I'm not sure about that, really. I can only speak for myself, of course, but what bugs me about this is not that he got busted and is now facing charges for what he did; what bugs me is that he's extradited.
I mean... why? Either what he did is illegal under Australian law, in which case he should be tried there (after all, he IS an Australian citizen), or it's not, in which case, well, he shouldn't be extradited.
Think about it: would you like the USA to send you to China because you said something that's against the law there, for example? I think it's pretty safe to say that you don't. Of course, that's entirely hypothetical since I can't imagine that he did NOT commit a crime under Australian law, but that still leaves the question: why not try him in Australia?
I am not sure at all about the reasons for that myself, so far, but it seems to me that there are two possible scenarios, and both of them seem to be designed to erode basic freedoms:
1. He's sentenced in the USA and sent to a prison in Australia. This would set a dangerous precedent - if you can be jailed in Australia without being sentenced there, then how or why can you be sure that the same thing will not happen to you when you're sentenced (in another country) for something that is not a crime under Australian law? To pick up the example from above, how can you be sure that you don't get sent to jail for something that you did that's illegal in, for example, China, Saudi Arabia or another dictatorship with enough economic power to be accepted by politicians in (western) democracies? And again, there's also the question why he isn't tried in Australia, under Australian law - it's not even like there is anything gained.
2. He's sentenced in the USA and sent to a prison in the USA. Same thing, really - possibly worse, in fact, as this would also mean that there is no control over what happens to him while in prison. Remember, he's still an Australian citizen, and as such has rights; it is not at all clear that those rights would be respected in a US-american prison. To give two examples, from what I understand, it's common for inmates in the USA to a) be forced to work and b) lose their right to vote; this may or may not seem acceptable to any US-american, but the fact remains that similar treatment would not be legal in other states. Of course, voting probably is a non-issue, since it most likely only applies to the ability to vote in US elections, which he most likely couldn't, anyway, but still - I don't see how this is different from "exporting" people to other states like Afghanistan etc. where the US administration can hold/question/torture them without having to respect the rights they'd have in the USA. (And before you say that that ain't happening, look up information on Khamed El-Masri, for example).
In either case, it really seems that there is no actual valid reason why he SHOULD be extradited, and several good reasons why he should NOT. Considering that not extraditing him would be the "natural" thing to do, anyway, that very much leaves the question why it's being done, and I think it's a valid question to ask and be concerned about.
Yeah, he's a criminal, and if he gets sent to prison, he most likely will have gotten what he deserves. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't still have rights, that he doesn't still reserve to be respected as a human being, and that he (or anyone else) does not have the right to ask questions or demand his rights.
BitTornado is another nice client, with the added benefit that it's not written in Java. Not that I've got much against Java personally, of course, but it's quite a resource hog that I'd rather avoid when possible.
The main mistake that guy made, though, is that he equates something that is basically a bad thing (killing people) with something that's basically good (sex).
In other words, there's nothing WRONG with being a prostitute; however, there decidedly is something wrong with killing people. It's not surprising that a state-sponsored murderer (which is what a soldier is) tries to deceive people that way, but it's still not true.
Apart from what others have already said, I think you're missing one key question here: why would Google actually *want* to create their own OS? The dot-com bubble days of "we'll do it just because we can" are over; these days, (most) companies will only do things if they reasonably expect to make money with it.
Furthermore, Google's main expertise is in the field of searching, and so far, literally ALL of its products services have been based around that. Where would an operating system fit in there?
True, but Google isn't a small startup without the financial/legal capabilities to defend itself anymore, either. Bullies always pick on the weakest - never those that, while still being smaller, might actually pose a challenge.
I can't talk about the USA, naturally (not living there), but over here, that's just the same way it's always been for amateur radio, more or less. Now, it hasn't been outright illegal, of course, but it was (and from what I know, still is) illegal to use it to actually have conversations with people, as opposed to just exchanging your call signs etc. The reason for that was - of course! - that the state-owned monopoly telecom did not want people to start using that instead of the telephone...
I'm not sure if it's still like that, given that there is no monopoly on phone services anymore, but I'm not sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if the law was still there, for no other reason than that there is no lobby for amateur radio users.
Unlikely. The BSD people are actively working to replace every GNU utility still in the system with a BSD-licensed version - look at the changelogs for OpenBSD, for example, and you'll occasionally see an entry mentioning that this or that has been replaced.
Noone ever said anything about "the next 12 hours" - feel free to take as long as you want. If you publish an article in a journal next year, that's fine with me, as long as it's actually based on facts rather than on already existing opinions of yours you try to justify at any expense instead of admitting even the theoretical possibility that you might be wrong.
Remember, the burden of proof is with the person who makes a statement. If you claim that Wikipedia does not work, then it's up to you to produce evidence for that, especially if the experience of anyone who actually contributes to it is that it, in fact, does.
My b) statement was that it is possible to correct errors that exist - I really have no idea how you can say that's incorrect, considering every (unprotected) page can be edited.
As for someone with enough devotion / resources being able to control an article, there *is* a process for dispute resolution. You are welcome to use facilities like WP:RFPP (requests for page protections), WP:RFC (requests for comments), WP:RFM (requests for mediation) and WP:RFAr (requests for arbitration); see my other comment in this discussion for links and details.
I think that deserves a -1, Troll. Note that contrary to what you claim, *you* are the first one to lower yourself to a level of personal insults, and also note that *you* are the one who posts as an anonymous coward.
Click on edit and fix it, then. Even you don't feel like making major and/or factual contributions, spelling/grammar fixes and the like are always very appreciated.
And it probably takes less time to do so than it takes to complain about it on Slashdot.:)
They can, yes, but you don't have any actual data on which to base your apparent conclusion that Wikipedia contains significantly more errors than, say, Britannica. You're welcome to conduct a study to find out whether this is true, of course, but until you do, it's just an unproved claim you make, and I won't take it all *that* seriously, especially considering it's directly incompatible with my own observations (which are based on my experiences gained after several thousands of edits).
You're making the same mistake that McHenry did: you use a sample with a size of 1 (one) article to make a general claim about Wikipedia, and what's more, you attempt to use that sample to "prove" an at most marginally related statement ("Wikipedia is good for checking well-known facts only"), which you then call "moral of the story" to cover up the fact that it is, in fact, a conclusion you attempt to draw rather than a proven fact.
What's worse, you use an article as an example where most people (me included) will just have to take your word that it's "garbage".
That being said, if the article actually really *is* garbage, then fix it: your contribution will be very appreciated.
I didn't use it to specifically say that Wikipedia is better than traditional encyclopedias; I just wanted to point out that it does work in Wikipedia (i.e., that this particular argument against Wikipedia does not work, in my experience), the question whether it works in other encyclopedias as well nonwithstanding.
Re:information is not a democracy-A "ruler" by day
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FUD-Based Encyclopedias
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Reference works, other encyclopedias, personal knowledge and so on - it always depends. I'm not fact-checking topics I know nothing about, of course, but for example, I'm a maths major, so if someone creates or edits a mathematics-related article, chances are that I will be able to spot mistakes that an average reader (without any special expertise in this field) might not.
Yeah, it's not perfect, but it works quite well, and I dare conjecture it does converge towards perfection, too.;)
They can, but Wikipedia's model also makes sure that they can and in fact will be ironed out again pretty quickly. "Hot topics" like politics etc. will attract more trolls, that's true, and also more trolls that have an actual agenda besides just wreaking havoc, but the same articles, for the same reason, also attract more readers/editors of the reasonable kind who will keep an eye open for trolls and troll edits.
You have a point, of course, but my experience with Wikipedia is that the opposite is happening really: the one person who is wrong but thinks he's right is taken out by the 100 who know the correct answer.
It doesn't always happen, and even when it does, it's no guarantee that there never will be misleading or even outright inaccurate information in Wikipedia, but generally, I think Wikipedia does converge towards perfection, so to speak *s*, and surprisingly fast so far, too, for that matter.
Indeed, and Wikipedia is all about that: facts, and nothing else (the relevant policy is called "NPOV", which means "Neutral Point of View").
That being said, conflicts happen, of course, and not every single Wikipedia user does hold this principle in as high a regard as they should; and in fact, with certain topics (politics are one example), there unfortunately are users who not only try to push an agenda, but are also very insistent.
However, it is not true that Wikipedia in general has either a bias or an agenda (outside of the agenda of providing a good, accurate and neutral encyclopedia).
That being said, if you have problems with specific articles and a consensus with other editors of these articles cannot be reached, there are ways to resolve those conflicts. The first step is to ask for comments from other (not directly involved) people at Wikipedia: Requests for Comments. If that does not help, you can file a request for mediation, where the two parties agree to a mediator that tries to help them resolve the problem; if that does not help, either, you can bring the case to the arbitration committee, who will hear all involved parties, gather evidence, hear statements etc. and ultimately come to a binding resolution. Try it - I've done so myself, and although the conflict this was about lingered for about three months and produced at least 300 KB of mud-slinging on the relevant article's talk page alone, it ultimately *did* get resolved; the offending user (who continued to push an agenda of their own and continually violated the NPOV principle) was banned from editing the relevant article and all pertaining to it for a year, and since then, constructive work on the article has resumed.
That being said, for immediate conflict resolution, if there is an edit war going on over a page, you can also request page protection; locking an article for a few days is often is a nice way of making sure that everyone cools down and a civilised discussion can resume.
As for facts not being negotiable, of course they aren't, but you should take care not to confuse facts with opinions. Not everything that *looks* like a fact is one, and while things like the date of George Washington's birthday really *are* facts, other questions like whether the it'd be justified to list shrub's regime on the Kleptocracy article ultimately revolve around opinions, not hard facts.
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I'm not sure about that, really. I can only speak for myself, of course, but what bugs me about this is not that he got busted and is now facing charges for what he did; what bugs me is that he's extradited.
I mean... why? Either what he did is illegal under Australian law, in which case he should be tried there (after all, he IS an Australian citizen), or it's not, in which case, well, he shouldn't be extradited.
Think about it: would you like the USA to send you to China because you said something that's against the law there, for example? I think it's pretty safe to say that you don't. Of course, that's entirely hypothetical since I can't imagine that he did NOT commit a crime under Australian law, but that still leaves the question: why not try him in Australia?
I am not sure at all about the reasons for that myself, so far, but it seems to me that there are two possible scenarios, and both of them seem to be designed to erode basic freedoms:
1. He's sentenced in the USA and sent to a prison in Australia. This would set a dangerous precedent - if you can be jailed in Australia without being sentenced there, then how or why can you be sure that the same thing will not happen to you when you're sentenced (in another country) for something that is not a crime under Australian law? To pick up the example from above, how can you be sure that you don't get sent to jail for something that you did that's illegal in, for example, China, Saudi Arabia or another dictatorship with enough economic power to be accepted by politicians in (western) democracies? And again, there's also the question why he isn't tried in Australia, under Australian law - it's not even like there is anything gained.
2. He's sentenced in the USA and sent to a prison in the USA. Same thing, really - possibly worse, in fact, as this would also mean that there is no control over what happens to him while in prison. Remember, he's still an Australian citizen, and as such has rights; it is not at all clear that those rights would be respected in a US-american prison. To give two examples, from what I understand, it's common for inmates in the USA to a) be forced to work and b) lose their right to vote; this may or may not seem acceptable to any US-american, but the fact remains that similar treatment would not be legal in other states. Of course, voting probably is a non-issue, since it most likely only applies to the ability to vote in US elections, which he most likely couldn't, anyway, but still - I don't see how this is different from "exporting" people to other states like Afghanistan etc. where the US administration can hold/question/torture them without having to respect the rights they'd have in the USA. (And before you say that that ain't happening, look up information on Khamed El-Masri, for example).
In either case, it really seems that there is no actual valid reason why he SHOULD be extradited, and several good reasons why he should NOT. Considering that not extraditing him would be the "natural" thing to do, anyway, that very much leaves the question why it's being done, and I think it's a valid question to ask and be concerned about.
Yeah, he's a criminal, and if he gets sent to prison, he most likely will have gotten what he deserves. But that doesn't mean that he doesn't still have rights, that he doesn't still reserve to be respected as a human being, and that he (or anyone else) does not have the right to ask questions or demand his rights.
It's like you're caught in a real-life ShadowRun campaign, isn't it? Creepy.
True, and I'm not suprised to see that it's timothy who posted this. Damn, wasn't this idiot removed as an editor a while ago?
It has, in Germany - see the Netfilter vs. Sitecom case.
BitTornado is another nice client, with the added benefit that it's not written in Java. Not that I've got much against Java personally, of course, but it's quite a resource hog that I'd rather avoid when possible.
The main mistake that guy made, though, is that he equates something that is basically a bad thing (killing people) with something that's basically good (sex). In other words, there's nothing WRONG with being a prostitute; however, there decidedly is something wrong with killing people. It's not surprising that a state-sponsored murderer (which is what a soldier is) tries to deceive people that way, but it's still not true.
Apart from what others have already said, I think you're missing one key question here: why would Google actually *want* to create their own OS? The dot-com bubble days of "we'll do it just because we can" are over; these days, (most) companies will only do things if they reasonably expect to make money with it.
Furthermore, Google's main expertise is in the field of searching, and so far, literally ALL of its products services have been based around that. Where would an operating system fit in there?
True, but Google isn't a small startup without the financial/legal capabilities to defend itself anymore, either. Bullies always pick on the weakest - never those that, while still being smaller, might actually pose a challenge.
I can't talk about the USA, naturally (not living there), but over here, that's just the same way it's always been for amateur radio, more or less. Now, it hasn't been outright illegal, of course, but it was (and from what I know, still is) illegal to use it to actually have conversations with people, as opposed to just exchanging your call signs etc. The reason for that was - of course! - that the state-owned monopoly telecom did not want people to start using that instead of the telephone...
I'm not sure if it's still like that, given that there is no monopoly on phone services anymore, but I'm not sure, and I wouldn't be surprised if the law was still there, for no other reason than that there is no lobby for amateur radio users.
It's things like that (among many others) that make me thankful I'm living in Europe.
As long as both sides keep improving their tools in order to convince people to switch, the user can only benefit from this.
Yes, I agree. Bill Gates definitely deserves an award, too! :)
Unlikely. The BSD people are actively working to replace every GNU utility still in the system with a BSD-licensed version - look at the changelogs for OpenBSD, for example, and you'll occasionally see an entry mentioning that this or that has been replaced.
In that case, you can still list the article on Pages Needing Attention, for example.
Noone ever said anything about "the next 12 hours" - feel free to take as long as you want. If you publish an article in a journal next year, that's fine with me, as long as it's actually based on facts rather than on already existing opinions of yours you try to justify at any expense instead of admitting even the theoretical possibility that you might be wrong.
Remember, the burden of proof is with the person who makes a statement. If you claim that Wikipedia does not work, then it's up to you to produce evidence for that, especially if the experience of anyone who actually contributes to it is that it, in fact, does.
My b) statement was that it is possible to correct errors that exist - I really have no idea how you can say that's incorrect, considering every (unprotected) page can be edited.
As for someone with enough devotion / resources being able to control an article, there *is* a process for dispute resolution. You are welcome to use facilities like WP:RFPP (requests for page protections), WP:RFC (requests for comments), WP:RFM (requests for mediation) and WP:RFAr (requests for arbitration); see my other comment in this discussion for links and details.
I think that deserves a -1, Troll. Note that contrary to what you claim, *you* are the first one to lower yourself to a level of personal insults, and also note that *you* are the one who posts as an anonymous coward.
Click on edit and fix it, then. Even you don't feel like making major and/or factual contributions, spelling/grammar fixes and the like are always very appreciated.
:)
And it probably takes less time to do so than it takes to complain about it on Slashdot.
They can, yes, but you don't have any actual data on which to base your apparent conclusion that Wikipedia contains significantly more errors than, say, Britannica. You're welcome to conduct a study to find out whether this is true, of course, but until you do, it's just an unproved claim you make, and I won't take it all *that* seriously, especially considering it's directly incompatible with my own observations (which are based on my experiences gained after several thousands of edits).
You're making the same mistake that McHenry did: you use a sample with a size of 1 (one) article to make a general claim about Wikipedia, and what's more, you attempt to use that sample to "prove" an at most marginally related statement ("Wikipedia is good for checking well-known facts only"), which you then call "moral of the story" to cover up the fact that it is, in fact, a conclusion you attempt to draw rather than a proven fact.
What's worse, you use an article as an example where most people (me included) will just have to take your word that it's "garbage".
That being said, if the article actually really *is* garbage, then fix it: your contribution will be very appreciated.
I didn't use it to specifically say that Wikipedia is better than traditional encyclopedias; I just wanted to point out that it does work in Wikipedia (i.e., that this particular argument against Wikipedia does not work, in my experience), the question whether it works in other encyclopedias as well nonwithstanding.
Reference works, other encyclopedias, personal knowledge and so on - it always depends. I'm not fact-checking topics I know nothing about, of course, but for example, I'm a maths major, so if someone creates or edits a mathematics-related article, chances are that I will be able to spot mistakes that an average reader (without any special expertise in this field) might not.
;)
Yeah, it's not perfect, but it works quite well, and I dare conjecture it does converge towards perfection, too.
They can, but Wikipedia's model also makes sure that they can and in fact will be ironed out again pretty quickly. "Hot topics" like politics etc. will attract more trolls, that's true, and also more trolls that have an actual agenda besides just wreaking havoc, but the same articles, for the same reason, also attract more readers/editors of the reasonable kind who will keep an eye open for trolls and troll edits.
You have a point, of course, but my experience with Wikipedia is that the opposite is happening really: the one person who is wrong but thinks he's right is taken out by the 100 who know the correct answer.
It doesn't always happen, and even when it does, it's no guarantee that there never will be misleading or even outright inaccurate information in Wikipedia, but generally, I think Wikipedia does converge towards perfection, so to speak *s*, and surprisingly fast so far, too, for that matter.
Indeed, and Wikipedia is all about that: facts, and nothing else (the relevant policy is called "NPOV", which means "Neutral Point of View").
That being said, conflicts happen, of course, and not every single Wikipedia user does hold this principle in as high a regard as they should; and in fact, with certain topics (politics are one example), there unfortunately are users who not only try to push an agenda, but are also very insistent.
However, it is not true that Wikipedia in general has either a bias or an agenda (outside of the agenda of providing a good, accurate and neutral encyclopedia).
That being said, if you have problems with specific articles and a consensus with other editors of these articles cannot be reached, there are ways to resolve those conflicts. The first step is to ask for comments from other (not directly involved) people at Wikipedia: Requests for Comments. If that does not help, you can file a request for mediation, where the two parties agree to a mediator that tries to help them resolve the problem; if that does not help, either, you can bring the case to the arbitration committee, who will hear all involved parties, gather evidence, hear statements etc. and ultimately come to a binding resolution. Try it - I've done so myself, and although the conflict this was about lingered for about three months and produced at least 300 KB of mud-slinging on the relevant article's talk page alone, it ultimately *did* get resolved; the offending user (who continued to push an agenda of their own and continually violated the NPOV principle) was banned from editing the relevant article and all pertaining to it for a year, and since then, constructive work on the article has resumed.
That being said, for immediate conflict resolution, if there is an edit war going on over a page, you can also request page protection; locking an article for a few days is often is a nice way of making sure that everyone cools down and a civilised discussion can resume.
As for facts not being negotiable, of course they aren't, but you should take care not to confuse facts with opinions. Not everything that *looks* like a fact is one, and while things like the date of George Washington's birthday really *are* facts, other questions like whether the it'd be justified to list shrub's regime on the Kleptocracy article ultimately revolve around opinions, not hard facts.