Wikipedia is a manipulative insidious organisation that's poisoning truth for profit. That's not a tin foil hat based statement. There's plenty of evidence.
I dont think there's anything sinister going on here; most of this money is probably going towards keeping the site up. There's nothing new about they're fundraising efforts, like when the server kept crashing.
In any case, i think this is a step towards legitimizing wikipedia as a valuable reference. The CD represents an error-checked version of wikipedia that doubters have been bitching about for some time.
Mind numbing boredom is what sells games. I hear the next World of Warcraft expansion will introduce 'watching paint dry' as a new profession.
Watching Paint Dry: Huck Finn's Adventure was a truly revolutionary game as a single player. I'm pretty interested to see what they do in the multiplayer version.
That was my biggest upset with Debian (I too played with it several years ago). I was always a slackware guy until Ubuntu.
My only upset with Ubuntu is it's networking support; wireless inparticular. I have a laptop running Edgy right now whose eth0 will go up and down depending on the weather. Both eth0 and eth1 have IP addresses assigned (DHCP) and are sending packets but otherwise it appears to not work (ping throws nothing, for example). Yes, ive checked IPTABLES and route -n and etc/networking/devices and nothing. /RANT
Hopefully Feisty will fix some of these issues. I really enjoy my Ubuntu laptop on the plane -- "What version of windows is that? You're doing so much and it doesn't lag at all"
Or medical cannabis laws in California. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Even if the federal government did get their way with the states, how would the implement this? They want the state government systems to synchronize their records with the national government. Sounds easy to the unwashed masses (Washington Bureaucrats), but in practice this is very, very difficult. I'm sure there are slashdotters on here who can speak to difficulties in linking just local governments to state systems let alone at the NATIONAL level!
I was once on a project linking a city government's records (I wont mention what kind) to the state government. Except for the fact that the city was using legacy system X running on X, and the state was on legacy Y running on Y. Oh, and don't forget the Bummsville servers which also need to integrate; and they haven't upgraded they're setup in 8 years and nobody knows how it works anymore.
I PRAY that the feds get they're way and we get to see how much of a mess it is for them to link these disparate, outdated, undocumented systems together.
It has already for some time. "Big Media" calls the phenomena of short internet videos and blurbs "infosnacking". Blogs, aggregate sites and sites like Youtube are included as sources of infosnacks.
CNN and MSNBC have both tried versions of online blogs and infosnack videos with little commercial success. A few years ago MSNBC launched its big campaign to many oohs and aahs from insiders but few people on the 'outside' paid little attention. While small internet news productions like Rocketboom took off from such content. It seems industry still hasn't caught on.
PBS did a great documentary on this called the "News Wars" - i think part 4 of 4 or 3 of 4 is where they talk about infosnacking.
Great, it's $600 cheaper, but nobody will buy it if it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
As someone who has worked with Flash since version 4 (in both a graphical and RIA capacity), the biggest stumbling blocks for Flash were/are:
1- Adobe Photoshop integration [*check!*]
2- Usefulness as a RIA application [remember the disaster that was Flash Googlemaps?]
3- Horribly broken scripting language [still an issue]
If Microsoft can compete on those points and bring something radically new to the table (say, easy 3D graphical development, quality OO scripting, etc) then they'll have an adoptable product. Otherwise, developers used to using Adobe & Flash products will look the other way.
Funny you should mention this... did you know many districts keep their admins dumb?
Back in the day we had an evil systems admin (you could call her a BOFH except she had no skills). Essentially, she was a school bus driver who knew something about Novell and so they put her in an admin role (seriously, she used to be a bus driver).
In any case, this woman forgot to set the default passwords on Novell (which were, at the time, admin:admin, admin: , user:user, etc., etc.) with essentially 'root' access. Didn't take me long before I started to leave text files on her user desktop with messages like "you need to change the admin password" and the like.
Long story short, loose lips sink ships and I bragged to my nerdish friends about it. I wasn't doing anything harmful, but they ratted me out anyway (jealous!!!) In the end the principal agreed i did nothing wrong, sort of laughed about the fact that the admin couldn't do her job, and let me off the hook.
[fast forward to the year 2006]
And I'm working at a consulting firm in an IT capacity. I learn from my mom (someone in education) that the district computer guy is probably retiring from his 120k/yr job. Knowing that I'm a shoe-in, I throw my hat in the ring. I have all sorts of ideas about how to revolutionize the learning environment through technology and would be perfect for this job.
"You'd never get hired" says my mom. Why? "They don't want someone who knows what they're doing. The last thing they want to do is highlight the problems with the infrastructure and the lag in technical skills of the students and have to spend millions to fix it."
That's right, they keep them dumb. She says this isn't just a problem in her district, but is common in school districts across the US.
I travel every week for work (~2 hour flight each way).
I originally purchased a used PSP at gamestop and two games for ~$250. I hated it - the controls were terrible, the games were substandard ports, and it was wayyyyy too bulky.
The next day I returned it. A week later, after a lot of searching, i found a DS Lite and my gaming life has been a breeze ever since. Its small, light, durable, and the games are exactly what I want.
The problem with PSP is it's trying to be a console on a portable system - it doesn't work. The DS works because it knows its audience - a quick, portable distraction that wont have you getting too involved in a game that requires a savepoint to safely exit.
I'm no Nintendo fanboy, but I have to say - in the portables arena DS wins hands down.
I went to a well known liberal arts college and received a masters in Computer Science. I ended up going to work for a consulting firm instead of taking the engineer path.
Knowing what I know now, i would have definitely applied for a games company or similar. Two of the people from my graduating class (a total of 10 computer scientists) went to work for EA (what exactly they do their, i have no idea).
In any case, i've been noticing that those with more liberal computer backgrounds tend to get picked up sooner and by more interesting companies. I think it speaks volumes when gaming companies are saying they don't want straight EE, CS, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia is a manipulative insidious organisation that's poisoning truth for profit. That's not a tin foil hat based statement. There's plenty of evidence.
I dont think there's anything sinister going on here; most of this money is probably going towards keeping the site up. There's nothing new about they're fundraising efforts, like when the server kept crashing.
In any case, i think this is a step towards legitimizing wikipedia as a valuable reference. The CD represents an error-checked version of wikipedia that doubters have been bitching about for some time.
Mind numbing boredom is what sells games. I hear the next World of Warcraft expansion will introduce 'watching paint dry' as a new profession.
Watching Paint Dry: Huck Finn's Adventure was a truly revolutionary game as a single player. I'm pretty interested to see what they do in the multiplayer version.
That was my biggest upset with Debian (I too played with it several years ago). I was always a slackware guy until Ubuntu.
/RANT
My only upset with Ubuntu is it's networking support; wireless inparticular. I have a laptop running Edgy right now whose eth0 will go up and down depending on the weather. Both eth0 and eth1 have IP addresses assigned (DHCP) and are sending packets but otherwise it appears to not work (ping throws nothing, for example). Yes, ive checked IPTABLES and route -n and etc/networking/devices and nothing.
Hopefully Feisty will fix some of these issues. I really enjoy my Ubuntu laptop on the plane -- "What version of windows is that? You're doing so much and it doesn't lag at all"
Or medical cannabis laws in California. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.
Even if the federal government did get their way with the states, how would the implement this? They want the state government systems to synchronize their records with the national government. Sounds easy to the unwashed masses (Washington Bureaucrats), but in practice this is very, very difficult. I'm sure there are slashdotters on here who can speak to difficulties in linking just local governments to state systems let alone at the NATIONAL level!
I was once on a project linking a city government's records (I wont mention what kind) to the state government. Except for the fact that the city was using legacy system X running on X, and the state was on legacy Y running on Y. Oh, and don't forget the Bummsville servers which also need to integrate; and they haven't upgraded they're setup in 8 years and nobody knows how it works anymore.
I PRAY that the feds get they're way and we get to see how much of a mess it is for them to link these disparate, outdated, undocumented systems together.
It has already for some time. "Big Media" calls the phenomena of short internet videos and blurbs "infosnacking". Blogs, aggregate sites and sites like Youtube are included as sources of infosnacks.
CNN and MSNBC have both tried versions of online blogs and infosnack videos with little commercial success. A few years ago MSNBC launched its big campaign to many oohs and aahs from insiders but few people on the 'outside' paid little attention. While small internet news productions like Rocketboom took off from such content. It seems industry still hasn't caught on.
PBS did a great documentary on this called the "News Wars" - i think part 4 of 4 or 3 of 4 is where they talk about infosnacking.
Great, it's $600 cheaper, but nobody will buy it if it doesn't bring anything new to the table.
As someone who has worked with Flash since version 4 (in both a graphical and RIA capacity), the biggest stumbling blocks for Flash were/are:
1- Adobe Photoshop integration [*check!*]
2- Usefulness as a RIA application [remember the disaster that was Flash Googlemaps?]
3- Horribly broken scripting language [still an issue]
If Microsoft can compete on those points and bring something radically new to the table (say, easy 3D graphical development, quality OO scripting, etc) then they'll have an adoptable product. Otherwise, developers used to using Adobe & Flash products will look the other way.
I'm one step closer to building my talking house... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHfVZS7I2fY&feature =PlayList&p=4013E3F37F4C8462&index=0
Come on, everyone knows the last "superhacker" died off when Zero Cool married Acid Burn.
Funny you should mention this... did you know many districts keep their admins dumb?
Back in the day we had an evil systems admin (you could call her a BOFH except she had no skills). Essentially, she was a school bus driver who knew something about Novell and so they put her in an admin role (seriously, she used to be a bus driver).
In any case, this woman forgot to set the default passwords on Novell (which were, at the time, admin:admin, admin: , user:user, etc., etc.) with essentially 'root' access. Didn't take me long before I started to leave text files on her user desktop with messages like "you need to change the admin password" and the like.
Long story short, loose lips sink ships and I bragged to my nerdish friends about it. I wasn't doing anything harmful, but they ratted me out anyway (jealous!!!) In the end the principal agreed i did nothing wrong, sort of laughed about the fact that the admin couldn't do her job, and let me off the hook.
[fast forward to the year 2006]
And I'm working at a consulting firm in an IT capacity. I learn from my mom (someone in education) that the district computer guy is probably retiring from his 120k/yr job. Knowing that I'm a shoe-in, I throw my hat in the ring. I have all sorts of ideas about how to revolutionize the learning environment through technology and would be perfect for this job.
"You'd never get hired" says my mom. Why? "They don't want someone who knows what they're doing. The last thing they want to do is highlight the problems with the infrastructure and the lag in technical skills of the students and have to spend millions to fix it."
That's right, they keep them dumb. She says this isn't just a problem in her district, but is common in school districts across the US.
I travel every week for work (~2 hour flight each way). I originally purchased a used PSP at gamestop and two games for ~$250. I hated it - the controls were terrible, the games were substandard ports, and it was wayyyyy too bulky. The next day I returned it. A week later, after a lot of searching, i found a DS Lite and my gaming life has been a breeze ever since. Its small, light, durable, and the games are exactly what I want. The problem with PSP is it's trying to be a console on a portable system - it doesn't work. The DS works because it knows its audience - a quick, portable distraction that wont have you getting too involved in a game that requires a savepoint to safely exit. I'm no Nintendo fanboy, but I have to say - in the portables arena DS wins hands down.
I went to a well known liberal arts college and received a masters in Computer Science. I ended up going to work for a consulting firm instead of taking the engineer path. Knowing what I know now, i would have definitely applied for a games company or similar. Two of the people from my graduating class (a total of 10 computer scientists) went to work for EA (what exactly they do their, i have no idea). In any case, i've been noticing that those with more liberal computer backgrounds tend to get picked up sooner and by more interesting companies. I think it speaks volumes when gaming companies are saying they don't want straight EE, CS, etc.