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Comment Libraries Too (Score 4, Insightful) 342

I like the fact that my library (and most others) destroy records of checkouts after you return a book so that the information can't be used in an investigation or trial.

Just because I read some Karl Marx, doesn't make me a commie. Likewise, just because I texted a quote from the Koran doesn't make me a terrorist.

Comment Budget Problems Solved (Score 4, Funny) 129

Just point them at key members' of Congress' homes for a while. Then, when budget reviews come up, NASA simply goes to Congress with a thumb drive. "We need funding for a new Mars mission, Senator. If not, we'll have to start selling some of these picture-filled drives to the public to offset the costs. Wouldn't it be a damn shame if certain images of that high school cheerleading squad coming and going from your house at all hours of the night were to...accidentally...end up on the Internet? That would be a damn, criminal, shame...wouldn't it, Senator?"

Comment Controller Markup? (Score 3, Interesting) 218

Anyone else notice the odd markup on the extra controllers? It's $20 per controller when you go from one to two controllers, but $30 per controller when going from one to four. Are they going to sell controllers separately or if you buy the 1 or 2 controller box, that's it, no adding on?

Comment The Looters & the Moochers (Score 1) 532

RI (and NC before them) are a looter's government, demanding money they haven't earned. My parents taught me that was theft, but the states call it "taxes."

These states are poorly managed and now want a chunk of money they didn't earn and have no right to to make up for their incompetence and stupidity. Good for Amazon. They can continue to "Shrug" as much as they want until states realize that being business-friendly means your state has money.

Censorship

Submission + - Wikipedia's flaws and bludgeons

Parker Peters writes: "In a long past history at Wikipedia, I was at one point an administrator for what I thought was a grand and noble project. I blocked "trolls", I "reverted vandalism", I wrote articles and corrected flaws, I did all the things a good editor and admin are supposed to do. Unfortunately, like all administrators, eventually the power got to me — I did things I'm not proud of, using my powers to help friends and attack people who wrote things I disagreed with.

When I came to my senses, I left wikipedia, leaving behind my goodbye message, which has since been mirrored on Wikitruth and multiple blogs.

I stayed out for some time, and still haven't reclaimed my dormant account. I see as long as the same systemic abuses I complained about are there, it won't be a good encyclopedia.

But I'd like to open this up for a new crop of people to discuss, because it needs discussing. There are three main problems I see:

1) A culture of "admins are always right." In the old days, Jimbo Wales proclaimed that adminship was "no big deal" and admins were "just a user with a few extra buttons." Those days are long gone. Today, the group of 1000 or so admins is an incestuous and self-aggrandizing lot, and any criticism of administrator behavior that doesn't come from another administrator is met with cries of "omg a rouge admin lol" and bannings of the complaining user. I've seen users banned indefinitely based on nothing more than certain agenda guilds who have administrator members taking a dislike to them, or for trying to appeal a block placed on their account in bad faith by these same groups.

2) A culture where games are played, and where the focus is the game. Wikipedia's got a famous set of directives such as AGF (Assume Good Faith) and NPOV (Neutral Point of View), as well as RS (Reliable Sources). Unfortunately, instead of working as intended, these are used as bludgeons. A user who catches another user lying is not to report it, because reporting someone for lying is a violation of "Assume Good Faith." NPOV and RS are used as bludgeons by groups who have agendas to push, making damn sure that only their accepted sources — no matter how good the other side's are — are allowed, and twisting "NPOV" to mean "Our Point of View" by force of numbers.

Worse yet is the prohibition on "wikilawyering", which is inevitably used just to attack new users; if they bring up that an administrator or editor did something against the rules as posted, they'll be banned and harassed for "wikilawyering", even while other users slap "warnings" on their message pages telling them that they're in danger of... breaking the rules.

3) "Consensus" at the expense of accuracy. If one group with an agenda insists that something they don't like — even if it's 100% true — not be in the encyclopedia, it won't ever be in, no matter how valid the source can be provided for it, because including it is "against consensus." At its extremes, this has driven off many good contributors from the project, including research scientists and doctoral experts in their field.

Every day, this goes on. Wikipedia, once a noble goal of providing a free and accurate encyclopedia, has turned into a travesty where little admin-lords control articles along with their editor-group fiefdoms.

My question to the Slashdot readers is: Can it be fixed? Is it possible? Or is it inevitable that it will fall, maybe not today or tomorrow, but after more ongoing scandals and the revelations that it is not a "sum of human knowledge" as the clueless Jimbo Wales claims, but rather a compendium of biased and inaccurate fluff crafted by one too many people with an agenda to push?"
Spam

Submission + - New service to detect disposable email addresses

mawhin writes: undisposable.org appears to be peddling a collaborative service to detect and block the use of disposable email addresses. Are we about to see an arms race here? From TFA...
This is a collaborative protection system against disposable email addressing (DEA). More explicitly, * Protects site owners' biggest assets; userbase and emails * Prevents userbase contamination by fake accounts * As critical as email validity check * Stops people registering your services with disposable email accounts like jetable.org, pookmail * Detects public accounts (spread from sites like bugmenot.com) and bans them * Working principle is similar to spam blacklists like spamhaus.org; power of masses * Totally free, your donations are welcome Technically speaking, this is a web service that provides you API to check email credibility against disposable hosts and fake accounts. We currently support only REST, XML-RPC protocols and PHP serialization but SOAP and JSON are on the way as well.
Math

Submission + - University Professor Defends Division By Zero

An anonymous reader writes: Dr James Anderson of The University of Reading has defended his claims about division by zero and his new number "nullity". He answers criticism about comparisons with NaN as well as proofs that other people have offered in an effort to counter his claims among other things.

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