No it's not even close to enough of an advance but once BluRay and HD-DVD are out in the wild properly the big players will start to put pressure on DVD manufacturers to "upgrade" to their favourite next gen format. Before you know it there will be no more licenses issued to press films to DVD format and the DVD market will slowly dry up. There will be no option with new movies. It will be next gen or nothing.
I, for one, am not surprised by this. It's hard to judge small volumes in a wide based container, especially by eye. It's nowhere near as hard on a tall thin container.
I wonder what would happen, though, if they took it to the extreme and had a very tall and thin container. My guess would be that you would again find over indulgence simply because the container dimentions are outside what people are used to.
No, the system I have in mind is really simple but I forgot to mention a section. I suspect that you think the system would be used to check for content correctness but is not. It's there just for sanity checks to stop trolls. 99.99% of trolling can be spotted by anyone. That tiny fraction of trolling that tries to pass itself off as genuine would probably get through almost any filter.
Each account would have a list of randomly selected edits and additions displayed as a bar on the right of the page with big hints that it would be nice if registered users moderated. No article would be given preference so I don't think any article would get left out. I think there are quite a few people, such as myself, that would welcome the serendipity of coming across an article that we hadn't read before. If I can moderate it at the same time as I read it all the better.
If you are still worried about article never getting moderated then use one of the well known scheduling algorithums for processes that stop starvation. The longer an article has gone unmoderated the higher its chance of appearing in the moderation list on the right hand side.
I agree that all user who want to post should be registered but I think the 6 day cooling off period is going to turn away a lot of people that would otherwise help (me for instance). I have written a couple of articles and edited a few (some edits were to remove abuse). I have done all of that without registering simply because it was quicker but I would still have done it if I had to register first. I wouldn't have done any of it if I had to register and then wait x days simply because that's not how I help with wikipedia. Some people devote hours to writting articles for wikipedia but a lot of us just help out now and then.
If you _really_ want to stop abuse I suggest this method: Everyone has to be registered to write or edit an article. Each account has a score associated with it. New accounts have zero points the top posters have 100. Every time an edit / addition is made it has to be checked and score 200 points to be accepted. Until it is accepted only registered people can view it. Each registered person can vote for the article either + or -. The number of points awarded to or removed from the article is the number of points assiciated with the moderators account. Each time you get an article or edit accepted your account scores one point. Articles that score -200 are removed and 10 points are deducted from the users account. So, for instance, an article could be accepted with as little as 2 votes from top submitters or 200 votes from people with one accepted article. It might slow down the acceptance of articles but it would ensure that there is no trolling and keep the immediacy in it.
Personally I would choose Java but perhaps that's because I ahve made a good living from knowing Java. I don't see either Java or C# really having much impact in Linux anytime soon. Java has issues with deployment in almost every distribution and Mono just isn't there yet.
The problem with the ID card questionaires is that the questions a skewed in favour of getting a yes. They always mention terrorism or organised crime or benifit fraud in the question. Even if the question itself doesn't the media has flooded people minds with the idea that terrorism, crime and fraud can some how be stopped by ID cards. Little to nothing has been said about the possible negative ramifications of wide spread ID cards other than the cost of the scheme. I suspect that is because most media outlets aim at being applicable to everyone, which means pandering to the lowest common demoninator. Difficult to debate topics such as the possibility of sleep walking into a police state and the errosion of civil liberties just get ignored. Perhaps I am paranoid but I would rather an ounce of paranoia now than a million dead should be need to over throw a tyranical government by force.
And finally... quickly think about Nazi germany as portrayed in films. What's one of the main features shown to make you understand it's a highly controlling and manipulative government. It's the constant checking of ID cards. Is this what we want to create?
You have badly missed one of the most fundamental points of democracy. You are correct that in a democracy everyone is allowed their say and the majority rules, however, the majority is not supposed to just trample on the minority. In the case of using the street as a toilet the majority is significantly large that those in the minority can probably be considered in need of help but this is not always the case.
Take, for instance, the ban on fox hunting that has just been passed. Although the majority wanted it banned (for whatever reason) there is a small but significant number of people that consider themselves adversly affected by it. Was it right that maybe a million people had part of their lives outlawed because of the way 20 million other people felt? I would have to argue that it was wrong in that case to go with the majority. If a million people want to do something and it doesn't adversly affect the lives of others then why ban it? The ban on fox hunting was a class thing not a democracy thing. If you are wondering, I would have voted to ban it. The difference, though, is that I would have voted for a ban simply to "stick one" to the toffs who needed bringing down a peg or two. It might not be right but at least I'm honest enough to admit it.
As another example: the UK is likely to get ID cards in the near future. After the government have finished manipulating the statistics they will probably show that 51% of the population are in favour. That's a majority but is it enough to force cards on the 49% who don't want them? What size majority do you need to have before it is morally right to force (persecute) the minority?
Democracy is not as clear cut as simply saying the majority rules. There are issues of fairness and morality that can't be expressed in a simply binary vote.
AIUI at this stage not much really. In fact you could probably go as far as to say nothing. It does mean, though, that in the future it will be much easier to add new features and generally work on the code.
In continuous use for over 20 years, the X Window System provides the only standard platform-independent networked graphical window system bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's enterprise: from network servers to desktops, thin clients, laptops, and hand-helds, independent of operating system and hardware.
I must be the most unnormal (my new word for the day) person around. I didn't searced for any of those terms in 2005. I don't even know what Ares and Baidu are? Where's Britney in that list anyway. I thought there was some sort of rule that said she always had to win?
Google has lost the plot in their race to get as much money as possible. The only ads I don't block are google text ads simply because they are not overly intrusive and they don't move. If google starts using wide spread static graphical ads I will seriously consider blocking them. If the ads are animated or flash they will most certainly be blocked along with all the other google ads. The collatoral damage for google if a lot of people do this could be huge.
On the flip side though. The way for the advertisers to beat this (and I'm supprised none do this) is to make the ads appear to come from the same domain as the content. It wouldn't be hard to write an ad proxy for a site. The only down side being the extra bandwidth needed. This sort of ad proxying could be very hard to block.
Perhaps now we can get on with writting a free encylopedia rather than arguing about who has the ability to edit pages. I'm surpuised it took them so long to get to this point. If parallels are drawn to software development it would be like letting any Tom, Dick or Harry submit a patch to the kernel, and have it included automatically, regardless of whether it even compiled.
While it would be nice to live in a world where people didn't abuse things like wikipedia that just isn't going to happen. The problem is that a very small number of people can do a lot of damage in a short space of time when it's completely open. I wouldn't be shocked if they moved to a completely moderated system before long.
Yes it might be lawful considering the current state of the law but was it morally right? The law is (or at least is supposed to be) a reflection of the way the people feel about given actions. I can't believe that most people would feel it was right that their conversations were being listened to. I suppose that problem is that most people think it won't happen to them.
I can understand the "it won't happen to be" brigade. I fail completely to understand the "if you've got nothing to hide" brigade though.
Interesting that you should say that (shame you probably won't see this reply too) because when I started getting wrist pain I also put it down to poor muscle tone in the lower arm and started working out. I started by simply using a grip strengthener which really helped and then moved onto more of a full obdy work out. My wrist pain was relieved in about 6 weeks and has never come back (well it did when I stopped exercising for a while but went again almost as soon as I started up again).
I wonder if it was just that I was doing exercise and any old streching / workout would help or if it specifically had something to do with building strength in the lower arm.
I'm sure this will be mentioned by others I find that the mouse, rather than the keyboard, is the thing that really brings on RSI. I've asked around it seems quite a few people have come to the same conclusion but I've not really heard it mentioned in the press.
They could intergrate the special features with FF. Problem solved. It gives them a browser that is undergoing constant free updates and backward compatability. They would, of course, have to write a translation layer (a la nVidia) as I am sure they wouldn't open the source of they fancy extensions.
Maybe we will finally be able to achieve the goal of making a paperless office when e-paper gets good enough. Some how I think the tansition is going to be a long slow and painful one though. I'm guessing the FDT (flattened dead tree) people will go out kicking and screaming much like the current music publishers are. In fact I foresee that it will be even worse than the current music and movie problems simply because it is so much more fundamental a shift. Should be fun to watch though:o)
I wonder if MS is considering opening IE or possibly even giving up on development of it. While you might fall over laughing at that and think "Oh, just another OSS fan boy" here's my reasoning. There is nothing left to fight for in the browser war. MS used the browser to get Windows on every desktop. They have done that now. They won, so why maintain their weapon (IE). In fact just look at the situation they have got themselves into. They didn't want to maintain IE so for x (7 IIRC) years they have just not really touched it. If FF hadn't come along I doubt they would have ever touched it again. After all, it didn't directly make them any money. What good it did to their bottom line had already been done. Personally, I think this update to IE is an egg on face stopper rather than a real update. Once they have done this update they then have a good two or three years to announce that they will no longer be updating IE. The great thing about that from MS's point of view is that they can abandon IE without loosing face.
What would be great is if they stopped development of IE and put some effort into FF. After all they are likely to be playing catch up for ever against FF simply because of the way it is developed and released. The only thing that would stop MS from doing this is pride. They won't admit that OSS can actually produce decent software.
...that thinks two competing document standards isn't a good thing? Yes, I know all the arguments about the competition spawning features and a better product and quite frankly I don't really believe them. As far as I am concerned it will just lead to a situation where I am always playing off the benifits and draw backs of the two formats and trying to guess which one a potential client will want. At least at the moment it's a no brainer. Send it in the latest.doc format or.pdf depending on whether you want the recipient to be ablet o edit the document.
If MSO and OOo have perfect reading and writting capabilities for both formats and both formats are able to produce quality documents (I think that's a given) that it's not a big issue but how would you choose between the two formats. You can't because they would be the same so you might as well roll them into one.
My worst fear is that the two formats will be fundamentally incompatible. That would be like having two incompatible versions of HTML and having to choose your browser based on site.
Slashdot Mirror
No it's not even close to enough of an advance but once BluRay and HD-DVD are out in the wild properly the big players will start to put pressure on DVD manufacturers to "upgrade" to their favourite next gen format. Before you know it there will be no more licenses issued to press films to DVD format and the DVD market will slowly dry up. There will be no option with new movies. It will be next gen or nothing.
I, for one, am not surprised by this. It's hard to judge small volumes in a wide based container, especially by eye. It's nowhere near as hard on a tall thin container.
I wonder what would happen, though, if they took it to the extreme and had a very tall and thin container. My guess would be that you would again find over indulgence simply because the container dimentions are outside what people are used to.
Where can I sign up for the study?
No, the system I have in mind is really simple but I forgot to mention a section. I suspect that you think the system would be used to check for content correctness but is not. It's there just for sanity checks to stop trolls. 99.99% of trolling can be spotted by anyone. That tiny fraction of trolling that tries to pass itself off as genuine would probably get through almost any filter.
Each account would have a list of randomly selected edits and additions displayed as a bar on the right of the page with big hints that it would be nice if registered users moderated. No article would be given preference so I don't think any article would get left out. I think there are quite a few people, such as myself, that would welcome the serendipity of coming across an article that we hadn't read before. If I can moderate it at the same time as I read it all the better.
If you are still worried about article never getting moderated then use one of the well known scheduling algorithums for processes that stop starvation. The longer an article has gone unmoderated the higher its chance of appearing in the moderation list on the right hand side.
I agree that all user who want to post should be registered but I think the 6 day cooling off period is going to turn away a lot of people that would otherwise help (me for instance). I have written a couple of articles and edited a few (some edits were to remove abuse). I have done all of that without registering simply because it was quicker but I would still have done it if I had to register first. I wouldn't have done any of it if I had to register and then wait x days simply because that's not how I help with wikipedia. Some people devote hours to writting articles for wikipedia but a lot of us just help out now and then.
If you _really_ want to stop abuse I suggest this method: Everyone has to be registered to write or edit an article. Each account has a score associated with it. New accounts have zero points the top posters have 100. Every time an edit / addition is made it has to be checked and score 200 points to be accepted. Until it is accepted only registered people can view it. Each registered person can vote for the article either + or -. The number of points awarded to or removed from the article is the number of points assiciated with the moderators account. Each time you get an article or edit accepted your account scores one point. Articles that score -200 are removed and 10 points are deducted from the users account. So, for instance, an article could be accepted with as little as 2 votes from top submitters or 200 votes from people with one accepted article. It might slow down the acceptance of articles but it would ensure that there is no trolling and keep the immediacy in it.
I just saw Santa crash! Presents went everywhere and I think Rudolf has a broken leg. Someone was talking about putting him down.
Linux version of the Devil maybe?
Personally I would choose Java but perhaps that's because I ahve made a good living from knowing Java. I don't see either Java or C# really having much impact in Linux anytime soon. Java has issues with deployment in almost every distribution and Mono just isn't there yet.
The problem with the ID card questionaires is that the questions a skewed in favour of getting a yes. They always mention terrorism or organised crime or benifit fraud in the question. Even if the question itself doesn't the media has flooded people minds with the idea that terrorism, crime and fraud can some how be stopped by ID cards. Little to nothing has been said about the possible negative ramifications of wide spread ID cards other than the cost of the scheme. I suspect that is because most media outlets aim at being applicable to everyone, which means pandering to the lowest common demoninator. Difficult to debate topics such as the possibility of sleep walking into a police state and the errosion of civil liberties just get ignored. Perhaps I am paranoid but I would rather an ounce of paranoia now than a million dead should be need to over throw a tyranical government by force.
And finally... quickly think about Nazi germany as portrayed in films. What's one of the main features shown to make you understand it's a highly controlling and manipulative government. It's the constant checking of ID cards. Is this what we want to create?
You have badly missed one of the most fundamental points of democracy. You are correct that in a democracy everyone is allowed their say and the majority rules, however, the majority is not supposed to just trample on the minority. In the case of using the street as a toilet the majority is significantly large that those in the minority can probably be considered in need of help but this is not always the case.
Take, for instance, the ban on fox hunting that has just been passed. Although the majority wanted it banned (for whatever reason) there is a small but significant number of people that consider themselves adversly affected by it. Was it right that maybe a million people had part of their lives outlawed because of the way 20 million other people felt? I would have to argue that it was wrong in that case to go with the majority. If a million people want to do something and it doesn't adversly affect the lives of others then why ban it? The ban on fox hunting was a class thing not a democracy thing. If you are wondering, I would have voted to ban it. The difference, though, is that I would have voted for a ban simply to "stick one" to the toffs who needed bringing down a peg or two. It might not be right but at least I'm honest enough to admit it.
As another example: the UK is likely to get ID cards in the near future. After the government have finished manipulating the statistics they will probably show that 51% of the population are in favour. That's a majority but is it enough to force cards on the 49% who don't want them? What size majority do you need to have before it is morally right to force (persecute) the minority?
Democracy is not as clear cut as simply saying the majority rules. There are issues of fairness and morality that can't be expressed in a simply binary vote.
AIUI at this stage not much really. In fact you could probably go as far as to say nothing. It does mean, though, that in the future it will be much easier to add new features and generally work on the code.
In continuous use for over 20 years, the X Window System provides the only standard platform-independent networked graphical window system bridging the heterogeneous platforms in today's enterprise: from network servers to desktops, thin clients, laptops, and hand-helds, independent of operating system and hardware.
BINGO!
I must be the most unnormal (my new word for the day) person around. I didn't searced for any of those terms in 2005. I don't even know what Ares and Baidu are? Where's Britney in that list anyway. I thought there was some sort of rule that said she always had to win?
Google has lost the plot in their race to get as much money as possible. The only ads I don't block are google text ads simply because they are not overly intrusive and they don't move. If google starts using wide spread static graphical ads I will seriously consider blocking them. If the ads are animated or flash they will most certainly be blocked along with all the other google ads. The collatoral damage for google if a lot of people do this could be huge.
On the flip side though. The way for the advertisers to beat this (and I'm supprised none do this) is to make the ads appear to come from the same domain as the content. It wouldn't be hard to write an ad proxy for a site. The only down side being the extra bandwidth needed. This sort of ad proxying could be very hard to block.
You would gett more karma if you used Calc or gnumeric ;o)
Perhaps now we can get on with writting a free encylopedia rather than arguing about who has the ability to edit pages. I'm surpuised it took them so long to get to this point. If parallels are drawn to software development it would be like letting any Tom, Dick or Harry submit a patch to the kernel, and have it included automatically, regardless of whether it even compiled.
While it would be nice to live in a world where people didn't abuse things like wikipedia that just isn't going to happen. The problem is that a very small number of people can do a lot of damage in a short space of time when it's completely open. I wouldn't be shocked if they moved to a completely moderated system before long.
Yes it might be lawful considering the current state of the law but was it morally right? The law is (or at least is supposed to be) a reflection of the way the people feel about given actions. I can't believe that most people would feel it was right that their conversations were being listened to. I suppose that problem is that most people think it won't happen to them.
I can understand the "it won't happen to be" brigade. I fail completely to understand the "if you've got nothing to hide" brigade though.
Interesting that you should say that (shame you probably won't see this reply too) because when I started getting wrist pain I also put it down to poor muscle tone in the lower arm and started working out. I started by simply using a grip strengthener which really helped and then moved onto more of a full obdy work out. My wrist pain was relieved in about 6 weeks and has never come back (well it did when I stopped exercising for a while but went again almost as soon as I started up again).
I wonder if it was just that I was doing exercise and any old streching / workout would help or if it specifically had something to do with building strength in the lower arm.
That's the count down till Google gets sued over this. Providing access to copyright material? Assisting in conpyright violation.
I would have gone futher with the count down but I seem to remember a very poor song that used those lyrics. I don't want to be next to get sued.
I wonder if it's possible to get RSI from too much one handed typing? The First question would be which wrist gets RSI first?
We should apply for funding to set up a study. No, wait. What am I thinking. We just need to organize a /. poll.
I'm sure this will be mentioned by others I find that the mouse, rather than the keyboard, is the thing that really brings on RSI. I've asked around it seems quite a few people have come to the same conclusion but I've not really heard it mentioned in the press.
...one of the reasons listed isn't going to affect anyone 'round here me thinks.
They could intergrate the special features with FF. Problem solved. It gives them a browser that is undergoing constant free updates and backward compatability. They would, of course, have to write a translation layer (a la nVidia) as I am sure they wouldn't open the source of they fancy extensions.
Maybe we will finally be able to achieve the goal of making a paperless office when e-paper gets good enough. Some how I think the tansition is going to be a long slow and painful one though. I'm guessing the FDT (flattened dead tree) people will go out kicking and screaming much like the current music publishers are. In fact I foresee that it will be even worse than the current music and movie problems simply because it is so much more fundamental a shift. Should be fun to watch though :o)
I wonder if MS is considering opening IE or possibly even giving up on development of it. While you might fall over laughing at that and think "Oh, just another OSS fan boy" here's my reasoning. There is nothing left to fight for in the browser war. MS used the browser to get Windows on every desktop. They have done that now. They won, so why maintain their weapon (IE). In fact just look at the situation they have got themselves into. They didn't want to maintain IE so for x (7 IIRC) years they have just not really touched it. If FF hadn't come along I doubt they would have ever touched it again. After all, it didn't directly make them any money. What good it did to their bottom line had already been done. Personally, I think this update to IE is an egg on face stopper rather than a real update. Once they have done this update they then have a good two or three years to announce that they will no longer be updating IE. The great thing about that from MS's point of view is that they can abandon IE without loosing face.
What would be great is if they stopped development of IE and put some effort into FF. After all they are likely to be playing catch up for ever against FF simply because of the way it is developed and released. The only thing that would stop MS from doing this is pride. They won't admit that OSS can actually produce decent software.
...that thinks two competing document standards isn't a good thing? Yes, I know all the arguments about the competition spawning features and a better product and quite frankly I don't really believe them. As far as I am concerned it will just lead to a situation where I am always playing off the benifits and draw backs of the two formats and trying to guess which one a potential client will want. At least at the moment it's a no brainer. Send it in the latest .doc format or .pdf depending on whether you want the recipient to be ablet o edit the document.
If MSO and OOo have perfect reading and writting capabilities for both formats and both formats are able to produce quality documents (I think that's a given) that it's not a big issue but how would you choose between the two formats. You can't because they would be the same so you might as well roll them into one.
My worst fear is that the two formats will be fundamentally incompatible. That would be like having two incompatible versions of HTML and having to choose your browser based on site.