Well moroccan prisons are certainly not five stars hotels, but I am pretty sure that it's much much more confortable for this guy to have it's trial in his home country rather than in the US nowdays with all the terrorist paranoia going in this country.
I am a Moroccan national, and I have partically renounced travelling to the US after all the horrors stories people I know have told me they have faced in US airports.
Morocco is not really a democratic country (yet), but things are slowly evolving in the good way and nothing similar to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo has happened lately in Morocco, since Tazmamart which was really horrible for those who have heard about it.
For now acting ethically is part of Google Business model its even central. They are where they are now by using viral marketing and leveraging the geek community as prescriptors, and this is very smart from their part. They would be very stupid (which they aren't) to alienate the active and enthousiastic support of this community.
Yeah but X feels so slow unresponsive and sluggish ! that it's a pain ! I don't know if this can ever be fixed. We where told that with soft real time added to the Linux Kernel X responsive will be greatly improved, but I admit I have seen stricly no improvement resulting from this.
The big problem here is Microsoft. Microsoft worst enemy is thin client and OS-independence. All their business model is based on the control they have of the Desktop, and extending this control to other platforms. They will fiercely fight the thin client model by all the means they have, technical means by tying desktop application to their platform, what they have largely managed to do, Marketing, Fud, Etc.
Do you mean "No interest to me, and to other right-thinking people like me?" Do you mean "No interest to the overwhelming majority of the reader base?"
I clearly mean No interest to me, and I suppose:) to other right-thinking people like me?
Yeah, generally, i vote "delete" in the inevitable "Vote for Deletion" calls on vanity pages and the like. But it bugs me that minority opinions are getting quashed because they aren't widely held. There's a fine line between "maintaining quality for the sake of credibility" and "maintaining conformity for the sake of the groupthink." Sometimes the voices of the crackpot are useful and, even occaisionally, right
Yes I agree with you here, there is always a fine line to respect, but its not always easy. We need to keep an open mind, ideally an Encyclopedia is ment to contain Enclyclopedic knowledge ie. represent all the opinions and not only a single opinion.
This is a good analysis, and Wikipedia is too useful for many people to let it die. That's why I am rather optimistic about its future despite all the spammers and vandals.
I think that it will be more productive to increase the quality to moderate good contributors than to moderate articles per se, this is far easier as there are far less contributors than articles, and it's very easy to notice a good contributor from a bad one.
I propose a Slashdot like moderation system, wich even if not perfect has proved it rather works than not.
Wikipedia need to work like a meritocraty, good contributors will be judged by their peers, and believe me it's very easy to notice a good and honest and productive contributors.
Some ideas base on this kind of contributor peer review is that anonymous contributions will still be allowed as in Slashdot, but when you reach a certain "karma" your contributions will be immediatly accepted or rated with "your" karma for instance. If you don't have enough "karma" they need to be checked by someone who has a good "karma". But this process needs to be the less bureaucratic possible and need no generate a lot of work for good contributors, the load needs also to be "distributed" among contributors.
I am not sure this is a good idea. the English version has nearly 600 000 articles now. It will be very hard to find volunteers to make a stable version of this. I contribute somtimes to Wikipedia when I have time or when I am in the mood of contributing, or when I am looking for information, but I sure will not be interested in devoting hours and hours for developing a stable version.
Another problem is Wikipedia now high visbility especially in Google, is begining to attract spammers, and it's sometimes very hard to track them or ban them as they are even creating now bogus articles to put their spam in.
Another problem is what I'll call "fan articles", their are lots of obscure people, bands, artists and so on making their way into Wikipedia, that have absolutly no Encyclopedic interest.
It's sad to admit it, but you are probably right. After being a big Linux fan for years, I must admit that it needs a lot of time to tweak and make it do what you really want. Yes Linux is really really powerful if you are a power user and have enough time, patience, and passion to explore it and learn it. But if you need are in the average, and you just want things to be done, just forget it, and this is the case for I believe 95% of people. Windows has a lot flaws but 95% of the time it just works ! and this is all what people need.
This is a good analysis. But open source based compagnies "are marketing driven too" as this the only way to differentiate yourslef from you competitor. Redhat is more an more a marketing driven compagny, as is Mysql, Jboss, Etc. The "only" way you can compete from another compagny selling "exactly" the same product is with Marketing. Microsoft are far from being idiots and I am pretty sure they understand this pretty well, this why they are more and more tageting open source compagnies and not Open Source Software per se.
This a good summuray. But as you said, its a quite complicated system, as everything designed by commity. EU is the fruit of countless negociations and comprimise between countries with different cultures and political systems. The thing is very difficult to hold together and its getting even worse with the new members; hence the constitution proposal, although it doesn't seems to be going to be adopted anytime soon. So I believe things will get worse and worse.
Now what would be cool is to translae the KDE documentation translated into the Wikmedia format. That would be really kick ass. I have always taught thatWiki is the ideal documentation tool, by it's dynamic nature, you could add topics, correct documentation, add examples Etc. à la PHP doc for instance or Faq-o-Matic. Linuxdoc can also profit from this, although I believe it's largly dead ?? by now.
This seems to be a trend now. After Google (and I think Yahoo and Amazon), MSN will be now under pressure to go somehow the open source road. They will probably vehemently protest, try resist, twist things their own way and explain how open source is bad, but they can't go against the tide and ultimately one day or another they will follow.
Then they should also have a don't be evil policy for sites beeing crawled. If you want google to behave nicely to you, then you should behave nicely to it too. That's seems fair to me. A site respecting this policy, can have a logo on its home page which give it a ranking bonus. Conversly if they break the rules, they sould be delisted. Its a trust system.
Yes, but I bet you will never have an official OS X for these architectures. If this happens I don't know what the reaction of Appel (and the gain and loss) if everybody can start downloading OS X libs en emule.
Sure this guy is a crackpot himself, he is just discrediting himself even more with this kind a provocative, tabloid journalism (if he has ever got any credit). Really Slashdot must not give echo to this kind person; they are just giving him what he is looking for a tribune and a readership.
The great beauty of the linux desktop is that it, like all *x desktop windowing systems, is not standardised
Alas this is also one of its main weakness. I had once high hopes for Linux on the desktop (three of four years ago), but the way I see it now is that its more fragmented than ever. I think it will manage to reach something around 5% share of the market in four or five years, but the bulk of the users will probably just stay with Windowz.
As the China and Indian get wealthier they wont give a fucking shit about the US and UK getting poorer
In macro-economics terms, you are completly wrong ! The economic interests of India and China dictate that they get richer without impovershing the US.
Sounds weired ? no ! Just think about if, your customer si rich then you get richer too ! To keep the pace of their development, India and China need an outlet for their products and services hence a richer US, Europe and Japan, Etc..
Indeed some people will loose while and others profit from this process. But if India and China get richer this a good thing for the whole planet. Just see what happened in Japan, a rich japan is better for the planet that a poor Japan.
I think that Google's perception is slowly changing among the Slashdot crowd, search results are less and less useful as they are beeing abused by spam indexing and Google's betas take forever (gmail and google news for instance).
Google is still "cool" and "not evil" but I strongly believe they need to react quickly against this trend.
Preception is reality !! I am among people who think that Slashdot has been determinent in Google's launch and popularity. Hey people from Google are you listening ? you need to listen to Slashdot (small but vocal an influential minority and do something before it's too late !) please do something extraordinary and incredibly cool to amaze us again;)
There is one more important thing you forgot; The main advantage Firefox has over IE is the same as the one Linux has over Winodow. Firefox has been developed to be a browser while IE has been developed to make money and this is really a very very big difference.
Indeed !! lemonde.fr one of the main french sites asked google news to remomve them, non they are back, they have probably reached the conclusion that they have more to gain than to loose from being listed there.
Slashdot Mirror
Well moroccan prisons are certainly not five stars hotels, but I am pretty sure that it's much much more confortable for this guy to have it's trial in his home country rather than in the US nowdays with all the terrorist paranoia going in this country.
I am a Moroccan national, and I have partically renounced travelling to the US after all the horrors stories people I know have told me they have faced in US airports.
Morocco is not really a democratic country (yet), but things are slowly evolving in the good way and nothing similar to Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo has happened lately in Morocco, since Tazmamart which was really horrible for those who have heard about it.
For now acting ethically is part of Google Business model its even central. They are where they are now by using viral marketing and leveraging the geek community as prescriptors, and this is very smart from their part. They would be very stupid (which they aren't) to alienate the active and enthousiastic support of this community.
Yeah but X feels so slow unresponsive and sluggish ! that it's a pain ! I don't know if this can ever be fixed. We where told that with soft real time added to the Linux Kernel X responsive will be greatly improved, but I admit I have seen stricly no improvement resulting from this.
What you say is technically sound but !
The big problem here is Microsoft. Microsoft worst enemy is thin client and OS-independence. All their business model is based on the control they have of the Desktop, and extending this control to other platforms. They will fiercely fight the thin client model by all the means they have, technical means by tying desktop application to their platform, what they have largely managed to do, Marketing, Fud, Etc.
Do you mean "No interest to me, and to other right-thinking people like me?" Do you mean "No interest to the overwhelming majority of the reader base?"
:) to other right-thinking people like me?
I clearly mean No interest to me, and I suppose
Yeah, generally, i vote "delete" in the inevitable "Vote for Deletion" calls on vanity pages and the like. But it bugs me that minority opinions are getting quashed because they aren't widely held. There's a fine line between "maintaining quality for the sake of credibility" and "maintaining conformity for the sake of the groupthink." Sometimes the voices of the crackpot are useful and, even occaisionally, right
Yes I agree with you here, there is always a fine line to respect, but its not always easy. We need to keep an open mind, ideally an Encyclopedia is ment to contain Enclyclopedic knowledge ie. represent all the opinions and not only a single opinion.
This is a good analysis, and Wikipedia is too useful for many people to let it die. That's why I am rather optimistic about its future despite all the spammers and vandals.
I think that it will be more productive to increase the quality to moderate good contributors than to moderate articles per se, this is far easier as there are far less contributors than articles, and it's very easy to notice a good contributor from a bad one.
I propose a Slashdot like moderation system, wich even if not perfect has proved it rather works than not.
Wikipedia need to work like a meritocraty, good contributors will be judged by their peers, and believe me it's very easy to notice a good and honest and productive contributors.
Some ideas base on this kind of contributor peer review is that anonymous contributions will still be allowed as in Slashdot, but when you reach a certain "karma" your contributions will be immediatly accepted or rated with "your" karma for instance. If you don't have enough "karma" they need to be checked by someone who has a good "karma". But this process needs to be the less bureaucratic possible and need no generate a lot of work for good contributors, the load needs also to be "distributed" among contributors.
I am not sure this is a good idea. the English version has nearly 600 000 articles now. It will be very hard to find volunteers to make a stable version of this. I contribute somtimes to Wikipedia when I have time or when I am in the mood of contributing, or when I am looking for information, but I sure will not be interested in devoting hours and hours for developing a stable version.
Another problem is Wikipedia now high visbility especially in Google, is begining to attract spammers, and it's sometimes very hard to track them or ban them as they are even creating now bogus articles to put their spam in.
Another problem is what I'll call "fan articles", their are lots of obscure people, bands, artists and so on making their way into Wikipedia, that have absolutly no Encyclopedic interest.
It's sad to admit it, but you are probably right. After being a big Linux fan for years, I must admit that it needs a lot of time to tweak and make it do what you really want. Yes Linux is really really powerful if you are a power user and have enough time, patience, and passion to explore it and learn it. But if you need are in the average, and you just want things to be done, just forget it, and this is the case for I believe 95% of people. Windows has a lot flaws but 95% of the time it just works ! and this is all what people need.
This is a good analysis. But open source based compagnies "are marketing driven too" as this the only way to differentiate yourslef from you competitor. Redhat is more an more a marketing driven compagny, as is Mysql, Jboss, Etc. The "only" way you can compete from another compagny selling "exactly" the same product is with Marketing. Microsoft are far from being idiots and I am pretty sure they understand this pretty well, this why they are more and more tageting open source compagnies and not Open Source Software per se.
This a good summuray. But as you said, its a quite complicated system, as everything designed by commity. EU is the fruit of countless negociations and comprimise between countries with different cultures and political systems. The thing is very difficult to hold together and its getting even worse with the new members; hence the constitution proposal, although it doesn't seems to be going to be adopted anytime soon. So I believe things will get worse and worse.
Now what would be cool is to translae the KDE documentation translated into the Wikmedia format. That would be really kick ass. I have always taught thatWiki is the ideal documentation tool, by it's dynamic nature, you could add topics, correct documentation, add examples Etc. à la PHP doc for instance or Faq-o-Matic. Linuxdoc can also profit from this, although I believe it's largly dead ?? by now.
This seems to be a trend now. After Google (and I think Yahoo and Amazon), MSN will be now under pressure to go somehow the open source road. They will probably vehemently protest, try resist, twist things their own way and explain how open source is bad, but they can't go against the tide and ultimately one day or another they will follow.
That's why google often manages to find dup and don't display them, only if you ask explicitly for them.
Then they should also have a don't be evil policy for sites beeing crawled. If you want google to behave nicely to you, then you should behave nicely to it too. That's seems fair to me. A site respecting this policy, can have a logo on its home page which give it a ranking bonus. Conversly if they break the rules, they sould be delisted. Its a trust system.
Yes, but I bet you will never have an official OS X for these architectures. If this happens I don't know what the reaction of Appel (and the gain and loss) if everybody can start downloading OS X libs en emule.
I find it hard to believe that the buzzword itself breathed life back into Javascript like the title implies.
;), Buzzwords is what has driven this industry (and many others) for decades.
So you don't know nothing about Marketing
Maybe the EU has finally found a very clever way to finance its enlargement, thank you Microsoft ;)
Sure this guy is a crackpot himself, he is just discrediting himself even more with this kind a provocative, tabloid journalism (if he has ever got any credit). Really Slashdot must not give echo to this kind person; they are just giving him what he is looking for a tribune and a readership.
The great beauty of the linux desktop is that it, like all *x desktop windowing systems, is not standardised
Alas this is also one of its main weakness. I had once high hopes for Linux on the desktop (three of four years ago), but the way I see it now is that its more fragmented than ever. I think it will manage to reach something around 5% share of the market in four or five years, but the bulk of the users will probably just stay with Windowz.
As the China and Indian get wealthier they wont give a fucking shit about the US and UK getting poorer
In macro-economics terms, you are completly wrong ! The economic interests of India and China dictate that they get richer without impovershing the US.
Sounds weired ? no ! Just think about if, your customer si rich then you get richer too ! To keep the pace of their development, India and China need an outlet for their products and services hence a richer US, Europe and Japan, Etc..
Indeed some people will loose while and others profit from this process. But if India and China get richer this a good thing for the whole planet. Just see what happened in Japan, a rich japan is better for the planet that a poor Japan.
I think that Google's perception is slowly changing among the Slashdot crowd, search results are less and less useful as they are beeing abused by spam indexing and Google's betas take forever (gmail and google news for instance).
;)
Google is still "cool" and "not evil" but I strongly believe they need to react quickly against this trend.
Preception is reality !! I am among people who think that Slashdot has been determinent in Google's launch and popularity. Hey people from Google are you listening ? you need to listen to Slashdot (small but vocal an influential minority and do something before it's too late !) please do something extraordinary and incredibly cool to amaze us again
There is one more important thing you forgot; The main advantage Firefox has over IE is the same as the one Linux has over Winodow. Firefox has been developed to be a browser while IE has been developed to make money and this is really a very very big difference.
I believe that the entiere wikipedia is about 1,5 GO, I don't kown is this include the images though
Indeed !! lemonde.fr one of the main french sites asked google news to remomve them, non they are back, they have probably reached the conclusion that they have more to gain than to loose from being listed there.