Why are people modding up idiotic statements like this?
Why this supports GW:
We have a record of 1200 years of roughly the same conditions as currently, except for the action of humans. Other than the actions of humans, we see no significant change in the last 100 years. However, the weather is behaving anomalously in a way that from *all* of our data, is totally unexpected. Unless we factor in human action, in which case it is totally expected.
The Earth may be old, but it doesn't act by magic. To reject anthropogenic GW after this data would be to declare that there is this huge coincidence whereby this last century gets picked out of 12 others, and *just happens* to be the century where we've been massively industrialising. It's to suggest that there exists this mysterious 'other cause' which has the deeply unusual properties of a reasonably long period time, and an extraordinarily fast onset, and which apparently leaves zero evidence in either historical records or even as it is actually happening. You might as well blame it on fairies.
Ice core samples give a chronological record of atmospheric conditions - in particular CO2 concentrations.
To analyse them, we assume that before man, CO2 concentration changes are mostly an *effect* of natural temperature changes (we can eliminate other natural sources of CO2 by various methods. E.g. we know if volcanos had an effect by sulphur in the sample, etc.) and so would track temperature changes closely. We then use time periods where we both have ice core data and other temperature data to calibrate a scale to convert CO2 concentration readings into temperatures, and viola, a temperature history.
Bit more complicated than that, but that's the essentials.
It is because in some countries even criminals (or in your example only accused) have rights. When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live.
And in any case, as of this moment, Boris Floricic is far more notable for this silly business about his name than for what he actually did in his life. Even if the name wasn't relevant before, it certainly is now.
Most articles have dozens of contributors at most, but there's a ton of articles, and only a finite number of moderators to monitor ALL of them. And the truly malicious can always call in their friends to spam the process.
It isn't a vast amount of effort. Summarising my post, all you need to do is:
Post an initial edit. Give the reason for your edit in the talk page.
If that fails, put a request for a third opinion, comment or mediation, depending on how many stubborn idiots there are.
And that is all. In total, only TWO edits are required, in the worst. And the result will be almost permanent. Compare to the difficulty of getting Britannica to correct an error. The difficulty you occasionally hear about from people always happens because they get hot headed and just keep escalating, or because they are actually wrong.
Has there actually been cases of brands being stolen in this way? Everyone seems to talk about it as though it were inevitable, but it seems plausible that even if copyright laws allowed a rival company to steal it's franchise, actual fans would always prefer the original makers, and view the copy as an entirely separate work. While they can steal ideas, they can't steal people. A rival company may try to do the Simpsons without Groening, but it will flop, over and over.
I posit that such a nightmare scenario is entirely illusionary, especially for franchises that are worth protecting.
It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.
It's a personal matter of what he thinks his actions will be interpreted as.
Go read the article yourself. He's refusing to endorse CC licenses because:
It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.
This seems to me an entirely realistic and reasonable statement.
Really, I think what RMS is trying to do here is to force CC to more strongly emphasise the differences between their licenses, and perhaps introduce a separate branding for the blatantly non-free licenses. He should be applauded and encouraged on this point.
Really though, individual articles should never be so large and complex in the first place. Anything approaching that should be broken up, for readability reasons.
Unworkable - it just doesn't scale right. The inevitable consequence is that *everyone* will claim to be an expert. Especially trolls and so on. The moderator's desks will immediately be so flooded with bad requests that we go straight back to square one.
The problem with such systems is that it's too slow, and it takes the focus off generating consensus. A bad article might survive if a cabal floods the votes with agrees. In the current system, any user can flag an article up as dubious by adding a tag. This system is far more sensitive to problems.
Something like that is certainly being worked on - i.e. a permanent mirror of approved articles.
In the mean time, you might want to link to the *specific revision* of an article. Clicking 'cite this page' will give you the url for that. You'll end up with something like:
In what ways does Wikipedia as it is today, with its complex structure of guidelines and user groups, reflect your original vision? In what ways does it not?
That's why a wikipedia article, if used for a serious purpose, cannot be considered as an article alone. The article's history needs to be taken into account. In such a case, schrodinger's cat does not apply, because you can see inside the box.
And besides, the quantum truth is true of any other source. A website could be hacked or hoaxed at the time you read it. A newspaper could print a page that was complete garbage and delete it 20 minutes later. Britannica is known to have a number of errors that will probably not be corrected for years. The difference here with Wikipedia is that you would know if it had happened. Despite the crap that happens from time to time, the whole thing has not broken down, is not breaking down, and probably won't break down any time soon.
Holkins is just mouthing off because his attempt at abusing the system was thwarted. And his comic that time directly contradicted his post. The possibility of Skeletor editing He-man is precisely the reason wikipedia doesn't accept 'expertism', which really should be called 'arguments from authority'. Skeletor is obviously an expert on He-man, but his edit was obviously a piece of vandalism that has to be reverted as soon as possible. Edits need to be judged on their own merits, and users need to be judged on what they have done. Any other way is unworkable.
Well, despite what is widely believed, Wikipedia is NOT a democracy. It's driven by consensus instead.
So, suppose are article is being edited by the majority of editors into a blatant factual error. Then we get a single editor to dispute this flawed consensus. (This is attainable, usually.) Wikipedia guidelines dictate a need for verifiability, so the editor would cite a source for his change.
Usually, things stop right here, and the error is corrected. Suppose otherwise. The opposing editors might try to escalate into a conflict. Factual inaccuracy tags would appear at this stage, to warn unwary readers and attract fact checkers. The bad outcome here is that our good editor may run away. In which case, we are back to square one. The fortunately more common case is that either the situation gets directly into the attention of admin, or people actually follow guidelines and turn to mediation.
In mediation then, which has a variety of levels, the editor can then raise his hopefully reputable source, and compel a change in the article because wikipedia guidelines are strongly on his side. So eventually, the correct minority should win, assuming most editors are acting in good faith and can recognise evidence when they see it. If the bad editors start to blatantly and shameless contradict facts at this point, things can go even further. A request for arbitration may be filed on the behaviour of the bad editors, and serious measures can be sought if they are judged to have acted in bad faith. The system strongly favours the truth.
Come on! It's not like it's hard to realise that this is a hoax. It's already appeared on Boingboing, where people noted that it was a load of crap. Will Slashdot editors please do a little research?
At least, I dunno, learn about the laws of physics? Specifically, THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.
Popular opinion always rules. Maybe the Wikipedia code can be modified so that a "hot" article can only have X lines of changes per user per period of time. If congressman X edits a file and others are watching, the others will dominate and keep the popular opinion alive.
That's the rationale behind the infamous 3-Revert-Rule policy, if I recall correctly.
1. Do some silly and stupid on wikipedia. 2. Escalate it into a conflict. 3. Raise it into mediation level (or fail to do so) 4. Find there is a consensus against your actions. 5. Bitch about it in wider media, where you can assume no one knows what you actually did, or is familiar enough with wikipedia guidelines to realise what you did wrong. 6. ??? 7. Profit!!
Slashdot Mirror
Why are people modding up idiotic statements like this?
Why this supports GW:
We have a record of 1200 years of roughly the same conditions as currently, except for the action of humans. Other than the actions of humans, we see no significant change in the last 100 years. However, the weather is behaving anomalously in a way that from *all* of our data, is totally unexpected. Unless we factor in human action, in which case it is totally expected.
The Earth may be old, but it doesn't act by magic. To reject anthropogenic GW after this data would be to declare that there is this huge coincidence whereby this last century gets picked out of 12 others, and *just happens* to be the century where we've been massively industrialising. It's to suggest that there exists this mysterious 'other cause' which has the deeply unusual properties of a reasonably long period time, and an extraordinarily fast onset, and which apparently leaves zero evidence in either historical records or even as it is actually happening. You might as well blame it on fairies.
Ice core samples give a chronological record of atmospheric conditions - in particular CO2 concentrations.
To analyse them, we assume that before man, CO2 concentration changes are mostly an *effect* of natural temperature changes (we can eliminate other natural sources of CO2 by various methods. E.g. we know if volcanos had an effect by sulphur in the sample, etc.) and so would track temperature changes closely. We then use time periods where we both have ice core data and other temperature data to calibrate a scale to convert CO2 concentration readings into temperatures, and viola, a temperature history.
Bit more complicated than that, but that's the essentials.
Day After Tomorrow is a load of crap.
It is because in some countries even criminals (or in your example only accused) have rights. When they have served there sentence they should be able to go on and have a live.
Except for when, you know... they're dead?
And in any case, as of this moment, Boris Floricic is far more notable for this silly business about his name than for what he actually did in his life. Even if the name wasn't relevant before, it certainly is now.
Most articles have dozens of contributors at most, but there's a ton of articles, and only a finite number of moderators to monitor ALL of them. And the truly malicious can always call in their friends to spam the process.
It isn't a vast amount of effort. Summarising my post, all you need to do is:
Post an initial edit. Give the reason for your edit in the talk page.
If that fails, put a request for a third opinion, comment or mediation, depending on how many stubborn idiots there are.
And that is all. In total, only TWO edits are required, in the worst. And the result will be almost permanent. Compare to the difficulty of getting Britannica to correct an error. The difficulty you occasionally hear about from people always happens because they get hot headed and just keep escalating, or because they are actually wrong.
Has there actually been cases of brands being stolen in this way? Everyone seems to talk about it as though it were inevitable, but it seems plausible that even if copyright laws allowed a rival company to steal it's franchise, actual fans would always prefer the original makers, and view the copy as an entirely separate work. While they can steal ideas, they can't steal people. A rival company may try to do the Simpsons without Groening, but it will flop, over and over.
I posit that such a nightmare scenario is entirely illusionary, especially for franchises that are worth protecting.
Read the damn article please.
It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.
It's a personal matter of what he thinks his actions will be interpreted as.
Go read the article yourself. He's refusing to endorse CC licenses because:
It would be self-delusion to try to endorse just some of the Creative Commons licenses, because people lump them together; they will misconstrue any endorsement of some as a blanket endorsement of all. I therefore find myself constrained to reject Creative Commons entirely.
This seems to me an entirely realistic and reasonable statement.
Really, I think what RMS is trying to do here is to force CC to more strongly emphasise the differences between their licenses, and perhaps introduce a separate branding for the blatantly non-free licenses. He should be applauded and encouraged on this point.
Really though, individual articles should never be so large and complex in the first place. Anything approaching that should be broken up, for readability reasons.
Unworkable - it just doesn't scale right. The inevitable consequence is that *everyone* will claim to be an expert. Especially trolls and so on. The moderator's desks will immediately be so flooded with bad requests that we go straight back to square one.
Nah. Too democratic.
The problem with such systems is that it's too slow, and it takes the focus off generating consensus. A bad article might survive if a cabal floods the votes with agrees. In the current system, any user can flag an article up as dubious by adding a tag. This system is far more sensitive to problems.
Something like that is certainly being worked on - i.e. a permanent mirror of approved articles.
_ program_of_Iran&oldid=38289193
In the mean time, you might want to link to the *specific revision* of an article. Clicking 'cite this page' will give you the url for that. You'll end up with something like:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nuclear
In what ways does Wikipedia as it is today, with its complex structure of guidelines and user groups, reflect your original vision? In what ways does it not?
That's why a wikipedia article, if used for a serious purpose, cannot be considered as an article alone. The article's history needs to be taken into account. In such a case, schrodinger's cat does not apply, because you can see inside the box.
And besides, the quantum truth is true of any other source. A website could be hacked or hoaxed at the time you read it. A newspaper could print a page that was complete garbage and delete it 20 minutes later. Britannica is known to have a number of errors that will probably not be corrected for years. The difference here with Wikipedia is that you would know if it had happened. Despite the crap that happens from time to time, the whole thing has not broken down, is not breaking down, and probably won't break down any time soon.
Holkins is just mouthing off because his attempt at abusing the system was thwarted. And his comic that time directly contradicted his post. The possibility of Skeletor editing He-man is precisely the reason wikipedia doesn't accept 'expertism', which really should be called 'arguments from authority'. Skeletor is obviously an expert on He-man, but his edit was obviously a piece of vandalism that has to be reverted as soon as possible. Edits need to be judged on their own merits, and users need to be judged on what they have done. Any other way is unworkable.
Well, despite what is widely believed, Wikipedia is NOT a democracy. It's driven by consensus instead.
So, suppose are article is being edited by the majority of editors into a blatant factual error. Then we get a single editor to dispute this flawed consensus. (This is attainable, usually.) Wikipedia guidelines dictate a need for verifiability, so the editor would cite a source for his change.
Usually, things stop right here, and the error is corrected. Suppose otherwise. The opposing editors might try to escalate into a conflict. Factual inaccuracy tags would appear at this stage, to warn unwary readers and attract fact checkers. The bad outcome here is that our good editor may run away. In which case, we are back to square one. The fortunately more common case is that either the situation gets directly into the attention of admin, or people actually follow guidelines and turn to mediation.
In mediation then, which has a variety of levels, the editor can then raise his hopefully reputable source, and compel a change in the article because wikipedia guidelines are strongly on his side. So eventually, the correct minority should win, assuming most editors are acting in good faith and can recognise evidence when they see it. If the bad editors start to blatantly and shameless contradict facts at this point, things can go even further. A request for arbitration may be filed on the behaviour of the bad editors, and serious measures can be sought if they are judged to have acted in bad faith. The system strongly favours the truth.
Of course, the problem here is that Freespace does not have Newtonian physics.
Come on! It's not like it's hard to realise that this is a hoax. It's already appeared on Boingboing, where people noted that it was a load of crap. Will Slashdot editors please do a little research?
At least, I dunno, learn about the laws of physics? Specifically, THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY.
That is all.
Popular opinion always rules. Maybe the Wikipedia code can be modified so that a "hot" article can only have X lines of changes per user per period of time. If congressman X edits a file and others are watching, the others will dominate and keep the popular opinion alive.
That's the rationale behind the infamous 3-Revert-Rule policy, if I recall correctly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3RR
1. Do some silly and stupid on wikipedia.
2. Escalate it into a conflict.
3. Raise it into mediation level (or fail to do so)
4. Find there is a consensus against your actions.
5. Bitch about it in wider media, where you can assume no one knows what you actually did, or is familiar enough with wikipedia guidelines to realise what you did wrong.
6. ???
7. Profit!!
That's totally silly. Just get a blog, man. Wiki articles tend to link to the subject's home page in any case.
The trouble with wikipedia is that it only works in reality, not in theory.
Once, I jumped from the roof of my junior high school after having cast "feather fall" on myself.
Did it work?
Also, some players seem to start off with special bonuses, oddles of cash, and so on. Damn haxxors.
They are all about law enforcement or medical employees, not scientific research or technology.