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Comment by the way, quality... (Score 2, Informative) 106

I'm not contributing to Wikipedia, I'm just an user, so I cannot judge their deletion policies.

Though, I would like to criticize the statement

"Quality though, is often considered to be higher on the German Wikipedia."

Quality is not measurable directly. It's just a subjective thing. If you find quickly the right information for you - the quality is good. If you don't find it - you try somewhere else. In this case, your personal quality standards haven't been satisfied.

This is where the deletion policies come into. Now if they tell "We take quality over quantity" - it's OK. But this isn't the case. Most articles are poorly translated from english to german; if you browse for some biographies (let's say Jimmy Page for example), there isn't even a terminology (missing the eye-catching information).
Or even browsing the periodical table of the chemical elements - you get some information, but it isn't presented well. I'd rather like 750k high-quality written articles than >2M poor transcriptions from en.wikipedia.org or somewhere else from the www. That's where de.wikipedia.org is right now. They cannot meet they own quality standards, whatever that means. One day, they will understand...

Even if they don't have that much contributors like en.wikipedia.org - they are doing a good job (ok, at least they are trying).

As a student of physics, I prefer a thing called "book" or "paper" to be my primary source of solid knowledge (OK, not always but mostly). Considering Wikipedia in a scientific work, it is just fine if you need "quick and unimportant" information to verify something, because you cannot always attach validity to such a dynamic source.

Input Devices

26 Gigapixel Photo Sets New World Record 139

FrenchSilk writes "The largest gigapixel photograph ever created with a DSLR camera was made by A.F.B. Media GmbH in Dresden, Germany. 1655 images, each 21.6 megapixels in size, were taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 400 mm lens over a period of 176 minutes. The images were stitched on a 16 processor system with 48GB of main memory, taking 94 hours to create the final result. The interactive view can be found here."

Comment Examples: (Score 1) 146

Automatic spell-checking does not add to literacy skills. I've never heard of a nine year old kid that has said something like "Wow, I just learned (from MS Word) that SOSAGE is spelled SAUSAGE correctly. " Of course, all the emoticons like "^^ :-) :o T.T" do not improve their literacy skills either.

If you write blogs about "stoopid school" and "teechers sucks a$$", this won't improve your literacy skills. If you write something like this "lfg 2dd +tank UBRS rly fast run gogo" - not improving anything...

Most kids copy and paste their homework from Wikipedia. They don't even bother to improve themselves. "New Technology" makes them really dependable.

BBC Quote: "They see enormous advantages in the relationship between teacher and child. Sometimes the computer is closer to the child than the teacher by the age of 13."
-> The computer is closer to the child than the parents. Side effect of our time. Don't wonder, if the computer/ the web programmes the child and not vice versa.

Comment DC Stuck between Bread and Extraterestial Life... (Score 1) 621

LHC@home seems more promising to find _ANYTHING_ (the "God-Particle" as said in the media, but hey - it's a GOD-Particle) but it's being compromised by notorious Bread attacks from the future... ;-)

The Kebap i ate later this day is a proof that there must be an extraterrestrial intelligence - I'm really sorry for the Distributed Computing based projects ;-)

Comment right, what's next? (Score 4, Insightful) 942

This is ridiculous. Since I guess the human beings are the problem for the (broken) ecology, why not eat some to save the planet? There are over six billions of them, I guess China may start exporting some "human delicacy" (irony) :P

Theoretically they may be right, every higher developed creature has a thing called "basal metabolic rate" but that's the wrong model for determine effects of global warming. It's just stupid nonsense, although funny to read.

Comment NASA and risk... (Score 4, Interesting) 244

Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission

"Feynman was clearly disturbed by the fact that NASA management not only misunderstood this concept, but in fact inverted it by using a term denoting an extra level of safety to describe a part that was actually defective and unsafe. Feynman continued to investigate the lack of communication between NASA's management and its engineers, and was struck by management's claim that the risk of catastrophic malfunction on the shuttle was 1 in 10^5; i.e., 1 in 100,000. Feynman immediately realized that this claim was risible on its face; as he described, this assessment of risk would entail that NASA could expect to launch a shuttle every day for the next 274 years without an accident."

Well, it has nothing to do with the topic, but I wouldn't trust a statement "four-in-a million" made by NASA... ;-)
There is no guarantee for a secure life on this planet. Asteroid impacts are a part of the nature, so everybody should be aware of those risks...

Comment Basic research won't repair any economy! (Score 2, Insightful) 552

The Quote "Basic research can repair the broken US business model [...]" is completely wrong.

For example: Astronomy
Astronomy is basic research. There are alot of politicians and institutions that think "why wasting time and money in astronomy? They just watch stars and cost alot of money, while social problems are growing such as poverty or unemployement". So they cut the funds and or may invest it in another projects which seem to be lucrative in a short-term. That is the wrong way!

Basic research IS very important to the mankind. Another example: the experimental proof of the Bose-Einstein-Condensate. It's been postulated by Bose in 1920's and discovered in 1995. What is the practical use of it? Currently, there is none. But it's a proof to our theories which is very valuable.

Basic research is very important but it's not meant to repair an economy or broken business models. The economy can only be repaired by making right decisions in the politics, by investing money in R&D, investing ALOT of money in public and academic education and of course protecting the environment.

The author from BW took some popular examples but also take mine into consideration. What if your company/country/whatever spends billions of dollars to create a B-E-C and in the end there is no monetary profit from it? It's all about short-term profits, isn't it?

Comment People just don't get it (Score 1) 843

There is still a purpose for MS Word. Sure, if you want to create a simple text or letter, it's much easier to use Word (or even open source alternatives to it). When it comes to scientific works, LaTeX IS the one thing you're looking for. I use ocassionaly Word to write some stupid letters or view my fellow students' documents they send to me. But that's my personal preference, I wouldn't badmouth Word that much. I just don't use it.

Comment Won't be useful here in Germany (Score 1) 63

I mean it's nice, but it's also kinda useless -- especially if you are unemployed. Neither can 50% of German PC "Magazines" spell the word BSD[1] nor does anybody here care about Yet Another nameless Certification.

It should make a name for oneself first - obtaining acceptance in the industry should be a primary goal of this new Certification Group.

[1] http://www.bsdforen.de/attachment.php?attachmentid =855

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