There have been several other attempts in to setup similar wikis. For example, Scholarpedia is exactly this model of a peer-reviewed topical encyclopaedia, but for mathematical sciences. There were two comments from other Slashdotters, complaining that a group of academics, or any group of people will often struggle to reach consensus. But I think that there are qualitatively different types of disagreements. Some are about writing or presentation style ("where the place the word 'the'"). But, some are more substantive, especially in topics that are not entirely resolved. For example, there is little disagreement that Newton's laws are wrong, but nearly exact for certain spatial and time scales. But, if you were to write an article on information coding in neurons, there are probably as many opinions as there are labs working in that area!
If only Wikipedia became more widely used than it is presently, especially in academic circles, then more groups will be interested in having articles reflect debates. To reflect different opinions is particularly important in fields involving subjectivity (pretty much every thing other than Mathematics). If there is enough interest among academics in Wikipedia, then the current state of debates on various topics is bound to be reflected in the articles.
Given that Stanford's plato website is simply a fledgling effort, I do not see why it is newsworthy. If for example, someone cited an article from the plato website in a peer-reviewed journal article (and reviewers accepted it), that would be newsworthy. Short of that, it is simply yet another effort at collaborative information sharing. It cannot be newsworthy simply because it is from a well known university.
You don't really understand. There is nothing they could have done to prevent the worm. The astronaut was installing Outlook which asked them to "close all software like antivirus and firewall which may interfere with the installation". The rest is history...
To top it all, NASA says in the same breath that they are investigating how the worm got abort and that the austronauts' laptops don't have any anti-virus software... Go figure!
It is a moot point to say that "Microsoft will eventually drop support for XP". The reality is that we are transitioning between two operating systems presently and so there is a need to make a choice between XP and Vista. So, the question remains, for a "typical" user (whoever that may be), is it safer and better to stick to XP for now, or should they already move on to Vista? Given that Microsoft *will* release a new OS in the future, this debate will be repeated with Vista vs. . Boring or not, it is a useful debate for lot of people.
As for interrogating people I guess it would not so much be their intentions as if whether they are telling the truth or not that is interesting.
A scanning would probably take quite some time and involve people being questioned at the same time.
Of course there are big ethical questions in this, I guess the anti-terror people in CIA and FBI would be quite interested in getting their hands on this technique, that is if they don't already use it.
One scary place this could be used was to check religious beliefs, in some countries you are prohibited to believe anything else than what the state dictates.
Slashdot Mirror
There have been several other attempts in to setup similar wikis. For example, Scholarpedia is exactly this model of a peer-reviewed topical encyclopaedia, but for mathematical sciences. There were two comments from other Slashdotters, complaining that a group of academics, or any group of people will often struggle to reach consensus. But I think that there are qualitatively different types of disagreements. Some are about writing or presentation style ("where the place the word 'the'"). But, some are more substantive, especially in topics that are not entirely resolved. For example, there is little disagreement that Newton's laws are wrong, but nearly exact for certain spatial and time scales. But, if you were to write an article on information coding in neurons, there are probably as many opinions as there are labs working in that area!
If only Wikipedia became more widely used than it is presently, especially in academic circles, then more groups will be interested in having articles reflect debates. To reflect different opinions is particularly important in fields involving subjectivity (pretty much every thing other than Mathematics). If there is enough interest among academics in Wikipedia, then the current state of debates on various topics is bound to be reflected in the articles.
Given that Stanford's plato website is simply a fledgling effort, I do not see why it is newsworthy. If for example, someone cited an article from the plato website in a peer-reviewed journal article (and reviewers accepted it), that would be newsworthy. Short of that, it is simply yet another effort at collaborative information sharing. It cannot be newsworthy simply because it is from a well known university.
You don't really understand. There is nothing they could have done to prevent the worm. The astronaut was installing Outlook which asked them to "close all software like antivirus and firewall which may interfere with the installation". The rest is history...
To top it all, NASA says in the same breath that they are investigating how the worm got abort and that the austronauts' laptops don't have any anti-virus software... Go figure!
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030134
It is a moot point to say that "Microsoft will eventually drop support for XP". The reality is that we are transitioning between two operating systems presently and so there is a need to make a choice between XP and Vista. So, the question remains, for a "typical" user (whoever that may be), is it safer and better to stick to XP for now, or should they already move on to Vista? Given that Microsoft *will* release a new OS in the future, this debate will be repeated with Vista vs. . Boring or not, it is a useful debate for lot of people.