Not only is their programming much higher in quality than American pay services like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax, but they also have an open source project for a streaming video format. Thanks to BBC America, I get to see a small part of what they produce, but could you imagine what our shows would be like if we followed a similar model instead of the crap pay TV model? Instead of 500 channels of complete shit, we'd have 40 channels of quality programming.
I don't have the time to dig up the link right now, but I do want to make certain that people realize that the BBC has an amazing set of programs. Better selection of music, actual comedy and drama on radio as well as news. It beats all American radio programming hands down. Not only that, but their online offerings are phenominal as well. To bad the closest thing we have is NPR and it, frankly, sucks. It could be soooo much better.
Using ALSA's built in tools and ability to record straight to HD from a sound application, you just use cron to kick it all off.
I also used to use cron + esd to grab realaudio and mp streams. It's actually scheduled stream ripping this guy is after and right now there are a multitude of ways to do it in Linux. Windows isn't as easy, which is not to say Linux is any easier. But if you persevere, you can make it work. I used stream ripping to grab the latest RealAudio streams of the new HHGTTG to Ogg Vorbis files.:)
I won't pretend to be an economist, so I will defer to what you pointed out in that regard. But we did have the whole Guantanamo Bay incident. Currently, the U.S. government is considering whether or not imprisoning people for no reason other than being suspected (ie. without evidence) of being a "terrorist" (defined as someone the governmetn doesn't liek at this point) for life with no access to a court trial is a good idea or not. So, I don't think that the atrocities of other totalitarian states are too far off unless something really major changes the political direction of the U.S.
To paraphrase the NRA member logic: Governments don't kill people, people kill people. The communist form of government had little to do with killing people. It ultimately fell victim to a human trait called greed. The people in power in the former soviet states felt that they were more equal than others. If you ask me, I will tell you that our capitalist republic is failing in the same exact way. The only difference is that with capitalism, the PR machine has better beads and trinkets. Now before anyone jumps on me to tell me that capitalism is an economic model and communism is a political model, don't forget that in communism, the economic model is defined by the political model. Here in the U.S. the economic model is also defined by the political model, but the balance is different. Here the economic model has more power than the political model. And those people who would have been high ranking politicos in the U.S.S.R. are instead CEOs in our corporations. Very effective way of attempting to take over the world without letting things like politics and ethics get in the way.
Go look at my very first JE a while back and I point out that OpenVPN is cross platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, BSDs, etc...) and works fairly well. Be warned that you need to use the latest Beta with Windows XP as SP2 breaks the last stable version. I've been using it going from Linux to Linux and it works great. Full access to my network at home from anywhere. All you need to do is open on UDP port and this will actually tunnel TCP and UDP traffic, so even Voice over IP will work with this for a private IP phone setup. Check it out. It's worth the effort.
As a side note, I used to use SSH tunnels. That worked very well for me too, but it required a good deal of setup and mapping ports on the remote end to ports on the local end. It's great as far as cross-platform goes, and if you don't have things changing much on your network, it really works well, but it won't handle UDP traffic. Not to mention, when I used it with VNC, I had to map remote ports to local ports that were unused. So if I connected to 'mymachine:1' at home, I would connect to '127.0.0.1:21' at work since I couldn't stomp over:1 on my machine here. With OpenVPN, that all goes away. You just connect to the remote machine by its own IP (or if you get DNS or hosts set up right by its name).
I'll also mention that I'm using OpenVPN in "routing" mode. I throw all traffic destined for my home network to the tun1 interface that openVPN brings up on my local machine. You can also use openVPN in bridged mode which is a bit more of a headache to set up since you need to know how to break your network up into ranges for each location. Bascially subnetting. But the advantage of bridged mode is that broadcasts will be carried over the tunnel. OpenVPN is about the closest you get in a free project to having a virtual ethernet cable going from one end of the connection to the other. In the end, I think this is what you want. Hope this helps.
Think about all the web pages and applications that were displaying the odd five digit year. 11000 I think it was. So I wouldn't say it was a hoax as a whole. There were a lot of opportunistic assholes who saw it as a chance to charge people for upgrades that weren't necessary either though. Not to mention the fear mongers who relied on the natural human tendency to fear the unknown (dried food sales as an example). I will point out that I had a program written in 1993 from the Norton Desktop for Windows 3.1. It was the Norton Dayplanner. I stuck it on a floppy when I got it and carried it with me as a "PDA". I had batch files that I used to sync it with my desktops at home and work. It worked well. Just a few weeks ago I found one of my archival copies of it on CD and ran it under W.I.N.E. Still works, and the dates are correct as well as the year. Interestingly enough, when I ran it in Windows 95, it would skewer the dates past the year 2000. So the app is fine, it was the OS that had the problem. I think in many cases, this was true and it's where a lot of people got taken. They paid for upgrades to apps that relied on the OS for proper date calculation. The main problem is... how do you know this without hindsight? That is how people got taken.
Dude. If you're on a date, do you really think you should be non-discretely getting connected to a server via SSH? Oh that's right, we're speaking figuratively here.;P
but at some gut level I'm just not sensing the long-term head of steam and ecomonic viability of the approach (or is it lifestyle?
I think it depends on who you are and what you do with it. Personally, I don't care at all about the economic viability of Free/Open software since I'm not involved to make money. I was just having a conversation with a friend yesterday. I've had two revalations about myself lately. Although I am a "wired" guy, I'm not really a geek as I once thought I was, but really more an artist who uses computers. I just happen to be much more advanced in my use of computers than most others who are primarily artistically inclined. Music is my main focus and the computers help me get there easier. Combine that with Open/Free music software and it's a really great thing.:) Though many people who know me would probably think otherwise, I'm not really a "gadget guy" but more of a "device guy". I'm more likely to buy a set of electonic components to build something or a bunch of computer parts to build a dedicated system of some kind, than I am to want a prebuilt product.
Yes, I have a computer as part of my entertainment system and it's been years since I've used my CDs directly to listen to music. The same goes for video tape. But everything that I use for the computerized portion of my entertainment system (as well as my speakers and soon my amp) has been assembled by me for me. Just as I've always prefered to build my own speaker systems, wire my own house and build my own electronic circuits, I like to compile my own collections of software using raw materials (code). There is something so unsatisfying in going to Best Buy and buying a gadget. It's a combination of being let down and feeling ripped off at the same time. It's truly depressing. Of course, there are things I can't build (LCD monitors, digital cameras, etc...) but for those that I can build (Amplifiers,mixers, MIDI thru boxes, power supplies, speakers, video switches, etc...) I prefer to.
Some of us just like to build our own because we know it will work better than what we can buy. It might cost more, or it might be cheaper, but the cost is irrelevant compared to the satisfaction of having something that is custom made. If you apply that same ethic to software, you get Free/Open software. The only thing better than having something custom made is to know that you can share it with everyone else. I would love it if I could build a good pair of speakers or a nice amp and then easily duplicate them and give them to people for free. That would be the most phenominal feeling ever. But, sadly, it's not possible to do that at the moment. This is the desire that Free/Open software satisfies. Some of us aren't in this for the money, we're in it because we love to do it and we love to share. That doesn't mix very well with economics.
While there are people who support the Free/Open movement who can get quite zealous (I've been guilty of it at times) it doesn't mean we think that everyone else is stupid. It just becomes annoying to have to keep defending your own position when all you get back are childish arguments about why all of the things you do are wrong. The anti-Free/Open side is just as zealous about their support of making money over everything else. That's what most of us rail against.
That's why I completely support the anti-piracy measures that companies like Microsoft favor. I just think the MS and company don't go far enough in enforcing the anti-piracy measures. I want every person in the United States to know that installing the same copy of a single user license of Windows on their PC and all their friends and families PCs is piracy. I want all of them to know that swapping music and movie files online is illegal and that there are no loopholes no matter how much they might wish there are. I want them to know that even sharing a VHS copy of a TV program broadcast for free over the air is considered to be an illegal action here in the U.S. And I want these things enforced. Once there are consequences behind these actions, I think people will realize how totally screwed they are. Then I can sit back and say, "I told you so"...:)
It's not my confusion, but the confusion of the majority I'm concerned about. Most people are all too willing to listen to a so-called expert and accept what they say without questioning it. They are too lazy to try and get second or third opinions or do some research themselves. This leads to many many problems. People listening to their doctors who overprescribe many drugs needlessly leading to other disorders. By deflating the power and ego inflation that arises from the application of the term expert, it is possible to bring these people down to earth.
A personal example is when I was diagnosed with G.E.R.D. a few years ago. I had what I thought was a healthy vegetarian diet and drank water instead ofother beverages. I don't drink alcohol or partake of any caffeine based drinks. So... why was I getting G.E.R.D? After a particularly bad attack, I went to my doctor and he gave me a very cursory examination. He concluded that I had G.E.R.D. and needed to get on Nexium. I also needed to avoid the spicy foods I liked. That was it! No delving deeper into my medical history. No blood work. Just... "sounds to me like it's G.E.R.D. I'll get you a prescription for Nexium". I'm sure this experience is not uncommon for many people in their 30s. And in many cases, I'm sure it's completely overdiganosed since it's such a quick fix to prescribe Nexium. But when you go to a doctor, you don't go for a quick fix, you go to get cured.
When I went to fill the prescription, it just seemed wrong to me. Here I was in my early 30s, living a healthy lifestyle and I was diagnosed with one of the most common illnesses that affects my age group. It's just wrong. I could understand if I at crap food, drank alcohol or caffeine, or was really obese, but none of that applied. Why? It didn't make sense and it seemed totally wrong. So, after I found out my insurance company (another group of supposed experts) wouldn't cover Nexium and I had to go with the lower end Prilosec, I decided to do a little research of my own into my condition. After all, why is my generation of 30 year olds running into this problem more frequently than previous generations?
With my own research, I found the root cause of my health issues: a systemic yeast infection. I determined that this had been caused by years of being prescribed antibiotics on a more and more frequent basis for sinus infections that were getting worse and worse. The bottom line is that I cured myself. I don't use Nexium or Prilosec. I'm healthier than I was before. The G.E.R.D. is gone. So are the sinus infections as well as the allergies I've had for years. Instead of going the supposedly easy route of listening to my doctor and taking a medicine that requires an almost permanent habit, I found the root cause and made the necessary changes (a little harder than taking a pill, but much more rewarding) in my lifestyle.
So... if you want easy answers that don't require thought, research and intelligent approaches, then by all means elevate your experts to the level of god by trusting everything they tell you. If you want to live your own life, then chuck the label of expert and cut those people down to size.
So does Ardour. I've been having a lot of fun using it to process my rackmount gear. Haven't tried it on a laptop though... I have it in my home studio.
That was a beautiful. I can't say anything more than that. But... can you name authoritative sources that can provide what Wikipedia does that do not have errors and are free? Note, I do not contend that Wikipedia is authoritative. I simply state the requirements since that is what the anti-Wikipedia folks seem to be so hung up on.
I'm not here to debait you. (hehehe) My point is that if you want truth, look somewhere else. I'm sure your pointy nose has been in books that satisfy that irrational obsession. If you want information that starts you off on the road to learning, use Wikipedia or a public library. You seem to have completely missed the point of Wikipedia. Your loss.
Why are articles on Wikipedia more valid than gibberish?
Because... there is a group consensus on whether or not the information contained on Wikipedia is more valid than gibberish. However, if you are someone who is truly interested in studying a subject further, you are not going to go to one single source for your answer. The fault in your thinking is that you assume that Wikipedia is attempting to be a single authoritative source. The only people who go to a single source are simply interested in a quick answer. It doesn't have to be exact, just close enough. Like the example I posted above regarding driving directions.
If you did post on Wikipedia that 1+1 equals anything you want it to, you would have a lot of people disagreeing with you who would change that information and make it more correct.
No... this does not bother me because my critical thinking is fairly decent and I can tell when to throw away information and when to keep it. Your input is bordering on heading for the discard pile.;P Love ya!
But most of us think of experts as being "people who know a great deal" about a subject, and you've just acknowledged that they exist.
Semantics. I don't consider someone who knows a great deal about something an expert. I know a great deal about a variety of subjects. In many cases, people would make the mistake of calling me an expert and I would correct them in each case. I may know more than they do in those areas, but I refuse to be considered an expert because no one is worthy of holding any kind of final authority on a subject. My problem isn't with the word expert but more in how it is used. Someone who is deemed an expert by others can be easily mistaken as the final authority. There is no final authority since what is true about a certain thing today may not be true tomorrow. Hence my point about information not being immutable. It's always changing. There are some rare exceptions to this, but in most cases information always changes and yesterday's so-called experts become irrelevant. The information is far more valuable than the person who has it. I prefer the term "knowledgable individual" as it accords the proper humility in it's description of an individual. Expert has been abused to justify a multitude of agendas. Just look at all the "experts" on Fox news.
Now you're being an ass. If you have critical thinking skills as someone else mentioned, you would be able to filter what is good information from what is bad. Wikipedia is just a starting point.
I don't get it. Why? What did these games do that someone would deserve to be knighted for creating them? Ohhh... I get it... one of the princes must love playing the game and he's hoping to get the cheat codes so he convinced the queen to intervene on his behalf.;P
There is only organized information that has provable, possibly reproducible results. Some of the information is better than others, but none of it is the ultimate answer. There are only limited fields where you can get one answer. 1+1=2. Sure. What's the best operating system to use? No. Thinking in absolutes, can really cripple one's outlook on life. I'm not discrediting any useful information that has been acquired through work or study and has proven to be useful. I'm just trying to get rid of this ridiculous attitude that there must be authority. It's tiresome.
...entertaining that people who argue for ultimate truth sould be so willing to look away from truth when it's too ugly for them to bear. Further down this thread there is someone who tries to explain why they removed a reference to Abu Ghraib in the Rape entry on Wikipedia. Later, there is photographic edivence of rape as well as a quote from someone who should know that rapes occurred. Even in the light of such information, the person who tried to expunge the Abu Ghraib reference still argues that there were no rapes. Just astounding how people are willing to bend their perception of reality to hold to their political agendas and then turn around and point at other people's agendas. It's all bullshit if you ask me.
That's the goal with wikipedia; trust people who know more than other people.
Everyone knows more about something than someone else. That's my point. It's continuum, not an absolute. Therefore this legitimacy or authority that people are trying to claim that a project like Wikipedia should have is unattainable. Any like the poster later down this thread points out, critical thinking is important. You can't be lazy and expect to get the ultimate answer to your question from a source if you need accuracy.
Take driving directions as an example. You could ask five different people how to get to a store and you will get five different answers. More than likely, a few of those answers will get you in the vicinity of the store but not exactly to it's doors. Which means you'd have to ask someone else who happens to be accesible at the moment to guide you a little closer. Eventually you get to the store. It may have been indirect, but along the way you may have discovered a short cut or some other stores that are of interest. This route has made you more knowledgable rather than one that would get you there directly. You could also go to a source that *should* be authoritative like mapquest.com and print out directions. But as many of you know, mapquest.com provides terrible driving directions. Sorry, but I just don't agree that there is such a thing as an expert. Yes, Linus might be able to tell you how the kernel works, but there are a lot of other people who can tell you about specific parts of the kernel that Linus may only have a superficial knowledge of. That's just the way the world works. Experts are not an honest approach to knowledge.
Information vs. services. This is a different argument. I still say that the surgeon is not an expert however. The surgeon is just, hopefully, highly skilled. I don't have a problem with people knowing a great deal more about a subject or field. I do have a problem with them believing that they are an ultimate authority on the subject. I know a great deal about computers, but I'm no authority and I don't accept that even if I know more than 90% of everyone on that planet that I would be an "expert". But, that doesn't stop people from coming to me for advice both at work and in my private life and more importantly, it doesn't stop me from sharing my knowledge.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only is their programming much higher in quality than American pay services like HBO, Showtime and Cinemax, but they also have an open source project for a streaming video format. Thanks to BBC America, I get to see a small part of what they produce, but could you imagine what our shows would be like if we followed a similar model instead of the crap pay TV model? Instead of 500 channels of complete shit, we'd have 40 channels of quality programming.
I don't have the time to dig up the link right now, but I do want to make certain that people realize that the BBC has an amazing set of programs. Better selection of music, actual comedy and drama on radio as well as news. It beats all American radio programming hands down. Not only that, but their online offerings are phenominal as well. To bad the closest thing we have is NPR and it, frankly, sucks. It could be soooo much better.
Using ALSA's built in tools and ability to record straight to HD from a sound application, you just use cron to kick it all off.
:)
I also used to use cron + esd to grab realaudio and mp streams. It's actually scheduled stream ripping this guy is after and right now there are a multitude of ways to do it in Linux. Windows isn't as easy, which is not to say Linux is any easier. But if you persevere, you can make it work. I used stream ripping to grab the latest RealAudio streams of the new HHGTTG to Ogg Vorbis files.
I won't pretend to be an economist, so I will defer to what you pointed out in that regard. But we did have the whole Guantanamo Bay incident. Currently, the U.S. government is considering whether or not imprisoning people for no reason other than being suspected (ie. without evidence) of being a "terrorist" (defined as someone the governmetn doesn't liek at this point) for life with no access to a court trial is a good idea or not. So, I don't think that the atrocities of other totalitarian states are too far off unless something really major changes the political direction of the U.S.
To paraphrase the NRA member logic: Governments don't kill people, people kill people. The communist form of government had little to do with killing people. It ultimately fell victim to a human trait called greed. The people in power in the former soviet states felt that they were more equal than others. If you ask me, I will tell you that our capitalist republic is failing in the same exact way. The only difference is that with capitalism, the PR machine has better beads and trinkets. Now before anyone jumps on me to tell me that capitalism is an economic model and communism is a political model, don't forget that in communism, the economic model is defined by the political model. Here in the U.S. the economic model is also defined by the political model, but the balance is different. Here the economic model has more power than the political model. And those people who would have been high ranking politicos in the U.S.S.R. are instead CEOs in our corporations. Very effective way of attempting to take over the world without letting things like politics and ethics get in the way.
Go look at my very first JE a while back and I point out that OpenVPN is cross platform (Windows, Linux, MacOS X, BSDs, etc...) and works fairly well. Be warned that you need to use the latest Beta with Windows XP as SP2 breaks the last stable version. I've been using it going from Linux to Linux and it works great. Full access to my network at home from anywhere. All you need to do is open on UDP port and this will actually tunnel TCP and UDP traffic, so even Voice over IP will work with this for a private IP phone setup. Check it out. It's worth the effort.
:1 on my machine here. With OpenVPN, that all goes away. You just connect to the remote machine by its own IP (or if you get DNS or hosts set up right by its name).
As a side note, I used to use SSH tunnels. That worked very well for me too, but it required a good deal of setup and mapping ports on the remote end to ports on the local end. It's great as far as cross-platform goes, and if you don't have things changing much on your network, it really works well, but it won't handle UDP traffic. Not to mention, when I used it with VNC, I had to map remote ports to local ports that were unused. So if I connected to 'mymachine:1' at home, I would connect to '127.0.0.1:21' at work since I couldn't stomp over
I'll also mention that I'm using OpenVPN in "routing" mode. I throw all traffic destined for my home network to the tun1 interface that openVPN brings up on my local machine. You can also use openVPN in bridged mode which is a bit more of a headache to set up since you need to know how to break your network up into ranges for each location. Bascially subnetting. But the advantage of bridged mode is that broadcasts will be carried over the tunnel. OpenVPN is about the closest you get in a free project to having a virtual ethernet cable going from one end of the connection to the other. In the end, I think this is what you want. Hope this helps.
Think about all the web pages and applications that were displaying the odd five digit year. 11000 I think it was. So I wouldn't say it was a hoax as a whole. There were a lot of opportunistic assholes who saw it as a chance to charge people for upgrades that weren't necessary either though. Not to mention the fear mongers who relied on the natural human tendency to fear the unknown (dried food sales as an example). I will point out that I had a program written in 1993 from the Norton Desktop for Windows 3.1. It was the Norton Dayplanner. I stuck it on a floppy when I got it and carried it with me as a "PDA". I had batch files that I used to sync it with my desktops at home and work. It worked well. Just a few weeks ago I found one of my archival copies of it on CD and ran it under W.I.N.E. Still works, and the dates are correct as well as the year. Interestingly enough, when I ran it in Windows 95, it would skewer the dates past the year 2000. So the app is fine, it was the OS that had the problem. I think in many cases, this was true and it's where a lot of people got taken. They paid for upgrades to apps that relied on the OS for proper date calculation. The main problem is... how do you know this without hindsight? That is how people got taken.
Dude. If you're on a date, do you really think you should be non-discretely getting connected to a server via SSH? Oh that's right, we're speaking figuratively here. ;P
Like the current state of the U.S. being a free country has little to do with the founding fathers? Oh wait... ;)
I think it depends on who you are and what you do with it. Personally, I don't care at all about the economic viability of Free/Open software since I'm not involved to make money. I was just having a conversation with a friend yesterday. I've had two revalations about myself lately. Although I am a "wired" guy, I'm not really a geek as I once thought I was, but really more an artist who uses computers. I just happen to be much more advanced in my use of computers than most others who are primarily artistically inclined. Music is my main focus and the computers help me get there easier. Combine that with Open/Free music software and it's a really great thing. :) Though many people who know me would probably think otherwise, I'm not really a "gadget guy" but more of a "device guy". I'm more likely to buy a set of electonic components to build something or a bunch of computer parts to build a dedicated system of some kind, than I am to want a prebuilt product.
Yes, I have a computer as part of my entertainment system and it's been years since I've used my CDs directly to listen to music. The same goes for video tape. But everything that I use for the computerized portion of my entertainment system (as well as my speakers and soon my amp) has been assembled by me for me. Just as I've always prefered to build my own speaker systems, wire my own house and build my own electronic circuits, I like to compile my own collections of software using raw materials (code). There is something so unsatisfying in going to Best Buy and buying a gadget. It's a combination of being let down and feeling ripped off at the same time. It's truly depressing. Of course, there are things I can't build (LCD monitors, digital cameras, etc...) but for those that I can build (Amplifiers,mixers, MIDI thru boxes, power supplies, speakers, video switches, etc...) I prefer to.
Some of us just like to build our own because we know it will work better than what we can buy. It might cost more, or it might be cheaper, but the cost is irrelevant compared to the satisfaction of having something that is custom made. If you apply that same ethic to software, you get Free/Open software. The only thing better than having something custom made is to know that you can share it with everyone else. I would love it if I could build a good pair of speakers or a nice amp and then easily duplicate them and give them to people for free. That would be the most phenominal feeling ever. But, sadly, it's not possible to do that at the moment. This is the desire that Free/Open software satisfies. Some of us aren't in this for the money, we're in it because we love to do it and we love to share. That doesn't mix very well with economics.
While there are people who support the Free/Open movement who can get quite zealous (I've been guilty of it at times) it doesn't mean we think that everyone else is stupid. It just becomes annoying to have to keep defending your own position when all you get back are childish arguments about why all of the things you do are wrong. The anti-Free/Open side is just as zealous about their support of making money over everything else. That's what most of us rail against.
That's why I completely support the anti-piracy measures that companies like Microsoft favor. I just think the MS and company don't go far enough in enforcing the anti-piracy measures. I want every person in the United States to know that installing the same copy of a single user license of Windows on their PC and all their friends and families PCs is piracy. I want all of them to know that swapping music and movie files online is illegal and that there are no loopholes no matter how much they might wish there are. I want them to know that even sharing a VHS copy of a TV program broadcast for free over the air is considered to be an illegal action here in the U.S. And I want these things enforced. Once there are consequences behind these actions, I think people will realize how totally screwed they are. Then I can sit back and say, "I told you so"... :)
It's not my confusion, but the confusion of the majority I'm concerned about. Most people are all too willing to listen to a so-called expert and accept what they say without questioning it. They are too lazy to try and get second or third opinions or do some research themselves. This leads to many many problems. People listening to their doctors who overprescribe many drugs needlessly leading to other disorders. By deflating the power and ego inflation that arises from the application of the term expert, it is possible to bring these people down to earth.
A personal example is when I was diagnosed with G.E.R.D. a few years ago. I had what I thought was a healthy vegetarian diet and drank water instead ofother beverages. I don't drink alcohol or partake of any caffeine based drinks. So... why was I getting G.E.R.D? After a particularly bad attack, I went to my doctor and he gave me a very cursory examination. He concluded that I had G.E.R.D. and needed to get on Nexium. I also needed to avoid the spicy foods I liked. That was it! No delving deeper into my medical history. No blood work. Just... "sounds to me like it's G.E.R.D. I'll get you a prescription for Nexium". I'm sure this experience is not uncommon for many people in their 30s. And in many cases, I'm sure it's completely overdiganosed since it's such a quick fix to prescribe Nexium. But when you go to a doctor, you don't go for a quick fix, you go to get cured.
When I went to fill the prescription, it just seemed wrong to me. Here I was in my early 30s, living a healthy lifestyle and I was diagnosed with one of the most common illnesses that affects my age group. It's just wrong. I could understand if I at crap food, drank alcohol or caffeine, or was really obese, but none of that applied. Why? It didn't make sense and it seemed totally wrong. So, after I found out my insurance company (another group of supposed experts) wouldn't cover Nexium and I had to go with the lower end Prilosec, I decided to do a little research of my own into my condition. After all, why is my generation of 30 year olds running into this problem more frequently than previous generations?
With my own research, I found the root cause of my health issues: a systemic yeast infection. I determined that this had been caused by years of being prescribed antibiotics on a more and more frequent basis for sinus infections that were getting worse and worse. The bottom line is that I cured myself. I don't use Nexium or Prilosec. I'm healthier than I was before. The G.E.R.D. is gone. So are the sinus infections as well as the allergies I've had for years. Instead of going the supposedly easy route of listening to my doctor and taking a medicine that requires an almost permanent habit, I found the root cause and made the necessary changes (a little harder than taking a pill, but much more rewarding) in my lifestyle.
So... if you want easy answers that don't require thought, research and intelligent approaches, then by all means elevate your experts to the level of god by trusting everything they tell you. If you want to live your own life, then chuck the label of expert and cut those people down to size.
Wow. I must have hit a nerve. Can I guess that you think of yourself as some kind of expert? :)
:) I can respect that. Well played sir. Well played.
So does Ardour. I've been having a lot of fun using it to process my rackmount gear. Haven't tried it on a laptop though... I have it in my home studio.
That was a beautiful. I can't say anything more than that. But... can you name authoritative sources that can provide what Wikipedia does that do not have errors and are free? Note, I do not contend that Wikipedia is authoritative. I simply state the requirements since that is what the anti-Wikipedia folks seem to be so hung up on.
OK. But answer this for me: What are you after?
I'm not here to debait you. (hehehe) My point is that if you want truth, look somewhere else. I'm sure your pointy nose has been in books that satisfy that irrational obsession. If you want information that starts you off on the road to learning, use Wikipedia or a public library. You seem to have completely missed the point of Wikipedia. Your loss.
Because... there is a group consensus on whether or not the information contained on Wikipedia is more valid than gibberish. However, if you are someone who is truly interested in studying a subject further, you are not going to go to one single source for your answer. The fault in your thinking is that you assume that Wikipedia is attempting to be a single authoritative source. The only people who go to a single source are simply interested in a quick answer. It doesn't have to be exact, just close enough. Like the example I posted above regarding driving directions.
;P Love ya!
If you did post on Wikipedia that 1+1 equals anything you want it to, you would have a lot of people disagreeing with you who would change that information and make it more correct.
No... this does not bother me because my critical thinking is fairly decent and I can tell when to throw away information and when to keep it. Your input is bordering on heading for the discard pile.
Semantics. I don't consider someone who knows a great deal about something an expert. I know a great deal about a variety of subjects. In many cases, people would make the mistake of calling me an expert and I would correct them in each case. I may know more than they do in those areas, but I refuse to be considered an expert because no one is worthy of holding any kind of final authority on a subject. My problem isn't with the word expert but more in how it is used. Someone who is deemed an expert by others can be easily mistaken as the final authority. There is no final authority since what is true about a certain thing today may not be true tomorrow. Hence my point about information not being immutable. It's always changing. There are some rare exceptions to this, but in most cases information always changes and yesterday's so-called experts become irrelevant. The information is far more valuable than the person who has it. I prefer the term "knowledgable individual" as it accords the proper humility in it's description of an individual. Expert has been abused to justify a multitude of agendas. Just look at all the "experts" on Fox news.
Now you're being an ass. If you have critical thinking skills as someone else mentioned, you would be able to filter what is good information from what is bad. Wikipedia is just a starting point.
I don't get it. Why? What did these games do that someone would deserve to be knighted for creating them? Ohhh... I get it... one of the princes must love playing the game and he's hoping to get the cheat codes so he convinced the queen to intervene on his behalf. ;P
There is only organized information that has provable, possibly reproducible results. Some of the information is better than others, but none of it is the ultimate answer. There are only limited fields where you can get one answer. 1+1=2. Sure. What's the best operating system to use? No. Thinking in absolutes, can really cripple one's outlook on life. I'm not discrediting any useful information that has been acquired through work or study and has proven to be useful. I'm just trying to get rid of this ridiculous attitude that there must be authority. It's tiresome.
...entertaining that people who argue for ultimate truth sould be so willing to look away from truth when it's too ugly for them to bear. Further down this thread there is someone who tries to explain why they removed a reference to Abu Ghraib in the Rape entry on Wikipedia. Later, there is photographic edivence of rape as well as a quote from someone who should know that rapes occurred. Even in the light of such information, the person who tried to expunge the Abu Ghraib reference still argues that there were no rapes. Just astounding how people are willing to bend their perception of reality to hold to their political agendas and then turn around and point at other people's agendas. It's all bullshit if you ask me.
Everyone knows more about something than someone else. That's my point. It's continuum, not an absolute. Therefore this legitimacy or authority that people are trying to claim that a project like Wikipedia should have is unattainable. Any like the poster later down this thread points out, critical thinking is important. You can't be lazy and expect to get the ultimate answer to your question from a source if you need accuracy.
Take driving directions as an example. You could ask five different people how to get to a store and you will get five different answers. More than likely, a few of those answers will get you in the vicinity of the store but not exactly to it's doors. Which means you'd have to ask someone else who happens to be accesible at the moment to guide you a little closer. Eventually you get to the store. It may have been indirect, but along the way you may have discovered a short cut or some other stores that are of interest. This route has made you more knowledgable rather than one that would get you there directly. You could also go to a source that *should* be authoritative like mapquest.com and print out directions. But as many of you know, mapquest.com provides terrible driving directions. Sorry, but I just don't agree that there is such a thing as an expert. Yes, Linus might be able to tell you how the kernel works, but there are a lot of other people who can tell you about specific parts of the kernel that Linus may only have a superficial knowledge of. That's just the way the world works. Experts are not an honest approach to knowledge.
Information vs. services. This is a different argument. I still say that the surgeon is not an expert however. The surgeon is just, hopefully, highly skilled. I don't have a problem with people knowing a great deal more about a subject or field. I do have a problem with them believing that they are an ultimate authority on the subject. I know a great deal about computers, but I'm no authority and I don't accept that even if I know more than 90% of everyone on that planet that I would be an "expert". But, that doesn't stop people from coming to me for advice both at work and in my private life and more importantly, it doesn't stop me from sharing my knowledge.