I'd like to see a Google Maps version, at 1 pixel per meter squared. At 40000 Km for the earths circumference and 15nm resolution I make that as giving a 60cm wide map. Now that's the right size and you could use an electron microscope to inspect any point. I suppose it is too small for colour, I wonder what one could do about that. Next step a 3D world at the resolution of Google streetmap!

This shows up one of the myths of wikipedia, that it tries to capture truth. It doesn't. It tries to capture what is notable and not completely transient in interest. In fact the policy is to reject original research and uncited statements. This means for instance if you have a great new idea there is no point trying to inform the world via wikipedia. The old wrong idea is the one which should be in wikipedia until such time as the new one is written down somewhere else and gains some decent support. Arguing with editors on wikipedia that your idea is better is besides the point.

My own opinion to doing things is nothing ventured nothing gained. What exactly would you lose if somebody reverts your edit? It's best not to think of oneself as owning the text and in fact people trying to own articles is one of the biggest problems. By the way you don't reveal your email when editing.

Just have a look at the swathes of missing articles at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles or more relevantly to people on slashdot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requested_articles/Applied_arts_and_sciences/Computer_science,_computing,_and_Internet And I'm aware of loads of other quite common stuff which just isn't there. Biographies of obscure people do get written as they have relatives or fans or whatever.

There's loads of good new topics which aren't covered in Wikipedia yet. The problem is people don't seem to be interested in writing them up, instead they compete on what everybody else is interested in. I'm not sure when I last had a revert so I guess I must be one of that 'elite'. And yes I do do a fair amount of reverting too. Mainly vandals writing their girlfriends names or parts of their anatomy. Plus there are a fair number of loons. I'm afraid yes I quote wikipedia policy at them, in particular no original research and notability. I say yes what you've written may be true, it's not up to me to judge, but you've got to convince others first by getting it published and people talking about it as wikipedia can't publish your original discoveries. What am I supposed to say, you're cracked - go talk to a lamppost? I don't bother with the current biography articles but editors on them have to be especially careful not to report things without evidence and there are a lot of people trying writing up the latest thing they heard on twitter or whatever. If you want to write on wikipedia think of something a little boring to start with where you're not fighting over Islam or what some movie star did or some pacman character first appeared. There is a truly monstrous list of 'Requested articles' plus an enormous number of stub articles that need developing.

Yes I agree, they are control freaks. They are also paternalistic and hate criticism. I don't know how one explains to such a person that what they are doing is extremely destructive and their means are destroying most of what they hold dear.

I'm sure those spam messages being sent around contain hidden messages for terrorists. Now there's something worthwhile for our spymaster boffins to do, they could crack the codes in the variable bits of the spam messages and decript the stenography in the misspelled words. Of course they could also stop most of it, maybe they have cracked the main spam bot codes and are spying on the terrorists that way. Spammers, they probably are involved in drugs guns and terrorism. It would explain why so many of them come from Russia or China though they probably originate in Iraq, Iran or North Korea.

Anyway which do you think is more probable if they actually were that good and could cope with a botnet, would they help us by closing it down or would they help spread it so they could spy on us even more or use it to blackmail those they saw as enemies of the state?

I'd have thought the casual market was more cyclical driven by fashion. So yes there are more casual gamers but it isn't straightforward capturing the market at any given time. The PS2 had this market a while ago with eyeToy, Singstar and their exercise games. I haven't the foggiest why Sony didn't try developing it more and lost the market to the Nintendo Wii. And yes it does go against common sense in that we've seen it all before and it didn't happen.

Sorry an 'l' went missing at the end of that reference http://www.atsf.co.uk/dottext/domesday.html