You totally miss his point. He checked an article which he knew was likely to have a problem based on his experience with Britannica. And indeed found that Wikipedia had a problem. His point was that the millions (well eventually maybe) of junior high students going to wiki as an authoritative source for their school reports would have no way of knowing the article is wrong. In addition, how many other countless articles, that he doesn't know anything about and hasn't checked, are also wrong.
If Mr. McHenry's problems with wikipedia was just that this one article has an error, you would be correct, however, he is pointing out that the problem is endemic to the literature form, and that without a staff responsible for researching and verifying the accuracy of all of the articles, and held accountable for that accuracy, there is no way that wikipedia should ever be used as an authoritative source for formal research.
I've been an Opera user since Netscape came out with the first release of Communicator. Communicator blew even worse than IE, and Opera was new, stable and beautiful.
When Mozilla started releasing non-Netscape browsers, with each new major release I tried it out. It never came close to the then current version of Opera I was using. I tried Firewhatever back at version 0.4 when I first heard of it, and again at 0.7 and it still couldn't compete, even with the extensions available at the time.
I am now using Firefox 1.0 on all of my machines as my main browser. Admittedly it is slower than Opera on rendering, but usually not noticably and never annoyingly so. It also takes about 30 minutes to an hour dredging through the extensions at Texturizer and Mozilla on initial installation, but in the end it nearly duplicates everything in Opera, while providing some customization features that Opera does not.
In the end I switched between Opera 7.54 and Firefox 1.0PR for about a week before finally deciding I liked Firefox as well/better and made the switch.
Firefox Pros: Open Source - Support the community if you feel that is an important goal. Extensions - these are a fantastic idea and lead to some much better and more customizable implementations than Opera's monolithic structure. Some extensions that provide functionality not available (natively) in Opera: Adblock - It just rocks! Usually, I don't mind ads on pages, I figure it helps the website pay the bills to bring the information to me for free, but flashing, animated, annoying ads really tick me off. With Opera I would just keep a mental list of websites not to go back to. With Firefox, I just block the ad server. Linkification - For all those idiot web authors that can't figure out the "a" tag. Context Highlight - Woot! Have you ever used Goolge cache, just to get the words you were looking for highlighted on a long page of text? This extension is everything you ever wanted. DICT - highlight a word and get a pop-up window with the definition. DictionarySearch if you prefer a new Tab rather than a pop-up. Both highly configurable. In Browser handling for BugMeNot, tinyurl, and RSS feeds.
Firefox Cons: Extensions - just like sourceforge, freeware websites, etc., anybody and everybody can load their own homegrown POS and give it a glowing description. You can download what is most popular, but actually figuring out what you want and what the best extension to meet your goals will be is a real pain. In Opera mouse gestures just work. In Firefox there are at least five different extensions that provide mouse gesture functionality, all of them slightly different, some of them highly annyoing. God help you if you load two extensions both trying to do the same thing (i.e. some of the tab browsing extensions). Also new releases of FF may break your old extensions, causing minor havoc until the extension writer updates their portion of the code.
Opera Pros: It just works - One of the most important factors generally to me. I'll spend a month tinkering with something I'm interested in, but if I don't want to tinker with something I want it to work out of the box. Fast - Opera renders pages somewhat faster than Firefox. Opera default loads into memory slower than FF default, but FF takes longer once you add all the extensions to get similar functionality. Support - Opera has professional, intelligent support that can help you deal with any problems. Firefox support is OK for the default, although you are still likely to get an RTFM or flame on some of the support boards, and support for extensions ranges from very good support by caring authors that really want to make their extension better/ to STFU you $*&! luzer if you don't like how I programmed it write one yourself/ to non-existant.
I submit that this is more an example of incredibly stupid and short-sighted economic policies, rather than a reason to keep increasing the population. If you keep following your line of reasoning, the U.S. will never get itself out of the trap that it is in. It is physically improbable, and historically impossible to maintain the level of population and economic growth to meet the demands we are placing on future generations. If we continue the current fiscal policies there will inevitably be a catastrophic crash (ex. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
The only intelligent solution is to start living within our means and paying off our debt. There is a certain amount of government debt that is beneficial to the economy, just as there is a certain level of unemployment, inflation, etc. that shows signs of a healthy economy. If any of those, or other, factors get wildly out of line it affects the others in a drastically detrimental way. Back in 1996, when we elected a Republican congress and they signed the "Contract with America" (anyone else remember that?), the Republicans forced a balanced budget (though they conveniently failed on making it a Constitutional Amendment) hoping that the resulting drop in government spending and social programs would infuriate and/or discourage the Democrat base and bleed enough people off to elect a Republican. They got thier wish and Bush, Jr. was elected. At that point everyone in congress and the media had a massive attack of amnesia and completely forgot the contract. The outrageous overspending and lack of fiscal responsibility since then was, on its own, enough for me to vow to vote anti-republican this past election.
I'm a designer, and the understanding in packaging is, that saving resources upfront (minimal packaging) is much, much more effective than say recycling.
If package designers have this wonderful understanding, then why does most of the software I buy in stores come on a CD in a little paper envelope, a 5-page 4"x6" manual that basically tells me to put the CD in the drive on my computer, and that's it. All surrounded by a box 8"x6"x1.5"? And it costs $100+, but that's another subject.
Yeah. I also have no information on who sponsors this kind of research in the first place. If perhaps it were a major chemical company, who manufacturers artificial preservatives.... pure speculation, but then I'm a continually disappointed optimist.
But, according to data gathered by Cassini, the particles that make up the cloud are too big to be methane.
"I don't believe it," says Chris McKay, a planetary scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "What else can they be? It would be like flying over Earth and saying the clouds are not water. If those clouds are really not methane, then a lot of the things we think about Titan are wrong. A lot of things we think about those clouds are wrong - the whole explanation of why they're there."
Had the clouds been found to be methane, it wouldn't have made the news. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that have been noticed so far that do fit the theories and the scientists just shrug and make another check mark on the clipboard.
B.S. Your Precinct Number is clearly printed on your Texas voter registration card. Just above the line where your signature goes is your Name and address, and above that are six pieces of information in boxes. These are clearly labeled Cert. No., Gender, Date of Birth, Prec. No, and valid from and thru. Across the top of your voter registration card is the 1-800 number for the Texas Secretary of State office and the website for that office. Your county voter registrar is also listed at the top of your voter registration card with their address, telephone number, and website (if any). Also, a quick Google for texas voting gives the Secretary of State website as the first hit. From the site:
Answers to questions on election law and procedures may be obtained by telephoning the Elections Division toll-free at 1.800.252.VOTE (8683) or direct at 512.463.5650.
Also,
In person - Call your County Clerk or Elections Administrator for early voting dates, hours and places. By mail - If you will be: (1) out of the county during early voting and on Election Day; (2) age 65 or older; (3) sick or disabled; or (4) confined to jail, call the Elections Administrator in charge of the particular election and ask him to send you an application for a ballot by mail. Or, you may request one from the Secretary of State's Office at 1.800.252.VOTE (8683), or on-line
This pamphlet is available in Spanish, large print, audiotape, or computer disc upon request.
(Este folleto está disponible en Español, tipo de imprenta más grande, cinta magnética para audio, o disco para computadora. Para conseguir una de estas versiones por favor llame sin cargo a la oficina del Secretario de Estado al 1.800.252.VOTE (8683)).
SECRETARY OF STATE Elections Division P.O. Box 12060 Austin, Texas 78711-2060 512.463.5650 or 1.800.252.VOTE (8683) Fax 512.475.2811 TTY 7.1.1 www.sos.state.tx.us
FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION 999 E Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20463 1.800.424.9530 www.fec.gov
TEXAS REPUBLICAN PARTY 900 Congress Avenue, Suite 300 Austin, Texas 78701 512.477.9821 www.texasgop.org
TEXAS DEMOCRATIC PARTY 701 Rio Grande Austin, Texas 78701 512.478.9800 www.txdemocrats.org
LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF TEXAS P.O. Box 56426 Houston, Texas 77256-6426 1.800.422.1776 www.tx.lp.org
GREEN PARTY OF TEXAS 818 W. 31st Street Houston, Texas 77018 713.866.6285 www.hcgp.org
If you can't figure out where and when to vote with all of these information sources, I have serious reservations about your ability to make an informed choice when casting your vote.
I read that as combine shopping not just with sex, but with political subject matter.
Now the first two no problem, but now I have this mental image of paying certain major political candidates for sex that I can't get out of my head. Of course, we'll get screwed in the end anyway...
I once read a study (my bookmarked link seems to be dead) that reviewed most of the studies on cancer preventative diets. You know the fish oil/olive oil/red wine/etc. reports. The researchers pointed out that all of the reasons each of these foods had been studied was because they were primary dietary components of groups of people with low cancer rates, compared to American society. When they started correlating factors the big commonality they found was that most of these societies used an extremely low amount of preservatives in their diet, with almost no artificial preservatives consumed at all. Through the data gathered by the other studies, and logical explanation of how preservatives work and the effect they probably have when induced into a living organism, they were able to convincingly postulate that what may be driving the high incidents of cancer in the western world, particularly the U.S., could be the massive amounts of preservatives the typical "modern world" person consumes over their lifetime.
At the time this was published there was quite a bit of talk about it on some of the research biology mailing lists. One of the students working for the main researchers posted some comments that the grant request to study the possible harmful effects of artificial preservatives had been turned down by their university. One of the reasons given was that the ability to preserve food for long periods was essential to modern food distribution methods, and if preservatives ended up having to be banned or heavily regulated as cancer causing agents it could mean mass starvation and worse health problems from food spoilage. To date I still have not seen any large scale or in depth studies on the cancer causing potential of artificial preservatives when taken in large quantities over a period of years.
If you read my original post it said nothing about personal responsibility. I totally agree that people should accept personal responsibility. Unfotunately, niether I, you, nor either of our governments can force that to happen.
The problem of people sueing because they hurt themselves doing something stupid is a bad one, and tort reform can do wonders to limit that kind of abuse. What most of this thread is discussing, however, is the potential for someone to do something very stupid with the tools made available to them and causing great harm, or ruining, other, innocent lives. I don't know how it is in other countries, but here, it is all too common for the most irresponsible portion of society (who amazingly enough also tend not to carry insurance) to be the cause of many accidents. In most states, vehicular manslaughter (i.e. running over a 2 year old while you're busy talking on a cell phone) has a maximum sentance of 5 years in prison. In reality, that generally means for a first offender 2 years probation and time served during the trial. If it were your 2 year old, the driver had no insurance to even help pay for funeral expenses, let alone medical expenses prior to death, would that satisfy you? If not, what would you do? The only legal action available in the U.S. is to sue someone. Generally sue someone who, hurting them in the pocket book, might force changes to reduce the chance of anything like that happening again.
Have the most wonderful and insightful governments of Austrailia, Europe, Asia, or Canada found another alternative to offer their citizens? Or do people just not care enough to actually take action against a great injustice?
So, just as an aside, what does the typical euro-asia-etc-ian do when their 3 y.o. is run over by an automatic parking car, or is killed by someone sniping eBay as they do 50 kph down a residential street? Do you just accept it as a bad deal and move on? Just accept that the loser who killed your child has enough insurance to cover your loss? Accept that whatever jail term they are given is enough payment for your dead child?
Do you decide that the manufacturer of a system that common sense shows as dangerous has no responsibility? That a company that installs aftermarket add-ons that are likely to be misused is "just doing business"?
Say you (or your sister) were a pregnant college girl walking in to get an abortion, and the local "right-to-life"thugs decided to video tape you and use that to identify and/or harass you.
Oh, you agree with the right-to-life thugs? Well what if the abortion clinic uses the same cameras to video tape and identify you and sends some pro-choice thugs over to firebomb your favorite church. Or gives the video to the police to "investigate" you.
Any technology is likely to be misused by people wanting to discredit, harass, or abuse their enemies.
It's so much easier if "They" can just model you on a mainframe, debit your account, and ship you whatever it is you're supposed to buy from them next,
Gee...sounds just like my Columbia House Music subscription. Although it is better now, than when they used to mail me LPs every month that had to be mailed back to them...
No because in George Lucas's new release the young idealistic Bush is actually turned to the dark side and joins evil emporer Ashcroft (look at who's been in power in the government longer if you think I have that backwards).
And Colin Powell shoots first.
Hmmm... Jenna and her sister in leather loin cloths and brass bikini tops? Laura painted blue and singing to Rush Limbaugh....
We've completely moved past the "find dirt on the opponent" stage an moved on to "make unlikely sh*t up and advertise it a lot, really loudly" stage.
This gets that portion of the world's population that slavishly agrees with your points all fired up, so you can point all of them out to the undecided masses of sheep and say "Look this many people can't be wrong. Agree with my policies!" The realatively low number of people who actually think critically about all the information they hear are already in the opposite camp, or are in yours, but willing to overlook your wild claims because of thier own convictions.
Slashdot Mirror
You totally miss his point. He checked an article which he knew was likely to have a problem based on his experience with Britannica. And indeed found that Wikipedia had a problem. His point was that the millions (well eventually maybe) of junior high students going to wiki as an authoritative source for their school reports would have no way of knowing the article is wrong. In addition, how many other countless articles, that he doesn't know anything about and hasn't checked, are also wrong.
If Mr. McHenry's problems with wikipedia was just that this one article has an error, you would be correct, however, he is pointing out that the problem is endemic to the literature form, and that without a staff responsible for researching and verifying the accuracy of all of the articles, and held accountable for that accuracy, there is no way that wikipedia should ever be used as an authoritative source for formal research.
I've been an Opera user since Netscape came out with the first release of Communicator. Communicator blew even worse than IE, and Opera was new, stable and beautiful.
When Mozilla started releasing non-Netscape browsers, with each new major release I tried it out. It never came close to the then current version of Opera I was using. I tried Firewhatever back at version 0.4 when I first heard of it, and again at 0.7 and it still couldn't compete, even with the extensions available at the time.
I am now using Firefox 1.0 on all of my machines as my main browser. Admittedly it is slower than Opera on rendering, but usually not noticably and never annoyingly so. It also takes about 30 minutes to an hour dredging through the extensions at Texturizer and Mozilla on initial installation, but in the end it nearly duplicates everything in Opera, while providing some customization features that Opera does not.
In the end I switched between Opera 7.54 and Firefox 1.0PR for about a week before finally deciding I liked Firefox as well/better and made the switch.
Firefox Pros:
Open Source - Support the community if you feel that is an important goal.
Extensions - these are a fantastic idea and lead to some much better and more customizable implementations than Opera's monolithic structure.
Some extensions that provide functionality not available (natively) in Opera:
Adblock - It just rocks! Usually, I don't mind ads on pages, I figure it helps the website pay the bills to bring the information to me for free, but flashing, animated, annoying ads really tick me off. With Opera I would just keep a mental list of websites not to go back to. With Firefox, I just block the ad server.
Linkification - For all those idiot web authors that can't figure out the "a" tag.
Context Highlight - Woot! Have you ever used Goolge cache, just to get the words you were looking for highlighted on a long page of text? This extension is everything you ever wanted.
DICT - highlight a word and get a pop-up window with the definition. DictionarySearch if you prefer a new Tab rather than a pop-up. Both highly configurable.
In Browser handling for BugMeNot, tinyurl, and RSS feeds.
Firefox Cons:
Extensions - just like sourceforge, freeware websites, etc., anybody and everybody can load their own homegrown POS and give it a glowing description. You can download what is most popular, but actually figuring out what you want and what the best extension to meet your goals will be is a real pain. In Opera mouse gestures just work. In Firefox there are at least five different extensions that provide mouse gesture functionality, all of them slightly different, some of them highly annyoing. God help you if you load two extensions both trying to do the same thing (i.e. some of the tab browsing extensions). Also new releases of FF may break your old extensions, causing minor havoc until the extension writer updates their portion of the code.
Opera Pros:
It just works - One of the most important factors generally to me. I'll spend a month tinkering with something I'm interested in, but if I don't want to tinker with something I want it to work out of the box.
Fast - Opera renders pages somewhat faster than Firefox. Opera default loads into memory slower than FF default, but FF takes longer once you add all the extensions to get similar functionality.
Support - Opera has professional, intelligent support that can help you deal with any problems. Firefox support is OK for the default, although you are still likely to get an RTFM or flame on some of the support boards, and support for extensions ranges from very good support by caring authors that really want to make their extension better/ to STFU you $*&! luzer if you don't like how I programmed it write one yourself/ to non-existant.
Opera Cons:
Shhhhhh!!!!!!! My wife might hear you.
I'll wait till the Transcender's come out for it before I attempt it... Is there a Boot Camp training being offered for it yet?
I submit that this is more an example of incredibly stupid and short-sighted economic policies, rather than a reason to keep increasing the population. If you keep following your line of reasoning, the U.S. will never get itself out of the trap that it is in. It is physically improbable, and historically impossible to maintain the level of population and economic growth to meet the demands we are placing on future generations. If we continue the current fiscal policies there will inevitably be a catastrophic crash (ex. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
The only intelligent solution is to start living within our means and paying off our debt. There is a certain amount of government debt that is beneficial to the economy, just as there is a certain level of unemployment, inflation, etc. that shows signs of a healthy economy. If any of those, or other, factors get wildly out of line it affects the others in a drastically detrimental way. Back in 1996, when we elected a Republican congress and they signed the "Contract with America" (anyone else remember that?), the Republicans forced a balanced budget (though they conveniently failed on making it a Constitutional Amendment) hoping that the resulting drop in government spending and social programs would infuriate and/or discourage the Democrat base and bleed enough people off to elect a Republican. They got thier wish and Bush, Jr. was elected. At that point everyone in congress and the media had a massive attack of amnesia and completely forgot the contract. The outrageous overspending and lack of fiscal responsibility since then was, on its own, enough for me to vow to vote anti-republican this past election.
Said it before, I'll say it again...
Training smarter sheep is not in the best interest of the sheperd.
He didn't change accents... that was the fine British engineered voice box he used as part of the Vader helmet.
If package designers have this wonderful understanding, then why does most of the software I buy in stores come on a CD in a little paper envelope, a 5-page 4"x6" manual that basically tells me to put the CD in the drive on my computer, and that's it. All surrounded by a box 8"x6"x1.5"? And it costs $100+, but that's another subject.
Plants have a cow? Now that's some major radiation induced mutation...
Yeah. I also have no information on who sponsors this kind of research in the first place. If perhaps it were a major chemical company, who manufacturers artificial preservatives.... pure speculation, but then I'm a continually disappointed optimist.
From the article:
Had the clouds been found to be methane, it wouldn't have made the news. I'm sure there are hundreds of things that have been noticed so far that do fit the theories and the scientists just shrug and make another check mark on the clipboard.
B.S. Your Precinct Number is clearly printed on your Texas voter registration card. Just above the line where your signature goes is your Name and address, and above that are six pieces of information in boxes. These are clearly labeled Cert. No., Gender, Date of Birth, Prec. No, and valid from and thru. Across the top of your voter registration card is the 1-800 number for the Texas Secretary of State office and the website for that office. Your county voter registrar is also listed at the top of your voter registration card with their address, telephone number, and website (if any). Also, a quick Google for texas voting gives the Secretary of State website as the first hit. From the site:
Also,
If you can't figure out where and when to vote with all of these information sources, I have serious reservations about your ability to make an informed choice when casting your vote.
Its been a long day...
I read that as combine shopping not just with sex, but with political subject matter.
Now the first two no problem, but now I have this mental image of paying certain major political candidates for sex that I can't get out of my head. Of course, we'll get screwed in the end anyway...
I once read a study (my bookmarked link seems to be dead) that reviewed most of the studies on cancer preventative diets. You know the fish oil/olive oil/red wine/etc. reports. The researchers pointed out that all of the reasons each of these foods had been studied was because they were primary dietary components of groups of people with low cancer rates, compared to American society. When they started correlating factors the big commonality they found was that most of these societies used an extremely low amount of preservatives in their diet, with almost no artificial preservatives consumed at all. Through the data gathered by the other studies, and logical explanation of how preservatives work and the effect they probably have when induced into a living organism, they were able to convincingly postulate that what may be driving the high incidents of cancer in the western world, particularly the U.S., could be the massive amounts of preservatives the typical "modern world" person consumes over their lifetime.
At the time this was published there was quite a bit of talk about it on some of the research biology mailing lists. One of the students working for the main researchers posted some comments that the grant request to study the possible harmful effects of artificial preservatives had been turned down by their university. One of the reasons given was that the ability to preserve food for long periods was essential to modern food distribution methods, and if preservatives ended up having to be banned or heavily regulated as cancer causing agents it could mean mass starvation and worse health problems from food spoilage. To date I still have not seen any large scale or in depth studies on the cancer causing potential of artificial preservatives when taken in large quantities over a period of years.
If you read my original post it said nothing about personal responsibility. I totally agree that people should accept personal responsibility. Unfotunately, niether I, you, nor either of our governments can force that to happen.
The problem of people sueing because they hurt themselves doing something stupid is a bad one, and tort reform can do wonders to limit that kind of abuse. What most of this thread is discussing, however, is the potential for someone to do something very stupid with the tools made available to them and causing great harm, or ruining, other, innocent lives. I don't know how it is in other countries, but here, it is all too common for the most irresponsible portion of society (who amazingly enough also tend not to carry insurance) to be the cause of many accidents. In most states, vehicular manslaughter (i.e. running over a 2 year old while you're busy talking on a cell phone) has a maximum sentance of 5 years in prison. In reality, that generally means for a first offender 2 years probation and time served during the trial. If it were your 2 year old, the driver had no insurance to even help pay for funeral expenses, let alone medical expenses prior to death, would that satisfy you? If not, what would you do? The only legal action available in the U.S. is to sue someone. Generally sue someone who, hurting them in the pocket book, might force changes to reduce the chance of anything like that happening again.
Have the most wonderful and insightful governments of Austrailia, Europe, Asia, or Canada found another alternative to offer their citizens? Or do people just not care enough to actually take action against a great injustice?
So, just as an aside, what does the typical euro-asia-etc-ian do when their 3 y.o. is run over by an automatic parking car, or is killed by someone sniping eBay as they do 50 kph down a residential street? Do you just accept it as a bad deal and move on? Just accept that the loser who killed your child has enough insurance to cover your loss? Accept that whatever jail term they are given is enough payment for your dead child?
Do you decide that the manufacturer of a system that common sense shows as dangerous has no responsibility? That a company that installs aftermarket add-ons that are likely to be misused is "just doing business"?
Just wondering.
Actually a better, far more realistic scenario...
Say you (or your sister) were a pregnant college girl walking in to get an abortion, and the local "right-to-life"thugs decided to video tape you and use that to identify and/or harass you.
Oh, you agree with the right-to-life thugs? Well what if the abortion clinic uses the same cameras to video tape and identify you and sends some pro-choice thugs over to firebomb your favorite church. Or gives the video to the police to "investigate" you.
Any technology is likely to be misused by people wanting to discredit, harass, or abuse their enemies.
Because VHS is so much easier to say than Beta, and who will ever remember what that silly H stands for...
Agreed. Not to mention the fact that apparently nobody thought to test the components before they assembled and certified them?
Why wait? They could do it now with the RFID in $20 bills. Hey, by counting number of unique IDs, they could target only wealthy Americans.
*AARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!*
Funny, I always have that reaction to Vogon Poetry.
Gee...sounds just like my Columbia House Music subscription. Although it is better now, than when they used to mail me LPs every month that had to be mailed back to them...
No because in George Lucas's new release the young idealistic Bush is actually turned to the dark side and joins evil emporer Ashcroft (look at who's been in power in the government longer if you think I have that backwards).
And Colin Powell shoots first.
Hmmm... Jenna and her sister in leather loin cloths and brass bikini tops? Laura painted blue and singing to Rush Limbaugh....
And what, pray tell, is your secret that is going to keep you from getting tagged and tracked like the rest of the sheeple?
BTW, I totally agree with your post.
Haven't you been paying attention?
We've completely moved past the "find dirt on the opponent" stage an moved on to "make unlikely sh*t up and advertise it a lot, really loudly" stage.
This gets that portion of the world's population that slavishly agrees with your points all fired up, so you can point all of them out to the undecided masses of sheep and say "Look this many people can't be wrong. Agree with my policies!" The realatively low number of people who actually think critically about all the information they hear are already in the opposite camp, or are in yours, but willing to overlook your wild claims because of thier own convictions.