From my brief perusing of Nupedia, I've decided that their quality control in this respect is pretty good. They have articles on music and the classics that are written by college professors in those areas. I have been incredibly impressed with the people that Nupedia has as article reviewers. They seem to actually be suffering in some of the technical areas, probably due to a lack of programmers who can write.:)
But seriously, this project seems to be under the directly of technically competent people who are experts in non-technical areas.
I was quite excited about the GNUpedia announcement when I first read about it. However, I spent a couple of days on the mailing list and discovered that the GNU project is going in a direction I am not as interested in. Several people made the excellent point that "editorialship" can be a form of censorship and dealing with opposing viewpoints on anything more controversial than addition can be a tricky balancing act. As a result, the GNU project, as the article states, seems to be turning more into a library than an encyclopedia. A useful project, but not one that I am interested in.
For those of you who were excited by the idea of a totally free encyclopedia, go check out Nupedia. It turned out to be exactly what I had wanted GNUpedia to be. They have already set up most of their infrastructure, have an excellent review process, and need people with all sorts of talents and interests. They seem to especially need people in the Mathematics and Physical Science (mostly Physics and Chemistry) areas. They also need you Grammar-Nazi people out there to do copyeditting!
I was also impressed by how much they seemed to follow (though they did their work before RMS's announcement) RMS's suggestion that work be done in little steps. If you think you are expert enough to write 1-5 paragraphs on a specific topic, you have what it takes to submit an article to Nupedia. And in true open-source fashion, you can download the entire article database to date (not very big) and the software used to manipulate it.
I would suggested it for anyone who is itching to write an article, but doesn't want to wait for the dust to settle over in the GNU/Alexandria (GNUpedia) camp.
You've produced the template for a lot of debates I read around here.
I've decided that discussion between people with extremely different viewpoints (Communism is obviously stupid vs. Communism is the way to solve our problems) will degenerate into some form of the above because neither party shares the other's assumptions. The assumptions are seldom acknowledged in the debate, and neither side intends to change their assumptions, so pretty soon they accuse each other of being "closed-minded."
Some people try to argue from (mostly) commonly held assumptions, but that results in giant philisophical treatises that justify some complex world view using a bunch of specious reasoning and verbal smoke-and-mirrors. In reality, the author has already assumed the end in mind and is just playing connect-the-dots to lead you to it. (Not that this is a bad thing. Mathematicians do it all the time. The difference is that math is done in rigorous framework, allowing the "connect-the-dots" steps to be checked for validity. However, there is no rigorous framework that can be used to prove the nature of man, so you have to make a bunch of unprovable, though perhaps probable, assertions.)
The most offensive example was in one of the "Call to Earth" books, a major hero was a homosexual. I remember thinking, "Gee, ain't that progressive," But I later realized that Card only put in the character so that he could do the right thing and marry a woman.
You're trying too hard. Sure, you could look at that as Orson Scott Card pushing his homophobia on you. Or, it could be a character faced with a difficult issue: The survival of their small band in the long term depended on procreation. This character (I wish I could remember his name) decided that contributing to that survival was more important than his sexual preference. He didn't do it because "God told him to".
Homosexuality in today's society doesn't have to deal with that sort of scenario because the perpetuation of the human race does not depend on such a small group of people. So, the decisions are different.
As for his prose degrading, I would suspect that it has more to do with his desire to crank out such huge amounts of work than increased "moralization". It certainly contributes, if nothing else.
If you did, you would become a conservative-liberal Linux zealot who thinks Windows is the greatest thing since KDE/Gnome. You would become terminally split-personality and commit suicide by pouring hot grits down your pants.
I've been wondering about this lately. Eight years back it was multimedia; Five years back it was all things Internet. What is their goal now? (Based upon their recent actions, not their PR propaganda.)
Let's be realistic about this. Probably less than 1% of computer buyers realize that they have the option of buying a box without paying for a preinstalled OS. Heck, lots of Linux users don't realize they can buy a box without paying for a copy of Windoze that they'll just erase.
Can you even do this? This guy tried to get a computer without an operating system 2 1/2 years ago with no luck. Has the situation changed?
The only two languages I've used that absolutely require the use of GOTO's (or the equivalent construct) are assembly language and FORTRAN. Maybe FORTRAN 90 fixed the problem, but I went nuts trying to figure out what the syntax for a WHILE loop was in FORTRAN 77 before I just decided to fake it with GOTO's and IF statements.
I almost bought your post (it seems reasonable enough) until I got to the part about "chlarodium" and "accumulating heat". I was curious about the special properties of one particular dye that made it resistant to the problems you describe.
I found absolutely nothing in Google with the word "chlarodium" in it. It looks like you're BSing us with the intent of karma-whoring.
I hereby declare Shenanigans on you unless you can fess up with a reference or a spelling correction.
I hadn't thought of the flamewar this way. People see this as a zero-sum game where the success of Linux is equivalent to the failure of Windows and vice-versa.
This is great news! I know how nerve-racking it can be when a satellite seems to have failed. (In my university's case, it never came back to life: ASUSat1 Home Page)
As a side question: What was the reasoning behind making the bootloader only turn the carrier on? We decided to make ASUSat1 transmit sensor readings after booting from the ROM. We never got in contact with it long enough to transmit new software, but two other hams received telemetry packets which they forwarded to us. This provided invaluable information when we were trying to figure out what went wrong.
Was the bootloader made as minimal as possible to make software verification easier?
I pitched this idea at my roommate last spring and we tossed around the idea for a while and almost had an algorithm going. (Calculating a score metric based upon a "web of trust" is basically the network flow problem from graph theory.) We also thought that decaying the "linkage" between people would allow the network to change with time.
Heck, here's a rough sketch of the algorithm we worked up:
The system maintains a weighted trust graph where each user is a node and the degree to which they trust another user is represented by an integer weight on the edge between the two users. A weight of 0 represents no connection, a positive weight implies trust, and a negative weight implies distrust (i.e. I believe the opposite of what you say).
Every comment displayed in a given story has three radio buttons next to it: "-", "0", and "+". All comments default to 0. If you want more of a particular type of comment, you mark it with a "+". If you want less, you mark it with a "-". The system will increase by 1 the weight of the edge between you and every other user who marked that comment the same (both "+" or both "-") and decrease the weight by 1 between you and every user who marked it opposite to you (one "+" and the other "-").
The ranking of a given post to you via another user is the product of your trust metric toward them (the weight of the edge connecting you to them) and their opinion of the post (treat "+" as +1 and "-" as -1). The overall ranking of a post will be the the sum of all of the rankings via every user you are adjacent to (nonzero weight between you).
This is a first attempt at an algorithm and has a number of details missing. It also has a problem that you might not be adjacent to enough people to give most posts a ranking other than zero. That's where the network flow part comes in. You could consider users adjacent to the users you are adjacent to, and so on. Of course, running the Ford-Fulkerson algorthm (designed to compute just such a thing) on the entire user base of a site like Slashdot would kill the servers. But, it might be possible to use a depth limit, or some other trick (calculate the distance in a cron job rather than on the fly) to make it doable for a smaller site, on the order of Kuro5hin.
Anyway, there's some food for thought for you. To anyone who reads this: drop me an email if you actually implement something like this.
Trolling on Slashdot, however, has it's roots in getting attention. Shortly after the demise of Segfault, I can recall reading my first blatant "trolls" (if you could call them that) in the form of "Mae Lin Mak, Naked and Petrified" (which quickly morphed into "Natalie Portman, Naked and Petrified" and "Young Teenage Female Actresses, Naked and Petrified"; people which more Slashdot readers could relate to). These were shortly joined by the "Hot Grits" trolls.
These got people's attention because they were not even remotely related to the articles being discussed. To get attention, you just had to be off-the-wall weird. Pretty soon, pouring hot grits down your pants stopped getting a rise out of people and we saw the rise of a more modern breed of trolling that seeks to directly make people mad by being as beligerent as possible.
However, as before, the "arms race" continues. We're getting apathetic as fast as the trolls get offensive. At first, an ASCII picture of a guy's anus is pretty shocking. But after not too long, you just yawn and hit the page down key again.
I'm not sure what ways there are left to get attention by being a troll on Slashdot. Troll technology seems to have stagnated for the moment.
Moore's Law doesn't deal with clock rates, as the other poster pointed out, but the answer to your question is:
10 Hydrogen atoms = 0.5nm
Speed of light = 3e8 m/s
Time to cross 10 H atoms = 1.667e-18 sec
Clock rate = 600 THz
Time to reach that clock rate = 38.7 years
So, if Intel releases the 10GHz CPU in January, 2005, then by Not-Moore's Law, they will release a 600 THz CPU in September, 2043.
Slashdot Mirror
But seriously, this project seems to be under the directly of technically competent people who are experts in non-technical areas.
For those of you who were excited by the idea of a totally free encyclopedia, go check out Nupedia. It turned out to be exactly what I had wanted GNUpedia to be. They have already set up most of their infrastructure, have an excellent review process, and need people with all sorts of talents and interests. They seem to especially need people in the Mathematics and Physical Science (mostly Physics and Chemistry) areas. They also need you Grammar-Nazi people out there to do copyeditting!
I was also impressed by how much they seemed to follow (though they did their work before RMS's announcement) RMS's suggestion that work be done in little steps. If you think you are expert enough to write 1-5 paragraphs on a specific topic, you have what it takes to submit an article to Nupedia. And in true open-source fashion, you can download the entire article database to date (not very big) and the software used to manipulate it.
I would suggested it for anyone who is itching to write an article, but doesn't want to wait for the dust to settle over in the GNU/Alexandria (GNUpedia) camp.
Nupedia
The military?
I've decided that discussion between people with extremely different viewpoints (Communism is obviously stupid vs. Communism is the way to solve our problems) will degenerate into some form of the above because neither party shares the other's assumptions. The assumptions are seldom acknowledged in the debate, and neither side intends to change their assumptions, so pretty soon they accuse each other of being "closed-minded."
Some people try to argue from (mostly) commonly held assumptions, but that results in giant philisophical treatises that justify some complex world view using a bunch of specious reasoning and verbal smoke-and-mirrors. In reality, the author has already assumed the end in mind and is just playing connect-the-dots to lead you to it. (Not that this is a bad thing. Mathematicians do it all the time. The difference is that math is done in rigorous framework, allowing the "connect-the-dots" steps to be checked for validity. However, there is no rigorous framework that can be used to prove the nature of man, so you have to make a bunch of unprovable, though perhaps probable, assertions.)
You're trying too hard. Sure, you could look at that as Orson Scott Card pushing his homophobia on you. Or, it could be a character faced with a difficult issue: The survival of their small band in the long term depended on procreation. This character (I wish I could remember his name) decided that contributing to that survival was more important than his sexual preference. He didn't do it because "God told him to".
Homosexuality in today's society doesn't have to deal with that sort of scenario because the perpetuation of the human race does not depend on such a small group of people. So, the decisions are different.
As for his prose degrading, I would suspect that it has more to do with his desire to crank out such huge amounts of work than increased "moralization". It certainly contributes, if nothing else.
If you did, you would become a conservative-liberal Linux zealot who thinks Windows is the greatest thing since KDE/Gnome. You would become terminally split-personality and commit suicide by pouring hot grits down your pants.
This is either really interesting, or total BS. Do you have a reference?
Whoa? What's up with your period key? All of them look like the copyright symbol on my system.
This stuff is way better than Rand's novels! You are one screwed up fellow, and have my deepest respect.
I've been wondering about this lately. Eight years back it was multimedia; Five years back it was all things Internet. What is their goal now? (Based upon their recent actions, not their PR propaganda.)
Can you even do this? This guy tried to get a computer without an operating system 2 1/2 years ago with no luck. Has the situation changed?
I think he was referring to the previous poster's assertion that you could not do an automated install with Debian.
The only two languages I've used that absolutely require the use of GOTO's (or the equivalent construct) are assembly language and FORTRAN. Maybe FORTRAN 90 fixed the problem, but I went nuts trying to figure out what the syntax for a WHILE loop was in FORTRAN 77 before I just decided to fake it with GOTO's and IF statements.
Nee!
Nee!
Nee!
Now go fetch me a shrubbery!
Cyrix, purveyor of extremely crappy (but very cheap) processors.
I found absolutely nothing in Google with the word "chlarodium" in it. It looks like you're BSing us with the intent of karma-whoring.
I hereby declare Shenanigans on you unless you can fess up with a reference or a spelling correction.
I hadn't thought of the flamewar this way. People see this as a zero-sum game where the success of Linux is equivalent to the failure of Windows and vice-versa.
[Scenario 2]
The geek fires up Netscape, and watches as Netscape dumps core.
You won't need Flash to crash Netscape...
Side point: KDE supports the Mac/Amiga-style menus for KDE apps.
ulterior: [other stuff removed] 2 : going beyond what is openly said or shown and especially what is proper.
Taken from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
As a side question: What was the reasoning behind making the bootloader only turn the carrier on? We decided to make ASUSat1 transmit sensor readings after booting from the ROM. We never got in contact with it long enough to transmit new software, but two other hams received telemetry packets which they forwarded to us. This provided invaluable information when we were trying to figure out what went wrong.
Was the bootloader made as minimal as possible to make software verification easier?
Heck, here's a rough sketch of the algorithm we worked up:
The system maintains a weighted trust graph where each user is a node and the degree to which they trust another user is represented by an integer weight on the edge between the two users. A weight of 0 represents no connection, a positive weight implies trust, and a negative weight implies distrust (i.e. I believe the opposite of what you say).
Every comment displayed in a given story has three radio buttons next to it: "-", "0", and "+". All comments default to 0. If you want more of a particular type of comment, you mark it with a "+". If you want less, you mark it with a "-". The system will increase by 1 the weight of the edge between you and every other user who marked that comment the same (both "+" or both "-") and decrease the weight by 1 between you and every user who marked it opposite to you (one "+" and the other "-").
The ranking of a given post to you via another user is the product of your trust metric toward them (the weight of the edge connecting you to them) and their opinion of the post (treat "+" as +1 and "-" as -1). The overall ranking of a post will be the the sum of all of the rankings via every user you are adjacent to (nonzero weight between you).
This is a first attempt at an algorithm and has a number of details missing. It also has a problem that you might not be adjacent to enough people to give most posts a ranking other than zero. That's where the network flow part comes in. You could consider users adjacent to the users you are adjacent to, and so on. Of course, running the Ford-Fulkerson algorthm (designed to compute just such a thing) on the entire user base of a site like Slashdot would kill the servers. But, it might be possible to use a depth limit, or some other trick (calculate the distance in a cron job rather than on the fly) to make it doable for a smaller site, on the order of Kuro5hin.
Anyway, there's some food for thought for you. To anyone who reads this: drop me an email if you actually implement something like this.
These got people's attention because they were not even remotely related to the articles being discussed. To get attention, you just had to be off-the-wall weird. Pretty soon, pouring hot grits down your pants stopped getting a rise out of people and we saw the rise of a more modern breed of trolling that seeks to directly make people mad by being as beligerent as possible.
However, as before, the "arms race" continues. We're getting apathetic as fast as the trolls get offensive. At first, an ASCII picture of a guy's anus is pretty shocking. But after not too long, you just yawn and hit the page down key again.
I'm not sure what ways there are left to get attention by being a troll on Slashdot. Troll technology seems to have stagnated for the moment.
I've heard of water, but that's about it.
10 Hydrogen atoms = 0.5nm
Speed of light = 3e8 m/s
Time to cross 10 H atoms = 1.667e-18 sec
Clock rate = 600 THz
Time to reach that clock rate = 38.7 years
So, if Intel releases the 10GHz CPU in January, 2005, then by Not-Moore's Law, they will release a 600 THz CPU in September, 2043.
Do I pass the class? :)