The data is not sold with accompanying user name or information, but merely as a numerical user value. However, it is still theoretically possible to tie this information to a specific ISP account
only if the ISP leaks something, like a specific identifier (MAC?) or a cookie.
Cancel said that this clickstream data is "much more comprehensive" than data that is normally gleaned through analyzing search queries
However, it can't be tied to the user, so no target-advertising etc. can be done. (It's probably just useful for market research)
And now this one is one from the "No" department:
Of course, it's an established fact that if you surf the web, your surfing habits can be tracked by any site you happen to visit
So my bottom line: big difference between a target-marketer and a market research firm. And the bottom line of the bottom line: is either Ars or "Cancel" on Goog's/Yahoo's/MSN's payroll?
since that data could be abused in any number of ways, including credit scoring, insurance scoring or leaks of "interesting details" to the press. Probably those would hurt Google's reputation more than any additional income it could generate, but it's still the better policy.
If you buy one for $125 you sponsor (a) The publisher and (b) The author So they wouldn't save money. Right now, you can get intro books for 14.99, from noname professors. Most colleges require the $125 ones.
This error was discovered at the last minute. What I heard was that they managed to measure it anyway with an array of radio telescopes. So the damage (apart from that to the researcher) was small. See also a link about this international effort.
Make it to display all common file types now on the web: pdf (generically), ps, *.doc, *.ppt. Then I wouldn't have to wait for Acrobat to load, install ghostview etc.
Make an integrated text-editor available. Then you could edit a part of a text page powerfully without having to copy to external app. Ideally run compiler with key-short. That would make using online tutorials more comfortable.
Apropos: search-as-you type should begin where you are on the page, not the first character. Avoids hopping around.
...but it is absurd to imagine that the rate at which errors are introduced is anything like the rate at which good information is introduced
Look at the rate at which information becomes unusable - reading an article with a factual error on every page on average diminishes the usefulness to the gossip line.
This doesn't even take into account the missing information. If you count omissions, WP has dozens of errors per page.
In cutting-edge science, a paper (or grant proposal's) author is generally going to be much 'better credentialed' than the reviewer on the narrow subject in question.Resulting in the reviewer asking the submitter to accept the paper?
An in-depth scholarly work, recent scientific review articles--basically, the sort of sources the encyclopedia article is based on--have precedence. Quite often--at least on the face of it--contributors of encyclopedias are well-known scholars of their disciplines. So I completely agree here.
which is definitely not being judged by someone with "better credentials" usually, editors of journals as well as people deciding on employment are seasoned capacities.
Secondly, considering anything that doesn't use peer review anti-science makes almost every newspaper, magazine, encylcopedia, web-site or conversation with your friends "anti-science".notice the difference between "newspaper, magazine" and "encyclopedia". E's are supposed to be a ressource to knowledge. If you want to settle a subject, consult the encyclopedia (or the library, if poss.)
I agree with this--but anyone who already knows a bit probably won't be learning much from any encyclopedia, anyway. My experience with encyclopedias--German publications like Kindler's but also EB--is that they do contain the knowledge of a respected specialist, etcetc.
It remains to be seen whether the noise level will rise enough to drown out the signal, but as Wikipedia gains notoriety it seems to be scaling pretty well. Well... instead of countering your valid posts, I want to point out another features of WP that need scrutiny.
On WP, everyone can edit, but will corrected if his view is not NPOV (leaving aside the notion that WP has an ultra-libertarian POV. Anything goes, as long as it's not orthodox/religious/etc.) That leads to articles showing different POVs next to each other: others say... still others say... etcetc. Some things are best told in one coherent manner.
But really, if I'm ignorant about a certain topic, I'm not going to go through the article about it and "bring it down to my level", so to speak If you have a college education, maybe specialized in the topic, you're not "ignorant", you have basic knowledge. Science and research should not be conducted on Wikipedia, though the progress of science and research elsewhere may be reported as such. They are not reported. College knowledge is reported. It's just an encyclopedia, for crying out loud, not the end-all and be-all of reference works In works like Encyclopedia Britannica and other real encyclopedias, articles are written by notable scholars and reviewed by other specialists. They are comparable to excerpts of academic textbooks and reflect thorough knowledge of the subject. Get over the hype.
this doesn't have to be bad, but it's a fact. Scientific practice around the world works by peer review. If you want to publish, your work is peer reviewed. If you want to get employment/government money, you are judget by peers with better credentials.
WP lets everyone edit (nearly) every page. The only distinction is time spent online. If you spend 4 hours, you can edit twice as much as with 2 hours. Generally, the quality of WP will converge to the mean of all users, a college education (considering that people with less skills pro'lly won't edit).
So if you want to "get a clue", WP is for you. If you are a bit above the noob in a topic, look elsewhere.
Actually, according to dictionary.com, there is irony in speech and irony in fact. Way back in highschool, we only learned it as in speech: a rhetorical figure. Check out a BYU page on rhetorical figures.
Actually, very extensive systems of "Folk" metadata already exist. Compare classifieds, Open Directory (any dir of a portal), Usenet, Wikipedia. They contain some standard classifications but mostly Folk. Might be more informative (= wink wink, nudge nudge)
Microsoft has failed to control or dominate the server market, and is experiencing strong competition from Linux.
Make that "crushed all commercial competitors".
The same tactic? So Microsoft has published source code and provided free cross-platform versions of their products.
I meant providing software free. Agreed, they only have provided IE free, so no widespread freeware from MS. However, they often incorporated features and utilities others offered for money into the OS
... FOSS has flourished in recent years is a tiny nuicance up in Seattle. Microsoft crushed (almost) all competitors in their main markets, OSes, productivity suits and browsers. The only way to avoid this fate was to produce free software, using the same tactic MS has employed.
Another explanation would be: A lot of highly trained, intelligent and creative people have rather dull jobs, maintaining or servicing existing technology. They want to "realize their potential", and they do open source.
Slashdot Mirror
This is Inter-format-ful
What's wrong (after reading TFA):
The data is not sold with accompanying user name or information, but merely as a numerical user value. However, it is still theoretically possible to tie this information to a specific ISP account
only if the ISP leaks something, like a specific identifier (MAC?) or a cookie.
Cancel said that this clickstream data is "much more comprehensive" than data that is normally gleaned through analyzing search queries
However, it can't be tied to the user, so no target-advertising etc. can be done. (It's probably just useful for market research)
And now this one is one from the "No" department:
Of course, it's an established fact that if you surf the web, your surfing habits can be tracked by any site you happen to visit
So my bottom line: big difference between a target-marketer and a market research firm.
And the bottom line of the bottom line: is either Ars or "Cancel" on Goog's/Yahoo's/MSN's payroll?
since that data could be abused in any number of ways, including credit scoring, insurance scoring or leaks of "interesting details" to the press. Probably those would hurt Google's reputation more than any additional income it could generate, but it's still the better policy.
If you buy one for $125 you sponsor
(a) The publisher and
(b) The author
So they wouldn't save money. Right now, you can get intro books for 14.99, from noname professors. Most colleges require the $125 ones.
P.S.: There is a for example the Calculus books at UPenn which has math books for free.
That was an interesting question... and the answer goes to:
Babylonians used base 60
Apparently they took the hexagon and observed that the perimeter is exactly 6 times the radius, so 6*60.
If we had 6 toes and fingers, I'd completely agree.
not really. Also not
* freshmeat.com
* freshmeat.org
That might be worth a fundraiser.
Hey, on WP you can make you own consensus! Might only hold for 5 minutes but still...
This error was discovered at the last minute. What I heard was that they managed to measure it anyway with an array of radio telescopes. So the damage (apart from that to the researcher) was small. See also a link about this international effort.
used this phrase before, saying
"Hunde wollt Ihr ewig leben", which is German for 'come on dogs, do you want to live forever?'.
Make it to display all common file types now on the web: pdf (generically), ps, *.doc, *.ppt. Then I wouldn't have to wait for Acrobat to load, install ghostview etc.
Make an integrated text-editor available. Then you could edit a part of a text page powerfully without having to copy to external app. Ideally run compiler with key-short. That would make using online tutorials more comfortable.
Apropos: search-as-you type should begin where you are on the page, not the first character. Avoids hopping around.
...but it is absurd to imagine that the rate at which errors are introduced is anything like the rate at which good information is introduced
Look at the rate at which information becomes unusable - reading an article with a factual error on every page on average diminishes the usefulness to the gossip line.
This doesn't even take into account the missing information. If you count omissions, WP has dozens of errors per page.
In cutting-edge science, a paper (or grant proposal's) author is generally going to be much 'better credentialed' than the reviewer on the narrow subject in question.Resulting in the reviewer asking the submitter to accept the paper?
An in-depth scholarly work, recent scientific review articles--basically, the sort of sources the encyclopedia article is based on--have precedence.
Quite often--at least on the face of it--contributors of encyclopedias are well-known scholars of their disciplines. So I completely agree here.
If nothing fundamentally changes, you'll notice the shortcomings of WP pretty soon.
I might be mistaken and WP is turned over to an independent body. But will the WP admins cease control easily?
which is definitely not being judged by someone with "better credentials"
usually, editors of journals as well as people deciding on employment are seasoned capacities.
Secondly, considering anything that doesn't use peer review anti-science makes almost every newspaper, magazine, encylcopedia, web-site or conversation with your friends "anti-science".notice the difference between "newspaper, magazine" and "encyclopedia". E's are supposed to be a ressource to knowledge. If you want to settle a subject, consult the encyclopedia (or the library, if poss.)
I agree with this--but anyone who already knows a bit probably won't be learning much from any encyclopedia, anyway.
My experience with encyclopedias--German publications like Kindler's but also EB--is that they do contain the knowledge of a respected specialist, etcetc.
It remains to be seen whether the noise level will rise enough to drown out the signal, but as Wikipedia gains notoriety it seems to be scaling pretty well.
.) That leads to articles showing different POVs next to each other: others say... still others say... etcetc. Some things are best told in one coherent manner.
Well... instead of countering your valid posts, I want to point out another features of WP that need scrutiny.
On WP, everyone can edit, but will corrected if his view is not NPOV (leaving aside the notion that WP has an ultra-libertarian POV. Anything goes, as long as it's not orthodox/religious/etc
But really, if I'm ignorant about a certain topic, I'm not going to go through the article about it and "bring it down to my level", so to speak
If you have a college education, maybe specialized in the topic, you're not "ignorant", you have basic knowledge.
Science and research should not be conducted on Wikipedia, though the progress of science and research elsewhere may be reported as such.
They are not reported. College knowledge is reported.
It's just an encyclopedia, for crying out loud, not the end-all and be-all of reference works
In works like Encyclopedia Britannica and other real encyclopedias, articles are written by notable scholars and reviewed by other specialists. They are comparable to excerpts of academic textbooks and reflect thorough knowledge of the subject. Get over the hype.
this doesn't have to be bad, but it's a fact. Scientific practice around the world works by peer review. If you want to publish, your work is peer reviewed. If you want to get employment/government money, you are judget by peers with better credentials.
WP lets everyone edit (nearly) every page. The only distinction is time spent online. If you spend 4 hours, you can edit twice as much as with 2 hours. Generally, the quality of WP will converge to the mean of all users, a college education (considering that people with less skills pro'lly won't edit).
So if you want to "get a clue", WP is for you. If you are a bit above the noob in a topic, look elsewhere.
Actually, very extensive systems of "Folk" metadata already exist. Compare classifieds, Open Directory (any dir of a portal), Usenet, Wikipedia. They contain some standard classifications but mostly Folk. Might be more informative (= wink wink, nudge nudge)
Good: Something on anything. Get a clue. Not too wordy compared to other net sources
Bad: Many POVs make for a badly structured article. The more complex the topic, the worse. Especially if possibly worldview & conspiracy debate
Ugly: NPOV on everything makes me sick (personal opinion...) therefore: WP not for kids/office use
as Karl Valentin said,
"the future isn't what it used to be".
Microsoft has failed to control or dominate the server market, and is experiencing strong competition from Linux.
Make that "crushed all commercial competitors".
The same tactic? So Microsoft has published source code and provided free cross-platform versions of their products.
I meant providing software free. Agreed, they only have provided IE free, so no widespread freeware from MS. However, they often incorporated features and utilities others offered for money into the OS
... FOSS has flourished in recent years is a tiny nuicance up in Seattle. Microsoft crushed (almost) all competitors in their main markets, OSes, productivity suits and browsers. The only way to avoid this fate was to produce free software, using the same tactic MS has employed.
Another explanation would be: A lot of highly trained, intelligent and creative people have rather dull jobs, maintaining or servicing existing technology. They want to "realize their potential", and they do open source.
And I want to browse comments >2 and "-1 Troll"