What possibly makes you think this lawsuit "won't go anywhere"?
Because it happened in the US, and it is completely legal in the US.
It won't go anywhere because there was no violation. Had it happened in the UK there would be a violation, but it didn't, it happened in the US. US law is -very- clear on this issue. Photographs of works of art in the public domain, without some sort of extra creative input, are automatically placed in the public domain. The more accurate to the original you make the picture, the less standing it has for copyright protection.
For example, in the US a picture of the Mona Lisa that is haphazardly taken - cockeyed and includes the frame with the light hitting it at a terrible angle - would land squarely in the realm of copyright. Shitty as it may be, it is original and therefore copyrightable. However, a picture that is painstakingly taken to include the picture and nothing else, with no strange light angles - trying with great professionalism and care to produce the most accurate copy possible - lands squarely in the realm of public domain.
These pictures are the second type. They were downloaded legally from the UK servers, and posted legally to the US servers. They have literally no legal standing in either country - though they may be able to get something through the UK system, I'm not sure. In which case, how do they enforce it? They don't have legal standing in the US to do that either.
I doubt it would be a big enough issue for the UK to deny him access unless he pays - it's a civil matter after all - the only way this guy is affected is if he moves to the UK at some point, then they could collect. Assuming they can sue someone in the UK for what someone in another country did in another country. You generally have to sue in the location the offense occured. Courts don't adjudicate law for an area they have no jurisdiction unless a prior agreement between parties places it in their jurisdiction, or interests of a fair trial force a relocation. It's kinda bad practice otherwise, the principle of which could cause some serious diplomatic issues.
So, it won't go anywhere unless the guy decides to cooperate with the NPG.
Which by the way, if they are offering the same photographs at lower resolution, I think that's fair and the guy should accept that - particularly if he can put a link to the higher resolution images (dunno about wikimedia policy on that). Then it is win-win. But by no means does he have to, he could stick it to them if he wanted.
The US is considered an ass because it generally fights for itself and for its citizens. That goes both ways. If other countries are going to roll over and be good little doggies, maybe they don't mind being treated as such?
Anyway, there is 0 chance that anybody will be extradited over this - it isn't even criminal and the sure as HELL won't extradite a US citizen to another country unless they have performed anything short of terrorism or something on a similar scale. If they somehow manage to go to court in the US over this, guess what? It's legal in the US. The NPG even admits that.
Don't complain about the US "imposing societal ideals". If other countries accept them, they obviously don't care enough about their own ideals. The tables are not turned here, this will go absolutely nowhere in the US.
Pot, meet Kettle. He's black, sure, but so are you.
The user who uploaded the pictures and servers the pictures were uploaded to are in the US. UK law does not apply to US citizens performing actions in the US that are legal in the US. The downloads were legal, the postings were legal. In the US those images are public domain. It's going to be very hard for the NPG to apply UK law to a US citizen who has done nothing illegal in either the UK or the US. The actions the NPG claims are illegal were not performed in the UK. They were performed in the US. Where it is legal.
Clear?
RTFS more carefully next time before you chastize someone for not paying attention. It makes you look bad.
You can also, as a photographer, photograph the exhibits. You can also get permission to photograph the exhibits professionally, using tripods and lights -- you just need to be not using them for commercial purposes to do so for free.
Except for, you know, the fact that NPG museums don't allow photographs of any kind.
But other than that sure! You're free to photograph!
In the US such photos are not copyrighted, and so the only reason for a museum - private or otherwise - to deny photography is in the interest of protecting the experience for other visitors. In the UK such images ARE copyrighted, so there is a slight monetary incentive to protect said copyright - state run or no. Money is money, museums have to beg for funding. If they can get a little bit by selling postcards and catalogues and charging every time someone uses an image they produced they will. And if they are the only ones who can produce those images, the money generated could probably equal several staff member's salaries. Not having it could mean making do without a body, which is a big deal in those types of places.
And in the US, where the supposed violation took place, copying and posting these pictures does not violate copyright law. Copyright may have been broken if it were in GB, but it wasn't in GB, it was in the US and it wasn't broken here.
The UK can have copyright here, and it will be honored according to US law, but it will NOT be honored according to British law.
It was apparently a google search update that tripped the warning. A commenter on the guy's own page got the same popup and let the change go through, just to see what was going on. Lo and behold, it was Google and nothing else.
If you look just below the "search" service the author points out, there is a "gupdate" service that ran right before it. That is Google update, and that is what triggered the popup.
This isn't some insidious new attack by M$, it's a dumbass wannabe tech journalist who couldn't be bothered to do an ounce of research, he just wanted to jump on the "bash microsoft" bandwagon. Google's search change alert is just a bit cautious, and triggers on a GOOGLE search update.
Microsoft knows better than to do something like this, they'll use all sorts of dirty tricks, but something like this would land them in hot water before you can say "Bing".
The author of this article should repeat my sig to himself in the mirror three times daily. That might help him out a bit.
Specifically, Acetaminophen causes nausea and vomiting in large doses.
500mg of Acetaminophen is a large dose.
Don't speak generally when the person you are replying to is speaking specifically. Not all drugs are created equal and they don't have the same side effects. They may have similar side effects, but they tend to vary in type and potency.
Cletus can't provide enough assurances he won't break things in the extraction, and we currently don't have the technology to create a vacuum big enough that also replicates the conditions of space.
There is nothing that should ever limit critical thinking to "scientists only".
Without thinking critically, how the hell is "average Joe" supposed to know which scientists, or journals, or media outlets are credible?
Scientists should apply some critical thinking to their own specific field to determine the validity of a claim, sure, and the only people we should be listening to are people in the field qualified to make such judgements and have actually taken the time to evaluate the claims being made. A scientist who comes out and says "This can never happen because of x, y, and z" is just as worthless as joe blo off the street making the same claim if the scientist never bothers to do any sort of analysis. Phrased differently, however, that same scientist can say almost the same thing and be usefull. If he says "Don't believe it until it is thoroughly tested, as it is currently thought to be impossible because of x, y, and z" then we laypeople know that it is very unlikely to be true, and we are less likely to be fooled.
Lay people cannot be expected to evaluate new science on their own, obviously. But they are more than qualified to evaluate the quality of the sources of their information and set their expectations from there. A press release for a new scientific breakthrough, that hasn't also been published in a number of journals for review, should be an immediate red flag. I'd personally give the average Joe a "C" at best for blanketly rejecting new science outright, the only thing that hurts progress more is when the average Joe accepts new science without any verification. In either case the average Joe is susceptable to fast talk and big words if he isn't thinking critically as a matter of course.
The energy goes up exponentially along with the magnitude, which goes up logarithmically. So, a 5 is 10 times more powerful than a 4, but releases 30 times the energy. They tend to be wider and move more earth, which accounts for the extra energy released.
It matters what exactly you are measuring when you describe your scale, which is why there is disparity there. What's fun is that if you bump the magnitude up another 0.2 on the richter scale you triple the energy released. A 5.2 on the richter scale releases about 90 times the energy of a 4.0. Fun stuff eh?
Up in Alaska we get them as well, but I think we get them in smaller numbers with greater magnitude. I say I think, because the last 5 or 6 we've had that I know of, I didn't feel. I usually sleep through them.
If you want a big quake though, take a look at the 1964 earthquake. It's peak magnitude was more than 10 times as powerful as the 1906 San Francisco quake, it released 90 times more energy, it lasted for 6 weeks, and in the first day alone had 11 aftershocks that were about double the 1906 quake. It destroyed Anchorage, but fortunately it was not a very big town yet. Tsunamis created by the quake killed people in Oregon and California, and it is still the third largest quake on record.
We've had a few big ones since, in the 6's and 7's, but nothing that big.
We need decent freakin' public transportation in this country. In Europe, it's everywhere. Here, you have to live in a "major" city and even then it's shaky at best.
Have you actually looked at a European vs an American city? Even the small ones are a lot more compact than American cities, lending themselves well to mass transit. Hell you can bike very effectively most anywhere in most European cities, whereas my city is about 60 miles across (total, main area is maybe 20). That's a lot of biking if you live across town, and a lot of stops/changes to make if you take mass transit. Mass transit is decent in my city, but only to the main 20'ish square mile area. Outside of that, good luck.
American cities and European cities grew up in different eras, and so are built differently. The American cities with the best mass transit also tend to be the oldest, and more tightly packed than younger cities.
Loans to people/companies who can actually pay them back yield a lot of money. Average return on a 15 year mortgage, for example, is about double. It's also frontloaded, so they make most of the profit by year 10 and all that is left is the principal that needs to be paid back.
Corporate loans work similarly, so if Company X pays back a 1 billion dollar loan in 10 years, the loaner has made a profit of probably around 50-75%.
That's a whole lot different than a grant, in which case the money is free so long as it is used for the specific purpose it was granted for.
Loans are a good thing as long as there is a good reassurance that the loan will be paid back. I don't mind a loan to Nissan, since they have a number of US factories and have a very solid business. That means more jobs and money for the US.
Loans should NOT be given to US companies that look like they might fail. That's what got the mortgage industry into trouble and helped cause this crisis in the first place. Propping up a failing business is bad practice, but helping a viable business become more viable and more profitable is good practice, especially when you can get a good return on your investment. All we should care about when granting these loans are two things: Will it create more lasting jobs in the US, and will we get are money back and then some. If we start fudging the second one just because it is a US based company, then we'll be headed for more heartache.
Of course, this kind of use of Wikipedia is only really justified for things that one is in a position to verify oneself, like math.
That's poppycock. You don't need to be an expert in anything to verify a wikipedia article. Basic research, even simply checking the wikipedia article's sources, will tell you if this is something that is consistantly agreed upon, or if it is somewhat contentious. That's why Wikipedia cites sources!
The "Wikipedia is not a valid source, ever" idiocy comes from people who misuse wikipedia. These same people would misuse the Encyclopedia Brittanica or ANY academic research comprised of collecting and condensing data from multiple sources. Most academic research is done exactly the same way Wikipedia articles are, but being academic they tend to be more thorough, more rigorously investigated, and more directed to their target audience.
In order to judge the quality of research, you must judge the quality of the sources. By definition, Wikipedia articles aught to be lower on the totem pole (high school research paper level stuff), but there is plenty of research in academia that is hogwash, and there are also many very solid and verifiably true Wikipedia articles.
Basically, if you're going to use a research article of any kind (and Wikipedia articles are research articles by definition), you must verify that article as appropriate to your subject matter and purpose. If all you need is some basic information about a subject, Wikipedia is great without bothering sources. For something more specific and technical, you should verify the sources of the Wikipedia article. For something that must stand up to rigorous investigation, you probably shouldn't use Wikipedia for anything more than a place to find sources, and you should perform the analysis of the source yourself.
Your math example is a good example of the latter - if you want to actually use the information in the article for something that will be scruitinized OR must be made to work correctly, you should perform your own verification. If you're just looking for cool maths, that's not necessary (unless you really want to see it in action:)).
Wikipedia at face value is just as valid as a source as any other collection of research. Wikipedia takes information from sources and condenses and analyses them for the reader, just like any other encyclopedia. It is perfectly viable as a quality source, as long as you take into account the quality of the sources cited by each encyclopedic article.
For example, if you are writing a "general knowledge" sort of essay/book/whatever, directly sourcing Wikipedia is probably fine unless the cited sources of the wikipedia article are complete hogwash. Usually Wikipedia itself notes these sorts of issues, but you should at least peruse them yourself.
However, if you are conducting academic research, Wikipedia is probably at best going to give you a basic understanding of the subject and point you in the direction of some research sources. It should probably not be used as a source itself. There are, however, a few very high quality editors in some of the subjects, so even this shouldn't be completely discounted.
It sounds like Scott Adams used the Wikipedia snippets primarily as the former, in sidebars as general clarifications for the uninformed - something encyclopedias are very, very good at. It would be perfectly acceptable to source Wikipedia on this, especially if Wikipedia's sources are confusing compared to the article.
Basically, anything can be a valid source - hell you could source a comic strip and it would be valid. What matters is your purpose, how you use the sourced information, and the quality of the source you are using. This goes for ALL forms of research. Nothing should be discounted simply because of where it comes from, but on the other hand nothing should be accepted for no reason other than the source.
Actually, since we're getting technical and not practical, all energy is free. You can't use it up. It simply moves from a state of high concentration (the highest being matter itself, in a sense) to low concentration. When energy is at a very low concentration, it is unuseable. Since we actually use energy by converting it to different forms, it is as though the energy is used up.
Technically, if you could eliminate all waste in a machine, and then re-capture the energy with 100% efficiency, you would have a perpetual motion machine. Any machine has this potential.
Here's the rub, in order to do any work with the machine, you must move energy out of the system and keep it out of the system. The only way to pull the energy back into the system in order to maintain the energy balance is to "undo" the work you did. This makes perpetual motion machines of any time completely worthless for any type of actual work in the sense of changing things the way we want to. You cannot "power" anything with a perpetual motion machine. At best you can get a machine that maximizes the energy you put into it, which would be very very cool.
For example, gasoline. Rough figures off the top of my head are we extract about 75% of chemical energy out of gasoline and put about 30% to work moving cars. If we were able to bump both numbers to 100%, the mpg of a given vehicle would bump up by 4-5 times, making even extremely inefficient vehicles run at 40-50mpg, and small cars run at 150mpg+. That would be cool. It's also impossible for other reasons, but that's technical maximum from an energy conversion standpoint.
Critical thinking doesn't allow you to "know" anything. If you are a critical thinker, you simply believe X is true because all current evidence suggest it is true. The further away from "all" the current evidence is for a theory, the weaker a critical thinker's belief in something should be.
For example, if there are three competing theories, with one of them looking like the more plausible, a critical thinker will pick the more plausible as best, but not with any amount of certainty. He will be completely willing to re-asses the theories when new data shows another as more favorable.
When a new theory comes out that has 40 years of solid physics saying that it is impossible, it automatically goes in to the "do not believe this catagory". However, a critical thinker will be open to new evidence that proves 40 years of physics wrong. It's just going to have to be substantial to make the switch.
A good critical thinker never thinks "this is the way things are, and the way they will always be". He thinks "This is almost certainly how it is, but who knows? Things change."
In order to think critically, you must be continuously re-evaluating your own ideas, as well as everything you hear. You don't write things off immediately, you take a stance of "sounds interesting, but I'm not ready to believe it yet" for just about everything. If evidence and experience verify what someone tells you, or what you have observed, you believe it. But when new evidence comes out, you must immediately re-evaluate your belief to see if the new data will change your belief.
In this way, when someone comes up with a new "free energy" scheme, they should never be written off immediately. However, if their data falls into the realm of what has already been thoroughly disproven, you should definitely not jump on their bandwagon, so to speak, until they have thoroughly proven that this is new science.
Slashdot Mirror
What possibly makes you think this lawsuit "won't go anywhere"?
Because it happened in the US, and it is completely legal in the US.
It won't go anywhere because there was no violation. Had it happened in the UK there would be a violation, but it didn't, it happened in the US. US law is -very- clear on this issue. Photographs of works of art in the public domain, without some sort of extra creative input, are automatically placed in the public domain. The more accurate to the original you make the picture, the less standing it has for copyright protection.
For example, in the US a picture of the Mona Lisa that is haphazardly taken - cockeyed and includes the frame with the light hitting it at a terrible angle - would land squarely in the realm of copyright. Shitty as it may be, it is original and therefore copyrightable. However, a picture that is painstakingly taken to include the picture and nothing else, with no strange light angles - trying with great professionalism and care to produce the most accurate copy possible - lands squarely in the realm of public domain.
These pictures are the second type. They were downloaded legally from the UK servers, and posted legally to the US servers. They have literally no legal standing in either country - though they may be able to get something through the UK system, I'm not sure. In which case, how do they enforce it? They don't have legal standing in the US to do that either.
I doubt it would be a big enough issue for the UK to deny him access unless he pays - it's a civil matter after all - the only way this guy is affected is if he moves to the UK at some point, then they could collect. Assuming they can sue someone in the UK for what someone in another country did in another country. You generally have to sue in the location the offense occured. Courts don't adjudicate law for an area they have no jurisdiction unless a prior agreement between parties places it in their jurisdiction, or interests of a fair trial force a relocation. It's kinda bad practice otherwise, the principle of which could cause some serious diplomatic issues.
So, it won't go anywhere unless the guy decides to cooperate with the NPG.
Which by the way, if they are offering the same photographs at lower resolution, I think that's fair and the guy should accept that - particularly if he can put a link to the higher resolution images (dunno about wikimedia policy on that). Then it is win-win. But by no means does he have to, he could stick it to them if he wanted.
Except that it won't fly in the US.
The US is considered an ass because it generally fights for itself and for its citizens. That goes both ways. If other countries are going to roll over and be good little doggies, maybe they don't mind being treated as such?
Anyway, there is 0 chance that anybody will be extradited over this - it isn't even criminal and the sure as HELL won't extradite a US citizen to another country unless they have performed anything short of terrorism or something on a similar scale. If they somehow manage to go to court in the US over this, guess what? It's legal in the US. The NPG even admits that.
Don't complain about the US "imposing societal ideals". If other countries accept them, they obviously don't care enough about their own ideals. The tables are not turned here, this will go absolutely nowhere in the US.
Pot, meet Kettle. He's black, sure, but so are you.
The user who uploaded the pictures and servers the pictures were uploaded to are in the US. UK law does not apply to US citizens performing actions in the US that are legal in the US. The downloads were legal, the postings were legal. In the US those images are public domain. It's going to be very hard for the NPG to apply UK law to a US citizen who has done nothing illegal in either the UK or the US. The actions the NPG claims are illegal were not performed in the UK. They were performed in the US. Where it is legal.
Clear?
RTFS more carefully next time before you chastize someone for not paying attention. It makes you look bad.
You can also, as a photographer, photograph the exhibits. You can also get permission to photograph the exhibits professionally, using tripods and lights -- you just need to be not using them for commercial purposes to do so for free.
Except for, you know, the fact that NPG museums don't allow photographs of any kind.
But other than that sure! You're free to photograph!
In the US such photos are not copyrighted, and so the only reason for a museum - private or otherwise - to deny photography is in the interest of protecting the experience for other visitors. In the UK such images ARE copyrighted, so there is a slight monetary incentive to protect said copyright - state run or no. Money is money, museums have to beg for funding. If they can get a little bit by selling postcards and catalogues and charging every time someone uses an image they produced they will. And if they are the only ones who can produce those images, the money generated could probably equal several staff member's salaries. Not having it could mean making do without a body, which is a big deal in those types of places.
And in the US, where the supposed violation took place, copying and posting these pictures does not violate copyright law. Copyright may have been broken if it were in GB, but it wasn't in GB, it was in the US and it wasn't broken here.
The UK can have copyright here, and it will be honored according to US law, but it will NOT be honored according to British law.
But he'll never be able to set foot in the U.K. again.
I doubt it would be that serious for a civil suit. Criminal maybe, but I'd doubt that this would rate high enough to warrant banishment.
IF they were able to figure out that he showed up and owed money in the short span of a vacation, I'd be impressed.
But who knows? Them Brits are kinda crazy. :)
How so? The UK has no power to enforce a lawsuit in the US.
Seriously, what are they going to do? Fine him if he ever goes to England?
It was apparently a google search update that tripped the warning. A commenter on the guy's own page got the same popup and let the change go through, just to see what was going on. Lo and behold, it was Google and nothing else.
If you look just below the "search" service the author points out, there is a "gupdate" service that ran right before it. That is Google update, and that is what triggered the popup.
This isn't some insidious new attack by M$, it's a dumbass wannabe tech journalist who couldn't be bothered to do an ounce of research, he just wanted to jump on the "bash microsoft" bandwagon. Google's search change alert is just a bit cautious, and triggers on a GOOGLE search update.
Microsoft knows better than to do something like this, they'll use all sorts of dirty tricks, but something like this would land them in hot water before you can say "Bing".
The author of this article should repeat my sig to himself in the mirror three times daily. That might help him out a bit.
Acetamiophen's two main side effects are nausea and a rash. It generally takes a lot to get hit with them, but 500mg is a lot.
Specifically, Acetaminophen causes nausea and vomiting in large doses.
500mg of Acetaminophen is a large dose.
Don't speak generally when the person you are replying to is speaking specifically. Not all drugs are created equal and they don't have the same side effects. They may have similar side effects, but they tend to vary in type and potency.
Apparently, that's just as insightful!
You must be new here.
I'd go with option C: warp field bubble.
Cletus can't provide enough assurances he won't break things in the extraction, and we currently don't have the technology to create a vacuum big enough that also replicates the conditions of space.
There is nothing that should ever limit critical thinking to "scientists only".
Without thinking critically, how the hell is "average Joe" supposed to know which scientists, or journals, or media outlets are credible?
Scientists should apply some critical thinking to their own specific field to determine the validity of a claim, sure, and the only people we should be listening to are people in the field qualified to make such judgements and have actually taken the time to evaluate the claims being made. A scientist who comes out and says "This can never happen because of x, y, and z" is just as worthless as joe blo off the street making the same claim if the scientist never bothers to do any sort of analysis. Phrased differently, however, that same scientist can say almost the same thing and be usefull. If he says "Don't believe it until it is thoroughly tested, as it is currently thought to be impossible because of x, y, and z" then we laypeople know that it is very unlikely to be true, and we are less likely to be fooled.
Lay people cannot be expected to evaluate new science on their own, obviously. But they are more than qualified to evaluate the quality of the sources of their information and set their expectations from there. A press release for a new scientific breakthrough, that hasn't also been published in a number of journals for review, should be an immediate red flag. I'd personally give the average Joe a "C" at best for blanketly rejecting new science outright, the only thing that hurts progress more is when the average Joe accepts new science without any verification. In either case the average Joe is susceptable to fast talk and big words if he isn't thinking critically as a matter of course.
The energy goes up exponentially along with the magnitude, which goes up logarithmically. So, a 5 is 10 times more powerful than a 4, but releases 30 times the energy. They tend to be wider and move more earth, which accounts for the extra energy released.
It matters what exactly you are measuring when you describe your scale, which is why there is disparity there. What's fun is that if you bump the magnitude up another 0.2 on the richter scale you triple the energy released. A 5.2 on the richter scale releases about 90 times the energy of a 4.0. Fun stuff eh?
Up in Alaska we get them as well, but I think we get them in smaller numbers with greater magnitude. I say I think, because the last 5 or 6 we've had that I know of, I didn't feel. I usually sleep through them.
If you want a big quake though, take a look at the 1964 earthquake. It's peak magnitude was more than 10 times as powerful as the 1906 San Francisco quake, it released 90 times more energy, it lasted for 6 weeks, and in the first day alone had 11 aftershocks that were about double the 1906 quake. It destroyed Anchorage, but fortunately it was not a very big town yet. Tsunamis created by the quake killed people in Oregon and California, and it is still the third largest quake on record.
We've had a few big ones since, in the 6's and 7's, but nothing that big.
We need decent freakin' public transportation in this country. In Europe, it's everywhere. Here, you have to live in a "major" city and even then it's shaky at best.
Have you actually looked at a European vs an American city? Even the small ones are a lot more compact than American cities, lending themselves well to mass transit. Hell you can bike very effectively most anywhere in most European cities, whereas my city is about 60 miles across (total, main area is maybe 20). That's a lot of biking if you live across town, and a lot of stops/changes to make if you take mass transit. Mass transit is decent in my city, but only to the main 20'ish square mile area. Outside of that, good luck.
American cities and European cities grew up in different eras, and so are built differently. The American cities with the best mass transit also tend to be the oldest, and more tightly packed than younger cities.
Loans to people/companies who can actually pay them back yield a lot of money. Average return on a 15 year mortgage, for example, is about double. It's also frontloaded, so they make most of the profit by year 10 and all that is left is the principal that needs to be paid back.
Corporate loans work similarly, so if Company X pays back a 1 billion dollar loan in 10 years, the loaner has made a profit of probably around 50-75%.
That's a whole lot different than a grant, in which case the money is free so long as it is used for the specific purpose it was granted for.
Loans are a good thing as long as there is a good reassurance that the loan will be paid back. I don't mind a loan to Nissan, since they have a number of US factories and have a very solid business. That means more jobs and money for the US.
Loans should NOT be given to US companies that look like they might fail. That's what got the mortgage industry into trouble and helped cause this crisis in the first place. Propping up a failing business is bad practice, but helping a viable business become more viable and more profitable is good practice, especially when you can get a good return on your investment. All we should care about when granting these loans are two things: Will it create more lasting jobs in the US, and will we get are money back and then some. If we start fudging the second one just because it is a US based company, then we'll be headed for more heartache.
Of course, this kind of use of Wikipedia is only really justified for things that one is in a position to verify oneself, like math.
That's poppycock. You don't need to be an expert in anything to verify a wikipedia article. Basic research, even simply checking the wikipedia article's sources, will tell you if this is something that is consistantly agreed upon, or if it is somewhat contentious. That's why Wikipedia cites sources!
The "Wikipedia is not a valid source, ever" idiocy comes from people who misuse wikipedia. These same people would misuse the Encyclopedia Brittanica or ANY academic research comprised of collecting and condensing data from multiple sources. Most academic research is done exactly the same way Wikipedia articles are, but being academic they tend to be more thorough, more rigorously investigated, and more directed to their target audience.
In order to judge the quality of research, you must judge the quality of the sources. By definition, Wikipedia articles aught to be lower on the totem pole (high school research paper level stuff), but there is plenty of research in academia that is hogwash, and there are also many very solid and verifiably true Wikipedia articles.
Basically, if you're going to use a research article of any kind (and Wikipedia articles are research articles by definition), you must verify that article as appropriate to your subject matter and purpose. If all you need is some basic information about a subject, Wikipedia is great without bothering sources. For something more specific and technical, you should verify the sources of the Wikipedia article. For something that must stand up to rigorous investigation, you probably shouldn't use Wikipedia for anything more than a place to find sources, and you should perform the analysis of the source yourself.
Your math example is a good example of the latter - if you want to actually use the information in the article for something that will be scruitinized OR must be made to work correctly, you should perform your own verification. If you're just looking for cool maths, that's not necessary (unless you really want to see it in action :)).
Wikipedia at face value is just as valid as a source as any other collection of research. Wikipedia takes information from sources and condenses and analyses them for the reader, just like any other encyclopedia. It is perfectly viable as a quality source, as long as you take into account the quality of the sources cited by each encyclopedic article.
For example, if you are writing a "general knowledge" sort of essay/book/whatever, directly sourcing Wikipedia is probably fine unless the cited sources of the wikipedia article are complete hogwash. Usually Wikipedia itself notes these sorts of issues, but you should at least peruse them yourself.
However, if you are conducting academic research, Wikipedia is probably at best going to give you a basic understanding of the subject and point you in the direction of some research sources. It should probably not be used as a source itself. There are, however, a few very high quality editors in some of the subjects, so even this shouldn't be completely discounted.
It sounds like Scott Adams used the Wikipedia snippets primarily as the former, in sidebars as general clarifications for the uninformed - something encyclopedias are very, very good at. It would be perfectly acceptable to source Wikipedia on this, especially if Wikipedia's sources are confusing compared to the article.
Basically, anything can be a valid source - hell you could source a comic strip and it would be valid. What matters is your purpose, how you use the sourced information, and the quality of the source you are using. This goes for ALL forms of research. Nothing should be discounted simply because of where it comes from, but on the other hand nothing should be accepted for no reason other than the source.
I have no idea why I said "perpetual motion machines of any time", it should of course be "of any kind".
Sorreh.
Actually, since we're getting technical and not practical, all energy is free. You can't use it up. It simply moves from a state of high concentration (the highest being matter itself, in a sense) to low concentration. When energy is at a very low concentration, it is unuseable. Since we actually use energy by converting it to different forms, it is as though the energy is used up.
Technically, if you could eliminate all waste in a machine, and then re-capture the energy with 100% efficiency, you would have a perpetual motion machine. Any machine has this potential.
Here's the rub, in order to do any work with the machine, you must move energy out of the system and keep it out of the system. The only way to pull the energy back into the system in order to maintain the energy balance is to "undo" the work you did. This makes perpetual motion machines of any time completely worthless for any type of actual work in the sense of changing things the way we want to. You cannot "power" anything with a perpetual motion machine. At best you can get a machine that maximizes the energy you put into it, which would be very very cool.
For example, gasoline. Rough figures off the top of my head are we extract about 75% of chemical energy out of gasoline and put about 30% to work moving cars. If we were able to bump both numbers to 100%, the mpg of a given vehicle would bump up by 4-5 times, making even extremely inefficient vehicles run at 40-50mpg, and small cars run at 150mpg+. That would be cool. It's also impossible for other reasons, but that's technical maximum from an energy conversion standpoint.
Mod parent up!
Critical thinking doesn't allow you to "know" anything. If you are a critical thinker, you simply believe X is true because all current evidence suggest it is true. The further away from "all" the current evidence is for a theory, the weaker a critical thinker's belief in something should be.
For example, if there are three competing theories, with one of them looking like the more plausible, a critical thinker will pick the more plausible as best, but not with any amount of certainty. He will be completely willing to re-asses the theories when new data shows another as more favorable.
When a new theory comes out that has 40 years of solid physics saying that it is impossible, it automatically goes in to the "do not believe this catagory". However, a critical thinker will be open to new evidence that proves 40 years of physics wrong. It's just going to have to be substantial to make the switch.
A good critical thinker never thinks "this is the way things are, and the way they will always be". He thinks "This is almost certainly how it is, but who knows? Things change."
That last bit is key.
In order to think critically, you must be continuously re-evaluating your own ideas, as well as everything you hear. You don't write things off immediately, you take a stance of "sounds interesting, but I'm not ready to believe it yet" for just about everything. If evidence and experience verify what someone tells you, or what you have observed, you believe it. But when new evidence comes out, you must immediately re-evaluate your belief to see if the new data will change your belief.
In this way, when someone comes up with a new "free energy" scheme, they should never be written off immediately. However, if their data falls into the realm of what has already been thoroughly disproven, you should definitely not jump on their bandwagon, so to speak, until they have thoroughly proven that this is new science.
I have not laughed so hard at anything on TV in a long, long time.
John Hodgman is now officially my hero. The extended Dune references were just brilliant. I'm gonna go hug my PC now.
BTW, who here was able to answer the Dune quiz off the top of your head? I did. :D