Technology that will augment a random person's skill to the level of a trained medic? I see what you mean, I just got sidetracked because 25 years still seems a tad too optimistic for that. And sure, speaking in general, such a thing would create a hell of an upheaval, even if I doubt that managing it "democratically" like the authors suggest would be useful in combat - human mind can't handle such complex situations to make all those decisions in time, especially if one's life depends on making the right ones quickly.

What you described as an "alternative" is already in place today - every soldier gets a basic medical training and is instructed to call for a medic if he isn't up to the task. The system described (as far as I can understand from the summary, didn't read the thing) would instead replace this instruction with bugging every member of the group with the question about whether to call somebody and whom to call. In the heat of the battle! And supposing that the member of the group with the most medical expertise isn't the one that gets called for some reason, can you imagine the said group delegating every incision (again, in the heat of the battle)?

Flying a plane remotely by giving somebody instructions on what lever to pull and what button to press is *much* easier than deciding where to cut when blood is spilling everywhere and the living subject is writhing in agony, before we even start to consider bullets and explosions.

That, plus "democratically" peforming specialist tasks doesn't seem like a terribly good idea. Who'd want to have their wounds tended by a political scientist? I wouldn't...

If you're so concerned about stupidity in slashdot, why did you have to make it worse by posting the above?

Ask, and be answered. They didn't, not by a long shot. It's not so much a question of training - the couple of laboratory lessons in which a class of students actually does dissecting won't make an anatomist or a physiologist out of anyone. But for me and a few other hands-on people that I know, those couple of hours were one of the most insightful parts of the whole undergrad study of biology. I cannot begin to explain how much more "real" that felt (in every sense of the word), as opposed to listening to abstract summaries of the processes we experienced. We have the same debate in my country, where some people argue that to become a geneticist, you don't have to know how to make a physiological preparation out of a toad's heart and see it respond to a solution of some nerve transmitter antagonist. The disagreement I feel fits into the broader perception of inadequacy of current trends in biology that lean towards reducing all biological processes to molecular level. Sure, machines that churn out DNA sequences are neat, and you don't have to go about killing cute bunnies to do research, but there's only so much you can learn from that. We are talking about the most complex phenomenon that we know - life. To think that a simulation and conjecture from molecules can replace one whole organizational level of it is immature, to say the least. If the dissecting lesson makes a physiologist of only one of that class, that's one badly needed expert more in a field that is rapidly becoming malnourished. And one less in a field that is already oversaturated (plus, those that become geneticists anyway get at least a glimpse of the broader picture).

Watching the video, I can conclude that the summary above is wrong. What this system actually does, is to take repeated pictures of repeated pulses of light, each delayed by a very tiny fraction of a second. So no, it doesn't take a trillion frames per second any more than a regular high-speed camera.

But you have enough info if you're personally connected with the subject. Who can say that you're not being honest (NPOV) in your writing if you aren't overtly exaggerating your claims?

There is, if you cannot trust this info.

What I'm saying is, that it is not possible to tell the difference, if you don't already know what's true. And if you do know, then you don't need an encyclopedia to tell you that.

You wouldn't even notice the kind of vandalism that you suggest opening the door to. You treat this issue much too narrowly, from the perspective of a topic you are familiar with. When people look something up in a general encyclopedia, it's often about a subject they know nothing about. How could they trust information that is based on self-published sources? I'm not just talking about obscure topics, I'm talking (for example) about fringe theories that would start being added to articles en masse.

No, there isn't. Well sourced means that you can trust the sources. And there is a lot more that is considered reliable than "mainstream" (whatever you imagine under this word). It's just that subjects you care about and would like to promote aren't important enough to get mentioned at all by anybody other than a very narrow group of people. It's immature to demand that Wikipedia change its rules because you feel that this is unjust.

Er... no, there isn't. And for every such article that might eventually, in a couple of years, be useful to a single person, there would be hundreds of articles with unverifiable false information (including that band's article). How do you write a NPOV article, if the only people who have correct information about a topic are those personally connected with the subject? Furthermore, I don't know what part of internet you use, but consider yourself extremely lucky if you didn't experience a resourceful troll yet. They would have a field day in a Wikipedia without notability rules (it's bad enough as it is). The effort to write that one useful article is nothing compared to effort that would be needed to sift through the crap.

Yes, they do. And it's completely reasonable to say, that if nobody bothered to get an article about something through the editorial process of a single media source that's more than locally important (given their sheer number), then this topic is useless for general public.

By the way, given the abovementioned number of sources that are considered reliable, it's completely ridiculous to claim that every single one of them is afraid of the gaming industry. I sincerely hope you were joking after all.

It's you who put up effort as a measure. I merely continued with this logic, so no, it's not a straw man any more than you are.

But okay, then, if not my molar, a song by a garage band that got played once or twice on a local radio and performed at a village fair before the band broke up. How about that? Or a primary school rocket-modelling team? The internet is not the only repository of public knowledge.

The problem with the internet generation is that they are very good at collecting information, but completely incapable of assessment. I strongly believe that current rules about what constitutes a reliable reference provide the best (or as nearly to the best as humanely possible) filter that keeps the useless crap out, while simultaneously allowing useful content and ensuring its accuracy.

Because they are useless and because anonymous contributors cannot be trusted to supply correct facts.

Because it's an encyclopedia, not an indiscriminate collection of random facts. Would you agree that if I made an effort to write an article about how I had my molars removed, this should be published in Wikipedia?

Again, according to you, i.e. irrelevant.

The existence is not in question here, relevance is. And by introducing more anonymous cowards, you haven't done anything to solve the problem of substantiating your opinion.

But there aren't any to begin with. Why would a topic like that deserve metion in an encyclopedia?

Introducing conspiracy theories doesn't really improve your argument.

That's exactly the kind of pointlessness I'm talking about. You said that they are influential and you have nothing to back this statement, except additional opinions. Why would your opinions be important?

... support the Wikipedia rules about notability. Some line has to be drawn, and without good sources, there's no way of telling that a user "Alex1648" (for example) is a genuine old gaming enthusiast as opposed to a 15-year old troll who made a story about it last Monday and set up a website. And if nobody but MUD players argues that this-or-this title was "massively influential", an uninvolved person would reasonably argue that maybe, just maybe, they're overstating its influence. Be it because of emotional attachment, or anything else, why would that be relevant? If we let MUDs slip through the guidelines, what's next? Cigarette lighters? Dish-washing brands nobody has heard of? Car salesmen? Why would they be deprivileged then? Surely they must've had massive influence, just look at how many people wash their dishes, light their cigarettes or buy cars (more than there are MMORPG players, surely).

They're immobile until someone steals them. So I suggest you tone down your sarcasm if you know so little about these things, because it just sounds stupid.

They are immobile until someone steals one. You should tone down your sarcasm, because it just sounds stupid if you know so little of what you're talking about.