I'm sure there's slashdot readers for whom setting up (and maintaining) their own mail server is a short task done before breakfast without breaking a mental sweat.
Not really. The problem is that, as with most hard tasks, it's easy to trivialize in the abstract. In 10 seconds, I can type a command-line script that will answer port 25. In a slightly longer time I can pull down the appropriate packages for the Linux distro of choice and configure them with whatever domain name. In slightly longer, I can configure appropriate countermeasures and firewalling. Given budget and time, I can deploy a suite of additional features including redundancy (local and/or remote), various protocols for access to the mail, a Web front-end, calendaring, mailing list handling, archival, SOx-compliant retention management, monitoring, escalation paths, and so on...
Or I can sign up for Google Apps and have all of the above deployed in under a half hour for a company of nearly arbitrary size with customizations (logo, URLs for local support, internal documentation updates, etc.) being done within a week and larger-scale work (changing deployment manifests for new systems to ensure compatible browsers and pre-configured IMAP clients, etc.) being done over the course of the next month or two in conjunction with other parts of the organization.
After running my own mail servers for a decade, I finally gave in and went the Google route for my personal domain, and I'd recommend it for any size organization. There are pitfalls. You'll have to adapt or replace pieces of what Google gives you (their mailing list management is atrocious). But I feel that the work they leave in your lap is a very small trade-off given what you get.
This whole Twitter phenomenon seems to reinforce the narcissistic personality common in today's 25 or younger crowd. They think 'Everyone will want to know I watched Top Model tonight, and 90210 and Gossip Girl last night.'
Either you grew up in a bubble or you forgot what high school was like. There's nothing unique about this generation other than the frequency with which they yammer with people on the other side of the globe.
To be fair, Western Oil Companies have permission to do what they're doing. It's the government that's allowing it.
Obviously these oil companies aren't blameless, but to place the blame on them alone is to absolve those in power of their crimes, and that's not really very fair.
This is why I typically don't bother posting to Slashdot about this sort of thing... Why would you expect an example of their genre diversity (which is what I said that list was) would be exhaustive?
Studio Ghibli movies (Ghibli is semi-independent, being headed up by the former Disney Japan President and having an exclusive distribution deal with Disney).
Let's be clear about what Disney has put out through their other labels through the years (I'm not holding up any of the following films as anything but examples of diversity in genre):
If you expect Disney to water down Marvel comics, you should probably ask yourself how much watering down they'd have to do in order to bring it in-line with Clerks or Pulp Fiction.
I don't doubt that Marvel's heyday is over, but that's not a result of the buyout. That's a result of their "properties" becoming far too valuable to "damage".
World of Warcraft: Destroying relationships with girls since... well, the day it came out.
-- No. I mean this. I've got about six female friends that either bought it as a anniversary or birthday present, or their boyfriend bought it... and the relationship has always ended within eight months after that fateful purchase.
I'd be sold, except for the fact that your math doesn't work. I have six female friends that either bought [insert product here] as an anniversary or birthday present and they all broke up with their boy/girl friends within 8 months! That's almost certainly true for anyone who has at least 8 female friends.
WoW is a time sink, as are all MMOs. If you introduce a time sink into a relationship without an understanding around what you both want out of it, there's going to be trouble. The same is true for any hobby that requires a great deal of time. I've seen hunting and model rocketry have similar influences.
My last friend got so fed up that she took the laptop (with the CD still in it) and smashed it in the driveway, drove over it a few times, then hit it with a hammer.
Your friend is unstable. She needs help. Really.
Then she called all her friends and went to have ice cream. That game is pure evil -- it makes boys think dating a high level elf huntress is better than having a real girlfriend.
Jerks. Level isn't everything, you know!
Legions of geeks coming to the defense of the game in 5...4...
'It's not trolling if your patent truly covers an innovation, and your competitors copy it. In this case it's called "protecting your rights"'
Apart from the accusation that Dish illegally copied TiVo technology. I would have assumed that there were any number of methods of pausing, rewinding, and recording live television on digital video recorders. A PC, a tuner card, a dual head harddrive, and two instances of FFMPEG..
You're making an argument that the patents in question are invalid. That's a fine argument to make (I haven't read them, so I don't know). The problem is that that's not the OP's point, and the OP is, in fact, correct. Patent trolls use patents as a tool to leverage money from an industry in which they don't participate. TiVo is using patents to defend their product line. The latter might not appeal to you, and that's fine. You might even be able to demonstrate that their claims are unreasonable. That's fine too. But the specific use of the term "patent troll" is incorrect and uncalled for, here.
I'm not sure it's fair to call them a patent troll. The term patent troll used to specifically mean companies whose business plan centered around gathering patents with which to issue suits. TiVo is trying to defend legitimate innovation. I don't agree with the idea that most of these things should be patentable, but given that they are, there is an ocean of difference between a patent troll and TiVo.
That doesn't mean I like it. I'd rather see TiVo just beat the competition by having a better product. I think that would be better for the customer, but again, not a patent troll.
If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...
...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not.
Yes, I agree. No one should be allowed to listen to music at work. For that matter, windows should be painted black and I can't see a reason for anyone below a GS7 to go without blinders in the office.
Seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? If I do my job, I should be allowed to select whatever kind of silly thing I want to put on top of my monitor; adjust my chair however I want; and select whatever sort of music I'd like to listen to. Having a "pointy haired bosses must stay out of my way" attitude for "us" and then this kind of oppressive attitude toward anyone who happens to be employed by the U.S. Federal Government is absurd.
Agreed. Such "free" music is just a drop in the bucket to the illegal downloads going on.
That's not going to stop Jamendo (just for example) from being pretty peeved about this. Actually, I'd go out on a limb and say that this constitutes a fairly decent basis for Jamendo suing the U.S. Federal Government. If the company line is: you can download for-pay music on government computers, but you can't use Jamendo... then there is a very serious problem, here.
Wikipedia articles cross-link everywhere needlessly.
They cross-link to define terms and to utilize the hypertext medium of the Web. Not sure I follow how this is "needlessly." In fact, if they did not do this, I would personally find the site vastly less useful. I've certainly seen (and corrected) links that didn't need to exist. More often, I've added linking where it was needed.
Further, Wikipedia implemented "nofollow" on external links, meaning that they feed off the search rankings of external linkers but don't give back in kind. This is linkfarm behavior,
They didn't always do this. They do it now because not implementing nofollow incentivizes spam. But, I'm sure you knew that. And no, that's not linkfarm behavior at all.
pure and simple, and puts the shitty wikipedia "articles" higher in search rankings than any article of genuine useful content.
Wrong again. Wikipedia articles ranked just as highly before they implemented nofollow.
Excellent. This sounds like an opportunity for you to contribute. Excellent idea!
Been there. Tried that. Fuck you.
Can I suggest that if this is the kind of communication that you brought to Wikipedia, then I'm not shocked that you failed to achieve consensus? Seriously, you can contribute, you just can't treat it as your personal podium. When consensus goes against you, you need to re-examine. Sometimes it's worth the fight, but that should be the exception by far. When you find yourself taking it personally, you've crossed a line.
The goal of Wikipedia is to allow all of these parties with competing views of history and knowledge to come together and hash out what the consensus is.
You obviously have ZERO experience with how wikipedia actually operates.
Actually, what's funny is that you don't know that at all. In fact, I used to contribute quite a lot (there are dozens of articles which I created), and then I stopped. Why? Because I became disillusioned. The thing is that my reasons are based on my experiences, and I know that those experiences aren't universal. I understand that Wikipedia's not a waste of time for some people, but for me it was. Clearly the same was (is?) true for you. The difference being that you blame Wikipedia. I blame a combination of my social skills and differing visions for what an online encyclopedia should be. I understand Wikiepdia's value, I just have strong opinions about how that value could have been enhanced.
What actually happens on Wikipedia is that a few editors (from 2-3 to 30-40) stake out a given article or topic space, organize themselves, and then proceed to rule it with an iron fist.
So what you're saying is that humans achieve consensus by establishing social hierarchies. Are you somehow shocked by this?
When anyone comes that disagrees with them, the harassment campaign begins - accuse of being a sockpuppet
Sockpuppet accusations are always a bit dicey, but in general are only applied to known patterns of abusive behavior. Typically (not saying you did) one has the ability to simply back away from said behavior, contribute in other areas for a bit to establish a solid reputation and then return.
The claim "it's just a website" is often trotted out, but it's untrue. It's a website set up to function deliberately as a linkfarm,
How are you defining "linkfarm," here? Wikipedia cites a great deal of Web-addressable information, but when I hear "linkfarm," the primary connotation that I have implies a lack of contribution on the part of said farm in terms of original content or organization. One thing Wikipedia has going for it in spades is organization.
I suppose you could also call Wikipedia a "book citation farm" or a "free image farm" but I'm not sure what these labels contribute to any meaningful conversation other than a cheap putdown.
which has search engine rankings far above what it should have if it were treated like every other linkfarm out there.
Can you please list any one linkfarm which contains a tenth of the information available on Wikipedia?
It's full of inaccurate, possibly libelous, or outright harmful (in the case of many articles regarding drugs/herbs/"homeopathic remedies") statements in most of the articles.
Excellent. This sounds like an opportunity for you to contribute. Excellent idea!
As a "first stop" for "information" for many searchers, it has an amazing ability to influence thought processes,
I'm sensing crazy territory, here... I want to believe that you're a level-headed guy, but any time someone points at a large Web service and starts talking about "influence" on thought processes, you have to expect the hairs on the back of the necks of those of us who have been around the block a few times to come to attention.
and as such is a breeding ground for fights and control-freak behavior from people trying to bias a topic their way.
Yes, absolutely! Wikipedia is full of competing forces trying to bias it toward their personal (sadly, not even that most of the time) views. Sure.
The goal of Wikipedia is to allow all of these parties with competing views of history and knowledge to come together and hash out what the consensus is. It's not a repository of "absolute truth," any more so than a bookstore is. There are true things in bookstores, but there is also a great deal of misinformation, inaccuracy and simple errors. The hope in both cases is that producing this information in a public way will allow us to have the conversation about what we believe to be true about the world around us.
The regulations have already gotten too arduous. Most of the good administrators jumped ship long ago.
Not to be snarky, but I have to ask... do you have some source for this assertion or is this just a guess?
Sure, there are certainly some with an axe to grind, and certainly there are even going to be some who were actually mistreated. You can't create a large community of people dedicated to gathering information without creating some drama. It's human nature. The fact of the matter is, however, that Wikipedia has succeeded in fulfilling the dream of a hypertextual Web more so than any other site short, arguably, of the larger search engines.
Most simply gave up in disgust. The result? A biased, horribly squished encyclopedia.
You're assuming that there has been an exodus on only one side of any given issue. I don't see any issues where that's the case. Perhaps you do. I don't doubt they exist, just that they're not the norm.
Well-written entries, such as one on PSP homebrew software, were nuked to oblivion because of admins and cliques with an agenda against the topic.
How about it, and how would it affect the proposed change in any way?
... the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country
Please explain the word "official" as you use it, here.
is firmly controlled by the government,
Very, very, very doubtful. What proof do you have of this? Are you simply claiming that the other editors who have opposed your edits favor the government's version of the story over yours?
and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false
Do you have a source? Do they?
I have tried to correct those mistakes but everytime within 15 minutes the old entry are back, and finally I was warned by someone (supposed to be volunteer for Wikipedia) to STOP meddling with that particular entry
What you're doing is called "edit warring." It's looked down on.
Side note: the person warning you not do to what you did is another user who has been editing pages for some time and has been given administrative rights by other administrators of Wikipedia. These are folks who help to resolve disputes in order to help improve the site. They're not some government bureaucrat.
What you should be doing is taking the dispute to the discussion page and talking it through with the people who are reverting you. Should they fail to present rational explanations for their actions that are in keeping with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, then you can ask for administrative intervention (as, obviously, someone did with respect to your edit warring). At which point, you will have do defend your actions and comments, so it's always best to be polite and attempt to work with other parties to get the correct, well-sourced information into the article.
A phone is just a phone and we don't need it to become another computer platform to be monopolized. Stop selling me services, please, I only need a phone (that is, hardware).
I disagree. To a large extent, the phone stopped being interesting a few years ago, and increasingly the phone is simply a commodity that's built into your PDA/mobile computing platform. If you didn't want that, then you wouldn't need an iPhone or any other smart phone. You'd just be using a bargain free-with-plan phone.
No, the vast majority of people buying iPhones are looking for a portable entertainment device with mapping, Web browsing, email and number of other critical features that have nothing to do with the fact that the device happens to have a phone built into it.
What kind of delays would be known days in advance?
Most of them.
Delays are typically based on traffic patterns, which are established as flight plans are filed weeks in advance. As that information takes shape, the FAA restricts departure times to control the airspace pro-actively.
Then, as weather predictions become available and reasonably accurate (starting 48 hours or so before takeoff), that information is factored in, and further action is taken.
If you find your flight delayed, chances are it is pretty much exactly on-time from the FAA's perspective. The airline just didn't inform you of the change in plans.
If it were a game, I'd say it had great graphics. But as a film it was just not convincing to me.
I said the same thing about Gollum when I saw him in trailers for Fellowship. The reality is that it's not the polygons that make or break an animated character. It's their integration into the story and the action. It's how others react to them and how well the actor voicing them manages to come through.
None of this was established in the short trailer we were handed.
Joss Whedon is a derivative hack who can't help be defile every thing he touches with some sort of adolescent fantasy involving shitty, super-powered, little girls.
Not sure how Joss Whedon got sucked into this, but you're simply wrong, here.
"Derivative" is a poor man's insult (and the punchline of one of the less amusing XKCD strips). Every story ever told is derivative. Star Wars, 2001, Terminator... they were all derivative. That doesn't mean they weren't great movies, nor that their writers and directors weren't tremendously talented at what they did.
That said, what's a "shitty, super-powered, little girl?" What does that even mean?! If your objection is that women play strong roles in his science fiction / fantasy shows in the sorts of fantastic situations that only men typically find themselves in... well, shucks, I can't help you there.
Then his shows get canceled and the fucker throws a tantrum a 7 year old would envy,
Ah, I see someone's bitter about Firefly/Serenity.
killing off all the likable characters and pile driving what little story there was face first into the fucking ground.
OK, let's start off with the killing (note: spoilers ahead for Serenity). I'd agree that killing Wash was both unexpected and not strictly required by the story. On the other hand, you just finished dumping on the man's work, and now you seem to be implying that you're pining for the return of his characters after the Serenity movie. I think that really isn't how it's normally supposed to work.
allowing somebody in World of Warcraft to talk with somebody playing Wings of Liberty.
Just what every SC player has been waiting for.
This is an important feature. Those who use Vent for WoW won't care, but those who use in-game voice and decide to go play a bit of SC won't be able to hear their guild-mates ask them to join a raid or PvP with them. That woudl erode the WoW player base, and that's not what they want SC to do. Especially since SC will likely be a 1-2 month fling for the majority of players.
Well, to be fair, you're probably comparing WoW to games that came out much later and thus were able to exploit later on-card features. Still, I do agree. These days I've been playing LOTRO and it's certainly got much more impressive water.
This is unnecessary because they tell you at the airport if your flight is delayed.
Oh dear my, no.
The airlines actually make it a strict policy to lie about delays. They don't release that information until many minutes and often hours until after they know about it. I used to work in the air traffic industry, and the data that I had access to at the time would show me delays that were scheduled by the FAA up to a couple of days in advance, but the airlines kept strict control over that information because leaking it would mean that competitors could offer to pick up passengers from delayed flights.
To the World of Warcraft team, I have been playing the expansion but largely left the World of Warcraft in search of something else after frustration from reduced effort to level.
Reduced effort? Bah! When I started playing this game, it took me a few weeks of intensive play to get from 1 to max-level. These days it takes a few weeks of intensive play to get from 1 to max-level. It just so happens that max-level is now 80, and the majority of your time is spent in the 60-80 range (leveling slows at 60 and comes to a comparative stand-still at 70).
I just finished leveling my warlock, and she was a slow grind from 70 to 80, given that I did no instancing to break it up.
I think there's some nostalgia about how "hard" the game used to be. If your sense of achievement in this game came from what level you got your mount or how long it took you get to level 30, then yeah, WoW got "easier", but the same is true any time they raise the level cap (making heroic dungeons from Burning Crusade soloable for some classes, for example). But, the end-game has always been hard. It took months for the best guilds in the world to get through the Uldar hard-modes, and most have not done so yet (probably won't ever unless the go back after the level cap is raised, and even then, in some cases it might still be too challenging for most).
This game isn't easy. It has many things that only require time (leveling). It has many things that only require time and coordination (basic raiding). It has many things that only require a mastery of your class (arena). But it has some things that require massive effort and some innate skill (hard mode raiding; high-end arena). If you're not doing those things, you have no place to talk about what's hard and what isn't.
It's not Google that needs to be reigned in here, it's copyright.
Your right, and copyright reform isn't nearly as hard as one might think. The problem is pushing companies like Disney and Time/Warner (these companies because they are some of the largest lobbyists for copyright "protections" being increased) into accepting that copyright reform is actually good for their businesses.
Once the service is there others would like to compete. *Then* we can bring the anti-monopoly whip out and beat Google senseless.
Except that Google has nothing to do with it. There's nothing anti-competitive about their contract with the publishers. The only anti-competitive move would be the publishers refusing to write the same contract for everyone else who wants to scan and display orphaned works.
Paging Harlan Ellison, Harlan Ellison to the controversy please.
Ugh. Please, no. Ellison is incapable of having a useful discussion. His only desire is to irritate whoever happens to be his audience. I don't mind people who are incendiary when they have a point, but Ellison is just incendiary for the sake of it.
You missed the point. Google have a deal with publishers, you, Joe Nobody, would not even be able to make an appointment to see an individual publisher's secretary's dog, let alone try and do a deal with an entire industry.
That's correct. However, the OP's comment is also correct. This opens the door for competition specifically because it's monopolistic. That is, Google knows full well that they can't be allowed to be the only player with access to this material, and that the next guy (Bing?) to come along can just say, "dear publisher, please write me a contract granting me access to your books on the same terms as Google or I will follow up my lawsuit with a trip to the DoJ, explaining the nature of your anti-competitive practices."
The publishers know this, and aren't interested in granting exclusive access to just one company anyway, so I imagine that they're warming up their contract-printing services as we speak.
Remember that Google is just the first company to have cracked this nut. There will most certainly be others.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure there's slashdot readers for whom setting up (and maintaining) their own mail server is a short task done before breakfast without breaking a mental sweat.
Not really. The problem is that, as with most hard tasks, it's easy to trivialize in the abstract. In 10 seconds, I can type a command-line script that will answer port 25. In a slightly longer time I can pull down the appropriate packages for the Linux distro of choice and configure them with whatever domain name. In slightly longer, I can configure appropriate countermeasures and firewalling. Given budget and time, I can deploy a suite of additional features including redundancy (local and/or remote), various protocols for access to the mail, a Web front-end, calendaring, mailing list handling, archival, SOx-compliant retention management, monitoring, escalation paths, and so on...
Or I can sign up for Google Apps and have all of the above deployed in under a half hour for a company of nearly arbitrary size with customizations (logo, URLs for local support, internal documentation updates, etc.) being done within a week and larger-scale work (changing deployment manifests for new systems to ensure compatible browsers and pre-configured IMAP clients, etc.) being done over the course of the next month or two in conjunction with other parts of the organization.
After running my own mail servers for a decade, I finally gave in and went the Google route for my personal domain, and I'd recommend it for any size organization. There are pitfalls. You'll have to adapt or replace pieces of what Google gives you (their mailing list management is atrocious). But I feel that the work they leave in your lap is a very small trade-off given what you get.
This whole Twitter phenomenon seems to reinforce the narcissistic personality common in today's 25 or younger crowd. They think 'Everyone will want to know I watched Top Model tonight, and 90210 and Gossip Girl last night.'
Either you grew up in a bubble or you forgot what high school was like. There's nothing unique about this generation other than the frequency with which they yammer with people on the other side of the globe.
To be fair, Western Oil Companies have permission to do what they're doing. It's the government that's allowing it.
Obviously these oil companies aren't blameless, but to place the blame on them alone is to absolve those in power of their crimes, and that's not really very fair.
This is why I typically don't bother posting to Slashdot about this sort of thing... Why would you expect an example of their genre diversity (which is what I said that list was) would be exhaustive?
Since clearly you mistook that for an exhaustive list, here's the actual list of films from the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group:
Let's be clear about what Disney has put out through their other labels through the years (I'm not holding up any of the following films as anything but examples of diversity in genre):
If you expect Disney to water down Marvel comics, you should probably ask yourself how much watering down they'd have to do in order to bring it in-line with Clerks or Pulp Fiction.
I don't doubt that Marvel's heyday is over, but that's not a result of the buyout. That's a result of their "properties" becoming far too valuable to "damage".
World of Warcraft: Destroying relationships with girls since... well, the day it came out.
-- No. I mean this. I've got about six female friends that either bought it as a anniversary or birthday present, or their boyfriend bought it... and the relationship has always ended within eight months after that fateful purchase.
I'd be sold, except for the fact that your math doesn't work. I have six female friends that either bought [insert product here] as an anniversary or birthday present and they all broke up with their boy/girl friends within 8 months! That's almost certainly true for anyone who has at least 8 female friends.
WoW is a time sink, as are all MMOs. If you introduce a time sink into a relationship without an understanding around what you both want out of it, there's going to be trouble. The same is true for any hobby that requires a great deal of time. I've seen hunting and model rocketry have similar influences.
My last friend got so fed up that she took the laptop (with the CD still in it) and smashed it in the driveway, drove over it a few times, then hit it with a hammer.
Your friend is unstable. She needs help. Really.
Then she called all her friends and went to have ice cream. That game is pure evil -- it makes boys think dating a high level elf huntress is better than having a real girlfriend.
Jerks. Level isn't everything, you know!
Legions of geeks coming to the defense of the game in 5...4...
3/10 for the troll. 1/10 for the logic.
'It's not trolling if your patent truly covers an innovation, and your competitors copy it. In this case it's called "protecting your rights"'
Apart from the accusation that Dish illegally copied TiVo technology. I would have assumed that there were any number of methods of pausing, rewinding, and recording live television on digital video recorders. A PC, a tuner card, a dual head harddrive, and two instances of FFMPEG ..
You're making an argument that the patents in question are invalid. That's a fine argument to make (I haven't read them, so I don't know). The problem is that that's not the OP's point, and the OP is, in fact, correct. Patent trolls use patents as a tool to leverage money from an industry in which they don't participate. TiVo is using patents to defend their product line. The latter might not appeal to you, and that's fine. You might even be able to demonstrate that their claims are unreasonable. That's fine too. But the specific use of the term "patent troll" is incorrect and uncalled for, here.
I'm not sure it's fair to call them a patent troll. The term patent troll used to specifically mean companies whose business plan centered around gathering patents with which to issue suits. TiVo is trying to defend legitimate innovation. I don't agree with the idea that most of these things should be patentable, but given that they are, there is an ocean of difference between a patent troll and TiVo.
That doesn't mean I like it. I'd rather see TiVo just beat the competition by having a better product. I think that would be better for the customer, but again, not a patent troll.
If you're downloading music at work, it probably is stealing...
...of company time. And given that my taxes are paying these people's salaries (that is, you and I are "the company"), I'd really rather them not.
Yes, I agree. No one should be allowed to listen to music at work. For that matter, windows should be painted black and I can't see a reason for anyone below a GS7 to go without blinders in the office.
Seriously, what kind of nonsense is this? If I do my job, I should be allowed to select whatever kind of silly thing I want to put on top of my monitor; adjust my chair however I want; and select whatever sort of music I'd like to listen to. Having a "pointy haired bosses must stay out of my way" attitude for "us" and then this kind of oppressive attitude toward anyone who happens to be employed by the U.S. Federal Government is absurd.
Agreed. Such "free" music is just a drop in the bucket to the illegal downloads going on.
That's not going to stop Jamendo (just for example) from being pretty peeved about this. Actually, I'd go out on a limb and say that this constitutes a fairly decent basis for Jamendo suing the U.S. Federal Government. If the company line is: you can download for-pay music on government computers, but you can't use Jamendo... then there is a very serious problem, here.
How are you defining "linkfarm," here?
Wikipedia articles cross-link everywhere needlessly.
They cross-link to define terms and to utilize the hypertext medium of the Web. Not sure I follow how this is "needlessly." In fact, if they did not do this, I would personally find the site vastly less useful. I've certainly seen (and corrected) links that didn't need to exist. More often, I've added linking where it was needed.
Further, Wikipedia implemented "nofollow" on external links, meaning that they feed off the search rankings of external linkers but don't give back in kind. This is linkfarm behavior,
They didn't always do this. They do it now because not implementing nofollow incentivizes spam. But, I'm sure you knew that. And no, that's not linkfarm behavior at all.
pure and simple, and puts the shitty wikipedia "articles" higher in search rankings than any article of genuine useful content.
Wrong again. Wikipedia articles ranked just as highly before they implemented nofollow.
Excellent. This sounds like an opportunity for you to contribute. Excellent idea!
Been there. Tried that. Fuck you.
Can I suggest that if this is the kind of communication that you brought to Wikipedia, then I'm not shocked that you failed to achieve consensus? Seriously, you can contribute, you just can't treat it as your personal podium. When consensus goes against you, you need to re-examine. Sometimes it's worth the fight, but that should be the exception by far. When you find yourself taking it personally, you've crossed a line.
The goal of Wikipedia is to allow all of these parties with competing views of history and knowledge to come together and hash out what the consensus is.
You obviously have ZERO experience with how wikipedia actually operates.
Actually, what's funny is that you don't know that at all. In fact, I used to contribute quite a lot (there are dozens of articles which I created), and then I stopped. Why? Because I became disillusioned. The thing is that my reasons are based on my experiences, and I know that those experiences aren't universal. I understand that Wikipedia's not a waste of time for some people, but for me it was. Clearly the same was (is?) true for you. The difference being that you blame Wikipedia. I blame a combination of my social skills and differing visions for what an online encyclopedia should be. I understand Wikiepdia's value, I just have strong opinions about how that value could have been enhanced.
What actually happens on Wikipedia is that a few editors (from 2-3 to 30-40) stake out a given article or topic space, organize themselves, and then proceed to rule it with an iron fist.
So what you're saying is that humans achieve consensus by establishing social hierarchies. Are you somehow shocked by this?
When anyone comes that disagrees with them, the harassment campaign begins - accuse of being a sockpuppet
Sockpuppet accusations are always a bit dicey, but in general are only applied to known patterns of abusive behavior. Typically (not saying you did) one has the ability to simply back away from said behavior, contribute in other areas for a bit to establish a solid reputation and then return.
The claim "it's just a website" is often trotted out, but it's untrue. It's a website set up to function deliberately as a linkfarm,
How are you defining "linkfarm," here? Wikipedia cites a great deal of Web-addressable information, but when I hear "linkfarm," the primary connotation that I have implies a lack of contribution on the part of said farm in terms of original content or organization. One thing Wikipedia has going for it in spades is organization.
I suppose you could also call Wikipedia a "book citation farm" or a "free image farm" but I'm not sure what these labels contribute to any meaningful conversation other than a cheap putdown.
which has search engine rankings far above what it should have if it were treated like every other linkfarm out there.
Can you please list any one linkfarm which contains a tenth of the information available on Wikipedia?
It's full of inaccurate, possibly libelous, or outright harmful (in the case of many articles regarding drugs/herbs/"homeopathic remedies") statements in most of the articles.
Excellent. This sounds like an opportunity for you to contribute. Excellent idea!
As a "first stop" for "information" for many searchers, it has an amazing ability to influence thought processes,
I'm sensing crazy territory, here... I want to believe that you're a level-headed guy, but any time someone points at a large Web service and starts talking about "influence" on thought processes, you have to expect the hairs on the back of the necks of those of us who have been around the block a few times to come to attention.
and as such is a breeding ground for fights and control-freak behavior from people trying to bias a topic their way.
Yes, absolutely! Wikipedia is full of competing forces trying to bias it toward their personal (sadly, not even that most of the time) views. Sure.
The goal of Wikipedia is to allow all of these parties with competing views of history and knowledge to come together and hash out what the consensus is. It's not a repository of "absolute truth," any more so than a bookstore is. There are true things in bookstores, but there is also a great deal of misinformation, inaccuracy and simple errors. The hope in both cases is that producing this information in a public way will allow us to have the conversation about what we believe to be true about the world around us.
The regulations have already gotten too arduous. Most of the good administrators jumped ship long ago.
Not to be snarky, but I have to ask... do you have some source for this assertion or is this just a guess?
Some have turned around and exposed the ongoing problems.
Sure, there are certainly some with an axe to grind, and certainly there are even going to be some who were actually mistreated. You can't create a large community of people dedicated to gathering information without creating some drama. It's human nature. The fact of the matter is, however, that Wikipedia has succeeded in fulfilling the dream of a hypertextual Web more so than any other site short, arguably, of the larger search engines.
Most simply gave up in disgust. The result? A biased, horribly squished encyclopedia.
You're assuming that there has been an exodus on only one side of any given issue. I don't see any issues where that's the case. Perhaps you do. I don't doubt they exist, just that they're not the norm.
Well-written entries, such as one on PSP homebrew software, were nuked to oblivion because of admins and cliques with an agenda against the topic.
But there appears to still
How about patently false entry?
How about it, and how would it affect the proposed change in any way?
... the official entry on Wikipedia regarding that country
Please explain the word "official" as you use it, here.
is firmly controlled by the government,
Very, very, very doubtful. What proof do you have of this? Are you simply claiming that the other editors who have opposed your edits favor the government's version of the story over yours?
and the history portion of the entry blames British for everything, something that is patently false
Do you have a source? Do they?
I have tried to correct those mistakes but everytime within 15 minutes the old entry are back, and finally I was warned by someone (supposed to be volunteer for Wikipedia) to STOP meddling with that particular entry
What you're doing is called "edit warring." It's looked down on.
Side note: the person warning you not do to what you did is another user who has been editing pages for some time and has been given administrative rights by other administrators of Wikipedia. These are folks who help to resolve disputes in order to help improve the site. They're not some government bureaucrat.
What you should be doing is taking the dispute to the discussion page and talking it through with the people who are reverting you. Should they fail to present rational explanations for their actions that are in keeping with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, then you can ask for administrative intervention (as, obviously, someone did with respect to your edit warring). At which point, you will have do defend your actions and comments, so it's always best to be polite and attempt to work with other parties to get the correct, well-sourced information into the article.
A phone is just a phone and we don't need it to become another computer platform to be monopolized. Stop selling me services, please, I only need a phone (that is, hardware).
I disagree. To a large extent, the phone stopped being interesting a few years ago, and increasingly the phone is simply a commodity that's built into your PDA/mobile computing platform. If you didn't want that, then you wouldn't need an iPhone or any other smart phone. You'd just be using a bargain free-with-plan phone.
No, the vast majority of people buying iPhones are looking for a portable entertainment device with mapping, Web browsing, email and number of other critical features that have nothing to do with the fact that the device happens to have a phone built into it.
What kind of delays would be known days in advance?
Most of them.
Delays are typically based on traffic patterns, which are established as flight plans are filed weeks in advance. As that information takes shape, the FAA restricts departure times to control the airspace pro-actively.
Then, as weather predictions become available and reasonably accurate (starting 48 hours or so before takeoff), that information is factored in, and further action is taken.
If you find your flight delayed, chances are it is pretty much exactly on-time from the FAA's perspective. The airline just didn't inform you of the change in plans.
If it were a game, I'd say it had great graphics. But as a film it was just not convincing to me.
I said the same thing about Gollum when I saw him in trailers for Fellowship. The reality is that it's not the polygons that make or break an animated character. It's their integration into the story and the action. It's how others react to them and how well the actor voicing them manages to come through.
None of this was established in the short trailer we were handed.
Joss Whedon is a derivative hack who can't help be defile every thing he touches with some sort of adolescent fantasy involving shitty, super-powered, little girls.
Not sure how Joss Whedon got sucked into this, but you're simply wrong, here.
"Derivative" is a poor man's insult (and the punchline of one of the less amusing XKCD strips). Every story ever told is derivative. Star Wars, 2001, Terminator... they were all derivative. That doesn't mean they weren't great movies, nor that their writers and directors weren't tremendously talented at what they did.
That said, what's a "shitty, super-powered, little girl?" What does that even mean?! If your objection is that women play strong roles in his science fiction / fantasy shows in the sorts of fantastic situations that only men typically find themselves in... well, shucks, I can't help you there.
Then his shows get canceled and the fucker throws a tantrum a 7 year old would envy,
Ah, I see someone's bitter about Firefly/Serenity.
killing off all the likable characters and pile driving what little story there was face first into the fucking ground.
OK, let's start off with the killing (note: spoilers ahead for Serenity). I'd agree that killing Wash was both unexpected and not strictly required by the story. On the other hand, you just finished dumping on the man's work, and now you seem to be implying that you're pining for the return of his characters after the Serenity movie. I think that really isn't how it's normally supposed to work.
Just what every SC player has been waiting for.
This is an important feature. Those who use Vent for WoW won't care, but those who use in-game voice and decide to go play a bit of SC won't be able to hear their guild-mates ask them to join a raid or PvP with them. That woudl erode the WoW player base, and that's not what they want SC to do. Especially since SC will likely be a 1-2 month fling for the majority of players.
Well, to be fair, you're probably comparing WoW to games that came out much later and thus were able to exploit later on-card features. Still, I do agree. These days I've been playing LOTRO and it's certainly got much more impressive water.
This is unnecessary because they tell you at the airport if your flight is delayed.
Oh dear my, no.
The airlines actually make it a strict policy to lie about delays. They don't release that information until many minutes and often hours until after they know about it. I used to work in the air traffic industry, and the data that I had access to at the time would show me delays that were scheduled by the FAA up to a couple of days in advance, but the airlines kept strict control over that information because leaking it would mean that competitors could offer to pick up passengers from delayed flights.
To the World of Warcraft team, I have been playing the expansion but largely left the World of Warcraft in search of something else after frustration from reduced effort to level.
Reduced effort? Bah! When I started playing this game, it took me a few weeks of intensive play to get from 1 to max-level. These days it takes a few weeks of intensive play to get from 1 to max-level. It just so happens that max-level is now 80, and the majority of your time is spent in the 60-80 range (leveling slows at 60 and comes to a comparative stand-still at 70).
I just finished leveling my warlock, and she was a slow grind from 70 to 80, given that I did no instancing to break it up.
I think there's some nostalgia about how "hard" the game used to be. If your sense of achievement in this game came from what level you got your mount or how long it took you get to level 30, then yeah, WoW got "easier", but the same is true any time they raise the level cap (making heroic dungeons from Burning Crusade soloable for some classes, for example). But, the end-game has always been hard. It took months for the best guilds in the world to get through the Uldar hard-modes, and most have not done so yet (probably won't ever unless the go back after the level cap is raised, and even then, in some cases it might still be too challenging for most).
This game isn't easy. It has many things that only require time (leveling). It has many things that only require time and coordination (basic raiding). It has many things that only require a mastery of your class (arena). But it has some things that require massive effort and some innate skill (hard mode raiding; high-end arena). If you're not doing those things, you have no place to talk about what's hard and what isn't.
It's not Google that needs to be reigned in here, it's copyright.
Your right, and copyright reform isn't nearly as hard as one might think. The problem is pushing companies like Disney and Time/Warner (these companies because they are some of the largest lobbyists for copyright "protections" being increased) into accepting that copyright reform is actually good for their businesses.
Once the service is there others would like to compete. *Then* we can bring the anti-monopoly whip out and beat Google senseless.
Except that Google has nothing to do with it. There's nothing anti-competitive about their contract with the publishers. The only anti-competitive move would be the publishers refusing to write the same contract for everyone else who wants to scan and display orphaned works.
Paging Harlan Ellison, Harlan Ellison to the controversy please.
Ugh. Please, no. Ellison is incapable of having a useful discussion. His only desire is to irritate whoever happens to be his audience. I don't mind people who are incendiary when they have a point, but Ellison is just incendiary for the sake of it.
You missed the point. Google have a deal with publishers, you, Joe Nobody, would not even be able to make an appointment to see an individual publisher's secretary's dog, let alone try and do a deal with an entire industry.
That's correct. However, the OP's comment is also correct. This opens the door for competition specifically because it's monopolistic. That is, Google knows full well that they can't be allowed to be the only player with access to this material, and that the next guy (Bing?) to come along can just say, "dear publisher, please write me a contract granting me access to your books on the same terms as Google or I will follow up my lawsuit with a trip to the DoJ, explaining the nature of your anti-competitive practices."
The publishers know this, and aren't interested in granting exclusive access to just one company anyway, so I imagine that they're warming up their contract-printing services as we speak.
Remember that Google is just the first company to have cracked this nut. There will most certainly be others.