Most of the people who attack Wikipedia for being deletionist don't understand its purpose: Wikipedia seeks to be a reliable source of information before it seeks to be a complete source of information.
Which has to be one of the most handwaving-and-smokescreen lines of doublethink bullshit I've ever read. Being deletionist does nothing to improve reliability.
Just five years ago Wikipedia was considered somewhat a joke because it contained so much misinformation and unreliable information.
In many place, it still has that reputation - usually with "bad and/or muddled writing" added.
This story is surprising. Why does the military buy critical electronic components from minor distributors?
The military spends billions of dollars and has the money to buy directly from known, reputable firms like AMD, Siemens, Mitsubishi, NEC, Toshiba, etc.
Because Congress has written purchasing rules for the Federal Government that give preference to small and minority owned businesses. The same rules also give preference to buying the parts as cheaply as possible.
The result is, when you are buying small quantities and/or unusual parts, you end up dealing with middlemen and minor distributors. The big guys are rarely interested in anything other than big and/or multi year purchase commitments.
Why is the military dealing with relatively unknown distributors of suspicious origin? This story is fishy.
Having been on both ends of the process (both as a purchaser for the Navy and working for a small electronics dealer who sold to Navy), I assure you there's nothing fishy at all about the story. When you're a buyer, if the price is right and the paperwork appears in order, you have no choice but to buy from the minor and unknown. You haven't the authority, or the time, to investigate.
Regarding your 'honeypot' theory, I suspect you've been reading too much Clancy or watching too much NCIS.:):)
And if you think equipment is tested to the extreme on a tin can or bird farm - step aboard a submarine.
I shudder to think what might happen if these chips were installed in, say, the atmosphere control system. Or the ballast and trim system controls. It wouldn't take much, the margin is razor thin down there.
Then on top of that, the world of scholarship doesn't stand still - new things about historical topics are routinely discovered.
Remember, you are not allowed to post "original research".
Did you actually read what I wrote? I didn't mention original research, implicitly or explicitly, anywhere.
I for one would prefer that the Wiki contained the most cutting edge information, but I suppose they don't want something posted that may later turn out to be premature.
Huh? What does this have to do with anything? There's no way to judge, in advance, what new research may at some uncertain future date be shown to be wrong. The advantage of an electronic encyclopedia is that it is agile, editable, and by not being bound by the limits of a hardcopy - capable of holding multiple points of view.
* reverting vandalism
* patiently explaining to every newbie who wanders by why their edit is wrong, or inappropriate
* enduring zombie edit wars (they won't stay dead...)
all the while remembering that they aren't "your" pages, and that all you can do is make your best evidence-based case and hope that other agree with it...
It's fascinating, and telling, that you fail to include "examine the new edit for quality" or any other positive statement on your list. You appear predisposed to revert.
all the while remembering that they aren't "your" pages, and that all you can do is make your best evidence-based case and hope that other agree with it...
From your 'to do' list above, it's abundantly obvious that you failed to remember that - as your 'to do' list is nothing but a list of ways to keep the article preserved in amber.
You illustrates precisely why people are leaving in record droves.
Besides, if an article was up for deletion 3 times and ultimately was deleted, it had some serious issues.
If you define "random fucktards who keep pushing against the consensus until they wear out the article's defenders and supporters" as "serious issues", then yeah. But personally, I don't generally count trolls with time on their hands to wear down supporters as prima facie evidence that the article had serious issues.
In all those months that passed, a single reliable source would have been enough to squash any deletion nominations right away. Why didn't you just add one?
So long as you don't come to the attention of a serious troll or deletionist and his clique, yes - reliable sources are adequate. But if you do, heaven help you - as you often find yourself wearing nothing but Speedo's in the middle of a thermonuclear blast.
All of a sudden humans who knew things outside the realms of academia were lesser again, and people who knew how to make a citation were greater, even if they didn't understand what they were citing.
I myself stopped participating after having an extended argument related to a minor edit I made, but the other guy had a citation. While I had real world experience on the issue and the other guy didn't, he had the citation. When I finally got the book he cited through inter-library loan, it turned out he had completely misunderstood the text.
I also quit after an extended argument over citations.
His citation was to a fanciful coffee table reference book published before the system in question was declassified, and which was widely cited elsewhere on the web. My citation was to a professional academic analysis written a decade after the system was declassified, but which existed only in a few thousand hard copies. (Damm thing cost me nearly $100.00, in comparison his was usually found in $10 bins around Christmas time. At least that's where I got my copy of it.) In addition I had actually worked on the system in question.
The powers that be decided than since he could point to places on the web that cited his citation - it was obviously more correct than mine.
You forgot one important factor - Wikipedia the RPG going into open beta. When newbies are numbed by the maze of rules (many contradictory, many obscure) and are repeatedly ganked as they cross out of the starting zone... They aren't likely to hang around. The outright hostility of the upper level players to any not in their clique leads to a hostile environment for those that do stay. And lastly, the willingness of the GM's to stand behind those that lie, cheat, and steal takes it's toll on the few that remain.
How much more can we write about Louis Pasteur or the Treaty of Worms or Heilongjiang? Wikipedia has had a ton of stuff poured into it and doesn't really need new contributors.
OTOH - I chanced to visit the article for LHC@Home the other day, and found it to be three years out of date. And really, that was only noticeable for the extreme length it was out of date... Almost daily I find articles out of date anywhere from a couple of months, to over a year. (TV series without info on the new season, sports teams whose coverage isn't current, bands listed as 'going on tour in Summer 2008'. Etc. etc..)
That's not to mention the numerous articles I visit, when not out of date, that have confusing introduction, information duplicated in multiple places, poor organization, etc..
Then on top of that, the world of scholarship doesn't stand still - new things about historical topics are routinely discovered.
Wikipedia is far from 'finished', it's not even close.
Advertising on the netbook itself could not cover it, perhaps, but remember what Google are trying to do here is break on the desktop; if they make a loss getting their netbooks into peoples homes (and their lives) then they are getting more desktop users by default (because if you are keeping your documents on google docs, then you will still use it when you boot a windows machine). They can make the numbers work if they are banking on increasing their userbase elsewhere.
That sounds suspiciously like Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22... "I lose money on every sale, but I make it up in volume!".
If Google can get a large enough userbase on their cloud applications to break the MS Office monopoly, then suddenly the reason 95% of the worlds desktop computers run Windows evaporates.
And suddenly a Microsoft monopoly is replaced by a Google monopoly. Pardon me for not regarding this as the Second Coming.
Just make buttons that have a touch screen on them, thus you still have the scroll-ability and versatility of a touch screen, combined with the tacticle feedback of buttons when you want things to function like a button...
Heck, we had something like this when I was in the Navy. Buttons that actually contained something like a miniature slide projector* that could display multiple messages. I know these were first used in the 88/0 system which was first deployed in the late 60's, and they may even be older.
The Shuttle uses a system where the buttons ring the screen, and each button's function is displayed onscreen next to the button. ISTR the Navy had systems that operated in the same general manner as early as the late 70's. (I didn't work with any of those systems, just saw them at a distance.)
Given how small LCD screens are getting now a days, you could do all manner of interesting things.
*You had multiple lamps and a system of films with the messages on them, masks, and 'light pipes' so that only one message/image was displayed when the appropriate light was lit.
Yes, lots of software is based heavily on mathematics, but then so is baking at the professional or upper semi professional levels. Wall Street traders rely also heavily on mathematics, statistics, models, etc.. Hell, accountants rely heavily on the same things.
But you wouldn't call any of them engineers would you? (Actually, giving your demonstrated willingness to dilute the term, you I suspect you probably would.)
And while I have no doubt you could bury me in pseudo mathematics - I don't confuse empirical studies and specifications with scientific ones.
Ah yes - since we don't repeal the law of supply and demand, we don't value science. (And yes, I'd let my daughter marry a young scientist - I learned at an early age that money isn't everything.)
I just want to say, you can also contribute your CPU power for LHC calculations, by joining LHC@Home.
LHC@home was used during the construction of the collider to test and validate magnet calibration scenarios - that phase was completed over three years ago. LHC@Home is no longer associated with the LHC *or* CERN (beyond website hosting) and has not provided [BOINC] work units for over two years.
'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem.
To some extent it wasn't foreseeable - this program is part of the fallout of 9/11. OTOH, we've had this program coming down the pike for years.
In reality, the DoE has been asking for funding to expand tritium production (for a wide variety of uses) since the mid 90's (correctly foreseeing that there would be a shortage of a material with a limited life span) and Congress has routinely refused the funding.
When we have a culture that doesn't value science and intellect, get back to me. (IOW, don't base your judgments on pop culture and parroting party lines.)
So we get a few more engineers writing Verilog code
If you're writing code - you're a programmer not an engineer. When you can produce valid statistics and mathematical models about performance, reliability, expected lifetime, failure modes, etc... etc... get back to me.
Massive cash awards to US scientists. These kids choose not to go into science because it is not cool. Why is it not cool? Lots of hardwork and small incomes.
Instead we will waste another $huge_amount dollars on some lame education effort only to have the kids still want to be Kobe Bryant, or Dr. Dre.
Except for the wasting boatloads of cash part - I'd say that's a good thing. Because that means the kids that grow up to be scientists do so because they want to be scientists rather than because it is cool. Real science is hard, dull, and painfully boring detail work - except to those with an interest in and a passion for it.
Science and society are much better off if we filter out those who can't hack it as early as possible.
If you give scientists boat loads of money, they become cool.
MBA's, lawyers, web developers... all have been cool, and all have made (at times) boatloads of money. But I don't think society or those fields are any better off for flooding those fields with folks in search of the pot 'o gold.
On the whole though, as a source of protein, fish aren't too bad. They're cold blooded, so their feed conversion ratio is quite good - they don't need to produce heat to maintain a constant body temperature. 1.5 - 2 grams of food will give you 1 gram of fish, although it varies by species. Compare that to a warm blooded animal - where the ratio of food/flesh is 6:1 or worse.
That conversion ratio varies greatly by species - active top level predators (like tuna) are nearly as bad as warm blooded animals. Very few commercially viable fish are down in the 1.5-2 range.
No, the REAL problem is the large and exponentially growing HUMAN population.
Given that human population isn't growing anywhere near exponentially - your point is what?
As it happens, saltwater aquaculture is widely practiced from Norway to Chile. It basically involves putting a cage out in the sea and growing fish in it.
Which also involves letting the sea flush away the excess feed, drugs, and wastes from those cages - often to the detriment of local ecologies. And heaven help you when non local fish escape from the cages and start interbreeding with local fish. (As has happened here in the Pac NW with Atlantic Salmon being raised in pens.)
The purpose of SF isn't fortune-telling. As with any commercial, genre fiction, its main purpose is to entertain, and it may also have some secondary purposes like social commentary, examination of philosophical issues, etc.
Indeed. And SF's 'ability' to predict the future is based on cherry picking from among (tens of? hundreds of?) thousands of 'predictions' to find the ones that came true - while ignoring those that didn't.
Re:Politicians always come up with a bullshit reas
on
Pittsburgh To Tax Students
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
We are going to tax you because.. "blah blah blah blah". No one believes them because they will then turn around and "waste" money the next time. We fought the British off and then turned around and just did it to ourselves.
We fought the British off (partly) over the issue of taxation without representation, but that isn't the problem here - as we have elected the people who are currently taxing us. (And in most cases continue to re-elect them.)
If they are short of money, maybe they should get some higher education "smart" people from MIT to look at "innovative" ways to cut costs or do things "smarter" and "cheaper".
Here, you hit the nail on the head. Most people live in a reality distortion field where governments do nothing but raise taxes and 'waste' the money. Under the influence of this field, they believe the government can indefinitely raise the level of services provided without raising income while (seemingly) being free of the influences of inflation and rising prices that the rest of us are. There's always 'waste' to be cut and money to be saved without ever cutting services.
Any corporation worth its salt has this approach and sells it to their employees as well as a corporate standard. Better faster cheaper.
Any we've seen the results of this in corporate America... Jobs going offshore, ever shoddier products, ever lower quality.
Here, the same reality distortion field as above is at work - people have this odd belief that they can spend less while getting the same quality and without the people on the production lines having to work harder for less. At the same time, they insist the stocks in their 401(k), IRA, or other pension plan, go up in value indefinitely.
Slashdot Mirror
I've, personally, been a victim of just that.
Which has to be one of the most handwaving-and-smokescreen lines of doublethink bullshit I've ever read. Being deletionist does nothing to improve reliability.
In many place, it still has that reputation - usually with "bad and/or muddled writing" added.
Horseshit. Wikipedia accepts all manner of unverifiable citations.
Horseshit.
Because Congress has written purchasing rules for the Federal Government that give preference to small and minority owned businesses. The same rules also give preference to buying the parts as cheaply as possible.
The result is, when you are buying small quantities and/or unusual parts, you end up dealing with middlemen and minor distributors. The big guys are rarely interested in anything other than big and/or multi year purchase commitments.
Having been on both ends of the process (both as a purchaser for the Navy and working for a small electronics dealer who sold to Navy), I assure you there's nothing fishy at all about the story. When you're a buyer, if the price is right and the paperwork appears in order, you have no choice but to buy from the minor and unknown. You haven't the authority, or the time, to investigate.
:) :)
Regarding your 'honeypot' theory, I suspect you've been reading too much Clancy or watching too much NCIS.
And if you think equipment is tested to the extreme on a tin can or bird farm - step aboard a submarine.
I shudder to think what might happen if these chips were installed in, say, the atmosphere control system. Or the ballast and trim system controls. It wouldn't take much, the margin is razor thin down there.
Did you actually read what I wrote? I didn't mention original research, implicitly or explicitly, anywhere.
Huh? What does this have to do with anything? There's no way to judge, in advance, what new research may at some uncertain future date be shown to be wrong. The advantage of an electronic encyclopedia is that it is agile, editable, and by not being bound by the limits of a hardcopy - capable of holding multiple points of view.
It's fascinating, and telling, that you fail to include "examine the new edit for quality" or any other positive statement on your list. You appear predisposed to revert.
From your 'to do' list above, it's abundantly obvious that you failed to remember that - as your 'to do' list is nothing but a list of ways to keep the article preserved in amber.
You illustrates precisely why people are leaving in record droves.
If you define "random fucktards who keep pushing against the consensus until they wear out the article's defenders and supporters" as "serious issues", then yeah. But personally, I don't generally count trolls with time on their hands to wear down supporters as prima facie evidence that the article had serious issues.
So long as you don't come to the attention of a serious troll or deletionist and his clique, yes - reliable sources are adequate. But if you do, heaven help you - as you often find yourself wearing nothing but Speedo's in the middle of a thermonuclear blast.
I also quit after an extended argument over citations.
His citation was to a fanciful coffee table reference book published before the system in question was declassified, and which was widely cited elsewhere on the web. My citation was to a professional academic analysis written a decade after the system was declassified, but which existed only in a few thousand hard copies. (Damm thing cost me nearly $100.00, in comparison his was usually found in $10 bins around Christmas time. At least that's where I got my copy of it.) In addition I had actually worked on the system in question.
The powers that be decided than since he could point to places on the web that cited his citation - it was obviously more correct than mine.
You forgot one important factor - Wikipedia the RPG going into open beta. When newbies are numbed by the maze of rules (many contradictory, many obscure) and are repeatedly ganked as they cross out of the starting zone... They aren't likely to hang around. The outright hostility of the upper level players to any not in their clique leads to a hostile environment for those that do stay. And lastly, the willingness of the GM's to stand behind those that lie, cheat, and steal takes it's toll on the few that remain.
OTOH - I chanced to visit the article for LHC@Home the other day, and found it to be three years out of date. And really, that was only noticeable for the extreme length it was out of date... Almost daily I find articles out of date anywhere from a couple of months, to over a year. (TV series without info on the new season, sports teams whose coverage isn't current, bands listed as 'going on tour in Summer 2008'. Etc. etc..)
That's not to mention the numerous articles I visit, when not out of date, that have confusing introduction, information duplicated in multiple places, poor organization, etc..
Then on top of that, the world of scholarship doesn't stand still - new things about historical topics are routinely discovered.
Wikipedia is far from 'finished', it's not even close.
That sounds suspiciously like Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22... "I lose money on every sale, but I make it up in volume!".
And suddenly a Microsoft monopoly is replaced by a Google monopoly. Pardon me for not regarding this as the Second Coming.
Heck, we had something like this when I was in the Navy. Buttons that actually contained something like a miniature slide projector* that could display multiple messages. I know these were first used in the 88/0 system which was first deployed in the late 60's, and they may even be older.
The Shuttle uses a system where the buttons ring the screen, and each button's function is displayed onscreen next to the button. ISTR the Navy had systems that operated in the same general manner as early as the late 70's. (I didn't work with any of those systems, just saw them at a distance.)
Given how small LCD screens are getting now a days, you could do all manner of interesting things.
*You had multiple lamps and a system of films with the messages on them, masks, and 'light pipes' so that only one message/image was displayed when the appropriate light was lit.
Yes, lots of software is based heavily on mathematics, but then so is baking at the professional or upper semi professional levels. Wall Street traders rely also heavily on mathematics, statistics, models, etc.. Hell, accountants rely heavily on the same things.
But you wouldn't call any of them engineers would you? (Actually, giving your demonstrated willingness to dilute the term, you I suspect you probably would.)
And while I have no doubt you could bury me in pseudo mathematics - I don't confuse empirical studies and specifications with scientific ones.
And what they think changes reality... how exactly?
Ah yes - since we don't repeal the law of supply and demand, we don't value science. (And yes, I'd let my daughter marry a young scientist - I learned at an early age that money isn't everything.)
LHC@home was used during the construction of the collider to test and validate magnet calibration scenarios - that phase was completed over three years ago. LHC@Home is no longer associated with the LHC *or* CERN (beyond website hosting) and has not provided [BOINC] work units for over two years.
'I have not heard any explanation of why this was not entirely foreseeable,' says Representative Brad Miller, chairman of a House subcommittee that is investigating the problem.
To some extent it wasn't foreseeable - this program is part of the fallout of 9/11. OTOH, we've had this program coming down the pike for years.
In reality, the DoE has been asking for funding to expand tritium production (for a wide variety of uses) since the mid 90's (correctly foreseeing that there would be a shortage of a material with a limited life span) and Congress has routinely refused the funding.
When we have a culture that doesn't value science and intellect, get back to me. (IOW, don't base your judgments on pop culture and parroting party lines.)
If you're writing code - you're a programmer not an engineer. When you can produce valid statistics and mathematical models about performance, reliability, expected lifetime, failure modes, etc... etc... get back to me.
Except for the wasting boatloads of cash part - I'd say that's a good thing. Because that means the kids that grow up to be scientists do so because they want to be scientists rather than because it is cool. Real science is hard, dull, and painfully boring detail work - except to those with an interest in and a passion for it.
Science and society are much better off if we filter out those who can't hack it as early as possible.
MBA's, lawyers, web developers... all have been cool, and all have made (at times) boatloads of money. But I don't think society or those fields are any better off for flooding those fields with folks in search of the pot 'o gold.
That conversion ratio varies greatly by species - active top level predators (like tuna) are nearly as bad as warm blooded animals. Very few commercially viable fish are down in the 1.5-2 range.
Given that human population isn't growing anywhere near exponentially - your point is what?
Which also involves letting the sea flush away the excess feed, drugs, and wastes from those cages - often to the detriment of local ecologies. And heaven help you when non local fish escape from the cages and start interbreeding with local fish. (As has happened here in the Pac NW with Atlantic Salmon being raised in pens.)
Indeed. And SF's 'ability' to predict the future is based on cherry picking from among (tens of? hundreds of?) thousands of 'predictions' to find the ones that came true - while ignoring those that didn't.
We fought the British off (partly) over the issue of taxation without representation, but that isn't the problem here - as we have elected the people who are currently taxing us. (And in most cases continue to re-elect them.)
Here, you hit the nail on the head. Most people live in a reality distortion field where governments do nothing but raise taxes and 'waste' the money. Under the influence of this field, they believe the government can indefinitely raise the level of services provided without raising income while (seemingly) being free of the influences of inflation and rising prices that the rest of us are. There's always 'waste' to be cut and money to be saved without ever cutting services.
Any we've seen the results of this in corporate America... Jobs going offshore, ever shoddier products, ever lower quality.
Here, the same reality distortion field as above is at work - people have this odd belief that they can spend less while getting the same quality and without the people on the production lines having to work harder for less. At the same time, they insist the stocks in their 401(k), IRA, or other pension plan, go up in value indefinitely.