There were no file formats before Microsoft cam along with Office? Then what was ASCII,.txt,.rdf, and Word Perfect's format.
Read my post again, please - I wasn't arguing that there weren't any "file formats" (which would be ridiculous!), but that there weren't any (or at least, not many) consortiums for standardizing file and data formats to promote cross-compatibility.
Okay, however at first you said there weren't any consortiums but now you're say "or at least, not many".
I agree that the ECMA proceeding may not have reached an acceptable solution. But was it better two decades ago, when no one submitted any data format to an independent body for review and documenting?
It was better when data formats weren't considered intellectual property and was available for anyone to use, without a license.
Actually plastic was originally made from plants, plants farmers could grow not manufacturing plants. Chemurgy was about making industrial products with agricultural material. DuPont was awarded a patent in the 1930s on a process for making plastic from petroleum so Chemurgy fell by the wayside. However now it's making a comeback, with Bioplastics.
even if he ISNT personally trying to be energy efficient, he has brought the concept into a much wider and more mainstream position.
I agree but if he really does care then he needs to walk his talk as well.
Please use a new 'Gore is bad because' link
Hey, I voted against Bush in 2000 by selecting Gore. And there's very little Bush has done I agree with but he doesn't talk about how bad the environment is then built an energy hog for a home.
Next thing you'll bring up how Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and won't let the inspectors do their job!
I'm still waiting to see those WMDs. Those same ones Saddam used against Iran as well as people inside Iraq while Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam.
Actually I think most of Apple's product line actually will require more transportation. While stuff like the Mac Mini and iMac are lighter they are not really expandable. Only the Mac Pros are. I can replace the motherboard, hard disks, graphics cards and other components in a Dell or HP thus extending it's life. But I can't do that to a Mini. My last 2 PCs I added internal hard disks, installed new mobos, and a graphics card. I can slowly upgrade a PC making it last longer but I can't do that to most Macs. However laptops, both PC and MacBook/ MacBook Pros, suffer this as well. And I say that typing this on a MacBook Pro.
I could ship people huge bags of thallium, mercury and dead baby condors and still be hailed as eco-friendly as long as the packaging was recycled.
Unfortunately this is all too true. For instance GE, with it's Ecomagination campaign is trying to greenwash it's image. However what you won't hear from them is how they're trying to work on the Three Gorges Dam which will forcibly displace millions of Chinese and submerge a lot of land, graves, and archaeological sites.
How about this: "Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe"? Between Present Bush and Al Gore guess who's home is more energy efficient... Bush's home. While Gore's home is a gluttony for energy Bush's home is pretty efficient. Bush's home was built to use geothermal energy for heating, though this link says Gore installed such a system in his home. Some get on Bush because he's an oilman however Gore's family has also invested in oil, specifically they invested in Oxy, Occidental Petroleum, and Oxy has threatened a number of native Indian tribes ancestral lands.
Were you listening when they told you that was for the situation where your gun jams, is lost or runs out of ammo?
Martial arts or hand to hand combat isn't just for what you listed here. We were also trained to use it it urban combat and other instances where small arms isn't practical. While a person could use a.45 APC in close combat trying to use an M16 is not practical when you can feel your opponent's breath. However the only grunts, infantry, that are issued.45s other than maybe officers were mortar men, those who fired mortars. Though I was trained to clean.45s I never fired one, and most guys in the companies I was in didn't train to clean them even.
There are also hidden costs in not producing enough/capable enough weapons: being ruled by those who did.
And who's got the weapons to rule? Militarily the USA only has China as a potential threat how China has about as much to loose as the US in any serious confrontation. The US could have cut defense spending without causing harm to the country. Heck, if the defense budget had been cut to 10% of it was at the end of the Cold War then a citizen's army was formed much of the cut in spending could have been used to help the poor in the Third World. Terrorism may be the grated threat the US will face, and a lot of the foot soldiers come from the poor, some feel their life as so little meaning a suicide bomber's death will give them that. By improving everyone's lives it takes away how terrorists, some at least, breed.
As long as fear and want are so strong it will be very difficult to achieve that balance.
One of my favorite quotes about this was said by Benjamin Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Like the USA's Founding Fathers my greatest fear isn't terrorists but government.
The reason Zimbabwe is failing is the same reason South Africa went from being a peaceful place to being a shithole of rape and murder that it is now. Mugabe took all the farm land owned by white farmers, told them to GTFO of his country, and handed it all over to uneducated blacks. Within a single year the country went from being the breadbasket to starving.
That's part of it, while Mugabe forced white farmers off the farms, he gave those farms to his cronies who knew nothing about farming. Zimbabwe had blacks who could have farmed almost if not as well as the white farmers. If nothing else Mugabe could have tried to keep those able to farm on the farms and had them train new farmers. Perhaps they could have been made the general manager of the farm, which was then incorporated with all the working hands receiving stocks in the corporation.
Mugabe liberated Zimbabwe then became a tyrant himself.
But a much more direct link is between the violent terror group FARC and the illegal drug trade.
The paramilitaries have more to do with drugs than FARC does. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar started the AUC paramilitary. And while Uribe gave the paramilitaries a free pass, he won't even negotiate with FARC or ELN.
But any reference to there being a moral imperative to obey drug laws sees to be missing from the Toward Freedom Website.
Narco News does better there, that is pointing out the damage the Drug War inflicts.
That would be something I agree on. The way I see it there is only two ways the world could solve Africa's problems, with force or ignore it.
A third way is to stop supporting bad actors.
Next solution would be to basically wall off Africa, noting and nobody goes in or out. Cut them off from the rest of the world. Famine, war, and plague will pretty much take care of the rest.
Yea right. Not much can be done about the Sudan, the Chinese supports them because of the oil.
Yes, it's heartless and pretty fucking sick but its the best I can think of. We've poured hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in to Africa over the last 60 years and all it has done is make it worse.
That's because the aid was the wrong type of aid. Much of the aid was based on the Washington Consensus, it's predecessors, and followers like neoliberalism. One part of this was to get most of the population to move into cities then let large scale farms grow food, when the west didn't export food. So, many small hold farmers were basically driven off farms, the same thing happened in Central America. The "Wilson Quarterly" had a pretty good article on how small farms are increasing in numbers and are producing more food than large operations, "The Coming Revolution in Africa". Though not the same, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. They used to produce enough food to feed everyone yet still had plenty of food left to export, food was Zimbabwe's major export earner. But now it's a basketcase and needs food aid.
"Anything and everything fuels conflict in Africa. At most, this is throwing a match into a raging fire."
But what can we, as a world community, do about it? We can't just barge in a la Iraq and impose our own order. This is something the African people have to do for themselves.
Sure, Africans need to work it out on their own but the First World doesn't need to support bad actors whether it's in the Congo, Niger Delta, or Angola.
Martial arts are not an appropriate first option in a conflict involving firearms.
Now who said anything about martial arts being a first option? Your statement is the FIRST statement saying anything about martial arts being a first option.
The Imperial Japanese Army trained its soldiers in martial arts, but they issued every infantryman a Type 99 bolt action rifle just the same.
Besides being trained in hand to hand combat, I was trained to use my M16, which didn't take much because I grew up hunting. As part of my Military Occupational Speciality or MOS which was infantry, Small Arms Specialist, or grunt we went through shooting qualification at least once yearly and I consistently had high scores. Now my first CO, Commanding Officer, frequently put me in for special training as well. I went through EOD, Explosive Ordinance Disposal, training for instance.
Sure there is, it makes defense contractors lots of money. But it is a drain on the economy, there's the opportunity cost, money that could have been used more wisely.
The martial arts is not effective against guns - there is a reason why the army issues its soldiers guns instead of martial arts training.
Ah but the military does train you in martial arts, at least I went through it. They call it hand to hand combat but it's simplified martial arts. And those who wanted it could get more training, one person in my united trained in what he called Chinese kick boxing. You could also learn karate, tai kon do, and others.
Simply, in close quarters combat knowing a martial art can mean the difference between living and dying.
Yeah, I guess the old days were better - when there was no consortium, when file and data formats were not at all intercompatible and mostly untranslatable, and when everyone just used Microsoft's file and data formats because "everyone else uses it."
There were no file formats before Microsoft cam along with Office? Then what was ASCII,.txt,.rdf, and Word Perfect's format.
Meanwhile open standards work fine such as for electricity, electricity produced by wind farms in Scandinavia is compatible with the electricity produced via wind farms in Spain or the electricity produced in France's nuclear reactors.
:lol: Um....:snicker: really? You want to talk about the intercompatibility of electricity?:lol:
Yes, several governments are talking about "Wind-fuelled 'supergrid' offers clean power to Europe" using High Voltage DC to transmit energy from Iceland the northern Africa. You recall those blackouts in the Northeast a few years ago, you know the one that effected the US and Canada? The lines were interconnected, if they hadn't been power would only have been lost in local places not all over.
Seriously, even electricity has had its share of battles and compatibility problems:
I know about the electrical battle between Edison and Tesla, Edison used DC whereas Tesla advocated AC. I even posted a link on/. a little while ago about how Edison tried to electrocute an elephant to show how dangerous AC power was. While AC power is delivered to most places in the US there were places in New York that used DC until last year, 2007. The US uses high voltage DC transmissions today. HVDC is used because there is less of a loss of power when transmitting it long distance than there is transmitting the same amount of power over AC lines the same distance.
The sole right granted by a patent is anticompetitive, yes. But that doesn't mean that the only use of a patent is to squelch competition - it can be used cooperatively in licensing, standards-body formation, etc.
Without patents licensing wouldn't be needed. Licensing itself is anticompetitive, "either you pay to license or we'll crush you." Standards bodies aren't helped by patents either, here on/. a bunch of discussions have taken place on how Microsoft has tried to pervert ISO standards bodies, such as with making MS Office an official standard. With Open Office.org's file format an ISO standard anybody, including Microsoft can implement it in their products, but to include MS Office file compatibility in another product you have to get MS's permission. Meanwhile open standards work fine such as for electricity, electricity produced by wind farms in Scandinavia is compatible with the electricity produced via wind farms in Spain or the electricity produced in France's nuclear reactors. In the US UL certification of an appliance pretty much insures the appliance will work in almost any outlet with the same electrical rating in the US. All patents do is hold standards as hostages.
To be precise wrt GUIs, Xerox did it first, Apple licensed it from Xerox, Microsoft licensed it from Apple as part of their license to write software for the original Mac, then Apple turned around and sued Microsoft mostly because of plain old sour grapes, and I say this as a long time (20+ years) Apple/Mac user. Apple predictably lost.
Actually I don't think it was sour grapes, though it might of been. John Scully sold a license to the GUI to Microsoft when he was CEO of Apple. Apple didn't file a lawsuit against Microsoft, at least don't I think, until Apple brought Steve Jobs back as CEO. Steve Jobs may not of known of this license.
GUI's could have been patentable, but as we've seen, Xerox started it, Apple used it, and Microsoft stole it from apple. When Microsoft was sued, they claimed prior art from Xerox. Once again, graphical representation is now prior art.
I used to think the same as you, that MS stole the GUI from Apple. However as CEO of Apple in or around 1991 John Sculley sold a license to a GUI to Microsoft. Some people think Steve Jobs stole the GUI from Xerox too. However Xerox invested in Apple and invited Jobs to tour Xerox PARC and try to develop a commercial product from what he saw there, PARC did fabulous research but weren't so good at commercializing what they created.
It wards off "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics and other types of anticooperative behavior.
Patents by their vary nature are anticompetitive (I know you said "anticooperative", which patents can be also), they grant the patent holder a monopoly.
While Google could have all those problems you list, at least it tries to verify the qualifications of the authors whereas Wiki does not. In both cases, Knol and Wiki, they should only be used as a starting point anyway. I only took a quick look at Knol's front page but I frequently use Wiki, I've post links to wiki articles a bunch of tymes on/. However I also look for other sources of information.
Knol articles have way less references than Wiki ones and rely more on the supposed authority of their authors.
Wiki doesn't even check the qualifications of authors, heck it lets anyone edit articles.
Slashdot Mirror
Lets say your house needs 5000 W. To get through an 8 h dark period, you need 40 kWhr
What are you running that that much power is used? Other than AC the frig may be the most power hungry appliance in the typical home. However "energy-efficient unit(s) made in the US is designed to run on 12 or 110 volts, and consumes about half a kilowatt-hour per day." The Sun Frost RF16 typically consumes 15 KWH per month[pdf]. And since storage is needed to supply power at night and it's cooler then both AC and refrig don't need to run as much.
Falcon
There were no file formats before Microsoft cam along with Office? Then what was ASCII, .txt, .rdf, and Word Perfect's format.
Read my post again, please - I wasn't arguing that there weren't any "file formats" (which would be ridiculous!), but that there weren't any (or at least, not many) consortiums for standardizing file and data formats to promote cross-compatibility.
Okay, however at first you said there weren't any consortiums but now you're say "or at least, not many".
I agree that the ECMA proceeding may not have reached an acceptable solution. But was it better two decades ago, when no one submitted any data format to an independent body for review and documenting?
It was better when data formats weren't considered intellectual property and was available for anyone to use, without a license.
Falcon
Not going to happen but I would so love to see the end of disposable computers.
I would like to see an end to disposable computers as well, unfortunately I love my MacBook Pro.
Falcon
Actually plastic was originally made from plants, plants farmers could grow not manufacturing plants. Chemurgy was about making industrial products with agricultural material. DuPont was awarded a patent in the 1930s on a process for making plastic from petroleum so Chemurgy fell by the wayside. However now it's making a comeback, with Bioplastics.
Falcon
Hell, Al cans vanish out of my recycling bin before the truck even gets there. It's magic!
Yea, I used to get paid to recycle, now I have to pay to recycle.
Falcon
even if he ISNT personally trying to be energy efficient, he has brought the concept into a much wider and more mainstream position.
I agree but if he really does care then he needs to walk his talk as well.
Please use a new 'Gore is bad because' link
Hey, I voted against Bush in 2000 by selecting Gore. And there's very little Bush has done I agree with but he doesn't talk about how bad the environment is then built an energy hog for a home.
Next thing you'll bring up how Iraq has weapons of mass destruction and won't let the inspectors do their job!
I'm still waiting to see those WMDs. Those same ones Saddam used against Iran as well as people inside Iraq while Reagan and Bush Sr supported Saddam.
Falcon
transportation.
Actually I think most of Apple's product line actually will require more transportation. While stuff like the Mac Mini and iMac are lighter they are not really expandable. Only the Mac Pros are. I can replace the motherboard, hard disks, graphics cards and other components in a Dell or HP thus extending it's life. But I can't do that to a Mini. My last 2 PCs I added internal hard disks, installed new mobos, and a graphics card. I can slowly upgrade a PC making it last longer but I can't do that to most Macs. However laptops, both PC and MacBook/ MacBook Pros, suffer this as well. And I say that typing this on a MacBook Pro.
Falcon
I could ship people huge bags of thallium, mercury and dead baby condors and still be hailed as eco-friendly as long as the packaging was recycled.
Unfortunately this is all too true. For instance GE, with it's Ecomagination campaign is trying to greenwash it's image. However what you won't hear from them is how they're trying to work on the Three Gorges Dam which will forcibly displace millions of Chinese and submerge a lot of land, graves, and archaeological sites.
Falcon
I think this puts your theories to rest.
How about this: "Gore isn't quite as green as he's led the world to believe"? Between Present Bush and Al Gore guess who's home is more energy efficient... Bush's home. While Gore's home is a gluttony for energy Bush's home is pretty efficient. Bush's home was built to use geothermal energy for heating, though this link says Gore installed such a system in his home. Some get on Bush because he's an oilman however Gore's family has also invested in oil, specifically they invested in Oxy, Occidental Petroleum, and Oxy has threatened a number of native Indian tribes ancestral lands.
Falcon
Were you listening when they told you that was for the situation where your gun jams, is lost or runs out of ammo?
Martial arts or hand to hand combat isn't just for what you listed here. We were also trained to use it it urban combat and other instances where small arms isn't practical. While a person could use a .45 APC in close combat trying to use an M16 is not practical when you can feel your opponent's breath. However the only grunts, infantry, that are issued .45s other than maybe officers were mortar men, those who fired mortars. Though I was trained to clean .45s I never fired one, and most guys in the companies I was in didn't train to clean them even.
Falcon
There are also hidden costs in not producing enough/capable enough weapons: being ruled by those who did.
And who's got the weapons to rule? Militarily the USA only has China as a potential threat how China has about as much to loose as the US in any serious confrontation. The US could have cut defense spending without causing harm to the country. Heck, if the defense budget had been cut to 10% of it was at the end of the Cold War then a citizen's army was formed much of the cut in spending could have been used to help the poor in the Third World. Terrorism may be the grated threat the US will face, and a lot of the foot soldiers come from the poor, some feel their life as so little meaning a suicide bomber's death will give them that. By improving everyone's lives it takes away how terrorists, some at least, breed.
As long as fear and want are so strong it will be very difficult to achieve that balance.
One of my favorite quotes about this was said by Benjamin Franklin, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Like the USA's Founding Fathers my greatest fear isn't terrorists but government.
Falcon
The reason Zimbabwe is failing is the same reason South Africa went from being a peaceful place to being a shithole of rape and murder that it is now. Mugabe took all the farm land owned by white farmers, told them to GTFO of his country, and handed it all over to uneducated blacks. Within a single year the country went from being the breadbasket to starving.
That's part of it, while Mugabe forced white farmers off the farms, he gave those farms to his cronies who knew nothing about farming. Zimbabwe had blacks who could have farmed almost if not as well as the white farmers. If nothing else Mugabe could have tried to keep those able to farm on the farms and had them train new farmers. Perhaps they could have been made the general manager of the farm, which was then incorporated with all the working hands receiving stocks in the corporation.
Mugabe liberated Zimbabwe then became a tyrant himself.
Falcon
But a much more direct link is between the violent terror group FARC and the illegal drug trade.
The paramilitaries have more to do with drugs than FARC does. Drug kingpin Pablo Escobar started the AUC paramilitary. And while Uribe gave the paramilitaries a free pass, he won't even negotiate with FARC or ELN.
But any reference to there being a moral imperative to obey drug laws sees to be missing from the Toward Freedom Website.
Narco News does better there, that is pointing out the damage the Drug War inflicts.
Falcon
That would be something I agree on. The way I see it there is only two ways the world could solve Africa's problems, with force or ignore it.
A third way is to stop supporting bad actors.
Next solution would be to basically wall off Africa, noting and nobody goes in or out. Cut them off from the rest of the world. Famine, war, and plague will pretty much take care of the rest.
Yea right. Not much can be done about the Sudan, the Chinese supports them because of the oil.
Yes, it's heartless and pretty fucking sick but its the best I can think of. We've poured hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in to Africa over the last 60 years and all it has done is make it worse.
That's because the aid was the wrong type of aid. Much of the aid was based on the Washington Consensus, it's predecessors, and followers like neoliberalism. One part of this was to get most of the population to move into cities then let large scale farms grow food, when the west didn't export food. So, many small hold farmers were basically driven off farms, the same thing happened in Central America. The "Wilson Quarterly" had a pretty good article on how small farms are increasing in numbers and are producing more food than large operations, "The Coming Revolution in Africa". Though not the same, Zimbabwe used to be the breadbasket of southern Africa. They used to produce enough food to feed everyone yet still had plenty of food left to export, food was Zimbabwe's major export earner. But now it's a basketcase and needs food aid.
Falcon
"Anything and everything fuels conflict in Africa. At most, this is throwing a match into a raging fire."
But what can we, as a world community, do about it? We can't just barge in a la Iraq and impose our own order. This is something the African people have to do for themselves.
Sure, Africans need to work it out on their own but the First World doesn't need to support bad actors whether it's in the Congo, Niger Delta, or Angola.
Falcon
Martial arts are not an appropriate first option in a conflict involving firearms.
Now who said anything about martial arts being a first option? Your statement is the FIRST statement saying anything about martial arts being a first option.
The Imperial Japanese Army trained its soldiers in martial arts, but they issued every infantryman a Type 99 bolt action rifle just the same.
Besides being trained in hand to hand combat, I was trained to use my M16, which didn't take much because I grew up hunting. As part of my Military Occupational Speciality or MOS which was infantry, Small Arms Specialist, or grunt we went through shooting qualification at least once yearly and I consistently had high scores. Now my first CO, Commanding Officer, frequently put me in for special training as well. I went through EOD, Explosive Ordinance Disposal, training for instance.
Falcon
There is no economic value in producing a weapon.
Sure there is, it makes defense contractors lots of money. But it is a drain on the economy, there's the opportunity cost, money that could have been used more wisely.
Falcon
The martial arts is not effective against guns - there is a reason why the army issues its soldiers guns instead of martial arts training.
Ah but the military does train you in martial arts, at least I went through it. They call it hand to hand combat but it's simplified martial arts. And those who wanted it could get more training, one person in my united trained in what he called Chinese kick boxing. You could also learn karate, tai kon do, and others.
Simply, in close quarters combat knowing a martial art can mean the difference between living and dying.
Falcon
Yeah, I guess the old days were better - when there was no consortium, when file and data formats were not at all intercompatible and mostly untranslatable, and when everyone just used Microsoft's file and data formats because "everyone else uses it."
There were no file formats before Microsoft cam along with Office? Then what was ASCII, .txt, .rdf, and Word Perfect's format.
Meanwhile open standards work fine such as for electricity, electricity produced by wind farms in Scandinavia is compatible with the electricity produced via wind farms in Spain or the electricity produced in France's nuclear reactors.
:lol: Um.... :snicker: really? You want to talk about the intercompatibility of electricity? :lol:
Yes, several governments are talking about "Wind-fuelled 'supergrid' offers clean power to Europe" using High Voltage DC to transmit energy from Iceland the northern Africa. You recall those blackouts in the Northeast a few years ago, you know the one that effected the US and Canada? The lines were interconnected, if they hadn't been power would only have been lost in local places not all over.
Seriously, even electricity has had its share of battles and compatibility problems:
I know about the electrical battle between Edison and Tesla, Edison used DC whereas Tesla advocated AC. I even posted a link on /. a little while ago about how Edison tried to electrocute an elephant to show how dangerous AC power was. While AC power is delivered to most places in the US there were places in New York that used DC until last year, 2007. The US uses high voltage DC transmissions today. HVDC is used because there is less of a loss of power when transmitting it long distance than there is transmitting the same amount of power over AC lines the same distance.
Falcon
The sole right granted by a patent is anticompetitive, yes. But that doesn't mean that the only use of a patent is to squelch competition - it can be used cooperatively in licensing, standards-body formation, etc.
Without patents licensing wouldn't be needed. Licensing itself is anticompetitive, "either you pay to license or we'll crush you." Standards bodies aren't helped by patents either, here on /. a bunch of discussions have taken place on how Microsoft has tried to pervert ISO standards bodies, such as with making MS Office an official standard. With Open Office.org's file format an ISO standard anybody, including Microsoft can implement it in their products, but to include MS Office file compatibility in another product you have to get MS's permission. Meanwhile open standards work fine such as for electricity, electricity produced by wind farms in Scandinavia is compatible with the electricity produced via wind farms in Spain or the electricity produced in France's nuclear reactors. In the US UL certification of an appliance pretty much insures the appliance will work in almost any outlet with the same electrical rating in the US. All patents do is hold standards as hostages.
Falcon
To be precise wrt GUIs, Xerox did it first, Apple licensed it from Xerox, Microsoft licensed it from Apple as part of their license to write software for the original Mac, then Apple turned around and sued Microsoft mostly because of plain old sour grapes, and I say this as a long time (20+ years) Apple/Mac user. Apple predictably lost.
Actually I don't think it was sour grapes, though it might of been. John Scully sold a license to the GUI to Microsoft when he was CEO of Apple. Apple didn't file a lawsuit against Microsoft, at least don't I think, until Apple brought Steve Jobs back as CEO. Steve Jobs may not of known of this license.
Falcon
GUI's could have been patentable, but as we've seen, Xerox started it, Apple used it, and Microsoft stole it from apple. When Microsoft was sued, they claimed prior art from Xerox. Once again, graphical representation is now prior art.
I used to think the same as you, that MS stole the GUI from Apple. However as CEO of Apple in or around 1991 John Sculley sold a license to a GUI to Microsoft. Some people think Steve Jobs stole the GUI from Xerox too. However Xerox invested in Apple and invited Jobs to tour Xerox PARC and try to develop a commercial product from what he saw there, PARC did fabulous research but weren't so good at commercializing what they created.
Falcon
It wards off "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics and other types of anticooperative behavior.
Patents by their vary nature are anticompetitive (I know you said "anticooperative", which patents can be also), they grant the patent holder a monopoly.
Falcon
I threw a chair at him but it missed and hit a statue of Natalie Portman.
And you're still alive? Natalie didn't clean you?
Falcon
While Google could have all those problems you list, at least it tries to verify the qualifications of the authors whereas Wiki does not. In both cases, Knol and Wiki, they should only be used as a starting point anyway. I only took a quick look at Knol's front page but I frequently use Wiki, I've post links to wiki articles a bunch of tymes on /. However I also look for other sources of information.
Knol articles have way less references than Wiki ones and rely more on the supposed authority of their authors.
Wiki doesn't even check the qualifications of authors, heck it lets anyone edit articles.
Falcon