Wikipedia has certain problems -- when I look up topics in which I'm an expert, I always find the articles full of mistakes -- but it was nice to see something that was relatively free of commercial spin.
I wish more people would do this. I think people rarely look up pages in which they are expert, or have good knowledge of. I have found errors, misrepresentations or bad explanations in most pages I've looked at, where I am knowledgeable in the subject. This leads me to the reasonable conclusion that there probably errors on most pages, some of them serious, some of them deliberate.
And no, I don't fix them. I simply do not have the time nor the inclination to play editing wars with some wikifascist. Until such time as wikipedia has a fair and transparent administration system there's no point in wasting your time trying to improve it.
It could well end up that Amazon's version ends up being more accurate and reliable due to the fact that they may well be more accountable and honest than the WikiFoundation.
I don't see an issue with this at all. Many wikipedia pages are already shilled, astroturfed, fancruft, blatant spam or copied as near as verbatim from commercial websites. Many "citations" are links to third party commercial sites, and nothing like primary sources at all. Importantly also, almost all Movie pages, for example, have content that's clearly stolen directly from IMdB. Since IMdB is owned by Amazon, it only seems fair that they'd return the favor and steal it back. I'm astounded Amazon hasn't already sued them -- the theft of their data by wikieditors has been blatant for years.
Anyway, how is this different from Jimbo selling off other people's wikipedia content to Answers.com for personal profit? This seems more honest than that to me.
I'm surprised, I'd have thought Paypal would have been the first to cut ties. Especially considering their connection to Meg Whitman.
Though, this is probably a good thing. Considering Paypal's reputation and standing, Paypal is a company that Wikileaks should have been publishing documents about, rather than using as a payment partner.
If you were talking about communications between private citizens I would agree, but these leaks are about our own government. This is supposed to be a representative democracy, and our government should have as few secrets as possible.
I agree. That's the irony on all of this. These "secrets" of "national security" aren't secrets to any other government. They know all about the supposed secrets of all other governments, pretty much. They all have spies, most of them have spy satellites, they know what's going on. None of this will be news to them.
Things that are State secrets, things of "National Security" are generally just things that governments don't want their own citizens, or the citizens of other countries, knowing about.
If any government truly believed in democracy they'd be a lot more transparent than they are. With the technology currently available it would be relatively simple to have openness and transparency, as well as democratic accountability, in any Government that was truly representative of its people.
Of course, I do not expect to ever see that in my lifetime. If anything, it's far more likely that all Governments will use that technology to spy on, and restrict, its citizens more and more.
It's almost as though the UK, the US, Australia and China have been experimenting collaboratively to see how best to use the Internet for citizen-control -- using the excuse of pedophilia, terrorism and copyright theft as the mechanism.
Branding wikileaks as a "terrorist organization" is just another convenient little Reichstag's Fire to use against the freedom of citizens.
Having read through the terms and conditions here, it looks like basically Amazon will pay you a token amount if the movie is made, whilst keeping all the millions for themselves.
Just another parasitic middleman in the movie industry. The very last thing the movie industry needs is more middlemen. If you work in the movie industry you will already be very familiar with this type of scam run by all sorts of people and all sorts of websites. As well as many other similar scams run for actors, directors and other movie professionals, or hopefuls.
Having Amazon now join in, adds an air of legitimacy to what is nothing more than a way of scamming writers. It may result in a break for a few amateur screenwriters. However with a bit of research, perseverance, and hard work, those same screenwriters could get a MUCH better deal for a viable screenplay.
There's a reason for the story. There's been a couple of others about wikipedia in the past month too -- and yet none for about 8 months prior.
The reason is: Wikipedia is on the scrounge again. Every single time they make an appeal for funds the number of wikipedia-related stories increases. Be they good or bad, they always increase, in order to drive people to the site and hopefully donate money.
I guess Wales thinks we are all stupid. They probably aren't going to block all verizon customers, they are just exaggerating for the sake of publicity.
This story is about money. About Wales getting more money. There will be more wikipedia-related stories too before their campaign is over. And then you won't see another until they are on the scrounge again -- or they are caught out with their latest fascist scheme, or embezzlement scandal.
"Google is a de facto monopoly because they're pretty awesome."
That's not true at all.
Google is a monopoly because there is currently no better alternative. Altavista was a monopoly for exactly the same reasons, until Google came along.
Ironically in fact, 13 years on, Google is currently no better that Altavista was. Since every POS on Earth has figured out how to game Google, the number of link-farm results in the first page is becoming as overwhelming as the tag-spammed results in Altavsita once was.
The difference between a virtual monopoly and a physical one is that the price of entry in the market is much lower. Google busted Altavsita with a good idea, a few employees and cobbled together gear. Someone can do that again. It won't be another monopolistic big corp like MS to do it, because they are too bureaucratic to innovate as much as is Google now.
Google's monopoly could crash and burn in a year by the actions of a couple of guys with a good idea. And, by god, we really need that to happen. Search is currently no better than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago.
What % of those are active users though? Yahoo has been around a long time in Internet terms, far longer than Google, and had email a decade before Google. For me, I'm no doubt considered a Yahoo subscriber, because I have had a couple of Yahoo accounts since they started their service. However, one I've not logged into in years, and the other I check about once a year for legacy reasons, but it has nothing but 1,000s of spam mails in it.
One the other hand I use my gmail accounts all the time. I'd be willing to bet Gmail and Yahoo mail has about equal numbers of active subscribers, and that Gmail is on the rise while Yahoo is bleeding accounts every single day.
Since the U.S. (and many other countries) uses the name "Burma", due to not recognizing the Military Junta that currently rules this country, should/. not follow suit?
Seems to me that if your country is ruled by a military junta, having your internet cut off is only to be expected. Being next door to China probably doesn't help.
FYI, Mark Zuckerberg says that he ALWAYS acquires companies for the people rather than the intellectual property.
If that's the case, then it's not a very smart strategy, and he's probably wasting his money.
There's a BIG difference in working in a small start-up, or SME, and working in a corporation. In a small firm your contribution matters, you can get changes made quickly and easily, you can get projects started in days if not hours. In a corporation none of that is going to happen. You will be marginalized, you will have to book projects through complex bureaucracy, and the smallest change may not be possible, or may take months to achieve.
The quality of life and the work environment is far, far worse in a corporation. If you have a brain, are creative and are driven (like most people in start-ups are) you will be frustrated and disillusioned in a corporation after a year or two max.
Chances are, the people you think you are buying will move on to another firm, or start-up on their own within 2-5 years max. Those that don't will just phone-in the shadow of their former productivity whilst continuing to work for you.
Zuckerberg is many things, but he's not that stupid. This just sounds like buzzword "we care about people" crap. He's buying IP and he's killing competition. He doesn't give a fuck about people, I'm certain of it -- if he does, he's an idiot.
I am amazed that people think google is (a) a good search engine, rather then soemthing to generate profit for google.
It was, by comparison. When Google first started it was vastly superior to the keyword-spammed search engines such as Altavista, Infoseek, Yahoo, etc. You could type in a word and would likely get what you were looking for in the first page or two -- rather than on page 10, or 30 with the other engines.
The problem is, that Google has not improved. Google Instant does not improve Search -- it's annoying and turns up the same results. Their new image search does not improve the results, just makes it slower to load.
13 years later, and not only is Search not any better, it's actually worse. People have long ago figured out how to game Google. Comparison site scams often appear as the top links on search terms (especially moreso on google.co.uk -- being the site the article is actually about). Wikipedia appears as spam as the top link on almost everything, even when that page is a stub, or just plain crap (due to the skewed page rank of the site -- not the individual page). Searching for an hotel is near impossible. Searching for a product is near impossible. Searching for anything local is near impossible -- you just end up with comparison site spam every time.
The other search engines are currently no better, so there's no point in switching. They, like Google, are corporate monoliths that are almost incapable of innovation.
Search is not going to improve until someone does what Brin and Page did. Two guys with a good idea cobbled together from spare parts in a garage somewhere.
Mozilla didn't get Firefox where it is by being morons.
Hmmm... Mozilla didn't get Firefox from 0.0 - 2.0 by being morons. However, there's certainly some evidence of moronic behavior from 2.0 onwards. Their focus seems to have changed from usability to adding more and more features. And that's moronic, because that's exactly what killed Netscape.
Only a moron would repeat history that way. Yet that does appear to be what they are doing.
Seems to my Gen X mindset, that there's a big difference between the Gen X-ers that are under 35, they seem more Gen Y -- similarly, there's an HUGE difference between the Gen Y-ers aged 35 - 20 and those under 20.
Those under 20 are more like Generation Z.
From a Gen X point of view, Gen Z are terrifying -- God help us all when they are in charge of something important. It seems that Gen X has become terrible parents.
"So why does/. hate Zuckerberg so much? I think it is largely a generational divide. Many of you come from the gold old days of tech (command lines, walking five miles in the snow to get your code to compile, etc) and don't really understand that just because something wasn't challenging in a technical sense it is still HUGELY useful to millions of people"
I'd guess the reasons why people hate Zuckerberg here so much, are indeed due to an age difference, and experience. The current generation who grew up with Facebook, such as yourself, have a very different set of values and ethics from any previous generation.
Geeks, generally, tend to be quite ethically-minded. Most sci-fi, for example, has core ethical values. Zuckerberg barely qualifies as a geek -- his technical achievements are insignificant. He simply created a fashionable me-too product -- useful, but which none of us really NEED. It's not life-changing, and it will not last a lifetime -- give it another 5 years max. However his marketing abilities, or those of whom he's worked with, are exceptional. He's sold us something we do not need, and privacy-raped everyone not smart enough to check the privacy settings on the site at least once a week.
His ethics are most certainly questionable. I'm not naive enough to believe for a second that this was some hobby of his, and he just liked building things. Capturing the University demographic was a cold-calculated move -- students are a very richly-prized target market. There was still enough dot.com stupidity around for him to figure out that Facebook would either make money itself, or that some bigger firm would eventually buy it out for its database alone.
The current generation is not as obsessed with privacy as any previously. This may be due to naivete, desensitization, or an increased narcissism, arrogance and self-obsession that typifies the current generation. It's therefore not a surprise that they are not as concerned about the dark side of Facebook as any previous generation. Most older geeks are paranoid enough to know that privacy matters. Zuckerberg has therefore committed the cardinal sin.
Zuckerberg is a Barnum of the Internet world -- much like Cuban and Wales and others before him. He's become very rich through smoke and mirrors, and the worst crime of all -- marketing.
Indeed it's actually very hard to see why Facebook is discussed here at all. It's not really news for nerds -- it's news for ad execs, spin doctors and marketing droids. The fact that it's a coded site on the web doesn't make it any more relevant to nerds than TMZ, mlb.com, or cosmopolitan's website.
To be in the stores for the holiday shopping season, it would already have had to be shown to retailers, the retail space booked and paid for by Microsoft, and the first containers of product on ships in transit from China. It's too late in the retail cycle for this season.
If you had linked to the map and not just an article about the map. The article doesn't even have a link to the map.
TFA does actually have a link to the map -- however, you'd easily miss it. It's at the bottom of the article, as a related link. The BBC's layout for stuff like this is appalling. What the actual point of the map image accompanying the article is, is also hard to figure out, since it's illegible and incomplete.
There's also considerable irony in a State-run Broadcasting corporation reporting on censorship. Considering it is something the BBC has been known to do itself.
It is also interesting that the BBC, as the World's largest news organization, is so on the ball that it is reporting something 5 months late. But then... it very, very rarely ever breaks a story, or has an exclusive (unless it's from another BBC investigative documentary team who don't work for BBC News). Does make you wonder where all that UK public money is being spent, and why it is being spent, when mostly all BBC News does is just recycle press releases.
Well, in some ways that's true. He probably is smarter than many directors. He's certainly made more money than most directors, if not all of them. However, that doesn't excuse the fact that most of his movies have been utter crap.
...those terrorists who are Fashion Designers spend far too much time arguing over the correct fabric to make the suicide vests out of, to actually do anything.
"The definitive recording of Beethoven's symphonies, for example, is usually regarded as being Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, recorded in 1968 and 1972. Compare the sales of this to any other recording of Beethoven's symphonies, and you'll see a massive difference."
I do have to take issue with that, depending on what you mean by definitive. Von Karajan's recordings probably sell the best, are perhaps the most famous -- especially because of the hype of recording the 9th on CD.
However, they are far, far, far from definitive musically. They are pompous, overstated and lack all subtlety. Much like the man himself. Furtwängler's recordings with the BPO are probably the most highly regarded among musicians. Obviously there's some degree of personal taste involved, but von Karajan is not highly-regarded as a general rule.
His recordings of the symphonies are ear-bleedingly godawful in my opinion, and best used as coasters.
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone with any knowledge of history.
Operation Streisand!
I wish more people would do this. I think people rarely look up pages in which they are expert, or have good knowledge of. I have found errors, misrepresentations or bad explanations in most pages I've looked at, where I am knowledgeable in the subject. This leads me to the reasonable conclusion that there probably errors on most pages, some of them serious, some of them deliberate.
And no, I don't fix them. I simply do not have the time nor the inclination to play editing wars with some wikifascist. Until such time as wikipedia has a fair and transparent administration system there's no point in wasting your time trying to improve it.
It could well end up that Amazon's version ends up being more accurate and reliable due to the fact that they may well be more accountable and honest than the WikiFoundation.
I don't see an issue with this at all. Many wikipedia pages are already shilled, astroturfed, fancruft, blatant spam or copied as near as verbatim from commercial websites. Many "citations" are links to third party commercial sites, and nothing like primary sources at all. Importantly also, almost all Movie pages, for example, have content that's clearly stolen directly from IMdB. Since IMdB is owned by Amazon, it only seems fair that they'd return the favor and steal it back. I'm astounded Amazon hasn't already sued them -- the theft of their data by wikieditors has been blatant for years.
Anyway, how is this different from Jimbo selling off other people's wikipedia content to Answers.com for personal profit? This seems more honest than that to me.
I'm surprised, I'd have thought Paypal would have been the first to cut ties. Especially considering their connection to Meg Whitman.
Though, this is probably a good thing. Considering Paypal's reputation and standing, Paypal is a company that Wikileaks should have been publishing documents about, rather than using as a payment partner.
I agree. That's the irony on all of this. These "secrets" of "national security" aren't secrets to any other government. They know all about the supposed secrets of all other governments, pretty much. They all have spies, most of them have spy satellites, they know what's going on. None of this will be news to them.
Things that are State secrets, things of "National Security" are generally just things that governments don't want their own citizens, or the citizens of other countries, knowing about.
If any government truly believed in democracy they'd be a lot more transparent than they are. With the technology currently available it would be relatively simple to have openness and transparency, as well as democratic accountability, in any Government that was truly representative of its people.
Of course, I do not expect to ever see that in my lifetime. If anything, it's far more likely that all Governments will use that technology to spy on, and restrict, its citizens more and more.
It's almost as though the UK, the US, Australia and China have been experimenting collaboratively to see how best to use the Internet for citizen-control -- using the excuse of pedophilia, terrorism and copyright theft as the mechanism.
Branding wikileaks as a "terrorist organization" is just another convenient little Reichstag's Fire to use against the freedom of citizens.
"Exploitation"
Having read through the terms and conditions here, it looks like basically Amazon will pay you a token amount if the movie is made, whilst keeping all the millions for themselves.
Just another parasitic middleman in the movie industry. The very last thing the movie industry needs is more middlemen. If you work in the movie industry you will already be very familiar with this type of scam run by all sorts of people and all sorts of websites. As well as many other similar scams run for actors, directors and other movie professionals, or hopefuls.
Having Amazon now join in, adds an air of legitimacy to what is nothing more than a way of scamming writers. It may result in a break for a few amateur screenwriters. However with a bit of research, perseverance, and hard work, those same screenwriters could get a MUCH better deal for a viable screenplay.
15% went into China. 9% came out???
There's a reason for the story. There's been a couple of others about wikipedia in the past month too -- and yet none for about 8 months prior.
The reason is: Wikipedia is on the scrounge again. Every single time they make an appeal for funds the number of wikipedia-related stories increases. Be they good or bad, they always increase, in order to drive people to the site and hopefully donate money.
I guess Wales thinks we are all stupid. They probably aren't going to block all verizon customers, they are just exaggerating for the sake of publicity.
This story is about money. About Wales getting more money. There will be more wikipedia-related stories too before their campaign is over. And then you won't see another until they are on the scrounge again -- or they are caught out with their latest fascist scheme, or embezzlement scandal.
That's not true at all.
Google is a monopoly because there is currently no better alternative. Altavista was a monopoly for exactly the same reasons, until Google came along.
Ironically in fact, 13 years on, Google is currently no better that Altavista was. Since every POS on Earth has figured out how to game Google, the number of link-farm results in the first page is becoming as overwhelming as the tag-spammed results in Altavsita once was.
The difference between a virtual monopoly and a physical one is that the price of entry in the market is much lower. Google busted Altavsita with a good idea, a few employees and cobbled together gear. Someone can do that again. It won't be another monopolistic big corp like MS to do it, because they are too bureaucratic to innovate as much as is Google now.
Google's monopoly could crash and burn in a year by the actions of a couple of guys with a good idea. And, by god, we really need that to happen. Search is currently no better than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago.
What % of those are active users though? Yahoo has been around a long time in Internet terms, far longer than Google, and had email a decade before Google. For me, I'm no doubt considered a Yahoo subscriber, because I have had a couple of Yahoo accounts since they started their service. However, one I've not logged into in years, and the other I check about once a year for legacy reasons, but it has nothing but 1,000s of spam mails in it.
One the other hand I use my gmail accounts all the time. I'd be willing to bet Gmail and Yahoo mail has about equal numbers of active subscribers, and that Gmail is on the rise while Yahoo is bleeding accounts every single day.
Since the U.S. (and many other countries) uses the name "Burma", due to not recognizing the Military Junta that currently rules this country, should /. not follow suit?
Seems to me that if your country is ruled by a military junta, having your internet cut off is only to be expected. Being next door to China probably doesn't help.
If that's the case, then it's not a very smart strategy, and he's probably wasting his money.
There's a BIG difference in working in a small start-up, or SME, and working in a corporation. In a small firm your contribution matters, you can get changes made quickly and easily, you can get projects started in days if not hours. In a corporation none of that is going to happen. You will be marginalized, you will have to book projects through complex bureaucracy, and the smallest change may not be possible, or may take months to achieve.
The quality of life and the work environment is far, far worse in a corporation. If you have a brain, are creative and are driven (like most people in start-ups are) you will be frustrated and disillusioned in a corporation after a year or two max.
Chances are, the people you think you are buying will move on to another firm, or start-up on their own within 2-5 years max. Those that don't will just phone-in the shadow of their former productivity whilst continuing to work for you.
Zuckerberg is many things, but he's not that stupid. This just sounds like buzzword "we care about people" crap. He's buying IP and he's killing competition. He doesn't give a fuck about people, I'm certain of it -- if he does, he's an idiot.
It was, by comparison. When Google first started it was vastly superior to the keyword-spammed search engines such as Altavista, Infoseek, Yahoo, etc. You could type in a word and would likely get what you were looking for in the first page or two -- rather than on page 10, or 30 with the other engines.
The problem is, that Google has not improved. Google Instant does not improve Search -- it's annoying and turns up the same results. Their new image search does not improve the results, just makes it slower to load.
13 years later, and not only is Search not any better, it's actually worse. People have long ago figured out how to game Google. Comparison site scams often appear as the top links on search terms (especially moreso on google.co.uk -- being the site the article is actually about). Wikipedia appears as spam as the top link on almost everything, even when that page is a stub, or just plain crap (due to the skewed page rank of the site -- not the individual page). Searching for an hotel is near impossible. Searching for a product is near impossible. Searching for anything local is near impossible -- you just end up with comparison site spam every time.
The other search engines are currently no better, so there's no point in switching. They, like Google, are corporate monoliths that are almost incapable of innovation.
Search is not going to improve until someone does what Brin and Page did. Two guys with a good idea cobbled together from spare parts in a garage somewhere.
Hmmm... Mozilla didn't get Firefox from 0.0 - 2.0 by being morons. However, there's certainly some evidence of moronic behavior from 2.0 onwards. Their focus seems to have changed from usability to adding more and more features. And that's moronic, because that's exactly what killed Netscape.
Only a moron would repeat history that way. Yet that does appear to be what they are doing.
Seems to my Gen X mindset, that there's a big difference between the Gen X-ers that are under 35, they seem more Gen Y -- similarly, there's an HUGE difference between the Gen Y-ers aged 35 - 20 and those under 20.
Those under 20 are more like Generation Z.
From a Gen X point of view, Gen Z are terrifying -- God help us all when they are in charge of something important. It seems that Gen X has become terrible parents.
Yep. You also can't copyright a name in the UK. The only thing you can do is trademark them.
I'd guess the reasons why people hate Zuckerberg here so much, are indeed due to an age difference, and experience. The current generation who grew up with Facebook, such as yourself, have a very different set of values and ethics from any previous generation.
Geeks, generally, tend to be quite ethically-minded. Most sci-fi, for example, has core ethical values. Zuckerberg barely qualifies as a geek -- his technical achievements are insignificant. He simply created a fashionable me-too product -- useful, but which none of us really NEED. It's not life-changing, and it will not last a lifetime -- give it another 5 years max. However his marketing abilities, or those of whom he's worked with, are exceptional. He's sold us something we do not need, and privacy-raped everyone not smart enough to check the privacy settings on the site at least once a week.
His ethics are most certainly questionable. I'm not naive enough to believe for a second that this was some hobby of his, and he just liked building things. Capturing the University demographic was a cold-calculated move -- students are a very richly-prized target market. There was still enough dot.com stupidity around for him to figure out that Facebook would either make money itself, or that some bigger firm would eventually buy it out for its database alone.
The current generation is not as obsessed with privacy as any previously. This may be due to naivete, desensitization, or an increased narcissism, arrogance and self-obsession that typifies the current generation. It's therefore not a surprise that they are not as concerned about the dark side of Facebook as any previous generation. Most older geeks are paranoid enough to know that privacy matters. Zuckerberg has therefore committed the cardinal sin.
Zuckerberg is a Barnum of the Internet world -- much like Cuban and Wales and others before him. He's become very rich through smoke and mirrors, and the worst crime of all -- marketing.
Indeed it's actually very hard to see why Facebook is discussed here at all. It's not really news for nerds -- it's news for ad execs, spin doctors and marketing droids. The fact that it's a coded site on the web doesn't make it any more relevant to nerds than TMZ, mlb.com, or cosmopolitan's website.
You've not worked in a corporation and sat through powerpoint presentations, you haven't, have you?
A dick directs Dick. (at least according to his reputation in the film industry)
To be fair, he didn't say which Christmas.
"Synergy" would also be a good name for the same reason. Absolutely would appeal to their core userbase.
TFA does actually have a link to the map -- however, you'd easily miss it. It's at the bottom of the article, as a related link. The BBC's layout for stuff like this is appalling. What the actual point of the map image accompanying the article is, is also hard to figure out, since it's illegible and incomplete.
There's also considerable irony in a State-run Broadcasting corporation reporting on censorship. Considering it is something the BBC has been known to do itself.
It is also interesting that the BBC, as the World's largest news organization, is so on the ball that it is reporting something 5 months late. But then... it very, very rarely ever breaks a story, or has an exclusive (unless it's from another BBC investigative documentary team who don't work for BBC News). Does make you wonder where all that UK public money is being spent, and why it is being spent, when mostly all BBC News does is just recycle press releases.
Well, in some ways that's true. He probably is smarter than many directors. He's certainly made more money than most directors, if not all of them. However, that doesn't excuse the fact that most of his movies have been utter crap.
...those terrorists who are Fashion Designers spend far too much time arguing over the correct fabric to make the suicide vests out of, to actually do anything.
I do have to take issue with that, depending on what you mean by definitive. Von Karajan's recordings probably sell the best, are perhaps the most famous -- especially because of the hype of recording the 9th on CD.
However, they are far, far, far from definitive musically. They are pompous, overstated and lack all subtlety. Much like the man himself. Furtwängler's recordings with the BPO are probably the most highly regarded among musicians. Obviously there's some degree of personal taste involved, but von Karajan is not highly-regarded as a general rule.
His recordings of the symphonies are ear-bleedingly godawful in my opinion, and best used as coasters.