Warning: previewing my own comment, it looks rather rant-ish. I swear there's some worthwhile information contained herein, though!
Actually, I hung out in #wikipedia on freenode when a write-up someone did for a band I used to be in simply disappeared and found out that things are getting deleted just because they don't want to look like they're full of cruft and un-encyclopedia-worthy content. I asked specifically if it was a lack of computer resources, or lack of editors to manage all the content, or if it was a lack of other good ways to deal with misinformation (the talk pages, new categories like "articles with unsourced statements", article locking, etc., seemed like good enough ways to manage misinformation to me, but maybe I was simply naive?)---but, I was told none of these were the reason!! (I would have logged the conversation and saved it, but you aren't allowed to log #wikipedia, because evidently someone that a bunch of wiki-editors didn't like very much kept posting logs of the chatroom, and they felt it was inappropriate for their public conversations to, erm, stay public?? or something.)
Also, as to the idea that "Well, there are lots of things with similar names!" -- yes, the reason behind disambiguation pages. If the canadian band named Fear Zero (incidentally, if you're curious, they showed up on the internet about 2004. fear *OF* zero showed up around 2000, and the name was then-unique, and we had picked it partly because we couldn't find anyone with a similar name.) ever got written up on wikipedia, and someone wanted the "Fear of Zero" entry to be a disambiguation page (although, AFAIK we always used the "of", and the canadian group has never used an "of", so I don't think the question would arise to begin with), then, hey, that'd work just fine.
When I went into #wikipedia to ask for info/help, a lot of people laughed and asked why some random garage band had gotten written up in the first place. Numerous chatters (some of which I discovered were editors and admins) jumped to the conclusion that I had written up an autobiography or autobandbiography or something, and said promotional material doesn't belong. (I have to retort: for a band that is no longer around, I wouldn't call it promo material; second, I *didn't* write it up! Someone else did! Christ...)
There actually wasn't anything in the main wikipedia deletion discussion logs... you can get "speedily-deleted" (which means no real record available* to prove some content was ever there), particularly if there's a write-up of somebody or something or somerandomband that doesn't explain its own notability (should every wikipedia article now include a section entitled "Why this thing is meaningful and shouldn't be deleted"?)
The only way I could ever tell the article had existed was that some editor told me I could construct a URL of the form "/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=PAGENA ME" and figure out if there was a record for deletion. (( '*' = )) The only record of the content was "A7" -- which means "The biography or write-up didn't provide a thorough description of the subject's notability" or something like that.
There have been so many speedily deletions that the 404 page for articles now includes an automatic link to this Special:Log/delete page for a given article... I guess a lot of people have been wondering where articles have been going. And, you don't even have to be "marked for speedy deletion", as the Post article states---you can just have a random editor click "Delete" and a write-up will disappear.
Non-admins can't access any speedily deleted content, unless they can beg an admin to restore the page---since I had always liked the write-up about [Fear of.Z.E.R.O.] once it had showed up, someone Userfyed it for me, meaning the revision history was added to my [User:Os] page as [User:Os/Fear_of_.Z.E.R.O.].
Does anyone else want to see another wiki-like site open up (something more akin to Everything2?) whose goal is pretty much to summarize and index all human knowledge, rather than just compete with Encyclopedia Britannica?
If the language is only taught officially, then someone who figures out the language just by observation is reverse engineering something that isn't theirs. (Ignore the fact that this is how babies learn to speak.) Isn't Microsoft sort of against reverse-engineering? I seem to recall some stories about the linux ntfs driver or some such.
Loglan is owned by a researcher, although it's an artificial language. In the US, it will become public domain at some point (one hopes, unless they keep mickey-mousing the copyright system forever and ever). That's why Lojban was created; the creator of Loglan kept trying to sue people who experimented with his artificial language (I think? correct me if I'm wrong!)
In the country where this language is spoken, what's the rule about copyrighted things falling into public domain?
There's already precredence, particularly in Europe. The EU has been pushing for the US to adopt something similar, under the premise that it protects the international trade/goods integrity of copyrights.
The RIAA, representing both (a) artists who feel that their own works shouldn't be performed by other artists and (b) artists who do many public performances/interpretations of other artists' works as cover songs, is drawn on the issue (understandably), since two of their goals are to protect copyrighted art as a means of income and to protect an artist's right to interpret, perform,
There are sorts of "reasonable limits" for doing covers; bands who do nothing but covers, bands who don't really use their own arrangements but instead closely mimic the originals, or bands who play to big crowds and make a lot of profit off of a cover are considered to be doing something inappropriate. However, many large clubs, music-oriented venues, and radio stations who host live performing bands typically are playing a flat licensing subscription fee already to the RIAA (and for radio stations, they pay fees to a branch of US copyright regulation that covers broadcasting).
In the US, performing (but not recording) cover songs is often considered fair use; the idea (I think) is that it's your own interpretation, therefore it has artistic merit from you and beyond that of the original recording.
In some countries (including lots of Europe), doing cover songs is often considered to be less of your own interpretation and more of simply public performance of the original work, which makes it illegal to perform anything (excluding public-domain) in public without explicit permission. Personally, I think it's a little overboard, especially when the original songs aren't arranged for harmonica.
You know, nature has a way of providing a diversity of things to accomplish similar effects. Just because europeans more commonly have a well-identified neanderthal gene for regulating brain size doesn't mean that other cultures don't have a different gene that serves a very similar purpose.
Besides, do you really think europeans and africans didn't interbreed at all, or somethin g? That would be just naive! Humans migrate periodically. It's happened an *awful* lot of times throughout history.
At the moment, wikipedia is trying to compete with "respected encyclopedias," which means they're deleting all articles that don't demonstrate "notability."
In other words, having an encyclopedia grateful for nearly all user contributions and that was like a conventional encyclopedia, Everything2, and a forum for the collection of all human knowledge worth its disk space, all mixed together --- that's gone.
They've been deleting articles left and right because Encyclopedia Britannica's current selling/competing stand is that Wikipedia has lots of crap alongside its useful content.
Or maybe it's just that wikipedia is too big to manage, so instead of trying to be to general knowledge what a library is to books, they're just trying to be a sexy, free, basic encyclopedia. If you're hoping that the world's biggest encyclopedia might have a page on very-little-known topic, well, no longer; anything not "widely cited" is getting the boot. It's like your library chucking out any book that hasn't been checked out in the last year, or maybe just converting itself into a book store.
In my view, the article shouldn't have been deleted, although it should have been edited based on not fitting NPOV requirements. It's good that it at least got a review first, though, and a detailed one at that! I've seen TONS of articles deleted lately, many without any review (the Speedy-Deletion criteria keep becoming more encompassing... and if something is speedily deleted, the only way you can find out that it ever existed, short of being an admin, is knowing when it was deleted or who deleted it---and you can't get to the original content---ever), simply because they weren't about items famous or important enough that Encyclopedia Britannica would cover.
That's why I've decided my contributions would be better appreciated at Everything2. I'm more of a jack-of-all-trades person, and I do have some worthwhile knowledge, but since I'm not a famous or well-regarded expert nor an experienced and talented editor, there is no place for me at wikipedia.
The random main-body text spam is all over the place lately. It seems that as soon as spammers realize X won't pass the filters, they send much less X and more Y. The problem with the random text is that it's very hard to discern from legitimate e-mail (statistically speaking). Filters don't have a sense of context and conversation, even if they're so extravagant that they can perform cunnilingus on a hardwood floor. A simple validation system (SPF isn't a bad idea) would be a good step forward, if it was ubiquitous enough. Perhaps somebody can make it trendy to "get your SPF on" ?
Let's suppose that there are three types of children: N, A, and pA. A kids are autistic no matter what. N kids are never autistic. pA kids may or may not realize full autism. Suppose that the amount of time that pA kids get to interact with society is an important factor in whether they develop normally (like an N child) or in an autistic manner (like an A child).
Here's a thought experiment. We have three populations, P1, P2, and P3, which all have the same constituency of N, A, pA. As the children age, we can re-categorize pA children as either N or A. P1 will be our control group: they will interact with society and watch a little bit of television. P2 will be like P1, but be exposed to more TV. P3 will model lazy parenting: the children won't get much social interaction, and the only thing they have to pass the time is TV, so they'll get a lot of it.
If watching too much TV can promote autism, P2 will have many pA -> A. OTOH, if it's a lack of exposure to social interaction that causes underdevelopment of brain circuitry that regulates social interaction, P2 should resemble P1 and P3 will have many pA -> A.
Even if there is a very strong temporal link between two variables, correlation and causation are tricky. You can't always say, "The reason that my alarm clock goes off in the morning is because the sun rises in the sky," even if you can point to some region where the sun is obscured by the terrain and people don't use alarm clocks.
I would love for non-interactive, advertisement-soaked, eye-candy-filled, dumbed-down media to be less prevalent. When Internet access began to be ubiquitous, I got excited, but then I saw and heard all of the media companies wanting to turn the Internet into a new form of TV.
I know, my examples have bad analogies, poor metaphors, logical flaws, et caetera. But I hope someone gets my point. Lots of people think "pot makes you stupid" -- but maybe it's just that stupid people enjoy pot more than intelligent people do, which could explain statistics.
Basically, there are correlations, relationships, and patterns EVERYWHERE. However, it's very rare that someone knows exactly WHY something is happening. If we knew exactly how something happened, usually it would make it trivial to manipulate.
I think what the employee meant was that *after* his wife went missing, it was obvious that he would be suspected of something, since he was the last to see her, IIRC. "see it coming" -- "it" wasn't Mr. Reiser murdering his wife -- "it" was Mr. Reiser being arrested given that his wife had disappeared.
Yes, standard c++ and standard C define a byte as the minimum addressable unit and sizeof(char)==1, but there are some non-standard compilers, especially on exotic platforms. Example: the CPU in an HP48 addresses 4-bit nibble, not bytes. The operating system handles pointers to nibbles, but a char needs at least 8 bits, so a pseudo-C compiler for that platform might have sizeof(char) ==2, and a special nibble type where sizeof(nibble) ==1. It's non-standard, but not everything out there is standard...
I don't think the goal is an ability to map anonymous clickprints onto a domain of known users---guessing right 99% of the time (optimistically speaking) with a population of only 2 users does not seem very good for that application. However, if gmail or yahoo or whoever alerted me when my access habits suddenly changed dramatically, or prompted for identification confirmation more often when my usage patterns changed, that might be somewhat useful.
But what I want to do is this: I did some damn good push-ups, here are some pictures to prove it, so as to inspire those who want to do push-ups in the future! I want to be able to put my homework solutions and papers online without getting my butt kicked by the university for "conspiring to plagiarize" or something like that...
I meant both cases (sorry if it wasn't clear in my post; I didn't read the original comic).
Some professors even have these sentiments: "You wrote a paper about Q for one of your previous classes, and now you're re-using parts of that paper for my class! That's not fair!" Or these: "You developed thesis T for a design class before! It's just not right to get credit for a second design class by extending further thesis T!"
I don't get it. I would love to hand my professors a copy of my antisyllabus when they give me theirs; e.g., what to expect from me, what I will and won't do with my work, and perfectly sane and ethical things that I would like to do with my work that you might find alarming. I'm paying *them* to teach me the class---it shouldn't be taught entirely on their terms, IMHO (I do realize that I can reasonably expect to have to meet certain standards of achievement; otherwise, one student's good marks might represent a very different amount of achievement than anothers, and college degrees are useless to employers if students can just pick-and-choose what to learn and not learn and in what manner).
Oh, didn't think of this, but here's an example: syllabi where there's a clause like, "No-contest automatic failure occurs when students turn in identical work. Don't let any other students see your homework." Some professors even add, "before or after you turn it in."
After a semester ends, sometimes it's okay to post your work online, but, some professors take offense to posting / publishing work in the future, ever. Personally, I can *maybe* understand no-contest rules [still smells like guilty until proven innocent, though.. personally, I'd rather go through the headache of a student judicial affairs trial rather than be handed an F with no way to challenge it] (at least for projects and term papers that share a bunch of identical passages without acknowledging proper citation, although for routine homework assignments, it's inevitable that students will turn in similar-looking answers from time to time), but, any rules from the professor that can extend past the semester end (they could just meet with the dean and get your grade changed, and I'm sure there are departmental deans who wouldn't care to hear the student's side of the story).
If you write something X for a class, and you let anyone else ever in your entire life look at X, your degree is bogus (in their eyes)---unless X is published through a peer-reviewed journal with their permission. You don't own your work, they do. Otherwise, what's to stop you from letting other students in the class, or in subsequent classes, read your work?
Obviously, if someone reads any material on the subject (such as X) and uses it in their submission Y, they should just list X in their bibliography. However, most professors feel it is cheating for you to put X up on your website, just because Y might not cite X.
In a similar scenario ("Maybe I *did* write that wikipedia entry!"), even if you did write entry W, you're still sharing your original work with the world, and if that same original work appears in X (even if you cite W in X, although citing yourself is just weird in most contexts), it's effectively the same (in their eyes) as publishing X without their permission, which is tantamount to giving your work to other students to be copied and submitted (in their eyes).
You can duplicate the functionality of email with the web (and maybe the other way around), but, what if you don't?
What if it's broken down to this: do you want the ability to communicate with other human beings only, or the ability to obtain information from computer databases only?
Perhaps that's more of where the question was aiming...
No problem. TightPod can just rename their product the "TightSosumi".;')
Also, Line 6 and Apple's iPod are both music-related; Line 6's pod products came first, so, really, Apple should be careful about the word "pod," because maybe the reason Line 6 didn't care is that the emphasis is on the i in iPod. (But, who knows, really.)
Line 6's stuff is nearly universally known among guitarists and bassists. "People who enjoy music" is simply a bigger market than "people who play guitars." Considering that, I'd say Line 6 has very good recognition (although their 'pod' products aren't as popular now as they once were... I think Zoom's cheaper copycats took care of that).
There are some biographies in simple English on wikipedia, if the main encyclopedia's articles are too far above the students' reading levels. (An example of a short one (there's probably better ones for more famous people): Nikola Tesla.) list of famous experiments should give some names to investigate...
1 - Okay, I admit I should have been more clear:) Congress, bill writers (lobbyist groups, political parties, etc), decisionmakers in the DEA, city mayors and other officials, people who design training courses for the police.. any place where someone has power over drug use, drug policy, or the spread of knowledge or information about drugs. 2 - I didn't mean to give the impression that I frowned on alcohol use... (on the contrary! there are tons of people who enjoy a few drinks with friends and never have problems). There will always be people who don't think things through, and I feel that, with good education and a change in cultural attitudes, the people who don't think things through won't end up in bad places, because other individuals who do think things through will have helped them wisen up (parents, teachers,...)
A lot of the people who end up with drug problems got that way because of their personalities or temperament, and not because of drugs. I think our culture doesn't always realize that, and will blame drugs for some people's poor choices, because people don't like to take responsibility for their actions. I read a book once called Unzipping Our Genes that talked about genetic research being able to predict people's personalities or something. It could be helpful to parents---if you know your child is predisposed to anxiety, you could focus on helping him/her be strong; predisposed to violence, teach peaceful conflict resolution; predisposed to reckless behavior or bad habits, offer advice on long-term goals in life and how to achieve them.
Many folk don't need to worry about addiction, but some do. It'd be sort of cool if we could be warned about things we personally should avoid (although I would worry about there being lists collected with the temperaments and predispositions of every child whose genes were analyzed... a la Gattaca)
Hmm, didn't mean to have any FUD... but I think at least DUI is a significant topic when it comes to drug use. It's true that there are plenty of bad drivers, intentionally reckless drivers, and people who are falling asleep, and they can cause accidents, too.. but I still think DUI is a bit different than other impairments (maybe too much exposure to MADD has brainwashed me *grin*)
I think a good goal would be to move toward general legalization; the idea of a license isn't intended to let the DEA keep drugs generally illegal---it's supposed to demonstrate that Americans can be responsible and don't need the DEA to babysit them.. it could be a first step toward more liberties. I don't want more bureaucracy nor control; I want the DEA to become less controlling, and eventually not even be necessary.
I agree that drug testing should be banned for most jobs. It just seems ethically wrong to me. The point about other countries where alcohol is treated differently is also well-made; I'm still not sure how to change the cultural attitudes toward alcohol here in the USA, though.
Good point about the Native American Church needing permission. Catholic churches don't have to get permission to serve communion wine to minors...
THC should have never been illegalized. I've heard theories that suggest that "good white folk" were scared by Mexican immigrants smoking it, or something. It used to be prescribed to treat asthma, and it's probably one of the best anti-nausea substances known to man... It has a lot of potential to be medically helpful (in addition to being recreational) but it's treated like a poison.
Out of curiosity, have you read Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend? If you haven't, you should. It's a really interesting story about a man learning how to use drugs to his benefit, instead of letting an addiction control his life.
I think good drug education (DARE maybe?) that teaches people from an early age that drugs are powerful, must be respected, tend to cause a lot of complications, can lead to serious problems, must be used with moderation if used at all, can impair judgment, and contribute to health problems and traffic accidents---is much better at helping the social problem than simply trying to arrest it away.
You typically can't arrest a problem; you can usually only arrest its symptoms.
Nevada (I think) has legalized prostitution, with certain restrictions and such by the government. From what I've heard, legalized prostitution is less of a problem than illegal prostitution: less disease, less loitering, less time required by law enforcement, and less abuse of sex workers.
I think part of the problem is that the government knows America is not ready for drug availability. Look at alcohol---you have to be 21, driving drunk is a punishable offense, giving it to minors is a punishable offense, using it to manipulate someone is a punishable offense---but it's still a HUGE problem! There's plenty of date rape involving alcohol, lots of minors drinking, lots of people driving drunk---I mean, come on, use common sense if you're going to drink!
There are some people who are mature enough to handle drugs. However, many people don't know the first thing about how drugs affect their brain and body...
An interesting idea is a "psychoactive research license." Someone could take a special training course, take an exam, and be granted a license for a few years that would let them purchase small quantities of illegal substances and use them in the privacy of their own home. I mean, the Native American Church has an agreement that's sort of like this for the use of peyote in religious ceremonies (the Church has a permit to buy peyote from special DEA-licensed growing farms for certain restricted uses with registered Church members). Of course, if you trafficked the substances, used anything around a minor, became a public nuisance while intoxicated, or tried to operate a vehicle, you'd have your license revoked and be punished in some way.
One potential problem is that employers might start screening potential employees against the list of people with licenses; I'm not sure if it would be possible to keep the license list private and unavailable to the public, except perhaps if it's considered part of freedom of religion. (Maybe a better name for the license would be "Ceremonial substance permit.")
Nobody's in charge of the gnutella network---there's nobody to sue. (Side note: we all know about freenet and its drawbacks, but have any of the other projects that claim a goal of being faster and better than freenet gotten anywhere yet?)
Hence, the RIAA will systematically sue every gnutella-capable software package they can track down. They can't sue things that are produced in countries outside their jurisdiction, but, that won't stop them from: (a) spying on you so they can sue people who download said programs [this is one advantage to freenet: some anonymity], (b) passing legislation to make it illegal to possess or write software that can be used to violate copyrights (DMCA et al)
Where do I write a complaint letter? I use programs like limewire to share my creative-commons music (and other artists' similarly-licensed music) with both friends and strangers. Are they trying to deny me the opportunity to use a different distribution model for my music? P2P is great, because I don't have to shell out big bucks for bandwidth.
That sounds like CD-distribution music companies trying to destroy non-CD-distribution music companies... it looks a lot like monopolistic behavior to me.:-/
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Warning: previewing my own comment, it looks rather rant-ish. I swear there's some worthwhile information contained herein, though!
A ME" and figure out if there was a record for deletion. (( '*' = )) The only record of the content was "A7" -- which means "The biography or write-up didn't provide a thorough description of the subject's notability" or something like that.
.Z.E.R.O.] once it had showed up, someone Userfyed it for me, meaning the revision history was added to my [User:Os] page as [User:Os/Fear_of_.Z.E.R.O.].
Actually, I hung out in #wikipedia on freenode when a write-up someone did for a band I used to be in simply disappeared and found out that things are getting deleted just because they don't want to look like they're full of cruft and un-encyclopedia-worthy content. I asked specifically if it was a lack of computer resources, or lack of editors to manage all the content, or if it was a lack of other good ways to deal with misinformation (the talk pages, new categories like "articles with unsourced statements", article locking, etc., seemed like good enough ways to manage misinformation to me, but maybe I was simply naive?)---but, I was told none of these were the reason!! (I would have logged the conversation and saved it, but you aren't allowed to log #wikipedia, because evidently someone that a bunch of wiki-editors didn't like very much kept posting logs of the chatroom, and they felt it was inappropriate for their public conversations to, erm, stay public?? or something.)
Also, as to the idea that "Well, there are lots of things with similar names!" -- yes, the reason behind disambiguation pages. If the canadian band named Fear Zero (incidentally, if you're curious, they showed up on the internet about 2004. fear *OF* zero showed up around 2000, and the name was then-unique, and we had picked it partly because we couldn't find anyone with a similar name.) ever got written up on wikipedia, and someone wanted the "Fear of Zero" entry to be a disambiguation page (although, AFAIK we always used the "of", and the canadian group has never used an "of", so I don't think the question would arise to begin with), then, hey, that'd work just fine.
When I went into #wikipedia to ask for info/help, a lot of people laughed and asked why some random garage band had gotten written up in the first place. Numerous chatters (some of which I discovered were editors and admins) jumped to the conclusion that I had written up an autobiography or autobandbiography or something, and said promotional material doesn't belong. (I have to retort: for a band that is no longer around, I wouldn't call it promo material; second, I *didn't* write it up! Someone else did! Christ...)
There actually wasn't anything in the main wikipedia deletion discussion logs... you can get "speedily-deleted" (which means no real record available* to prove some content was ever there), particularly if there's a write-up of somebody or something or somerandomband that doesn't explain its own notability (should every wikipedia article now include a section entitled "Why this thing is meaningful and shouldn't be deleted"?)
The only way I could ever tell the article had existed was that some editor told me I could construct a URL of the form "/w/index.php?title=Special:Log/delete&page=PAGEN
There have been so many speedily deletions that the 404 page for articles now includes an automatic link to this Special:Log/delete page for a given article... I guess a lot of people have been wondering where articles have been going. And, you don't even have to be "marked for speedy deletion", as the Post article states---you can just have a random editor click "Delete" and a write-up will disappear.
Non-admins can't access any speedily deleted content, unless they can beg an admin to restore the page---since I had always liked the write-up about [Fear of
Does anyone else want to see another wiki-like site open up (something more akin to Everything2?) whose goal is pretty much to summarize and index all human knowledge, rather than just compete with Encyclopedia Britannica?
If the language is only taught officially, then someone who figures out the language just by observation is reverse engineering something that isn't theirs. (Ignore the fact that this is how babies learn to speak.) Isn't Microsoft sort of against reverse-engineering? I seem to recall some stories about the linux ntfs driver or some such.
Loglan is owned by a researcher, although it's an artificial language. In the US, it will become public domain at some point (one hopes, unless they keep mickey-mousing the copyright system forever and ever). That's why Lojban was created; the creator of Loglan kept trying to sue people who experimented with his artificial language (I think? correct me if I'm wrong!)
In the country where this language is spoken, what's the rule about copyrighted things falling into public domain?
There's already precredence, particularly in Europe. The EU has been pushing for the US to adopt something similar, under the premise that it protects the international trade/goods integrity of copyrights.
The RIAA, representing both (a) artists who feel that their own works shouldn't be performed by other artists and (b) artists who do many public performances/interpretations of other artists' works as cover songs, is drawn on the issue (understandably), since two of their goals are to protect copyrighted art as a means of income and to protect an artist's right to interpret, perform,
There are sorts of "reasonable limits" for doing covers; bands who do nothing but covers, bands who don't really use their own arrangements but instead closely mimic the originals, or bands who play to big crowds and make a lot of profit off of a cover are considered to be doing something inappropriate. However, many large clubs, music-oriented venues, and radio stations who host live performing bands typically are playing a flat licensing subscription fee already to the RIAA (and for radio stations, they pay fees to a branch of US copyright regulation that covers broadcasting).
In the US, performing (but not recording) cover songs is often considered fair use; the idea (I think) is that it's your own interpretation, therefore it has artistic merit from you and beyond that of the original recording.
In some countries (including lots of Europe), doing cover songs is often considered to be less of your own interpretation and more of simply public performance of the original work, which makes it illegal to perform anything (excluding public-domain) in public without explicit permission. Personally, I think it's a little overboard, especially when the original songs aren't arranged for harmonica.
You know, nature has a way of providing a diversity of things to accomplish similar effects. Just because europeans more commonly have a well-identified neanderthal gene for regulating brain size doesn't mean that other cultures don't have a different gene that serves a very similar purpose.
Besides, do you really think europeans and africans didn't interbreed at all, or somethin g? That would be just naive! Humans migrate periodically. It's happened an *awful* lot of times throughout history.
At the moment, wikipedia is trying to compete with "respected encyclopedias," which means they're deleting all articles that don't demonstrate "notability."
In other words, having an encyclopedia grateful for nearly all user contributions and that was like a conventional encyclopedia, Everything2, and a forum for the collection of all human knowledge worth its disk space, all mixed together --- that's gone.
They've been deleting articles left and right because Encyclopedia Britannica's current selling/competing stand is that Wikipedia has lots of crap alongside its useful content.
Or maybe it's just that wikipedia is too big to manage, so instead of trying to be to general knowledge what a library is to books, they're just trying to be a sexy, free, basic encyclopedia. If you're hoping that the world's biggest encyclopedia might have a page on very-little-known topic, well, no longer; anything not "widely cited" is getting the boot. It's like your library chucking out any book that hasn't been checked out in the last year, or maybe just converting itself into a book store.
In my view, the article shouldn't have been deleted, although it should have been edited based on not fitting NPOV requirements. It's good that it at least got a review first, though, and a detailed one at that! I've seen TONS of articles deleted lately, many without any review (the Speedy-Deletion criteria keep becoming more encompassing... and if something is speedily deleted, the only way you can find out that it ever existed, short of being an admin, is knowing when it was deleted or who deleted it---and you can't get to the original content---ever), simply because they weren't about items famous or important enough that Encyclopedia Britannica would cover.
That's why I've decided my contributions would be better appreciated at Everything2. I'm more of a jack-of-all-trades person, and I do have some worthwhile knowledge, but since I'm not a famous or well-regarded expert nor an experienced and talented editor, there is no place for me at wikipedia.
The random main-body text spam is all over the place lately. It seems that as soon as spammers realize X won't pass the filters, they send much less X and more Y. The problem with the random text is that it's very hard to discern from legitimate e-mail (statistically speaking). Filters don't have a sense of context and conversation, even if they're so extravagant that they can perform cunnilingus on a hardwood floor. A simple validation system (SPF isn't a bad idea) would be a good step forward, if it was ubiquitous enough. Perhaps somebody can make it trendy to "get your SPF on" ?
Let's suppose that there are three types of children: N, A, and pA. A kids are autistic no matter what. N kids are never autistic. pA kids may or may not realize full autism. Suppose that the amount of time that pA kids get to interact with society is an important factor in whether they develop normally (like an N child) or in an autistic manner (like an A child).
Here's a thought experiment. We have three populations, P1, P2, and P3, which all have the same constituency of N, A, pA. As the children age, we can re-categorize pA children as either N or A. P1 will be our control group: they will interact with society and watch a little bit of television. P2 will be like P1, but be exposed to more TV. P3 will model lazy parenting: the children won't get much social interaction, and the only thing they have to pass the time is TV, so they'll get a lot of it.
If watching too much TV can promote autism, P2 will have many pA -> A. OTOH, if it's a lack of exposure to social interaction that causes underdevelopment of brain circuitry that regulates social interaction, P2 should resemble P1 and P3 will have many pA -> A.
Even if there is a very strong temporal link between two variables, correlation and causation are tricky. You can't always say, "The reason that my alarm clock goes off in the morning is because the sun rises in the sky," even if you can point to some region where the sun is obscured by the terrain and people don't use alarm clocks.
I would love for non-interactive, advertisement-soaked, eye-candy-filled, dumbed-down media to be less prevalent. When Internet access began to be ubiquitous, I got excited, but then I saw and heard all of the media companies wanting to turn the Internet into a new form of TV.
I know, my examples have bad analogies, poor metaphors, logical flaws, et caetera. But I hope someone gets my point. Lots of people think "pot makes you stupid" -- but maybe it's just that stupid people enjoy pot more than intelligent people do, which could explain statistics.
Basically, there are correlations, relationships, and patterns EVERYWHERE. However, it's very rare that someone knows exactly WHY something is happening. If we knew exactly how something happened, usually it would make it trivial to manipulate.
I think what the employee meant was that *after* his wife went missing, it was obvious that he would be suspected of something, since he was the last to see her, IIRC. "see it coming" -- "it" wasn't Mr. Reiser murdering his wife -- "it" was Mr. Reiser being arrested given that his wife had disappeared.
Yes, standard c++ and standard C define a byte as the minimum addressable unit and sizeof(char)==1, but there are some non-standard compilers, especially on exotic platforms.
Example: the CPU in an HP48 addresses 4-bit nibble, not bytes. The operating system handles pointers to nibbles, but a char needs at least 8 bits, so a pseudo-C compiler for that platform might have sizeof(char) ==2, and a special nibble type where sizeof(nibble) ==1. It's non-standard, but not everything out there is standard...
On some very exotic platforms, sizeof(char) != 1. Not every machine is byte-addressed...
I don't think the goal is an ability to map anonymous clickprints onto a domain of known users---guessing right 99% of the time (optimistically speaking) with a population of only 2 users does not seem very good for that application. However, if gmail or yahoo or whoever alerted me when my access habits suddenly changed dramatically, or prompted for identification confirmation more often when my usage patterns changed, that might be somewhat useful.
But what I want to do is this:
I did some damn good push-ups, here are some pictures to prove it, so as to inspire those who want to do push-ups in the future!
I want to be able to put my homework solutions and papers online without getting my butt kicked by the university for "conspiring to plagiarize" or something like that...
I meant both cases (sorry if it wasn't clear in my post; I didn't read the original comic).
Some professors even have these sentiments:
"You wrote a paper about Q for one of your previous classes, and now you're re-using parts of that paper for my class! That's not fair!"
Or these:
"You developed thesis T for a design class before! It's just not right to get credit for a second design class by extending further thesis T!"
I don't get it. I would love to hand my professors a copy of my antisyllabus when they give me theirs; e.g., what to expect from me, what I will and won't do with my work, and perfectly sane and ethical things that I would like to do with my work that you might find alarming. I'm paying *them* to teach me the class---it shouldn't be taught entirely on their terms, IMHO (I do realize that I can reasonably expect to have to meet certain standards of achievement; otherwise, one student's good marks might represent a very different amount of achievement than anothers, and college degrees are useless to employers if students can just pick-and-choose what to learn and not learn and in what manner).
Oh, didn't think of this, but here's an example: syllabi where there's a clause like, "No-contest automatic failure occurs when students turn in identical work. Don't let any other students see your homework." Some professors even add, "before or after you turn it in."
:-D
After a semester ends, sometimes it's okay to post your work online, but, some professors take offense to posting / publishing work in the future, ever. Personally, I can *maybe* understand no-contest rules [still smells like guilty until proven innocent, though.. personally, I'd rather go through the headache of a student judicial affairs trial rather than be handed an F with no way to challenge it] (at least for projects and term papers that share a bunch of identical passages without acknowledging proper citation, although for routine homework assignments, it's inevitable that students will turn in similar-looking answers from time to time), but, any rules from the professor that can extend past the semester end (they could just meet with the dean and get your grade changed, and I'm sure there are departmental deans who wouldn't care to hear the student's side of the story).
okay, enough ranting
Most professors define that as cheating.
If you write something X for a class, and you let anyone else ever in your entire life look at X, your degree is bogus (in their eyes)---unless X is published through a peer-reviewed journal with their permission. You don't own your work, they do. Otherwise, what's to stop you from letting other students in the class, or in subsequent classes, read your work?
Obviously, if someone reads any material on the subject (such as X) and uses it in their submission Y, they should just list X in their bibliography. However, most professors feel it is cheating for you to put X up on your website, just because Y might not cite X.
In a similar scenario ("Maybe I *did* write that wikipedia entry!"), even if you did write entry W, you're still sharing your original work with the world, and if that same original work appears in X (even if you cite W in X, although citing yourself is just weird in most contexts), it's effectively the same (in their eyes) as publishing X without their permission, which is tantamount to giving your work to other students to be copied and submitted (in their eyes).
You can duplicate the functionality of email with the web (and maybe the other way around), but, what if you don't?
What if it's broken down to this: do you want the ability to communicate with other human beings only, or the ability to obtain information from computer databases only?
Perhaps that's more of where the question was aiming...
For those who don't catch the references...
Principia Discordia (visual)... and there are many sequels, such as the apocrypha and the errata
I bought it with that 2000" TV. It was a double-package. ;)
No problem. TightPod can just rename their product the "TightSosumi". ;')
Also, Line 6 and Apple's iPod are both music-related; Line 6's pod products came first, so, really, Apple should be careful about the word "pod," because maybe the reason Line 6 didn't care is that the emphasis is on the i in iPod. (But, who knows, really.)
Line 6's stuff is nearly universally known among guitarists and bassists. "People who enjoy music" is simply a bigger market than "people who play guitars." Considering that, I'd say Line 6 has very good recognition (although their 'pod' products aren't as popular now as they once were... I think Zoom's cheaper copycats took care of that).
There are some biographies in simple English on wikipedia, if the main encyclopedia's articles are too far above the students' reading levels. (An example of a short one (there's probably better ones for more famous people): Nikola Tesla.)
list of famous experiments should give some names to investigate...
1 - Okay, I admit I should have been more clear :) Congress, bill writers (lobbyist groups, political parties, etc), decisionmakers in the DEA, city mayors and other officials, people who design training courses for the police.. any place where someone has power over drug use, drug policy, or the spread of knowledge or information about drugs. ...)
2 - I didn't mean to give the impression that I frowned on alcohol use... (on the contrary! there are tons of people who enjoy a few drinks with friends and never have problems). There will always be people who don't think things through, and I feel that, with good education and a change in cultural attitudes, the people who don't think things through won't end up in bad places, because other individuals who do think things through will have helped them wisen up (parents, teachers,
A lot of the people who end up with drug problems got that way because of their personalities or temperament, and not because of drugs. I think our culture doesn't always realize that, and will blame drugs for some people's poor choices, because people don't like to take responsibility for their actions. I read a book once called Unzipping Our Genes that talked about genetic research being able to predict people's personalities or something. It could be helpful to parents---if you know your child is predisposed to anxiety, you could focus on helping him/her be strong; predisposed to violence, teach peaceful conflict resolution; predisposed to reckless behavior or bad habits, offer advice on long-term goals in life and how to achieve them.
Many folk don't need to worry about addiction, but some do. It'd be sort of cool if we could be warned about things we personally should avoid (although I would worry about there being lists collected with the temperaments and predispositions of every child whose genes were analyzed... a la Gattaca)
Hmm, didn't mean to have any FUD... but I think at least DUI is a significant topic when it comes to drug use. It's true that there are plenty of bad drivers, intentionally reckless drivers, and people who are falling asleep, and they can cause accidents, too.. but I still think DUI is a bit different than other impairments (maybe too much exposure to MADD has brainwashed me *grin*)
I think a good goal would be to move toward general legalization; the idea of a license isn't intended to let the DEA keep drugs generally illegal---it's supposed to demonstrate that Americans can be responsible and don't need the DEA to babysit them.. it could be a first step toward more liberties. I don't want more bureaucracy nor control; I want the DEA to become less controlling, and eventually not even be necessary.
I agree that drug testing should be banned for most jobs. It just seems ethically wrong to me. The point about other countries where alcohol is treated differently is also well-made; I'm still not sure how to change the cultural attitudes toward alcohol here in the USA, though.
Good point about the Native American Church needing permission. Catholic churches don't have to get permission to serve communion wine to minors...
THC should have never been illegalized. I've heard theories that suggest that "good white folk" were scared by Mexican immigrants smoking it, or something. It used to be prescribed to treat asthma, and it's probably one of the best anti-nausea substances known to man... It has a lot of potential to be medically helpful (in addition to being recreational) but it's treated like a poison.
Out of curiosity, have you read Aleister Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend? If you haven't, you should. It's a really interesting story about a man learning how to use drugs to his benefit, instead of letting an addiction control his life.
I think good drug education (DARE maybe?) that teaches people from an early age that drugs are powerful, must be respected, tend to cause a lot of complications, can lead to serious problems, must be used with moderation if used at all, can impair judgment, and contribute to health problems and traffic accidents---is much better at helping the social problem than simply trying to arrest it away.
You typically can't arrest a problem; you can usually only arrest its symptoms.
Nevada (I think) has legalized prostitution, with certain restrictions and such by the government. From what I've heard, legalized prostitution is less of a problem than illegal prostitution: less disease, less loitering, less time required by law enforcement, and less abuse of sex workers.
I think part of the problem is that the government knows America is not ready for drug availability. Look at alcohol---you have to be 21, driving drunk is a punishable offense, giving it to minors is a punishable offense, using it to manipulate someone is a punishable offense---but it's still a HUGE problem! There's plenty of date rape involving alcohol, lots of minors drinking, lots of people driving drunk---I mean, come on, use common sense if you're going to drink!
There are some people who are mature enough to handle drugs. However, many people don't know the first thing about how drugs affect their brain and body...
An interesting idea is a "psychoactive research license." Someone could take a special training course, take an exam, and be granted a license for a few years that would let them purchase small quantities of illegal substances and use them in the privacy of their own home. I mean, the Native American Church has an agreement that's sort of like this for the use of peyote in religious ceremonies (the Church has a permit to buy peyote from special DEA-licensed growing farms for certain restricted uses with registered Church members). Of course, if you trafficked the substances, used anything around a minor, became a public nuisance while intoxicated, or tried to operate a vehicle, you'd have your license revoked and be punished in some way.
One potential problem is that employers might start screening potential employees against the list of people with licenses; I'm not sure if it would be possible to keep the license list private and unavailable to the public, except perhaps if it's considered part of freedom of religion. (Maybe a better name for the license would be "Ceremonial substance permit.")
Nobody's in charge of the gnutella network---there's nobody to sue. (Side note: we all know about freenet and its drawbacks, but have any of the other projects that claim a goal of being faster and better than freenet gotten anywhere yet?)
:-/
Hence, the RIAA will systematically sue every gnutella-capable software package they can track down. They can't sue things that are produced in countries outside their jurisdiction, but, that won't stop them from: (a) spying on you so they can sue people who download said programs [this is one advantage to freenet: some anonymity], (b) passing legislation to make it illegal to possess or write software that can be used to violate copyrights (DMCA et al)
Where do I write a complaint letter? I use programs like limewire to share my creative-commons music (and other artists' similarly-licensed music) with both friends and strangers. Are they trying to deny me the opportunity to use a different distribution model for my music? P2P is great, because I don't have to shell out big bucks for bandwidth.
That sounds like CD-distribution music companies trying to destroy non-CD-distribution music companies... it looks a lot like monopolistic behavior to me.