Well, of course no encyclopedia is a primary source. Wikipedia free-for-all makes it more susceptible to being at least unverified.
What the professors should do is impose a detention on every student that cites Wikipedia: for every cite, let them go correct the error, and find and correct three other errors in their area of study.
Everyone wins this way: the information gets corrected, the student learns, and the public gets better info.
Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.
In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.
Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.
Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.
Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.
Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.
Maybe simplistic in logic when you think of examples like the one you did.
However, the complexity is the whole application, or applications, and in years upon years of adding features, testing them, debugging them, and putting the organization's reputation on them.
There are nightly batch runs, there are trickle feeds from other sources, there are exports and imports for data going and coming to other systems and other organizations, there are reports that are printed and go to operational managers as well as executives. It is not merely "a transaction".
COBOL maybe mundane and dull compared to other languages today, but organizations don't use COBOL, they use "Applications" that happen to be written in COBOL.
He is using MS IE, so spyware is a possibility, but then again, this means Microsoft is in collusion with Spyware companies, which is unlikely. Much as they do a lot of bad things, being a monopoly and all, actively supporting referrals via spyware is not something that they would do.
The other thing may be this: Yahoo, naturally, favors its own Yahoo Travel, but if someone does not have an account there, why not make the best of the situation and pass the info (for a fee) to competition.
Well, here is a real life case from a relative of mine:
Last October, he was searching Yahoo for a website of a conference that was held in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Less than an hour later he receives an email from Expedia, which he used before to book travel (and probably checked off or left checked, a box that says "send me spam").
The email from Expedia says:
"Dear X, Looking for a hotel in Sao Paulo? We make it easy, thanks to a variety of ways to search. Plus, with our Best Price Guarantee, you'll always get the lowest price. The best rooms and rates go fast--start your hotel search now."
So, does Yahoo sell the info in real time to rival Microsoft, rather than their own Yahoo Travel? Or what?
These things are very pretty and very deadly as well.
The proper name for them is not "sea snails" (there are lots of snails in the sea). The are called cone shells or cone snails. See the Wikipedia article on them.
I used to see them when snorkeling in the Red Sea. They are one of the few snails that are "clean" since they have a mantle withdrawn over the shell and hence algae and barnacles do not attach to it. The other snail that does that is the cowrie shell. If you find a dirty shell, then it is because the animal inside it has died, and the algae has move on it.
The cone shells are very very toxic and as far as I recall have no antidote. They have a harpoon like needle that injects venom, and a proboscis to swallow prey with.
One true horror story from Sinai in Egypt was about a woman tourist who was found dead under the water after scuba diving. They took the body out and checked the regulator, the air supply,...etc and all was good. When they unzipped the wet suit, a live cone shell fell off. What seemed to have happened is that she saw this pretty shell and did not know it was toxic. She just decided to keep it safe and unzipped the suit and tucked it in.
I am not a neuro-scientist, but a medical doctor I know explained deja vu as simply when the signals from the same event reach the two sides of the brain a split second apart.
The second one triggers the "I've seen this before" experience in the brain, which is technically true, but not in the distant past, rather in the very near past (less than a second ago).
You may be right, since the device is dated 150-100 BC, and Hispania was captured by the Roman Republic from the Carthaginians after the Second Punic War (201BC).
Actually, classing them as Arabic isn't much better either since the bulk of Morocco's population is Berber with only about 10% being "pure" Arabs, Algeria's genetic makeup is not too much different than that of Morocco
The term Arab and Arabic are different, although they are used interchangeably. Arab refers to ethnicity, and Arabic refers to language and culture. All of North Africa is Arabic by culture and language, and not by ethnicity. The countries have significant minorities of non-Arab speakers, but Arabic is spoken by most, and is also an official language. Those countries are members of the Arab league.
Libya is even named after a Berber tribe.
Actually, the name Libu comes from ancient times. It is recorded from the 2nd millenium BC in Egyptian annals as Ribu (since the ancient Egyptians converted the L to an R, like Japanese today). Identifying them as present day Berber is tenuous. Berber predecessors is more accurate, just like the Numidians a millenium afterwards.
The real reasons here is not to have a hedge against Iran.
It is actually emulating Iran's nuclear ambitions for two purposes:
- Gain support locally among the populace
Almost all the Middle East regimes are hated by their citizens, being despotic, dictatorial, and unelected (at least not in the proper sense). By acting tough, they shed the image of being weaklings by emulating the strong men of the past (e.g. Gamal Abdel Nasser, and more recently Saddam). By having a "national rallying point" around nuclear technology, they divert from political repression, economic failure and all the other internal problems.
- Prevent potential USA attacks
They have the belief that owning nuclear technology will prevent the USA from attacking them (seeing that the USA did not attack North Korea or Iran, but attacked Iraq and Afghanistan). Whether this is true or not, it is seen that way by many...
- Raise the issue of Double standards
By raising the issue of why Israel is allowed to gain nukes while the other cannot. This is a valid point to raise, although just going about making nukes is not the best way to raise it.
Iran here acts as a catalyst for this, by the others trying to emulate them, not as much for being feared to be a nuclear threat in the region.
Sometime back I wrote about Digital archeology, and how there are inherent perils with going digital. Case in point: The BBC Doomsday laser disc was not readable only 2 decades after it was made. One one someone rebuilt a BBC computer it was resuscitated. The same goes for early UNIX tapes by Ritchie which were unreadable until someone across the country revived a drive that can read it.
The reason Portugal ended with so little can be traced back in the Inter caetera papal bull. The fact that Pope Alexander VI was Spanish, and that the geography of the New World was not understood in 1494 lead to the Treaty of Tordesillas.
This is why Brazil became Portuguese, and the rest of Latin America was Spanish.
Spain's riches from the New World caused it to become the dominant empire, and eventually swallow Portugal.
The irony of it all is that the US claims that it is invading countries to spread "freedom" and "democracy", for the betterment of the local population.
The case of Libya proves that this is just hypocrisy, since the population of Libya has not been more free nor more democratic when Gaddafi gave up and relented his hardline. There are still no elections, and the Green Book quasi-ideology is still in effect, not liberal democracy.
Gaddafi's son is presented as a young and progressive voice and slated to take over from dad. Very little has changes since Gaddafi Sr came to power 1969 as a young army lieutenant.
Western companies rushed in to establish offices for oil drilling, supplying goods,...etc.
The only benefit is that the chaos of Iraq with the bombing and sectarian strife is not happening. But this is like a person who has a failing hart being thankful he does not have cancer...
The message here is: mercantilism and corporatism drives this, and US/UK say it is driven by morals, yet in actuality, the average Libyan people be damned.
The trouble in Darfur, Sudan is a classic example of this.
The two groups here are settled African-speaking agriculturalists, and semi-nomadic Arabic speakers.
As desertification takes its toll, the arable land is less and less, and hence the nomads start to encroach on the farmers. The defining event was the failing rains and ensuing famine in 1983 and 1984.
Of course, as with most human conflicts, the reasons are complex, and there are other factors contributing to this, such as regional powers meddling with the issue. However, the weather is a preciptiating factor here.
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Well, of course no encyclopedia is a primary source. Wikipedia free-for-all makes it more susceptible to being at least unverified.
What the professors should do is impose a detention on every student that cites Wikipedia: for every cite, let them go correct the error, and find and correct three other errors in their area of study.
Everyone wins this way: the information gets corrected, the student learns, and the public gets better info.
South Korea is one country that shares a language with only one other country (North Korea).
The matter is worse in other parts of the world where many more were affected.
A while ago, I wrote about Microsoft and Arabization and the issue of browser independence.
Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.
In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.
Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.
Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.
Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.
Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.
Actually, after ex-Liberal Wajid Khan crossed the floor, and became a conservative, the balance of power is with the NDP, and not the liberals.
I would be very surprised if the NDP let this pass.
They use Gnome (which I don't like) ...
You don't have to use Gnome.
Just download Kubuntu and enjoy KDE. We use it on five machines, and it is great.
You must be new here ...
No, not easy.
Maybe simplistic in logic when you think of examples like the one you did.
However, the complexity is the whole application, or applications, and in years upon years of adding features, testing them, debugging them, and putting the organization's reputation on them.
There are nightly batch runs, there are trickle feeds from other sources, there are exports and imports for data going and coming to other systems and other organizations, there are reports that are printed and go to operational managers as well as executives. It is not merely "a transaction".
COBOL maybe mundane and dull compared to other languages today, but organizations don't use COBOL, they use "Applications" that happen to be written in COBOL.
Exactly!
And this is why celebrities are used in advertising for products and services they are not qualified nor knowledgeable about.
In the public eye : rich or famous = qualified.
A person who is a citizen of Qatar is called a Qatari, and plural is Qataris.
Qatarese is wrong.
He is using MS IE, so spyware is a possibility, but then again, this means Microsoft is in collusion with Spyware companies, which is unlikely. Much as they do a lot of bad things, being a monopoly and all, actively supporting referrals via spyware is not something that they would do.
The other thing may be this: Yahoo, naturally, favors its own Yahoo Travel, but if someone does not have an account there, why not make the best of the situation and pass the info (for a fee) to competition.
Last October, he was searching Yahoo for a website of a conference that was held in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Less than an hour later he receives an email from Expedia, which he used before to book travel (and probably checked off or left checked, a box that says "send me spam").
The email from Expedia says:
So, does Yahoo sell the info in real time to rival Microsoft, rather than their own Yahoo Travel? Or what?
It can't be a coincidence for sure.
George Orwell must be turning in his grave ...
These things are very pretty and very deadly as well.
...etc and all was good. When they unzipped the wet suit, a live cone shell fell off. What seemed to have happened is that she saw this pretty shell and did not know it was toxic. She just decided to keep it safe and unzipped the suit and tucked it in.
The proper name for them is not "sea snails" (there are lots of snails in the sea). The are called cone shells or cone snails. See the Wikipedia article on them.
I used to see them when snorkeling in the Red Sea. They are one of the few snails that are "clean" since they have a mantle withdrawn over the shell and hence algae and barnacles do not attach to it. The other snail that does that is the cowrie shell. If you find a dirty shell, then it is because the animal inside it has died, and the algae has move on it.
The cone shells are very very toxic and as far as I recall have no antidote. They have a harpoon like needle that injects venom, and a proboscis to swallow prey with.
One true horror story from Sinai in Egypt was about a woman tourist who was found dead under the water after scuba diving. They took the body out and checked the regulator, the air supply,
I am not a neuro-scientist, but a medical doctor I know explained deja vu as simply when the signals from the same event reach the two sides of the brain a split second apart.
The second one triggers the "I've seen this before" experience in the brain, which is technically true, but not in the distant past, rather in the very near past (less than a second ago).
You may be right, since the device is dated 150-100 BC, and Hispania was captured by the Roman Republic from the Carthaginians after the Second Punic War (201BC).
Excellent analysis, thank you.
Except for one part: the Mediterranean has barely any tide.
So, they would use it for other things, but not that.
I used Media Ring as early as May 1999. They were the Skype of that time.
The term Arab and Arabic are different, although they are used interchangeably. Arab refers to ethnicity, and Arabic refers to language and culture. All of North Africa is Arabic by culture and language, and not by ethnicity. The countries have significant minorities of non-Arab speakers, but Arabic is spoken by most, and is also an official language. Those countries are members of the Arab league.
Actually, the name Libu comes from ancient times. It is recorded from the 2nd millenium BC in Egyptian annals as Ribu (since the ancient Egyptians converted the L to an R, like Japanese today). Identifying them as present day Berber is tenuous. Berber predecessors is more accurate, just like the Numidians a millenium afterwards.
The real reasons here is not to have a hedge against Iran.
...
It is actually emulating Iran's nuclear ambitions for two purposes:
- Gain support locally among the populace
Almost all the Middle East regimes are hated by their citizens, being despotic, dictatorial, and unelected (at least not in the proper sense). By acting tough, they shed the image of being weaklings by emulating the strong men of the past (e.g. Gamal Abdel Nasser, and more recently Saddam). By having a "national rallying point" around nuclear technology, they divert from political repression, economic failure and all the other internal problems.
- Prevent potential USA attacks
They have the belief that owning nuclear technology will prevent the USA from attacking them (seeing that the USA did not attack North Korea or Iran, but attacked Iraq and Afghanistan). Whether this is true or not, it is seen that way by many
- Raise the issue of Double standards
By raising the issue of why Israel is allowed to gain nukes while the other cannot. This is a valid point to raise, although just going about making nukes is not the best way to raise it.
Iran here acts as a catalyst for this, by the others trying to emulate them, not as much for being feared to be a nuclear threat in the region.
See more here, with some more links.
Sometime back I wrote about Digital archeology, and how there are inherent perils with going digital. Case in point: The BBC Doomsday laser disc was not readable only 2 decades after it was made. One one someone rebuilt a BBC computer it was resuscitated. The same goes for early UNIX tapes by Ritchie which were unreadable until someone across the country revived a drive that can read it.
More examples and concerns in what I wrote.
Gtalk has a nifty feature where your chats are logged to your Gmail accounts. They are then searchable, ...etc.
If you use Gaim and Jabber to talk to Gtalk buddies, would Google still log your conversations in Gmail?
Not really.
The reason Portugal ended with so little can be traced back in the Inter caetera papal bull. The fact that Pope Alexander VI was Spanish, and that the geography of the New World was not understood in 1494 lead to the Treaty of Tordesillas.
This is why Brazil became Portuguese, and the rest of Latin America was Spanish.
Spain's riches from the New World caused it to become the dominant empire, and eventually swallow Portugal.
There is already an extension for this.
...
It is called Session Manager. It does exactly what you want: a history of closed tabs.
It also has the nice feature of saving the entire session (all windows, all tabs) so when you restart you can go back to what you were doing
The irony of it all is that the US claims that it is invading countries to spread "freedom" and "democracy", for the betterment of the local population.
...etc.
...
The case of Libya proves that this is just hypocrisy, since the population of Libya has not been more free nor more democratic when Gaddafi gave up and relented his hardline. There are still no elections, and the Green Book quasi-ideology is still in effect, not liberal democracy.
Gaddafi's son is presented as a young and progressive voice and slated to take over from dad. Very little has changes since Gaddafi Sr came to power 1969 as a young army lieutenant.
Western companies rushed in to establish offices for oil drilling, supplying goods,
The only benefit is that the chaos of Iraq with the bombing and sectarian strife is not happening. But this is like a person who has a failing hart being thankful he does not have cancer
The message here is: mercantilism and corporatism drives this, and US/UK say it is driven by morals, yet in actuality, the average Libyan people be damned.
If you do not mind hosting your own solution, the look into installing Drupal and the GeSHiFilter module.
You can also get a pre-hosted account at Bryght, but it is not free like other blogging services.
Disclaimer: I am a contributor to the Drupal project.
The trouble in Darfur, Sudan is a classic example of this.
The two groups here are settled African-speaking agriculturalists, and semi-nomadic Arabic speakers.
As desertification takes its toll, the arable land is less and less, and hence the nomads start to encroach on the farmers. The defining event was the failing rains and ensuing famine in 1983 and 1984.
Of course, as with most human conflicts, the reasons are complex, and there are other factors contributing to this, such as regional powers meddling with the issue. However, the weather is a preciptiating factor here.