that no one yet has made an OS that is trivial to get working in a reasonable default configuration, and then infinitely (and relatively easily) tweakable.
(I'm sure someone will suggest that someone has...)
I have a hard time seeing how a corporation doing things with the intent of making a positive change is likely to cause more harm than a corporation doing things only for the purpose of enriching its shareholders.
First of all its not just the "karma bonus system", but that counts for a fair amount.
It's really the whole ratings system, of which karma is one aspect. Note also that people with good karma get to moderate more often (at least that is my understanding), so a spammer can't easily just create a bunch of accounts solely for the purpose of rating his own posts up. And meta moderation is also important.
The point is, a spammer would have his post viewed by very few people if he doesn't have any karma, and even then, his post would quickly get modded away. Again....imperfect, but it certainly discourages spammers from bothering.
No, karma would have more to do with quality of content than quantity. People who's content is rated consistantly highly by those who themselves have a good reputation (for giving quality ratings and/or posting quality content). And so on. A smart karma system is very similar to Googles PageRank thing.
I disagree. I set my preferences so anons don't have a -1, and people with karma bonuses aren't shown with +1.
You are forgettting an important point. Because other people don't do that, others have less incentive to post crap. I think you have no idea how much spam there would be if no karma system.
I'll make an analogy about how badly you understand analogies.
I say "puppies are to dogs as kittens are to cats".
You say "flawed analogy! Kittens are not canines!"
And I'm not convinced you really "gamed" slashdot in any significant way. Try to get a crappy (as seen by the community) comment prominently displayed for a long time, in order to push some agenda. Without balancing it out by posting a large amount of good (as seen by the community) content.
How does wikipedia, in its current form, *not* represent the opinions of those who use it (including the opinion that it shoudl be as neutral as possible)?
If people using it today value neutrality, how is that going to change when a karma system is put in place?
Please make your case that slashdot would be better if there was no karma system...I don't buy it. I think it is poorly designed, but still makes slashdot more useful than boards of comparable size that have no such system. (actually, I don't think boards of such size without a rep system exist....they became unusable long ago because of all the trolling and spam)
Also I think it is odd to say that "because there is a case of something doesn't work, that will never work".
Yeah but some of the most brilliant things on the internet might have a low "page rank" on Google. Still, Google's reputation system (which is exactly what it is), does a pretty good job, even with the fact that it must infer ratings by links. Obviously, they have to work pretty hard to make it hard to game.
And what is wikipedia today if not "groupthink"? As much as they like to say their is "NPOV" and that this is purely objective, I call BS.
Wikipedia's current system is "edit till the arguing stops". Ultimately, the more people sharing an opinion, the more the articles will bias that way. A good reputation system would not change this, just make it more efficient.
Good the Wright brothers didn't say that because lots of attempts were made at flying that failed.
Slashdot's karma system is far from perfect, but at the end of the day it works. Can you game it? I don't really think so, at least not without a LOT of effort, which generally means contributing a lot of good content/ratings so that you can sneak in a very small amount of biased content or ratings.
Whether "ungameable" is possible or not I don't know, but I am quite sure that wikipedia's system could be improved upon massively.
In the history of cryptography, a bombe was an electromechanical machine used by British and American codebreakers to help break German Enigma machine signals during World War II. The bombe was invented by Alan Turing with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman. Using the Turing-Welchman bombe, the Allies were able to read a high proportion of the German Enigma traffic, and it was the primary tool used for this purpose.
I'm quite sure you can use the toilet if the power is off. It just won't be warm and wash your butt for you. I'm pretty sure as well that most people who own one will still keep toilet paper or tissues in the bathroom.
Given that these things are everywhere in Japan (and bidets have been around in europe for half a century at least), I don't see what the big deal is. Some people like to be squeaky clean, and have some cash to spare. I can think of lots of more frivolous ways to spend a few hundred bucks.
The parent didn't say free, he said royalty free. Also, you seem to be implying that the decoder chips were not manufactured themselves, but mined from the ground or plucked off trees. Someone makes them, and therefore someone can make the chips decode OGG if it makes economic sense to do so. It doesn't matter that it isn't the actual company that makes the player.
By whose definition is a sabertooth the same species as what we have today?
Species is often a blurry concept, especially when you move through time. Many organisms that CAN interbreed are still considered different species (i.e. grizzly bears and polar bears, tigers and lions, etc), which just shows how arbitrary the term is. But if they are different enough that they CAN'T interbreed, they are most certainly different species, by any definition.
My guess is a sabertooth couldn't interbreed with a modern tiger, but its a bit hard to test.
What exactly are you looking for? Someone to actually sit and physically observe something that takes hundreds of thousands of years to take place before their (very patient) eyes? Seems like you are just going to keep picking and choosing definitions words like "species" and "prove" to suit your needs.
I suspect the movement to keep standing up can be minimized to being indetectable. The quicker and more accurately it can compensate, the less the motion has to be.
Well, to clarify, I think its rather reactionary to want to spend ridiculous amounts of money so you can avoid having to buy toothpaste and shampoo at your destination.
I don't think its an overreaction for them to take extra precautions before we even know exactly how wide ranging the plot is.
Seems to me that the image issue is more of a weakness of web browser/server technology than anything. There are solutions, but they are currently a major pain in the ass, and are probably better thought of as "theoretical" solutions.
For instance, say I have a web site with images on it. I could have some javascript detect how big the page is and the user's text size, then request appropriate resolution images. Server side there would presumably be something that resizes and caches a variety of different size images from the highest resolution original.
As it is, almost no site does this because it is such a hassle to do and maintain. If it was "built in" to servers and browsers and the html spec, though, it would solve the problem, in my opinion.
I think the more limiting issue is that it is so hard to do AJAX across domains. XMLHttpRequest doesn't work, nor do hidden iframes. I think no one has put too much thought into what the potential of this is if it could be done.
However, they appear be building something at Ajaxlets.com that is supposedly a clean, open source solution to this, by packetizing the data in javascript script urls. Apparently their release is a few days off.
Are you suggesting that it didn't occur to those who created XMLHttpRequest how it might be used?
I think it was far more a case of it taking a while for someone to make a compelling enough application using it for it to get public acceptance and attention from mainstream developers. And probably a bit of reluctance to go down that path until a large enough percentage of users had a browser that supported it to make it make economic sense to invest in the use of such techniques on a large scale.
Slashdot Mirror
that no one yet has made an OS that is trivial to get working in a reasonable default configuration, and then infinitely (and relatively easily) tweakable.
(I'm sure someone will suggest that someone has...)
I have a hard time seeing how a corporation doing things with the intent of making a positive change is likely to cause more harm than a corporation doing things only for the purpose of enriching its shareholders.
First of all its not just the "karma bonus system", but that counts for a fair amount.
It's really the whole ratings system, of which karma is one aspect. Note also that people with good karma get to moderate more often (at least that is my understanding), so a spammer can't easily just create a bunch of accounts solely for the purpose of rating his own posts up. And meta moderation is also important.
The point is, a spammer would have his post viewed by very few people if he doesn't have any karma, and even then, his post would quickly get modded away. Again....imperfect, but it certainly discourages spammers from bothering.
No, karma would have more to do with quality of content than quantity. People who's content is rated consistantly highly by those who themselves have a good reputation (for giving quality ratings and/or posting quality content). And so on. A smart karma system is very similar to Googles PageRank thing.
I'll make an analogy about how badly you understand analogies.
I say "puppies are to dogs as kittens are to cats".
You say "flawed analogy! Kittens are not canines!"
And I'm not convinced you really "gamed" slashdot in any significant way. Try to get a crappy (as seen by the community) comment prominently displayed for a long time, in order to push some agenda. Without balancing it out by posting a large amount of good (as seen by the community) content.
What you describe is technically known as collaborative filtering. Reputation system are not "relative to the user", but collaborative filtering is.
How does wikipedia, in its current form, *not* represent the opinions of those who use it (including the opinion that it shoudl be as neutral as possible)?
If people using it today value neutrality, how is that going to change when a karma system is put in place?
Please make your case that slashdot would be better if there was no karma system...I don't buy it. I think it is poorly designed, but still makes slashdot more useful than boards of comparable size that have no such system. (actually, I don't think boards of such size without a rep system exist....they became unusable long ago because of all the trolling and spam)
Also I think it is odd to say that "because there is a case of something doesn't work, that will never work".
Maybe they could add a reputation system!
Yeah but some of the most brilliant things on the internet might have a low "page rank" on Google. Still, Google's reputation system (which is exactly what it is), does a pretty good job, even with the fact that it must infer ratings by links. Obviously, they have to work pretty hard to make it hard to game.
And what is wikipedia today if not "groupthink"? As much as they like to say their is "NPOV" and that this is purely objective, I call BS.
Wikipedia's current system is "edit till the arguing stops". Ultimately, the more people sharing an opinion, the more the articles will bias that way. A good reputation system would not change this, just make it more efficient.
Good the Wright brothers didn't say that because lots of attempts were made at flying that failed.
Slashdot's karma system is far from perfect, but at the end of the day it works. Can you game it? I don't really think so, at least not without a LOT of effort, which generally means contributing a lot of good content/ratings so that you can sneak in a very small amount of biased content or ratings.
Whether "ungameable" is possible or not I don't know, but I am quite sure that wikipedia's system could be improved upon massively.
Sorry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe
From Wikipedia:
In the history of cryptography, a bombe was an electromechanical machine used by British and American codebreakers to help break German Enigma machine signals during World War II. The bombe was invented by Alan Turing with an important refinement suggested by Gordon Welchman. Using the Turing-Welchman bombe, the Allies were able to read a high proportion of the German Enigma traffic, and it was the primary tool used for this purpose.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombe
(goodbye, karma! :)
I think you're kidding but....
I'm quite sure you can use the toilet if the power is off. It just won't be warm and wash your butt for you. I'm pretty sure as well that most people who own one will still keep toilet paper or tissues in the bathroom.
Given that these things are everywhere in Japan (and bidets have been around in europe for half a century at least), I don't see what the big deal is. Some people like to be squeaky clean, and have some cash to spare. I can think of lots of more frivolous ways to spend a few hundred bucks.
The parent didn't say free, he said royalty free. Also, you seem to be implying that the decoder chips were not manufactured themselves, but mined from the ground or plucked off trees. Someone makes them, and therefore someone can make the chips decode OGG if it makes economic sense to do so. It doesn't matter that it isn't the actual company that makes the player.
By whose definition is a sabertooth the same species as what we have today?
Species is often a blurry concept, especially when you move through time. Many organisms that CAN interbreed are still considered different species (i.e. grizzly bears and polar bears, tigers and lions, etc), which just shows how arbitrary the term is. But if they are different enough that they CAN'T interbreed, they are most certainly different species, by any definition.
My guess is a sabertooth couldn't interbreed with a modern tiger, but its a bit hard to test.
What exactly are you looking for? Someone to actually sit and physically observe something that takes hundreds of thousands of years to take place before their (very patient) eyes? Seems like you are just going to keep picking and choosing definitions words like "species" and "prove" to suit your needs.
BTW, chimps didn't "change" to orangutans.
I suspect the movement to keep standing up can be minimized to being indetectable. The quicker and more accurately it can compensate, the less the motion has to be.
Well, to clarify, I think its rather reactionary to want to spend ridiculous amounts of money so you can avoid having to buy toothpaste and shampoo at your destination.
I don't think its an overreaction for them to take extra precautions before we even know exactly how wide ranging the plot is.
Geez.
Seems to me that the image issue is more of a weakness of web browser/server technology than anything. There are solutions, but they are currently a major pain in the ass, and are probably better thought of as "theoretical" solutions.
For instance, say I have a web site with images on it. I could have some javascript detect how big the page is and the user's text size, then request appropriate resolution images. Server side there would presumably be something that resizes and caches a variety of different size images from the highest resolution original.
As it is, almost no site does this because it is such a hassle to do and maintain. If it was "built in" to servers and browsers and the html spec, though, it would solve the problem, in my opinion.
I think the more limiting issue is that it is so hard to do AJAX across domains. XMLHttpRequest doesn't work, nor do hidden iframes. I think no one has put too much thought into what the potential of this is if it could be done.
However, they appear be building something at Ajaxlets.com that is supposedly a clean, open source solution to this, by packetizing the data in javascript script urls. Apparently their release is a few days off.
Are you suggesting that it didn't occur to those who created XMLHttpRequest how it might be used?
I think it was far more a case of it taking a while for someone to make a compelling enough application using it for it to get public acceptance and attention from mainstream developers. And probably a bit of reluctance to go down that path until a large enough percentage of users had a browser that supported it to make it make economic sense to invest in the use of such techniques on a large scale.