That's interesting, my experience is completely contrary. I'm a very active Wikipedia contributor and read many English and German articles. My personal impression (and this view is shared by many fellow Wikipedians) is that the coverage of subjects (e.g. chances to find an article about a certain subject) is better on the English Wikipedia, while quality often is better on German Wikipedia.
Unfortunately there is no scientific study (I am aware of) which directly compares German to English Wikipedia in aspects of quality. However, comparisons with other German encyclopedias have been generally supportive of the German Wikipedia (in tests it "won" against Microsoft Encarta and the highly-reputable encyclopedia by Brockhaus). Also, the German Wikipedia was the first one to use Flagged Revisions, a software feature that makes sure every edit is reviewed by an experienced user. Beside that, the German Wikimedia chapter "Wikimedia Deutschland" has done much to facilitate quality improvements (e.g. the Zedler medal for outstandingly good articles; or Wikipedia Academy, an attempt to attract academics as Wikipedia contributors). Although there is no explicit prove, there are many indicators that the German Wikipedia often has articles of higher quality or at least tries to focus more on quality.
If you speak languages other than English, contributing to translations is a good and effective way of helping. One platform where you can do so it translatewiki.net. It started as a project to translate MediaWiki, but now every free software project can handle their translations through translatewiki. It works quite well, there about 55 languages in which >99% of all MediaWiki messages are translated. (Don't worry, there is enough work to do on other translatewiki projects)
Why is there such a focus on asteroids? Do the USA need to justify their nuclear arsenal in the current post-cold-war situation? (yes, "Armageddon", I'm looking at you). Asteroids are not rare, Asteroids capable of destroying humanity are. It is very unlikely that one will hit us in next 100 years, and after that, we'll probably have completely different means available for trying to avert incoming asteroids. I'm not saying that research in this area is wrong, but it should be low priority and the risks must not be overestimated. We already have something threatening human (and animal) existence on earth, it's called global warming. Unlike asteroids, it wont happen by chance, it is happening and will continue to happen, even if we cease to pollute right now (which we nevertheless should strive after to minimize effects by global warming). This is a much more serious threat to our existence than Asteroids.
German Pirate Party gets some attention, though it could be more. They have been successful this far, because they address topics that major parties ignore (internet cencorship, civil rights, privacy, government transparency, open access, copyright, patents,...). They got 0.9% at European Parliament election in June and now they got 2% in federal elections. Their membership number is exploding (currently almost 10,000, graph). Even though some pirates hoped for a better result, 2% is absolutely astonishing. If their success continues (and polls show that PP has 13% of all first-time voters, some time is working for us), they may very well be in the Bundestag (parliament) in four years. By comparison, Green party had 1.5% in its first federal election in 1980 and since the following election, they are represented in the Bundestag with constantly over 5%.
I know that this is not the point you are trying to make, but I thought that you'd die from caffeine before the water intoxication kicks in. Interestingly, you are right, overconsumption of energy drinks will more likely result in water intoxication than caffeine intoxication. Here is my calculation: 175mg/kg * 70kg = 12.25g (Wikipedia says that 150-200mg caffeine per body weight kilogram is lethal; assuming 175mg and 70kg as average. Results in 12.25g as lethal dose) 0.2g/l * x = 12.25g (According to Wikipedia, Red Bull has 0.2g caffeine per liter) x= 62.5l (To reach the lethal dose, you have to drink over 60 liter of Red Bull. I'm not sure when water intoxication begins to be lethal (Wikipedia says 10 liters are problematic), but I'm quite sure that you can't drink that much.) Perhaps there are other ingredients that are more dangerous than water?
I think you confuse Free-as-in-Freedom Software with gratis Software. There is nothing wrong with being charged for a service in user support. If your car is broken, and you bring it in for repair, you have to pay. This is normal and it has nothing to do with your freedom to use/modify your car as you wish (as long as you don't violate any other laws). If you want professional support, buy it. With Free Software, you actually may get better commercial support, as you can choose between multiple providers.
Servers are maintained by people who are not computer newbies and need a GUI. Normally they know how to handle a shell. Extremely ease install routines for server applications suggest that maintaining a server and keeping it secure is a trivial task, just like clicking those shiny "install" buttons. This is not the case, and you better know how to keep your server save if you run it on the web, especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows.
There is a nice (and quite popular) information graphic by Titanic, a German satire magazine: This is how our information society works (the arrows translate as: "cites from", "plagiarizes from")
Yeah, but with voting computers[1] human errors will be quite disastrous... if a programmer makes a mistake (intentionally or unintentionally), then this may very well change the whole outcome of the voting. He's even comparatively save, as most voting computers use closed source software, and the public can't (even theoretically) prove the fraud. If you're voting pen&paper style, election fraud will be time- and cost-consuming and there's a quite large probability that it will be noticed. Replacing a few thousand paper ballots is difficult, having a small bug in your computer program and therefor changing hundreds of millions of votes is easy. It's a question of scalability.
[1] As the German CCC noted, it is better to call them computers than machines. They are technically the same computers that you used at home some decades ago. Unlike machines and much like computers they tend to have bugs and security holes.
How ironic that you say that, even though the day before there was a story which showed what proprietary software can do to you, your computer, your data and your privacy.
One of the most interesting fields where Lucene is useful (probably also for you) is Wikipedia. Remember how painful it was to search something on Wikipedia some months ago?
Well now, thanks to Lucene, Wikipedia (and its sister projects) don't have to use the in-build MediaWiki search engine (which really is crappy). Probably the best feature Lucene brings is "Did you mean...". Google is still better, but Lucene was a big step for Wikipedia.
The last time I tried the upload page for an image from the Cassini mission I was pretty much blown away how complicated it is to figure out how to tag a file to avoid having it be deleted on sight, even though the use permissions from the copyright owner were pretty clear.
See? There is already the problem. The permission from the copyright owner to upload the files is not enough, because Wikipedia only accepts free content (except for some Wikipedias which allow fair-use-images to be uploaded). So, the copyright owner must put his work under a specific License (GFDL 1.2, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or something alike) and then Wikipedia can use that. Don't blame us (I am a Wikipedian myself), blame copyright law that makes it so complicated to reuse works of others and make them available for everyone.
What about: "The neutrality of this politician is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page." or: "This political speech does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this political speech by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed." xkcd had it right: Wikipedian Protester
begging for money all the time isn't a business model.
No, it's not a business model. It's a way of keeping up a non-profit website.
You see, most people think ads are the easy way out of a financial situation that could well be improved. They're not. These are the reasons why ads suck: 1. Ads suck for the reader. If a user visits Wikipedia, he wants information, not ads. Ads distract the user from what he wants (granted, big banners asking for donations kind of do the same, even though they suck less) 2. The "customer" of Wikipedia has always been the reader. With ads, it's the advertisement partners. Readers would be just a means to an end. 3. Ads are one-way. Once you introduce ads, you depend on them. No one will donate money (Wikipedia can just put on more ads when they are in need of money, right?) anymore, and your structure will expand to a more expensive one. You can't just say "oops, ads were a bad idea, let's switch back to donations". 4. Isn't it great that in a world, where everyone just tries to maximize his own profit, there are projects that solely finance themselves though generous donations from people from all over the world? I really think this is great. 5. Editors will demand money. After all, with ads there is enough money to pay them a bit. And if you do that, people will just try to find ways to maximize their payment with minimal efforts (Spelling-error-fixing bots, test edits, etc.). The money gets more important than the content. 6. Editors will be really pissed. In 2002, there were rumors that Wikipedia would possibly run ads, and the result was that this false rumor made most of the Spanish Wikipedians leave and participate in an fork of Wikipedia. Imagine what would happen, if Wikipedia really ran ads. In think most editors would leave, perhaps even starting a new non-profit, ad-free fork of Wikipedia.
There are more reasons, but I think this is enough to make clear that even though not excluded ultimately, ads should be avoided if possible. And the way I am seeing it, we manage to finance ourself quite ok atm. Disclaimer: Of course, such a statement is dangerous. It doesn't mean that Wikipedia has enough money, it doesn't. It has enough money to finance the servers as they are. But that doesn't mean that additional money wouldn't be useful. With more money, we* can buy faster servers and hire developers that improve the software. So please, DO donate. (*I am a Wikipedian as well and yes, I contribute both via edits and donations)
Why don't they use BitTorrent or similar p2p networks to distribute their files? Sure, it might be a bit more difficult for live-streaming, but most content is not live content* and p2p networks have shown to be a good alternative to regular Server-Client-downloads. (* I don't know about you guys, but hate anyone trying to force me to watch some tv show at a specific time. I want to watch what I want, when I want. I believe this is true for most people and most content).
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That's interesting, my experience is completely contrary. I'm a very active Wikipedia contributor and read many English and German articles. My personal impression (and this view is shared by many fellow Wikipedians) is that the coverage of subjects (e.g. chances to find an article about a certain subject) is better on the English Wikipedia, while quality often is better on German Wikipedia.
Unfortunately there is no scientific study (I am aware of) which directly compares German to English Wikipedia in aspects of quality. However, comparisons with other German encyclopedias have been generally supportive of the German Wikipedia (in tests it "won" against Microsoft Encarta and the highly-reputable encyclopedia by Brockhaus). Also, the German Wikipedia was the first one to use Flagged Revisions, a software feature that makes sure every edit is reviewed by an experienced user. Beside that, the German Wikimedia chapter "Wikimedia Deutschland" has done much to facilitate quality improvements (e.g. the Zedler medal for outstandingly good articles; or Wikipedia Academy, an attempt to attract academics as Wikipedia contributors). Although there is no explicit prove, there are many indicators that the German Wikipedia often has articles of higher quality or at least tries to focus more on quality.
If you speak languages other than English, contributing to translations is a good and effective way of helping. One platform where you can do so it translatewiki.net. It started as a project to translate MediaWiki, but now every free software project can handle their translations through translatewiki. It works quite well, there about 55 languages in which >99% of all MediaWiki messages are translated. (Don't worry, there is enough work to do on other translatewiki projects)
Why is there such a focus on asteroids? Do the USA need to justify their nuclear arsenal in the current post-cold-war situation? (yes, "Armageddon", I'm looking at you).
Asteroids are not rare, Asteroids capable of destroying humanity are. It is very unlikely that one will hit us in next 100 years, and after that, we'll probably have completely different means available for trying to avert incoming asteroids.
I'm not saying that research in this area is wrong, but it should be low priority and the risks must not be overestimated.
We already have something threatening human (and animal) existence on earth, it's called global warming. Unlike asteroids, it wont happen by chance, it is happening and will continue to happen, even if we cease to pollute right now (which we nevertheless should strive after to minimize effects by global warming). This is a much more serious threat to our existence than Asteroids.
He probably read this wikiHow article
Sorry for the misinformation, you are right. Here's the source: telepolis (German)
German Pirate Party gets some attention, though it could be more. They have been successful this far, because they address topics that major parties ignore (internet cencorship, civil rights, privacy, government transparency, open access, copyright, patents, ...). They got 0.9% at European Parliament election in June and now they got 2% in federal elections. Their membership number is exploding (currently almost 10,000, graph).
Even though some pirates hoped for a better result, 2% is absolutely astonishing. If their success continues (and polls show that PP has 13% of all first-time voters, some time is working for us), they may very well be in the Bundestag (parliament) in four years. By comparison, Green party had 1.5% in its first federal election in 1980 and since the following election, they are represented in the Bundestag with constantly over 5%.
NoScript will save the world! Thanks god, I'm save!
More info about the Wikipedia downtime in the Wikimedia Techblog: http://techblog.wikimedia.org/2009/06/current-events/
Ironically, at the moment all blogs of the Wikimedia Foundation are down as well... unfortunately, I can't find a cached version around. Try later.
I know that this is not the point you are trying to make, but I thought that you'd die from caffeine before the water intoxication kicks in. Interestingly, you are right, overconsumption of energy drinks will more likely result in water intoxication than caffeine intoxication. Here is my calculation:
175mg/kg * 70kg = 12.25g (Wikipedia says that 150-200mg caffeine per body weight kilogram is lethal; assuming 175mg and 70kg as average. Results in 12.25g as lethal dose)
0.2g/l * x = 12.25g (According to Wikipedia, Red Bull has 0.2g caffeine per liter)
x= 62.5l (To reach the lethal dose, you have to drink over 60 liter of Red Bull. I'm not sure when water intoxication begins to be lethal (Wikipedia says 10 liters are problematic), but I'm quite sure that you can't drink that much.)
Perhaps there are other ingredients that are more dangerous than water?
Read the answer by Mike Godwin (Gerneral Counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation) to reproaches by the EFF.
Either that's a scientist's prank or Douglas Adams really was right!
I think you confuse Free-as-in-Freedom Software with gratis Software. There is nothing wrong with being charged for a service in user support. If your car is broken, and you bring it in for repair, you have to pay. This is normal and it has nothing to do with your freedom to use/modify your car as you wish (as long as you don't violate any other laws).
If you want professional support, buy it. With Free Software, you actually may get better commercial support, as you can choose between multiple providers.
Servers are maintained by people who are not computer newbies and need a GUI. Normally they know how to handle a shell.
Extremely ease install routines for server applications suggest that maintaining a server and keeping it secure is a trivial task, just like clicking those shiny "install" buttons. This is not the case, and you better know how to keep your server save if you run it on the web, especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows.
They obviously plan to "roll" out the largest Rickrolling in history!
It depends... I think M$ will include a special browser ;)
Then people will see the difference
Well, I didn't RTFA, but I don't think this will detect encrypted traffic. Read BitTorrent protocol encryption
There is a nice (and quite popular) information graphic by Titanic, a German satire magazine: This is how our information society works (the arrows translate as: "cites from", "plagiarizes from")
Yeah, but with voting computers[1] human errors will be quite disastrous... if a programmer makes a mistake (intentionally or unintentionally), then this may very well change the whole outcome of the voting. He's even comparatively save, as most voting computers use closed source software, and the public can't (even theoretically) prove the fraud.
If you're voting pen&paper style, election fraud will be time- and cost-consuming and there's a quite large probability that it will be noticed.
Replacing a few thousand paper ballots is difficult, having a small bug in your computer program and therefor changing hundreds of millions of votes is easy. It's a question of scalability.
[1] As the German CCC noted, it is better to call them computers than machines. They are technically the same computers that you used at home some decades ago. Unlike machines and much like computers they tend to have bugs and security holes.
How ironic that you say that, even though the day before there was a story which showed what proprietary software can do to you, your computer, your data and your privacy.
One of the most interesting fields where Lucene is useful (probably also for you) is Wikipedia. Remember how painful it was to search something on Wikipedia some months ago?
Well now, thanks to Lucene, Wikipedia (and its sister projects) don't have to use the in-build MediaWiki search engine (which really is crappy). Probably the best feature Lucene brings is "Did you mean ...". Google is still better, but Lucene was a big step for Wikipedia.
Commons:Project scope
See? There is already the problem. The permission from the copyright owner to upload the files is not enough, because Wikipedia only accepts free content (except for some Wikipedias which allow fair-use-images to be uploaded). So, the copyright owner must put his work under a specific License (GFDL 1.2, CC-BY-SA-3.0 or something alike) and then Wikipedia can use that. Don't blame us (I am a Wikipedian myself), blame copyright law that makes it so complicated to reuse works of others and make them available for everyone.
What about: "The neutrality of this politician is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page." or: "This political speech does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this political speech by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed."
xkcd had it right: Wikipedian Protester
No, it's not a business model. It's a way of keeping up a non-profit website.
You see, most people think ads are the easy way out of a financial situation that could well be improved.
They're not. These are the reasons why ads suck:
1. Ads suck for the reader. If a user visits Wikipedia, he wants information, not ads. Ads distract the user from what he wants (granted, big banners asking for donations kind of do the same, even though they suck less)
2. The "customer" of Wikipedia has always been the reader. With ads, it's the advertisement partners. Readers would be just a means to an end.
3. Ads are one-way. Once you introduce ads, you depend on them. No one will donate money (Wikipedia can just put on more ads when they are in need of money, right?) anymore, and your structure will expand to a more expensive one. You can't just say "oops, ads were a bad idea, let's switch back to donations".
4. Isn't it great that in a world, where everyone just tries to maximize his own profit, there are projects that solely finance themselves though generous donations from people from all over the world? I really think this is great.
5. Editors will demand money. After all, with ads there is enough money to pay them a bit. And if you do that, people will just try to find ways to maximize their payment with minimal efforts (Spelling-error-fixing bots, test edits, etc.). The money gets more important than the content.
6. Editors will be really pissed. In 2002, there were rumors that Wikipedia would possibly run ads, and the result was that this false rumor made most of the Spanish Wikipedians leave and participate in an fork of Wikipedia. Imagine what would happen, if Wikipedia really ran ads. In think most editors would leave, perhaps even starting a new non-profit, ad-free fork of Wikipedia.
There are more reasons, but I think this is enough to make clear that even though not excluded ultimately, ads should be avoided if possible. And the way I am seeing it, we manage to finance ourself quite ok atm. Disclaimer: Of course, such a statement is dangerous. It doesn't mean that Wikipedia has enough money, it doesn't. It has enough money to finance the servers as they are. But that doesn't mean that additional money wouldn't be useful. With more money, we* can buy faster servers and hire developers that improve the software. So please, DO donate. (*I am a Wikipedian as well and yes, I contribute both via edits and donations)
Why don't they use BitTorrent or similar p2p networks to distribute their files? Sure, it might be a bit more difficult for live-streaming, but most content is not live content* and p2p networks have shown to be a good alternative to regular Server-Client-downloads.
(* I don't know about you guys, but hate anyone trying to force me to watch some tv show at a specific time. I want to watch what I want, when I want. I believe this is true for most people and most content).