Wikipedia appears to satisfy most of the definitions for 'encyclopedia' listed by Google. Encyclopedias don't need to be printed on paper, and they don't need to be written by experts or even be accurate. Of course, accurate encyclopedias are preferable to inaccurate ones.
In other words if you want to prove that someone famous lives in your town going to their house and interviewing them is not sufficient.
Why is your claim more trustworthy than the newspaper's?
It may be that you're right and the newspaper's wrong. But generally, newspapers are more reliable than random people on the internet. This is why the rule exists.
I'm not certain, but I don't think a birth certificate is a primary source. Primary source - the guy saying "my name is so-and-so". The birth certificate is a secondary source - an independent third-party certifying that so-and-so was the name given to the child.
What are you on about? The AC was correct. The issue in this case was that Der Spiegel took this guy's name from Wikipedia - an encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody. A newspaper with paid editors should properly fact-check anything it reports, especially when it's reporting information taken from Wikipedia.
I said that Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is "authoritative" is wrong, and you try to contradict that by pointing out that the source they quoted was wrong?
Generally, newspapers are fairly authoritative sources, as they're expected to fact-check what they publish. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and doesn't pretend to be. Der Spiegel didn't fact-check properly, and Wikipedia cited them as a source for incorrect information. A more reliable source has come along, so the Der Spiegel citation has been removed. It's interesting that the incorrect information came from Wikipedia in the first place, but it's ultimately irrelevant - the same thing could have happened if they got the incorrect name from any other unreliable source.
What exactly do you think is wrong with Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is authoritative or not? Have you actually read the guidelines? In this case, Wikipedia editors made the reasonable assumption that a newspaper was a reliable source; the assumption turned out to be incorrect and the incorrect information and citation was removed. Hopefully, citations from that newspaper will be considered less trustworthy in the future.
It's unfortunate that sometimes incorrect information ends up on Wikipedia, but it's unavoidable. The guidelines exist to minimize the amount of incorrect information, but they can't hope to eliminate it entirely. In this case, Wikipedia policies worked and eliminated the incorrect information. Therefore, the problem is with Der Spiegel, not Wikipedia.
I can't correct the original website, but I can correct Wikipedia -- except that I'm not allowed to, because I can't actually provide a link that proves that I really do spell the name the way I do, or that the "facts" were made up.
So what do you suggest? Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, not information that's true, because determining the truth of a statement is difficult.
Readers can easily verify that the source cited did in fact claim that your name was spelt that way, and did in fact state the made-up 'facts' about you. Verifying the objective truth of those statements is much more difficult.
If you can't provide a reference to some source that corrects the misinformation, then unfortunately the misinformation will stay there. The anonymity of the internet means that saying "this is not true, and I know this because the statements are about me" is not good enough. How do I know you are who you say you are?
This is good journalistic practice, and if wikipedia doesn't do it they can rightfully be blamed.
The problem is that Wikipedia is edited by volunteers. You can't really 'blame Wikipedia' for this problem - it's the unfortunate result of the fact that properly sourcing articles is not a particularly interesting task, so few Wikipedia editors spend their time doing it well. (Plus, there are no serious consequences to not properly sourcing information on Wikipedia - so people aren't as concerned about it.)
The naming conventions seem to suggest that this isn't Wikipedia policy. (For example, the article on 50 Cent is called '50 Cent', not 'Curtis James Jackson III'.) Perhaps the articles you cited need to be renamed - though it might be worth checking the discussion pages first.
Hope for what? Life after death? Why do you need "hope" in *anything*? What's going to happen is going to happen, regardless of what you believe. And what's going to happen is that you wink out of existence when you die.
How do you know that? There's no scientific theory that can explain why we're conscious, which means there's no way we can predict what happens to one's consciousness after death. Nobody can experience death and come back to tell us about it, so there's really no way of telling what happens after death. You can't say for sure that you just 'wink out of existence'.
There's no evidence of an afterlife, so it's probably simplest to just assume that there isn't one. However, evidence of absence is not absence of evidence. I see nothing wrong with choosing to believe in an afterlife - as long as you realise it is a belief, not a fact. What's wrong is insisting that there definitely is or definitely isn't an afterlife. Both theories are unfalsifiable.
That survival motif, the one that says "good mutations get passed on and bad mutations don't" doesn't really explain intelligence, for example. Take plants. If raw intelligence were such an advantage for survival, you'd think some plant would've stumbled across it by now, what with all the millions of years of competition they've got under their belt.
Raw intelligence does not make most organisms more likely to survive, which is why most organisms are not intelligent. Some organisms, notably humans, have ended up in an environment where intelligence gives them a survival advantage.
What's a good trait for one organism is not necessarily good for another. Intelligence is useful to animals like humans. It's not so useful for immobile plants. Similarly, resistance to pesticides is not a particularly useful trait for humans, as we're not regularly sprayed with them. It is a useful trait for the insects that want to eat the food we grow using pesticides, though.
I feel as though I'm an exceptional driver and I feel safer when I'm in control.
Most people think this, regardless of how good they are at driving. However, even if you are an 'exceptionally' good driver, there's only so much you can do to protect yourself from other people's shitty driving. And of course, everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
It'll take a long time for people to give up driving, but I think eventually we'll have cars that can drive themselves more safely than humans can. Once those cars are standard, it won't be too long before you're not allowed to drive on public roads - if you still want to drive for pleasure, take it to a track.
Winter days are usually colder than summer days and vice-versa, but there are still warmer winter days and cooler summer days. The GP said "[the climate science community] deal with long term trends, where [...] short-term noise is factored out". Predicting the temperature on one day six months from now is not dealing with a long-term trend where short-term noise is factored out. The random variation is significant when you're talking about the temperature on a single day.
I can tell you, right now, today, that the temperature six months from now will be warmer than the temperature today. Why? Because what you're talking about is weather, and it's short-term chaotic.
You meant can't, right? The temperature six months from now is also 'weather' and is also short-term chaotic.
Actually, I thought that Slashdot existed for a while before the current user account system came into existence. Those with low UIDs are just the people who signed up for the new accounts as soon as they were available.
Run As... works for everything but launching Windows Update, or running an app that lives on a mapped network share.
I'm not sure why you can't just launch Internet Explorer using runas and then go to the Windows Update website. Network shares don't work when the 'runas' user (ie. Administrator) doesn't have access to the network shares.
That seems like a major flow to me - but it is no surprise. Designing a key feature for securing a system as an Active X component must rate as one of the worst design decisions in recent history.
At least this behaviour has been changed in Vista.
I'm always a little irked by this supposition that the developer for an app that has nothing to do with security has to be aware of the details of the security subsystem.
I consider the concept of running as user vs. administrator a pretty basic part of the way the OS works, not a 'detail of the security subsystem'. Any developer writing software for a particular OS needs a basic understanding of how the OS works, and this is part of it.
Not really. UAC is useful because it makes it immediately obvious when a program requires administrative privileges. This should reduce the prevalence of software that requires administrative privileges to run. Hopefully, that will then make people more suspicious of software which requires administrative privileges - part of the reason people just blindly click "OK" is because there are a lot of tasks out there that require you to do so when it shouldn't be necessary.
You're correct, but the post you replied to never said that being in the administrator group was the same as 'running as root'. In fact, the AC seemed to understand how UAC works just as well as you do.
Slashdot Mirror
Wikipedia appears to satisfy most of the definitions for 'encyclopedia' listed by Google. Encyclopedias don't need to be printed on paper, and they don't need to be written by experts or even be accurate. Of course, accurate encyclopedias are preferable to inaccurate ones.
Why is your claim more trustworthy than the newspaper's?
It may be that you're right and the newspaper's wrong. But generally, newspapers are more reliable than random people on the internet. This is why the rule exists.
I'm not certain, but I don't think a birth certificate is a primary source. Primary source - the guy saying "my name is so-and-so". The birth certificate is a secondary source - an independent third-party certifying that so-and-so was the name given to the child.
What are you on about? The AC was correct. The issue in this case was that Der Spiegel took this guy's name from Wikipedia - an encyclopedia that can be edited by anybody. A newspaper with paid editors should properly fact-check anything it reports, especially when it's reporting information taken from Wikipedia.
Generally, newspapers are fairly authoritative sources, as they're expected to fact-check what they publish. Wikipedia is not a reliable source, and doesn't pretend to be. Der Spiegel didn't fact-check properly, and Wikipedia cited them as a source for incorrect information. A more reliable source has come along, so the Der Spiegel citation has been removed. It's interesting that the incorrect information came from Wikipedia in the first place, but it's ultimately irrelevant - the same thing could have happened if they got the incorrect name from any other unreliable source.
What exactly do you think is wrong with Wikipedia's criteria for determining if a source is authoritative or not? Have you actually read the guidelines? In this case, Wikipedia editors made the reasonable assumption that a newspaper was a reliable source; the assumption turned out to be incorrect and the incorrect information and citation was removed. Hopefully, citations from that newspaper will be considered less trustworthy in the future.
It's unfortunate that sometimes incorrect information ends up on Wikipedia, but it's unavoidable. The guidelines exist to minimize the amount of incorrect information, but they can't hope to eliminate it entirely. In this case, Wikipedia policies worked and eliminated the incorrect information. Therefore, the problem is with Der Spiegel, not Wikipedia.
I guess this makes me 'delusional', huh? Attack the argument, not the person.
So what do you suggest? Wikipedia includes information that's verifiable, not information that's true, because determining the truth of a statement is difficult.
Readers can easily verify that the source cited did in fact claim that your name was spelt that way, and did in fact state the made-up 'facts' about you. Verifying the objective truth of those statements is much more difficult.
If you can't provide a reference to some source that corrects the misinformation, then unfortunately the misinformation will stay there. The anonymity of the internet means that saying "this is not true, and I know this because the statements are about me" is not good enough. How do I know you are who you say you are?
It happens, but it's generally against Wikipedia policy and discouraged.
The problem is that Wikipedia is edited by volunteers. You can't really 'blame Wikipedia' for this problem - it's the unfortunate result of the fact that properly sourcing articles is not a particularly interesting task, so few Wikipedia editors spend their time doing it well. (Plus, there are no serious consequences to not properly sourcing information on Wikipedia - so people aren't as concerned about it.)
This is against Wikipedia policy, so you should be able to revert such changes if you encounter them.
The naming conventions seem to suggest that this isn't Wikipedia policy. (For example, the article on 50 Cent is called '50 Cent', not 'Curtis James Jackson III'.) Perhaps the articles you cited need to be renamed - though it might be worth checking the discussion pages first.
Yeah, I meant 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence'. Oops.
How do you know that? There's no scientific theory that can explain why we're conscious, which means there's no way we can predict what happens to one's consciousness after death. Nobody can experience death and come back to tell us about it, so there's really no way of telling what happens after death. You can't say for sure that you just 'wink out of existence'.
There's no evidence of an afterlife, so it's probably simplest to just assume that there isn't one. However, evidence of absence is not absence of evidence. I see nothing wrong with choosing to believe in an afterlife - as long as you realise it is a belief, not a fact. What's wrong is insisting that there definitely is or definitely isn't an afterlife. Both theories are unfalsifiable.
Raw intelligence does not make most organisms more likely to survive, which is why most organisms are not intelligent. Some organisms, notably humans, have ended up in an environment where intelligence gives them a survival advantage.
What's a good trait for one organism is not necessarily good for another. Intelligence is useful to animals like humans. It's not so useful for immobile plants. Similarly, resistance to pesticides is not a particularly useful trait for humans, as we're not regularly sprayed with them. It is a useful trait for the insects that want to eat the food we grow using pesticides, though.
Most people think this, regardless of how good they are at driving. However, even if you are an 'exceptionally' good driver, there's only so much you can do to protect yourself from other people's shitty driving. And of course, everyone makes mistakes sometimes.
It'll take a long time for people to give up driving, but I think eventually we'll have cars that can drive themselves more safely than humans can. Once those cars are standard, it won't be too long before you're not allowed to drive on public roads - if you still want to drive for pleasure, take it to a track.
Winter days are usually colder than summer days and vice-versa, but there are still warmer winter days and cooler summer days. The GP said "[the climate science community] deal with long term trends, where [...] short-term noise is factored out". Predicting the temperature on one day six months from now is not dealing with a long-term trend where short-term noise is factored out. The random variation is significant when you're talking about the temperature on a single day.
You meant can't, right? The temperature six months from now is also 'weather' and is also short-term chaotic.
Actually, I thought that Slashdot existed for a while before the current user account system came into existence. Those with low UIDs are just the people who signed up for the new accounts as soon as they were available.
It's active on my Vista install, and as far as I can remember I never chose to turn it on.
Yes, because until UAC most users just ran as administrator anyway, so there was no need to use runas.
I'm not sure why you can't just launch Internet Explorer using runas and then go to the Windows Update website. Network shares don't work when the 'runas' user (ie. Administrator) doesn't have access to the network shares.
At least this behaviour has been changed in Vista.
Right-clicking the desktop and selecting 'Properties' brings up the Display control panel applet.
TFA indicates that this is not the case - the problem appears to be that disabling UAC, by default, does not trigger a UAC prompt.
You don't need to know that. You've made an extraordinary claim. The burden of proof lies on you.
I consider the concept of running as user vs. administrator a pretty basic part of the way the OS works, not a 'detail of the security subsystem'. Any developer writing software for a particular OS needs a basic understanding of how the OS works, and this is part of it.
Not really. UAC is useful because it makes it immediately obvious when a program requires administrative privileges. This should reduce the prevalence of software that requires administrative privileges to run. Hopefully, that will then make people more suspicious of software which requires administrative privileges - part of the reason people just blindly click "OK" is because there are a lot of tasks out there that require you to do so when it shouldn't be necessary.
You're correct, but the post you replied to never said that being in the administrator group was the same as 'running as root'. In fact, the AC seemed to understand how UAC works just as well as you do.