The problem that I have had with Wikipedia is that in editing articles on which I am a recognized expert, I have had my edits and entries entirely removed by others who "feel" that these edits were somehow inappropriate, even when I referenced those entries along with results from peer reviewed journals.
Part of the Wikipedia experience as an editor is to continuously observe an article. In this case it means reversing the reverse, mentioning in the comment that the other party is to put some explanation on the discussion page. Yes, it's tedious, stupid, a waste of time, but the persistency is necessary in the Wikipedia project. Plus, if you're lucky, there are some similar-minded editors who observe the same article and can help reversing false edits so that you don't have to do it all of the time.
Taiwan is not recognized by IIRC all except for 25 smaller countries. (There must be something in Wikipedia's Taiwan article, but I'm too lazy to read it now.) Most nations want to do business with China.
Also, the fact that they are plain text, with no markup, formatting, binary code, whatever in them means that they'll always be accessible to anyone, regardless of software or platform. And that's a good thing, too!
I know about the problems that old file formats can cause. However, I doubt that formats like PDF or JPG will ever get "lost". There's just too much information stored in them, and various free libraries available with source code which read and write them.
More books are a good thing. Having a scanned PDF version includes graphics as well, which are missing from Gutenberg ebooks. So I see this as a very positive development.
Two points I want to comment on concerning the other replies so far:
License - IMDb would be a great place to get data from, but the way they distribute their raw data at the moment is not very import-friendly. I guess they don't want to make it too easy for the "competitors". There are programs that import IMDb data into a database, but it's a tedious way. I'd prefer something ready to import into a database like.sql or.csv and something I'm allowed to use everywhere I please. When doing a TV data project from scratch today, a solid design of the data structures and the freedom to use the data everywhere should go without saying.
Wiki - I like the Wiki approach, but I'm not sure how suitable it is to collectively edit structured data. Wikipedia works great, but it's just a big text for each article. Maybe software exists to support entering database-style rows in a Wiki?
I'd like to see some numbers on how Europeans are affected by pornography first. Addiction to it, child pornography, it all exists here as well. Seems to be doing fine? Only from a distance.
I just tried it, but with larger PDFs Acrobat Reader 7 is significantly faster when stepping through pages. With FoxItReader I can watch the parts of a page render themselves... However, Acrobat Reader is slower loading. But I don't find that important.
People may be switching over to Firefox, but my site still has 55% IE users and 40% Mozilla and Firefox. And my site has primarily technical content, so I expect a higher percentage of IE on sites with content addressing the average web user.
I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore. Users benefit from faster downloads and content providers have to pay for less bandwidth. It's a win win situation (unless you break it like Blizzard).
Provider restrictions which throttle P2P down to next to nothing or forbid certain services (like BitTorrent) altogether. Alternatives are sometimes scarce or non-existent.
If anyone intends to post follow-up criticism to this post, be aware: Arguing with me will not make you right. I've already moved on. Don't waste your time.
So you are right no matter what and you want to have the last word in this. That's different from a five-year-old how?
Anyway, your long rant about stupid people behaving in a stupid way and your superiority over them doesn't touch the topic of smart people and how they interact. Small talk may prevent people from reaching Borg collective efficiency in terms of communication, but there is a lot more to it. You didn't figure that out yet, and you seem to be determined to keep it that way in the future. Good luck with that attitude!
But even previous 'liberal' Iranian governments have been putting together a sophisticated Internet filtering system to prevent their citizens from visiting 'questionable' websites and censoring dissent.
Who ever said that every country on the planet must have USA values?
Maybe the people of Iran don't want to watch the stuff we do. Does 1 person who wants to see that content have the right to tell 1,000,000 other people to put up with his crap?
Yes, that's pretty much it. The one person must be allowed to access the crap, and the million other people can just choose not to do the same thing.
You have it backwards: This is not about making people do something, it's about letting people do what they want as long as they don't get into the way of others.
And: those 'values' are not 'USA values', they are hopefully universal ones. Freedom of speech. Etcetera. We're not there yet, but we should strive to go there.
The last quote has got to be German via Babelfish.
No, the sentence structure had to be different. The German word for "used" would have to be placed at the end of the sentence: Warum wird... gebraucht?
I looked at the Limewire wish list. It seems to me that the modifications they want sometimes require changes that effect quite a few parts of the program's architecture. If someone wants to earn his dollars quickly, he'll add hacks here and there, and in the end the whole thing will be unmaintainable.
Are there any requirements for developers that go beyond "make it work"?
Do major ISPs really offer newsservers with binaries on them? I thought good binary servers were run by companies that specialize on that particular service.
Yes. But they are mostly "special offers" which are not available continuously.
Are these like Uber-Walmarts (giant department store) or like the A&P (larger than usual grocery store)?
They are discounters, but the most successful ones in Germany are quite the contrary of Walmart - they have a rather limited selection of products. It seems to me that Walmart offers about anything you can imagine.
Yes, that's one of the reasons why I find the idea of a competitor like Yahoo! compelling. "Classic Google Groups" can be accessed using one of the country TLDs like groups.google.ca, but that's not going to work forever, I guess.
I know about comp.compilers which has a website somewhere. But is there really anything else? I couldn't find it. Nothing readily available (like a tarball of a news spool directory). I'd be interested to learn about such places if they do exist.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem that I have had with Wikipedia is that in editing articles on which I am a recognized expert, I have had my edits and entries entirely removed by others who "feel" that these edits were somehow inappropriate, even when I referenced those entries along with results from peer reviewed journals.
Part of the Wikipedia experience as an editor is to continuously observe an article. In this case it means reversing the reverse, mentioning in the comment that the other party is to put some explanation on the discussion page. Yes, it's tedious, stupid, a waste of time, but the persistency is necessary in the Wikipedia project. Plus, if you're lucky, there are some similar-minded editors who observe the same article and can help reversing false edits so that you don't have to do it all of the time.
Taiwan is not recognized by IIRC all except for 25 smaller countries. (There must be something in Wikipedia's Taiwan article, but I'm too lazy to read it now.) Most nations want to do business with China.
Also, the fact that they are plain text, with no markup, formatting, binary code, whatever in them means that they'll always be accessible to anyone, regardless of software or platform. And that's a good thing, too!
:)
I know about the problems that old file formats can cause. However, I doubt that formats like PDF or JPG will ever get "lost". There's just too much information stored in them, and various free libraries available with source code which read and write them.
And if I'm wrong I won't live to see it.
More books are a good thing. Having a scanned PDF version includes graphics as well, which are missing from Gutenberg ebooks. So I see this as a very positive development.
Two points I want to comment on concerning the other replies so far:
.sql or .csv and something I'm allowed to use everywhere I please. When doing a TV data project from scratch today, a solid design of the data structures and the freedom to use the data everywhere should go without saying.
License - IMDb would be a great place to get data from, but the way they distribute their raw data at the moment is not very import-friendly. I guess they don't want to make it too easy for the "competitors". There are programs that import IMDb data into a database, but it's a tedious way. I'd prefer something ready to import into a database like
Wiki - I like the Wiki approach, but I'm not sure how suitable it is to collectively edit structured data. Wikipedia works great, but it's just a big text for each article. Maybe software exists to support entering database-style rows in a Wiki?
I'd like to see some numbers on how Europeans are affected by pornography first. Addiction to it, child pornography, it all exists here as well. Seems to be doing fine? Only from a distance.
Awsome. I didnt know they were exporting those. I wonder how high they tax. I want one.
While you're at it, also try their salmon.
I just tried it, but with larger PDFs Acrobat Reader 7 is significantly faster when stepping through pages. With FoxItReader I can watch the parts of a page render themselves... However, Acrobat Reader is slower loading. But I don't find that important.
Maybe Mozilla/Firefox could work with Google to implement this type of feedback system...
That already exists as stumbleupon.com and deli.cio.us.
Also, unlike DHTML, Java applets are also limited to a square box on the page.
No, using some Javascript you can make applets always use the complete browser window.
I get 0.9 % Opera on my tech-oriented site (50K hits per month).
People may be switching over to Firefox, but my site still has 55% IE users and 40% Mozilla and Firefox. And my site has primarily technical content, so I expect a higher percentage of IE on sites with content addressing the average web user.
I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore. Users benefit from faster downloads and content providers have to pay for less bandwidth. It's a win win situation (unless you break it like Blizzard).
Provider restrictions which throttle P2P down to next to nothing or forbid certain services (like BitTorrent) altogether. Alternatives are sometimes scarce or non-existent.
If anyone intends to post follow-up criticism to this post, be aware: Arguing with me will not make you right. I've already moved on. Don't waste your time.
So you are right no matter what and you want to have the last word in this. That's different from a five-year-old how?
Anyway, your long rant about stupid people behaving in a stupid way and your superiority over them doesn't touch the topic of smart people and how they interact. Small talk may prevent people from reaching Borg collective efficiency in terms of communication, but there is a lot more to it. You didn't figure that out yet, and you seem to be determined to keep it that way in the future. Good luck with that attitude!
But even previous 'liberal' Iranian governments have been putting together a sophisticated Internet filtering system to prevent their citizens from visiting 'questionable' websites and censoring dissent.
Who ever said that every country on the planet must have USA values?
Maybe the people of Iran don't want to watch the stuff we do. Does 1 person who wants to see that content have the right to tell 1,000,000 other people to put up with his crap?
Yes, that's pretty much it. The one person must be allowed to access the crap, and the million other people can just choose not to do the same thing.
You have it backwards: This is not about making people do something, it's about letting people do what they want as long as they don't get into the way of others.
And: those 'values' are not 'USA values', they are hopefully universal ones. Freedom of speech. Etcetera. We're not there yet, but we should strive to go there.
I'd very much like to get Google Maps Germany. Does anyone know whether that is this in the pipeline?
In my humble opinion, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin meet this criteria quite well for the years they were chosen for.
Exactly. And if the Time editors would have had anything resembling balls, Osama would have become man of the year as well.
The last quote has got to be German via Babelfish.
... gebraucht?
No, the sentence structure had to be different. The German word for "used" would have to be placed at the end of the sentence: Warum wird
The Fish can't do that. It's dumb as a brick.
I looked at the Limewire wish list. It seems to me that the modifications they want sometimes require changes that effect quite a few parts of the program's architecture. If someone wants to earn his dollars quickly, he'll add hacks here and there, and in the end the whole thing will be unmaintainable.
Are there any requirements for developers that go beyond "make it work"?
Do major ISPs really offer newsservers with binaries on them? I thought good binary servers were run by companies that specialize on that particular service.
Antarctica has .aq, but what about the north pole?
You can get a PC in the supermarket in Germany?
Yes. But they are mostly "special offers" which are not available continuously.
Are these like Uber-Walmarts (giant department store) or like the A&P (larger than usual grocery store)?
They are discounters, but the most successful ones in Germany are quite the contrary of Walmart - they have a rather limited selection of products. It seems to me that Walmart offers about anything you can imagine.
Yes, that's one of the reasons why I find the idea of a competitor like Yahoo! compelling. "Classic Google Groups" can be accessed using one of the country TLDs like groups.google.ca, but that's not going to work forever, I guess.
I know about comp.compilers which has a website somewhere. But is there really anything else? I couldn't find it. Nothing readily available (like a tarball of a news spool directory). I'd be interested to learn about such places if they do exist.
Provide a service similar to Google Groups. It can be of value even though the last 20 years are missing.
Unfortunately, not many people care about newsgroups, so this probably doesn't make business sense.