Yes, it's true that those have to be redundant and damage resistant but traditionally on warships those things are exactly that. Coming back to the USS Missouri (because it's the ship I know best) I can tell you that just about anything worth doing on our ship can be done from 3 different places (sometimes more). And pretty much all of the critical systems are located in well-protected areas of the ship.
The British have been designing, building and operating warships for centuries - they had one of the best Navies on the ocean when the United States was just a gleam in George Washington's eye. I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing and that they'll make the critical systems hardened and redundant.
I'm a little surprised that these ships are intended to be conventionally powered. I realize that nuclear power brings its own set of problems, but it also has a lot of advantages -- for example not having to worry about fuel consumption en route to the theater (or theatre in this case, I guess) of operations.
Well there's some truth to that but in considering cost of ownership you also have to figure that in 50 years these things are going to need to be in the shipyard at least once a decade for maintenance, upgrades, repairs, etc. The U.S. Navy has thirteen aircraft carriers (if I recall correctly) but only a dozen on the water at any given time because they always have one of them in the shipyard getting an overhaul.
Still, it is cheaper than a conventional carrier if you can reduce the total crew needed. And the costs go beyond mere salary; clothes, food, supplies and training savings are there to be realized as well.
When they modernized USS Missouri in the mid-80s they cut the crew complement roughly in half. It didn't mean longer watches; it meant fewer duty stations. The new automation systems on board (and fewer small guns to man) meant that it didn't take as many crewmembers to perform the same tasks any more.
New engineering technology, for example, can cut the number of men it takes to operate an engine room from 25-30 down to 5-10. And more of those jobs are monitoring systems jobs, as opposed to manual labor, which reduces fatigue and reduces the chance of injury.
It works fine if it's properly designed and managed.
Chris Rock, being funny but honest, points out that the money isn't in the cure - the money is in the medicine. He opines that the pharmaceutical industry isn't going to cure things anymore - they'll just find a way to help you live with it. Keep you coming back.
Now that is a cynical view, of course, and intended to be funny -- but there is also a ring of truth to it. Public institutions are the ones whose primary focus is on public benefit and not shareholder gains. While I value the role of competition and private industry, I also acknowledge the power of coordination and cooperation between and among government and educational institutions in advancing research and discovery.
Unfortunately our faith-based administration seems to have very little use for science and I think that active disregard will come back to haunt America's science programs in the years to come.
On the plus side at least science and medicine-based television shows (Numb3rs, various CSIs, etc.) have become quite popular which makes it cool and sexy to be a scientist. Hopefully that will inspire more young people to pursue science.
Actually what you're referring to is taking the case on "contingency" -- which means the lawyer gets paid a percentage of the winnings. (and if there are no winnings then there is no fee).
Pro Bono (short for Pro Bono Publico; latin for "For the Common Good") means without compensation.
In this case it may be that the court thinks the city's behavior was so reprehensible that the city should have to reimburse the pro bono counsel for any expenses they may have incurred. Not likely that they'll get any legal fees but they might get costs. (postage, filing fees, etc.)
I think it's fairly ironic that the same Republicans who were so anxious to impeach Clinton for lying about his sex life crying "The President has to uphold the law!" are now shrugging off the law as an inconvenience when it's their boy under the spotlight.
One of the reasons this country is so great is that we have laws like the Constitution to protect us from the excesses of government and the egomaniacal power grabs of individuals. Checks and balances are an absolutely essential component of what America is all about.
The judge is exactly right that this case needs to be exposed to the light of day to ensure that abuses (if any) are curtailed and exposed. And our President needs to be reminded that he's not the King. He works for us, not the other way around.
A guy who self-righteously claims to promote democracy shouldn't have to be reminded of that.
Bush, Cheney and the Republicans have already been cracking down on leaks of classified information so that they won't have any more splaining to do.
They only crack down on the leaks they don't like. When it's time to smear a political opponent you can bet that Karl and Scooter are working the phone trees to leak whatever they can.
A new study had found that 27% of studies reach obvious and/or useless conclusions. Researchers at the Duh Institute surveyed 7 people and asked them their opinion of a couple of selected studies including reports that:
1. People who are taking antidepressants tend to be depressed. 2. Cows emit a lot of methane. and 3. 30% of Internet users go online just for fun.
Four of those surveyed were too depressed to respond, one told the researcher to sit down and finish his supper and two said "Not now, I'm updating my MySpace."
It was the secret word from the classic text game "Adventure". If I recall correctly if you typed it while you were in the correct room it would magically transport you to another place in the maze.
Well, that hasn't been my experience. Yes they may not want or need a full-time geek but as businesses grow beyond a couple of computers they start to talk about shared documents, shared databases and shared applications.
You can do that to a limited extent peer-to-peer but when you start to get to 8, 10, 12 or more workstations most companies really should have a server and SBS is a good solution for those kinds of companies.
They don't need a full-time geek. It can be installed, configured and then just takes occasional maintenance. As long as somebody in the office knows how to change the backup tapes there isn't much other need for daily interaction with the server.
Most of the companies we see are trying to do more with their technology, not less. The web browser is fine, but it's hard to run a substantial company purely on web-apps and, frankly, I don't think I'd want to.
For performance reasons if nothing else I think larger companies (i.e. 8-25 computers) should maintain their own server locally for documents, e-mail and other local applications.
A lot of companies of that size (~25-50 employees) are already running Microsoft Small Business Server (or certainly could be) and thus already have their own Exchange server. It never ceases to amaze me how many of them don't realize they have it and so still pay for hosted POP e-mail via some ISP.
About every 3 weeks we take on a new client where our first project is to turn on the Exchange server they already own, create their MX record so that their mail comes to their own server instead of the ISP, create their mailboxes and change Outlook from POPing their mail from the ISP to native MAPI to their own server.
It's easy, the improvement for most of the clients is fairly dramatic (especially if their mail ISP hasn't been terribly reliable) and a SBS server can be readily maintained by a single geek with a little bit of knowledge.
Google's market for this is probably the very small businesses - 10 employees who may not even have a server.
My GMail inbox gets maybe 1 or 2 spam a day. My Hotmail inbox gets about 2-3 an hour.
GMail's spam filter catches most of the spam I get (30-40 a day) to the account and correctly redirects it to the Junk Mail folder with almost no false positives. Hotmail catches maybe 50% (at best) of the spam.
Given that it does appear to be old news I wonder why RIM hasn't been putting this news out there more prominently. There is still a lot of hand-wringing among organizations who are heavy Blackberry users and this kind of information would go a long way towards soothing them.
In fact today's press release it the first mention of it I can find in Blackberry's press releases. Their October 26th, 2005 release about the case makes no mention of it, for example.
We already have a whole army of teens and college-aged kids who are expert marksmen. They know that you click the left directional button to zoom in, press Y to turn on your night-vision for better contrast in low-lighting or bad visibility conditions, kneel for better stability, and squeeze the right trigger when you're ready to fire.
It's not about developing better sights, it's about developing the right kind of controllers.
Their biggest shock if they get into real combat will probably be in discovering that you can't turn off the vibration.
You appear to be highly blinkered by a romantic vision of free collaborative access to all of human knowledge without any responsibility for the consequences. That's why you keep making fallacious attacks on my motives rather than deal with the substance.
You've presented no substance, only your opinion. You claim I can't know the relative accuracy of Wikipedia (hypocritically making another of those ad hominem attacks you claim to dislike in the process) but the converse is also true -- you can't know what percentage of Wikipedia is not accurate. My experience with Wikipedia has been that, in fact, those who are interested and knowledgable about an article almost always win out over the ignorant and the vandals.
Are there exceptions? Sure. You haven't cited any examples, but I'm confident that if you really tried you could. Ultimately, however, your argument is all sizzle and no steak.
Take the article on the Iowa-class Battleships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_class_battleshi p) for example. It's fairly extensive, though by no means comprehensive, currently contains no obvious errors (and it's a subject I'm knowledgable about), and is watched, updated and refined on a regular basis by several knowledgeable participants. There is also an extensive discussion page which documents some of those refinements and the discussions that have gone on around them.
Additionally, contrary to some of your criticisms about the lack of references, it includes no fewer than 7 outside references and 11 external links to non-Wikipedia sites with relevent content. Citing sources and providing references for material, as well as external links, is increasingly encouraged at Wikipedia to assist in fact-checking and multi-source research.
You present a lot of opinion and theory as if it were fact at the same time haughtily dismissing my opinion, theory & experience. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
Just like democracy, it only works when informed, concerned and intelligent people step forward and take an active role
Yes, that's called an analogy.
But wikipedia expends no effort at all checking with that information that people are informed with is correct. This leads to the result that "concerned and intelligent people" can be misinformed and make bad decisions based on information that is false - do I need to cite a big, long example or shall I just write "Iraq WMDs" and leave it at that?
You're not really going to blame Wikipedia for the Bush administration's intelligence shortcomings are you? I mean, I know the CIA has taken some lumps but it would be a heck of a scandal if it turned out they were relying upon Wikipedia for all of their information.
Wikipedia does no fact checking, that is correct. Wikipedia is merely a posting place -- a place for people who wish to share information (correct or incorrect) to meet and post that information.
As accuracy goes I'd submit it's more accurate than the average website for the simple fact that errors and mistakes can be corrected by anybody who wishes to AND because it invites open discussion of the content of an article. If I Google and find a random article on the Internet, perhaps on the subject of Pseudo-intellectuals, and I find content that I believe to be false I generally have no way to discuss that content with the author of the piece and almost never have the opportunity to correct errors that I find.
Furthermore wikipedia makes no attempt to screen truth from falsehood or elevate expertise over ignorance.
Correct. Which also means we're not subjected to biased opinions of who is or is not an expert. Ultimately truth or falsehood is determined by the community, some of whom are experts on the subject, and that community can discuss the matter openly.
Further I submit that often some of the most valuable content on Wikipedia can be found on the Discussion page instead of the article itself.
Since there are more lies than truths and more ignorance than expertise, it seems to me that there is only one result. And it ain't pretty.
It may seem that way to you but the reality is that the vast majority of the content on Wikipedia is accurate.
But I live in a country that has a representative democracy which is NOT a republic. Can you parse that? You don't know the difference do you?
Leaving aside your ad hominem attack (oh the delicious irony) I know perfectly well what a Republic is. And especially what a Federal Republic is (that's what the country I live in is). What I don't know, or particularly care, is what country you live in.
Wikipedia has nothing other than (naive) faith in the goodness of humanity.
Yes, that's the nature of "open source." It's not perfect, but it's good.
What you're actually saying is that Wikipedia is valuable as an unauthoritative source.
What I'm actually saying is that no real researcher relies upon a single source of information. You cross-check your facts and your sources. This is the first day of high school science class stuff. The vast majority of the time the content in Wikipedia will be supported by other sources but it is incumbent upon the researcher to check those other sources anyhow.
The beauty of it is that when the other sources prove Wikipedia to be wrong...you can fix Wikipedia in mere moments.
I wouldn't rely upon the Encyclopedia Britannica all by itself either.
It appears to me that you have a real problem with Wikipedia - did they disparage your favorite Anime artist or fail to give the proper respect to the DEC PDP-10?
That is called an ad hominem attack.
If you're going to participate in Slashdot you may want to get some thicker skin. That said it was a statement of opinion -- you seem to have a pretty big chip on your shoulder about Wikipedia that goes beyond simple disagreement with their editorial model. Fortunately you're not required to use Wikipedia.
Well, first of all I never said it was a democracy. I made an analogy(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy) intended to illustrate that Wikipedia, like a democracy, really only works if the constituency takes responsibility for making it work. If people, especially the intelligent and informed people, stay at home and don't vote (or in our context don't step up and contribute or edit articles) then the process is going to fail. Idiots are going to get elected and bad content is going to get and stay posted.
Your aspersions about what the "mob" does or doesn't distinguish ring hollow I'm afraid. There are a great many people on Wikipedia who do care about truth and accuracy (I'd submit that most of the articles have at least one author/contributor/editor who is knowledgable and concerned) and there is quite a bit of excellent content on the site.
Is Wikipedia authoritative? No. But as one part of a larger research effort it is extremely valuable. (especially considering the price) Like any source it should be cross-checked and verified. I can assure you that printed encyclopedias contain errors too and they're a lot harder to fix.
It appears to me that you have a real problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grudge) with Wikipedia - did they disparage your favorite Anime artist or fail to give the proper respect to the DEC PDP-10?
Well, whatever it is, if you don't like Wikipedia that's fine. But let's not unfairly trash a valuable resource just because it's not perfect. Understanding its weaknesses will go a long way towards exploiting its strengths and getting the most from it.
The whole site is editors to moderate what people are saying. Anybody (or at least any registered user) can change/delete/revert/add/modify (almost) any article at (almost) any time.
Wikipedia's greatest weakness is also its greatest strength -- 50 million editors and contributors. Some of whom are brilliant, some of whom are morons. Hopefully the brilliant ones win out but every now and then you have to put up with (or even step in and edit) some inanity.
Just like democracy, it only works when informed, concerned and intelligent people step forward and take an active role.
When I was consulting in Los Angeles about a decade ago I did computer work for Alex Trebeck and Shirley Maclaine (among others). I never met Ms. Maclaine but her business assistants (who I dealt with) seemed nice enough.
I worked with Trebeck a bunch of times and found him to be a very nice, very bright (didn't know much about computers but was a fast learner) and just fine to deal with.
Celebrities are just people -- some of them a bit eccentric I suppose -- and I don't really get what all the hub-bub is about. If I didn't know Trebeck was a big game-show host he'd have just seemed like a nice guy with an impressive collection of sweaters. (and a ton of money)
1) Cops in the USA do not shoot out the tires of fleeing suspects. They're not allowed to shoot at moving vehicles except under the most dire circumstances. And they certainly don't do it from a moving cop car.
They use spike strips or other similar techniques to try and take out the tires. Not bullets.
2) What you're suggesting is having roving gunships flying over major cities and opening fire with large caliber automatic weapons in heavily populated areas. Aside from the inherent Stalin-esque quality of that it's extremely difficult for a moving helicopter to hit just the engine on a moving vehicle. As often as not they'd end up wounding or killing some or all of those inside the car.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, it's true that those have to be redundant and damage resistant but traditionally on warships those things are exactly that. Coming back to the USS Missouri (because it's the ship I know best) I can tell you that just about anything worth doing on our ship can be done from 3 different places (sometimes more). And pretty much all of the critical systems are located in well-protected areas of the ship.
The British have been designing, building and operating warships for centuries - they had one of the best Navies on the ocean when the United States was just a gleam in George Washington's eye. I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing and that they'll make the critical systems hardened and redundant.
I'm a little surprised that these ships are intended to be conventionally powered. I realize that nuclear power brings its own set of problems, but it also has a lot of advantages -- for example not having to worry about fuel consumption en route to the theater (or theatre in this case, I guess) of operations.
-Coach-
Well there's some truth to that but in considering cost of ownership you also have to figure that in 50 years these things are going to need to be in the shipyard at least once a decade for maintenance, upgrades, repairs, etc. The U.S. Navy has thirteen aircraft carriers (if I recall correctly) but only a dozen on the water at any given time because they always have one of them in the shipyard getting an overhaul.
Still, it is cheaper than a conventional carrier if you can reduce the total crew needed. And the costs go beyond mere salary; clothes, food, supplies and training savings are there to be realized as well.
-Coach-
When they modernized USS Missouri in the mid-80s they cut the crew complement roughly in half. It didn't mean longer watches; it meant fewer duty stations. The new automation systems on board (and fewer small guns to man) meant that it didn't take as many crewmembers to perform the same tasks any more.
New engineering technology, for example, can cut the number of men it takes to operate an engine room from 25-30 down to 5-10. And more of those jobs are monitoring systems jobs, as opposed to manual labor, which reduces fatigue and reduces the chance of injury.
It works fine if it's properly designed and managed.
-Coach-
Chris Rock, being funny but honest, points out that the money isn't in the cure - the money is in the medicine. He opines that the pharmaceutical industry isn't going to cure things anymore - they'll just find a way to help you live with it. Keep you coming back.
Now that is a cynical view, of course, and intended to be funny -- but there is also a ring of truth to it. Public institutions are the ones whose primary focus is on public benefit and not shareholder gains. While I value the role of competition and private industry, I also acknowledge the power of coordination and cooperation between and among government and educational institutions in advancing research and discovery.
Unfortunately our faith-based administration seems to have very little use for science and I think that active disregard will come back to haunt America's science programs in the years to come.
On the plus side at least science and medicine-based television shows (Numb3rs, various CSIs, etc.) have become quite popular which makes it cool and sexy to be a scientist. Hopefully that will inspire more young people to pursue science.
-Coach-
Actually what you're referring to is taking the case on "contingency" -- which means the lawyer gets paid a percentage of the winnings. (and if there are no winnings then there is no fee).
Pro Bono (short for Pro Bono Publico; latin for "For the Common Good") means without compensation.
In this case it may be that the court thinks the city's behavior was so reprehensible that the city should have to reimburse the pro bono counsel for any expenses they may have incurred. Not likely that they'll get any legal fees but they might get costs. (postage, filing fees, etc.)
-Coach-
I think it's fairly ironic that the same Republicans who were so anxious to impeach Clinton for lying about his sex life crying "The President has to uphold the law!" are now shrugging off the law as an inconvenience when it's their boy under the spotlight.
One of the reasons this country is so great is that we have laws like the Constitution to protect us from the excesses of government and the egomaniacal power grabs of individuals. Checks and balances are an absolutely essential component of what America is all about.
The judge is exactly right that this case needs to be exposed to the light of day to ensure that abuses (if any) are curtailed and exposed. And our President needs to be reminded that he's not the King. He works for us, not the other way around.
A guy who self-righteously claims to promote democracy shouldn't have to be reminded of that.
-Coach-
Bush, Cheney and the Republicans have already been cracking down on leaks of classified information so that they won't have any more splaining to do.
They only crack down on the leaks they don't like. When it's time to smear a political opponent you can bet that Karl and Scooter are working the phone trees to leak whatever they can.
-Coach-
A new study had found that 27% of studies reach obvious and/or useless conclusions. Researchers at the Duh Institute surveyed 7 people and asked them their opinion of a couple of selected studies including reports that:
1. People who are taking antidepressants tend to be depressed.
2. Cows emit a lot of methane.
and
3. 30% of Internet users go online just for fun.
Four of those surveyed were too depressed to respond, one told the researcher to sit down and finish his supper and two said "Not now, I'm updating my MySpace."
-Coach-
It was the secret word from the classic text game "Adventure". If I recall correctly if you typed it while you were in the correct room it would magically transport you to another place in the maze.
-Coach-
I was going to guess "XYZZY" but I guess I'm showing my age.
-Coach-
Seeing the beams in air is probably just a matter of giving it something to reflect off of. A tiny fog machine should do the trick. :-)
-Coach-
Well, that hasn't been my experience. Yes they may not want or need a full-time geek but as businesses grow beyond a couple of computers they start to talk about shared documents, shared databases and shared applications.
You can do that to a limited extent peer-to-peer but when you start to get to 8, 10, 12 or more workstations most companies really should have a server and SBS is a good solution for those kinds of companies.
They don't need a full-time geek. It can be installed, configured and then just takes occasional maintenance. As long as somebody in the office knows how to change the backup tapes there isn't much other need for daily interaction with the server.
Most of the companies we see are trying to do more with their technology, not less. The web browser is fine, but it's hard to run a substantial company purely on web-apps and, frankly, I don't think I'd want to.
For performance reasons if nothing else I think larger companies (i.e. 8-25 computers) should maintain their own server locally for documents, e-mail and other local applications.
-Coach-
A lot of companies of that size (~25-50 employees) are already running Microsoft Small Business Server (or certainly could be) and thus already have their own Exchange server. It never ceases to amaze me how many of them don't realize they have it and so still pay for hosted POP e-mail via some ISP.
About every 3 weeks we take on a new client where our first project is to turn on the Exchange server they already own, create their MX record so that their mail comes to their own server instead of the ISP, create their mailboxes and change Outlook from POPing their mail from the ISP to native MAPI to their own server.
It's easy, the improvement for most of the clients is fairly dramatic (especially if their mail ISP hasn't been terribly reliable) and a SBS server can be readily maintained by a single geek with a little bit of knowledge.
Google's market for this is probably the very small businesses - 10 employees who may not even have a server.
-B-
My GMail inbox gets maybe 1 or 2 spam a day. My Hotmail inbox gets about 2-3 an hour.
GMail's spam filter catches most of the spam I get (30-40 a day) to the account and correctly redirects it to the Junk Mail folder with almost no false positives. Hotmail catches maybe 50% (at best) of the spam.
GMail's filter works much better for me.
-Coach-
Sounds to me like they're just going to an advanced form of Google with some automated analysis and relationship management. Big deal.
Why should I care if the government wants to index my blog? I figure the NSA is probably the only ones reading it anyhow.
-Coach-
Given that it does appear to be old news I wonder why RIM hasn't been putting this news out there more prominently. There is still a lot of hand-wringing among organizations who are heavy Blackberry users and this kind of information would go a long way towards soothing them.
In fact today's press release it the first mention of it I can find in Blackberry's press releases. Their October 26th, 2005 release about the case makes no mention of it, for example.
-Coach-
On wikipedia, the experts drown in an ocean of sludge.
That's your opinion and one that is not supported by my experience.
-Coach-
We already have a whole army of teens and college-aged kids who are expert marksmen. They know that you click the left directional button to zoom in, press Y to turn on your night-vision for better contrast in low-lighting or bad visibility conditions, kneel for better stability, and squeeze the right trigger when you're ready to fire.
It's not about developing better sights, it's about developing the right kind of controllers.
Their biggest shock if they get into real combat will probably be in discovering that you can't turn off the vibration.
-Coach-
You appear to be highly blinkered by a romantic vision of free collaborative access to all of human knowledge without any responsibility for the consequences. That's why you keep making fallacious attacks on my motives rather than deal with the substance.
i p) for example. It's fairly extensive, though by no means comprehensive, currently contains no obvious errors (and it's a subject I'm knowledgable about), and is watched, updated and refined on a regular basis by several knowledgeable participants. There is also an extensive discussion page which documents some of those refinements and the discussions that have gone on around them.
You've presented no substance, only your opinion. You claim I can't know the relative accuracy of Wikipedia (hypocritically making another of those ad hominem attacks you claim to dislike in the process) but the converse is also true -- you can't know what percentage of Wikipedia is not accurate. My experience with Wikipedia has been that, in fact, those who are interested and knowledgable about an article almost always win out over the ignorant and the vandals.
Are there exceptions? Sure. You haven't cited any examples, but I'm confident that if you really tried you could. Ultimately, however, your argument is all sizzle and no steak.
Take the article on the Iowa-class Battleships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_class_battlesh
Additionally, contrary to some of your criticisms about the lack of references, it includes no fewer than 7 outside references and 11 external links to non-Wikipedia sites with relevent content. Citing sources and providing references for material, as well as external links, is increasingly encouraged at Wikipedia to assist in fact-checking and multi-source research.
You present a lot of opinion and theory as if it were fact at the same time haughtily dismissing my opinion, theory & experience. So I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.
-Coach-
What you actually said was:
Just like democracy, it only works when informed, concerned and intelligent people step forward and take an active role
Yes, that's called an analogy.
But wikipedia expends no effort at all checking with that information that people are informed with is correct. This leads to the result that "concerned and intelligent people" can be misinformed and make bad decisions based on information that is false - do I need to cite a big, long example or shall I just write "Iraq WMDs" and leave it at that?
You're not really going to blame Wikipedia for the Bush administration's intelligence shortcomings are you? I mean, I know the CIA has taken some lumps but it would be a heck of a scandal if it turned out they were relying upon Wikipedia for all of their information.
Wikipedia does no fact checking, that is correct. Wikipedia is merely a posting place -- a place for people who wish to share information (correct or incorrect) to meet and post that information.
As accuracy goes I'd submit it's more accurate than the average website for the simple fact that errors and mistakes can be corrected by anybody who wishes to AND because it invites open discussion of the content of an article. If I Google and find a random article on the Internet, perhaps on the subject of Pseudo-intellectuals, and I find content that I believe to be false I generally have no way to discuss that content with the author of the piece and almost never have the opportunity to correct errors that I find.
Furthermore wikipedia makes no attempt to screen truth from falsehood or elevate expertise over ignorance.
Correct. Which also means we're not subjected to biased opinions of who is or is not an expert. Ultimately truth or falsehood is determined by the community, some of whom are experts on the subject, and that community can discuss the matter openly.
Further I submit that often some of the most valuable content on Wikipedia can be found on the Discussion page instead of the article itself.
Since there are more lies than truths and more ignorance than expertise, it seems to me that there is only one result. And it ain't pretty.
It may seem that way to you but the reality is that the vast majority of the content on Wikipedia is accurate.
But I live in a country that has a representative democracy which is NOT a republic. Can you parse that? You don't know the difference do you?
Leaving aside your ad hominem attack (oh the delicious irony) I know perfectly well what a Republic is. And especially what a Federal Republic is (that's what the country I live in is). What I don't know, or particularly care, is what country you live in.
Wikipedia has nothing other than (naive) faith in the goodness of humanity.
Yes, that's the nature of "open source." It's not perfect, but it's good.
What you're actually saying is that Wikipedia is valuable as an unauthoritative source.
What I'm actually saying is that no real researcher relies upon a single source of information. You cross-check your facts and your sources. This is the first day of high school science class stuff. The vast majority of the time the content in Wikipedia will be supported by other sources but it is incumbent upon the researcher to check those other sources anyhow.
The beauty of it is that when the other sources prove Wikipedia to be wrong...you can fix Wikipedia in mere moments.
I wouldn't rely upon the Encyclopedia Britannica all by itself either.
It appears to me that you have a real problem with Wikipedia - did they disparage your favorite Anime artist or fail to give the proper respect to the DEC PDP-10?
That is called an ad hominem attack.
If you're going to participate in Slashdot you may want to get some thicker skin. That said it was a statement of opinion -- you seem to have a pretty big chip on your shoulder about Wikipedia that goes beyond simple disagreement with their editorial model. Fortunately you're not required to use Wikipedia.
-Coach-
Well, first of all I never said it was a democracy. I made an analogy(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy) intended to illustrate that Wikipedia, like a democracy, really only works if the constituency takes responsibility for making it work. If people, especially the intelligent and informed people, stay at home and don't vote (or in our context don't step up and contribute or edit articles) then the process is going to fail. Idiots are going to get elected and bad content is going to get and stay posted.
Secondly democracy is in many ways mob rule - especially direct democracy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy). What you're speaking of is representative democracy which is also known as a Republic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic).
Your aspersions about what the "mob" does or doesn't distinguish ring hollow I'm afraid. There are a great many people on Wikipedia who do care about truth and accuracy (I'd submit that most of the articles have at least one author/contributor/editor who is knowledgable and concerned) and there is quite a bit of excellent content on the site.
Is Wikipedia authoritative? No. But as one part of a larger research effort it is extremely valuable. (especially considering the price) Like any source it should be cross-checked and verified. I can assure you that printed encyclopedias contain errors too and they're a lot harder to fix.
It appears to me that you have a real problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grudge) with Wikipedia - did they disparage your favorite Anime artist or fail to give the proper respect to the DEC PDP-10?
Well, whatever it is, if you don't like Wikipedia that's fine. But let's not unfairly trash a valuable resource just because it's not perfect. Understanding its weaknesses will go a long way towards exploiting its strengths and getting the most from it.
-Coach- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony)
The whole site is editors to moderate what people are saying. Anybody (or at least any registered user) can change/delete/revert/add/modify (almost) any article at (almost) any time.
Wikipedia's greatest weakness is also its greatest strength -- 50 million editors and contributors. Some of whom are brilliant, some of whom are morons. Hopefully the brilliant ones win out but every now and then you have to put up with (or even step in and edit) some inanity.
Just like democracy, it only works when informed, concerned and intelligent people step forward and take an active role.
-Coach-
When I was consulting in Los Angeles about a decade ago I did computer work for Alex Trebeck and Shirley Maclaine (among others). I never met Ms. Maclaine but her business assistants (who I dealt with) seemed nice enough.
I worked with Trebeck a bunch of times and found him to be a very nice, very bright (didn't know much about computers but was a fast learner) and just fine to deal with.
Celebrities are just people -- some of them a bit eccentric I suppose -- and I don't really get what all the hub-bub is about. If I didn't know Trebeck was a big game-show host he'd have just seemed like a nice guy with an impressive collection of sweaters. (and a ton of money)
-Coach-
I think you're watching too much TV.
1) Cops in the USA do not shoot out the tires of fleeing suspects. They're not allowed to shoot at moving vehicles except under the most dire circumstances. And they certainly don't do it from a moving cop car.
They use spike strips or other similar techniques to try and take out the tires. Not bullets.
2) What you're suggesting is having roving gunships flying over major cities and opening fire with large caliber automatic weapons in heavily populated areas. Aside from the inherent Stalin-esque quality of that it's extremely difficult for a moving helicopter to hit just the engine on a moving vehicle. As often as not they'd end up wounding or killing some or all of those inside the car.
-B-
Now I have to duck into an online store while the salesclerks are on break. Great.
-B-
http://think2x.blogspot.com