I believe you can upload to Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) without article edits. Pictures placed there can be used by any Wikimedia project (including all the different language editions). You might want to try there -- or as David Gerard said above, put them on Flickr tagged CC-By-SA and put a comment on the talk page saying "I have these photos; could someone upload them?"
Heck, do so and email me; I'll put 'em up. (morven@byz.org)
Every contribution to Wikipedia is copyright by its contributor. Wikipedia owns the copyright to almost nothing on its site - only those portions created by employees of the Wikimedia Foundation.
What they do demand is it must be released under a license that allows fairly liberal re-use. No 'non-commercial'. No 'internet only'. No 'wikipedia only'. You can demand that your work be attributed and you can demand that derived works be licensed under the same terms as the original. Few other restrictions are acceptable.
If anyone told you this, they were badly misinformed, or you're not describing the situation accurately.
Wikipedia does not require you to give up your copyright or ownership; what they do require is that you license your images under an acceptable free license (the exact details of what's acceptable are on the site somewhere). You can definitely retain the right to be attributed as the creator of the image. You can also insist that any re-user must release their derived work under the same license.
In general, the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC-By-SA) is the simplest and most common of these licenses; you can read its terms at creativecommons.org if interested.
Did you, perhaps, wish to have some other constraint on the images, for example restricting re-use (permission only for Wikipedia, or only for non-commercial use)?
... applies only to the guy that owns the presses.
In other words, who are you to tell the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedia project that they're not allowed to have standards? Are you paying for their hosting? Are you helping run the project?
I suspect not. If you want a web site where anyone is allowed to post anything and nothing is removed... here's a hint: pay for it yourself.
A number of users think articles about Internet fads should be deleted as insufficiently notable altogether - there have been attempts to delete many articles about Slashdot phenomenal, for instance.
But TBSDY is right - articles that aren't about people are less risky.
In other words, technically not a problem. You can download the software and a recent database dump and do it. In fact, quite a few people already do - mostly to get Google results for a lot of searches and sell ads.
However, just like Linux, you'll be mightily bored with your own forked version that nobody cares about. In order to fork the COMMUNITY, you need to have enough people convinced that (a) the current guys in charge suck, and (b) that you'll be better. Hard task.
If you think a million articles means everything is already covered, then you have no unusual interests. Articles in many of my favorite topic areas are covered in redlinks. I agree that the current mechanisms for article deletion are seriously flawed, and given to very biased decisions and a severe random factor.
As to the rest, it seems that you don't like it when people don't let you use Wikipedia as your own private playground. Well, boo hoo. In most cases, when significant material is removed from an article, it's because it's unverified and/or off-topic. While I don't know Extraordinary Machine very well, nor Astrotrain, and Radiant! only in passing, if Morwen ruined your Wikipedia experience, I suspect the project is only the better for it.
I've been in California 7 years, but before that in the UK. I have no doubt that *fast lane* speeds might be that high, but are you seriously saying that ALL lanes are driving at that speed? I thought lorries still had governors to keep them to 70 or so?
In the mid 90s my rather clapped out 1.3 litre VW Golf Mk2 (which could do 90 or so flat-out, 80 comfortably) was quite sufficient for motorway driving.
1960s / early 1970s American cars were pretty fast, actually. It was the 55 mph speed limit and mandated 80mph speedos that killed things after that. I drive a 1967 Ford Thunderbird every day; it's badly out of tune and needs a lot of work, but it's still a challenge to keep to the 65mph speed limit. The car wants to cruise at 80-90, and it will easily do the "ton" - I get scared and back off before it stops accelerating. People on the mailing list for these beasts claim that pinning the 120mph speedometer is easy with a car in good condition, and there are claims of 130-140 mph. Not bad for a 3-speed automatic transmission, which is probably the eventual limiting factor (a higher cog would be nice).
And this was a semi-luxury cruiser, not a performance car by any means. Of course, the seven litre V8 probably helps...
... we didn't really consider a 'how to find child porn online' article really all that appropriate for an encyclopedia. So it was turned into an article ABOUT online child pornography, which is a little more appropriate. Oops, sorry.
I'm saying it's rather shockingly unlikely, and it's hilarious that you're trying to claim this. Invoking 'My brother did things as me while I was out' as a copout when you said something stupid is... well, let's just say it's confirming everyone's opinion of you.
And no, I've never had that experience. I lock my screen. Unfailingly.
is the oldest joke in the book. I was finding you annoying, but now I'm discovering just what a comic genius you are; I think we should keep you around for the entertainment value.
You can't fix latency. There is a hard limit on it; the speed of electrical signals in a cable or light in fiber. There is always going to be more delay in accessing a server on the other side of the world, and as the networking technology improves, the share of the delay that's due to wire length only increases. Plus, as protocols get more and more complex, it matters more and more.
The coke recipe has been published. It's not the secrecy of the recipe that matters. It's firstly Coke's marketing muscle -- it's not that nobody else can mimic the taste, it's the label.
Secondly, in the case of Coke, it's very hard for anyone else to get that coca-leaf importing license required. Yes, there still is coca extract in Coke. They just process it to destroy the active cocaine ingredient these days, but the flavor is still there.
Car manufacturers don't make cars that fail after 3 years. They can generally rely on people wanting the latest in automotive fashion.
Even 35-40 years ago, the 'design life' of a car was about 7 years and 100-120 thousand miles. And then, most of the reason for car death was rust, not mechanical failure.
Modern cars are designed for 10 year lifespans at least and about 200-250 thousand miles.
And there are quite a few well-built cars that will last functionally forever with proper maintenance. My '67 Ford Thunderbird is now 36 years old and has the original of practically everything on the car (new battery, starter, alternator, plugs, plug leads, belts, some hoses, and tires are about all it's had). It's the car I drive daily. (not mine from new; I've had it most of this year, old lady owner before that).
Car insurance varies more depending on where you live and your driving history than with the car. Even if you have full comprehensive insurance, the expensive bits are medical and third-party liability coverage in most cases.
Ballmer states that there's "nobody who has his rear end on the line" with Linux.
I posit that Linux developers have something rather important on the line; their reputations, professional and personal. When you ship open-source code, you are showing the world how good, or how bad, you are. Your reputation can be made or broken by the code you release.
Contrast that with all too many developers in commercial shops, whose code is read by nobody but their immediate co-workers and nobody takes responsibility for bugs.
If Microsoft employees' asses are on the line, show me a firing or two every time a security hole shows up. And not just the line programmers; bring me the heads of the designers who designed things badly, the project managers who made hitting deadline more important than getting it right, and the managers who let it all happen.
I would say that in the vast majority of cases, commercial programmers' asses are NOT on the line, in terms of security problems. As long as you crank out code fast enough to keep up with your co-workers...
Yes, certainly, some things are cheaper. But the examples you give; both the clothing and automotive markets were once upon a time totally fed by US manufacturers. I'm pretty sure socks didn't cost the equivalent of modern $20. Being a little bit of a car nut, I know cars have not got any cheaper since then either. According to a quick run through an inflation calculator, my 1967 Ford Thunderbird's $4500 cost new equates to $24,000 now. Try and find a semi-luxury car for $24K... In fact, American manufacturers RAISED their prices.
No; rather, I know that in the company I worked for and in a representative number of the others where I knew the people well enough to know, no viruses were written. I also knew and knew of a fair number of virus writers, all of whom were not on an AV company's payroll.
There are PLENTY of bored, disgruntled or easily-amused people out there who'll write a virus without being paid for it. Or do you think that the people who deface web sites etc. get paid for that, too? They're the same mindset, pretty much.
Don't kid yourself. Technology choice is rarely, in any organisation, done for purely altruistic 'what's good for the company?' reasons.
Instead, the technology chosen is one of two choices:
1) What people are comfortable with. A lot of people want an easy, safe, predictable decision.
2) Resume fodder. What do the decision-makers want to add to their resumes? What's missing?
Analyse the average IT department's choices and one of those two is almost always the cause. Let's face it, most of us would also be guilty of these; picking what we're used to and what we think would be fun or useful to learn.
I used to work at an antivirus company.
on
LovSan Clone Let Loose
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· Score: 4, Insightful
While some companies in the AV industry have shown (ahem) questionable ethics in the past, I think it's stretching to say they WRITE the viruses, rather than just hype them.
For one thing, there are plenty of idiots out there quite willing to write a virus for free.
For another, if the viruses/worms/trojans were written by the AV firms, they'd be MUCH better. My co-workers and I would regularly discuss how one could, hypothetically, write the ultimate virus... some of our ideas would have been quite evil indeed. And most of us were pretty good programmers.
Contrast that with the true nature of most successful 'in the wild' viruses -- most of which aren't that well written...
Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia should document the world as it is, which includes a fair population of neopagans.
The "Anything I don't like/don't care about is non-notable!" attitude is a big problem with deletionism.
I bet you they didn't. Wouldn't be the first time a company thought RAID meant you didn't have to take backups.
It would be very ironic if the reason they were upgrading was partly that backups weren't working anymore.
I believe you can upload to Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org) without article edits. Pictures placed there can be used by any Wikimedia project (including all the different language editions). You might want to try there -- or as David Gerard said above, put them on Flickr tagged CC-By-SA and put a comment on the talk page saying "I have these photos; could someone upload them?"
Heck, do so and email me; I'll put 'em up. (morven@byz.org)
Every contribution to Wikipedia is copyright by its contributor. Wikipedia owns the copyright to almost nothing on its site - only those portions created by employees of the Wikimedia Foundation.
What they do demand is it must be released under a license that allows fairly liberal re-use. No 'non-commercial'. No 'internet only'. No 'wikipedia only'. You can demand that your work be attributed and you can demand that derived works be licensed under the same terms as the original. Few other restrictions are acceptable.
If anyone told you this, they were badly misinformed, or you're not describing the situation accurately.
Wikipedia does not require you to give up your copyright or ownership; what they do require is that you license your images under an acceptable free license (the exact details of what's acceptable are on the site somewhere). You can definitely retain the right to be attributed as the creator of the image. You can also insist that any re-user must release their derived work under the same license.
In general, the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license (CC-By-SA) is the simplest and most common of these licenses; you can read its terms at creativecommons.org if interested.
Did you, perhaps, wish to have some other constraint on the images, for example restricting re-use (permission only for Wikipedia, or only for non-commercial use)?
It's a bit ... rich to be criticising people for using screen names when you're doing it yourself, isn't it? I don't see your real name on this post.
That being said, many Wikipedia contributors either use their real name, or if they use a handle give their real name on their user page.
... applies only to the guy that owns the presses.
... here's a hint: pay for it yourself.
In other words, who are you to tell the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikipedia project that they're not allowed to have standards? Are you paying for their hosting? Are you helping run the project?
I suspect not. If you want a web site where anyone is allowed to post anything and nothing is removed
most of the people I see leaving haven't contributed much except their sense of self-importance.
A number of users think articles about Internet fads should be deleted as insufficiently notable altogether - there have been attempts to delete many articles about Slashdot phenomenal, for instance.
But TBSDY is right - articles that aren't about people are less risky.
In other words, technically not a problem. You can download the software and a recent database dump and do it. In fact, quite a few people already do - mostly to get Google results for a lot of searches and sell ads.
However, just like Linux, you'll be mightily bored with your own forked version that nobody cares about. In order to fork the COMMUNITY, you need to have enough people convinced that (a) the current guys in charge suck, and (b) that you'll be better. Hard task.
If you think a million articles means everything is already covered, then you have no unusual interests. Articles in many of my favorite topic areas are covered in redlinks. I agree that the current mechanisms for article deletion are seriously flawed, and given to very biased decisions and a severe random factor.
As to the rest, it seems that you don't like it when people don't let you use Wikipedia as your own private playground. Well, boo hoo. In most cases, when significant material is removed from an article, it's because it's unverified and/or off-topic. While I don't know Extraordinary Machine very well, nor Astrotrain, and Radiant! only in passing, if Morwen ruined your Wikipedia experience, I suspect the project is only the better for it.
I've been in California 7 years, but before that in the UK. I have no doubt that *fast lane* speeds might be that high, but are you seriously saying that ALL lanes are driving at that speed? I thought lorries still had governors to keep them to 70 or so?
...
In the mid 90s my rather clapped out 1.3 litre VW Golf Mk2 (which could do 90 or so flat-out, 80 comfortably) was quite sufficient for motorway driving.
1960s / early 1970s American cars were pretty fast, actually. It was the 55 mph speed limit and mandated 80mph speedos that killed things after that. I drive a 1967 Ford Thunderbird every day; it's badly out of tune and needs a lot of work, but it's still a challenge to keep to the 65mph speed limit. The car wants to cruise at 80-90, and it will easily do the "ton" - I get scared and back off before it stops accelerating. People on the mailing list for these beasts claim that pinning the 120mph speedometer is easy with a car in good condition, and there are claims of 130-140 mph. Not bad for a 3-speed automatic transmission, which is probably the eventual limiting factor (a higher cog would be nice).
And this was a semi-luxury cruiser, not a performance car by any means. Of course, the seven litre V8 probably helps
Just try to cite, say, Britannica at a level higher than high school and see how quickly you get laughed out of class.
... we didn't really consider a 'how to find child porn online' article really all that appropriate for an encyclopedia. So it was turned into an article ABOUT online child pornography, which is a little more appropriate. Oops, sorry.
I'm saying it's rather shockingly unlikely, and it's hilarious that you're trying to claim this. Invoking 'My brother did things as me while I was out' as a copout when you said something stupid is ... well, let's just say it's confirming everyone's opinion of you.
And no, I've never had that experience. I lock my screen. Unfailingly.
is the oldest joke in the book. I was finding you annoying, but now I'm discovering just what a comic genius you are; I think we should keep you around for the entertainment value.
You can't fix latency. There is a hard limit on it; the speed of electrical signals in a cable or light in fiber. There is always going to be more delay in accessing a server on the other side of the world, and as the networking technology improves, the share of the delay that's due to wire length only increases. Plus, as protocols get more and more complex, it matters more and more.
The coke recipe has been published. It's not the secrecy of the recipe that matters. It's firstly Coke's marketing muscle -- it's not that nobody else can mimic the taste, it's the label.
Secondly, in the case of Coke, it's very hard for anyone else to get that coca-leaf importing license required. Yes, there still is coca extract in Coke. They just process it to destroy the active cocaine ingredient these days, but the flavor is still there.
Car manufacturers don't make cars that fail after 3 years. They can generally rely on people wanting the latest in automotive fashion.
Even 35-40 years ago, the 'design life' of a car was about 7 years and 100-120 thousand miles. And then, most of the reason for car death was rust, not mechanical failure.
Modern cars are designed for 10 year lifespans at least and about 200-250 thousand miles.
And there are quite a few well-built cars that will last functionally forever with proper maintenance. My '67 Ford Thunderbird is now 36 years old and has the original of practically everything on the car (new battery, starter, alternator, plugs, plug leads, belts, some hoses, and tires are about all it's had). It's the car I drive daily. (not mine from new; I've had it most of this year, old lady owner before that).
Car insurance varies more depending on where you live and your driving history than with the car. Even if you have full comprehensive insurance, the expensive bits are medical and third-party liability coverage in most cases.
Ballmer states that there's "nobody who has his rear end on the line" with Linux.
...
I posit that Linux developers have something rather important on the line; their reputations, professional and personal. When you ship open-source code, you are showing the world how good, or how bad, you are. Your reputation can be made or broken by the code you release.
Contrast that with all too many developers in commercial shops, whose code is read by nobody but their immediate co-workers and nobody takes responsibility for bugs.
If Microsoft employees' asses are on the line, show me a firing or two every time a security hole shows up. And not just the line programmers; bring me the heads of the designers who designed things badly, the project managers who made hitting deadline more important than getting it right, and the managers who let it all happen.
I would say that in the vast majority of cases, commercial programmers' asses are NOT on the line, in terms of security problems. As long as you crank out code fast enough to keep up with your co-workers
Yes, certainly, some things are cheaper. But the examples you give; both the clothing and automotive markets were once upon a time totally fed by US manufacturers. I'm pretty sure socks didn't cost the equivalent of modern $20. Being a little bit of a car nut, I know cars have not got any cheaper since then either. According to a quick run through an inflation calculator, my 1967 Ford Thunderbird's $4500 cost new equates to $24,000 now. Try and find a semi-luxury car for $24K ... In fact, American manufacturers RAISED their prices.
No; rather, I know that in the company I worked for and in a representative number of the others where I knew the people well enough to know, no viruses were written. I also knew and knew of a fair number of virus writers, all of whom were not on an AV company's payroll.
There are PLENTY of bored, disgruntled or easily-amused people out there who'll write a virus without being paid for it. Or do you think that the people who deface web sites etc. get paid for that, too? They're the same mindset, pretty much.
Don't kid yourself. Technology choice is rarely, in any organisation, done for purely altruistic 'what's good for the company?' reasons.
Instead, the technology chosen is one of two choices:
1) What people are comfortable with. A lot of people want an easy, safe, predictable decision.
2) Resume fodder. What do the decision-makers want to add to their resumes? What's missing?
Analyse the average IT department's choices and one of those two is almost always the cause. Let's face it, most of us would also be guilty of these; picking what we're used to and what we think would be fun or useful to learn.
While some companies in the AV industry have shown (ahem) questionable ethics in the past, I think it's stretching to say they WRITE the viruses, rather than just hype them.
... some of our ideas would have been quite evil indeed. And most of us were pretty good programmers.
...
For one thing, there are plenty of idiots out there quite willing to write a virus for free.
For another, if the viruses/worms/trojans were written by the AV firms, they'd be MUCH better. My co-workers and I would regularly discuss how one could, hypothetically, write the ultimate virus
Contrast that with the true nature of most successful 'in the wild' viruses -- most of which aren't that well written