First, I'll admit that I might be a bit of a Mac "fanboy". I don't think I'm irrational, but I do like Macintoshes quite a lot these days. To put it in perspective, I spent most of my life using Windows and thinks anyone who was a an of Apple in the '90s was an absolute head-case. However, these days they're basically the same hardware as the other guys, a form of Unix, and a nice GUI. They're hands-down the easiest desktop operating system to set up and maintain on a small/medium scale. (I've never managed a huge network by myself, so I won't speak to that)
Anyway, now that I've given a hint of a background, I'll state for the record that I don't think Microsoft needs to die. I hope they don't die. I'm not looking for more software monoculture and fewer choices, so we don't need to get rid of Microsoft. However, Microsoft does need some healthy competition. They need someone to keep them honest. Microsoft needs market pressures to force them to use open standards and open formats. They need to start playing well with others, and they need an economic incentive to put the needs of their customers at the forefront.
Regarding copying, you're right, and I've never understood the complaint. Microsoft copied from Apple, and Apple copied from Microsoft. Gnome and KDE copied both of them, and they both copied Xerox and any other company that came along with a good idea. Is that a problem?
I really don't know why people would complain about this sort of copying. Some implementations might be better than others, but if you think you can use an already-existing interface convention to make your interface better, use it! For the whole of human history, people have been taking the best ideas they could find and trying to put those ideas together in better ways. That's progress. That's what people should be doing.
Microsoft shouldn't be too worried until Apple begins to sell OS X for installation on hardware besides theirs
If their smart, they'll worry much before that. First, unless you're some sort of a Mac-ophobe, there isn't a real reason why you can't buy a Mac if you want to run OSX. You can buy one machine and gain the ability to run OSX, Windows, Linux, and whatever else runs on x86 hardware (EFI aside). Contrary to what you hear, Macs aren't really expensive for what you get, so if Apple gets some more market segmentation, most of the reasons to buy a Dell with fall away. The only market they'll be missing are the homebrew people, which is a market I'm sure Apple can live without.
And, of course, Apple doesn't need to get a majority market-share in order to be a danger to Microsoft. It's sufficient that people will start saying, "So why doesn't Windows let me do [such-and-such]?" Microsoft has relied on vendor lock-in for years, and any competitor gaining even a significant market share means that there will be market forces for them to open up a little more. To explain it a different way, if you see Macs creep into everyday life a bit more, you'll find a lot more heterogeneous environments. If Microsoft doesn't use open standards in order to interoperate with Macs, it will be clear that they are blocking productivity and the people maintaining those environments will be more likely to choose something more open.
So, in this sense, a single Unix-y alternative OS getting through the doors will probably open the door for others to come in, too. By gaining 10-15% market share, Apple might actually increase Linux adoption as well.
Right now, Microsoft is feeling pressure on many fronts to use open standards and open formats, and that can only be a good thing.
But those drivers are certified by Microsoft, not HP. I've actually had Microsoft certified drivers bring a system down, since the hardware was actually a slightly different model than the disk controller that Microsoft certified, and installing the new driver meant that Windows had trouble accessing the disks.
Ok, I'm actually surprised it took this long for someone to pick up on that. What I mean is: How do you know anything about the American Revolution? Inevitably, you're relying on someone's account. Even if an event was well-documented at the time, you're still relying on that account to be authentic, honest, and accurate.
That's not to say that it won't be. God, you'd have to be completely paranoid to distrust everything. However, most of our knowledge of history comes from text books, historians, teachers, parents, etc. Hardly first-hand accounts, and first-hand accounts aren't even 100% accurate.
Now let's move to math and science. Of all the math you use and claim to know, how much of it have you, personally, proven? Of all the things you know about the universe, how much have you observed? Do you believe in the Big Bang? Did you observe it? Have you yourself done all the math required to demonstrate the Big Bang?
Even when scientists have made the proofs themselves, they're often relying on other mathematical/scientific proofs/theorems they have not done themselves.
This is not all bad. We can only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Still, it's worth noting. Try paying attention, listening to yourself talk, and listening to yourself think. When you make a statement, ask yourself, "How do I know that? How am I sure?" If you do this strictly for even a short amount of time, you'll begin to realize that the amount of knowledge you have from first-hand experience is minuscule when compared to the number of facts you know from, "what you've heard" and "what you've been told". Just think of all the things you know because it was on TV, on the news, on the Discovery Channel, or in a book. All the things that you have no proof of other than "everyone knows that," or "they've proven that," and you never heard anyone dispute it.
I know, if you're reading this you might be thinking, "But I could test it. I could go witness it first-hand. I could do the mathematical proof. I could repeat the experiment." But you didn't. You believed it all anyway, without the witness, without the proof, without the experiment. Because you believe it, you assume that you could verify it for yourself, but you believed it first. You believed it because someone who's supposed to know about these things told you.
To relate this back to the Wikipedia, I think the most important thing is to have some sort of citation, in case someone actually wants to know where the information came from. The person who posted the information and gave the citation, however, is less important.
My point was, and still is, doing verification on an ISP-level on a one-service-at-a-time basis is a completely worthless system
It's not completely worthless if it stops PayPal phishing. A large percentage of phishing that goes on is pretending to be PayPal or Ebay.
Or you're going to have a whole bunch of individual services all trying to get all of the ISPs to provide authentication for their crap
Not "provide authentication". They're not asking ISPs to devise an authentication service. The service exists. The key thing is that they're asking everyone to refuse messages that aren't authenticated.
The key thing here is that it sounds like PayPal is, in fact, pledging to ISPs that they will be signing all of their valid e-mail. Most ISPs and businesses would *LOVE* to be able to reject all unsigned e-mail in order to cut out spam and phishing. The problem with refusing unsigned e-mail is that most individuals and businesses don't sign their e-mail. If PayPal only signed a portion of their official e-mail and an ISP started rejecting all unsigned e-mail, that ISP would start receiving complaints both from it's customers and from PayPal. However, if PayPal pledges to sign all valid e-mail and asks ISPs to block all unsigned e-mails, it will allow ISPs and businesses to easily filter the phishing attempts without any fear of losing valid e-mail.
What the hell is a debate doing in an encyclopedia?
It's going on behind the scenes. The Wikipedia allows people to propose changes and talk about the changes that have been made. For example, here is the discussion page on "debate". You think this is wrong? Don't you think that the writers and editors of print encyclopedias discuss the content of the encyclopedia?
I'm not sure, but it's possible the idea might fight entropy. If an article degrades over time, there doesn't need to be anything forcing the editor of the "stable" version to take the new edits. The editor could pick and choose the new information as it's added and backport it (so to speak) to the old version.
Yes, I do agree though that poor writing is a problem, which is why I wonder whether this focus on "experts" might be heading in the wrong direction. I don't really know, but someone has suggested to me that a "stable" Wikipedia fork idea would be better served by having the editors be fact-checkers and copy-editors than by having them be high-level experts in the subject of the article. I think this is at least an interesting idea.
What part of "So yes" didn't you understand? I acknowledged that what you were saying was true, but that you missed the point. That's not a straw-man tactic.
Personally, I've been in favor of suggestions that the Wikipedia divides into "stable" and "unstable" branches, similar to what software developers do. The "unstable" branch would be the Wikipedia as it is today, and would constantly have new/updated pages. The "stable" branch would be a bit more restricted, with editing rights possibly restricted to long-time trusted Wikipedia contributers for editing.
The "stable" branch wouldn't even necessarily need to be edited for accuracy by people with great expertise in the subject. It would be enough to do some fact checking, editing the articles for spelling/grammar, and filtering some of the contentiousness of controversial subjects. Occasionally, articles just aren't even consistent or cohesive. You really get the feeling that it has been written by different authors with different agendas, and in those cases a decent copy editor might help.
However, even if such a step were taken, I think it's important to retain a version of the Wikipedia that's a bit of a free-for-all. It may not result in the most reliable source of information, but it certainly has its virtues.
No, it's more like expecting people to call up the police department to confirm that the IDs of the people claiming to be police agents are valid
I'll tell you what: if there were a band of impostor police running around town robbing people, and the police department requested that you call them for verification before allowing police officers into your home, I would be willing to do that. When you consider the alternative making the phone call isn't so bad. Are you telling me that when the police came to your door, you'd just let them in because you're too lazy to make the phone call?!
Actually, there is little relationship between epistemic issues in wikipedia and appeal to authority fallacy. That fallacy requires inference from "Authority X says Y" to "Y is true." However, it is not fallacious to put higher degrees of belief into a genuine authority's claim than just any old person you find on the street...
I am in less good of a position to judge claims about physics than Hawking, my students are in a less good position to judge the quality of philosophical arguments than I am, and so on.
I think you miss the point. In cases where two opposing claims cannot be verified through any means other than authority, then it is an exercise in good judgement to believe the person who is supposed to have greater expertise. However, whichever authority you believe, the authority of that person alone is not sufficient grounds for an argument of validity to that claim.
So, yes, if I'm supposed to simply believe a philosophical argument on the grounds that some person "says so", then it is better to believe the "expert". However, if you believe philosophical arguments are supposed to be taken on authority, then it would be foolish to take your word on any of it. If you present a good philosophical argument, it should be able to stand on its own, regardless of who first formulated it. Trying to use your own supposed authority as grounds for an argument is exactly an "appeal to authority".
Now those are with arguments, but what of bare facts? Again, it would be better if the validity of facts were not taken on authority of Wikipedia authors themselves, but instead if there were citations to disclose where the fact came from, so that the sources themselves can be judged. In the discussions over revisions, at no point should the author's identity have any bearing. If they cannot cite a reliable source and they cannot present an argument, saying, "But I'm a PhD," should not rescue their position in our eyes.
But then they'd have equal access to unlimited pennies, and they would make a similar deal with someone else to shovel the unlimited pennies. This chain would continue until everyone had access to the pennies, and because of this, the pennies would be worthless, and no one would ever shovel them.
They don't forget how to do that when they turn on their computers.
People forget all sorts of things when they turn on their computers. Or even when they step into a conversation that isn't strictly job-related. Or have you really never been in an internet conversation where, at some point, someone claims to have some academic position and tries to use that backing for for their claims, without offering arguments or evidence?
If I were taking this discussion more seriously, I could probably cite evidence of this on Slashdot. However, anything I cited would be pretty anecdotal anyhow, and I assume others have enough experience of this on their own to draw on.
Of course it's a marketing move. Gmail's 2GB was also a marketing move. Many people won't fill 20 MB of e-mail in a year, but they'll still switch to a provider that offers large/unlimited mailboxes just so that they don't have to worry about running out of space.
You're absolutely correct to say that no one should take the Wikipedia as an authoritative scholarly source. I've always said this. The unfortunate fact of the Wikipedia's setup is that there is no way to be sure that any given fact in any given article at any given time isn't flat-out wrong. The setup of the Wikipedia isn't to prevent errors from ever existing in the Wikipedia, but rather to hope that the errors eventually get corrected.
However, I think you're wrong to say that it's only "fun". The fact is that, if you look up any given topic in the Wikipedia, most of the time it's *close*. The details may be off, and some things may be a bit misleading, but it's usually not way off in left field. Go ahead, pick a topic you actually know something about and look it up. Mostly, you'll get some information that, at the very least, is a decent overview for someone who knows little/nothing about the topic.
It may not be perfect, but it is a fantastic source for information. It shouldn't be your last stop for information if you intend to do scholarly research, but if you're looking into a subject that you know very little about, it's a decent place to start.
You know, I really don't think it matters whether the owners are old, rich, or white, but I think you are onto an insightful issue. The real issue is that these media companies are built to be a method of disseminating information, and the people who are making careers in these companies view themselves in a particular way. They seem to want to think that they're the real source of information, and that they have a mission to make the world see things in a particular way.
Whenever you build a system and have people devoting their lives to that system, those people will view opposing systems (or even things outside their system) negatively. There are plenty of people within the big-media system who view the Internet as a threat to their mission. It's an alternative source of information which they don't get to filter, reframe, or control in any way. The most they can do is try to participate, which still puts them on equal footing with some random 14 year-old who just started a weblog. Since they've devoted their lives to the thing, the idea of being put on equal footing with everyday people is insulting.
Yeah, I don't really like the idea of credentials and such. The truth is that the whole topic is much stickier than lots of people want to believe. For example, being a PhD on a subject does not mean that you're unbiased regarding that subject. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of being wrong about that subject. It doesn't mean that there aren't non-PhDs who know more than you do.
"Facts" are often more complicated than they seem. One way or another, we can usually trace most of our knowledge back to some authority figure telling us, and we accept a lot based on authority. However, "authority" can easily be wrong, and often is. I actually rather like the idea of Wikipedia contributions being relatively anonymous. "Appeal to authority" is listed among "logical fallacies" for a reason. If your point is good, if you're correct and you have the background to argue your point well, then a know-nothing shouldn't be able to stand against you in a debate. If you can't debate your point, and you need to fall back on, "I'm a professor at [such-and-such] College!" then you probably don't really know what you're talking about anyway.
Identifying users has a good purpose-- to track who is making good contributions and who is making bad contributions. Citations are useful for determining where information is coming from. But does it really matter who is actually making the contribution? Do we really want the Wikipedia to be based on authority, rather than on demonstrably good information?
I'm not sure how this analogy is relevant. Isn't Paypal asking service providers to block Paypal messages that lack signatures? Wouldn't it be more like: if there were fake police officers going through people's houses and stealing things, and in response then the police department asked citizens not to let police officers into their houses unless those police carried some kind of official ID.
Really, go back and check the financials from right after Katrina, you'll see a ton of discussion by economists about sudden fuel cost spikes and who gets harmed the most from it the quickest. Independent truck drivers are another group...
Exactly. FedEx (and the like) as well as *truckers*. Big companies who do their own shipping weren't hardest hit because they have other profits to eat the cost of a temporary spike is costs, but shipping became more expensive all around.
They're doing a decent enough job of filtering those people out already. Look, you have to know quite a bit about computers to lie in the way that I'm describing. When they ask you to do something, you need to know what the normal result would be, and what the result would be if you need a specific part replaced. You have to know the approximate timing of things, because if they ask you to reboot, and you immediately say, "Ok, I've rebooted!" they'll know something is up. This move (lying) is strictly for pros, but as a professional, my experience is that sometimes you have to lie.
Sometimes you know what exactly what the problem is and which part is required to fix it, but you have some tech on the phone that wants you to go through stupid trouble-shooting steps. In those cases, lie.
Yes, you might not realize it, but "cool" matters in these markets. You see, these companies aren't generally too concerned with what's convenient for *you*, per se. You might only be interested in whether it's a useful tool for you, but these companies are trying to sell advertising space, which means they need an audience. These video sites are trying to be "the cool place" for people to post their videos, because that brings about a snowball effect: People post on YouTube because it's the "cool" place to post your videos; YouTube ends up with more "cool" content then other video sites; having more "cool" content reenforces the idea that it's the "cool" place to post your videos; and finally, more people post on YouTube because it's the "cool" place to post your videos.
However, through all this, what the owners of the site (in this case, Google) are interested in is all the people coming to YouTube to watch the videos. Google wants an audience for their ads. You only get that audience if you have good content that the audience wants to watch. You only get that "good content" if the people making/posting the content believe it's the "cool" place to post content. Ergo, Google wants their site to be "cool".
As somebody who worked at various helpdesks for a few years as a phone monkey...If you want a Linux notebook, then buy a Linux notebook
As someone who worked at various helpdesks for a few years trying to get support through phone monkeys, I can tell you that the best strategy is to lie:
"Ok, I want you to restart your computer and go to the start menu..."
Instead of saying, "I'm running Linux and don't have a 'start menu'," say, "Ok. Done. Now what?"
He'll continue, "Open notepad, and try typing... bla bla bla."
Just keep saying, "Yeah, ok, I did that..." and when the tech asks you about your results, just say, "Yup, the space bar still isn't working."
The thing is, even when you haven't done anything to void the warranty, the phone monkeys are usually asking you to do completely stupid things. Those "appropriate steps" are usually things that, assuming you know anything about fixing computers, you've already done those steps before you called. You're calling because the damn thing is broken, and we don't need your help diagnosing the problem, we just need the hardware replaced.
Slashdot Mirror
First, I'll admit that I might be a bit of a Mac "fanboy". I don't think I'm irrational, but I do like Macintoshes quite a lot these days. To put it in perspective, I spent most of my life using Windows and thinks anyone who was a an of Apple in the '90s was an absolute head-case. However, these days they're basically the same hardware as the other guys, a form of Unix, and a nice GUI. They're hands-down the easiest desktop operating system to set up and maintain on a small/medium scale. (I've never managed a huge network by myself, so I won't speak to that)
Anyway, now that I've given a hint of a background, I'll state for the record that I don't think Microsoft needs to die. I hope they don't die. I'm not looking for more software monoculture and fewer choices, so we don't need to get rid of Microsoft. However, Microsoft does need some healthy competition. They need someone to keep them honest. Microsoft needs market pressures to force them to use open standards and open formats. They need to start playing well with others, and they need an economic incentive to put the needs of their customers at the forefront.
Regarding copying, you're right, and I've never understood the complaint. Microsoft copied from Apple, and Apple copied from Microsoft. Gnome and KDE copied both of them, and they both copied Xerox and any other company that came along with a good idea. Is that a problem?
I really don't know why people would complain about this sort of copying. Some implementations might be better than others, but if you think you can use an already-existing interface convention to make your interface better, use it! For the whole of human history, people have been taking the best ideas they could find and trying to put those ideas together in better ways. That's progress. That's what people should be doing.
Microsoft shouldn't be too worried until Apple begins to sell OS X for installation on hardware besides theirs
If their smart, they'll worry much before that. First, unless you're some sort of a Mac-ophobe, there isn't a real reason why you can't buy a Mac if you want to run OSX. You can buy one machine and gain the ability to run OSX, Windows, Linux, and whatever else runs on x86 hardware (EFI aside). Contrary to what you hear, Macs aren't really expensive for what you get, so if Apple gets some more market segmentation, most of the reasons to buy a Dell with fall away. The only market they'll be missing are the homebrew people, which is a market I'm sure Apple can live without.
And, of course, Apple doesn't need to get a majority market-share in order to be a danger to Microsoft. It's sufficient that people will start saying, "So why doesn't Windows let me do [such-and-such]?" Microsoft has relied on vendor lock-in for years, and any competitor gaining even a significant market share means that there will be market forces for them to open up a little more. To explain it a different way, if you see Macs creep into everyday life a bit more, you'll find a lot more heterogeneous environments. If Microsoft doesn't use open standards in order to interoperate with Macs, it will be clear that they are blocking productivity and the people maintaining those environments will be more likely to choose something more open.
So, in this sense, a single Unix-y alternative OS getting through the doors will probably open the door for others to come in, too. By gaining 10-15% market share, Apple might actually increase Linux adoption as well.
Right now, Microsoft is feeling pressure on many fronts to use open standards and open formats, and that can only be a good thing.
But those drivers are certified by Microsoft, not HP. I've actually had Microsoft certified drivers bring a system down, since the hardware was actually a slightly different model than the disk controller that Microsoft certified, and installing the new driver meant that Windows had trouble accessing the disks.
Ok, I'm actually surprised it took this long for someone to pick up on that. What I mean is: How do you know anything about the American Revolution? Inevitably, you're relying on someone's account. Even if an event was well-documented at the time, you're still relying on that account to be authentic, honest, and accurate.
That's not to say that it won't be. God, you'd have to be completely paranoid to distrust everything. However, most of our knowledge of history comes from text books, historians, teachers, parents, etc. Hardly first-hand accounts, and first-hand accounts aren't even 100% accurate.
Now let's move to math and science. Of all the math you use and claim to know, how much of it have you, personally, proven? Of all the things you know about the universe, how much have you observed? Do you believe in the Big Bang? Did you observe it? Have you yourself done all the math required to demonstrate the Big Bang?
Even when scientists have made the proofs themselves, they're often relying on other mathematical/scientific proofs/theorems they have not done themselves.
This is not all bad. We can only see so far because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Still, it's worth noting. Try paying attention, listening to yourself talk, and listening to yourself think. When you make a statement, ask yourself, "How do I know that? How am I sure?" If you do this strictly for even a short amount of time, you'll begin to realize that the amount of knowledge you have from first-hand experience is minuscule when compared to the number of facts you know from, "what you've heard" and "what you've been told". Just think of all the things you know because it was on TV, on the news, on the Discovery Channel, or in a book. All the things that you have no proof of other than "everyone knows that," or "they've proven that," and you never heard anyone dispute it.
I know, if you're reading this you might be thinking, "But I could test it. I could go witness it first-hand. I could do the mathematical proof. I could repeat the experiment." But you didn't. You believed it all anyway, without the witness, without the proof, without the experiment. Because you believe it, you assume that you could verify it for yourself, but you believed it first. You believed it because someone who's supposed to know about these things told you.
To relate this back to the Wikipedia, I think the most important thing is to have some sort of citation, in case someone actually wants to know where the information came from. The person who posted the information and gave the citation, however, is less important.
My point was, and still is, doing verification on an ISP-level on a one-service-at-a-time basis is a completely worthless system
It's not completely worthless if it stops PayPal phishing. A large percentage of phishing that goes on is pretending to be PayPal or Ebay.
Or you're going to have a whole bunch of individual services all trying to get all of the ISPs to provide authentication for their crap
Not "provide authentication". They're not asking ISPs to devise an authentication service. The service exists. The key thing is that they're asking everyone to refuse messages that aren't authenticated.
The key thing here is that it sounds like PayPal is, in fact, pledging to ISPs that they will be signing all of their valid e-mail. Most ISPs and businesses would *LOVE* to be able to reject all unsigned e-mail in order to cut out spam and phishing. The problem with refusing unsigned e-mail is that most individuals and businesses don't sign their e-mail. If PayPal only signed a portion of their official e-mail and an ISP started rejecting all unsigned e-mail, that ISP would start receiving complaints both from it's customers and from PayPal. However, if PayPal pledges to sign all valid e-mail and asks ISPs to block all unsigned e-mails, it will allow ISPs and businesses to easily filter the phishing attempts without any fear of losing valid e-mail.
What the hell is a debate doing in an encyclopedia?
It's going on behind the scenes. The Wikipedia allows people to propose changes and talk about the changes that have been made. For example, here is the discussion page on "debate". You think this is wrong? Don't you think that the writers and editors of print encyclopedias discuss the content of the encyclopedia?
I'm not sure, but it's possible the idea might fight entropy. If an article degrades over time, there doesn't need to be anything forcing the editor of the "stable" version to take the new edits. The editor could pick and choose the new information as it's added and backport it (so to speak) to the old version.
Yes, I do agree though that poor writing is a problem, which is why I wonder whether this focus on "experts" might be heading in the wrong direction. I don't really know, but someone has suggested to me that a "stable" Wikipedia fork idea would be better served by having the editors be fact-checkers and copy-editors than by having them be high-level experts in the subject of the article. I think this is at least an interesting idea.
What part of "So yes" didn't you understand? I acknowledged that what you were saying was true, but that you missed the point. That's not a straw-man tactic.
The "stable" branch wouldn't even necessarily need to be edited for accuracy by people with great expertise in the subject. It would be enough to do some fact checking, editing the articles for spelling/grammar, and filtering some of the contentiousness of controversial subjects. Occasionally, articles just aren't even consistent or cohesive. You really get the feeling that it has been written by different authors with different agendas, and in those cases a decent copy editor might help.
However, even if such a step were taken, I think it's important to retain a version of the Wikipedia that's a bit of a free-for-all. It may not result in the most reliable source of information, but it certainly has its virtues.
No, it's more like expecting people to call up the police department to confirm that the IDs of the people claiming to be police agents are valid
I'll tell you what: if there were a band of impostor police running around town robbing people, and the police department requested that you call them for verification before allowing police officers into your home, I would be willing to do that. When you consider the alternative making the phone call isn't so bad. Are you telling me that when the police came to your door, you'd just let them in because you're too lazy to make the phone call?!
I think you miss the point. In cases where two opposing claims cannot be verified through any means other than authority, then it is an exercise in good judgement to believe the person who is supposed to have greater expertise. However, whichever authority you believe, the authority of that person alone is not sufficient grounds for an argument of validity to that claim.
So, yes, if I'm supposed to simply believe a philosophical argument on the grounds that some person "says so", then it is better to believe the "expert". However, if you believe philosophical arguments are supposed to be taken on authority, then it would be foolish to take your word on any of it. If you present a good philosophical argument, it should be able to stand on its own, regardless of who first formulated it. Trying to use your own supposed authority as grounds for an argument is exactly an "appeal to authority".
Now those are with arguments, but what of bare facts? Again, it would be better if the validity of facts were not taken on authority of Wikipedia authors themselves, but instead if there were citations to disclose where the fact came from, so that the sources themselves can be judged. In the discussions over revisions, at no point should the author's identity have any bearing. If they cannot cite a reliable source and they cannot present an argument, saying, "But I'm a PhD," should not rescue their position in our eyes.
But then they'd have equal access to unlimited pennies, and they would make a similar deal with someone else to shovel the unlimited pennies. This chain would continue until everyone had access to the pennies, and because of this, the pennies would be worthless, and no one would ever shovel them.
Yes, it matters. I'd much rather have 20 million dollars in $20 bills than in pennies.
Kittie or Kiddie? Either way.... you sick bastard!
They don't forget how to do that when they turn on their computers.
People forget all sorts of things when they turn on their computers. Or even when they step into a conversation that isn't strictly job-related. Or have you really never been in an internet conversation where, at some point, someone claims to have some academic position and tries to use that backing for for their claims, without offering arguments or evidence?
If I were taking this discussion more seriously, I could probably cite evidence of this on Slashdot. However, anything I cited would be pretty anecdotal anyhow, and I assume others have enough experience of this on their own to draw on.
Of course it's a marketing move. Gmail's 2GB was also a marketing move. Many people won't fill 20 MB of e-mail in a year, but they'll still switch to a provider that offers large/unlimited mailboxes just so that they don't have to worry about running out of space.
You're absolutely correct to say that no one should take the Wikipedia as an authoritative scholarly source. I've always said this. The unfortunate fact of the Wikipedia's setup is that there is no way to be sure that any given fact in any given article at any given time isn't flat-out wrong. The setup of the Wikipedia isn't to prevent errors from ever existing in the Wikipedia, but rather to hope that the errors eventually get corrected.
However, I think you're wrong to say that it's only "fun". The fact is that, if you look up any given topic in the Wikipedia, most of the time it's *close*. The details may be off, and some things may be a bit misleading, but it's usually not way off in left field. Go ahead, pick a topic you actually know something about and look it up. Mostly, you'll get some information that, at the very least, is a decent overview for someone who knows little/nothing about the topic.
It may not be perfect, but it is a fantastic source for information. It shouldn't be your last stop for information if you intend to do scholarly research, but if you're looking into a subject that you know very little about, it's a decent place to start.
Good point. If he doesn't have a PhD in Wikiology, I'm not listening to him.
You know, I really don't think it matters whether the owners are old, rich, or white, but I think you are onto an insightful issue. The real issue is that these media companies are built to be a method of disseminating information, and the people who are making careers in these companies view themselves in a particular way. They seem to want to think that they're the real source of information, and that they have a mission to make the world see things in a particular way.
Whenever you build a system and have people devoting their lives to that system, those people will view opposing systems (or even things outside their system) negatively. There are plenty of people within the big-media system who view the Internet as a threat to their mission. It's an alternative source of information which they don't get to filter, reframe, or control in any way. The most they can do is try to participate, which still puts them on equal footing with some random 14 year-old who just started a weblog. Since they've devoted their lives to the thing, the idea of being put on equal footing with everyday people is insulting.
Yeah, I don't really like the idea of credentials and such. The truth is that the whole topic is much stickier than lots of people want to believe. For example, being a PhD on a subject does not mean that you're unbiased regarding that subject. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of being wrong about that subject. It doesn't mean that there aren't non-PhDs who know more than you do.
"Facts" are often more complicated than they seem. One way or another, we can usually trace most of our knowledge back to some authority figure telling us, and we accept a lot based on authority. However, "authority" can easily be wrong, and often is. I actually rather like the idea of Wikipedia contributions being relatively anonymous. "Appeal to authority" is listed among "logical fallacies" for a reason. If your point is good, if you're correct and you have the background to argue your point well, then a know-nothing shouldn't be able to stand against you in a debate. If you can't debate your point, and you need to fall back on, "I'm a professor at [such-and-such] College!" then you probably don't really know what you're talking about anyway.
Identifying users has a good purpose-- to track who is making good contributions and who is making bad contributions. Citations are useful for determining where information is coming from. But does it really matter who is actually making the contribution? Do we really want the Wikipedia to be based on authority, rather than on demonstrably good information?
I'm not sure how this analogy is relevant. Isn't Paypal asking service providers to block Paypal messages that lack signatures? Wouldn't it be more like: if there were fake police officers going through people's houses and stealing things, and in response then the police department asked citizens not to let police officers into their houses unless those police carried some kind of official ID.
It doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
Really, go back and check the financials from right after Katrina, you'll see a ton of discussion by economists about sudden fuel cost spikes and who gets harmed the most from it the quickest. Independent truck drivers are another group...
Exactly. FedEx (and the like) as well as *truckers*. Big companies who do their own shipping weren't hardest hit because they have other profits to eat the cost of a temporary spike is costs, but shipping became more expensive all around.
Sometimes you know what exactly what the problem is and which part is required to fix it, but you have some tech on the phone that wants you to go through stupid trouble-shooting steps. In those cases, lie.
However, through all this, what the owners of the site (in this case, Google) are interested in is all the people coming to YouTube to watch the videos. Google wants an audience for their ads. You only get that audience if you have good content that the audience wants to watch. You only get that "good content" if the people making/posting the content believe it's the "cool" place to post content. Ergo, Google wants their site to be "cool".
As somebody who worked at various helpdesks for a few years as a phone monkey...If you want a Linux notebook, then buy a Linux notebook
As someone who worked at various helpdesks for a few years trying to get support through phone monkeys, I can tell you that the best strategy is to lie:
The thing is, even when you haven't done anything to void the warranty, the phone monkeys are usually asking you to do completely stupid things. Those "appropriate steps" are usually things that, assuming you know anything about fixing computers, you've already done those steps before you called. You're calling because the damn thing is broken, and we don't need your help diagnosing the problem, we just need the hardware replaced.