikipedia!?"-protection from the likes of MPAA/RIAA/Wiley?/BSA.. at least not in most courts of law.

    3. Re:legitimizing torrents by stenvar · · Score: 1

      You seem to be confusing "legal" and "legitimate". It's legal, but not necessarily considered legitimate. In particular, many ISPs seem to interfere with torrent traffic. The more people use it for non-copyright-infringing purposes, the more pressure there is on ISPs to back off on their interference.

    4. Re:legitimizing torrents by QuasiSteve · · Score: 1

      While popularly torrents get messed about with in terms of available bandwidth, the same applies to several other P2P protocols. It's the painted nature of the beast - lots of potentially high-bandwidth connections established for essentially low-priority purposes - that hurts it in that respect. (Yet) An(other) archive of wikipedia isn't going to change that - unless you can think of a convincing reason to submit to ISP decisionmakers that would cause them to believe that throttling the download and/or upload of such an archive to be substantially detrimental to their users (and, ultimately, their bottom line).

  12. 2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this numbering scheme of 2013-11-04 in what notation system? Is it 4th day of 11th month or 11th day of 4th month?

    With the imperial people you never know!

    1. Re:2013-11-04 by deains · · Score: 1

      This is a news-for-nerds site. It’s reasonable to assume dates are in ISO format. :)

    2. Re:2013-11-04 by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 2

      YYYY-MM-DD is the only date scheme where filenames sort ASCIIbetically. Kinda useful if you have a lot of copies of something.

    3. Re:2013-11-04 by QilessQi · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, ISO 8601 dates (YYYY-MM-DD) are unambiguous: far better than the ambiguous AA/BB/YYYY notation, since Americans interpret it as MM/DD/YYYY but in some other countries it's regarded as DD/MM/YYYY.

      As an added plus, a lexical sorting of YYYY-MM-DD dates is also a temporal sorting. Not so with either of the other two formats.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

      --
      Koans and fables for the software engineer
    4. Re:2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On their homepage it has a news section at the top. As there are only 12 months in a year and their first date is 2013-11-25 I can only assume that they follow this date format consistently throughout their website so your date will be November.

    5. Re:2013-11-04 by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      year month day, so it can be sorted easy.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    6. Re:2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a news-for-nerds site. It’s reasonable to assume dates are in ISO format. :)

      Not quite; on a news-for-nerds site, it's more reasonable to assume dates are in whatever format the poster feels like using that day, complete with links to decades-long internet pissing matches — sorry, "discussions", for a very loose definition of the word — "proving" it's "the only sensible choice". Note that this may include genuinely unparseable new formats the poster came up with while stoned.

      All this despite the fact that everyone knows YYYYMMDD is the best because it sorts the easiest. :-)

    7. Re:2013-11-04 by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      Yeah, even worse, the scripting runtime on Windows auto-parses AA/BB/YYYY into Date types, but it defaults to USA regardless of system locale... unless it can't be interpreted as a valid date.

      If you enter

      12/02/1999

      That's the second of December, regardless of actual system locale...

      13/02/1999

      And that's the 13th of February (possibly just in locales like GB).

      Not sure if this has ever been fixed, but it was a royal PITA when I used to do ASP classic pages.

    8. Re:2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is this numbering scheme of 2013-11-04 in what notation system? Is it 4th day of 11th month or 11th day of 4th month?

      With the imperial people you never know!

      It amuses me how people think they're clever for having a blanket hatred of all Americans and American culture (and here I thought we Americans were the culture-centric assholes... I guess that'll show ME!), then they say things like that. Anonymous sir or madam, I defy you to come up with a legitimate modern use of a YYYY-DD-MM formatted date by someone who isn't snarking it up to beat the band AND who appears to be in reasonable control of his or her cognitive abilities.

      Oh, well. At least this still gives me open license to call the offsides rule in Association Football a non-deterministic clusterfuck of sports administration, because really, who knows what the hell's happening on a field like that?

    9. Re:2013-11-04 by ortholattice · · Score: 1

      I agree that ISO 8601 is much better, but people will still put the year last in informal usage no matter how much you try to convince them otherwise. Among the countries that I've visited (not an exhaustive list obviously), only the US (usually) uses "/" as the separator. The others usually use "." or "-". And only the US has the month first. So an informal convention that usually works for me when there is ambiguity is to interpret "/" as meaning month first, anything else day first.

    10. Re:2013-11-04 by mikael · · Score: 1

      I've seen some online specifications in the format YY/MM/DD or maybe it's YY/DD/MM, practically impossible to determine for the past 14 years.

      --
      Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
    11. Re:2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Australia and New Zealand both use / as the common seperator, but unlike our backwards American cousins, we use DD/MM/YY (which, when not using ISO 8601, is the most logical alternative since it goes in unit order).

    12. Re:2013-11-04 by RaceProUK · · Score: 1

      Add the UK to that list.

      --
      No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
    13. Re:2013-11-04 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We Hungarians meanwhile, have no idea what the fuss is all about. We were using "YYYY. MM. DD." since long before I was even born. When I was a kid, I remember when I first encountered a MM/DD/YY date on the 'net, I was thinking (after realizing that it's actually a date), "are they trying to confuse themselves on purpose, or what?"

  13. Wikitaxi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is this different from wikitaxi which has been available for years. http://www.yunqa.de/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index

    1. Re:Wikitaxi by emj · · Score: 1

      Because all offline wikipedia readers require you to download the wikipedia dump, and the english wiki isn't dumped that often, and this is wiki converted to HTML with downscaled images as far as I can understand.

    2. Re:Wikitaxi by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      How is this different from wikitaxi which has been available for years. http://www.yunqa.de/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index

      Dumps for Wikitaxi typically don't have images. Though it is a great tool.

  14. Re:As a long long time editor... by Sarten-X · · Score: 2

    And yet you commented only 16 minutes after the AC...

    --
    You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
  15. Re:As a long long time editor... by dmbasso · · Score: 2

    As a long long time editor...

    Look at the quality of information.

    I agree, you did a terrible job. Please, quit editing!

    --
    `echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
  16. What? by Kardos · · Score: 1

    > XOWA is a free, open-source application that lets you download Wikipedia to your computer. No internet connection required!

    This is supremely impressive; download Wikipedia without an internet connection!

    1. Re:What? by oodaloop · · Score: 1

      Yeah, just drive run a crossover cable to Wikipedia's server room!

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    2. Re:What? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      First, you tie your request to download Wikipedia to this pigeon's leg and let it fly off.

      Next, you wait for the reply.

      Finally, you load the reply into your computer.

      NOTE: Reply will come in printed format - one article per pigeon. A few million pigeons may be required, but don't worry. We send them all at once to keep you from having to wait.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    3. Re:What? by Kardos · · Score: 1

      Sounds good to me, there's certainly no shortage of pigeons. It'll be good to put them to work doing something useful!

    4. Re:What? by tepples · · Score: 1

      This is supremely impressive; download Wikipedia without an internet connection!

      Someone's never heard of BD-R.

    5. Re:What? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      Be... without internet? *screams*

      Some of us have to do it. When the boat's connection goes down (e.g. because bad weather misaligns us with the satellite for days on end), that's it ; no internet. Also no emails, or phone calls except through the ship-to-shore radio set. It's bliss!

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  17. Re:As a long long time editor... by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    Cereal boxes have more accurate information than slashdot too.

  18. CAN I HAZ LOCAL CP? by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 1

    WANTZ UNCYCLOPEDIA

    --
    "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
    Never been known to fail..."
  19. What? by operagost · · Score: 1

    Be... without internet? *screams*

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
  20. When was that version copied? by hcs_$reboot · · Score: 2

    I hope it's when the previous pope (Ben #16) was pictured as Master Yoda in Wikipedia.. missed that :-)

    --
    Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
  21. Offline/remote situations by g8oz · · Score: 1

    This will be great for offline/remote/low speed situations. Imagine being on a merchant ship or even a cruise ship with a pricey connection package. Scientific expeditions etc.

    How about preloading it on OLPC?

    What if your high school kid can't do his homework without getting distracted online, but says he needs Wikipedia for research. Bam, here's your air-gapped PC son.

  22. Now this is truly by ruir · · Score: 1

    what I call backup on the cloud

  23. for me 100GB is a bit to large by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can I have a slightly smaller copy without the images and references?

    1. Re:for me 100GB is a bit to large by nurb432 · · Score: 1

      Yes. Plenty of ways to do that. Google is your friend.

      You can even buy a handheld piece of hardware ( that runs forth! ) if you like. http://www.thewikireader.com/

      --
      ---- Booth was a patriot ----
    2. Re:for me 100GB is a bit to large by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      Can I have a slightly smaller copy without the images and references?

      Use Wikitaxi (Windows only, works in Wine): http://www.yunqa.de/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index

      Get dumps from here:
      http://dumps.wikimedia.org/enwiki/
      look for: pages-articles.xml.bz2
      You have to process the dump. One I did earlier in the year resulted in a 15GB file.

  24. Don't Panic by Covalent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Next year or so 100GB phones will be commonplace...and you will have your Hitchhiker's Guide.

    Truly amazing times we live in.

    --
    Great warrior...hrmph! Wars not make one great.
    1. Re:Don't Panic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      mod up (+42, naturally....)

    2. Re:Don't Panic by istartedi · · Score: 1

      Next year or so 100GB phones will be commonplace...and you will have your Hitchhiker's Guide.

      Pffth. I don't need that. I just need to remember that it's "mostly harmless".

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    3. Re:Don't Panic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You already do. The Guide was networked to the sub-etha network.

    4. Re:Don't Panic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah but when you catch a ride to Alpha Centauri on some Vogon ship you'll be missing some vital info.

  25. Revisions? by hendrikboom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Presumably the wikipedia is under revision control.
    Does this give you the whole thing so that you can forever after sync with the master?
    Or just the most recent versions of the articles?
    Should there be a bittorrent for syncing huge revision control data bases?

    1. Re:Revisions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Should there be a bittorrent for syncing huge revision control data bases?

      In the protocol itself, no. BT segments files into fixed size chunks to facilitate the p2p transfer model. It's impossible to compress efficiently for such a system using general purpose techniques. Sure, it's one could design a compression algorithm which retains blocking information, but that wouldn't be quite as size efficient, and probably quite a bit slower.
      There is however, a much simpler way to skin this cat - simply ship the changes in revision as a separate torrent, and use a specialized client to merge them on the user's end. If you feel fancy, you can even group older revisions together, to improve performance for those who update only occasionally. Blizzard Entertainment has been using this technique since the early days of everyone's favourite cash cow and it works pretty well for them.

    2. Re:Revisions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      GitTorrent?

    3. Re:Revisions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Revisions? (Reverting possible vandalism by 98.161.46.94 to version by 209.37.65.3. False positive? Report it. Thanks, ClueBot NG. (0) (Bot)) (undo)

      I hate Wikipedia.

  26. Some apps already do this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm using minipedia. So far no images or formulas and there are some formatting issues, but its a promising start.

  27. already did this ( today, text version only ) by vikingpower · · Score: 2

    just pulled the most recent english-language wikipedia dump, and made elasticsearch ( via the wikipedia river plugin ) run over it. 13.9 million entries now on a small server, answering times ~ couple-of-millisecond order. elasticsearch rocks !

    --
    Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
    1. Re:already did this ( today, text version only ) by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Actually, the two things an offline Wikipedia version would benefit from are semantic search and a better UI. Those haven't been tackled yet.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:already did this ( today, text version only ) by vikingpower · · Score: 1

      Second this. On the semantic search thing, we are generating ideas in-house right now. Contact me if you have an idea for better UI.

      --
      Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
  28. What's new about this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've been mirroring a local copy of Wikipedia for a long time, with images. What's new about this app compared to the dozens of others that already do this?

    1. Re:What's new about this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What have you been using to run your local mirror?

  29. Finally! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I was wondering when I could replace my CD of Encarta 96.

  30. XOWA link... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... goes to http://xowa.sourceforge.net/

    An open-source project that still uses SourceForge. How delightfully quaint.

  31. SQLite? by biodata · · Score: 1

    But I thought SQL wasn't webscale wtf?

    --
    Korma: Good
    1. Re:SQLite? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't supposed to scale. it is supposed to be local...

      Don't worry, wikipedia.org itself doesn't use sqlite.

  32. Not very entertaining by AvderTheTerrible · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia is only so entertaining if you are stranded somewhere with no other way to pass the time.

    Now, if they give us a torrent of the complete TVTropes site....

  33. Only 100GB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's ALL it takes up?? My goodness! Wikipedia can fit on my largest USB drive?? haha.. I expected it to be in the multi-TB range!

    1. Re:Only 100GB? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      It's text only. Images and videos not included.

    2. Re:Only 100GB? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's text only. Images and videos not included.

      From TFS:

      There's 100 GB of sqlite databases containing 13.9 million pages, and 3.7 million images

      So you're saying that while it contains 3.7 million images, the images ain't included?

    3. Re:Only 100GB? by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Hmm, I thought it was text only. Must've missed that part. I stand corrected.

  34. Mirrors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm surprised that Jimmy doesn't encourage lots of ppl to be mirrors so he can spread the costs of wikipedia.

  35. POSIX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "readable from any POSIX system"

    There, fixed it for you.

  36. One reason... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Often the subject matter of the page or pages involved would be considered "trivial," and the person complaining about the edit abuse will be scorned for a) wasting their time on girlie trivia and b) for worrying about whether their "worthless trivia point" is more important than their WP opponent's "worthless trivia point."

    The trouble is that even if the subject matter really is trivial, the principles involved are not, but it's not the principles involved that will be scorned by Slashdotters.

    Editorial abuse by the WP elite is rife and a serious problem, because they and their abusive tactics don't discriminate between "important" and "trivial." If you don't share their opinion, you will be insulted, reverted and banned.

  37. Torrent here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here is the torrent file mentioned in the summary:
    http://xowa.sourceforge.net/torrent/wiki/en.wikipedia.org/Xowa_enwiki_2013-11-04_wiki_complete.torrent

  38. Checksums anyone by CBravo · · Score: 1

    I am missing checksums to verify the download. It seems sourceforge has the tendency to change stuff.

    --
    nosig today
  39. Fits on $100 a SD card & runs on a $50 compute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine how much knowledge you'll get for $10 in 10 years from now.

    https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:FundraiserLandingPage&uselang=en&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=donate&utm_campaign=C13_en.wikipedia.org

  40. Aside from all the jokes by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    This is really a cool thing to have as an option. 100G isn't that much today when a TB might cost you 30 bucks.. ( rather surprised its that small... ) and with how 'vunerable' everything is on the net today it wouldn't hurt to have an archive before the next take down notice or commercial buy-out. ( or shut-down due to loss of funding )

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  41. For offline Wikipedia use, just use ZIM by Psykechan · · Score: 1

    If all you want is an offline Wikipedia reader, just use Kiwix. It uses the ZIM format which was created specifically for offline use and runs on Win/Mac/Linux/Android or anything else if you want to compile it yourself.

    While the full English Wikipedia ZIM sans pictures is a bit old (January 2012), it has the benefit of being only 10GB and split up into 2GB chunks so it will fit on a FAT32 device like your phone's SD card.

    1. Re:For offline Wikipedia use, just use ZIM by aikawa · · Score: 1

      Yes, ZIM is the best format for this, easy to use on Android too. Full-text search.

      And everyone's phone should have Wikivoyage, whole world travel guide in ~1GB (ZIM or HTML files).

  42. Re:As a long long time editor... by amalcolm · · Score: 1

    That was a typo. Was supposed to say 10 minutes. Maybe not long enough !

    --
    Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
  43. The Use of Offline Wiki by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hear newegg has a special on SSD's, so put your XOWA downloads on an instant drive.