Except for the fact that at least initially, this Citizendium is going to have exactly the same number of articles as Wikipedia, right? Not exactly: as of January 18th, Citizendium deleted "all inactive Wikipedia articles from the Citizendium pilot project wiki. This will leave us with only those articles that we've been working on". This is to give Citizendium a life of its own instead of being just a clone of Wikipedia. Details here.
Citizendium will go the way of Nupedia. Or worse, the way of enciclopedia libre, the languishing spanish language fork of wikipedia; if you manage to load the page (seldom possible due to technical problems all the time), you'll see it has about 20% as many articles as the spanish wikipedia, which is by no means among the top 5 wikipedias.
Schemes that foster collaboration are key here; Nupedia was too closed; it's no wonder that both citizendium and enciclopedia libre are far more restrictive than wikipedia, thus both are destined to always lag behind in the way of content.
Scott Finnie tests Vista for hundreds of hours, finds nothing wrong with it, so he complains that Microsoft now focuses on " Avoiding negative publicity (especially about security and software quality)". And it's somehow wrong.
Spending six years and six billion dollars to achieve little more than a (debatable) improvement in security and a glossy but irritating GUI is wrong.
Imagine what a company that cared about its customers could do with those resources.
hum.. let's see.. six billion dollars.. how about 1000 copies of steve austin??
capable of storing around 2,000 words in a unit the size of a white blood cell, Yeah so.. how many words in a unit the size of a football field? remember that's the only area measuring unit we understand!!
Damn and here I was waiting for the digg effect to wear off so I could see the site and then WHAM here comes slashdot.. well I guess another 2 days waiting won't hurt...
if someone else, say, Mr. Trump were to invest, the money would go toward a useless condo tower or crappy TV show. Hold it there mister! don't you dare mess with The Donald!! just because he's worth about 10% of Bill Gates' fortune it doesn't mean he's a bad investor!
If only they were this creative and imaginative when sitting down to try to solve a conflict peacefully. This goes for both sides, and it applies in most conflicts.
Remember, no matter how intelligent the weapons inventors are, it's still violence; and "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
"Not only are phone makers not making steps forward, they're moving backwards. "
Motorola is, at least. Keep in mind there are others. A Nokia might fit the bill for you. I also had a V3, coming from an older Nokia 7210, and I couldn't stop complaining about its limitations. I got a new Nokia 6131; it's a fairly basic phone and yet every time I use it I'm amazed by the thought that went into the interface design. It's really intuitive, and there's basically nothing that leaves me thinking "gee, I wish it could do X". And yes, it can have multiple data items for a contact, each with its icon and designation (home, mobile, email etc) and you can even set one of them as the default for the contact. Anyway.. my 2 cents.
Why would this movie, or Alive, or even United 93 or Twin Towers be inappropriate? it's not like I'm going to show it to a hysteria-prone man on the brink of snapping and hijacking the plane. If I have it on my iPod I know what it's about and I maintain full control to turn off the movie at any time.
Gee, it's not like watching it is actually going to make snakes appear in the plane. Plus, I don't think it'd be nearly as bad as depicted in the movie.
While you're right that legally Gracenote did nothing wrong, morally their actions were pretty nasty, because they took all the information that the community input into their database *for free* and then started making a profit out of it without giving back to the community. And "all the data you input up until we went commercial is here for you to use" doesn't count. Imagine if Wikipedia suddenly said "well, so long and thanks for all the fish, we're going commercial, oh and by the way, here's the archive of all your contributions so far, feel free to use it for whatever while I become a billionaire". Legal? yes. Feels right? nope.
Like you (and I) said, Gracenote were completely within their rights to do what they did. However they pissed off a community which helped them in good faith only to see access to community-generated data become commercial and closed. A lot of work had to be duplicated (freedb didn't come out of thin air you know). Community is not going to sue or anything, just don't expect us to have any sympathy for Gracenote.
I like the tone of "we did nothing wrong, it was the investors' fault, and besides, all our functionality and data are already available through freedb".
Yeah right, so the community had to duplicate a lot of the work that was "donated" to CDDB, while Gracenote profited from it without giving back. His point that the data before CDDB went commercial can still be downloaded is flawed; we're interested in what happened *after* you took all that hard work that you got for free and started charging for it. Besides, that's not "giving back"; that's "whee, we're making a boatload of money here, but hey, have some leftovers of the WORK YOU DID FOR US which we happened to leave behind!".
That's ok, I think the community did a good-faith effort and look how things turned out. I'd say no hard feelings, but I also don't think CDDB can expect a lot of community support or understanding in the future, pretexts and explanations nonwithstanding.
You have a lifetime of boring 40-hour-a-week-and-come-home-for-dinner to look forward to;
Man, that's bleak. You're dismissing the possibility of finding a long-term job you actually like that doesn't require you put in 80-hour weeks. And if coming home for dinner with your family looks boring to you, then why did you start a family in the first place?
I think my time and money are better spent on wikipedia; just like I didn't appreciate the rashness with which enciclopedia libre forked off wikipedia.
I already watch most of my TV by internet download. The reason however is because cable networks here in Mexico only bring proven-hit series and then, only after about a year. So why should I pay the cable company for outdated content? this way I get to watch content a day after it airs. And here's a hint to tv companies: if you give me the content even with ads, I'll still be watching it.
Actually, it's not. Yet people earn up to 50 times less money in 3rd world countries. So when a software package costs a month's salary for the average person, most people resort to piracy.
OH; I see! you were joking and referring to piracy! LOL! i get it now ! LOL!
posting ads makes you cry? hell man, you must cry a hell of a lot, then..
Re:Not sure how it works...
on
Computer Voodoo?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's how it works.
IDE drives keep a list of spare sectors to be used if one of the "primary" ones gets damaged. However, if a sector gets damaged and it already contained data, the drive won't reallocate it, because it would have no way of recovering the information. So it keeps "hoping" that some day the data will be readable again, and when that happens, it'll reallocate the sector. However, it never happens.
When you overwrite a defective sector, the drive says "aha! since the user overwrote the information, it means it's not important anymore; so I'll go ahead, mark the sector as bad and replace it with a spare". That's why overwriting gives the drive a chance to remap all bad sectors to clean ones.
This is a trick I learned by reading the documentation on smartd; if SMART reports defective or unreadable sectors, there's a way to figure out which files reside in those sectors and overwrite them with zeroes; the file will of course be lost, but by overwriting you let the drive reassign the sector and everything is peachy again.
By the way, if you reformat the drive with the destructive verification option (-c -c) it's likely that when the test overwrites to verify readability, the same reassigning process will take place; the standard "-c" test is a read-only test that's why you're unable to format a drive without the overwriting procedure.
This is the country that refuses to adopt the metric system out of nothing but stubbornness, and you expect them to actually reform the english language into something more sensical? PLEASE! at least the article is honest and all the "reform" example paragraphs are actually quite hilarious.
Slashdot Mirror
Citizendium will go the way of Nupedia. Or worse, the way of enciclopedia libre, the languishing spanish language fork of wikipedia; if you manage to load the page (seldom possible due to technical problems all the time), you'll see it has about 20% as many articles as the spanish wikipedia, which is by no means among the top 5 wikipedias.
Schemes that foster collaboration are key here; Nupedia was too closed; it's no wonder that both citizendium and enciclopedia libre are far more restrictive than wikipedia, thus both are destined to always lag behind in the way of content.
Spending six years and six billion dollars to achieve little more than a (debatable) improvement in security and a glossy but irritating GUI is wrong.
Imagine what a company that cared about its customers could do with those resources.
hum.. let's see.. six billion dollars.. how about 1000 copies of steve austin??I'm just kidding ok, they have their days.
Damn and here I was waiting for the digg effect to wear off so I could see the site and then WHAM here comes slashdot.. well I guess another 2 days waiting won't hurt ...
If you haven't read Cryptonomicon or The Diamond Age be aware that I discuss the endings here.
*** SPOILERS ****
Ah, so you're actually discussing nothing?
Oh, hello! you must be an american.
If only they were this creative and imaginative when sitting down to try to solve a conflict peacefully. This goes for both sides, and it applies in most conflicts.
Remember, no matter how intelligent the weapons inventors are, it's still violence; and "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent".
"Not only are phone makers not making steps forward, they're moving backwards. "
Motorola is, at least. Keep in mind there are others. A Nokia might fit the bill for you. I also had a V3, coming from an older Nokia 7210, and I couldn't stop complaining about its limitations. I got a new Nokia 6131; it's a fairly basic phone and yet every time I use it I'm amazed by the thought that went into the interface design. It's really intuitive, and there's basically nothing that leaves me thinking "gee, I wish it could do X". And yes, it can have multiple data items for a contact, each with its icon and designation (home, mobile, email etc) and you can even set one of them as the default for the contact. Anyway.. my 2 cents.
Why would this movie, or Alive, or even United 93 or Twin Towers be inappropriate? it's not like I'm going to show it to a hysteria-prone man on the brink of snapping and hijacking the plane. If I have it on my iPod I know what it's about and I maintain full control to turn off the movie at any time.
Gee, it's not like watching it is actually going to make snakes appear in the plane. Plus, I don't think it'd be nearly as bad as depicted in the movie.
+1 funny :)
While you're right that legally Gracenote did nothing wrong, morally their actions were pretty nasty, because they took all the information that the community input into their database *for free* and then started making a profit out of it without giving back to the community. And "all the data you input up until we went commercial is here for you to use" doesn't count. Imagine if Wikipedia suddenly said "well, so long and thanks for all the fish, we're going commercial, oh and by the way, here's the archive of all your contributions so far, feel free to use it for whatever while I become a billionaire". Legal? yes. Feels right? nope.
Like you (and I) said, Gracenote were completely within their rights to do what they did. However they pissed off a community which helped them in good faith only to see access to community-generated data become commercial and closed. A lot of work had to be duplicated (freedb didn't come out of thin air you know). Community is not going to sue or anything, just don't expect us to have any sympathy for Gracenote.
I like the tone of "we did nothing wrong, it was the investors' fault, and besides, all our functionality and data are already available through freedb".
Yeah right, so the community had to duplicate a lot of the work that was "donated" to CDDB, while Gracenote profited from it without giving back. His point that the data before CDDB went commercial can still be downloaded is flawed; we're interested in what happened *after* you took all that hard work that you got for free and started charging for it. Besides, that's not "giving back"; that's "whee, we're making a boatload of money here, but hey, have some leftovers of the WORK YOU DID FOR US which we happened to leave behind!".
That's ok, I think the community did a good-faith effort and look how things turned out. I'd say no hard feelings, but I also don't think CDDB can expect a lot of community support or understanding in the future, pretexts and explanations nonwithstanding.
You have a lifetime of boring 40-hour-a-week-and-come-home-for-dinner to look forward to;
Man, that's bleak. You're dismissing the possibility of finding a long-term job you actually like that doesn't require you put in 80-hour weeks. And if coming home for dinner with your family looks boring to you, then why did you start a family in the first place?
I think my time and money are better spent on wikipedia; just like I didn't appreciate the rashness with which enciclopedia libre forked off wikipedia.
I already watch most of my TV by internet download. The reason however is because cable networks here in Mexico only bring proven-hit series and then, only after about a year. So why should I pay the cable company for outdated content? this way I get to watch content a day after it airs. And here's a hint to tv companies: if you give me the content even with ads, I'll still be watching it.
Actually, it's not. Yet people earn up to 50 times less money in 3rd world countries. So when a software package costs a month's salary for the average person, most people resort to piracy.
OH; I see! you were joking and referring to piracy! LOL! i get it now ! LOL!
Cheaper to produce, my ass. They'll be charging an arm and a leg for this type of memory.
wait until teachers start throwing chairs at students and threatening to "fucking kill" them ...
posting ads makes you cry? hell man, you must cry a hell of a lot, then..
Here's how it works.
:)
IDE drives keep a list of spare sectors to be used if one of the "primary" ones gets damaged. However, if a sector gets damaged and it already contained data, the drive won't reallocate it, because it would have no way of recovering the information. So it keeps "hoping" that some day the data will be readable again, and when that happens, it'll reallocate the sector. However, it never happens.
When you overwrite a defective sector, the drive says "aha! since the user overwrote the information, it means it's not important anymore; so I'll go ahead, mark the sector as bad and replace it with a spare". That's why overwriting gives the drive a chance to remap all bad sectors to clean ones.
This is a trick I learned by reading the documentation on smartd; if SMART reports defective or unreadable sectors, there's a way to figure out which files reside in those sectors and overwrite them with zeroes; the file will of course be lost, but by overwriting you let the drive reassign the sector and everything is peachy again.
By the way, if you reformat the drive with the destructive verification option (-c -c) it's likely that when the test overwrites to verify readability, the same reassigning process will take place; the standard "-c" test is a read-only test that's why you're unable to format a drive without the overwriting procedure.
So you see, not voodoo.
*shakes head*
That would be "Corona" and the other guy was talking about "Cojones".
This is the country that refuses to adopt the metric system out of nothing but stubbornness, and you expect them to actually reform the english language into something more sensical? PLEASE! at least the article is honest and all the "reform" example paragraphs are actually quite hilarious.