Besides, you may have noticed that "you're the one" indicates that I was bouncing his claim back at him, which he actually directed not at me but an editor who was being on the side of due diligence. It was justified, we were inserting information that was cited on point-by-point basis, and he wasn't.
I also see that the admin has now blocked another user, I suspect in response to me pointing out to him that according to wikipedia policies he should've treated all sides equally and that I was going to report it to the admin mailing lists, but evidently, that was not before that user stuck "original research" and "hoax"(!) on a version we had painstakingly cited point-by-point. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_ of_Indian_and_Arabic_numerals&diff=30940364&oldid= 30908790
They have called me "charlatan" and other things too, look at the page, and so they did to reputable and widely-respted professors I cited. He's a liar; the dictionary defines a lie as "A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood", and a liar as "One that tells lies"; "a person who has lied or who lies repeatedly". I have demonstrated what errors he was insisting on and backed it up by verifiable, reliable sources. I requested that he does the same. He has not done so despite repeated requests. He knows his stuff is false because I have demonstrated that at length, and in detail citing authorities on the topic, and he does not provide evidence to back up his claims that his insists on. In addition, he lies too in his replies.
There's no contradiction between free speech and holding people accountable for what they say. In fact, speech is *only* free when people are held accountable for it. If you can't claim ownership of your words and opinions and hold yourself accountable for them upright and forthright then you're not free; free men don't hide behind the veil of the obscure.
Here's an example of what's wrong with Wikipedia
on
Interview with Jimbo Wales
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Here's a vivid and current exmaple of what's wrong with Wikipedia.
I came across the Arabic Numerals article on Wikipedia a little while ago and it shocked me how many errors there were in the article, all suggesting a strong Hindu Nationalist and Hindu revisionist bias. I have no personal anti-Indian bias as I listen to Indian music often (I'd particularly recommend Musafir, Gypsies of Rajasthan) and eat Indian food, never mind many Indian friends. I took the good part of the last week correcting the article so that it abides by Wikipedia policies that "content must be based on verifiable sources"; Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia: Cite sources, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and did so for every significant piece of information. To those whom I disagreed with I went over their version and in detail and at length, point-by-point, demostrated what was in error and cited verifiable and reliable source. I demanded that they do the same, and they have not done so, but responded with evasive and false one-liners, calling my sources "revisionist" though I cited sources that were Western, Chinese, and even a paper on the topic by a neutral Professor who is a member of the International Academy of the History of Science, and the literature of the Indian National Science Academy and the Bulletin of the National Institute of Sciences of India.
To cut the story short, and the story is in the talk pages for whomever wants to check the facts, they eventually got an administrator whose name is Gurubrahma and whose userpage has the Indian flag forefront (Gee, with such a username and userpage what are the chances that he's neutral?) to block me for pointing out to them that deliberate, demonstrable errors are lies, eventhough Wikipedia blocking policy states that Blocking on the basis of personal attacks should be "rarely used" and are limited to "Personal attacks which place users in danger", (ie "threats have been made or actions performed (including actions outside the Wikipedia site) which expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others"), and it clearly states that in the case of "Excessive reverts" where "multiple parties violate the rule, sysops should treat all sides equally". He has not, and now they have removed a version that painstakingly cited its sources on a point-by-point basis to be hidden from view and even so stuck a "disputed", "original research", and even "hoax"(!) banner on it. Whereas their page in which I counted over 9 factual errors just in one section of it that I detailed in the talk page is now forefront, and it links to a personal blog titled ""Laputan Logic: Fanciful. Preposterous. Absurd." that lists no author in its about section.
I have complained left and right within the Wikipedia system without much help. I have complained on the sci.math newsgroup where I got the reply that "This is one of the problems with creating an encyclopedia that anyone and his brother can add information to. And this is also why I try to direct people away from Wikipedia and towards more neutral and established site (such as MathWorld)." Implying I should just give up on Wikipedia.
I'm sorry, but having just experienced what a circus Wikipedia is, I'm no longer inclined to recommend it to anyone.
Here are the pages for those who wish to verify what I said above
Seriously, how much do you need to pamper them with automatic wizards and pretty icons?! Get the bitches to learn Emacs and use it with Auctex to output LaTeX documents (that are letters, articles, reports, books or even slides), with ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) and the R statistical language to handle their spreadsheet needs, and sql.el for their databases. Within a year they'll be emacs crooners.
The bitches; I am sick of this spoilt populace that refuses to be anything but dumb.
Insightful my ass! Maybe you won't go pissing on church doors, but what if the church crowd came over to your place and pissed on you??! That's what happened. The guy is an Academic. He went to no friggin' church door, he's teaching a course in his friggin' department. Keep the church crowd within the churches, and leave the universities and schools alone!
When a whole nation is dedicating itself to anti-Islamism, while Christianism is fucking it up the ass (how's that for "poorly-worded"?), it's only fair that in a state like Kansas, made infamous worldwide by that ludicrous anti-science christianism, scientists would have an anti-Christianism sentiment and it's only fair that they make it heard by all concerned. If they won't, who will?! Don't kid yourself, Science, and scientists are under attack by the deliberate liars and peddlers of self-serving nonsense.
I don't know when I started with 'linux' (In fact, it's better to just call it unix/gnu, because that's what it is, I never cared for the kernel, it's the unix-posix tools+culture+mindset and the gnu-fsf software that I care for) but I wish I had started much, much earlier. I have here now a setup of scite+tetex+rcs+ccrypt, and let me tell you, it didn't take me long to get productive, it's actually pretty easy, and it's already better and I'd argue easier than anything I'd do on MSWord, and a whole lot more fun. Even openoffice feels redundant to me now. I'm also learning other things, it's so much better on the unix-gnu side.
No it didn't. Yes, technically it was a blog, but it was the blog of a highly respected and very competent person. And having seen his post about the sony rootkit on his blog, it was no ordinary 'blog' post. It was almost as rigorous as a peer-reviewed journal paper. So no, that's not what people have in mind when they think blogs. He's the exception, not the rule.
I was disgusted when I watched a movie in the cinema and before it started they showed that copyright notice that said 'copyright theft helps terrorism'. I was so, so disgusted. Can we have enough of this bullshit?! It's becoming the norm that anyone with an unreasonable case to make only has to come up with a bullshit statement like "helps terrorism" or "hates America" for them to think that they've made the point without needing a proof. I can't have much respect for a rich organisation which propaganda resembles that of a stupid usenet troll. I'm also starting to feel a wish to shoot everyone who makes this "helps terrorism" bullshit to push their case.
I get the same feeling when I saw that the Guardian linked to talk.origins usenet newsgroup' FAQ as the first link for an article they published written by Richard Dawkins and another professor. I also got amused once on seeing that a Springer-Verlag book (Springer-Verlag is a pretty big deal in scientific publishing) I was reading quoted an "expert" from a usenet statistics newsgroup.
I feel the term "ubiquitous computing" could be a huge big misnomer, the term suitable, for what's described in this article at least, is ubiquitous automation. When everyone can code in lisp or such stuff and can customise whatever device they come across, or at least the devices would allow it, THAT i'll consider ubiquitous computing, but a "smart" car is really nothing more than a dumb car with some additional automated functions. Unless I can compute, and the device can give me a command line interface and an interpreter prompt, there's no ubiquitous computing in being surrounded by "smart" devices, which I, again, would actually call dumb devices with some more automatied features.
They have the right to monetise on their costs of maintaining and developing AIM And its servers. Those AIM bots are pretty mild and tame. They're not intrusive, and you can easily remove them.
Re:Google Consolidating All Info For Advertising?
on
Google Base Launches
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· Score: 1
Don't forget the jokes. That's what got me hooked on slashdot when I first did. I still mainly read it for the jokes.
That's nonsense, 'putting a car together' would be writing the LaTeX distribution itself from scratch or writing the Word application itself from C++. As for the 10-minute tutorial argument, it's *your* guys argument and I must have refuted it pretty well that you now disown it. Why are you guys so poor at rational analogies and reason? I must suspect this wouold explain your passionate defence of dumb solutions such as MSOffice. I have used Word long enough and thorough enough to know what are the user errors and what are program screw-ups. I can tell you haven't used word much, and in fact, you haven't used LaTeX much either, that's for sure. Had you, you wouldn't be engaged in this argument. I shudder at the ability of a parent who's so poor at logic and argument, and so averse to a little learning, to raise successful children that would enjoy "the best" in life.
Well it's obvious you're not a "Word prolific". Use Word for a long enough period of time as I had done, save a document a few times and load it, let it have any significant outline-like bulleted list with some indentation, and see how often it screws up the thing. I don't need to convince *any* friggin' one what's easier or harder, I have used Word for long enough and I have, not long ago, started using LaTeX. I don't need to convince *any* friggin' one, all I need is to know which is simpler and wiser *for me* to use over a long period of time and the answer is there's no contest, LaTeX wins, it's far more portable, cross-platform, secure, stable, simple, *automatic* (yes, I don't need to worry about formatting or such nonsense, it's done by LaTeX to a professional quality, and this is an opinion that *not* only I hold, by far). As for my children, I sure hope they won't expect to know how to drive a car after a "ten-minute tutorial", or expect that any other thing that they'd use for life is worth *no* more than ten minutes of learning time - if they do, then I'll consider myself a failure of a parent for having raised such instant gratification junkies who think that life is akin to a TV remote.
Sorry, your analogy is bunk. MSWord VS LaTeX has *nothing* to do with a socks drawer, unless you think a computer is nothing more than a socks drawer. And I'm surprised that you would say that I'm comparing apples to oranges yet you compare this to a socks drawer or anything laundry. As for the 1980s, I do think mainstream computing has gone through a huge friggin' regression mandated by the need to sell yet-another-set-of-useless-features to people and get them to pay for them. Computing might've needed that to convert those who wanted to use it as a washing machine, and it's telling that you compare it to laundry, but I don't think that's all it needs to be, a glorified washing machine, and I don't think anyone would have any trouble to use it as such. It's already as such for most. But anyone who's going to use a computer for any significant period of time ought to consider using it well. As for your suggestion that LaTeX should be bundled in a way that LaTeX should be bundled in a way to be used out of the box with only a ten-minute tutorial, I think this expectation is the root of the problem. People don't drive a car after a ten-minute tutorial, they don't learn how to cook after a ten-minute tutorial, they don't learn how to read, write or do math within a ten minute tutorial. Why should they learn how to use a platform that's the infrastructure of modern society within 10 minutes and stagnate at that ignorance for the rest of their days?
I disagree. A GUI is good to get you using the computer if you've never touched one. But for someone to use a computer for longer than a couple of months then I really do think that learning something more reliable and flexible is a better option if they intend to use a computer for life. I know this from personal experience because I have used a GUI for ~20 years now, become 'expert' at using MS software over this time, and consider much of those 20 years a waste of time already. It's okay to start off as a dummy, but it's pretty friggin' dumb to stay a dummy for the rest of your days.
It took me little time to read some LaTeX tutorials, and I do know for sure and without a doubt that dealing with LaTeX is a much better option for me than dealing with why MS Word screws up my bulleted lists on regular basis or whether I should worry about changes to formatting resulting from using MS Word documents between version of MSOffice, OpenOffice.org, Macintosh, PocketPC and Palm or even if my platoform of choice or convenience can handle MS Office documents. None of that is a concern with LaTeX thanks to the plaintext file format that'll work on any device and I don't need to even worry about formatting seeing how LaTeX handles it all. I also don't find anything friggin impossible or even difficult about "\documentstyle{letter} \begin{document}... letters... \end{document}", in fact, it's simpler and faster than messing with MSWord.
I think it's ludicrous that kids learn MSWord in schools and stay with it. I think it's ludicrous that business run on MSWord. LaTeX could do all those trivial things and much, much better.
Same is for much else in the "Unix Culture". The day Unix become about no more than being a GUIfied windows-like-dumbness is the day I think it would lose anything of significance that makes it better than windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, you may have noticed that "you're the one" indicates that I was bouncing his claim back at him, which he actually directed not at me but an editor who was being on the side of due diligence. It was justified, we were inserting information that was cited on point-by-point basis, and he wasn't.
_ of_Indian_and_Arabic_numerals&diff=30940364&oldid= 30908790
I also see that the admin has now blocked another user, I suspect in response to me pointing out to him that according to wikipedia policies he should've treated all sides equally and that I was going to report it to the admin mailing lists, but evidently, that was not before that user stuck "original research" and "hoax"(!) on a version we had painstakingly cited point-by-point. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History
They have called me "charlatan" and other things too, look at the page, and so they did to reputable and widely-respted professors I cited. He's a liar; the dictionary defines a lie as "A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood", and a liar as "One that tells lies"; "a person who has lied or who lies repeatedly". I have demonstrated what errors he was insisting on and backed it up by verifiable, reliable sources. I requested that he does the same. He has not done so despite repeated requests. He knows his stuff is false because I have demonstrated that at length, and in detail citing authorities on the topic, and he does not provide evidence to back up his claims that his insists on. In addition, he lies too in his replies.
There's no contradiction between free speech and holding people accountable for what they say. In fact, speech is *only* free when people are held accountable for it. If you can't claim ownership of your words and opinions and hold yourself accountable for them upright and forthright then you're not free; free men don't hide behind the veil of the obscure.
Here's a vivid and current exmaple of what's wrong with Wikipedia.
I came across the Arabic Numerals article on Wikipedia a little while ago and it shocked me how many errors there were in the article, all suggesting a strong Hindu Nationalist and Hindu revisionist bias. I have no personal anti-Indian bias as I listen to Indian music often (I'd particularly recommend Musafir, Gypsies of Rajasthan) and eat Indian food, never mind many Indian friends. I took the good part of the last week correcting the article so that it abides by Wikipedia policies that "content must be based on verifiable sources"; Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, Wikipedia:No original research, Wikipedia: Cite sources, Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Reliable sources, and did so for every significant piece of information. To those whom I disagreed with I went over their version and in detail and at length, point-by-point, demostrated what was in error and cited verifiable and reliable source. I demanded that they do the same, and they have not done so, but responded with evasive and false one-liners, calling my sources "revisionist" though I cited sources that were Western, Chinese, and even a paper on the topic by a neutral Professor who is a member of the International Academy of the History of Science, and the literature of the Indian National Science Academy and the Bulletin of the National Institute of Sciences of India.
To cut the story short, and the story is in the talk pages for whomever wants to check the facts, they eventually got an administrator whose name is Gurubrahma and whose userpage has the Indian flag forefront (Gee, with such a username and userpage what are the chances that he's neutral?) to block me for pointing out to them that deliberate, demonstrable errors are lies, eventhough Wikipedia blocking policy states that Blocking on the basis of personal attacks should be "rarely used" and are limited to "Personal attacks which place users in danger", (ie "threats have been made or actions performed (including actions outside the Wikipedia site) which expose other Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by government, their employer or any others"), and it clearly states that in the case of "Excessive reverts" where "multiple parties violate the rule, sysops should treat all sides equally". He has not, and now they have removed a version that painstakingly cited its sources on a point-by-point basis to be hidden from view and even so stuck a "disputed", "original research", and even "hoax"(!) banner on it. Whereas their page in which I counted over 9 factual errors just in one section of it that I detailed in the talk page is now forefront, and it links to a personal blog titled ""Laputan Logic: Fanciful. Preposterous. Absurd." that lists no author in its about section.
I have complained left and right within the Wikipedia system without much help. I have complained on the sci.math newsgroup where I got the reply that "This is one of the problems with creating an encyclopedia that anyone and his brother can add information to. And this is also why I try to direct people away from Wikipedia and towards more neutral and established site (such as MathWorld)." Implying I should just give up on Wikipedia.
I'm sorry, but having just experienced what a circus Wikipedia is, I'm no longer inclined to recommend it to anyone.
Here are the pages for those who wish to verify what I said above
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Indian_and _Arabic_numerals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:History_of_India n_and_Arabic_numerals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Arabic_numerals
Seriously, how much do you need to pamper them with automatic wizards and pretty icons?! Get the bitches to learn Emacs and use it with Auctex to output LaTeX documents (that are letters, articles, reports, books or even slides), with ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics) and the R statistical language to handle their spreadsheet needs, and sql.el for their databases. Within a year they'll be emacs crooners.
The bitches; I am sick of this spoilt populace that refuses to be anything but dumb.
Oh I'm sorry, let me guess again then, it's was the spaghetti monster crowd then?
Insightful my ass! Maybe you won't go pissing on church doors, but what if the church crowd came over to your place and pissed on you??! That's what happened. The guy is an Academic. He went to no friggin' church door, he's teaching a course in his friggin' department. Keep the church crowd within the churches, and leave the universities and schools alone!
When a whole nation is dedicating itself to anti-Islamism, while Christianism is fucking it up the ass (how's that for "poorly-worded"?), it's only fair that in a state like Kansas, made infamous worldwide by that ludicrous anti-science christianism, scientists would have an anti-Christianism sentiment and it's only fair that they make it heard by all concerned. If they won't, who will?! Don't kid yourself, Science, and scientists are under attack by the deliberate liars and peddlers of self-serving nonsense.
Give up. You won't win. The mainstream will always be stupid.
I don't know when I started with 'linux' (In fact, it's better to just call it unix/gnu, because that's what it is, I never cared for the kernel, it's the unix-posix tools+culture+mindset and the gnu-fsf software that I care for) but I wish I had started much, much earlier. I have here now a setup of scite+tetex+rcs+ccrypt, and let me tell you, it didn't take me long to get productive, it's actually pretty easy, and it's already better and I'd argue easier than anything I'd do on MSWord, and a whole lot more fun. Even openoffice feels redundant to me now. I'm also learning other things, it's so much better on the unix-gnu side.
Well to that I say fuck "general scrutiny".
No it didn't. Yes, technically it was a blog, but it was the blog of a highly respected and very competent person. And having seen his post about the sony rootkit on his blog, it was no ordinary 'blog' post. It was almost as rigorous as a peer-reviewed journal paper. So no, that's not what people have in mind when they think blogs. He's the exception, not the rule.
I was disgusted when I watched a movie in the cinema and before it started they showed that copyright notice that said 'copyright theft helps terrorism'. I was so, so disgusted. Can we have enough of this bullshit?! It's becoming the norm that anyone with an unreasonable case to make only has to come up with a bullshit statement like "helps terrorism" or "hates America" for them to think that they've made the point without needing a proof. I can't have much respect for a rich organisation which propaganda resembles that of a stupid usenet troll. I'm also starting to feel a wish to shoot everyone who makes this "helps terrorism" bullshit to push their case.
the sound of a burning server.
I get the same feeling when I saw that the Guardian linked to talk.origins usenet newsgroup' FAQ as the first link for an article they published written by Richard Dawkins and another professor. I also got amused once on seeing that a Springer-Verlag book (Springer-Verlag is a pretty big deal in scientific publishing) I was reading quoted an "expert" from a usenet statistics newsgroup.
My cat amused everyone in the park when it got chased on foot by a bird.
Which invites the question, why should it threaten anyone that 3.5 Billion want to uplift themselves from poverty and get a little decent living?
I feel the term "ubiquitous computing" could be a huge big misnomer, the term suitable, for what's described in this article at least, is ubiquitous automation. When everyone can code in lisp or such stuff and can customise whatever device they come across, or at least the devices would allow it, THAT i'll consider ubiquitous computing, but a "smart" car is really nothing more than a dumb car with some additional automated functions. Unless I can compute, and the device can give me a command line interface and an interpreter prompt, there's no ubiquitous computing in being surrounded by "smart" devices, which I, again, would actually call dumb devices with some more automatied features.
They have the right to monetise on their costs of maintaining and developing AIM And its servers. Those AIM bots are pretty mild and tame. They're not intrusive, and you can easily remove them.
Don't forget the jokes. That's what got me hooked on slashdot when I first did. I still mainly read it for the jokes.
That's nonsense, 'putting a car together' would be writing the LaTeX distribution itself from scratch or writing the Word application itself from C++. As for the 10-minute tutorial argument, it's *your* guys argument and I must have refuted it pretty well that you now disown it. Why are you guys so poor at rational analogies and reason? I must suspect this wouold explain your passionate defence of dumb solutions such as MSOffice. I have used Word long enough and thorough enough to know what are the user errors and what are program screw-ups. I can tell you haven't used word much, and in fact, you haven't used LaTeX much either, that's for sure. Had you, you wouldn't be engaged in this argument. I shudder at the ability of a parent who's so poor at logic and argument, and so averse to a little learning, to raise successful children that would enjoy "the best" in life.
Am I the only one who, after reading the mandrake bit, read this title above as "King Kong Livecd"?
Well it's obvious you're not a "Word prolific". Use Word for a long enough period of time as I had done, save a document a few times and load it, let it have any significant outline-like bulleted list with some indentation, and see how often it screws up the thing. I don't need to convince *any* friggin' one what's easier or harder, I have used Word for long enough and I have, not long ago, started using LaTeX. I don't need to convince *any* friggin' one, all I need is to know which is simpler and wiser *for me* to use over a long period of time and the answer is there's no contest, LaTeX wins, it's far more portable, cross-platform, secure, stable, simple, *automatic* (yes, I don't need to worry about formatting or such nonsense, it's done by LaTeX to a professional quality, and this is an opinion that *not* only I hold, by far).
As for my children, I sure hope they won't expect to know how to drive a car after a "ten-minute tutorial", or expect that any other thing that they'd use for life is worth *no* more than ten minutes of learning time - if they do, then I'll consider myself a failure of a parent for having raised such instant gratification junkies who think that life is akin to a TV remote.
Sorry, your analogy is bunk. MSWord VS LaTeX has *nothing* to do with a socks drawer, unless you think a computer is nothing more than a socks drawer. And I'm surprised that you would say that I'm comparing apples to oranges yet you compare this to a socks drawer or anything laundry. As for the 1980s, I do think mainstream computing has gone through a huge friggin' regression mandated by the need to sell yet-another-set-of-useless-features to people and get them to pay for them. Computing might've needed that to convert those who wanted to use it as a washing machine, and it's telling that you compare it to laundry, but I don't think that's all it needs to be, a glorified washing machine, and I don't think anyone would have any trouble to use it as such. It's already as such for most. But anyone who's going to use a computer for any significant period of time ought to consider using it well. As for your suggestion that LaTeX should be bundled in a way that LaTeX should be bundled in a way to be used out of the box with only a ten-minute tutorial, I think this expectation is the root of the problem. People don't drive a car after a ten-minute tutorial, they don't learn how to cook after a ten-minute tutorial, they don't learn how to read, write or do math within a ten minute tutorial. Why should they learn how to use a platform that's the infrastructure of modern society within 10 minutes and stagnate at that ignorance for the rest of their days?
I disagree. A GUI is good to get you using the computer if you've never touched one. But for someone to use a computer for longer than a couple of months then I really do think that learning something more reliable and flexible is a better option if they intend to use a computer for life. I know this from personal experience because I have used a GUI for ~20 years now, become 'expert' at using MS software over this time, and consider much of those 20 years a waste of time already. It's okay to start off as a dummy, but it's pretty friggin' dumb to stay a dummy for the rest of your days. It took me little time to read some LaTeX tutorials, and I do know for sure and without a doubt that dealing with LaTeX is a much better option for me than dealing with why MS Word screws up my bulleted lists on regular basis or whether I should worry about changes to formatting resulting from using MS Word documents between version of MSOffice, OpenOffice.org, Macintosh, PocketPC and Palm or even if my platoform of choice or convenience can handle MS Office documents. None of that is a concern with LaTeX thanks to the plaintext file format that'll work on any device and I don't need to even worry about formatting seeing how LaTeX handles it all. I also don't find anything friggin impossible or even difficult about "\documentstyle{letter} \begin{document} ... letters ... \end{document}", in fact, it's simpler and faster than messing with MSWord.
I think it's ludicrous that kids learn MSWord in schools and stay with it. I think it's ludicrous that business run on MSWord. LaTeX could do all those trivial things and much, much better.
Same is for much else in the "Unix Culture". The day Unix become about no more than being a GUIfied windows-like-dumbness is the day I think it would lose anything of significance that makes it better than windows.