too bad that one cannot fire the parents that tell weird stories to their kids (which is fine) and wantto sell these fabricated and highly unbelievable stories to be accepted as truth (which is a crime against the intelligence of their kids).
Not even for factoring, actually. Factoring is known to be sub-exponential.
yes, you're right. I should have said "outperforms super-polynomially" (I guess it is poly(n) for a QC vs n^log(n) classically, n beinig the input size in bits)
Hojima wrote: Actually, it doesn't matter how fast a classical computer operates, a quantum computer WILL go exponentially faster regardless.
this has so far not been proven. What is proven is that a quantum computer can outperform a classical computer polynomially (in algorithms based on unstructured search) and that it can outperform the best currently known classical algorithms for some problems (factoring, quantum simulation) exponentially. Moreover, exponential separation has been proven in terms of "query complexity" for "oracle problems" (in which a quantum black box is assumed to be available and only the number of accesses to the black box is counted as cost) and in terms of "communication complexity" in quantum communication (where the number of (qu)bits that need to be exchanged between two locations is counted as cost).
Quantum computers are able to achieve a dual state as a result of calculations. Also, quantum computers operate on the mathematical principles of a unitary matrix. One of the properties of a unitary matrix is it's reversibility, so that any operation that can be perform can be "unperformed". So take the ability to reverse calculations and achieve more than one answer at once, and you can "unperform" at an exponential rate.
that does not follow. having a superposition of 2^100 answers doesn't help you to get out a single one (since when you perform a measurement (and a quantum computer is supposed to give us a conventional ("classical") answer to our problem) each answer occurs with exponentially small probability only. The hard part is to make all these many "answers" to interfere such that the right answer comes out with high probabiliy (that decreases only polynomially in the number of bits used as input). Also, reversibility is not needed for a quantum speed-up.
One would think that it should be possible to design tests which they could pass if they possessed the working technology, without them having to reveal how exactly they achieved the result.
This is actually quite hard (and I'm not sure any such test exists).
One can distinguish two scenarios: (1) a quantum computer tas a box that gets a classical input, processes it and outputs a classical result. Then the only distinction between classical and quantum is speed - or rather "computational complexity" in the sense that the number of required computational steps sclaes differently with the size (in bits) of the input - hence by sending a series of queries with varying length and plotting the scaling one might conclude "this device is better than any known classical machine". But there are two caveats. one needs to go to really large input to see such a scaling and there's no proof that there does not exist a clever classical algorithm with the same scaling.
(2) one can demand more of a quantum computer, namely the capability to perform a universal set of gates and therefor prepare a large class of quantum states. There are well-developed criteria to verify that such states have been produced and that certain gates have been performed. If a universal set of gates has been implemented with sufficient quality one knows that the device is capable of performing quantum computations (but maybe this capability is not needed for QC). To apply this criterion, however, one needs to "look into the box" and perform measurements on the qubits.
This problem could be circumvented, if their supposed quantum computer would also have a "quantum interface" that allows input and output of quantum information (e.g., I send them a bunch of photons, they map their state into their computer, perfom a set of operations I ask them to do and then they write back the state ofthe qubits to photons and send them back to me for analysis. Then I could verify (not me, but experimentalists with the proper equipment) if the desired operation has indeed been performed.
Of course, d-wave does not claim that their device is a "universal quantum computer" or that it can prepare these kind of states. How their claims can be verified without looking into their device, I don't know.
for all I know they have not shown any proof that their computer works in the quantum regime: they have not given quantitative data showing that they have produced quantum superpositions, entanglement, or a quantum speed-up. So by the standards applied to other work in this area: no, it's not a quantum computer - they have not even demonstrated that they have a single qubit, much less 28.
(This is not to say that they are not doing good work. The D-wave folks have some publications in peer-reviewed journals and I think they are serious. But they have not provided evidence for "extremely impressive performance gains" or for any "quantum information processing" in their device.)
if you had read the press release you would have seen that there were indeed numerous genuine candidates (i.e., noOOXML-campaigns in several countries), which said they didn't need the money - and which, for all their activism and ingenuity, didn't manage to create the same level of disgust with the format that Microsoft schieved with all the committee stuffing and other shenanigans and the total lack of reasoned argument for the proposed standard.
The best way to show that someone is an idiot is often to just let him babble...
Is this the Japanese numbering of Final Fantasy II, or the USA releases?
actually, the abbreviation stands for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a not-for-profit organization that has campaigned (in Europe), among other things, against software patents, excessive "intellectual" "property" rights and for open standards.
IANAL, but as explained in Novell's motion (and in the ruling, I suppose), the right to jury trial exists only for certain types of legal proceedings, in particular, it does not apply if it's about contracts (presumably, because it would be too difficult for laypersons to understand the intricacies involved) and if the damages asked for are equitable only (not, e.g. punitive). And Novell did drop one of its claims (and SCO moved unsuccessfully not to allow it to) to make the damages at issue fit the bill.
So I do think SCO are treated fairly here.
Microsoft puts its own spin on the result in this press release.
More information on the upcoming proceedings at ISO are explained in this discussion on the currently slashdotted noOOXML site. (my apologies for poor HTML in the original post that made <no>OOXML come out as OOXML.
It's clear that this is far from over. Microsoft will convince more countries to become O or P members in the respective committees and
Further effort (exposing fraud, convincing your national bodies) is required to prevent OOXML from being accepted as a standard.
But it is encouraging to see that resistance is not futile;-)
The Commission still has a blocking power. Otherwise there would have been a clear law against SW patents a few years ago.
True, but thankfully the status quo (in most European countries including my native Germany) is that patents on software/business methods are verboten. So the EPO may grant swpats, but the (national) courts will not enforce them.
Of course we need institutional reforms in the EU to give more power to the parliament, but at least the Commission can no longer do as it pleases...
The way european democracy works is that if the non-elected european commission chooses to have SW patents after some hollidays sponsored by big american SW compagnies, all the european countries will have to implement them fast or be fined.
actually, it not that bad: the European Parliament has to agree, and recently it has been possible to stop some very harmful legislation despite a strong push (for it) by the European Commission. The SW-Patent directive has been stopped, IPRED2 has been held up, and EPLA (the last attempt to legalize SW patents and, at the same time, remove them from the reach of national and European legislation) may still be averted. The point is: democracy can work, if citizens are active and alert! even if institutions with very indirect democratic control/legitimation like the commission have too much to say.
Since the whole idea here is to elliminate the possibility for a man in the middle, intrusion detection is something valuable. Mind you, if the sending single photons was as un-interceptable as originally claimed, intrusion should be simply not possible, so I'm a bit stumped as to why would they want to detect something impossible. Maybe they know something we don't about how impossible it really is? (E.g., come to think of it, a laser kind of device inserted on the line could multiply that original photon thousands of times, all the clones having the exact same phase, polarisation, whatever.)
The point is not that intrusion is impossible - but that it is always possible to detect intrusion (and hence abort the key distribution process if it is not secure). The point of the decoys is, AFAIK, essentially bandwidth: it makes it easier to detect intrusion nd less of the "key" has to be sacrificed for that purpose.
The basic point of quantum key distribution (QKD) is that any eavesdropping attempt will unavoidably (by, at your preference, the uncertainty principle, the no-cloning principle, or monogamy of entanglement) introduce noise into the data shared by the two communication partners -- and that the amount of noise in the transmitted data (which is in practice also unavoidable, even if there is no eavesdropping at all) allows one to put a strict upper bound on any information a possible eavesdropper might have obtained. If the bound is sufficiently low, further classical "privacy amplification" can then make the shared key as secret as desired, otherwise the protocol must be aborted.
In the first protocols, a random sequence of only four quantum states was sent from A to B and used both for intrusion detection and key generation. It may not be surprising that sending other states as well (and monitoring what becomes of them) may tell A and B more about the eavesdroppers actions.
BTW: the process behind the "kind of laser device" is "stimulated emission", which has indeed be shown to work in some cases as an "optimal cloning device". But even optimal cloning does not break QKD, since it can only clone half of the states faithfully and introduces noise in the other half.
One question which I haven't seen the answer too (probably because I'm lazy and don't search), if this 'project' fails... everyone who donated gets a refund right?:)
so far, they collect pledges, not donations (in order not to have to refund everybody). What I wonder is what percentage of pledges they expect to be actually donated if the bid succeeds.
The problem is that Novell's agreement can be seen as legitimizing Microsoft's claims, which can create fear among companies thinking about adopting GNU/Linux.
Yes, it could be seen that way, but it appears to me that this is a rather weak possibility and doesn't really justify the huge uproar: Microsoft has been trying to fuel this perception for some time. But given how unspecific the agreement is (not naming any "IP") and given that Novell is paid far more than it pays to Microsoft, I think it rather unlikely that it will have this effect.
Leaving aside the possible change in perception, facts haven't changed at all: with or without the agreement, Microsoft could sue Linux users or distributors for alleged patent infringement (with all the unfair advantages a rich plaintiff has in such cases). If there were indeed Microsoft patents infringed by Linux, the agreement will make MS no more likely to succeed (the only rather irrelevant change is that for a limited time some Novell customers may not be sued). If MS had a case, it would have sued long ago. That it didn't speaks (at least to me) far louder than any money exchange between Novell and MS. And if MS does not have a case (i.e., no valid patents are infringed) then the promise is merely one to absain from nuisance lawsuits against some people - no big thing.
I think the bigger effect (any maybe even the one intended by MS) is the division created in the FOSS camp: SuSE vs. Ubuntu, GPLv2 vs. GPLv3, commercial vs. non-commercial. Let's hope that this will not be the start of a fragmentation of Linux.
Lastly, Jackson made three GREAT films out of the single-book LOTR.
no, Jackson made one abomination which was spread over three installments for worse effect.
however, even if he failed with the epic, he may get the children's book right. after all, the (still) pictures were ok in the movie-mutilation of LotR
I guess this shows that numbers like the age of the universe should always be quoted with the current error bars. As far as I understand the new value is still within the uncertainty of currently accepted estimate. To have reduced the error from "a factor of 2" to below 15% within the last decade or so seems pretty good to me.
not that it matters, but the summary is off (by a constant factor, not an order of magnitude). TFA states: ...the typical Windows developer has produced one thousand new lines of shipped code per year during Vista.
and ... the average software developer in the US only produces around (...) 6200 lines a year. So Windows is in bad shape - but only by a constant, not by an order of magnitude.
Now, for someone to adequately know whether or not a particular stock is good or bad, they would most certainly need to know what the company has planned, and provide such data. You might argue that a stock-holder knew what s/he was getting into while buying the stock, but not providing enough data defeats the primary purpose that one buys the stock for.
By not providing such information, Google is leaving folks uncertain - now, honestly, if your data was good you'd release it because it would do good to your stock price. If you aren't, I'd be worried about what else is going on, and that is most definitely not a good sign.
But Google is giving all the information it is required to give in its quarterly and annual reports. It just doesn't give the analysts a hand in predicting/guessing the future - which is after all the analysts' job, and the get paid very nicely for it. Instead of just lazily relying on "guidance" they'll have to do the math and the guesstimates themselves - or they can just stop covering Google. Who would care? I think Google should just let them whine and get on with business!
precisely what I wanted to say, too. Usenet is no more "flawed" than email, and it's imminent death has been erroneously predicted before many times. I guess the author just didn't know how to use kill-files.
Both by its decentralized nature and by the interface for posting or reading is Usenet is WAY better than any forum software I've ever seen on the Web. Way to go for Usenet.
I got hooked by the Linux (SuSE 3.0) resp. Unix computers we had at university. What I liked best were the shell, the virtual desktops, the great LaTeX environment, and Emacs. For a while I tried to make do with EmTeX and MicroEMACS on my DOS 5.0 PC at home, but with Suse 5.1 I made the switch there, too and have never looked back.
So it was the great software (and the able admin of seastar@mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de;-) which made me switch - but meanwhile I have also learned to appreciate the philosophy/moral of GNU/Linux. I continue to be awed and amazed by the great community. Many thanks to all the developer, testers, writers who intentionally or not promote Freedom!
Parent should be "insightful" not "funny"!
I pity the tired, poor, huddled masses brought up on things called "word processors" who may not even know that to breathe free today no voyage over the ocean is needed but a simple mouse-click is enough...
Thanks to Don Knuth and the folks from the LaTeX3-project for this awesome gift.
I propose a Slashdot like moderation system, wich even if not perfect has proved it rather works than not.
I like the idea of "freezing" an article that has reached a very good or authoritative state. To maintain the open character of a Wiki, why not keep a "development version" of the article besides he frozen "production version"?
That would still enable particpation and improvement even of good articles, while also allowing the creation of a stable and reliable encyclopedia under tighter editorial control.
Pardon me, i didn't read on beyond the fun part; so it is happening. What was the local (offline) response? Has the board voted meanwhile?
PS: I must admit that I wasn't aware of the Flying Spaghetti-Monsterism before. Henceforth, I will include it prominently in any list demanding equal time with ID!
how could I forget! certainly this important theory shall not be left out!
Once one of these idiotic committes in Kansas or elsewhere tries again to put ID in the curriculum one should send thousands of this kind of letters to them, state officials and journalists to expose how ridiculous the ID-position is. Is this happening anywhere?
Slashdot Mirror
too bad that one cannot fire the parents that tell weird stories to their kids (which is fine) and wantto sell these fabricated and highly unbelievable stories to be accepted as truth (which is a crime against the intelligence of their kids).
Not even for factoring, actually. Factoring is known to be sub-exponential.
yes, you're right. I should have said "outperforms super-polynomially" (I guess it is poly(n) for a QC vs n^log(n) classically, n beinig the input size in bits)
this has so far not been proven. What is proven is that a quantum computer can outperform a classical computer polynomially (in algorithms based on unstructured search) and that it can outperform the best currently known classical algorithms for some problems (factoring, quantum simulation) exponentially. Moreover, exponential separation has been proven in terms of "query complexity" for "oracle problems" (in which a quantum black box is assumed to be available and only the number of accesses to the black box is counted as cost) and in terms of "communication complexity" in quantum communication (where the number of (qu)bits that need to be exchanged between two locations is counted as cost).
Quantum computers are able to achieve a dual state as a result of calculations. Also, quantum computers operate on the mathematical principles of a unitary matrix. One of the properties of a unitary matrix is it's reversibility, so that any operation that can be perform can be "unperformed". So take the ability to reverse calculations and achieve more than one answer at once, and you can "unperform" at an exponential rate.
that does not follow. having a superposition of 2^100 answers doesn't help you to get out a single one (since when you perform a measurement (and a quantum computer is supposed to give us a conventional ("classical") answer to our problem) each answer occurs with exponentially small probability only. The hard part is to make all these many "answers" to interfere such that the right answer comes out with high probabiliy (that decreases only polynomially in the number of bits used as input). Also, reversibility is not needed for a quantum speed-up.
One would think that it should be possible to design tests which they could pass if they possessed the working technology, without them having to reveal how exactly they achieved the result.
This is actually quite hard (and I'm not sure any such test exists).
One can distinguish two scenarios: (1) a quantum computer tas a box that gets a classical input, processes it and outputs a classical result. Then the only distinction between classical and quantum is speed - or rather "computational complexity" in the sense that the number of required computational steps sclaes differently with the size (in bits) of the input - hence by sending a series of queries with varying length and plotting the scaling one might conclude "this device is better than any known classical machine". But there are two caveats. one needs to go to really large input to see such a scaling and there's no proof that there does not exist a clever classical algorithm with the same scaling.
(2) one can demand more of a quantum computer, namely the capability to perform a universal set of gates and therefor prepare a large class of quantum states. There are well-developed criteria to verify that such states have been produced and that certain gates have been performed. If a universal set of gates has been implemented with sufficient quality one knows that the device is capable of performing quantum computations (but maybe this capability is not needed for QC). To apply this criterion, however, one needs to "look into the box" and perform measurements on the qubits.
This problem could be circumvented, if their supposed quantum computer would also have a "quantum interface" that allows input and output of quantum information (e.g., I send them a bunch of photons, they map their state into their computer, perfom a set of operations I ask them to do and then they write back the state ofthe qubits to photons and send them back to me for analysis. Then I could verify (not me, but experimentalists with the proper equipment) if the desired operation has indeed been performed.
Of course, d-wave does not claim that their device is a "universal quantum computer" or that it can prepare these kind of states. How their claims can be verified without looking into their device, I don't know.
for all I know they have not shown any proof that their computer works in the quantum regime: they have not given quantitative data showing that they have produced quantum superpositions, entanglement, or a quantum speed-up. So by the standards applied to other work in this area: no, it's not a quantum computer - they have not even demonstrated that they have a single qubit, much less 28. (This is not to say that they are not doing good work. The D-wave folks have some publications in peer-reviewed journals and I think they are serious. But they have not provided evidence for "extremely impressive performance gains" or for any "quantum information processing" in their device.)
if you had read the press release you would have seen that there were indeed numerous genuine candidates (i.e., noOOXML-campaigns in several countries), which said they didn't need the money - and which, for all their activism and ingenuity, didn't manage to create the same level of disgust with the format that Microsoft schieved with all the committee stuffing and other shenanigans and the total lack of reasoned argument for the proposed standard.
The best way to show that someone is an idiot is often to just let him babble...
Is this the Japanese numbering of Final Fantasy II, or the USA releases?
actually, the abbreviation stands for the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a not-for-profit organization that has campaigned (in Europe), among other things, against software patents, excessive "intellectual" "property" rights and for open standards.
that should read:
World credits Linux with SCO's demise
scnr
IANAL, but as explained in Novell's motion (and in the ruling, I suppose), the right to jury trial exists only for certain types of legal proceedings, in particular, it does not apply if it's about contracts (presumably, because it would be too difficult for laypersons to understand the intricacies involved) and if the damages asked for are equitable only (not, e.g. punitive). And Novell did drop one of its claims (and SCO moved unsuccessfully not to allow it to) to make the damages at issue fit the bill.
So I do think SCO are treated fairly here.
Microsoft puts its own spin on the result in this press release.
More information on the upcoming proceedings at ISO are explained in this discussion on the currently slashdotted noOOXML site. (my apologies for poor HTML in the original post that made <no>OOXML come out as OOXML.
Groklaw also has some commentary and more links.
It's clear that this is far from over. Microsoft will convince more countries to become O or P members in the respective committees and Further effort (exposing fraud, convincing your national bodies) is required to prevent OOXML from being accepted as a standard. But it is encouraging to see that resistance is not futileThe Commission still has a blocking power. Otherwise there would have been a clear law against SW patents a few years ago.
True, but thankfully the status quo (in most European countries including my native Germany) is that patents on software/business methods are verboten. So the EPO may grant swpats, but the (national) courts will not enforce them. Of course we need institutional reforms in the EU to give more power to the parliament, but at least the Commission can no longer do as it pleases...The way european democracy works is that if the non-elected european commission chooses to have SW patents after some hollidays sponsored by big american SW compagnies, all the european countries will have to implement them fast or be fined.
actually, it not that bad: the European Parliament has to agree, and recently it has been possible to stop some very harmful legislation despite a strong push (for it) by the European Commission. The SW-Patent directive has been stopped, IPRED2 has been held up, and EPLA (the last attempt to legalize SW patents and, at the same time, remove them from the reach of national and European legislation) may still be averted. The point is: democracy can work, if citizens are active and alert! even if institutions with very indirect democratic control/legitimation like the commission have too much to say.Since the whole idea here is to elliminate the possibility for a man in the middle, intrusion detection is something valuable. Mind you, if the sending single photons was as un-interceptable as originally claimed, intrusion should be simply not possible, so I'm a bit stumped as to why would they want to detect something impossible. Maybe they know something we don't about how impossible it really is? (E.g., come to think of it, a laser kind of device inserted on the line could multiply that original photon thousands of times, all the clones having the exact same phase, polarisation, whatever.)
The point is not that intrusion is impossible - but that it is always possible to detect intrusion (and hence abort the key distribution process if it is not secure).
The point of the decoys is, AFAIK, essentially bandwidth: it makes it easier to detect intrusion nd less of the "key" has to be sacrificed for that purpose.
The basic point of quantum key distribution (QKD) is that any eavesdropping attempt will unavoidably (by, at your preference, the uncertainty principle, the no-cloning principle, or monogamy of entanglement) introduce noise into the data shared by the two communication partners -- and that the amount of noise in the transmitted data (which is in practice also unavoidable, even if there is no eavesdropping at all) allows one to put a strict upper bound on any information a possible eavesdropper might have obtained. If the bound is sufficiently low, further classical "privacy amplification" can then make the shared key as secret as desired, otherwise the protocol must be aborted.
In the first protocols, a random sequence of only four quantum states was sent from A to B and used both for intrusion detection and key generation. It may not be surprising that sending other states as well (and monitoring what becomes of them) may tell A and B more about the eavesdroppers actions.
BTW: the process behind the "kind of laser device" is "stimulated emission", which has indeed be shown to work in some cases as an "optimal cloning device". But even optimal cloning does not break QKD, since it can only clone half of the states faithfully and introduces noise in the other half.
so far, they collect pledges, not donations (in order not to have to refund everybody). What I wonder is what percentage of pledges they expect to be actually donated if the bid succeeds.
Yes, it could be seen that way, but it appears to me that this is a rather weak possibility and doesn't really justify the huge uproar: Microsoft has been trying to fuel this perception for some time. But given how unspecific the agreement is (not naming any "IP") and given that Novell is paid far more than it pays to Microsoft, I think it rather unlikely that it will have this effect.
Leaving aside the possible change in perception, facts haven't changed at all: with or without the agreement, Microsoft could sue Linux users or distributors for alleged patent infringement (with all the unfair advantages a rich plaintiff has in such cases). If there were indeed Microsoft patents infringed by Linux, the agreement will make MS no more likely to succeed (the only rather irrelevant change is that for a limited time some Novell customers may not be sued). If MS had a case, it would have sued long ago. That it didn't speaks (at least to me) far louder than any money exchange between Novell and MS. And if MS does not have a case (i.e., no valid patents are infringed) then the promise is merely one to absain from nuisance lawsuits against some people - no big thing.
I think the bigger effect (any maybe even the one intended by MS) is the division created in the FOSS camp: SuSE vs. Ubuntu, GPLv2 vs. GPLv3, commercial vs. non-commercial. Let's hope that this will not be the start of a fragmentation of Linux.no, Jackson made one abomination which was spread over three installments for worse effect.
however, even if he failed with the epic, he may get the children's book right. after all, the (still) pictures were ok in the movie-mutilation of LotRThe preprint of ApJ article is on the ArXive, entitled The First DIRECT Distance Determination to a Detached Eclipsing Binary in M33 .
I guess this shows that numbers like the age of the universe should always be quoted with the current error bars. As far as I understand the new value is still within the uncertainty of currently accepted estimate. To have reduced the error from "a factor of 2" to below 15% within the last decade or so seems pretty good to me.not that it matters, but the summary is off (by a constant factor, not an order of magnitude). TFA states:
...the typical Windows developer has produced one thousand new lines of shipped code per year during Vista.
... the average software developer in the US only produces around (...) 6200 lines a year. So Windows is in bad shape - but only by a constant, not by an order of magnitude.
and
Now, for someone to adequately know whether or not a particular stock is good or bad, they would most certainly need to know what the company has planned, and provide such data. You might argue that a stock-holder knew what s/he was getting into while buying the stock, but not providing enough data defeats the primary purpose that one buys the stock for. By not providing such information, Google is leaving folks uncertain - now, honestly, if your data was good you'd release it because it would do good to your stock price. If you aren't, I'd be worried about what else is going on, and that is most definitely not a good sign. But Google is giving all the information it is required to give in its quarterly and annual reports. It just doesn't give the analysts a hand in predicting/guessing the future - which is after all the analysts' job, and the get paid very nicely for it. Instead of just lazily relying on "guidance" they'll have to do the math and the guesstimates themselves - or they can just stop covering Google. Who would care? I think Google should just let them whine and get on with business!
precisely what I wanted to say, too. Usenet is no more "flawed" than email, and it's imminent death has been erroneously predicted before many times. I guess the author just didn't know how to use kill-files. Both by its decentralized nature and by the interface for posting or reading is Usenet is WAY better than any forum software I've ever seen on the Web. Way to go for Usenet.
I got hooked by the Linux (SuSE 3.0) resp. Unix computers we had at university. What I liked best were the shell, the virtual desktops, the great LaTeX environment, and Emacs. For a while I tried to make do with EmTeX and MicroEMACS on my DOS 5.0 PC at home, but with Suse 5.1 I made the switch there, too and have never looked back. ;-) which made me switch - but meanwhile I have also learned to appreciate the philosophy/moral of GNU/Linux. I continue to be awed and amazed by the great community. Many thanks to all the developer, testers, writers who intentionally or not promote Freedom!
So it was the great software (and the able admin of seastar@mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de
Parent should be "insightful" not "funny"!
I pity the tired, poor, huddled masses brought up on things called "word processors" who may not even know that to breathe free today no voyage over the ocean is needed but a simple mouse-click is enough... Thanks to Don Knuth and the folks from the LaTeX3-project for this awesome gift.
I propose a Slashdot like moderation system, wich even if not perfect has proved it rather works than not.
I like the idea of "freezing" an article that has reached a very good or authoritative state. To maintain the open character of a Wiki, why not keep a "development version" of the article besides he frozen "production version"? That would still enable particpation and improvement even of good articles, while also allowing the creation of a stable and reliable encyclopedia under tighter editorial control.Is this happening anywhere?
Pardon me, i didn't read on beyond the fun part; so it is happening. What was the local (offline) response? Has the board voted meanwhile?
PS: I must admit that I wasn't aware of the Flying Spaghetti-Monsterism before. Henceforth, I will include it prominently in any list demanding equal time with ID!how could I forget! certainly this important theory shall not be left out!
Once one of these idiotic committes in Kansas or elsewhere tries again to put ID in the curriculum one should send thousands of this kind of letters to them, state officials and journalists to expose how ridiculous the ID-position is. Is this happening anywhere?