I am pretty sure this is their intention. They say they want to integrate it into the Google infrastructure, that probably means that you will also be able to compose you Gmail mails in Writely and post to your Blog in Blogger too.
I think sooner or later, someone will release a Firefox extension to access Writely, maybe even Google will do it. It sure will more responsive than Ajax.
Well first of all I can assure you that again, there is no conspiration here:)
On the other side what you describe groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) and it is inherent and (consubstantial sp ?) to a sociological group, its in fact what make it exist. Yes people who contribute to WP do believe in some basics assumptions, otherwise they won't do it.
As for controversial subjects, I can assure you that Wikipedia has opened my eyes about many topics or obscure points of certain topics I was not aware of, because nearly everybody can express his opinion and this exactly the way Slashdot works too. Nevertheless I grant you that one of the main weaknesses of Wikipedia is that fringe beliefs can be expressed very easily and can quickly get a lot of exposure, but this will in the same time, inevitably attract attention and probably corrections too, that's the way things work in WP, it's a dynamic process.
This not true, It's one of the Myths surrounding Wikipedia, there is absolutly no secret a good article has a lot of people intersted in it and a lot of editors too, who are constantly looking at modifications, reversing vandalism and stupidities. In my long Wikipedia experience I have rarely witnessed what you said. This myth needs to be debunked now !
Granted that style is not the primary asset of Wikipedia, as many contributors have different writing abilities but overall the information is generally there, and that is all what people are looking for.
Alas yes, in Morocco for example, MS has a total and near absolute dominance and many people here think that Bill Gates invented computers and the Internet (not kidding). But things are slowly changing, there is now some open source based business and Linux is making some inroads into progressive administrations and companies. Oh and did I said that we even had Stallman vist last year ) he has been invited by a Moroccan Association for the evanglization of open source software (and yes he told us too that every license outside the GPL was bad too and talked about GNU/Linux:))
In Morocco women drive without any problem, hell in the 70s they even used to put mini skirts, too bad this has changed:) with rising Islamist influence:( still in many areas of Casablanca women dress code is very liberal and can be compared to European countries.
Well as a native Arabic speaker, who also happens to speak French at a native level, and a pretty good English too (at least I think) I can tell you that this is absolutely not a problem, because as you said, those are just conventions and symbols with a meaning (a semantic) which are independent of the language itself, an Iteration concept will always be an Iteration concept in every language of the world, a print statement is a print statement even in Amazonia. Beside this, all Arabic geeks generally speak at least one foreign language, sometimes many, generally English in the Middle East and French in North Africa. We generally have no problems with foreign languages and we also need them do to access technological information which is nearly scarce or inexistent in Arabic.
In my opinion, that's the most important skill for a manager, making quick decisions even though they are not optimal, there is one thing worse than a bad decision it is no decision at all.
Just use a Wiki. I have been doing this for at least four years now, it works wonders. I have started with TWiki, then migrated to Mediawiki when I became a Wikepedia addict. I store evryting in my local Mediawiki, ideas, thoughts, to do lists, drafts, specifications, bug lists, interesting articles, and even interesting Slashdot comments:). I have adopted a Wikipedia style of doing things, using categories, merging articles or spliting them when necessary. I have created my own local Wikipedia, next thing I will probably install Lucen (search engine) and nothing will never be lost. My ultimate goal is dump all my memory into that thing and then create a Semantic Web with Artificial Intelligence capabilities:)
You mean exactly like Wikipedia;) that's how all the software should be designed, but I wonder if its possible. I remember reading Linus a while ago saying that he refuses to modulize Linux (i.e split it in relatively small modules communicating among them with a set of stable API, this also sounds like the micro kernel architecture he is notoriously againt) as long as it has not completly stabilised (not in the buggy sens), but till all the infrastrucre is not there yet. If the new X is a success may he will review his judgment, this will bring more hackers to the Kernel.
It has been voted on by the community but endorsed and encouraged by Wales. Wales openly acts like a kind of benevolent dictator, although that's not really the word as Wikipedia is clearly not a dictatorship, as Wikipedia editor I really don't feel oppressed by him. His role is important to solve in last recourses important issues when consensus is not reached which permit the project to go ahead and not stall forever because of sterile disputes. His role can be much compared to that of Linus.
You obviously haven't read the new policy. Semi protection will be the exception not the rule, that means that for the great majority of articles nothing will change, anonymous edits will still be allowed, only controversial subjects will be protected for a fixed amount of time from anonymous edits.
It would solve their problems of restriction to a greater extent than imposing these top down ruling upon the community
Those are not top down ruling, policies in Wikipedia are voted for and everyone (i.e every registred editor) can particpated, many proposed policies are rejected.
Whenever you have a social group, which means a group of people who communicate more among themselves than with others, you fatally have groupthink. Groupthink is consubstantial to social groups. That's why you have national or regional accents, national values, that are why you have religions and sects and that's why you even have languages. A group needs some cohesion, which constitute its identity, but on the same time don't totally eliminate critics which are fundamental for its evolution. And obviously in Wikipedia and Slashdot critics are more than heard.
Well this is a commen critic, I will call it something like "The price for doing business". Wikipedia is a moving target, I think that the solution to that real problem is to have a Wikipedia 1.0 with peer reviewed and validated articles. Too bad you left Wikipedia whe need good and didacted editors.
This an excellent initiative, as a Wikipedia editor I'll try to seed that idea. i.e to have articles about Wikipedia written in the press (with an interesting readership I mean, not the tabloids crap) and then ask the readers to visit Wikipedia to correct or enhance articles in their field.
MS is trying to stop the sea with its hands as they say, all it will manage to do is perhaps to slow it a bit, but everybody knows that nothing will stop the revolution. In a certain way this is pathetic.
Kazaa is notably proprietary and they have been quinte agressive in blocking Kazaa lite for example which was a modified binary without their spyware (the hole story here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa). On the other side emule IS open source and in my opinion far better than Kazaa, unless they are targetted but the RIAA.
I am pretty sure that we will soon have a p2p 2.0 as we had a Web 2.0. What the music industry doesn't seems to get it, this a Darwinian process, by acting like this they only manage to strengthen this technology. There is already plenty of new concepts floating around that will bring a new revolution into this field (anonymous, decentralised, underground, private, freenet, overnets, darknets, and so on)
An while I am at it, emule is excellent, and they are probably the next target, they better get ready for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I am pretty sure this is their intention. They say they want to integrate it into the Google infrastructure, that probably means that you will also be able to compose you Gmail mails in Writely and post to your Blog in Blogger too.
Really cool, thanks for the tip.
I think sooner or later, someone will release a Firefox extension to access Writely, maybe even Google will do it. It sure will more responsive than Ajax.
Have a look here for some more information about licensing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_vs._Micr osoft_Office_Open_XML_licensing although the article needs some cleaning
No, have a look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_ supporting_OpenDocument, there are not many applications yet, but the list is growing
Well first of all I can assure you that again, there is no conspiration here :)
On the other side what you describe groupthink (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink) and it is inherent and (consubstantial sp ?) to a sociological group, its in fact what make it exist. Yes people who contribute to WP do believe in some basics assumptions, otherwise they won't do it.
As for controversial subjects, I can assure you that Wikipedia has opened my eyes about many topics or obscure points of certain topics I was not aware of, because nearly everybody can express his opinion and this exactly the way Slashdot works too. Nevertheless I grant you that one of the main weaknesses of Wikipedia is that fringe beliefs can be expressed very easily and can quickly get a lot of exposure, but this will in the same time, inevitably attract attention and probably corrections too, that's the way things work in WP, it's a dynamic process.
Thank you for this positif and well thought article about Wikipedia, I have put a link to in my Home Mediawiki :)
By the way, could you send me your Wikipedia home page please ?
This not true, It's one of the Myths surrounding Wikipedia, there is absolutly no secret a good article has a lot of people intersted in it and a lot of editors too, who are constantly looking at modifications, reversing vandalism and stupidities. In my long Wikipedia experience I have rarely witnessed what you said. This myth needs to be debunked now !
Granted that style is not the primary asset of Wikipedia, as many contributors have different writing abilities but overall the information is generally there, and that is all what people are looking for.
Alas yes, in Morocco for example, MS has a total and near absolute dominance and many people here think that Bill Gates invented computers and the Internet (not kidding). But things are slowly changing, there is now some open source based business and Linux is making some inroads into progressive administrations and companies. Oh and did I said that we even had Stallman vist last year ) he has been invited by a Moroccan Association for the evanglization of open source software (and yes he told us too that every license outside the GPL was bad too and talked about GNU/Linux :))
In Morocco women drive without any problem, hell in the 70s they even used to put mini skirts, too bad this has changed :) with rising Islamist influence :( still in many areas of Casablanca women dress code is very liberal and can be compared to European countries.
There are bialphabetic keyboards which combine latin and arabic scripts, you can easily switch from one script to the other.
Well as a native Arabic speaker, who also happens to speak French at a native level, and a pretty good English too (at least I think) I can tell you that this is absolutely not a problem, because as you said, those are just conventions and symbols with a meaning (a semantic) which are independent of the language itself, an Iteration concept will always be an Iteration concept in every language of the world, a print statement is a print statement even in Amazonia. Beside this, all Arabic geeks generally speak at least one foreign language, sometimes many, generally English in the Middle East and French in North Africa. We generally have no problems with foreign languages and we also need them do to access technological information which is nearly scarce or inexistent in Arabic.
In my opinion, that's the most important skill for a manager, making quick decisions even though they are not optimal, there is one thing worse than a bad decision it is no decision at all.
Now it will be intersting to watch what does the DMCA have to say about this if the RFID vendor files a law suit ?
Just use a Wiki. I have been doing this for at least four years now, it works wonders. I have started with TWiki, then migrated to Mediawiki when I became a Wikepedia addict. I store evryting in my local Mediawiki, ideas, thoughts, to do lists, drafts, specifications, bug lists, interesting articles, and even interesting Slashdot comments :). I have adopted a Wikipedia style of doing things, using categories, merging articles or spliting them when necessary. I have created my own local Wikipedia, next thing I will probably install Lucen (search engine) and nothing will never be lost. My ultimate goal is dump all my memory into that thing and then create a Semantic Web with Artificial Intelligence capabilities :)
You mean exactly like Wikipedia ;) that's how all the software should be designed, but I wonder if its possible. I remember reading Linus a while ago saying that he refuses to modulize Linux (i.e split it in relatively small modules communicating among them with a set of stable API, this also sounds like the micro kernel architecture he is notoriously againt) as long as it has not completly stabilised (not in the buggy sens), but till all the infrastrucre is not there yet. If the new X is a success may he will review his judgment, this will bring more hackers to the Kernel.
It has been voted on by the community but endorsed and encouraged by Wales. Wales openly acts like a kind of benevolent dictator, although that's not really the word as Wikipedia is clearly not a dictatorship, as Wikipedia editor I really don't feel oppressed by him. His role is important to solve in last recourses important issues when consensus is not reached which permit the project to go ahead and not stall forever because of sterile disputes. His role can be much compared to that of Linus.
Hum sorry I made a fool of myself, I thought you were talking about the new Wikipedia policy.
You obviously haven't read the new policy. Semi protection will be the exception not the rule, that means that for the great majority of articles nothing will change, anonymous edits will still be allowed, only controversial subjects will be protected for a fixed amount of time from anonymous edits.
It would solve their problems of restriction to a greater extent than imposing these top down ruling upon the community
Those are not top down ruling, policies in Wikipedia are voted for and everyone (i.e every registred editor) can particpated, many proposed policies are rejected.
Whenever you have a social group, which means a group of people who communicate more among themselves than with others, you fatally have groupthink. Groupthink is consubstantial to social groups. That's why you have national or regional accents, national values, that are why you have religions and sects and that's why you even have languages. A group needs some cohesion, which constitute its identity, but on the same time don't totally eliminate critics which are fundamental for its evolution. And obviously in Wikipedia and Slashdot critics are more than heard.
Well this is a commen critic, I will call it something like "The price for doing business". Wikipedia is a moving target, I think that the solution to that real problem is to have a Wikipedia 1.0 with peer reviewed and validated articles. Too bad you left Wikipedia whe need good and didacted editors.
This an excellent initiative, as a Wikipedia editor I'll try to seed that idea. i.e to have articles about Wikipedia written in the press (with an interesting readership I mean, not the tabloids crap) and then ask the readers to visit Wikipedia to correct or enhance articles in their field.
MS is trying to stop the sea with its hands as they say, all it will manage to do is perhaps to slow it a bit, but everybody knows that nothing will stop the revolution. In a certain way this is pathetic.
Kazaa is notably proprietary and they have been quinte agressive in blocking Kazaa lite for example which was a modified binary without their spyware (the hole story here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa). On the other side emule IS open source and in my opinion far better than Kazaa, unless they are targetted but the RIAA.
I am pretty sure that we will soon have a p2p 2.0 as we had a Web 2.0. What the music industry doesn't seems to get it, this a Darwinian process, by acting like this they only manage to strengthen this technology. There is already plenty of new concepts floating around that will bring a new revolution into this field (anonymous, decentralised, underground, private, freenet, overnets, darknets, and so on)
An while I am at it, emule is excellent, and they are probably the next target, they better get ready for it.