There is not "C" model because it was cancelled in development, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of seats... The 'x' in a designation like F-14x is nothing but a version number.
That's what I thought. Our local paper (in Virginia Beach) ran a full spread story on the Tomcat and made that specific comment about the "C" model -- that it was traditionally reserved for single-seat models. I was only reporting what I read:-)
Even in military towns (like Va Beach at least was) newspapers get technical material wrong.:)
Could a single-seat Tomcat have been proposed and cancelled?
I imagine its possible, even though I've never heard of any such - typically the number of seats only increases. The Tom is a two seater because of the complexity of its weapon system - delete that, and you no longer have a Tom.
The wings on the F-14 don't fold like other planes. The wings sweep back for supersonic flight and "oversweep" (to about 75 degrees) for storage. I believe the wingtips can also double fold up (like an "S") on the later F-14D models to save even more space. (There is no "C" model, a designation usually for single-seat fighters).
There is not "C" model because it was cancelled in development, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of seats.
The 'x' in a designation like F-14x is nothing but a version number. (The 'X' in XF-14 means experimental or prototype - the designation system is positional, where the letter appears determines its meaning.)
I believe that the real debate in Washington is how best to distract citizens from the real issues facing our country and the world. The polarization of the parties is simply a ploy to get americans to react on an emotional level instead of examining issues from a logical perspective.
Amen, Brother. They have turned politics into a sports show, pitting your favorite team against your favorite team's enemy. If you love the Browns, you hate the Steelers. That's just the way it is. You root for the Browns, or whoever is playing the Steelers. Life is great as long as the Browns win and the Steelers lose.
You can't 'turn something into' what it has already been for centuries.
Seriously.
The level of naivete so far in this discussion if absolutely frightening. Nothing so far attributed to [Washington (D.C.)|(the US) Congress| [Republicans|Democrats]] is particularly new. At a minimum you can see it by studying the English Parliment in the 1700's.
What Sanger is counting on is that the Citizendium will attract the large community of experts and people who care about accuracy who have already been driven away from Wikipedia - because it [Wikipedia] neither cares about nor makes any attempt to retain either kind of person. In fact, to some degree the Wikipedia is openly hostile to both types of people.
Three quick points- one, you're right in that this is Sanger's explicit wish. Two, I think it's very likely this project will draw existing wikipedians to it. Third, I think you may be unfairly stereotyping Wikipedia. Those hostile tendencies toward experts do exist, but to say they dominate Wikipedia is a pretty strong assertion.
The anti-expert bias is in Wikipedia's very DNA - it was set up explicitly to provide public input into the expert dominated Nupedia. Furthermore, the entire system is set up on a 'democratic' basis - credentials are niether asked for, nor examined. ('Democratic' is in scare quotes as Jimbo Wales has been stealthily creating a class of super-editors, without any input from the community that supposedly runs the Wikipedia. It's becoming increasingly clear that his [current] vision and the original vision are becoming divergent.)
Why is [preventing non-credentialed people from contributing] bad? I personally have no problem with non experts being prevented from contributing. The importance and value of an encyclopedia lies in its completeness and authoritativenes, not its eglatarianism.
This is the million-dollar question. I think Wikipedia benefits from accepting contribution from a very wide set of people. In fact, the majority of content is generated by them- have you read http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia ?
If some of that broad audience moves to Citizendium and can't contribute, that could be bad.
In most situations open competition is rated as good thing - as it keeps all parties involved honest. Wikipedia does indeed benefit from such a broad range of input, but it's also hurt (in varying degrees) from being created by such a broad range of individuals. I know of multiple articles on specialist topics that reflect the public's beliefs and urban legends - rather than factual information. I've fixed as many (in my areas of expertise) as I can, but I quit when maintaining them in the face of soi-disant 'experts' took all the time I had to give to the Wikipedia. (Mostly because said 'experts' hold the fixed belief that "if its on the web, it must be true" - which is patent nonsense.
Furthermore, since they will share a common license - content can be freely exchanged between them; thus, no matter where the content is created - it can appear in the Wikipedia. This allows people who wish to work in a more academic enviroment to do so and allows the users a choice of which system to use.
Citizendium has a lot going for it as a project. And it's definitely worth doing. But it has some potential side-effects (as I've argued) and nobody really knows how things'll turn out- untested social are pretty darn unpredictable. Larry Sanger, for instance, has commented that "[Wikipedia] is a project that shouldn't work, but does." Maybe Citizendium is a project that should work, but doesn't.
Yes, Sanger has made that comment in the past - but his writings in relation to the Citizendium project indicate (to me) that he now believes that the Wikipedia doesn't work - except in its original role as feedstock to a more formal and credentialed encyclopedia. (Remember, Wikipedia was not originally the standalone project it is now.) The Citizendium is also being designed to fix multiple flaws in the design of the Wikipedia - flaws that the Wikipedia has shown no inclination to repair.
The real news is that this made it into the news. Not because it isn't news worthy but because it only makes sense to maintain a shroud of ignorance once you have actually cracked a channel of communication thus instilling your enemies with a false sense of security.
For instance during World War II, even after the allies had broken a German code or devised a method to figure out that day's cipher string, they would still go about their routine of acting like they didn't know what the Germans were going to do. Meaning that if a cargo ship was headed towards a line of submarines, they might find it best to sacrifice that cargo ship at the possibility of saving a warship later in the day.
That in fact - is not correct. The Allies broke the [U-boat] Enigma specifically for the purpose of evasive routing. The UK had a whole Tracking Center where info from Bletchley, Huff-Duff, etc... etc... was integrated into a single picture and used to route convoys, determine when to send them out from their origin ports, where to concentrate ASW forces and HUK [Hunter-Killer] groups. Now it is true, as a general principle, that one does attempt to shroud the source of the intelligence from the enemy. In the case of the Battle of the Atlantic, this was done by never mentioning the Enigma decrypts except by their code name ('Ultra'), and by paraphrasing the information anytime it was conveyed outside of small inner circle. (For a description of US practice, here is description of the US Tracking Room. Or you can check out this photographic tour.) It was extremely rare (I.E. no example exists of which I am aware) for them to not direct a convoy to avoid a U-boat whose location was specifically known.)
The reason for this decision is simple; If the Germans changed their codes - tracking could still be accomplished by Huff-Duff (though with less accuracy). The *only* way for the Germans to avoid being tracked was to cease the daily transmissions from the U-boats to Dönitz - but if they did so, his whole strategy of detailed control of both the wolf packs and individual U-boats would have fallen apart. Either way, it seemed at the time, the Allies came out to the better.
f they responded directly to communications, the Germans would continue to change the code or investigate ways to improve their encryption methods and upgrade Enigma.
The Germans upgraded [the U-boat] Enigma twice during the war, and each time it was broken after a short period. During the blackout periods, tracking by non cryptographic means proved mostly sufficient.
IIRC, most of the problems on the ISS have been a result of American craftsmanship.
The Russia built stuff is more primitive, but also a lot sturdier.
You don't recall correctly - as Elektron has had ongoing problems for several years now.
The [Elektron] unit's design lifetime was originally one year.
And the currently installed unit is the third such unit to be installed on the ISS. Each of the units only lasted as long as they did through heroic repair efforts - not by any intrinsic robustness of the Russian design. (The current unit in fact has had considerable problems over the past year - consuming many man hours in maintenance and repair.)
That's mostly because you don't understand the issue. The newspapers in question were not objecting to Google pointing to their content, but to Google serving their content. There's a huge difference between the two.
I don't understand either. If I look at news.google.com, it lists major stories; headlines of articles about these stories which are links to the source (newspapers, etc), and 1.5 lines of text from each story. There are NO cache links as there are for ordinary Google searches. And I looked at several national versions, including.be; all the same. The only "content" served was the headline and the 1.5 lines of text (occasionally a thumbnailed image, but I don;t know if htey do that for all sources.) So WTF is the complaint?
The complaint is that Google cached the content and continued to serve it to the general public (when they clicked on a link on Google News) after the newspaper had deleted the page and moved the content to a subscriber only page. (Don't confuse News with Search - they are two utterly different programs.)
I don't understand why news outlets get so upset when sites like google point people to their content. They should think of it as free advertising.
That's mostly because you don't understand the issue. The newspapers in question were not objecting to Google pointing to their content, but to Google serving their content. There's a huge difference between the two.
I'm literally sick of all this people who don't like being indexed. If you don't want to show up in google, adjust robots.txt so that google won't search it. This is not a problem of "companies entering into your house because you left the door opened". Web sites are supposed to be there to be visited, if you don't like being indexed use robots.txt
The key issue isn't that they didn't want to be indexed but that they didn't want to be cached. There's a big difference between the two.
the claim that best-gas-price-hunting is an effort that could be better used on other products
I'm not a gas-price-shopper, but I know several people who are. It actually takes zero time to do since you're driving past all the big price signs on the way to and from work every day. To say the effort could be better used somewhere else is silly.
To claim that your geography is typical is even sillier. On my way to work (if I still worked from my old location) I would drive past exactly *zero* gas stations, on my wifes way to work she drives past exactly *one*. I know multiple people in the same situation.
On the other, this is going to confuse a lot of people, and might take manpower away from Wikipedia.
How will it confuse people? What will it confuse them about?
Wikipedia works so well because the community is so large- anything that draws people, especially experts and those who care about accuracy, away from the project could be pretty rough.
What Sanger is counting on is that the Citizendium will attract the large community of experts and people who care about accuracy who have already been driven away from Wikipedia - because it [Wikipedia] neither cares about nor makes any attempt to retain either kind of person. In fact, to some degree the Wikipedia is openly hostile to both types of people.
I find myself wondering how this Citizendium will deal with identifying experts and handling contributions- if it draws readers away from Wikipedia, and prevents most of them from contributing because they're not "experts", that's bad.
Why is bad? I personally have no problem with non experts being prevented from contributing. The importance and value of an encyclopedia lies in its completeness and authoritativenes, not its eglatarianism.
It all boils down to that, the same you consider an expert on that article's field, probably the other "morons" consider also themselves experts. A solution is to add citations for sources. That way you back your claim of expertise. More and more, articles I check have lots of citations.
Most of what you see on the Wikipedia is links to webpages - which is not quite the same thing as an academic citation. It's the moral equivalent of citing a classmates book report in your own. (And in most of my fields of expertise, the web is by and large completely incorrect where it covers the field at all.)
I don't contribute to Wikipedia as an expert simply because I don't want my edits to compete with wanna-be experts.
This really sums up 95% of the opposition to Wikipedia. (The other 5% comes from people who actually contribute to Wikipedia and whose opinions, therefore, actually count for shit.) It's petty egotism.
No, it's not egotism. It's being tired of seeing well written and factually correct articles being replaced with bilge as mutiple wanna-be experts 'fix the grammar' or 'clean up the layout' or 'reword the introduction' or 'copyedit the article'. It's being tired of watching wanna-be experts replace your article (based on accurate references, though not available on the web) with another article based on random web pages. The examples are endless - and have absolutely nothing to do with ego.
(Hint: I've actually contributed to Wikipedia, quite widely in fact.)
Wikipedia is as successful as it is because it invites active public participation, and simply being able to participate as a peer is the incentive that drives contributors. Encyclopaedia Britannica is as successful as it is because it pays experts to participate.
Wikipedia is 'sucessful' because it's popular. Britannica is sucessful because it has spent decades building a reputation for completeness and accuracy. Once might just as usefully compare apples to anthracite.
The fallacy of Wikipedia is that being able to participate as a peer makes one a peer. Sorry, no. No matter how many web pages you quote, no matter how many references you cite - you won't be my peer (on certain topics) without spending years understanding the material.
Citizendium offers neither money or treatment as a peer. It doesn't take an expert to see that Citizendium will be authoritative... and very nearly devoid of content.
Citizendium does offer treatment as a peer - an actual peer however, rather than a pale imitation of one. Your own ego prevents you from seeing the difference.
Wikipedia is a wonderful thing. On top of being an incredible source for information, it's an excercise in damage control and chaos theory. Wikipedia works, not despite page defacers and fact monglers, but *because* of them. Without the constant controversy surrounding things like politicians changing their own wiki entries, innacurate or false information would tend to sit in the pool and stagnate.
That's a nice theory. In reality, innacurate or false information does tend to pool and stagnate - because not articles attract such attention. (In fact, it's a vast minority of the articles that so do.) In the remainder of the articles, their state depends on who runs out of steam in the edit war first.
How will different viewpoints get across? In the wiki, at least, as an informed user, I can look up the discussions and history of pages. I don't have to depend that the latest page is 100% correct nor do I expect it to me.
The widespread belief that you can judge the accuracy and completness of a Wikipedia article by edits or discussion is nonsense.
Reviewing the discussion page assumes that the folks taking part in the discussions themselves have a real clue about the topic under discussion. I know of at least one page, on a topic where I am an expert, where the discussion page is huge (covering many topics), yet the page is utter bilge - filled with errors from top to bottom. Yes, I've tried to fix it - but eventually got tired of trying to maintain it in the face of a flood of 'experts'.
The same goes for the history page - all that tells you is that the page has been edited and by whom at which time. I know of completely correct pages with just a handful of edits (over a year ago) by a single individual, and completely incorrect pages with hundreds of edits by dozens of people.
As a saying I came across recently has it: On the Wikipedia, the output of a dozen idiots is indistinguishable from that of a dozen idiots plus one expert. Unless you are already knowledgeable about the topic - there is no objective way of verifying the correctness of any given article.
if the current [Wikipedia article] base is really so bad and unreliable as he makes it look, this will result in taking over everything bad but shutting out the broad mass of eyes that could spot a error and correct it.
You are missing the point - which is that, despite the broad mass of eyes, errors aren't being fixed in the Wikipedia.
So trying to get people to think its more reliable (and thus view it with less suspicion/ less "thinking") is a bit like cheating the user.
And the Wikipedia's two faced attitude isn't cheating the user?
Face #1 - We are building a repository of human knowledge to replace traditional encyclopedias.
Face #2 - (which replaces Face #1 whenever Wikipedia is criticized) - We shouldn't actually be trusted, after all we aren't actually an encyclopedia.
A note on Face #1 - Even the Wikipedia itself realizes the level of crap they've engendered. They have a specialized team filtering through the Wikipedia to locate and select articles suitable for 'public release'.
The tone of the comments so far are quite amusing - for quite some time, people have been saying "the beauty of GPL is that you can fork - if you don't like the Wikipedia, fork it!". Now that someone is doing so - all the comments revolve around why it's a bad idea to do so.
By putting restrictions or limitations on computer/internet/etc usage, you will accomplish nothing. It will signify your lack of trust,
So what? No parent with a smidgen of sense trusts kids. (Except with in an extremely limited domain.) I wouldn't trust a kid with matches, power tools... or unfettered acess to the internet. Using all these things takes experience and judgement - which children lack, and must be taught.
As for rules/boundaries, several things should be kept in mind. If he spends a lot of time on the computer, so be it. Remind him and encourage him to do other things, but forcing him to not use the computer will just piss him off
As above, so what? My job as a parent is to ensure the growth (mental, physical, and social) of my child. Part of the way to do that is to expose him to a wide variety of activities. My job is not to never 'piss him off' or make him unhappy.
As for punishment, remember that there are a lot worse things that he could be doing than illegally downloading music or watching porn. If you see him downloading music, at least you know he isn't out doing drugs.
And again - so what? If he's breaking the household rules, or the law - he's going to get punished appropriately. Period. Just because he's doing an activity that creates less harm than another doesn't change the fact that he's breaking household rules, or the law.
What surprises me is that more people aren't speaking up like Schneier. It seems to me that the role of the press and politicians in promoting terror is very much like that of oxygen and fuel in promoting fire.
Let's not delude ourselves here. If it weren't for the 'fear and hype' generated by the Goverment - Schneier would have to go the Dvorak route and generate some, lest he have to go and find a real job. Schneier isn't 'speaking out', he's fanning the flames so that people see him as a heroic fireman - and the speaking fees etc... keep a' flowing into his pocket.
Some scientists were very concerned the first atomic bomb would produce so much heat it would ignite the atmosphere and burn the entire surface of the earth.
If by very concerned you mean they had an office pool betting on the yield of the first atom bomb, then you would be correct, 'ignite the atmosphere' was a longshot, nothing to be seriously concerned about.
No, there were concerns over the possible repercussions - your statement is about the equivalent of "you said white, but I'm guessing you mean bicycles". The betting pool is a seperate incident.
The date on that report is 1946 not 1942. Furthermore, every reputeable book on the Manhattan Engineer District reports this concern as existing in the weeks leading up to Trinity - Richard Rhodes discusses it and (IIRC) gives references. (I'm travelling so my copy is unavailable.)
In order to maintain a reasonable standard of living, many couples both have to work now.
Some of this comes from an unrealistic view of what constitutes a 'reasonable' standard of living. (Driven largely by advertising I suspect.) I know several young couples who view themselves as deprived because they have to buy and drive used cars, don't have the latest and greatest (and largest) TV, etc... etc... I know anecdotal evidence isn't worth much - but I see that attitude far more often than I don't.
'The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in lace of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.'
-Socrates (possibly miss-attributed but still very old)
I just knew someone (or multiple someones) would regurgitate that or some variant - it's always easier to do so than to think.
The fact is - if you stop and think and pay attention you'll notice the younger generation(s) of today *are* qualitively different. I never saw a six year old dance like a stripper (while being encouraged by her parents) in public until three years ago. The concept of a 'slacker' didn't even exist in the 1970's. My high school in the 1970's had exactly 2 girls get pregnant during my senior year - the exact same school and roughly the same student body size (around 1400) has in the upcoming senior class nearly 100 students who have already had children! etc... etc.. Examples abound if care to look.
Odd thing, the full Encyclopeida Dramatica site is down, and even more strange is that the Wikipedia article for it is deleted and protected, along with the talk page, and there is no explanation, it has been down since august. Does anyone have any idea why this is?
Wikipedia now has a policy whereby articles can be deleted from the Wikipedia without explanation.
Did it get slashdotted, or purposely removed? Also whats up with the Wikipedia page. I would like to at least know what the Encyclopedia Dramatica is, the only source I could really find was from Urban Dictionary, which really isn't the best source of anything.
Read WikiTruth for an eye opening account of how the Wikipedia really works.
At first, I was on the side of the guy that posted all the info. "It's their fault they gave their information out before knowing who they were giving it to.",
No, it's not. You are not allowed to publish private communications without the permission of both parties, nor are you allowed to publish private information without permission - period. There are laws about this - and just because it happened 'on the internet' doesn't change that.
You know, it's a good idea to have some idea what you're talking about before you run your mouth off.
Advice you might take yourself.
Credit card debt is only one small part of a credit check.
Other than pedantic assholes - who cares? None of the posters above me were talking about credit checks - they, and I, were talking about credit card payments. Pay the fuck attention idiot.
Slashdot Mirror
Even in military towns (like Va Beach at least was) newspapers get technical material wrong.
I imagine its possible, even though I've never heard of any such - typically the number of seats only increases. The Tom is a two seater because of the complexity of its weapon system - delete that, and you no longer have a Tom.
There is not "C" model because it was cancelled in development, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of seats.
The 'x' in a designation like F-14x is nothing but a version number. (The 'X' in XF-14 means experimental or prototype - the designation system is positional, where the letter appears determines its meaning.)
You can't 'turn something into' what it has already been for centuries.
Seriously.
The level of naivete so far in this discussion if absolutely frightening. Nothing so far attributed to [Washington (D.C.)|(the US) Congress| [Republicans|Democrats]] is particularly new. At a minimum you can see it by studying the English Parliment in the 1700's.
The anti-expert bias is in Wikipedia's very DNA - it was set up explicitly to provide public input into the expert dominated Nupedia. Furthermore, the entire system is set up on a 'democratic' basis - credentials are niether asked for, nor examined. ('Democratic' is in scare quotes as Jimbo Wales has been stealthily creating a class of super-editors, without any input from the community that supposedly runs the Wikipedia. It's becoming increasingly clear that his [current] vision and the original vision are becoming divergent.)
In most situations open competition is rated as good thing - as it keeps all parties involved honest. Wikipedia does indeed benefit from such a broad range of input, but it's also hurt (in varying degrees) from being created by such a broad range of individuals. I know of multiple articles on specialist topics that reflect the public's beliefs and urban legends - rather than factual information. I've fixed as many (in my areas of expertise) as I can, but I quit when maintaining them in the face of soi-disant 'experts' took all the time I had to give to the Wikipedia. (Mostly because said 'experts' hold the fixed belief that "if its on the web, it must be true" - which is patent nonsense.
Furthermore, since they will share a common license - content can be freely exchanged between them; thus, no matter where the content is created - it can appear in the Wikipedia. This allows people who wish to work in a more academic enviroment to do so and allows the users a choice of which system to use.
Yes, Sanger has made that comment in the past - but his writings in relation to the Citizendium project indicate (to me) that he now believes that the Wikipedia doesn't work - except in its original role as feedstock to a more formal and credentialed encyclopedia. (Remember, Wikipedia was not originally the standalone project it is now.) The Citizendium is also being designed to fix multiple flaws in the design of the Wikipedia - flaws that the Wikipedia has shown no inclination to repair.
That in fact - is not correct. The Allies broke the [U-boat] Enigma specifically for the purpose of evasive routing. The UK had a whole Tracking Center where info from Bletchley, Huff-Duff, etc... etc... was integrated into a single picture and used to route convoys, determine when to send them out from their origin ports, where to concentrate ASW forces and HUK [Hunter-Killer] groups. Now it is true, as a general principle, that one does attempt to shroud the source of the intelligence from the enemy. In the case of the Battle of the Atlantic, this was done by never mentioning the Enigma decrypts except by their code name ('Ultra'), and by paraphrasing the information anytime it was conveyed outside of small inner circle. (For a description of US practice, here is description of the US Tracking Room. Or you can check out this photographic tour.) It was extremely rare (I.E. no example exists of which I am aware) for them to not direct a convoy to avoid a U-boat whose location was specifically known.)
The reason for this decision is simple; If the Germans changed their codes - tracking could still be accomplished by Huff-Duff (though with less accuracy). The *only* way for the Germans to avoid being tracked was to cease the daily transmissions from the U-boats to Dönitz - but if they did so, his whole strategy of detailed control of both the wolf packs and individual U-boats would have fallen apart. Either way, it seemed at the time, the Allies came out to the better.
The Germans upgraded [the U-boat] Enigma twice during the war, and each time it was broken after a short period. During the blackout periods, tracking by non cryptographic means proved mostly sufficient.
You don't recall correctly - as Elektron has had ongoing problems for several years now.
And the currently installed unit is the third such unit to be installed on the ISS. Each of the units only lasted as long as they did through heroic repair efforts - not by any intrinsic robustness of the Russian design. (The current unit in fact has had considerable problems over the past year - consuming many man hours in maintenance and repair.)
The complaint is that Google cached the content and continued to serve it to the general public (when they clicked on a link on Google News) after the newspaper had deleted the page and moved the content to a subscriber only page. (Don't confuse News with Search - they are two utterly different programs.)
That's mostly because you don't understand the issue. The newspapers in question were not objecting to Google pointing to their content, but to Google serving their content. There's a huge difference between the two.
The key issue isn't that they didn't want to be indexed but that they didn't want to be cached. There's a big difference between the two.
To claim that your geography is typical is even sillier. On my way to work (if I still worked from my old location) I would drive past exactly *zero* gas stations, on my wifes way to work she drives past exactly *one*. I know multiple people in the same situation.
How will it confuse people? What will it confuse them about?
What Sanger is counting on is that the Citizendium will attract the large community of experts and people who care about accuracy who have already been driven away from Wikipedia - because it [Wikipedia] neither cares about nor makes any attempt to retain either kind of person. In fact, to some degree the Wikipedia is openly hostile to both types of people.
Why is bad? I personally have no problem with non experts being prevented from contributing. The importance and value of an encyclopedia lies in its completeness and authoritativenes, not its eglatarianism.
Most of what you see on the Wikipedia is links to webpages - which is not quite the same thing as an academic citation. It's the moral equivalent of citing a classmates book report in your own. (And in most of my fields of expertise, the web is by and large completely incorrect where it covers the field at all.)
No, it's not egotism. It's being tired of seeing well written and factually correct articles being replaced with bilge as mutiple wanna-be experts 'fix the grammar' or 'clean up the layout' or 'reword the introduction' or 'copyedit the article'. It's being tired of watching wanna-be experts replace your article (based on accurate references, though not available on the web) with another article based on random web pages. The examples are endless - and have absolutely nothing to do with ego.
(Hint: I've actually contributed to Wikipedia, quite widely in fact.)
Wikipedia is 'sucessful' because it's popular. Britannica is sucessful because it has spent decades building a reputation for completeness and accuracy. Once might just as usefully compare apples to anthracite.
The fallacy of Wikipedia is that being able to participate as a peer makes one a peer. Sorry, no. No matter how many web pages you quote, no matter how many references you cite - you won't be my peer (on certain topics) without spending years understanding the material.
Citizendium does offer treatment as a peer - an actual peer however, rather than a pale imitation of one. Your own ego prevents you from seeing the difference.
That's a nice theory. In reality, innacurate or false information does tend to pool and stagnate - because not articles attract such attention. (In fact, it's a vast minority of the articles that so do.) In the remainder of the articles, their state depends on who runs out of steam in the edit war first.
The widespread belief that you can judge the accuracy and completness of a Wikipedia article by edits or discussion is nonsense.
Reviewing the discussion page assumes that the folks taking part in the discussions themselves have a real clue about the topic under discussion. I know of at least one page, on a topic where I am an expert, where the discussion page is huge (covering many topics), yet the page is utter bilge - filled with errors from top to bottom. Yes, I've tried to fix it - but eventually got tired of trying to maintain it in the face of a flood of 'experts'.
The same goes for the history page - all that tells you is that the page has been edited and by whom at which time. I know of completely correct pages with just a handful of edits (over a year ago) by a single individual, and completely incorrect pages with hundreds of edits by dozens of people.
As a saying I came across recently has it: On the Wikipedia, the output of a dozen idiots is indistinguishable from that of a dozen idiots plus one expert. Unless you are already knowledgeable about the topic - there is no objective way of verifying the correctness of any given article.
You are missing the point - which is that, despite the broad mass of eyes, errors aren't being fixed in the Wikipedia.
And the Wikipedia's two faced attitude isn't cheating the user?
A note on Face #1 - Even the Wikipedia itself realizes the level of crap they've engendered. They have a specialized team filtering through the Wikipedia to locate and select articles suitable for 'public release'.
The tone of the comments so far are quite amusing - for quite some time, people have been saying "the beauty of GPL is that you can fork - if you don't like the Wikipedia, fork it!". Now that someone is doing so - all the comments revolve around why it's a bad idea to do so.
So what? No parent with a smidgen of sense trusts kids. (Except with in an extremely limited domain.) I wouldn't trust a kid with matches, power tools... or unfettered acess to the internet. Using all these things takes experience and judgement - which children lack, and must be taught.
As above, so what? My job as a parent is to ensure the growth (mental, physical, and social) of my child. Part of the way to do that is to expose him to a wide variety of activities. My job is not to never 'piss him off' or make him unhappy.
And again - so what? If he's breaking the household rules, or the law - he's going to get punished appropriately. Period. Just because he's doing an activity that creates less harm than another doesn't change the fact that he's breaking household rules, or the law.
Let's not delude ourselves here. If it weren't for the 'fear and hype' generated by the Goverment - Schneier would have to go the Dvorak route and generate some, lest he have to go and find a real job. Schneier isn't 'speaking out', he's fanning the flames so that people see him as a heroic fireman - and the speaking fees etc... keep a' flowing into his pocket.
No, there were concerns over the possible repercussions - your statement is about the equivalent of "you said white, but I'm guessing you mean bicycles". The betting pool is a seperate incident.
The date on that report is 1946 not 1942. Furthermore, every reputeable book on the Manhattan Engineer District reports this concern as existing in the weeks leading up to Trinity - Richard Rhodes discusses it and (IIRC) gives references. (I'm travelling so my copy is unavailable.)
Some of this comes from an unrealistic view of what constitutes a 'reasonable' standard of living. (Driven largely by advertising I suspect.) I know several young couples who view themselves as deprived because they have to buy and drive used cars, don't have the latest and greatest (and largest) TV, etc... etc... I know anecdotal evidence isn't worth much - but I see that attitude far more often than I don't.
I just knew someone (or multiple someones) would regurgitate that or some variant - it's always easier to do so than to think.
The fact is - if you stop and think and pay attention you'll notice the younger generation(s) of today *are* qualitively different. I never saw a six year old dance like a stripper (while being encouraged by her parents) in public until three years ago. The concept of a 'slacker' didn't even exist in the 1970's. My high school in the 1970's had exactly 2 girls get pregnant during my senior year - the exact same school and roughly the same student body size (around 1400) has in the upcoming senior class nearly 100 students who have already had children! etc... etc.. Examples abound if care to look.
Wikipedia now has a policy whereby articles can be deleted from the Wikipedia without explanation.
Read WikiTruth for an eye opening account of how the Wikipedia really works.
No, it's not. You are not allowed to publish private communications without the permission of both parties, nor are you allowed to publish private information without permission - period. There are laws about this - and just because it happened 'on the internet' doesn't change that.
Advice you might take yourself.
Other than pedantic assholes - who cares? None of the posters above me were talking about credit checks - they, and I, were talking about credit card payments. Pay the fuck attention idiot.