People do get that the only thing that knocked RIM from the top of the heap was the lawsuit filed by patent troll NTP, right?

They weren't beaten on technical merits. They weren't beaten because they "don't understand consumers". They weren't beaten on style, or execution, or anything else.

They were beaten by a corrupt US legal system that forced the guys running the company to stop running the company, hang around in a court room for years and in the end pay over half a trillion dollars to patent trolls.

Looking back, what they should have done was shut down US operations immediately, allowed the US government to implode and gone on to greener pastures.

Moral of the story, don't do business with Americans. One way or another, they'll fuck you over in the end. That's how they got where they are today.

Smart men just don't do business with the sharpest horse trader in town.

You mixed up the policies. No Original Research is unrelated to why Bjork's Academy Awards dress has it's own Wikipedia article. No Original Research is why the article doesn't contain any new ideas or opinions by the article-writers themselves. The article accurately describes what The World has to say about the dress. The article has 13 sources cited 18 times providing external documentation for almost every sentence in the article.

The policy you wanted was "Wikipedia editors aren't allowed to decide how 'important' a topic is... Wikipedia Notability means that multiple independent Reliable Sources have published significant discussion of the subject." The World decides what is and isn't Notable, not me. As a Wikipedia editor I'm not allowed the opinion that it's embarrassment to humanity that Academy-Awards-Dresses are considered newsworthy. (I can have the opinion, but I can't delete the article based on my opinion.)

The sources include: telegraph.co.uk, shine.yahoo.com, Filmology: A Movie-a-Day Guide to the Movies You Need to Know ISBN 978-1-4405-0753-3, All about Oscar: The History and Politics of the Academy Awards ISBN 978-0-8264-1452-6, Vanity Fair magazine, Spin magazine, New York magazine, Reel Winners: Movie Award Trivia ISBN 978-1-55002-574-3, BjÃrk: wow and flutter ISBN 978-1-55022-556-3, The Advocate magazine, today.msnbc.msn.com. And there is no doubt that there are countless other uncited sources that exist. The World has clearly decided that this topic is worthy of significant published coverage.

By the way, this particular article has been getting around 55 pageviews a day. That's a lot higher than many of our more serious minor topics. Apparently there are a fair number of people coming to Wikipedia searching for this article.

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The "worldview" is that Wikipedia is supposed to be an Encyclopedia. Wikipedia is the Encyclopedia That Anyone Can Edit, not a public blog-space. The only thing that prevents Wikipedia from becoming a scribble-board are the Wikipedia Policies, and editor dedication to those policies. If you throw out Wikipedia content-verifiability policies then it would start looking a lot less like an Encyclopedia.

How search works: If you type a search term into Google you'll get random writings about the topic, no matter how trivial. If you type a search term into Wikipedia you'll get an encyclopedia-style article with Verifiable information cited to independent Reliable Sources, if we have one. ~~~~

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<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_policies_and_guidelines</ref>

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I was involved in a example of this recently. TheFederalist.com is a one-year-old rightwing website. They ran an attack piece on Neil degrasse Tyson. It was picked up by the rightwing blogosphere, but was totally non-newsworthy (as established by the lack of news coverage). Someone tried to insert it into Wikipedia's biographical page on Neil degrasse Tyson. That edit was promptly reverted because Wikipedia has a policy of being extremely cautious about adding negative material to the Biography of Living Persons. A blogosphere rant against someone doesn't qualify. So then TheFederalist.com writer started screaming CENSORSHIP and equating Wikipedia editors to religious fundamentalist terrorists for not writing his hit-job into Tyson's biography. *THIS* picked up some minor coverage for the story from other sources.

At this point someone noticed that we had an tiny article page on TheFederalist.com, and the only sourcing for that article was TheFederalist itself and a blog page from MediaMatters. The TheFederalist page was nominated for deletion. A massive effort was made by many people trying to find an sources talking about TheFederalist.com, searching for any sources we could use to fix the article. The search turned up squat. Then TheFederalist.com wrote about Wikipedia nominating their article for deletion, and *THAT* got picked up by a few sources. And *THOSE* stories gave us enough information about TheFederalist.com in order to write a an article on it.

So yeah..... it was painfully circular. ~~~~

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Wikipedia editors aren't allowed to have opinions about a topic. The Neutral Point of View policy mandates that edits be deleted or re-written to present a reasonably neutral description of a topic. (And if needed, a neutral description of the sides in a controversial topic.)

Wikipedia editors aren't allowed to "know stuff" about a topic. The No Original Research policy mandates that facts and information must be Verifiable in published Reliable Sources. The sources need to exist, even if they aren't cited. Any information which is challenged, or is likely to be challenged, can be removed or tagged with {{citation needed}}.

Wikipedia editors aren't allowed to decide how "important" a topic is. This one causes the most confusion. Wikipedia's has a specific and somewhat unusual definition of Notability. Wikipedia Notability means that multiple independent Reliable Sources have published significant discussion of the subject. A musician who barely shows up at the #100 slot on a Billboard-top-100 list is Notable because The Wold has created the Billboard top-100 list to Take Note of musicians, and because a few paragraphs about the musician here and there in magazines give us Verifiable information from which to build an article. A Youtuber with more fans than the musician isn't Notable because (generally) books and magazines and the news don't publish any discussion of popular Youtubers. That means we have no independent sources from which to build an article.

So.... the reason this article was deleted rather than tagged "needs more verifiable sources" was that the number of independent usable sources was ZERO when it was nominated for deletion, and because everyone who participated in the deletion discussion did a search for more sources and came up with ZERO.

You can't built a valid Wikipedia article without verifiable sources, and you can't fix a broken article by adding sources to when the sources don't exist.

People can't write Wikipedia articles about themselves saying how awesome they are, or their company, or their pet project. (Well, they can write the article, but it will be deleted if it doesn't cite multiple independent published Reliable Sources discussing the subject).

It doesn't matter how awesome someone thinks their Python-LMDB project is. It doesn't matter how important someone thinks their Python-LMDB project is. If there's no magazines or books or news talking about it, then it's a dead-duck under Wikipedia Notability policy. We can't build an article based on just their own promotional materials, and editors can't just claim "personal knowledge" to make up stuff to write an article.

And no, this lame Slashdot story won't change that. ~~~~

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Comparing Internet service in the US to other nations is mostly pointless.
 
Do you get how amusing that is, given the context?

I do not agree that this is a good use of public resources, part of which are mine. That's the point of having a discussion about it.

If she wants to hire a private investigator out of her own pocket, that's all well and good.

That's the thing about a democracy... it's not based on principles, it's based on unity. If you can't convince the vast number of people who agree with me, you have no right to use our tax money to finance your investigation.

I remember when SnapChat first hit the scene, thinking that such a service shouldn't exist, that it's inherently malignant in nature. Seeing these people get burned by its failure makes me happy, and I have no interest in working extra hours so I can fund a team of people to shore up what was a bad idea in the first place.

Perhaps, if you hope to see your vision of how things ought to be realized, you should stop making authoritative statements and start providing compelling arguments that take my demographics interests into account.

Competition brings out the least in people.

If you measure yourself against the world, you'll always have room to improve.

If you measure yourself against other men, if you're the best, you'll never reach your potential.

And, because your peers have motivation to celebrate your failures, rather than your successes, you'll actually be fighting those who should be benefiting from your achievements.

On a personal level... dealing with competitive people is too tiresome to bear. Nothing they have to offer is worth dealing with their ego driven crap.

And, you can see the idiocy in their posts here. ISPs in the states are the most "free market" in the world, and they are also among the worst. The countries that treat ISPs as critical infrastructure like roads are the ones with the fastest infrastructure, but the "free market ra ra ra" crowd are still convinced that the way to improve the situation is to move further away from what is working better elsewhere.

Now, this isn't an academic debate. When you can look around, see that other people are getting better results, and you ignore that, that is just plain stupid.

Shoplifting is a great example. If a shopkeeper catches the perp in the act, they get charged with a minor crime. But, zero public resources are spent on investigation, because it just isn't worth the trouble.

I'm bored enough to play...

Let's accept the arguments and move past them. What is she seeking when she asks us to accept that she is the victim of a sex crime?

She is seeking for us to take responsibility for locating and punishing the people who distributed these photos at our expense.

Each of us asks ourselves: Will going along with her position protect me? Will it protect people I care about? Will it encourage society to change in ways that I prefer? Will it put me at risk by criminalizing behavior that I enjoy engaging in? Will it put me at risk by criminalizing behavior I might engage in unknowingly, and burden me with the need for increased vigilance? How much will it cost? What will we be sacrificing to pay that cost? Is it all worthwhile?

She wants to make this our responsibility. The "victim blamers" do not want to assume this responsibility. She is selling something and some of us aren't buying it.

And, in typical fashion, those who fancy themselves the Champions of Women are attempting to paint those who are unsympathetic as hateful and shame them into submission, making them angry and defensive.

Which is smart, because when you rationally consider the reward on investment involved in treating this as a serious crime, it's open and shut. Only an emotional thinker could think this is a rational response.

Of course, it does mean that you don't have any buddies anymore and you've got piss all over your toilet seat.

These sorts of comments remind me that, even though my opponents are anonymous, I am nevertheless wounding them with my rhetoric. That makes me smile.

Thank you!

I've been doing this for the better part of a decade. Except, I know I'll be repeating this phrase to myself every day, so I take it as an opportunity to engage in a little self programming. It makes the passphrase personal instead of generic, and useful instead of burdensome.

"I don't like drinking with my buddies till 3 because it makes me feel rotten the next day" = "Idldwmbt3bimmfrtnd"

Now when my buddies ask me to stay out drinking on Thursday night, I'll hear "I don't like drinking with my buddies till 3 because it makes me feel rotten the next day" in my head and make the responsible choice.

Or whatever. "I put the toilet seat down because even though it's inconvenient it's better than listening to my wife criticize me"?

You can have fun with it.

I didn't realize she's only 24. She looks old for her years...

Like I said, I don't know who she is, and don't really care. Entertainers are a dime a dozen, and they're as replaceable as a washer.