You don't get it. Or perhaps you have a strange definition of open internet. Open internet is an internet where everyone is free to participate without fear of retribution, which means anonymously. Slashdot is an example of an open internet working - at the very least, moderation is - because you can, pretty much, say whatever you want. Moderation and pseudonymous reputation aren't counterpoints to the open internet, they are very much part of it.
A non-open approach would require everyone to sign in with an authenticated real name - in which case the moderation system would be far less necessary, but which certainly would limit the conversation (though not necessarily in a bad way).
Total open internet doesn't work. That is clear from slashdot alone else why would we have moderation and bans?
No, Slashdot is not an example why open internet doesn't work. It's the opposite, it's one of many working models which facilitate a community despite and because of the near-to anonymity. Moderation in particular is a great way to deal with a lot of crap that people post when they don't need to fear real world retribution.
Quoting the pro-nuclear article (which is many years old, FWIF) linked to in the Slashdot blurb: "All studies of potential health hazards associated with the release of radioactive elements from coal combustion conclude that the perturbation of natural background dose levels is almost negligible."
But hey, coal sucks, too, no doubt about it. The primary solution to the energy problem is using a lot less energy, not hoping for a way for it to be produced cleanly.
Quite a story he's got there. And I can't fault him for being very pissed at his hosting company. But I also have to say their support sounds pretty nice. Sure, they messed up telling him to buy more bandwidth, but apparently they refunded him without a problem - and a mail "Go to hell." to their support actually got a very nice reply asking if there were any problems they could help with. That's all more than I would expect from some of the web hosters out there...
Those 10 hours aren't just due to the more efficient - and significantly slower - processor. I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers, but powering the CPU is just one of several major power drains in a laptop. With the adaptive voltage all modern mobile CPUs offer, the display uses more power, and the hard drive isn't insignificant, either. Consequently, smaller displays and physically smaller HDD form factors result in longer battery times.
That said, 15+ hours on a single charge is still awesome.;)
When I was reading your post, Slashcode gave me a very fitting quote: "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? -- Steven Wright"
That's still 3 to 4 times as much as I'd want to spend on a camera. Plus, it's way too bulky. So, doesn't meet requirements, much too expensive - great!
By 2007, it will cost several million dollars just to keep Wikipedia running.
Care to elaborate? The hardware costs (which are the largest single item) are an investment, it's not like they need to replace their existing infrastructure every year. Of course they might need to further expand the server farm, but not for several millions. Bandwidth needs will increase, but bandwidth is cheap, and it will be cheaper still in 2007. So where are the millions coming from? Personnel? Legal fees?
Austrian techies, actually. They just gave a talk on it during this years Chaos Communication Congress - kind of like Europe's Def Con or whatever - which happens in Berlin. Well, at least Wired got it right.
That's a neat idea. Sounds like more fun than the current CAPTCHAs.;) Not sure how well it could be applied to audio though - famous songs? Movie quotes? Animal sounds? I guess simple sentence transcription would do it, but that's pretty much what standard audio CAPTCHAs would do.
Your article is an island, in the version before the anon edit it didn't link anywhere, it still isn't linked from anywhere. The only way people will get to it is by directly entering the article title. In other words, very few people noticed your page, so no one was there to improve it. There are a number of ways to get attention to an article, the most common one is to mark it as a stub, others include as marking it as in need of attention, copy-editing, expert knowledge and various other things.
That's actually kind of an intriguing idea. MPOV when a NPOV can not be reach, basically forking the article. Forking off the controversial parts of an article is already done, to prevent the main article from being affected by edit wars etc. One danger of the MPOV model is a inflation of forks - a MPOV fork should always be avoided if possible, because people would have to read all MPOV articles to get the whole picture. More than two MPOVs per controversial issues should very rarely be necessary. After some time, maybe the forks could be merged.
Still, while it may be intriguing, I'm not sure if it's a good idea. The tyranny of the most persistent exists, but it's not as bad as you make it sound - actually I've been there, and given up because I just wasn't as persistent. But others took up the banner, and often the two sides to create a common article that reflects the various points of view already. In other words, the NPOV model works surprisingly well. Exceedingly well when both parties while "hostile" are well-meaning, which sadly is only rarely the case.
Of course, what you describe would not be possible in Java. Interface are pure virtual, they may not contain any code at all, just function definitions. Including default implementations would make it an abstract class - but since Java does not support multiple inheritance, a given class can only extend a single abstract, while it can implement any number of interfaces.
(Not meant to rag on Java - I love the whole strong typing object orientation and understand the design choices against multiple inheritance.)
As an extreme example - what's to stop a nation with an axe to grind against the US continually editing all US-related content to reflect poorly on the US?
Well, I'm sure if that happened there would be attempts to stop it at a technical level - banning IPs or even IP ranges, protecting pages. This is all possible today, but maybe someone will come with a smarter idea some day. Of course as with all technical measures, it wouldn't deal with every malicious user. But for those there are probably enough volunteers who have the pages on their watch list to detect and revert the malicious edits. That, too, is happening all the time today. Considering that this was your extreme example, the threat just doesn't seem to be that great - especially when then worst case result would be a slight slant in the US-related articles. There already are highly disputed topics and topic areas where edits go back and forth, and yes, it can be frustrating. But in fact, I think that kind of a threat would be easier to deal with the malicious edits Wikipedia has to deal with all the time, because some of those aren't so systematic and harder to detect.
When I meet people who don't like Wikipedia, all I can really tell them is how I use the site - pretty much all the time. I don't use it for critical information, at least not without third parties to confirm it - but if you really use an encyclopedia, or any internet resource for truly critical information, you're insane, anyway. I also don't think that Wikipedia, with it's current working model, will ever be as authoritative as a "real" encyclopedia. But a non-authoritative source of information that is easy to reach is extremely valuable to me. You wouldn't believe how much information on chemistry I picked up by reading Wikipedia. Of course, I'm not a chemist, but school chemistry hasn't sated by curiosity in every regard. So what if 10% (and I doubt it's that much) is inaccurate?! I'm certain I misunderstood a similar percentage during school lessons (and forgot even more); they were still valuable. It's not like I'll ever truly need the information, it's just interesting to me. The same goes for dog breeds, astronomy, geography, religion and pop culture. Since Wikipedia is so easy to reach (w keyword in my adress bar), I've gotten way more curious about all kinds of abstruse topics. If I don't know it, I'll look it up, and on average I'll be smarter for it. I don't see how that is a bad thing.
It is amusing because they're reporting old news. It's like writing an alarming news piece about how OMG AMD processors run more efficiently than Intel CPUs. It shows that many news reporters didn't bother digging very deep. But all of that was just a minor side point, you seem to have missed the first half: I think you're wrong, the wider internet community does not think Wikipedia is worthless - the opposite is true. Maybe they're all idiots, that's a fairly reasonable assumption about the net at large. But I think Wikipedia has pretty much established itself as sort of an internet institution, a site virtually everybody knows and a whole lot of people use, whether you think it's of no value or not. Yeah, that's got to rankle.
The growing consensus? Bullshit. It's all just shit mongering by a few (Andrew Orlowski, that is you). Hating Wikipedia is in this week. Next week it will be something else. The most amusing thing is that all these pundits are just repeating arguments that have been discussed on Wikipedia, where else, months or years ago.
I can assure you they will notify you. If you don't pick up the registred mail, they will try to deliver it personally for as long as it takes to get you in person. I really don't think trying to avoid "getting served" is a viable course of action.
Most important note to this story: (Prize money comes from a special donation provided by an individual EFF supporter, earmarked specifically for this project. Prize money does NOT come from EFF membership dues, corporate or foundation grants, or other general EFF funds.)
So at least they're not wasting your membership fees on this "huge scientific problem".
Slashdot Mirror
You don't get it. Or perhaps you have a strange definition of open internet. Open internet is an internet where everyone is free to participate without fear of retribution, which means anonymously. Slashdot is an example of an open internet working - at the very least, moderation is - because you can, pretty much, say whatever you want. Moderation and pseudonymous reputation aren't counterpoints to the open internet, they are very much part of it.
A non-open approach would require everyone to sign in with an authenticated real name - in which case the moderation system would be far less necessary, but which certainly would limit the conversation (though not necessarily in a bad way).
Total open internet doesn't work. That is clear from slashdot alone else why would we have moderation and bans?
No, Slashdot is not an example why open internet doesn't work. It's the opposite, it's one of many working models which facilitate a community despite and because of the near-to anonymity. Moderation in particular is a great way to deal with a lot of crap that people post when they don't need to fear real world retribution.
All of the current top3 Supercomputers in the world are POWER5 IBM designs.
Clearly, that makes it an obvious choice for a laptop CPU.
Quoting the pro-nuclear article (which is many years old, FWIF) linked to in the Slashdot blurb: "All studies of potential health hazards associated with the release of radioactive elements from coal combustion conclude that the perturbation of natural background dose levels is almost negligible."
But hey, coal sucks, too, no doubt about it. The primary solution to the energy problem is using a lot less energy, not hoping for a way for it to be produced cleanly.
Quite a story he's got there. And I can't fault him for being very pissed at his hosting company. But I also have to say their support sounds pretty nice. Sure, they messed up telling him to buy more bandwidth, but apparently they refunded him without a problem - and a mail "Go to hell." to their support actually got a very nice reply asking if there were any problems they could help with. That's all more than I would expect from some of the web hosters out there...
Since Ballmer runs it, MS is both a BUISNESS and a chairity.
Of course chances are it simply won't be available outside the US at all.
I'd rather have the 20+ board games and the 2000 bucks.
Those 10 hours aren't just due to the more efficient - and significantly slower - processor. I'm too lazy to look up the real numbers, but powering the CPU is just one of several major power drains in a laptop. With the adaptive voltage all modern mobile CPUs offer, the display uses more power, and the hard drive isn't insignificant, either. Consequently, smaller displays and physically smaller HDD form factors result in longer battery times.
;)
That said, 15+ hours on a single charge is still awesome.
Omnipresent is so last decade, the word to use is now ubiquitous. Actually, there probably is a yet more recent term.
When I was reading your post, Slashcode gave me a very fitting quote: "Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song? -- Steven Wright"
That's still 3 to 4 times as much as I'd want to spend on a camera. Plus, it's way too bulky. So, doesn't meet requirements, much too expensive - great!
By 2007, it will cost several million dollars just to keep Wikipedia running.
Care to elaborate? The hardware costs (which are the largest single item) are an investment, it's not like they need to replace their existing infrastructure every year. Of course they might need to further expand the server farm, but not for several millions. Bandwidth needs will increase, but bandwidth is cheap, and it will be cheaper still in 2007. So where are the millions coming from? Personnel? Legal fees?
Austrian techies, actually. They just gave a talk on it during this years Chaos Communication Congress - kind of like Europe's Def Con or whatever - which happens in Berlin. Well, at least Wired got it right.
That's a neat idea. Sounds like more fun than the current CAPTCHAs. ;) Not sure how well it could be applied to audio though - famous songs? Movie quotes? Animal sounds? I guess simple sentence transcription would do it, but that's pretty much what standard audio CAPTCHAs would do.
Please read the style guide: avoid weasel terms.
Your article is an island, in the version before the anon edit it didn't link anywhere, it still isn't linked from anywhere. The only way people will get to it is by directly entering the article title. In other words, very few people noticed your page, so no one was there to improve it. There are a number of ways to get attention to an article, the most common one is to mark it as a stub, others include as marking it as in need of attention, copy-editing, expert knowledge and various other things.
That's actually kind of an intriguing idea. MPOV when a NPOV can not be reach, basically forking the article. Forking off the controversial parts of an article is already done, to prevent the main article from being affected by edit wars etc. One danger of the MPOV model is a inflation of forks - a MPOV fork should always be avoided if possible, because people would have to read all MPOV articles to get the whole picture. More than two MPOVs per controversial issues should very rarely be necessary. After some time, maybe the forks could be merged.
Still, while it may be intriguing, I'm not sure if it's a good idea. The tyranny of the most persistent exists, but it's not as bad as you make it sound - actually I've been there, and given up because I just wasn't as persistent. But others took up the banner, and often the two sides to create a common article that reflects the various points of view already. In other words, the NPOV model works surprisingly well. Exceedingly well when both parties while "hostile" are well-meaning, which sadly is only rarely the case.
Of course, what you describe would not be possible in Java. Interface are pure virtual, they may not contain any code at all, just function definitions. Including default implementations would make it an abstract class - but since Java does not support multiple inheritance, a given class can only extend a single abstract, while it can implement any number of interfaces.
(Not meant to rag on Java - I love the whole strong typing object orientation and understand the design choices against multiple inheritance.)
As an extreme example - what's to stop a nation with an axe to grind against the US continually editing all US-related content to reflect poorly on the US?
Well, I'm sure if that happened there would be attempts to stop it at a technical level - banning IPs or even IP ranges, protecting pages. This is all possible today, but maybe someone will come with a smarter idea some day. Of course as with all technical measures, it wouldn't deal with every malicious user. But for those there are probably enough volunteers who have the pages on their watch list to detect and revert the malicious edits. That, too, is happening all the time today. Considering that this was your extreme example, the threat just doesn't seem to be that great - especially when then worst case result would be a slight slant in the US-related articles. There already are highly disputed topics and topic areas where edits go back and forth, and yes, it can be frustrating. But in fact, I think that kind of a threat would be easier to deal with the malicious edits Wikipedia has to deal with all the time, because some of those aren't so systematic and harder to detect.
When I meet people who don't like Wikipedia, all I can really tell them is how I use the site - pretty much all the time. I don't use it for critical information, at least not without third parties to confirm it - but if you really use an encyclopedia, or any internet resource for truly critical information, you're insane, anyway. I also don't think that Wikipedia, with it's current working model, will ever be as authoritative as a "real" encyclopedia. But a non-authoritative source of information that is easy to reach is extremely valuable to me. You wouldn't believe how much information on chemistry I picked up by reading Wikipedia. Of course, I'm not a chemist, but school chemistry hasn't sated by curiosity in every regard. So what if 10% (and I doubt it's that much) is inaccurate?! I'm certain I misunderstood a similar percentage during school lessons (and forgot even more); they were still valuable. It's not like I'll ever truly need the information, it's just interesting to me. The same goes for dog breeds, astronomy, geography, religion and pop culture. Since Wikipedia is so easy to reach (w keyword in my adress bar), I've gotten way more curious about all kinds of abstruse topics. If I don't know it, I'll look it up, and on average I'll be smarter for it. I don't see how that is a bad thing.
It is amusing because they're reporting old news. It's like writing an alarming news piece about how OMG AMD processors run more efficiently than Intel CPUs. It shows that many news reporters didn't bother digging very deep. But all of that was just a minor side point, you seem to have missed the first half: I think you're wrong, the wider internet community does not think Wikipedia is worthless - the opposite is true. Maybe they're all idiots, that's a fairly reasonable assumption about the net at large. But I think Wikipedia has pretty much established itself as sort of an internet institution, a site virtually everybody knows and a whole lot of people use, whether you think it's of no value or not. Yeah, that's got to rankle.
The growing consensus? Bullshit. It's all just shit mongering by a few (Andrew Orlowski, that is you). Hating Wikipedia is in this week. Next week it will be something else. The most amusing thing is that all these pundits are just repeating arguments that have been discussed on Wikipedia, where else, months or years ago.
The Family Guy humour might be random and not smart, but nobody does random, non-smart humour anyhwere near as good as Family Guy.
I can assure you they will notify you. If you don't pick up the registred mail, they will try to deliver it personally for as long as it takes to get you in person. I really don't think trying to avoid "getting served" is a viable course of action.
Most important note to this story: (Prize money comes from a special donation provided by an individual EFF supporter, earmarked specifically for this project. Prize money does NOT come from EFF membership dues, corporate or foundation grants, or other general EFF funds.)
So at least they're not wasting your membership fees on this "huge scientific problem".