You can check the edit history, as you yourself have done in this case, to see how recently and how often the article in question has been edited. As for figuring out which version is more "correct", that's what the citations are there for. Follow the citations and see which ones seem more reliable.

Yes, it's a few extra clicks and a bit more research than simply reading the current version of the article and taking whatever it says as faith. But we're talking about journalists here. It's their job to do a bit more research. If they're not willing to do their job properly I'd say that's a problem for their editors to deal with, not Wikipedia's. Wikipedia provides everything they should need.

So, in a comment thread under a Slashdot article that's about mainstream media doing shoddy reporting, you cast aspersions on a study in a peer-reviewed journal and use a USA Today article to back your claim up?

As an aside about this particular incident, I find it enlightening that despite active attempts by Fitzgerald to keep his bogus quote in the Wikipedia article the longest it managed to stay there was 24 hours. On the other hand the various news articles in non-user-editable media are stuck with it. So Wikipedia does seem to be working quite well here by comparison.

One: The Congressional Budget Office issued a report to that effect in 2005 (when the US federal government was entirely Republican-run). http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6908/12-01-10PercentTaxCut.pdf

Two: Nobel prize laureate James Tobin, for another. In 1992 he wrote that "[t]he 'Laffer Curve' idea that tax cuts would actually increase revenues turned out to deserve the ridicule with which sober economists had greeted it in 1981."

And three, economist Paul Pecorino calculated in 1995 that peak revenue was generated at a tax rate of around 65%, much higher than current tax rates in the US.

We haven't here on Earth because humans are much much cheaper down here. For the cost of one human mission to Mars, with all the immense life support expenses and technologies that would have to be carted along, I suspect you could indeed do a more capable job with robots. Lots of robots. You could scatter them all over the planet.

For purposes of argument, sure, let's say that's all true. There's lots of quibbling that can be done over recycling and such but one way or another there's lots of additional resources out in space. Why do we need actual living breathing humans in space to get access to those resources? Robots have done wonders for deep space exploration, there's no fundamental reason why they couldn't also be used for deep space exploitation. Once we've landed a nice big automated robotic factory/mining complex on the Moon we can have it go ahead and build us a giant dome to live in if we like. In the case of someplace like Mars there's the additional concern of contamination of potential native life to consider. If you send humans there's no way they're going to avoid shedding all sorts of bacteria and other grue while they explore the place, with robots it's easier to sterilize them and keep them sterile. I'm not raising that issue out of some fundamental need to keep space "pristine", I'm more concerned about making sure we get all the data we can get out of those environments.

I borrowed it from a friend, read it, and gave it back to him when I was done. No extra copies were ever sold as a result. Did I rip off the orignal creators any worse than the guy who downloaded it? I'm actually not sure, it seems like I didn't but I can't think of exactly why not. The net result was exactly the same. BTW, I rea;;y liked Dr. Manhattan's time-awareness but thought the plot's ultimate resolution was ridiculous. I didn't pay any money for the experience, though, so some may consider my opinion invalid.

If they're truly idiots who don't understand how to secure my data properly, then I want them to lose my data. I wouldn't trust them with it.