Heck, I communicate with my room-mates over IM far more than actually walking down to their room and talking to them about something. While it certain has benefits, it also has downsides.
You misunderstand me. In your quote, Tycho was responding to suggestions that he edit the article himself, because after all, Wikipedia can be editted freely by anyone. My point is that if you consider contributing to Wikipedia as a worthwhile hobby, you shouldn't expect everyone to have that amount of dedication to the project. That is to say, while I agree with your post in itself, I'm not sure if it's a valid response to Tycho's original point.
[That, and it's pretty late out here, so my lexical skills are at an all time low.:-)]
Ummm, he wasn't saying writing to Wikipedia was a waste of time, but that being forced to make edits is. That is to say, while following your hobby is a very productive usage of your time, assuming that others would share the same interest as you in tracking random edits isn't.
I don't know if this helps, but I am Indian. I see no reason why my country's current innovation capability should be dented by what the British did or did not do fifty years back. That they screwed us over can explain why we had a food shortage in the fifties and sixties perhaps; it still doesn't explain why we don't have, for instance, universal adult literacy or a viable national innovation system like other Asian "Tiger" economies such as Korea or Singapore have.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to compare Japan, or Korea or any other country, with India. I'm just saying that using British Raj is just not a viable crutch anymore, it's time we let go of that historical bogeyman to advance our policy debate.
The British mostly abandoned Pakistan after WWII (around 1947, IIRC) which left India (and Pakistan) to mostly fend for themselves, while post-war Japan for the most part had domestic policy dictated by the United States, which only lead to further modernization.
Which still doesn't explain why Suzuki built one of its largest car-plants in India.
Sorry, but there's no reason to blame the British for one's own policy failings.
In other words, India wants to justify the theft of our intellectual property by saying, "nyah, nyah, we found the plant first", whether they actually did or not. The logic is flawed anyway considering that finding the plant may or may not have ultimately been used in the final drug. We certainly don't go peeling the bark off of trees to make aspirin any more.
I don't think anyone's concerned about making new drugs from medicinal plants, but are more concerned about ensuring existing Ayurvedic/Unani/Siddha/etc medicines aren't patented as if they we were new. Like most other ancient civilisations, we've had systemised forms of medicine that we should be free to practise without the need for paying royalties to anyone. Note that the article doesn't talk about barks or anything, but actual, fully-developed remedies, so it's much more than merely a list of medicinal plants as you seem to believe it is.
In short, with completely inane patents on turmeric, it is you who are "stealing" intellectual property from us.
basically, it was divided into public and private sectors, where the government controlled several core infrastructures in the public sectors.
To paraphrase TN Seshan on this, there's never been a good reason why the government has had to make condoms, for instance. And let's not even get into the whole shebang of respective state governments making television sets, scooters, refrigerators, cars, watches, milk-based products, bread, hotels, restaurants and so on, so forth. And even in the few places where the government didn't exist, the private sector had its goals set by the government; Lakshmi Mittal, for instance, was once famously asked by the Indira Gandhi government to reduce his steel plant's production capacity because it was over what the babus had planned for.
In short, what you stated was the Nehruvian explanation for India's brand of Fabian socialism, but is not enough of an explanation for the sheer amount of state control of the markets that later governments have had, and indeed, continue to have to this day.
For instance, India has never had a state medical system - sure, there are state hospitals - but still, majority of the medical system in the country has always been privatized.
Actually, that's not entirely true; our primary healthcare has always been in the public sector (which, for instance, would explain the relatively high healthcare metrics in Kerala, compared to relatively more prosperous Karnataka or Tamil Nadu). Private sector is more or less limited to tertiary healthcare (i.e., elective surgery) centers; you'll never find an Apollo or an Escorts doing, for instance, work on improving infant mortality rates or better vaccination. Not necessarily because they are coldhearted bastards, but mostly because that's not their job.
Again, tertiary healthcare in the public sector is heavily subsidised; AIIMS and other so-called super-speciality hospitals provide free healthcare to anyone with a Below Poverty Line ration card (the colour is white in Andhra Pradesh, don't know what it is in other states).
Another place where state-funding is apparent is in seeing how the annual Constituency Development Funds get spent; most MP's prefer setting up swanky new hospitals with no equipment or staff, than do something useful, like say, fund existing research in their constituencies or something.
So yeah, while we don't have an NHS-like system in India, the reason is not a lack of intent, but lack of a clear policy. That health is a concurrent subject (ie, both the central and state governments can make policy on this topic) doesn't help the cause.
The time when the growth started slowing down was about the time Soviet Union died - but this was owing to several factors, particularly a very bad political climate.
The current thinking apparently is that the beginnings were in 1981, when GoI allowed investment by Suzuki in the Maruti plant in Gurgaon. The Balance of Payments crisis merely formulated one-off attempts such as the Maruti into a coherent national policy.
So, India was never really a socialist state in the sense of the word
Socialism has different meanings in different parts of the world, of course, so I suppose if you talk in terms of, say, pre-Deng-Xiopeng Chinese socialism, or the communist countries, then yeah, we weren't socialist. But we were, and indeed, the Congress I and the Left are, socialist in the west-European sense of the term; among other things, the Directive Principles of State Policy states that it is our constitutional goal to create conditions for the establishment of a welfare state.
Heck, we've been the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India for thirty years now.
Singapore has two roads that can be converted into airstrips, Lim Chu Kang Road in the west, and a stretch of the East Coast Parkway (ECP) in the east.
You know, I was just going to say Miller test, but I just realised something; the Miller Test defines what forms of expression can be obscene, not what is pornographic. At least according to this Wikipedia entry, most "mainstream" pornographic material is not obscene, although hardcore stuff depicting murder or rape or child porn probably is.
I haven't directly answered your point no, but was just reminded of my class in univ on American cyber-law.:-)
The Fine article doesnt go into depth, but the way I remember it, I believe it's to do with web-apps, web-services and such. Currently, under ver2, it is possible for you to download an OSS project such as, say, Slash, make modifications to the code, and host it publically without needing to release the source code to your modifications. I believe the ver3 effort will primarily address situations such as this.
Now, it's a different matter to discuss whether such a situation is, indeed, in need of a remedy, but all the same, I believe the discussions are mainly to do with distributed applications.
My point wasn't that he had to go against answers.com and reference.com as well, but that, contrary to what's being said on this thread, whatever's being said on Wikipedia has a definite impact.
That is to say, while we all agree here that you shouldn't take Wikipedia as a final source on anything, the situation now is that it is in a position where people trust it, and therefore, it is in Wikipedia's interest to retain and enhance that trust. One great way to do it is to enforce a certain, even limited, amount of accountability into whatever submissions it accepts.
Don't get me wrong; I love the Wikipedia. I've found stuff there on everything from ontological arguments to pop culture to, I kid you not, some estoteric Sanskrit verses that I was once looking up. As it exists, it's a great repository of human knowledge that's easily accessible by a vast majority of people. That said, seen as a result and not necessarily as a process, I think this guy's point is very valid; there is a lot of muck out there that needs to be cleaned, muck that's accumulated because no one faces any consequences for writing anything there.
He did mention that Wikipedia's content was mirrored on answers.com and reference.com and that it took three more weeks for those sites to change content.
Whether it was intended thus or not, the fact is Wikipedia has become a widely-quoted source into which it's easy to put stuff in without any personal liability, but from where it's much more difficult to remove misleading content. And frankly, expecting folks to engage themselves in edit-wars just because it is teh Intarweb is a bit too much; some of us have, a matter of fact, lives to live.
Actually, the way I understood his article, seemed to me as if he wanted to hold Wikipedia volunteers accountable for whatever they write on the site. I quite get where he's coming from; Wikipedia being inherently anonymous (by social, technical *and* legal design), it's easier to libel and gossip on Wikipedia than it is in regular press.
I'm not saying I agree completely with his position, but just saying how I parsed his column.
Been a while since we've had political prisoners though, will grant that (unless, errr, the gahmen reads this and traces the post to my MaxOnline line:-|)
Slashdot Mirror
And oh, we have roughly two holidays per major religion out here, and my (new) contract allows for 11 or so public holidays, so no complaints for me.
Look at the positive side; you know when someone's blocked or deleted you, or when someone's closed their conversation windows!
[That, and it's pretty late out here, so my lexical skills are at an all time low. :-)]
Ummm, he wasn't saying writing to Wikipedia was a waste of time, but that being forced to make edits is. That is to say, while following your hobby is a very productive usage of your time, assuming that others would share the same interest as you in tracking random edits isn't.
try the Time Tracker starter kit. Not saying it's necessarily useful, but I started off in .net with this, so. :-D
Which is why I found it amusing to watch Indian Idol; it had product placements for Pepsi and Maruti (Suzuki) Baleno. :-)
Don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to compare Japan, or Korea or any other country, with India. I'm just saying that using British Raj is just not a viable crutch anymore, it's time we let go of that historical bogeyman to advance our policy debate.
Sorry, but there's no reason to blame the British for one's own policy failings.
Then again, I get all my news from Slashdot, so there.
Bet he wasn't slim.
In short, with completely inane patents on turmeric, it is you who are "stealing" intellectual property from us.
I suppose that's another reason why we need to be thankful of a certain visitors to our island city. :-|
In short, what you stated was the Nehruvian explanation for India's brand of Fabian socialism, but is not enough of an explanation for the sheer amount of state control of the markets that later governments have had, and indeed, continue to have to this day.
Actually, that's not entirely true; our primary healthcare has always been in the public sector (which, for instance, would explain the relatively high healthcare metrics in Kerala, compared to relatively more prosperous Karnataka or Tamil Nadu). Private sector is more or less limited to tertiary healthcare (i.e., elective surgery) centers; you'll never find an Apollo or an Escorts doing, for instance, work on improving infant mortality rates or better vaccination. Not necessarily because they are coldhearted bastards, but mostly because that's not their job.Again, tertiary healthcare in the public sector is heavily subsidised; AIIMS and other so-called super-speciality hospitals provide free healthcare to anyone with a Below Poverty Line ration card (the colour is white in Andhra Pradesh, don't know what it is in other states).
Another place where state-funding is apparent is in seeing how the annual Constituency Development Funds get spent; most MP's prefer setting up swanky new hospitals with no equipment or staff, than do something useful, like say, fund existing research in their constituencies or something.
So yeah, while we don't have an NHS-like system in India, the reason is not a lack of intent, but lack of a clear policy. That health is a concurrent subject (ie, both the central and state governments can make policy on this topic) doesn't help the cause.
The current thinking apparently is that the beginnings were in 1981, when GoI allowed investment by Suzuki in the Maruti plant in Gurgaon. The Balance of Payments crisis merely formulated one-off attempts such as the Maruti into a coherent national policy. Socialism has different meanings in different parts of the world, of course, so I suppose if you talk in terms of, say, pre-Deng-Xiopeng Chinese socialism, or the communist countries, then yeah, we weren't socialist. But we were, and indeed, the Congress I and the Left are, socialist in the west-European sense of the term; among other things, the Directive Principles of State Policy states that it is our constitutional goal to create conditions for the establishment of a welfare state.Heck, we've been the Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic of India for thirty years now.
Singapore has two roads that can be converted into airstrips, Lim Chu Kang Road in the west, and a stretch of the East Coast Parkway (ECP) in the east.
I haven't directly answered your point no, but was just reminded of my class in univ on American cyber-law. :-)
Now, it's a different matter to discuss whether such a situation is, indeed, in need of a remedy, but all the same, I believe the discussions are mainly to do with distributed applications.
Yup, the die has been cast!
That is to say, while we all agree here that you shouldn't take Wikipedia as a final source on anything, the situation now is that it is in a position where people trust it, and therefore, it is in Wikipedia's interest to retain and enhance that trust. One great way to do it is to enforce a certain, even limited, amount of accountability into whatever submissions it accepts.
Don't get me wrong; I love the Wikipedia. I've found stuff there on everything from ontological arguments to pop culture to, I kid you not, some estoteric Sanskrit verses that I was once looking up. As it exists, it's a great repository of human knowledge that's easily accessible by a vast majority of people. That said, seen as a result and not necessarily as a process, I think this guy's point is very valid; there is a lot of muck out there that needs to be cleaned, muck that's accumulated because no one faces any consequences for writing anything there.
Whether it was intended thus or not, the fact is Wikipedia has become a widely-quoted source into which it's easy to put stuff in without any personal liability, but from where it's much more difficult to remove misleading content. And frankly, expecting folks to engage themselves in edit-wars just because it is teh Intarweb is a bit too much; some of us have, a matter of fact, lives to live.
Good one. :-D
I'm not saying I agree completely with his position, but just saying how I parsed his column.
I think I should try with the FSM one of these days.
Been a while since we've had political prisoners though, will grant that (unless, errr, the gahmen reads this and traces the post to my MaxOnline line :-|)