To: Department of Defense, Source Distribution Department From: Kim Jong Il
To Whom It May Concern,
In accordance with the terms of the GNU General Public License, I'd like to receive a copy of the source code for your Pacific-based Ballistic Missile Defense System. I do not require it in CD form; please simply email it to me at the above address (k.il@korea-dpr.com).
Thank you for your prompt fulfillment of your obligations under the GPL.
Screw the screen - can you imagine typing on this? IMHO, the "ultra-mobile" line of computers will not succeed because of keyboard issues. The tablet PC's have already dealt with that effectively by becoming "notebooks" in the real sense of the word (you write directly on the screen with a pen). UMPC's are the worst of both worlds. Just go for a small laptop or tablet if you want mobility.
Maybe I'm showing my ignorance of physics here, but wouldn't it be irrelevant what their orbital speed is? I'd think the only thing that would matter is their velocity towards or away from the Earth's gravitational center. If I'm driving a car and I throw a baseball out of the window at 20 MPH, it will move toward the side of the road at 20 MPH even if I am driving 100MPH forward. It will just do so while also moving forward at a fast rate.
The posters above are right to say that Wikipedia is primarily useful as a resource for noncontroversial topics. What I would add is that Wikipedia is *particularly* useful if you are researching topics in information technology. The people who are most interested in contributing to Wikipedia tend to also be interested in the Internet and the underlying technology, and the detail and quality of articles in those topics is deeply impressive. For example, look at the article on "internet protocol suite". Articles like that one are good enough that I use them as a reference for programming along with the O'Reilly books, w3schools.com, etc., and I don't know of any resource that is better on a meta, qualitative level (as opposed to a technical level).
In general, as long as the topic is not controversial, the primary benefit of Wikipedia is the sheer amount of detail that you get with so many contributers. Also, traditional encyclopedias with a defined publisher/editor tend to restrict how much they say in order to only state facts that are beyond question. That makes them more authoritative than Wikipedia, but often results in a poverty of information that leaves the articles unhelpful. Encarta Encyclopedia is a great example of this problem. As long as you take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, the benefit of this increased information can outweigh the cost of not being able to fully trust it.
However, this discussion does raise one thing that needs to be fixed about Wikipedia - the home pages of the language sections currently focus on current events and news stories, implying that Wikipedia should be used to research such information. It is clear to most people in this discussion that Wikipedia cannot be trusted on that time frame. So, I think Wikipedia should perhaps retreat a little and stop trying to be a encyclopedia-style Associated Press. WikiNews doesn't work.
Stephen
(PS: This is my first post!)
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To: Department of Defense, Source Distribution Department
From: Kim Jong Il
To Whom It May Concern,
In accordance with the terms of the GNU General Public License, I'd like to receive a copy of the source code for your Pacific-based Ballistic Missile Defense System. I do not require it in CD form; please simply email it to me at the above address (k.il@korea-dpr.com).
Thank you for your prompt fulfillment of your obligations under the GPL.
Sincerely,
Kim Jong Il
Screw the screen - can you imagine typing on this? IMHO, the "ultra-mobile" line of computers will not succeed because of keyboard issues. The tablet PC's have already dealt with that effectively by becoming "notebooks" in the real sense of the word (you write directly on the screen with a pen). UMPC's are the worst of both worlds. Just go for a small laptop or tablet if you want mobility.
Maybe I'm showing my ignorance of physics here, but wouldn't it be irrelevant what their orbital speed is? I'd think the only thing that would matter is their velocity towards or away from the Earth's gravitational center. If I'm driving a car and I throw a baseball out of the window at 20 MPH, it will move toward the side of the road at 20 MPH even if I am driving 100MPH forward. It will just do so while also moving forward at a fast rate.
Or a short, "speedy" goodbye, if you push off in Earth's direction...
The posters above are right to say that Wikipedia is primarily useful as a resource for noncontroversial topics. What I would add is that Wikipedia is *particularly* useful if you are researching topics in information technology. The people who are most interested in contributing to Wikipedia tend to also be interested in the Internet and the underlying technology, and the detail and quality of articles in those topics is deeply impressive. For example, look at the article on "internet protocol suite". Articles like that one are good enough that I use them as a reference for programming along with the O'Reilly books, w3schools.com, etc., and I don't know of any resource that is better on a meta, qualitative level (as opposed to a technical level). In general, as long as the topic is not controversial, the primary benefit of Wikipedia is the sheer amount of detail that you get with so many contributers. Also, traditional encyclopedias with a defined publisher/editor tend to restrict how much they say in order to only state facts that are beyond question. That makes them more authoritative than Wikipedia, but often results in a poverty of information that leaves the articles unhelpful. Encarta Encyclopedia is a great example of this problem. As long as you take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, the benefit of this increased information can outweigh the cost of not being able to fully trust it. However, this discussion does raise one thing that needs to be fixed about Wikipedia - the home pages of the language sections currently focus on current events and news stories, implying that Wikipedia should be used to research such information. It is clear to most people in this discussion that Wikipedia cannot be trusted on that time frame. So, I think Wikipedia should perhaps retreat a little and stop trying to be a encyclopedia-style Associated Press. WikiNews doesn't work. Stephen (PS: This is my first post!)