Just edit the Wikipedia is Failing article to say it's fixed.
You're obviously joking, but it's my sincere belief that one of the dangers facing Wikipedia is where the community, and the defence of Wikipedia from criticism becomes more important than the integrity of Wikipedia itself. This is an inherent risk with anything community-based; superficially, the effort is to support and protect the project (and those taking part may well still believe this), but in reality the loyalty is to the community or team, even at the risk of the stated aims of the project.
And that precisely recounts virtually all of the comments defending Wikipedia in this discussion.
A lot of the Wikipedia bashers and nay-sayers have one unique problem: they don't get it. They want academic rigor and precise accuracy in something that is not edited exclusively by academics, experts and elites.
No, it's the apologists who fail to get it. Wikipedia claims to want to be an encyclopedia. Most of the bashers and nay-sayers are only guilty of holding them to their own claim.
Wikipedia is a look in to the hive mind of humanity - and reflects the daily winds of change in the common consensus and the fact that people perceive reality differently.
If Wikipedia wants to be the non-fiction version of MySpace - fine. Delete the word 'encyclopedia' from the site. Cease to claim to be the 'free encyclopedia that anyone can edit'. Then, and only then, will the 'bashers and nay-sayers' no longer have a leg to stand on.
The previous poster mentioned this as well, but I'll note it clearly: You can change the default behavior of setting the earth moving by turning off Motion Momentum and/or Planet Inertia in the View menu. You can also try turning of Point Go-To to see if that's more to your liking. In World Wind, like a lot of F/OSS apps, you have options. Take the blinders off, and realize that there are other ways of doing things, and some ways might even be, dare I say it, better.
When a program, out of the box, behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other map program out there - it's broken. It doesn't matter that you can change it. I don't object to options - I object to ill designed UI's.
And I notice you throw flashy words like "stability" and "performance" out there, but then just whine about the UI. Perhaps you should actually complain about what you set out to complain about.
Maybe you should actually read what I wrote - and note that under the discussion of UI I also note performance issues.
Just because a law exists with a definition, does not make it correct.
When the law defines a legal term - it is by definition correct. Don't confuse the lay meaning of a term with it's legal meaning.
If Congress passes a law tomorrow that defines the internet as a series of tubes, solely because the Congress is made up primarily of technologically ignorant people, and the bill contains enough pet projects, pork and other personal/special interests to actually pass both bodies of legislature, does that suddenly make it true?
So why, precisely, is it any better when a bunch of Slashdotters, pundits, and activists seek to redefine a legal term? As you point out it's bad for technologically ignorant people to define technology terms - the same should hold true of legally ignorant people and legal terms. (And, as I said in my original message, this usage is not a modern creation. It dates back centuries.)
Think of your parents or grandparents. Think of their understanding of IP laws, computers in general, copyright and anything else that we have very poor definitions for based on 19th century concepts that have been drastically outdated by modern technology.
That's just the problem - the basic concepts haven't been outdated at all. Creators of IP still have rights, just as they did in the 19th century.
Are these the people you trust to tell you both what things are legally defined as, and to set the laws governing them?
Frankly, I trust them more than I do the average Slashdot hypocrite - who whines when a F/OSS license is broken, but cheers when copyright law is broken.
Remember this virtual globe has never had the same goals as Google Earth
That's obvious - because GE's goals include things like stability and performance - two things WorldWind noticeably lacks. (Not to mention the horror that is WorldWind's UI.)
I just tried V1.4 - and it has the same braindead UI problems that previous versions have suffered. When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map. (And as the rotation speed speed of the globe varies with lag - it's frustrating to position precisely.) When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up. (This slows rendering (which is glacial to start with) and makes it difficult to reach a precise zoom point and take a goodly amount of time if you change zoom by any significant amount.) Etc... Etc...
This isn't something for the F/OSS community to be proud of. It was a piece of crap when they took it over - and it's still a piece of crap.
It's not theft because nobody has ceased to possess anything.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. If you take something that belongs legally to someone else, it's theft under the law. Period.
To forestall the inevitable carping - no, it's not the MPAA/RIAA/whoever trying to redefine terms. Terms like 'theft' and 'piracy' for IP infractions go back over a century (and in some cases nearly half a millenia). The people trying to redefine terms and playing sophmoric semantic games are people like the OP. (And those that rated him +5.)
You didn't list any of those things as limiting conditions - you're *only* limiting condition was *your* personal preference. If those things matter, then a professional would list them - as they will effect the advice he's given. But you didn't list them did you?
He's not evaluating alternative solutions - he's seeking one that matches his personal preferences. This is obvious from lack of listing any constraints on his choice except his personal preference.
Don't get me wrong, there are some folks who will love just seeing their name in print. But the vast majority of people know they can already do that without having to cast their lot in with this place. Unless Wales can provide some additional value to the user aside from a little exposure, I don't see this one differentiating itself from the 50,000 other websites looking for content creators.
All true except for one factor - those 50,000 other websites don't have (tens or hundreds of) thousands of wikidroids long indoctrinated that Wales is the Way.
If you actually knew how to do a job, instead of whining at how useless your MSCE is -- your own preference does play a rather large role here.
If I'd whined about having an MCSE, hell if I even *had* an MCSE, you'd have a point. (But then I don't even work in IT.)
Oh, and why is it that trolls always come out with this exact argument -- it's "religious" when people choose Linux (or BSD or OSX), but it's "practical" when they choose Windows?
Ah - now it's trollish to suggest that application choices should be based on their usefulness and on considerations such as compatibility etc... rather than using what OS they run on as the sole or primary consideration? When somebody say "I prefer" or "I want" over "since we are a Linux shop" or "to reuse existing infrastructure", that's a key indicator of religion over other criteria.
I bet if they were a Windows-only shop, Asking Slashdot for a Windows solution (since their product was migrating to Linux), you wouldn't see anyone call him "religious" or a "zealot".
True - you wouldn't see anyone call him "religious" or a "zealot", they'd call him _much_ worse things, but not "religious" or a "zealot".
I am the IT Director for a long-term-care medical facility (400 employees) and found out a few weeks ago that the vendor that supplies our GL, AP, HR, and Payroll software is dropping support for Linux, in November (after using them for four years). They code in Progress and have decided to convert to a proprietary web GUI (IIS + IE6 + ActiveX) rather than use Progress + Apache + any browser. This means we either abandon Linux, or we are in the market for new accounting software modules (I bet you know which is my preferred choice).
If you were actually doing your job - your preferred solution would be that which was better for your employer. Instead, what's clear, is you place your own religious beliefs ahead of any other consideration.
Instead, the US is just aknowledging that attacks on it's internet infrastructure can be responded to just like physical attacks.... by military attack.
Yep. And it should be unsurprising that the US treats the internet like it does aircraft, ships, other infrastructure, and the persons of its citizens - threaten them and you risk retribution.
And before the tinfoil hat brigade starts it's anti-Bush rants, I should point out that these explicit policies go back at least as far as Teddy Roosevelt - and the roots go all the way back to the Barbary Pirates in the early 19th century.[1] (And cyberwarfare work goes back the start of the dot-com era - back in the Clinton administration.)
[1] Thats what "the shores of Tripoli" refers to in the Marine Corps Anthem.
A Class Action lawsuit about knowingly selling defective goods,
You'd have a hard time under the law proving that Microsoft knowingly sold defective goods.
You'd first have to show, under the law, that Microsoft (and by extention Windows) was responsible for providing for security in the first place. You'd have to prove, under the law, that Microsoft was responsible for the actions of the users (in clicking yes where the shouldn't) that cause harm, and was responsible for the failure of users to take proactive measures of their own (like installing Firefox and Zone Alarm).
It's not as trival or simple as the Slashdot community would like it to be.
I'm sorry to hear you have such a negative opinion about Citizendium.
And you haven't identified any specific policy objections, so I can't really speak to whatever concerns you may have.
I don't have a negative opinion about Citizendium or specific policies - I have a negative opinion about Larry Sanger's adminstration thereof. That should have been trivially obvious from reading my message.
Larry claims to want a community based system - but from the very beginning, community has been absent, as rule has been via dictat. When (if) the Constitutional Convention is held, it will be meaningless as the administrative structure will be well seeded with Larry's handpicked lieutenants.
I will note that no one by the name Derek Lyons is registered on the wiki, so I don't know how much of our process you're familiar with.
Someone from the Executive Committee, should show much more energy than to check a single location of the many where someone might have registered. (And has the Citi instituted a policy that only committee members and officers can post on Slashdot? It's very Borg like (and suspicious) that no 'ordinary' user ever posts.)
Having said that, we're not perfect. We (not just Larry) do need to get up to speed on the nuts-and-bolts issues of wiki management.
I agree 100% - but my contention is that the Citi is unable to do so while Larry treats it as an academic experiment rather than acting as a leader in reaching consensus and setting stable community based policies.
Anyway, and I mean this in the least offensive way possible, it's easier to second-guess project decisions and play the vague pundit than to offer specific, actionable suggestions.
I'm not second guessing - I'm stating personal experience. I, and others, suggested many specific and actionable suggestions to Larry - only to either be ignored, or to have the suggestions presented to the world as Larry's work.
The "I know better than you" bombshell caused me to start really questioning and looking closely at what was going on - and when I did so I was deeply troubled. His lengthy post on the functions of the mailing list, he wanted a list where people posted theses (like a favorite list of his youth) rather than a discussion list, made me question his actual goals. The increasing list of hand picked individuals for specific jobs, especially individuals who were not active members of the list, and arbitrary requirements for constables made me question his commitment to community. (On the issue of constable, I and others, when we questioned his dictat were specifically told that if we didn't agree with Larry we should feel free to depart.)
Hence I ceased active participation months ago as it became ever more clear that the Citi was likely to remain forever a thing of shadow and mirrors.
I still monitor Citizendium-L however - and such things as the 'Big Delete' do little to shake my belief. From day one many of us argued of the deep, and insurmountable, difficulties of forking all of Wikipedia all at once. Yet Larry insisted, strongly, that we simply had to have all that material in order to 'compete' with Wikipedia - yet six months later we see a complete reversal of that policy. (Look at Larry's post to Citizendium-L titled "Ready to create some new articles?" - in which he presents as Sanger's Principles exactly what he was told by others months ago.)
The recent announcement of reaching 1000 articles indicates a deep failure to reach even a subcritical mass - it's taken six months (more or less) to reach a milestone that should have been reached in six weeks given the size of the community. Why the delay? Larry's obsession with process over progress. Larry is trying to apply Nupedia principles to the wiki enviroment - and the attempt is failing.
I had left the laptop in sleep mode with the lid closed on the edge of the sofa in the living room
I'll take the odds that the sofa was the most flammable piece of furniture in his house.
Not only that, but every laptop I've ever owned specifically warns against placing a laptop on a soft surface, because that could block ventilation. Even in sleep mode - the computer is still consuming some power and generating heat.
If you wanted to know why I rejected it out of hand why didn't you ask that in the first place? Instead you waste my time and yours.
Why do I reject it out of hand? For the reason I've mentioned twice: the energy requirements of storing it. There is no dialog to be had - we'll be storing this stuff, like nuclear waste, essentially forever. This should be obvious to anyone who bothers to think rather than 'dialog'. The implications of that are blatantly obvious to someone who bothers to think.
But you lack the wit to even phrase a question properly without extreme prodding.
What I have in mind is something like a simple daemon program that anyone can run, which caches part of the content of a site and serves it to site visitors. I am sure many people would be willing to run such a daemon for sites they like. I think the system could even be made transparent to browsers, so that anybody could be using it as soon as the system is implemented.
Wikipedai already does something like this with its own machines using SQUID caches and load balancers. Doing so with machines outside of their control brings up issues with data integrity.
Look at the situation Citizendium is in: they haven't even been able to attract enough money and interest to make their fork available to the public for reading without signing up for an account.
That's not an accurate statement of the problems the Citizendium is facing.
More accurately the Citizendium has been unable to attract and hold a critical mass of people for a variety of reasons including;
Rapid and unpredictable policy shifts from Larry Sanger. (Which has resulted in endless discussions of how to deal with the latest changes - because they change again before people figure out how to deal with the previous changes.)
When I think about it - virtually all of the Citizendiums problems stem from that one source. Larry wants a community - but he tends the run the Citi as if it were his own property, every time somebody gets a 'buy in', he changes the rules. Worse yet, when he does adopt an idea developed by the community - he presents it as fiat as though it came from him. In his official announcements you'll never see him give credit to others.
Unrealistic expectations by Larry as to how the Citi will function and the nature of both the work and the community.
While we were discussing various aspects of these topics on the Citi community boards, Larry dropped a bombshell on us; "I've spent a long time thinking about these things, and they aren't really up for negotiation". Huh? As the general tenor of the replies to the bombshell went; "Larry, do you really think that you, as an individual, are smarter than all of us and that you've actually considered all the details?". He didn't deign to reply. (That's been an ongoing problem - Larry had a high level view of the Wikipedia, but is out of touch with the nuts and bolts issues.)
I could go on in this vein for a while, but I know it was this (and other behaviors on Larry's part) that alienated me and several other - I can only wonder how many others there are that feel the same. Larry treats the Citi as an game where he not only sets the rules, but can change them without notice or discussion.
Well, I'll repeat myself in hope you'll actually read and comprehend this time: I'm rejecting liquid CO2 or dry ice out of hand due to the energy requirements of storing it.
Slashdot Mirror
And that precisely recounts virtually all of the comments defending Wikipedia in this discussion.
No, it's the apologists who fail to get it. Wikipedia claims to want to be an encyclopedia. Most of the bashers and nay-sayers are only guilty of holding them to their own claim.
If Wikipedia wants to be the non-fiction version of MySpace - fine. Delete the word 'encyclopedia' from the site. Cease to claim to be the 'free encyclopedia that anyone can edit'. Then, and only then, will the 'bashers and nay-sayers' no longer have a leg to stand on.
When a program, out of the box, behaves in a different (and unexpected) way from virtually every other map program out there - it's broken. It doesn't matter that you can change it. I don't object to options - I object to ill designed UI's.
Maybe you should actually read what I wrote - and note that under the discussion of UI I also note performance issues.
To put it simply - bullshit. When I click and drag in GE, it stops when I release the mouse. When I click and drag in WW it continues to drift.
Wrong. GE does not render each and every layer - let alone load them. WW does.
When the law defines a legal term - it is by definition correct. Don't confuse the lay meaning of a term with it's legal meaning.
So why, precisely, is it any better when a bunch of Slashdotters, pundits, and activists seek to redefine a legal term? As you point out it's bad for technologically ignorant people to define technology terms - the same should hold true of legally ignorant people and legal terms. (And, as I said in my original message, this usage is not a modern creation. It dates back centuries.)
That's just the problem - the basic concepts haven't been outdated at all. Creators of IP still have rights, just as they did in the 19th century.
Frankly, I trust them more than I do the average Slashdot hypocrite - who whines when a F/OSS license is broken, but cheers when copyright law is broken.
Depends on the kind of girl. My wife would appreciate both.
That's obvious - because GE's goals include things like stability and performance - two things WorldWind noticeably lacks. (Not to mention the horror that is WorldWind's UI.)
I just tried V1.4 - and it has the same braindead UI problems that previous versions have suffered. When you grab a point on the globe - you start the globe spinning, rather than as in GE grabbing a 'handle' to position the map. (And as the rotation speed speed of the globe varies with lag - it's frustrating to position precisely.) When you zoom in - WW loads each and every layer of zoom between the one you start with and where you end up. (This slows rendering (which is glacial to start with) and makes it difficult to reach a precise zoom point and take a goodly amount of time if you change zoom by any significant amount.) Etc... Etc...
This isn't something for the F/OSS community to be proud of. It was a piece of crap when they took it over - and it's still a piece of crap.
Sorry, but that's nonsense. If you take something that belongs legally to someone else, it's theft under the law. Period.
To forestall the inevitable carping - no, it's not the MPAA/RIAA/whoever trying to redefine terms. Terms like 'theft' and 'piracy' for IP infractions go back over a century (and in some cases nearly half a millenia). The people trying to redefine terms and playing sophmoric semantic games are people like the OP. (And those that rated him +5.)
You didn't list any of those things as limiting conditions - you're *only* limiting condition was *your* personal preference. If those things matter, then a professional would list them - as they will effect the advice he's given. But you didn't list them did you?
He's not evaluating alternative solutions - he's seeking one that matches his personal preferences. This is obvious from lack of listing any constraints on his choice except his personal preference.
When he states he has a 'preferred' solution, without giving any qualifications as to why - it's not 'bigoted', it's an observation of fact.
All true except for one factor - those 50,000 other websites don't have (tens or hundreds of) thousands of wikidroids long indoctrinated that Wales is the Way.
If I'd whined about having an MCSE, hell if I even *had* an MCSE, you'd have a point. (But then I don't even work in IT.)
Ah - now it's trollish to suggest that application choices should be based on their usefulness and on considerations such as compatibility etc... rather than using what OS they run on as the sole or primary consideration? When somebody say "I prefer" or "I want" over "since we are a Linux shop" or "to reuse existing infrastructure", that's a key indicator of religion over other criteria.
True - you wouldn't see anyone call him "religious" or a "zealot", they'd call him _much_ worse things, but not "religious" or a "zealot".
If you were actually doing your job - your preferred solution would be that which was better for your employer. Instead, what's clear, is you place your own religious beliefs ahead of any other consideration.
Yep. And it should be unsurprising that the US treats the internet like it does aircraft, ships, other infrastructure, and the persons of its citizens - threaten them and you risk retribution.
And before the tinfoil hat brigade starts it's anti-Bush rants, I should point out that these explicit policies go back at least as far as Teddy Roosevelt - and the roots go all the way back to the Barbary Pirates in the early 19th century.[1] (And cyberwarfare work goes back the start of the dot-com era - back in the Clinton administration.)
[1] Thats what "the shores of Tripoli" refers to in the Marine Corps Anthem.
You'd have a hard time under the law proving that Microsoft knowingly sold defective goods.
You'd first have to show, under the law, that Microsoft (and by extention Windows) was responsible for providing for security in the first place. You'd have to prove, under the law, that Microsoft was responsible for the actions of the users (in clicking yes where the shouldn't) that cause harm, and was responsible for the failure of users to take proactive measures of their own (like installing Firefox and Zone Alarm).
It's not as trival or simple as the Slashdot community would like it to be.
I don't have a negative opinion about Citizendium or specific policies - I have a negative opinion about Larry Sanger's adminstration thereof. That should have been trivially obvious from reading my message.
Larry claims to want a community based system - but from the very beginning, community has been absent, as rule has been via dictat. When (if) the Constitutional Convention is held, it will be meaningless as the administrative structure will be well seeded with Larry's handpicked lieutenants.
Someone from the Executive Committee, should show much more energy than to check a single location of the many where someone might have registered. (And has the Citi instituted a policy that only committee members and officers can post on Slashdot? It's very Borg like (and suspicious) that no 'ordinary' user ever posts.)
I agree 100% - but my contention is that the Citi is unable to do so while Larry treats it as an academic experiment rather than acting as a leader in reaching consensus and setting stable community based policies.
I'm not second guessing - I'm stating personal experience. I, and others, suggested many specific and actionable suggestions to Larry - only to either be ignored, or to have the suggestions presented to the world as Larry's work.
The "I know better than you" bombshell caused me to start really questioning and looking closely at what was going on - and when I did so I was deeply troubled. His lengthy post on the functions of the mailing list, he wanted a list where people posted theses (like a favorite list of his youth) rather than a discussion list, made me question his actual goals. The increasing list of hand picked individuals for specific jobs, especially individuals who were not active members of the list, and arbitrary requirements for constables made me question his commitment to community. (On the issue of constable, I and others, when we questioned his dictat were specifically told that if we didn't agree with Larry we should feel free to depart.)
Hence I ceased active participation months ago as it became ever more clear that the Citi was likely to remain forever a thing of shadow and mirrors.
I still monitor Citizendium-L however - and such things as the 'Big Delete' do little to shake my belief. From day one many of us argued of the deep, and insurmountable, difficulties of forking all of Wikipedia all at once. Yet Larry insisted, strongly, that we simply had to have all that material in order to 'compete' with Wikipedia - yet six months later we see a complete reversal of that policy. (Look at Larry's post to Citizendium-L titled "Ready to create some new articles?" - in which he presents as Sanger's Principles exactly what he was told by others months ago.)
The recent announcement of reaching 1000 articles indicates a deep failure to reach even a subcritical mass - it's taken six months (more or less) to reach a milestone that should have been reached in six weeks given the size of the community. Why the delay? Larry's obsession with process over progress. Larry is trying to apply Nupedia principles to the wiki enviroment - and the attempt is failing.
Not only that, but every laptop I've ever owned specifically warns against placing a laptop on a soft surface, because that could block ventilation. Even in sleep mode - the computer is still consuming some power and generating heat.
If you wanted to know why I rejected it out of hand why didn't you ask that in the first place? Instead you waste my time and yours.
Why do I reject it out of hand? For the reason I've mentioned twice: the energy requirements of storing it. There is no dialog to be had - we'll be storing this stuff, like nuclear waste, essentially forever. This should be obvious to anyone who bothers to think rather than 'dialog'. The implications of that are blatantly obvious to someone who bothers to think.
But you lack the wit to even phrase a question properly without extreme prodding.
They seem a bit fuzzy on the all-important step of recovering the power from the 'cold store' during the day.
Wikipedia has been hosted on multiple machines at multiple sites for quite some time now.
Wikipedai already does something like this with its own machines using SQUID caches and load balancers. Doing so with machines outside of their control brings up issues with data integrity.
That's not an accurate statement of the problems the Citizendium is facing.
More accurately the Citizendium has been unable to attract and hold a critical mass of people for a variety of reasons including;
- Rapid and unpredictable policy shifts from Larry Sanger. (Which has resulted in endless discussions of how to deal with the latest changes - because they change again before people figure out how to deal with the previous changes.)
When I think about it - virtually all of the Citizendiums problems stem from that one source. Larry wants a community - but he tends the run the Citi as if it were his own property, every time somebody gets a 'buy in', he changes the rules. Worse yet, when he does adopt an idea developed by the community - he presents it as fiat as though it came from him. In his official announcements you'll never see him give credit to others.- Unrealistic expectations by Larry as to how the Citi will function and the nature of both the work and the community.
While we were discussing various aspects of these topics on the Citi community boards, Larry dropped a bombshell on us; "I've spent a long time thinking about these things, and they aren't really up for negotiation". Huh? As the general tenor of the replies to the bombshell went; "Larry, do you really think that you, as an individual, are smarter than all of us and that you've actually considered all the details?". He didn't deign to reply. (That's been an ongoing problem - Larry had a high level view of the Wikipedia, but is out of touch with the nuts and bolts issues.)I could go on in this vein for a while, but I know it was this (and other behaviors on Larry's part) that alienated me and several other - I can only wonder how many others there are that feel the same. Larry treats the Citi as an game where he not only sets the rules, but can change them without notice or discussion.
That's fine in a world where we don't have underage rapists and killers. But that's not our world sadly.
What part of rejected out of hand do you not understand?
Well, I'll repeat myself in hope you'll actually read and comprehend this time: I'm rejecting liquid CO2 or dry ice out of hand due to the energy requirements of storing it.