I'm not going to wave genitalia at you. Whatever. I've written both COBOL and fortran for money; even better I've done neat things....
here's where I stop waving my balls. Honestly, I don't care. You might be older and more expierienced than I am, and great. I don't care. I've got my life, you've got yours, and I would be really surprised if they collided.
Please have fun in the mean time. I will.
OK, good, this is somehting we can talk about. Threads make me insane,too- trust me, I'm about to kill someone over this. But what does MS do that makes this notion better?
That's the biggest pile of market-worshipping crap I've heard in a long time.
Maybe. However, it is simply a statement of fact, similar to the fact that mosquitos suck blood, or fire is hot.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't fight to make them accountable, or whatever your deal is, but the fact remains that companies exist solely for the purpose of making money. If you'd like to dispute this, look at the relevant law - I did, when I incorporated. If you continue to not recognize reality, you'll have a problem getting people to listen to you.
The other comment hinted at the distinction, but one of the hallmarks of intelligence is desire. In philosophic language, "intentionaliy". Without goals and self-directed moves towards those goals, you do not have intelligence. Note that intentionality is needed, but not sufficient. In any case, Google, the machine, does not have self-directed goals.
I looked over that website, and most of it falls in the category of "that would bug the crap out of me". I see how it could be useful. I just don't develop that way. Interactive popups distract me from what I was trying to do.
With vim, I have tab expansion for method calls, but only when I want it - not some distracting thing that tries to second guess me. I have syntax highlighting, brace balancing, way better keyboard navigation (at the cost of being warped into the vi world, but that was done to me years ago). Method variants are a function of tab expansion. Pop up crap would distract me from what I'm doing. And arcane as it may be, s/(.*)re?gex$/somethingelse($1)/g is extremely powerful. My fingers just work that way, and I'm only 32. Don't get me started on the cool things one can do with ex commands.(god, did I just say I'm *only* 32?)
I suspect this is an old-school-new-school thing. I don't like IM, either - email me or go away. If I don't know how the object is called, I need to read the public declaration, or I have no business writing code against that interface.If assisted coding actually didn't become a distraction, and actually inferred intent, I might take the time to learn it. But now I'm just being grouchy. Thanks for the explanation of what you like. I know I'm a little bit purist; I didn't use the syntax highlighting for quite a while, because it (a) didn't work in edge cases well, and (b) well, can't you indent properly? What's the problem?
Maybe developing that way is be faster, but I do think I understand, and can troubleshoot, things better with my coding suite and style. So I'm still not swayed.
And I'll hit you with my cane, whippersnapper, if you bug me while I'm feeding the ducks.
The MS tools are far superior to anything else in the world at the moment. They are more robust and easier to use.
I've heard this from several corners. Sometimes, even from people I trust a bit. I still don't get it. I don't live in the MS world, so I don't have much of a reason to experiment, but I am honestly interested in what makes them so great.
I hear about the "tool tip" style reference checking, auto-library chain analysis, etc. The first would annoy the shit out of me, and the second I get from my make file (or ant, depending on what I'm building).
C# seems to be a slight step up over Java, but nowhere near enough to incur the cost of switching platforms. (I say this as someone who develops and maintains production apps in Java, and hates the language.)
As a sysadmin-cum-developer-cum-business-guy, I do everything in vi, make/ant, cscope, and custom tools using primitives like sed, awk, grep, perl, svn, RT, image-magick, [custom mailing list manager], etc (yeah, perl can replace sed and awk. I mean to, some day...). I think I have everything I need, but I'd love to hear about how it could be done better.
So, please, do tell- what makes MS dev tools so great? I'm really curious.
No decision has been made whether that person will be charged
1) get a job with an emergency response/first responder entity (fire department, forest ranger, search/rescue, anbulance driver)
2) make friends with a cop/civil "servant"/datamining contractor employee. Ask for a favor.
3) develop a grudge, hate your lifestyle, or figure out a way to profit from a crime.
4) don't do it again.
We'll be the second coming of the DDR in another 20 years. At least then I can retire, and ignore some of the backstabbing.(yes, on my own means -- what, you thought SS would be there? Hah.)
I bet MS is more scared of the free applications that are more and more capable than a free kernel. How many people are saying, "Wow! I can get this great kernel!"? The OS seems to be the least cost when compared with tools that run on top of it. MySQL/PostGres vs MS SQL in license cost. Development tools on the Linux platform vs IDEs from Borland and Microsoft. Office Software on MS brand new vs Open Office or StarOffice or whatever. License costs are what hurt myself and other coworkers not kernel 2.whatever. Can we do the same task for far less money? That'll work every time and I think that in the long run is what scares MS most.
All true - apps bring the users. But what brings the apps?
As much as he was (rightly) mocked for the monkey dance, Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" rant had a real message behind it, and I suspect what has MS running scared at the moment, from a strategic standpoint, is just how hackable and generally developer friendly Linux is.
This is why MS _loves_ companies like RedHat and Novell. Not only are they companies, and therefor attackable, but they also provide a static target. There is also the ossification that is natural to a profitable company, but that is harder to define. (When the Board is happy with profits and there's a strategy plan for the next year on the table, and there are a few shining star salesguys around, start saving money. cf Sun circa 1998.) MS gets it, though, and knows how to attack it.
Modulo the coming patent war (which I don't think anyone can predict how that will play out), the biggest threat to MS is the hobby coder, to whom (ironically enough) they started off catering. Debian, Damn Small Linux, etc. are things they can't kill, because they don't play by the same rules. Rule one of incumbent defense: watch the low end.
You're absolutely right, NYC would starve and go cold (esp. right now) without outside trade. Guess what? That's called *commerce*. Something we're pretty good at. Those Southerners living on my tax money might do well to figure out they aren't as self-sufficient as they like to think they are (I'm not just being a damnyankee here - I grew up just south of Nashville).
Being self sufficient means you can buy what you need. NYC could. Could Alabama? Those "red states", supposedly so big on family values, morals and limited government, are a bunch of welfare queens living on the dole paid for by all us amoral heathen big-city high rollers.
....
You want a pretend cowboy for a president? Fine. Wanna ransack random countries? Fine. Ban consensual behaviour, research, and teach your children lies? Whatever, that's your business. Just don't do it in my name with my money, and make me live with the consequences.
The building I live in occupies less than an acre of space and houses ~1300 people. I don't know how many cars those >1000 people have (neither I nor my partner do), but I can't imagine it is more than 100. We are all heavy public transport users. The building recylces heavily.
If it is your contention that city dwellers should subsidize land consuming industrial farms that burn fuel and generate waste in order to buy more subsidies, it truly is time for NYC to declare independence. We've got ports - I'll happily rely on imported food to be done with the rest of this nation. We've got the largest intelligence and civillian police force in the nation. We've got all the capital generation we need. The money we'd stop exporting to fools like you would be more than enough to cover the rest.
Long thrive the Godless Heathen's Republic of NYC!
Want to bomb us? That already happened, and is being used as an excuse for the last few years of insanity, funded with our money.
if you are not doing anything wrong - you have nothing to worry about.
(a) This is demonstrably not true. To pick one extreme example that I think nobody sane will quibble about, look at the number of death row inmates who are released only after the tireless efforts of non-governmental advocates.
(b) Even if this were true, this is the mindset of an un-free society. It is *because* one is doing nothing wrong that one should not be under government scrutiny. Just some advice: ponder seriously the phrase "by the people, of the people, for the people".
Your present methods circumvent the system - and by purposely hindering the system you are honestly just comitting a crime
This is so close to "that which is not permitted is forbidden; that which is not forbidden is mandatory" that I doubt a substantive debate on the limits of government between us is possible. You don't appear to want to live in a free society.
One more suggestion: anytime someone starts talking about "the rights of the government", seek cover. The first step is to assume that the government is distinct from the citizenry, and the second it to assume that it somehow comes before people when deciding matters of confic
Sometimes people need practical demonstrations of that.
I think where you and i disagree is not about the "shades of gray" issue. Where we disagree is about inerlocking shades of intent. If, by way of example, a complete loss of privacy (strip searches upon exiting the home, "your papers, please!" at every corner, etc. for one week would eliminate a very serious threat (and I don't think bin Laden actually qualifies for something this intrusive, but for a theoretical, let's use him), and then everything would be back to a relatively free society, many might be OK with that. However, what actually happens is a ratchet effect - increased scrutiny is also useful for other things, and so it tends not to go away. Look at the cameras going up everywhere, or the increasing scrutiny of financial transactions.
I don't believe it is alarmist to say that we are moving towards being the most heavily surveiled society in history - the former East Germany (DDR), I think, holds that title now, but if things don't change, the US will take the lead in my lifetime.
And producing chafe along the road to that, I believe, is patriotic to the country I want to live in - if I can't vote to not become a panopticon, I can at least do my part to increase the cost of becoming one.
So, If I, a random farmer, who has never bitten the poison apple and grow my crops from my own gene lines, is somehow randomly effected by your patented cross-polination, tell me - what do I do? Am I "responsibe" for "pirating" genes?
This all sounds a lot like a legalistic method of making revenue stream out of what has resulted in mankind being capable of doing bookkeeping.
Bite me, I can grow seeds, and if I want, procreate. It is that simple.
Anyone who cares about this massive travesty, take a look at the gene bank.
For the record, that is only an entry point, most of the exchange of genetic material happens much more informally.
Call them tree huggers or whatever, but these are the people that are keeping the world's genetic line available to all, and this started about the same time that the patent madness did. For obvious reasons. Think of this as the ham radio response to the internet.
For the record, I'm not even a botanist, or whatever, but I'm a member. I get requests maybe twice a month for things I'm growing, and I send them off. Kinda cool, right? At least, I think it is.
I don't need Monsanto's crap, and if they infect me, I will be pissed off, and they can count on me making that apparent.
I read that as saying that every kitchen stove operator has the responsibility to learn about how the stove works, what dangers are lurking, and what needs to be done to avoid those dangers.
WRONG!
That responsibility exists, but shouldn't necessarily be the user's responsibility. Just to use any stove, you don't have to know how it works. Not all users are also engineers, you know.
By using flame-enabled item like stoves, a user essentially trusts stove makers to manage the interface between the flame and the user. And stove makers trust the gas delivery system below it, to manage the interface between gas tanks and the plumbing hardware. That trust includes an assumption of safety/reliability/integrity. The current state of stove security tells me, that trust is often misplaced.
It's an endless battle of opinions, but IMO the #1 reason for having fire detectors etc. is not functionality, but the fact that gas delivery systems, stove dials, pans and so on, are BROKEN (unreliable, buggy, insecure). If they wouldn't be, there would be few reasons to put a fire alarm between a househould stove and the gas plumbing. Similar goes for radon detectors, 911, etc.
It may be a full time job to keep ordinary stoves's secured & 100% functional, but don't assume that should be the user's job. I guess new developments like remotely managed, limited functionality stoves's could provide some relief here for many users, who are incapable of managing fire.
However this says nothing about whether they can track the motion of the car itself especially on public roads, it just limits them from searching what is in the car.
Fine, if they aren't asserting any other priviledge here. Because if that is all it means, then I can track cars using the same means just as legally, including police cars.
Civilians don't get to do things that cops do all the time. If you were to tail me, watch my house, walk up to me and ask for my identification, I could call it harassment. If a cop does it, (it could still be harassment under specific circumstances, but) it's part of his everyday operation.
Exactly my point. People are quoting the Constitution, which is about placing limits on government behaviour, not limiting the people's behaviour.
If you wish to defend cops doing things that I can't, there has to be a counterveiling grant of rights. If one is merely stating that the fact that people cannot expect privacy while driving, then I have the right to "observe" as much as anyone else, cops included. Ergo, I can bug your (or police) cars with GPS trackers if they can.
This principle was on display a while back in (IIRC) Oregon, where cops dug through someone's trash, the mayor said there was no right to privacy in trash not on your property,and a reporter went through the mayor's trash. The mayor got really pissed and started talking about passing laws about trash privacy.
If they're making lack of privacy claims without asserting some other special priviledge, then it logically follows that I can do the same to whomever I want.
"Persons." "Houses." "Papers." "Effects." Whereabouts of vehicles, wherein the vehicles are registered to the government, the privilege of driving said vehicles is granted by government, and in a country in which the vehicles are driven on roads built by the government and maintained by the government.
A car sounds like an "effect" to me. The government licenses *driving*, not car ownership. I feel that cops messing with my posessions without a court order is improper and illegal.
If you disagree, then you must also be perfectly fine with me tagging your car with a GPS, too, right? Afterall, you have no expectation of privacy on the road, and messing around with your car is OK with you.
Lost a chuck, and is wobbling?
on
The Corkscrew Meteor
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'd guess a piece of it fell off/vaporized (nonuniform portion, etc.), and it is wobbling around its axis as it spins.
Really. You appear to belive that anyone writing software should go out of their way to fence in users so that it is technically impossible to break the law. If that is your position, please just state it.
And then we should regulate cars, knives and brickmakers. And monitor every communication between people. Perhaps there should be a LawXML spec that everyone should build in to every application, so that when copyright is extended again, old software doesn't "mistakenly" allow ilegal activity.
What he should have done is focus on what causes people to do so (greed/being cheap, a horrible media distribution system, overpriced merchandise, etc).
So, a telented protocol designer should branch out in to entertainment industry economics and/or psychology, rather than design neat new software?
You seem to think this is about linguistic control, rather than taxonomic control. A Taxonomy is very different than a language.
The distinction between formal and informal taxonomies are about value-add, inclusion, utility, and control.
It isn't about whether words are "redefined". It is about the fact that, without standards for synonyms, taxonomies lose value, because they end up with "semantic forks", if you will, with redundant data in some places, missing data others, reduced search value, and general lack of confidence overall.
Now, whether the inclusiveness and volume of assistance outweighs the cost of these weaknesses, I think depends on the particular taxonomy and use.
I think it kicks ass in Delicious, but I wouldn't want volunteer contributors in the Dewey Decimal System or a legal knowledge management system.
Slashdot Mirror
here's where I stop waving my balls. Honestly, I don't care. You might be older and more expierienced than I am, and great. I don't care. I've got my life, you've got yours, and I would be really surprised if they collided. Please have fun in the mean time. I will.
OK, good, this is somehting we can talk about. Threads make me insane,too- trust me, I'm about to kill someone over this. But what does MS do that makes this notion better?
Maybe. However, it is simply a statement of fact, similar to the fact that mosquitos suck blood, or fire is hot.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't fight to make them accountable, or whatever your deal is, but the fact remains that companies exist solely for the purpose of making money. If you'd like to dispute this, look at the relevant law - I did, when I incorporated. If you continue to not recognize reality, you'll have a problem getting people to listen to you.
The other comment hinted at the distinction, but one of the hallmarks of intelligence is desire. In philosophic language, "intentionaliy". Without goals and self-directed moves towards those goals, you do not have intelligence. Note that intentionality is needed, but not sufficient. In any case, Google, the machine, does not have self-directed goals.
With vim, I have tab expansion for method calls, but only when I want it - not some distracting thing that tries to second guess me. I have syntax highlighting, brace balancing, way better keyboard navigation (at the cost of being warped into the vi world, but that was done to me years ago). Method variants are a function of tab expansion. Pop up crap would distract me from what I'm doing. And arcane as it may be, s/(.*)re?gex$/somethingelse($1)/g is extremely powerful. My fingers just work that way, and I'm only 32. Don't get me started on the cool things one can do with ex commands.(god, did I just say I'm *only* 32?)
I suspect this is an old-school-new-school thing. I don't like IM, either - email me or go away. If I don't know how the object is called, I need to read the public declaration, or I have no business writing code against that interface.If assisted coding actually didn't become a distraction, and actually inferred intent, I might take the time to learn it. But now I'm just being grouchy. Thanks for the explanation of what you like. I know I'm a little bit purist; I didn't use the syntax highlighting for quite a while, because it (a) didn't work in edge cases well, and (b) well, can't you indent properly? What's the problem?
Maybe developing that way is be faster, but I do think I understand, and can troubleshoot, things better with my coding suite and style. So I'm still not swayed.
And I'll hit you with my cane, whippersnapper, if you bug me while I'm feeding the ducks.
I've heard this from several corners. Sometimes, even from people I trust a bit. I still don't get it. I don't live in the MS world, so I don't have much of a reason to experiment, but I am honestly interested in what makes them so great.
I hear about the "tool tip" style reference checking, auto-library chain analysis, etc. The first would annoy the shit out of me, and the second I get from my make file (or ant, depending on what I'm building).
C# seems to be a slight step up over Java, but nowhere near enough to incur the cost of switching platforms. (I say this as someone who develops and maintains production apps in Java, and hates the language.)
As a sysadmin-cum-developer-cum-business-guy, I do everything in vi, make/ant, cscope, and custom tools using primitives like sed, awk, grep, perl, svn, RT, image-magick, [custom mailing list manager], etc (yeah, perl can replace sed and awk. I mean to, some day...). I think I have everything I need, but I'd love to hear about how it could be done better.
So, please, do tell- what makes MS dev tools so great? I'm really curious.
1) get a job with an emergency response/first responder entity (fire department, forest ranger, search/rescue, anbulance driver)
2) make friends with a cop/civil "servant"/datamining contractor employee. Ask for a favor.
3) develop a grudge, hate your lifestyle, or figure out a way to profit from a crime.
4) don't do it again.
We'll be the second coming of the DDR in another 20 years. At least then I can retire, and ignore some of the backstabbing.(yes, on my own means -- what, you thought SS would be there? Hah.)
All true - apps bring the users. But what brings the apps?
As much as he was (rightly) mocked for the monkey dance, Ballmer's "developers, developers, developers" rant had a real message behind it, and I suspect what has MS running scared at the moment, from a strategic standpoint, is just how hackable and generally developer friendly Linux is.
This is why MS _loves_ companies like RedHat and Novell. Not only are they companies, and therefor attackable, but they also provide a static target. There is also the ossification that is natural to a profitable company, but that is harder to define. (When the Board is happy with profits and there's a strategy plan for the next year on the table, and there are a few shining star salesguys around, start saving money. cf Sun circa 1998.) MS gets it, though, and knows how to attack it.
Modulo the coming patent war (which I don't think anyone can predict how that will play out), the biggest threat to MS is the hobby coder, to whom (ironically enough) they started off catering. Debian, Damn Small Linux, etc. are things they can't kill, because they don't play by the same rules. Rule one of incumbent defense: watch the low end.
Being self sufficient means you can buy what you need. NYC could. Could Alabama? Those "red states", supposedly so big on family values, morals and limited government, are a bunch of welfare queens living on the dole paid for by all us amoral heathen big-city high rollers.
You want a pretend cowboy for a president? Fine. Wanna ransack random countries? Fine. Ban consensual behaviour, research, and teach your children lies? Whatever, that's your business. Just don't do it in my name with my money, and make me live with the consequences.
If it is your contention that city dwellers should subsidize land consuming industrial farms that burn fuel and generate waste in order to buy more subsidies, it truly is time for NYC to declare independence. We've got ports - I'll happily rely on imported food to be done with the rest of this nation. We've got the largest intelligence and civillian police force in the nation. We've got all the capital generation we need. The money we'd stop exporting to fools like you would be more than enough to cover the rest.
Long thrive the Godless Heathen's Republic of NYC!
Want to bomb us? That already happened, and is being used as an excuse for the last few years of insanity, funded with our money.
(a) This is demonstrably not true. To pick one extreme example that I think nobody sane will quibble about, look at the number of death row inmates who are released only after the tireless efforts of non-governmental advocates.
(b) Even if this were true, this is the mindset of an un-free society. It is *because* one is doing nothing wrong that one should not be under government scrutiny. Just some advice: ponder seriously the phrase "by the people, of the people, for the people".
Your present methods circumvent the system - and by purposely hindering the system you are honestly just comitting a crime
This is so close to "that which is not permitted is forbidden; that which is not forbidden is mandatory" that I doubt a substantive debate on the limits of government between us is possible. You don't appear to want to live in a free society.
One more suggestion: anytime someone starts talking about "the rights of the government", seek cover. The first step is to assume that the government is distinct from the citizenry, and the second it to assume that it somehow comes before people when deciding matters of confic
Which is exactly the point.
Sometimes people need practical demonstrations of that.
I think where you and i disagree is not about the "shades of gray" issue. Where we disagree is about inerlocking shades of intent. If, by way of example, a complete loss of privacy (strip searches upon exiting the home, "your papers, please!" at every corner, etc. for one week would eliminate a very serious threat (and I don't think bin Laden actually qualifies for something this intrusive, but for a theoretical, let's use him), and then everything would be back to a relatively free society, many might be OK with that. However, what actually happens is a ratchet effect - increased scrutiny is also useful for other things, and so it tends not to go away. Look at the cameras going up everywhere, or the increasing scrutiny of financial transactions.
I don't believe it is alarmist to say that we are moving towards being the most heavily surveiled society in history - the former East Germany (DDR), I think, holds that title now, but if things don't change, the US will take the lead in my lifetime.
And producing chafe along the road to that, I believe, is patriotic to the country I want to live in - if I can't vote to not become a panopticon, I can at least do my part to increase the cost of becoming one.
I'm waiting for the "Damn, my oven gets hot" and "Dog bites considered harmful" articles.i
This all sounds a lot like a legalistic method of making revenue stream out of what has resulted in mankind being capable of doing bookkeeping.
Bite me, I can grow seeds, and if I want, procreate. It is that simple.
For the record, that is only an entry point, most of the exchange of genetic material happens much more informally.
Call them tree huggers or whatever, but these are the people that are keeping the world's genetic line available to all, and this started about the same time that the patent madness did. For obvious reasons. Think of this as the ham radio response to the internet.
For the record, I'm not even a botanist, or whatever, but I'm a member. I get requests maybe twice a month for things I'm growing, and I send them off. Kinda cool, right? At least, I think it is.
I don't need Monsanto's crap, and if they infect me, I will be pissed off, and they can count on me making that apparent.
I read that as saying that every kitchen stove operator has the responsibility to learn about how the stove works, what dangers are lurking, and what needs to be done to avoid those dangers. WRONG! That responsibility exists, but shouldn't necessarily be the user's responsibility. Just to use any stove, you don't have to know how it works. Not all users are also engineers, you know. By using flame-enabled item like stoves, a user essentially trusts stove makers to manage the interface between the flame and the user. And stove makers trust the gas delivery system below it, to manage the interface between gas tanks and the plumbing hardware. That trust includes an assumption of safety/reliability/integrity. The current state of stove security tells me, that trust is often misplaced. It's an endless battle of opinions, but IMO the #1 reason for having fire detectors etc. is not functionality, but the fact that gas delivery systems, stove dials, pans and so on, are BROKEN (unreliable, buggy, insecure). If they wouldn't be, there would be few reasons to put a fire alarm between a househould stove and the gas plumbing. Similar goes for radon detectors, 911, etc. It may be a full time job to keep ordinary stoves's secured & 100% functional, but don't assume that should be the user's job. I guess new developments like remotely managed, limited functionality stoves's could provide some relief here for many users, who are incapable of managing fire.
Fine, if they aren't asserting any other priviledge here. Because if that is all it means, then I can track cars using the same means just as legally, including police cars.
That's my only point.
Exactly my point. People are quoting the Constitution, which is about placing limits on government behaviour, not limiting the people's behaviour.
If you wish to defend cops doing things that I can't, there has to be a counterveiling grant of rights. If one is merely stating that the fact that people cannot expect privacy while driving, then I have the right to "observe" as much as anyone else, cops included. Ergo, I can bug your (or police) cars with GPS trackers if they can.
This principle was on display a while back in (IIRC) Oregon, where cops dug through someone's trash, the mayor said there was no right to privacy in trash not on your property,and a reporter went through the mayor's trash. The mayor got really pissed and started talking about passing laws about trash privacy.
If they're making lack of privacy claims without asserting some other special priviledge, then it logically follows that I can do the same to whomever I want.
A car sounds like an "effect" to me. The government licenses *driving*, not car ownership. I feel that cops messing with my posessions without a court order is improper and illegal.
If you disagree, then you must also be perfectly fine with me tagging your car with a GPS, too, right? Afterall, you have no expectation of privacy on the road, and messing around with your car is OK with you.
But what do I know, IANAA(stronomer).
When a company like Intel screws up this hard, it is just funny.
And then we should regulate cars, knives and brickmakers. And monitor every communication between people. Perhaps there should be a LawXML spec that everyone should build in to every application, so that when copyright is extended again, old software doesn't "mistakenly" allow ilegal activity.
That which is not forbidden is mandatory.
So, a telented protocol designer should branch out in to entertainment industry economics and/or psychology, rather than design neat new software?
What branch of ethics do you subscribe to?
The distinction between formal and informal taxonomies are about value-add, inclusion, utility, and control.
It isn't about whether words are "redefined". It is about the fact that, without standards for synonyms, taxonomies lose value, because they end up with "semantic forks", if you will, with redundant data in some places, missing data others, reduced search value, and general lack of confidence overall.
Now, whether the inclusiveness and volume of assistance outweighs the cost of these weaknesses, I think depends on the particular taxonomy and use.
I think it kicks ass in Delicious, but I wouldn't want volunteer contributors in the Dewey Decimal System or a legal knowledge management system.
Sorry. my eyes were bleeding.